The guy turned white. "That son of a bitch!" he gasped.
I said, "No, I think you have it wrong. It wasn't Sanford. Someone got to him first. He's dead."
The look on his face could only be described as mixed between a frown and a smile. "Harley's dead?" he asked.
I said, "Dead as they get, pal."
"Janice is okay?"
"She's recovering nicely. It was supposed to look like a self-inflicted drug overdose. I don't believe it was."
He said soberly, "Of course it Wasn't. She doesn't do drugs. Also, Janice and I were leaving tomorrow. But of course our plans were put on hold with Martha's death."
I asked stupidly, "Leaving for where?"
"As far from that bastard as I could get her!"
Well, well. It was getting curiouser and curiouser and I could hardly wait to get the straight of that.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
As it turned out, the pilot needed a lift only to the airport, where his car had been parked since the flight to L.A. The car seemed to be his primary concern of the moment and he insisted that he was okay to drive. He wanted to return immediately to the hospital to be with Janice. I tried to caution him about the way it might look to the police but he was adamant about being with her. I also alerted him to the fact that she had not yet been notified of her husband's death, on doctor's orders.
Lancer told me, "Sure, I understand. My only concern is for Janice, the rest of it can go to hell. I'm not worried about looking bad in any of this. I'm not sorry that Harley is dead but don't worry, I will respect Janice's feelings. As for Harley, he was the most arrogant son of a bitch I have ever known. What that woman had to put up with! He was a total bastard. I don't know how she's taken it as long as she has. He used everybody, abused everybody, even his own daughter."
I said, "Be careful how you say that, pal. A sharp prosecutor in a murder trial could give you fits with a statement like that. Especially if you've been involved with the victim's wife."
He replied, "I'd say it to anybody, now that Harley is
dead. I had nothing to do with his death and I am not afraid of making the facts known now. I was planning to leave my job even before Janice and I got together. It was primarily for her sake that I decided to stay on here as long as I could stand it."
"So how long have you been involved with Janice?"
"Long enough to be crazy in love with her."
I observed, "There's quite an age difference there."
This guy was letting it all hang out for me. "She's seven years older than me—no big deal."
I said, "I had you pegged younger than that, Tom."
"I'm forty-five. Janice married young, too young to know what she was getting into with a man like Harley Sanford. Look, the guy has been screwing around with everything in skirts as long as I've known him. I know that for a fact, at least during the time I've been flying his women around with him."
"How long has that been?"
"Nearly five years. But long before I came onto the scene, Harley's women were legend." The pilot sniffed disdainfully. "According to the stories I've heard, most of the women he was involved with until recently were prostitutes."
"Did Janice know about that?"
"Sure she knew. Harley was the kind of guy who wore his sexual indiscretions like campaign ribbons. All in all, he lived much longer than he ever should have. I have no regrets about Harley."
I said, "Don't take offense, but others could wonder if you had a powerful motive for murder, so think of this as friendly advice. With Harley dead, Janice could be worth a lot of money, which means that you could be, too, if you married her. Sorry, it's just the way cops think... and prosecutors."
He showed me a wan smile and said, "I don't give a damn what people think. I'm not interested in Janice's money."
I reminded him of our conversation aboard the plane when I tried to warn him about Sanford's problems, and added, "I told you that things could get brutal. So if there is anything you would like me to know about that, now's the time."
"I've been so torn up over Janice's problems with Harley, I guess I just haven't had a good perspective on all this. I have had a good feeling about you, though, since our conversation at Burbank, especially after you warned me about Harley. Look, I don't know from cops and, to tell you the truth, I've never thought of them as my favorite people. But I read you as a straight guy and I don't mind telling you that I've had a very insecure feeling about all this since I learned about Martha's death."
I said, "When was that?"
"It came to me out of the blue. I was down in Bishop on some business—well, okay, I was buying some things for our getaway, which was scheduled for today. My phone was ringing off the hook when I got home. It was Janice, from her car phone. She was halfway to L.A. by then and had been trying to reach me for hours. She told me about Martha."
"Quite a shock."
'To put it lightly."
"Did you know that Janice had been searching for her husband before she left for L.A.?"
"She told me, yes. She had decided to have it out with Harley before she brought Martha home, didn't want this other stuff hanging fire at such a time. I believe she felt that Harley would try to use the tragedy to keep her with him. Not that he gave a rat's ass except as his standard control mechanism."
"Sanford was good at that?"
"He was a master at that."
"So what was your scenario with Janice?"
He smiled and replied, "I wouldn't call it a scenario. We just wanted to be together, and we didn't want a lot of harassment from Harley."
"Doesn't work that way, pal, especially not with a guy like Harley Sanford in the picture. Had you and Janice discussed marriage?"
"No, mainly we just discussed divorce."
I chuckled. "First things first, huh?"
The guy had an easy smile, despite all that he had been through. He chuckled with me as he replied, "Well, sure, we talked about marriage but that seemed a long way off. I guess it's light-years now. How will we ever put it together with all this tragedy around us?"
I said, "Happens all the time. Don't focus on the tragedy. If you two are truly in love—what is that saying?—love will find a way?"
"God, I hope so," he said.
I said, softly, "Me too."
Privately, I did not give them a big chance for that. But, of course, I have been known to be wrong—about a lot of things, and especially about affairs of the heart.
As we pulled up beside his car at the airport, Lancer told me, "That business here last night—I figured Harley was behind it. Call it paranoid, I guess, but I would not have put anything past Harley Sanford. Now I have to wonder. Who do you think killed Harley, and why?"
"That's the big question of the day, pal. What seemed to be a suicide note was found on the body. How does that grab you?"
He snorted derisively. "Not that guy. All of life was an endless series of deals for Harley. He's probably right now trying to hammer out a deal in heaven—or, more likely, in hell."
"So who, would you think, wanted him dead?"
The pilot replied, "I'm much more interested in Janice's problem. You're a cop, give me a theory—who other than Harley could have wanted Janice dead?"
I told him, "The answer to that requires more than I could theorize. There are mob people hanging all over this thing. It's tied to Harley some way, but I don't have the straight of that yet."
"You'll tell me about it as soon as you work it out, won't you?"
"Bet on it. You're a sharp guy, Tom. Who wanted Harley dead?"
"Oh, there should be an endless list of candidates for that honor. You haven't been listening to me, have you? Sanford was the most 'killable' bastard I have ever known. The happiest men in town this week will be the lucky bastards who get the pleasure of serving as his pallbearers. Shit, we could sell tickets to that."
I got the message, and I had to feel that the sentiment was invoked by something more than a romantic invol
vement with the dead man's wife. It was scathingly obvious that this man had no admiration for his employer, in stark contrast with the initial loyalty for his boss that he had shown me, which was probably understandable in those other circumstances. After all, certain formalities go with the paycheck. I could not fault the guy for his turnaround at this time.
Look at it another way. Janice was in the catbird seat now. Technically, according to California law, she had always been coowner of the business; however, I was sure that she had never enjoyed any real power under the original status quo. Harley Sanford had obviously never been one to relinquish any power to his wife. In the present situation, Janice was the power.
As Lancer got out of my van and paused to turn back to thank me for the lift, I said to him, "You mentioned earlier that the news of Martha's death gave you an insecure feeling. What did you mean by that?"
He said, "Well, I guess I was just afraid that this would affect my relationship with Janice. If that makes me sound callous, I barely knew Martha. I regretted it, sure, but Janice was my major concern."
"And your plans with Janice."
"Sure, that was on my mind, I'm no saint. I was genuinely sorry about Martha but I've also been scared to death that something would get in the way of our plans."
That all seemed entirely understandable and believable. I had no feeling of guile in this guy. For his sake, and for Janice's, I hoped that it was true.
But it would be interesting to see how the "lovebirds" fared now that Harley Sanford was dead.
It was close to the noon hour when I returned to Mammoth. It was the first real chance I'd had to try to get a line on Martha's safety-deposit box.
As soon as I parked the van and stepped inside the bank there was something like a subliminal quiver that made me know I was in the right place.
It all looked so familiar, and that feeling was intensified when a bank officer at the safety-deposit counter showed me a smile and a cheery greeting. "Mr. Copp, nice to see you again. What can I do for you?"
This was the weirdest feeling, to walk in on total strangers and get that kind of recognition. Suddenly I knew this place and remembered the last time I was there. I had a flash of Martha walking beside me into the safety-deposit vault and I could even see the tension in her face as we were retrieving the box.
The bank official was showing me a puzzled look as I grappled with the memory. She asked me, "Are you okay?"
I tried to pass it off as I replied, "Yeah, sorry, I was thinking about something else. I need to get into my safety-deposit box."
She had me sign the card and perfunctorily verified the signature with the cards she had on file. She opened the door for me and led me back to the vault. I had no way of knowing if the key I held in my hand would open the box, but I had passed the signature test so I had to assume that it would.
It did.
I removed the box from the vault and the official escorted me to a private cubicle, where I was left alone to inspect the contents.
So far, so good. Actually, it was improper for me to access the property without notifying the bank of Martha's death, even though I was obviously a co-renter of the box. The bank official apparently had not heard about Martha's death and I saw no need to complicate things.
Things were immediately complicated enough.
I found a single three-and-a-half-inch computer floppy disk in that box. And, yeah, it would have fit perfectly inside a videotape case or small milk carton.
That was not a particularly startling discovery since I had suspected something like that after the ransacking of Arthur Douglas's apartment.
What was startling was the discovery of a thick bundle of bearer bonds. They were worth a cool million bucks.
That could be regarded as a strong motive for murder.
So maybe I had more of a credibility problem than Tom Lancer did.
bearer bond is in about the same league as an anonymous gift to the possessor. It belongs to whomever has the bond in hand. For the moment there, then, I was a millionaire. I will not say that I did not think of that immediately. It would not be necessary, even, to establish any right to the property; possession alone was the only criterion. Of course I had never dealt with that kind of paper and I still do not fully understand the reason for putting that much money into such an insecure arrangement. I had always assumed, in my limited understanding, that a bearer bond is most often associated with a desire to handle large sums of money in a more or less secretive manner, in order to circumvent or avoid taxes or conceal other illegal activities. But I am no financial expert, so what do I know? All I knew for sure was that I had a million bucks in my hand and that maybe it was legally mine.
So call me a jerk, and maybe I was, but I had never been overly impressed with wealth, per se. Not, anyway, enough to dirty myself to get it. That million bucks, though, had something to do with Martha's death and my reason for taking her to Los Angeles. That was not just a "feeling" but another one of those dim perceptions that had been hammering at me for the past two days.
How would Martha have come into that kind of money—legally?
Obviously, though, it had been connected to not only her murder but also to the recent intrigue in Mammoth. The life insurance money from Kaufman, according to Janice, had been only enough for Martha to set up her small business and get her going on her own. And the potential income from such a small backwoods art gallery would hardly have been enough to make her a millionaire that quickly. So where had the money come from and why had it placed her in such jeopardy?
Surely not from her own father! But maybe so. One could draw a reasonable scenario involving a guy like Harley Sanford if the money had actually been his from the beginning and if, for some reason, Martha had taken it and refused to return it to him.
But I had been in the bank with her when the bonds were placed in the box. I knew that was true; I had a definite memory of helping her put them there. I also knew that the bonds had been placed in the box shortly before we left for Los Angeles—which would have been very soon after the gallery burned. I could even see her consternation as we deposited the bonds—she was scared as hell—and I could see our almost panicky flight from Mammoth.
This kind of peek-a-boo memory is enough to drive a guy nuts.
I knew, yet "in a glass darkly," as a mystic has characterized this kind of "knowing."
I would not make a good mystic, because this shadowed reality can propel you to the very edge of insanity. When you are out there moving through that kind of darkness you can question your own perceptions at times and wonder if you will ever find the full light again.
A cop usually deals with concrete perceptions of the human reality, total logic, and hard facts. Right now I was afraid that I was dealing primarily with human emotions raging against the light. I had to discipline myself continually and wait for the light to dawn. That had never been my way. I had always been the kind of cop simply to seize the truth and try to make sense of it. That can be very difficult when you are forever staggering around half blind and half-witted—yeah, and I was feeling entirely stupid much of the time.
Thank God, it had not yet affected my trigger finger. I had the feeling, even then, that there would be plenty of fireworks ahead.
I left the bonds in the box at the bank as the safest place for them at the moment, then I took the computer diskette to a computer specialist for copying. It is amazingly fast once the technician gets a "read" on the program itself. Took this guy about twenty seconds to hand me two duplicates. The guy was good but also curious, so I elected to pass on a printout. I wanted complete privacy for that. I had no idea what information might be hidden away and I sure as hell did not feel like sharing it with a stranger.
If you are not familiar with computers, maybe this
would have little significance to you. A three-and-a-half- inch floppy diskette compresses more than a million bytes of data, which, when run through a computer, translates computer language into ordina
ry information according to the program originally employed. What it meant to me at the moment was nothing. I would not be able to read the copy until it was fed through a compatible computer.
The contents of a diskette are totally meaningless even to an expert until the computer itself retranslates the data into an ordinary language format. That was where I was at the moment, so I was none the wiser. I simply had preserved extra copies of the data for future use.
A small floppy such as this one could store the equivalent of several large volumes of text, so it was anybody's guess what could be concealed there. I had to feel that it was something very important and I knew that I would have to print out the information from the floppy at the earliest practical moment. I returned the original diskette to the safety-deposit box and then rented another box—in my name alone, of course—and left one of the copies in the new box. And just to circumvent any difficulty that may arise once the bank knew that Martha was dead, I also moved the bearer bonds into my own box.
I felt that my first priority was a visit to Lake Tahoe.
That was my immediate destination.
Lake Tahoe is widely regarded as one of the loveliest lakes in the United States. It sits astride the California-Nevada border at an elevation of more than six thousand feet, a deep-blue clear lake. The maximum depth exceeds sixteen hundred feet, ranking it among the deepest in the world. Twenty-two miles long and twelve miles wide, the state line splits the lake along a north-south axis to almost the south shore but shears off at a southeast tack a short distance above South Lake Tahoe, so that two-thirds of the lake plus the entire south shore lies within the state of California. The entire east shore of the lake and a portion of the north shore is within Nevada.
The lake has long been a popular and important resort complex for wholesome family fun and is dotted with state parks and camping facilities. Although a popular winter and summer recreational area, one of its major attractions in recent years has been the booming gambling business on the Nevada side adjoining South Lake Tahoe. The relatively few luxurious hotel casinos are closely clustered just across the Nevada line in the town of Stateline. This is nowhere in the same league as Las Vegas, but then also the natural beauty of the area far excels anything to be seen in the stark desert surroundings of Vegas.
Copp In Shock, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp Private Eye Series) Page 12