When I got there, Mira was in seeing a doctor. I found Carlos in an extremely agitated state. He said to me, ‘You should see what he did to Mira, Frank! If I ever find that bastard, I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him, I swear.’ Now this is not what you should be saying to a police officer.”
“No, it isn’t,” I agreed.
“I tried to calm him down,” Frank continued, shoving pens and pencils into a large, cracked jar to the right of him. “I said to him, ‘Take it easy, man. It doesn’t help to be talking like this. You just take care of Mira. Let me and my men take care of finding who did this.’”
Frank stopped speaking and stared directly into my eyes before he went on. “Lee, he shrugged me off, walked over and punched a nearby wall so hard it rattled the hanging pictures. I finally had to take him outside. I told him if he didn’t stop the macho crap, I would arrest him for disturbing the peace and making threats against a citizen.”
“How was he after that?” I asked.
“A little better. He said I was right. He didn’t know what got into him. Not that the damage wasn’t already done. There are about eight witnesses, including two of my own men, who heard him say he would kill the guy. Did I mention his fingerprints were on the murder weapon?” Frank said, shaking his head.
“What did Carlos say about that?”
“When I asked him, he said he found the man dying and tried to help by pulling the knife out, the idiot.”
“So it was a knife. Sounds messy.”
Frank nodded and resumed collecting and storing writing paraphernalia from the top of his cluttered desk. “Twelve-inch butcher knife. One of those fancy, professional jobs.”
“What’s a ‘fancy professional job?’ Keep in mind that I use a Swiss Army knife, even to chop vegetables.”
“You’re kidding.”
“You wish.”
“Instead of steel, the blade’s made out of ceramic. One of those chefs on the Food Channel uses one, so they’re hot right now. You get them at upscale stores, like Williams-Sonoma.”
“Upscale?”
“They cost a fortune. Believe me, I know. I gave one to Abby for Christmas. The knife in question sells for around two hundred and fifty dollars. It’s surprising to have it used as a murder weapon.”
“Why is that?”
“The appeal of a ceramic knife is that it never needs to be sharpened, but it’s easily broken if you’re not careful. In fact, that’s what happened here. Most of the knife is still inside the victim. Broken off near the handle.”
“Lovely,” I commented.
“Carlos admitted he did that when he tried to pull it out. And it’s just the kind of knife a fancy, privileged boy might have on hand and use.”
“We’re back to the word, ‘fancy.’ Is that as opposed to the unfancy, underprivileged killer, who would probably use something cheaper and more reliable?”
“That’s right.”
“But possibly not,” I argued. “A knife is a knife. Anyone could have used it, and it seems to have done the job. The man’s dead.”
“Statistically, most knife wounds come from blades made of stainless steel that cost fifteen or twenty bucks,” he retorted. “Ceramic ones can break at an inopportune time, are expensive, and harder to come by. I’m not telling you anything the prosecution isn’t going to glom onto. It’s an unusual knife for the average man to get his hands on. Save the theatrics for the courtroom.”
“Sorry.”
“No, I am, Liana,” he said after a moment. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. This has been a hard day.”
“All around,” I murmured. I took a long drink of the coffee, felt my scalp begin to tingle and decided I’d had enough caffeine for the day. Setting down the cup, I went on, “I take it you’re looking into whether or not Carlos bought one of those knives.”
“Yes, but it’s not as easy as you think. If you pay cash, stores don’t keep records of who bought what.”
“Then you may not be able to prove he bought one,” I said, thinking aloud.
“You may not be able to prove he didn’t, either,” Frank countered, again with that same edge to his voice.
I felt as if I were being talked to like a member of opposing counsel. I found it odd but let it go. “Let’s go back to this 911 call.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” he replied. “But it could have been genuine. Between us, I don’t think so. As you say, it’s awfully convenient.”
“You don’t think Carlos did this, do you, Frank?”
“Of course not,” he huffed. “I’ve known that boy almost as long as I’ve known you and Richard. I can see him killing another man in a duel over the honor of a woman or for God and country, something like that. But a knife in the back? That doesn’t sound like Carlos.”
“I would have thought that, too,” I muttered, thinking of the recent accounts of Carlos’ strange behavior. I decided to keep my doubts to myself.
“Not that it matters what I think. I can be a character witness later on, but first, I’ve got to keep him behind bars. It doesn’t look good, Lee. It doesn’t look good at all,” Frank said more to himself than to me.
“Is he still here? Can I see him?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“Not unless you’re his legal representation. You get a law degree in the past couple of days I don’t know about?”
“Just testing the waters,” I grinned. “You know, for old time’s sake.”
“I’ll test your waters,” he bantered easily, his dark eyes flashing. “You know, for old time’s sake.” We both smiled for a moment and felt the tension ease a little. Frank sighed and looked away. “You’ll have to wait and see him down in San Jose, probably Monday after the arraignment. They’re moving him down there as we speak, for his own protection. This is considered a high profile case, him being a rich Stanford boy and all.” He drained the last of his coffee. “I wish he could stay here so I could keep an eye on him, but that’s the way it goes.” He shrugged and studied the inside of his empty cup. “By the way, Carlos says he doesn’t have a lawyer yet.” He looked up at me. “You want to take care of that?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll call Jim Talbot, the world’s oldest practicing attorney.” I was only half kidding. Mr. Talbot was in his early eighties, a little hard of hearing but with a mind as sharp as the heel on one of Mom’s Ferragamo pumps. “He may not be available, but I’m sure he can recommend someone. By the way, this has been gnawing at me. How did you get a warrant so fast?” I asked. “The cops were at the apartment with a search warrant in less than two hours.”
“The detective on duty got hold of Judge Frye on the golf course with a list of Probable Causes. I was there, playing golf with Frye today just like I do every Saturday. The phone call came in at the thirteenth hole. Really threw off my game.”
“The judge was carrying his cellphone during a golf game? I thought golf links were sacrosanct.”
“Had to. Frye’s the Emergency Call Judge this weekend. Something bad always happens on that thirteenth hole, I swear. Last week one of the caddies got bit by a squirrel.”
“I thought you weren’t superstitious,” I teased.
“If this keeps up, I will be. Even though I don’t work weekends, I came in today because of who was involved. See what was going on, you know.”
“You’re a good guy, Frank.” I watched him shrug in embarrassment. I knew under that tough exterior of Frank Thompson was an even tougher interior, but he was an honorable man and loyal to his friends. Carlos was lucky to be able to call him friend.
“Yeah, well, I found out what was going on, all right,” he said.
“So let me see if I’ve got this straight. Probable Cause was Carlos’ fingerprints on the murder weapon, a 911 caller reporting him at the scene of the crime, and other witnesses hearing him threaten to kill the victim the night before. It’s quite a list.”
“It doesn’t get much better,” Frank nodded. “Frye was on the phone for less than five
minutes, and it was done. We went on with our golf—you don’t walk off in the middle of a game with Josh Frye and live to tell about it—and then I came straight here. I wanted to be here before they took Carlos away. This is the kind of case the prosecution dreams of, Lee.” Frank stared me dead in the eye saying, “What are you going to do?”
“Well, after I get hold of Mr. Talbot,” I said, thinking out loud, “I’ll talk to Carlos about bail. It’s going to be pretty high, and he may have to pull some funds out of Mexico. Fortunately, money is something…”
Frank interrupted with a dry, empty laugh. “You need to back up and face reality. He’s not going to get any judge in the world to give him bail. Carlos Garcia is not getting out any time soon.”
I stared at Frank. “You mean there isn’t even a hope of bail? Even if it’s a sum that could buy a tropical island?” He answered me by staring back. I thought for a moment. “Flight risk.”
“Serious flight risk,” Frank agreed and continued to stare at me in a way I found unnerving. “On Monday at the arraignment, the judge will hold him for a prelim, and I’ll bet my pension the charges will be murder one.” Prelim is short for preliminary hearing.
“Murder one! That’s premeditation,” I said, jumping up. “That means they believe he went there with the intent to kill. That’s punishable by death.”
“Bingo. So I repeat,” he glared at me, “what are you going to do about it?”
“Well,” I started lamely, “aren’t we all—I mean you and me—going to try to prove him innocent?”
Frank slowly shook his head, and I began to see what all the stares were about. I am nothing if not slow on the uptake. “Lee, until someone brings me some other facts I can work with, I have to stick with the ones I’ve got,” he said, pointing his finger at his chest. “My job is to see that Carlos stays in jail. My job is to help the prosecution come up with enough evidence for a conviction.” He leaned as far forward over his desk as he could and pressed the same finger on the tip of my nose. “And your job is to see that I don’t. Get it?”
“Got it.”
“Good.”
I rose, walked across his office and opened the door. I could feel his black eyes boring into my back as I closed it behind me. For the first time since I’d known Frank, we were on opposite sides of the law. Or maybe it was the opposing sides of the intent of the law. Frank’s job was to prove Carlos’ guilt. Mine was to prove his innocence.
For as long as I can remember, Frank has been haranguing me to become something other than a PI and he wasn’t fussy about what it was. He didn’t much care if I became a dancer, real estate agent, cruise director, butcher, baker, or candlestick maker. Even though my own father started the family PI business, Frank has always felt that his goddaughter—me—was above such gritty work. His preference would have been for me to go to med school like his daughter, Faith, and become a doctor.
Recently Frank and I had come to an uneasy truce about my lot in life, but I had never found him to be what I would call accepting. Now it looked like he not only accepted I was a PI but was counting on it. At least, for as long as Carlos was in jail for murder.
Even though it was the weekend, I was determined to reach Jim Talbot, Legal Counsel for Discretionary Inquiries and Family Retainer since Mom was in diapers. In all that time, I don’t think anyone has dared to bother him over holidays or the weekends. There’s a first time for everything, I thought, as I punched in one of the myriad of numbers I had in my iPhone for him.
The phone rang on the other end of the line while I reflected on the man who started out as my grandfather’s law partner until Grandfather Hamilton’s death, decades before. After that, he carried on the firm of Hamilton and Talbot, Esquires, alone. In his eighties, Mr. Talbot had the same skills as when he was a junior clerk for Presiding Judge Walter B. Beals during the Nuremberg Trials in the 1940s.
I knew the octogenarian had been promising his wife he would retire since the first Bush took office. I was sure hoping he wouldn’t be keeping his promise to Mrs. Talbot anytime soon. His service answered, and I left a message for him to call me.
Then I phoned Mom to see how Mira was doing. Tío had fed her homemade chicken soup, and she had fallen asleep wrapped in a blanket in my old room while watching one of my favorite movies, Dark Victory. If you think you have problems, wait until you get a load of Bette Davis in this tearjerker. It’s enough to make you count your blessings.
Chapter Four
Saturday Night Fervor
Before I went home Saturday night, I dropped by the fourth floor of the University Garage, just to eyeball the murder scene. There wasn’t much to see initially, cars silently waiting, half-enclosed by cement walls, little else. The crime scene area was taped off and looked like it had been scoured within an inch of its life. Not even a cigarette butt remained. Undaunted, I got out my trusty flashlight, the one you can self-wind to recharge the battery and, winding it up, went under the tape and dropped down on all fours. When I found the area to be clean, I widened my scope and began to search beneath nearby cars. My theory is, you never know. An hour went by, and I wished I had some kneepads.
Then three spaces away, something sparkled when the beam of light hit near the inside back right tire of a grey SUV. It could have been a candy wrapper, a piece of cellophane, but I crawled under the car, anyway. Once I grabbed it, I could tell it had been a stud earring at one time, sufficiently crushed by the weight of a car or two to be almost unrecognizable as anything other than a shiny glob. On turning it over, I saw that the five-prong setting still held a large, sparkling stone. The stone itself was virtually undamaged, which led me to believe it just might be a genuine diamond. Otherwise, judging by the condition of the setting, it should have been reduced to little more than powder. If I showed it to Lila later, she would know in an instant whether it was real and, probably, where the stone was mined.
Valuable or not, it couldn’t have been there long. I knew these garages were swept of debris nightly by a street cleaning machine. My stomach did the flip-flop that it does when I’m on to something. But what? Did it mean an unfortunate woman lost one of her earrings or could this mean the murderer was a woman? A knife wasn’t the usual female weapon, but it has been known to happen.
Maybe there was no way to tell if this had anything to do with the murder, but if it did, I’d tainted the evidence by picking it up. Maybe I should turn it over to Frank. Flipping the earring up in the air as if it were a coin, I caught it just like George Raft does in his movies. No, I decided. I found it outside the taped-off crime scene. This bauble was mine.
I put the remains in my pocket and thought about going home, suddenly tired and depressed. My mind came back to the last of my conversation with Mira. A silver-haired appraiser at the Mesoamerican Gallery told her the stolen statue was worthless. Yet it was worth enough for somebody to steal it, practically in the middle of the day.
Mesoamerican Gallery was only about a block away, but what could I learn by going there? I could call Richard and ask him to do a run on it, but that would only glean facts and figures. Right now, I wasn’t interested in how much they grossed. I wanted a rundown on the place by someone knowledgeable in the field, with a little gossip and innuendos thrown in. That meant Race Holbrook.
Race is a six foot three Australian art dealer with a year-round tan and a gold chain collection rivaling most jewelry stores. Shirts open to the navel in order to display this abundance of gold, he tops the look off with his Akubra Military Slouch hat and drives around Palo Alto in a green
and black monster truck with a dual exhaust system. Not someone to be overlooked in a crowd.
He’s had a huge crush on Lila since I can remember. With four wives under his belt, he wants nothing more than to make Lila wife number five. Shortly after Dad died, Race moved in fast on Mom, inviting her to go away with him on a two-week spear fishing trip to the Great Barrier Reef. Putting aside that Mom does not do sports, boats smaller than the QE II,
nor would she spear anything other than a Cartier bracelet at a charity raffle, she was appalled the man had asked her less than two months after she’d become a widow.
Bless his heart, he’s not even deterred by the fact she insists on addressing him as Horace, his given name, something no one else has the nerve to do, not even his mother. If ever there was a man who acted less like a Horace, it’s Race.
But, back to my interest in him, he was big into the Palo Alto art world, not to mention president of the Chamber of Commerce. Even though his specialty was medieval art, I believed he could give me an insider’s take on Mesoamerican Galleries. I gave him a fast call at his small gallery off Ramona, and he answered on the second ring.
“G’day! Holbrook Galleries. You have the honor to be speaking with Race Holbrook, himself.” Not only did he drop his “h’s” and clip his vowels, but the greeting climbed the scale in volume and pitch. The longer he lived in the states, the heavier his Australian accent got.
“Hello, Race. It’s Lee. Lee Alvarez.”
“Lila’s little girl! How is your mother, luv? Still thriving?”
“Oh, yes,” I said.
“Well, you tell my lovely lady I’ve got some amber fluid in my fridge with her name on it, anytime she wants to drop by.”
“I’ll do that, Race.” Right. Like my mother would drink beer. “Meanwhile, I’m hoping you can help me.”
“Anything, my luv. You name it. Good old Race at your service.”
“What can you tell me about Mesoamerican Galleries?”
He took a deep breath and held it for a moment. “They’re fairly new, you know. Only been open a little over a year but keeping in the black, unlike a lot of them. Two owners, Spanish, Mexican, something like that. You know, south of the border. One of them a Nancy boy.”
Slightly taken aback, I asked, “You mean gay?”
“That’s right, a banana bender. He brought his new boyfriend to our monthly commerce meeting last week. If that didn’t start tongues a-wagging. Wait half a mo, you know the one I mean, Douglas somebody or other. You went to school with him.”
Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1-3 (The Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries) Page 26