Till The Old Men Die (The Jeri Howard Mystery Series Book 2)

by Janet Dawson

  “You arranged to meet Dolly at the Hyatt on Friday. But you had no intention of keeping that appointment. Nina says you left the restaurant before nine o’clock and took her directly home. That gave you plenty of time to drive to Oakland and slip into the building with all the party guests.”

  “I tell you, I didn’t kill her,” Rick snarled. “We were supposed to meet at the Hyatt in San Francisco, the one at the foot of Market Street. Ten o’clock. I waited. She didn’t show. I went to the condo the next day. That’s how I found out she was dead.”

  I heard a door slam, the noise echoing around the warehouse. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Eddie the Knife moving quickly up the center aisle, headed for the stairs. When I turned back to face Rick Navarro, he was on his feet, one hand in a side drawer of his desk. He pulled out a gun and pointed it at me.

  I shook my head and rearranged my face into a calm facade, masking the disquiet I felt at looking down the barrel of his gun. “That solves nothing.”

  “It buys me some time.” He moved to his right, around the end of the desk, in front of the glass case that held the Hawaiian feathered cape.

  Eddie thumped up the stairs and appeared in the doorway, eyes moving swiftly from Rick and the gun to me, assessing the situation.

  “She’s got everything,” Rick told him.

  Eddie’s glare was full of venom. “I told you I’d kill you. I should have done it that day you busted in on my grandfather.” He looked over at Rick. “What do we do now?”

  “We’re going to take a ride over to Oakland, to Miss Howard’s office. After we get what we want, you can do whatever you like with her.”

  Eddie grinned. He liked that idea. His right hand moved to his back pocket and he pulled out the knife. With a click the blade jumped out and glittered in the light. “Come along, bitch,” he said, waving it at me.

  “What makes you think it’s in my office?”

  “I think you can be persuaded to tell us where it is,” Rick said, glancing at the knife Eddie held.

  “And what if I made more than one copy?” I gestured at the papers on Rick’s desk.

  “And gave them to whoever translated the tape?” Rick smiled contemptuously. “Alex Tongco, perhaps? I’ll take care of him later.”

  “You always seem to be taking care of things for your father,” I taunted him, “though lately you don’t do it very well. Is that your function in life? How does it feel, being the cat’s paw?”

  I touched a nerve, for now Rick’s face darkened with anger. “Get her out of here,” he told Eddie. “We’ll take your car.”

  Eddie beckoned with his knife. I walked slowly toward him, watching Rick as he turned and pulled his jacket from its hanger in the closet. He set the gun down on his desk in order to put it on. As I passed the white and gold ceramic elephant near the doorway where Eddie stood, my left hand shot out and seized the areca palm around its thick stem, heaving it up so that I wielded plant and pot like a mace. I swung the clay pot directly at Eddie and felt a satisfying thud as it caught him between the chest and neck. He fell onto the landing, knife clattering out of his hand.

  By the time Rick grabbed the gun from the desk, I had leapt over Eddie’s prone figure. Rick fired at me, the slug slamming into the wall as I took the stairs two at a time. As I reached the central aisle of the import warehouse, Rick was on the stairs, shouting to Eddie, who was back on his feet and swearing. I darted to my right, into one of the middle aisles, dodging behind a forklift. The shelves next to me held stacks of woven baskets, and I peered through them, glimpsing Rick and Eddie as they conferred at the bottom of the stairs. The fluorescent lights glinted off the dull metal of Rick’s gun and showed me the blade of Eddie’s knife. They split up, each heading toward the outer wall of the warehouse, hoping to circle me before I could get to the door or the phone on the wall near the double front doors, the one Rick had used to call a cab for Efren Villegas.

  I backed away from the shelf and stumbled against the forklift. Someone had left a coffee mug on the seat, and now I swore under my breath as I caught it before it could fall. I held it in my hand for a second, then I moved quickly to the center aisle and threw the mug toward the stairs. It shattered on the concrete floor.

  I heard running feet in two directions, converging on the spot where I’d thrown the mug. Through the baskets I saw Eddie Villegas in the aisle next to mine. I whirled and ran toward the outer wall, listening to their voices as they shouted in Tagalog. Someone ran down the center aisle toward the front doors. It was dark in this part of the warehouse, and I banged my shin against a wooden crate left in the middle of the passageway.

  I peered down each aisle, getting past two with no sign of either of my pursuers. When I peered into the third, I saw one of the movable metal staircases, and, beyond it, Rick Navarro at the opposite side of the building. He shouted to Eddie. I heard steps to my left as Rick ran toward the center aisle. Eddie rounded the corner, the knife in his hand making a vicious circle like the head of a snake. The shelf in front of me held stone carvings and brass trays of varying sizes. I grabbed a tray, using it as a shield as Eddie struck, his knife glancing off the metal surface.

  Rick shoved his way past the metal staircase, gun in hand, but he didn’t fire. He needed me alive, so I could lead him to the evidence he was trying so hard to destroy. Eddie had no such compunctions. He wanted to kill me. He struck at me again, and again I deflected the knife with the tray. Then I seized a stone carving and hurled it at him as I reached for another. He dodged the first, but the second hit him on the chest and he staggered backward. Rick had circled in back of me and now he grabbed my shoulder. I turned and hit his right arm with the brass tray I still held, stamping on his foot as I grabbed for the gun. He twisted it out of my grasp.

  I ran toward the center aisle, but before I could get there, Eddie appeared at the end. I detoured up the tall metal stairs and clambered onto the top shelf some twenty feet above the concrete floor. I looked around. The broad wooden shelf was cluttered with the painted elephants I had seen the workmen unloading the other day. They were about two feet high, in green and blue and yellow ceramic with gold and silver accents glimmering in the light from the fixtures above. I picked up one, deciding it was heavy enough to do some damage. Eddie was halfway up the metal stairs when I hurled the elephant over the edge. His arms went up reflexively as he tried to cover his head. The elephant caught him on the shoulder and knocked him all the way to the floor. When I looked down at his motionless figure lying amid the chunks of broken ceramic, I wondered if I’d killed him.

  I didn’t have long to entertain the thought. Rick Navarro had reconsidered using his gun. I ducked out of range as he brought it up and fired at me, then I shoved a few more elephants over the side and he retreated toward the outer wall. How was I going to get down from this perch? I gauged the distance from this shelf to the next. There were two shelves between me and the front door of the warehouse, between me and the phone. I saw the cable I’d seen on my first visit to the warehouse hanging from the ceiling just beyond that last shelf. Maybe I could slide down it to the floor. Of course, I still had to neutralize Rick.

  I launched myself across the space and gained the top of the next shelf, knocking several big woven baskets to the floor and alerting Rick that I was on the move. “You’re not going to get out of here,” he called from the aisle below.

  “I wouldn’t bet on it.” I looked at the next shelf. Carved wooden boxes, stacked neatly together in rows about three feet high. I didn’t see any toe room at all, at least not on this end of the shelf. I made my way slowly down the shelf that held the baskets, looking for a foothold in the boxes on the next shelf.

  “I swear to you I haven’t killed anyone. You can’t prove that I did.”

  “Tell me another story, Rick.”

  “Maybe we can make some kind of arrangement. Why don’t you come down here and we’ll talk about it.”

  “With you holding a gun? Don’t make me laugh.”
As long as he was talking, I could guess where he was. Of course, he was doing the same, following my progress as I rustled through the baskets. He was quiet for a moment, then I heard a different series of sounds. I couldn’t place them at first, then I realized he was rolling another metal staircase into position at the end of the shelf, where I stood. Baskets didn’t provide as much cover as brass trays. I saw bare wood at the end of the shelf that held the wooden boxes and jumped for it just as Rick’s head and shoulders appeared at the top, and he fired.

  I knelt behind the inadequate shelter of the boxes. On my left I spotted the cable dangling from one of the overhead supports, tantalizing me as it led down the floor in front of that telephone. I could have reached it if I climbed over the rows of wooden boxes that paved the shelf. I raised my head just enough to see Rick, still crouched at the top of the staircase, waiting for me to break cover. I had to get the boxes out of my way, and I had to move fast.

  I quickly shoved boxes over the edge of the shelf, clearing a path toward the cable. Rick heard the clatter as wood rained down on the aisle below. His head disappeared from view as he ducked down the stairs to the center aisle. I seized the cable and swung out over empty air, sliding down, scraping skin off my palms. I landed hard on the concrete floor below, the force of my descent dropping me to my knees. I leapt to my feet, reaching for anything I could use as a weapon. I spotted a crowbar leaning against an unopened crate as Rick rounded the corner from the center aisle, his gun raised.

  I brought the crowbar down on his right arm. He cried out as the gun slipped from his grasp. I followed the first blow with a second across his kneecaps. He dropped to the floor, screaming in pain. I picked up the gun and leveled it at him as I reached for the phone.

  “Don’t move. Don’t even think about it.”

  Twenty-eight

  I HAD A LOT OF TIME TO THINK DOWN AT THE HALL of Justice. After I took him out with the crowbar, Rick Navarro needed medical treatment, so the police hauled him off in an ambulance, along with Eddie Villegas, still breathing in spite of the elephant. I spent the next couple of hours laying out the details to Inspector Cobb and his partner, who were chary of my involvement but glad to finally move Lito Manibusan’s murder out of the unsolved column. At two in the morning they put me in the custody of two more officers. The three of us took a swift surrealistic trip over the Bay Bridge in an unmarked police car to collect the tape, the documents, and Carlos Manibusan’s notebook.

  They finally let me go at a quarter to seven that morning. I saw Maximiliano Navarro as I was leaving. He was grim-faced as he walked quickly through the front door of the Hall, his bodyguards on either side. He fixed me with a hard, implacable look that made me think it might be a good idea to postpone any plans I had to visit Manila. I stared right back at him all the same, and the cat blinked. Then he moved on, his bodyguards shouldering a path through a group of reporters, photographers, and TV types toting minicams. They were all shouting questions at him, on the scent of a story, an intriguing one about the arrests of a small-time San Francisco hood and the son of a Philippine presidential candidate charged with the murder of a college professor and the attempted murder of a private investigator.

  I drove back to Oakland, toward the sun already risen above the East Bay hills, a golden sunburst like the one on the Philippine flag. My mind struggled past the fatigue that threatened to consume me. Now that one death had been explained, I could consider the other, examining what I knew and what I guessed. There were some things I should have realized before, things that people said that I should have interpreted in a different way. When you look at something so long and so hard, trying to make the pieces fit together, sometimes it’s easy to miss that one little piece that fits somewhere else, maybe even in a different puzzle.

  The adrenaline rush that had carried me through the events at the import warehouse had disappeared several hours before, plunging me into a pit of exhaustion. More than anything in the world, I wanted to go home and feed my cat, fall into bed, and sleep all day. But I couldn’t do that yet. I had one more stop to make.

  She was awake despite the early hour. She answered the door, wearing one of the jumpsuits she favored, this one yellow, as bright as the morning sun. The red camera bag and a tripod were stacked near the front door. “You’re lucky you caught me,” she said. “I’m going up to Sonoma County on a shoot.”

  “You’re not going anywhere, Felice.”

  Her eyes widened into black pools, but without surprise, as though my presence were somehow inevitable. “Did you want to talk about something?” she asked, words slow as she backed away from the door.

  “Let’s talk about Dolores Cruz. You really hated her, didn’t you? Almost as much as you hate your father.”

  She turned abruptly, walking toward the back of her house as I shut the door behind me. I followed her into the kitchen, where a pot of coffee sat on the counter, waiting to be poured into a thermos. She went out onto the enclosed back porch and looked around her. I wondered if she was looking for a way out, a way to avoid the words that had to be said. I got between her and the door leading out to her garden, but she made no move to run. It was as though she realized there was no exit, no escape.

  “You hated Dolly for ensnaring your father at a time when your mother was ill and needed him. Then your mother killed herself, and you blamed both of them. It may not be logical, but that’s the way you felt. Then Dolly made a pass at your husband at a family dinner one night in Manila. You went after her and put that scar on her chin. But that’s not the whole story. Your hate has been festering for a long time.”

  She sat down on the flowered cushion of the rattan chair as though weighted with the force of my words.

  “Max treated you like part of the furniture, didn’t he? Even the fact that you’re an accomplished photographer meant nothing to him. He wanted to establish a Navarro dynasty. Your only value to him was as a pawn, a female child to be married off, to form an alliance with another rich family. But you have an independent streak. You refused to marry the man he wanted, and eloped with an American instead. When I was here before, you told me that as far as your father was concerned, you don’t exist. They say that negative attention is better than none at all. I guess he’ll have to notice you now.”

  Felice tilted her head up at me as I stood over her. In her lap her hands clenched and unclenched.

  “Murder is as negative as it gets. Before I call the police, I want to sort out some details. Like why you picked this particular time to kill Dolly. You didn’t know she was in the United States until I asked you if you knew anyone named Dolores Cruz and so conveniently described her to you, right down to the scar. How did you know where she lived?”

  “I knew she had a sister and brother-in-law who ran a travel agency,” Felice said, her voice a thin reed. “I made phone calls, I found out where she worked. Then I followed her to that building on Lakeside.”

  That made sense, I thought, recalling the words Dolly hurled at me when I confronted her in the lobby the night she was killed. She said I’d been following her, and I had. But when I thought about who else might be following her, my candidates were Rick Navarro and Eddie Villegas, not Felice.

  “You must have walked into the building right after the photographer who came to take pictures of the Beaumont party. You saw her, and that’s what gave you the idea. I thought the guard was confused or distracted. He said the photographer was a dark-haired woman, but he wasn’t sure whether she was carrying a camera bag or a camera. And I was so certain Rick killed Dolly that I didn’t show the guard your picture. What happened after you went upstairs? I imagine Dolly was surprised to see you.”

  “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to —”

  “Yes, you did,” I said roughly. “I saw the body, and the blood splattered on the wall. I imagine it took only a couple of blows to kill her, but you kept hitting her with that candlestick over and over again. You must have been covered with blood. So you went into the
bathroom and washed yourself off. You took the rubber gloves and a sponge from under the sink and wiped everything you’d touched. I figure you grabbed a coat from Dolly’s closet to cover up the bloodstains on your clothes. You were just about to leave, when I walked into that condo. You had your camera. You hit me with it. That flash of light I saw really was a flash. You put the gloves back on and wrapped my hand around that candlestick. I know how, Felice, I just want to know why.”

  “I didn’t plan it,” she cried, anguish and something else on her face. “It just happened.”

  “The hell it did. You went there to kill her.”

  “The greedy bitch,” Felice said. “She poisoned everything she touched, everyone she met.”

  I shook my head wearily. Blaming the victim is always a convenient strategy where murder is concerned. But Felice would always hate the woman who had been her father’s mistress when her mother committed suicide. “So it’s Dolly’s fault that you killed her?”

  “My father paid her off when he threw her out, with money and a green card so she could stay in the United States. Better if she’d gone back to Manila or whatever cesspool she crawled out of, but she wanted more.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “When I saw Rick last week, he seemed worried, preoccupied. When I asked him why, he finally told me. He said Dolly had turned up, threatening to make a scandal that would hurt Max. She wanted more money.”

  “What else did Rick tell you?”

  “Just that there were some important papers in an envelope. Papers that would embarrass Max.”

  “You hate your father. Why should you care if Dolly made a scandal?”

  “I didn’t.” Felice’s mouth twisted. “When Dolly answered the door, she was surprised to see me. She said she was meeting Rick later. I told her Rick couldn’t keep their appointment, and I was there as his emissary. It didn’t matter to her. She just wanted money in exchange for the envelope. But I didn’t do it to protect Max. I wanted to use it to get back at him. For the way he treated me, the way he treated my mother. I will anyway. Imagine the headlines. Presidential candidate’s daughter arrested for murder.”