by Susan Dunlap
33
KIERNAN PULLED UP by Dixie Alley
“Six A.M.,” Olsen muttered. “Eight hours in goddamn Central District station. I thought I’d seen every let-’em-stew tactic in the cop shop. But these guys—”
“You’d still be there if anyone but Bill Quist were the captain. And if I hadn’t done him a favor big enough to be remembered ten years later.”
“What kind of favor?”
“Staying on the horn to every lab for every protocol in a case that wasn’t important to anyone but him.” She got out of the car, and opened his door, holding out an arm. “Take it!” she insisted when he tried to barge shakily past. He coughed. The coughs had progressed over the hours to long whooping gasps that left him gagging. “Either you do as I say, or I drop you at the emergency room!”
“No hospitals!” Grudgingly, he took her arm and hobbled to the stairs.
“You’re sure you have no clue who deposited you in the crab box?”
“Jesus! You act like the idea never crossed my mind.” He coughed. “I’ll tell you one more time, probably a guy. Someone strong enough to poke me with a piece and conk me good.” He grabbed the railing for support.
She waited till he was down the stairs and inside his apartment, seated on a dining-room chair, with a glass of orange juice in his hand, before giving in to her own urge and saying, “And so, Mr. Macho, you went off to the place you’d been warned away from and ended up just like any sensible person could have told you you would—” She sounded, she realized with a start, exactly like her own mother. Worry personified. Worry justified. Worry basking in its own existence. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I just wish you hadn’t come up empty.”
A grin crept across Olsen’s ashen face. “I didn’t say that.”
“What did you get?”
“If I weren’t so weak and dehydrated, I’d make you grovel.” He took a long, slow swig at his juice.
“Skip!”
“Well, m’dear”—he coughed and swallowed hard against the orange juice. Tears squeezed from his eyes. His face reddened. “Delaney had a locker in the warehouse. That wasn’t standard. Nothing is so organized as to be standard in that building.” He coughed again. “So no one checked it out. Until yesterday. Yesterday, someone came and carted off the contents.”
“Do we know what those contents were?” she asked, holding her breath.
“No.”
“Oh.”
“But we do know that the guy who took them was from the coroner’s office.”
“The coroner’s office? How did they know about the locker?”
Olsen shook his head, sneezed, dragged out a disgusting handkerchief and stared at its wet wrinkles.
Kiernan grabbed the phone and dialed the coroner’s office. The phone rang three times before she remembered it was six in the morning. She slammed down the receiver. She’d deal with Rosten later. Later, but today.
“You need a hot bath. Now!” she snapped at Olsen.
“You need to control your temper.” He coughed. “I’m going to bed.”
“Not before you drink something hot.”
He leaned forward, pressed a hand on the table and started to lift himself up. “I’m going—”
She pushed him back in the chair. “I don’t have much bedside manner even at the best of times. You’ve used up what little I had. The hell with how you feel. You can sit there and drink hot water and come up with a damned good explanation of why you hired Carlos Delaney, and why the hell you didn’t tell me about it.”
He coughed again, a long hacking roll that rattled his ribs and turned his face crimson. Sweat covered his face. The man was definitely sick. She said, “Delaney?”
He blew his nose.
“Olsen, you’re going to end up with a lot worse than pneumonia if you don’t answer my questions. I’m not in the habit of slapping men around, but pissed off as I am, I’d be real happy to start with you. You get it?”
Olsen stared at her only momentarily. “Well, hey, come on, we all know the reason you go private is there aren’t any rules. You’re a big girl—”
She smacked his face. His head snapped back. His eyes flew wide open; the white of the sclera showed around all edges of the cornea. Kiernan felt a rush of satisfaction that frightened her. It felt as good as kicking the television and seeing the picture clear up. Her palm was moist. Wet. She looked down at it. It was covered with snot.
She wiped off her hand. “Olsen, the truth. Now!”
“Okay, okay. I hired Devereaux, Delaney, to get close to Robin and get her to tell him about hitting Garrett.”
“You picked a guy who could barely see in bright light and sent him out on the ocean?”
He honked into a tissue. “How was I to know the guy couldn’t see? It’s not like he put that at the top of his resume. It was weeks before I realized he had a problem. He’d probably spent a lifetime learning to disguise it.”
“Still, why him?”
“He was smart and available. I wanted someone I could count on to be around Robin and still keep his head.”
“And what did he find out in these tête-à-têtes?”
“Not a thing.”
“What’d he get from the wire?”
He started to cough but choked it down. “What wire?”
“Olsen, I can’t tell you how sorry I am I didn’t leave you up there in the crab cage. Or at least in jail. I tell you, every cop in town has got my sympathy dealing with you.” What had ever made her feel a fondness for him? It must have been a well-hidden appeal.
Olsen let go a trail of coughs, whooping into the tissue until he was shaking. “I don’t know anything,” he gasped, “about any wire.” He took a long, cautious breath.
“Olsen, the boat was wired for eavesdropping, from the cabin to the cockpit.”
Olsen’s eyes widened. He hacked, trying to clear his throat. “I didn’t”—he swallowed—“authorize any listening device.”
“Why would Delaney install it without your okay? And without your paying for it?”
“He wouldn’t. There wouldn’t have been anything for him to hear. Robin wasn’t likely to call someone on the ship-to-shore and tell them about running over Garrett Brant.”
Kiernan nodded grudgingly. It made sense. Delaney would not have grandstanded by secretly installing the wire. But still, if he wasn’t responsible who was? “Okay, Skip, what did Delaney find out during his weeks in your employ?”
Olsen opened his mouth to cough, but the only sound was a low gagging. He squeezed his eyes shut. His head and shoulders quivered. His voice almost a whisper, he said, “I didn’t hear about him going down till the next day, on the news. That the coast guard had found him. I called them, said I was with the department. They told me about Devereaux’s face and hands, the crabs gnawing away at them. Nothing but bone halfway to the elbows.” He snorted. “I’d talked to Devereaux a couple times a week for six weeks. I knew the guy.” He sniffed harder. “He called me the week before he drowned. He was sick of the job, ready to pack it in. He figured he wasn’t going to get anything else, and he hated the boat and taking orders, and dealing with the glare out in the ocean nine hours a day. But”—he swallowed—“I leaned on him for one more week.”
Kiernan walked to the stove, poured water in a pan and waited for it to heat. Delaney had died or been killed; Garrett Brant’s was a death of a different kind. And Olsen was guilty, grieving, and just plain scared. She restrained the urge to look at him. She’d dealt with fear so often in gymnastics that it was part of the process, not a choking stop. But few people were that lucky. And certainly not Skip Olsen. For him that fear must have been as real as the gag and the bindings on his wrists last night. She poured the water over a slice of lemon and a generous spoonful of honey and handed him the cup. “Start with small sips. Let the hot water clear your throat.”
While he drank she straightened his bed, then helped him into it. He sank back, looking as gray and lifeless as the pillowca
se. “There’s something else,” he murmured, his words barely audible. “Something new I picked up down there at the wharf. It’s floating around somewhere … I can’t grab it.” He shook his head slowly, then let his eyes close.
Against her inclinations, Kiernan said nothing. Given the state he was in, Olsen wasn’t going to drag anything out of his memory. She wanted to find out what he knew about her assailants at Delaney’s apartment, too. She hadn’t told him about that bit of illegality. But something stopped her. If he wasn’t responsible, he wouldn’t know anything; if he was, he wouldn’t tell.
She couldn’t leave Olsen unguarded. She left the bedroom and went to lie down on the couch, telling herself she’d wake at eight-thirty.
The sides of the Crab Cage shook, the ladder was banging against them, a bigger ladder, with bars like the jail cell door. She could hear the sea lions in the water, growling their long, guttural demands. She hung onto the ladder, and braced her feet against the box, but the ladder banged louder. It pulled her over the side. It barked. Kiernan!
She opened her eyes, looking at the strange room, realizing it was Olsen’s.
“Kiernan, let me in!”
She staggered to the door. The rain had stopped; the sky was gray but bright. Brad Tchernak started in, but was shoved aside by a flying mass of gray-brown fur.
“Ezra!”
The dog leapt, paws landing on her shoulders, tongue lapping her face.
“Get down, you fool!” she muttered happily as she rubbed his ears and neck. Her command had no effect. The huge dog continued to lick her; she rubbed his wiry chest and murmured “Ezraaa.” She hadn’t realized how much she had missed him and Tchernak.
Sea lion-like snores shook the room.
“What’s that racket?” Tchernak demanded, pushing aside Ezra and throwing his own arms around her.
“Olsen snoring,” she said to his chest.
“Snoring? He could get work as a foghorn.”
Kiernan opened the bedroom door and looked at the sleeping man. His body was rocking slightly with the thrust of the snores.
“Maybe his neighbors took up a collection and paid to have him kidnapped.”
“Actually,” Kiernan said, “someone really did do a number on him. The poor guy’s sacroiliac was already so bad he couldn’t walk without a limp. Now he’ll be lucky if he can walk at all for a while, without a cane, anyway. Someone is real serious about stopping us.”
Tchernak gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Well, Kiernan, Ez and I are on the job now. Christ, I thought you’d have to be dead to let me protect you.”
Kiernan laughed, scratching Ezra’s flank. “I would, Tchernak. I can’t tell you how pleased I am there was a good reason to call you. I could hardly charge Maureen Brant for bringing me a sexy man and the world’s best dog. You do remember that it’s Olsen you’re here to guard. I don’t want to leave him alone, and I can’t stay put and hover over him. And considering that he spent a cold, rainy night out in the open, good, nourishing food will be just what he needs.”
“Hey, I came here to detect!”
She flopped onto the leather couch. “Kiddo, this is a big part of the glamorous life of the investigator. But what about those backgrounds you requested from BakDat?”
“They screwed up. Lost everything.” Tchernak kicked off his shoes and settled on the sofa arm, resting his feet on the cushion. “I had to argue with the guy on duty to convince him we’d even made the request.”
“And did you convince him?” she asked, looking up at the six foot four, 240-pound form looming above her.
“Oh, yeah. He was falling over the phone apologizing by the time I hung up. Promised to run those free, and bump me to the top of the line with the next order.”
“Okay. Have them run Robin Matucci again. See if anything new has come in. Get them to check the Uniform Commercial Code filings.”
“What’s that?”
“Sit down, novice investigator, and take out your pen. The Uniform Commercial Code filings are debts. The list is filed by the lenders to protect themselves. But what we can learn from it is whether or not Robin has taken out a sizable loan and put up collateral we didn’t know about.”
“Like if she planned to bankroll her disappearance?”
“Right. She doesn’t seem like the type of woman who would wander off penniless.”
Olsen groaned. She heard the word “bathroom.”
“I believe your charge is calling you, Tchernak.” She’d pay for this … but not till later.
She hurried into the bedroom, riffled through the printouts in the desk, grabbed Robin Matucci’s, and was just rounding the doorway when Tchernak emerged from the bathroom scowling.”
“Can’t we stick Olsen in the hospital?” he demanded.
“He’s too sick.”
A barrage of coughs shook the bathroom door.
Kiernan strode back to the sofa. Ezra clambered up beside her, filling the rest of the space.
Top of the list with BakDat turned out to mean an hour’s wait. The Uniform Commercial Code check turned up nothing. If Robin bankrolled her escape, it was from funds she already had.
Kiernan wadded up the printout and threw it toward the fireplace. “Damn! Robin Matucci was a planner. I can’t believe she’d disappear without some preparation.”
“Or some you can trace, you mean?”
She sank back against the sofa. “Right. If I killed you and hightailed it out of La Jolla, I’d take every spare dollar and—”
Tchernak laughed. “You’d be a cinch to track.”
“Oh yeah?” she demanded, offended.
“Sure. I’d just put an ad in the paper asking for anyone who’d seen a tiny woman with a huge dog. You wouldn’t leave Ez behind.”
She laughed. “Fortunately for me you’d be dead.” She squeezed Ezra’s head against her chest. He let out a yip. “Sorry, Ez.”
“Too bad Early Bird sank, huh? Or I could put in my ad about redhead and boat. Sounds like Robin Matucci was as crazy about her boat as you are about Him.” Tchernak shoved Ezra off the couch and sat down himself.
Kiernan jumped up, strode into the bedroom. Olsen was snoring. She shook him awake.
“Hey,” he muttered groggily.
“Wake up. I need you to do some work.”
“I’m sick.”
“You’re alive because I saved you. I need you to make a phone call.”
Olsen coughed into his pillow. “Okay. Okay. What?”
“Do you have a connection at Motor Vehicles?”
He nodded.
“Have him run Robin Matucci.”
“Don’t you think I’ve done that?”
“How recently?”
“As soon as I hired Devereaux.”
“Olsen, that was six weeks ago. Call again. Now.”
Olsen pushed himself up. He grabbed a tissue and honked into it. “Okay, give me a few minutes. In private.”
Shrugging, Kiernan walked back into the dining area. Tchernak was standing before the cabinets. All the doors were open. “There’s no food here! Nothing fit for man nor beast. Certainly not a beast of His tastes. Where’s the nearest butcher? Where’s the vegetable market?”
“Tchernak, I’m on a case here. I can’t sit around while you go shopping.”
“You’re going to be embarrassed to see headlines: NOVICE DETECTIVE STARVES.”
“There’s toast,” she said, realizing as the words came out that half a loaf was an hors d’oeuvre for Tchernak.
Stretching up to his full height, he stared down at her, and said the irrefutable words: “Ezra is hungry.”
She sighed. “No wonder Sherlock Holmes’s only pet was his habit. Okay, go. But no butcher, baker and soufflé-maker. Only to the supermarket. One stop. Be back in half an hour, max.”
“Boy,” he grumbled, “you can certainly tell a woman who doesn’t do her own cooking.”
A quarter of an hour later, Olsen called her. When she opened the bedroom door, he
was lying back against his pillow and smiling. “Robin Matucci sold her red Porsche for ten thousand dollars.”
“She won’t live in style on that for long, but she won’t starve either.”
Olsen waited a beat, then burst out with, “Don’t you want to know who she sold it to?” Before she could ask, he said, “Carl Hartoonian.”
When Tchernak returned, balancing four large grocery bags, she grabbed her jacket and ran out the door.
She made the trip to Marin County in record time, slowing to fifty-five only at the sight of a highway patrol car. The thought of Hartoonian, a baby holding a stick of dynamite, filled her with fear.
She pulled the Jeep up next to his Bronco and ran to the house.
Hartoonian was still in his bathrobe. His too-large eyes widened behind his thick glasses. “I’m busy.”
“Carl, you are a nice guy, a good friend, and unwittingly, you’ve gotten involved. Carl, you’re in a lot of trouble.”
He took a step back.
Kiernan edged in around him. “Robin sold you her Porsche last month. Why?”
“How’d you know that?” One hand was still on the door, a mug dangled from the other.
“I’m an investigator, Carl. It’s my trade to know these things.” She forced a smile, not wanting to let her apprehension unnerve him. “But the fact is that you have a new Bronco; you’ve got a business with a lot of expensive equipment and one customer. How do you come to afford two vehicles? You didn’t, did you? No money changed hands, did it?”
He was silent, but his shocked, fearful expression answered for him.
“She was planning her escape, wasn’t she?”
His bony face paled. He clasped both hands around the mug as if for protection.
“She had to ditch the boat she loved, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to leave her lovely red Porsche, right?” When he still didn’t answer, she reached over and put a hand on his arm. “The police are going to be asking questions, you know that, don’t you?”
“Oh, God,” he muttered.
“Carl, you’ve got to trust someone. There’s no one but me, is there?”
The gray light created pale blotches on the futon bed behind him. Hartoonian stared at the sharp hospital corners as if for reassurance. Then he sank into one of the basket chairs. Kiernan took the other, sitting on the edge. “Carl?”