by Lisa King
Snyder took Jean into Zeppo’s garage and had her sit on a cardboard box next to Hugh’s car, shutting the door behind them. Snyder took notes, leaning on the car. Jean gave her name and address and the names of the two injured men. “This is Zeppetello’s apartment,” Jean said. “Rivenbark forced us to come here. That’s his car. He was going to kill us.”
“Why?”
Jean sighed. “It’s a long story.” Her hands felt sticky and itchy in the baggies.
“Just tell me what happened tonight.”
Without mentioning the manuscript, Jean recounted how Rivenbark had followed them from the bridge, and gave Snyder directions to the clearing where they’d left Zeppo’s car.
“What’s your relationship with Rivenbark?” Snyder asked.
“It’s all about Martin Wingo. Zeppetello used to work for him and Rivenbark was Wingo’s friend.”
Snyder raised her eyebrows. “In that case we’ll hold off any more questioning. I’ll get in touch with the investigating officers on the Wingo case. They’ll want to talk to you.” Snyder turned a page in her notebook. “Who’s Zeppetello’s next of kin?”
“He has no immediate family. He’s an orphan.”
“What about Rivenbark?”
“He’s a widower. His brother-in-law lives in Mendocino.” Jean thought about how hard it would be on Edward to learn the truth.
The evidence technician finally arrived and swabbed Jean’s hands, and she was allowed to rinse off in the utility sink in the garage. Clutching her purse, which the police had searched, she rode in the back of Snyder’s squad car to the hospital.
CHAPTER 39
At San Francisco General, which housed the main trauma unit for the city, Officer Snyder took Jean through the emergency entrance into the waiting room, where they found Blumberg.
“They’re operating on Zeppetello now,” he told Jean. “You’ll be notified as soon as they’re finished. The dispatcher is trying to reach Hallock and Davila.”
“Is there anyone you can call to be with you?” Snyder asked.
“Yes, my friends.”
Jean pulled out Zeppo’s cell and called Beau’s. Roman answered on the first ring. “Where the hell are you?” he demanded. “I’ve been calling Zeppo’s cell for over an hour.”
“I’m at S.F. General. Zeppo’s been shot.”
He was silent for a moment. “Is he alive?”
“So far.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
“We’ll be right there.”
She flipped the phone closed. “My friends are on the way,” she told the officers.
“We’ve got another call,” Snyder said. “I spoke with Inspector Davila, and he says it’s OK to leave you here. He and Hallock will contact you as soon as they can.” Snyder turned and followed Blumberg out the door. “Good luck, Jean.”
“Thanks,” Jean said to her retreating back. She sat down in the vast waiting room, her stomach in a knot so tight she thought she might vomit. The night was busy, and the less urgent cases would wait a long time—a young Latina holding a crying baby, an obese old woman in a wheelchair, a middle-aged man holding a handkerchief over his eye. In a corner, two uniformed cops questioned a sullen gangbanger with cuts on his face and what looked like a broken nose. Ambulances arrived and their passengers were whisked past, medical personnel running alongside like bobsled teams.
Jean knew Zeppo’s wound was her fault. If she’d driven back to Roman’s, none of this would have happened. If Roman had gone with them, if they hadn’t been stuck so long on the bridge, if she hadn’t pulled over, if she hadn’t insisted they make love right away, if she’d been faster with the wine bottle, if she weren’t a selfish, sex-crazed imbecile . . . her self-recriminations made her head ache. She’d never before had such a memorable sexual experience that she regretted so deeply.
Jean knew Zeppo’s body almost as well as her own, and it was agonizing to think of him pierced by a bullet, cut with scalpels, stuck with needles, invaded by tubes. She was lost in nightmare imaginings of blood clots, infections, and incompetent doctors when she looked up to see Roman hurrying toward her, Peter and Diane right behind him. She stood and let Roman enfold her in his arms, leaning into him, grateful for his strength. Peter and Diane stood close by.
“What happened?” Roman said into her hair.
“Hugh Rivenbark forced us to go to Zeppo’s apartment at gunpoint. We kept him talking and Zeppo threw something at him. Before I could stop him, he shot Zeppo in the shoulder.”
“Will he be OK?”
“I don’t know. They’re working on him now. Someone’s supposed to come out and talk to me.”
“Are you hurt?” Peter asked anxiously. “There’s blood on your clothes.”
“It’s all Zeppo’s.”
Diane’s eyes were wide with shock. She gripped Jean’s arm. “Hugh did this?”
“Not only that, he admitted he pushed Martin off the boat and killed his wife. We both heard him. Convinced now, Diane?” Jean regretted her sharp tone immediately.
Diane sat down hard on a plastic chair. Peter took her hand. “What happened to Hugh?” he asked.
“He’s here, too. I hit him with a wine bottle. I hope I fractured his fucking skull.”
“How did Hugh find you?” Roman asked. “You were supposed to come straight home.”
Jean sighed. Here came the part where she sounded really stupid. “We . . . we got the urge to make love and went to that clearing in the Presidio. Hugh followed us and watched the whole show.” She didn’t want to make Diane feel worse by telling her how Hugh had known where they’d be.
“Good God, Jean,” Peter said. “Zeppo’s shot because you couldn’t control yourself?”
“I know, I know. I screwed up big time. Go ahead and say I told you so.” Again it came out sharper than she’d intended.
“Jean, shh,” Roman said, pulling her close, rubbing her back. “You didn’t shoot him. You’re guilty of nothing more than poor impulse control and an overactive libido.”
“I’m sorry,” Peter said. “I didn’t mean to blame you. After all, Hugh’s the one who’s been trying to kill you.”
“No, that wasn’t him in the cars,” Jean said. “He knew nothing about it.”
Roman digested this piece of news. “So Zeppo’s phone call about the thumb drive set him off.”
“What phone call?” Diane asked. “What thumb drive?”
Jean explained the mythical scanned copy. As she talked, she realized people were looking at them and whispering—Peter and Diane had been all over the news lately. “Hey,” she said. “You two are notorious. You’d better leave before someone alerts the media.”
Roman looked around. “She’s right. Take the car and go back to Beau’s. We’ll get a cab later.” He handed Peter his keys.
Diane, teary-eyed, put her arms around Jean. “I’m so sorry. I might have prevented this if I’d believed you.”
Jean hugged her back. “It’s OK, Diane. I can’t blame you for being loyal.” She kissed Peter goodbye and watched the two of them leave the hospital.
Jean and Roman sat close together and waited. She knew how much he hated hospitals, especially this one, where he’d been on so many deathwatches over the years. Jean had been here too often herself, visiting friends now dead. She put her hand on his knee. “I’m sorry to bring you here again.”
He laid his arm across her shoulders. “It’s OK. This time no one’s going to die. While we’re waiting I want to hear a blow-by-blow account of your encounter with Hugh.”
Jean told him, and when she was done he smiled at her. “You did fine. Once you were in that situation, with him holding a gun on you, there weren’t many options. It’s because of you that no one got killed.”
“It’s because of me that we were there in the first place.”
“Wait until Zeppo’s back in the saddle and Rivenbark’s in prison. You’ll forgive yourself then. Now tell me what Iv
an had to say.”
“He dropped Martin at the South Beach Marina. Zeppo says one of Martin’s old girlfriends lives there. Will you go with me to talk to her?”
“Of course.”
“How’d your sailing excursion go?”
“Ivan’s boat was easy to find,” Roman said. “It’s named the Sugar Magnolia, predictably, and I got the CF number.” Roman looked across the room and stood, pulling her up. A nurse was calling out Zeppo’s name.
They followed her into another room and were soon joined by Dr. Boles, a weary-looking young man in green scrubs. He gazed at Jean and Roman doubtfully. “Are you his family?”
“He has no family. I’m his girlfriend and this is another friend.”
The doctor shrugged. People in San Francisco were used to unorthodox social relationships. “The EMTs did a good job and he was lucky,” he said. “The bullet fractured his left clavicle, grazed a rib, and exited just below his scapula. He has a non-union of the clavicle ends, which may close up by itself. There’s soft tissue damage but the lung is unaffected. We still have to watch for infection, but he’s young and very fit, so he should recover completely.”
Jean felt giddy with relief. “Can I see him?”
“Not tonight. He’s in the recovery room now, and later we’ll move him to the ICU. Tomorrow you can see him briefly. He lost a lot of blood, so he’ll be weak for a while.”
When the doctor left, Jean turned to Roman. “You might as well go home,” she said. “I’ll wait until they move him to the ICU and then follow you.”
Roman raised an eyebrow. “The last time I left you alone, there were casualties.”
“I’m not going to screw up twice in one night. I’ll stay where it’s crowded and come straight home. No fooling around this time.”
He thought about it. “Very well. I’m concerned about Setrakian coming to Beau’s. He can’t know you’re here, but stay on your guard.”
“See you later, Roman, and thanks.”
He went out the front entrance to catch a cab.
Jean paced around for an hour or so until Zeppo got settled in the ICU. He was still out cold, but a sympathetic nurse let her look at him through the glass wall of his room. His pale skin seemed translucent and the bones in his face were even more prominent than usual, reminding Jean eerily of Martin’s corpse. An oxygen tube ran out of his nose, a bandage covered his left shoulder, an IV line was taped to the back of his right hand, and a catheter snaked out from under the covers. Jean wanted to touch him, but the nurse said she couldn’t go in until morning.
It was nearly midnight; Jean sat for a few minutes in the ICU waiting room pulling herself together. A slender male shape at the edge of her vision made her glance up. “Edward,” she said in surprise. He looked at her, dazed and anxious. “How’s Hugh?” she asked.
“There’s no fracture,” he said. “He has a severe concussion, though, and they’re worried about a subdural hematoma, bleeding inside the skull. And Zeppo?”
“He’s stable. They say he’ll be fine.” Jean wondered how she could have hit Hugh so hard and not cracked his skull.
“I can’t believe what the police are saying,” Edward said. “Hugh shot Zeppo? And you hit him? They didn’t really explain why. What in God’s name happened?”
“This is going to hurt.”
“It already does.”
“Come and sit down, Edward. It’s a long story, but the important part is that Martin had the original handwritten manuscript of Home to Greenwood. Zeppo saw it. We found a sample of Hugh’s handwriting and you sent us Esther’s. Hugh didn’t write it, Edward. Esther did.”
He blinked at her. “You’re saying she wrote it and let him take credit? Why? I don’t understand.”
“Probably because she loved him and he was having trouble with his own work.”
“It’s . . . it’s unbelievable. He shot Zeppo because of that?”
She explained the chain of events that had brought them to the Presidio and to Zeppo’s apartment. “Hugh admitted he pushed Martin off the boat because he’d only just discovered that his old buddy knew all about it.” Jean was reluctant to tell him what else Hugh had confessed.
“It was in Esther’s handwriting?” Edward said.
“Just like the sample you sent, according to Zeppo.”
Edward sat perfectly still, staring across the room. Finally he turned to Jean. “He killed her, didn’t he?” His voice was constricted with pain.
Jean put her hand on his arm. “He admitted that, too. Esther must have had second thoughts and asked him to come clean, and he couldn’t do it.”
“I wondered at the time whether he might have done it, but I thought he loved her and had no reason to hurt her. Now I find he had a good reason, but there’s no way to prove it.”
“I’m afraid you’re right. Tell me, was he really at his apartment all night after the wedding?”
“Yes. Did you think I lied to protect him?”
“I wondered.”
Edward shook his head. “No, I didn’t. But I would have if he’d asked, and Laurel probably would have, too. He’s been as close as a brother all these years.” He pounded a fist into his open hand. “How could he look me in the eye after what he did? How could he cry for her, pretend to grieve for her?”
“If it means anything, he says he regrets killing her.”
“It means nothing from a cold-blooded liar like him.” Edward leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and worked his hands together. “First he killed her, and then he spent the next thirty years lying to me. Well, the lying’s over now.” He sat back, his face hard and determined. “He won’t get away with it any longer.”
Jean scrutinized his expression with alarm. “Edward, don’t go near him. He’ll be convicted of attempted murder. He’ll go to prison and lose the thing he values most—his precious reputation.”
“He won’t lose as much as she lost, as I lost.”
“Don’t even think about revenge. He’s not worth it.”
“But she is.” He stood up. “I have to call Laurel. Let us know how Zeppo’s doing.”
“You’re not driving home tonight, are you?”
“No, I’m staying at Hugh’s apartment. He gave me a key, like a good brother. Goodbye, Jean, and thank you.” He turned toward the door, his hands thrust into the pockets of his denim jacket, his resolve clear in his walk and the line of his shoulders.
CHAPTER 40
A taxi took Jean through the cold foggy night to Beau’s. Roman opened the front door. “Anything new?” he asked as they joined Peter and Diane in the living room. Diane’s eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, and she clutched a wad of tissues.
Jean flopped into the wing chair. “Zeppo looks like a corpse, but apparently he’s doing OK. I ran into Edward Bongiorni and told him what happened. He’s pretty upset.”
“God, he must be devastated,” Diane said. “I can’t even imagine what’s going through his mind.”
Jean knew exactly what was going through his mind but kept it to herself. “I need a drink. Can I have a Cognac?”
“Of course,” Roman said. “Always good in a crisis.” He poured her a snifter.
Jean drank it quickly and it hit her hard. She realized she’d only had a couple of fried calamari since lunch. “Is there anything to eat?”
Roman brought her a plate of leftovers from their Jardinière dinner, duck breast with lentils and baby turnips, which she ate ravenously.
“I see even near-death experiences don’t affect your appetite,” Roman remarked.
“I have to keep my strength up in case Setrakian drops by,” she said. The phone rang and Jean leaped up to answer it.
“Ms. Applequist?” Inspector Hallock said. “I know it’s late, but at the ICU they said you’d just left. We would’ve contacted you earlier, but we’ve been tied up for several hours. Officer Snyder told me what happened this evening.”
Jean was so relieved it wasn’t the hospital calling with ba
d news that she was polite to him. “Yes, she was very helpful. Thank her for me.”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions, but there’s no reason we can’t do it in the morning.”
Jean stared at the phone. Hallock was being polite, too. What had gotten into him? “Uh, OK. But I want to be at the hospital as early as possible.”
“How about if I come by around eight o’clock?”
“I’ll expect you then.” She hung up. “Will wonders never cease. Hallock is being considerate.”
“Maybe he’s starting to appreciate you, Jean,” Roman said. “You did disarm a crazed gunman while naked using only a paperweight and a bottle of wine.”
“Rivenbark was overmatched,” Peter said. “Jean naked is a pretty disarming sight.”
Jean glanced at the couch. Peter had his arm around Diane, who had fallen asleep against him.
“And on that note, I think we’ll go to bed.” He woke Diane and they went upstairs.
Jean kissed Roman on the cheek at the back door. “Good night, Roman. Thanks for everything.”
“De nada. You’ve helped me through a crisis or two.”
Jean locked up and went upstairs to Beau’s room. She put fresh water into the red vase that held the tropical blooms Zeppo had given her. She took a shower to wash off the last of his blood, then dug through his suitcase for his Zorro T-shirt, which she wore to bed. His scent was on the sheets and she found a curly red hair on his pillow.
Jean was afraid she’d be wakeful, but Cognac and sheer exhaustion put her out in minutes. Once during the night, half asleep, she reached for Zeppo, wanting him, smiling in anticipation of his certain response. When he wasn’t there and she came fully awake and remembered why, she went downstairs for another glass of Cognac.
JEAN LAY in bed the next morning and considered what to say to Hallock. She’d have to tell him about the manuscript even though it would get Zeppo and her into trouble. She had no other option—the manuscript was the reason Hugh had attacked them. She’d have to mention the car attacks because they were why Zeppo had invented the thumb drive. Since she didn’t know what Zeppo would say, she planned to stick pretty close to the truth.