Treasure Hunt

by John Lescroart

  Tamara eyed her with some suspicion. “Are you sure you didn’t talk to my boss or my brother? No, I’m kidding. But both of them are always on me to eat, eat, eat.” She paused for a second. “Maybe we should go out and have a little bite. Would you like to do that?”

  “I think I have to. I’m sorry.”

  Tamara pushed her chair back and stood up. “No more apologizing, okay? We go get something to eat, we talk about what you heard the other night. Good?”

  “Yes, good,” Ms. Colores said. “Thank you.”

  Fortuitously, Hunt’s office was close to Belden Alley, just a block away. Mickey often said that Belden Alley alone, one short block in length, if it were the only street in the city, might make San Francisco qualify as a better-than-average-destination restaurant town, and then he’d list its restaurants like a carnival barker: “Brindisi Cucina di Mare, Voda, Taverna, B44, Plouf, Café Tiramisu, Café Bastille, and Sam’s Grill.”

  Partially guided by expense, although none of the places would bust even Tamara’s budget, she convinced Linda that Brindisi was what they wanted. Fifteen minutes later, during which they made small talk mostly about food and their brothers (Linda had two, both older), the waiter delivered Tamara’s rigatoni with lamb ragout and artichokes, and Linda’s grilled salmon sandwich on ciabatti with lobster mayonnaise, salad, and fries.

  “So,” Tamara began, a few bites into her lunch, “what happened that Tuesday night?”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” Linda said, then paused for a moment. “I feel really bad that I didn’t do more, I mean when it happened. But then, I know it sounds bad to say I didn’t want to get involved, but at the time it just seemed like a fight, and all I wanted to do was get away from it. And then at the store, they were talking about how they found the body right near where I’d been. And then at first I wasn’t even sure it was Tuesday. I mean, I really didn’t think about it at all as maybe connected to Mr. Como’s murder until I heard about the reward—I know that sounds a little crass . . .”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “Still. I just thought about what if it might have actually been important. You know?”

  “It’s fine, Linda. That’s why they put out a reward. Get people thinking about things that otherwise they might not really have registered. But now you’re pretty sure it was Tuesday?”

  “No. I’m completely sure.” She dabbed a napkin at her mouth. “I have this little calendar book—I know this is pretty Type-A, but welcome to Linda Land, as my brothers say. Anyway, I kind of use it as a shorthand diary for everything I do every day—how much I ran, hours I worked, where I ate, who I went out with, movies, books. It’s probably a disease, and I’ve definitely got it.” She shrugged. “In any event, I checked back and realized it had been payday and Cheryl—she’s my friend from work—and I decided to go wait at the A16 bar and have dinner there. Which, of course, took about three hours.”

  “For dinner?”

  “Well, one and a half for the wait—totally worth it, by the way—then about the same for dinner. But the point is that I probably got out around ten, ten- fifteen, said good- bye to Cheryl, and then—remember, it was that warm week?—I was stuffed so I decided it was so nice out I’d walk some of the food off, so I headed down to the Palace of Fine Arts, which I love at night.”

  “Go on.”

  “So then I’m down by the lagoon, just really strolling, enjoying the night, and I get down to the parking lot by the Exploratorium and I hear these voices, a man and a woman, so I stop. It’s not like I was trying to eavesdrop. Just ahead of me the trail turned and they must have been around the bend.”

  “You didn’t see them?’

  “No. Even if I had, it would probably have been too dark to recognize them. But anyway, it was obviously a fight, I mean just from the sound, but then I’m standing there and the woman goes, ‘God damn you!’ and I hear this, like, slap. And then she’s all ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean that.’ ”

  Clearly getting caught up in the emotion of her retelling, Linda Colores blew at a few of her hairs that had fallen in front of her face, then brushed them from her forehead. “So now I’m thinking,” she continued, “I’ve got to get out of here, but it’s like my feet are stuck to the ground. I’m just rooted there, afraid I’m going to make some noise if I move. I mean, I really don’t want to be there, but . . .” Another shrug, followed by another sigh.

  “So she hit him?”

  Now Linda nodded. “And then there’s this silence, and finally I hear him plain as day. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘I’m sorry, but it’s over. I can’t do anything about it.’

  “And she goes, ‘You can. You can if you still love me.’

  “And he goes, ‘Aren’t you listening to me? That’s the problem. I don’t love you anymore.’

  “And then I hear her say, ‘No, no, no, that can’t be,’ and then there’s this kind of sickening sound, like a . . . I don’t really know what it was like exactly. I mean, she kind of groaned with exertion or something and then there was this, this kind of dull sound—I even thought at the time it could have been somebody getting hit with something. I know I should have maybe gone and looked then. I mean, it sounded bad enough, but by then I was scared. I mean really scared. And then suddenly I start to actually feel sick and light-headed myself and I turn back and start walking away as fast and as quietly as I can. I really should have done something about it then, I think. I mean, called the police or told somebody. But when there was nothing about it on the news, not until Friday when they found the body, and even then I didn’t immediately put it together. Although I guess I should have, shouldn’t I?”

  “You’re here now,” Tamara told her, “when a lot of other people wouldn’t be. So I wouldn’t beat myself up over it too much.”

  “I don’t like to think I’m such a coward,” Linda said, “or that I only came forward now because of the reward.”

  “I don’t think that,” Tamara said, “and I’m the only one listening.”

  20

  Being thorough, Mickey stayed on at the Sanctuary House offices and spoke for a time with each one of the five other women who worked there to see if any of them had seen or heard anything from Nancy Neshek on the Monday afternoon of the reward announcement that might bear on the question she had meant to put to the Hunt Club. None of them was particularly helpful; all were shaken and tearful.

  It was after noon when Mickey finally finished and left the admin office. From the hospital lobby, he called Hunt on his cell phone and left a message, thinking, What’s the goddamn point of having a cell phone if you don’t take it with you or keep it turned on? Hunt was supposed to be at the Como memorial. So was nearly the entire cast of characters from which he needed to find alibis for the past Monday night. So it was doubly frustrating that Mickey had just learned that the Communities of Opportunity people had held a meeting on that night. Presumably—in fact, almost certainly—Nancy Neshek had been there along with many others of the nonprofit executive directors, associates, and certainly even Len Turner.

  And Hunt, at this very moment, was in all probability with these people and didn’t have that one rather critical bit of information. But then, getting to his car, Mickey realized that if Hunt spoke to even one of these people, he’d find out about the Monday-night meeting right away anyway.

  Still, Mickey liked being the bearer of good news, especially when he thought it was good stuff and he’d discovered it himself. So he placed another call to the office to brag a bit to Tamara, but she didn’t pick up there either. And what was that about? he wondered.

  For just a brief moment, he found that his stomach had gone a little hollow. Where was his sister? Had he and Hunt been too cavalier about bringing her back to work, in assuming that’s what she wanted, in giving her more responsibility? Or might Mickey hope against hope that she had actually, of her own volition, gone out for something to eat? It was, after all, lunchtime.

  His
phone still in his hand, without much forethought, he went to his favorites list and hit Jim’s number, heard it ring four times, got his answering machine. “Give me a fucking break,” he said aloud, and leaving no message, he threw his phone onto the seat next to him.

  He knew who he wanted to call next. But really, what was he going to say to Alicia except that he had just loved her company the night before and wanted to see her again? Wanted to see her all the time, in fact. What she had called her nerd moment from the night before had struck Mickey as incredibly poignant, echoing as it did his own feelings. It had humanized her to an extent that had taken him by surprise. He really didn’t need anything to help make her more compelling, but there it had been, unpracticed and sincere, a glimpse of the person under the package.

  Beautiful there as well.

  Still, he would have to wait. She was mourning Dominic Como. In fact, now that he thought of it, she was almost certainly at the memorial herself.

  This was just swell, he was thinking. Here he was, all dressed up and no place to go. In the future, he would really have to try to remember to get more and/or clearer assignments from Hunt before he left the office for the day, which now stretched long and empty before him.

  He turned the key in the ignition, the car started right up, and he pulled out of his space. When he got to Potrero, the traffic was heavy and unbroken going south to his left, but there was an opening turning right if he moved quickly, and so he jammed down on the accelerator.

  That was the extent of the thought he gave to turning back uptown. It could have easily gone either way, since he didn’t have a destination in mind.

  Such a small, random decision. Such huge consequences.

  The windows that overlooked the booth tables at Lou the Greek’s were set high in the west-facing wall, their bases perhaps six feet from the floor. This unusual design feature wasn’t due to some architect’s skewed or artistic vision; from outside the building, all six of the windows sat level to the asphalt that paved a debris- and Dumpster-strewn alley. Lou’s had been built about halfway underground. Patrons entering the building’s front double doors could either go up the stairs to the first floor—Acme Bail Bonds, Florence Ward/Notary Public, and Presto Dispatch (a document delivery service)—or down eight ammonia- or possibly urine-tinged steps, through a red- leather one-sided swinging door, and into the bustling netherworld of Lou’s—“Open Six to Two Seven Days a Week/Full Bar/Daily Special.”

  When you walk in, the bar is to your right. If it’s lunchtime, the bar is jammed, with all the stools taken, and behind them a couple of rows of standing room. If it’s your first time here, you notice the high windows, under them the six old-fashioned four-person wooden booths, the low-slung acoustic tile ceiling, the faint odor of cooking oil, soy sauce, maybe spilled beer. The place squeezes twenty four-tops onto the floor, and six two-tops around the walls, and every weekday it serves over two hundred lunches, all the more remarkable because its menu every day, save the occasional bonanza of fortune cookies, is comprised of only one dish: the Special.

  Lou the Greek’s wife, Chiu, was Chinese, and for twenty-five or more years, she’d been honoring her and her husband’s union by creating a new dish nearly every single day, always based on their two nationalities. Today’s Special, for example, General Lou’s Pork, was at once typical and unique: pita bread pockets stuffed with bright red Chinese barbecued pork, scallions, garlic, hoisin sauce, yogurt, and hot pepper flakes. A lot of hot pepper flakes.

  Juhle and Russo sat sucking their iced teas through straws across from each other in one of the booths.

  Russo set her glass down, swallowed, and blew in and out noisily a couple of times. “Holy shit,” she said. “Lou calls this ‘some spicy’? I’d like to see a lot spicy if this is some. This stuff is fire.”

  Juhle slid over the little jar of pure hot pepper seeds in oil. “You want to get serious, add some of this. Then it gets spicy.”

  “I pass.” Russo sipped again, rubbed at her lips. “I mean it. Holy shit.”

  “You already said that.”

  “It’s a two ‘holy-shit’ pita pocket.”

  Juhle took another bite, chewed contentedly, switched to another subject without preamble. “So how can it hurt? We’re just talking to her.”

  “We don’t know it’s her scarf, Devin.”

  Juhle shrugged, sipped some tea, shrugged again. “We ask her. We show her that lovely color photograph you took and ask the lovely Ms. Thorpe if she’s ever seen this thing before. She says no, we keep looking, maybe ask some other people if they ever saw her wearing it, or somebody else wearing it. On the other hand, she says yes, we’re getting close.”

  “I’m not even so sure of that.”

  “No? Why not, pray?”

  “Because even if it’s hers, we don’t know if it’s his semen.”

  “Granted. But we will know in a couple of days. And?”

  “And you just seem to want to be building this case on one flimsy lead after another. You really don’t see this?”

  “I see what you’re saying, sure. First we get the tire iron. We know it’s Como’s hair on it, but we don’t know it’s from Como’s limo, although the tire iron from the limo is missing. Right? Right. There are a lot of tire irons in the world. Close, but not proof positive. So then we search the limo and guess what? We find the scarf. And sure, it might not be the Thorpe girl’s scarf, and it might not be Como’s masculine essence on it, either, but—”

  “Jesus, Dev, you think you could just say ‘semen’?”

  “I doubt it. I don’t even say ‘semen’ when I’m talking to Connie.”

  “So what do you . . . no, never mind. Forget I asked. Go on.”

  “So I agree with you, is what I’m saying, in theory. We’ve got all these things we don’t know for sure. Could be but might not be. The tire iron, the limo, the scarf that might not be hers, the semen—see, I can do it—that might not be his. But let’s say—let’s just say—that the elements of the trail I see here all turn out to go in our direction. I mean, it turns out the tire iron came from his limo. It’s her scarf and his semen. Then, in that case, she’s definitely lied to us, which tells us something new, doesn’t it? Now, add to that that she had daily access to the limo, that he fired her that day—”

  “We don’t know that. Only maybe that he said he was going to.”

  “So we ask her that too. She tells us yes, she’s got a motive. And all this is not even talking about Monday night, where she slept in her car out by the beach a couple of blocks below where Nancy Neshek breathed her last.” Juhle took the last loud slurp from his iced tea, held up a hand until he’d swallowed it. “I’m not saying we’re ready for an arrest here, Sarah. But come on. Put a little press on her, get another statement, see if she answers the same as last time. What have we got to lose?”

  When the service was over, Al Carter hung back over in the corner of the downstairs lobby of the War Memorial building while Hunt corralled Turner, the Sanchezes, and Lorraine Hess into a circle off to the side at the bottom of the steps. Carter listened in while Hunt pinned down each of them in turn about their whereabouts the night of Neshek’s death. It seemed to take some of the wind out of Hunt when he learned that they’d all been at a meeting with one another on the Monday night when Neshek had been killed. But then when he learned that Nancy Neshek had been there with them all, too, he picked up again. So, Hunt asked, what time did the Communities of Opportunity meeting break up? Where had every one of them gone afterward?

  This last question got Turner hot enough that nobody wound up having to answer. Maybe, Turner had exploded, Hunt didn’t realize that he was talking to the leadership of the philanthropic community in San Francisco. None of Len Turner’s associates were suspects in either one of these murders. In fact, Turner himself had hired Hunt and these people had contributed to the reward. Weren’t those the facts?

  Hunt had had to admit that they were.

  And then Turner we
nt on the offensive. Carter had heard him do it before. He reminded Hunt that all of these executives had places to go and important things to do, and maybe Hunt could better spend his time following the leads he had already developed through the process they were paying him for rather than harassing them in this ridiculous manner, thank you.

  After the executive group broke up, Hunt had waited until they’d all left the building, then he’d sat down on the steps and had a brief talk on his cell phone. By the time he closed the phone and slid it into its holster on his belt, Carter was standing in front of him, arms crossed over his chest, leaning back against the wall.

  “That Len Turner, he’s a force of nature, isn’t he?”

  Hunt stood up, nodded in acknowledgment through a frustrated grin. “Al Carter, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir. I had a talk with one of your people the other day out at Sunset. Mickey?”

  “Mickey it is.”

  “And his grandfather is Jim Parr?”

  “That’s him. Do you know Jim?”

  “I do. He was my predecessor and taught me some of the driving ropes. It’s not all about steering and brakes and acceleration, you know. There’s a significant political component as well.”

  “I’d imagine so. In any event, Mickey mentioned that he might be trying to see you again today, as a matter of fact.”

  Al Carter’s wide, intelligent face closed down slightly. “He didn’t make an appointment.”

  “No. I think he just planned to go out there and hoped he’d run into you.”

  “Did he mention what he wanted to discuss? Maybe you and I can take care of it here, whatever it might be. Although I must tell you, my ignorance about Mr. Como’s movements that last night is near total. I dropped him off near his home, as I told your Mickey and the police, and had the limo back in the school lot by six-thirty. Then I went home myself. Can I ask you a question?”