Blood Truth

by Matt Coyle

  Except this woman had already starred in my movie. Stop-action still shots from the balcony of room 310. A woman driving an eighty-thousand-dollar sports car wasn’t just an extra, existing only to fill up Jeffrey Parker’s leisure time and fantasies. She had her own story. Maybe Parker existed just to fill up her leisure time.

  Would it matter to Kim? Her husband had broken civilization’s most sacred oath. The deed was the betrayal. The partner, unimportant. Except to me. I’d uncovered the sin, but not the whole truth. Especially with Peter Stone involved.

  I turned the ignition back on.

  * * *

  I pulled up behind the woman as she sat at a stoplight. I took a picture of the Corvette’s license plate with my phone. The woman turned right on Mission Boulevard. So did I.

  I called Moira.

  “Too late, Cahill. You had your chance.” The husky jackhammer voice. “You need a friend tonight, hug your dog.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. I need you to run a plate.”

  Moira had connections at every police department in San Diego County. I had a major disconnect with the La Jolla Police Department that reverberated throughout all the other PDs in San Diego. When I needed to find out who a car was registered to, or any information a cop could give me, I called Moira.

  “Another favor? You’re a one-way street, Cahill. Give me the plate number.”

  I texted her the photo of the Corvette’s license plate and heard a ping through the phone. “I just texted it to you.”

  “Thanks, Einstein.” That offer of a beer, a distant memory. “You already onto another case? How did your friend take the bad news?”

  “Same case. I haven’t told her yet.”

  “Then what’s the plate for?”

  “Just tying up loose ends.”

  “You’re delaying the inevitable.” Her voice softened, but the words were hard. “Quit chasing your tail and tell the woman what she hired you to find out.” She hung up.

  I followed the Corvette through Pacific Beach and Crown Point as it took the Ingraham Street Bridge over Fisherman’s Channel, which connects Mission Bay and Fiesta Bay. The Corvette exited onto Nimitz Boulevard just before the Sea World exit. The woman took Nimitz through Ocean Beach and turned right on Rosecrans, the main road through Point Loma.

  Famous for its historic lighthouse and the Cabrillo National Monument, Point Loma is located on a peninsula bordered west and south by the Pacific Ocean and the San Diego Bay to the east. It’s a small, sleepy community with pockets of wealth that can match any in San Diego. Point Lomans are just less ostentatious about it.

  The Corvette exited Rosecrans up a steadily climbing street, then left, and right again up a San Francisco–style hill. I followed a block back and felt like an astronaut in liftoff position as I climbed the last hill. The Corvette turned into a driveway of a home three quarters of the way up the street. The house was an old, nothingspecial midcentury with a multimillion-dollar view of the harbor, airport, and downtown San Diego. It looked like a knockdown and flip waiting to happen. The other homes on the street were all more modern and probably appraised at a million more than the house where the Corvette parked. Still, location, location, location.

  I passed by the house just as the woman walked from her car toward the front door. She carried a black briefcase with a silver clasp. Peter Stone’s briefcase. What secrets did it hold? Probably just money. Once clean, now dirty or vice versa. But did it have anything to do with Jeffrey Parker? Probably not. Just another sin by people who committed a lot of them.

  I U-turned at the top of the street and parked a couple homes above the house on the opposite side of the street. Not for the first time, I evaluated the choices I’d made in my life that led up to me sitting in a car admiring other people’s views. Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a view.

  I pulled out my phone and logged onto a paid website and ran a deed search on the house across the street. A couple years back, I’d call Kim when I needed to know who owned a property. It had been free and I got to talk to Kim. If I called her now, I’d have to explain why I wanted the address and how it related to my surveillance of her husband. She’d get the bad news about her husband tomorrow. Unless Kim asked for extra details, I’d keep the Point Loma address and Peter Stone to myself. This was just me scratching an itch.

  For twenty bucks, the website gave me the owner of the house. Gaia Trust. I tried to dig deeper into the trust, but the website didn’t have any details. I looked up Gaia Trust and didn’t find anything except references to Gaia who I already knew to be the Greek ancestral goddess of all life. Mother Earth. My phone buzzed. Moira.

  “The car is being leased by a Sophia Domingo, age thirty-eight.” As usual, no preamble from Moira. “Lives at 1022 1st Place in Hermosa Beach.”

  “Good work.” Hermosa Beach was a couple hours north in Los Angeles.

  “I’m not done. Married twice. Divorced twice. No record of employment over the last three years.”

  “I guess when most of your work is done under the sheets, you keep the employment under the table.”

  “Clever, Cahill.” She hung up before I could thank her.

  I watched the house and admired the view for an hour, then drove home. The case was over. The information I had to give to Kim might end her marriage. The only woman I’d ever loved since the death of my wife twelve years ago. Pregnant with the child of the man who was cheating on her two years into their marriage. Thoughts a better man wouldn’t allow pulled at the edges of my conscience. Could the destruction of Kim’s marriage I’d chronicled for her be the pathway to our getting back together?

  What kind of man was I?

  CHAPTER SIX

  I MET KIM at Muldoon’s the next morning at seven thirty. The restaurant only served dinner and wouldn’t be open for another nine and a half hours, but the back door was open for deliveries. My agreement with Turk didn’t have time restrictions, as long as I didn’t interfere with day-to-day business. I nodded at the kitchen manager and led Kim past two steel food-prep tables, the walk-in refrigerator, and the dishwashing station out into the dining room. I tapped the dimmer switch next to the open grill and lit up the raised booths in the corner. Kim followed me up to my unofficial office in booth four.

  She wore slacks and a blazer. No sign of a baby bump. Blond hair pulled back for business. This morning’s business would be different than any she’d ever experienced. For me, just another one of the dozens and dozens of adultery cases I’d handled over the years. Except that it wasn’t.

  I kept the folder containing my report and photos closed in front of me on the table. I gave Kim a brief overview of tailing her husband the first day. No bombshells. Then I told her about day two, The Pacific Terrace Hotel, and Sophia Domingo with Jeffrey on the balcony of room 310. I left out Peter Stone, the briefcase, and the house in Point Loma. Parker’s sin was enough for Kim. The rest would be an unneeded worry. She had a baby and a broken marriage to worry about. That was enough.

  Kim’s face tightened, but she held it together.

  “Do you have pictures, Rick?” A hint of disdain, now that what I did for a living affected her life. “I know you usually take pictures.”

  I opened the folder and slid it across the table to her. She looked at the photos one by one, staring at each for thirty seconds or more. Her cheeks flushed red and her mouth pinched flat, but she didn’t say anything. Her eyes, clear, dry, angry.

  Finally, “Are you holding back pictures that are more revealing?” The disdain more evident now. “I know getting those is your specialty.”

  I took the insult. The karmic penalty for wondering if showing Kim her husband’s infidelity might open a path for us again.

  “No. These are all I have. All I took.”

  “How long was Jeffrey with her?”

  “It’s all in the report.” I pointed at the folder.

  “I don’t want to read it.” Slight glisten in her eyes. “I’m asking yo
u.”

  “He was there about an hour and a half.”

  She looked at the photo of the woman in the silk robe with her hand on Jeffrey Parker’s thigh for a long time. “Do you think what you’ve shown me today proves that my husband has been unfaithful?”

  “There could be an innocent explanation.”

  “I need your honest opinion. What do you think?”

  “I think they look comfortable with each other.” I thought back to Parker and the woman in lounge chairs on the balcony, sipping wine, sharing a laugh. The hand on his thigh. This wasn’t their first time. “They’re probably having a physical affair. And it’s probably been going on for some time.”

  “So, he’s not just fucking another woman, he’s in a relationship.” Her face twisted into an anger I’d never seen in the eight years I’d known her. And I never heard her use that word before. “That’s worse than fucking a different call girl every other night.”

  “People make mistakes, Kim. For a variety of reasons. Marriages can survive this kind of thing. I’ve seen it plenty of times.”

  “Not this one.”

  “Talk to him before you make any decisions. Don’t hurry into anything. Take a breath.”

  “Stop.” She held up a hand. A tear ran down her cheek. “You don’t have that right. You gave it up two and a half years ago.”

  “I still care about you, Kim.” The words were true, but they sounded false even to me as they tumbled out of my mouth. “I want you to be happy.”

  “Please. Enough.” She took an envelope out of her purse and handed it to me. “Thank you for finding the truth.”

  “There’s no charge.” I set the envelope on the table next to the folder in front of her. “It’s on me.”

  “It’s not on you.” She grabbed the envelope, threw it at my chest. More tears slid down her cheeks. “That just makes it worse. You don’t get to play the hero. You better cash the damn check. This was a business arrangement. I hired you because you’re the best PI in San Diego at spying on people having affairs. Not because we used to be friends.”

  She pushed out of the booth and ran out of the restaurant.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SAN DIEGO SAFE was located next to a couple quick-service restaurants in a strip mall in Kearney Mesa. Squat building painted beige and brown. Probably built before I was born. I lugged my dad’s wall safe into the store and set it down on the front counter. A seventyish man in a Dickies work shirt behind the counter eyeballed me over reading classes. The name on the tag above his left pocket read Phil. The owner and the man I’d talked to on the phone.

  “I’m guessing you’re Mr. Cahill.”

  People twice my age addressing me as Mister made me feel like an impostor.

  I stuck out a hand. “Call me Rick.”

  We shook. His hand, leathery and strong.

  “Well, let’s have a look.” He spun the safe around like it was on a lazy Susan. “Gardall concealed wall safe, SL4000/F-G-C. Fine product. Doesn’t give up its contents easily. I’ll have to drill it to open it up. Hate to do that.”

  “It’s okay by me.” I wasn’t going to use the safe again. I had a gun safe. I didn’t have anything more important to conceal than a gun.

  “Seems like a waste.” He pointed brown eyes at me over his cheaters. “And you said over the phone that you’d tried combinations with numbers that may have had some meaning to your father?”

  “Yes.” I’d tried his birthday, mine, my sister’s, my mother’s. Even the date of their wedding. The combination, like the safe, was just another secret that my father took to his grave.

  “Well, then, it’s going to cost two hundred dollars to drill it out. I have to use a special bit. You think there’s anything in here that’s worth two hundred dollars to you?”

  “I have no idea. Drill away.”

  “Give me thirty minutes.”

  “Take your time.” My father had been dead for eighteen years. I could wait a little longer to find out what was in a safe I didn’t know about until four days ago. “I’m going to get something to eat.”

  “The safe will be ready for you to open when you get back.”

  I walked outside. It was still morning and the October sun hadn’t shown all of its teeth, yet. The quick-service restaurants in the mini mall didn’t interest me. The Original Pancake House was only a mile away. I started walking. I figured the walk back to San Diego Safe after breakfast would be much needed after the heavy carbo-loading I was about to take on.

  I bought a newspaper from the box dispenser outside the restaurant, and went inside. Nine thirty and OPH was humming. When Kim and I used to come here for our Sunday morning ritual, there was always at least a twenty-minute wait. Today being a weekday, I only had to wait a couple minutes for a table to open up.

  The hostess sat me at a two-top in the noisy restaurant, and I pulled the mini pencil out of the binding of a notepad I always carried with me, and went to work on the USA Today crossword puzzle. Kim and I used to tag-team it over our breakfast. Another ritual. Melancholy memories bubbled up, and I set aside the crossword. Memories from happier times. And memories from this morning at Muldoon’s.

  The pancakes were as good as I remembered. Heavenly pillows topped with butter and warm maple syrup. Halfway through, I regretted my choice of restaurants. Not because of the food or my expanding belly. Because of the memories.

  My phone buzzed on the walk back to San Diego Safe. My memories had come full circle. Kim.

  “Rick, I want to apologize for how I treated you this morning.” A low hush. “You didn’t deserve that. I childishly took my pain out on you. I’m ashamed. I’m sorry.”

  I could almost hear her lash a switch across her own back. It made me uncomfortable because she wasn’t alone. I shared in the guilt. Not for anything I did in Muldoon’s, but for what I didn’t do years ago. Her sentiment at Muldoon’s hadn’t been wrong, it had just been redirected from an earlier time.

  “Kim, you don’t have to apologize to me. Ever. I’m sorry how things turned out.” With her husband. With me.

  “No. I was wrong. Please let me apologize.”

  “Okay. Accepted.” I just wanted to move on.

  “I asked Jeffrey about Sophia.” Her apology had been sincere, but she also needed a sounding board.

  “What did he say?”

  “That she was a client. I didn’t ask him if he was sleeping with her. I’d told him I’d found his second phone.”

  “What did he say about the phone?”

  “He said that she requested he use a separate phone because she didn’t want anyone to know that she was talking to another realtor. She was afraid someone at our office would see their correspondence and word would get out.”

  “Do you believe him?” It was the worst lie I’d ever heard in an adultery case. And I’d heard plenty. Parker had gotten the other phone to hide his relationship with Sophia from Kim.

  “Not really.” Exhale, then a pause. “Maybe. I’d never doubted Jeffrey until he lied to me about seeing the client in Del Mar the other day.”

  All I’d known about Jeffrey Parker before his wife hired me was that he was an upstanding guy. But I’d seen all-American men turn into Italian politicians when the wrong woman gave them attention. Sophia Domingo was the wrong woman.

  “I told you from the start that things weren’t always as they seemed and that sometimes there were simple explanations.” Although, not in this case.

  “But you think he’s lying, right?”

  “I don’t know him well enough to make a determination. You should go with what your gut tells you.” Kim was pregnant and thought she’d married a good man who would make a good father. It wasn’t my place to talk her out of it.

  “I don’t know what to believe. You didn’t actually see them have sex or even kiss. They didn’t even hold hands. You just saw her touch his leg once, right?”

  “Right.”

  Silence. Then, “There’s something else I di
dn’t tell you about.”

  The sound of Kim’s voice told me it wouldn’t be good news.

  “What’s that?”

  “When I found the phone and the texts to Sophia, I found another phone number that Jeffrey had called a couple times.”

  “Okay.”

  “I called the number from my phone and a man answered. I recognized the voice from interviews I’d seen on TV.” She hesitated. “I’m pretty sure the man was Peter Stone.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “Not really. I asked for Sophia and he said there was no one there by that name. He has a very distinctive voice.”

  “Did you ask your husband about the calls to Stone?”

  “No. I didn’t think about it at the time. I was more concerned about this Sophia person.”

  “Why didn’t you mention it when you hired me?”

  “I knew about your history with Peter Stone and worried that you wouldn’t take the job if you knew he might somehow be involved.” She let go a long breath. “Now, I’m worried that Jeffrey might have some connection to him. I don’t know what to think. I’m scared.”

  “Why don’t you ask your husband?”

  “I can’t tell if he’s telling me the truth anymore.”

  I told her what I’d learned about Sophia and Peter Stone, the house on the hill in Point Loma, and Stone’s briefcase.

  “Why didn’t you put all of this in your report?” A tinge of the anger carried over from this morning’s meeting at Muldoon’s.

  “It wasn’t pertinent to discerning whether or not your husband was having an affair.”

  “Then why did you investigate on your own?”

  “Seeing Peter Stone with the briefcase changed things.” I let out a guilty breath. I’d been keeping my own secrets. “It made things bigger than just an adultery case.”

  “That’s why I still need your help.”

  “You want me to continue to follow Jeffrey?”

  “No. He’s going to Las Vegas today for a convention.” Silence. Then, “I want you to follow Sophia.”

  “That’s not a good idea.”