Projections for the next six months didn’t look much better. He’d had to lay off three workers this past year, might have to let another go pretty soon. Couldn’t afford to replace the extrusion machine that kept breaking down, and if it crapped out completely, they’d have trouble filling the orders that did come in. At the rate things were going, and without an infusion of cash, he might be able to keep Chaleen Manufacturing afloat another a year or so before his creditors and the fucking bank forced him into Chapter Eleven.
Maybe he should have listened to the old man’s advice. Don’t be too ambitious, don’t try to expand too soon, don’t overextend the profit margin. But Christ, the old man had always been dispensing advice like that, trying to mold him in his own tight-fisted, tight-assed image. Don’t throw your money around, Frank, don’t chase women, don’t gamble, don’t do this, don’t do that. And what had his conservative business practices and vanilla lifestyle gotten him? A heart attack and a hole in the ground at fifty-two without ever really having lived. That wasn’t Frank Chaleen’s way. Never had been, never would be.
Still, there was no denying the bind he was in now. Banks wouldn’t give him a new loan, not for any amount, not with all that red ink; he’d already been turned down half a dozen times. Nobody would float him a private loan, either, none of the rich bastards he’d met in his City Hall days—Vorhees had seen to that. Even Margaret had turned him down, and all he’d asked her for was fifty thousand. “You know I don’t believe in loaning money to anyone for any reason, Frank. And I won’t make an exception for you. You’re a wonderful lover but a poor businessman.” Bitch. She’d deserved what she got the other night—
No. He didn’t want to think any more about Margaret.
He shuffled the P&L statements together, banged the rose quartz paperweight down on the pile. Fifty thousand wouldn’t save the company, but it would’ve helped hold the wolves at bay a while longer—bought the new extrusion machine so the present production pace could be maintained, kept the bills more or less current until the economy finally started turning around. Fifty thousand. Cory’d promised she could get him that much out of Vorhees once she was married to the bugger, and there’d be a whole lot more when they figured a safe way to get rid of Vorhees and she inherited. She’d keep her promises, too; he wouldn’t have let her talk him into doing the things he’d done for her if he didn’t believe that.
Except that now all of a sudden everything was up in the air. That frigging Runyon and his boss. How the hell had they found out Cory was sleeping with him, too? That fit Vorhees had thrown at her last night, after those two put the bug in his ear … she said it could’ve been worse but it was bad enough. She’d played innocent, calmed him down, let him screw her again, but Vorhees wouldn’t be that easily satisfied. No telling what he might do, especially if he got a whiff that Margaret’s death wasn’t an accident. He could be a pit bull when he was crossed. Chaleen had learned that when he’d mistakenly decided to have a fling at city politics and worked on the bastard’s campaign for supervisor. Did those two private snoops suspect the truth about Margaret, put that bug in Vorhees’ ear, too? Runyon was the one who’d found her body.…
Cory said no, Vorhees didn’t doubt the official verdict of a drunken accident. Said Vorhees wasn’t going to walk out on her, either, she wouldn’t let that happen. Stay cool, Frank, be patient; nothing’s changed, it’s still going to go according to plan. Well, what else could he do? In too deep now not to trust she knew what she was doing, but it didn’t keep him from worrying.
The worst of it was her insisting they stop seeing each other until she was sure Vorhees was no longer suspicious and would own up to his marriage proposal. Even an hour or two together somewhere out of town was too risky. So he was looking at days, weeks, without her. Along with everything else weighing heavy on him, he wasn’t sure he could stand that.
Just remember I love you, Frank. As if he could forget it. Christ! He loved her just as much if not more. Never imagined he could feel about any woman the way he felt about Cory. But then he’d never imagined a woman remotely like her existed anywhere on the planet. Smart. Ruthless. A little wild, a little scary. Unique. Exciting. Best sex he’d ever had, ever hoped to have. Incredible sex.
Took his breath away the first time he saw her naked.…
Don’t think about that, either. All he was doing was giving himself a useless hard-on.
He drained the last of the scotch, got up to pour a refill at the wet bar. Back at his desk, he stared at the pile of P&L statements without touching them again. A sudden sharp surge of frustration made him slam his fist down on the blotter hard enough to rattle the objects on the desktop. He caught up his glass before it spilled, took another pull.
Somewhere out front, the sound of a car engine broke the silence. Growing louder, coming onto company property; Abby must have forgotten to lock the gates when she left. But it wouldn’t be her coming back, not this late. Who the hell—?
A squeal of tires as the driver braked near the office building. The slam of a car door. And a few seconds later, he heard the outer door open and then bang shut.
He knew who it was by then and he was on his feet when Andrew Vorhees came through into his private office. In spite of himself he felt a cut of fear. Stupid, stupid! He should have known Vorhees would come looking for him. Should have been prepared for it.
Vorhees stomped past the wet bar and the long leather couch to the near corner of the desk. “I thought I’d find you here, Chaleen.” Aggressive tone, hard-eyed stare—the bugger’s pit bull mode.
“What’s the idea busting in here like you owned the place? It’s after business hours—”
“I didn’t come on business. You know why I’m here.”
“No, I don’t. What do you want?” Chaleen was too rattled to keep a faint quaver out of his voice; hearing it made him angry, brought heat to his face. He had to will himself not to reach down for the glass of Glenlivet.
“What the fuck do you think? Cory Beckett.”
“What about Cory Beckett?”
“Don’t play dumb. And don’t bother lying to me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The hell you don’t. I know you’ve been sleeping with her.”
“Me? What gave you that idea?”
“She did. She admitted it to me.”
“She wouldn’t do that—”
Chaleen caught himself too late. Vorhees’ lips peeled in against his teeth; he stomped forward until only a few inches separated them. “I knew it was true,” he said. Spittle came out with the words, sprayed hot against Chaleen’s face. “You sneaking, backbiting son of a bitch.”
“It’s not true. Listen to me, Andy—”
“Shut up! You do the listening.” Vorhees poked him in the chest with a forefinger. “It wasn’t enough for you to cozy up with Margaret. No, you had to put the moves on Cory, too. Prove what a stud you are.” Another poke, harder than the first. “How difficult was it to get into her pants? Easy? Or did you have to work at it?”
It was easy! I didn’t put the moves on her, she put them on me! But he shook his head, didn’t say anything.
“How long has it been going on? How long?”
“Back off, damn you.”
“Answer me. How easy? How long?”
“No. Get out of here.”
“Not until you tell me the truth, admit what a scumbag you are.”
“I’m not going to admit anything to you.”
“She’s mine, Chaleen. You hear me?” Another jab, two fingers this time and hard enough to hurt. “She made a stupid mistake with you and she knows it. Now I want to hear you say you know it. Say ‘She’s yours, Andy, all yours.’ Say ‘I won’t go near her from now on.’”
Anger swelled in Chaleen; he swatted the thrusting hand away. “And if I don’t?”
“You will, by God, if you know what’s good for you. ‘She’s yours, Andy, all yours.’ Say it.”
> “No!”
“I’m not leaving until you do. Neither are you.”
“You want me to call the cops? Trespassing on private property, making a lot of crazy accusations, threatening me—”
“What do you need the cops for? Why don’t you go ahead and throw me out yourself?”
Chaleen could feel himself sweating. He had five years, ten pounds, and a couple of inches on Vorhees, but the bastard was in better shape, had done some boxing in college.
“I’m warning you—”
Vorhees laughed in his face. “Afraid to brawl with me? Sure you are. Just like that night at the Red Fox.”
“That was a public place, this is my private office—”
“You didn’t have the balls then, you don’t have the balls now. You’re a coward, Chaleen.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“A sly, sneaky coward. Always have been, always will be.”
“I’m not a coward!”
“Prove it. Come on, coward, show me I’m wrong, show me how much you hate my guts.”
The anger was a roaring in Chaleen’s head now, but it still wasn’t hot enough to burn away the fear. He stood there flat-footed, sweating.
“All right then,” Vorhees said, “I’ll show you how much I hate yours.”
When the jab came this time, it was with the heel of Vorhees’ hand—a blow with enough force to drive Chaleen backward. His feet tangled together; he fell sideways into his desk chair, skidding it, then upending it so that when he caromed off onto the floor the chair clattered over on top of him. One of the padded arms slammed into his chin, jammed the back of his head and neck into the carpet.
A sunburst of pain swirled fear and anger together, dizzied his thoughts, distorted his hearing so that Vorhees’ voice saying, “Get up, you’re not hurt,” seemed to come humming from a distance. It was his hands and fingers that reacted, without conscious will, as if they were independent entities: shoving the chair off, reaching upward to clutch and hang onto the edge of the desk and lift himself onto his feet.
“‘She’s yours, Andy, all yours.’” Vorhees’ voice was clearer now, the words arrogant, commanding. “‘I’ll never go near her again.’”
Chaleen leaned shakily on the desktop. He heard himself say in a cracked voice, “Get away, get out.”
“‘She’s yours, Andy, all yours.’”
“Get out, get out!”
Through a haze of pain and sweat he saw Vorhees come toward him, felt a handful of his shirt caught and bunched and his body jerked close. “Say it, you piece of shit!”
Again it was the fingers of his right hand that reacted without conscious thought. Scrabbled forward, touched the coldness of the heavy rose quartz paperweight, gathered it into his palm—
“Say it!”
—and blindly, then, his arm swung up and swept around, and he heard the crunch of stone meeting flesh and bone, felt warm wet droplets spatter his face, felt the grip on his shirtfront release. His fingers went nerveless; the paperweight bounced, rolled on the desktop. Shock waves rolled through him. Clearly, then, he saw Vorhees still standing, a look of disbelief on his face, the extended hand fluttering as if with sudden palsy, a crimson and bone-white hole in his forehead where the left eyebrow had been.
“No,” Chaleen said, “no, I didn’t mean—”
Vorhees’ eyes glazed over and he collapsed into a loose bundle on the carpet.
Numbly, Chaleen stared down at him. It seemed like a long time before he could make his legs carry him forward. In what felt like slow-motion movements, he lowered himself to one knee beside Vorhees, fumbled for a pulse that wasn’t there.
Dead.
Dead!
Nausea churned in his stomach, funneled bile into his throat. He lurched to his feet, stumbled around the couch into the bathroom, reached the toilet just as the scotch came boiling and burning out of him. He hung there, retching, until there was nothing left. At the sink then, not looking into the mirror before or after, he scrubbed the blood spatters off his face. His hands still shook badly when he was done; his breathing was erratic, he couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen into his lungs.
In his office again, not looking at what lay on the carpet, he took two long pulls from the bottle of Glenlivet. The whiskey burned like fire, stayed down, but did little to quiet his screaming nerves or ease the feeling of suffocation. Unsteadily, he went through the front office, opened the outer door, stepped outside to suck in deep breaths of the cold night air—
Christ! Vorhees had left the gates standing wide open.
The thought that somebody, one of the homeless that hung around the area, might’ve come wandering in ran a shudder through Chaleen. No cars on the street now, nobody in sight, but he ran across the night-lit yard anyway, closed the gate, snapped the padlock. His chest heaved like a bellows on the way back.
Inside again, he locked the outer door. Sat down at Abby’s desk to try to get his breathing under control, try to think.
What was he going to do?
Dead man in his office. Bastard deserved to die, but not like this, not here. The other night with Margaret had been bad enough, but all he’d had to do then was make sure she drank enough to pass out, then carry her out to the garage and fire up her Mercedes. No blood, no violence, no body to worry about. And he hadn’t had to watch her die.
But it wasn’t a detached murder this time, wasn’t murder at all. Vorhees had hit him, knocked him down, grabbed him, threatened him … he’d acted in self-defense. Call the police? Tell them how Vorhees had bulled in here, but not the reason, and then the rest of it just as it had happened. They’d believe him. Wouldn’t they?
Maybe they wouldn’t. No marks on him to show that he’d been attacked; he felt his head and neck to be sure. Common knowledge that he and Vorhees had had trouble before. There’d be an investigation and the cops would find out about him and Cory from those two private dicks. And what if they got it in their heads to question Margaret’s death despite the accident verdict, somehow managed to tie him to it? He wasn’t sure he was in any shape to stand up to police questioning tonight, or at any time. Calling the law was out, it would only make things worse.
Get rid of the body. That was what he had to do. Take it somewhere and hide it, bury it, or at least make it look like Vorhees was killed someplace else by somebody else. But what about Vorhees’ car? That damn Aston was parked right out front. He couldn’t leave it there, and he couldn’t drive two cars. Didn’t dare run the risk of ditching the Aston after ditching the body and then taking a taxi or public transportation to come back for his Caddy—
Cory!
She’d know what to do, she’d help him. Call her, explain what had happened, tell her—
Tell her he’d just killed her future husband, the man who was going to make her rich? Tell her all her carefully laid plans had been for nothing and both of them might be up shit creek now? She wouldn’t care that it had been self-defense, she’d blame him for letting it happen. Never forgive him, never let him near her again. He’d lose her for good.
No, he couldn’t ask her for help, couldn’t ever tell her what had happened here tonight. Didn’t make any difference whether Vorhees was found dead or just disappeared without a trace; either way, Chaleen’s only hope of keeping her was to plead ignorance and make her believe it.
The body, the car … he’d have to get rid of them by himself. No other choice. But how?
Think, think!
He went back into his office for another jolt of Glenlivet. This one steadied him, helped him focus. And pretty soon an idea began to form. He clung to it, shaped it until it was complete. Or almost complete. There was still the problem of the two cars, getting back here to claim his own after he got rid of the body and Vorhees’ Aston.…
One more drink, a small one this time, and he had the answer. George Petrie. Old George, factory foreman at Chaleen Manufacturing from the day the old man opened the plant. Loyal as they come. Do any favor
he was asked to, even after business hours, and without asking questions of his own. And he was guaranteed reachable by phone; a widower, old George never went out on weeknights by his own admission.
Chaleen made himself go look at the body. The way Vorhees had fallen, half over on his left side, most of the blood from the wound glistened on his face and shirt and coat. Not much on the carpet, just a few spots. More spots on the desktop, smeared on the paperweight. The clean-up wouldn’t be too bad. But he’d have to get that started first, before the blood dried. Then he’d get a tarp from the factory and roll the body into it before he carried it out to the Aston.
All right. Now that Chaleen had a plan in place he was steady-handed again, his control regained. When the salvage job was finished, there’d be nothing to tie Vorhees’ death to him. He’d still have Cory, and before long they’d figure a way, or she would, to get their hands on the kind of money she coveted and he needed.
It could, it would work out that way. It had to!
22
Tamara and Runyon were discussing Andrew Vorhees’ no-show when I came into the agency. Vorhees still seemed to be missing this morning; there’d been no word from him, and when Tamara called his office, she got the kind of tight-lipped runaround that indicates something amiss.
“Something’s happened to him,” she said ominously, “and you can bet Cory Beckett had a hand in it.”
Jumping to conclusions as she often did, I thought at the time, but it turned out that on this occasion she was at least half right. Something had happened to Andrew Vorhees, the kind of something that would be overheated media fodder for days to come.
We had advance word before the news became public. Tamara had texted her Hall of Justice pipeline, a woman named Felicia who worked in the SFPD’s computer section, asking for any information the Department might have on Vorhees. The answer she received prompted a furious series of back-and-forth texts to learn the details.
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