Five O'Clock Twist

by Joanne Pence

  “It’s so sad that innocent people had to die,” Rebecca said. “I’m only thankful you weren’t one of them.”

  “So am I.” She squeezed Rebecca’s hand. “But I worry about my business. Esteban says he’ll be able to run things, and Sierra offered to help hire a new assistant, but I can’t imagine anyone wanting the job after the horrible publicity Kiki’s House of Beauty has received. I also can’t imagine many customers coming back. The whole thing feels ghoulish. I know I’ll think of Inga every time I walk into the place.”

  “Try not to worry. I’m sure Esteban and Sierra will do a good job for you.”

  “I know they will, but I can’t help but think it might be time to let Mr. Young sell his building and move closer to his son.”

  Rebecca hated hearing Kiki say that, but it might be the most practical course for her and her children. “If you do decide to go that way, talk to Richie. He’ll get you the best deal possible, believe me about that.”

  “You think he would?”

  “I know he would.”

  Kiki sighed. “That’s a relief.”

  “You don’t have to decide right away. Let him talk to the buyers, see how much he can run up their offering price, and then see what works best for you.”

  “I like that idea,” Kiki murmured.

  “Get your health back, and after that, knowing you, Kiki, you’ll be able to conquer the world.”

  o0o

  Richie showed up at Rebecca’s house that evening.

  He greeted Spike, and then said, “I heard about Sean Hinkle’s death. I just wanted to make sure you were okay after all this.”

  They faced each other awkwardly. “I’m okay.”

  “I’ve heard it was supposed to have been suicide.”

  “That’s what Calderon and Benson’s preliminary findings are, but I understand they do have their doubts. His apartment was almost too clean, as was the railing where he jumped. But so far, they have no evidence at all to suggest it was anything else. And people at work are saying he’s been despondent since his girlfriend, Audrey, was killed. They also hinted that he was involved in some of her real estate schemes. Even worse, the mayor was beginning to think he was a liability and was about to fire him, which they claim made him even more depressed.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  “Not at all.”

  Richie nodded. “I wonder if he just knew too much.”

  “It could be. He was hiding something when I talked to him, but I don’t know what.” She sighed and moved towards her kitchen. “Coffee?”

  He followed. “Thanks. I’m still tired from all that happened last night,” he admitted.

  “You gave your statement?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Yes. I think Sutter will decide it’s too much of a hassle to question any of this.”

  “I hope so,” she admitted, handing him a cup.

  “Kreshmer’s reasons for killing had nothing to do with anything Hinkle was involved with.” Richie took a sip of the warm brew. “But one thing troubles me. There’s no suggestion at all that Kreshmer tried to have you killed on the beach. He was a loner, but he would have needed an accomplice at the beach. And I can’t see him handling an assault rifle like a trained sniper out in that fog.”

  Her shoulder’s sagged. “I know he told you he wasn’t the shooter, but killing a cop is pretty much an automatic death sentence, and even confessing to an attempt might have been enough to take any plea deal off the table. And he did have enough connection in city government to find out how to fake the dispatch call to set me up. Besides, he had enough money, since he rarely spent any, to hire a hit-man.”

  “All that is true except for one thing. Once cornered, he didn’t care about plea deals. He wanted to die. And another thing, I doubt if he had enough in his piggy bank to hire a two-man crew. Taking out a cop is a big deal. Very expensive.”

  “But if he wasn’t the one who tried to kill me …”

  “I know,” Richie whispered.

  He said no more, but she could see in his eyes what he was thinking. Someone out there might have known what Sean Hinkle and Audrey were involved in and worried that her investigation might go a whole lot further up the chain of government or to some other powerful group—even the Five Families that Richie considered friends. If so, this wasn’t over.

  “As long as nothing new happens,” Richie said, “no one should be coming after you again.”

  “I wonder if I’ll ever know the entire story, and why Sean Hinkle died.”

  “It’s safest not to ask.” He finished his coffee. “I should go.”

  She followed him to the door. She couldn’t help but lift her hand to lightly and gently touch his face. There was some swelling on the cheekbone, and he’d have a bruise for a while. It tore at her. “And I should let you,” she whispered.

  He looked all but pained at her touch, and at holding himself back. “I know, because you’re Rebecca Rulebook.”

  “Maybe so.” She dropped her hand as thoughts of all her lies about the “crime scene” in Chinatown and to her boss struck. “Or, maybe not.”

  As if reading her mind, he said, “Don’t let it bother you. You did the right thing.”

  He looked down to see Spike up on his hind legs, his front paws on Richie’s knees, begging to be petted. He reached down and picked him up. “Spike, my man, you take care of your Mom for me. She’s a difficult one, but despite that, against any good sense I ever had, and all my mother’s prayers to the contrary, I do love her, you know. And you.” He kissed the top of Spike’s head and gave the little guy a hug, then put him down. “Good-bye, Rebecca,” he said softly, and then walked out the door.

  She shut the door behind him.

  She stood alone in the apartment. Spike gazed up at her with the saddest eyes she had ever seen, and she knew they were a reflection of her own.

  --I do love her, you know.

  She waited a moment, trying to breathe, thinking of all the times Richie had been there for her, and how does she thank him but to say she’s “confused” and “troubled.” Because of what? Because everything wasn’t perfect between them? Because they had differences? Or was it because she had never felt so strongly about anyone and didn’t know how to deal with emotions that seemed to defy her personal “rulebook”?

  --I do love her, you know.

  She couldn’t stop herself from running out the door, through her back yard, and into the street.

  She got there just in time to see his Porsche turn out of the alley. “Richie, wait!”

  Too late. He didn’t hear her, he didn’t stop. Spike trotted outside and sat at her feet, looking up at her with a “What now?” expression.

  “I don’t know,” she said, still looking at the empty street, scarcely believing he was gone. She could tell herself it was “for the best” that she hadn’t gotten there on time, that her life would be much easier this way. But she didn’t. “Spike, what have I done?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Richie sat alone at the bar at Big Caesar’s. He tried talking to people; he tried playing the host, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  A number of people walked over to him from time to time to talk to him, but they soon realized—even if he said nothing unfriendly—that their company wasn’t wanted that night.

  And, he thought, why should it be? It was Saturday night, after all. The band was playing, the club was filled, but the only song that kept going through his head was “Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week” because that was how he felt.

  Even Shay and Vito had kept out of his way the past couple of days, ever since the incident in Chinatown. He hadn’t even felt like taking on any new clients. He’d had three guys come to him for help, but he turned them all away.

  He had heard from Kiki, who was home now. He had gone to see her one day while Rebecca was at work. After serious thought and discussion with her children, Kiki realized that trying to get her spa going again after a de
ad body had been found in the mud bath, was probably a bridge too far. She was better off giving up the lease, resting until she was strong, and then finding a new location—with a new name—and starting over. She asked for his help.

  Richie worked out a deal for her with Milton Jang, who did know a lot more about the potential buyers of the spa’s location than he had been willing to admit when Richie first talked to him. The buyers wanted the property enough that they were willing to pay quite a bit to Kiki to void her lease. She was stunned and grateful. The money would go a long way to helping her set up her new spa when she ready.

  Jang also found buyers for Steve Burlington’s commercial building. Richie would net about five-hundred thousand dollars in that deal. He’d get a million from Burlington for closing the deal, but soon realized he would need to pay out at least half of that amount to everyone he worked with to make sure it happened.

  He would do it this once, but never again.

  Someday, he might even feel good about it.

  He sipped his tonic and lime drink. He was quite tempted to have the bartender put gin in it, but he’d learned in the past that turning to alcohol to forget about Rebecca only made everything a lot worst.

  He was surprised to hear the band start to play a song outside their usual swing and jazz numbers. He grimaced. “Unchained Melody.” As soon as it began he couldn’t help but remember it was one of Rebecca’s favorite songs, from one her favorite movies, the horribly sappy, romantic Ghost. Why, he wondered, was a woman who could be so sentimental over a romantic fantasy also be so hard-nosed when it came to real life and real emotions?

  He turned around to get off the stool and tell the band he didn’t pay them to play that kind of schlocky …

  Rebecca was walking his way.

  He said nothing, only watched, as the center of all his thoughts these past few days approached. She was wearing a black evening dress, her blond hair free of the pony tail she wore at work and hung soft and straight past her shoulders. She looked gorgeous. His insides felt as if they were doing handsprings, but he also knew he couldn’t jump to conclusions as to why she was here.

  She probably came with that muscle-bound FBI creep, and decided to say hello. He stiffened his shoulders. “Rebecca.”

  “They’re playing my song,” she said. Her voice was smooth as silk, a little low, with a bit of a catch in it.

  “I know you like it,” he murmured, and turned back to his drink, facing the bar.

  She stepped closer. Standing beside him, she also faced the bar. She stared straight ahead as she murmured, “I was wrong.”

  He turned his head a bit in her direction. “Oh?”

  “Nothing’s changed,” she admitted, catching his eyes. “Our issues are still the same as ever, but maybe we can find a way to deal with them.”

  He faced her square on, his expression bleak. “What’s the good of that?”

  “Maybe, in time, we’ll figure it out,” she said. “All I know is, I’d rather be miserable with you than without you.”

  His brows lifted. “So I make you miserable?”

  “Absolutely,” she admitted.

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “Because you do the same for me.”

  She smiled. “Dance with me, Richie. I did, after all, have to bribe the band leader to play my song.”

  “A bribe? Uh oh, Rebecca. Be careful of that slippery slope.”

  “Believe me, I am.”

  He got off the barstool, and walked her to the dance floor. They only took a couple of steps when the song ended. He left her to whisper something in the band leader’s ear. When he came back to her, he took her hand and said, “Now, it’s my song.”

  The band began to play the jazz classic, “At Last.”

  And that was exactly what he was thinking as she stepped into his arms. He felt her softness and warmth; he drank in the heady scent of her perfume as their eyes met. Then her arm went to his shoulder as she moved closer. As they danced together once again, he knew that, despite everything that happened in the past and might happen in the future, at least for now she was back where she belonged. At last.

  Plus ...

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  Find out what happens next in the lives of Rebecca and Richie when the clock strikes SIX. Here are the opening pages of Six O’Clock Silence:

  Chapter 1

  As I drive through quiet, fog-laden streets of the city, I’m filled with memories of all you once meant to me and how it all turned out so wrong.

  I warned you. I taught you to fear. And ironically, it was me you came to fear. You couldn’t see the real me. All you saw was your idea of me. All you heard were my words of warning, but not what was in my heart.

  You were wrong. But I, too, was wrong to push you away. You and I never should have happened, but you sneaked up on me, wormed your way into my life, into my heart, with your goodness.

  Yet, you weren’t all that good, were you? If you were, you never would have cheated on the man you married. You didn’t love him, that was clear. You loved him once, or so you claimed, but as the years passed, you grew into a dull acceptance of life, of boredom.

  When we met, you said you had never known anyone like me. That I fascinated you with my silences, my strange life, and that I inflicted death on others with what you believed to be ease, and what I knew to be justice.

  You said you loved me, but more than that, you feared me—feared me not for what I was, but for all I had come to mean to you.

  I could not fight your fear.

  In the end, I sent you back to the life you despised. And you hated me for it.

  I vowed I would never contact you again, and made you promise me the same, even while knowing that together we were more than either of us is apart.

  I ignored your tears as I walked away, and I didn’t look back.

  I have always been a man of my word.

  Chapter 2

  Four days earlier—

  San Francisco Homicide Inspector Rebecca Mayfield and her partner, Homicide Inspector Bill Sutter, stood at the edge of a trench dug to lay sewer lines in the far western portion of Golden Gate Park. The area, up to this time untouched by most park users, consisted of pine and fir trees, shrubs, a rarely visited old Dutch windmill, and a small tulip garden. But as the city’s population grew, the Recreation and Park Commission decided to install public restrooms to prepare for future activity centers. The sewer lines would connect the restroom to the city system.

  The trench was the length of two football fields, and deep. Along it were mounds of dirt that had been excavated.

  As best Rebecca and Sutter could determine, none of the workmen had noticed anything unusual about the site until they arrived that morning. They found that something—most likely dogs or foxes—had dug through some of the dirt and scattered a number of small bones and one large one. The foreman believed the bones were human and called the police.

  “I’d say the foreman is right,” Rebecca said. Thirty-five years of age, she was tall, with large blue eyes in a triangular face ending in a pointed chin. Her straight blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. “The bones look as if they’re from a human hand, as in fingers. And the longer one could be a forearm.”

  The bones weren’t the clean white color seen in museums or medical schools, but were a deep, mottled brown. All had been gnawed on, their ends ragged. But until someone with medical and forensic knowledge studied them, no one currently at the crime scene could officially state what they were looking at.

  “I suspect,” Sutter said, pointing at the undisturbed land on either side of the trench, “the rest of the body must be in there somewhere.” Sutter was in his fifties, with short gray hai
r and a wiry build. He consistently spent more time planning for his retirement than thinking about his cases, but somehow couldn’t bring himself to turn in the “I’m outta-here” paperwork.

  “If someone buried an entire body out here,” Rebecca said, “whoever did it picked one of the least busy areas of San Francisco. If those new sewer pipes weren’t being installed, the site might have gone on undisturbed for quite a few more years.”

  “I always thought only vagrants and people wanting to hide from prying eyes come to this part of the park,” Sutter said. “Seems like a waste of taxpayer money building restrooms way out here. No one, least of all me, ever expected this new construction.”

  Rebecca ignored most of the comment, but Sutter did have a point. “Which means, whoever buried the body—or parts of the body—here, must have assumed it would remain well hidden. That it would never be discovered. It also means it’s highly likely our corpse’s death was no accident.”

  She walked away from the trench, Sutter following. “Let’s get these bones packed up and to the lab, and shut this site down until we have a better idea of what’s going on out here.”

  Continue with Six O’Clock Silence wherever fine books and ebooks are sold.

  About the Author

  Joanne Pence was born and raised in northern California. She has been an award-winning, USA Today best-selling author of mysteries for many years, but she has also written historical fiction, contemporary romance, romantic suspense, a fantasy, and supernatural suspense. All of her books are now available as e-books, and most are also in print. Joanne hopes you’ll enjoy her books, which present a variety of times, places, and reading experiences, from mysterious to thrilling, emotional to lightly humorous, as well as powerful tales of times long past.

  Visit her at http://www.joannepence.com. Also, to hear about new books, please sign up for Joanne’s New Release Mailing List