“You know why I still live in San Francisco when I could live anywhere in the world? Because maybe Cece wasn’t murdered. Maybe she was abducted. Or maybe she just wanted to get away from me. Maybe she’ll come home, and if she does, I’ll be waiting for her.”

Conklin and I left Chandler on the Cecily. As we walked across the dock toward the parking lot, my partner said to me, “Janet Worley has been holding out on us.”

“Just spitballing now, but try this on for size,” I said. “Say Nigel Worley does the killings because he’s angry that his wife had an affair, plus he’s crazy. Janet goes along with it. And she’s the one who does the decorating with numbers and flowers.”

“And they put the heads on the back step? Why?”

“Because it makes Harry Chandler a suspect. If he gets accused of murder again, then maybe this time, he doesn’t get off.”

“All because of a fling ten years ago.”

“Maybe neither Janet nor Nigel got over the insult,” I said. “Maybe hatred of Harry Chandler is what keeps those two together.”

Chapter 44

“I’VE GOT HER,” I said to Conklin.

He looked up from his computer.

“Marilyn Varick,” I said. “Google shows a dozen pages on her. She was something special about five years ago.”

Our former Jane Doe had saturated the local surfer news and blogs. Many of the articles about her had photos of her in a Speedo standing next to her surfboard, and there were links to YouTube. I clicked on one, played a video of Marilyn riding enormous waves at Pillar Point.

I turned the monitor so Rich could see.

“Jane Doe was a surfer,” I said. “A champion.”

Rich had been doing his own research as I looked up Marilyn Varick on the Web. He said, “She’s got priors for possession, loitering, panhandling, all in the last two years. She was always picked up in Pacific Heights. I guess that was her home base.”

“LaMetta Wynn said that she was sleeping in doorways. LaMetta gave her money. Maybe other people did too,” I said to Rich. “Our drawing doesn’t look much like these younger pictures of her in real life. It’s like comparing a plum to a prune.”

I did a search for Marilyn Varick on Facebook, found more beauty shots of a graceful young woman daring the waves off Ocean Beach, but she hadn’t updated her page in two years.

“Something happened to her a couple of years ago,” I said. “She dropped out.”

Rich said, “Wynn said there was no way Harry Chandler knew Marilyn Varick. Chandler also said that he didn’t know her. But then we have Nigel Worley saying Chandler had a wide range of types. Maybe a pretty surfer girl would have been one of those types.”

“Speculating now,” I said. “Say Chandler meets her, dates her, breaks her heart. Marilyn goes downhill. Starts living on the street near Chandler’s house.”

“She’s not in missing persons,” Richie said. “But she’s got parents living in San Rafael.”