Vixen

by Bill Pronzini

  Vorhees was dead. Bludgeoned to death, the apparent victim of a carjacking. A patrol unit had spotted his Aston Martin speeding on Geneva Avenue near the Crocker Amazon Playground shortly after 2:00 A.M.; the driver, a nineteen-year-old youth from the projects, refused to stop and there’d been a brief high-speed chase that ended when the kid missed a turn and ran the Aston into a light pole. When the cops checked the trunk, they found Vorhees’ body stuffed inside.

  The ghetto youth and his passenger cousin admitted they’d stolen the car, but swore they hadn’t committed the murder, hadn’t had any idea there was a dead man in the trunk. Their story was that they’d seen the Aston parked on a street in Visitacion Valley, the keys in the ignition, and decided to take it for a ride. The police weren’t buying. Both suspects had juvenile rap sheets for stealing and stripping cars, and though the murder weapon hadn’t been found with the body, the assumption was that the youths had tossed it and were heading somewhere to get rid of the body when they were spotted.

  “Crap,” Tamara said. “Pure crap.”

  “You don’t think it was a carjacking?” I asked her.

  “No way.”

  I didn’t think so, either, but I said, “Why not?”

  “Bunch of reasons. Too big a coincidence, for one—Vorhees suddenly turning up dead so soon after his wife and just when he’s getting ready to hire us.”

  “Go on.”

  “Carjackers and guys that jump iron off the streets are different breeds of cat. No ’jacking on these two kids’ sheets.”

  “They’re only nineteen. Maybe they decided to change their MO.”

  She made a face to indicate what she thought of that explanation. “You ever hear of a ’jacker whacking a car owner with some kind of round blunt instrument? Uh-uh. Guns or knives.”

  “Good point,” Runyon said, and I agreed.

  Tamara said, “Then there’s the preliminary coroner’s report. Felicia says Vorhees’d been dead for hours when the body was found, maybe as many as seven or eight. No streetwise kids are gonna waste somebody, hang onto the hot car and the corpse for seven or eight hours, and then go out speeding with it on a city street.”

  An even better point.

  “So if it wasn’t a ’jacking,” she said, “and those dudes are telling the truth, why was Vorhees’ expensive wheels on the street in Visitacion Valley with him dead in the trunk and the keys in the ignition? So it’d get stolen, right? So whoever swiped it would get stuck with the corpse, right?”

  “Assume a setup, then,” I said. “Who’s responsible?”

  “Cory Beckett, who else.”

  “All by herself? A woman who has a history of not dirtying her own hands?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Who did the job, then? Frank Chaleen?”

  “Sure. Got him to do Vorhees’ wife, didn’t she?”

  “We don’t know that for sure. If Margaret Vorhees’ death was premeditated murder, then it was strictly for gain. Cory’s whole focus is money and power; presumably that’s why she took up with Vorhees in the first place. Why would she suddenly want him dead?”

  “On account of he dumped her and she was pissed at losing her meal ticket.”

  “That’s another thing we don’t know for sure, that he dumped her,” I pointed out. “Confronted her about Chaleen, yes, but that’s all.”

  Runyon agreed. “Seems to me her reaction if he tried to walk away would be the opposite of violence—use every trick she knows to get him back on the hook.”

  “Right. And if that didn’t work, she’d just lick her wounds and start looking for another mark. Vorhees isn’t the only wealthy yachtsman around who can be seduced and bled.”

  Tamara wanted Cory Beckett to be guilty of both homicides. She said stubbornly, “Her motive doesn’t have to be revenge. Maybe offing him is what she was planning all along.”

  “Same objection,” I said. “Nothing in it for her.”

  “… Well, suppose Vorhees changed his will, put her in for a big slice of his estate? She’d want him dead before he could change it, right?”

  “Now you’re reaching. No matter how smitten Vorhees was with her, he’d have to be a fool to change his will in her favor while he was still married or immediately after his wife’s death. Whatever else he was, he was no fool when it came to money. He’d have waited until he was married to Cory before he made her his heir, and then not until he was completely sure of her. Same reasoning if she wanted him dead: after they were married, not before.”

  Tamara scowled, but she didn’t argue the point. “All right, then how about this? She found out somehow he was hiring us to investigate her and there’s something heavy in her past she’s afraid we’ll find out.”

  “A skeleton she wants to keep closeted desperately enough to toss the rest of her plans and commit murder? Doesn’t seem likely. Besides, you’d have already picked up a hint if there was.”

  “Not necessarily. I dug pretty deep, but I didn’t hit bottom.”

  “Close to it, though. You can keep digging, but do you really believe you’ll find those kind of buried bones?”

  No, she didn’t—I could see it in her expression—but she wouldn’t admit it. And she still wasn’t ready to let go of the subject. She said, “So maybe Cory didn’t have anything to do with it. Maybe Chaleen did Vorhees on his own.”

  “For what reason?”

  “So he could have her all to himself.”

  “Blow up her plans, do both of them out of a piece of Vorhees’ money? That doesn’t wash, either.”

  “He wouldn’t dare cross her,” Runyon agreed. “She’d eat him alive.”

  “Okay, okay,” Tamara said grumpily. “So it wasn’t Cory and it wasn’t Chaleen. But it wasn’t any freakin’ carjacker, either.”

  “Vorhees was the kind of man who made enemies,” I said. She opened her mouth, but I held up a hand before she could say anything. “I know, I know. The long arm of coincidence again.”

  Runyon said, “SFPD’ll find out who did it and why. High-profile victim, high-priority investigation.”

  “The kind that might just bring Cory and Chaleen down, whether or not they had anything to do with what happened last night.”

  “Believe it when I see it,” Tamara said. Then she said, “Cops are bound to get around to us sooner or later. What do we tell them?”

  “As much as we know to be fact,” I said. “Nothing more, nothing that crosses legal and ethical lines.”

  “Otherwise we stay out of it.”

  “That’s right. Even if Vorhees had signed a client’s contract, we’d have to stay out of it. The police wouldn’t give us permission for an independent investigation in a case like this.”

  Tamara sighed. “Stuck in neutral again. Sometimes I wish we didn’t always have to go by the book.”

  “We wouldn’t stay in business long if we didn’t.”

  * * *

  As expected, the media—local and national both—milked Vorhees’ murder for all it was worth. Statements from and interviews with the chief of police, union and City Hall officials; editorials on crime in the streets; rehash features on Vorhees’ scandal-ridden personal life and the recent death of his wife. I didn’t see or read any of the reportage; secondhand commentary from Tamara and Kerry was enough for me. I tend to avoid all direct contact with print and broadcast journalism, particularly where sensational crime news is concerned. Kerry says, only half kidding, that I’m an ostrich in the current events sandbox. Guilty.

  Evidently the SFPD wasn’t any more satisfied with the carjacking explanation than we were. Except for the usual stock handouts, they put a tight lid on their investigation. So tight that Tamara’s friend Felicia refused all further requests for progress information.

  The homicide inspectors in charge got around to us soon enough. They interviewed Tamara alone first on Thursday; Runyon and I weren’t in the office at the time. They talked to me at home, and Jake at the Hall of Justice where he went vol
untarily.

  The three of us had worked out exactly what we would and wouldn’t be free to say, and for once Tamara held herself in check and followed instructions. Runyon’s private conversations with Kenneth Beckett were one of the off-limits topics; our suspicions that Margaret Vorhees’ death was premeditated murder was another. This is what we admitted to:

  That Runyon and I had spoken to Andrew Vorhees in his office the day before he was killed, at his request. That he’d wanted to know what we knew about his wife’s death, which was nothing more than what Runyon had told the police after his discovery of Margaret Vorhees’ body. That it was common knowledge Vorhees had been involved with a woman named Cory Beckett, who had at one time been our client, and her name had come up during the course of the conversation. That a former friend and campaign worker of his, Frank Chaleen, was reputed to also be having an affair with the Beckett woman, and that Vorhees had been upset about it. And that Vorhees had called in person the following day with the stated intention of hiring us, saying he would explain what he wanted us to do when he met with Runyon that evening on his yacht.

  There was enough inference in all of this to put the inspectors onto the Cory Beckett cabal, if they weren’t already headed in that direction and whether or not either she or Chaleen was involved in the Vorhees homicide. The two of them would tell different stories than we had, of course, but it was their word against ours and we were on pretty solid ground. For all we could tell, the closemouthed inspectors seemed to think so, too. There had not been a suspicious or adversarial edge to the interview with me, nor to the ones with Jake and Tamara.

  That was the way things stood through Friday. No more visits from the police. No new information leaked to or revealed in the media. And no word from Cory Beckett, her brother, or Frank Chaleen.

  * * *

  On Saturday, Kerry and I had a small argument over her mother’s cremains. It started when I suggested that it would be a good day, the weather being clear and sunny, for the three of us to drive over to Marin County and honor Cybil’s wish to have her ashes scattered in Muir Woods.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said.

  “Why not? Too soon?” She’d gotten the box of cremains from the Larkspur mortuary on Wednesday.

  “No, not exactly.”

  “What then, exactly?”

  “I’m not so sure we ought to do it at all.”

  “Why not? It’s what Cybil wanted.”

  “I know that, but … Muir Woods, a national park full of people on nice weekends.”

  “We can find a private place off one of the trails.”

  “Even so. You know as well as I do it’s against the law to scatter human remains in a public place.”

  “A misdemeanor that a great many people don’t happen to believe should be a crime at all. Loved ones’ ashes are scattered in natural surroundings every day with no harm done.”

  She gave me one of her sidewise looks. “You’ve always been such a stickler for following the letter of the law,” she said. “This bizarre business with Andrew Vorhees and the Becketts, for instance. And now you want to step over the line.”

  “A stickler professionally, yes, for the most part, especially when a case involves a couple of homicides and the integrity of the agency. But I freely admit to having bent and stretched points of law a few times, and even to committing a couple of small felonies when it seemed necessary.”

  “So you’re honest and law-abiding only when it suits you.”

  I said gently, “Kerry, I’m going to make an observation. Think about it before you snap back at me.”

  “What observation?”

  “That you’re reluctant to scatter Cybil’s ashes for the same reason you have her personal belongings displayed in your office and you’re determined to get all her fiction back into print.”

  “What are you saying? I’m trying to keep her with me even though she’s dead and gone?”

  “Yes, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Up to a point. But buying an urn for the ashes, putting it in your office with the rest of her stuff—”

  “I wasn’t going to do that.”

  “The box is in there now, isn’t it? On the bookcase?”

  She had no answer for that.

  “I’m not criticizing you,” I said, “and I’m not saying this to hurt you. I know how important it is for you to keep Cybil’s memory alive; I’m in complete agreement there. But holding onto her cremains is not only borderline morbid, it goes against her express wishes and your promise to honor them. You never defied your mother when she was alive. Don’t start now.”

  She moved away from me without answering, out onto the balcony where she stood stiffly outlined against the sweeping view of the city and the bay. I had the good sense not to follow her. She was not out there very long. And when she came back inside, it was without any trace of anger or resentment.

  “I thought it over,” she said, “and you’re right. You know me so well it’s scary sometimes.”

  “Not as well as you know me. Which is even scarier.”

  That earned me a wan smile. “You fetch Emily while I get ready. Then we’ll head over to Marin.”

  We spent two hours in Muir Woods, part of it wandering the network of marked trails among the groves of giant coast redwoods in search of a suitable spot. When we found one, we slipped off among the towering trees—another small law respectfully broken—and once we were sure we were alone and unobserved, Kerry opened the mortuary container and carefully scattered Cybil’s ashes among several of the tall trees. Then the three of us held hands and murmured words of remembrance to one another and thought our private thoughts. Kerry was solemn throughout; I imagined she might cry a little, but she didn’t. She gave me another small smile, this one sad, wistful, on the walk back to the car.

  All in all, it was a private, peaceful, dignified ceremony.

  We agreed that Cybil would have approved.

  * * *

  I treated Kerry and Emily to Sunday morning brunch, and afterward we went to the park for a leisurely walk around Stowe Lake, then home to our individual pursuits. Normal, quiet, relaxing day that I expected would continue through to bedtime.

  But it didn’t.

  Because this was the day the Cory Beckett powder keg suddenly and lethally blew up.

  23

  JAKE RUNYON

  Most wage earners look forward to time off on weekends, one or two days of freedom to rest, putter, engage in recreational pastimes. Runyon wasn’t one of them anymore. Not after the long, empty months in Seattle following Coleen’s slow and agonizing death, not after the move to San Francisco and his failure to end the long estrangement with Joshua, not even after he’d become involved with Bryn. Work was his primary focus, the one thing he was good at, the only activity that gave him any real satisfaction.

  Weekends when he had no business to occupy his time were nothing more than a string of hours of enforced waiting, to be endured and gotten through. He had no hobbies, no particular interest in sports or cultural events; he was constitutionally incapable of sleeping more than five or six hours a night, or of sitting around the apartment reading or staring at the tube or just vegetating. An active diversion more job-related than pleasurable was the only sure way he’d found to deal with those empty Saturdays and Sundays: close himself inside the Ford and burn up long miles and tanksful of gas on the highways, back roads, streets, and byways of the greater Bay Area and beyond, familiarizing and refamiliarizing himself with the territory and what went on in each part of it. The better he knew his turf, the better he could do his job.

  This weekend was not one of the empty ones. This Saturday and Sunday he’d been working a field case, acting on a hunch. It was one of the few jobs he disliked on general principle, involving stakeouts and spy photography, but he didn’t mind it so much in this case because the subject was the sort of scofflaw it would feel good to take down.

  The stakeout was in Belmont, near a fair
ly affluent tract home owned by a businessman in his forties named Garza. Garza had a large accident policy with Northwestern Insurance and had put in a claim citing an on-the-job injury that prevented him from doing any sort of manual labor. He had a doctor’s report to back him up. Northwestern smelled fraud and hired the agency to investigate, with Runyon being given the assignment.

  Fraud was what it was. He’d found out that Garza and the doctor were old high school buddies who played golf together now and then, conducted a couple of drive-bys at Garza’s home and business, and finally readied his digital camcorder and began the stakeouts in the hope of proving the subject wasn’t anywhere near as incapacitated as he claimed.

  The Saturday stakeout had been a bust; Garza had spent most of the day at the small plumbing supply company he owned, supervising his handful of employees and doing nothing contrary to his injury claim. The hunch that had drawn Runyon to the subject’s house today was the fact that Garza was having a new driveway put in. The man was too smart to do any heavy work at his place of business, but there was the chance that he’d decided to cut costs by doing some of the driveway renovation himself.

  Most of the day it had looked like another bust. But then a little past three-thirty, Garza figured it was safe enough to put in a couple of hours of work on the driveway. The garage door went up and there he was, coming out with a shovel in hand. He looked around without spotting Runyon in the Ford, then started shoveling and spreading gravel. No strain, no pain, not even a wince while he worked.

  Runyon had recorded three full minutes of damning video when his cell vibrated. He put the camcorder down before he checked the phone. And then he forgot all about Garza.

  The caller was Kenneth Beckett, with his third and final cry for help.

  “Help me, Mr. Runyon. Please. I don’t want to do it.”

  The naked desperation in the kid’s voice put Runyon on instant alert. He could feel himself going tight inside and out. “I don’t understand. What don’t you want to do?”