Wolf in the Shadows

by Marcia Muller

  “No, I haven’t, but after I talked with you this morning, I got concerned and did some checking.” Briefly I told her what I’d found out. “Kate, the phone-company credit card Hy used to make those calls from the airport—would it be his personal card or the foundation’s?”

  “He usually uses the foundation’s and reimburses us for personal charges later. I doubt he even has one for his home phone—you know Hy and plastic.”

  “Will you give me the four-digit code, please?”

  She told me, then repeated it. “You’re going to find out who he called?”

  “I’m going to try. I gather he uses this American Express card in the same way.” I read her the number I’d copied off the rental-car contract.

  “That’s right.”

  “Will you do me a favor and call American Express? I’d like to know if Hy used the card for anything after he rented that car.”

  “Sure. You sound as worried as I’ve been ever since I found out the plane’s still at Oakland.”

  “I am. I don’t like the fact that the car was damaged and dropped off by someone other than Hy. While I’ve got you on the line, will you also give me the name and number of his accountant?”

  “Barry Ashford, here in Vernon. I’ll check the phone book.” While she paged through it, she asked, “Why do you want to talk with Barry?”

  “This morning you mentioned that Hy left instructions with him to pay all bills as they come in, and he also paid his ranch hands two months in advance. I want to know if he gave any explanation.”

  “Good idea. Here’s the number.” She read it off to me. “Sharon, do you want me to go out to the ranch and talk with the guys? Maybe he mentioned his plans to one of them.”

  “If you would, I’d appreciate it. But I’ll bet he didn’t tell them a thing. There’re times when being the strong silent type isn’t a virtue—and this is one.”

  After I hung up, I checked my watch. Five to five. Quickly I looked up the number of the general aviation terminal at Oakland Airport and dialed. Sandy was about to go home, but willing to take a moment to check the number of the pay phone from which Hy had made his calls. Next I found Pacific Bell’s toll-free customer-service number in the directory; after listening to a recorded voice drone out a long list of options that seemed to encompass everything except talking with a human being, I finally reached a service representative.

  I identified myself as Kate Malloy of the Spaulding Foundation. “On the morning of Wednesday, the second, one of our employees made some credit-card calls from Oakland Airport. We haven’t received our bill yet, and I need to find out the time and charges as well as the numbers called.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but there’s no way I can access that information. The employee should have asked that the time and charges be reported at the conclusion of the calls.”

  “Who can access that information?”

  “You might talk with one of the supervisors in the billing office, but it’s closed now.”

  I looked at my watch again. Five straight up. “Thanks for your trouble.”

  There had to be a quicker way to find out what I wanted than waiting until the billing office opened in the morning. I thought for a moment, then dialed my friend Adah Joslyn’s extension at the SFPD homicide detail. Adah was out, the inspector who answered told me, as was her partner, Bart Wallace. No one knew when they’d be back. For a moment I considered calling my former lover, Greg Marcus, now a captain on Narcotics, and asking him to expedite an inquiry to Pacific Bell—but only for a moment. Greg operated pretty much by the book, and before he’d make the request, he’d want to know exactly why I needed the information, an explanation I wasn’t prepared to give him.

  As I sat drumming my fingers on the base of the phone, a memory nudged at me. I muttered, “What did I do with that card?” Grabbing my Rolodex, I thumbed to the P’s. Nothing where Pacific Bell would be filed. I could have sworn I’d kept it, though. Phone company, perhaps? No. Telephone? No again. Sexy-guy-I-met-at-a-party? Hardly.

  Informant—phone company. Aha!

  His name was Ron Chan, and I’d met him at a Christmas party at my neighbors’ house. We’d hit it off instantly and spent most of the evening together. Before I left, he gave me his card—he was a mid-level manager in Pacific Bell’s marketing division—and said he’d be glad to help me with information they normally didn’t give out, providing I didn’t misuse it. I hadn’t needed any favors since then, and I hadn’t pursued the invitation that his writing his home number on the back of the card implied.

  Now I pulled the card out and turned it over. The home number was a 648 prefix, the same as All Souls’s. It was too early for Chan to have returned from his downtown office, so I slipped the card into the pocket of my jeans; I’d try him later. Then I dialed Barry Ashford’s number in Vernon, got no answer, and put the paper I’d jotted it down on with the card.

  My purse was still downstairs in Rae’s office, where I’d left it before the partners’ meeting. I’d grab it and head out for Ravenswood Road in San Benito County.

  * * *

  Once I was past Daly City and out of the fog belt, the early evening turned hot and sunny. Traffic was slow all the way down the Peninsula and came to a near standstill in San Jose. Many years of dealing with northern California’s varied climate zones have conditioned me to keep a couple of changes of clothing in the car, and as I breathed exhaust fumes I thought longingly of the tank top and shorts in the trunk. But joining one of the long lines of exiting cars on the shoulder in order to get to a gas station and change seemed like more trouble than it was worth, and even if I could easily have reached my overnight bag, I’ve never thought much of disrobing in front of the curious eyes of dozens of fellow motorists. In the end I just kept pulling my sweater away from my sticky back and chest, and turned the blowers on the MG’s vents to max.

  Then San Jose—sprawling tracts and office parks where orange groves once stood—was behind me. The highway paralleled railroad tracks for a while, fruit stands heaped with early-summer produce lining either side. A newish section of freeway bypassed Morgan Hill and Gilroy—farm towns turned bedroom communities—and narrowed in the lower reaches of Santa Clara County. At the first turnoff for Hollister, I thought of a tragic case of mine that had its roots in that area, and felt a brief touch of regret.

  The stand of eucalyptus and boulders was farther south than I remembered. By the time I got to it, it was well past seven-thirty. I made a U-turn at the first opportunity and drove north in the slow lane. Ravenswood Road branched off to the east about a hundred yards beyond where the rocky wooded area began.

  I pulled onto the shoulder and stopped, not making the turn just yet. Across the pavement to my left the graffiti-splashed boulders and towering trees were cloaked in shadow. Only an occasional car sped by, its air currents making the little MG shudder. I looked to the east; mellow evening light spread over the flatland that the secondary road bisected on its way toward distant craggy hills. This was farm country—fields of tender green crops and uniformly tilled soil, occasionally interrupted by clusters of utilitarian buildings where combines and tractors stood idle.

  Hy, I thought, why did you come here? Where did Ravenswood Road take you?

  After a moment I turned the MG and started east. The pavement was poorly maintained, cracked and potholed. I kept my speed down, searching for anything that would provide an indication of where Hy had been headed. The road ran relatively straight for about five miles, then took a sharp southward bend and dead-ended in seven-tenths of a mile at a pasture fence. The field beyond the fence lay fallow, deserted except for some sort of rodent that scurried into its burrow as I stopped the car. I got out and looked around.

  Nothing here except for a distant two-story gray house and barn. A single barren tree that looked as if it had been split by lightning stood in the foreground. Nothing moved over there, nothing made a sound; not even a dog barked in warning of my intrusion. The place looked
as dead as the tree. I could see no access to the property; in order to get to it, I supposed, one would have to take another county road out of Hollister or Salinas.

  This, then, had not been Hy’s destination. Logic told me so, but I also knew it on a deeper, more elemental level. From the day Hy and I met, there had been an odd emotional connection between us. At first I’d resisted it, this tie to a man who wouldn’t permit me to know him, from whom I also felt compelled to keep secrets. But as last winter wore on—even though we remained separated by our mutual stubborn silence and the frozen Sierra Nevada—I’d felt the pull more and more strongly.

  Of course, the roses had been a constant reminder. Every Tuesday morning a single perfect rose arrived at my office, by Hy’s arrangement with a neighborhood florist. Yellow roses: pink was too sentimental, red too traditional for me, he claimed. On one of those Tuesdays, when the tug of longing was particularly strong and the snow was melting on the mountain passes, I’d gotten into the MG and driven back to Tufa Lake and we’d become lovers. After that, the roses were an exotic tangerine—a tangerine, Hy said, that was the exact color of our passion.

  Now, standing there beside the pasture fence in the gathering dusk and silence, I strained to feel a connection to Hy. Tried hard, but fell far short. Nothing.

  No, I decided, he had not come to this lonely place, not ever. If he had, I would have known. It was that simple.

  * * *

  I was about to turn north on 101 when the clearing in among the boulders and eucalyptus caught my attention. I waited for a semi to rumble past, then accelerated across the highway. The clearing was fairly large—about twenty feet in diameter— and tire-marked. Farther back, in a circle of stones near the base of a huge tree, were the remains of a campfire. I shut the MG’s engine off, got out, and went over there.

  An odd place for a campfire, I thought, and a dangerous one. Dry eucalyptus ignite easily and can turn a spark into a conflagration in a matter of minutes—witness the tragic fire that destroyed twenty-five lives and hundreds of homes in the East Bay hills close to two years ago. But people seldom learn from such examples and will camp or picnic anywhere—gas stations, parking lots, the middle of shopping malls. This place, even though they’d be sucking up exhaust fumes with their hot dogs, was more scenic than most.

  I went up to the improvised fire ring and peered around into the deepening darkness. The picnickers—many groups of them—had been careless; trash covered the ground amid the boulders. I glanced down, saw that the circle of stones had been broken and scattered; there were tire tracks through the cinders and ashes.

  Ashes. I thought of the damaged rental car, the fine ashlike dust coating its exterior.

  The tracks pointed toward the boulders where the trash was strewn. I went that way, taking my small flashlight from my bag and shining its beam over the ground and rocks and tree trunks. One of the boulders had a prominent white scar some two feet off the ground. I shone the light closer and saw blue paint scrapings on the pale stone. Squatting down, I shone the flash on the ground. Broken glass that looked as if it might have come from a headlight lay scattered there.

  So this was where Hy had come—and where the car had gotten damaged. But why? And how?

  I felt in my bag for one of the envelopes I keep there, then scooped up some of the glass fragments and placed them inside. Took another out and used my Swiss Army knife to scrape some of the blue paint into it. Then I stuck the envelopes in the bag’s’flap pocket and stood, began going through the trash on the ground item by item.

  Potato-chip bags and fast-food containers; paper plates and plastic forks; used condoms and beer cans; candy wrappers and Styrofoam cups; pop bottles and soiled disposable diapers. God, people could be pigs! At least Hy, devoted environmentalist that he was, had tossed his cups on the floor of the rental car. If they were Hy’s …

  The accumulated garbage disgusted me, but I determinedly waded through it. Newspapers and plastic bags; gum wrappers and matchbooks and cigarette butts; assorted scraps of paper.

  Including one bearing Hy’s bold handwriting: “RKI mobile unit—777-3209.”

  Car phone. Whose? RKI. What—a person or a company? Mobile unit—it sounded more like a company.

  I kept searching, but found nothing more that I could link to Hy. Finally I gave up and went back to the car.

  So what had happened here? I wondered. Hy must have had good reason to search this place out. What? A meeting with someone? Perhaps. For sure something to do with RKI, whatever or whoever that was. Somehow he’d managed to drive the rental car through the fire ring and ram the boulder. How hard? Enough to injure himself? Maybe. Enough to kill himself? Doubtful. And why? I couldn’t begin to guess.

  It was full dark now. Vehicles, including a Highway Patrol car, sped past on 101, but none of their occupants seemed to notice me. A good meeting place, then, one where a parked car would attract minimal attention. Meeting place for what, though?

  Finally I started the MG, flipped on its headlights, and drove north toward San Francisco. But at the first opportunity I pulled off into a gas station and placed a call to Ron Chan, my contact at Pacific Bell. He was home, pleased to hear from me, and willing to check out the numbers Hy had called, provided I’d have lunch with him next week. I promised I would, and Chan said that he knew a night supervisor at the phone company who owed him a favor. He’d get back to me later tonight or first thing in the morning. Next I tried Hy’s accountant, Barry Ashford, but again got no answer. Then I continued back to the city.

  It was nearly eleven when I arrived at my brown-shingled earthquake cottage near the Glen Park district. I hadn’t left the porch light on this morning because I didn’t expect to return after dark, and on the steps I stumbled over something. An indignant yowl arose. “Sorry, Ralphie,” I said and opened the door for my tabby cat. He streaked inside, still scolding.

  A sheet of paper had been slipped under the door—an estimate from a contractor for reshingling the cottage’s facade. Nearly two weeks ago it had been sprayed with some ugly graffiti—a consequence of my involvement in the case that the All Souls partners now labeled Jack Stuart’s personal crusade— and I was eager to have the work done. As I went down the hall to my informal sitting room I glanced over the figures. They looked reasonable; I’d give the contractor the go-ahead.

  The light was blinking on my answering machine. Ignoring Ralph’s loud pleas for food—augmented now by those of his calico sister, Alice—I played the tape. Ron Chan: Hy had called a La Jolla number first, then one here in the city. Both belonged to Renshaw and Kessell International. Chan also gave the addresses. No additional calls had been billed to the credit card to date.

  Renshaw and Kessell International. RKI. It sounded vaguely familiar.

  I picked up the receiver and called the San Francisco number. A recorded voice said, “You have reached the offices of Renshaw and Kessell International. Our hours are from nine to five, Monday through Friday. If this is an emergency call, please enter your security code and press one. Stay on the line. A representative will be with you.”

  Emergency? Security code? I listened to the taped message replay, then hung up. Who were these people? None of the references I had here in my home office would tell, unless I wanted to stay up all night reading the Yellow Pages. I’d have to wait until morning when I visited their offices on Green Street.

  But damn, the name sounded familiar! Why?

  Four

  Tuesday, June 8

  When I woke at ten after seven the next morning, my subconscious had dredged up what Renshaw and Kessell International was—and the knowledge made me damned uneasy. Confused, too. I couldn’t see why Hy would be mixed up with them, unless … But if that was true, it would mean I’d severely misjudged him. It would mean that I, who thought I instinctively understood him, had rejected what casual acquaintances had assumed all along.

  It was too early to confirm anything. For a while I lay under my quilts, hemmed in by the
cats. Then I threw off the quilts—and the cats—showered, dressed in jeans and a sweater, and took a brisk walk down Church Street to a corner store where I bought a copy of this morning’s Chronicle and a whole-wheat bagel.

  Mr. Abdur, the store’s owner, smiled and told me the fog had put roses on my cheeks. He was young—well, about my age—and one of the new breed of neighborhood grocer who had come to realize that pleasantries, rather than surliness, would bring the customer back. Since taking a vigorous walk to buy the paper was part of an ambitious new morning routine I was trying—without great success—to adopt, I was pleased to have located a shopkeeper who wouldn’t snarl at me and spoil my day.

  When I got home, it was still too early to call anyone to confirm what I’d remembered about Renshaw and Kessell, so I toasted the bagel and had it with the first of my customary three cups of coffee. I supposed I should eliminate caffeine if I planned to lead a virtuous life from now on, but I knew I wasn’t going to give it up—just as I suspected that my good intentions would soon go the way of most New Year’s resolutions. That was okay, though; my vices are so few—caffeine, white wine, chocolate, and an addiction to late-night grade-B movies—that relinquishing any would practically turn me into a saint.

  There was nothing much of interest in the paper; it even felt thin. The comics weren’t funny, the crossword and the Jumble were all too easy; in desperation I even read the business section, but the lead article on the unexpected withdrawal of an initial public offering of Phoenix Labs stock failed to stir me. Finally it was nine o’clock, time to make my call.

  I dialed the number of one of the city’s larger security firms and asked to speak to Bob Stern, my former boss. Bob, who has changed companies about once every nine months since I worked for him, saved me from a hideous life by firing me several years ago, and has spent most of the intervening time trying to hire me back for whatever outfit he’s hooked up with at the moment. I have a certain reputation in investigative circles here in the city, and while the consensus is that I’d be impossible to work with, a number of people would like to give it a whirl.