by Josh Lanyon
I had to look away.
He kissed the top of my head.
I said gruffly, “I am happy—about us.”
I felt his smile. “Are you?”
“Hell yeah. This is me happy. Last night was me unhappy. Notice the difference? It’s a lot quieter today.”
“Mmhm.” He gave me another kiss and rose. “You want anything from the store?”
“I’m fine.”
I listened to his footsteps retreating down the staircase and I went back to finding out what I could about the principals in the case. Not that I really knew who all the principals were. There was the gallery owner, John Cantrell, but everything I’d read seemed to indicate he had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was Alan Lorenson, the owner of the coin collection, but since the collection was not insured, it was hard to see what he had to gain. There was Elijah Ladas who had come out of retirement for one last score—the score that had gotten John Cantrell killed. And then it had gotten Ladas killed. Now Elijah’s village idiot of a brother was crashing around in his wake and we’d all be lucky if he didn’t kill someone too.
Or, more accurately, someone else, because I’d have been willing to bet money, Beck, not Elijah, had killed Cantrell.
There remained at least one other principal. The person who had killed Elijah Ladas. In fact, there were probably two other unknowns because it would have been very difficult, maybe impossible, for one person to cart a corpse the size of Ladas’ from car to moving van.
Stupid people committing stupid crimes. Greed and violence. That’s all this amounted to. Not a real mystery at all. Miss Butterwith would be disgusted. I was disgusted on her behalf.
I must have dozed off at some point because when I woke it was two o’clock and the house felt very quiet. Listening to that deep and comfortable silence, I deduced that J.X. was still not back yet.
For a few minutes I watched the sunlight sparkling through the French doors. A blue jay landed on the balcony railing, cocked his head as he looked in at me, then flew away.
All at once, I felt much more cheerful. I threw on my bathrobe and went downstairs to find something to eat.
The coffee was perking when the phone rang. I reached for it and then stopped. The answering machine picked up and I listened to Jerry asking if he could bring books over for me to sign that afternoon.
My brief sense of well-being disappeared. Along with my appetite.
The door bell rang. I squinted through the peephole.
I was fully prepared to see Jerry standing there with a guileless expression and an armload of books, but I was wrong.
The figure was female. Dark hair and a sunny-yellow short skirt with matching jacket.
Sydney Nightingale, girl reporter.
Chapter Thirteen
I’m not sure why I opened the door.
Relief that she wasn’t Jerry? Or simple boredom?
Sydney gazed at me—or rather at my sumptuous bathrobe—in surprise. “Hel—oh! I’m sorry. Are you not well?”
“Genius takes its toll. Actually, we got back late last night.” I held the door for her and her face lit up in pleased surprise. She slipped inside before I could change my mind.
I shut the door and led the way to the parlor.
“This is nice!” Sydney said, gazing around the long, airy room.
“It needs pictures.”
She sat down on a long, elegant sofa that I did not recognize as belonging to either J.X. or myself. When had that been delivered? She held up her phone. “Is it okay if I record our conversation?”
“Is that how it’s done these days? On a phone?”
“I’ll take notes too, but yes.” She showed me a small purple notebook.
“Fine. Whatever.” I sat down across from her. I was already regretting the impulse that had me opening the door to her.
“We could just start with something simple,” Sydney said. “How do you like San Francisco?”
“I…think I’m going to like it,” I said.
She put up a hand, pressed her phone. We listened to my voice repeating doubtfully, “I…think I’m going to like it.”
Sydney smiled approvingly. She resumed, “Of course, finding a body wasn’t the best introduction you could have had. But you’re no stranger to crime. There are your Miss Buttermilk books. Forty-eight at last count.”
“Butterwith,” I said.
“I’m sorry.” Sydney double-checked her notes. “I have it written down as Buttermilk.”
“It’s Butterwith.”
She made a question mark on her notes and continued blithely, “And there’s your amateur sleuthing.”
“I’m not an amateur sleuth.”
“But you’ve solved two murder cases in the past year.”
“It’s not how it looks,” I said firmly.
“And now you’re involved in a third murder case.”
“I’m not involved.”
“But you did find a body in your basement. The body of the man suspected of robbing the Quercus Gallery of over ten million dollars in rare antique coins.”
My gaze landed on the Levenger box with the two Reading Bear bookends, still lying where I’d left it. My stomach knotted. I said, “That was sheer happenstance.”
“What did you think when you found the body of Elijah Ladas?”
“That I have terrible luck. And that he had worse luck.”
Sydney’s brows arched. She glanced back at her notes, “Do the police have any suspects in the case?”
“The police always have suspects.”
“Have they given you a hint as to whom they’re focusing on?”
“I’m not in the confidence of the police.”
Sydney’s look was openly skeptical. “It’s hard to believe the police wouldn’t be working with such a well-known amateur sleuth. On top of that, your partner, J.X. Moriarity, is a former SFPD inspector.”
“It would be harder still to believe that the police would take a mystery writer into their confidence. That only happens on TV. Maybe you have me confused with Jessica Fletcher. I have better hair and I do not ride a bicycle.”
“If you were working this case, how would you set about solving it?”
“Which case? The case of who killed Ladas? Or the case of the missing coins?”
“Both. Either.”
“You know more about it than I do. You reported on the robbery to start with.”
She gave me a surprised look. “True. Well, I can tell you what I know. Though Ladas was arrested several times in connection with stolen antiquities, he was never convicted of any crime. He was very proud of the fact that no one was ever harmed in any of his capers.”
“Until John Cantrell and Quercus Gallery.”
“Yes.”
“But that was probably Igor.”
She looked blank for a second, then she gave a short laugh. “You mean Beck? Yes. I agree. Murder was never Ladas’ style. In fact, he liked posing as a gentleman thief. He had a penchant for fine living and a passion for old coins.”
I sniffed. “That sounds like a press release.”
“As a matter of fact, he was working on a book about his exploits.”
I stared at her. “How do you know that?”
“I interviewed him about a year ago.”
She said it so casually. “And he was going to confess in his memoirs to robbing people?”
“Oh well.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t believe he planned on publishing the book right away. Not until the statute of limitations had run out on some of his crimes.”
I said gloomily, “It would probably be a bestseller.” Sydney was watching me, apparently waiting for me to make some brilliant deduction. I asked, “When did he start working with his younger brother?”
“I don’t know that he did. I thought he always worked alone, until I saw that security video tape. But he was getting on. He was in his fifties. That’s—”
“Old. For that line of work.
”
When I didn’t continue, she said, “So you must have some theories, right?”
“Wrong.”
She laughed. She had a nice laugh. “Come on, Mr. Holmes. You found the body of a famous thief in your own basement. You have to be curious about what happened. It’s meat and drink for a mystery writer, right?”
“Only if he’s on a very strict diet.”
“What if Beck killed his brother?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t buy that. Why would he?”
“Maybe they argued.”
“About what?”
Sydney shrugged.
“I don’t think so.”
She frowned. “Why don’t you think so?”
Among other reasons, because if Beck had killed his brother, I couldn’t see any point in him harassing and hunting me. He would have to know that my involvement, such as it was, was incidental. But he did not seem to know this. Clearly, he believed I had information he needed. J.X. was right. I was Beck’s starting point.
But I wasn’t about to share that with Ms. Nightingale.
Naturally she put my reticence down to the wrong thing. “So you are working with the police.”
“No. I’m really not. It’s just that people have to have a reason for killing each other. Even crazy people believe they have a reason.”
“You don’t know what reason Beck might think he had.”
“True.”
“Maybe he thought his brother was going to cut him out of his share of their take.”
“Well, maybe.” That wasn’t bad, actually. Except that Beck would know if he had killed his own brother. I kept coming back to that.
“There could be all kinds of reasons for thieves falling out.”
“Yes. I agree.”
She was frowning again. “But you don’t think so.”
I shrugged.
I heard the sound of a key in the front door and a moment later J.X., carrying a couple of plastic bags, walked past the doorway. A second later he stepped back into the doorway, eyeing us in surprise.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hi there.” He put down his bags and walked into the room.
“This is Sydney Nightingale,” I said. “She works for KAKE TV.”
“Baywatch News,” J.X. said. “I recognize you. You did the reporting on those wildfires last year.” He offered her the smile that launched five hundred thousand bestsellers.
Sydney smiled back as she clicked her phone off. She dropped phone and notebook in her purse, and rose offering her hand to J.X.
“Such a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Moriarity,” she said to him. And to me, “See, I promised this would be painless. If you think of anything you’d like to add, you can always reach me here.” She handed me her business card again. “Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Holmes. You’ve made my producer really happy.”
“Okay. Well, thank you.” I was a little surprised at how fast she had decided to wrap up the interview.
Sydney was already headed for the front door. J.X. saw her out and returned to the parlor where I was absently swinging the tassel on the end of my robe tie.
“I guess I scared her off,” he said.
“She did scurry, didn’t she? And she didn’t bring her photographer with her, so I don’t know if her producer is going to be really happy or not.”
“She had to know you wouldn’t let a photographer in here.”
“True.”
The doorbell rang. J.X. gave me a quizzical look. “Maybe she remembered something else she wanted to ask you.”
I swallowed and said, “Maybe it’s Jerry.”
J.X.’s face hardened. “I hope it’s Jerry.”
It was not Jerry, it was a shipment from the Anna Hitchcock estate, and I knew at once it had to be the antique writing desk Anna had promised me back in February. I remembered our casual joking and my chest felt tight.
J.X. opened the door for the shipping company and two men in uniforms carried the heavy hand-carved ball and claw piece into the foyer.
J.X. called, “Where do you want this, Kit? In your office?”
“In the fireplace.”
“Let’s take it upstairs to the guestroom, guys.”
I reached down and picked up one of the Reading Bear bookends. I could hear J.X. and the delivery men struggling not to drop the huge antique desk down the staircase.
Footsteps overhead.
Footsteps on the stairs.
The delivery men departed. I called, “I’m going to lie down.”
J.X. didn’t answer.
I wandered into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water. I stared out the wall of windows of the breakfast nook.
The phone rang again. I groaned.
From behind me, J.X. said, “Go back to bed. Rest your back. I’ll deal with it.”
I turned and contemplated him for a long moment. “You’d better be careful, J.X.”
“What’s the matter?”
“If we’re going to live together, you should know that I will take advantage of any and all weaknesses. You have been warned.”
He grinned. “Duly noted.”
The phone rang for the third time and he winked at me and picked it up. He listened for a moment or two and then said, “He’s not available at the moment. Can I take a message?”
I gawked at him.
J.X. covered the mouthpiece and said, “Do you want to go to dinner at Alan Lorenson’s?”
“Who?”
“You don’t know him?”
I shook my head, but then I remembered. “Wait. Lorenson? Yes. When?”
J.X. returned to the phone. “When?” He reported back to me, “Tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“No?”
“No, yes. Yes, I mean.”
“Yes?”
I nodded.
“Yes,” J.X. said into the mouthpiece.
I listened to the half conversation while J.X. got details and directions. He hung up and said, “Who’s Alan Lorenson and why are we having dinner with him?”
I explained who Alan Lorenson was. It took longer to explain why we were having dinner with him, and I’m not sure I convinced either of us.
“Are you sure you want to get any further involved in this?” J.X. asked.
“I think we are involved whether we want to be or not.”
Depressingly, he didn’t deny it.
I said, “You were gone a while.”
“I met Izzie for a late lunch.”
I said cautiously, “Oh yes? What did Inspector Jones have to say for himself?”
“Ladas hasn’t been back to his apartment. In fact, the last time anyone saw him there was before the gallery robbery. His rent is currently two weeks past due.”
“So he’s been on the run ever since Cantrell was killed.”
“He’s been lying low, for sure. He’s got a number of lady friends, but so far he hasn’t shown up at any of their places.”
“Lady friends? Is that official police terminology? And that means what?”
“It could mean we—I mean, SFPD—don’t know all his lady friends. Or that he’s living out of his car.”
Or that one of those other unknown principals in this case was giving him shelter. But I understood why J.X. didn’t want to suggest that idea if it hadn’t yet occurred to me.
“How the hell hard can it be to catch one not very bright thug? Especially since he seems to be following me everywhere I go? He’s probably sitting out front of the house right now.”
“He’s not sitting out front of the house right now. He’s not anywhere in this neighborhood, I can tell you that much. I spent a couple of hours this morning looking for him.”
“Oh.”
“SFPD has a patrol car driving by every couple of hours. Okay? That alone furnishes a significant deterrent to Ladas trying to contact you again.”
“You would think,” I said. “I wish I was as sure.”
Chapter Fourteen
Alan Lorenson lived in Oakland, which sounded lovely and rural, but…not so much.
I didn’t doubt that the Lorenson mansion was considered an achievement for modern architecture though. At first glance it looked a bit like someone had transported a building from an old mining town to the top of a pristine and carefully landscaped hill. Wings of tinted concrete intersected with cedar sidings stained translucent turquoise. There were a multitude of square, severe, modern windows and coppery, clay tile roofing.
It no doubt cost a fortune and was probably frequently featured in architectural magazines, but I found it ugly and artificial. It made me appreciate the little gem of a house J.X. had found for us. I had never said the words “elegant,” or “comfortable” to him. No, I had focused on things like swimming pool, fireplace in bedroom, large backyard, hardwood floors. The Lorenson house had all those things, but I’d have been distressed to find myself living there. J.X. had read between the lines and found a house I could actually love. And if that didn’t demonstrate both understanding and…well, simpatico, I didn’t know what did.
“What?” he said, meeting my gaze as we stood on the subtly tinted concrete doorstep of the Lorenson house, waiting for someone to answer our knock.
“Nothing.”
“Come on. What did you forget?”
“Nothing. I just think you’ve got good taste in houses. That’s all.”
“Oh.” He reddened as though I’d paid him some extravagant compliment. “Thanks.”
I nodded.
The front door opened and a woman in a conservative dark dress opened the door. Clearly a housekeeper and not the lady of the house.
“Mr. Holmes. Mr. Moriarity.” There was no question. She knew who we were because only invited guests ever darkened this doorstep.
The housekeeper led the way through large rooms featuring lofty ceilings with skylights, huge windows and rough timber accents. There was what seemed to me a pretentious lack of furniture—and no books—but to each his own.
The housekeeper paused on the threshold of a spacious room and announced in modulated tones, “Mr. Holmes and Mr. Moriarity.”
Everyone in the room turned our way. I had been thinking that it would just be us and Lorenson, so I was nonplussed to find a seven-member reception committee.