Cold Call (Iris Thorne Mysteries Book 1)

by Dianne Emley

  “She was driving your car?”

  “She picked me up. The TR had keys in the ignition… with her purse. I told the police. I told them.”

  “Iris, tell me what you know about Alley. What you know about any of it.”

  “It was supposed to be me, wasn’t it? Jaynie had the TR. We looked like sisters… what everyone always said.” She searched his face for an answer, then turned and walked with her hands limp at her sides. “What have I done?”

  He pulled a chair out from the desk and flung it around to face the room. “Iris, sit down.”

  She paced, her body jerking with hiccupping sobs.

  “Iris, sit down.” He grabbed her arm on the next turn and pulled her down into the chair.

  She inhaled tremulously.

  He put his hands on her shoulders. “Iris. Trust me.”

  She breathed in short gasps with each hiccup. “Should have been me. They wanted me.”

  “I don’t know why you’re protecting Alley. You don’t know the kind of person he really was.”

  “He really was?”

  He put his face within inches of hers. “Alley was a thief.”

  She sobbed. “He wasn’t.”

  “Oh, no? He made trips to Mexico, passed himself off as an executive of your firm, threw money around. Big show. You know the Mexican police were going to arrest him? They think he was part of a money-laundering scheme.”

  “Wasn’t a thief.” Her arms dangled at her sides and she shook her head back and forth. “I knew him.”

  “Did you? Did you know he kept a prostitute? A real racehorse. She told me Alley had a couple of weird requests, but she got used to it, being a pro.”

  “Sadist.”

  Somers pulled a desk lamp around and turned it on, twisting the neck so that the light blazed onto her face.

  She covered her swollen eyes with her hand. “Turn it off. Think you’re in some old grade B detective movie?”

  “Where did Alley get the money? Did you help him?”

  She held her hand in front of her face and squinted at the light coming between her fingers. “Bastard. Trust me, you said.”

  “Tell me what you know about Alley and I’ll leave you alone. Forever.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “What kind of a fool do you take me for? Your name comes up in every conversation. You’re onto Joe Campbell’s father. Your condo’s been trashed. Jaynie’s murdered after driving your car. Your boss insinuated you’ve embezzled money. I’ve defended you down the line, Iris. It’s time for you to do something for me.”

  “How much money did Stan say was missing?”

  “Ten thousand dollars.”

  She looked at the Rodeo Drive shopping bag and stopped crying. “Oh, really?”

  “He said you broke into his filing cabinet and took the Worldco file.”

  “And you believe him.”

  “Tell me what the truth is.”

  “You stomp in here saying how you know Iris Thorne. Bullshit.”

  He put his face in her line of vision. “Iris, you’re in a world of trouble. Let me help you.”

  “Did Stan say who the money belonged to?”

  “Joe Campbell’s father.”

  “Stan wouldn’t tell you that.”

  “Joe Campbell told me.”

  “Bull. Bull, bull, bull. Lie, lie, lie. Liars! All around me. Damn you!”

  “Iris, clear it up for us.”

  She wiped her nose on the toilet paper and glared back.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “Trust you? I’ll carry it to my grave first.”

  “Okay, Iris. Fine. We have plenty of time. I have an obligation to stay here anyway if someone’s trying to kill you.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and watched her. He thought about the irony of finally being in her bedroom again when he heard footsteps. He moved his hand to the gun in a holster on his belt.

  Steve entered the room, balancing takeout containers on each hand.

  Somers released his grip.

  “Hi,” Steve said. “The door was open, so I just walked in. Am I interrupting something?”

  Iris punched out a laugh. “Steve Grant, this is Detective John Somers.”

  Steve put the container in his right hand on top of the one he held in his left. He reached to shake Somers’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Howya doin’?” He walked over and kissed Iris on the lips. A casual “I’m home” sort of kiss.

  Somers watched.

  “I thought I’d help you pack. I brought sushi. With your kitchen messed up… anyway, there’s plenty for three.”

  Steve set the containers on the dresser, opened one, took out a white rice rectangle with a slab of dark pink raw fish on top, and held it up to Iris’s lips. “The maguro’s really fresh.”

  She held Steve’s hand and took a bite from his fingers.

  Somers watched.

  The sushi crumbled into grains of rice, pungent green wasabi, and fish into her hand. She tried to mash it back into a rectangle. She tipped the mess into the box and rubbed her hands together. “I can’t eat right now. Thanks, Steve. You go ahead.”

  He looked at Somers and then at Iris’s tear-swollen face. “Maybe I should go. Looks like I came at a bad time.”

  “That’s all right,” Somers said. “I’ll leave. I can see you don’t need my help, Iris, just like you said.” He left the bedroom. At the front door, he loudly said, “I’d advise you to keep this door locked,” and closed it hard behind him.

  Steve asked, “What’s going on? I just came over to see if you needed any help packing.”

  “Steve, I need time to think. I can’t think. I need to be alone right now.”

  “No problem. I’ll be on the boat if you need me. I’ll put the food the fridge, okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  He kissed her on the forehead and rubbed his forefinger against her cheek. He walked out and she heard the soft soles of his deck shoes squishing on the linoleum as he opened and closed the refrigerator door and then went out the front door.

  Iris sat slumped in the desk chair. Time passed. She didn’t move. After a long time, she sat up straight. She blew her nose into the damp wad of toilet paper.

  “Okay. Enough.”

  She got out of the chair, dropped to her knees, and started digging through a pile of books and magazines on the floor. She threw magazines across the room, their slick covers sliding on the carpet. She finally found her personal telephone book. She flipped the pages, her fingers sticky, then held a page open with one hand and punched numbers into the telephone with the other.

  “Hi, it’s Iris.”

  “Iris. What a surprise.”

  “I have to talk to you. Can you meet me?”

  “Of course. Where?”

  “The office in half an hour.”

  “I’ll see you there.”

  Iris opened the top drawer of her nightstand and took out the blue velour Crown Royal bag and the box of cartridges. She untied the yellow braid at the neck of the bag, pulled the gun out, and loaded it. She unzipped her purse and crammed the gun inside, slipping the box of cartridges in after it. She slung the purse over her shoulder, zipped the Rodeo Drive shopping bag with the two hundred thirty-eight thousand dollars into her backpack, scooped up her keys, and jogged to the front door.

  She started to close the door behind her, then flung it open, so hard that it banged against the door stop and almost slammed closed again on its own momentum.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  John Somers drove the arced junction of the Ten and the Four-oh-Five, holding the inside curve of the banked road, swinging past the towers of Westwood toward the darkness of the Sepulveda pass, going home to his tree house. But he was too unsettled to go home. Then back to the crime scene. But it’d be cleaned up by now, and dark. There was only one place to go.

  He slammed the steering wheel with both hands.

  “Dam
n her!”

  He sped across two lanes of traffic and exited at the next off ramp. He turned left, underneath the freeway, and got on again in the opposite direction.

  “Somers, you idiot.”

  He took the stairs to Iris’s condo two by two and rapped hard on the door with his knuckles. It swung open silently.

  “Iris!” He slammed the door closed behind him. “Keep this blasted door locked. What the hell is wrong with you, anyway?”

  He strode through the kitchen, dining room and bathroom, his long legs making quick work of the condo’s floor space. He flung the shower door open and it rattled in its frame.

  “Iris!”

  In the bedroom, he walked into the closet and kicked through the pile of clothing. The duffel bag was still on the bed. He sat next to it and worried its nylon webbing strap in his hands, looking furiously around the room for some idea of what to do next.

  He saw a dog-eared telephone book on the bed. It hadn’t been there before. Iris had doodled a scallop around the edge of the museum print on the cover. Somers held the book and stared at the cover as if a breeze would blow through the window and flutter the pages open to the last one she’d looked at. He picked up her telephone to see if it had an automatic redial function. It didn’t.

  She went with him.

  He flipped the book open to the Gs. “Goss, Greene… Grant, Steve. P.O. Box blah-blah. Sympa at D-Basin. Panay Way, slip eighty-nine. Sympa. Must be a boat.”

  He pocketed the telephone book and started to leave the condo when he heard someone open the front door. There were tentative steps on the parquet entryway. Something lying on the floor got kicked out of the way and skidded against the wall.

  Somers drew his gun. He crept down the hallway with his back to the wall, holding his gun close to his chest with both hands. He inched closer to the doorway that led to the living room, reached it, then started to swing into it with weapon raised when he heard a voice.

  “Iris?”

  It was a woman’s voice. The tone was uncertain.

  “Iris? Where are you?”

  Somers peeked his head around the doorway, then put his gun back in his holster. She was older, but she still looked pretty much the same.

  “Mrs. Thorne?”

  “Yes?” She walked over to him and looked into his face. She struggled with recognition. “Johnny Somers. My gosh.”

  She held out both hands and he extended his. She took his hand between hers and held it. “Johnny, what happened? Where’s Iris?” She nervously looked around the room.

  Somers didn’t have a good answer.

  Mrs. Thorne walked into the kitchen, her hand pressed over her lips.

  “What happened? All her china and crystal. Lord. I knew something was wrong. I just knew it. Where is she, Johnny? Is she all right?”

  “She’s with her friend, Steve Grant.”

  “Oh. The sailor. Well, as long as she’s all right.”

  His face burned with the lie.

  “What are you doing here, Johnny?”

  He didn’t have a good answer to that one, either.

  “Mrs. Thorne, I think you should go home. I’ll have Iris call you as soon as she can.”

  “She’s in trouble, isn’t she? What’s happened?” Her hands trembled against her lips.

  “Iris is fine, Mrs. Thorne. I just saw her. Let me walk you to your car. Don’t worry, okay?”

  “I feel better knowing you’re looking out for her.”

  Somers sent Mrs. Thorne home and got in his car. She felt better. People should feel better when he was around. He protected and served and made folks feel safe. It came with the territory. They didn’t know that sometimes he made it up as he went along, that sometimes he hid the helpless feeling reeling in his gut. That seemed to come with the territory lately, too.

  Sailboat halyard fixtures clanged against aluminum masts in the light breeze that blew through the marina. The wind carried the sound, like shallow church bells, across the water. Laughter and music and the tinkle of ice cubes in glasses came from the balconies of apartment buildings that edged the marina, where tenants paid dearly to overlook the boats, hear those nautical sounds, and sleep close to the edge of the world.

  Somers opened the unlocked gate that led to slip 89 and walked down the dock, his heavy-soled shoes echoing on the wooden planks. A light burned inside Sympa’s cabin. Somers walked down the wooden finger beside the boat, his weight making the finger undulate in the water. He had never been comfortable with the unstable feeling of walking on liquid ground.

  There wasn’t any place to knock, so he loudly called, “Hello, Steve Grant?”

  Steve poked his head out the open cabin door. “Hello? Hi. John Somers, right?” Steve heaved himself over the steep set of stairs to the cabin without touching them and stepped onto the deck. He was barefoot and wearing red jogging shorts and a tank top smudged with grease.

  “Come on board. But take your shoes off. Those soles’ll mark the deck.”

  Somers removed his shoes and socks, feeling naked in his bare feet and suit and tie. He grabbed onto the stanchions on either side of an opening between the lifelines and hoisted his leg over the side. The boat tipped a little with his weight and he reached to grab something to steady himself. Steve held out his hand. Somers felt the sureness of Steve’s grasp and the hardened skin of his palm. Steve’s palm felt like he’d never had a helpless moment in his life.

  Somers pulled his other leg over and stood on the deck wide-legged, finding his sea legs. “It’s been years since I’ve been on a boat.”

  “You’ll get your sea legs. Come down. I just made coffee.” Steve hopped down the stairs and Somers picked his way after him. The surface of the deck felt cold and damp and foreign beneath his bare feet.

  The cabin was wide and comfortable. The shelves lining the walls were packed with dry and canned food. A two-inch lip ran along the edge of each shelf, to keep the contents from sliding out when the boat heeled. Fruit swung in a net hammock suspended above the galley. Framed pen-and-ink seascapes were hung on the walls. Curled maps and charts were scattered across the cushioned benches. A map was spread open on a wooden table that had been pulled down from the wall. A protractor, a pencil, and a ruler held down one side of the map and an amber beer bottle filled with water and a fresh rosebud held down the other side. The table was lit by a small gooseneck lamp bracketed to the wall.

  The door to the bow berth was open and Somers could see down the narrow, wood-paneled corridor past a door that must have been the head and into a spacious cabin where a cushioned area was made up with royal blue sheets, fluffy pillows, and a light-blue-and-white striped feather comforter.

  A wooden hatch was pulled away beneath the cabin stairs and a flashlight in a square case sat on the floor, shining on the workings inside. Chrome tools were spread out on two shop cloths protecting the wood floor, laid out by type and in descending order by size, as precise as surgeon’s instruments.

  There was no Iris.

  Somers sat on an upholstered bench that ran the length of one side of the cabin. Steve poured Somers coffee into a stoneware mug, then spread a towel down before sitting across from Somers on a small, wood-framed sofa that had been strapped to the side of the boat with leather thongs around the rear legs. Steve looked at Somers’s hands.

  “I got grease on you.” He took a clean shop cloth from a stack on the floor and dipped a corner into an open can of a slippery concoction. He handed the cloth to Somers.

  “Sorry about that. I was fine-tuning the pumps. I’m leaving tomorrow morning for the South Pacific. What can I do for you? Mind if I work while we talk?”

  Somers wiped the grease from his large hands, which seemed clumsy and pale next to Steve’s, which were nimble, efficient, and tanned. Somers picked up a black leather portfolio from a corner of the bench. It was embossed with the initials I.A.T. Iris Ann Thorne. He rubbed the insignia with his thumb.

  “Go ahead. Steve, I’m looking for Iris
.”

  Steve selected a crescent wrench. “She’s not at home?”

  “No. I went back to her place and she was gone. The door was wide open.”

  Steve laughed and shook his head. “Iris.”

  “I thought she’d left with you.”

  “No. After you left, she said she wanted to be alone. I put the food in the fridge and split. I’m surprised. She needs to get her gear together to leave at sunrise.”

  “I’m investigating the murder of someone who worked in her office, a man named Alejandro Muñoz.”

  “Sure. Iris talked about it.” Steve fastened the wrench around a nut and winced while he tried to turned it. “And she talked about you.”

  Somers watched him labor over the mysteries of the boat works. “I guess she doesn’t think too much of me.”

  “Iris appreciates the job you have to do. But she’s just stubborn, man. Once she latches on to something…” Steve laughed.

  “I guess you know her better than I do.”

  “Well, she’ll be out of the picture and you guys can follow up on the money.”

  “What money?”

  “She still hasn’t told you?” Steve smiled and shook his head, his ponytail brushing his shoulders. “I told her that if she didn’t come clean before she left, she’d have a tough time coming back. These aren’t nice people she’s dealing with.”

  Somers didn’t respond. He was irritated with Steve’s familiar tone regarding Iris.

  Steve loosened the nut and finished unscrewing it with his fingers. “Gotta admire her determination, though.”

  “Somebody’s trying to kill her.”

  Steve placed the wrench on the shop cloth in its place and rolled back on his heels and met Somers’s eyes. “I thought it might come to something like that.” He sat cross-legged on the floor. “Iris came on the boat yesterday with two hundred-odd grand in cash crammed into her backpack.”

  “Where’d she get it?”

  “Alley gave Iris a key to a safe-deposit box. Before he was murdered. He just handed her an envelope and told her to ‘be smart.’ She blew it off until… you know. The box had the cash and stock certificates for some company called Equi… something and a bunch of stuff… dried flowers, trinkets—”