Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1-3 (The Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries)

by Heather Haven

  “Wow. You’re right in there with the big boys.”

  “And girls. There are twenty of us, fifteen men and five women.”

  “Any of them from other countries?”

  “You bet. Most of them are from Ethiopia or Kenya. I ran with one man from Eritrea three years ago. He came in first, and I came in fifth. I think it’s the run that did in my knee.”

  He let out a laugh, warm and sweet, and I stored its memory for a later time. Gawd, I loved this man. Wait a minute. I said that.

  “I need to stretch out a little and get over to my corral.” He looked at his watch. “Yup. Nearly time. We start in fifteen minutes. Want to help pin my bib to my shirt?”

  He stripped off his windbreaker to reveal a yellow tank top, somewhat covering his rippling and well-defined muscles. The warm color of the shirt emphasized the green of his eyes and matched his cheery disposition. Gurn ripped open a small plastic bag given to each specific runner, containing his numbered bib and four steel safety pins. He dumped the pins into my upturned palm, pressed his bib to his chest, and stood erect.

  “Try to pin it on straight, Lee.” He smiled down at me, and I knew he was looking for a truce, for me to cooperate and help make this work. “I don’t want to look like a slob.”

  “As if,” I said, grinning back at him. A truce it was.

  With care, I fiddled with the bib on his shirt and began to pin it in place. I got a little sloppy with the last pin, and stuck him with the sharp point.

  “Ow! Careful, sweetie. If I wasn’t awake before, I am now.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t realize these bibs were so thick. It’s hard to get the pin through. By the way, have you seen Richard or Frank?” I was still wondering why neither my brother nor godfather had spilled the beans about the night before.

  “No, Richard called earlier, but we didn’t have a clear connection. He’s back somewhere.”

  The runners were lined up along the length of Baker Street, block by block. Front runners were placed at the beginning, on Bay Street. At the start gun, all runners would take off at the same time, but from their different intersections.

  As usual, the race would circle the Palace on Palace Drive, head west on Lundeen Street and continue through Crissy Field—just to further torture everybody—and then along Mason Street to the end of Marine Drive. The run heads for the underbelly of the Golden Gate Bridge but makes a u-turn at Fort Point. A few hundred yards of retracing their steps, and then there’s the climb up and through Sea Cliff onto the breathtaking Lands End Trail, with views to die for.

  This group will take no time for sightseeing, however, only occasionally making a pit stop for water. Those still with us will hang a left at El Camino de Mar, where they start an even more arduous climb up to the Palace of the Legion of Honor, ending up on Thirty-Fourth Avenue and in the circular parking lot in front of this noble-looking museum.

  In between both palaces are hills, bumpy pavement, dirt, wide paths, narrow lanes, rocks, and grass, and a lot of heavy panting. It isn’t so much the distance—just a little over seven miles—but the terrain. At least ninety percent of the run is uneven, uphill, and difficult. Some people drop out midway and head over to Greens, a great vegetarian restaurant in Ft. Mason, for a well-deserved breakfast. That would be my route.

  Before all these people started running for whatever reasons possess people to do so, I would have driven overland to wait at the finish line. The problem seemed to be at the finish line, and I wanted to be there well ahead of time.

  “Okay, sweetie, I gotta go,” Gurn said, blowing me a quick kiss.

  “Wait!”

  He dutifully turned around and waited for what I had to say, running in place.

  “Don’t forget to look for me at the end of the race. I might need to tell you something. You never know. Keep a lookout for me,” I shouted.

  He gave me the okay sign with thumb and forefinger formed in a small circle, spun around and ran to his corral.

  Three short blasts from speakers scattered on posts and on trees, gave the warning the race was scheduled to start in fifteen minutes. Last minute entrants frantically tried to find the locations of their corrals. The easygoing atmosphere vanished and was replaced by a rushed excitement and tension. Before I left for the car, I whipped out my cellphone to call Richard.

  He answered on the first ring. I had a much better connection than Gurn said he’d had.

  “Hey, Lee. Got my blue tooth in and been waiting for your call. And by the way, Mom told me what happened. You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” I lied.

  “I’m still trying to take it in. Tugger earned his keep last night. Where are you?”

  “I’m near the check-in at the palace. And thanks for not saying anything to Gurn. I appreciate it. Where are you?”

  “Standing around with the other losers at Baker and Francisco. And I was going to tell him, but I thought it would be better coming from you. You’re going to shut the front door from now on when you get home, right?”

  I see where I get my nagging tendencies. A family trait. “You bet.”

  “I called about Flint this morning,” Richard went on, “and he’s doing much better. D.I. sent him a huge bouquet of flowers. Vicky took care of it. Speaking of Vicky—”

  Another blast of the horn drowned out his last words. People started moving fast and loud chatter broke out among the throng.

  “Richard, I can’t hear you. Let’s talk later,” I interrupted. “But first, do you see anything questionable or suspicious?”

  “Sis, it’s more of a party atmosphere around here than a race. No beer except root, but we’ve got a couple of people dressed up as horses, saddles and all, and some guy running

  around as Daisy Mae. I don’t know where that one came from.”

  “Where’s Frank?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for about an hour.”

  “You looking for me?” Frank’s bass-baritone voice seemed to come out of nowhere. I whirled around, nearly dropping the phone.

  Frank sauntered over, dressed in a light gray tank top, dark gray running shorts, and white running shoes, mocha skin aglow from moderate exercise. His bib number read 542. Funny, he still looked like a cop, even in a running outfit.

  “Richard, I’ve got to go but stay close to your phone.” I hung up and turned to Frank. “Where did you come from?”

  “Been checking things out, Lee. Saw you with Gurn a few minutes ago but wanted to give you some time together.”

  “Thanks for not telling him about last night.”

  “Figured it should come from you. But you’d better do it soon.” He winked at me, after he gave me a fake scowl.

  I nodded, grateful everybody thought I was grown up enough to know when and where to tell someone something. “Did you find anything?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think it’s on this end, Lee.”

  “Neither do I.” I threw my cellphone into my bag. “The race is going to start in about ten minutes. I’d better head over to the finish line and see what I can see.”

  “I’ll go with you,” he said, falling into step with me, toward the car less than a block away.

  “Aren’t you running the race?”

  “Me? Not on your life. Just get me to the other end by wheels, please.”

  “Which reminds me, don’t they electronically monitor the runners at check points? You know, to make sure they do the entire race on foot? I think you’re disqualified if your foot doesn’t fall on certain pads along the way.”

  “Well, if they don’t they damned well should,” Frank said, with no little indignation. “People are going to try to cheat on something like this, especially for twenty-five thousand dollars. I thought you knew I’d never planned on running the race. When we get to the Golden Gate, I’ll jump out and scout around. Nobody’ll be suspicious of me dressed like this.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Frank. You manage to make it look
like a cop’s uniform.”

  “Yeah?” He looked down in surprise. “Well, don’t you worry about me. You just put your thinking cap on and come up with how these SOBs are doing it.”

  My mouth formed a grim line, as I heard the ten-minute warning blast go off. I opened the car doors with the beeper. “I guess I’ll keep looking at the videos and hope I find something.” I slid into the driver’s seat of my ’57 Chevy. “Good luck squeezing in.”

  Frank opened the passenger’s door and grimaced. “Oh, mama, I need to lose weight.”

  “If I can’t find anything, our job is to tackle Gurn to the ground before he gets anywhere near the finish line. Agreed?”

  He got in, nodding gruffly. “Agreed.”

  I pulled out into the street and followed the streets the run would take, heading toward the Golden Gate Bridge. “How much time do we have? How long before the first runners get to the end, do you think?”

  “Less than an hour. It’s not a long race, but it’s grueling. Glad I’m not doing it. These guys are going to need some TLC after this.”

  “As long as nobody needs a gurney,” I muttered.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Can’t You Pick Another Route?

  Five minutes later, I sat with the motor idling, while Frank showed his ID to a foul-tempered, thin, dark-skinned man at the latest checkpoint, a man who would have rather been anywhere else but where he was. We had decided to drive as much of the race as we possibly could, just to check things out. I looked out the windshield straight ahead while Frank’s voice droned on in laconic tones, courteous but saying only what was necessary.

  No more than a quarter mile ahead, the end of San Francisco’s land mass sat, sloping into a small, tawny-colored dune next to the sea. Speckled with gray-green weeds, the dune had been created by centuries of wind and rested under the base of this side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Lucky dune, it had a multi-million dollar view of the sparkling Bay waters, Sausalito, and the Marin Headlands.

  This stint of the run was a narrow slope bringing the runners to a flat patch of land, covered overhead by the GG Bridge. If you were directly in the sun or sheltered from the blustery weather, the day had warmed somewhat. Otherwise, the bone-piercing wind off the Bay stressed not only the soon-to-come winter but the not-so-user friendly San Francisco Bay.

  “Okay, let’s get going,” Frank said, his business over. He impatiently tapped the dashboard in front of him as a signal for me to put the pedal to the metal.

  I pulled on ahead, going no more than eight miles an hour, heading to the spot where Jimmy Stewart jumped into the water and rescued a suicidal Kim Novak in Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Knowing what I know about the San Francisco Bay, it

  made me wonder how on earth anybody—even stunt doubles—could throw themselves into freezing, tumultuous waters like that. Just thinking about it, brrrr!

  The car crawled alone this quarter-mile portion of the road turning back onto itself once we got to the end, the building at Fort Point. Ahead I saw one of the computerized foot registers each runner would have to be sure to hit, if they didn’t want to be disqualified.

  Avoiding personnel, police, and officials who were darting all over the place on this narrow portion of the run, I noted the twenty-foot wide pavement separated by the Bay on one side and a sloping cliff on the other. This was a very vulnerable section of the run, although the security was first rate, with surveillance cameras stationed on platforms every few feet or so. Before I made a U-ee and drove back, I stopped the car and looked across the mouth of the Golden Gate spanned by the world famous bridge only since the late thirties. Before, people got from one side to the other perilously, via ferry or other watercraft. Strong currents and the standard sixty-mile-an-hour winds labeled this bridge “the bridge that couldn’t be built.” Yeah, right. It sat peaceful and imposing, this huge edifice, the deep orange color contrasting vividly with the robin’s egg blue of the sky and the aquamarine, white-capped waters beneath.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” commented Frank. “But we’d better get going. This looks pretty secure here. The circular parking lot out in front of the Legion of Honor worries me. There could be crowd control problems there.”

  We turned around, headed away from the marina area, and passed through Sea Cliff, a residential area of swells where a doghouse costs millions of dollars. Up we went, through Lands End Trail, turning onto El Camino del Mar. As we neared the finish line, dozens of people, carrying lawn

  chairs, blankets, water bottles, many with small children, trudged up each side of the winding, tree-covered street.

  They’d stop now and then to enjoy the intermittent but spectacular views of the Golden Gate and the surrounded headlands. The spectators moved haphazardly as large crowds often do, spilling out into the street, laughing, chatting, even singing. Their goal was not so much to be near the ribboned finish line but close enough to see the passing action.

  I turned into the parking lot of the palace of the Legion of Honor, teeming with police and race officials, preparing for the onslaught of runners in about thirty minutes time.

  “Park behind the news van over on the right,” Frank ordered. “I’ll get out and look around. Some of Hank Fenner’s men are here undercover. He’s in charge.”

  He turned around and faced me, his mocha-colored bare arm holding onto the handgrip over the door. I inched through the crowd, barely going five miles an hour. I gripped the wheel tighter, just out of sheer nerves.

  “You remember Hank Fenner?” Frank went on. “Transferred to SFPD about twenty years ago. Runs the homicide division. Bobby and I went to the Academy with him.”

  “I do, Frank. He’s the one who interrogated me several months back when I found Portor Wyler’s body.”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s right.”

  “He was pretty nice to me,” I admitted. I didn’t add I’d been short tempered and curt, but he’d let it all wash over him.

  “He should be. Fenner idolized your father. Said he learned a lot from him. We all did.” Frank’s voice took on the gruff edge it did when he was caught up in an emotion he was trying to push away. He flung open the car door and sprang out then leaned back inside.

  “You coming?”

  “No. I want to keep looking at these videos. I’ve got a nagging feeling I’m overlooking something in them. Let’s keep in touch by cellphone.”

  He nodded and slammed the car door shut. I reached behind me and grabbed my bag off the backseat.

  When I opened the lid of the laptop, I realized although I’d unplugged it when I’d left home, I had neglected to turn it off. The frozen close-up image of the fallen Peruvian’s bib still covered the screen.

  Annoyed at myself for needlessly wasting battery power, I checked what was left. Another four and a half hours remained. Okay. It was okay. Way before, this whole mess should be over. One way or another.

  I clicked on the videos feeling determined, but with a heaviness of spirit. I’d start the whole process of scrutinizing them again, because that’s what a good PI does, but I didn’t hold much hope. Whatever secret or clue was there kept eluding me, no matter how many times I tried to snag it.

  Sitting on the dashboard was the remnants of cold coffee from earlier, but I thought better of chugging it down. I’d had no breakfast, and now that it was down to the wire, literally, my stomach was churning up bile better than a milkmaid churning butter.

  I reached under the seat for one of the ubiquitous chocolate candy bars I stow there; stale though it might be. Some day I’m going to get ants in the car from all the food I store under the driver’s seat, but it sure comes in handy when I’m in a situation like this.

  Munching away, I watched frame by grueling frame, lost in my concentration. So much so, I hadn’t noticed the lot was quickly filling up with hundreds of people, packing themselves five and six deep on the sidelines of the final span. Someone actually jumped onto the trunk of my car, rocking me out of my absorption in the laptop’s offerings.r />
  “Hey,” I yelled out the window. “What the hell are you doing? Get off my car!”

  A teenage boy, possibly sixteen or seventeen, turned and gave me a startled look.

  “Sorry,” he stuttered, with an apologetic smile. “I just wanted to see when they hit the ribbon. You can’t see anything from the ground.” He hopped down with no more conversation and disappeared into the hoard.

  I looked over to where the finish line was or should have been. I’ve been to less crowded rock concerts. A glance at my watch showed it to be 8:30 a.m. The first of the runners were due in ten minutes, more or less. I’d been watching these stupid videos for over twenty-five minutes with nothing to show for it.

  I turned back to the laptop, this time to shut it off properly. I’d given up. There wasn’t any way I could figure out how the syndicate was killing off these people. But I wasn’t going to lose Gurn to them. I’d stop him from nearing the finish line if I had to shoot him to do it. Wait a minute. Not the best of plans.

  In my frustration, I banged on a couple of keys. The frozen image of the white bib Tugger had somehow triggered the computer to save came back on screen, stark white against the black dirt of the ground.

  My forefinger raised in the air, poised to shut down the program when I saw what had been taunting me the entire time. The bib. Clean and stark white. A stark white bib, ostensibly coming from a man’s sweaty shirt at the end of a long run in a tropical clime. Moreover, what was it doing off on the side of the path? It should have still been pinned to his shirt.

  Shaky fingers tapped the frames of the video to the last moments of the Peruvian runner’s life. And then I saw it. One moment a bib, sweaty, soiled, and wrinkled was pinned to the pale green T-shirt of his crumpled body, and the next moment a pristine white bib was laying on the side of the path. Ignoring the images of people hovering over the body, I closed in on what hadn’t been obscured by well-meaning bystanders.

  Before a do-gooder stepped in the way and knelt down, I had a blurred vision of short, stubby fingers reaching out and tearing the dirty bib from the shirt. I clicked forward trying to keep the image of the shirt in frame all the time then froze it. I enlarged the image, enhancing and filling in missing pixels for a clearer picture. Sure enough, I saw small tears in the fabric of the shirt where the bib had been. Then I backed the frames up widening my scope. Little by little, I searched for the person attached to those stubby fingers. No luck. I fast forwarded to the last of the video, back to the pristine white bib lying on the side of the path.