Under Suspicion

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Under Suspicion Page 14

by Lee, Rachel


  Tebbins took it and looked at it. Then he held it out to Anna. “Is this the real dagger?”

  She didn’t want to look at it. Revulsion filled her, and she had the wild fancy that she could feel the evil emanating from it. But she forced her eyes to settle on it, forced herself to reach for it. Cold seemed to leap from it along her arm, as if its maker had filled it with part of his ugly soul.

  She made herself turn it over, made herself examine its lines. “No,” she said finally. “It’s a replica. Better than the last. Maybe because he has the original to work from now.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m positive. The blade is glass, not jade, and it isn’t honed exactly right. See these chips?” She pointed to them with her thumbnail. “They weren’t on the original.”

  “And the hilt?”

  “Much better. He must have made a mold and poured it. But he didn’t electroplate this one. Maybe not enough time, I don’t know. He used some leafing, rubbed it on. But it’s not perfect. You can see small places where he was careless.”

  Tebbins nodded. “Where would he get the leafing?”

  Nancy spoke. “You can get it in some hobby shops. I’ve used it on some of my Warhammer pieces. I suppose knowing that makes me guilty, right?”

  Tebbins merely glanced at her.

  Anna gave Tebbins the dagger back, dumping it hurriedly into his hands, then shrank back under her blankets. Alone. She was alone. Not even Nancy could help her with this one.

  It was nearly four by the time Tebbins returned to his home. He retreated at once to the library, the room which he had decorated to suit his turn-of-the-century personality. The walls were lined with books, the floor was covered with a copy of a worn oriental rug—a policeman’s budget didn’t run to the real thing—and a massive mahogany-stained desk dominated. He switched on the green-shaded banker’s lamp and settled into his comfortable leather chair behind the desk.

  He treated himself to a moment to admire his setting, reminding himself he’d kill the property value if he carried his taste throughout the house. People in Florida seemed to prefer light colors, light wood, and rattan and wicker. He himself vastly preferred the style of the heyday of the British Empire.

  But he indulged himself for only a few moments. Heedless of the hour, he picked up the phone and called Gil Garcia.

  He got dumped into Gil’s voice mail twice before he called the pager number. He knew what he was doing. The eight rings would have roused Gil, and now the buzzing or beeping of his pager would bring him to full alert. Moments later his phone rang. He picked up the receiver but before he could say a word, Gil was speaking, his voice thick and disgruntled.

  “Garcia,” he said. “And this had better be damn good. If you’ve checked a clock recently, you’ll notice you only had to wait a few hours until dawn.”

  “It’s good.”

  There was a rustling from the other end of the phone, and Tebbins could easily imagine Gil propping himself against pillows and pulling the sheets up. “Talk. Before I roll over and go back to sleep.”

  Tebbins smiled into the phone. “Now, you wouldn’t want to be left out, would you?”

  “It happens to be your case unless you’ve found out something about Malacek’s murder.”

  “It’s our case. No escaping it. Bound by trouble and duty. Anna pulled down her bedcovers tonight and found another replica dagger.”

  He savored the silence from the other end of the phone. He’d already learned that it wasn’t easy to surprise Gil.

  “Is she okay?”

  The question interested Tebbins. Apparently Gil’s focus was a little different from his own. That could cause problems. “Scared but fine,” he said.

  “Did you put protection on her?”

  “I have a car sitting across the street.”

  “Good. But it’s not enough.”

  “It’s all I can get. You don’t need me to explain that to you.”

  “He’s going to kill her.”

  “We don’t know that. What we do know is that someone’s doing enough to keep us hopping without giving us any clues.”

  “I beg to differ. The curse is the clue.”

  “Not a very good one. Practically every man, woman, and child in the bay area has heard about it. Any one of them could have decided to do this.”

  “Not every one of them has the skill or expertise. Tomorrow I want to talk to the security people again. I’m not happy with the ‘it’s impossible’ view of this theft. I also want to know who’s been feeding information to Reed Howell. Because there’s no way he should have associated Anna with the curse, other than through her work. Where did he find out all that stuff?”

  “He’s not going to tell you. He’s a reporter.”

  “I have my ways.” Gil was silent for a few seconds. “All of Eddy Malacek’s friends are saying the same thing. Nothing about his behavior was unusual. He didn’t do drugs. He came to the D&D game on Tuesday evening the way he always did, and left around ten-thirty to go get ready for work. However.”

  Tebbins waited, then prompted him. “However what?”

  “However… I talked to one of his friends after I got home tonight. The dungeonmaster of the group. He said Eddy mentioned before he left that he hoped one of the guys at work would bring cappuccino again.”

  “What guy?” Tebbins’s mind spun into overdrive. “Malacek was supposed to be there alone.”

  “Right. Nobody else was on duty. But apparently some of the employees work late at the museum. My source didn’t know who Eddy was talking about, didn’t think Eddy mentioned the name. He just had the impression that the person occasionally brought a Thermos of cappuccino and shared it with Eddy.”

  “Christ. I’ve got to review all those videotapes.”

  “I was going to suggest that in the morning. We need to go back a couple of weeks and see if we can pick that up.”

  Tebbins nodded, then remembered Gil couldn’t see him. “Right. First thing. How long were you going to keep this under your hat?”

  “Till morning. I actually have some respect for the average police officer’s need for sleep.”

  Tebbins chuckled. Then he winced as he twisted his moustache too hard and pulled one of the hairs. He needed to shave the damn thing off but was reluctant to do so until this case was closed. It was some kind of superstition that had surprised him with its sudden appearance. “How’s the toxicology?”

  “We’re on it. I told you, it’ll be a couple of weeks. Oh, hell, I forgot. I’ve got the autopsy in the morning. Well, have fun with the videos.”

  “Thanks a bunch. Get your ass back to sleep.”

  “My ass is still soundly asleep, thank you. It’s the rest of me that’s awake now.”

  “Well, we’ve got a break now.”

  “Yeah, a veritable hole in the dike.”

  “Maybe even a floodgate.”

  “I wish. Shut up and go to bed, Tebbins. If I have to work with you, I’d prefer it if your brain were functioning.”

  Gil didn’t take his own advice. Shortly after hanging up, he sighed and climbed out of bed. At the doorway, the memory of his daughter caught him, and he paused to pull on some shorts and a T-shirt. It wouldn’t do to have her wake up and find her father padding around the house naked, the way he was wont to do when she wasn’t there.

  In the kitchen he started a pot of coffee then hunted around in the freezer for some of those sausage-and-biscuit things he kept on hand for emergency breakfasts. Oh, hell, that he kept on hand for most breakfasts. Why lie to himself? Cooking for one was a chore he avoided at all costs, including his health. He practically felt like a saint when he went to a restaurant and told them to replace the fries with steamed broccoli or a salad.

  This morning, before he went to the M.E.’s office, he had to try to straighten things out with Trina. He just wished he knew how. Then he wished his mother was still alive, because she’d always been full of wise advice about child rearing. Then h
e wished his father was still alive, too, because Hector Garcia would have sat right there at that table with a mug of coffee and told him to get his head out of his ass.

  So, they weren’t there anymore, but he could still hear their voices.

  “You know, Gil,” Betty would have said, “teenagers think they’re grown up. They like to make their own decisions. You just have to gently guide her. She’s a bright child. She’ll figure it out on her own.”

  And Hector would have said, “Damn it, son, that Anna Lundgren is a suspect. What are you trying to do? Lose your job?”

  Yeah. Gil filled a mug with steaming thick brew and sat at the table. Then he remembered the sausage and biscuit he hadn’t found. Muttering under his breath, he returned to the freezer and hunted until he found the package beneath a heap of other stuff that Trina had wanted to buy and still hadn’t touched: frozen lasagne, a box of ice-cream sandwiches, and a few frozen dinners.

  Thinking about it, he realized that probably said a lot about the way she was eating at home. Those were her favorite foods.

  Hell, he needed to get his butt in gear and cook dinner for the two of them himself. He was no chef, but he could manage better than TV dinners. The problem was, his job often didn’t allow him to be home at such a crucial time of day.

  Another one of the things his ex had hated.

  With his hot biscuit in hand he returned to the table and his coffee. His mind was doing the flea thing, he realized, hopping everywhere except to his major concern: the dagger in Anna’s bed.

  He wondered if she was sleeping. Probably not. She’d be too frightened, too wound up. He hoped Nancy was making her feel safer. He glanced at the phone, thought about calling, then told himself not to be such an asshole. It was okay to like her—he’d liked suspects before—but it was not okay to get involved.

  It was all too neat and tidy, the whole case. Too neat. Anna finds the first replica, Anna discovers the theft, Anna finds the second note, Anna finds the second replica. It was too damn much.

  Most cops would probably think she was doing it all herself to point the finger in another direction, playing the victim when in fact she was the perpetrator.

  It might be so. He was willing to allow that. He couldn’t quite get past all those replicas on her shelves. When he added that to the fact that her father may have been a victim of the curse, he could come up with all kinds of motivations for her. Motive, means, and opportunity, the cops’ creed for identifying perps.

  In Anna’s case, two plus two was definitely equalling four.

  But he didn’t buy it. What he bought was that the perp had a very different motive than simply acquiring a priceless antiquity. A thief who wanted to do that would have called it done as soon as he rubbed out Eddy Malacek, and would have vanished into whatever hole he’d crawled out of.

  Nor was the burglar taunting the cops. Tebbins would, of course, consider that a high probability, since he figured they were up against a mastermind. Unfortunately for Tebbins’s hopes, the case wasn’t a James Bond movie and masterminds were smart enough not to return to the scene of the crime and sprinkle additional clues by taunting the cops. Unless, of course, they were cops or cop wanna-bes themselves—which kept Gil’s attention tuned to Tebbins.

  Each one of these clues could easily become the giveaway that would reveal the thief’s identity. Serial killers were notorious for doing things like that, things to taunt the cops or to get themselves caught. But this wasn’t a serial killer, and a mind sharp enough to bypass all those security systems surely realized the pitfalls in returning time and again to leave his messages.

  So, this wasn’t about the dagger, not directly. It was about Anna, one way or another. And it was most definitely about the curse.

  The biscuit sat like lead in his stomach, and the coffee was giving him heartburn. Gil went to the cupboard and got himself a couple of antacids, then switched off the light. He thought better when he paced in the dark.

  The curse. He’d better get some people to start researching in the morning. He needed to know how many survivors there had been after the earthquake and the fire at the petroleum refinery. Probably hundreds, even thousands. The task was daunting. But they had to start looking for someone else with a personal involvement, someone besides Anna.

  As he passed by the front window, he glanced through the sheers. Across the street a car was parked, a shadowy shape visible only because it was near a streetlight. It wasn’t an uncommon sight, except that the car hadn’t been there earlier. Something prickled along the base of his skull, and he decided that maybe he’d better check it out.

  But as soon as he had the thought, the car sped away.

  Ten seconds later, he was gently shaking his daughter.

  “Wake up, honey,” he said. “We’re going to Anna’s now.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Anna couldn’t hold still. Anxiety kept her pacing the house, making her feel as if she wanted to crawl out of her skin. Nancy sat at the table, watching her from bleary eyes, her coffee growing cold in front of her.

  “I guess we need to do something ourselves,” she said finally.

  Anna gave a short laugh. “Yeah, right. What?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. But there’s got to be something we can do. In the meantime, I vote we start doing the twin thing. This guy can’t find you if he can’t figure out which one of us is which.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’ll only put yourself in danger.”

  Nancy shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I’m already in danger just by being here. I might be in his way.”

  Anna swung around sharply and looked at her with horror. “Nancy, no! You’ve got to go home.”

  Her sister shook her head. “Pointless. Besides, it sounds to me like this is about the curse. If so, he’ll be after both of us.”

  “Oh, God, why did you have to come to visit right now?”

  “Fate?” But Nancy suddenly looked haunted. “Or the curse,” she suggested in a hushed voice.

  “Curses aren’t real.” But Anna’s voice lacked its usual vehemence on the subject. Maybe curses were real, all right. And maybe they sometimes needed human agents. Her skin started crawling again, and she resumed her rapid pacing.

  “You want to know something,” Nancy said. “I don’t believe in them either. But now I’m starting to wonder.”

  Anna didn’t even want to think about it, but the possibility was stalking her, too.

  Just then, there was a knock on the front door. Both of them froze. The knock sounded again.

  “I’ll get it,” Nancy said.

  “Not alone you won’t.” Anna went with her to the front door. Nancy looked out the peephole.

  “It’s a cop,” she said, and unlocked the dead bolt.

  Standing on the stoop was a young Temple Terrace policeman. He looked embarrassed.

  “Hi, I’m Officer Richter, the guy who’s been sitting in the car across the street. Sorry to bother you ladies, but I saw you were still up. Could I use your bathroom?”

  “Of course,” Anna said, trying to hide her reluctance to let a stranger in, even a cop.

  “It must be hard to sit out there for hours,” Nancy remarked, trying to sound friendly.

  “It’s tough,” he admitted with a shy smile. “Especially this time of night. I’m having trouble staying awake.”

  At last there was something Anna could actually do that would be useful. “Let me make you some coffee, Officer. It’s the least I can do.”

  “Thanks. That’d be really great.” He gave them another shy smile and followed Nancy’s directions to the bath.

  Anna was almost disappointed when she realized the coffee was already made. Nancy had poured one small cup for herself, and there were still eight cups left in the carafe on the warmer.

  Oh, well. She pulled out an insulated bottle she rarely used and filled it.

  Nancy came up beside her and asked in a voice barely above a whisper, “Do you suppose he’s for real
?”

  “Probably.”

  “Maybe we just let the killer inside.”

  “Don’t. Don’t even suggest it.”

  “But he could’ve done in the real cop…”

  “Nancy, please.” Anna found herself hating this paranoia, hating the way it was twisting her world out of shape, making her suspicious of everyone and everything. “If he did kill the cop, what was there to keep him out anyway?”

  “True.” Nancy became silent just as Richter came out of the bathroom.

  Anna called to him. “How do you like your coffee?”

  He came to the kitchen doorway. “Black is fine, ma’am, thank you. I really do appreciate this.”

  “It’s no problem.” Summoning a tired smile, she handed him the bottle. “Enjoy.”

  “I will,” he promised, holding up the Thermos. “Just let me put this out in the cruiser and take another walk around the house. If you hear anything, don’t worry. It’ll be me.”

  He left and Nancy bolted the door behind him. “Whew,” she said. “I’m glad that didn’t turn into a big mistake.”

  So was Anna, but she didn’t admit it. She did however wonder why she’d opened the door to him in the first place. She couldn’t trust anybody now. Not anybody.

  She peered out the window, watching Richter cross the street. He paused for a moment and tipped his chin toward his shoulder. The radio, Anna realized. After a moment he seemed to speak, then put the bottle on the hood of his car, adjusted his belt and came back in their direction, disappearing around the corner of the house.

  “He’s walking around now,” she said, dropping the curtain back into place. “He’s for real.”

  “Thank God.” Nancy returned to the table and took a sip of her coffee, then made a face. “Damn, that’s cold!”

  “Let me make you some more.”

  “I don’t think my stomach could handle it. I don’t know about you, but my eyes are full of sand, and my stomach’s burning something fierce.”

  “I’m too wound up,” Anna said. “I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.”

 

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