Half a Mind (The Kate Teague Mysteries)

by Wendy Hornsby

  “Playboy?” Kate took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. “That’s a new one. I suppose that if they had called Dad a drunk it would have ruined their Triangle theory. Lots of drunks get lost at sea.”

  “The story makes good fill between their ads. Bus-stop reading.” He rolled up on one elbow. “Theresa said what’s-his-name was around today.”

  “Who? Sean O’Shay?”

  “Sean O’Shay?” He tried to force something out of the blank space in his mind. “Sean O’Shay? Sounds like a brand of deodorant soap.”

  “He’s the college freshman Theresa wants to go out with.”

  “Won’t he ask her?”

  “He did. You said no.” She stretched forward and kissed him, a sort of consolation prize, he thought. “Sean is on the swimming team. Remember now? Shaved off all his body hair? You said that if he had so much body hair he had to shave it, he probably had an oversupply of hormones and she should watch out for him.”

  “I said that?” Recognition failed him.

  “He was over the day you had your last seizure.”

  “Ah.” He closed his eyes as she wrapped her arms around him, knowing he couldn’t hide his chagrin from her. He had had two seizures since his head injury, both when he had been overtired and overstressed. About them he remembered nothing except the wonderful euphoric aura that preceded them and the bottomless void that followed.

  “Okay, so it wasn’t Sean who came over,” she said. “Who was it?”

  “Name’s gone. Doesn’t matter.”

  “Sure it does. The doctor said to think of your brain as a flabby muscle that needs exercise. Come on. Try to force it.”

  “You know.” He had a picture in his mind, but the label wasn’t there. “Damn.”

  “Twenty Questions, then. Give me a hint.”

  He made a circle with his thumb and forefinger.

  “Round?” she asked. He shook his head and put the circle to his eye. “Hole,” she said. “Doughnut hole? Keyhole? Asshole?”

  “Right.” Then he made a larger circle with both hands.

  “Big asshole?” She thought for a moment. “Carl?”

  “That’s it.”

  “I saw him. He’s started work on Uncle Miles’s house.”

  “He going to live there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What will you do if he does?”

  She shrugged, trying to seem blasé, but he saw her expression harden.

  “Kate?”

  “Honest to God, I don’t know. It would be so … presumptuous, I guess, for him to move in.”

  “Because he was your uncle’s bastard son?”

  “Because he wasn’t.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’ll wait until everything clears probate, get our property settlement finalized, then I’ll sell out and move to Tahiti.” She made a fist and rested her chin on it. “You like Tahiti?”

  “We could stay at my place.” Then he wondered whether, like his car, some disposition had already been made of his house. No. He was still making mortgage payments. He stretched and yawned.

  “Tired?” she asked, capping her pen.

  He shrugged, smiled. “I forget.”

  Slowly she raised the hem of her shirt, giving him a glimpse of round, pale breast. “Remember this?”

  “No,” he said.

  6

  Kate moved the can of shaving cream aside to make room for herself on the edge of the sink in front of Tejeda. When she was situated, she held a letter on thick cream-colored stationery in front of him. “See this?”

  “Wait a sec.” He rinsed his hands before taking the letter from her. “Apology from the bank?”

  “Hand-delivered, accompanied by flowers. They’re afraid I’ll transfer my accounts somewhere else.”

  Strange world she lived in, he thought. No bank had ever sent him flowers or apologized for a gaffe. Nor was ever likely to.

  “I’ll let them stew for a while,” she said, “but I won’t move any funds. If Carl tries another stunt, the bank won’t be so fast to comply.”

  “Good idea,” he said, not knowing what else to say. Money was a potential bugaboo between them. As far as he could tell, Kate never thought much about money; it was always just there. But her indifference was a luxury he—first as the son of schoolteachers, then as a cop supporting a family—had never been able to afford.

  Both he and Kate lived simply, well within their means. But there was a vast difference, he thought, in the scope of their means. This month, after making a house payment and sending some emergency funds to his son, Richie, in college, Tejeda had about a hundred and eighty dollars left in his checking account. Kate spent almost that amount every week just to have the three cars in her garage washed, even though one of them, a Mercedes belonging to her one surviving uncle, was never driven beyond the turnabout in the driveway.

  Maybe it was time to talk about money, he thought with resignation. When Kate had brought him here from the hospital, no one had mentioned finances, only how practical a solution this living arrangement was, for a number of reasons. Tejeda watched Kate rinse whiskers out of his razor. It was time to talk, he decided. Then she looked up and smiled at him, her face still rosy from her shower, and he changed his mind. They’d hack out the money thing soon. But not now. Talking about money meant talking about permanence.

  He handed the bank letter back to her. “I’m glad you got it settled so easily.”

  “Too easily, if I know Carl. Oh, look, you’ve nicked yourself.” She held his face in her warm hands and carefully pressed a tissue against the tiny cut under his jaw. He watched her in the mirror as she took the tissue away, leaned forward to check the bleeding, then refolded the tissue and put it back on the nick. She was very gentle, very matter-of-fact, and he found himself very moved.

  Without warning, he felt an uncomfortable pang thinking about her gentleness. He knew it had something to do with Cassie, an unexpected reminder of their early married years together, her sweetness, before the reality of life with a cop, the never-ending obligations of raising children, and a lot of nights alone had snapped her. Kate, he thought, was tougher, certainly more independent. Maybe she would have made it. Then he glanced at the bank letter, soaking up a puddle of water on the sink, and wondered if he and Cassie might have survived if they’d had the buffer of an inherited fortune. Though it made him feel bad to even think it, he could understand why so many people resented Kate for her money.

  “What time is Eddie picking you up?” Kate asked.

  “Eight-thirty.” He was still watching her in the mirror, feeling almost as if his thoughts of Cassie had been a betrayal. But the guilt faded as he followed the lines of Kate’s straight back, admired the simplicity and grace of her every movement. Under the heavy lime scent of his shaving cream he found the delicate perfume she had dabbed on after her shower. When she leaned toward him, he felt a rush of warm air escape from the top of her robe. And with it came a heady scent that was uniquely hers.

  “What?” she said, catching him staring.

  He folded her in his arms and pressed her against his bare chest, leaving no room between them for ex-spouses or other ghosts. “You smell good.”

  She kissed his shoulder as she lightly ran her fingernails down the long muscles of his back. “What else?”

  “If I say anything else,” he said, nuzzling the smooth hollow at the base of her throat, “you’ll miss your nine o’clock class and I’ll miss the inquest.”

  “I could call in sick.”

  “I could get arrested.”

  “Mister!” Trinh’s voice carried through the door of the adjoining bedroom. “Sergeant Green is here!”

  Tejeda leaned back and yelled, “Tell him to go find his own girl.”

  There was a small silence before Trinh said, “He wait downstairs.”

  Tejeda sighed and kissed Kate’s smile. “Leave your name and number. I’ll get back to you.”

  They talked as they
dressed, side by side, in the cavernous dressing room that opened off the bathroom. Comfortable, Tejeda thought, just as if they’d been together like this for years.

  “Reece has tickets for the Rams game Sunday,” she said as she reached for a pair of fawn-colored heels. “Want to go?”

  “Good seats?”

  She smiled.“You know Reece.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. Reece, Kate’s cousin by marriage and also her closest friend, was in so many ways her opposite, Tejeda thought, his taste running to early Duke of Windsor. For all Reece’s starched cuffs and designer picnic baskets, though, he was always good company and endlessly loyal. “Ball game sounds like fun.”

  “I’ll tell him,” she said. “Will your inquest take long?”

  “An hour or two.”

  “Richie said he’ll be here two hours after his last class this afternoon. About five.” She came over and straightened his tie and smoothed the lapels of his navy suitcoat. “You’ve lost some weight since you wore that last. Make Eddie buy you lunch.”

  He put his arms around her. “I’d like to tell Eddie to take a flying leap.”

  “Then do it,” she said as she stretched up to kiss him.

  Eddie Green, never much of a talker, was quiet all the way to the County Hall of Administration. Tejeda stood beside him in the elevator to the fourth floor, waiting for his partner to spill whatever it was that was bothering him. But there was never a chance. As soon as the elevator doors slid open, the press of people hovering outside the door to the coroner’s conference room surged toward them.

  Tejeda took a step back, letting Eddie head the forward assault. The crowd circled them. He had expected this to be news hounds, but the crowd’s equipment ran more to vinyl handbags than videocams. He had been looking at them in a generic way, as just a mass of people. But he shifted his focus and picked out more than a dozen familiar faces, each, in common with the others, with a mask of fear, anger, and unrelieved sadness.

  A man, about fifty, with a fringe of steel-wool hair, stepped forward from the group. Tejeda knew him, but couldn’t name him.

  “We’re glad to see you again, Lieutenant,” he said.

  Tejeda stayed behind Eddie’s shoulder. “Exactly who are ‘we’?”

  “Silver Threads,” the man said. “We’ve organized a support group for the families of Arty Silver’s victims. We’ve sent a representative to every single one of Silver’s pretrial hearings.”

  “Very commendable,” Tejeda said. “But why are you here? This inquest has nothing to do with Arty Silver.”

  Eddie nudged him as if he’d made a gaffe. “What?” he asked, but Eddie only rolled his eyes. There was more going on here than Eddie had told him about, and it was making him feel uncomfortable, like coming into a joke just before the punch line.

  “Haven’t you heard?” The man raked his wiry hair nervously. “Arty’s attorney has asked for another trial postponement. He says this case is so similar to Arty’s that there’s a good possibility Arty was wrongfully accused, ’cuz there’s no way Arty could have done this one. He wants full disclosure and time to study.”

  “That’s just more of Arty’s bullshit,” Eddie fumed. “Trial’s going to start Monday.”

  A tall, hard-faced woman pushed to the front. “Maybe we should let him postpone.”

  “Velma,” the man said, aghast. “What are you saying? We been waiting five years already.”

  “My son’s murder isn’t among the charges against Arty Silver,” she scolded. “All the D.A. has is one photograph of my boy found at Arty’s house. He can’t even prove whether he was dead or alive. Maybe if he had a few more weeks …”

  Tejeda expected the crowd to shout her down, but instead they seemed to draw around her supportively. A plump little woman stretched her short arms around Velma and drew her head down to her shoulder.

  “No, honey,” she said, offering a handkerchief to the woman softly weeping into her neck. “We agreed. None of us will ever know the whole truth about what happened to our kids. The important thing is helping the D.A. fry Arty.”

  Tejeda could almost see this motherly little woman dropping the cyanide pellets under Arty’s chair. He wondered which of the counts on the indictment represented her son. When she looked up at Tejeda, there were no tears in her eyes.

  “Get this killer, Lieutenant,” she ordered. “You came through for us once, trapped that little bastard. We’re asking for your help again. Find him fast. Don’t let Arty Silver ride to freedom on his back.”

  “Take care of each other,” Tejeda said. He grabbed Eddie’s elbow and began moving with him through the crowd. “We’ll take care of Arty.”

  He was grateful that the Silver Threads didn’t follow. Apparently they were keeping their vigil, and their presence, out in the hall.

  “Remind me to call the marshals,” Eddie said as they walked into the coroner’s conference room. “We need metal detectors outside courtroom eight on Monday.”

  “Yeah.” Tejeda was only half-listening. He saw in front of him another room full of people and he broke out in a sweat; all this pressure, he couldn’t remember a single name. But as he followed Eddie deeper into the room, he felt a tremendous burden lifted. He raised his eyes and said a silent thanks to Mrs. Otis Washington; the coroner’s wife had made name cards for all of the participants in her fine script. With everyone labeled for him, at least he wouldn’t be stumbling over names. He grinned at Eddie. “Otis’ wife must be feeling better.”

  Eddie nodded. “She’s just back from two months drying out at the Betty Ford Center. You want coffee?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Tejeda said. He found his place at the table and pulled his chair back so that he would be sitting beside but just behind Eddie so they could talk more easily during the proceedings. Anyway, if he was here in an advisory capacity only, as Eddie had assured him he was, then he wasn’t about to take a seat among the official witnesses.

  While Eddie waited for a turn at Mr. Coffee, Tejeda watched the chairs around the table fill up. Like waiting for a symphony, he thought, the sound level rising, changing tone, as each player entered and tuned up for the performance to follow.

  The preliminary inquest was official, but informal. Which meant that Vic Spago, who came into the room sharing a joke with Coroner Otis Washington, was wearing a tie with a loose knot and an open collar.

  Tejeda exchanged nods with the people he recognized, but he stayed in his chair, his long legs stretched in front to define his personal territory. He felt wary, nervous. This room, and the situation, were too familiar; this was where the official quest always began, the dropping-off point beyond which there were monsters.

  Otis Washington, born politician that he was, stopped to greet each little group in the room. Then he broke away and came over to Tejeda. He turned Eddie’s chair around and sat facing Tejeda.

  “Glad you could make it,” Otis said. When he sipped from a steaming mug with “Caffeine PRN” printed on its side, Tejeda got a whiff of bourbon.

  “I had a choice?” Tejeda said. “There’s nothing I have to say that you don’t already know.”

  “Humor us.” Otis winked at him. “Makes people feel happy to know you’re here. You’re our star when it comes to floating heads.”

  “Nice way to talk, Otis,” Eddie said. He was wrestling two overfull mugs of coffee and a stack of files that someone had thrust under his arm along the way. As he put a cup in Tejeda’s hand, he pointedly measured his partner’s distance away from the table with his eye. “You want field glasses?”

  “Come on, Spud,” Tejeda said, leaning forward. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Eddie looked down at Otis, waited for a desultory nod, then turned to Tejeda. His voice was low: “We need your expertise—that goes without saying. But we need something else from you too.”

  Eddie blew on his coffee as a delaying tactic. Then he cleared his throat. “Otis, Vic, me, some of the others, have seen enough of this case, and enoug
h of cases like it, to know that this kid’s killing is part of a series. The technique suggests it wasn’t the first. And unless we catch our perpetrator, it won’t be the last.”

  “So?” Tejeda asked. “You know how to proceed.”

  “Yeah, if we had the budget,” Otis said. “The mayor and half the city council are up for reelection this spring. They get a lot of image per enforcement dollar busting street-corner drug pushers,” he said. “They took three detectives per watch away from homicide and assigned them to narco. You know what sort of caseload that leaves the rest of us with.”

  “That’s standard political bullshit,” Tejeda said. “You’ll find ways to survive.”

  Otis pulled his chair closer. “Except that Monday morning the most expensive trial ever mounted in this state begins—Arty Silver. The D.A. got budget for seven full-time new staff to handle the evidence load, and carte blanche on investigator time. You know what that leaves for the rest of our cases? Shit, Roger, there’s simply no fudge money left in the department.”

  “That’s where you come in,” Eddie said.

  “What?” Tejeda laughed. “Fund-raising?”

  “You got it. We bring you in, parade you around, let the public think there’s some tie-in to the Arty case, and bingo, we either get our men back or we get access to the investigators assigned to the D.A. for the duration.”

  Otis tapped Tejeda’s knee with his ham-size fist and grinned into his face. “Already I’ve had calls from the L.A. Times, the San Diego Union, and KTLA: someone leaked you were subpoenaed for the inquest. The mayor invited me to sit beside him at his businessmen’s prayer breakfast tomorrow.” Otis sat back and preened. “And he wants me to bring you.”

  “Like hell,” Tejeda said loudly enough to turn a few heads.

  “If you love me,” Otis said, “or love your old department, you’ll just tag along with Eddie now and then and look busy when you see the press. I figure every mention you get us on the six o’clock news is worth another day or two of investigator time. Capisce?”

  Tejeda chuckled to himself; he should have guessed. Maybe he was worth millions after all.