The Triple Threat Collection

by Lis Wiehl

  Rod opened the refrigerator, and Nic peered over his shoulder. The door held capers, gherkins, cocktail onions, and Thai chili sauce. On the shelves were three lemons, bottles of seltzer and tonic, five take-out cartons, and a pint of half-and-half that was bulging suspiciously.

  The side-by-side freezer was equally empty, containing only a bottle of Grey Goose vodka, a stack of frozen entrees from Whole Foods, and a half-dozen bags of Jamaican Blue coffee beans.

  “I’m surprised he doesn’t have those coffee beans that are excreted by meerkats or whatever,” Heath said. “Supposed to be the best in the world. They say it lends them a unique flavor.” He smacked his lips.

  Nic kept her face impassive.

  Leif gave them their assignments, and they spread out. He took the bedroom, often ground zero for any investigation, the inner sanctum, where the best secrets were concealed. Nic got Fate’s office, Heath the dining and living rooms, Karl the library, and Rod the bathroom.

  Just as they had in Fate’s office, Nic boxed the computer up for the electronic forensics lab. On the desk were two microphones and a couple of sets of headphones that she had to disconnect from the computer.

  Next she took a quick run through Fate’s three-drawer oak filing cabinet, but there was nothing that stood out. Tax returns, clippings about himself, product manuals, bank statements. No cards, no photos. No love letters or hate mail either, but these days, both of those would probably be on the computer. Anything that seemed like it might need closer scrutiny went into lidded cardboard file boxes for closer review.

  Nic thought of something and looked around the walls. They were decorated with a couple of large art photographs, one a close-up of peeling bark and another of a sunset turning the ocean pink. But what had caught her eye was something that wasn’t there. Here there was no brag wall. No trophies. No visible signs—other than every possession being top-of-the-line—of Fate’s success.

  In the desk, Nic hit pay dirt. She walked into the bedroom to show it to Leif, who was checking underneath a drawer to make sure nothing had been taped there.

  As she waited for him to straighten up, she noticed the strong V of his back. Even through his jacket, she could see the shape of his shoulders. To distract herself, she looked closer at the book that lay facedown on the bedside table. It was about the Civil War. When Jim Fate had set that book aside, he hadn’t known that he would never pick it up again. One day she might be just going about her business, leaving things unfinished, but planning to pick them up again—and then she would suddenly be gone. And in Nic’s view, dead was dead. Fate wasn’t a soul who might be going to heaven or hell. He wasn’t a ghost, and he hadn’t been reborn as a dragonfly or a dog. He was just gone.

  It was a hard reality to look in the eye, and Nic was glad when Leif got to his feet and said, “What have you got?”

  “Look at this.” Nic held out the envelope she had found in Fate’s desk drawer. The contents and the envelope had been printed on a computer. She was nostalgic for the time when each typewriter left its own unique marks on a piece of paper, but those days had already been dying out even before she joined the Bureau.

  Leif slid out the piece of paper inside and read it aloud.

  “‘I know where you live. I know what you look like. You’re going to pay for what you’ve done.’” Leif looked more closely at the envelope. “And whoever sent this showed him that they meant it. Because this was mailed to his home address.” He slipped it into an evidence bag, and Nic went back to finish the office.

  When they had finished their search, Leif gathered the ERT for a quick rundown of what they had found. It wasn’t much. Leif had discovered a woman’s earring underneath the bed. Hammered silver, it looked handmade, not mass-produced. It was shaped like a Chinese character.

  Rod gave voice to a thought that was just coming clear in Nic’s mind. “Could it be Japanese?”

  Leif said, “You thinking of Victoria Hanawa? I’ll ask Jun if he knows what language it is.”

  Heath laughed. “Maybe it will turn out like all those people who think they’re getting tattooed with the character for wisdom in Chinese, and it turns out to be the character for idiot.”

  “How about the living and dining room?” Leif asked. “Did you find anything in there?”

  “Just tens of thousands of dollars of equipment, all of it topnotch. He had a couple hundred DVDs. No porn. Everything from old John Wayne movies to the latest thrillers. Nearly all of them feature one man up against the odds and fighting for justice.”

  It was an interesting insight, reminding Nic that even Heath occasionally had something useful to say.

  Rod said, “There wasn’t much of interest in the bathroom. The only drugs had prescription labels on them. It looks like Fate had high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Oh, and in one of the drawers I found a box of condoms. A few of them were gone.”

  Karl said, “Lots of books, but that’s about it.”

  A frown creased Leif ’s face. “This whole place is more conspicuous for what it doesn’t have than for what it does. No photos of family or friends. No cards. And it’s all very clean. Like it’s going to be photographed for a magazine shoot. It feels . . . impersonal.”

  “It feels lonely,” Nic said quietly, and Leif shot her a surprised look. She had kind of surprised herself.

  “Maybe this was the place where he went to retreat from the world,” Karl said.

  “Maybe,” Nic agreed. But part of her wondered if Jim had felt more at home sitting behind his mike and watching the phone lines light up, knowing that thousands of people were hanging on his every word.

  When the team left, an older woman with hair dyed a purple-black was standing in the hallway. All of her clothes were shades of lavender, violet, and magenta. She eyed them with interest.

  “Hello, officers. Are you here about my erstwhile neighbor, Mr. Fate?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Leif said.

  “I wanted to impart to you that I saw something the morning that Mr. Fate was killed. Or rather, I saw someone.”

  “What did you see?”

  She paused, obviously enjoying the fact that she had the team’s full attention.

  “I saw a woman depart his apartment.”

  Leif ’s voice sharpened. “Did she leave with him?”

  “He had left four hours prior. This young woman looked like those movie stars you see in the tabloids. The ones who are pretending that they don’t want anyone to recognize them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She had a black coat, blonde hair, and big, black sunglasses. Who wears sunglasses in Oregon in February? Indoors, no less.”

  “Have you seen her before?” Nic asked.

  She started to shake her head, and then hesitated. “Well, that might not be true. Something about her was familiar. I know I haven’t seen her in this building before. But it seems to me that I have seen her. Maybe at church or at the supermarket or at the Multnomah Athletic Club.”

  “Would you recognize her if you saw her again?” Leif asked.

  “I might.”

  “You said you haven’t seen her leave Jim’s condo before,” Nic said, thinking of the condoms and the woman’s earring. “But have you seen other women leave here before?”

  She gave them a coy look. “A few. Not as many as you might speculate.”

  Nic thought of half-Japanese Victoria Hanawa. “And were they all blonde? All white?”

  Jim’s neighbor shook her head. “Mr. Fate,” she said, “had eclectic tastes.”

  Chapter 21

  McCormick & Schmick’s Harborside Restaurant

  While they waited for their table, Allison was quickly moving from hunger to nausea, a continuum that her pregnancy had shortened considerably. Swallowing hard, she pressed her fingers against her lips.

  “Here.” Cassidy put something in Allison’s other hand. “Eat this.”

  It was a granola bar studded with nuts and chocolate chips. Her stomach rum
bled, but she hesitated. “Isn’t it kind of rude to eat something they didn’t sell you?”

  Nicole shook her head. “Girl, you could starve to death before we got anyone’s attention.” She shot a rare grin at Cassidy. “Did that come out of your magic bag?”

  Cassidy hefted her huge, black leather tote. “You know it. If I ever get stranded on a desert island, I’ll be fine as long as I have my purse.”

  It was a standing joke that Cassidy’s purse held everything anyone might need: safety pins, sewing kit, makeup, food, bus tickets, greeting cards, and of course, food. Allison wouldn’t be surprised if there were a small tent and a ham radio in there as well.

  Surreptitiously unwrapping the granola bar, she scanned the room. People were five deep at the bar, laughing, shouting, flirting, and, by the looks of things, drinking hard. Everyone was giddy. Only the day before, so many had been convinced that they were dying. But only a dozen people had been hospitalized, injured in the mad panic. And now Portland, having so narrowly escaped disaster, was more than ready to party.

  As Allison remembered how people had collapsed all around her, a wave of relief washed over her. Thank You, Lord, for watching over us. She grinned at her two friends.

  “What?” Cassidy shouted above the noise.

  “It’s nothing,” Allison said as Nicole leaned in to hear. “I’m just glad that we’re all okay.”

  Fifteen years earlier, the three of them had graduated from Catlin Gabel, one of Portland’s elite private schools. Then they had barely known each other, although they had known of each other. Nicole had stood out by virtue of being one of the fewer than a half-dozen African American students. Cassidy had been a cheerleader. And Allison had been a fixture on the honor roll and captain of the debate team.

  At their high school reunion, their common interest in crime— Cassidy’s in covering it, Nicole’s in fighting it, and Allison’s in prosecuting it—had drawn them together. When Nicole was transferred to the Portland office, Allison had suggested they meet for dinner, and a friendship began over a shared dessert called Triple Threat Chocolate Cake. In its honor, the three women had christened themselves the Triple Threat Club. And whenever they got together to talk about their jobs and their private lives, they made it a point to share the most decadent dessert on the menu.

  “To the Triple Threat Club!” Cassidy said, raising her gin and tonic.

  Nicole echoed her words, bumping their glasses with hers of red wine.

  “Long may it reign!” added Allison as she tapped her glass of orange juice against her friends’ glasses. When she tipped her glass back, Allison caught a glimpse of the TV screen over the bar. “I can’t believe they haven’t taken that commercial off the air,” she said, pointing. The other two women turned to look.

  The political ad began with a video, shot at an angle, of Quentin Glover talking with his mouth full, a half-eaten hot dog in his hand. Slumped and slovenly, he obviously had no idea he was being filmed. As he gestured to an unseen listener, a piece of food fell from his mouth.

  But it wasn’t that image that had made Allison think they would have pulled the ad by now. It was the voice-over, which she had heard so often in recent weeks that she could have recited it from memory. The announcer was saying, “Radio talk show host Jim Fate was Quentin Glover’s best man. Now even Fate says we shouldn’t reelect Quentin Glover.”

  The noisy bar quieted as Jim Fate’s own voice, recorded from his show and laced with indignation, came on. “Quentin Glover has now been indicted on charges that he lied about receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from a manufacturing firm. Some of the goodies he allegedly received include a car and a second home at Sunriver. Now, people, you know I find it hard to believe that the guy who was cheating on his wife was 100 percent honest.”

  On the screen, the words THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN GIFTS, GOODIES, and CHEATING ON HIS WIFE appeared.

  “I’m not saying our congresspeople have to be perfect,” the voice of a dead man continued, “because I myself have weaknesses. But our standard is that just because you are popular doesn’t mean you can get away with committing felonies. And if this week it’s perjury, and next week it’s theft, and the week after that it’s having somebody beaten up, then one day America may well end up a sleazy country like Iraq, where the corruption is unending.”

  An angry man appeared on the screen. He wore traditional Middle Eastern clothing: a long, white robe; a white kaffiyeh head covering; and a black circlet to hold it in place. With one hand he hoisted a machine gun. In the other was a stack of money.

  Only two days earlier the commercial, paid for by a group called Clean Up Oregon Politics, had been annoying or amusing, depending on your political leanings and how many times you had already seen it. Now people muttered and shook their heads at the sound of Jim’s voice. The three women looked at each other, and Allison knew they were sharing the same thought: exactly how angry had that commercial made Quentin Glover?

  Just then the hostess came up with a smile. “Sorry for the delay, ladies. Your table is ready now.”

  “This was worth the wait,” Allison said as she settled in next to the window overlooking the river. The tables, set in tiers, all offered a view, but the ones next to the window were the best.

  After they ordered, the three women took out notebooks and pens. Normally when they met, it was as friends, with work being just one topic of conversation. But this was work, taking place over dinner.

  “Let’s start at the beginning.” Nicole turned to Cassidy. “Allison and I need to know everything you know about Jim Fate. Leif got this photo of him at the radio station. We’ll be using it for the canvas. Is this a current likeness?” She set a photo on the table. Usually they dealt with candid snapshots, not eight-by-ten glossies.

  Picking it up, Cassidy regarded it critically. “This is a bit out-of-date. He’s had a little work done in the last couple of years. Botox, some resurfacing. Most of these old acne scars are gone. Although I don’t know why Jim bothered. They just give a man character.”

  “So you knew him pretty well,” Nicole observed. She rested her glass of wine against her cheek, partly obscuring her mouth. In high school, Nic had had a prominent overbite. A few of the crueler kids had dubbed her Mrs. Ed. Somewhere in the intervening years, she’d had her teeth straightened. With her dark, smooth skin and slightly slanted eyes, she had always been pretty. Now she was beautiful. Still, old habits died hard.

  Cassidy shrugged and set the photo down. “You know. Portland’s a big town on a small scale, so we cross”—she corrected herself—“crossed paths a lot.”

  “Where did all this path crossing take place?” Allison asked.

  “Press conferences, fund-raising dinners, that kind of thing.”

  The waitress set down a basket of bread and carafes of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Cassidy busied herself pouring the oil and vinegar into a small, white dish.

  “We both worked in the media, albeit in opposite ends.” Cassidy dabbed a slice of bread into the mixture. “Is it true that he refused to leave the studio when he knew he had been exposed to the gas?”

  Allison said, “That’s what we’re hearing. He stayed inside so that the others wouldn’t be exposed.”

  “He died a hero. He would have liked that.” Cassidy’s eyes sparkled with tears, but she managed a smile. “Except for the dying part. Would he have lived if he’d opened the door?”

  Nicole shook her head. “No. At the autopsy this morning, they said he would have needed an immediate dose of an opioid antagonist. And maybe even that wouldn’t have saved him.”

  Cassidy’s perfectly groomed brows drew together. Her eyes were an arresting teal blue—the result, Allison knew, of colored contacts. “That’s what I don’t understand. I was at the press conference John Drood held this afternoon. So it wasn’t sarin gas?”

  Nicole said, “No. The results of the autopsy point to some kind of opiate. We won’t know which for a while.”
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  “What do you know?” Cassidy asked. Sometimes Allison and Nicole would give her tips that she wouldn’t have heard anyplace else, allowing her to scoop the competition. In return, Cassidy occasionally brought her own findings to them.

  “Something interesting did turn up today,” Nicole said, “but you can’t air this. Not yet. A neighbor told us she saw a blonde woman leaving Jim’s condo yesterday—and it was probably after Jim was already dead.”

  “Really?” Cassidy’s eyes widened. “Do you have any idea who it was?”

  Allison wondered if she was jealous.

  “That’s the thing. There were no signs that he was living with anyone,” Nicole said. “Do you know if he was dating anyone?”

  Cassidy shrugged one shoulder. “Remember, you’re talking about a guy who started his own Internet dating service for conservatives: Let Fate Find You a Date. Jim dated any beautiful single woman in Portland he could get his hands on.”

  Matter-of-factly, Nicole said, “So that would include you.”

  Allison winced at her bluntness, but she had had the same thought.

  “I didn’t say that.” Cassidy flushed and looked away. “Besides, it wasn’t anything serious. Jim plays—played—the field.”

  “How about his cohost, Victoria Hanawa?” Allison asked. “Do you think she was having a relationship with Jim?”

  “You mean, had they dated?” Cassidy asked. “Of course. A couple of times. But was Victoria his girlfriend? No. Jim always said he liked to keep his work life separate from his private life. Of course, this is the same guy who always used his name to get a good table at a restaurant.”

  “What was Jim like, anyway?” Allison asked. “Especially off the air.”