by R. E. Donald
"Just tickety boo," he said. "And you?"
"Tickety boo? How delightfully corny. Come on in," she said, looking up from a stack of paperwork. "What can I do for you?"
"I'd like you to hear something." Hunter pulled the miniature tape recorder out of his pocket. "But before you do, I'd like you to tell me about Ruby."
Pat Stevens threw down her pencil and leaned back in her chair with an exaggerated sigh. "Shit," she said. "I should've known this would happen sooner or later. Close the door and pull up a case of CC and sit down."
Hunter found an unopened case solid enough to sit on and moved it to a spot where he could watch her as she spoke.
She sighed again, made a wry face. "A.k.a. Ruby. Yeah. I have champagne tastes, and at this stage of my career, a beer income. A friend I met at college listed herself with a high priced escort service, and told me what a gas it was. She went places with these rich guys, businessmen from out of town with fat expense accounts, mostly out for dinner at nice restaurants or to shows, and sometimes they ended up in bed, other times not. Sometimes she was just paid to attend parties of the rich and famous. Eye candy. Party favors. Not much different than going on blind dates or to pick-up bars, she said, and getting paid for it. Except you're expected to be easy. Well, we are, I told her." She laughed weakly. "Sounded like my kind of job, so I thought about it for a few weeks, then signed up. It was like a matchmaking service, and the girls are independent contractors, so you can call your own shots. As they say, the rest is history."
"And these?" Hunter held up the tape.
"Greg saw me once at one of the other clubs. I was with one of my least favorite clients of all time, some car dealership bigwig from Edmonton. Greg figured out what was going on and said he knew how we could both make a few bucks off jerks like him. Hey. Champagne tastes. I'm not about to turn down easy money. I put a clear twenty thousand in the bank in less than six months working maybe one day a week." She paused, lit up a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
"So I'd tape my clients, but only the ones I knew had a lot to lose, plus they were jerks or weren't regular enough or rich enough to keep. A few of them got pissed off and dropped me as soon as Greg made one of his friendly little phone calls, and a couple of them didn't give a shit. They just told him to fuck off, didn't give a shit whether or not he told anybody." She shrugged. "But about half of them were scared enough to pay him off. Of course, when it got back to the agency they dropped me. Thanks, Greg." She shrugged again, “Easy come…”.
"Sharon Nillson got paid in drugs."
"Not me. I only do drugs socially."
"But on the tapes..."
"Yeah, I know. Greg's idea. He'd get a finder's fee for sending guys to do business with this biker named Toad, plus it added to the... uh... blackmail-ability of the client. If I could get the suckers to buy cocaine, they'd be in deeper, you know? Greg gave me half his finder's fee."
"Toad?"
"Yeah. A biker. He does his business from a sharp-looking RV, sort of a mobile operation. I see him in here once and a while. Greg told me who he was, but we don't officially know each other. He knows I work here, but I doubt that he knows my name."
"He and Greg knew each other?"
"Well, yeah," she said, taking a drag on her cigarette, then tapping it against the ashtray to knock off the ash.
"And this Toad would have known Sharon?"
Pat shrugged. "Maybe. Look, if I thought there was any chance Toad had killed Greg, I wouldn't even have mentioned his name. I have no intention of being found dead in an alley from an overdose. Toad was pissed off at Greg about a fast one he pulled, but they sorted that out and Greg learned his lesson, never tried it again."
"What kind of fast one?"
In spite of the fact that the door was closed, she lowered her voice. "This guy comes in here sometimes. Toad buys stuff off of this guy, like, he's a wholesaler you might say. Well, one night I phoned up Greg and told him I had this client who wanted to make a big buy for some fancy party he was throwing. He had wads of cash in his pockets, could I send him over? Greg was here at the Blackburn, and he saw this wholesaler sitting around waiting for Toad, but Toad was late. So Greg went to this wholesaler and sweet-talked him into selling direct to this rich dude, and when Toad got here, expecting to get a new supply from his wholesaler, the guy had already split with the money from my client. Greg said that Toad was really, really pissed off."
"Pissed off enough to kill someone?"
"If he was that pissed off, he would've done it. He's a biker. They don't fool around. Greg said he told him he'd break every fuckin' one of his fingers and flatten his pretty nose if he ever messed with Toad's operation again. Greg wouldn’t have taken any chances after that. The wholesaler had already left, but I think Toad was madder at him than at Greg because he'd stiffed him. Toad was expecting that stuff, so it left him high and dry. He said he was going to have to teach the guy a lesson."
"Did he?"
"Probably. I only ever saw the guy one more time."
"When was that?"
Pat sighed, looked up at the ceiling. "I think I told you about him the first time you were here. He was the guy who Greg was talking to the night Sharon got into an argument with him. That was the last time I saw the guy. Any of them, in fact."
"Would you recognize his voice?"
"No. I don't think I ever heard him talk, but he's straight looking, sort of a jock. Greg joked once that the only reason he didn't figure him for a cop was that he looked too much like a cop to be one. No real cop would be stupid enough to do business looking that much like a cop." She looked Hunter up and down. "Sort of like you, but you don't look anything like him. You're not a jock."
"Would you recognize him to see him again?"
"Of course."
Hunter pulled a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket. It was a photocopy of a selection of six photographs, headshots from the RCMP mug files. One of the photos was the one Al had asked the Vancouver Police Department to fax him. "Do you recognize any of these men?"
Pat took the paper from him, stubbed out her cigarette as she looked it over. "No," she said, shaking her head and handing it back. "He's not on there."
“You sure?” He held it out again.
She took another look and nodded. “Absolutely.”
Hunter thanked her. "Your client, the one who made the big buy, he wouldn't be a potential candidate for mayor of Vancouver, would he?"
She smiled. "You didn't hear it from me, cowboy."
"You showed her a photo line up? Can I see?" asked El as they walked out to the parking lot. Hunter handed her the paper, and she carried it into the glow of a floodlight. "Hey! That's him! That's the guy!" she said excitedly.
"How do you know?" asked Hunter, wondering if Pat Stevens had a reason not to identify the wholesaler she'd talked about. Was she afraid of what he'd do to her? Or what Toad would do if he found out she knew more than she should?
"Not the guy on the tape," El said, turning the page toward Hunter and jabbing Chad Williams' photo with her finger. "This guy. He's the one I saw leaving Greg Williams' house that day I touched the cookie jar."
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Alora worked late, as usual, and by the time she got home she was too tired to make a proper meal. She sipped on a glass of chilled wine and appeased her hunger with a plate of cheese and wheat thins while she thought about what to have for dinner, decided to throw together a salad and heat up a frozen pasta entree in the microwave. She watched a rerun of Seinfeld on TV from the kitchen counter as she washed and sliced tomatoes and cucumbers for the salad. She'd seen the episode at least twice already, but it didn't matter. Seinfeld and NYPD Blue seemed to have become substitutes for a social life of her own. People talked and laughed and fought with each other, and she experienced a little vicarious camaraderie and vindication, love and anger, emotions that seemed sadly lacking in her own life.
She tried to put work out of her mind in the ev
enings, but she wasn't always successful. She was thinking now of how ironic it would be if Ray and Sharon Nillson each believed that the other had locked Greg Williams in their trailer, and had each confessed to save the other, when in fact, if they had both simply told the truth, it might make the real killer that much easier to find. Love could be stupid. Love could be cruel.
It was almost nine when the phone rang. She looked at her watch, surprised that Hunter Rayne would be calling this early. She let it ring three times, taking deep breaths. "Hello?"
"You're looking good, Monkey." It was not Hunter Rayne.
At the first word of her ex-husband's voice, Alora felt hot and cold at the same time. She wanted to put the phone down, but knew it wouldn't help. He knew where she worked now. He knew how to reach her at home, probably manipulated someone at the firm into giving him her home number. He could be slick. She prayed he wouldn't be able to find out where she lived.
"Magee, huh? You married again or is that just a corruption of McGuire?"
"What do you want, Mike," she said, her voice as flat as she could make it. "We're expecting an important call." Her heart was thudding against her ribcage, and she cursed herself for letting him get to her, for being frightened enough to lie.
"We? So you are married. Looks good on you, Monkey. Who's the lucky man?"
"You and I have nothing to talk about." Alora realized she was standing rigid, as if she were frozen in place. Still, she didn't move.
"That was a nice suit you had on. Looked expensive. You and your husband must be making big bucks. He a lawyer, too?" When she didn't answer, he continued. "You take that pretty suit off yet, Monkey? I still miss your tits. You got nice tits. Does Mr. Magee appreciate your tits, Alora? Let me talk to him, okay? I got a real good lawyer joke for him."
"Good bye, Mike." There was nothing else to say. Reasoning with him had never worked. Alora hung up the phone.
As she expected, it rang again within thirty seconds. She glanced at the Caller I.D. unit. Both calls simply read "PRIVATE CALL". He was probably using a cell phone, so there'd be no way to block his calls. She let it go to her voice mail, dreading what the messages might be. Knowing he would call again and again before he gave up. Tomorrow she'd change her number. Again. Tonight she would simply turn off her phones.
And lie awake listening to their silence.
Hunter tried to call Alora Magee when he arrived home at eleven o'clock. He reached her voice mail, but he didn't leave a message. He went right to bed and slept like a log until his internal alarm woke him at five thirty, giving him just enough time to make coffee, shower and pack his duffel bag before leaving home. By quarter to seven, he was firing up the big diesel engine in the Blue Knight at the Watson yard on Annacis Island. In order to be sure its trailer load of cargo would be delivered in Portland by four o'clock that afternoon, he was allowing extra time for morning rush-hour traffic through Seattle, and possible delays at the border crossing or construction hold ups along the I-5.
As the engine warmed up, he went inside to talk to El. She was on the phone to Chicago and paused only long enough to wish him a good trip - "Call me from Portland," she said - so he just filled up his coffee mug from the pot in the lunchroom, and hit the road.
The border wasn't busy, and there were no problems with his clearance. He didn't even have to get out of the truck. As he passed, he saw a tractor-trailer unit very similar to Ray Nillson's backed up to the customs dock, one of the drivers leaning against its concrete wall smoking a cigarette. He wondered when would be a good time to try calling Alora Magee again. Portland would be soon enough, he decided. After she'd had a chance to talk to Sharon and get a list of the stops the Nillsons had made that trip, maybe even locate a suitable lawyer for Ray.
Less than an hour later, Hunter pulled his rig into the parking lot outside the restaurant in Mount Vernon where Greg Williams' car had been found. He felt this was as good a place as any to stop for breakfast. He found a window table where he could keep an eye on his truck, and ordered bacon and scrambled eggs, with a side of hash browns. As he stirred cream and sugar into his coffee, he thought about Williams' car. It made sense that if the Nillsons were guilty and this was where Williams entered their trailer, Ray and Sharon would steer police away from this potential site for witnesses or evidence. If Williams didn't enter the trailer here, then his car had been moved. If someone had known enough about their itinerary to frame the Nillsons by putting Williams in their trailer, it would've been a small matter to plant his car somewhere else along their route.
Hunter delivered his load in Portland well ahead of the deadline, then headed straight for the Jubitz Truck Stop where he could settle into a booth with a table phone. He waited while the waitress cleared the table and took his order, then he dialed the number of Alora Magee's law firm. The receptionist asked his name, said, "She's expecting your call," and put him through.
"Did you call last night?" she asked. "I'm sorry, I had my ringer turned off."
Hunter wondered briefly if perhaps she hadn't been alone, decided it should not be his concern. "I found Ruby,” he said. “She gave me some more pieces of the puzzle, but I’m still trying to put them all together. There’s a man on one of the tapes I haven’t got an ID on yet, but I think he may be the key to all this. Have you talked to Sharon again? Did they fuel up or keep any receipts from their Ferndale stop?" The waitress arrived with his pie and coffee. He nodded his thanks.
“Yes, I talked to her. She’s sticking with her story, but says there’s nothing to verify their stop in Ferndale.”
“I’ll be checking out the logistics at the Wells Fargo bank there on my way home today. The police were able to determine that Ray didn’t make any bank transactions on July 14th. I’ll ask if anyone at the gas station remembers him.”
“I may have found a new lawyer for Ray.”
"I appreciate that. I hope El can talk him into accepting a new lawyer. With any luck, he's not going to need one," said Hunter. "I'll call you later to let you know what I find out. That is, if you're going to turn your phone back on."
"Wait," she said. "Have you got a pen? I'll give you my new phone number."
"Oh," he said. He suddenly understood. As a Mountie, he'd met a lot of women who'd stopped answering their phones before a sudden change of phone numbers. The first time he'd seen them, many of them had purple bruises and broken bones. The last time he'd seen some of them was in the morgue. Alora Magee was smart. She was savvy. He hoped she could keep herself safe. He took down the number. "Take care of yourself," he said, and immediately felt uncomfortable. He was getting too personal. "I'll call you tonight."
His next call was to Russell Kupka of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department. "I was wondering if you would do me a couple of favors," he said.
The detective laughed out loud. "Yeah, right. Why the hell I should I?" was his reply.
"Because if you do, and if I'm right, you'll have won yourself another all expenses paid trip to the beautiful Pacific Northwest."
She was due for a vacation so it wasn’t hard for Teresa to arrange a week off. As soon as she got home from work, she pulled out an overnight bag and packed hurriedly, throwing in underwear and a nightgown and two or three changes of clothing, and hanging her beige linen suit on the doorknob.
Grey Tiger jumped in and out of her bag and chewed on its nylon straps. She picked him up and kissed the top of his head, then set him down beside the stuffed tiger on her pillow. She would take him. It had been many weeks since she'd seen her parents, and over six months since she had stayed the night in her old room at the farm. She couldn't have taken Greg there, never had. Her parents wouldn't have understood, and she feared her brothers would have understood too well.
She went into the bathroom she shared with Hellen, that they had both shared with Greg. She scrubbed her face with a rough washcloth dripping with cold water, feeling the need to wake herself up out of this bizarre dream. Greg, who was always handing her just a ten or twe
nty dollar bill to help with expenses, always apologizing for not being able to afford more, and telling her how one day he would shower her with gold jewelry and take her on a world cruise. How could he have paid cash for expensive recording equipment, thousands and thousands of dollars of it in the past year? What did all those little tapes contain? She had listened to part of one, played it in her answering machine, but it was voices from a world she didn’t want to be a part of, nor even know about, so she’d stopped the tape and bundled them all into a padded envelope and mailed it to the address on the policeman’s business card.
She never really knew Greg, then, after all. He had kept so many secrets from her. Did Hellen know?
Perhaps Teresa was just the way they paid their rent and bought their groceries. Teresa's hard work had made it possible for Greg to pursue his music, and had supported Hellen's causes, her caustic crusade to save animals from people. What kind of human being loved animals over people? Did Teresa mean less to Hellen than a pig or a cow? Was she nothing to them both but a meal ticket? How could she have been such a fool for so long?
After she'd washed her face and brushed her teeth, Teresa put her toothpaste and soap and lotion in a zippered cloth bag. She would help her mother and father tomorrow, help to pick radishes and carrots and wash and bundle them for the market. She would squat on the earth in the hot sun, a shawl shading her head and shoulders, listening to the hypnotic buzz of flies and the swish and growl of cars and trucks along the road beside the field, and she would try to stop thinking about the past two weeks. Instead, she would think about the moment, or maybe think about nothing at all.
She would feel the sun drape its heat across her back and the soft soil cling to her fingers, she would smell the perfume of earth and green onions, and she would put behind her what had happened with Greg and Hellen, stop trying to understand why, after she had been so strong and willful in her refusal to relinquish control of her future to her parents, she had given control of herself to such people. How was she able to stand up strong to her parents the way she had after high school graduation, when she insisted on moving to the city to attend college and get a job, but then go limp like an uprooted potato stalk when first Hellen, and then Greg had started molding her life? How could she have let herself be told how to think and how to behave in order to fit into their world? How had she allowed Greg to hide so many secrets from her? Why hadn't she seen what was happening long ago? How had they made her feel so unworthy?