Faye Kellerman_Decker & Lazarus 18

by Blindman's Bluff

  Milfred Connors lived in a small California-style bungalow—stucco exterior and red-tiled roof illuminated by a streetlamp. It was one story sitting on a bumpy lawn almost devoid of landscaping. The cracked walkway led up to a dilapidated porch. The light was on and Decker rang the bell. The man who answered was stoop shouldered and rail thin. He had wisps of gray tendrils atop his head and a long, drawn face. He appeared to be around seventy plus or minus five years. He had on a white shirt, slacks, and slippers. He stepped aside so that the detectives could come into the house.

  The living room was neat and spare, the furniture including a floral couch, a leather recliner, and a flat-screen TV sitting on a plywood bureau. Scarred wood floors but quarter sawn oak, Decker noticed. They were original to the house.

  “Have a seat.” He offered them the sofa. “Would either of you like some coffee or tea?”

  “I’m fine,” Decker said, “but thank you.”

  “Me too, thanks,” Brubeck said.

  “Then just give me a minute to get my tea.” He disappeared and came back a minute later holding a steaming mug. He sat on his leather recliner but didn’t recline. “Is the visit about the Kaffey murders?”

  Decker said, “Yes, in a way.”

  “Horrible thing.”

  “Yes, it is.” Decker paused. “You worked for the company for a long time.”

  “Thirty years.”

  “Ever get a chance to see Guy interact with his brother or his sons?”

  “All the time.”

  “What would you say about their relationships?”

  “Well, now…” Connors sipped tea. “Guy could be rough. But he could be nice, too.”

  “Did you get along with him?”

  “I wasn’t on the same plane. Guy Kaffey was up here.” Connors extended his arm. “I was down here.” The accountant lowered his arm.

  “Yet you saw him all the time.”

  “He was always checking the books. Not just me, everyone. I was one of about twenty.” There was a long pause. “You want to talk to me because I was fired for embezzling.”

  “We want to talk to a lot of people, but you did make the list.”

  “Lucky me.” Connors took a sip of tea. “It isn’t what you think. I was fired, but no criminal charges were ever filed against me.”

  “Yet you didn’t protest the termination,” Decker said. “You didn’t file any wrongful suit against the company.”

  When Connors didn’t answer, Brubeck pulled out his notebook and a pen. “Why don’t you tell us what happened?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m sure it is.” Decker took out his pad of paper and a pencil. “How about if you start from the beginning.”

  Connors took another sip of tea. “I worked for Kaffey for thirty years. Never asked anything from him, but he sure as hell asked a lot of me. Unpaid overtime, on-call twenty-four/seven, especially during tax time. I did it all without a complaint. But then my wife got sick.”

  Decker nodded.

  “It was only me and my wife,” Connors told him. “We never had kids. Lara was a preschool teacher so I suppose she got her kid fix by her job. And me, I’m a numbers person, not a people person. Lara made all the social decisions.”

  “That’s usually the way it is with married folk,” Brubeck said.

  “Well, that was the way it was for us.” He warmed his hands on the tea mug. “I went to work, I came home. Whatever Lara planned was okay by me.” His eyes welled up with tears. “She died five years ago from the big C. I can’t seem to move on.”

  “My sympathies,” Brubeck told him.

  “Must have been hard,” Decker said.

  “It was hell, Lieutenant. She was in pain constantly. Even doped up, she was in pain. It was a very long illness. We had insurance, but it didn’t pay for everything. When regular medicine didn’t work, we tried experimental things that insurance wouldn’t cover. We ate through my paycheck, we ate through our savings. The next stop was selling the house. I couldn’t do that to her, but I didn’t want to give up on treatment either.”

  Decker nodded and asked him to go on.

  “I swallowed my pride and asked Mace Kaffey if he could arrange a loan for me. I knew Mace better than Guy, and everyone at the company knew that Mace was an easier touch than Guy.”

  “How long ago was this?” Decker asked Connors.

  “Maybe six years ago—at the beginning of the end.” Connors let out a deep sigh. “Mace told me to write off the loan as an inventory expense. And he told me to cut the check for thirty thousand, that he’d take a little extra in case I needed more. The company does business with hundreds of suppliers so it wasn’t hard to bury it somewhere. I knew it was wrong but I did it anyway. Two days later, I had cash in my pocket. I rationalized it by telling myself that I was just following the boss’s orders. I had every intention of paying it back.”

  “How did you plan on doing that?” Decker asked.

  “Doing freelance work. I told Mace that I’d pay back every cent, but he told me not to worry about it. Just get the wife better and then we’d talk. It sounded too good to be true, but I wasn’t going to question him. Twenty thousand was a lot, but I knew I could make that amount up. The problem was…”

  He put the mug down on an end table.

  “It wasn’t just twenty thousand. It was twenty thousand, then forty, then sixty. By the time she died, I was one hundred and fifty thousand in the hole. That’s a lot of money to pay back considering that my life savings, my pension plan, and my wife’s pension plan had been totally wiped out. I had nothing left to my name except the house.”

  Connors rubbed his eyes.

  “I went to Mace to tell him that I was going to sell the house to pay back the loan and he told me to hold off and not to do anything rash. I wasn’t going to insist.” A long pause. “He also told me to keep on borrowing from the company for just a while longer. He said that there were other people in bad straits. I needed to keep at it a little bit longer. And for my effort, he’d knock off some of the loan money.”

  “And you went along with it,” Decker said.

  “I was in debt and he was my boss. If he said to keep doing it, I kept doing it. I did summon up enough nerve to ask him if it was okay with Guy.”

  “What’d he answer?” Brubeck said.

  “He said that Guy skimmed off the top all the time. All in all I wrote about two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of phony checks.”

  “And that was okay with you?” Decker said.

  Connors looked at the detectives. “I had lived two years in hell and I was deep in debt. So whatever Mace said, I did and didn’t ask questions. Anyway, the whole mess came to a head when the company got audited. That meant opening the books. The embezzlement was discovered, the IRS began to levy charges against Kaffey Industries, and a huge lawsuit ensued between the brothers. I thought I was going down with the ship, but Mace, Gold bless him, covered for me.”

  “How?” Brubeck asked.

  “He told Guy that the discrepancies had to do with the increased cost of materials or something stupid like that. Guy didn’t buy it. Hence the lawsuit. But no matter how bad it looked for Mace, he didn’t rat me out to the authorities. I was really grateful.”

  Decker said, “Mr. Connors, Mace was accused of embezzling five million dollars. Your part in the scheme didn’t amount to nearly that much.”

  Connors shrugged. “Maybe he had the same kind of arrangement with a few other accountants. I was just one of many.”

  “You were an account executive,” Brubeck said.

  “Like I said, there are around twenty account executives in the company. Each one is in charge of one project or another.”

  “If Mace was stealing from the company, why didn’t Guy kick his brother out?”

  “I can’t say for sure, but I think Mace wasn’t lying when he said that Guy skimmed off the top, too. Since Guy was the CEO, he was much more vulnerable to jail time for cheatin
g the IRS than Mace was. It was probably cheaper for Guy to keep him on rather than to prosecute him.”

  Decker said, “So the two brothers settled and Mace was moved back east.”

  “Yes, sir,” Connors answered. “And that was that.”

  “Except for one thing,” Decker said. “You were caught embezzling money even after Mace left the West Coast.”

  Connors threw up his hands.

  Decker said, “Would you care to explain?”

  “No charges were brought against me.”

  “You asked Mace for another favor.”

  “I just told him, I’d rather put a bullet into my head than go to jail.”

  “And he covered for you.”

  He shrugged.

  Decker said, “Would you care to explain to us what happened?”

  “Simple. I got caught.” Connors shrugged again. “Some habits die hard.”

  FOURTEEN

  DECKER BROUGHT OVER a cappuccino and a croissant and placed it in front of Rina. He had set her up at his desk. “The croissant is from Coffee Bean. The cap’s from around the corner. Half caffeinated with whole milk.”

  “Perfect.” Rina took a sip. “All I need is the Sunday paper.”

  “You usually read the Sunday paper in bed wearing a robe.”

  Rina had put on a soft, flannel top and a loose denim skirt and had on sneakers. “I’m very comfortable, and this is a lot more fun than reading an L.A. Times article about murder and mayhem.”

  Decker placed three mug books in front of her. “Darlin’, it doesn’t get more murder and mayhem than this.”

  “True, but in this case, at least I’m doing something.” She took a sip of the cappuccino. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

  Decker rubbed his temples. He was dressed in a polo shirt and a pair of slacks. Right now he felt scrubbed clean, but that wouldn’t last long. The dust at the ranch was fierce. “When you’re done with these, I’ve got about another dozen books sitting on a table right outside my office. Go through as many as you want or as few as you want. When you get tired, quit. Eyestrain is the enemy.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “And don’t guess. I’d rather you say “I don’t know’ than to take a stab in the dark.”

  “I understand. I don’t want to lead anyone on a wild-goose chase.” Rina flipped open the first page—six men in full face and profile, their vital statistics—height, weight, eye color, hair color, race, and distinguishing marks—underneath the photograph. “Hmmm…the men I saw had tattoos. I guess that’s standard nowadays.”

  “All tattooed men aren’t cons, but all cons have tattoos. But ink work is almost as good as a fingerprint. No two tattoos are exactly alike. What kind of tattoos did you see?”

  “One looked like a tiger or it could have been a leopard; the other guy…I think he had a snake. There were also letters.”

  “Letters? You mean like ABC letters?”

  “More like Xs. And some Ls, maybe.”

  “Could they have been Roman numerals?”

  “Good call, Peter. They probably were.”

  “Do you remember seeing the Roman numbers XII?”

  “Maybe. Why?”

  Decker scooped up the mug books. “Let me start you off with some other books. It may be a more efficient use of your time.”

  “Which books?”

  “Members of the Bodega 12th Street gang. They’re often tattooed with BXII or just XII.”

  “I’ve heard about Bodega Twelve. They mostly do drug running. Would it make sense for them to know about the Kaffey murders?”

  “If they committed the murders, it would make total sense.”

  “Why would they murder the Kaffeys?”

  “Because Bodega 12th Street is filled with murderers. Plus, I found out that Guy Kaffey often hired rehabilitated gang members for security.”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “I’m not lyin’. Brady said that Guy wanted them out of ideology, but also because they worked cheap. Ordinarily, I would have thought he was feeding bull, but Grant confirmed that Guy actually did hire former gang members. Sometimes people—especially very rich people—don’t recognize their own mortality. Hold on, I’ll be right back.” He came back with two other mug books. “Start with these. Hopefully you won’t find anyone who looks familiar. And if you do recognize a face, don’t tell anyone except me about it.”

  “THIS IS A list of all the bullets, shells, and casings we found on the property.” Wynona Pratt was dressed in a short-sleeve cotton shirt and had on jeans and tennis shoes. “Almost all of the ammo was located in the northeast sector—number four—near and in four stacked bales of hay.”

  “Sounds like a target practice area.”

  “That would be my guess. We also found a rusty knife and some other sharp pieces of metal that might have been knives or shivs, but it appears that they haven’t been touched in a long time. I’ve sent them to forensics. I’ll be ripping through the bags of evidence this afternoon at the station house. It’s cooler there.”

  “Good. Tell me about the exits and entrances.”

  “The ranch is surrounded by a double layer of barbed wire and seven-foot cyclone fencing. Nothing is electrified so it is possible to cut through the metal if you have a good pair of wire clippers and you’re wearing thick, protective gloves. I found eight gates in and out of the property.” Wynona rummaged through her folder and pulled out a sheet of paper. “I even drew you a little map.”

  Decker scanned the diagram.

  She said, “The gates are solid metal except for the two back gates, which are made out of cyclone fencing and secured by padlocks. Wire cutters could take care of them.”

  “Did either of the padlocks look breached?”

  “No.”

  “What about the fencing? Holes anywhere?”

  “Nothing that’s obvious, but I haven’t gotten down and checked every inch of the perimeter.” Wynona adjusted her hat. “I have a set of knee pads at home. I’ll organize something tomorrow morning unless you want it done right now.”

  “Tomorrow is fine.” Decker mopped his brow with a handkerchief. He could hear the dogs and the horses registering protest at the heat. “Who’s watching over the animals?”

  “I assumed it was the groomsman—Riley Karns. He was here yesterday.”

  “Is he here today?”

  “Haven’t seen him.”

  “Who let you inside the property?”

  “Piet Kotsky. He said you told Neptune Brady that you don’t want any private guards around until you’ve cleared them.”

  “I might have said that,” Decker told her. “Does that mean Riley Karns isn’t considered a guard? Because I certainly haven’t cleared him.”

  Wynona shrugged. “Someone has to take care of the livestock.”

  “I’m going to poke around the stables…see if he’s there.”

  “Take a mask. I betcha it stinks.”

  “I don’t mind horse shit. In my younger days I had a ranch and stables. I used to ride all the time.”

  She cocked her hip and looked at him. “Is that a fact?”

  “It is. I’m at home around horses. It’s people that I find confusing.”

  THE STABLES HAD eight stalls and six of them were empty, but the straw had been recently changed. The two remaining horses—both looked like Morgans—were well fed and well hydrated. Decker left the stables through a half door that led to a paddock. Three animals were hooked up to an automatic horse walker—a contraption that looked like a giant umbrella frame without the canvas top. As the horses walked, the frame rotated like a carousel.

  Riley was grooming a well-muscled mare with a deep brown coat and a white blaze down her snout, moving the rubber currycomb in a gentle circular motion to loosen up dirt. He glanced up when he heard Decker come into the area, but he continued working. Karns was a tiny man, but with a wiry frame that screamed jockey. He had thin brown hair that was combed across his brow and tiny facial features e
mbedded in a craggy face covered with a sheen of sweat. He wore a black T-shirt, jeans, and work boots.

  Decker said to Karns, “Nice-looking quarter horse.”

  “Not just any quarter horse. Her sire—Big Ben—was AQHA World Cutting Champion two times over. Won a purse of over a half million.” Karns pursed his lips. “I used to ride him…Big Ben.”

  “Did Mrs. Kaffey buy the mare on your recommendation?”

  “I don’t make recommendations,” Karns said. “I’m just hired help. But when I heard that Big Ben was siring a foal, I gave the missus a contact number. She fell in love with Zepher. Who wouldn’t?”

  “She looks young.”

  “She is young. Wait till she fills in.”

  “She’s got good muscle.”

  “Great muscle.”

  Decker said, “So the Morgans came first?”

  “The missus loved Morgans. She shows them all the time.” Karns grew quiet. Then he said, “Horse shows bore Mr. Kaffey. So he decided that he’d try his hand at racing. That’s how he came to buying Tar Baby…the black stallion. The first time I raced him, I knew he didn’t have it. But I kept me opinions to meself.”

  “Smart man.”

  “I’m just hired help, sir.” Karns trailed a finger over Zepher’s topline. “Go ahead. Ask your questions, Governor.”

  “It’s Lieutenant Decker.”

  “Whatever you say, Guv. Where’d y’learn about horses?”

  “I used to keep horses. I like quarter horses. Versatile animals. On my way over here, I noticed Afghan hounds in the kennel; was Mrs. Kaffey the primary force behind them as well?”