"It's gratifying to hear my heroes are appreciated:" Fowler strolled over to the bay window. "What a magnificent view of the bay. Are you sure you can't help us with Bodenhausen?"
The manager's forehead furrowed. "Damn, I wish I could. But I just never knew him."
"You said he took good care of his apartment," Garreth said. "That sounds like you were in it."
"Yeah, from time to time, when something needed fixing."
"Was anyone else ever there? Or do you know if he was particular friends with any of the other tenants?"
The furrows deepened. "Keith Manziaro, I think. Once when I was up in his apartment he was telling his wife about fighting the Battle of Bull Run against Bodenhausen."
"Bodenhausen was a war games buff?" Fowler asked.
"More than that." Catao grinned. "His spare bedroom where he spread those battlefield maps on the floor looked like a museum. I mean, he had muskets and swords and Civil War rifles all over the walls. He even had some military uniforms from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, handed down from ancestors who'd worn them, he told me."
Possibly Bodenhausen himself had worn them, Garreth mused.
"And he also had this letter he claimed was signed by George Washington, freeing another ancestor who'd been a slave at Mount Vernon. I don't know if I can believe that, but it makes a good story."
A letter signed by George Washington! Garreth caught his breath. That letter and the other relics would be priceless heirlooms to most families. Who had Bodenhausen's belongings gone to? A friend who could appreciate them, perhaps a fellow vampire? "Mr. Catao, what happened to Bodenhausen's belongings after he died?"
Catao blinked at Garreth. "His executors took it all away, of course."
"Executors? Who were they?"
"Hell, I don't remember." He rolled his eyes as Garreth frowned. "Christ, what do you think, I have a photographic memory? I saw the name once six years ago when this guy shows up with a key to the apartment and papers signed by Bodenhausen making some museum or something his executor."
"Museum?" Garreth frowned. "A local one?"
"I don't know. Probably not. I didn't recognize the name. Hey, I didn't pay much attention, okay? The papers looked legal so I let them have Bodenhausen's things and forgot about it."
A throb started behind Garreth's forehead. "Naturally," he said wearily. Did not know. Did not remember. Had paid no attention. Had forgotten. The same damned roadblocks over and over again. "Isn't there anything you remember? What the man looked like maybe? The markings on the moving van?"
"I remember the guy's car."
That was a start. "What about his car?"
Catao grinned. "The name of the museum was on the plates. I remember thinking museum work must pay pretty well for him to be driving a BMW."
The hair rose all over Garreth's body. Lady Luck, you bitch, I love you! "This guy, was he in his fifties, average height and weight, graying hair, mustache, glasses?"
"I'm not sure about a mustache and glasses:" The manager's forehead creased with the effort of remembering. "But the rest sounds right. How-"
"Thank you very much, Mr. Catao: " Garreth hurried for the building door. "Sorry to have bothered you. Have a nice day."
At the car he waited impatiently for Fowler to catch up. The man who came for Bodenhausen's belongings had to be Holle. How many men in San Francisco drove BMW's with personalized plates carrying the name of an organization which might be mistaken for a museum name? The Philos Foundation. This made four people with links to that organization: Irina, Holle, Bodenhausen, and Corinne Barlow . . . two of them part of the murder case, three of them vampires. Too many people for pure coincidence. Philos bore looking into.
Fowler unlocked the car. "Hello, hello. Something he said put a piece in the puzzle, did it?"
Sooner or later the writer would have to be given some answers, but . . . not yet. "Maybe." Garreth climbed into the car and lay back in the seat, giving up the fight against daylight's drag for a few minutes.
"Maybe?" Fowler said. "You know it bloody did. That was Holle you described. Now what's the connection?"
Maybe he needed to confide in Fowler a little at least. "It was Holle. The connection is the Philos Foundation. But since Harry and company will end up there sooner or later, too, on their way through Holle's address book, we can't afford a straightforward visit:" Garreth closed his eyes. "Head for Union Street. We'll think up something devious on the way."
7
All that distinguished the yellow-with-brown-trim Foundation headquarters from the other shop-filled Victorian houses around it were drapes instead of some commercial display inside the bay window and a discrete brass plate on the door at the top of steep brick steps. Philos Foundation, script engraving read. Please ring for admittance.
Fowler pushed the bell.
A minute later the door was opened by a slim young woman whose modish dress and frizzy mane of hair made her look like a fashion model. A spicy scent that smelled equal parts cinnamon and clove wafted out of the house past her. "Good afternoon. May I help-" She broke off, staring past the writer at Garreth.
His gut knotted. She recognized him for what he was! If she said anything in front of Fowler . . .
But she said only: "Please come in."
Garreth followed her and Fowler inside, feeling as though he were walking into a mine field.
Judging by the house's interior, the Philos Foundation suffered from no shortage of money despite its non-profit status. Garreth could not help but compare the bargain furnishings and poster-decorated walls at the Bay Mission Crisis Center with this thick carpeting and a front room furnished in chrome-and-leather chairs, modern sculpture, and signed/numbered prints. The spicy odor became more pronounced, drowning the blood scents in the room.
The young woman sat down at a desk made of chrome and glass. An engraved nameplate said: Meresa Ranney. "What may I do for you, Mr . . .?"
Fowler smiled at her. "Warwick. Richard Warwick. A friend of mine came over here to work for your organization several years ago and as I'm in town for a bit, I thought I'd look her up. Corinne Barlow."
While Fowler occupied the receptionist Garreth strolled around the room, trying to look idle . . . peering out the bay window, touching sculpture, eyeing the prints . . . all the while studying the house covertly.
"Corinne Barlow?" The receptionist frowned. "I'm sorry but I don't know the name. What does she do?"
The rear wall had a large fireplace with a door to one side. Nothing identified what might be beyond it. Garreth remembered seeing double sliding doors on down the hallway. They probably opened into the same room as this door. Which would be what, an administrative office?
"Corinne works with computers," Fowler said.The accident report had mentioned that in vital statistics about the victim.
Garreth eyed the doorway to the hall. He could see the bottom of the stairs through it. Nothing indicated what lay up them, however.
The receptionist's frown deepened. She shook her head. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid-oh." Her breath caught. "Now I remember. There was an Englishwoman. I'd completely forgotten her, she was here so short a time."
"She got sacked? Damn." Fowler feigned disappointment beautifully. "I don't suppose you'd know where she went."
"She wasn't fired." The lovely model's face settled into lines of sympathy. "I'm sorry to be the one to tell you. She was killed in a car accident just a couple of weeks after she arrived."
Fowler also acted out shock and grief with the skill of a professional actor. "Damn." His throat worked, then he smiled faintly. "Well, thank you. Sorry to have troubled you." He headed for the hall.
Garreth moved up to the desk . . . to the end, so that the receptionist had to look away from hall door to face him.
She regarded Garreth with surprise. "Aren't you with the other gentleman?"
"No, we just met on the steps outside. I'm Alan Osner."
The front door opened and closed. A moment later Fowle
r slipped past the doorway and down the hall toward the back of the house.
"I've been staying at Leonard Holle's-I'm sorry," he said contritely as her eyes filled. "I didn't mean to upset you." Inwardly, he noted her reaction with satisfaction. They knew Holle here all right . . . very well.
"No, that's all right." She groped in a desk drawer. "I'm fine."
"I take it you knew Leonard?"
"He was our chapter president." The groping hand came up with a tissue. She carefully blotted her eyes and inspected the damage with a small mirror from the same drawer. "It's been a terrible-who are you looking for, Mr. Osner?"
Fowler reappeared in the hall and started up the stairs.
"Miss Irina Rudenko. Leonard's housekeeper said I might find her here."
On the bottom step, Fowler started, turning to stare at Garreth for a moment before continuing up the stairs.
"I'm sorry," the receptionist said. "Miss Rudenko isn't here right now. Would you care to leave a message?"
"I'd rather see her personally." He forced his voice to remain casual, to ignore the drumming urgency in him. "Do you have a home phone for her?"
"I can't give out that kind of information, sir."
Garreth casually took off his glasses.
Such improbably blue eyes had to be a product of tinted contacts. The depth and wideness was her own, though, and for an uneasy moment as he caught her gaze, Garreth wondered if a vampire could ever become trapped in his victim's eyes. He forced himself to widen his focus beyond the twin cobalt pools.
A mistake. A pulse pounded visibly in her long neck. The tantalizing warmth of her blood scent caressed him, perceptible despite the spicy odor filling the room. Hunger exploded in him. She stared into his eyes, lips parted as though in anticipation. Anticipation seared him, too . . . the feel of her in his arms-pliant, yielding-the throb of that pulse against his lips and searching tongue . . . the exquisite salty fire of her blood in his mouth. He started around the desk toward her.
Laughter whispered in his head . . . eager, mocking. Lane's laughter.
Garreth caught himself in horror. Jumping back, he jammed on his glasses and shoved his hands in his coat pockets to hide their tremble. He fought to steady his voice. "Do you think Irina might be in later?"
The receptionist blinked up at him with the puzzled expression of a waking sleeper struggling to orient herself. "I . . . don't know. Mr. Holle gives-gave her the run of the place since her mother works for the Foundation in Geneva, but since she doesn't work for us herself we never know when-" She hesitated a moment, then smiled. "I guess I can tell you, though."
The hair on his neck rippled. "Why me in particular?"
She gave him a brilliant smile. "Your aura, of course. People with black ones always seem to get preferential treatment around here. See, I have this gift for seeing auras. Mostly I don't tell people because they laugh or get nervous, like they're afraid I'll read their minds or something. The people here at the Foundation don't mind, though. Mrs. Keith, that's Mr. Holle's secretary, even said it's one of the reasons they hired me. I usually see black just around dying people, but yours isn't the same kind of black. It's . . . bright, if that makes any sense, a very intense, fiery black. Very rare. Miss Rudenko has your kind of aura, though, and so does one of the bloodbank techs who works nights. The Englishwoman the other gentleman was looking for had it, too."
Garreth breathed in slowly. This had to be the vampire connection Ricky the hustler and Holle's housekeeper hinted at. He remembered the blood in Holle's refrigerator. How much of the blood Philos collected ended up somewhere besides hospitals and the Red Cross?
"Do you suppose it's genetic?" the receptionist said. "Maybe you're all related somehow."
Hunger still licked at him. He avoided looking at her throat. "We share a common bloodline, yes. You were going to tell me something about Irina?"
"Oh yes. She mostly comes by in the evening, when she's bored with running around town, probably. We're closed then, except for the bloodbank staff, of course,"-she pointed at the ceiling-"so when you come back tell them Meresa said for you to."
In the hall, Fowler slipped down the stairs and past the doorway. The front door opened and closed, and a moment later Fowler hurried into the front room. "I beg your pardon, but-"
The receptionist stiffened. "How did you get back in? The door is locked on the outside."
"Really? Perhaps it didn't closed solidly behind me. Be that as it may, I came to inform this gentleman that his car has apparently slipped out of gear and is inching its way along the curb toward freedom. I do think you ought to get out there. Immediately."
Garreth caught the emphasis. "Shit!" He raced for the door. "Harry and company?" he muttered at Fowler.
"Quite. I spotted them from the hall window upstairs."
"How far?"
"Half a block."
Garreth's stomach dropped. That close? Step on the sidewalk and they would spot him. Yet where else was there to go? He looked around desperately as the outside door closed behind him.
The space between this and the adjoining building caught his eye.
Fowler followed his gaze in dismay. "You must be joking. Only a shadow will fit through there."
It did look narrow. However . . . he could see Harry and Girimonte coming closer every second. Their attention appeared to be on each other and the open notebooks in their hands but the moment they looked up, they would see him.
He vaulted over the side of the steps and dived between the buildings. It was a tight squeeze. It had to be even worse for Fowler. Somehow, though, the bigger man worked his way through the gap after Garreth.
"God bless adrenalin, which lowers every fence, lightens every weight, and widens even the eye of a needle for a desperate man," Fowler panted as they wormed their way free into the alley behind the Foundation building. He brushed at cobwebs clinging to his suitcoat. "I do hope all this is worth something. Am I wasting my breath asking who this Rudenko woman is?"
Garreth blinked. "From your reaction out there in the hall, I thought you knew her."
"Not her." Fowler shook his head. "Mada's stories mentioned a Polish woman named Irina Rodek and I thought at first you were going to say her name." He lifted a questioning brow. "This is the fourth name now you've pulled out of the air."
"Not quite." Careful, Mikaelian. They headed down the alley toward the street. "She's the woman who asked Holle about Lane. The housekeeper mentioned the name."
The writer stared at him in disbelief. "I think I'm going mad. There must be a chain of logic tying all of this together, but it totally escapes me."
"No logic, I'm afraid, just the luck of the Irish." Garreth gave him a wry grin. "What did you find out about the rest of the house?"
"That it's quite true you can go anywhere if you appear to know what you're doing. No one questioned my story about checking the photocopiers. Fortunately I do know something about the contraptions from all the time I've spent tinkering with mine to keep it running. I chatted up a secretary in an office at the back of the house downstairs and some medical technologists and a computer operator on the first floor. None of them know the name Lane Barber; neither have they seen a tall, red-haired woman like Barber at the Foundation. What did the receptionist have to say?"
"I just asked her about Rudenko. I can't risk her mentioning to Harry and Girimonte that they're the second people interested in Lane Barber today."
Fowler sighed. "Quite. Well, then, did she tell you where to find Rudenko?"
Garreth shook his head. "I think she knew, but she wouldn't say."
"Wouldn't say!" Fowler stopped short and spun around to scowl at him. "You didn't press her?"
Memory of what had nearly happened when he started to set him shaking again. "No."
"Christ! How the bloody hell do you expect to learn anything! That creature is out there killing people and blaming you and you're walking away from potential sources of information!"
Why was he so
angry? "Hey. Easy. You sound like you're the one being framed."
"And you're bloody casual about it all!" Fowler snarled. His eyes narrowed. "Don't you want to find her? Don't you care she's going to put you in the dock and maybe make you swing?"
"We use lethal gas in this state." A correct hanging that broke his neck would be one way to kill him, though.
Fowler's hands came up as though to grab him by the throat, but before he actually touched Garreth, he stopped short, blinked, and backed away, grimacing sheepishly. "Good lord. I am sorry. I don't know what the devil got into me. Identifying with you, I suppose . . . like I do with my characters. Forgive me."
Garreth eyed him. "No problem. The receptionist did tell me Rudenko comes in evenings. I plan to call back then. For now, you must be starved. Let's get something to eat and head back to Bryant Street before Harry puts out an APB on us."
8
Harry and Girimonte dragged into the squadroom after five. Harry headed for the coffee pot. Girimonte flung herself in her chair, propped her feet on her desk, and lit a cigar. Puffing it, she eyed Garreth and Fowler, who sat at Harry's desk with cups of tea and the Mossman and Adair files. "Well, don't you two look comfortable and satisfied with yourselves. Where've you been all day?"
"Retracing my nightmares," Garreth replied. True enough considering the incident with the receptionist.
"You mean visiting the Barbary Now and places like that?"
Garreth sipped his tea. When she and Harry played Bad Cop/Good Cop she must do one hell of a job in the tough role. Her question smoldered with accusation. "Was someone killed there this afternoon?"
She blew out smoke. "Cagy, Mikaelian, but it doesn't answer the question."
"Oh? Is this an interrogation?"
Fowler slapped the Adair file closed. "What this is, is juvenile! I'll answer the bloody question. Yes, we visited that club, and the alley, and the Jack Tar, the Fairmont, and half a dozen other sites connected to the case. We also had coffee at Ghirardelli Square and visited a book store so I could buy a couple of little gifts." He picked up three books from a corner of the desk.
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