“Manuel… God Almighty, he never harmed nobody in his life. Who’d want to do a thing like that to him? It don’t make sense.”
Grunt. Grunt. Like a goddamn Neanderthal.
“Who are you, mister? What’re you doing on my farm?”
Runyon worked spit through his mouth, struggling to concentrate. He formed words in his mind, pushed one of them out. “Pocket.”
“What?”
And then the rest: “Inside… jacket… pocket.”
A hand reached through the light, fumbled with his jacket. Found his ID case, yanked it out, flipped it open.
“Private investigator? What the hell?”
He wanted to say “subpoena,” but he couldn’t get his mouth around the word. He grunted again instead.
“Crazy,” Belsize said. “Just plain crazy. First the fires, now this. Chrissake, what’s going on around here?”
Runyon let go of the door, first one hand, then the other. He could stand all right, but he couldn’t walk yet. Two wobbly steps and his knees sagged; he would’ve collapsed if Belsize hadn’t grabbed him and held him up.
“Take it easy, mister. Just sit down here until the ambulance comes.”
“No. Walk.”
“Better not try it.”
“Walk. Move.”
“… All right then. Lean on me.”
Belsize slid a muscled arm around him and they walked, slow, across the yard. His first few steps were clumsy, but on the way the last of the bloated feeling left his legs and his equilibrium came back. As they neared the farmhouse, ablaze with light now, he felt he could walk on his own. He pushed out of Belsize’s grasp and tried it. A little stagger, but otherwise okay.
He made it as far as the porch steps, sat down on one of them. Belsize left him there and went inside the house. Voices drifted out to him that he didn’t try to listen to. Most of his senses were working again, but the disorientation wouldn’t right itself, wouldn’t let him think. The strain of trying made his head hurt even more.
Wait. Just sit here and wait.
H e was feeling better until the noisy parade started. Sirens, red and blue flashers, glaring headlights. Ambulance, sheriff’s department cruisers, other cars filling up the farmyard. People milling around, talking in loud voices. More confusion that rekindled the fire in the firebox.
The EMTs took one good look at him and made him lie down on a stretcher. They checked his vital signs, and one of them mopped up the blood and put something stinging on his head wound while the other asked the usual questions: What’s your name? What day is it? Do you know where you are? How many fingers am I holding up? He answered them all right, but the response time was slow-a mental delay between hearing them and processing and voicing the answers. He could talk well enough now, with only a little slur to the words, but his thoughts still wouldn’t connect. Scrambled him up good, whoever had clobbered him.
One of the sheriff’s deputies, or maybe the sheriff himself, came over and threw some hard questions at him about the dead man in the tack room. Officious type, jut-jawed, one hand resting on the butt of his service revolver. Runyon’s slow responses didn’t satisfy him; the questions came faster, overlapping what he was trying to say. It made him angry. He might have said something harsh if the EMTs hadn’t intervened. Talk to the man later, one of them said, after the ER docs get a look at him. Which hospital? Red Bluff General, where else?
He didn’t want to go to a hospital. Practically lived in hospitals during Colleen’s illness, hated the damn places. But the EMTs wouldn’t listen to any argument. One of them said, “You don’t have a choice, man. Head injury’s nothing to fool around with, not for you, not for us.” They loaded him into the ambulance, and away they went, bouncing over the uneven farm road.
Good thing they didn’t use the siren on this trip. The ride was long enough and bad enough without the scream of a siren to make it a rolling nightmare.
A t the hospital the first thing they did as they were wheeling him in was take his wallet. Sure, right-find out if he had any medical insurance. More questions from a woman in scrubs, one about notification. Was there anyone he wanted notified of his “accident” and where he was? No, he said. Joshua wouldn’t care, and why burden Bill or Tamara with a nonagency matter?
More poking and prodding in the ER, amid the hospital stink of medicine and sickness and death, the humming and chirping machines, and the sudden cries that made your skin crawl. Kill himself before he died like Colleen had, in a place like this. But that wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t terminal yet, just fuzzy, confused. He managed to summon the will to shut himself down, just let it all happen. Heard somebody say, “Skull doesn’t appear to be fractured. Vitals are strong. Eyes seem mostly clear.” Heard somebody else say, “Let’s get him to X-ray,” and off he went to have his head examined.
After that, they put him in a ward room with three other beds, all of them occupied, and rolled a curtain around him. A nurse came in and hooked him up to an IV and fed in some kind of sedative. He didn’t mind. The sooner he was rid of tonight, the better…
5
I had the white gift box under my arm when I walked into the condo. Kerry was curled up on the living room couch with a book and Shameless, the world’s laziest cat. When she saw the box she said with mock excitement, “For me? You shouldn’t have.”
“I didn’t,” I said. “It’s not for you.”
“Aha. One of your other women.”
“The only other woman in my life is Emily, and it’s not for her, either.”
I set the box on the coffee table, went over to kiss her. She’d put on fresh makeup, brushed her auburn hair to a silky gloss. She looked good and tasted good, and I told her so.
“I feel good,” she said. “The checkup did wonders for my spirits.”
“You didn’t try to do too much today?”
“No. Worked for a while, took a nap, had a long talk with Cybil on the phone. Oh, and Paula stopped by for a few minutes. She brought me this book.”
Paula was Paula Hanley, an interior designer friend of Kerry’s and a grade-A flake. To put it mildly. Among Paula’s none too endearing traits was a certainty that what was good for her was also good for everybody else; she mounted conversion campaigns at every opportunity. This was compounded by the fact that she was a faddist who believed passionately, at least for a while, in any harebrained new or old concept that came into current vogue. Scientology, Est, New Age tantric sex, holistic medicine, and most recently, God help us, some sort of weird offshoot of the Haitian voodoo religion.
“Don’t tell me,” I said as I sat down beside Kerry. “Let me guess. It’s a book about health and well-being through voodoo ritual. All you have to do is dance naked to the beat of drums and you’ll be good as new.”
“Hah.”
“Sacrifice a goat? Stick pins in a doll that looks like your worst enemy?”
She held up the book so I could read the title and author. The Magic Island by W. B. Seabrook.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“It’s not what you think,” she said. “It’s an early history of Haitian voodoo practices, first published in 1929-native accounts of all sorts of rituals and ceremonies, not to mention encounters with werewolves, zombies, and fire hags.”
“Terrific. In other words, pure fiction.”
“A lot of it is superstition, yes. Paula doesn’t think so, but to me it’s entertainment. I’m enjoying it.”
“Don’t tell me she just dropped it off without the usual proselytizing?”
“More or less.”
“Not even an invitation to watch a priest behead a chicken?”
“No, and don’t put her down-she’s been a good friend through all of this.”
“Sorry. I know she has. But I can’t help remembering all the past lunacies.”
“Of course,” Kerry said musingly, “there are some fascinating possibilities in voodoo rites. I could dress in a red robe, wear a hat in the shape of horns, ca
rry a whip and a votive candle, and make an offering of food, drink, and money to Papa Legba, Baron Samedi, and the other voodoo gods while a bocor chants over a cemetery grave. That’s been known to cure all sorts of illnesses.”
I stared at her. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Not at all,” she said, and her mouth twitched and she burst out laughing. God, it was good to hear her laugh again. “You should see the look on your face.”
“… Had me going there for a second.”
She put the book down and gave me a long look that I couldn’t quite read. But her eyes were soft. “Another thing I’ve been doing today is thinking,” she said.
“About what?”
“That I haven’t been much good to you the past few months.”
“You’re always good to me. And good for me.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Sex,” she said.
“Hey, where did that come from? That’s not important right now.”
“You’re a man, aren’t you?”
“A sixty-two-year-old man. At my age-”
“Oh, don’t give me that age nonsense. You’re as horny as you ever were. So am I, in spirit. I haven’t lost interest any more than you have.”
“Sure, but under the circumstances…”
“The circumstances. I’m tired of letting ‘the circumstances’ rule our lives. Admit it-you want us to be the way we were as much as I do.”
“Of course I do, but-”
“And that means making love again.”
“Kerry… why are we having this conversation?”
“Why do you think we’re having it?”
“The timing isn’t right…”
“No, not quite. But pretty soon. If I’m well enough to go back to work week after next, I’m well enough to start having a love life again.”
She had that look she gets when she’s made up her mind about something. The look she’d had all through the surgery and radiation therapy. Very determined woman, Kerry. She accuses me of being stubborn sometimes, but she can be just as hardheaded.
“I don’t know,” I said. “You don’t want to do anything that might-”
“Might what? Give us both some pleasure?”
“I mean… what would Dr. Janek say?”
“I don’t discuss my sex life with my oncologist, for heaven’s sake.”
“Uh… the radiation burn…”
“We’ll be careful.”
“Still, the contact, the pressure, close like that…”
“Resourceful, aren’t we? We’ll think of something when the time comes.”
The conversation was making me uncomfortable. By way of changing the subject, I went out to the kitchen for a bottle of Anchor Steam. When I came back, Kerry had picked up The Magic Island, but she wasn’t reading-she was eyeing the gift box again over the top of the book.
“Okay,” she said. “What’s in the box?”
“An investigation I let myself get talked into today.”
“You’re investigating a box?”
“For starters, yes. Whether or not it goes any further depends on what I find in there-and what Tamara finds on some computer discs that I off-loaded to her.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“My kind of case, these days.”
I explained about Celeste Ogden’s hatred and distrust of her brother-in-law, and her suspicion that her sister’s death wasn’t accidental, and what she’d hinted I would find among Nancy Mathias’s personal effects.
“She may be right about Mathias,” Kerry said. “When a woman feels that strongly and intuitively about a person, there’s usually some basis for it.”
“Maybe. Unless she’s as monomaniacal as she claims Mathias is.”
“Well, why don’t we have a look in the box?”
“We?”
“There might be something a woman would pick up on that a man wouldn’t. Did Tamara go through the contents?”
“No. I figured the discs were enough of a burden. I’d’ve tackled the diary myself, but you know how I am with computers.”
“I don’t envy her the job. Reading another person’s private diary is a kind of invasion, even if the woman is dead.”
“And pawing through the rest of her effects isn’t?”
“Not exactly. It’s not quite the same thing.” She laid the book aside and sat up. “ The Magic Island isn’t all that interesting, and frankly, I’m bored just sitting around. If you don’t want my help, I think I’ll go in and do some more work.”
“I want your help,” I said.
So we hunkered over the box like a pair of grave robbers and divvied up the contents. One thing became apparent immediately: Nancy Mathias had been something of a pack rat, saving everything, including handwritten notes to and from her husband. I looked through the notes first. There were a fair number, mostly written by her, a few of them crumpled as if they’d been thrown away and she’d rescued them. The usual “gone to the store, be back in half an hour”-all except one. That one said:
Darling,
Im going to spend the weekend in CV, I need to be by myself. Please dont be angry. And please meet me at Ds at 2:00 on Tuesday. Please! I cant deal with this alone.
N
I showed the note to Kerry. She said, “Deal with what alone, I wonder.”
“Could be just about anything.”
“She sounds desperate. And begging. Three ‘pleases.’ ”
“Which could mean Mathias wasn’t or hadn’t been responsive to whatever it was. That would fit with what Celeste Ogden says about him-cold, self-involved, controlling.”
“Assuming ‘Darling’ was her husband,” Kerry said.
“Pretty safe assumption.”
“No way to tell when it was written. Can you find out?”
“Maybe, if we can figure out what or who ‘CV’ and ‘D’ stand for.”
Insurance policies next. House, two cars, joint term life, all of them with Pacific Rim Insurance. The death benefit amount on the life policy was $50,000, with the Mathiases as each other’s beneficiary. There was a double indemnity clause, which made the payoff to Brandon Mathias $100,000. That was a lot of money to me; to the head of a multi-million-dollar computer software company it was more in the category of chump change. No motive for murder there-unless Mathias was so overextended for one reason or another that he desperately needed a hundred grand bailout money. Not too likely, but worth checking. If we continued with the investigation, the first thing we’d have to do was look into his entire financial background.
Kerry said, “Here’s something.”
She’d been poring through packets of canceled checks from the current year, and had pulled out one from the Mathiases’ joint Calvert Group investment account. The amount on it was $10,000, dated three weeks ago and made out to T. R. Quentin.
“That’s a lot of money for one check,” she said.
“Yes, it is.”
“None of the other checks in this account or her Washington Mutual account come even close to that amount. No others made out to T. R. Quentin, either.”
I made a note of the name, date, amount, and check number. “Let’s see if there’s anything among the rest of this stuff to explain the ten thousand.”
There wasn’t. Whether T. R. Quentin was an individual or a company of some kind, neither the name nor the initials appeared anywhere else in the records. Kerry, being thorough, checked to see how many checks had been made out to individuals; there were a dozen or so, most to Philomena Ruiz, the cleaning woman, and none for more than $300.
I shuffled through the various bill receipts, all of which were marked “paid” in the same hand that had written the “Darling” note. Nancy Mathias had paid her bills promptly, by both check and computer transfer, and they all looked to be routine-utilities, household expenses, credit card charges, women’s clothing shops, doctor, dentist, house cleaner, gardener, pool service. There were no i
nvoices from lawyers, psychiatrists, or private detective agencies to indicate dissatisfaction, unrest, or suspicion on her part.
One of two property tax bills solved the CV question. The Mathiases owned a second home in Carmel Valley, valued for tax purposes at $350,000. Some second home. But it was a piker compared to their primary Palo Alto residence; that one was worth a million two. Both homes were held jointly. Not that it would have made a difference if she’d been sole owner; they’d have been part of the inheritance package in any case.
There were three Ds among the canceled checks-Delborn Florists, Denise’s Designs, Drovnik Gardening Service. The second was an exclusive dress shop in Atherton-exclusive because of the prices they charged for an “evening suit” and an unspecified lingerie item. Didn’t seem to be any possible connection between any of them and the pleading urgency in the note.
“Is this all of Nancy Mathias’s personal records?” Kerry asked when we were done.
“Everything that was in her office desk, evidently.”
“Poor woman. Her sister was right-she really did lead a closed-off life. No letters or photographs or scrapbook items, nothing to indicate she had any friends. Not even a calendar or datebook.”
“Even if Mathias forced reclusiveness on her, that doesn’t mean he had her killed.”
“There might be something in her diary.”
“It would have to be pretty compelling,” I said. “So far I just don’t see motive or anything else to justify the kind of investigation Celeste Ogden wants.”
6
JAKE RUNYON
Except for a headache, a swollen ear, and a dry mouth, he was all right in the morning. Unscrambled, in command of himself again. He could remember everything that had happened at the Belsize farm up to the moment he’d been assaulted. The rest of it was blurred and fragmentary, like images from a particularly vivid dream.
A nurse came in and the first thing he asked her, in a croak that didn’t sound much like his own voice, was how soon he could get out of there. Not until Dr. Yeng examined him, she said. When would that be? On Doctor’s regular rounds this morning. She gave Runyon some water, took his temperature, checked his pulse. He asked if he had a concussion and she confirmed it. How serious? He’d have to speak to Dr. Yeng about that. The only information Runyon could get out of her was that three stitches had been necessary to close the wound on his temple. He asked where his clothes and belongings were. Clothing in a locker, valuables in a lockbox. He talked her into fetching the valuables bag. The subpoena was there; so were his wallet and cell phone. The. 357 Magnum and his license case were missing. Sheriff’s people had them, likely. Better have.
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