“How about ‘Alan’?”
“Yes—Alan. Thanks.”
“See you at two-thirty.”
1 P.M., PDT
FROM NEW YORK, HE could hear the intermittent buzzing: Preston Daniels’s private line, ringing. At the third ring, Jackie Miller came on the line. She recited the number, nothing more.
Should he identify himself? Would she recognize his voice? If she did recognize his voice, and he didn’t identify himself, would she be suspicious?
“Jackie—is Mr. Daniels available?”
“Bruce?”
“Yes.”
“He’s in a meeting. I don’t think—”
“Just tell him I’m calling. Let him decide. Okay?”
“Just a moment.” It was her Ivy League accent. Vassar, of course.
A long silence. Then Daniels came on the line: “Yes. What is it?” A short, terse question.
“I—ah—think I should come back to New York. Now.”
“Are you finished there?”
Unaccountably, he laughed, a momentary eruption. It was nervousness, he knew. Tension. Momentary loss of control. And control was essential now. Who would take control? Daniels, with his billions?
Or him, with what he knew, what he’d found out?
“I don’t know whether I’m finished or not. But we should talk.” In the background, he could hear voices. Yes, Daniels was in a meeting. In a meeting, yet taking this call. Leverage. Winner take all.
“I’m leaving for Atlanta at noon tomorrow,” Daniels said. “You fly to Atlanta. Stay at the Hilton. I’ll contact you there.”
“The Atlanta Hilton. Right.”
Abruptly, the line went dead.
2:30 P.M., PDT
“CUP OF COFFEE? SEVEN-UP?” Bernhardt smiled, an attempt to put her at ease. “A glass of white wine?”
“No, thanks.”
“Are you sure? Because I’m going to have some coffee.” He gestured to an automatic coffee maker that shared bookshelf space with rows of well-thumbed books, most of them paperbacks.
“Okay. Black.”
“I’ll just be a minute.”
“Fine.” She watched him as he rose, went to the machine, poured the coffee. He was a tall, lean, loose-limbed man, slightly stooped. He was dressed casually: rumpled corduroy sports jacket, tattersall shirt open at the neck, slacks that needed pressing, loafers that needed shining. His face went with the clothes: a dark, Semitic face, reassuringly creased. The nose was slightly hooked, the mouth was wide and expressive: a mouth meant to smile. His eyes were soft and dark. His thick salt-and-pepper hair curled just over his collar, and needed trimming. Only the glasses evoked the actor, the intellectual: expensive-looking gold-framed aviator’s glasses. The glasses suggested that Bernhardt understood the game; the clothes suggested that he chose not to play.
Carrying the two steaming mugs of coffee, Bernhardt carefully handed one mug to her, then sat facing her across the small, cluttered office.
“I haven’t done anything about finding out about Jeff Weston’s death,” he said. “I may as well tell you that, right out.”
She sipped her own coffee, which tasted Colombian: good, strong Colombian, another touch of class. Covertly, she eyed Bernhardt, imaging the body beneath the clothing. What would it be like, making love to a man like this? Pillow talk—what would the pillow talk be like, after the sex? What would make a man like this laugh?
She put the mug on the table beside her chair. “I didn’t think you’d done anything.”
“Oh?” He looked at her. Partly, she decided, it was a shrink’s look: eyes not quite friendly, mouth not quite smiling. Setting the limits. Asking the questions. Always, asking the questions: sly, deft little questions: “Why’s that?”
“Because,” she said, “I didn’t think you figured I was being straight with you. Or at least telling you everything, the whole story.”
The small smile widened appreciatively. “That’s very perceptive, Diane. I’m impressed.”
She nodded acknowledgment, but made no reply. Instead, lowering her eyes, she drank from the mug. But could she use the caffeine jolt? An hour ago, to steady herself, get control, she’d taken a pill. So if she drank too much coffee, it could—
“Why don’t we start,” Bernhardt was saying, “by me telling you everything I know about you—everything I know, and everything I surmise. How’s that?” As he spoke, he took a sheet of paper from a file folder that lay on his desk. Scanning the paper, he tilted his head up. Bernhardt wore bifocals.
She shrugged. “Fine.”
“I know,” he began, “that you grew up in San Francisco. Millicent and Paul Cutler were—are—your parents. They divorced when you were about fourteen. Your mother married Preston Daniels, real estate tycoon. You moved to New York when you were just starting high school. Which has got to be the worst time to move, especially so far away, and especially since your father remarried, I gather, just about that time. Right?”
She knew she must respond, knew she must nod. Soon, she knew, the probing would begin. First the probing, then the pain.
Always, the pain.
“So now,” he was saying, “we come to the present.” He tossed the sheet of paper on the desk, an actor’s flourish, and spread his hands to include the two of them, sitting here in the office that once had been a bedroom, eyeing each other, deciding about each other.
“So—” Once more the professional smile, his eyes crinkling behind the trendy glasses. “So what’s happened, since yesterday?”
“What’s happened,” she answered, “is that a man named Bruce Kane came to see me this morning. He’s my stepfather’s pilot, his personal pilot.”
“And he scared you.”
Cautiously, she scanned his face. “Why do you say that?”
“Because you were already scared of something yesterday. But you weren’t willing to talk to me about it. Now, though, you’ve come to tell me what’s bothering you.” Expressively, he spread his hands. “So I figure that Kane has something to do with your change of heart. Maybe a lot to do. Maybe everything.”
“I—I’m not sure. I’m just not sure.”
“Tell me about it, Diane.” He spoke quietly, seriously—as friends speak. “Start at the beginning. Tell me the whole story. It’s the only way.”
Slowly, resigned, she nodded. Then she began.
3:15 P.M., PDT
WHEN SHE’D FINISHED TELLING the story, Bernhardt sat silently for a moment, his expression thoughtful. Finally: “That’s some story, Diane. If it happened the way you think it happened—if Daniels killed his girlfriend, and buried her, and then had Jeff Weston killed to shut him up—” Incredulously, Bernhardt shook his head. “That’s a big deal. That’s a very big deal.”
She made no response.
“On the other hand,” Bernhardt said, “there’s also the possibility that Daniels’s girlfriend OD’d, and he panicked. It’d make sense. A scandal like that—girl found dead in tycoon’s love nest—it could ruin him.”
“What about Jeff, though? What if he tried blackmail, and got murdered?”
“What if he got in a fight, and lost? Or he could’ve gotten mugged for the money he’d collected.”
“Yes, but—”
“It could’ve all been coincidence. Pure coincidence.”
“But it could also—”
“How long was it between the time Daniels’s girlfriend disappeared and the time Weston was killed?”
“A day. Almost to the hour.”
“Yeah. Well—” Dubiously, he shook his head. “See, that’s where, frankly, I think it could all fall apart. I mean, you don’t hire a murderer in twenty-four hours, not unless you happen to have one on the payroll. And even if you do have one on the payroll, it still takes time to plan a murder.”
“It only takes a few seconds to kill someone.”
“True. But how could the murderer have known Weston’s delivery schedule? That’s the kind of question the police are going to ask.”
“Are you saying you don’t believe me?”
“Not at all. I believe you absolutely. You and Weston saw Daniels load a body—or something suspiciously like a body—in his Cherokee. Then he drove to the landfill. However, you—”
“Wait a minute. What’d you mean, ‘like a body’?”
“I mean,” he answered, carefully measuring the words, “that you don’t really know—not a hundred percent—that it was a body. You—”
“It was a body. Just the way he was acting, it couldn’t’ve been anything else. And there was the arm, the hand—I saw it fall out.”
“Diane—” Reluctantly, he drew a deep breath. “Imagine yourself on the witness stand. The defense attorney, who probably makes half a million a year, asks you whether, in fact, you’re certain it was a body. You tell him exactly what you’ve told me. ‘A hand?’ he asks, jumping right on it, not backing away. And then he starts: ‘How far away were you? Was there a moon? Had you been drinking?’ You know how it goes, you’ve seen the movies. Then he’ll ask you whether, in fact, you actually saw Daniels burying the body, actually eyeballed him. And then he’ll—”
“But what about Jeff? You’re saying it was coincidence that he was killed? But I’m telling you that—” Angrily, she broke off, began shaking her head. Suddenly she reached for the coffee mug. If it couldn’t be booze, at least she’d be swallowing something, anything. But the mug was empty, the story of her life.
“More coffee?” Bernhardt asked.
Sharply, she shook her head.
“The odds are,” Bernhardt said, “that it’ll take a trip to Cape Cod to find out how Jeff died. And that’s expensive, Diane. That’s thousands of dollars.”
“So I’m wasting my time talking to you. Unless I can come up with money, I’m wasting my time. Is that it?”
“No,” he answered, his voice measured, his eyes steady. “No, that’s not it. But airline tickets cost money. Rental cars, too. Then there’s me. I’ve got rent to pay. And—” He smiled, an overture. “And I’ve got an Airedale to support.”
Unsmiling, she shifted sharply in her chair, looked at her watch. It was time to go. Time for a drink, for a pill—for relief from the pain that was beginning. Anger could only carry her so far.
As if he hadn’t noticed her restlessness, Bernhardt asked, “What about Bruce Kane? How’s he figure in all this?”
She shrugged, shook her head, gestured impatiently. “I’m not sure. I think originally he was hired to find me, which wasn’t too hard. I mean, it was pretty plain that I was coming to San Francisco. And then it was easy to figure I’d stay with Carley. But now—” She frowned. “Now, from the things Kane said this morning, I have the feeling that he might be out to blackmail Daniels.”
Bernhardt sat up straighten “Why do you say that?”
“He hinted that he and I are the only two people besides Daniels who know what happened. He didn’t say it in so many words, right out. He’s too shrewd for that. But I think he flew Daniels and his girlfriend into the Cape, maybe on Saturday. Everyone in Carter’s Landing knew Daniels was shacking up on weekends. So when Daniels left for New York, alone, on Monday, I think Kane started to suspect something was wrong. So between the two of us, with what he knows and what I know, we could ruin Daniels. And I think Kane knows that.”
“But if that’s true,” Bernhardt mused, “then why would Daniels hire Kane to find you? I’d think he’d want to keep you and Kane apart.”
She shrugged, shook her head. She couldn’t answer the question.
“Do you believe Kane’s capable of blackmail?”
“I believe he’s capable of anything.”
“Murder?”
“Probably.”
“Could he have murdered Jeff Weston?”
“Why would he do that? What would he gain?”
“If Weston was thinking about blackmail, too, then he might’ve been competition.”
Impatiently, she shook her head. “That’s crazy. It was only the day after the girlfriend disappeared that Jeff died. It’d be too early for Kane and Jeff to be at each other’s throats. Besides, there’s enough for everyone, if you’re talking about blackmailing Daniels. Plenty to go around.”
Genially, Bernhardt nodded. “You’re pretty good at this, Diane. You’ve got a gift for imagining why people do what they do. Otherwise known as a devious mind.”
“Mmmm.” Her smile was tentative; her eyes were speculative.
“That was meant as a compliment. I could’ve just plain said you’re a very smart lady.”
Her smile widened almost imperceptibly. Plainly, Diane Cutler distrusted compliments.
Picking up on the cue, Bernhardt shifted ground: “So why’re you here, Diane? Why’d you come to San Francisco? Why’re you running? Yesterday you said it was family trouble. Then you talked about Jeff, about how he might’ve died. Then—now—you tell me that seeing Daniels and the body freaked you out. So what is it? All three?”
As if the effort cost her pain, she grimaced, then nodded. “It’s all three. It’s—Christ—it’s everything. I hate New York. I hate Preston Daniels. What I had with Jeff—” Sadly, she shook her head. “That was nothing. Worse than nothing, really. So then—” Struggling to frame the thought, put it into words, she broke off, sat silently for a moment, staring down at the floor. Finally saying: “So then, when I saw that—that scene, on Sunday—the great Preston Daniels, humping to load a dead body in the same car I’d ridden in, and then the next night, when I saw Jeff lying in the gravel beside the road with his eyes wide open and blood everywhere—well, I just had to split, that’s all. I—I just couldn’t handle it.”
“You’d already split from your mother, though, earlier on Monday. Isn’t that right?”
“Yeah, well—” She shifted in the chair, a sharp, restless protest, a teenager’s mute admission of the pain within. “Well, that’s happened before. I mean, that wasn’t the first time I slammed out of the apartment. But then, Christ, then I drove up to the Cape, and—”
“You saw Daniels, though, after you slammed out of the apartment. You said you saw him in the parking garage of your building. Isn’t that so?”
“Oh, yeah—” Her voice was bitter. “Oh, yeah, I saw him.”
“And from what he said to you in the garage, you were convinced that he’d been doing away with a body, the night before.”
She nodded.
“And you think he realized that you knew what’d happened.”
“Right.”
“And you think that if Jeff was murdered to shut him up, then you could be next.”
Once more, she nodded.
“Okay, so if that’s true—” Bernhardt leaned intently forward, locking his eyes with hers. “So if that’s true, and if you hate Daniels so much, then why didn’t you go to the police, blow the whistle? You’ve got Daniels right where you want him. One word to the police, and he’s ruined.”
She grimaced, looked away. “One word to the police from me, and I’d die. Just like Jeff died. Witnesses die all the time, you know, before trials begin.”
“Hasn’t it occurred to you that you could go to your mother, tell her everything you know about this—everything you suspect? Don’t you think that’d be your best insurance?”
Once more, her mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “Do you think my mother would believe me if it meant blowing the whistle on Daniels? Christ, a scandal like that, and she might not be president of the museum board.”
Thoughtfully, Bernhardt studied her face, now drawn so painfully tight, eyes cast down, defeated. Finally, speaking softly, he decided to say, “If you went to the police, blew this whole thing open, then you could ruin both Daniels and your mother. Two for one.”
Her response was a quick, involuntary shudder, as if he’d caused her pain.
Still speaking softly, he said, “You don’t want to blow the whistle because you don’t want to hurt your mother. Isn’t that right, Diane?”
“I—Christ—” Desperately, she shook her head. “I—I don’t know. I just don’t know anymore.”
Plainly, the admission had left her spent. It was, Bernhardt knew, time to close out the scene, begin the exit lines:
“Do you know where Kane is staying? What hotel?”
“No.”
“Any idea how I could reach him?”
Exhausted, she shook her head.
“Does he have Daniels’s airplane, do you know?”
Once more, she shook her head.
“What kind of an airplane is it?”
“I don’t know the name of it. But it’s got two motors, and it can go three hundred miles an hour, I know that.”
“Is it a jet? A Lear jet, like that?”
“No. It’s got propellers.”
“Okay.” With an air of finality, he moved forward in his chair as he said, “I’ll see what I can do. Stay close to Carley’s phone. Okay?”
“Yes. Okay.”
WEDNESDAY,
August 1st
11 P.M., EDT
“WHEN SHE HEARD THAT Carolyn was missing,” Kane said, “and I said the police were looking for her, she freaked out. I mean, she really freaked out.”
Dressed in dinner clothes, seated in Kane’s hotel room, legs crossed, willing his hands to relax as they rested on the arms of the chair, Daniels allowed himself a single carefully calculated nod. It was, after all, what he’d expected, and therefore prepared himself to confront.
“What is it,” he asked, “that Diane thinks she knows? Did she tell you, in so many words?”
“She didn’t have to tell me. It was all there in her face. She was with Weston the night Carolyn disappeared. What Weston saw, she saw.”
“Ah.” Daniels nodded. “Yes. I thought that must’ve been it.” As if he were a medical clinician assessing the nature of his own responses, he took the critical inventory again: hands steady, face expressing gravity but not fear, body satisfactorily aligned, voice under control.
“You did, eh?” It was a toneless, expressionless question, a question without an answer, signifying nothing.
Except for the Bones Page 14