by Matt Coyle
“Is that unusual?”
“A little. She usually returns calls within a few minutes. She’s probably showing a house and has a lot of walk-ins.” His face pinched tight. “Is Kim in danger?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. When was the last time you saw or spoke to her?”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Parker stared at me as I pulled it out. Kim’s name on the screen. I answered.
“Why all the phone calls?” Kim asked. “Is something wrong?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that question in front of her husband.
“I just wanted to make sure you were all right.” I looked at Parker who pulled out his phone and punched a phone number.
“I just got out of a meeting with my divorce attorney,” Kim said.
“Hang up with him!” Parker shouted at my phone. He’d figured out who I was talking to.
“Why are you with Jeffrey?” Anger in Kim’s voice. “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. Call me after you talk to your husband.” I hung up.
“What the hell’s going on, Cahill?” Parker looked at me and then back at his phone, silent in his hand.
“I don’t know. Yet.” I left the Parker house.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I PULLED INTO my driveway and noticed a Spectrum cable van a couple houses down. Good luck. A lot of the homes had satellite dishes on their roofs like mine. After a taste of satellite, I wasn’t coming back. I doubted my neighbors would, either.
I got inside the house a few minutes after four o’clock. Midnight was waiting for me. I owed him. Dog park, Fiesta Island. We still had a couple hours of sunlight. I wasn’t getting paid by Stone until tomorrow morning, so I wasn’t officially on the clock yet. Even if Moira was.
I went upstairs with Midnight on my heels and stored my gun in the nightstand next to my bed. We hustled back downstairs and I grabbed Midnight’s chest harness and leash out of the closet. He sat in front of me and placed his front legs into the loop one at a time. I snapped the connector over his back, then tossed the end of the leash over his head. He snatched it out of the air, snorted, and danced in place.
It had been too long for both of us.
* * *
Fiesta Island sits in the east end of Mission Bay. It’s really a man-made peninsula with a tiny strip of road connecting it to the rest of Mission Bay Park. Sea World is a couple Tiger Woods drives across the bay. Fiesta Island’s biggest claim to fame is that it holds the world-famous Over The Line tournament for two weekends every July. The rest of the time, most of the island is ruled by dogs on the largest off-the-leash dog park in San Diego. Or probably anywhere else.
I parked in the dirt parking lot and Midnight howled out the window in the backseat. He always did. A call back to the wild. I let him out of the car and walked him through the parking lot and down into the sand fronting the bay.
I watched Midnight run and bark and swim for an hour. An hour I wouldn’t trade for anything. An hour for both of us to be free. To follow nature’s mandate. To feel joy.
I needed more of those hours.
* * *
We got back home just as the sun gave up the day. I washed Midnight in the backyard. After I dried him off, we bull-fought with the towel for a while then I went inside and took my own shower.
I settled into my recliner in front of the TV in the living room and reached for the remote control on the side table, but stopped. I studied the bookcase built in around the TV. Something was wrong about it. The books all seemed to be in place. What was it? More of a feeling than something I could point at.
Then I saw it. The clay sculpture on top of the bookcase that Kim had made for me after we’d been dating about a year. It was supposed to be me in the image of Rodin’s The Thinker. The likeness was pretty good for someone who’d only taken a class for two months. The body was more sculpted than mine had been since college football, but I guess a girl could dream. I’d praised the gift and truly liked it, but had always seen it as a subtle push. For me to get out of my head and get on with the two of us. Of course, I never did.
What caught my eye tonight was the angle of the sculpture. I’d placed it at about a forty-five-degree angle on top of the bookshelf when I’d moved into my house three years ago. Now it looked to be slightly more square to the room. My imagination? Maybe. But I sat in that chair almost every night and numbed out to the TV. The background had always looked the same. Until tonight. Maybe Midnight or I bumped into the bookcase and jostled the sculpture sometime when we were playing. Possible.
Except the sculpture was heavy and hadn’t even moved when a medium-size earthquake rolled through a year ago.
I stared at the sculpture. It had definitely been moved. I got up and walked over to the bookshelf and rose up on my tiptoes so my eyes were just above the top of it. A small black rectangle less than an inch long and half the width of a D battery was snugged up against the base of the sculpture.
An audio recording device. Probably Wi-Fi connected to a receiver somewhere close by.
My face flushed, but cold sweat blistered the hairline on my neck. Someone had breached my house. Invaded my sanctuary. I was vulnerable and hadn’t even known it. But who and how? Midnight was always in the house when I was gone. Nobody could get past him without feeling teeth. Then I got it.
The Spectrum cable van on the street when I left for Fiesta Island. Hiding in plain sight. Waiting for me to leave with Midnight so an operative could get inside and bug my house. That still left the who and why. I didn’t have any information worth listening to or sharing with someone else. Not yet, at least. Maybe someone wasn’t taking any chances with what I might learn and who I might tell it to. Someone who always had to have the odds in his favor no matter the cost.
Peter Stone.
What did he think I already knew about Sophia Domingo that would help me find her? Maybe this was just his standard operating procedure when he hired a PI. Bug them in case they don’t tell you everything. Or learn the whereabouts of a missing person before they give it to you so you can get to that person before anyone else. And then do what? The options Stone might employ sent a shiver through me.
Still, I left the audio recorder where it was and turned on the TV. Whatever Stone was up to, I didn’t have to let him know I was onto it. Yet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
STONE’S LAIR HUNG off the side of a hill on Hillside Drive. Thus, the name of the street. You could see the house from below as you wound up the hill. Swirling glass and cement, it loomed like sets of giant grinding gears waiting to pulverize anything or anyone who got too close.
I knocked on the hand-hammered bronze front door that rose to the sky. The last time I’d been there was four years ago. Stone hadn’t expected me then. He’d opened the door in a bathrobe. I was the one holding an envelope that time. And a gun.
This morning he answered the door in a suit that was worth more than my whole wardrobe. Dressed for business. So was I. Without a gun this time.
“Rick.” He eyed my jeans, bomber jacket, and ball cap. “You look exactly the same as the last time I had the pleasure. Your earnest lateral progression continues. Bravo.”
He looked the same, too. Midsixties, but could pass for fifty. Tall. Lean. Sculpted good looks without a surgeon’s aid. Gray widow’s peak sharp as a knife point aimed at my face. No, he hadn’t changed on the outside. But his insides churned the picture of Dorian Gray.
“Well, it beats continued descent. How far down are you now, Stone? The Seventh Circle?”
“Ha!” A genuine laugh without the usual condescension. A first. “You actually opened a book in college during those grueling hours of jock study hall. Come on in.”
He pulled the door open. I entered and swiveled my head, checking for bad guys out of habit.
“It’s just us today. No need to worry. Follow me down the hall to my office.” He smiled an executioner’s grin. “That’s right, I almost forgot, you know the way.”
His house didn’t look any more lived in than it had four years ago. Stylish, sharp-edged furniture straight off the staging set from a Million Dollar Listing television show. It looked like it could cut you if you caught a corner. The living room had an entire wall of glass that revealed a ten-million-dollar view of La Jolla and the Pacific Ocean. The other walls still had framed mirrors of every size. The better for Stone to gaze at himself twenty-four hours a day.
I followed him down a hallway with photos of A- B- and C-list celebrities. All shaking hands with Stone back in his casino days. Some featured Stone in his remade La Jolla life with local politicians, athletes, and cops. A change of address, money, and lies can buy you a new spotless reputation.
Stone stood behind a huge mahogany desk with the same view from the living room behind him.
“Please, sit.” He sat down and I did the same in a white leather chair across from him. A letter envelope sat on the desk between us. About the same width of the one I’d found in my father’s wall safe. He looked at the envelope, then at me. “That’s yours, Rick. Fifteen thousand dollars, tax free. That’s the real reason you don’t want it wired into your account or via a check, isn’t it? Keeping the Tax Man from grabbing his share.”
“I’ll declare it as income, but your name won’t be anywhere near it.”
“As I mentioned yesterday, I want our names intertwined even less than you do.” He laughed again, but this had the usual condescension hanging off it. “However, if just a whiff of our collaboration got out to San Diego who’s whos, you’d have more clients than you could ever handle. And you wouldn’t have to hold your breath hoping your new clients’ checks would clear. So, spare me the holier-than-thou outrage. We both know your virtue is transitory.”
“You’re right.” I stood up, grabbed the envelope off the desk, and shoved it into my coat pocket.
“I just don’t want to be close enough to be hit by debris when that Stone façade comes tumbling down.”
“You’ll never escape my reach, Rick.” The self-amused mirth left his eyes and the inner malevolence took over. “No one has yet.”
Stone’s “yet” went back to his casino days in Las Vegas where there was plenty of desert to dig holes for people who tried to outrun his reach. I suddenly wondered if that reach had a hook on the end of it when it came to Sophia.
“If you’re looking for a spotter so you can line up Sophia for a kill, you’ve misjudged how transitory my virtue is.” I took out the envelope and dropped it onto the desk.
“I want Sophia alive more than you do. You can walk away right now if you don’t believe me. I’ll find some other discount gumshoe to take your place before you make it back to your utilitarian Honda Accord. The only memory I’ll have of you is that you chose to go against me. That puts you and what few friends you have on the wrong side.”
I still didn’t know if Kim had met with Sophia the night before Stone claimed Sophia disappeared. All I knew was that Stone and Sophia were connected and so were Sophia and Jeffrey Parker. I could handle being on the wrong side of Stone, but I didn’t want Kim to be there, too, because of me.
I picked up the envelope and put it back in my pocket.
“Has someone tried to find Sophia up in Hermosa Beach? That’s where she owns a home.”
“Hermosa Beach is covered.” Stone’s face pinched up like I’d asked a stupid question. “You handle San Diego. Call me tomorrow with an update.”
I almost told him that I’d just speak out loud in my living room and he could listen in through the “hidden” recording device one of his other stooges had put there. But I’d hold onto that information for now.
“Sophia checked out of The Pacific Terrace Hotel Friday night. Consider that tomorrow’s update.”
“That’s a start.” He lifted up the receiver of the phone on his desk and raised his eyebrows. “We’re done.”
My phone pinged the arrival of a text on the walk back to my car.
Kim: Can we meet at Muldoon’s in a half hour?
Me: Yes.
I wondered if she wanted to tell me that she’d filed for divorce. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel if she did.
I called Moira. She started right in without a hello or preamble.
“Sophia wasn’t at the Point Loma house. I’ve called eight local hotels and asked to be connected to Sophia Domingo’s room. Zero for eight. Another hundred or so to go. Of course, she probably wouldn’t use her real name, but I have to check the easy boxes first.”
“Great. I’ve got an envelope with fifteen grand in my pocket. Half of it is yours.”
“Is this your idea of foreplay, Cahill? Because it would take at least the whole envelope to get me interested.”
I laughed. She hung up.
I wound down Via Capri into the back end of La Jolla. The marine layer, gray overhead. The briny ocean air sifted through it. An overcast morning in La Jolla was just about as good as a sunny one anywhere else.
I turned onto Prospect Street with too much time to spare, so I detoured over to Parker Real Estate to see if Kim had been at the office when she called me. It was a Sunday, but real estate agents are on call twenty-four seven. After the talk she must have had with her husband yesterday, I figured she might want to get out of the house early this morning. I wondered if Kim was already looking for a new job or if she’d fight for a piece of Parker Real Estate in the divorce. Kim’s car wasn’t parked out front. I drove up the ramp to the parking lot on top of the building. Just one car was parked up there. A white Corvette Z06 convertible.
Sophia Domingo’s car. Empty.
Well, I’d already earned some of Stone’s money. I found the car. That was a start.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Sophia’s car in the parking lot of Parker Real Estate. After all, she was now a 10 percent partner in the company. Except that she’d been reported missing going on two days now. At least by Stone.
I parked next to the Corvette. Its top was up, so I looked through the passenger-side window. No purse or briefcase or any personal items that I could see. Maybe Sophia already had a key from her partnership agreement and had gone into the office. A stairwell thirty feet away in the corner of the roof led down to Parker Real Estate. It had a gated cage around it. All I had to do was verify that Sophia was in the office and call Stone with the good news. I’d found her. It wasn’t my job to detain her until Stone arrived. That would be kidnapping. It was my duty as a human being to warn Sophia that Stone was looking for her. I’d be done with Stone and Sophia and ready to move on.
I got out of my car and walked over to the caged stairwell. Locked. I wondered if Sophia would come to the front door if I knocked. Worth a try. I checked my watch. Fifteen minutes until my meeting with Kim at Muldoon’s. Of course, there was a simpler way to get into Parker Real Estate. But putting Kim and Sophia in the same office building wasn’t a good idea.
I walked back toward my car. An ocean breeze blew another layer off the morning haze. I glanced at the back of the Corvette and stopped walking. Tiny flecks of something dark sprinkled the white paint just below the trunk. It looked like dried blood. I bent down and got a closer look. Something sickeningly sweet and putrid at the same time seeped through the seal of the trunk.
I’d smelled the odor before.
I didn’t have to worry about Sophia and Kim running into each other in the office anymore. Unless someone else was in the trunk of her car, Sophia Domingo wouldn’t run anywhere ever again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
HAD STONE BEATEN me to Sophia? The smell seeping through the trunk of the Corvette told me Sophia had to have been dead for at least a day. Probably longer. The temperature yesterday had been warm. Decomposition of the body may have been somewhat accelerated in the trunk of the car, but I doubted so much so that I’d be able to smell it through a sealed enclosure after less than a day.
If Stone had murdered Sophia or had someone else do it, he’d done it before he called me yesterday. If
so, why hire me? To set me up for the murder? No. Stone may have been playing three-dimensional chess while I played checkers, but hiring me to find a woman he murdered didn’t make sense on any level. Two-dimensional or three.
If not Stone, then who? That was the police department’s job to figure out. I took my phone out of my pocket and tapped a phone number.
Kim answered.
“Change of plans. Meet me at your office. I’ll be waiting out front.”
“Why?” I could hear road sounds in the background.
“I’ll tell you when you get here.” I hung up.
* * *
I hadn’t decided if I’d call the police and report the Corvette and the smell of death. I had to talk to Kim first. According to Peter Stone, she may have been the last person to see Sophia alive. Except for the killer.
My heart told me she couldn’t be both.
I drove down the ramp to the street and parked in front of Parker Real Estate. Spaces were starting to fill up as people arrived to eat the best breakfast in La Jolla at The Morning Cup, a block down. On any other Sunday, I’d join them. Not this morning. I’d lost my appetite.
I got out of the car and waited in front of Parker Real Estate.
Kim pulled her BMW into a space next to my Honda Accord. Our lives had gone in different directions since we stopped dating years ago. The next five minutes would tell me in what direction they’d each go from that moment forward.
Kim didn’t smile when she got out of the car. She looked worried. That made me worried.
“Why are we meeting here? Jeffrey always comes to the office on Sundays. He’ll be here soon.”
“We won’t be here long.” I hoped. “Open the door, so we can talk inside.”
“What’s going on, Rick?” She unlocked the door and opened it. “What’s this all about?”
“Just trust me.” I followed Kim inside and walked back to her corner office, shifting my eyes between the floor and wall looking for blood. Clean. Thank God. Kim followed me into her office and sat in the chair behind her desk. I stood across from her. Her eyes were round with concern and her hands fidgeted in her lap.