by Sue Grafton
The two men had emerged from the bar and were heading in our direction, feet crunching on gravel, their progress leisurely. I moved on toward my car, thinking to go ahead and unlock it and get in. No point in standing in the cold, I thought. The cadence of the footsteps picked up, and I turned to see what was going on. The two men appeared on either side of me, crowding in close, each man gripping an arm. “Hey!” I said.
“Please be very quiet,” one of them murmured.
They began to walk me toward the limo, virtually hoisting me off the ground so that my feet barely touched as they hurried me along. I felt like a kid being held aloft by my parents, lifted over curbs and puddles. When you’re little, this is fun. When you’re big, it’s scary stuff. The rear door of the limo opened. I tried to dig my heels in, but I had no purchase.
By the time I gathered myself and bucked, squawking, “Help!” I was in the back of the limo with the door slammed shut.
The interior was black leather and burled walnut. I could see a compact bar, a phone, and a blank television screen. Above my head, a band of varicolored lighted buttons controlled every aspect of the passengers’ comfort: air temperature, windows, reading lights, the sliding moon roof. The interior glass privacy panel was rolled up between us and the chauffeur. I sat there, squeezed in between the two guys on the back bench seat, facing a third man across a spacious length of plush black carpeting. In the interest of personal safety, I made a point of looking straight ahead. I didn’t want to be able to identify the two sidekicks. The guy facing me didn’t seem to care if I looked at him or not. All three men were throwing out body heat, absorbed by the silence, which ate up all but the sounds of heavy breathing, largely mine.
The only lights on in the limo were small side bars. The floods from the parking lot were cut by the heavily tinted windows, but there was still ample illumination. The atmosphere in the car was tense, as if the gravitational field were somehow different here than in the rest of the world. Maybe it was the overcoats, the conviction I had that everybody in the car was packing except me. I could feel my heart thumping in my chest and the sick thrill of sweat trickling down my side. Often fear makes me sassy, but not this time. I felt excessively respectful. These were men who operated by a set of rules different from mine. Who knew what they’d consider rude or offensive?
The limo was so long that the man across from me was probably sitting eight feet away. He appeared to be in his sixties, short and blocky, balding on top. His face was dotted with miscellaneous moles, the skin as heavily lined as a pen-and-ink sketch. His cheeks bowed out almost to a heart shape, his chin forming the point. His eyebrows were an unruly tangle of white over dark, sunken eyes. His upper lids sagged. His lower lids were pouched into smoky poufs. He had thin lips and big teeth, set slightly askew in his mouth. He had big hands, thick wrists, and heavy gold jewelry. He smelled of cigars and a spicy after-shave. There was something distinctly masculine about him: brusque, decisive, opinionated. He held a small notebook loosely in one hand, though he didn’t seem to be referring to it. “I hope you’ll forgive the unorthodox method of arranging a meeting. We didn’t intend to alarm you.” No accent. No regional inflection.
The guys on either side of me sat as still as mannequins.
“Are you sure you have the right person?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know you,” I said.
“I’m a Los Angeles attorney. I represent a gentleman who’s currently out of the country on business. He asked me to get in touch.”
“Regarding what?” My heartbeat had slowed some. These were not robbers or rapists. I didn’t think they were going to shoot me and fling my body out into the parking lot. The word M-A-F-I-A formed at the back of my mind, but I didn’t allow it to become concrete thought. I didn’t want confirmation, in case I was forced to testify later. These guys were professionals. They killed for business, not pleasure. So far, I had no business with them, so I figured I was safe.
The alleged attorney was saying, “You’re conducting a homicide investigation my client has been following. The dead girl is Lorna Kepler. We’d appreciate it if you’d apprise us of the information you’ve acquired.”
“What’s his interest? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“He was a close friend. She was a beautiful person. He doesn’t want anything coming to light that might sully her reputation.”
“Her reputation was sullied before she died,” I pointed out.
“They were engaged.”
“In what?”
“They were getting married in Las Vegas on April twenty-first, but Lorna never showed.”
Chapter 14
*
I stared across the dark of the limousine at him. The claim seemed so preposterous that it might just be true. I’d been told Lorna met some heavy hitters in the course of her work. Maybe she fell in love with some guy and he with her. Mr. and Mrs. Racketeer. “Didn’t he send someone up here to find her when she didn’t show?”
“He’s a proud man. He assumed she’d had a change of heart. Naturally, when he heard what had happened to her, the news was bittersweet,” he said. “Now, of course, he wonders if he could have saved her.”
“We’ll probably never have the answer to that.”
“What information do you have so far?”
I was forced to shrug. “I’ve only been working since Monday, and I haven’t come up with much.”
He was silent for a moment. “You spoke to a gentleman in San Francisco with whom we’ve had dealings. Mr. Ayers.”
“That’s right.”
“What did he tell you?”
I paused. I wasn’t sure whether Joe Ayers’s cooperation or his failure to cooperate would generate disfavor in this crowd. I pictured Ayers hanging from his chandelier by his dick. Maybe the Mob didn’t really do things that way. Maybe they’d picked up a bad rep these days. Living in Santa Teresa, we didn’t have a lot of experience with these things. My mouth had gone dry. I was worried about my responsibility to the people I’d spoken with. “He was courteous,” I said. “He gave me a couple of names and telephone numbers, but I’d already checked them out, so the information wasn’t that useful.”
“Who else have you spoken to?”
It’s hard to sound casual when your voice starts to quake. “Family members. Her boss. She’d done some house-sitting for the boss’s wife, and I talked to her.” I cleared my throat.
“This was Mrs. Bonney? The one who found her?”
“That’s right. I also talked to the homicide detective who handled the case.”
Silence.
“That’s about it,” I added, sounding lame.
His eyes drifted down to his notebook. There was a glint of light when his gaze came up again. Clearly he knew exactly whom I’d spoken to and was waiting to see how candid I intended to be. I pretended I was in a courtroom on the witness stand. He was an attorney, according to his claim. If he had questions, let him ask and I’d answer. In the unlikely event that I knew more than he did, I thought it was better not to volunteer information.
“Who else?” he asked.
Another trickle of sweat slid down my side. “That’s all I can think of offhand,” I said. The car seemed hot. I wondered if they had the heater turned on.
“What about Miss Rivers?”
I looked at him blankly. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Danielle Rivers.”
“Oooh, yeah. Right. I did speak to her. Are you guys connected to that fellow on a bike?”
He ignored that one. He said, “You talked to her twice. Most recently tonight.”
“I owed her some money. She came by to collect. She gave me a haircut and we ordered a vegetarian pizza. It was no big deal. Really.”
His gaze was cold. “What has she told you?”
“Nothing. You know, she said Lorna was her mentor, and she passed along some of Lorna’s financial strategies. She did mention her personal manager, a guy named
Lester Dudley. You know him?”
“I don’t believe Mr. Dudley is relevant to our discussion,” he said. “What’s your theory about the murder?”
“I don’t have one yet.”
“You don’t know who killed her?”
I shook my head.
“My client is hoping you’ll pass the name along when it comes into your possession.”
Oh, sure, I thought. “Why?” I tried not to sound impertinent, but it was tough. It’s probably smarter not to quiz these guys, but I was curious.
“He would consider it a courtesy.”
“Ah, a courtesy. Got it. Like between us professionals.”
“He could also make it worth your while.”
“I appreciate that, but… mmm, I don’t mean to sound rude about this, but I don’t really want anything from him. You know, that I can think of at the moment. Tell him thanks for the offer.”
Dead silence.
He reached into the inside breast pocket of his coat. I flinched, but all he did was take out a retractable ballpoint pen, which he clicked. He scribbled something on a business card and held it out to me. “I can be reached at this number at any hour.”
The guy on my right moved forward, took the card, and passed it to me. No name. No address. Just the handwritten number. The attorney continued, his tone pleasant. “In the meantime, we’d prefer that you’d keep this conversation confidential.”
“Sure.”
“No exceptions.”
“Okay.”
“Including Mr. Phillips.”
Cheney Phillips, undercover vice cop. I said, “Got it.”
I felt cool air on my face and realized the limo door had been opened. The guy on my right got out, extending a hand to me. I appreciated the assist. It’s hard to hump your way across a seat when the sweat on the back of your knees is causing you to stick to the upholstery. I hoped I hadn’t wet myself. In this situation, I didn’t even trust my legs to work. I emerged somewhat ungracefully, butt first, like a breech birth. To steady myself, I put a hand against the car parked next to mine.
The guy got back in the limo. The rear door closed with a click and the car eased away, gliding soundlessly out of the parking lot. I checked for the license plate, but the number had been obscured by mud. Not that I’d have had the plate run. I didn’t really want to know who these guys were.
Under my jacket, the back of my turtleneck was cold and damp. An involuntary spasm scampered down my frame. I needed a hot shower and a slug of brandy, but I didn’t have time for either. I unlocked my car and got in, slapping the lock down again as if pursued. I peered into the backseat to make sure I was alone. Even before I started the car, I flipped the heater on.
I sat in a back booth at Frankie’s Coffee Shop, as far from the windows as I could get. I kept searching the other patrons, wondering if one of them was tailing me. The place was moderately full: older couples who’d probably been coming here for years, kids looking for some place to hang out. Janice had spotted me when I came in, and she appeared at the table with a coffeepot in hand. There was a setup in front of me: napkin, silverware, thick white ceramic cup turned upside down on a matching saucer. I turned the cup right-side up, and she filled it. I left it on the table so she couldn’t see how badly my hands were shaking.
“You look like you could use this,” she said. “You’re white as a sheet.”
“Can you talk?”
She glanced behind her. “Soon as the party at table five clears out,” she said. “I’ll leave you this.” She put the pot down and moved back to her station, pausing to pick up an order from the kitchen pass-through.
When she returned, she was toting an oversize cinnamon roll and two pats of butter wrapped in silver paper. “I brought you a snack. You look like you could use a little jolt of sugar with your caffeine.”
“Thanks. This looks great.”
She sat down across from me, careful to keep an eye out in case customers came in.
I opened both pats and broke off a band of hot roll, which I buttered and ate, nearly moaning aloud. The dough was soft and moist, the glaze dripping down between the coils. Nothing like fear to generate an appetite for comfort foods. “Fantastic. I could get addicted. Is this a bad time for you?”
“Not at the moment. I may have to interrupt. Are you all right? You don’t seem like yourself.”
“I’m fine. I have a couple of things I need to ask.” I paused to lick butter from my fingers, and then I wiped them on a paper napkin. “Did you know Lorna was supposed to get married in Las Vegas the weekend she died?”
Janice looked at me as if I had begun to speak a foreign language and she was waiting for subtitles to appear at the bottom of the screen. “Where in the world did you hear such a thing?”
“Think there’s any truth to it?”
“Until this very second, I’d have said absolutely not. Now you mention it, I’m not so sure. It’s possible,” she said. “It might explain her attitude, which at the time I couldn’t identify. She seemed excited. Truly, like she was wanting to tell me something, but was holding back. You know how kids are…. Well, maybe you don’t. When kids have a secret, they can hardly keep it in. They want to tell so bad they can’t stand it, so most of the time they just blab it right out. She was acting like that. At the time, I wasn’t picking up on it consciously. I did notice, because that’s what popped in my head the minute you said that, but at the time, I didn’t press. Who was she going to marry? As far as I know, she didn’t even date.”
“I don’t know the man’s name. I gather it was some fellow from Los Angeles.”
“But who told you? How did you find out about him?”
“His attorney got in touch with me a little while ago. Actually, it might have been the guy himself, playing games. It’s hard to say.”
“Why haven’t we heard about him before now? She’s been dead ten months and this is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Maybe we’ve finally started fishing in the right swamp,” I said. “You want me to ask the girls if she said anything to them?”
“I’m not sure it matters. I have no reason to believe the story’s fabricated. It’s a question of filling in some blanks.”
“What else? You said there were a couple of things.”
“On the twentieth of April – the day before she died – she closed out a savings account she kept down in Simi Valley. It looks like she withdrew approximately twenty thousand dollars, either in cash or check. It’s also possible she moved the money to another account, but I can’t find a record of it. Is this ringing any bells with you?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. I don’t know anything about that. Mace or me didn’t come across any substantial sums of money. I’d have turned it in, figuring it might be evidence. Besides, if it was Lorna’s money, it’d be part of her estate and we might have to pay taxes on it. I don’t cheat the government, not even the tiniest little bit. That’s one thing I taught her. You don’t fool around with the IRS.”
“Could she have hidden it?” I asked.
“Why would she do that?”
“I have no idea. She might have closed out the account and then tucked the money away someplace until she needed it.”
“You think someone stole it?”
“I don’t even know if there was really any money in the first place. It looks like there was, but I can’t be sure. It’s possible her landlord might have taken it. At any rate, it’s a detail I need to pin down.”
“Well, I sure never saw it.”
“Was she security conscious? I didn’t see a lot of locks and bolts at her place.”
“Oh, she was awful about that. She left the door wide open half the time. In fact, I’ve often thought somebody might have got in while she was jogging, which is why there wasn’t any sign of forced entry. The police thought so, too, because they asked me about it more than once.”
“Did she ever mention a safe in the house?”
; Her tone was skeptical. “Oh, I don’t think she had a safe. That doesn’t seem like her at all. In that crappy little cabin? It wouldn’t make any sense. She believed in banks. She had accounts everywhere.”
“What about her jewelry? Where did she keep that? Did she have a safe-deposit box?”
“It was nothing like that. She kept a regular old jewelry box in her chest of drawers, but we didn’t find anything expensive. Just some costume stuff.”
“But she must have had good pieces if she went through all the trouble and expense to insure them. She even made a point of mentioning her jewelry in her will.”
“I’ll be happy to show you what we found, and you can see for yourself,” Janice said.
“What about those home security devices where people hide their valuables – you know, fake rocks or Pepsi cans or phony heads of lettuce in the vegetable bin? Did she have anything like that?”
“I doubt it. The police never found anything in the house that I know of. I’m not sure about outside. I know they searched the yard around the cabin. If she had something like that, they’d have found it, wouldn’t they?”
“You’re probably right, but I may go back over there tomorrow and take a look. Feels like a waste of time, but I don’t like loose ends. Anyway, it’s not like I have any better ideas.”
I went home to bed and slept fitfully, pricked by the awareness that I had work to do yet. While my body teetered toward exhaustion, my brain synapses fired at random. Ideas seemed to shoot up like rockets, exploding midair, a light show of impressions. By some curious metamorphosis, I was being drawn into the shadowy after-hours world Lorna Kepler had inhabited. Night turf, the darkness, seemed both exotic and familiar, and I felt myself waking to the possibilities. In the meantime, my system was operating on overload, and I didn’t so much sleep as short myself out.