“Did you see video of him?”
“Nada,” Eric said. “Same story. He can’t let his new face be seen or he’ll be caught and extradited.”
“A tape?”
“The claim is that the voiceprint would give the authorities too much to look at.”
“Fine, then,” Nina said. “The fraud will be obvious to the court.”
“Not so fast, Nina,” Eric said. “Take a look at the attachment to this affidavit.”
They all flipped to the last page, which held a copy of a California driver’s license with a picture on it Nina recognized.
“It’s Jim’s license,” Philip said. “My God, it’s still valid! I’ve seen him flash it a million times. That sure looks like his signature.”
“Must be forged,” Paul said.
“But where would they get this?” Philip studied it, his jaw working nervously back and forth. “Unless—someone took it from him?” He shook his head. “He wouldn’t give it up voluntarily.” He held on to the license so tightly, his fingers whitened. “No, but this sure is an exact duplicate of the original. I remember because he weighed one ninety-five, he was always complaining about it, and he gave his weight on the license as one-eighty.”
Eric said, “We can put a handwriting expert on it. And the other ones on the affidavits.”
“Do you know if this is a duplicate or the original license?” Paul asked.
Eric shook his head. “I was handed these papers, which Michael Stamp, on Jim Strong’s behalf, is going to file in your case tomorrow, Nina. About all I got you is one day’s notice. At least it won’t come as an awful shock in court.”
“The lawyer down there must be in on it,” Paul said. “What else did you find out about her?”
“No complaints against her. The local Guardia has nothing but praise. They aren’t aware Strong may be living in their town either, at least so they say.”
“This Brazilian attorney,” Nina said, “I assume from what you’ve said so far she was not Marianne’s mother.”
“She was too young. No name match. Never lived in Rio.”
“Did you talk to the notary?” Nina asked.
“Of course. He’s a bank officer two blocks from the lawyer’s office. Said a guy with a beard and glasses and a baseball cap showed up at his bank to have this document notarized. He says he examined a passport in the name of James Philip Strong for identification. He claimed the picture looked like the guy in front of him, as far as he could tell.”
Paul said, “Bull.”
“It’s kind of a big bull though,” Sandy said. “The horns are kind of sharp. Time to bring out the really good picadors.” Having said her piece, she disappeared back to the front office.
“How will this new information affect our case?” Philip asked.
All eyes swung to Nina.
“I haven’t studied the affidavit,” Nina said, “but it reinforces the claims that have already been made. Eric, what did you find that would add force to an argument that this is a fraud?”
“I can testify that the notary’s statements to me indicated he hadn’t really established the identity of the man who notarized this document.”
“The lawyer’s in on it,” Paul said.
“Maybe not. No more than Michael Stamp. She’s practiced law for twenty-five years and appears very matter-of-fact about the whole thing.” Eric stroked his stubble. “I couldn’t crack her façade, if that’s what it was.”
“I would have,” Paul muttered.
“What?” Eric demanded.
“You came back with squat.”
So much for Paul staying low-key, Nina thought, tapping her pencil, eyes locked at the image on Jim’s license, now lying on the table, face-up. A grin on it.
“I did my job. The one you don’t have.” Eric turned to Nina. “What’s he doing here, anyway?”
“Paul’s an informal adviser.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“That’s not it,” Nina said, at the same time Paul said, “That’s it exactly.”
Eric said to Philip, “I can’t help you anymore with this”—Eric took a deep breath—“with the highly opinionated Mr. van Wagoner second-guessing everything I do. Either you trust me or you don’t. Hire him if you’ve got problems with my work, and good luck with that. Otherwise, I don’t want him showing up and weighing in on things that are none of his business.”
“Paul, I know you want to help, and I appreciate that, but Eric’s right, this isn’t your business,” Philip said.
“Someone’s defrauding you and running your business into the ground. I’m going to figure out who and how. And then—”
“To tell you the truth, when Nina asked if you could sit in today, I wasn’t sure about it. Why insert yourself into this case?” Philip asked. “I don’t like the implication that my investigator can’t do the job. I trust Eric.”
“That’s right. Face it, Paul. Nobody wants you here,” Eric said, arms folded in front of him.
“I’m here for Nina.” Paul’s face set.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Nina said, whacking her pencil on the table. “We’re all here to get some work done and not get derailed, so let’s get back to how to control this material.”
But fatigue and macho prevailed. Eric unraveled. “You’d do a lot for Nina, wouldn’t you, van Wagoner?”
“I would.”
“Anything.”
Paul avoided looking at Nina. He didn’t say anything. Possibly he realized how patronizing he sounded. Maybe he had finally figured out this was a no-win situation. Eric also wasn’t his best self today, as Nina’s mother would have said.
“Now I’m wondering about something I heard, something about Jim Strong threatening Nina,” Eric said, “and thinking about how you like to see yourself as her protector, not that she needs one.”
“Wonder all you want, pal,” Paul said.
Both of the men kicked their chairs back and stood. They glared at each other, classically posed, bodies taut, eyes bright with anger, raring to fight. They looked like wolves.
Nina also stood. “Enough!”
“I’ll leave now,” Paul said, “for Nina’s sake.”
“You’ll leave because you’re not wanted!” Eric’s hoarse voice growled out of him.
Paul saw an advantage, his adversary close to out of control.
He smiled.
Eric’s teeth ground together so hard, Nina feared he might bite off his tongue.
Paul took his time, beaming around the room, looking at peace with himself and the world again. Then he leaned over the table to shake Philip’s hand. “Listen, Philip,” he said softly, as if they couldn’t hear him. “Don’t trust this guy. He’s got something wrong going on.” Paul straightened up. “See you, Nina.” He left.
Silence stifled the air.
“Look, we’re all upset,” Philip said to Eric. “You’ve brought us bad news, essentially, not that it’s your fault.” Philip patted the seat beside him. “Please sit down, Eric, so we can finish up and you can get a good sleep.”
Which he sorely needed, Nina thought.
Eric looked out the window to where trees swayed in sunshine. He took Paul’s copy of the affidavit and put it back into his file folder.
Nina waited until some sense of order and calm was restored. She cleared her throat. “Okay. Here we have Jim’s driver’s license with his signature and yet another painful affidavit to deal with, with almost no time. Tell us, Eric, how could someone in Brazil get Jim’s license? Are these papers forged? What’s going on? What’s your professional opinion?”
“I can’t give a full accounting yet, but I plan to follow up with the Department of Motor Vehicles,” Eric said. “That shouldn’t take long. However, I should tell you they don’t give out new driver’s licenses by mail to anybody. Did you ever receive a bill to renew your license?”
“Sure,” Philip answered.
“It’s a fairly automatic process. But I don’t
think this constituted an easy renewal. Jim had to take the driving test because he had let his previous one expire. That was four years ago. This license appears current. Maybe Jim’s alive and driving all the fuck over the land. Maybe he eats out in Brazil and raises orchids.”
“You make it sound ridiculous.”
“I never said I thought the people I met in Brazil were trustworthy, but I can’t say your son is dead based on what I saw and heard.”
“Tell us more about this lawyer’s background,” Philip said.
“I’ve told you what I know.”
“Do you think she’s conspiring with someone in this country?” Nina asked. “I think that’s a real possibility.”
Eric shrugged. “Maybe, but I think we have to make progress on that from this end. I keep thinking about Marianne Strong. I’ve been watching her since the original embezzlements. I’m meeting with her tomorrow. I should tell you something. I saw her last week—and this is really strange—I saw her coming out of the title company, you know, the one Hendricks runs?”
“Huh. Well, she’s never made a secret about her interest in the business. She might have a perfectly reasonable explanation for being there,” Nina said.
“I called and asked her. She claimed she was clarifying business issues.”
“So you were concerned enough to follow up,” Nina said, curious. “I wonder. Eric, I’d like to come with you to meet her tomorrow. Would that be okay?”
“Sure.”
“I confess to a certain—unease—about Michael Stamp. He’s always at the center, though of course, it’s my tendency to trust my fellow attorneys.”
Startled at Nina’s sudden levity, both Eric and Philip laughed. The mood in the room lightened just a bit.
“I have no reason to believe he’d do anything criminal. He’s a well-respected lawyer in this town. However, I have a strong feeling I should talk to him and see what else I can find out about any possible link to these people in Brazil.”
“I showed the attorney down there Stamp’s photo, Nina. But nothing. She also claimed not to recognize Marianne or Gene Malavoy.”
“What happens now?” Philip took the license in his hand once again, turned it over, and turned it again, looking about as exhausted as Eric at this point. Nina had seen that harrowed face before in a painting by El Greco: St. Sebastian tortured by arrows.
“The hearing is a day after tomorrow,” Nina said “Your case is my first priority. Maybe I can get more time—”
“I’m really worried. This could crush the sale.”
“Philip, I believe the sale will go through, but the entire net proceeds, the two and a half million dollars left after the sale, may go into an escrow account while you and Kelly and Marianne try to sort out your share from Jim’s, and Jim’s legal status finally is clarified.”
“What a thing, Nina,” Philip said. “He has no legal status in this world. He really is a ghost, dead or alive. You know, if that money is placed in escrow, I will be personally bankrupt. I can’t wait several years for him to be declared dead. My share of the sale will go entirely to creditors. The same for Kelly and Marianne.” He stood up. “I have to get over to Paradise. We have a broken quad lift and too many skiers for the number of runs we have. That used to be good news. Now I feel like I don’t even know what good news is.”
CHAPTER 18
Monday afternoon Paul stopped for a triple espresso at the Java Hut and skimmed the police reports regarding his new case, hunting for a direction. He was boiling about Eric Brinkman, but the boiling didn’t seem to have much rational basis. It was the boiling of upper altitudes, cooler than it appeared. He had seen Brinkman’s examination of Nina after he sat down, and it had made him extremely angry, and that was that, nothing to be done about it, unless Brinkman laid a hand on her, in which case he would—
He went back to his reports: autopsy reports on the two women, photos—Brenda’s wound primitive-looking, as if an animal, not a knife, had done it.
The knife had been strongly wielded rather than efficiently wielded. The murder scene didn’t look like the preferred place of someone who had committed similar crimes. Too risky.
Paul could not work this the way a cop would; he had neither the time nor the resources to be systematic. He needed to hit hard at the spikes, the things that jumped out at him, things that might open up.
Johnny Castro spiked first. He had been both the husband and manager of Miss Cyndi Amore, aka Cyndi Backus.
At three o’clock in the afternoon, Paul set his GPS for the address, driving along the highway. Mist clouded the lake and the road, and he bypassed a fender bender and spinout that had landed an SUV upside down on a hillside. Why couldn’t people remember to put their lights on? Paul thought, rubbernecking to view the damage. Ah, nobody dead, only a few stunned-looking skiers talking with the cops, ambulances idling nearby. Traffic slowed, then narrowed to one lane, then a woman dressed in yellow plastic from head to toe waved him forward.
A small town a couple of miles away, south and adjacent to South Lake Tahoe, Meyers, with no town center and motley housing—cabins, trailers, and fanciful mountain homes jostling together in the forest—mostly lured people who preferred to live on the cheap or on the fringe.
Johnny Castro lived behind a larger home in an old cabin near Highway 50 as it headed out of town, deeper into California. The front porch had been boarded up into an inside room long ago. Fresh paint hadn’t touched the weathered wood for ages. Paul parked in the dirt driveway, examining the black slushpiles of snow here and there—the old brownish snowman down on its luck meant children.
Paul found Johnny home on a weekday afternoon. The door opened and the middle-aged widower/father came out, sporting an extra forty pounds and a tattoo collection that made his arm and chest look clothed. Paul checked for gang tattoos but saw mostly the skull, Bettie Page, and Virgin de Guadalupe type. Castro wore a small goatee; his hair was cropped so close he was almost bald. Heat surged out of the little house, hitting Paul like a slap in the face.
“Enjoyin’ staring at my house?” Castro said.
“John Castro?” Presenting him with his card, Paul explained his business.
Castro gestured toward the dim interior of the cabin. Ironing board in front of the TV. Laundry basket full of clothes, toys mostly neatly stacked in the corners, a few of which Paul had to step over. “We obviously have kids,” Castro said. “I already told the cops I don’t know why Cyndi got herself killed. I had to identify her. I’ll never forget that. Never.” He flung the basket of clothes waiting to be folded on the couch onto the rug.
Paul sat down in a clean spot.
“I don’t have much time. Have to put on a sweatshirt and go get the kids. They’re in an after-school program.” Castro shook his head. “They don’t get that their mom’s gone forever. They keep asking.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Paul didn’t like hearing himself say such a thing again in such short a time. He didn’t like imagining the harm such losses entailed, the families left behind. Children. Lovers. Friends. Moms and dads.
Grieving people.
Castro nodded, as if following Paul’s sad train of thought. “No words for that crap, huh? No words to take in the whole in-fucking-credible loss of the mother of my kids. And how about the fact that I thought she was someone she wasn’t?”
And no coffee here, Paul thought, glad he had fueled up. Like Ronnie Bee, Castro appeared devastated at the loss of his wife. “Mr. Castro, is there any chance you got to read the autopsy on your wife?”
“Saw it yesterday. Sergeant Cheney let me read it. Cyndi died of a blunt trauma injury followed by somebody smothering her.”
“Asphyxiation.”
“He tied her own underwear around her neck and suffocated her. My wife died in a hotel room with a stranger. And PS, this is not something I want the kids to hear, ever. Tell you the truth, I’d forgive her today if she came to me somehow and we could start all this all over.”
“At work. I’m a cashier at the Raley’s. Don’t take my word. Take the word of my fellow workers, at least a dozen of them. Sergeant Cheney did.”
Paul would check that claim later, but Castro sounded so casual, Paul believed him. “Is it your belief she might have been with another man that day?”
“What else? What else.” Castro sighed, picked a pair of trousers out of the pile of laundry, and put them on. He searched for a shirt, rejected two, then settled on a brown knit polo.
“Tell me about her, Mr. Castro.”
“Call me Johnny.”
“Johnny.”
“I met her at a strip club in Reno seven years ago. She was barely twenty-one. She hung with bad people, had a lot of bad habits. Once I started going down there on a regular basis, she started taking better care of herself. She stopped drinking. Once we got married, we both got clean and sober. Mostly.”
“You had a substance problem, too?” Paul guessed.
“Had then, have again. I have an ongoing substance abuse problem. It’s another thing to watch and manage. I self-medicate, but these days I work out a lot and eat better. I’m getting along. Improving. Not dragging myself through gutters.”
“Did Cyndi keep stripping?”
“Dancing, yeah. Good money in that. Just once a week and no extras on Saturday nights at a little club called the Furnace in Reno. I didn’t object. We needed the extra income. She liked her day job at Prize’s, though, and the tips were drying up at the club because of the recession, so she planned to ease out of that scene.”
“You have how many children?”
“Two. Boy and girl. Our kids hear things. They’re burned down. I spend all my time taking care of them, taking them to school, keeping the house going, sitting with them at night. I can’t work right now. I have to take care of my emotional problems and my kids’. My mother keeps us afloat right now. I’m looking for some way to make money at home.”
Dreams of the Dead Page 17