The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  While waiting for the law, I went back to my car and made the short trip back to the Shores construction site. I felt the foreman should be told what had happened to Dustin’s son, so in the event the older man checked back in with the job site, somebody could relay the news.

  The men in the trailer office registered the expected amount of dismay and shock. Joe Sidjakov kept asking me over and over who could have done it. I kept telling him I didn’t know, but it would be nice if the boy’s father could be notified somehow. They were still gaping after me when I drove back to the Basin.

  During the next hour and a half I went over my story three or four times—once for the first patrolling deputy who’d arrived to secure the murder scene from onlookers, then another few times in all or in part for the detectives who came along later. I wasn’t working for anybody involved in any of this right then, but the years in the business kept me from blabbing about every little angle I might know about. I told them Dewer’s real name and that his father ran the construction outfit putting up the Shores project. I also told them about the dead man’s sister living up in Mendocino County. They were entitled to all that. I threw in what Sidjakov had told me about Red having been on a big Bechtel job in the Middle East, and about the boat he’d been overhauling up at the Clipper Yacht Harbor. That might save them some time, and they’d be thankful.

  I didn’t go into what I’d been told about Red’s apparently brief fling in the saucy movie business. That would connect him with the daughter of a very recent client, and I didn’t see the need for that at the moment. According to what Red had told me, that was a closed chapter in his life. But I’ve got as much conscience dealing with the Sheriff’s Department as I do with anybody else. If down the road it looked as if the movie business played a part in the murder, I would go to them about it.

  To cap it all off, I told them what Shirley had said about seeing Red shoving around young Duffy Anderson in town the night before. I didn’t tell them Duffy used to be married to Red’s sister, the one on the commune in Mendocino County. With diligence, they could make that connection on their own if they wanted to pursue it. I didn’t know that any of it meant anything, and I didn’t want to seem like I was looping the rope around the boy’s neck and looking around for a likely tree to hang him from. I figured if they opened the can of worms having to do with the Shores project, which is what they ought to do if Sidjakov told them the same things he told me, they’d have enough to keep them spinning around for a few days.

  The only part they didn’t like was the reason I gave for letting myself inside the Donita Rose, and the reason I gave was the truth. I had just concluded a professional bit of business in which Red had played a very minor role. That business was finished by now to everybody’s satisfaction, and while Red had looked at one time as if he might be able to help out my investigation, it hadn’t turned out to be necessary after all. Still and all, I had been looking for him unsuccessfully for a couple of days. Just to clear up a minor point in my own mind, I had still wanted to talk to him. Then, when Sidjakov told me his real identity, something had given me an uneasy feeling. I admitted to having found the body in Tamalpais Valley a couple of days earlier. The uneasy feeling I had after talking to Sidjakov led me to want to take a look inside the Donita Rose.

  The lead investigator was a plainclothes detective named Reitlin. He was the department’s heavyweight, and we’d met enough times before to be nodding acquaintances. He was wearing slacks and an aloha shirt open at the throat. He was in his middle forties, and he didn’t look much like a cop, but he thought the way most of them do.

  “I appreciate what you’ve been able to tell us,” he said. “It’s seldom we have this much information to do with the victim in such a short period of time. But I would sure feel better about things if you could tell us just a bit more about what you wanted to talk to the victim about.”

  “I would in a minute, Lieutenant, if I thought it would help. But some things I’d rather keep confidential for now. More than that, I honestly think it would be a waste of your time hearing about any of that. I don’t think it had anything to do with Red’s death. If I ever feel otherwise, I’ll come to you immediately. I think Otto Damstadt can assure you on that point.”

  We were standing on the afterdeck of the Donita Rose. Reitlin raised one eyebrow and studied me a moment, then moistened his lips. “Lieutenant Damstadt is not conducting this homicide investigation, Mr. Bragg.”

  He turned to one of the other investigators, and I stared back down the pier. Because of the crowd of people I had assured Shirley would turn up, the deputies and investigators and coroner’s people all trooping up and down the dock, she had not gone onto her roof naked to sunbathe. No. She had gone onto her roof in a two-piece bikini you could fold up and slip into a shirt pocket without anybody’s suspecting it was there. From time to time she came up out of the wicker lounger to stare across at the activity. She did so now. I waved at her, and Reitlin turned back to see who I was greeting. I reminded him he’d want to be talking to her before she had to go to work, and asked if I could leave.

  I went back down the dock and crossed to my car. Just before climbing into it, one of the Dustin pickup trucks pulled into the lot and stopped beside me. Joe Sidjakov was behind the wheel. I waited for him to turn off the motor and swing down out of the truck cab. He hadn’t been a young man when I first met him earlier that morning. He looked far older now. He stood there a minute staring at the ground with his hands on his hips. When he looked up there was doubt on his face, as if he wasn’t sure that he was doing the right thing.

  “Supposing we hired you to find Andy Dustin. How would you go about it?”

  “Supposing who hired me?”

  “The construction outfit I’m temporarily running. Andy’s outfit. We decided things have gone along about far enough. This thing about his boy tops it. Andy needs to know about that. None of us was bright enough to figure out a way to find him. If you do this sort of work, maybe you could. But we don’t know just how good you might be. That’s why I asked how you’d go about it.”

  “I’d probably start in the way I do most jobs. Asking questions.”

  “But who would know where he is?”

  “Andy Dustin knows, for one. And unless he’s gone off to hole up in a cave somewhere, he’ll be in social contact with other people. It’s just a matter of finding the right people.”

  “Done this sort of thing before?”

  “Lots of times.”

  “What do you cost?”

  “Depends on what I run into. Don’t worry, the firm can easily afford me. But I’ll tell you what. I have almost a personal interest in this. I’d like to have a talk with Andy myself. I’ll give you the first twenty-four hours free. No cash up front. If you’re not satisfied with what I’ve found by then, you can ask around and hire somebody else.”

  He nodded. “That’s fair.”

  “Okay, but there is something I’ll need. I want you to go back to your office and have a brief letter typed out, saying I’m engaged by the Dustin firm for certain unspecified activities. You sign it, along with whoever signs the payroll checks. I’ll be by to pick it up later this afternoon.”

  We shook hands on it. When he drove back out of the parking area, he looked a little more hopeful than when he’d driven in. I was glad he hadn’t pressed me any closer on who I’d be asking questions in an attempt to find Dustin.

  I started to climb into the car again, but was stopped by somebody on one of the piers calling my name. It was Shirley. She’d pulled on a blouse and was running down the dock. I waited for her. When she came into the parking area and threw her arms around me to catch her breath, she had a grin on her face, so at least it wasn’t another disaster.

  “I just got out in time before the cops came to grill me. Told them they’d have to wait a minute.”

  “What’s so important?”

  Her grin faded. “I think a friend of mine saw the kid, that Duffy Anderso
n, here on the pier last night, sometime just before the fire started.”

  “Who was it?”

  “A girl who lives a couple of boats down from me. When she heard what all the people were doing out at Dewer’s boat, she phoned me. We gossip some. She’d seen you too and watched you go out toward the end of the pier. I told her you were a friend of mine who came visiting. She said not long after you went past, she heard somebody else. She peeked out and saw this other person. She was wondering what all the traffic was about at that time of night, so she stayed by the window for a few moments. She didn’t see you again, but before long this other man came back down the dock. He was in a hurry, and from what she told me about him I flashed on the kid Duffy. I described the clothes I’d seen him wearing in town. She said it matched. Mean anything?”

  “Maybe.”

  She stepped back from me. “Hey, what kind of a dick are you, anyway? ‘Maybe,’ he says.”

  “What do you want done, the kid tossed in jail and the key thrown away just because of a third-hand description? It’s interesting, I’ll give you that. And I’ll check it out.”

  She grinned again and threw in one of her rich little laughs to go with it. “That’s better. Where you off to?”

  “To check it out. I’ll be in touch later. You’d better go talk to the law.”

  “Sure you won’t take me back home with you?”

  She was more serious than the lightness of our conversation might have suggested.

  “You’d only get lonely. I’m going to be out working.”

  “Then take care,” she said. She stood on her toes and gave me a brief kiss on the lips. She winked and turned away to hurry back out the pier, her long legs flashing and her chestnut mane trailing behind her as she ran. I watched her a moment, then got into the car and drove out to the highway and headed north to Peacock Gap.

  FIFTEEN

  Nobody answered my ring at the Anderson front door. I rapped a couple of times, but didn’t get any more response than I had the times I’d been on Dewer’s boat. I strolled around the side of the house. Young Terri was sunning herself in a lounger beside the pool. She was wearing sunglasses and a brief bikini bottom. The top had been tossed off to one side. I coughed a couple of times. She raised her head briefly, then let it fall back.

  “Why, it’s the sex-mad detective.”

  “Yeah, come to call on the exotic dancer.”

  “Screw you.”

  “Don’t have the time. Sorry I broke up your grand time last night, but you could have started a riot in that place.”

  “Hardly. I don’t have that good a figure.”

  I let my eyes rove over her. “You’re wrong. For your proportions, you have a fine figure. I’m looking at most of it. And when you move it around the way you were doing last night, it doesn’t matter all that much how good it is anyhow.”

  “It’s nice that you noticed. If I’d gotten laid the night before, I might have gotten some things out of my system.”

  “If you’d gotten laid the night before at my place, it would just make my job a lot tougher now.”

  She took off her glasses. “What does that mean?”

  “Your brother might be in a little trouble.”

  She just stared at me a minute, then sat up and raised the back of the lounger. She really did downgrade herself. She had very nice breasts. She carried them as proudly as she did the rest of her.

  “What’s Duffy done?”

  “I’m not sure. But he might have been seen by some people in awkward circumstances. Andy Dustin had a son named Jimmy. He went by the nickname Red. Did you know him?”

  “No. I knew of him, but he’s been out of the country. I never met him myself. Elaine spoke of him some.”

  “That’s right, she would have. Did your brother ever talk about him any?”

  “Not to me, he didn’t.”

  “Well, Red came back to this country a few weeks ago. He’s been living on a boat down at Marinship Basin. Somebody shot him aboard his boat last night. He’s dead.”

  Her mouth opened, but she didn’t speak. She brushed a strand of blonde hair away from her eyes. “That’s awful. Is that why Duffy’s in trouble?”

  “Maybe. Duffy and Red were seen together earlier in the evening up in Sausalito. It must have been after Duffy brought you home and went back there.”

  Terri sighed and reached down beside the lounger to where she’d tossed the top to her bikini. “That’s right. He was pissed off at having to bring me home and spend all that time away from Big Mama.”

  She slipped the top around her, but had some trouble with the attaching mechanism in back. She got up out of the lounger and backed up to me so I could close it for her.

  “I’m not doing this to hide anything from you,” she told me, “but if mother comes home and sees me talking to you without it on, she’d just freak. What were Duffy and Red doing together in Sausalito?”

  “Having an argument, according to a witness. Apparently Red shoved him around a little to make some sort of point. Then Duffy left. Later on last night, around midnight or a little after, somebody thinks they might have seen Duffy out on the pier Dewer’s boat was on.”

  “Who’s Dewer?”

  “Sorry, that’s the name Jimmy was using around the Basin Area. Red Dewer.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I’m not sure. The person who might have seen Duffy, incidentally, isn’t all that sure a witness. Somebody else who knew Duffy compared notes with the witness. It sounded as if it might have been him, is all. The time he might have been on the dock is about the time Dewer, or Dustin, was shot, according to an initial estimate by the coroner’s people. And since Red had been seen arguing with your brother in town earlier…Well, it’s the sort of thing cops spend a lot of time going over with a suspect.”

  The girl let out a hoot of laughter. “Hey, you’re not telling me somebody thinks Duffy might have shot someone?”

  “It’s a conclusion they might come to.”

  “But you’ve seen my brother. He couldn’t stub his own toe without somebody’s help. Duffy? Kill somebody?”

  “None of that will matter to the sheriff’s people. Especially if they don’t come up with another suspect. Where is Duffy?”

  The absurdity of it drained out of her face. It was replaced by something darker. She looked away a minute, deciding something. When she turned back, she was looking for a friend.

  “He’s not here, Pete. I’m not sure where he is. I don’t think he came home last night. Or if he did, he didn’t stay. His bed wasn’t slept in. I figured he’d finally worked up the nerve to do an over-nighter with Melody.”

  The creases in my forehead must have shown her the sort of trouble her brother could be in.

  “Oh, shit, my brother’s a klutz. He couldn’t kill anybody.”

  “I don’t think he could, either, at this time in his life but what I think doesn’t count. Does your brother own a handgun?”

  “Two of them,” she said quietly.

  “Mind showing me where he keeps them?”

  She looked up at me, then turned and led me back to the rear entrance to the house. We went through a sunny kitchen and down a hallway traversing a side wing of the rambling dwelling. We entered a large bedroom that didn’t have much personality. There were some prints on the wall that might have been selected by Duffy’s mother. We went around the neatly made-up bed, and Terri knelt to open a set of dresser drawers on the other wall. She murmured a curse.

  “They’re gone. Both of them.”

  “You’re sure that’s where he kept them?”

  “He insisted that I know, so that if there ever was an intruder when he wasn’t here…”

  She held up a couple of small cartons. I thought I recognized from their shapes what came in them. She shook them, but both were empty.

  “He took all the bullets,” she said quietly.

  “What kind of guns were they?”

  She put stuff back in th
e drawer and closed it. She stood up and looked around the room, the way a person who knows they’re looking at a familiar room or place for the last time might look at it.

  “One was a twenty-two target pistol. For plinking. The other was more serious. I’m not sure what it was. It looked like one of those things the Germans always carry in old war movies.”

  “A Luger?”

  She nodded. Her face started to break up and she covered it with one hand, and spoke in her little-girl voice, sniffing back tears. “Oh, I don’t believe this…”

  I took her by the shoulders and gave them a reassuring squeeze. “Easy, Terri girl. Things don’t have to be as bad as they seem. There might be a simple explanation.”

  She shook her head violently and raised her face, still all scrunched up and wet around the eyes. “Bullshit. He’s in deep. He’s running, the jerk.”

  She wheeled around and went back out into the hall. I tailed her a short way to another bedroom. It must have been her own. It was a more normal pastiche of little dolls and Mick Jagger posters and photos and clutter that reflects a young person growing up. She sat down on her bed and lifted a touch dial phone from the bottom shelf of a bedside stand. She placed it beside her as she brought out a Marin County phone book and riffled through the yellow pages. She found the number she wanted and dialed it.

  She spoke to a couple of people before she got through to the person she wanted, somebody named Wagner, whom she seemed to know. She kept the grief out of her voice and pleaded with Wagner to run an electronic check on her brother’s savings and checking accounts to see if he’d made any cash withdrawals that day. She had to argue some, but she finally got her way. She waited a few minutes, and while she waited she impulsively reached out and grabbed my hand to give it a squeeze. Romance had nothing to do with it. This was for luck.

  “Yes,” she said, looking up.

  I knew the answer from the wince that crossed her face.