Circle in the Water

Book 0: A Sharon McCone Mystery

by Marcia Muller

Genres: Private Investigators; Female Sleuths; Suspense

Synopsis

A series of pranks turn deadly in the latest installment in New York Times bestselling author Marcia Muller's gripping Sharon McCone series.

San Francisco is home to more than 200 privately owned streets. Most are alleyways, but a select few look torn straight from the pages of a magazine. Lined with mansions and elaborate gardens, the properties are luxurious and perfectly maintained; security guards patrol the grounds to keep the curious at bay. Few know of these exclusive enclaves, but those who do prowl for availability, ready to make a grab for the precious real estate if opportunity strikes.

When several such streets are targeted in a series of so-called pranks, Sharon is hired by a coalition of concerned owners to investigate. But as things escalate—an attempt on Sharon’s life, an explosion at a meth lab, and a shocking murder—Sharon realizes far more is at play than a few misdemeanors gone wrong.

The case takes a sudden turn when one of McCone & Ripinsky’s most trusted employees is implicated, and Sharon will have to dig deep to save her agency—and her life.

Release date: April 23, 2024

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 272

Sample

11:35 p.m.

A light rain pattered down on the paving stones of Rowan Court, and the trees at the far end, for which the Presidio Heights court was named, shifted in a breeze. Gray clouds scudded across the dark sky. I huddled in my slicker and pulled its hood lower on my forehead. A drop of water slid down and settled on my nose.

Damn! We’ve had several years of drought, and when it decides to rain, it does so when I’m outside on a surveillance.

Surveillances weren’t all that common for me any more. My agency was fully staffed, and I let my operatives perform the long and often tedious stakeouts. But this was Halloween, and most of my employees either were on assignment or had begged off, citing parties or the need to deal with trick-or-treaters.

I preferred to stand guard rather than deal with trick-or-treaters. Small children in outlandish costumes make me nervous. A couple of people had invited me to parties, but carving pumpkins and rowdy behavior are not my thing. Besides, my husband, Hy Ripinsky, was working a case out of our London office, so it was the job of the co-owner of McCone & Ripinsky International to hold down the fort in his absence. My brother John was hosting a séance at his condo in SoMa, but I’d begged off that too—especially as the person he intended to bring back from the dead was Richard Nixon. Frankly, I couldn’t get my spirits up—pun intended—for any of the seasonal activities. Sometime during the previous year, a curious lassitude had settled on me, and so far I hadn’t been able to shake it.

What had caused the lassitude was a mystery to me. Last January I’d successfully closed a case in the extreme wilderness of northern California—Meruk County—centering on the murders of two Indigenous women that the local law had seemed inclined to dismiss. My findings had shaken the power structure there and promised vindication for many disadvantaged people. I should have been feeling satisfied, if not high, with the outcome, but instead I’d downplayed any positive emotions. Throughout the spring and summer, when asked about my sagging spirits by friends, employees, and even my husband, I’d shrugged off their questions and grimly gone about my business. As of now, nothing had changed.

Another raindrop splatted on my nose.

I was sitting on a pair of concrete steps that led up to the service entrance of the first house on the right side of the court. A coalition of the owners of the five houses on this privately owned street had hired my agency to stand guard because of recent vandalisms of various kinds—broken windows, spray-painting, damage to parked vehicles.

The house—like the others in this privileged Presidio Heights enclave—was Edwardian in style, and enormous, with red brick and dark half-timbering, many-paned windows, the lower ones protected by decorative ironwork, and a steeply peaked roof. Only security lights showed inside this one; the owners were at their winter home in Cabo San Lucas. I felt a twinge of envy, picturing sun and warm sand.

In addition to doing the Rowan Court surveillance, just this morning I’d spoken by phone with my contact there, Theresa Segretti. She’d called to say she was forming a coalition with residents of three other private streets in the city that had been similarly vandalized. Was I interested in taking them all on as clients?

Why did they want the services of my agency? I’d asked. The residents of the street were among the wealthiest in the city; they could afford to hire our best security guard services.

They weren’t satisfied merely to use guards, Segretti said. In fact, many of them didn’t like the presence of guards at all. What they wanted—and thought I could provide—was answers. They wanted to know why this was happening to them and who was behind it. Besides, by joining forces, they could pool their funds and hire the very best investigators the city had to offer.

I’m not above subtle flattery. And business had been slow during the past two months. I readily agreed.

She emailed me some materials on the properties and coalition members. The note she appended said the SFPD had repeatedly been contacted about the problem and presumed that the attacks on the private streets could be caused by anything from neighborhood jealousy to hatred of the elite to just plain cussedness. The police seemed to favor the latter explanation.

I wasn’t so sure; four different but similar attacks on four different streets in four different parts of the city? And all of them since mid-August? I didn’t think so.

In the first, at a nursery near the San Francisco Zoo, bags of fertilizer had been brought in and opened and their contents scattered around. The second had occurred on Bancroft Lane on Telegraph Hill; a fire had been set in overgrown brush next to a brick house occupied by an internet worker. The third, in an enclave called Rusty’s Meadow, had involved a broken water main. And finally, Rowan Court had been spray-painted, and the owners of the properties had banded together to get to the bottom of the trouble.

No, I wasn’t so sure these were random attacks.

My instincts told me there had to be a connection, but what? The vandalism could be the work of one person or a group of people. The target could be one resident of each area or all of them. So far, the residents I’d spoken with had said they knew no one on the other vandalized private streets. But still I couldn’t let go of my idea that the incidents were somehow related.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, all my operatives would be back at the agency. We’re a 24-7 operation, and the question of who’s on when can become so confusing that we’ve posted a chart on a whiteboard in the hallway between the reception area and the offices. I’d stopped in there early this morning and noted that three of my most reliable operatives—Patrick Neilan, Derek Frye, and Zoe Anderson—would be returning tomorrow. Come morning, we’d be off to a good start.

The rain slackened, but then a wind kicked up, cold and damp, soaring high off the Bay. I peered over the buildings on the downhill slope at the Golden Gate; it was shrouded in a strange, stationary fog. The horns so far had been silent, but now they began their mournful bellow.

A skittering noise in the brush beneath the rowan trees attracted my attention. I turned on my flashlight, aimed it back there. Nothing. Maybe a neighborhood cat or one of the raccoons that prowl the city seeking out garbage cans. Not a coyote, our other nocturnal type of visitor; they didn’t come this close to people.

I switched off the light and leaned against the cold steps, thinking of tomorrow. I’d be free of work, and Hy wasn’t due back till Wednesday. The weekend would be a good time to get an early start on Christmas shopping or catch the new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. Or lie lazily around the house. The latter was most appealing—

Pop!

I started. Reached automatically for my .38 in its side holster, then paused.

More popping sounds. Of course—Halloween cherry bombs. I heard a giggle as footsteps slapped around the house at the far end. Kids, not vandals. Vandals don’t call attention to themselves by making unnecessary noises.

A light flared on the house’s front porch. A woman stepped out, holding her dark-blue bathrobe closely around her. Theresa Segretti, the head of the neighborhood coalition and the only member I’d met with personally so far.

I stood and moved toward her, shining my light on my face so she’d know who I was.

“Ms. McCone,” she called, “were those shots?”

“Just cherry bombs. Go back in the house,” I said. Dammit, I’d instructed her not to come outside if there was a disturbance. Theresa—Theo—Segretti hadn’t paid attention.

I ran up the wide brick steps to the door. When I stepped into the foyer, she was flattened against the wall next to the door. A small table lamp cast a semicircle on deep-piled red carpet that led up a staircase. The woman was shaking, her hands—a large diamond ring on the left—steepled against her lips, her dark hair in sweaty curls around her face.

I said to her, “It’s all right. Kids playing with fireworks. I thought I told you to stay inside.”

“I… couldn’t. Davis is in the Far East on a buying trip, and I thought I should see what the noise was.”

Davis Segretti, her husband, was an importer dealing in Asian art. I said, “That’s for me to do. I’m out there by the entrance to the court. The best way you can help me is to make sure your doors and windows are locked, and turn off all lights if there’s a disturbance.”

“Can’t you come in, sit awhile?” She motioned through an archway at a living room. The room was large, a flat-screen TV dominating the far wall, and overdecorated: wallpaper with pink and white and red blossoms against a black background; long pink velvet drapes that cascaded into heaps on the hardwood floor; flimsy little tables and spindly chairs. Except for the TV, I felt as if I’d stepped into a past century.

“Thank you, but I really should get back to my post. I do have a few questions, however. Did you see or hear anything before the fireworks went off?”

“No, nothing. But I was watching a show on Hulu, with the sound turned up.”

“Have you seen anyone in the court who looked suspicious today?”

“Suspicious?”

“Like he or she didn’t belong here.”

“I’m not sure. I know pretty much everyone who belongs here.”

“So you saw no one?”

“You’re confusing me, Ms. McCone.”

I’d asked a straightforward question. How could it confuse her? Then I took a close look at her eyes: they were dilated. The woman was high. Not on booze or pot; I could’ve smelled either, unless she’d taken an edible. Perhaps cocaine, oxycodone, or some other opioid? Maybe, but no way to tell. I didn’t want to invade her privacy by asking, but I didn’t like leaving her alone in this condition.

I ran through my mental file of the residents of the court: Nancy and James Knight, currently in Cabo; Emily and Chuck Carstairs, a social couple, heavily involved with the opera and museums; Jane Curry, an artist who kept mostly to herself; Marc Thomas, a photographer and gay man-about-town. None of them seemed like people I could call upon to comfort the woman.

“Mrs. Segretti,” I said, “you’ve got to get hold of yourself. There was no real danger—just kids getting Halloween thrills. Will you be all right here tonight?”

“Yes, fine, now that you’ve reassured me. And my maid, Benicia Angelos, is sleeping in the servants’ quarters. I’m all right now, knowing you’ll be down at the gate.”

“I will be. Anything you need, just reach out to me.”

When I went outside, the rain had stopped completely. Not much of a drought breaker. I returned to my perch on the cold steps. It was still two hours till my operative Zoe Anderson would relieve me.

The fog was in fully now. It’s funny with fog—most of the time it’s warmish and wraps you in a gentle blanket, but at other times, like this night, it’s bitter cold and unfriendly. I circled my knees with my arms and curled up, my jacket’s hood draped over my head like a turtle’s shell.

This, I thought, is why I’ve expanded the agency and hired all those new operatives. This makes me remember those long, cold nights and early mornings when I was so bleary eyed after stakeouts I could barely find my car. And the tension—it was always there. The watching, the waiting. Sometimes I’d be so tense I could hardly sleep when I got home. It’s spreading through me right now—

A step sounded outside the gate to the court. I started, then watched as a tall, lanky figure came toward me. I recognized its smiling face just before its arms went around me and I breathed in the familiar scent of my husband.

“Mick told me where to find you,” Hy said. “Nice surprise?”

“The best. How come you’re home two days early?”

“Finished up in London, so I flew to Kennedy and hitched a ride with a buddy who owns a G550. Why would I want to sit around airports when I could be in bed with you?”

7:30 a.m.

I woke in our big bedroom at the rear of our house on Avila Street in the Marina district. Hy was still sleeping, a pillow over his head, but I’d heeded the annoying greetings of the dove that made its home in the gnarled apple tree outside the window: “Hoo, hoo hoo. Hoo, hoo hoo.” Over and over.

Someday I’m going to strangle that bird.

Yeah, brave thought, McCone.

I’ve always been afraid of birds, something to do with a red-winged blackbird grabbing my head at our senior class picnic. I don’t like the fluttering, the screeching, the flapping of feathers. Give me a fixed-wing aircraft and I’m happy.

So what to do today? Hy would sleep for hours yet, so I reached for my iPhone, checked my texts and email. Zoe reported that nothing had happened at Rowan Court during her shift and that her relief had already arrived. Most of the weekend staffers had checked. . .