Shadow of Doubt (A Kali O'Brien legal mystery)

by Jonnie Jacobs

  “I did a little nosing around for you today,” Tom said, scooping a mound of salsa onto a too-small chip.

  “For me?” I tried for an understated sarcasm. Apparently I succeeded, because Tom raised an eyebrow. “For me, then. That better?” He took another scoop of salsa. “You want to hear?”

  I nodded.

  He was suddenly serious. “It isn’t all good.”

  “I still want to know.”

  “I was talking to a police friend of mine. Seems the search of Jannine’s house turned up nothing.”

  That much was good news, anyway.

  “Also, they found a couple of kids who remember hearing what sounded like shots about three o’clock Saturday. They said they were looking for frogs down by the creek, but the suspicion is they were smoking dope — which is why they were reluctant to say anything before now.” Tom paused and looked at me. There was an unexpected softness to his gaze. “The kids also remember seeing a blue car turn onto the county road a little before that. It had one of those bumper stickers, ‘If you can read this, thank a teacher.’”

  I looked away and took a long swallow of beer. Blue cars were pretty common, and the bumper sticker wasn’t exactly a special issue. I’d seen several of them out at the school. Turning onto the county road didn’t mean much either, since it was a natural turn-around for people who missed the entrance to the bridge. But it didn’t help Jannine any that her car was a blue Ford with the same rear bumper sticker.

  “You think she’s guilty?” I asked.

  Tom shrugged. “I’m just reporting what I heard. You obviously have reason to believe she’s not.” His voice was kind, and not at all patronizing.

  “I’m not sure what I think anymore.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “No, I’m glad you did.” I managed a smile. “And thanks for asking around.” I began peeling the label from my bottle. “Do you think they'll arrest her?”

  “I don’t know. They might.”

  The police still didn’t have a strong case, but I could see that it might be enough.

  “At the funeral this afternoon I talked to George Marrero and his wife. They were supposed to have left for Arizona last Saturday morning, but they changed their plans at the last minute and didn’t leave until Sunday.” Tom looked perplexed, and I realized I’d jumped ahead of myself. “He and Eddie were involved in a dispute over control of The Mine Shaft. In essence, George lost. Now that Eddie’s no longer in the picture though, he gets full control of the business.”

  “Are you suggesting he might have killed Eddie?”

  “It’s possible. He’s got a motive, and he probably had access to Jannine’s gun.”

  Tom looked skeptical. “George Marrero’s been a member of this community for a long time. Past president of the Rotary Club, member of the Silver Creek Business Association ...”

  “Jannine’s been a member of this community for a long time, too,” I said, cutting him off. “It hasn’t prevented anyone from thinking she might be a killer.” I rubbed my head, suddenly weary of the whole business. “Anyway, George and Eddie had apparently reached an agreement. According to the attorney involved, George was more or less reconciled to taking Eddie in as a partner.”

  I rolled the bits of peeled label between my fingers. When I looked up, I caught Tom eyeing me. A small, lopsided smile pulled at his mouth.

  “What?” I asked.

  The smile grew till it pulled at the corners of his eyes as well. “Nothing.”

  There was a fluttery sensation somewhere in my chest. I looked away, remembering again why I’d been hesitant to join him for a drink.

  Tom glanced at his watch. “Cripes,” he said suddenly. “It’s later than I thought.” He stood and tossed the empty bottles into the trash. “Sorry about the rush. You want a ride home?”

  I shook my head. “I can use the exercise, and Loretta’s getting downright fat.”

  Tom threw his head back and laughed. It was a rich, wonderful sound that ran across my shoulders like the tickle of a feather. “She’s not fat, Kali. She’s expecting.”

  “Expecting?”

  “Puppies. From the looks of it, I’d say she’s due in a couple weeks. You’d better get the whelping bed together, and anything else you need.”

  I looked over at Tom to see if he was joking, but he was busy gathering up his jacket and car keys. Apparently he was serious.

  What little I knew about birth, animal or human, I’d learned in eighth grade science class. I had steadfastly refused to add to that knowledge, and I certainly didn’t want to change the pattern now. I had enough to worry about already.

  Tom climbed into the truck and started the engine. “You sure you don’t want a ride?”

  “I’m sure.” Pregnant or not, Loretta had walked there, and she could damn well walk home.

  Tom was backing down the driveway when he leaned out window. “How about going dancing with me tomorrow night.”

  Dancing. The word had the same effect on me that walk did on Loretta. Only I’d learned not to be so obvious.

  “Nothing fancy,” Tom said. “There’s a country western bar about twenty minutes up the road that usually gets some pretty good local bands.”

  “Sounds like fun,” I told him. I could already feel the twang of the steel string guitar reverberating in my bones.

  Back at the house, I cooked up some frozen hamburger meat for Loretta, which she wolfed down in no time. I also poured her a bowl of milk, which she sniffed and then ignored.

  For myself, I dug out a fork and began eating leftover noodles, cold and straight from the fridge. It was a habit which drove Ken crazy. He likes his meals warm, preferably served on real china in at least three courses.

  The box of papers Jannine had given me was on the floor by the front door. I hauled it onto the kitchen table and began sorting through it while I finished off the noodles. I started with the phone bills, which were on top of the stack. There were only a couple. I scanned them quickly, finding nothing that caught my attention. Canceled checks and bank statements came next. The mortgage company and Save-Mart were the big winners, but the gas and electric company, the county assessor, and the church all got a sizable share, too. Again, there was nothing that struck me as questionable. I went through the MasterCard statement with the same result.

  At the bottom of the box, I found a large envelope which Jannine had labeled “tavern.” The word was followed by a string of question marks. When I looked inside I could understand her confusion. There were loose papers, blueprints, pages filled with columns of numbers, and an assortment of odd-sized notes in Eddie’s own writing. I pulled everything out and spread it across the table, then focused my attention on a small stack which appeared to be copies of balance sheets. Diligently, I went through them line by line.

  The columns totaled up, that much I could tell pretty easily. The individual entries and the total monthly revenues looked reasonable, as well. Of course, back in my idealistic days as a law student I’d opted to take Policies for Effecting Change instead of Accounting for Lawyers, so my analysis wasn’t airtight by any means. I put the whole mess back in the envelope and began plowing through the rest of the box. I was into last year’s tax return when Nancy called.

  “Finally, you’re home.”

  “Well, excuse me!”

  “Oh for goodness sake, Kali, this is important.”

  Properly chastised, I tried again. “Sorry. What’s up?”

  “It’s about Cheryl. I went back to school right after I left you at the Langley's. A couple of kids were there working on the layout for the yearbook, and we got to talking. Anyway, to make a long story short, one of the boys saw Cheryl Newcomb with Eddie last Saturday morning.”

  “Where?”

  “Right here at school, just before noon. They were walking from the athletic field toward the front of the school.”

  “What happened?”

  “That’s it. Erik, that’s th
e boy, was getting something out of his locker. They kind of nodded at each other, and then he went off in the other direction. You think her disappearance is somehow connected with Eddie’s death?”

  “I don’t know what to think. Her phone number’s on the missing page of Eddie’s calendar, Eddie’s dead and Cheryl’s missing. It’s an awfully strange coincidence.”

  “I just can’t imagine Cheryl mixed up in anything violent. Cutting class, maybe smoking in the bathrooms, but that’s about the extent of it.”

  “What do the police think?” I asked.

  “So far, they’ve been treating it as a simple runaway. Seems some of Cheryl’s clothes and a little over a hundred dollars of her mother’s money are missing.”

  “The big question here is, why did she run away? It might be that she’s afraid. Or it might be that she’s in trouble.”

  “Cheryl’s a confused kid, but she’s a good girl at heart.”

  “Even good people get into trouble,” I said. “Add a little youthful inexperience and confusion, and who knows what the outcome will be.”

  “Cheryl didn’t run away until Sunday though, the day after Eddie was killed. If she was somehow mixed-up in all this, wouldn’t she have left before that?”

  I agreed that it didn’t make a lot of sense. “At the very least,” I said, “she may have been the last person to see Eddie alive. Did she ever mention a friend or relative, someplace she might go in a time of trouble?”

  “No.”

  “What about her writing?”

  “Cheryl’s stories weren’t like that. They tended to be fabrications, usually about wealth and glamour and excitement. She wrote a whole string of them about being a famous model in San Francisco.”

  “You think she might have gone there?”

  “It’s possible. I don’t see her running off to Placerville. It just isn’t the same.”

  “What about her friends?”

  “Cheryl’s kind of a misfit, the type of kid who tends to seek out adults more than her peers. Makes her feel important, I guess.”

  “Tom knows someone connected with the police. I’ll see if he can find out if they have any leads on her.”

  “Tom?”

  “Tom Lawrence. He was one of John’s friends, a couple of years ahead of us in school. He used to be a hotshot reporter for The L.A. Times. Now he’s back here working for The Mountain Journal, of all things.”

  She laughed. “He doesn’t work for the paper, honeybuns, he owns it.”

  “Well,” I humphed, “it still strikes me as a major step down the career ladder.”

  “I don’t know. He’s done some pretty interesting pieces. Built up quite a following, even down in Sacramento. Besides, there are some of us who find that particular ladder much too narrow for comfort.”

  It was a thought I’d entertained once or twice myself, but as one now clinging onto my job for dear life, I found I’d forgotten why.

  After I hung up, I started going through the box of papers once again, but my mind was jumping off in twenty different directions at once. I put the box away and got out my pads of lined yellow paper instead. With Loretta snoring lightly at my feet, I began writing out what I knew—without order, without trying to make sense of any of it. That would come later.

  There are people who swear by index cards. They can arrange and rearrange the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle. I've never been fond of jigsaw puzzles. Some people use an elaborate system of color coding. I’ve tried that, too, but I find I spend more time selecting the appropriate color than thinking about the case. Besides, the lines on paper are better suited to my scrawling and often slapdash handwriting. With all my arrows and notes in the margins, the page looks pretty messy by the time I’m finished, but it somehow flows the way my mind does.

  When I’d finished putting everything on paper, I poured myself a glass of wine and looked at my notes. Nothing made sense. I tried thinking of motive, means and opportunity. The last two didn’t get me very far. Neither did motive, but it seemed like my best chance. If only I could figure out why Eddie had died, maybe I could figure out who was responsible. He’d spoken to Nancy about something “unpleasant.” He’d spoken to me about needing an attorney. I shut my eyes and tried to imagine the dark corners of Eddie’s life. Other than Vicky, there wasn’t a shadow or smear to be found.

  Chapter 16

  There was nothing in the morning paper about Cheryl Newcomb’s disappearance, and by the time I called Tom, he’d already left. But Nancy’s news had been gnawing at me all night; I couldn’t simply let it drop. I called Beverly Silverstein, a therapist I’d met during my summer internship with the San Francisco Family Law Center. Beverly works with troubled teens, and I figured she might be able to tell me a little about runaways.

  She told me more than a little, none of it encouraging.

  “Unfortunately,” she said, “the city’s full of them. Sad kids, abused kids, scared kids, hateful kids — they run away for all sorts of reasons. Most of them end up worse off than they were. Of course, for some, the street’s an improvement.”

  “How do they manage?”

  “Hand-to-mouth, mostly. They beg, steal, get into drugs or prostitution. Girls especially, they take up with some guy they think is going to watch over them, and before they know it they’re in so deep they have trouble getting out.”

  I’d seen the hard-edged hookers, the glassy-eyed addicts, the cold and hungry souls who wandered the city’s streets. I couldn’t imagine how a fourteen-year-old kid from a hillbilly town could make it there. “She wants to be a model,” I said.

  Beverly laughed without humor. “Don’t they all? If the family is serious about getting their daughter back, their best bet is to hire a private detective. It’ll cost them, but the police just don’t have the manpower to deal with something like this. These kids are smart, too. It’s not easy finding someone who doesn’t want to be found.”

  She gave me the number of a runaway hotline, and the names of a couple of social service agencies. “I’ll keep my ears open,” she added. “I’ve got a few street connections myself. You should try the Silver Creek area, too. Most runaways don’t get far from home.”

  I agreed to send her a description and a picture, though we both knew it was a long shot Then I got into the car and headed for Vicky’s, which was an even longer shot.

  The address Jannine had given me turned out to be a duplex in the old section of town. A green stucco box with two doors and four windows. The two on the left were hung with starched lace curtains, the two on the right with sheets, a pink floral design which did nothing to improve the building’s curb appeal. Vicky’s number matched the windows on the right.

  To the side of the door, the buzzer dangled loosely from a single wire. I knocked instead. When no one answered, I tried peering through a gap in the sheets, which is something like threading a needle by moonlight There wasn’t much I was going to learn anyway, except that Vicky’s chosen profession was not that of interior designer. Sheepishly, I tried the knob.

  Locked.

  I turned to head back down the front walk and just about collided with a willowy blonde in pink spandex running tights. Her lips and nails were a complimentary shade of iridescent fuchsia.

  “Miss Fairlaine?”

  She looked as though she wanted to deny it, but was having trouble coming up with a suitable story. Finally, she nodded.

  “My name’s Kali O’Brien. I’d like to talk to you about Eddie Marrero.”

  Vicky’s face went through a succession of contradictory expressions before settling into a tight mask of indifference. Then she did a slow, deep stretch, as though she’d just finished a healthy workout. Only she wasn’t even sweating.

  “I’m investigating his death. I understand you knew him.”

  She shook her head, but got only as far as the “No, I . . .” before she stopped her stretching and burst into tears. “Oh, shit,” she said, wiping her eyes, “you might as well come in while I fi
nd a Kleenex.”

  I followed the tight little derriere down a narrow hallway to the kitchen at the back, then stood silently while Vicky poured herself a glass of orange juice and dabbed at her eyes. I had been prepared not to like her, and I didn’t. She was attractive, but more flashy than beautiful, and about as genuine as a three dollar bill. And she had an annoying habit of tossing her head and shoulders as though she were readying herself for the click of a camera.

  “You a cop?” she asked between tosses.

  “A lawyer.” The answer didn’t make a lot of sense, but it seemed to satisfy her.

  “He was so deep,” she said, blinking hard. “So intense. Nothing like the Neanderthals you generally find around here. And those eyes — all he had to do was look at me, and I was putty.”

  I could understand the part about the eyes. The rest of it didn’t sound much like Eddie. Of course, Vicky’s idea of deep and mine were probably a bit different. “How well did you know him?” I asked.

  She gave another pert toss of her head. “Very well, if you get my drift.”

  I did. “Was he in any kind of trouble that you know of? The artfully penciled brows furrowed, but Vicky’s face remained expressionless.

  I tried again. “Anyone angry at him?”

  “Yeah, me.” The furrow became a full-fledged crease. “Turns out the guy was married.”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  “Not until I called his house and found myself talking to his goddamn wife. Jeannette or whatever her name is. Kids, even. The bastard.” Afresh round of tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. Vicky was an emotional roller coaster.

  “When was this?”

  “Four weeks and three days ago, exactly.” She dabbed at her eyes. “I thought I’d finally met Mr. Right, you know, wedding bells and picket fences, and then it turns out the creep was cheating on me.”

  That was certainly a novel way of looking at it.