by Matt Coyle
“Yes, I do. But only for the initial meeting.” Regaining her natural confidence. “I want you to listen to his voice when I talk to him. To hear if he’s being truthful.”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“You know as well as I do that people who hire P.I.s to check up on loved ones are desperate. Sometimes they hide their true intentions. I’m not going to take a case where someone could get hurt.”
“Turk’s not like that.” I shook my head. “He’d never get violent. Not unless he had to defend himself. And never with a woman.”
“People can surprise you, Rick. You know that better than anyone.”
Turk had surprised me. A surprise that caused the end of our friendship seven years ago. Still, violence against a woman? Never.
“Not in that way.” I said.
“Well, then come with me and let him prove it. I’m not taking the case without you there. I don’t do domestics anymore, anyway.”
“Since when?”
“I took a domestic while you were in Santa Barbara. Doctor John Donnelly. My son’s pediatrician until he outgrew him. He was a nice man. Gentle with Luke. Never got impatient with me when I asked him question after question.” An ache in her voice. “His first wife died six years ago. He hired me to find out if his new wife, Rachel, was having an affair. She was.”
“It’s always hard giving bad news to a client, especially a friend, but Turk will be able to handle it. He won’t hold it against you.”
“John Donnelly murdered his wife, Rachel, and killed himself the day after I told him she was cheating on him. The doctor who I entrusted with my son’s health for eighteen years. A man I liked very much. Revered in the community. Bad news turned him into a murderer.”
I didn’t know what to say. Moira wasn’t big on receiving sympathy, and I wasn’t great at giving it. Still. “That’s awful, but it’s not your fault. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been some other P.I. who gave him the information.”
“I know, but I should have read the situation better. Maybe if I had, he wouldn’t have killed his wife. And himself.”
“There’s nothing you could have done, but if you’re that concerned, why even take Turk’s case? You don’t owe him anything.”
“I know, but now I owe the woman who’s going to be investigated by me or someone else. If I take the case and think she’ll be in any kind of danger, I’m going to warn her. I’m the only P.I. who has a friend who can get a read on Turk. If I agree to take the case, I’ll investigate Shay Sommers, but she’ll be my responsibility as well as the target of the investigation.”
In the six years I’d known her, I’d never seen Moira get emotionally involved in a case. I’d been the one who crossed over the line from dispassionate investigator to unbalanced zealot. She’d always been on the outside trying to rein me in. Seems the wrong side of me rubbed off on her. Not a good development. I’d have to play out of character and be the cautionary voice.
“When do you want to meet with him?”
“Now.”
“I guess you drive.” I stood up. Ready to help Moira. And Turk. And ready to venture back into my old life for at least one day.
CHAPTER THREE
MULDOON’S STEAK HOUSE was in La Jolla, a wealthy enclave and tourist magnet, clinging to the coastline just north of San Diego. The chilled mist on my face told me the sun hadn’t yet pierced through the winter morning haze. Only five miles from my home in Bay Ho, but a completely different microclimate.
I hadn’t been to Muldoon’s in almost a year. Before Santa Barbara. A different lifetime ago. I had my service cane with me, but let Moira guide me from her car, along the sidewalk, and down the stairs to the restaurant.
At the bottom of the staircase, Moira angled slightly to the right and stopped after a few steps. The front door.
“It’s locked,” I said. Muldoon’s only served dinner and didn’t open until five p.m. “The back door will be open for deliveries.”
I heard a muted clack when Moira tried the handle.
“Told you.” I smiled.
“Shut up.”
Just like old times. Progress.
We walked toward the back of the building, then Moira turned me to the right. A few more strides and we stopped again. The creak of door hinges. Latin music spilled out through the doorway.
“Watch your step.” Moira grabbed my arm.
But I’d already stepped over the raised threshold and entered the short hall. A tiny office would be on the right and the kitchen straight ahead. My memory kicked in with images I remembered of a restaurant I spent years traversing.
I hoped Turk hadn’t moved any of the furnishings around. We headed into the back of the kitchen and Moira turned me to the right around the wire shelving that held cookware. A quick left and we were in the main kitchen. A knife working on a cutting board behind the shelving. No, two knives. Prep cooks chopping vegetables on the metal prep table.
Where it started for me.
Turk’s father gave me a job cutting veggies and mopping floors the summer I was fourteen. My father, once a proud and distinguished member of the La Jolla Police Department, had been kicked off the force four years earlier amidst rumors that he was a bag man for the mob. Shame, misplaced honor, and the bottle finally beat him down until he could no longer hold a steady job. I had to pitch in to help pay the bills.
I hid my father’s shame under a chip on my shoulder and a quick temper. Turk didn’t care about my father’s reputation, he only cared about his own father’s restaurant. Either I put the success of Muldoon’s and the team that made it run ahead of my own insecurities or I had to find a new job. I quickly learned how to be a good teammate.
Life had forced me to become an adult at an early age. That summer, Turk Muldoon taught me how to become a man.
Turk stood at the butcher block table cutting meat across from the prep cooks. Or someone else did. The smell of raw meat that had just been unwrapped from its packaging. A slight metallic smell from the meat’s bloody juice floated in the air.
The scent of blood. I first smelled it in this kitchen cutting meat. Later, as a cop and as a private investigator, I’d smell it again with dire consequences.
“Veronica Mars and Magnum P.I.” Turk’s voice bellowed from a few feet away. I could almost feel his physical presence.
That presence was as large as his personality. At six foot three, two-hundred-fifty pounds, he’d been an All-Pac 12 linebacker at UCLA three years ahead of me. His curly red hair bushing out the back of his helmet as he raced from sideline to sideline making tackles. I’d followed him to UCLA and we’d played together my freshman year when I was a starting safety.
“Sirloins?” I asked.
“How the hell?” His baritone.
“Sirloin butts were always the most pungent.” I cut meat while I managed Muldoon’s. Sirloins took much more labor than striploins and tenderloins. And they had the most meat juice to sop up with a cloth towel.
“Are you two a team now?” Clatter of a knife set down on the butcher block. “Am I getting a two for one?”
“I thought it would be nice for you two to see each other since I was coming down here anyway.” Moira’s voice had a forced cheer to it. If she’d brought me as a lie detector, her voice was the first lie I detected. Of course, her words were lie number two. “Plus, Rick and I have worked a lot of cases together. Consider him a consultant.”
There was some truth in that, but only to hide the lie. I rethought my decision to meet Turk with Moira. I was lie number three. When I worked with Turk, I would have asked him if he was out of his mind hiring a P.I. to follow his girlfriend. But our friendship had changed since then.
And I hadn’t yet met Moira then, either. She was my best friend now. She’d asked for my help, an unusual thing for her to do. I owed her. Even more than I owed Turk.
“I guess that’s okay as long as I’m only paying one of you.” Turk had meant it as a joke, but his voice was tig
ht and stuck in the back of his throat. He was uncomfortable. A rare situation for him. At least the him I used to know.
“As we discussed on the phone yesterday, I have a few questions for you.” Moira, back to her confident, professional self. “Do you want to talk here or …” She paused and may have glanced at the prep cooks, an unexpected audience.
“Rick, your office or mine?” Ease returned to Turk’s voice. I doubted he’d meant to be cruel or ironic referring to the booth I’d never be able to use as an office again.
“Booth four,” I said and took a step forward.
Moira grabbed my arm and I let her lead me through the kitchen door into the dining room, past the large open grill on the right, women’s restroom on the left, and a right turn around the busboy station straight ahead. The hint of cooked steak and sautéed garlic hung in the air from last night’s service.
I heard Turk behind us on the cement kitchen floor, then the tile in the grill area, and finally, the carpet in the dining room. Hard footstep, thunk of the cane, and drag of his right leg. Over and over again. The fact that he could walk at all was a miracle. The lead fragment lodged against his spine from the bullet he took saving my life put him in a wheelchair for almost a year. Willpower, athleticism, and modern science had gotten him out of it.
We made our way across the dining room, two men forever changed. Turk a little ahead in the recovery process. Both physically and emotionally. I heard the click of Turk pushing the dimmer switch for the lights over the booths. Moira led me up the two steps onto the platform that held the booths. Number four was on the left. I found the edge of the table and slid in. Moira next to me, Turk across the way.
“Are your questions about the information I emailed you yesterday after we talked on the phone?” Turk, voice tight again. “You got all of it, right? The photo, address, social security number?”
“Social security number?” I said. “Why the hell would you have someone you’re dating’s social security number?”
One hundred and eighty degrees from the Turk I used to know.
“Rick.” Moira elongated my name like a mother scolding a child.
I guess I was supposed to be mute as well as blind. She should have thought more carefully before she invited me to come along. She knew me well enough to know that I wouldn’t sit quietly when something didn’t sound right.
“That’s okay. I got Shay’s social security number when I hired her, just like I would for any other employee.” Turk’s voice more defensive than his words.
“But you don’t date every employee you hire,” I said.
“Rick! Enough.” Moira.
The rule at Muldoon’s when I ran it was that management didn’t date the staff. I’d upheld that rule and so had Turk while I was there.
“She’s not an employee anymore.” Still defensive. “Are these your questions, Miss MacFarlane?”
“You can call me Moira, and no, they’re not.” I could almost feel Moira’s glare burning into the side of my face. “I apologize for Rick. I guess holing himself up in his house the last few months has made him even more antisocial. If that’s possible.”
“No need to apologize.” Turk beat me to my own defense. “That’s just Rick being himself. He likes to get right to the point. And be an asshole doing it.” A forced chuckle.
“Why do you want Miss Sommers followed?” Moira asked.
“I have my reasons.” No chuckle. “I didn’t realize that was something you needed to know. I’m hiring you to follow Shay and report back on what she does and who she sees. Those are the parameters.”
“You’re hiring me to follow your girlfriend, Mr. Muldoon.” Moira, full command presence. “I have my own parameters. If you can’t give me reasons why, I can’t take your case.”
Turk let go a long sigh, but didn’t say anything. I stared at nothing.
Finally. “I think she’s seeing someone else.” Voice tight again. From sadness or shame that his girlfriend was cheating on him or something else. I couldn’t tell, yet. I wished I could see his face.
“How long have you and Miss Sommers been dating?” Moira.
“A little over a year. We met when I hired her as a hostess. I work the reservation station on the weekends with the hostesses.” The tenor of his voice went lower like he dropped his chin and shortened his neck. Maybe staring down at the table. “One thing led to another and …”
Six months was about the average length of a Turk relationship when we worked together. I couldn’t remember him ever dating someone for a whole year. Should be time for him to move on to the next woman, anyway. Shay Sommers must be special.
“And you two are still in an active relationship?” Moira.
“Yes.”
“Do you love her?” Moira, dispassionate like a questionnaire you’d fill out for a doctor’s appointment.
Silence. I couldn’t tell if Turk was thinking or turning red with anger.
“Yes.” A slight hiss at the end.
“When was the last time you made love?”
“What kind of a question is that?” An edge in Turk’s voice now. One you didn’t want to be on the other side of if you were an unruly customer in his bar.
“You know the rules.” I jumped in before Moira could. “Answer Moira’s questions or we walk.”
“A couple nights ago.” Clipped.
“Why do you think she’s seeing someone else?”
“She’s been a little distant the last month.” A hint of shame. “Sometimes she’s hard to reach and it takes her a while to reply to my texts.”
“To be honest, Mr. Muldoon, that just sounds like your relationship is finding a new level or nearing its end.”
“Call me Turk. If you’re going to ask me how often I make love to my girlfriend and who’s on top, we might as well be on a first-name basis.” A little more at ease. Closer to the Turk I used to know. “But I understand your point. By distant, I mean more preoccupied than uninterested. And to advance your point about making love, we still do it as often as before and with the same passion.”
“Then why do you think she’s having an affair?” I couldn’t help myself.
Another pause. Anger or thinking? Moira had a better view than I did.
“I followed her twice last week after she left the restaurant, and both times she went to the La Valencia Hotel.” Sad. “She told me she’d gone home when I asked her what she’d done after work.”
“I thought she didn’t work for you anymore?” Moira.
“She doesn’t. I got her a job at Eddie V’s up the street. She hostesses there and usually gets off around nine or nine thirty, then stops by here before she heads home.” His voice dropped again. “Or wherever she goes at night.”
“Did you see Shay meet anyone at the hotel?” I asked.
“No. I didn’t follow her inside. I didn’t want to risk her seeing me.”
“Maybe she stopped at the bar for a drink to unwind after work.” Moira.
“Shay rarely drinks. Only on her birthday and sometimes at parties. But never alone at a bar.”
“Maybe she has a drink once in a while and doesn’t want you to know,” I said. Everybody has secrets. Some innocuous, some dangerous.
“I doubt that’s it.” Confident without being dismissive.
“Did you confront her about La Valencia after she lied to you?” I asked.
“No.” Barely audible.
“Why not?”
“Because I accused her of lying about something trivial once. Turned out I was wrong. She broke up with me for almost a month. I don’t want to go through that again.” A tremble in his voice. “Trust is very important to Shay. Her father abandoned her and her mom when she was three years old. Her mom died a few years ago. She doesn’t really have anyone else.”
I kept my mouth shut for a change and didn’t mention that by hiring someone to spy on Shay, Turk was betraying her trust. This wasn’t the Turk I knew. For many reasons. An unsteadiness to his emotions I
’d never seen before. Felt before. Shay Sommers mattered to him. Maybe more than any girlfriend ever had.
But the Turk I used to know didn’t walk with a cane and almost bleed out below the cross on Mount Soledad seven years ago. That kind of incident can change you. Forever.
It did me.
This was why I decided to quit my P.I. gig even before I lost my eyesight. Too many people in pain acting out of desperation. And sometimes those people were friends. Or used to be.
“What are you going to do if we find out she’s seeing someone else?” Moira, devoid of any sentimentality. Another trait that made her such a good private investigator. She didn’t get personally involved in her cases. That’s why she had less scars than me. Inside and out. But her son’s pediatrician murder/suicide had scarred her and she didn’t want to get hurt again. Or anyone else to on her watch.
“I guess I’ll have to move on with my life.” Melancholy.
As Moira and I knew, it was never as easy as that.
CHAPTER FOUR
I HELD ONTO Moira’s left arm as we walked down Prospect Street. She stayed on the outside of the sidewalk, the buffer between cars on the road and me. I’d always taken that position when I walked with a woman before I was shot in the face. An anachronistic blast from the chivalrous past my father drummed into me as a kid. I’d learned his lessons well. So much so that I always took the outside position whenever I was with anyone, man or woman. I felt comfortable out there. Being able to recognize potential danger and react to it instantly.
I didn’t feel comfortable holding onto Moira and being led. Not by her or anyone. But it was either that or the cane. The cane worked fine, but it made me stick out. After over a decade of being the main suspect in my wife’s murder and seven years as a private investigator, I’d worked hard to blend in. Now it was second nature and my comfort zone. Hidden in plain sight. The cane was a neon sign. “Look at me.”
I didn’t like to be looked at. Ever. I especially didn’t like being looked at when I couldn’t see who was doing the looking. I’d made some enemies during my time as a P.I. None of whom I wanted to bump into on the street. Or walk in front of at a crosswalk as they sat in their cars revving their engines.
