Treasure Hunt wh-2

by John Lescroart

  Mickey raised a finger. “What do you think it was, Wyatt?”

  “I think these reports were due to come out anyway and both Turner and Dominic knew about them in advance somehow. Beyond that, I think he’s a dangerous guy who thinks that since he’s paying us, we’ll do whatever he wants. Now, I don’t know what they did about these reports, if anything, but obviously somebody’s playing fast and loose with this community money. And meanwhile, I want to protect our position vis-a-vis the reward, and Turner’s clearly the guy to see about that. But first I’ve got to waste a couple of hours this morning talking to Juhle and Russo about finding Neshek’s body. So, Mick, we’re going to want to change our strategy.”

  “Okay. Sure. Whatever.”

  “This isn’t clearinghouse stuff anymore. Which is why we’ve got to be careful with Mr. Turner, since it’s not what he thinks he’s paying us to do. We don’t want to give him a reason to pull the plug, agreed?”

  “Of course.”

  He looked over at Tamara. “See why I love this guy?” Then, back to Mickey. “Okay. Even if we haven’t had any reward calls, you and I are both going to get in a quick look at this Neshek thing, if only because then we can eliminate suspects on Como.”

  “How’s that?” Mickey asked.

  “If somebody’s got an alibi for Monday night, two nights ago, when Neshek got killed, then odds are they didn’t kill Como. Assuming, of course, which I am, that the same person killed both of them.”

  “Do Juhle and Russo think that?” Tamara asked.

  “They won’t say so, at least not to me, but they’d be dumb if they didn’t.”

  Mickey sat, his arm resting on the back of his chair, apparently relaxed. But he couldn’t stop tapping his foot. “So what’s the plan?”

  “The plan is that I go to the memorial service this morning and concentrate on the Como people and see if there’s any I can eliminate. If, say, Mrs. Como had a bridge group over or went to Napa or something on Monday night, then she’s clear. Same with Al Carter. Or even your friend Alicia.”

  Mickey shot a quick-angry? defensive?-glance at his sister, then said to Hunt, “What about Alicia? You’re not telling me she’s really still a suspect in this.”

  “Well, she’s a person without an alibi for the time Como was killed. If she’s got one for Neshek… what’s that look?”

  Tamara answered. “We had her and her brother over for dinner last night.”

  “Her and her brother?” His jaw suddenly clamped down, Hunt looked from Tamara to Mickey, and back again. “Why did you do that?”

  “Because they’re good people,” Mickey said. “I wanted to have them over. We’re starting to be friends.”

  “I’m happy for you,” Wyatt said evenly. “But they’re also-or at least she is-a suspect in a murder investigation, unless she’s got an alibi on Monday night.”

  Mickey and Tamara shared another furtive look.

  “What now?” Hunt said.

  Tamara let out a breath. “She slept out in her car by the beach Monday night. Got up early to surf Tuesday morning.”

  After a pause, Hunt asked, “What beach?”

  Mickey took it. “Ocean. Out by Seal Rock.”

  Hunt hesitated again. “Did I tell you where Nancy Neshek lived?”

  “No.” The defensive pose sitting heavy on Mickey now. “Where?”

  “Just above Phelan Beach, well out that way.”

  Mickey was shaking his head. “There is no way Alicia killed anybody, Wyatt. If you talked to her, you’d know that in five minutes.”

  “How would I know that?”

  “Because you could tell. You could just see the person she is.”

  Hunt just barely did not snort. “I don’t think I’ve got to remind either of you how unreliable personal reactions can be. People can hide things, really for truly. They can fool you even with who they are.” He pointed a finger at each of them. “All of us know this firsthand, so excuse me if I’m not overly enthusiastic about Alicia’s overtures to become your friend.”

  “She hasn’t made any moves, Wyatt. I asked her over to dinner.”

  “That’s true,” Tamara added.

  “I’m sure it is.”

  Mickey, getting a little hot now, “What do you mean by that?”

  Hunt held up a restraining palm. “Nothing. I’m just cautioning you to go slow and be a little wary. And neither of you should be socializing with these people. Really.”

  But Mickey couldn’t let it go. “She didn’t do anything, Wyatt. I know she didn’t.”

  “All right,” Wyatt said, “but let me ask you this: Did she tell you that Dominic Como had fired her on the last day of his life?”

  The siblings exchanged another glance. “Who told you that?” Mickey asked.

  “Mrs. Como. Who heard it point blank from her husband.”

  “Maybe she was lying to you. Maybe he was lying to her.”

  “Maybe both,” Hunt admitted. “But maybe I’m going to ask Alicia about it today, if she’s at the service. Not at a nice friendly dinner. And while I’m at it, I plan to ask her, and Al Carter if I get the chance, if either of them know where they store the tire iron in a Lincoln Town Car.”

  “Why would that matter?”

  “Because we know the weapon that killed Dominic Como was a tire iron. And we know that the tire iron from his limo isn’t there anymore.”

  “We do?” Mickey asked. “When did we find that out?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. Juhle and Russo went out to Sunset and looked. And they’re probably looking for more in it now even as we speak.”

  After a minute, Tamara brought up the usual objection. “That doesn’t mean the tire iron that killed him came from that car.”

  “Good, Tam. No, it doesn’t. Not automatically. But on the other hand, there’s nothing says it isn’t either. It certainly could be. And, Mick, just consider this: Your friend Alicia, who might have just been jilted by him, and fired at the same time on the last day we know he was alive, had easy access to it. And then certainly had access back to him.”

  Mickey was sitting back, his mouth set, his hands clenched in his lap. “This is bullshit.”

  “No, Mick. These are facts we have to deal with.” Hunt slowed himself down with a breath. “Look, I’m not saying she’s guilty of anything. She might be the nicest person in the world. But she’s in this until conflicting evidence or an alibi gets her out, okay? You can’t become friends with her, and probably not with her brother either. I’m sorry, but you just can’t.” He looked from one of them to the other. “Neither of you.”

  A heavy silence settled in the tiny reception area. Mickey and Tamara shared a few more looks, until at last Mickey came back to Hunt, his voice again under control. “So. What do you want me to do?”

  “Look around up at Sanctuary House. Nancy Neshek’s place. That would be a start. Juhle and Russo are going to be futzing with the limo and crime scene stuff from last night all morning. This gives us a small opening before anybody in Sanctuary has a chance to get their guards up.”

  “So you’re going to talk to Al Carter?” Mickey asked.

  “Yeah. If he’s at the service, which he should be. What about him?”

  A shrug. “One of my lunatics yesterday, Damien Jones? Maybe he wasn’t actually off on everything. He said we should look for somebody, probably with the Battalion but maybe not, up at Sunset. Which, by the way, my grandfather agrees with. Meanwhile, just so you’re clear that Al Carter’s another guy with access to the tire iron. Also the last known human to see Como alive. I don’t know about his alibi, if any. And he hasn’t told us very much about Como’s mysterious last appointment either.”

  “Yeah. I’ll talk to him. That’s a good thought. But listen”-Hunt leaned his lanky form forward, his elbows on his knees-“the main thing for all of us-even you, Tam-is to be careful here. Whoever it is, this killer’s now done it twice. Let’s not force a third. All we’re trying to do is collect informati
on and pass the valid stuff along to Devin. That’s all.”

  Mickey shook his head. “Nice try, but it’s gotten bigger than that, Wyatt,” he said. “A whole lot bigger.”

  The address of the administrative headquarters for the Sanctuary House for Battered Women was on Potrero Avenue near San Francisco General Hospital. Unlike the other service-oriented nonprofits he’d visited in the last few days, for obvious reasons Sanctuary did not shelter, educate, or test any of its clientele on-site-instead, they were assigned, often with their children, to one of the organization’s seventeen secure locations within the city limits. Because of this, Sanctuary’s footprint here on Potrero was so small as to be nearly invisible. Mickey drove by what should have been the address twice before he realized that the office must be somewhere among the buildings that made up the much larger hospital complex.

  Fifteen minutes after he’d finally managed to park in a handicapped zone in the hospital’s main but still woefully inadequate lot, he found the place-one of many apparently identical offices on the ground floor of the hospital’s Admitting and Triage Building. It was a typical overused bureaucratic medical landscape-already at nine A.M., long lines had formed at each of the glass windows, with the chairs in the main lobby filled with mostly older and poorly dressed patients. Although there was still the usual complement of mothers with their coughing or sleeping children, spaced- out young adults, and obvious derelicts, all waiting in numb patience while the clammy fluorescent lighting lit the area and reflected up at them from the greenish tile flooring.

  The only indication of Sanctuary House’s presence was the name of the organization stenciled onto the glass doorway, now open at the farthest extent of the lobby. Mickey stood in the doorway for a long moment. In front of him, a counter bisected most of the room across the front, and behind it were mazes of green and gray filing cabinets and a few desks. Venetian blinds over the high back windows. To his left, the counter made a right angle, and behind it more of the ubiquitous green-tinged glass separated out the two or three other offices.

  He heard low voices, apparently coming from one or more of those offices, but saw no one, so he stepped forward and, following instructions, “Please Ring for Assistance,” pushed the little hotel bell that someone had duct-taped down to the peeling wooden counter.

  In five seconds, a tiny and tentative bespectacled young woman appeared from between one of the banks of filing cabinets, wearing what looked to Mickey like a thrift-store cotton dress and a devastated and yet somehow impatient expression. Beneath her wire- rimmed glasses, her eyes were red and swollen. Mickey at once realized two things: that the employees had heard the news about their executive director, and that maybe this should have been an assignment for Tamara-the vast majority of the time, Mickey supposed that men here were going to be the enemy; it came with the turf. Still, he dredged up a look of respectful solicitude.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  Having done his homework, Mickey knew the name of the associate director. “I’d like to speak to Adele Watrous,” he said, “if she’s in.”

  “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Are you Ms. Watrous?”

  “No.”

  “I was hoping to talk to Ms. Watrous.”

  “It’s Mrs., and she is having a difficult morning. I’m afraid we all are. Can I tell her what this is about?”

  Mickey’s heart went out to this young woman, but he was here to get information-specifically if Nancy Neshek had mentioned to anyone here the question she’d wanted to ask Hunt-and the further down the food chain he went with the staff, he thought, the less likely the result. “I’m afraid it’s about Ms. Neshek, which I can see you already know about. I’m very sorry.”

  She opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out, and then she closed it, nodded twice, then again, and finally disappeared back into the maze. After another moment, a grandmotherly woman appeared. Her snow-white hair was disheveled and she, too, had clearly been crying, but she spoke in a crisp, no- nonsense manner. “I’m Adele Watrous,” she said. “Is this about Nancy? How can I help you?”

  “I’m working on the investigation into Mr. Como’s death,” he began, “and now Ms. Neshek’s. Nancy’s. She made a call to our office on the night she died, and I was hoping to talk to you about whatever she might have told you, if anything, that might shed some light on her death.”

  Nodding wearily, Mrs. Watrous lifted the flip-up portion of the counter and motioned him inside into the office proper, then led him beyond the first door they passed and into the second one. Once they were seated, the door closed behind them, she templed her hands at her mouth and blew into them a time or two, regaining her composure.

  “When did you hear about it?” Mickey began.

  She sighed. “This morning. The phone started ringing around six-thirty. One of our women out at the Jackson Street facility heard it on the news. After that…” She opened her hands. “Everybody.” Then, suddenly, in a kind of a double take, she seemed to focus on him more clearly. “You said you were investigating Dominic Como’s death?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think Nancy’s is related to that?”

  “We don’t know. What we do know is that Nancy called the hotline at our office after the reward was announced on Monday and said that she had a question, an important question. And would we please call her the next day, here at your offices, or at her home? She said she’d be at one of the two places, definitely, but never answered at either.”

  “No. She never made it in here on Tuesday.” She paused. “But that wasn’t by any means unusual. I mean, she’d often get called out to one of the sites and have to stay until whenever…” Trailing off, she shook her head in obvious dismay and confusion.

  Mickey gave her a minute. “Were you both here when the reward on Mr. Como’s death was announced?”

  “And when was that, exactly?”

  “Around four in the afternoon.”

  “Well, then”-she considered carefully-“I’m sure we were here, yes, both of us. But I don’t remember hearing about it here. I know we didn’t talk about it.”

  This was more or less what Hunt and Mickey had expected, but that didn’t make the bare fact-that Watrous had no information about why Neshek had called the Hunt Club-any easier to accept. He pursed his lips in frustration. “Might Nancy have spoken to anybody else here about it? Did she stay late, for example?”

  Again, Mrs. Watrous gave the question its time. And again she shook her head no. “She left right at five on Monday, or a little after. I stayed on till a little past six.”

  Grasping at straws, Mickey asked, “Was that also usual, that she left work right around five?”

  “No. Usually she stayed much later. Unless she had a fund- raiser or some event or something like that. The work here is never finished, so we tend to put in some long hours.”

  “So”-Mickey barely daring to hope, but here at last was a possible opening-“was there something Monday night, then?”

  She started to shake her head again, and then abruptly stopped. “Well, yes… I mean. Oh, God, I hadn’t even thought of that.”

  “What’s that, Mrs. Watrous?”

  “They were having a COO meeting at City Hall.”

  “COO?”

  “You know? The Communities of Opportunity. Oh, and speaking of which, did you see that thing in the paper this morning, the CityTalk column? That’s what they must have been going to talk about, that report coming out.”

  “Who was that? Besides Nancy, I mean.”

  “Well, I suppose all or most of the beneficiaries. Us, Mission Street, Sunset, Delancey, all the others.” Now, her color suddenly high, Adele Watrous tapped impatiently on her desk. “People don’t realize. It’s harder than it looks. You’ve got to put on a song and dance to get people to come out and give you money for these projects. You see what’s in the paper today, you think it’s all about throwing this foundation money away on mus
ic or public relations consultants or other nonessentials, but you’ve got to spend money to make money, especially in these times, in this field. Mr. Turner understands that. There’s no other way to do it.”

  “I believe you,” Mickey said, keeping his calm. The mention of Len Turner’s name in this other context suddenly put his brain on high alert. “So you’re fairly certain that Nancy was planning to attend this meeting?”

  “I’m sure she was. But you can find out if she did easily enough.”

  “You’re right, Mrs. Watrous, we can. Well”-Mickey started to get to his feet-“I want to thank you for all your help and cooperation here today. I know this news must have been brutal.”

  “It was. I still can’t make myself believe it. And you know what’s really so terrible, almost the worst part?”

  “What’s that?”

  Suddenly her weariness seemed to overcome her. She sighed again and closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, she shook her head in what Mickey took to be resignation. “The worst part is that we’re so used to terrible news here. We get terrible news here every single day.”

  18

  Due to the late night they’d both spent at the Neshek home, neither Juhle nor Russo got into work until just before Hunt arrived to make his statement to them. In Nancy Neshek, they had a fresh homicide to begin investigating, and the crime scene analysis and report to review, but Russo wanted to go down and finish up whatever work remained with the limousine first. After all, they’d gone to all the trouble of getting a warrant and having the Lincoln towed to the impound lot, and that lot was only just across Seventh Street, adjacent to the Hall of Justice, where they currently found themselves anyway.

  “But Hunt’s going to be here to make his statement any minute.” Juhle was at his desk in the homicide detail, a wide-open room filled with desks on the fifth floor of the Hall of Justice. “We’re going to want to talk to him about that and find out what else he knows or knew about Neshek. I’d bet you he’s also going to know about those CityTalk numbers-”

  But Russo cut him off. “I don’t even want to talk about Wyatt Hunt.”