Whatever Doesn't Kill You (An Emma Howe and Billie August Mystery Book 2)

by Gillian Roberts

  “I was wondering when I’m supposed to check in with Michael Specht. Did he have a schedule with you? A regular time? You didn’t say.”

  Emma picked up and pulled her coat back on as she spoke. “Talk to him when you have something to say. Do you?”

  Billie hesitated, as if she were debating the answer to that simple question.

  This was all an act. She wasn’t retarded or mentally handicapped or whatever they called it these days, so it had to be that her artsy-fartsy background had ruined her. She had to make the grand entrance, had to make every statement a pronouncement, infuse every gesture with enormous meaning. She either had something to tell Specht or she didn’t. Was that so difficult to decide? If she couldn’t tell the difference between knowing something or not knowing anything, how the hell was she going to be an investigator?

  “I was out at this place in West Marin. It’s called ‘Whynot Farm.’”

  She paused. Emma suspected she was supposed to smile at the name, maybe even crack up, slap her knee, salute Billie for discovering such a witty pun of a farm name, but Emma didn’t like that kind of fey cuteness, and that wasn’t information, anyway. She thought bitterly of how close to home and a drink she’d already be if this girl expressed herself like a normal human being.

  Instead of pointing at her watch, which is what she wanted to do, she waved Billie into the chair on the other side of her desk, and pulled her coat off yet again. Billie took her seat with an expression so grateful, you’d think she’d expected Emma to make her stand at attention while she reported in.

  “The woman who runs it,” she began, “was Gavin Riddock’s friend, at least to the extent that she’s the one who sent him to the Marine Mammal Center. She was also Tracy Lester’s friend—in fact, Tracy was staying with her when she was killed. And she—Veronica—is convinced that Tracy’s husband—she was separated—had beaten her up at least once and was harassing her with phone calls. He’d hang up if Veronica answered, and she’s sure he killed her.”

  This was good stuff. Michael would be very pleased. “What else do you have?”

  Billie looked blank.

  “To back it up.”

  “See, that’s the thing. Nothing real enough.” Billie looked down at her hands, then up at Emma again. “That’s why I don’t know what to do.”

  “What about the violence?”

  Billie shook her head. “No records. No police reports.”

  Emma’s wavelet of optimism evaporated into the sand. Feelings again. Oh, but they must have been sympatico, Ms. August and the Whynot Farmer, emotions pouring forth. Emma was glad she hadn’t been anywhere near them.

  “Somebody phoned and stayed silent every night for two weeks,” Billie said. “Except two times when Tracy spoke with the caller. She said it wasn’t Robby, only a wrong number, but it didn’t sound like a wrong number. She was heard telling the caller to leave her alone. She was killed before they tried a trace.”

  Stupid to have thought Ms. August would come up with anything you could put your hands on. This rancher had a crank caller. A silent caller, so who even knew if the harassment—if that’s what it was—was for Tracy? Billie had precisely nothing except the words of an upset woman and a few wrong numbers.

  “A pissed off husband is always a good suspect,” Emma said, “but the police must have had reasons for not agreeing.”

  “This Veronica has a major hate on for Robby Lester and I’m not totally sure why.”

  “It’s hard to warm up to a person you’re sure murdered your friend.”

  Dim girl looked as if she wasn’t sure if Emma was making a joke, mild though it was. As if Emma never joked!

  “I meant…” Billie said, then she looked at Emma appraisingly, and grinned. “You’re right. I’ve never cared for the people who murdered my friends.”

  “Can you talk to Mr. Lester?”

  “Why would he want to help the defense of his wife’s accused murderer?”

  “Offhand, I can’t think of a single reason, but I’m sure I could, if pressed. As could you. But if you go there as yourself—in case he really is dangerous—we should go together.” She looked away as she spoke, focused on the Victorian hat rack that held two Giants’ baseball caps, a scarf, and three coffee mugs.

  “Really? Oh, that’d be—tha—” Sweet Jesus, there it was, just as feared. A complete overreaction. But then, Emma could almost hear Billie pull on the brakes, come to a shuddering, screechy halt. “Good idea,” Billie finally said in a clipped, neutral voice.

  Emma stood up. “And now,” she said, leaving unsaid the rest of her directive: get out, leave me alone, get on with your work.

  Billie also stood, but she wasn’t ready to let go. Once again, she looked like the slow learner at the back of the class. “Then—what do I—should I even mention—I’m talking about Michael Specht. About telling him whatever, about this man.” She moved behind Emma, and slowly the two of them left the room, until they were barely past the reception area, where Zack looked up for a moment, then returned to whatever he was studying on the computer screen.

  Zack had said it wouldn’t kill Emma to acknowledge human emotions once a fiscal quarter. But why? Every mess Emma was called upon to investigate had an overflow of human emotions as its root cause. It was idiotic to think there should be still more, and more show about them.

  “I mean, is this worth telling him?” Billie stuttered out. “Michael Specht, I mean.”

  How many times in one sentence did the girl have to tell Emma that she meant what she meant? “Of course it is. Tell him whatever you found out. Let him take it from there.”

  “Now? When?”

  “Well…what did you have in mind to do next?” Emma would take book that the answer was “not a damn thing” said politely, in the style taught the privileged few at private school.

  “I thought I should talk to Gavin Riddock,” Billie said promptly. “We don’t really have much in the way of contacts, people who know him. How was the list drawn up? Who provided names? Why wasn’t Veronica on it?”

  “Gavin,” Emma said. “In his fashion and for what it’s worth. He’s understandably stunned, disoriented, and less than normally articulate, which wasn’t ever much. Less aware than he’d normally be. His mother helped a little, and the schools he attended.”

  “It’s obviously not very comprehensive. I thought maybe Gavin would be calmer now, and be able to think of more names. People who know him, could speak up for him, who Mr. Specht doesn’t know about.”

  She looked rabbity when she got this way, as if her face were pushing forward at its center, her nose all but twitching. “Help me!” Little Timid’s expression said. How could she toughen up Rabbit Girl?

  Zachary coughed. Little Timid glanced over at him. Then she squared her shoulders and raised her eyebrows and stood up straighter.

  Something in the air shifted. Emma could almost feel it pass by her face, but she didn’t know what it was. “Interview Gavin?” she murmured, repeating Billie’s idea. “I don’t know…you could be right.”

  Another look darted between Zachary and Billie. What the hell was going on?

  Then: “Right?” Billie said. “I could be right?” Her face took on a positively beatific expression of joy. “You guess I could be right? Oh, Emma, thanks!” Her voice sounded like bright colored foil, light sparking off it. “It’s great to be given positive reinforcement! Makes an enormous difference to a raw green recruit like me. All the difference in the world! I feel so much better now!”

  “What did I—?”

  Behind Billie, Zack smiled broadly, even when Emma glared at him.

  Billie’s own smile grew even wider, more brilliant. “What did you do? You did everything and just when I so desperately needed it, too!” She sounded like one of those motivational leaders Emma had seen on late night TV. “It probably doesn’t register because it comes so naturally to you. All the same, I should have told you sooner how much it means to me. But trust me—I
’ll justify your faith in me. I will! I promise!” And she turned and all but skipped back to her cubicle.

  Zack had his head at a ridiculous angle, so that she couldn’t see his face. She could have sworn she heard something akin to a snort.

  “Don’t you dare say a word,” she warned him. “Not a single, solitary word.”

  He looked at her, his lips held tightly together but curling up at the corners, his eyes dancing, “Not a single,” he announced, “a whole lot. And they are: First, behold, the worm turneth. Second, and high time, too. And third, bet you can’t drive this one away, Emma. She’s tougher than you want to see.”

  Emma winked at him and left the office. Billie was more interesting than she’d suspected.

  All the same, Emma was glad Billie had retreated to her cubicle before she’d seen Emma smile.

  Eleven

  Heather Wilson lifted the phone. The detective hadn’t returned her call. Maybe she hadn’t gotten the message. The guy on the phone hadn’t sounded interested, so who knew what he’d done with it? And Heather wanted—needed—the detective to tell her how her case was going.

  Her case. She liked the sound of that.

  Liked having somebody work for her instead of always being the person who worked for somebody else. Liked being able to pick up the phone and demand a little attention, a little respect. The customer is always right. Right?

  But just her luck, in came the boss, and she quietly replaced the receiver in its cradle. Mr. Vincent got royally pissed when you made personal calls on what he always called his time. His time. As if she lived in some parallel universe and the clock on the wall didn’t apply to her. Actually, Mr. Vincent made her feel that way about herself, too. As soon as she got this all straightened out about her mother, she was going to find something else. Her ex-boyfriend had gotten her this job, and it had seemed like it would be okay, but there had to be something better to do than filing invoices and her nails day after day. She would have quit sooner, but she needed to save enough money to hire a PI, plus she didn’t want to give her mother—her stepmother—the satisfaction of saying “I told you so.” She was always on her case about this job. It wasn’t “good enough,” it didn’t “use her to full capacity.” She was right, but she made Heather so mad with that whole business of what was proper and what a person should do. You would think she was the Queen of England, she had so many rules about how people had to act. Rules that nobody else Heather knew had to follow.

  But the fact was, it had been a mistake since day one, leaving school and taking this job. The only saving grace was that now it could pay for the private investigator and she could find out who she really was. She was pretty much trapped here until she’d paid Emma Howe whatever it took, as long as it took.

  “Hi, girls,” Mr. Vincent said.

  She didn’t much like that, either, the way Marlena and she were “girls” while he was Mr. Vincent, and the accountant was Mr. Poulus, and even the guy who drew the ads was a mister. The truck drivers had first names, but they weren’t “the boys” or anything like that.

  “’Lo,” Heather said without taking her eyes off the estimate form on the computer screen.

  “Hey, there, Mr. V!” Marlena said, as if his arrival were the biggest, best thing she could imagine.

  She was always that way. A suck-up of the first degree, and a stupid suck-up because where had it gotten her? So she was the one who talked to people coming in to this dump and Heather didn’t. Big major deal. Who wanted to, anyway? Half of them just wanted packing boxes. People moving called in most of the time, or Mr. Vincent made the deal himself without either of them, and she answered the phone, just like Marlena did. Without sucking up to Mr. V.

  Marlena hinted that she had something going with Mr. V, but Heather was almost 100 percent sure that was just talk. Marlena thought she was gorgeous, when she was just a lot of bright colors, most of them fake.

  “Long time no see!” Marlena said to their boss. Or to his back.

  He’d gone into his own office, ignoring her, but that didn’t stop her from talking to him, acting like they were having a conversation. Bet she thought that was original, that “long time no see.” Or what she was always saying, it was “retro.” She’d been saying crap like that a whole lot lately. Wearing clothing from the thrift store, looking like those women in late-night movies. The most stupid ones. Hopelessly out of style. But Marlena called it “retro chic,” those weird dresses with the full skirts, or worse, the ones she called “sheaths” that were tight all over. She looked ridiculous in them and the hair that hung over one eye.

  Mr. V reemerged from his office. Checking up on them now.

  “You’ll never guess who was here while you were away on business.” Marlena’s voice was trilly. Heather tried to think of who she could mean, but Mr. V frowned. He looked up from the pile of mail he held. Heather knew it was mostly junk because she was in charge of putting it in his in-box. Like a doggie with the morning paper, she figured. If she’d ever had a doggie. If Kay would have ever allowed pets who made messes and shed into their house.

  Mr. V’s mail was as boring as what they got at home. It was Heather’s opinion that a boss’s mail should be more impressive, with real correspondence, letters written on heavy embossed paper.

  “If I’d never guess it, don’t make me try.” He sounded bored. He tossed a green flyer into the wastepaper basket next to Marlena’s desk. “Who was here?”

  He looked at Marlena differently than he looked at Heather, so maybe it was true that they had a thing going, the way Marlena said. He was twice her age and married and a father, but that didn’t seem to stop people even if Heather’s mother—if Kay, the Church Lady, the Queen of England—acted as if things like that were unthinkable.

  “The law! That’s who!” Marlena put her hand up to her mouth to cover her giggle.

  Mr. V did not look amused. “Who? Why? What happened? We were robbed? There was a break-in? Nobody tells me a damn—”

  Marlena was too busy being thrilled with herself to notice how annoyed, even angry, he looked.

  “No,” Heather began, but he wasn’t paying attention. “It wasn’t—”

  “Jesus, Marlena, get a damn grip on yourself. What the hell happened and why wasn’t I informed?” He looked ready to strangle her, and personally Heather thought she deserved it. So full of herself she didn’t notice a single other human being.

  “So easy to get your goat, Mr. V!” Marlena said. “Hold onto your hat, I’m joking. It wasn’t about us. It was an investigator.”

  “A woman,” Heather said softly. That seemed important, something that would make him less agitated, but he looked at her with surprise. As if he forgot that she worked there, too.

  “Why? Who?” he said. “Investigating what?”

  Marlena shrugged. “Gavin Riddock.”

  His expression was blank.

  “The guy who killed Tracy Lester. You remember her. The girl who worked at the travel agency?”

  He frowned, then nodded. “Forgot her name, but sure—that girl.”

  “She was killed last week, before you left town. You must know about it. Killed over in Blackie’s Pasture. It was all over the TV and the papers.”

  “Okay sure, I remember, but I’m still confused. What did this—this woman—this investigator— What did she want with us?”

  “Information,” Marlena said.

  Mr. V spoke low and slowly. “I figured that much out myself, Marlena. What kind of information? I assume she didn’t want information about moving her piano, her pets or the like—so what?”

  “Oh, just what I knew about Gavin. Like what kind of guy he was. He’d given them my name. I was surprised, because I barely knew him.”

  “What did you say to this detective?” Mr. V’s voice had eased up a little and so did the tension Heather felt. The office was even less fun when somebody or something pissed him off, and it wasn’t hard to piss him off in the first place. That was another reason
Heather was going to move on as soon as she could.

  Marlena shrugged and gestured. One look at those red nails and you knew how super-slow she was on the keyboard to avoid getting them caught between the keys. “Not much. Like I said, I didn’t know enough.”

  “This woman investigator—she’s from the Sausalito police?” he asked.

  Marlena shook her head. “She’s not police at all. A PI. I have her card somewhere.”

  Heather could have told them her name and her office address and even her phone number, but she didn’t see the point of letting them know she’d paid attention. She didn’t see the point of telling anybody here about her own search, either. Too easy to let Marlena broadcast her personal life to the world. No way.

  Mr. V seemed deep in thought. “Let me get this straight, then. A PI came around to ask you questions about the murderer, not about, um, Tracy, the girl who was killed. Am I right so far?”

  “Correct you are, Mr. V!” Marlena had this movie star she liked, somebody who’d been big when Heather’s grandparents—whoever they were, really—must have been young. Rosalind Russell, the woman was, and Marlena considered herself a blond version. Which was rich, because Marlena was no more that white-blond color of her hair than Heather was. Almost nobody was except an albino, so who did she think she was fooling? But Marlena watched Rosalind Russell movies and she tried to sound like her too. Called herself a “girl Friday” and started calling Mr. Vincent “Mr. V.” Just like in the movies she watched. Heather had watched a few of them, too. They came on late at night, and then she could see who Marlena was imitating. Only Rosalind Russell said funny things, and Marlena just got the sound of the voice, the way she spoke, without anything smart coming out of her mouth.

  “That means,” Mr. V said slowly, “that she’s working for the defense. For Gavin Riddock.”

  Marlena shrugged. Heather kept doing nothing, being invisible. “So what did you tell her?”

  “Like I said, there was nothing to tell. I barely knew him, and I knew Tracy even less.”