Locked In - [McCone 29]

by Marcia Muller

  “Come with me.”

  They got into Glenn’s Jaguar and drove over to Franklin Street near City Hall, where Glenn handed the car over to a valet parker at a small cafe called Bistro Americaine. Glenn was known there— he was probably known in most good restaurants in the city—and they were quickly seated in a booth. When Craig looked at the menu his stomach lurched, so Glenn ordered for him: steak, fries, a side of creamed spinach. Bottle of a chewy zinfandel for the two of them.

  “Heart-stopper meal,” Glenn said, “but the wine’ll cut the grease.”

  Craig smiled weakly.

  “Actually I wanted to talk privately with you,” Glenn added.

  “About what?”

  “The issue of what happened to Sharon. In the brief time I had to review it, the information you presented to me—and I presented to the DA—didn’t indicate any link to her shooting.”

  The feeling of dread that he’d been entertaining all day intensified. “That was my take on it.”

  “I don’t mean to say these people aren’t killers; Lee Summers is my candidate for the murders of his daughter, Harvey Davis, and Teller and Janssen. But they didn’t do Yatz and Angelo—I’ve spoken to the SFPD and ME’s office, and they believe that was just what it appeared to be, a murder-suicide. And my gut tells me none of them did Shar.”

  Craig rubbed his eyes. The waiter came with the wine, and he waited till the whole ritual of smelling the cork and tasting a sip was done before he asked, “Is that just a gut-level reaction, or is there some basis for it in fact?”

  “There’s a basis. There was no need for them or anyone connected with them to enter the pier and search files. They had access to everything they needed to know.”

  Craig sat up straighter. “How?”

  “When I came to pick you up at the pier this afternoon, I took a close look at D’Angelo’s e-mails, then I asked Derek to take an even closer look. She sent copies of everything to Lee Summers.”

  “Playing both sides, was she?”

  “Three sides, I’d say. She was working for McCone Investigations, living with Jim Yatz, and selling out both to Summers.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “Square one, my friend. Square one.”

  * * * *

  HY RIPINSKY

  H

  e’d received a message on his voice mail, having had to turn the phone off for the conference in the DA’s office. Halfway to the parking lot he played it.

  Ben Travers: “I have good news about your wife. Call me as soon as you can.”

  He tried calling Travers back, couldn’t reach him. Ran into the lot, reclaimed his Mustang, and sped across town, weaving in and out among slow drivers. At SF General he parked in a physician’s space and rushed inside.

  Shar’s floor was quiet; no one was at the nurses’ station for the moment. He went down the hall to his wife’s room, pushed aside the curtains around her bed.

  A nurse was sponging off Shar’s face; it looked small and pale beneath the bandages that covered her head. The nurse turned and smiled at him.

  “Mr. Ripinsky, we’ve been waiting for you. Haven’t we, Ms. McCone?”

  Shar said, “Ack!”

  He stared at her.

  “Ack!”

  It was the most beautiful sound she’d ever uttered.

  * * * *

  JULIA RAFAEL

  S

  he slumped in her chair, staring at the duffel bag on her desk.

  She’d spent the afternoon phoning local luggage stores—over fifty in all. Most hadn’t carried this particular brand; the others didn’t keep sales records going back three years. Dead end, unless she wanted to extend her search to other communities, and she didn’t have the energy for that right now.

  The phone buzzed, and she picked up. Ted said, “A Lt. Morrison on line two.”

  She’d called Dave Morrison, the head of the team working Haven Dietz’s murder, to ask him to find out Dietz’s blood type.

  “Type O positive,” he told her.

  Earlier he’d asked her why she needed the information. She’d said something vague about a lead, and then he’d had to take another call. Now he repeated the request.

  She badly wanted to tell him about the money and the duffel bag. Dump the case in his lap and move on. But if she did, she’d violate the bond of confidentiality with the Peepleses by admitting they—and she and the agency—had covered up evidence. But evidence of what? It wasn’t Dietz’s blood in the duffel, and she really couldn’t prove it was linked to the attack or murder.

  “I thought I had a lead, but it turns out I don’t,” she said.

  “Why don’t you tell me about this lead?”

  Julia began the tale she’d thought up while being put on hold by the luggage store. “An informant spun this wild story about finding bloodstained clothing near Dietz’s apartment building. He said he’d had it tested, and the blood was type AB negative. But he couldn’t tell me what lab he’d had it tested at, and—after I called you—it turned out that he couldn’t produce the clothes. Then he admitted they’d never existed.”

  Dios, Shar had told her this job would turn her into a liar. Now she’d gone world-class.

  Morrison sighed. “Informants ... They can be a pain in the ass. Hope this one didn’t take you for much.”

  “Nah, he was in it for the publicity.”

  After she hung up the receiver, she slumped back again, brooding over the duffel bag.

  There were footsteps on the catwalk, and Rae came into the office. “God, I’m exhausted!” she exclaimed and flopped on her back on the floor.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “Lafayette, interviewing Senta Summers again. No surprises there. It’s hotter than hell in the East Bay, and traffic got snarled near the Caldecott Tunnel.”

  “I’ve never been there—I mean, past the tunnel.”

  “Pretty suburbs, rolling hills. But it’s getting so damn overpopulated. Every place in California is getting overpopulated. What’s that?”

  “What’s what?”

  “The bag on your desk.”

  “A big pain in the culo.” She briefly summarized her theory about the bag.

  Rae listened, massaging her temples with her fingertips.

  “Okay,” she said. “Your reasoning sounds solid. Whoever attacked Dietz bled, and some of it came off on the bag’s lining. If you were a cop, you could go to databases of known offenders and try for a DNA match. But you’re not a cop.”

  “And I can’t break my agreement of confidentiality with the Peeples. I was the one who told them to keep the money in their safe.”

  “Because there was no evidence of a crime. You’re entitled to hold money you find on your property any place you choose. Even the bloodstains don’t prove a crime—their son could’ve cut himself shaving the day he stashed the cash.”

  “Right. So what should I do? I’ve never had to deal with anything this complicated before.”

  Rae was silent, her knees bent, arms outflung on the carpet.

  “Let Shar hear the evidence. She’ll know.”

  “How? She’s fighting for her life.”

  Rae sat up, blue eyes wide. “Didn’t anybody tell you? She’s completely conscious, making sounds, and moving a little—a miracle. Give her a few days. This case will wait till then.”

  Julia put her head in her hands and cried with relief.

  * * * *

  MONDAY, JULY 28

  * * * *

  SHARON McCONE

  T

  oday is the day I really start living again.

  I can move—minimally. I can talk, even if it does come out garbled most of the time. I’m responding to therapy.

  But best of all, they’re all coming this afternoon. We’re holding a staff meeting right here in my new room at the Brandt Institute.

  It was a bigger room with two upholstered chairs and an even better view of the eucalyptus grove. Same restful blue walls, but I no
w found myself drawn to the bright spots of color of the flowers people had sent and a poster of Rae’s new book jacket that she’d tacked up.

  Bright color, a symbol of action, liveliness, my future.

  Hy, of course, had briefed me all along on the investigations. Indictments were being prepared against Pro Terra Party Chairman Lee Summers, his aides, and a dozen city and state officials. Summers was under investigation for the murders of his daughter, Harvey Davis, Amanda Teller, and Paul Janssen; whether he’d done them or hired them out made no difference. He was going down.

  But it was doubtful he or one of his associates had put the bullet in my head.

  That left the case Julia was working on, which she was going to present to me this afternoon. And if my shooting wasn’t connected with that—then what?

  A run-of-the-mill burglary that I interrupted? The random situation of being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

  No, that didn’t feel right.

  One in the afternoon. I could actually turn my head a little to see the small crystal clock that Hy had bought me. The agency staff were coming at one-thirty. I felt like a kid who was having a birthday party.

  A bald-as-an-egg kid.

  The nurses kept reassuring me that my hair would grow back in. But when they’d removed the bandages, I’d wondered. Jesus, what vanity! But I’d always had such thick, manageable hair— probably my best feature.

  No, from now on your best feature will be walking and talking. Making love with Hy. Eventually driving and flying. Living—pure sweet living.

  * * * *

  Promptly at one-thirty they filed in—Julia, Mick, Craig, Rae, and Adah. In the interest of keeping the meeting small, we’d decided against including Patrick, Derek, and Thelia. Hy had come a few minutes earlier and leaned against the wall, making room for the others.

  Adah chaired the meeting, asking first Craig, then Mick, and finally Rae to sum up the city hall investigation. The indictments had come down, the accused had lawyered up. Lee Summers was being held without bail for the murders of Teller and Janssen. The chief evidence against him was the document Teller had made Janssen sign, admitting to collaborating with Summers in choosing his victims for the sex videos: instead of destroying it, Summers had carelessly left it in a locked drawer in his office. The Pro Terra Party—which had only been a vehicle for getting into office lawmakers whose votes would financially benefit Summers and a handful of associates—had been disbanded, although some environmentalists Hy knew were thinking of reviving it in its original incarnation. There was no tangible evidence to link Summers or any of his cohorts to my shooting, but the authorities were investigating Summers’s involvement in his daughter Alicia’s murder.

  One case closed.

  “The mayor,” Hy said, “is weathering the storm with his usual diplomacy. City operations go on uninterrupted.”

  Adah said, “Julia? Your case?”

  She stood, visibly nervous. I knew why: everybody else had closed their investigations; she—a relatively new kid on the block—had hit a wall. I tried to smile reassuringly at her, but smiles were not my forte these days.

  She gave a detailed synopsis of the case, holding up pictures from her file as she had the last time.

  “What bothers me,” she ended, “is why Larry Peeples would leave a hundred thousand dollars at his parents’ place and not try to retrieve it till recently.”

  Think, Julia. Maybe he didn’t leave it.

  Maybe he couldn’t retrieve it.

  “And if he attacked Dietz for it, why did he nurse her back to health?” Julia went on, “The attack was savage—no simple mugging. And the perp brought along his own bag to stash the money in. I asked the parents what Larry’s blood type is—O positive. It was AB negative in the duffel.”

  Because Peeples didn’t attack her. It was the perp’s blood.

  “But it stands to reason he put the money under the floor in that tack room. Whoever did it had knowledge of the place, and an excuse to be there in case somebody saw them. I called Ben Gold before I came over here, asked him for yet another follow-up interview later this afternoon. And tomorrow, I’ll talk with the parents again.”

  I moved a finger toward the file—a tiny gesture, but Hy caught it and told Julia to hold it up where I could see it. She turned the pages slowly until I found what I was looking for.

  Somebody else was familiar with the property. And could’ve explained away his being there.

  I said, “Pebbers.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Pebters!” God, this was aggravating, knowing what I wanted to say but not being able to articulate it.

  Hy said, “She means pictures. She wants to see the pictures again.”

  Thank God somebody could understand me.

  Julia turned to the pictures: formal headshot of Dietz before the attack; group shot with the staff at the financial management firm where she’d been employed; informal and badly lighted snap of her in front of her apartment. Formal shot of Peeples; Larry with his parents at the vineyard; Larry and Ben Gold with Seal Rock in the background. I studied them.

  Yes!

  I wanted to point to the picture, but my strength was flagging. Everybody was watching me, but I could only twitch a finger. I glanced at Hy; he nodded, encouraging me.

  I said, “Bole.”

  Dammit!

  They waited. I looked around, then focused on Mick. He was wearing a silver bracelet that he’d bought on vacation in Santa Fe a couple of years ago. Intricate handcrafted links, like the ones my hand had grazed when the flash from my assailant’s gun briefly illuminated them. Like the metal links in my hallucinations when I’d crashed. Like the bracelet the man in the photograph wore.

  I stared fixedly at Mick’s bracelet. No one spoke; I supposed they all thought I’d lost it. Mick shifted his stance, I shifted my stare. He glanced around and frowned. I kept staring.

  He said, “Shar? What’s wrong?”

  I didn’t take my gaze off the bracelet. He looked down, frowned again.

  It was Julia who got it. She glanced from Mick’s wrist to the photos she’d shown me. Looked into my eyes.

  I blinked once.

  “Ben Gold,” she said. “Dietz told Peeples about the embezzlement, and he told Gold.”

  I blinked once again.

  There was a stir in the room, a collective hiss of anger and sigh of relief. Then everybody started talking.

  ”Gold ripped off Haven Dietz, then hid the money at the Peepleses’ place.”

  “He waited till he was sure nobody suspected him before he asked Larry to go away with him.”

  ”Larry refused—he was moving back to Sonoma to learn the wine business.”

  ”Did Gold kill him?”

  ”What did he do with his body?”

  “Gold’s kept in touch with the family, plans to go back and get the money someday. He thinks it’s still in the tack room.”

  ”So who was it that was skulking around the night Julia spent there?”

  “Haven Dietz, of course. She overheard my conversation with Judy Peeples. I should’ve figured that out sooner.”

  “When Gold found out the parents hired us to investigate, he broke into the pier, looking for our case files.”

  ”Why’d he take a gun along?”

  ”Maybe he knew about the guard. Or maybe he just felt safer armed.”

  They’d summed up what I was thinking: it wasn’t personal. I’d just gotten in the way.

  I looked for Hy, but he was gone.

  Now the craziness starts...

  * * * *

  HY RIPINSKY

  H

  e stopped at the RI offices to pick up a weapon, some handcuffs, and a voice-activated tape recorder. He had carry permits and kept .45s in locked bedside tables in all three of Shar’s and his homes, but he didn’t like to keep one on his person or even in his car. Too much chance of theft, too much chance of having it turned against him.

  The previous
year, after the offices of the company then called RKI had been bombed, he’d relocated the business to a very different type of building from the converted warehouse on Green Street: a newish high-rise on Second Street near the Transbay Terminal. Building security was top-notch, RI’s additional security on its three floors even better. It would take a lot more than a homemade explosive device to bring the firm down again.