Cold Call (Iris Thorne Mysteries Book 1)

by Dianne Emley

  “My father is not involved in the underworld, to use your word.”

  “C’mon, Joe,” Lewin said. “It’s well known.”

  “Some overzealous prosecutors have made wild accusations, none of which have been substantiated.”

  “I’ll bet he can thank this Wendell Ellis guy for that.”

  “Detectives, I’m very busy. Please make your point.”

  “Tell us about Worldco,” Lewin said.

  “It’s one of the firm’s accounts. What about it?”

  “Stan Raab said that some of Worldco’s funds were… what’s the term he used? Misdirected.”

  “He said what?”

  “He made a connection between the missing funds, Iris Thorne, and Alley Muñoz.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “Your father must be pretty proud of you, a son working in an organization like this,” Lewin said.

  “What are you insinuating?”

  “Let’s see,” Lewin said. “McKinney Alitzer buys and sells securities for a shady offshore corporation called Worldco. Raab says the corporation’s documentation and money disappears. A mailroom boy named Alley makes trips to Mexico; a female trader, who may have stolen the documentation, is cozy with the mailroom boy; and another trader is the son of a known organized crime figure. The mailroom boy ends up dead, the female trader is harassed, and you wonder what it has to do with you. Your father wouldn’t, by any chance, own Worldco, would he, Joe?”

  “I have things to do. Please leave.” Campbell got up. The meeting was over.

  The detectives walked to the door.

  “Thank you for your time, Joe.”

  Campbell stood silently, holding his desk with both hands as if he were about to fall into an abyss. When the detectives were gone, he quickly walked to close the door. He picked up the phone and punched in a number.

  “Pop, the police were just here. They suspect a connection between Worldco, Alley, and you. It’s just speculation on their part at this point. I told you it would catch up with us. Trading securities isn’t the same as fencing goods from stolen trucks. That is your history. I don’t want to it blow up, I’m just telling you what happened. Even if the police drop this angle, the Worldco money laundry can’t continue. It should have never started.”

  The detectives stood next to Teddy’s cubicle. Somers looked at Joe Campbell’s closed door. Lewin looked around the suite.

  “Kraus left,” Billy Drye said from across the room. “When you guys were in with Raab.”

  “Iris gone too?” Somers asked.

  “She had an appointment in Century City.”

  Drye walked over to the detectives. “Maybe if you tell me what’s going on, I can help you.”

  “Thanks,” Somers said. “We’ll let you know.”

  “Everyone’s acting dumb today.” Drye said. “Iris cashed out her accounts and the market’s down.”

  “Why?” Somers asked.

  “Teddy said that she said that life was cheap, or something like that.”

  “Life’s cheap?” Somers said.

  “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Drye.”

  “Anytime.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Jaynie Perkins drove the canyon road from the Valley to Century City with the top down on the TR, swinging the little car around the curves and feeling the wind in her hair and the sun on her face. It was 99 degrees at 4:30 in the afternoon, the city was having a stage-two smog alert, and it all felt great. People looked at her in the red car. It felt like California and she felt like a California girl. She’d hardly ever done anything reckless, except maybe dating Teddy, and while she was driving she forgot about Teddy, at least between the red lights.

  She found a parking spot in the street in front of the Century City Tower Building. What luck. It had turned out to be a good day, after all, after such a bad start when she saw Teddy sitting in his car outside her apartment at five in the morning.

  She looked up at the tower’s black eyes and thought about Iris in there somewhere. Conducting business. Making deals. Shaking hands. Jaynie wished she’d finished college. When she was married and playing house, she’d forgotten about her career ambitions and some of her personal goals as well. Now she was divorced and bored and getting older and wishing she’d been more focused. She’d done okay for herself, but she felt trapped in Human Resources and Administration, the velvet ghetto. She could see across the next thirty-five years of her working life, a straight shot. It took guts to change, and determination. Iris had that. In spades. Jaynie decided she could do it, too. She’d go back to school. That’s what she’d do. Good. It was a good day.

  A car drove up and parked next to the curb behind her. Jaynie heard the car door slam and saw a shadow on the sidewalk approaching the TR from behind. She didn’t think anything of it until the shadow covered the TR’s shiny hood and she felt someone at her left shoulder. She looked up.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.” The sun was behind him and Jaynie squinted. “Can I help you?”

  “You’re coming with me.”

  “What?”

  “Get out of the car.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  “I’m not coming with you.”

  She reached for the key in the ignition. She felt something hard against her arm and looked down to see the barrel of a gun peeking out from under a jacket that was thrown over his arm.

  “Get out of the car.”

  Jaynie turned the ignition key and forgot about the clutch. The car lurched forward six inches. He jumped forward after it. He pulled on the driver’s door, reached inside to unlock it, then pulled it open.

  “What are you doing!” Jaynie screamed.

  A few people were walking on the street, but mostly there were commuters in their cars with the windows up and the radio and air conditioner on. They might have heard Jaynie’s screams and looked over, but everyone’s so loud in L.A. anyway. They’d rushed to windows enough times because someone was screaming just to hear the screams turn into laughter. You feel like a fool. The guy was well dressed and cleaned up. If he were something else, they might have paid more attention. It looked like these two were just talking in a groovy, showy, L.A. sort of way.

  Jaynie undid her seat belt and lunged for the passenger door. The stick shift hit her in the middle and she tried to angle around it. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back.

  “Just relax. Just come with me. Nothing’s gonna happen.”

  “Why do you have a gun?”

  “To get your attention. C’mon. Get outta the car.”

  He held onto her arm and pulled her toward him. She stood up on Silly Putty legs. He pressed the gun into her side and walked her toward the car parked behind her. Maybe she’d kick him. Yell. Or maybe she’d humor him until she could get away. That’s it. She’d go along. They weren’t going anywhere fast in this traffic, anyway. She’d keep her wits about her. He’d be careless. She’d find a moment. That was all she needed.

  Iris came out of the office building and saw the TR parked. She figured Jaynie was just taking a walk. Probably wanted to clear her head. Poor kid. Iris’s blood pressure rose when she saw the keys dangling from the ignition. She looked up and down and around for Jaynie and didn’t see her anywhere.

  “She’s got a hell of a lot of nerve.”

  Iris punched her fists into her waist and stared lasers at the ignition keys. Then she saw Jaynie’s purse tucked behind the passenger’s seat. Her stomach sank. This was not right. This was not right at all.

  Iris looked through Jaynie’s purse. Everything seemed to be there, even cash. She sat in the TR and waited, watching the cars clot and flow through the intersection. An hour passed. She pulled her cuticles into rags. She got out of the car, went back in the building, and called the police.

  The cop who answered said he was sorry she was concerned, ma’am, but the police
couldn’t do anything about someone who’d only been missing an hour. He understood about the boyfriend, but unless there were signs of a struggle, they couldn’t consider her a missing person.

  Iris persisted. “But she wouldn’t have left her purse.”

  The cop said he understood she was worried, but he couldn’t do anything at this point. “If she’s still missing tomorrow, ma’am, give us a call.”

  “I’m going to bean the next person who ma’ams me.” She slammed the phone down. “Probably thinks I’m PMS crazy lady. Jerk.”

  Iris sat until 7:00. The traffic started to clear a little. She started the TR and took the One-oh-one to the Valley and knocked on the door of Jaynie’s apartment. No answer. Her car was in the carport. The apartment was dark.

  She drove home. She called John Somers’s office. He wasn’t available. Was there a message?

  “Yes, there’s a message. Help me!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The sound of car tires crossing the bridge connectors echoed in the canyon like a Ping-Pong game played in an empty gymnasium. Police spotlights illuminated the crisscrossed bridges in white daylight, the art deco trim of an older, unused lower bridge throwing open-weave shadows on the underside of the concrete freeway built over it. Yellow plastic police ribbon encircled a section of the canyon, crossing a creek that babbled a narrow foot of water in defiance of the drought.

  “The way I figure,” Lewin said, “she was kneeling about here…” He stood near the body and bent his knees. “Then, he stood here, and…” Lewin raised an imaginary gun. “Boom. Lights out.”

  Somers looked down at the body. He’d seen lots of murder victims but remembered a forgotten horror and felt that if he’d just worked harder, been more on top of his game, paid closer attention, listened better, he could have prevented this one.

  Jaynie was on her back, her legs bent in a way that would have been uncomfortable in life, her arms casually dropped by her sides, her head in the shallow creek, her blonde hair flowing with the current. The bullet had made a small hole in her forehead. The back of her head had been washed down the creek. She was wearing the black-and-white houndstooth check dress she’d worn to wear to work that morning. One of her black patent leather pumps had been freed from her foot and was on the grassy bank beside her.

  Somers turned to a uniformed officer. “What did those kids have to say?” He inclined his head in the direction of four teenagers huddled together on the steep canyon bank.

  “They came down to neck and drink, saw her, and climbed back up and called us. They’re scared because one of the boys has a coupla cans of spray paint on him.”

  Lewin squatted on the muddy bank of the creek. It was covered with short grass. “Professor, how many sets of footprints you see here?”

  “Hard to tell. Mud’s soft. There’s Jaynie’s. One man… maybe two. Smooth-soled shoes.”

  “I want Teddy picked up,” Lewin said. “Hey,” he called to a police photographer. “Take one from that angle looking across and I want one from the top of the hill up there.” He turned back to Somers. “That’s the jerk who messed me up last time.”

  “More and more bullshit. Every time we turn around,” Somers said. “Iris Thorne is talking. Today. You notify Jaynie’s next of kin. I’m going to Santa Monica.”

  “You’re the man, Professor.”

  Somers knocked on the open door of Iris’s condo.

  “Anyone home?” He walked across the parquet entryway into the living room, stepping over the clutter. “Iris?” The room was illuminated by a lamp that had been put back in its place on an end table, the shade crushed on one side. “Hello?”

  He walked through the kitchen, checked the terrace, then walked toward the bedroom, turning quickly to check the bathroom first. The bathroom was empty. The bedroom was empty. The light in the walk-in closet was on. Something rustled inside.

  Somers stood ready to draw his weapon. “Iris?”

  “Who’s there?”

  Somers looked inside the closet and saw Iris standing thigh-high in a pile of clothing.

  “John?”

  “I yelled, but… why is your door open?”

  “Let ‘em in if they want in. Look. They threw every last thing on the floor.”

  Somers surveyed the closet and the portable clothes rack that stood outside the door, crammed with clothes. “Why do you have so much stuff?”

  “Why?” She shrugged. “Because I can, I guess.” She started digging through the pile surrounding her knees.

  “Iris, I came to tell you something.”

  “You got my message?”

  “What message? At home?”

  “At the office. You didn’t get it? Here’s what I’m looking for.” She grabbed a long nylon webbing strap and walked backward. A large canvas duffel bag popped free. She threw the bag onto the bed, unzipped it, and started packing a small mound of clothes that were piled outside the closet door.

  “Going somewhere?” Somers asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Where?”

  “The South Pacific. Sailing.”

  “For long?”

  “Maybe.”

  “That’s why you cashed out your accounts.”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “At your office today.”

  “Talk about life in a fishbowl. At least I won’t be under scrutiny day and night.”

  “Leaving’s not a good idea, Iris.”

  “It’s the best idea I’ve had in a long time.”

  “The case… everything’s unresolved.”

  “It won’t stay that way. You’ll find a solution, and whatever it is, it’ll be the right one. Then everything will be fine. Back to normal. Status quo. Except I’ll be sitting under a palm tree somewhere. Finally being smart.”

  “Typical Iris.”

  “Typical Iris, what?”

  “Never lets any grass grow under her feet.”

  She glared at him. “What’s your problem?”

  “The going gets a little tough, and she’s outta here.”

  “Where do you get off coming into my home and saying those things? You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.”

  She walked into the closet, bent over the pile of clothes, and threw a bunch into the room behind her. They landed near his feet.

  “I know you, Iris. You left a situation fifteen years ago and didn’t care about what you left behind then, either.”

  “You were Mr. Sour Grapes. ‘Who wants to live in Europe anyway? Who cares?’ You couldn’t see beyond your own backyard. Then you stopped writing me. I found out you got married from my girlfriend. Talk about bailing out of a situation.” She threw more clothes behind her.

  “I made a wrong decision,” he said. “It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t left.”

  “So it’s my fault? Nothing like taking responsibility for your own actions, huh, John?”

  “That cuts both ways. Your girlfriend filled in the details you left out of your letters, about your affair with that French guy, what was his name? Poopoo? Fifi?”

  “Real close, John. Loulou, a nickname for Louis. An affair. You make it sound so sordid. He was just a guy in my class. We decided not to be tied to each other that year, remember?”

  “You traveled with him.”

  “So what! You got married! Got married and moved away and didn’t even have the guts to tell me. Big macho cop.”

  She pulled a black Chanel handbag from the pile, twisted backward, and threw it at him with a quick overhand toss. It hit him squarely on the chest then fell at his feet.

  “Dropped out of school. Real tough guy.”

  Somers looked down at the purse with his mouth open, then looked back up in time to dodge a taupe Coach leather clutch that sailed past his left shoulder. His face turned red. He clenched his fists. She stood staring at him, still twisted backward, her hands dug into her waist, her jaw tight and her face seething.

  He took one hea
vy step toward her, paused, took one more, wrestled for control, then swiveled and walked to the doorway. He held on to the top of the door frame with one hand and rubbed his other hand across his face.

  “You found me after fifteen years, remember? Come into my life and criticize how I live and what I do. Forget the message I left. I don’t need your help. I don’t need anyone’s help. I’m the only one I can count on. That’s the way it was then, and that’s the way it is now.”

  “What was the message?”

  “Jaynie’s disappeared. The police blew me off.”

  Somers pulled his hand away from his face. He caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror at the end of the hallway. His shoulders slumped. He couldn’t do it anymore.

  He turned to Iris with his hands out, palms up, apologizing in advance for the bad news.

  She stopped packing. “What is it?”

  “Iris…”

  “What! What is it?”

  “Jaynie’s dead.”

  Her legs gave way. She dropped onto the pile of clothes.

  “She was murdered. We just found her body. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He took a step toward her with palms open but empty, without solace.

  She got to her feet and waded out of the closet, waving him away. She drifted to the bed, sat on a corner, and stared straight ahead. She folded her hands in her lap and worked her knuckles, breathing hard and slow. Then her breath caught and the tears started to flow. She covered her face with her hands. “My God, my God.”

  He knelt on the floor beside her and put one hand on her knee and the other around her waist.

  “She wanted to pick up my car. Wanted something to do.” She wiped her nose against the back of her hand.

  He went into the bathroom, pulled a length of toilet paper from the roll, and handed it to her.

  She got up and walked to one side of the room, turned, walked back, then retraced her steps, back and forth, trailing the toilet paper behind her. “My God, Jaynie.”