I Scarce Can Die (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 5)

by Michael Wallace

“Not if it could hypothetically be avoided.”

  “If you’re as smart as you look, it could definitely be avoided.” He chewed another bite of his sandwich and continued, “Will you promise you won’t bring me into this, no matter what?”

  Gordon didn’t really want to make that promise, but at the same time felt he might possibly be onto something big. He picked up the coffee cup, and by the time he had taken a sip, his curiosity had got the better of him.

  “You have my word,” he said.

  “And you won’t tell Nell what I told you?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “So we’re in agreement about the terms?”

  “I believe we are.”

  Burroughs finished the first half of his sandwich and looked around. The retired couple had left, and the waitress was nowhere to be seen. He shook his head.

  “I must be crazy to do this, but here goes. I was first on the scene that night, and one of the things I noticed in the chaos was that Connie Baxter’s skirt was hiked up higher than you’d expect it to be if she’d fallen naturally. The first thought that crossed my mind was that she may have been sexually assaulted, but it wasn’t my job to ask that question.”

  “That didn’t come out at the trial,” Gordon said.

  “Of course it didn’t, because nobody asked the question.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know. Anyway, I happened to be around the building when they did the autopsy, and I heard, I’m not saying how, that they found fresh semen in her and no signs of a struggle.”

  “You mean she and Gary …”

  “Will you let me tell the story, Gordon? DNA tests showed it didn’t belong to Gary, and it didn’t belong to anyone in the state’s DNA database. That can only mean one thing. Not long before she was murdered, Connie Baxter had consensual sex with a law-abiding male who wasn’t her husband. And nobody knows who.”

  ELIZABETH MACONDRAY’S LAST CLASS at City College let out at 12:30. She picked up a chicken/vegetable wrap from a food truck and ate it in her office while checking her email, replying only to two messages that were semi-urgent and could be answered in a few words. Then she gathered her belongings and headed to her Subaru for the drive to Tony’s Tip Top Tavern in Hayward.

  It was a mellow, sunny autumn day in the Bay Area, with a bit of haze between the foothills on either side of the bay. Highway 101 was busy but moving, and she got to the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge shortly after two o’clock. Once on the other side of the bay, she plunged into the heart of Hayward. There is a branch of California State University in Hayward and there are a number of fine residential neighborhoods. Tony’s wasn’t in one of those neighborhoods. After getting lost a couple of times, she found it on one of the city’s main commercial streets, in a part of town that had seen better days. Tony’s was a squat, one-story building, with a front of wood siding that could have used a coat of paint. The front windows, backed by closed blinds, had neon signs promoting several brands of American and Mexican beer.

  Next to Tony’s was a small strip mall with space for six businesses. One of the spaces was vacant, and the other five were occupied, left to right, by a liquor store, a Chinese restaurant, a pawn shop, a bail bondsman, and a tropical fish store. Since no one else was parking in the mall’s lot, Elizabeth did, staring at the fish store for a minute after turning off the engine. She finally concluded it must be a money-laundering operation.

  Before heading into Tony’s to meet Roger Gow, Gary Baxter’s step-brother, she checked herself in the car mirror. She was wearing a pair of tan slacks that flattered her butt and an ivory blouse that invited a see-through but didn’t deliver. It could, however, be opened a couple more buttons if there were a cynical need to be provocative. The image she was aiming for was worth-a-look-but-not-slutty, and she felt she’d hit the mark. On second thought, she felt she’d hit it better if she removed her glasses and put them in her purse, which she did. She also took off the flats she’d been wearing in class and put on a pair of heels that bumped her up to five-eleven, and (she hated to admit it) bumped up her confidence as well.

  When she walked through the door, everyone in the joint — all four of them — looked up. The bartender, presumably Roger, was in his early thirties, with sleek, shoulder-length dark brown hair and a Tom Selleck mustache. A twenty-something redhead, presumably an underemployed waitress, was leaning against one end of the bar. At a table off to one side, two men in their thirties were nursing beers. They looked as if they could have been taking a break from money laundering at the fish store.

  The interior walls were covered with Oakland Raiders memorabilia and photos of past greats — Ken Stabler, Daryle Lamonica, Phil Villapiano, Jack Tatum, Warren Wells, Fred Biletnikoff, Lester Hayes, Jim Plunkett, John Madden. The place smelled of booze and cigarettes that might have been consumed when those men were still with the team, a long time ago. Elizabeth took in a deep breath of Tony’s ambiance and walked to the bar.

  “You must be Roger,” she said.

  “And you must be Elizabeth,” he said, extending his hand. After the handshake, the conversation lapsed for half a minute.

  “Nice photos on the wall,” Elizabeth said. “Are all your customers Raider fans?”

  “Just about. And the ones who aren’t wouldn’t say so. Tony’s has a reputation in Raider Nation. Ken Stabler and a couple of the other guys on the team actually came here once after a game. Before my time, of course.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Are you a Raiders fan?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow football all that much. I’m more of a basketball fan.”

  That killed the conversation for another 45 seconds before Roger tried to revive it.

  “Can I get you something to drink? On the house?”

  “Thank you. That’s sweet of you. Do you have any wine?”

  “Sure thing.” He turned to the red-headed waitress. “Hey, Crystal, can you go in the back and get me some wine? The good stuff?”

  “You mean, like, not in a box?”

  “In a bottle, babe.”

  “You got it.” She vanished behind a pair of curtains to the right of the bar.

  “So,” Roger said, lowering his voice to a confidential level, “you say you’re with some outfit that thinks Gary might actually be innocent.”

  She nodded.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

  “You seem doubtful.”

  “You know, Gary and I were never that close. My mom was a drunk and so was his dad. When his mom married my dad, they didn’t drink, but they still didn’t get along. Gary and I were thrown together without any say-so in the matter. It wasn’t the best of circumstances, and we kind of went our own separate ways more often than not.”

  “Still, you must have gotten to know him, at least some.”

  “Is this all right?” Crystal was back with a bottle of Paul Masson red wine. Elizabeth flashed back on when she was a little girl and had seen TV ads for Paul Masson, with Orson Welles intoning, “We will sell no wine before its time.” The bottle looked well past its time.

  “That’s great,” Roger said. She set it on the counter, and he rummaged underneath it, looking for a corkscrew. Elizabeth almost hoped he wouldn’t find it, but he did. He slit off the foil at the top to reveal the cork, with a slight crusting of mold on one side. He noticed that she noticed.

  “It’s just on the outside,” he said. “I’ll wipe it before I pour, and the wine should be fine.”

  He uncorked it, wiped the lip of the bottle, found a wine glass on the counter behind him, held it up to the light, wiped the dust off with a towel, and poured her drink. She held the glass up to the light — not so much to admire the color of the wine as to make sure there was nothing floating in it. Satisfied, she took a sip. It wasn’t as sour as it could have been.

  “Nice,” she said. “But we were talking about Gary and how you must have known hi
m, living together and all that.”

  “Sure, you couldn’t help it. But Gary was like that guy in the funnies who was always walking around with a rain cloud over his head. He never got the breaks, but he never did anything to earn them either. I’m not surprised he ended up in trouble with the law, big-time.” He paused and looked around the bar. “Though I guess I’m a bit surprised it was for murder. I never figured him for the violent type.”

  “That’s one thing people keep saying about him,” Elizabeth said. “That he wasn’t violent. Did you talk to him often after you left Dutchtown?”

  “We talked on the phone every couple of months. If he had a load on, he could keep going a long time about how the world was doing him wrong. I know he’s my step-brother and all that, but it didn’t make you look forward to his calls.”

  “I can understand that. Do you remember anything about the last conversation you had with him before Connie was murdered? I know it was a long time ago …”

  “Actually, I remember it pretty well, because of what happened. He called on Labor Day weekend when I was watching a football game. He’d just lost a job, and, well, I don’t know if I should be telling you this. It may hurt his case.”

  “We’re trying to get at the truth,” Elizabeth said.

  “All right, then. He was wondering if Connie was stepping out on him with someone else. He really had his Jockeys in a knot over it. Do you think that could have been the reason? For killing her, I mean.”

  “It could have, if he did it. But Roger, this is important. Did Gary say anything about who she could have been stepping out with?”

  “He was all over the place. He’d obviously gotten started on the booze. But I do remember he said something about Mike.” He shrugged his shoulders. “There must be a dozen Mikes in Dutchtown. Next I heard was a call from his mom saying he’d been arrested for Connie’s murder. I tried to call him at the jail, but they wouldn’t let me talk to him, and he never called me. And that’s about all I can tell you.”

  She left soon after, and when she opened the door to go out, was nearly blinded by the late afternoon sun. As her eyes were adjusting to the light, she was almost run over by a young man in a black hoodie riding a bicycle pell-mell down the street. As she stepped back from that, a heavy-set man with a large butcher knife in his left hand ran past her, shouting after the bicyclist, “Get off my bike, motherfucker!”

  She waited until her vision had fully returned and no one else was on the sidewalk before heading back to her car. Someone had thrown eggs at it from the street, and four of them had hit the windshield and roof. She stared at it for a minute before getting in.

  “The car wash is on you, Gordon,” she said, as she started the engine.

  AFTER MEETING THE DEPUTY, Gordon checked his cell phone and found that he could make a call. He made two, then got his rod from the Cherokee and headed toward the water. The pier jutted 30 feet into the lake, forming a T, with the cross of the T at the end 15 feet wide — plenty of room for two anglers. Peter was on the left side, and Gordon waited until he had cast out into the water before calling out, “Coming from behind,” and walking to the right edge of the end of the pier.

  “Any luck?” he asked Peter.

  “Three. Not bad for the middle of the day.”

  “This late in the season they can be feeding any time. What are you using?”

  “Copper John under an indicator.”

  “How deep?”

  “Seven to eight feet.”

  Gordon looked out at the lake. In 15 seconds he saw two fish rise to the surface.

  “We have to go in half an hour,” he said. “Just for giggles, I’m going to try a dry fly until then.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Gordon tied on a #16 Adams, a dry fly that can pass for nearly any medium to dark- colored insect, and cast it into the lake, 60 feet from the pier. With the mountains on the opposite side reflecting on the lake’s surface, the fly was hard to see. He concentrated on looking at it, thinking all the while of what Burroughs had just told him. It shouldn’t be that hard for Pope to get the full autopsy report, even at this late date, and he didn’t have to say —

  Whap!

  A trout had risen to Gordon’s fly, and with a quick rise of his rod tip, he set the hook. Several minutes later he’d brought in and released a 12-inch Brook Trout.

  “First-cast luck,” Peter said laconically.

  Gordon caught two more fish before they had to leave. The half-hour of fishing was all he got, after waking up that morning expecting half a day on the water.

  GORDON’S FIRST CALL from the lodge had been to Nell Quinn, arranging a meeting that afternoon. He felt he owed her an update, and by the time he and Peter got to Pass City, he’d figured out how to dance around what Burroughs had told him. Nell was waiting at the front door of the inn.

  “Have you gotten that phone call yet?” she asked.

  “I talked to him two hours ago.”

  “What did he say?”

  Gordon looked around. “Can we find a more private place for this discussion?”

  “What am I thinking? I’ve forgotten my manners altogether. I’m sorry. It’s just that — well, it means so much that there may finally be some hope for Gary. There are cookies in the parlor, and I’ll be back with tea.”

  Gordon and Peter sat down where they had on Saturday. True to her word, Nell was back soon with a large teapot.

  “It needs to steep for a couple of minutes,” she said. “Now tell me what Scott told you.”

  “I have to be a bit careful in what I say, Nell,” Gordon replied. “What he did was point me to where we might be able to find something. It’s too early to say yet how important it’ll be.”

  “I wonder why he didn’t tell me about it.”

  “He has a problem, Nell. If what Scott told me gets traced back to me, there’s no obvious connection to him. If it got traced back to you, there could be. He’s sticking his neck out for you, and his job could be affected if he’s caught. Can you trust me to handle it for the time being?”

  “I suppose so. And it is sweet of Scott to help. I think the tea’s ready.”

  She poured cups all around. It was the same breakfast tea as before, and went well with the cookies.

  “How about Gary’s brother and Connie’s sister?” Nell asked.

  “My assistant, Elizabeth, should be with Roger, the brother, as we speak.”

  “How about the trial transcript? Have you read it and seen the problems with the case?”

  “I’m about halfway through. I see the problems, all right, but with Gary on the scene and nobody else to suspect, I can understand how the jury didn’t give much weight to those problems.”

  Nell shook her head vehemently.

  “No,” she said. “It was obvious that those problems were big enough to destroy the case against Gary. His lame attorney didn’t do a good enough job of pointing them out.”

  From what Gordon had read, he felt that Pope had actually done a decent job in that regard. Nell was turning the discussion into a recrimination session, and Gordon had to change gears to head it off.

  “Listen, Nell,” he said. “You’ve probably spent more time with Gary since his arrest than his lawyer has. I need your help here. Can you remember anything he said — anything at all — that might have suggested someone else who could have killed Connie?”

  She took a sip of tea and shook her head, less vehemently this time.

  “No,” she said. “And I wasn’t really concerned about that because I knew Gary was innocent. What he kept saying was that he loved her and she didn’t have an enemy in the world. In fact, after being in the play that summer, she even had some new friends.”

  A light came on in her eyes and she set her teacup down hard on the table.

  “That play!” she said. “I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe something happened during that play. You should look into that.”

  Gordon and Peter looked at each other.
/>
  “That’s a really good idea, Nell,” Gordon said. “I’ll see what I can find out about that.”

  “You should talk to the director,” she said. “The one who’s named like a plant.”

  The cup of tea seemed to last forever, but Gordon and Peter were finally able to take their leave, not much wiser than when they had arrived. Gordon had promised Nell before they left that he would be back Friday or Saturday, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. A little Gary Baxter discussion with Nell went a long way.

  When they got in the Cherokee, Peter assumed an innocent tone and asked:

  “So does Elizabeth know you’re calling her ‘my assistant?’ ”

  “No, and unless someone rats me out, she never will.”

  Gordon pulled onto the highway. A mile down the road, Peter spoke again.

  “The deputy you talked to this afternoon. Is he in love with Nell?”

  “I didn’t ask and he didn’t say. But if you want my sense of it, I think he is.”

  “Is he normal?”

  “Hard to say on such a short acquaintance, but he seemed to be. Why?”

  Peter shook his head.

  “Poor bastard,” he said. “He hasn’t got a chance with her.”

  AS THEY PULLED INTO DUTCHTOWN, Gordon’s cell phone rang. He picked it up and drove with one hand as he talked.

  “Gordon? Len Vincent here. I have some news.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’d rather do it in person. Did you have any plans for dinner tonight?”

  Gordon looked at Peter and said, “We haven’t gotten that far yet.”

  “Can you meet us at the taqueria in an hour?”

  “Six o’clock?” He turned to Peter and nodded. Peter nodded back. “We’ll be there.”

  “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

  They returned to the house, cleaned up, and decided to walk to dinner. As they crossed the bridge, Gordon noticed that fresh flowers had been put out for Maria.

  It was twilight and still in the high 60s when they reached the restaurant. Len and Gloria were occupying half of a table for four by a railing on the deck.

  “I hope you’re OK with dining outside,” she said as they arrived. “It may be the last time this year we can do it.”