One O'Clock Hustle: An Inspector Rebecca Mayfield Mystery (Rebecca Mayfield Mysteries Book 1)

by Pence, Joanne

  “Thanks to Eddie, I realized there was a big world out there. In time, I got up the nerve to leave everything I knew.”

  “I imagine it wasn't easy.”

  She smiled and drank a little more wine as she thought back on those days. “I was scared to death. I mean, I was a farm girl, raised with potatoes and pigs. What did I know about the world? I adored my dad, and to lose him and a short while after, to realize how things had changed with Eddie … to say it wasn't easy is an understatement.”

  “That Eddie has to be the world's biggest jerk,” he said indignantly. “I hope you haven't been pining for him all these years.”

  She chuckled. “God, no! I'm long over him.” He refilled her glass. “But being a cop doesn't make for an easy love life.”

  “So I've heard,” he said, digging into the meal with obvious relish.

  She watched him as he ate, wondering not only why he was asking, but why she was answering. Maybe simply because he seemed to be a good listener. “I dated quite a bit when I first got to the city, but it took a few years before I met someone I could trust enough to let myself get serious about. We dated nearly a year. But as time went on, it became clear that the closer we got, the less he could accept that I was a cop.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “For one thing, I was close to my male partner back when I was a uniform. It's only natural when you ride together, and watch each other's back. But it bothered Will a lot. The relationship ended when I got shot trying to break up a domestic dispute. It was only a flesh wound, not serious at all, but Will said it was him or the job. I chose the job.”

  “You loved him, but chose the job instead?”

  She thought a moment, then decided to be honest. “Guess it means I didn't love him as much as I thought I did. As for the job, it's the best job ever.”

  She half-expected some sort of disagreement from him. Instead, he nodded. “Do you ever regret the choices you made?”

  She didn't have to think twice. “No.”

  “You love your job that much, do you?”

  “At this point in my life, yes.”

  He nodded. “That's good. It's good to live a life with no regrets.” His voice sounded wistful. “You're lucky.”

  “I wouldn't go quite that far,” she said. Then, not sure why she wanted to know, she asked, “What about you?”

  “Oh, I've had plenty of regrets!” he said with a chuckle. “Let's clear these dishes. Shay will be here soon.”

  “Just a minute! That's not what I'm talking about and you know it.” She helped him carry dirty dishes to the kitchen. “Were you ever married?”

  “No.” He started to load the dishwasher while she scooped leftovers into plastic refrigerator containers.

  “Close?”

  “Yeah, you could say that.” He took off his platinum Rolex watch while he ran some hot, sudsy water into the pan he had cooked the sauce in, then took a nylon pad and began to scrub it.

  “And?” Rebecca asked.

  He paused a moment. “I waited a long time for the right woman. I'll admit, I enjoyed being single. But then, out of the blue one day, when I was thirty-four, I met someone. Someone special.”

  Something about his tone of voice caused her to stop what she was doing. She almost didn't want to know, but at the same time, couldn't stop herself. Her voice soft now, she said, “What happened?”

  His shoulders stiffened, and his hands paused. When he spoke, his voice sounded gruff and harsh, as if he was determined to get the words out, whatever it took. “Car accident. On the approach to the Golden Gate bridge. Deadly spot, that Doyle Drive. Lots of bad accidents there. All my life I had that fact drummed into me. It takes on a whole new meaning when one of the statistics is somebody you care about.”

  Damn. She hated that something like that had happened in his life, hated it that she should feel such sympathy for him. “I'm so sorry, Richie.”

  He forced his attention back to washing up and scoured the pan until it was cleaner than it had ever been. “Yeah, me, too. It took a long time to get over that. Don't know if I have, or if I ever will.”

  “Were you engaged to her?”

  He rinsed off the pan and put it on the dish rack by the sink, but then left his hand resting on it as he said, “Yeah, for all of three days before she was killed. Before that, almost a year, I was afraid to ask, afraid she'd turn me down.” He drew back his hand and looked over the sink, as if wondering what he should do or say next. He rested both hands on its rim a moment. “Now, I see that was stupid. We could have had a lot more time together as a couple, being happy.”

  She picked up a dishcloth and began to dry the pan. “It must have been horribly difficult to handle.”

  “Yeah, difficult.”

  He sounded irritated with her, irritated both at her questions and that he was answering them. The room fell absolutely quiet as he scrubbed the pot so hard Rebecca wondered if he'd put a hole in it. She said nothing, waiting. “If you really want to know, I drank too much, ate too much, and screwed around too much. No drugs, at least. I didn't do that. Somehow, Vito and Shay got me to stop. It wasn't easy, and definitely wasn't fast. They got me to drink less, eat the right foods, even go to a gym. I hate gyms. Guys like me, we don't go to gyms.” He shook his head. “I'm still not sure how they did it. Or why they bothered.” He put the pot on the rack.

  “Maybe because they're friends.” She picked up the spaghetti pot to dry it as his words, his sorrow and disappointment settled deep within her heart. “You must have loved her very much. Very deeply. In a way, you're lucky for that. Sometimes …” she hesitated, but then realized he was being honest and deserved the same from her, “sometimes I think I never loved enough.”

  At those words, he glanced her way, as if surprised at such an admission and perhaps wondering if she meant to make it. She could feel his gaze on her, but she refused to meet it. He went back to washing up. After a while he said, “The best thing, if you ask me, is to make sure you don't get too attached to people.”

  She nodded. “I learn that lesson every day in my job.”

  He grinned. “Boy, what a pair of misanthropes we are!”

  She gave him a small smile. “I'm glad you told me. It actually explains a lot.”

  He was taken aback. “It does?” He lifted the wine bottle and saw they had killed it. He tossed it in the glass recycling. “Actually, Rebecca Rulebook, your dedication to your job—that explains a lot to me about your life as well.”

  “Hmm … my life is supposed to be a closed, well-hidden book, opened to me alone.” She put the pots in the cupboard under the sink. “I don't know that I like this.”

  “I can keep your secrets,” he said with a grin.

  The dishes done, he washed the sink then spread the dishrag over the faucet to dry. “I do have to say, though, I understand your old boyfriend, Will.”

  “You do?”

  “Absolutely. I'm with him. I lost my fiancée and she was a bank loan officer. I can't imagine being married to a woman who walks towards danger every day.”

  Just then, there was a knock on the door.

  Shay unlocked it and walked inside before Rebecca even reached it. He looked from her to Richie as if noticing the odd vibe in the room, took in everything surrounding them, and without any change of expression, put his laptop on the kitchen table, and fired it up.

  “Where's the thumb drive?” he asked.

  Rebecca handed Shay gloves, put on a pair herself, and then removed the drive from the evidence bag. Shay studied it closely. He took some canned air and other implements to dry and clean it. Rebecca and Richie sat and watched him work.

  Finally he plugged it into his laptop. It whirred, clunked, and then asked for a password.

  “So far, so good,” Shay said. “As I suspected, it's password protected. I'll run my software to crack the password. Hopefully, Glickman wasn't too clever when he set it up.”

  “Try ghostwriter,” Rebecca su
ggested.

  “You think he'd use something so simple?” Richie asked.

  “Absolutely. He was more proud of working on that than anything else. I can definitely see him using it.”

  Shay typed it and the screen unlocked. He shook his head. “Damn! She was right.”

  With that, he perused the file. “It's an Excel spreadsheet. How low-tech can you get? Take a look at this, Richie. You know several of these guys.”

  Richie pulled up a chair to sit by Shay. He gave a low whistle. “They're the guys Glickman told us about, plus a whole lot of others—some are names, some only initials,” he said to Rebecca. “But now, we've got dollar amounts, plus wins and losses, to go along with all these people.”

  “The monetary amount itself probably doesn't matter all that much,” Rebecca said. “Often, it's the little nobody's who think they should be special who do the most harm in this world.”

  “True enough,” Richie agreed.

  Rebecca stood behind Shay and looked over his shoulder at the list. Her gaze zeroed in immediately on “R. Am.” She was pretty sure who that must be. She could scarcely believe it when she saw he spent $75,975 on bets last year, but only won $47,338. “My God!” she muttered.

  “What?” Richie asked.

  “Nothing.” She lied. “It's a long list, that's all.”

  “If these numbers are true,” Shay said, “Pasternak had a problem. The IRS cares when a gambler doesn't report his winnings. They don't give a damn if a person loses, and you can't report a loss anyway.”

  “Looks like you're safe from the IRS, Richie.” Rebecca pointed to the name she thought was him and couldn't stop herself from grinning.

  “Real funny.” Richie glowered. “Most years I do a whole lot better.”

  “Right.” She loved how men liked to brag, even if it was over something illegal.

  “And remember, Inspector, using a bookie isn't illegal in California,” he added.

  “True, but being a bookie is,” she pointed out. “We never did learn how Danny planned to get around that one.”

  “Maybe,” Richie suggested, “that's why he talked to his mistress about going to Aruba.”

  “Anyway,” Shay interrupted. “Looking at this info, Pasternak didn't have a lot to offer the IRS.”

  “Which means he could still be on the hook to them,” Richie said.

  “Right,” Rebecca added. “And if Danny went ahead with his tell-all book, the main people who could be harmed by it were those who needed to keep their names clean. Men who didn't want the public to know they were involved in any gambling, let alone illegal gambling.”

  Richie folded his arms and glared at the computer screen. “In other words, men like the city supervisor and the hot-shot lawyer.”

  “And that would make Pasternak's book one big dud.” Rebecca scanned the names again. “The names he had aren't big enough for him to make money on. They might be of some interest locally. But even here, how many San Franciscans are going to spend their money to read that a city supervisor gambled? Who cares?”

  “It makes me wonder,” Richie said, “if Danny didn't realize his best way to make money was the threat of the book, not the book itself.”

  “Blackmail?” Rebecca asked.

  “Exactly.”

  Shay searched the drive for hidden and erased files, then made copies of everything. Giving a nod to Rebecca, she removed the drive and placed it back into the evidence bag, and then removed her gloves. “I'll give this to the CSI's computer experts in the morning,” she said. “I'll do it before Sutter learns I didn't turn in the disk today.”

  “Good,” Richie said. “I don't want you to do anything that might jeopardize your job. Especially not now that I know how much it means to you.”

  She just nodded, but couldn't help thinking of Lt. Eastwood's words to her earlier. Her job might already be in jeopardy.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Carolina Fontana,” Rebecca said, facing Pasternak's goomar the next morning in Homicide's interview room, “did you see Danny Pasternak on Saturday night?”

  Instead of answering, Carolina said, “I didn't know you was a cop! I would have told you the truth, if I knew, but there was no reason why I should, right? I mean, why would a cop be with Richie? That don't make no sense!”

  Rebecca hit the button to turn the recorder off, then backed it up to where the interview started. She thought Carolina would answer her questions without wandering into territory that Rebecca didn't want the entire homicide squad to know about. Clearly, she was wrong.

  She restarted the tape, giving all the preliminary introductions once more. “Tell me about last Saturday night,” Rebecca said, trying another approach. “Did you see Danny Pasternak?”

  She pursed her lips. “He told me not to tell anybody.”

  “Why?”

  “I don't know. But you really are a cop, right? I mean, since we're here and all, I guess this isn't another trick of Richie's right?”

  Rebecca cringed. “This is no trick, Ms. Fontana. Please answer the question. Did you see Danny Saturday night?”

  “I saw him, but he was nervous like. I never seen him so nervous. He kept saying, 'If anybody asks, Carolina, just say you don't know where I am, and you never seen me for a long time.' So that's what I did. I listened to him, like always.”

  Rebecca asked the next question with abrupt coldness. “How long was he with you?”

  Carolina sat up stiff and straight as she answered. “He stayed that night, and then he left the next day when Vito called and said Richie was looking for him. He said if Richie could find him, others could as well, and then he split.”

  “Who was he afraid of?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Did he say he'd return soon?”

  “He didn't say nothing. He just split.” Carolina's voice grew higher and louder with each reply.

  “Was he worried that Richie was looking for him?” Rebecca eyes drilled into her.

  Carolina swallowed. “I don't think so.”

  “Did he know Richie had been arrested for Meaghan Blakely's murder?”

  “Maybe.” Carolina twisted her fingers.

  Rebecca's voice grew louder, more demanding. “Did he tell you someone had been killed in his office Saturday night?”

  “I don't remember.” Carolina's answer was whispered.

  Rebecca leaned towards her. “Did he know about the murder?”

  Carolina started to cry. “I don't remember! I don't know anything! How many times do I have to say it?”

  “All right.” Rebecca sat back and waited until Carolina calmed down. “What time did Danny arrive at your home Saturday night?”

  Carolina wiped her eyes. “What time? Hmm…I guess it was about one-thirty.”

  “One-thirty? You mean, Sunday morning?”

  “Yeah, I guess that would be. To me, it's all Saturday night.” When Carolina put down her Kleenex, half of one of her fake eyelashes had come unglued. It now pointed upward.

  Rebecca did her best not to stare at the furry-looking thing. “Why did he arrive so late?”

  “He works Saturday night so he can pick up bets for Sunday's races. During football season, that's the biggest time people place bets.” Then her eyes widened. “I mean, you know he was a bookie, right?”

  “So I've heard.”

  “Oh, yeah, I guess Richie would have told you.”

  Rebecca couldn't help but grit her teeth as she said, “Everyone told me.”

  “And we talked about it, didn't we?”

  Rebecca rolled her eyes. The last thing she wanted was for Carolina to remember that afternoon.

  Carolina's eyebrows lifted. “And you two were so lovey-dovey”—Rebecca smacked the Off button on the recorder—“you wouldn't even let go of his hand. I remember now. That was so cute! That was why I never, ever would have dreamed you was a cop. Not with Richie!”

&nb
sp; Rebecca stood. “Thank you for your help, Ms. Fontana. I'll show you the way to the elevator.”

  She hurried Carolina out of the interview room to the elevator. She was tempted to say, “Don't call me, I'll call you,” but doubted Carolina would understand.

  o0o

  Sutter found Rebecca as she headed to the coroner's examination room, five minutes before the autopsy on Sherman Glickman was to begin. He told her he couldn't view it with her because he had to talk to 'some' people at the nightclub.

  “Sure you do,” she said.

  “I knew you'd understand, Rebecca.”

  She did; he preferred to talk to nondescript people from the nightclub, people rather like imaginary friends, rather than to watch another autopsy. Not, she expected, that he would have much to offer if he did.

  Sometimes she liked him even less than she liked Richie Amalfi.

  At times, even she felt that watching an autopsy was overkill, so to speak, and was glad she had missed Pasternak's yesterday. There was nothing new. Two gunshots to the brain were the official cause of death.

  This autopsy, however, was a different story.

  First, the disgust factor loomed large. Watching a 'normal' autopsy was bad enough, but watching the coroner cut through charred, essentially cooked, skin was beyond nauseating. After her first burn victim autopsy, she couldn't eat barbecued ribs for over a year.

  She had to know, however, if Glickman's death was caused by the fire, or if someone had helped him along beforehand.

  She walked into the laboratory off the morgue just as Evelyn Ramirez was about to start cutting. Rebecca stared at the burned body on the table. “I thought this was Sherman Glickman's autopsy,” she said.

  “That's the name I was given. Presumed victim, his apartment, probably his body.”

  “Wait.” She stepped closer. The body on the table was downright skinny. “Sherman Glickman wasn't tall, but he was fairly chubby. Would being in the fire shrink his body?”

  “The flesh hasn't decomposed very much. From what I can tell already, this man not only wasn't heavy, he was emaciated. Also, from nasal, cheekbone, and tooth structures, he may have been of African descent.”

  Rebecca stared at her. “That's not Sherman Glickman.”