The Golden Gate: A Novel

The novel flashes back to a January afternoon in 1930, when six-year-old Isabella Stafford, Mrs. Bainbridge’s granddaughter, plays hide-and-seek with her older sister, Iris, during their regular Sunday visits to Berkeley, California’s luxurious Claremont Hotel. While their mother, Sadie Bainbridge-Stafford, plays tennis with her friend, Mrs. Tillie von Urban, Isabella and Iris keep each other company. Isabella hides in an armoire but emerges after realizing that she has been alone for too long. She searches the hotel for Iris, eventually hearing a woman’s scream from the hotel’s kitchen area.

Following hotel staff, Isabella discovers Iris’s body atop a pile of laundry in the basement. Her sister’s neck appears twisted with a thin, red laceration, and her body resembles a broken doll. 

On Friday, March 10, 1944, Detective Al Sullivan of the Berkeley police department is at the Claremont Hotel to meet Nicole Bainbridge, one of Mrs. Bainbridge’s granddaughters. Sullivan comes from a working-class, mixed-race background, and his Jewish Mexican father was deported during the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s. Sullivan passes as white, having taken his mother’s last name, and he muses on how the Great Depression has had no effect on California’s wealthy, like the Bainbridges. He means to question Nicole about her involvement with Sal Ibarra, a known communist agitator, but they are interrupted by the maître d’, who takes Sullivan aside and reports that there were shots fired in the room of one of the hotel’s guests: Walter Wilkinson, an industrialist and former presidential candidate. Sullivan finds Wilkinson unharmed, and the man claims that a communist with a Russian accent tried to kill him. After Sullivan moves Wilkinson to another room and arranges police protection for him, he goes to report to his boss, Chief Greening. Greening, an antisemitic, opines that Wilkinson’s attacker was probably a Jew. A little past midnight, Greening receives a call saying that Wilkinson has been murdered in his original room.

Sullivan heads back to the Claremont. He discovers that Wilkinson’s body has been shot in the forehead, that he’s partially undressed, and that various objects—like flowers, a pen, and a jade cube—are stuffed in his mouth. The guard, Dicky O’Gar, reveals that Wilkinson returned alone to his old room to retrieve a forgotten item. Sullivan finds several pieces of evidence: an empty black velvet jewelry box, a yellow silk thread caught in the doorjamb, and an old porcelain-faced Dy-Dee doll in the closet. To get an early start on the investigation, Sullivan decides to stay at the Claremont. 

Sullivan directs his investigation teams across multiple locations and asks his men to interview all the guests at the Claremont. At the Alameda Coroner’s Bureau, Coroner Emerson shows him a green jade cube with Chinese writing that was retrieved from the victim’s throat. At the Berkeley police forensics lab, Jim Archimbault reports that the bullets came from a Colt .38, the thread is rare silk, and the jewelry box originated from Shreve & Co., an upscale San Francisco jewelry shop. The Dy-Dee doll has a melted foot and usable fingerprints. 

The narrative flashes forward to the deposition of March 15. Mrs. Bainbridge reveals to DA Doogan that her granddaughters—twins Cassie and Nicole and their cousin Isabella—were all born within a week of each other. She insists that understanding their childhood is essential to the case.

The novel flashes back to the months following Iris’s death, when the Bainbridge-Stafford household becomes consumed by grief and dysfunction. Isabella becomes mute and exhibits strange behavior, producing perfect, left-handed handwriting identical to her sister’s. Her mother, Sadie, succumbs to grief and develops an alcohol addiction, eventually attempting suicide before being forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Emotionally abandoned, Isabella begins speaking with the voice of her dead sister. Iris’s voice tells Isabella that her memory of the fatal day is flawed, claiming that she was hiding, but not from Iris, and reminding her that there was a hooded figure present.

As Sullivan continues his investigation, he forgets that he is supposed to meet his 11-year-old niece, Miriam Milsap, for lunch. Miriam is the daughter of his half-sister, Rosemary. Miriam makes it to his office by herself, and Sullivan reflects that while Rosemary is an irresponsible parent who drinks too much and can’t hold a job, Miriam picks up the slack. She works at a store after school and helps pay the rent. 

Later, Sullivan learns from the Claremont’s hotel manager that a maid named Juanita Juárez worked on the victim’s floor but has not reported for work since the murder. Sullivan visits Juanita’s home and, speaking Spanish with her to build trust, learns that she saw Wilkinson at midnight with a young, beautiful, blonde woman. Juanita identifies her as one of the Bainbridge granddaughters but cannot distinguish which one. Sullivan realizes that he was at the hotel bar with Nicole that night, placing her in the location of the murder.

The narrative flashes back to the days after Iris’s death. In the Bainbridge-Stafford house kitchen, cook Mabel and housekeeper Mrs. Biddleston discuss their growing concerns about working for the troubled family. Mabel expresses her desire to quit after Sadie threw silverware at her. The staff discusses Isabella’s disturbing behavior, including placing a headless doll in the refrigerator and speaking with Iris’s voice. Mrs. Biddleston adds a rumor from a Claremont maid who claimed to have witnessed Isabella push her sister to her death.

Chief Greening forbids Sullivan from questioning the Bainbridge family, chastising him for taking the word of a Mexican working-class woman and putting the three beautiful, wealthy Bainbridge girls under suspicion. Sullivan then meets with a hotel guest named Jessup, who claims that he saw a Chinese woman leaving Wilkinson’s room on the night of the murder; Jessup believes that she was a sex worker. 

When Sullivan gets to his own room at the Claremont, he finds a beautiful, blonde woman waiting outside his door (the narrative will later reveal that she is Isabella Stafford). She tells him that she is a reporter for The New York Tribune and provides him with a tip about a rumored affair between Wilkinson and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, the wife of the president of China, who is currently living in Berkeley. Isabella hints that either Madame Chiang or her husband were involved in the murder. While Isabella flirts with Sullivan and gets him to buy her a drink, she doesn’t tell him her name. Afterward, Sullivan locates Wilkinson’s car and discovers a pocket calendar inside with a circled appointment for midnight on the night he died.

Nicole Bainbridge comes to the Claremont to meet with Sullivan. Though Chief Greening has forbidden him from questioning the Bainbridges, Sullivan thinks it would be fine for him to question Nicole since she showed up on her own accord. She wants to talk about Sal Ibarra, the communist agitator she is involved with, and when Sullivan warns her about him, she defends Sal’s cause as being righteous. When Sullivan questions her about her whereabouts during Wilkinson’s murder, she says that she was at the family’s country house in Sonoma with her sister, Sadie, and cousin Isabella. She says that she left to go there soon after her meeting with Sullivan; he suspects she is lying. Later that night, Sullivan experiences a nightmare in which he sees a little girl in the Claremont’s hallways who transforms into the crime-scene doll and attacks him.