The 8th Confession (Women's Murder Club 8)

“The young girls wore green plaid uniforms and did a maypole dance every year. Streamers and all.

“Sara Needleman and Isa Booth were both in my class in eighty-two. I still can’t believe that they’re dead! They had charmed lives. And when I knew them, they were both darling children. Look at this.”

Friedman handed me a small leather book with glassine pages filled with snapshots. She turned to the back page and pointed to stepped rows of ten- year-old girls in a class photo.

“There’s Isa. This is Sara. And this girl, poor thing, with the sad eyes. She was always the odd girl out,” Friedman said of a young girl with shoulder-length dark hair. The child looked familiar, but although my mind was on search, I couldn’t place her.

Friedman said, “She was Christopher Ross’s illegitimate daughter. Her mother was the Ross’s housekeeper, and Ross paid for his daughter’s schooling at Burke’s. I helped to get her admitted.

“The other girls all knew her circumstances, of course, and some of them were unkind. I said to her once, ‘Honey, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ and she seemed to take courage from that.

“And then Chris died, and his wife, Becky — who had previously looked the other way — fired Norma’s mother, cut her and the child off without a penny. Chris must’ve thought he’d live forever, and he hadn’t provided for them in his will. Anyway, poor Norma was dropped from the school.

“And you know, I was right. It didn’t kill her, and I think it did make her stronger.”

I stared at the picture of the sad-eyed little girl — and suddenly the pieces locked into place with such force I could almost hear them clang. When I met Norma Johnson, her hair was caramel-blond and she was thirty-three years old.

Friedman said, “Last time I spoke with Norma was about ten years ago. She had created a little gofer business for herself, used her old contacts to get work.

“She let down her hair with me over a nice lunch in Fort Mason, and I’ll tell you, Sergeant, and it gives me no pleasure to say it, Norma was very bitter.

“You know what those rich girls called their old school chum? They called her ‘Pet Girl.’ ”

Chapter 94

CONKLIN TOOK A CHAIR in Jacobi’s office, but I was so revved up, I couldn’t sit. I was also freaking out. We’d interviewed Norma Johnson twice, written her off as a suspect both times and kicked her.

“Am I missing the obvious?” Jacobi asked me. “Or are you?” His meaty hands were clasped together on his trash heap of a desktop.

“Maybe it’s me. What’s the obvious?”

“Did you consider that Ginny Friedman might be the doer? She not only admits to knowing one of the original victims, she knew half the current ones, too.”

“She has a solid alibi, Jacobi. Didn’t I say that?”

“You said she had an alibi, Boxer. I’m asking for details.”

There were times when reporting to Jacobi was like having bamboo slivers pushed under my fingernails. Had he forgotten we’d worked together for more than ten years?

Had he forgotten he used to report to me?

“When the killings happened, Ginny Friedman was cruising the Mediterranean on a sailing ship,” I told him. “She learned about the killings when the ship docked last week in Cannes. France.”

“I know where Cannes is,” Jacobi said, pronouncing it in the plural.

“I have Friedman’s round-trip airplane receipts and her travel documents from the Royal Clipper on my desk. The ship left port before the Baileys were killed, and it didn’t return until Brian Caine and Jordan Priestly were dead.”

“You’re sure?”

“I examined her passport,” I said. “The photo was current, and the book was properly stamped. She wasn’t in San Francisco over the last month, Jacobi, no chance. But McCorkle is checking her out anyway.”

Jacobi picked up the receiver on his phone, punched all five of his lines so no calls could come through. Then he fastened his eyes on me.

“Tell me more about this Pet Girl.”

I told Jacobi that Johnson’s father, Christopher Ross, wasn’t married to Norma’s mother, that the mother just changed the bed linens and vacuumed the floors in his Nob Hill manse.

“Ross was so rich, he was beyond scandal,” I said, “at least, while he was alive. After he died, Norma’s mother was canned and little Norma was officially an outcast.