“How much, goddamn you?”
“This isn’t about money, Mrs. Vorhees. I’m just trying—”
“Oh, yes, sure. Just trying to be a good Samaritan. Well, that’s a crock of you-know-what.”
There was nothing I could say to that.
She knocked back half of her second drink, then came toward me again. Her face was splotchy now, the lipstick smeared; even in the pale lamplight I could see the anger like pinpoints of firelight in her eyes.
“Who?” she said in low, strained tones. “Who wants me dead?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t give you any names.”
“Names, plural. More than one person?”
I didn’t say anything.
“The Beckett whore and who else? Her brother?”
“No.”
“Damn you, then who?”
I could not just keep on standing there like a dummy. The urge to get the hell out was strong, but I’m not the kind of man who runs away from a difficult situation. All I could think was: She has a right to know, dammit. Give her something, let her figure it out for herself. But I knew I was making a mistake before all the words were out of my mouth.
“I’ll say this much. When we were employed by Cory Beckett, there was a situation in which she brought along a friend to help her. A close friend, evidently, given the circumstances. His name is Frank Chaleen.”
It rocked her. Her hand jerked enough to slop a little of the remaining whiskey over the rim of her glass.
“Frank? Frank and that slut? I don’t believe it.”
“The operative who was present can confirm it if you like.”
“He’s having an affair with her, too? She wants me dead and he’s colluding with her? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“I’ve told you all I can, as much as I know to be fact.”
“Meaning draw my own conclusions? Well, I won’t draw them—I don’t believe it.” She looked half wild now, her face twisted out of shape. “You’re a goddamn liar.”
“No, ma’am, I’m not—”
“Liar! Liar!”
And all in one motion, with no warning, she threw the glass at me.
I was half-turning away from her and I didn’t see it coming in time to dodge. The heavy crystal bottom edge slammed into my forehead, just above the bridge of my nose, with enough force to jerk loose a yelp of pain and knock me cockeyed. I staggered backward, banged into an end table and sent an unlighted lamp crashing to the floor. I went down after it, hard on my side on the rough-weave carpet. My vision was still out of whack; I swiped a hand across my forehead, felt an open stinging gash and the stickiness of blood mixed with whiskey. The liquor stench made my gorge rise.
Dimly I heard the maid come running into the room, calling out querulously in Spanish. Margaret Vorhees told her to shut up, go get some towels, look at all that damn blood. The maid hesitated, said something about first aid; there was a brief argument, the words all jumbled together through a sharp buzzing in my ears. I twitched around on the floor, still trying to swipe my vision clear so that I could see. More sounds flowed around me, but no more voices, and when the room finally swam back into focus I saw that I was alone.
I shoved up onto my knees. My right hand was smeared with diluted blood; little streams of it spilling down around my nose kept trying to screw up my vision again. I caught hold of the table and hauled myself upright, but I had to keep leaning on it for support, woozy and wobbly, aware now of a blistering, throbbing pain across my forehead into both temples.
I was still standing there, trying to pull myself together, when the maid hurried back into the room. She made concerned noises at me in both English and Spanish, only some of which penetrated—asking if I was all right, if I needed a doctor. I managed to say yes and then no, and let her take my arm and guide me to one of the couches and sit me down. She’d brought a first-aid kit and an armload of wet towels; gently, she sopped up most of the blood around the wound and on the rest of my face, said something that sounded like “not too bad,” and then went to work with an antiseptic that stung like hell and some gauze and adhesive tape.
By the time she was done, the dizziness and disorientation were gone and I was all right except for the headache. Margaret Vorhees hadn’t put in an appearance, and wouldn’t, but not because she was contrite or ashamed. She just didn’t want anything more to do with me, with or without the blood. There was nothing I could do about the glass-throwing incident and she knew it. It was her house, I hadn’t been invited, and I’d upset her with vague and unsubstantiated claims. The hell with me.
Yeah, and the hell with her, too.
I felt like the damn fool I was for coming here.
Pretty soon I tried standing up, and that was all right; then I tried walking a little and that was all right, too. The maid was down on her knees now, scrubbing at the spatters of blood and whiskey on the carpet—orders from Mrs. Vorhees, no doubt. She gave me a sad, sympathetic look underlain with something that might have been bitterness or exasperation, or maybe both. I thanked her in Spanish, and she said, “De nada, por favor.” She would have dutifully gotten up to show me out if I hadn’t made a stay-put gesture and told her I could find my own way.
Outside in the car, I peered at myself at the rearview mirror. Christ. The area around the bandaged wound was puffy and already starting to discolor. The maid had gotten most of the fluids off my face, but there were still spots and streaks here and there. On my shirt, tie, and jacket, too. It looked as though I’d been in a fight and gotten the worst of it. Hell of a time explaining this to Kerry, I thought, after my promise to keep myself out of harm’s way.
But that concern became irrelevant in the next minute or so. It didn’t matter what had just happened to me; it was simply no longer important.
I keep my cell phone turned off when I’m in somebody’s home or office; I sat there a little longer to make sure I was okay to drive before it occurred to me to check for messages. There was one on my voice mail, from Kerry. A message that slammed me harder and did more damage than Margaret Vorhees’ crystal tumbler; that really ripped the day apart, turned it dark and bleak and far more painful.
“The on-duty doctor at Redwood Village just called,” she said. Very calm, very controlled, as if she were holding herself in rigid check. “Cybil had a massive stroke this morning. She died before they could move her from the clinic to the hospital.”
12
TAMARA
The first time the guy called asking for Bill, she had no idea who he was. Just an unfamiliar voice on the phone, kind of tight and demanding. She told him Bill wasn’t there and probably wouldn’t be available the rest of the week. He said, “I have to see him,” and she said, “I’m sorry, that’s not possible, may I take a message?” No message. Was there something she could help him with? Evidently not. He hung up on her without giving his name.
The second call came a few minutes later, while she was taking a short break to drink her second cup of coffee and brood a little. About Bill and Kerry and the death of Kerry’s mother, mainly. He’d called her with the news last night. She had never met Cybil Wade, but she knew how close Kerry and her mother were from the things Bill had told her. She felt bad for both of them. Old people died every day and Cybil Wade had had a good, long life, but that didn’t make it any easier for her family to deal with.
Man, they’d had so much crap in their lives, Kerry especially the past couple of years, and now this. Wasn’t right that bad things kept happening to good people while the bastards in the world went right on sailing along on untroubled seas.
Thinking the word “bastard” led her straight to thinking about Horace again, like continually picking at a splinter or a scab. He wasn’t one of the worst, but he still ran with the pack. Damn the man! She couldn’t make up her mind what to do about him.
Why hadn’t he stayed in Philadelphia instead of coming home to the city and slithering back into her life? Well, she didn’t have to have let
him, never mind how contrite he was or pretended to be. Didn’t have to start sleeping with him again, either, for God’s sake. What a weak, stupid mistake that’d been! Same old silver-tongue Horace, talk the panties right off a girl even after she vowed not to let it happen.
Never mind, either, that he was still the best lover she’d ever had, maybe the best she would ever have. It was just sex now, wasn’t it? Sure it was; she didn’t love him anymore, not the way she had before he dumped her for another cellist in the Philadelphia orchestra. Served him right that Mary from Rochester dumped him for some other guy after he’d gone and put a ring on her finger.
Sex, no matter how good … well, it just wasn’t as important as it had been when she was living with him. She was older now, smarter (most of the time, anyway), she had responsibilities and a job she loved, she didn’t need or want Horace complicating her life and maybe messing it up again. She’d told him that, and he swore he’d never hurt her again, he was a changed man. Maybe fact, maybe bullshit. Whatever, he wouldn’t go away and leave her be. And she couldn’t seem to just say no, just tell him adios, and lock the doors every time he came sucking around.…
This was what was going through her mind when the phone rang and the same dude as before started another rap about needing to see Bill ASAP. He sounded even more tight-assed this time, as if he were upset about something and working to keep himself under control.
“Where is he? Not in the hospital, is he?”
“The hospital? No. Why would you think that?”
“Out of town, then, or what?”
“I can’t tell you that. What’s your business with him?”
“That’s between him and me. Can you get a message to him? Have him get in touch with me right away? Not by phone, in person.”
“I might be able to, if it’s important enough.”
“It’s important, all right.”
“Who am I talking to?”
Long pause before he countered with, “Who’re you?”
“Tamara Corbin. Partner in this agency.”
“Partner.” Another pause. “This is Frank Chaleen.”
Tamara wasn’t surprised. The hospital question had tipped her. The other thing Bill had told her last night was a brief account of how Margaret Vorhees had tried to brain him with a whiskey glass.
She said, playing the dude, “What was that name again?”
“Frank Chaleen. You know who I am.”
“Do I? What makes you think so?”
Pause number three. Then, “Don’t you people talk to each other?”
“Usually. When there’s good reason.”
“Your partner didn’t say anything to you about me?”
“I didn’t say that. How do I know you’re who you claim to be? Just a voice on the telephone.”
Chaleen didn’t like that. She could tell she’d gotten under his skin; his voice had an angry wobble when he said, “You get a message to him, tell him to come talk to me.” He rapped out the address of Chaleen Manufacturing. “Tell him he’d better show up soon if he knows what’s good for him.”
Like hell I will, Tamara thought. She said, “Good-bye, Mr. Careen,” deliberately mispronouncing his name, and hung up on him this time.
* * *
Jake Runyon came in a little before one. She was expecting him; he’d been in the city all morning, finishing up a hit-and-run investigation for the victim’s attorney, and had told her yesterday that he’d stop in with a report and to see if she had anything new for him.
She let him get his business out of the way first. Pulled up the hit-and-run casefile and made notes on it while he talked, in between bites from the sandwich she’d brought from home. When he was done, she said, “News, Jake, none of it good,” and told him, first, about Cybil Wade dying. She’d thought about notifying him last night after Bill’s call, but why lay a load of gloom on the man after he’d put in a long day on and off the road? There was nothing he could do. Nothing she could do, either.
Jake had one of these immobile faces that seldom showed emotion, made it hard to guess what he was thinking. Not so much now, though. The news had the same effect on him that it had had on her. The way one side of his mouth twitched and he muttered, “Damn,” told her that.
“Bill said Kerry seems to be coping all right so far, but after all she’s been through…”
“Yeah.”
“Be a while before he comes back to work. So we’ll have to take up the slack, maybe put in even more overtime.”
“That’s no problem.”
Tamara said, “He got the news just after talking to Margaret Vorhees yesterday. That went down hard for him, too.”
“What happened?”
“She was drunk, belligerent. Wouldn’t believe she was in any danger. He told her as much as he could … a little too much, maybe, he said. Dropped Chaleen’s name, intimated Cory Beckett was screwing him as well as her husband, and she went ballistic. Called him a liar, threw a glass at him that he didn’t see coming in time to duck.”
“He all right?”
“Cut on the forehead, otherwise okay,” Tamara said. “But he must’ve got through to her despite the tantrum. Enough for her to yank Chaleen’s chain and put him in a snit.”
“How do you know that?”
“Man called up twice this morning, looking for Bill. Must be real anxious to know how Bill found out enough about him and the Beckett bitch to warn Mrs. Vorhees.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Put him off for the time being. He didn’t like it, made a half-assed threat against Bill.”
“Worried. Nervous, if not scared.”
“Right. But worried enough to call off whatever they’re planning?”
“If they think Bill knows too much about it.”
“His idea or hers for Chaleen to talk to him, try to find out?”
“His,” Jake said. “He may not even have told her about Bill’s warning. Waiting to get more information first.”
“She’s the one pulling the strings.”
“So it would seem.”
“Anyhow,” Tamara said, “Bill stirred things up pretty good yesterday. What do you think of stirring ’em up a little more?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“You go see Chaleen instead. Walk in on him cold, let on you know what Bill knows without saying what it is. Same careful approach he took with Mrs. Vorhees.”
Jake thought it over. “Tricky,” he said. “And it means getting in deeper than we already are. We’re putting a lot of faith in an emotionally damaged kid’s story as it is.”
“You still believe Kenny told you the truth?”
“The truth as he perceives it, yes.”
“Doubts, Jake? Second thoughts?”
“About some of the details, maybe.”
“But not about the gun?”
“No. Cory’s got one, all right.”
“And not that there’s a murder scheme?”
“My gut feeling says Beckett’s right about that.”
“So if you talk to Chaleen,” Tamara said, “and come on strong enough, you might be able to shake him up enough so he backs out on Cory. No murder scheme without him, right?”
“Theoretically.”
“It’s worth a shot. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Tamara said, “Just watch out he doesn’t get pissed enough to chuck something at your head. And make sure you duck in time if he does.”
13
JAKE RUNYON
Frank Chaleen’s factory was on Basin Street, on the southeastern side of the city near the Islais Creek Channel. Basin ran at an angle off Evans: four blocks long and lined with small factories and warehousing companies, an auto-body shop, an outfit that made statuary for gardens and cemeteries, and midway along the last block, a pair of buildings crowded behind a chain-link fence topped by strands of barbed wire. Signs on the fence and on the largest of the two buildings identified the place as Chaleen Man
ufacturing, Inc.
The main structure was an L-shaped hunk of rust-spotted corrugated iron; a much smaller building, a squat trailer-like affair that sat behind and to one side like a broken-off piece of the factory, figured to be the office. Both buildings had a neglected look, not quite rundown yet but getting to that point. There were two double gates in the fence—truck-wide and standing open—that gave access to a trio of bays in the facing factory wall, one of the bays filled by a semi being loaded or unloaded. The asphalt yard needed resurfacing: cracked, pitted, buckled in a couple of places.
Another set of gates, farther along and smaller, provided direct access to the trailer-like structure. Runyon pulled up near these. They, too, were open; he walked on through and up to the office entrance. A promotional poster headed WE’RE ECO-FRIENDLY! was pinned to the door; words underneath proclaimed that Chaleen’s X-Cel Packing Peanuts were nontoxic, reusable, biodegradable in compost, and dissolvable in water. One of the poster’s corners had come loose, some time ago judging from the way it was curled up.
Runyon stepped inside. The interior appeared to have been cut into two more or less equal halves by a center wall. Four desks, only one of them occupied, were jammed into the near half. In the bisecting wall were two closed and unmarked doors, one of which would probably lead to private quarters in the rear half.
Runyon told the lone employee, a young dark-haired woman wearing a pair of red-rimmed glasses, that he was there to see Frank Chaleen. She said, “Mr. Chaleen is out in the factory. He should be back shortly. If you’d like to wait…”
“I’ll just wander over there, if there’s no rule against visitors.”
“Well, no, there isn’t, but—”
“He’s anxious to see me. Whereabouts in the factory?”
“The manufacturing section. One of our extrusion machines has broken down again. He went over there to look at it.”
Extrusion machine. Whatever that was.
Runyon thanked her, walked out and across the yard to a set of cracked concrete steps that led up onto the loading dock. A warehouseman driving a forklift was loading a pallet laden with cardboard drums into the maw of the semi parked in the nearest bay; he didn’t seem to be working too hard at it. He paid no attention as Runyon entered the warehouse, a cavernous, fluorescent-lighted space crowded with more of the drums, as well as stacks of cardboard cartons and bundled plastic bags.
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