Except that it didn’t just open; it thumped and rattled as if it had been pushed in hard. Sharp clicking steps followed. I couldn’t see who had come in because my office door was partly closed. Alex Chavez was in the anteroom, working on his laptop at one of the desks, and I heard the mutter of his voice and then a kind of cat-hiss response. Even before Alex came and poked his head in and said I had a visitor, I knew who it was.
She was standing alone in the middle of the anteroom, straight as a tree with her arms down at her sides and her mouth so tightly compressed it seemed lipless. Dressed in an expensive scarlet outfit today—suit, shoes, scarf, purse—that made her midnight hair seem even blacker, the red color scheme broken only by a white cashmere turtleneck and a gold cameo brooch. This was the other Cory Beckett, the real Cory Beckett. Nothing soft or seductive about her. Hard. Glacial. All the fire burned deep inside—a molten core wrapped in a block of ice.
Chavez stood looking at her from a distance with his mouth open a little, as if he’d never seen anyone quite like her before. Tamara was there, too, standing in the doorway to her office; she glanced at me as I stepped out, but only for a second. Cory Beckett had her full attention. She didn’t have to have met the woman before to know who she was.
Cory’s magnetic gaze was fixed on me, unblinking, as I approached her. Sub-zero cubes of luminous gray-green glittering with venom. Touch her skin, I thought, and you’d burn your fingers. Like touching dry ice.
I said, “Well, Ms. Beckett, this is a surprise,” even though it wasn’t. After nearly forty years in law enforcement, hardly anything surprises me anymore.
“Is it?” Her voice had a brittle quality, as if it, too, were partially frozen. “I don’t think so, after what you and what’s-his-name that works for you did.”
“What did we do?”
“Don’t play games with me. Your lies to Andrew Vorhees almost cost my brother his freedom.”
“We didn’t tell him any lies. Just repeated yours.”
“I ought to sue you for slander.”
“But you won’t because you know you have no case. We never accused you of anything, or even once took your name in vain. Ask Vorhees, if you haven’t already.”
Her mouth worked and puckered as if she were about to spit. Instead she said, “Damn you, you might’ve helped send Kenny to prison.”
“But that didn’t happen. You were confident he’d get off, and that’s exactly what did happen. He didn’t even have to stand trial.”
“No thanks to you.”
I smiled at her. “How’s your relationship going with Vorhees, by the way? Wedding bells in the offing? After a decent period of mourning, of course.”
No reaction. Cory ice.
“More likely he’s getting ready to bounce you out of his life, if he hasn’t already. That’s the real reason you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Fuck you.”
“Such language. Did you know he’s thinking of hiring us?”
She hadn’t known. It was three blinks before she said, “Hire you? To do what?”
“He hasn’t said yet. Maybe to investigate you.”
“What? He wouldn’t do that.”
“Sure he would,” I said. “You and Frank Chaleen. Not very smart of you to try juggling two affairs at the same time with prominent men who don’t get along.”
The icebound venom in her eyes was so intense now it darkened the irises, made them seem like black holes. She said, spitting the words, “My personal life is none of your business.”
“It is if this agency is paid to conduct a legal investigation and what we find out is a matter of public record.”
“I won’t stand for being harassed.”
“No one is harassing you. Except possibly Andrew Vorhees.”
“I’m warning you,” she said. “Leave me and my brother alone. If you make any trouble for us, bother us in any way ever again, you’ll regret it.”
“Threats in front of witnesses, Ms. Beckett?”
She stood shredding me with those eyes, a stare-down that went on for maybe fifteen seconds. Then she did the one thing I was not expecting—the thing, I realized afterward, she’d come here intending to do.
Without warning, cat-quick, she stepped forward and belted me open-handed across the face.
It was a hell of a blow. She was no lightweight; there was considerable strength in that slender body. I staggered backward a step from the force of it, bells going off in my head, before I recovered my equilibrium. She stayed put long enough to watch with chilly satisfaction as I lifted my hand, grimacing, and then she spun on her heel and stalked out.
Chavez, still gawking, murmured something in Spanish. Even Tamara was impressed. She said from her office doorway, “Wow, that was some slap. You okay?”
My cheek stung like fury. Touching it with fingertips made me wince. “I’ll live.”
“You’re lucky the bitch didn’t use her nails.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Or her gun.”
20
JAKE RUNYON
It was full dark when Runyon pulled into the parking lot next to the St. Francis Yacht Club. This part of the city was ablaze with lights after nightfall—rectangles, blobs, streamers, shimmers from the Marina District homes, the Palace of Fine Arts, the rushing traffic on Marina Boulevard, and closer in here, stationary lights at the club building, along the West Harbor walkways and floats, on a few of the boats anchored in the basin. The combined light-glare made the water and the overcast sky look like sections of sunstruck black glass.
There weren’t many cars in the lot, and no one in sight as he followed the walkway to the gate nearest the slip where Andrew Vorhees’ yacht was berthed. He expected the Ocean Queen to be one of the lighted craft, but it was just a bulky shadow-shape in its slip, showing no illumination of any kind.
Runyon checked the radium dial on his Timex: 7:56. Vorhees should be here waiting for him by now. And should have left the security gate open or unlocked for access to the yacht. It was neither.
Delayed for some reason. Busy man, Vorhees, the demands on his time increased now by the load of personal problems weighing on him. Even relatively important appointments, as this one would seem to be, were subject to obstruction of one kind or another.
A need for movement set him pacing the walkway from one end to the other. Still no sign of Vorhees after half a dozen or more back-and-forth treks. He went back to the parking lot. Tamara had given him Vorhees’ cell number, but his call went straight to voice mail. He left a terse message, giving the time and his location; Vorhees already had his number, in the exchange with Tamara, but he added it anyway.
He swung the Ford around and reparked it so that it was facing Yacht Road. The agency file included the fact that Vorhees drove a two-year-old silver Aston Martin. Should be easy to spot when he finally showed up.
Except that he didn’t show up.
Eight-thirty, nine—no sign of him.
And no return call.
Runyon tapped the redial button on his cell. As before, the call went straight to Vorhees’ voice mail. No point in leaving a second message. He quit the car, walked back along the concrete strip to where the dark shape of the Ocean Queen loomed below.
The restlessness in him intensified. This lengthy a delay didn’t seem right. Vorhees was a public-sector, politically connected businessman, the kind of man who didn’t blow off meetings on a whim; if he was going to be this late for an appointment that he’d initiated, he should have made contact and given a reason by now.
Brisk footsteps sounded on the walkway behind Runyon. But it wasn’t Vorhees. A pudgy, sixtyish man in a yachting cap approached the gate, stopped, and gave him a curious but not unfriendly glance. “Hi there,” he said. “Don’t know you, do I?”
“Afraid not. I’m here to see Andrew Vorhees. Business matter.”
“Oh, sure. Poor Andy. You know his wife died in an accident a few days ago?”
“Yes.”
“Ter
rible thing. Terrible.” The pudgy yachtsman shook his head, then peered in the direction of Vorhees’ yacht. “Doesn’t look like he’s aboard.”
Runyon said, “Belowdecks, maybe.” He didn’t really believe it.
Neither did the yachtsman. “Could be,” he said dubiously, “but he’d have to be sitting in the dark. You’d see a light otherwise.”
“All right if I go aboard and check? Wait for him on deck if he’s not here yet?”
“Well … You’re here on business, you say?”
“That’s right.”
“Kind of late in the day, isn’t it?”
“Mr. Vorhees has been tied up all day. This is the only time he had free.” Runyon added his name and the agency’s name, omitting the fact that they were a firm of private investigators.
The pudgy man subjected him to a closer scrutiny, decided he was who he said he was and that there was no need to ask for his ID. “I guess it’ll be okay,” he said. “My name’s Greenwood. I own the Belle Epoch, two slips down from Andy’s.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Greenwood.”
Greenwood opened the gate with a key and they went together down the ramp to the board float that stretched between the slips. At the Ocean Queen, Runyon thanked the man and swung himself on board. Greenwood stood for a moment watching as Runyon went to the main cabin door and rapped on it, then moved on when there was no response from within.
When the yachtsman had passed out of sight, Runyon tried the door. Secure. The afterdeck benches were covered by tarps to weather-protect the cushions; he sat on the one on the port side where he could watch the walkway and gate above.
More time passed. Quiet here, peaceful, though it didn’t do much to cure his unease. Muted traffic noises from out on the boulevard, classical music playing softly on one of the other boats. A breeze had picked up and the night temperature had dropped several degrees, but he barely noticed. Weather conditions meant little to him unless they had a direct effect on a job he was doing. When it got hot enough or cold enough, his bad leg—the one busted in half a dozen places in the high-speed car crash that had killed his partner and effectively ended his Seattle police career—ached and stiffened and sometimes hampered his movements.
Being on a luxury yacht like this one had no meaning for him, either. Boating wasn’t his thing; his experience with watercraft of any kind was limited. Skiffs and rowboats the few times he’d tried fishing, a sport he’d eventually decided wasn’t for him. The only time he’d enjoyed being on a boat was when he and Colleen had gone sailing on Puget Sound with casual friends who owned a small sloop. When was that? Three … no, four years after they were married. That had been a pretty good day. Bright sun, calm water, just enough wind to billow the sails and keep the sloop moving. But the main reason he’d enjoyed it was because Colleen had.
Thinking about that long-ago day brought up an image of her standing next to the main mast. Head tilted skyward, gamin face in perfect profile, long fair hair feathered and swirled by the wind. Tall and slender in blue shorts and white halter, the sun radiant on her long legs and bare midriff. She’d always been beautiful to him, but that day, watching her framed against sun and sky and blue water, she’d taken his breath away. And made him wonder yet again why she’d picked him to fall in love with out of all the men she could’ve had, a dedicated cop who laid his life on the line every day, a divorced man paying child support to an unbalanced alcoholic ex-wife who’d taken his son away from him, a flawed man who didn’t share half her passions, preferred staying at home to traveling, had to be talked into social outings like this one. He’d asked her that question once, in all seriousness, and she’d just smiled and said that a good man was far more important to her than a perfect one and besides, you love who you love and it doesn’t really matter why.
Funny. Since her death he had taken out and savored many memories of their time together, like you would favorite photographs in a family album. But that day on the sloop, the image of her standing there in the wind and sun, hadn’t been one of them. Why not?
Then he remembered why not.
As he’d watched her, a rush of emotion had welled up and on impulse he’d gone to her and taken her in his arms and kissed her with no little passion—surprising himself because he was not a man given to spontaneous displays of affection in the presence of others. “Well, what prompted that?” she’d said, pleased, maintaining the embrace, and he’d said, “Thinking what a lucky guy I am to be married to you.” And she’d smiled and said, “I feel the same about you. Colleen and Jake, two of the luckiest people in the world.”
Lucky. Two of the luckiest people in the world.
Until all the luck suddenly ran out.…
The creak of footfalls on the float alerted him, shoved the memory back into storage. But the approaching steps didn’t belong to Vorhees. The tread came from the other direction—the pudgy yachtsman, Greenwood, returning. He paused alongside the Ocean Queen, peering upward at where Runyon was seated.
“Still no sign of Andy yet, eh?” he said.
“Not yet.”
“You try calling him?”
“Twice.”
“Held up on account of what happened to his wife, maybe. He’s a pretty important man and something terrible like that happens, well, it sets off a media bombshell. Those people can be relentless.”
Runyon agreed that they could.
“Or could be political or union business. That what you’re here to see him about?”
“No. Private matter.”
“Oh, I see,” Greenwood said, the way people do when they really don’t see at all. “You planning to wait much longer? Getting pretty cold out.”
“A while. It’s important that I see him.”
“Well, in that case, my wife thought you might like something to drink to keep you warm. Coffee, tea, a hot toddy.”
“Good of you both, thanks, but I’ll pass,” Runyon said. “Mind if I ask you a question, Mr. Greenwood?”
“Fire away.”
“Have you seen Mr. Vorhees anywhere this evening? Say since four or five o’clock?”
Greenwood didn’t have to think about it. “No,” he said, “and I would have if he’d been at the club or around the harbor. I was here all day. Haven’t seen him since last night.”
“What time was that?”
“Oh, about this time. Maybe a little later.”
“Was he alone or with someone?”
“Alone. Seemed to be pretty upset—his wife, I imagine. He didn’t even want to hear condolences.”
Runyon thanked him again, gave an appropriate response when Greenwood asked him to make sure the security gate was locked after him whenever he left, and another when the yachtsman said good night. Alone again, he sat with his mind a blank slate, the door to his memories locked tight.
The half hour between nine-thirty and ten came and went. By then he was aware of the cold because his bad leg had begun to give out little twinges. At a few minutes past ten he called it quits, more than just restlessness working in him.
A high-powered, determined type like Vorhees being late for an appointment was one thing. Failing to show for it without calling or returning calls was something else again.
* * *
Runyon drove from the yacht harbor to Nob Hill. There was no reason to suppose that Vorhees had decided to pay another visit to Cory Beckett, but he had to be somewhere and she was capable of appeasing his anger and luring him back into her bed. Sex was as good a reason as any for a man, even one as tough-minded as Vorhees, failing to keep a business appointment.
The facing windows of the Becketts’ apartment were all dark, but it was getting on toward eleven o’clock; Cory could just as well be in bed alone. Runyon didn’t see the Aston Martin in the immediate vicinity, but Vorhees was too intelligent to park a six-figure set of wheels on a public street, even in an upper-class neighborhood like this. The nearest open-all-night garage was in the next block west; Runyon pulled in there, de
scribed the silver sports job to the sleepy-eyed attendant.
“Oh, sure, I know that car. Some sweet ride. Belongs to a VIP—Andrew Vorhees.”
“That’s right. He been in tonight?”
“Not since I came on at six. Left the Aston here a couple of hours last night, but not tonight.”
* * *
The Vorhees house in St. Francis Wood was dark except for the night-light on the porch. The driveway was empty, the yellow DO NOT CROSS police strip still in place across the front of the garage. No cars on the street in the vicinity, either.
Runyon made two more phone calls on his way down Sloat Boulevard. Knowing they wouldn’t buy him anything, doing it anyway because he was always thorough. The first, to Vorhees’ cell, again went to voice mail. The second, to his home number, went unanswered.
Whereabouts unaccounted for and incommunicado all evening. Maybe there was a simple explanation, maybe there wasn’t, but whatever the reason Runyon didn’t like the feel of it. Not one bit.
21
FRANK CHALEEN
He sat alone in his office, guzzling single-malt scotch and worrying, worrying. About Cory, Vorhees, Chaleen Manufacturing. About himself and his future. The wall clock read 6:30. Everybody gone for the day but him, and the only reason he was still here was because he had nowhere else to go. He’d be just as alone, just as worried in his Cow Hollow flat.
Spread out on the desk in front of him were the P&L printouts Abby had left for him. He kept trying to tell himself they were full of discrepancies, misconceptions, but he knew they weren’t; Abby was too good a bookkeeper to make mistakes. The statements might as well have been printed in red ink. Drowning in it the past six months—the miserable goddamn economy. Orders and profits way down, creditors yammering for payment of overdue bills, accounts receivable not much more than two-thirds of the operating expenses and getting harder and harder to collect.
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