Dead Midnight (v5) (epub)

by Marcia Muller

  “How d’you suppose? He whined and sulked.”

  “Then it would be an understatement to say you weren’t close.”

  “Rog was a loner, not close to anybody. During the time he lived here before he bought his flat, he barely spoke. It was a relief to see him go.”

  “And I don’t suppose he told you anything about what went on at InSite.”

  “He didn’t talk about his job to any of us.” Harry rattled the ice in his glass, went to the bar for a refill.

  “What about his final e-mail to you? Did he say anything in it?”

  “His what?”

  “In his journal entry the day he died, he said he’d e-mailed both you and Eddie.”

  “Oh, that. I don’t know what he said; I deleted it without opening it.” He paused. “I sense you don’t approve of our relationship.”

  “I’m not here to judge you.”

  “That’s good, because you don’t understand the situation. Nobody does. Rog gave my parents a lot of grief his whole life.” He returned to his chair, flopped into it heavily. “He ran away from home because he was disappointed in love—at eighteen, for God’s sake. By eighteen I’d been disappointed in any number of things, but I didn’t turn my back on my family. For the next seven years, every time he paid a visit he put a downer on all of us. And then the son of a bitch knocked himself off. My folks’re never going to recover from that.”

  “This disappointment in love—did you know the girl?”

  “Hard not to, the way she used to hang around here. Dinah Vardon was a miserable little twat. Came from Pinole, or some such place. Was living with an aunt and going to school here because the circumstances at home weren’t any too savory. She met Rog at a party, took one look at this house, and decided she’d love him forever in order to get her hands on our money. Dragged him around by his dick for a year, then ran off with somebody who had even bigger bucks.”

  “Are you aware she worked with him at InSite?”

  “She what?”

  “She’s their Webmaster. Or WebPotentate, as she calls herself.”

  “Goddamn.” His face went still, eyes thoughtful. “Maybe that’s how he got the job. And it might explain—”

  “Explain what?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing you’d be interested in.”

  “I’m interested in anything having to do with Roger.”

  “This has no relationship to the lawsuit.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.”

  “Uh-uh. You go ahead and gather your evidence, but leave me out of it.”

  “Why, Harry?”

  “Because I don’t care about the suit. Tell you the truth, I don’t care about anything anymore.”

  Dinah Vardon and her former relationship with Roger intrigued me, so I drove to my office and called J.D. Smith to ask how his plan to allow me an inside look at InSite and its staff members was shaping up. But J.D. wasn’t available at any of his numbers; I ended up leaving messages and, for good measure, e-mailed him. Next I called a couple of Roger’s friends and made appointments and tried Jody Houston again, but got no answer.

  It was now nearly five; I added fifteen hours to the local time and came up with approximately eight in the morning. The message slip with Hy’s number in Bangkok was on my desk. I dialed his hotel, asked for his room, and he answered on the first ring.

  “About time, McCone,” he said.

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “I always know.”

  And I always knew too. We had an odd emotional connection that seldom failed us. “Why’d you ask if I got the rose?”

  “The florist I was using went out of business, and I’m trying a new one.”

  “Well, it’s here and it’s beautiful.” I stroked one of its velvety petals.

  “Great. So how’re you?”

  “Oh … okay.”

  “You don’t sound okay. It’s Joey, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. We’ll talk about that when it won’t cost us a fortune. But I need to ask you something: do you think I’m insensitive and uncaring?”

  “Where’s that coming from? You’re one of the most sensitive and caring people I know.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. It’s occurred to me that I give people short shrift when it’s not convenient to take the time or effort.”

  “Oh, I see. You couldn’t find Joey, and now that he’s dead you feel guilty.”

  “I didn’t look hard enough for him. I gave up when it got difficult. And this afternoon I realized I didn’t even notice that the day he died was his birthday.”

  In the silence that followed, I sensed Hy was carefully framing a reply. “Let me ask you this: when was the last time Joey sent you a birthday card?”

  “He never did.”

  “So he didn’t keep track of your birthday either.”

  “That’s no excuse for me—”

  “No, but it proves you’re normal. People forget other people’s birthdays all the time. It doesn’t make them monsters, or even mean they don’t care. Your problem is that Joey’s suicide had nothing to do with you, but because he was your brother you think it should’ve, so you’re looking for ways to take the blame.”

  I thought about that, again touching the rose. The human mind and emotions worked in such convoluted ways. “Ripinsky,” I said, “how’d you get to be so wise?”

  “I’m not, particularly. But I have had some experience with suicides.”

  “Oh? I didn’t know that.”

  “There’s a lot about me you don’t know. And I like it that way—keeps you off balance and interested. When I get back, I’ll tell you about those experiences; maybe it’ll help you put this thing into perspective. Meantime, we’d better hang up, or we’ll never be able to afford to build that new deck at Touchstone.”

  The evening had turned damp and chill, and a strong wind blew off the bay and whistled through the streets and alleys of SoMa. It rattled newspapers in the gutters and swayed even the hardiest of outdoor plantings. As I walked along Brannan toward Jody Houston’s building a siren wailed nearby and a dog howled in perfect imitation.

  The windows of Houston’s flat were lighted, but when I pressed the bell there was no answer. I hesitated, fingering the front-door key that Glenn Solomon had given me. A small white cat crouched shivering against the jamb, and that decided it; I let myself—and the cat—inside and watched as it scampered away to scratch at the door of the first-floor flat.

  It was close to ten o’clock. I’d spent some time with Julia Rafael going over the file on her first real assignment—a skip trace so simple that I’d had to bite my tongue to keep from revealing where I suspected she’d find the defaulter— then read through my other operatives’ daily reports, and grabbed a quick dinner at Gordon Biersch with Anne-Marie Altman, who’d been working late in her office in Hills Brothers Plaza. In between I’d lined up several appointments with friends of Roger and made repeated unanswered calls to Houston’s flat. Now I took the creaky elevator to her floor and paused outside her door. Music came from within—rock, turned loud. Maybe Houston hadn’t been able to hear the bell. I pounded on the door and after a few seconds the volume was lowered and footsteps approached.

  “Who is it?” a muffled voice asked.

  “Sharon McCone. We met yesterday at Roger’s flat.”

  “I’m sorry? Oh, you must want Jody.” The chain rattled, the deadbolt turned, and I was looking at a pretty woman in dirty sweats with a smudge on one cheek and light brown hair held atop her head by a scrunchie. She clutched a cleaning rag in one hand. “I’m her friend, Paige Tallman,” she said. “She leased the flat to me.”

  “Since when?”

  “This morning. She knew I was looking for a place, and she called to ask if I wanted hers. I jumped at the chance, but God, it’s a pit. I don’t think she ever cleaned.”

  “Where did Jody go—and for how long?”

  “Indefinitely, and she wouldn’t tell me where. S
aid I’d be better off if I didn’t know. I’m to hold her mail and packages till she sends instructions.”

  “What about the rent payments?”

  “I gave her cash for first and last, and she has postdated checks for the rest of the year. After that, I don’t know.”

  “Awfully sudden, wasn’t it?”

  Now the woman’s eyes grew wary. “Who are you, and why’re you looking for her?”

  I repeated my name, told her my occupation. “Jody’s connected with a case I’m working on, and she may be in danger. I need to find her.”

  Paige Tallman nodded, concerned but unsurprised. “I was afraid of something like that. There were some messages on the answering machine today—including a couple from you—that sounded like she was in trouble. And she acted really freaky this morning, rushing around and tossing stuff in suitcases. She wouldn’t answer the phone or the doorbell, either.”

  “When did she leave?”

  “Around noon. She couldn’t wait to get out of here. She left a lot of her stuff; I’m supposed to box it up and hold on to it.”

  “She drive? Fly?”

  “She doesn’t have a car. I heard her call a cab—probably to go to the airport.”

  That meant I might be able to trace her. My travel agent had taught me a number of ways to get information from the airlines.

  I asked, “Are you sure she didn’t give any indication of where she was going?”

  “No. She said that way nobody could force me to tell them.”

  But that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t try. Paige Tall-man could be in for a very bad time. “Look, Ms. Tallman, this is not a good situation. Maybe you shouldn’t move in just yet.”

  “I’m already in; I got my stuff out of storage this afternoon. After living on my sister’s hide-a-bed for five months after I broke up with my boyfriend, this place is like heaven, dirt and all. Besides, I can take care of myself.”

  Tallman thrust her chin out defiantly, daring me to contradict her, and I realized how young she was—no more than twenty-one or -two. Young and full of bravado, as I’d been two decades before, and likely to get herself into fully as much trouble as I sometimes had.

  “At least change the locks,” I suggested.

  “Can’t afford to.”

  She didn’t know who or what she might be up against but, then, neither did I. Maybe the threat wasn’t serious; maybe Jody Houston was simply paranoid. Still, I couldn’t leave Paige Tallman alone and at risk.

  I handed her my card. “I’ll make you a deal. When you hear from Jody, try to find out where she is and let me know. In exchange, I’ll send a friend over who specializes in residential security. She’ll install an alarm, free of charge.”

  Tallman looked at the card. “Thanks, Ms. McCone! What a day. This is the second time the right person’s come along at the right time.”

  “And my friend will make sure the wrong person won’t be able to come along tomorrow.”

  After I left Paige Tallman I climbed the interior stairway to the floor above and let myself into Roger’s flat. It was very cold there, as if each chilly night since his death had added its weight until the warmth of day could no longer penetrate it. The flat smelled of fresh paint and furniture polish, but beneath those clean odors was filth and decay. Fanciful thinking on my part, I supposed, because I knew what the closet and cupboard doors concealed.

  The other morning I’d noticed the phone up here was still connected; my cell had discharged by now, and I wanted to call Sue Hollister, my friend in residential security, right away. Sue was home and agreeable to coming over first thing tomorrow; I asked her to bill my office and gave her the Nagasawa case-file number for reference.

  Then I turned on a small lamp in the living room and sat down on the sofa to listen to the silence.

  When I was looking for my birth parents the previous autumn, Hy had taught me a useful technique: listening to the spaces between people’s words, the pauses between statements. Listening, in effect, to what they censored. I hadn’t tried it with a physical environment before, but I’d long contended that a place can tell you a great deal about the events that have transpired within it if you’re patient and allow it to do so. Now I waited for the flat to give me some hint of the past.

  From outside came the normal city sounds: more sirens, more barking dogs, someone yelling in the street, a car burning rubber, an alarm gone haywire. But the flat must be well insulated, because all of those seemed very far away.

  In the kitchen the refrigerator made ticking noises. Then there was a swirling and gurgling. Something wrong with the coil, meaning costly repairs or even a whole new unit. Mine did that periodically, and every time I heard it I got depressed.

  The wind was stronger now. It made small, shrill whistles as it seeped through the ill-fitting frame of the rear window. A skylight groaned ominously, and a piece of plaster beside it broke loose and crumbled as it hit the floor.

  I thought of Roger coming back to the city, landing a dream job, expecting stock options, buying a flat full of light. But then the dream job turned into a nightmare, the options didn’t materialize, the flat turned into a maintenance problem—

  No. You can quit a job and find another. You can defer maintenance or take out a home-improvement loan. Those problems are not personal “failures.” Those problems are not the “circumstances” that drive you over a bridge railing.

  I listened some more. Tick. Gurgle. Whistle. Groan. Crack. There was something in between, a subtlety that I couldn’t quite grasp—

  The phone shrilled.

  My heartbeat accelerated and I jumped off the sofa, scooped up the receiver, and answered in a voice made hoarse by surprise.

  “Communing with the dead again?” The caller could have been either male or female, sounded like he or she had covered the mouthpiece with something. “It’s not going to do any good. Better you should reschedule our appointment.”

  “Who is this?”

  A silence. Caution? Surprise?

  The receiver was replaced violently.

  Roger, thank God, had favored state-of-the-art phone equipment. I pressed the key to view the number of the last caller, saw that the prefix was the same. Close by, then.

  “McCone,” Adah Joslyn’s sleep-clogged voice said, “I can’t do it till morning. Shouldn’t be doing it at all.”

  “I don’t ask for a lot of favors.” I pictured the SFPD homicide inspector snuggled up in bed with my operative Craig Morland and her enormously fat cat, Charley. Warmth and comfort were the reasons she didn’t want to run the check.

  “Don’t go all humble pie on me, girl! It ain’t you.”

  I waited her out while she fulminated about late-night calls when I wanted something. Adah, who often denigrated her talents by claiming her straight-to-the-top career path was due to her being the department’s “three-way poster child”—meaning half black, half Jewish, and a woman— was a terrific cop and a better friend, if inclined to be testy.

  “Okay,” she finally said, “fifteen minutes. But this is the last time, McCone. You hear? The last!”

  “Phone booth,” Adah said some ten minutes later. “Lobby of the Redwood Health Club on—”

  “Brannan.”

  “You knew that, why’d you wake me up?”

  “I know where the club is, not their phone booth number.” The club was next door. Whoever called had seen there was a light here in the flat.

  Adah snorted. “You know where a health club is? When was the last time we swam together?”

  “We’ll go to the pool next week, I promise.”

  “Yeah, sure. You know, McCone, you and that crew of yours at the pier are really something.”

  I tapped my fingers on the receiver, impatient to hang up. “What does that mean?”

  “Well, you wake me up on a night when I had trouble getting to sleep because my man’s out boozing with your office manager—”

  “Craig’s with Ted?”

  �
��Right. Seems Neal up and quit his job this afternoon. Harsh words were exchanged. So Ted’s afraid to go home, and he and Craig’re on a pub crawl.”

  Great. Now I had to worry about Neal, alone and miserable, while Ted, who couldn’t hold his liquor, was out drinking with Craig, who could, and would probably tempt him to spectacular excess. Well, that was their problem—for now, anyway.

  The health club was a twenty-four-hour operation, and the large windows that fronted on the sidewalk were awash with light. Inside, a dozen or so spandex-suited individuals used various instruments of torture, bearing grim expressions born of a determination to achieve bodily perfection. I’ve never understood why you would want your sweaty efforts displayed to every passerby—isn’t it something better done in private?—but most fitness centers seem to favor this form of free advertising.

  The lobby was empty, with no one at the horseshoe-shaped reception desk. The pay phone was in an alcove tucked between the entrances to the men’s and women’s locker rooms. I went back there and looked around, but there was no trace of the person who’d recently used it. Then I went to the entrance to the exercise room and studied the people. They were all concentrating on their machines and didn’t notice me.

  Well, what did I expect? The caller wasn’t likely to have remained on the premises to work on his or her abs.

  A black woman with curly auburn hair came through a door behind the desk marked Office. “Help you?” she asked.

  “Maybe. A friend called me about half an hour ago from the pay phone. I was supposed to meet her here, but I don’t see her. Is there someplace she might be besides the exercise room?”

  “She a member?”

  “I guess.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Uh, Jody Houston.” Since she’d lived next door, she might have been a member; if she was, maybe the woman would let me look around.

  She went to her computer and tapped in the name. “Sorry, we’re not showing her.”

  “Maybe you saw her make the call?”

  “I haven’t seen anybody on the phone tonight, but I’ve been in and out of the office, so I could’ve missed her.”