“But he’ll know she’s lying. Is there any chance he’ll be upset enough to defy her, go to the police on his own?”
“The way I read him, no, not much. More than likely he’ll end up doing what he’s always done—giving her the benefit of the doubt.”
“Real love-hate thing there,” Tamara said.
Runyon said, “That’s what’s tearing him apart. He wants to break loose from her, but he can’t do it on his own. Took about all the courage he had to run off to Belardi’s, and he only managed that because he’s terrified of going to prison.”
“Must have some guts to reach out to you the way he has.”
“Desperate cry for help, not an act of courage.”
I said, “Sees you as an authority figure, a father confessor.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“You think he’ll contact you again?”
“He might if he can get away from her long enough to use a phone. Figures she took his cell away from him after bringing him back from Belardi’s.”
“If you do hear, try to get together with him again in person and convince him to do the right thing. From what you’ve told us, he’s not too coherent on the phone. And you seem to be the only person besides his sister he’ll listen to.”
Tamara said musingly, “You know, one thing bothers me. That gun Kenny found. He claims Cory never owned a piece before. And Chaleen didn’t use it or need it last night. Then why did she buy it?”
“Protection’s the obvious answer.”
“Who from? Chaleen? No reason for her to be afraid of lover boy Vorhees.”
“That we know about,” I said. “She may not have either of them as tightly controlled as we surmise, Chaleen in particular. The gun could be an insurance policy.”
“Here’s another idea. She bought it for some new scheme she’s cooking up.”
“Such as?”
“Who knows? Bitch is capable of anything, right? Any damn thing at all.”
“Whatever the reason,” Runyon said, “I wish I knew what she’s done with it. I don’t like the idea that it’s still in the apartment.”
“If it is, she’s got it hid this time where Kenny can’t find it.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“You don’t think she’d use it on him?”
“That’s not what worries me.”
“Kenny using it on her?”
“Not that, either. I doubt he’s capable of harming her, or else he’d have done it long ago.”
“Uh, oh. Use it on himself, then?”
“That’s it.”
I said, “He strike you as potentially suicidal, Jake?”
“No, but there’s no way to be sure. He’s weak, scared, on the ragged edge. Hates himself as well as his sister. If the trial goes badly, if there’s enough pressure to push him over the line, he might decide killing himself is his only way out.”
The phone rang just then, as if to add an exclamation point to Jake’s words. Tamara slid her chair around to answer the call. Listened, raised an eyebrow in Runyon’s direction, listened some more. “I’ll see if he’s available,” she said, tapped the hold button, and said to us, “Andrew Vorhees’ secretary. Man wants to see Jake ASAP.”
Well, we might have expected it, though not this soon. Runyon and I exchanged glances; he nodded, and I said to Tamara, “Go ahead and make an appointment.”
She did that. “Vorhees’ office at eleven,” she said when she broke the connection. “Man’s wife dies last night, he’s in his office bright and early this morning. Business as usual.”
Runyon said, “He’d say it was his way of keeping his mind off his loss.”
“Yeah, sure. What’ll you tell him when he asks why you were out at his house?”
“Nothing that’ll reflect badly on us. Play it by ear.”
“Right.”
“There’s another way to handle it,” I said.
Tamara raised an eyebrow. “What way?”
“Jake and I both keep the appointment. Double up on him. Two are more convincing than one.”
“What do you mean, convincing?”
“There doesn’t seem to be much we can do to prove Cory and Chaleen are murderers, at least not directly. But there is something we can do to rock the boat she doesn’t want rocked. If we work it right, we might even be able to punch enough holes to sink it.”
17
When you faced Andrew Vorhees in his plush Civic Center office, it was easy enough to see how he’d been able to forge a successful political and business career despite his scandal-ridden private life. He cut an imposing figure behind a broad cherrywood desk: lean, athletic body encased in a black silk suit that must have cost a couple of thousand dollars, thick dark-curled hair whitening slightly at the temples, craggy features, piercing slate-colored eyes. The kind of self-confident, strong-willed mover-and-shaker who dominates most any room he’s in.
If he was bothered at all by the fact that I’d accompanied Runyon, he didn’t show it. There was no delay when his secretary announced us, and no visible reaction when she showed us in. Just one question to me: “Who are you?” I told him and he nodded and let the matter drop.
He wore a tight, solemn expression this morning; that and the black suit were his only sops to being newly widowed. If he’d had any feelings left for his dead wife, they were well concealed. When I said, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Vorhees,” and Runyon added his condolences in turn, he made a vague gesture as if we’d expressed sorrow over the fact that the weather wasn’t better today. He tight-gripped each of our hands for a few seconds while his eyes probed ours: trying to read us and at the same time let us know he was the alpha male here. Jake and I showed him about as much of the inner man as he was showing us, just enough so that he understood we were not intimidated by him.
The first thing he said after we were seated was, “I’ve never known any private detectives before.” He didn’t quite make the words “private detectives” sound like an indictment, but close enough.
“A business like any other,” I said.
Vorhees picked up a turquoise-and-silver letter opener, held it between thumb and forefinger and tipped it in Runyon’s direction. Bluntly, he asked, “Were you working for my wife?”
“No.”
“Never had any dealings with her?”
“Not before last night. I never met her while she was alive.”
“Then what were you doing at my house?”
“I went there to talk to her.”
“About what?”
“Things I felt concerned her.”
I said, “The same things I spoke to her about three days ago.”
Vorhees frowned at that. “Oh, so you had dealings with her.”
“Of a sort.”
“What does that mean? What did you speak to her about?”
“Relationships, mainly.”
“Margaret and I were separated—I suppose you know that.”
“I’d heard as much.”
“Well?”
“Not your relationship with your wife. Yours with Cory Beckett.”
Vorhees’ spine stiffened. He made another jabbing motion with the letter opener, toward me this time, before he said, “Even if that were true, my private life is none of your affair. Nor was it any of my wife’s affair. I told you, we were legally separated.”
“Are you denying a relationship with Cory Beckett?”
“I don’t have to confirm or deny anything to you.”
“No, you don’t. But it so happens I saw you coming out of her apartment building about a week ago. I mentioned it to her, but evidently she didn’t mention it to you.”
She hadn’t. His effort to hide the fact didn’t quite come off. “What were you doing there?”
“She was my client at the time. I don’t have to tell you she hired our firm to find her brother when he disappeared three weeks ago. One reason I went to see her that day was to inform her that we’d located him, or rath
er Mr. Runyon had.”
“One reason?”
“The other is that I don’t like being lied to.”
“By Cory Beckett? About what?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“I’m asking you.”
“The theft her brother’s charged with,” I said. “The fact that it was a frame-up and she was the intended target, not him. The fact that it was her idea he take the blame and that she had help shifting it to him.”
The skin across Vorhees’ forehead bunched into ribbed rows. He let the letter opener drop with a small clatter on the desktop.
“Bullshit,” he said.
“Facts.”
“How could you know all that?”
“We’re detectives, remember?”
He didn’t say anything for a time. Then, “Why would Cory want to frame her brother?”
“Ask her.”
“The hell I will. I don’t believe it. She loves the kid, she’s doing everything she can to get him off. She’d have to be crazy to do what you’re accusing her of.”
“Or sane and full of schemes.”
“Schemes? What kind of schemes?”
“That’s not for us to say.”
“Why the hell not, if you think you know?”
“Legal and ethical reasons.”
“Legal and ethical,” he said, as if they were dirty words.
Runyon said, “Aren’t you going to ask us who arranged the frame in the first place?”
“If I thought it was true, I wouldn’t have to ask.”
“Or who allegedly helped her shift it to her brother?”
“… All right. Who?”
“The same person allegedly recruited to frame her.”
“Goddamn it, who?”
“Allegedly,” I said, “Frank Chaleen.”
The name rocked him like a blow. He got abruptly to his feet, stood woodenly for a clutch of seconds, then leaned forward and flattened his hands on the desktop.
“Bullshit,” he said again.
“Fact.”
“Cory hardly knows Chaleen.”
“She knows him a lot better than you think.”
“How do you know she does?”
Runyon said, “When Kenneth ran off, he went to a place called Belardi’s on the Petaluma River. That’s where I found him. He wouldn’t leave with me, so she drove up to convince him and bring him home.”
“I know that. So what?”
“Chaleen was with her.”
Vorhees started to say something, changed his mind, and opted for a stony silence.
On the ride down here from South Park, Jake and I had decided to push the envelope with him as far as possible. I’d already taken the biggest chance in suggesting, if not directly accusing, Frank Chaleen of complicity in a crime. Now it was time for the capper.
“Chaleen gets around, doesn’t he,” I said. “One woman at a time’s not enough for him. Wives and mistresses, both fair game.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“What do you think it means, if he was involved in the original plan to frame Cory Beckett for theft? It’s common knowledge he’d been having an affair with your wife. Seems pretty clear the only thing that would make him switch his allegiance from her to Cory is that he’s sleeping with her, too—cuckolding you twice.”
A rush of blood put a wine-dark stain on Vorhees’ smooth-shaven cheeks. The veins in his neck bulged.
“Sorry,” I said, “but it stacks up that way, doesn’t it?”
He said between clenched teeth, “That son of a bitch! I’ll make him wish he was never born.”
Runyon and I let that pass without comment.
The sudden fury didn’t last long. Vorhees had not gotten where he was by letting his emotions run away with him. I watched him make a visible effort to control himself.
“You better not be lying to me about any of this,” he said at length.
I said, “We’re not in the habit of lying.”
He lowered himself into his chair, folded his hands together. All business again, except for the fact that the knuckles on both hands showed white. “I’ve got enough to deal with as it is without the media busting my chops again. What would it take for the two of you to keep all of this quiet?”
“Are you offering us a bribe, Mr. Vorhees?”
“Hell, no. A favor for a favor. I have a fair amount of influence in this city. I could do your agency some good—”
“No, you couldn’t. You can’t trade for or buy our silence. You already know that if you’ve checked us out and I’m sure you have. But we’ll give it to you for nothing. We didn’t intend to make trouble for your wife and we don’t intend to make trouble for you. That’s not why we’ve disclosed as much to you as we have.”
“No? Then why did you?”
“We don’t like to see a good kid like Kenneth Beckett facing a prison sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. Or a newly bereaved husband jerked around by lovers and former friends.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Believe what you like.” I got to my feet; Runyon followed suit. “We’ve said our piece—it’s in your hands now.”
He made a derisive noise. But his face was set, hard and brittle, like a ceramic sculpture fresh out of the kiln. He believed it, all right. And his simmering anger was not only directed at Chaleen but at his lying, conniving mistress.
Mission accomplished.
Boat rocked and holed and taking on water, fast.
18
JAKE RUNYON
The interview with Andrew Vorhees produced results more quickly than Runyon and Bill had anticipated. That same evening, Kenneth Beckett broke his silence with another call.
“Mrs. Vorhees is dead, Mr. Runyon, you know that,” the kid’s voice said without preamble. He wasn’t calling from home; multiple voices punctuated with laughter rose and fell in the background. “It wasn’t an accident. Chaleen did it. I told you, didn’t I? You said you wouldn’t let it happen.”
“I tried, but I got there too late.”
“It’s my fault. If I’d told you sooner…”
“Ken, listen to me. Where are you now?”
“A tavern down the block. Mr. Vorhees came to the apartment again tonight. He was mad, real mad—he knows about Cory fucking Chaleen. He kept yelling at her, calling her names, and she kept yelling back. They forgot about me so I sneaked out and came here.”
“What’s the name of the tavern?”
“… I don’t know.”
“Ask somebody. I’ll come there and we’ll talk. Decide what to do.”
“Can’t we just talk now? I don’t want to be away too long. They might … Cory might come looking for me.”
“I can barely hear you with all the background noise. Better if we talk in person anyway. Find out the name of the tavern, okay?”
There was a short silence. Then the bar sounds cut off—Beckett must have put his hand over the mouthpiece. After the better part of a minute, “It’s the Fox and Hounds. On Pine Street.”
“It shouldn’t take me more than half an hour to get there. Promise me you’ll wait.”
“All right. As long as Cory doesn’t come.”
The Ford’s GPS got Runyon to Pine Street and into a legal parking space in twenty-seven minutes. The Fox and Hounds was an upscale Nob Hill version of a British pub: horseshoe-shaped bar, dark wood booths, dartboards, framed fox-hunting prints, signs advertising a dozen varieties of British ales and lagers. There were maybe twenty patrons, most of them in the booths and grouped in front of one of a pair of dartboards where a noisy match was going on. Beckett wasn’t among them.
So the kid hadn’t waited after all. Faded in, made his call, lost his nerve and faded out. Like a shadow—
No, he was still here. Must’ve been in the men’s room because he emerged from a hallway at the rear, moving in a slow, slump-shouldered walk, and went to sit in front of a full glass of beer at the far end of the bar.
He was staring into the glass when Runyon got to him.
“Ken.”
Beckett’s head jerked up. Fear showed in his face, visible even in the dim lighting, until he recognized Runyon; then it morphed into a kind of twitchy relief. “I thought you’d never get here,” he said. “I almost left a couple of times.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. Let’s go sit in a booth. More privacy.”
There was one empty booth, just vacated and at a distance from the dart throwers; Runyon claimed it for them. A waitress appeared, began clearing the table, and asked them what they’d like. Beckett shook his head; he’d left his beer on the bar, probably hadn’t drunk much, if any, of it. Runyon ordered a pint of Bass ale, but only because it was necessary to remain in the booth.
When the waitress went away, he said to Beckett, “Now we can talk. About Mrs. Vorhees’ death, first. What did Cory say about it?”
“She said it was an accident, a fortunate accident. Fortunate for me because now for sure I wouldn’t have to go to prison.” The kid was facing toward the entrance; he cast a nervous look in that direction before he went on. “But I could tell she was lying. I can always tell.”
“You didn’t say anything to her about your suspicions?”
“They’re not suspicions. She made Chaleen kill Mrs. Vorhees.”
“Made him?”
“I told you before, she can make anybody do anything she wants. Any man.”
Beckett was looking toward the entrance again. Runyon touched his arm to refocus his attention. “You want to be free of her, don’t you, Ken? Free to live your own life, work on yachts like the Ocean Queen again.”
“Yeah, sure, but it’s too late now.”
“No, it isn’t. Not if you tell the police everything you’ve told me.”
“The police? No! I couldn’t do that. They’d think I was guilty, too, like they think I stole Mrs. Vorhees’ necklace.”
“Not if I go with you, vouch for you.”
Violent headshake. Badly agitated now, couldn’t seem to keep his hands still; they moved on the table, folding, clenching, unfolding, scrabbling away from each other with the fingers hooked upward like a pair of white spiders. “I won’t go to the police. I can’t. If you try to force me…”
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