Coyote

by Rhonda Roberts

  ‘Kannon!’ He grabbed me. ‘Listen to me. There are things going on in this case that I just can’t piece together fast enough to protect you —’

  ‘Protect me?’ I shook off his hands.

  ‘I told you about River because I was afraid you’d go off and do something really crazy —’

  ‘REALLY CRAZY?’ I bellowed.

  The rage, the fear and the sorrow overwhelmed me. I stuck my fist in his face. ‘Don’t try and stop me from doing my job, Honeycutt. Because nothing is going to stop me from finding out —’

  ‘No, Kannon, you can’t stay on this case, I won’t let you!’

  ‘You don’t get to tell me what I do or don’t do, Honeycutt,’ I spat. ‘If you’re not going to help me — then stay away from me and my case!’

  ‘No, Kannon! You’re upset. You’re not brushing me off, I won’t —’

  I spun on my heel and made for my car. This was wasting precious time. I got in, slamming the door shut.

  Honeycutt leant in my window. ‘Kannon, you can’t —’

  ‘Oh, I certainly am going to!’ I already knew exactly what I was going to do.

  I gunned the engine, making Honeycutt dodge away.

  There’d been one person all along … one person who wanted Hector Kershaw’s diary as much as River.

  My old client — Seymour Kershaw.

  The day I arrived back from old Santa Fe, Seymour had been the first person there to see me. He’d been so desperate to find out if there was a diary, it was obvious that there was more to it than him just wanting to preserve his ancestor’s words.

  Seymour Kershaw had sent me on the mission because he was afraid someone else would find the diary first. But when I confronted him about Dry Gulch, Seymour genuinely had no idea what I was talking about.

  That meant there was something else in that diary that Seymour was afraid of coming out …

  Something far worse than Dry Gulch.

  Seymour Kershaw was in his office on the top floor of the Kershaw Bank. His secretary refused me admittance so I barged through. He was with two well-dressed clients, chatting over lattes.

  I slammed open his glass door. ‘Clear the room, Seymour. Now!’

  Seymour Kershaw got to his feet, the picture of dignified outrage. ‘What are you doing here —’

  ‘You heard me!’

  Seymour signalled his secretary to call for security. She stayed at a safe distance while she spoke into her phone.

  I planted my feet. ‘What else is in Hector’s diary besides Dry Gulch?’

  Seymour eyed his two clients with horror.

  Four security officers came around the corner at a clip.

  Seymour asked his clients to excuse him and they gladly left. He got rid of the security guards just as fast.

  He shut the door and pulled the blinds. ‘How dare you burst in here —’

  I bulldozed him straight into the wall. ‘Don’t waste my time, Seymour! I’m not in the mood.’

  He looked in my eyes and quailed.

  ‘I’ll ask you just one more time, Seymour … What’s in Hector’s diary that’s worse than Dry Gulch?’

  Seymour clenched his jaw. That question’d given him backbone … Whatever the answer was, it scared him as much as I did.

  ‘Come on, Seymour! I know that’s why you sent me back to old Santa Fe. You wanted me to find that diary before River could.’

  Seymour shook his head. ‘You can’t prove anything. I’m going to call the police.’ He slid away from me.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, sitting on the end of his desk and offering him his phone. ‘Call the Marin County Sheriff’s Office, extension 237. I was just talking to them about how Jackson River was murdered.’

  Seymour gaped at me. ‘Wha … what?’ He collapsed into his chair. ‘River was murdered? … But how?’

  His reaction was real. I could smell his fear. Seymour was petrified — a rabbit caught in headlights.

  ‘Do they know who did it?’ He hugged himself for safety. ‘Did they catch the killer?’ he implored.

  Hmm. So Seymour was not only innocent — he was terrified he’d be next. ‘You know who killed River, don’t you?’

  He looked at me in terror. ‘No. No, I don’t.’

  ‘You’re a terrible liar, Seymour. You know who the murderer is.’

  ‘No, I don’t really.’

  ‘You’re lying, Seymour.’ I started dialling. ‘I’m going to talk to the sheriff and tell him that you have a motive. That you killed River to stop him from finding Hector’s diary.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Hallo,’ I said. ‘Is that the Sheriff’s Office? Can I please speak to —’

  Seymour leapt to his feet and disconnected the phone.

  I put the receiver down, satisfied. ‘Well?’

  Seymour ran his fingers through his hair. It was obvious he was trying to work out what to tell me. Or, more likely, what not to tell me. ‘Someone’s trying to blackmail me.’ He eyed me angrily — as though it was all my fault.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About things that Hector did in old San Francisco.’ He sat. ‘They didn’t have enough proof to force me to pay —’

  ‘And now they’re after the diary to get better leverage.’ I nodded to myself. ‘So they killed River to stop him from getting to it first.’

  Seymour didn’t answer, just nodded.

  ‘So who’s the blackmailer, Seymour?’

  ‘I told you the truth … I don’t know their identity. They contact me through untraceable letters.’

  ‘But why haven’t you gone to the police, Seymour?’

  ‘I can’t,’ he howled.

  I eyeballed him. ‘Tell me what’s in the diary!’

  He just sat there, mute.

  ‘If you don’t tell me, Seymour, I’m gonna walk out of here and straight into the nearest TV station. I’ll go public with Dry Gulch and I do have proof of that,’ I bluffed.

  ‘No! You can’t!’ he pleaded.

  ‘You’d better believe I will, Seymour.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Seymour. ‘But you have to understand … my family believed Hector had gone mad after Dry Gulch. That the horror had broken his mind …’

  I tapped my toe. ‘What did Hector do, Seymour?’

  ‘Terrible, terrible things … His wife, Edwina, and his father-in-law found out about them after he disappeared. They found papers …’ He shifted uneasily. ‘And other things …’ He faltered.

  ‘Go on, Seymour,’ I warned.

  ‘They pieced it all together … they realised what he’d been doing all along.’ He silently appealed for mercy.

  I pushed. ‘Don’t waste my time, Seymour!’

  He slumped. ‘Hector Kershaw wasn’t the brave lawman trying to clean up San Francisco after all.’ Seymour shook his head. ‘He’d tricked everyone into serving his own purpose …’

  Suddenly I knew what Seymour was going to say. ‘This was all about breaking the Corsairs … wasn’t it?’

  Seymour nodded. ‘Hector wanted to mobilise San Francisco against them. So he could take over the Barbary Coast, the whole underworld, the whole network of corrupt politicians …’

  ‘So Hector could take over San Francisco,’ I said. ‘And become the mayor, the ruler of San Francisco.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what exactly did Hector do?’ Nasty suspicions were rising like toxic bubbles off industrial waste.

  Seymour tried to challenge me. ‘But why do you need to know? This has nothing to do with —’

  ‘I warned you about wasting my time, Seymour!’

  He gulped. ‘Hector needed a way to rouse San Francisco against the Corsairs, to motivate both the honest officials and the ones the Corsairs controlled. So he …’ Seymour could hardly bear to say it. ‘So he created a disaster that’d so outrage San Francisco that they would rise up against the Corsairs … and anyone who tried to protect them. Hundreds of men, women and children died in the disaster. And Hector set
it up so it was clear the Corsairs had done it.’

  He shot me a careful look.

  Seymour was a terrible liar. He was giving me bits and pieces but not how they fitted together.

  ‘What aren’t you telling, Seymour?’ I growled, showing my canines.

  Seymour blanched. ‘The week before last the blackmailer copycatted what Hector did to blame the Corsairs …’ He whined in self-pity, ‘And they left evidence there that implicated me. They said it’d appear as though I was following in my ancestor’s footsteps … I paid them everything I had to get that evidence back from Portsmouth Square.’

  Portsmouth Square?

  I sagged onto the desk. This was much worse than I was immediately able to comprehend.

  So Hector had locked innocent men, women and children in the buildings around Portsmouth Square and set them on fire … And someone had just repeated it to squeeze money out of the effete socialite opposite me.

  I felt like a human volcano about to erupt and take the known universe with me. I lunged over the desk at him, pinning him to the chair. ‘And you didn’t tell the police!’

  He slobbered in fear.

  I had to get a grip. ‘Who’s blackmailing you, Seymour? Who did this?’

  ‘I don’t know, I told you!’ Seymour wailed. ‘I just get threatening letters with instructions on where and when to drop the cash off.’

  I brooded silently for a moment.

  ‘Show me the letters,’ I ordered.

  He shook his head. ‘I burnt them all.’

  ‘Idiot!’ I thought again. ‘Where do you make the drop?’ I demanded.

  ‘There’s an old cemetery where most of the victims from the original Portsmouth Square disaster are buried. The blackmailer must’ve picked it to scare me into paying.’ He shivered. ‘I hate the place. There’re rows and rows of graves carved with weeping angels … all little kids from a school that was destroyed —’

  He stopped at the expression on my face.

  River was killed by someone with sniper training … Seymour was being blackmailed by someone with a hell of a lot of historical detail at her fingertips.

  I nodded to myself. Gilda, the ex-Navy SEAL, had a second job …

  Blackmailer.

  I felt strange … as though I was losing control and gaining momentum all at the same time. Without a word I made for the door.

  Gilda was going to pay …

  55

  MEN-ONLY NIGHT

  It was a foggy night but the streets were still busy in the Barbary Coast. The Hue & Cry was closed for business. I rattled the front door, but could see through the glass it was padlocked on the inside. I listened. There was noise … voices. I rattled the door again.

  No one knew where I could find Gilda. And I’d tried every means I could to contact Gideon Webb but he wasn’t answering his phactor. There was someone in there and I wasn’t leaving until they answered my questions … and told me where Gilda was.

  I circled the building, looking for a less exposed place to break and enter.

  There was another entrance in the side alley. But there, a grim-faced bouncer blocked the firmly closed door. He watched me with thinly veiled suspicion as I made my way up the stairs then curtly informed me that The Hue & Cry was closed for business tonight. When I asked about Gilda he became even less cooperative and grunted an impatient negative, jerking his head back at the street.

  The message was ‘get lost or there’ll be consequences’.

  A deep growl rumbled in my throat.

  He squinted at my face, alarm registering.

  My hands curled into fists.

  He shoved his hand under his jacket, ready to draw …

  Then I heard the sound of hurried footsteps, clattering up the stairs behind me.

  Two men, both in tailored business suits, rudely pushed past me to appeal to the bouncer for entry. They were impatient, but the bouncer refused to even acknowledge them until I’d backed out of earshot and the alleyway. He’d kept his hand on his gun the whole time.

  I watched from cover, across the street. The two men gave the bouncer tickets and, satisfied, he finally opened the door and let them past.

  Over the next ten minutes, multiple groups of twos and threes repeated the same little dance. They looked both ways before they entered the alleyway, like naughty kids about to smoke behind the school toilets, and the bouncer gave them — and their tickets — a thorough once-over before they made it through that side door.

  All were extremely well dressed.

  All were male.

  Hmm. So it was Men-Only Night at The Hue & Cry …

  I heard a car door slam.

  To my left three women exited a parked car. They’d worked hard to maximise their natural assets with firm bodies and perfect hair but where nature had failed them they’d taken matters into their own hands. There wasn’t a wrinkle between the three of them and they each wore enough make-up to mask a burn victim. Their seductive clothing proclaimed their profession: high-class hookers.

  They went to the trunk of their car and each pulled out a matching make-up case. Now armed, they trotted across the road in their vertigo-inducing stilettos and into the alleyway.

  They swayed up the alley to the bouncer. He gave them a cursory glance and opened the door. This time no tickets needed.

  Hmm. Looks like the staff were still arriving.

  I went back to my car, found my own make-up bag and pulled out the bag of tricks Des had given me.

  There was a ritzy hotel in the block around the corner from The Hue & Cry, so I went in. It was jammed full with some kind of convention. Lots of men and women wearing the same grey conservative suits with an S-shaped logo on the pocket.

  I made my way through to the restroom.

  By the time I was changed and adjusting my make-up, the women passing through the restroom were giving me hasty glances and leaving at the double.

  My eyes glinted a molten gold glare back at me in the mirror.

  I didn’t look anything like Kannon Dupree any more. This woman was completely …

  Wild.

  I had Brigitte Bardot eye make-up, pouting red lips and a square-fringed black wig that hung straight down my back. I stood five inches taller in my black thigh-high boots, the black leather miniskirt barely covered my bottom, and the red halter top showed that I wasn’t wearing a bra. My gun was in my shiny black shoulder bag.

  In the hotel foyer the convention crowd parted like the Red Sea. The women turned away, whispering; the men watched me — a cross between stunned and aroused.

  Good. I had the right look.

  I strode down the alley, while the bouncer watched me like I was a cold drink on a hot day.

  ‘Hallo, gorgeous.’ He didn’t even challenge me, just gave me a pat on the rear and opened the door. ‘Save some for me,’ he whispered as I passed.

  I didn’t reply.

  Once inside there were two doors.

  And two more bouncers, both armed …

  I wasn’t about to risk a shoot-out with a maniac like Gilda around. If she’d set fire to Portsmouth Square, she wasn’t likely to look out for innocent bystanders. I had to get the jump on her, and the black wig should make sure she didn’t see me coming. If I could just get her within arm’s reach, I’d knock her out and drag her out the door … bouncers be damned!

  While I hesitated, the external door behind me opened again and two chattering females, about my age, walked in. They took the right-hand door, so I followed.

  It was a change room. One side held a long rack stuffed to exploding with nineteenth-century women’s clothes, the other held a doorway that led through to a bathroom with old-fashioned mirrors and basins.

  Okay, so tonight was when the male tourists got the real deal, the authentic experience — a Barbary Coast whorehouse.

  An older woman hurried in to snap at us. ‘You girls hurry up! You’re very late. The auction’s due to start in ten minutes and Gilda will have all our hides if
it doesn’t start on time.’

  Frightened, the two girls peeled off their streetwear down to their bras and pants and padded through to the bathroom. I followed suit. They washed off all their make-up, wiping their faces completely clean, and brushed out their long hair. I did the same. Then I trooped behind them, back into the next room.

  The older woman inspected us like cattle. ‘You,’ she barked at the taller girl. ‘You’ve put on weight since last time!’

  I gawked. The girl was slim.

  ‘Take off your bra,’ ordered the older woman.

  The girl complied.

  She grabbed the girl’s breast and hefted it. ‘No, you’re not going in! You look too old!’

  The girl started to argue. They exchanged some pithy four-lettered words, but the girl threw her clothes back on and stormed out.

  The older woman started on the next girl. She was flat-chested and without her make-up she looked like a kid … maybe twelve, prepubescent at least. But I was betting she was older than me.

  The woman nodded approvingly. ‘Good, good. Put your hair in braids this time. And find those pink ribbons … they like that.’

  Okay … It was clear, whatever was about to happen the madam wanted girls that looked underage. Very underage.

  Damn. I had a baby-face, but the rest of me was all curves. I looked down. Actually, that wasn’t true. Maybe I’d dropped enough weight in New Mexico to mean this could work.

  While the girl sorted through the costume rack, the madam turned to me. She seemed puzzled more than anything. She walked around me, prodding and poking, then lifted my chin to gaze into my eyes.

  She stood back and tapped her chin. ‘Sweetheart, your body sure doesn’t look like you’d fit into the Virgin Auction …’ She paused. ‘But that face will blow their sick little minds.’

  She slapped my butt and said, ‘I’d like to get you up on that block anyway and see what happens. Take off your underwear; I’ll see how you look in costume and then have a talk to Gilda.’

  I nodded submissively.

  Softly I whispered, ‘Oh yes please … do bring Gilda within arm’s reach!’

  While the other girl pulled on a nineteenth-century kid’s dress and tied ribbons in her hair, the madam personally fitted me out in a long white nightdress.