Unwillingly, my mind digressed into another direction. I wondered if Harry really had a girlfriend, someone he spent the night with when he came to L.A., in spite of Amanda's assurances to the contrary.
Then I had another idea. Did he receive or make a telephone call that caused him to stay in town the extra day? Once more, Wendy took pity on me. Incoming calls couldn't be traced, but every outgoing call from his room showed up on a computer printout. I compared the numbers with the list Amanda had given Brad and hit the jackpot.
One of the numbers on the hotel list was different. After writing it down and thanking Wendy profusely, faking the possibility of more tears, I moved over to a comfortable chair in the lobby, pressed the ten digits on my cell phone, and waited.
"Mr. McDonald's office."
McDonald, McDonald. Where had I heard that name recently? My memory didn't cooperate.
"Is he in, please?"
"I'm sorry. He's out of town at the moment."
"When will he return?"
"On Friday. Would you like to leave a message?"
Thinking it wouldn't hurt to talk to the man later, even if I didn't know how he fit in, I said "yes" and gave her Brad's name and office phone number. And then I had another idea. "Oh, one more thing. Did Mr. Hammond visit Mr. McDonald last Friday afternoon at four o'clock? Or was it five?"
"May I ask who's calling, please?"
I hesitated. To say I was Mrs. Grant from Featherstone's would only confuse the poor girl. So I lied. "I'm Mr. Hammond's secretary. His calendar is such a mess." I inserted a little you-know-how-that-is laugh. "I can never read his handwriting."
"Just a minute." A pause. Then, "Five o'clock."
I thanked her and hung up. I felt a little ambivalent over my fiddling with the truth that way. I'd added another white lie to my growing list—getting to be just like Kinsey Millhone, the private eye in Sue Grafton's mysteries—and I hoped the end justified the means.
Yet, it wasn't until I relaxed on the plane flying back to SFO that I remembered where I'd heard McDonald's name. Carl Novotny had mentioned Kevin McDonald the day before. He was a rival jewelry store owner. Harry's former partner, whom he later, supposedly, hated. Why would he call him? And visit him? Did they argue, and had McDonald followed Harry back to San Francisco the next day and killed him? His secretary said he'd gone out of town. Maybe he was in the Bay Area right that minute. Suddenly I wished I'd asked her a lot more questions.
I pounded my fist on the armrest, frustrated at still being clueless with this interrogation stuff. Well, I'd ask the questions later. I had the number, so I could call back. Maybe I'd even return to Los Angeles. I wanted very much to see Kevin McDonald in person. Even if he was the person who killed Hammond. Actually, especially if he was.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Although it was almost seven by the time I returned to the office, Brad sat there in his chair, the bandaged foot propped on his desk, reading what appeared to be legal documents. He put them aside when he saw me and smiled. "You're back."
"Feeling better?" I asked.
"Amazing what six hours in bed plus some chicken soup can do for you."
"You're still pale, and I sincerely doubt sleep and soup were the miracle cure you tried."
"No. I visited Ziegler, reread everything in the Hammond file, and then came here to wait. I was worried about you."
I let that sink in for a moment, feeling a little smug, although I suspected his concern stemmed not so much for my well-being as that I'm a woman. Try as I might, I hadn't completely erased his peers' chauvinistic attitudes that had rubbed off on him, probably in the locker room after football games. He once joked that the real reason the captain always went down with his ship was the fear that, at the last minute, his wife would take the helm.
"I told you I'd be okay, and I found out something." I took my time coming in and sitting down in the facing chair, keeping him in suspense.
"Okay, what did you find out?"
"Remember Carl Novotny telling us about a man named McDonald?"
"What about him?"
"I discovered that, instead of flying home last Friday afternoon, Harry visited him."
"Aha!" He leaned forward across the desk. "What did they talk about?"
"McDonald wasn't there, so I don't know. I left a message with his secretary for him to call."
Looking disappointed, Brad leaned back in his chair again. Without more details, he apparently lost interest in the subject and merely nodded.
"Type up all your notes for me when you can. I left the recording of my talk with Ziegler on your desk, and you can do that one too. No rush, though. I think I'll do what the doctor suggested and take two more days off."
I rose from the chair and picked up my coat and purse again. After a disgusted sigh, I remembered what we'd been talking about and returned to my seat in front of the desk. At the moment, my curiosity was apparently greater than his.
"What did you learn from Ziegler? Is he still a suspect?"
Brad frowned. "I don't think so. He may be a greedy devil, but I don't think he has the nerve to kill people or have them killed. Or need to."
"Did he admit to trying to buy company stock from other employees?"
"Yes, and he's not a bit guilty over it either. It's not illegal or even necessarily immoral. That's why he didn't need to kill anyone."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, first of all, it seems to be an accepted fact in the company that Amanda would take charge in Hammond's place. He hates Amanda, so why kill the boss—?"
"—and bring about that which he most fears?" I finished.
"Right. Anyway, the point is, if this bozo wants to take over Hammond Jewelry, like Novotny suggested, he didn't need to bump off Hammond or Novotny to do it."
Nevertheless, I persisted. "But with Harry out of the way, it might be easier to persuade the widow to sell him her shares. You can't have a widow without a dead husband."
"I still say it doesn't make sense. Now killing Amanda would make sense. At least," he added hastily, "from his viewpoint."
"Is that why you spent so much time with her last week, to protect her?"
Brad looked a little embarrassed. "Who says I'm spending a lot of time with her? A lunch, a dinner, that's all."
A dinner? So he had been with her the previous evening. My speculative instincts were still in good working order. I forced my mind back to the present puzzle.
"If Ziegler didn't need to kill Harry for control of the company, why might he try to kill Amanda? Doesn't the same logic apply?"
"Sure. Unless he thought Amanda might fire him and convince Rose Hammond he couldn't be trusted."
"Since Rose doesn't trust Amanda, that seems improbable."
"I think things are moving that way. When I called Amanda today, she told me she's making Carl Novotny her executive assistant, putting him ahead of Ziegler."
I brightened. "Well then, that gives him a motive for trying to kill Novotny."
"But Novotny's attack occurred last night, and the announcement wasn't made until today. I've already checked that out." He anticipated my next question. "Amanda assures me no one knew in advance that she'd make that appointment."
I slumped down in my chair but didn't give up the idea. "Maybe Ziegler knew ahead of time anyway. Maybe—"
"Maybe he did, and maybe he didn't. The important thing right now is"—he stood up, dropped his pencil onto the pad, and looked at his watch—"I have a date."
I straightened. "With Amanda?"
He avoided my question with one of his own. "Are you ready? I'll walk you to your car."
He turned off the office lights. I locked the door, and together we headed for the elevator. Then I remembered the pouring rain outside and that I hadn't taken my raincoat with me that morning.
"Wait a minute. Why don't we go down the back way? The parking lot is closer, and we won't get drenched."
"What back way?"
"Through the art gallery.
Parry Williams always leaves her back door unlocked."
"That's a stupid thing to do." Leaning on a cane, he bypassed the stairs, and we chose the elevator after all.
"I know," I said as we descended, "but whenever I see her, I forget to ask her why she does that. Anyway, only other building occupants can get to the back door, and who would steal that crazy stuff she calls art?"
Much as I liked Parry, I loathed most of the art she put in her gallery. She knew that, of course, because of my penchant for speaking my mind—even at inappropriate times (especially at inappropriate times)—having told her so long before. Since we preferred to remain friends, it was something we never discussed.
Spared having to trudge down the fire stairs for four floors, we landed at the ground level and then went through the back door into the gallery. It smelled like air freshener, no doubt to disguise the concrete odor that escaped from the stairway nearby. Next, accompanied by the tapping of Brad's cane, we wound our way through various dimly-lit rooms. Brad stopped for a moment in the sculpture room to rest, and the night lights made the weird metal and wooden things that passed for sculpture look even spookier. He asked if I knew where I was going.
"Of course. One more room and we'll be at her receiving doors." We reached them and went through. They locked automatically behind us, and I scampered across the parking lot to my car.
"Don't forget Harry's funeral is tomorrow," I called to Brad.
He waved. "I won't."
After Brad drove off, I sat behind the wheel, wondering what Amanda Dillon saw in my brother. Although well-preserved, perhaps by the chemical industry, perhaps a plastic surgeon, and undoubtedly a gym, she was probably older than Brad. On the other hand, I was older than Lamar Grant, my second husband, and it wasn't the difference in ages that caused our split. I looked for something else.
Pure sexual attraction? Brad was very good-looking, but not in the pretty-boy sense. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had a more rugged but younger Hugh Jackman quality. Amanda may have been brilliant at her job—everyone commented on how smart she was—but I knew Brad could compete in any intelligence contest.
Amanda was powerful and resourceful and conniving and… I stopped at bitchy and sighed. Brad would have to figure those things out for himself. If he was infatuated with her, I just hoped it wouldn't affect his judgment in pursuing the murder investigation.
I started the car and watched the windshield wipers swoosh across my view, wondering if it would rain again the next day. In films, it always rains at funerals. It was one of those absurd Hollywood clichés, like the hero finding a parking place in front of his building and a helicopter always exploding with a fireball the size of Alaska. Only in the movies does metal burn and fire produce no smoke.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I awoke Thursday morning to sunshine and blue skies. The grass and decking outside my bedroom window looked wet, however, so I assumed it had rained most of the night. I hadn't heard it, but I was born and spent the first years of my life in the Midwest, where I learned to sleep through thunder and lightning. So I had no difficulty ignoring mere raindrops on rooftops.
While I took my shower, a guilty feeling surfaced. Harry's briefcase still sat in the trunk of my car, and I needed to see Novotny and trade it for Brad's. I phoned Mills Hospital again and learned Carl Novotny had been discharged. Two things made that good news. First, apparently his injuries hadn't been too serious and I had worried needlessly, and second, I decided I could swing by his house to do the briefcase-swap on my way to the office.
Yet, when I dialed his home number, only his voicemail picked up. A call to his office proved equally fruitless. A recording told me he wouldn't be in until Monday and to leave a message. So he was still recuperating, but where?
Acting on the theory he was home but just not picking up the phone, I drove over and parked in front. A trip up the front walk, carefully navigating the treacherous steps, discouraged me, because I noticed two rolled-up newspapers decorating the lawn. I rang the doorbell anyway, lots of times. I could hear the chimes ding-donging away inside, but no one showed up to let me in.
A narrow strip of window on one side of the door gave a sliver view of the front hallway, and, feeling pretty bold by then, I pressed close to the glass. The front hall appeared normal. No bodies, dead or alive, no blood on the floor, nothing out of place. I tried the doorknob, but it wouldn't turn, and I still drew the line at breaking and entering. After our dinner Tuesday night and the silly, romantic images that flashed across my mind whenever I thought about Carl, I was more than a little upset that I couldn't find him. I worried that whoever had tried to "off" him then might have succeeded this time, and he lay in a pool of blood somewhere beyond my line of sight.
Finally, I persuaded my brain that he wouldn't let himself be attacked the same way again and went down the one step onto the lawn. I scooped up the papers and placed them behind an azalea bush. I considered it my good deed for the day and atonement for peeking in his window.
I drove to Brad's office building, unlocked the door, and turned on lights. Then I started the computer and typed up my notes from my quick trip to L.A. Since Brad still hadn't arrived, I called his apartment but got his voicemail. Obviously, it wasn't my day for reaching people, and I vented my frustration by hanging up the phone instead of leaving a message.
I waited another hour for Brad, during which time I finished typing the notes of my trip to L.A. I knew I should listen to the tapes of Brad's interview with John Ziegler and type those notes for the file, but by then it was after ten thirty. I itched to be active, so I decided to go sleuthing on my own. If Brad wasn't around to tell me not to, it was his own fault.
I looked at my list of names and crossed off five: Rose, Debra, Amanda, Ziegler, and Novotny. Not that I had, or could have, absolved any of those people of guilt, but at least they'd been interviewed. Of course, I leaned toward eliminating Carl. After all, he couldn't very well have hit himself over the head, and anyway, I liked him. I told myself I couldn't be attracted to anyone who had the capacity to kill someone else.
We had yet to see McDonald and Powell. Since I couldn't reach McDonald, I decided to interview Powell. Surely, an advance visit to get my reaction to the man would be helpful and not even remotely beyond my authority. A call to the jewelry store in the mall netted the information he'd gone to the television studio to make a commercial. Did I want to leave a message? No, I did not. I put a note on Brad's desk, locked up the office, and headed for the television station.
KDMG was not one of the large network stations. It was local and occupied a cinder-block building near the bay in either Belmont or Redwood City, depending on where the dividing line snaked through the flatlands that once held salt ponds.
Inside a dark entryway, a heavyset, muscular woman—who looked like she could arm wrestle gorillas—gave me a scowl and asked what I wanted. I mentioned James Powell and instinctively backed up a little, thinking that if I hadn't said the magic word, she might pick me up and throw me back out into the parking lot.
Instead, she got to her feet and led me down a narrow corridor. "Mr. Powell is taping now and will be out soon." She stopped at a door marked Greenroom and told me I could wait there. She opened the door, flipped on a harsh overhead fluorescent light, and hiked off.
Of course, I knew that greenroom was a title for the place people waited or prepared to go on stage and was rarely actually painted green, although once upon a time they may have been. That one was cinder-block gray, contained someone's discarded, sagging sofa, two directors' chairs with black canvas seats and, along one wall, a wide expanse of mirror above a counter littered with combs and brushes, various types of makeup, jars of cold cream, and a giant box of discount-store-brand tissues.
I sat in one of the chairs for about five minutes and then, feeling even more frustrated, decided not to wait, telling myself Powell might not come back to that room after his taping. I opened the door and looked down the corridor. Seeing no
one, I left the greenroom and tippy-toed in the opposite direction from the gorilla wrestler.
The corridor turned right, and I soon found myself behind large black curtains. I heard noises on the other side, so I went through the opening into a large, high-ceilinged studio, two of whose corners contained little stage sets with tables and chairs. I also saw three large cameras mounted on rolling dollies, thick cables running all over the floor like boa constrictors, and two men in jeans and sport shirts, one working a camera.
My gaze leaped, however, to a brilliantly lighted sidewall with a blown-up photo of the interior of a jewelry store. In front of the photo stood a man I assumed to be Powell. He was dressed in an expensive business suit, pale blue shirt, and striped tie. His hair was wavy and as thick as a helmet, his smile full of white teeth, and he read lines with animation from a teleprompter fastened below the camera in front of him.
Had the photo behind him pictured rows of used cars, he would have seemed less out of place. Whereas Hammond Jewelers was the Tiffany of San Ricardo, with tasteful ads in slick magazines, Powell's store, judging by his spiel, was the Crazy Eddie of the jewelry discount chains.
Which is not to say the man didn't have a certain amount of charm. He was good-looking in a Nicolas Cage type of way, tall and broad-shouldered, and his eyes actually twinkled when he described the tremendous values his company offered the jewelry buyer.
While I waited for him to finish, I remembered that Powell was only an employee—manager of the store at Bay Meadows Mall—and Kevin McDonald owned it. According to Carl, after Hammond and McDonald split up, McDonald opened his own chain of stores in Los Angeles, but apparently he couldn't resist plunking one down right in Harry's backyard. Like little boys going, "nyaa, nyaa."
I stood in the darkened wings for a good fifteen minutes, no one bothering me, thinking Powell was making another commercial I'd mute if I ever saw it. I wasn't one of those people who put down television or swore they never watched, but I had to agree that ninety percent of the time, when the producers went for mediocrity, they nailed it.
Dead Men's Tales (Olivia Grant Mysteries Book 2) Page 9