Corona del Mar—a small seaside village located in the southern part of Newport Beach. It was the same area in which Clarice and John Hollowell had their home back when I was looking into Sophie London’s death. Maybe Clarice was still living in the area, even though she’d sold the house.
If an obituary had been published, it was probably in the Orange County Register. I switched over to the newspaper’s website. It took some hunting to find recent obituaries, but there it was, a short paragraph without a photo dedicated to information on Shirley Pearson’s death. From it, readers learned that Shirley was the owner of Rambling Rose and that she had died last Saturday at the age of thirty-seven. Tidbits about being murdered, her past bank heist, and the fact that she began life as a he rather than a she were conveniently left out. However, it did contain information about an upcoming memorial service on Saturday morning at ten o’clock, the day after tomorrow, and requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the AIDS Services Foundation of Orange County. Information in hand, I returned to the guys.
“Damn.” Greg knitted his brows. “I have to be at the shop all day this Saturday.”
“There’s no way you can get away for a few hours in the morning?” I asked him.
“None. I’m meeting a new client first thing, and we’re working on a special order for delivery Monday morning. And Chris is out of town until Monday.” Chris Fowler was Greg’s right-hand man at the shop. He’d been sent off to Mountain Breeze Graphics, Greg’s shop in Denver, to work with Greg’s partner, Boomer, on installing and training the staff on new equipment.
“I’ll go with you.”
I turned to find Clark scratching his back on a post like an old bear.
“If you two don’t mind,” he continued, “I could stick around and go to the service with Odelia.”
Greg gave Clark a short grunt of decision—one bear talking to another. “I think that’s an outstanding idea, Clark. Thanks.”
“What about me? Don’t I get a say in this?”
“No,” the two growled in unison.
“I’ll bet Zee will want to go. After all, she knew Shirley. She can go with me.”
Greg stroked my arm. “Whether Zee goes with you or not, I’d feel better if you took Clark along. Considering there are now two murders, there’s no telling who will show up at that funeral.”
“Greg’s right. Think of me as just another pair of eyes.”
As much as I claimed that I didn’t need a babysitter at Shirley’s memorial service, inside I was glad Clark would be by my side.
The next morning, Joan Nunez found her way to my office. I had just called Zee and given her the info about the memorial service for Shirley. As I expected, she did want to go. Since it was in Corona del Mar, I told her Clark and I would pick her up on Saturday morning. Zee was surprised and excited to meet Clark, having heard about him when Greg and I had returned home from Massachusetts.
The visit from Joan didn’t surprise me. I knew she’d be eager to see if I’d learned anything about her father during the previous evening’s fact-finding mission. Unfortunately, I’d learned butkis. After she closed my door and took a seat in the visitor’s chair, I told Joan so. When I gave her the news, the sight of her forlorn face about broke my heart.
“I’m sorry, Joan. I only came across one neighbor, and she wasn’t very forthcoming with information. She only said she hadn’t seen him in a while and that he appeared nice but kept to himself. From what I saw of his apartment, it looked liked he hadn’t been home for some time. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still trying.” I also knew that by now the police would be all over that apartment, and the young woman with the baby would be telling them all about the nosy woman with the flyers.
My office phone rang. The display told me it was Steele. I ignored it and returned my attention to Joan.
“How’s your mom doing?”
“She and my stepdad are having some problems. He wants to drive to Las Vegas this weekend and get quickly remarried.”
“And she doesn’t? Seems like after what you told me about her worrying about living in sin, she’d be eager to do that.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
Joan wrapped her arms across her thin chest in a self-hug. Dark circles cupped her eyes like two ashy hammocks.
“My mother is now afraid that if she’s found guilty of fraud, she’ll drag my stepfather into it legally if they remarry. If their marriage isn’t valid, she thinks he might be able to stay clear of any problems.”
“Has she consulted a lawyer?”
Joan looked up at me with the eyes of an expectant waif, like an orphan from a Charles Dickens novel looking for food and a bed.
“Do you think, Odelia, that Mike Steele might talk to her?”
“Steele?” I had been leaning forward in my chair, but her request pushed me back with surprise. “Of all the attorneys in this office, you want to ask Steele for help?”
She shrugged a why not my way. “He’s the best. You’ve said so yourself.”
“He is, but you know yourself that empathy is not his strong suit.” I shook off the surprise. “Why not ask one of the litigators? Someone like Carl Yates, who has a heart instead of a block of ice in his chest. Or maybe Marc Boer? You work closely with both of them. They’re almost like family to you.”
Joan unwrapped her arms and leaned forward, fixing me with a determined eye. “Carl and Marc are lovely people, Odelia, and excellent attorneys. But I don’t want kind and nice. I want someone tough and brutal. Someone who’ll tell us the truth without any sugarcoating.”
“Well, you’d certainly get that with Steele.”
“So you’ll ask him if he’ll help, or at least talk to us about the insurance thing?”
As if summoned from the underworld, Steele knocked and swung open the door to my office. “When I call you, Grey, I expect you to pick up the phone, especially if you’re in the middle of girl-chat.” He flashed his eyes to Joan. She wrapped her arms around herself again as if her limbs were made of Kevlar.
“Do you mind, Steele?” I scowled in his direction. “We’re talking about something important here.”
He stepped past Joan and placed his hands, palms down, on my desk. “If you two ladies aren’t talking about my deal, then it’s not important. Got that?”
I turned to Joan, who’d shrunk in her seat in an attempt to disappear. “Sure this is what you want?”
Without looking at Steele, Joan shook her head up and down in short, fast staccato nods like spiked heels hitting pavement.
When Steele glanced her way, she froze. “As I asked yesterday, Nunez, don’t you have any work to do?”
Joan shifted her big brown eyes to me. “Maybe we should do this another time?” She got up to leave.
“No,” I said to her. “Stay where you are. It’s now or never, Joan. If this is what you want, best to face it head-on.” I looked up at Steele, who was glowering down at me, expecting me to jump at his command. “Joan has a problem, Steele, and she needs your help.” Before he could say anything snarky, I added, “It’s a legal problem.”
At the mention of a legal problem, Steele’s eyes sparkled with such interest, I half expected him to lick his chops. Encouraged, I threw more motivation into the pot. “And it may have something to do with Shirley Pearson’s murder.”
Steele pivoted his body fully toward Joan. His eyes went wide, his brows shooting upward with eagerness. His excitement buzzed like a loose electrical wire. “Really?” He studied Joan like a specimen under a microscope until she visibly squirmed.
“Joan, Steele knows about Shirley Pearson. He was in part of the meeting I had with Detective Frye, but he doesn’t know about your dad.”
“Your father?” A look of confusion replaced Steele’s mad-scientist zeal. “But I thought your father passed away several years ago.”
“He did,” Joan squeaked out, not looking up at Steele. Instead, she looked at me, hoping for me to throw her
a lifeline.
“It’s a complicated story, Steele,” I said, taking some of the pressure off my pal. “But mostly, I think Joan needs your advice on a possible insurance fraud situation.”
Steele looked from Joan to me and back at Joan, his mind keenly zeroing in on and weighing the topic. “You, Nunez? Possible insurance fraud?”
“Not Joan,” I added. “Her mother. Seems her father didn’t die after all and was recently found murdered. Now her mother is being investigated for insurance fraud on the money she collected after his first death.”
“Damn!” Steele was seldom at a loss for words, but this definitely surprised him, though I wished he’d come out with something a bit more sympathetic and appropriate for Joan’s sake. On second thought, I guess his enthusiasm was better than his usual snide remarks.
I turned my attention to Joan and jerked a thumb in Steele’s direction. “Are you sure you want this clown involved?”
“Clown?” Steele interrupted his astonishment to raise a brow my way. “Remind me to have Jill add that to my résumé.”
Joan raised her head and looked at Steele—really seriously considered him—as if seeing him for the first time. “Yes, I do. That’s if you want to help, Mr. Steele.”
In spite of his displeasure at being tagged with a circus moniker, I could tell Steele was near wetting himself with legal exhilaration.
“Sure,” he told Joan. “As long as you drop the Mr. and as long as it doesn’t interfere with this deal Grey and I are working on.” He turned to me. “And that goes for both of us.”
“No problem,” I assured him.
Steele tossed me a look that screamed he didn’t believe me. Sticking his hands back into the pockets of his fifteen-hundred- dollar suit, he leaned against my bookcase and addressed Joan. “So, Nunez, tell me what’s going on, and how is this linked to Grey’s latest murder?”
After Joan gave Steele a synopsis of what was going on with her mother, she had to leave. Jill had buzzed my phone to let us know that Marc Boer was looking for Joan and needed her.
“Glad to see someone still works around here,” Steele quipped after she left my office.
Before Joan left, Steele asked if her mother could come in the next day, Saturday, around ten, saying they could meet more privately at that time. Joan had nearly kissed the hem of his pants in gratitude.
“It looks like there will be no leisurely Saturday for either of us.” I shuffled the papers on my desk to find my way back to where I’d left off.
Steele took the seat Joan had vacated. “Why, Grey, you coming in to finally get some work done?”
I squinted at him. He knew damn well I was on top of everything, especially his deal of the moment. “No. Tomorrow at ten, I will be at Shirley Pearson’s memorial service, along with Zee and Clark Littlejohn.”
I’m not sure which part of my comment snagged his attention more, the part about Shirley’s memorial or the part about my half brother being in town. Steele seemed torn about which to ask about first.
“Your brother’s in town?” Curiosity about Clark won.
“Yep, showed up unannounced last night.” I looked up from the clutter on my desk. “Seems he’s retired from being a cop. He was interviewing for a consulting job in Phoenix and decided to pop on over.”
“Will I get to meet him while he’s here?”
“Not sure how long he’s staying, but Greg and I were talking this morning about having a few folks over on Sunday afternoon for a barbecue. I’ll be e-mailing details out tonight.”
“Great. I’ll bring the beer.”
“Uh-huh. Are you being nice, or is it that you don’t like our usual Sam Adams?”
Steele winked at me. “A bit of both.”
He settled back in the chair as if he were the one with no work to do. “So have you really not found out anything about Joan’s father, or are you keeping it to yourself to save her feelings?”
“I got nuthin’. Alfred Nunez lived in a modest apartment in Santa Ana and hung out with some other dead people. That’s all I know.”
“You think Joan’s mother knew about his disappearance?”
“You’ll need to ask her that tomorrow, Counselor.”
Steele chuckled. “I intend to, but I want to know your opinion. What’s your Spidey sense telling you?”
I put down the papers in my hand and sat back in my chair to give it some thought. “Hard to tell. I’m sure Joan knew nothing about it, and I’m leaning toward her mother not knowing either. Joan’s mother is a lot like Joan, a real straight arrow. But Joan told me that her parents’ marriage wasn’t the best and Joan’s mother, a devout Catholic, would never have divorced Alfred. Maybe they came to a mutual agreement to go their separate ways. Maybe not. Maybe it was all Alfred’s idea.”
Steele soaked in my middle-of-the-road opinion and considered it. “So why the funeral tomorrow?”
“It’s actually just a memorial service. Not sure the body’s been released by the police yet. Going was Clark’s idea, and a good one. I’m hoping to see some of the other folks in the photograph there—at least Clarice. Somebody had to arrange the service. I want to see who did and talk to them. Too many people in that photograph have flown the coop or died for it to be a coincidence.”
Steele stood up to go. “Just be careful, Grey. It’s very likely the killer will be there, too. If you seem too nosy, you might make the hit list.”
“Is that a warning or wishful thinking?”
He opened my door. “Whichever it is, don’t let anything happen to you until after this deal with Ogle closes. Got that?”
I threw him a salute. “Yes, sir!”
“That’s more like it.”
“Are you sure you have the right address?” Clark asked as we drove up and down Pacific Coast Highway in search of the location for the memorial service. “Maybe you jotted the numbers down wrong.”
My nose twitched of its own accord. “I didn’t jot down the numbers at all, I printed it out, so it’s exactly as it was in the newspaper.”
“Maybe you’re reading it wrong,” came Zee’s voice from the back seat of Clark’s rental car. “I keep telling you to get reading glasses.”
Now my nose was vibrating with annoyance like a tuning fork. “I’m reading it just fine, thank you very much.”
“Even if you are reading it wrong,” Clark added, “I don’t see any churches or funeral homes anywhere. In fact, no place where a memorial service would be held. Didn’t the obit give you the name of the place?”
“Nope, just the address.”
Clark was right. We were cruising the stretch of PCH just north of the touristy section of Laguna Beach, where the art galleries, high-end shops, and expensive hotels were located. In this section, the highway was lined with small everyday businesses and more budget-minded hotels. Not that it still wasn’t lovely, just not as snooty. Nowhere along the street did I see any building suitable for housing a memorial service.
From the car, I tried to read the numbers on the buildings. Some I could see; some seemed nonexistent. “Maybe it’s not at a church or a funeral home.”
“If it’s along here, it won’t be.”
“Steele lives down here.” I turned to Clark. “That’s my boss. He has a condo right on the beach a little farther down.”
“Well, if all else fails, we can pop in for coffee.”
I laughed. “Not sure Steele is the sort you can pop in on.” I glanced at my watch. It was quarter to ten. “Besides, he had a meeting this morning at the office.”
“On a Saturday?”
“My husband’s in the office this morning, too,” added Zee. “He’s also an attorney.”
Clark snorted. “Almost as bad as being a cop.”
I returned to studying the numbers on the buildings. “We’ve gone too far again, Clark. Make a U-ey when you can, and let’s go back. It should be on our right. On my side.”
“But we’re in the vicinity, right?” Clark’s voice was clo
aked in barely restrained frustration.
“Yes.”
It was quite a stretch before Clark found a legal place to make a U-turn so we could go back for another pass. When we approached the addresses similar to that on my notes, I told him to slow down.
“Damn it, Odelia.” Clark huffed and puffed. “It’s a Saturday in June in a beach town. If I slowed down any more, we’d be parked.”
“That’s it!”
“You see it?” Hope swelled Zee’s question like bad water retention.
“No,” I clarified. “What I meant is, we should park. We know it’s somewhere on this block, so we’ll park and walk. There’s no way we can miss it that way.”
Up ahead, I saw someone pulling out of a parking spot. I patted Clark’s arm. “There, Clark.” I pointed. “There’s a spot now. Right where that convertible is pulling out.”
Fortunately, the two cars ahead of us didn’t want the spot. Clark pulled in. “Maybe you two should stay here and I’ll hoof it solo and look for the numbers. No sense all of us getting hot and sweaty.”
He had a point, but it hardly seemed fair. “That’s okay, Clark, it’s only on the next block.”
Zee tapped my shoulder from the back seat. “He’s being a gentleman, Odelia. Let him. It’s okay by me.”
Clark chuckled as he turned off the engine but left the AC on. “I’ll wave if I find it. Just remember to pull out the car key and bring it with you.”
Clark wasn’t gone long before I saw him signaling us from the next block, indicating he’d found our destination. As instructed, I turned off the power and pulled the key out of the ignition before climbing out of the car.
It was warm, but it was still early in the day and we were close enough to the ocean to catch a lovely sea breeze. The weather man had promised temperatures in the mid-nineties by midday. Zee and I stepped lively along the sidewalk to where Clark stood in front of several storefronts and a bar. Even with the breeze, I could feel dampness gathering in my armpits, light seepage promising to be lakes in no time. Most of the people we passed on the street were dressed in shorts and tank tops. Many of the women wore bikini tops with their shorts. In keeping with usual memorial service protocol, Zee and I were both wearing conservative dresses with heels.
Twice as Dead Page 10