The concierge reared up stiffly—like someone had dropped an ice cube down the back of his shirt. It was clear he wasn’t used to being talked to like that. “I’m sure I don’t know what—”
“First of all,” Keegan said loudly, talking over the other man, “I don’t want to come into your lousy hotel. Just tell Zinnia I’m across the street at Schwab’s. I’ll be at the lunch counter. Tell her it’s important. She should come right away.”
The other man’s face had grown red. He seemed unable to speak.
Keegan gave his head a derisive shake and then turned away and headed for the door. He could hear a kind of furious sputtering behind him as he walked. He pulled the door open and then looked back over his shoulder at the concierge. “If you want us to bring you back a sandwich,” he said, “just give Zinnia the details. We can settle up later.” He stepped out into all the sunlight and traffic.
FROM HIS STOOL at Schwab’s lunch counter, Keegan saw Zinnia through the big front window. She paused on the sidewalk outside, peering up at the neon sign above the alcove.
Keegan felt a small surge of sympathy for her. She looked so woefully out of place standing there on the famously stylish Sunset Strip—a tiny, plain woman bundled in a frumpy housedress.
She pulled the door open, and the bell above it jingled. She came inside the drugstore, looking around herself, as if she’d never visited such a place before. Keegan raised himself up on his stool and waved her over. She came and sat down next to him.
When he asked, she told him she hadn’t eaten breakfast, but that she wasn’t at all hungry. The two of them would be taking up counter space, so they’d have to buy something. It was too early for lunch, so Keegan caught the counter girl’s eye and ordered them both a coffee and a slice of cherry pie. Zinnia made no objection.
This was the closest Keegan had ever been to Zinnia, and it looked like she hadn’t slept at all the night before. He could see the glassiness of her eyes and their red-rimmed lids. She wore no makeup, so he could see a scattering of pimples below her hairline and the vertical creases that were beginning to form on her lips. She sat holding her purse on her knees primly, tensely waiting for him to tell her whatever news he’d brought. She seemed downtrodden and brittle.
Keegan didn’t want the counter girl to interrupt them while they were talking. He thought he’d wait until the coffee and pie were on the counter in front of them before he gave Zinnia the news. This was the part of the job Keegan most hated: the report. As a detective, he was hired to find information, but the information he dug up was seldom happy. He’d never grown cozy with breaking bad news; there was no painless way to do it. He didn’t mind waiting another minute while the Schwab’s girl plated a couple of pie slices and poured them coffee. Keegan waited until she was out of earshot and then swiveled on his stool to face Zinnia.
“It’s bad,” he told her, choosing his words carefully. “We don’t know exactly what happened, but the boat isn’t in Newport, and it never arrived in Avalon.”
Zinnia stared at his mouth as he spoke. She seemed to have trouble grasping the meaning of his words, and he felt another surge of sympathy for her.
“And I’m afraid Frank turned up dead,” he told her.
Zinnia looked up at his eyes then. “Frank?” she said. The shattered expression on her face made Keegan stumble.
“And things don’t look good for Mrs. Fletcher,” he plowed on, clumsily. “She’s missing at sea.”
Sudden tears welled up in Zinnia’s tired eyes. One dribbled down her cheek, and she didn’t bother to wipe it away.
“There’s no Coast Guard report,” Keegan floundered on, “but it seems like the boat went down somewhere out in the channel.”
“Frank is dead?” Zinnia said miserably. “Frank Romano?” Her voice sounded tiny, vanquished.
There was something about the expression on her face that threw Keegan off. He felt like he was missing some key element of the situation. “I saw the body,” he told her, distracted. “I’m sorry.”
Zinnia looked beyond him then, over his shoulder. “Frank’s dead,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
Keegan watched Zinnia’s face go through a series of alterations, helpless to help her. “That can’t be right,” she said. “We were going to go away.”
Keegan nodded, not sure what she was saying. “And Mrs. Fletcher is—”
He stopped mid-sentence, caught up short. In a flash, he understood what he’d been missing all along: Frank and Zinnia had been lovers—with or without their employer’s knowledge or blessing. He slumped a little on the stool and stared at the woman beside him. The blood had drained entirely from Zinnia’s face. She might have been a body on a slab. She might have been a ghost.
Keegan should have seen this coming. He should have understood what kind of news he was bringing her. But how could he have known about their liaison? That was the way it always was with people, he had learned: the closer you looked, the messier and more complicated they turned out to be.
Zinnia gasped twice and then dissolved into a fit of sobbing, which she made no effort to hide.
Keegan put his hands on her shoulders, in an awkward gesture of comfort, while she cried and gulped for air. What a fool he’d turned out to be. Cowed by a glorified hotel clerk, he’d made poor Zinnia meet him out here in public—in Schwab’s Pharmacy, of all places—so he could break her heart where everyone could witness it.
The girl behind the counter had just refilled a coffee cup at the far end of the counter and was headed in their direction with the carafe held high. When she saw Zinnia’s unchecked sobbing, she stopped in her tracks and then backed away again.
Others around the place were starting to notice Zinnia as well. A couple sharing a club sandwich at one of the tables turned in their direction. A woman back by the magazine racks shot Keegan an angry look, assuming he must have done something churlish. At least it wasn’t the lunch rush yet, Keegan thought. At least he hadn’t brought the poor woman here when the place was packed with spectators. Zinnia’s breakdown was becoming a scene, and he needed to get her out of there before someone tried to intervene.
He rifled his trouser pockets and left a wad of cash on the counter without bothering to count it. Holding Zinnia by the shoulders, he got her up off the stool and then tucked her purse under one arm. He steered her between the tables and outside to the sidewalk.
When they had safely crossed Sunset Boulevard at the corner light, he moved her along the busy sidewalk, staring down any passerby who dared take a second look at them. He ushered Zinnia into the Chateau Marmont’s lobby. She was keening loudly by this point, blind with grief, crying with a small child’s abandon.
The concierge glowered in Keegan’s direction but, for once, made no move to stop him as he steered the weeping woman—she was a paying resident, after all—toward the French doors and through them.
Keegan found the bungalow’s gate and front door both unlocked; Zinnia had come away without securing them. He guided her through the door and sat her down in her usual spot at the kitchen table. He went to the kitchenette and poured her a coffee mug of tap water—for no purpose he could explain, other than the need to do something. He hunted down a box of Kleenex from a bedroom nightstand and set it on the table within reach.
Despite Keegan’s clumsy ministrations, Zinnia cried, unable to speak, for a good half-hour longer. When she stopped, abruptly exhausted, she stared blank-eyed at the door, which Keegan had left standing wide in his rush to get her inside. She still seemed unable yet to speak.
“I’m going to have to leave you here,” Keegan told her gently. He was standing at her side, bent to her level, pressing both palms on the kitchen tabletop. “You can call my office if you need me. I just have to call the lawyers—and somebody needs to talk to the nephew.”
Zinnia snapped her head up. “No,” she said fiercely. It was her first word spoken since they’d left the drugstore’s lunch counter. She pressed a damp hand on top of
one of Keegan’s. “Don’t talk to that—that—boy,” she said, as though that were the most stinging insult she could come up with for him. “This was all his fault.”
Keegan thought of the scorching car hood and the kid’s lie about the Bouzy Rouge. “Well, the police know he’s in town,” he said. “He’s officially next of kin. They’re going to call him if I don’t.”
“Let them,” she said, her voice full of spite. “None of us should have the least thing to do with him.” She looked at Keegan then, eyes damp and fiery red. “It’s what they would have wanted.”
Keegan straightened up. There would be no contradicting her. He nodded.
WHEN HE LEFT her, he walked through the Chateau Marmont’s courtyard, past the empty pool, feeling like too much of this unholy mess had been his doing. He’d brought the news about the nephew’s arrival, setting the whole thing in motion. Then, without meaning to—without even knowing the fact himself—he’d tipped the nephew off that the old lady was on her way to Catalina.
Would it even be possible? he thought as he approached the lobby’s French doors. Could the nephew have waited offshore somehow? Could he have intercepted the sailboat out there in the dark open waters at night? The idea hardened in his stomach, like a small, indigestible stone. He paused with his hand on the door handle. It had happened once before, where his best intentions and his lack of understanding had cost a woman her life.
Were Ida Fletcher and Frank the Boxer two more souls to add to his reckoning?
CHAPTER EIGHT
KEEGAN HEARD THE phone in the outer office that afternoon. It rang twice before Mrs. Dodd picked it up. The documents from Ida Fletcher’s strongbox were strewn out over his desk, and he was trying to sort them out in his head, to get a sense of how many loose ends he’d have to tie up before all this was someone else’s problem.
First, he’d set the will off to one side—that was clearly the most important of these documents, and he was happy to know it wouldn’t be his responsibility much longer. By this afternoon it would be the lawyers’ headache, and the lawyers would have to deal with Danny Church and Zinnia and whoever else held a stake in the old lady’s estate as well.
He’d then sorted through the rest of the papers, pleased to see how many of them—deeds and titles, insurance papers and tax returns—could also be handed off to the old lady’s white-shoe attorneys. He was grateful he’d majored in English and had never gone to law school. In a few days, he’d be clear of this whole mess.
Mrs. Dodd rapped on the inner office door. She opened it a little and stuck her head in. “Hey, boss,” she said. “Youknow-who is on the phone.”
Keegan, in fact, didn’t know who—and he was about to tell Mrs. Dodd as much, when it occurred to him who she must mean. He looked down at the phone on the corner of his desk where one of the line buttons was blinking yellow. Danny Church was on hold. He’d no doubt heard the news and called to talk to James, his old friend and confidant. Why had Keegan given the kid his card in the first place?
“I know you didn’t want me to put him through before,” Mrs. Dodd was saying, “but has that changed? I mean, with the old lady out of the picture, isn’t he sort of our client now, as her next of kin?”
Keegan looked down at the stacks of documents on his desk. A fortune of property and assets and cash, and almost all of it would be going to the nephew. You don’t suppose I’ve fallen out of favor, do you? Keegan didn’t like Danny Church. The kid was a cad, a gadabout, a narcissist—but could he really be a killer?
“I wish you hadn’t put it quite like that,” Keegan said. “But, yeah, you’re probably right. I suppose I should talk to him.” He picked up the phone’s receiver and paused with an index finger hovering over the blinking button. He thought of all the money locked up in the outer office safe. The old lady had given it to him in good faith to do a job for her. He couldn’t wash his hands of Ida Fletcher just yet, not in good conscience. If the old lady had wanted her nephew to get her fortune, he’d have to see it through. And if the kid had murdered his aunt, Keegan would need to make things right.
He sighed and pressed the button.
DANNY CHURCH COULDN’T hide the excitement in his voice over the phone. Sure, he said all the de rigueur things about the old dear having lived a good, long life and her being in a better place—but there was an edge of eagerness to his words. The kid sounded, in fact, like he’d already begun celebrating his good fortune with his late, lamented uncle’s stock of single-malt scotches. His voice rose and fell in giddy, lubricated cadences. He was even more voluble and flighty than usual.
The Sheriff’s Department had tracked him down and broken the news that morning, while Keegan was out at the Chateau Marmont. They’d told him that Frank’s body had been found; that the old lady was missing, presumed dead; that the Coast Guard had found some wreckage, late that morning, drifting in the north-flowing current off Malibu. It was the right kind of boat, they’d told him—the same make and model as The Seven of Swords. It wouldn’t take long for a positive ID.
As he listened, Keegan knew the question that was coming, but the nephew was taking a few minutes to get around to it. At least his privileged upbringing had taught the kid to be discreet. In polite circles, a few minutes of small talk preceded the big talk.
“How long before the old dear can be declared legally dead?” the kid finally asked. “I’m only asking because of the funeral arrangements and so on.”
Keegan nodded. Yeah sure, he thought, the flowers and the black armband and the obit in the newspaper—that’s what the kid’s got on his mind. He tried to keep his voice neutral as he spoke. “My understanding is that—given the facts of the case—it shouldn’t take too long,” he said. He picked a ballpoint pen and tapped it on the edge of his desk. “But that’s all up to the lawyers.”
How would you even find another boat at sea? How would you go about sinking it and making it look like an accident? Did the kid even know how to sail? And, if he’d just arrived back in California, would he even have had access to a boat?
“Well then, James,” the nephew went jauntily on. “I suppose I should let you go. I appreciate all you’ve done for me since I arrived on your doorstep, as it were. I suppose the next step is to give Mr. Burritt a ring, and he’ll let us know where to go from here. You wouldn’t happen to have his number handy?”
“Burritt?” Keegan said. He glanced around the papers littering his desk. He couldn’t remember ever coming across the name.
“Milton Burritt?” the kid said. “My aunt’s lawyer?”
Keegan pulled the will in front of him. Roland Dion and Associates, it read along the top of the paper, Attorneys at Law. He flipped through the pages, skimming for any reference to Burritt.
“That’s not the attorney who drew up the will,” Keegan said into the phone.
“It’s not?” the kid said. He paused a few seconds, clearly surprised. It was the first real break in his torrent of words since Keegan had picked up the phone. “But Mr. Burritt has been the family lawyer—well, since before I was born. He’s an old family friend.”
Keegan looked down at the stack of oversized legal parchment, creased twice and bound with a paperclip. He picked it up and leaned back in his chair. He squinted at the fine print, trying to make out the firm’s address: 22 Heeser Place, Santa Monica, California. He knew that address. It was the building where old Donovan had rented an office—a big, breezy building just up the hill from the pier, all steel and plate glass.
Looked at one way, it made perfect sense that a paranoid old lady might have changed lawyers. A single sideways glance or an ill-chosen word could have turned her against this Milton Burritt—old family friend or not. And, if Burritt had become the target of Ida Fletcher’s dark suspicions, she might have asked Donovan to help her find a new attorney. Old Donovan, following the path of least resistance, would have conserved his energy by simply picking a lawyer from the lobby directory in his own building: Roland Dion and Associates
. It would have required as little effort as possible on Donovan’s part, so it made perfect sense. Hell, it almost felt inevitable.
“All I can tell you is that it’s a new will,” Keegan said. “Your aunt had it done up a couple of months ago. She used a lawyer called Roland Dion.”
There was a longer pause on the line now, a deathly, calculating silence. A truck rumbled by down below Keegan’s office window. He allowed himself a small smile. It felt good to know the kid was flustered—wondering if he had, indeed, fallen out of the old dear’s favor.
“A new will?” Church finally said. The sentence was just three words long, Keegan noted, but the man’s dry voice took its time with it.
“Look, this is for the lawyers to work out,” Keegan said, regretting the words even as he was saying them. “But, between you and me, I don’t think she changed anything major. Pretty much everything she had is coming to you.”
Keegan heard a hiss of breath on the other end of the line. “James,” Church said finally, his voice swelling with gratitude, “you’re a good man. I’m grateful to have someone like you in my corner. You’re about the best friend I have these days.”
Keegan winced. He wasn’t in Church’s corner, and he damn sure wasn’t his friend. “Look,” Keegan said into the phone, “I need to run all this stuff over to the lawyer anyway. I’ll do it first thing in the morning, and I’ll give him your number. I’ll tell him to give you a call. You can get all the details from him.”
THAT NIGHT, LONG after midnight, Nora stood in the bedroom doorway, barking. She seemed too scared to go out into the living room, too unsettled to go back to sleep. Keegan shushed her and wrapped his head in a pillow, but, of course, she just kept barking.
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