Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  “Never mind. Lila has to live her own life, and if she wants to run Bobby’s business, I won’t say a word.”

  I let out a hoot of laughter. “Yeah, right. That’ll be the day when you never say a word. Besides, Frank, he left the business to all of us, not just Mom. Twenty-four-and-a-half percent each to Richard and me and fifty-one percent to Lila. He wanted us to carry on as a family.”

  Frank brought himself up to his full six-foot two inches and looked down at me. “He wanted you to sit on the board. Make executive decisions. That’s what he meant. He never meant for you to actually be involved in the day-to-day grit of it. Look at your brother. He’s behind the scenes. Why can’t you be more like him?”

  “Don’t start with my brother,” I said wearily. “He’s a computer geek. He likes statistics and numbers. I don’t. I like people.”

  “So become a social director on a cruise ship.” He studied the expression on my face. “Why do I bother? You are as stubborn as Bobby ever was.”

  “I know. That’s why you love me. I remind you of Dad,” I replied. Frank laughed and shook his head.

  “All right. Go on. Get out of here. I’ve got work to do,” he told me, as he opened the door. I started down the hall and he shouted after me. “And call Faith. I think she’s got a live one for you!”

  I exited into the clear air shielding my eyes from the bright sun. I felt a surge of depression, without knowing what exactly I was depressed about.

  Maybe it was Frank’s fatherly concern, misplaced though it was. Maybe it was this murder I might have prevented if I had done something different. It made me feel ineffectual and inept. I didn’t like it.

  But this oppressive feeling seemed more than that. I had a sudden revelation and looked at my watch to confirm the date.

  Yup, January 24th. Today marks the third anniversary of the ending of my eight-year marriage. Today marks the acknowledgment of acts of betrayal and failure. No wonder I’m depressed.

  “Don’t think about Nick,” I said aloud, reflecting nonetheless, on the handsome Greek American boy I’d met in high school and married after college. So much like my father, I’d thought at first, despite what anybody had said to me.

  He had easily won my heart only to deceive me from the beginning with a constant flow of other women. After years of denial, I’d faced it and demanded he stop seeing them. He hit me. Twice. Once to knock me down and again to make sure I stayed there. When you’re an ex-marine you know how to make sure somebody stays down.

  Within minutes, he’d dissolved in tears, begging my forgiveness. I forgave him but I knew better. I forgave him because I loved him. I knew better because I’d taken too many classes in spousal abuse not to know how it goes.

  Shortly after that, I’d enrolled in a karate class after telling everyone I wanted to be more “self-sufficient” at my job. Becoming a black belt was not too difficult for a girl who had taken ballet all her life, and had anger and fear living inside her.

  Six months later when I stood up to him again about a new girlfriend, Nick took another jab at me, but I flattened him. I sued for divorce and tried not to look back. Whenever I did, though, I could never tell who I was madder at, Nick for dishing it out or me for taking it.

  Forcing thoughts of yesteryear out of my mind, I stopped by a cell phone outlet to buy a new battery for my phone, praying that was the problem.

  It took me twenty minutes of back and forth with the salesman to convince him I didn’t want to trade it in for a new phone. What is with that, anyway? I had just finally figured out how this one worked.

  The new battery seemed to do the trick, and I speed dialed Tío. After the latest word on the “little guy” I called the office. Lila was at lunch, something I wished I were at myself, so I hung up.

  With a growling stomach, I crossed the street to Togo’s, a sandwich place on bustling University Avenue. Service is fast, and I love the tuna submarine sandwich. I sat on a bench under a tree and watched the world go by while I ate.

  Licking my fingers of the remaining tuna, I felt the sudden urge to go back to the San Francisco warehouse. Maybe if I had paid more attention, I might have prevented Wyler’s death from happening. Maybe not, but that was something I would never know unless I tried to find some answers.

  ~*~

  Forty minutes later, I arrived at the same San Francisco Street I had been on less than twenty-four hours before. However, as the song goes, what a difference a day makes.

  The weather was absolutely gorgeous. The parking was also a lot easier. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad day, after all.

  Yes, it was. A man was dead, and it might have been because of me.

  Opening the car door, I stepped out into air slightly cooler than Palo Alto’s and, oh, so delicious. The breeze ruffling my hair had a slightly chilled feeling to it, reminding me the bright sun was not enough to completely ward off winter.

  There was no evidence of the previous night’s storm anywhere to be seen. The sun had dried the rain soaked streets and now shone brightly in the sky. It was close to seventy degrees but that, as I knew, could change at any moment.

  I looked over to Telegraph Hill topped by Coit Tower. The tower always made me smile but not today.

  It was a memorial to Lily Coit, a rich and eccentric woman whose devotion to fires during the early days of San Francisco rivaled many of today’s pyromaniacs. But she was more about helping to stop fires than starting them.

  The Nob Hill widow gave money, equipment, and prestige to the fledgling firefighters of the Barbary Coast. After her death, the firemen of San Francisco built and dedicated a monument to her in the shape of a fire hose, aimed toward the sky.

  I’m not completely sure what was going through their minds, but it has always looked like a huge phallic symbol to me. Color me crude.

  I walked briskly toward the warehouse. Everything had a slight Salvador Dali look. The slant of the winter sun caused buildings and trees to throw irregular, stark shadows, a vibrant blue sky serving as backdrop. I dug into my bag for the small, matchbook-sized video camcorder.

  D.I. provides each agent with one of these camcorders, weighing less than three ounces. It sends images and sound to a receiver that lives in the trunk of each agent’s car. The receiver can take in data from up to five miles away with crystal clarity, which is stored on an external flash drive.

  The trick is in learning how to aim one of these little things so you record what you really want. Before I got the hang of it, I meticulously recorded many a blank wall, person’s foot, or bird’s duff.

  Agents are required to carry three eight-hour battery packs on their person at all times, each the size of a paperclip, enough for a twenty-four hour day. The battery in the receiver itself is good for twenty-four hours when it’s fully charged.

  When we return to home or work, we enter the flash drive into the USB port of a computer, send the info off to the mainframe, and then try to remember to recharge the batteries for future use. All very ritualistic, but it sure does save from scribbling notes on the back of your checkbook, as I have done in the past.

  I turned it on and began to record all the license plates of the cars in my path. I had used the camcorder right before the monsoon hit and mentally noted several cars were there for the second day. This was something the computer program we entered the data into would automatically correlate.

  I also made some verbal notes into the small device as I walked along. If anyone noticed me talking, they probably thought I was either on a cell phone, nuts, or possibly both.

  “It’s about one-thirty p.m. on January twenty-fourth. I am at Bay and Beach walking toward the warehouse,” I said in barely a whisper.

  “If I can, I’m going inside it. One thing that really puzzles me, and I keep mulling this over, is why Watch Line was hired to patrol a dilapidated warehouse. They’re more expensive than most security services. Maybe it’s the cost of their cute little blue and red uniforms. Anyway, that fact should be explored. O
kay, here we are.”

  I stopped across the street from the warehouse and noted a slim, beautiful Chinese woman, about ten years younger than me, coming out of the parking lot. She hurriedly crossed the street and opened the door of a new lime green Volkswagen Bug.

  She was wearing a plain black slim skirt and a long sleeve white sweater but managed to give this common outfit a lot of style. I watched her long stockinged legs swing elegantly around and into the car after she sat behind the wheel.

  I didn’t think anybody could get into one of those small cars looking like a lady, but somehow she managed to do it. For a brief moment, she looked back toward me, shielding her eyes from the sun. That was when I got a shot of her face. Then I aimed for the license plate of her car.

  I wondered briefly who the woman was and if she had ever been a dancer. She certainly moved like one. My eyes followed her as she drove off, tires squealing.

  I turned my attention back to the small, restricted parking lot holding one non-descript, late-model, white pickup truck covered with rust and dents. It had a recently abandoned look and one of the tires was low on air.

  Nobody seemed to be around, so I crossed the street and went for a closer inspection. The cab of the truck had several empty cans of Mountain Dew strewn around on the passenger’s seat and floor. There was nothing else inside that I could see.

  I tried the doors but they were locked. A faded tarp, grimy and torn, lay crumpled in the bed up near the cab. Two cigarette butts were on the floor.

  Other than that, it looked recently swept clean. I continued to the back of the truck and recorded the truck’s license plate.

  Finished, I turned around and went to the door of the warehouse fully expecting it to be locked. To my surprise, the door was slightly ajar.

  Dropping the camcorder in my pocket, I pushed open the door and stepped inside, trying to adjust my eyes to the lack of light. I was struck by the moist and musty smell of a place rarely exposed to fresh air or sunshine.

  Brilliant shafts of light pierced through holes in the rusted roof and hit the uneven, cement floor like small spotlights. The warehouse was larger than it looked from the outside and obviously constructed many years ago. The outside structure was painted stucco, but inside it was lined in rusting, corrugated tin. Dry, wooden beams reached up to support the corroding metal of the roof.

  It was pretty yucko, and I could imagine things setting up housekeeping in here National Geographic might want to know about.

  Beginning directly below the roofline and continuing to the floor were dozens of large, square shaped cages that lined the four walls of the warehouse. They were apparently used as temporary storage areas for merchandise taken from the ships.

  Three sides of each square were made of a crisscrossed heavy-duty iron, open enough for maybe a child’s hand to fit through but no more. The perimeter of the warehouse completed the fourth wall.

  Each cage was about one hundred feet wide and had a solid door locked with various types of padlocks. Nowhere did I see yellow crime scene tape. I’d assumed the murder hadn’t been committed inside the warehouse, and now I knew for sure.

  All but three cages were empty. One enclosed thousands of bundles of tied steel wire, piled in neat stacks. Another cage contained hundreds of shoeboxes, strewn helter-skelter.

  Next to the unloading bay, a third cage proved to be the most interesting. Inside this cage was a small room built of wood, about twenty feet square, probably used as a makeshift office. Other than that, the cage was completely empty.

  What caught my eye, however, was the locked door on the cage. Intrigued, I crossed the cement floor that was covered with dirt and small pebbles, making small scratching noises with my feet. My footsteps echoed in the dark, and I shivered involuntarily.

  It was an eerie feeling, so I tried to pretend I was both Nick and Nora Charles in an old Thin Man movie. That didn’t really work, but I forgot all about my discomfort, anyway, once I got a closer look at the lock and the door.

  In my job, I’ve learned to spot the better-made and more effective locks manufactured. This was one of them, big time. It was a Gibson, digital and state-of-the-art, with an internal, computer-generated locking code that changed within the lock several times daily.

  The way it’s set up is, you can only access the current code with a satellite locator, tied into yet another computer in Sacramento that is only accessible after about a dozen passwords are given. This Gibson was wired to an elaborate alarm system, so elegant it brought tears to my eyes.

  The whole thing was about as burglar-proof as you can get. Even though I didn’t come across many of these in my travels, I knew the system had a price tag of several thousand dollars, not including the monthly maintenance charges.

  Then, I focused on the door itself and became even more confused. It appeared to be made of solid steel, over four inches thick, with overlaid hinges. I’ll bet it probably weighed in at about a ton and a half. If you were to try to open either the door or the lock by force, you’d probably have to use enough explosives to destroy whatever they were protecting.

  I’d certainly never seen either one on anything as ordinary as a holding place for manufactured goods. I studied the crisscrossed iron bars, so thick even a heavy duty, pneumatic wire cutter would have problems cutting through, and saw another sophisticated alarm system woven in and out, similar to one installed at a bank where we recently finished a job.

  “Qué pasa?” I said, trying to make sense of it all. “What do they have stored in here? Diamonds? And if so, where are they?”

  You didn’t need to be an Einstein to know something major was wrong in this quiet, musty place. I spun around and surveyed the other cages again with a suspicious eye.

  Somewhat mollified, I turned back to the anomalous cage. I scrutinized the wooden room inside as best I could, as it was some forty feet back from the front of the cage.

  In order to get a clear look at it, I had to squint between the crisscrossed iron bars. The room also had an iron door, sort of a junior version of the behemoth one standing beside me. To the left of the door was a high, iron-barred window through which a light shone.

  Need I say that the iron door and window sported two more very expensive locks? I didn’t think so.

  I felt like I was missing a chapter of a book. You know, the one that explains what’s going on.

  Was this or was this not an empty hold in a dilapidated, empty warehouse being protected almost as well as Fort Knox? I made up my mind I was going to find out what was in that office if I had to chew my way through the iron. I tried to shake the fencing with all my might, but it was about as responsive as the Great Wall of China.

  I put my toes in between the holes in the crisscrossing and climbed several feet up. This gave me a little more of a vantage point, and I could see a little bit into the window and inside the room. I strained my eyes and could see the top of a chair, a desk and the back wall of the room, although something didn’t look quite right.

  I dropped down and walked slowly around to the side of the cage that was next to the loading bay so I could pace out the interior and exterior of the room with my size nine running shoes.

  “Okay, who are you and what are you doing?” said a gruff voice behind me.

  SIX

  Everybody’s A Suspect

  As I had been concentrating on counting and math not being one of my stronger suits, I was so startled I let out a yelp and fell back against the iron cage. Then I saw the uniform of a San Francisco policeman. I was annoyed, but tried not to show it.

  “Whoa, officer, don’t shout at someone like that. You scared me half to death,” I chided him, in what I hoped was a winsome manner.

  The boxy, middle-aged man was unmoved by my charms and looked more like someone who has just come across a snake in his tool shed. “I repeat, young woman, what are you doing here? Who are you?”

  I did some fast thinking. “I was just looking for a warehouse to rent for my business, an
d I thought there just might be someone inside to talk to about it. But, my, my, what’s a policeman doing here? Has something happened?” I asked, in a breathless, inquisitive voice that sounded a little like Marilyn Monroe on helium.

  I’d seen this approach work for Lila countless times, so I gave it a whirl. I could have saved myself the trouble. He wasn’t buying any of it.

  “I’m going to ask you for the last time,” he rasped, staring at me in a menacing way. “What’s your name and what are you doing here? This is private property. You want to rent the place? Dial the number on the sign on the outside of the building. You’re trespassing. I might have to arrest you.”

  “That’s a little over of the top, don’t you think?” I replied, dropping my voice to its normal range and matching his menacing tone.

  “I haven’t done anything other than look. What are you going to arrest me for? Trespassing seems a little thin, as the door was open, and there’s no sign telling me to keep out.” My change of attitude and demeanor confused him, and his body began to twitch involuntarily.

  Before he could answer, another voice came from the entrance doorway. “Mitchell, go on outside. I’ll take care of this.” Mitchell shrugged, shrank a little in size and turned on his heel, heading past the voice, and out through the doorway.

  The voice, dressed in a dark suit, sauntered towards me and became a man of about six feet tall. He was backlit so I couldn’t tell much more, other than he was probably gorgeous; I have these instincts.

  He stopped in one of the shafts of light from the ceiling and stared at me. Nothing moved save the dust particles highlighted around his head by the makeshift spotlight.

  After a moment, he spoke in a silky, calm manner unnerving me completely. “I’m Detective John Savarese. My friends call me John. You’re Bob Alvarez’s daughter, aren’t you? What’s your name, Lillian or something?”