Cold Call (Iris Thorne Mysteries Book 1)

by Dianne Emley

  “A ring.”

  “A ring, right. Iris thought Alley knew something might happen to him and he knew things would appear to be different than they really are. She starts to check around and overhears her boss and this other guy, Joe Campbell, at the office talking about money being transferred out of one of the company’s offshore accounts, Worldco, into this Equi… Mex, that’s it, another Caribbean corporation. So, Iris gets the idea to check into Worldco.”

  “But the documentation’s already gone,” Somers said.

  “Right. While she’s at the office, Raab and Campbell show up. She hides underneath a desk and hears them talking about ten million dollars missing from Worldco, which turns out to be owned by Joe’s dad. And EquiMex is owned by Alley—or at least his name is on everything.”

  “Not ten thousand?”

  “No. It was definitely ten million, because Iris and I were speculating as to what kind of business Joe’s dad could be in to have so much dough. Then Iris hears about the Sunday doings at Disneyland and you know the rest.”

  “Did they find the safe-deposit box money in Iris’s condo?”

  “No. She’d brought it here to show me. After they broke in, I gave her my forty-five.”

  “You gave her a gun?”

  “She knows how to use it.”

  Somers rubbed the leather portfolio that he still held in his lap, then set it aside and stood, bending his head to keep it from hitting cabin ceiling.

  “She called someone before she left her condo tonight. Any idea who?”

  Steve stroked his chin. “Knowing Iris, she’s might want to settle the score before she left. Turn in the money and stock, sort of ‘Stop hassling me.’ Maybe she went to see Campbell. It’s his dad’s dough.”

  Somers climbed onto Sympa’s deck and stood facing the marina lights. Patches of oil and gasoline on the surface of the black water diffused the light into swirls of violet and green. Someone on an apartment balcony laughed. Someone else let out a rebel war whoop. Somers looked at the black water and thought of Alley beneath the ground and was irritated at Iris for closing the distance between him and his homicide victim, for taking his objectivity.

  “He’s relieved from his suffering now. His death wasn’t a struggle,” someone had said.

  Somers looked out at the blackness and imagined the sea and imagined being rootless. He was a root maker. Iris was not. Whatever. He still had work to do, a daughter to raise, and a dog to feed.

  He took Iris’s telephone book from his inside pocket and looked at the cover. He touched something pasty on the corner and held it to his nose. Wasabi paste from the sushi she’d eaten. He opened the cover and smelled the first page. Then he turned over the next page and smelled it. Then the next one and the next one. He finally found it. Raw fish and wasabi. The page Iris had turned to for a number.

  Somers stuck his head back inside the cabin and saw Steve lying on his side on the floor, digging at the boat’s guts.

  “Steve, phone?”

  “Just been disconnected because of the trip. There’s one outside the Ship’s Store.”

  Somers put his socks and shoes back on and ran up the dock, fishing for change in his pocket. A man who looked like he’d wobbled down from one of the balcony parties was using the phone. Somers showed him his shield. The man ended his call, suddenly sober.

  Somers opened Iris’s phone book to the page and furiously punched in numbers, talked briefly, ran to his car, switched on the siren, and sped toward the freeway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The One-oh-one flows north from its mouth in downtown Los Angeles, rises above Hollywood, transverses the San Fernando Valley, where it’s fed by tributaries—the One-seventy and the One-thirty-four and others—then drops into Camarillo and continues to Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Salinas, San Francisco, Eureka, then up into Oregon, past sequoias and rugged coastline and pockets of population gathered at its banks as in ancient times, then into Washington, where it disperses in Olympia, running with the Five. Of the Southern California freeways, the One-oh-one is the most traveled.

  Teddy drove it with the Beemer’s sunroof open, the metal station’s volume up and the bass down. Slower drivers, which was almost everyone, spotted the Beemer’s buffed candy-apple lacquer up their tailpipes and stubbornly held their positions at first, not ceding the road—No way—sick of all the aggressive creeps empowered by tons of steel—Go around, jerk—until Teddy got so close that they closed their eyes and they remembered the freeway snipers looking for an excuse and they figured, Let him have it if it’s that important to him. And Teddy grinned even more and waved merrily as he shot up the tailpipe of the next driver.

  The CHP motorcycle spotted the red Beemer west of the junction with Sunset Boulevard. It looked like the car. The cop swung out of his hiding place in a nook of a putty-colored retaining wall and closed in on the Beemer to get a closer look. MAKE ME. It was him. The cop radioed for backup.

  “Turn it up and piss off your neighbors!” the D.J. yelled in a whiskey voice. Teddy obeyed. He twisted the bass down and the treble up but they were already maxed out. He wrapped his big chest around the steering wheel and steered with his shoulders and drummed his paws against the dash in time.

  He drove up the tailpipe of a new Japanese compact.

  The driver changed lanes.

  “Wimp!” Teddy waved his hand in a V out of the sunroof anyway. Have a beautiful day.

  Teddy bore down on a woman with henna-red hair driving a new Jaguar and talking into a car phone.

  “Get that exhaust-spewing relic from a faded empire out of lane one!”

  The woman glanced in the rearview mirror with the smallest shift of her head, her tinted designer glasses camouflaging her eyes.

  “Hyped-up yuppie,” she sneered.

  “The fast lane means fast, bitch!”

  The woman ended her call and looked full on in the rearview mirror. She flipped Teddy off with a porcelain-tipped nail.

  Teddy laughed. “A Pink Coral Frost bird. I’m scared now!” He blew her a kiss. “Go home to Calabasas! Close the gate! Keep the Mexicans out! Except Thursdays when they do the lawn.”

  The woman looked at her speedometer. Teddy had inched her up to eighty. She saw the red Beemer nervously swerving back and forth in the lane behind her like an itchy trigger finger. Goddamn. You go along, minding your own business, and turn around and there’s some guy dressed in battle fatigues carrying an assault rifle or some guy on your ass on the freeway because he doesn’t like your car.

  She turned on her signal indicator.

  Teddy gave her two thumbs up. No hard feelings. She should yield to superior German technology. She should yield lane one. He waved two fingers at her through the open sunroof. Peace and love, baby.

  The CHP motorcycle swung in behind Teddy. Backup was on the way. A black-and-white was already cruising two miles ahead. You could never tell. This guy could go down easy, meek and mild, or he could want a fight. The APB said he’d just put a bullet through some girl’s head. The motorcycle decided to clear the freeway.

  Teddy sidled up next to a topless jeep with zebra-striped seat covers. The driver was female and blond and tanned and fetching in that sun-kissed, twisted-hair, strawberry-ice-cream, Southern California sort of way. She raked her long mane with her hand and tossed her head, over and over again. I’m young, I’m beautiful, I have a Jeep.

  Teddy gave her a drop-dead, come-hither look. Yo, baby.

  She looked at him sidelong, up from underneath her eyebrows, pushing her glossed bottom lip out, affecting every ad in Cosmo. She raked her hair again and breathed fire.

  The yellow halogen lights lining the freeway sparkled on the Beemer’s fresh hand-wax job. It looked beautiful. Teddy’s chest swelled with pride. He sat tall, sucked in his gut, and angled a crooked smile at her. He was Brando, he was Nicholson, he was going for it. You’re beautiful, baby. I love you. Make me forget.

  An American-made sedan, going about twe
nty miles per hour slower than Teddy, slipped in front of the Beemer.

  Teddy slammed on his brakes. The Jeep sped away on the right, out of his life. He saw her hand go up. Was she waving farewell or raking her hair?

  Teddy narrowed his eyes at the American sedan and assessed the driver. Male, forty-something, short hair, white shirt, driving with his left hand at 12:00 the steering wheel, his right arm draped lazily over the empty passenger’s seat. A plastic cup holder hanging from the passenger window held a jumbo-sized Styrofoam coffee container that probably had a corner of the plastic lid torn off to sip and drive. Small boxes were scattered across the shelf beneath the rear window.

  Recognition washed over Teddy. Samples. The boxes were samples. He was a salesman. A freaking salesman driving a freaking company car.

  Teddy flashed his high beams. “Get off the road, peddler!”

  The man wearily raised his hand, made a formidable bird, then dropped his arm back across the passenger’s seat. It’d been a long day.

  Teddy flashed his high beams again and again, then left them steady on.

  The man slowly raised his resting arm and flipped his rearview mirror to the “night” position, deflecting the glare of the high beams onto the ceiling of the car. He punched another radio station and held his speed steady at sixty-five miles per, his left hand at twelve o’clock.

  Disarmed of his high beams, all Teddy could do was bear down.

  Two motorcycle cops five miles behind Teddy started to slow traffic by swinging back and forth across all lanes. The black-and-white two miles ahead was ready. The motorcycle following Teddy decided the time had come. He whooped his siren once.

  Teddy didn’t hear. He was focused on the American sedan’s rubber-faced bumper. He was half an inch away. It was a feat of nerve, skill, and timing and Teddy was king. The salesman’s arm didn’t move from the passenger’s seat. He knew better. The yuppie wouldn’t damage his fine German car on his white-bread company sedan. The expensive car implied weakness.

  The motorcycle cop turned his spotlight on Teddy and whooped his siren again.

  Teddy was momentarily blinded and took his foot off the gas, losing ground. He looked in his rearview mirror and saw the cop for the first time. Busted. He’d get off the road. In a minute. Teddy made up lost ground and swerved to the right of the sedan as if he was going to nick its rear bumper. He saw the peddler’s right hand fly to the steering wheel. Ha haaaa! Teddy fell back in behind. Only kidding.

  The motorcycle cop left his siren steady on. He pulled next to Teddy and thumbed toward the side of the road.

  Teddy looked over at the cop, then back at the peddler. The cop gestured again, his jaw tight. Teddy patted the air with his hand. Okay, okay. The cop dropped behind Teddy and turned his siren off. The guy was going down voluntarily.

  Teddy inched closer to the peddler, focusing on his rear bumper like a mantra.

  The man’s brake lights flashed red. The peddler was slowing down!

  Teddy braked hard. His face flushed red. He accelerated into the American sedan’s rear bumper. A love peck.

  The sedan swayed with the impact.

  The motorcycle cop drove next to Teddy, gesturing. Get off!

  Teddy slowed a little then sped up, righteously ramming the sedan. The driver swerved into the right lane, almost hitting the cop, who swerved into the lane to the right of him. Cars made impact and scattered like a broken trail of ants. In thirty-five seconds, all four lanes of traffic were blocked.

  Teddy cut across three lanes in front of the commotion and headed for an off ramp, nicking a compact car and spinning it across two lanes.

  “Argghhhh!” Teddy screamed. He took his hands off the steering wheel and waved two clenched fists out the sunroof. His heart felt like it was going to burst out of his chest. Argghhhh!” He rotated his fist around his right ear, “Rwoof, rwoof, rwoof, rwoof!” He was king. King of Lane One.

  He ran the red light at the bottom of the off ramp, turned left underneath the freeway, and got on the One-oh-one in the opposite direction. He saw a black-and-white on the northbound side with its lights flashing. Gooseneckers on the southbound side slowed down to look at the accident on the other side. Two cars collided in a distracted fender-bender in front of Teddy.

  He pulled the Beemer onto the shoulder and headed for the next off ramp. Too much traffic. He’d take the surface streets.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Iris drove through the beach-town streets of Santa Monica with the top of the TR still down the way Jaynie had left it, the sea mist and street people that blanketed Palisades Park sobering her thoughts.

  She had spotted the periwinkle blue Cadillac five signals and two turns ago. She was convinced that it was following her. The Cad reminded her of her great-aunt Iris, who had bought a new Cad every year since 1961, the new Cads painted the same blue mist and champagne frost hair-rinse colors as the heads of Aunt Iris’s friends, who crowded the back seat. But it was 11:00 on Monday night, late for a cruise.

  At the next stop light, Iris stared backward in the rearview mirror. The short one was driving and grim; the tall one smiled a Casanova smile, as if he’d just charmed everyone in the place, then gone home and kicked his dog.

  A rush of prickly cold fear tickled Iris’s spine. “Victim” rolled around in her head. She hated it. She hated it until it turned into anger. Then she wasn’t afraid anymore.

  She reached into her purse and pulled Steve’s gun onto her lap. She twisted around and waved at the geeks, like old friends. The small one nudged the tall one and pointed. They exchanged words and shrugged. Iris turned back around and smiled to herself. That’s right. Keep them off base. Try and figure it out. Jerks.

  Iris got on the Ten east where it started its transcontinental journey, at the business end of the New World. She bowed to the green-and-white Day-Glo Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway sign.

  She cruised down the Ten’s middle lane at a comfortable sixty-one. Traffic was light. The Cadillac stayed a casual distance behind her, like a friend following her home. Iris wished she hadn’t had that wave of acquisitive guilt and had bought a cellular phone. She looked around for a cop and anticipated her next move.

  She reached the junction with the Four-oh-five. She held steady. Then she pulled the steering wheel hard right and cut across lanes three and four with a squeal of tires.

  A car behind her braked and fishtailed.

  Iris jammed the accelerator down and swung up and around the banked junction, grabbing the TR’s steering wheel hard in her fists. The tires complained but held the inside rail.

  She came off the junction and merged into the northbound traffic with a maneuver as delicate as a sledgehammer’s blow. There were angry horns. She honked and honked back until the horn fuse blew, then she shook her fist at the other drivers out of the open roof. She swerved from behind a VW beetle that spewed smoke as it trudged up the steep grade of the Sepulveda pass, pulled in front of it, swerved from behind the next car, shifting from forth to overdrive to third and back, zigzagging across the freeway as if she were tacking up the main channel of Marina del Rey.

  She pulled in front of a pickup truck that was four tires wide across the back and drove there, hidden from approaching traffic. She didn’t see the Cad.

  A red Ferrari Testarossa appeared beside her, hovering like a humming bird. The driver’s grin said, Race cutie?

  Iris smiled pleasantly and shook her head. No thanks.

  He gestured as if he were drinking something. C’mon cutie.

  The Testarossa stood out like a beacon. Iris turned her head and ignored him. The driver persisted without patience, then disappeared the same way he’d arrived.

  Damn TR. Trading it for the most plain Jane thing I can find.

  Iris checked her mirrors and didn’t see the Cad. She exhaled in relief, patted the TR’s dash, and felt guilty for her moment of betrayal. Love the car. Gotta love the car.

  Then she saw the periwinkle blu
e Cad speed past her on the left.

  They’d missed her. They were probably on their way to Bakersfield by now.

  There was a chain reaction of brake lights ahead. Traffic broke around a slow-moving car like a stream around a boulder.

  The Cad was now even with Iris. The tall geek waved at her.

  He rolled down his window, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled something. His words were lost on the wind. She cupped her hand over her ear. He leaned toward her and she leaned toward him as they rose over the pass going seventy.

  “Car!” he yelled, pointing toward the rear of the TR. “Stop!” He waved his arms like railroad signals.

  Iris put her hand over the stick shift and felt the TR’s pulse. The six pistons of its tractor engine purred contentedly after the freeway run. Baby was solid. Cool ride. Sweet steel.

  Iris gestured “okay” with a circled thumb and forefinger and pointed to the shoulder of the road. Let’s rock and roll.

  The Cad fell in behind her. Iris turned on her right signal indicator and crossed lane three.

  A train of tailgating cars wouldn’t let the Cad in. The geeks lost a beat.

  The junction with the One-oh-one was coming up. A window opened in lane four. Iris closed her eyes and accelerated to freedom.

  The Cad followed, nicking a minivan’s rear quarter panel.

  The TR held the curved junction. The Cad skated across the asphalt.

  Iris looked in her rearview mirror, then ahead. She mashed her feet on the brake and clutch pedals.

  The geeks slammed on their brakes.

  The cars painted twin tire marks on the road. The air stank of burned rubber.

  Iris winced and prayed as her brakes squealed. The TR finally stopped. The Cad whined behind her. It stopped. They were both stopped.

  So was everyone else.

  A news helicopter and a police helicopter tore up the air overhead.

  The white lights of a Freeway Condition sign said: TRAFFIC CONGESTED, MAJOR ACCIDENT, USE ALTERNATE ROUTES