McCone and Friends

by Marcia Muller

  The next morning, Mick began by accessing the Napa County property-tax assessor’s records; he found that the estate in the hills belonged to Carols Robles, a prominent vintner, whose wines even I—whose budget had only recently expanded to accommodate varieties with corks—had heard of. While Mick began tracking information on Robles in the periodicals indexes, I asked a contact on the SFPD to check with the National Crime Information Center for criminal histories on the vintner, Angie Holbrook, and Melissa Wells. They all came up clean.

  Mick started downloading news stories and magazine articles on Robles and his winery, and soon they formed an imposing stack on my desk. I had other work to do, so I called in Rae Kelleher, my field investigator, and asked her to check with our contacts at Bay Area police departments for detectives answering to the women’s names or matching their descriptions. At six o’clock, I hauled the stack of information on Robles home to my brown-shingled cottage near the Glen Park district, curled up on the couch with my cats, and spent the evening reading.

  If you believed Robles’ press, he was a pillar of the Napa Valley community. His wines were considered excellent and frequently took gold medals at the various national competitions. Robles Vineyards hosted an elegant monthly wine, food, and music event at their St. Helena Cellars, which was attended by prominent social and political figures, many of whom Carlos Robles counted among his close friends. I couldn’t detect the slightest breath of scandal about his personal life; he’d been married to the same woman for thirty-three years, had four children and six grandchildren, and by all accounts was devoted to his family.

  A paragon, if you believed the press…

  As the next week passed, I dug deeper into the winemaker’s life, but uncovered nothing significant, and I finally concluded that to get at the truth of the matter, I’d have to concentrate on the two women. Rae had turned up nothing through our PD contacts, so I asked Mick to do an area-wide search for their address—a lengthy and tedious process, as far as I was concerned, but he didn’t seem to mind. Mick, who is also my nephew, has a relationship with his PowerBook that I, no fan of the infernal devices, sometimes find unnatural.

  The search paid off, however: He turned up two Melissa Wells’ and three Angela Holbrook’s in various East Bay locations, from Berkeley to Danville. I narrowed it down by the usual method- surveillance.

  The building I tailed Angie Holbrook to from her Berkeley apartment was vine-covered brick, set well back from the sidewalk on Shattuck Avenue, only two blocks from the famous Chez Panisse restaurant in the heart of what’s come to be known as the Gourmet Ghetto. Polished brass lettering beside the front door said HQ Magazine. By the time I went inside and asked for Angie, I was putting it all together. And when she started to cry at the sight of my I.D., I knew I had it right.

  But even after Angie, Melissa Wells and I sat down over a cappuccino at Chez Panisse and discussed the situation, something still nagged at me. It wasn’t till the Monday before their next flight to Calistoga that I figured out what it was, and then I had to scramble fast to come up with the evidence.

  “Open their briefcases,” I said to Sam Delaney. We were gathered in the office at Wide Horizons—Sam, Gordon Tillis, Melissa, Angie, and me.

  Sam hesitated, glancing at Gordon.

  “Go ahead,” he prompted. “You’re pilot in command; you’ve got the FAA in your corner.”

  He hesitated some more, then flipped the catch of Melissa’s case and raised its lid. Staring down into it, he said to me, “But…you told Gordon we had big trouble. This is …just papers.”

  “Right. Recipes and pictures of food.”

  “I don’t get it. I thought the babes were into drugs.”

  Unfortunate word choice; the “babes” and I glared at him.

  “Ms. Wells and Ms. Holbrook,” I said, “are chefs and food writers for a very prestigious magazine HQ—short for Home Quarterly. Unfortunately, like many prestigious publications, it doesn’t pay well. About a year ago Melissa and Angie started moonlighting—which is strictly against the policy set by the publisher, Sarge Greenfield.”

  “What’s this got to do with—”

  “I’m getting to that. For the past six months Melissa and Angie have been creating the menus for Robles Vineyards’ wine, food, and music events, using recipes they originally developed for HQ. Recipes that Sarge Greenfield would consider stolen. Since they didn’t want to risk their jobs by leaving a paper trail, they arranged for Robles and their other clients to pay them in cash, upon acceptance of the proposed menus. Naturally they’re always somewhat tense before their presentations to the clients, but afterward they’re relieved. Relieved enough to indulge in wine tasting and spending.”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed. “You say these recipes are stolen?”

  “I suppose Greenfield could make a case for that.”

  “Then why don’t you have them arrested?”

  “Actually, the matter’s already been settled.” Angie and Melissa had decided to admit what they’d been doing to their employer, who had promptly fired them; they had now established their own catering firm and, in my opinion, would eventually be better off.

  Gordon Tillis cleared his throat. “This strikes me as a good example of how we all rely too heavily on appearances in forming our opinions of people. Not a good practice; it’s too easy to jump to the wrong conclusion.”

  Sam looked down, shuffling his feet. “Uh, I hope you ladies won’t hold this against me,” he said after a moment. “I’d still like to fly you up to the valley.”

  “Fine with us,” Angie replied.

  “Speaking of that—”I glanced at my watch “—isn’t it time you got going?”

  Gordon and I walked out onto the field with them. The two men preflighting the Piper next to Sam’s plane cast admiring glances at Angie and Melissa, and I was surprised when one of them winked at me. When we got to the Cessna, I snapped my fingers and said, “Oh, there’s something I want to check, just out of curiosity. May I see the paperwork Sam gave you for this flight, Gordon?”

  Sam frowned, but Gordon, as prearranged, handed the folder to me. I opened it to the weight-and-balance calculation that a pilot always works up in order to know the best way to arrange the passengers and their baggage.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, “fuel, pilot…Sam, you’ve really got to stop eating that junk food! Passengers one and two, plus purses and briefcases. Additional baggage stowed aft. Hmmm.”

  “Just get to the point.” Sam said, glancing around nervously.

  “In a minute.” I slipped inside the Cessna and checked the rear compartment. One bag of takeout. One large bag of takeout.

  Sam was leaning in, reaching for my arm.

  “Golden Arches?” I asked.

  “KFC. Leave it!”

  I picked it up. Heavy KFC.

  “Sam,” I said, “you really ought to go on a diet.”

  After the DEA agents who had been hanging around the Piper with their warrant had opened the take-out containers full of cocaine and placed Sam under arrest, Gordon, Angie, Melissa and I slowly walked back to Wide Horizons in subdued silence.

  “What I don’t understand,” Gordon finally said, “is why he always entered the stuff he was carrying on the weight-and- balance.”

  “To cover himself. He knew if you caught him stowing any package he hadn’t entered, you’d start watching him. But why he put down the accurate weight for the bag is beyond me. Nobody would believe he could eat that much for lunch—even with his weight problem.”

  Gordon sighed. “And here I thought Sam was just getting fat because of bad eating habits, when all the while he was eating too well on his profits from drug running.”

  I grinned at him. “Widening his horizons at the expense of Wide Horizons,” I said.

  THE HOLES IN THE SYSTEM

  (Rae Kelleher)

  There are some days that just ought to be called off. Mondays are always hideous: The trouble starts when I dribble toothpaste all over my
clothes or lock my keys in the car and doesn’t let up till I stub my toe on the bed stand at night. Tuesdays are usually when the morning paper doesn’t get delivered. Wednesdays are better, but if I get to feeling optimistic and go to aerobics class at the Y, chances are ten to one that I’ll wrench my back. Thursdays—forget it. And by five on Friday, all I want to do is crawl under the covers and hide.

  You can see why I love weekends.

  The day I got assigned to the Boydston case was a Tuesday.

  Cautious optimism, that was what I was nursing. The paper lay folded tidily on the front steps of All Souls Legal Cooperative—where I both live and work as a private investigator. I read it and drank my coffee, not even burning my tongue. Nobody I knew had died, and there was even a cheerful story below the fold in the Metro section. By the time I’d looked at the comics and found all five strips that I bother to read were funny, I was feeling downright perky.

  Well why not? I wasn’t making a lot of money, but my job was secure. The attic room I occupied was snug and comfy. I had a boyfriend, and even if the relationship was about as deep as a desert stream on the Fourth of July, he could be taken most anyplace. And to top it off, this wasn’t a bad hair day.

  All that smug reflection made me feel charitable toward my fellow humans—or at least my coworkers and their clients—so I refolded the paper and carried it from the kitchen of our big Victorian to the front parlor and waiting-room so others could partake. A man was sitting on the shabby maroon sofa: bald and chubby, dressed in lime green polyester pants and a strangely patterned green, blue and yellow shirt that reminded me of drawings of sperm cells. One thing for sure, he’d never get run over by a bus while he was wearing that getup.

  He looked at me as I set the paper on the coffee table and said, “How ya doin’, little lady?”

  Now, there’s some contention that the word “lady” is demeaning. Frankly, it doesn’t bother me: when I hear it I know I’m looking halfway presentable and haven’t got something disgusting caught between my front teeth. No, what rankled was the work “little.” When you’re five foot three the word reminds you of things you’d just as soon not swell on—like being unable to see over people’s heads at parades, or the little-girly clothes that designers of petite sizes are always trying to foist on you. “Little,” especially at nine in the morning, doesn’t cut it.

  I glared up the guy. Unfortunately, he’d gotten to his feet and I had to look up.

  He didn’t notice I was annoyed; maybe he was nearsighted. “Sure looks like it’s gonna be a fine day,” he said.

  Now I identified his accent—pure Texas. Another strike against him, because of Uncle Roy, but that’s another story.

  “It would’ve been a nice day,” I muttered.

  “Ma’am?”

  That did it! The first—and last—time somebody had gotten away with calling me “Ma’am” was on my twenty-eighth birthday two weeks before, when a bag boy tried to help me out of Safeway with my two feather-light sacks of groceries. It was not a precedent I wanted followed.

  Speaking more clearly, I said, “It would’ve been a nice day, except for you.”

  He frowned. “What’d I do?”

  “Try ‘little,’ a Texas accent, and ‘ma’am!”

  “Ma’am are you all right?”

  “Aaargh!” I fled the parlor and ran up the stairs to the office of my boss, Sharon McCone.

  Sharon is my friend, mentor, and sometimes—heaven help me—custodian of my honesty. She’s been all those things since she hired me a few years ago to assist her at the co-op. Not that our association is always smooth sailing: She can be a stern taskmaster and she harbors a devilish sense of humor that surfaces at inconvenient times. But she is always been there for me, even during the death throes of my marriage to my pig-selfish, perpetual-student husband, Doug Grayson. And ever since I’ve stopped referring to him as “that bastard Doug,” she’s decided I’m a grown-up who can be trusted to manage her own life—within limits.

  That morning she was sitting behind her desk with her chair swiveled around so she could look out the bay window at the front of the Victorian. I’ve found her in that pose hundreds of times: sunk low on her spine, long legs crossed, dark eyes brooding. The view is of dowdy houses across the triangular park that divides the street, and usually hazed by San Francisco fog, but it doesn’t matter: whatever she’s seeing is strictly inside her head, and she says she gets her best insights into her cases that way.

  I stepped into the office and cleared my throat. Slowly Shar turned, looking at me as if I were a stranger. Then her eyes cleared. “Rae, hi. Nice work on closing the Anderson file so soon.”

  “Thanks. I found the others you left on my desk: they’re pretty routine. You have anything else for me?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” She smiled slyly and slid a manila folder across the desk. “Why don’t you take this client?”

  I opened the folder and studied the information sheet stapled inside. All it gave was a name—Darrin Boydston—and an address on Mission Street. Under the job description Shar had noted “background check.”

  “Another one?” I asked, letting my voice telegraph my disappointment.

  “Uh-huh. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

  “Why?”

  She waved a slender hand at me. “Go! It’ll be a challenge.”

  Now, that did make me suspicious. “If it’s such a challenge, how come you’re not handling it?”

  For and instant her eyes sparked. She doesn’t like it when I hint that she skims the best cases for herself—although that’s exactly what she does, and I don’t blame her. “Just go see him.”

  “He’ll be at this address?”

  “No. He’s downstairs. I got done talking with him ten minutes ago.”

  “Downstairs? Where downstairs?”

  “In the parlor.”

  Oh, God!

  She smiled again. “Lime green, with a Texas accent.”

  “So,” Darrin Boydston said, “Did y’all come back down to chew me out some more?”

  “I’m sorry about that.” I handed him my card. “Ms. McCone has assigned me to your case.”

  He studied it and looked me up and down. “You promise to keep a civil tongue in your head?”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “Well, you damn near ruint my morning.”

  How many more times was I going to have to apologize?

  “Let’s get goin’, little lady.” He started for the door.

  I winced and asked, “Where?”

  “My place. I got somebody I want you to meet.”

  Boydston’s car was a white Lincoln continental—beautiful machine, except for the bull’s horns mounted on the front grille. I stared at then in horror.

  “Pretty, aren’t they?” he said, opening the passenger’s door.

  “I’ll follow you in my car,” I told him.

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  As I got into the Ramblin’Wreck—my ancient, exhaust-belching Rambler American—I looked back and saw Boydston staring at it in horror.

  Boydston’s place was a storefront on Mission a few blocks down from my Safeway—an area that could do with some urban renewal and just might get it, if the upwardly mobile ethnic groups that’re moving in to the neighborhood get their way. It shared the building with a Thai restaurant and a Filipino travel agency. In its front window red neon tubing spelled out THE CASH COW, but on the bucking outline letters was a bull. I imagined Boydston trying to reach a decision: call it the Cash Cow and have a good name but a dumb graphic; call it the Cash Bull and have a dumb name and good graphic; or just say the hell with it and mix genders.

  But what kind of establishment was this?

  My client took the first available parking space, leaving me to fend for myself. When I finally found another and walked back two blocks he’d already gone inside.

  Chivalry is dead. Sometimes I think common courtesy’s obit is about to be
published too.

  When I went into the store, the first thing I noticed was a huge potted barrel cactus, and the second was dozens of guitars hanging from the ceiling. A rack of worn cowboy boots completed the picture.

  Texas again. The state that spawned the likes of Uncle Roy was going to keep getting in my face all day long.

  The room was full of glass showcases that displayed an amazing assortment of stuff: rings, watches, guns, cameras, fishing reels, kitchen gadgets, small tools, knickknacks, silverware, even a metronome. There was a whole section of electronic equipment like TV’s and VCRs, a jumble of probably obsolete computer gear, a fleet of vacuum cleaners poised to roar to life and tidy the world, enough exercise equipment to trim down half the population, and a jukebox that just then was playing a country song by Shar’s brother-in-law Ricky Savage. Delicacy prevents me from describing what his voice does to my libido.

  Darrin Boydston stood behind a high counter, tapping on a keyboard, on the wall behind him a sign warned CUSTOMERS MUST PRESENT TICKET TO CLAIM MERCHANDISE. I’m not too quick most mornings, but I did manage to figure out that the Cash Cow was a pawnshop.

  “Y’all took long enough,” my client said. “You gonna charge me for the time you spent parking?”

  I sighed. “Your billable hours start now.” Them I looked at my watch and made a mental note of the time.

  He turned the computer off, motioned for me to come around the counter, and led me through a door into a warehouse area. Its shelves were crammed with more of the kind of stuff he had out front. Halfway down the center aisle he made a right turn and took me past small appliances: blenders, food processors, toasters, electric woks, pasta makers, even an ancient pressure cooker. It reminded me of the one the grandmother who raised me used to have, and I wrinkled my nose at it, thinking of those sweltering late-summer days when she’d make me help her with the yearly canning. No wonder I resist the womanly household arts!