Where The Bodies Are Buried

by Janet Dawson

  Praise for Janet Dawson’s Jeri Howard mysteries

  Where the Bodies Are Buried

  “One reason I like Janet Dawson’s gal gumshoe, Jeri Howard, so much is that she likes her life.... Jeri is not your standard malcontent, bourbon-guzzling private eye.... As with the other six novels in the Jeri Howard series, Where the Bodies Are Buried salts its suspense with tart social commentary.”

  —The Washington Post

  Kindred Crimes

  “A welcome addition to this tough genre.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  Till the Old Men Die

  “Dawson keeps suspense and interest at high pitch.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Take a Number

  “Entertaining, enlightening, and most satisfying.”

  —Mostly Murder

  Don’t Turn Your Back on the Ocean

  “Mother/daughter feuds, family solidarity, and ecological mystery: Dawson blends these familiar ingredients with a chef’s élan.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Nobody’s Child

  “A rich plum pudding of a story sprinkled throughout with memorable characters.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  By Janet Dawson

  KINDRED CRIMES

  TILL THE OLD MEN DIE

  TAKE A NUMBER

  DON’T TURN YOUR BACK ON THE OCEAN

  NOBODY’S CHILD

  A CREDIBLE THREAT

  WITNESS TO EVIL

  WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED

  WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED

  A Jeri Howard Mystery

  Janet Dawson

  Copyright © 1998 by Janet Dawson

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Cover design by Sue Trowbridge, interbridge.com

  ISBN 0-449-00322-1

  ISBN 978-0-9834031-7-3(ePub)

  First Hardcover Edition: November 1998

  First Mass Market Edition: July 1999

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Dedication

  THIS ONE’S FOR SAM. IT’S ALSO FOR EVERYONE WHO’S ever been laid off, downsized, restructured, reengineered, or shoehorned into cubicles.

  Acknowledgments

  I WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE FOR sharing their time and expertise: Susan M. Lowe, attorney extraordinaire and good friend, for her command of food law, her sharp eyes, and her counsel; and Chuck Stoffers, for his knowledge of bacteria and food safety. Muchas gracias to my Carlsbad, New Mexico, connections, Diane Metcalf Dominguez and Tony Dominguez.

  One

  THE PHONE RANG AT ONE IN THE MORNING. AT LEAST that’s what the faintly glowing red digits on my clock radio said.

  As the phone jangled, I struggled from the tangled embrace of sheets, dislodging my cat Abigail, who was curled up at the hollow of my back. As I groped for the switch on the bedside lamp, my other cat, Black Bart, jumped to the floor, as though to escape the hullabaloo. I picked up the telephone receiver, mercifully cutting the racket in midpeal.

  Before I had time to croak out a greeting, I heard my ex-husband’s voice. “You got a client named Rob Lawter?”

  “And good morning to you, too.” I squinted at the clock readout and said what generally comes to mind in a situation such as this. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Never mind what time it is,” Sid growled. “Rob Lawter, male Caucasian, twenty-nine, brown hair, brown eyes. He lived in a fifth-floor apartment in a building on Alice Street.”

  I picked up on the past tense right away. You notice words like that, particularly when they’re used by a homicide detective.

  “Yeah, he’s a client,” I said slowly. “What’s going on, Sid?”

  “Was a client. He’s dead. He took a header out his living room window a couple of hours ago. Your business card was in his wallet.”

  Two

  I’D ALREADY CASHED THE RETAINER CHECK ROB LAWTER had given me. But I hadn’t yet started my investigation. I hadn’t started because I wasn’t quite sure just what he wanted me to do.

  He’d asked me to hold off, during our initial meeting in my office. Wait, he’d said. I’ll give you the details soon. Now I had a dead client and minimal information to go on.

  On my way to work that warm Friday morning the second week in September, I drove by the building where Rob had lived—and died. It was on Alice Street near Seventeenth, an older L-shaped structure, with its long end pointing toward the street. Built of rosy brown brick, it had an air of faded elegance, unlike the more modern stucco buildings that lined both sides of the street.

  I found a parking spot farther down Alice and walked back for a closer look at the building. As I went up the sidewalk, aware of the apartment windows and double-door entrance on my left, my attention was focused on the yellow crime scene tape still in place, directly in front of me. It stretched across the entrance to a square concrete patio, where a round table and several plastic chairs had been shoved out of the way, making it easy for me to see the irregular dark stains on the pale gray cement.

  I stared at the bloodstains for a moment, then raised my eyes from the patio to the building, following a vertical line of windows upward to the top floor, the fifth. The windows, tall and wide, had wooden sills and no screens. That was common in older buildings around here. The one on the fifth floor, Rob’s, was still open.

  Did he jump? Fall? Or was he pushed?

  As I stood next to the crime scene tape, trying to sort it all out, one of the double doors opened. A woman in a business suit came out, wearing running shoes. She carried a briefcase in one hand and a couple of envelopes in the other. She didn’t say anything, but she eyed me suspiciously, as though I were some kind of sick voyeur who got off looking at places where people died. Then she hurried toward the street, moving at quite a clip. I followed her out to the street and saw her drop the envelopes into a blue mail collection box. She set off again toward Seventeenth Street. I headed for my car.

  Fifteen minutes later, in my office on Franklin Street in downtown Oakland, I opened the window at the back of the long narrow room and started a pot of co
ffee. While the water dripped through the grounds I unlocked the filing cabinet and pulled the almost empty folder marked “Lawter, Rob” from the drawer that held active cases. As soon as the coffee was ready, I poured myself a cup and sat at my desk, pondering the man’s death and the case I hadn’t even started.

  I didn’t know much about either. The incident had occurred after this morning’s edition of the Oakland Tribune had gone to press, so all I had was the sketchy information Sid had given me during his brief early morning phone call. Rob had fallen out the window of his apartment and landed on the patio below. Sid hadn’t elaborated, but I figured Rob died instantly. I’d have to wait for the autopsy results to know for certain.

  I looked up from the file, at the empty chair opposite my desk, the one clients sat in. Then I mentally placed Rob Lawter in the chair he’d occupied two days earlier and animated him beyond the terse “brown hair, brown eyes” description Sid had recited on the phone.

  Rob’s eyes had indeed been brown, but they sparkled with wit and intelligence. The hair was an ashy brown, like a fallen leaf, worn long and curling around the ears. He was lean, about six feet tall, comfortable in blue slacks and a pale yellow shirt. He loosened his tie as he sat back in the chair and crossed one leg over the other.

  That was early Wednesday afternoon, during Rob’s lunch hour. My good friend Cassie Taylor had brought him to my office a few minutes earlier, on her way to a hearing at the Alameda County Courthouse. Cassie and I used to be legal secretaries together before Cassie went to law school and I got into the investigating business. Now she’s a partner in the firm of Alwin, Taylor and Chao, just down the hall from my third-floor office.

  “Be nice to Rob,” Cassie said after she’d made the introductions. “He’s a paralegal, like you used to be, before you became a private investigator. Rob and I have known each other for years. We met when I was a baby lawyer, over at that big firm in San Francisco.”

  I smiled at Cassie’s words. When she and I had worked together at another law firm in Oakland, we called the first-year associates “baby lawyers,” meaning we knew more about the legal biz than they did.

  “Rob’s thinking of hiring you,” Cassie continued. “I’ll let him tell you about it.”

  After Cassie had breezed out the door, I toyed with the lined pad and pencil in the center of my desk and examined Rob Lawter. “So why does a paralegal need a private investigator?”

  “I’m not a hundred percent convinced that I do,” Rob said, with a warm smile. “Need an investigator, I mean. But Cassie was concerned. She said I should talk with you.”

  He leaned forward and reached into the back pocket of his slacks, pulling out a brown letter-sized envelope that had been folded in half. “I found this on my desk this morning when I got to work.” He handed it to me. On the front, someone had typed, “ROB LAWTER, PERSONAL. TO BE OPENED BY ADDRESSEE ONLY.” I opened the flap and removed a single sheet of white paper.

  The message was hand printed in black marker and big capital letters. “BACK OFF IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU.”

  “That’s straightforward and to the point,” I said. “What are you supposed to back away from?”

  “Have you heard of Bates Inc.?” Rob asked.

  “Sure. I have a few cans of Bates Best beans in my cupboard at home. It’s a local company, family owned.”

  “Not family owned, not since the early days,” Rob said. “It was publicly held, even before the company went through a leveraged buyout a year ago. Now it’s owned by a couple of corporate money men. Anyway, it’s a food processing company, canned goods, cereal, dairy products—stuff like that. Not only the Bates Best label, but they do a lot of private label work for grocery chains, things that show up at your neighborhood store as house brands. Bates also sells products to school districts and military commissaries. You’re right about the company being local. Headquarters is right here in Oakland, down by the waterfront.” He pointed in the general direction of the estuary that separates Oakland from Alameda. “They’ve got several plants here in the East Bay. I’ve worked in the legal department at Bates since I left that law firm Cassie told you about, four years ago.”

  “Why did you come to see Cassie?” I asked. “Was it this note?”

  Rob smiled. “The note is only the latest part of it. Something’s going on at the company that shouldn’t be happening. And I’m about to blow the whistle. I figure I need to get some legal advice before I stick my neck out, in case my employer retaliates by firing me.” He gestured at the note. “I didn’t anticipate this kind of retaliation. It may be that someone’s aware of my plan to expose the...” He paused, then went on. “The scam, for want of a better word.”

  “What sort of scam?” I asked. “I need more details. Just what is it you’re going to expose?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t tell Cassie, either. I’d rather play this hand close to my chest, at least for now. The fewer people who know, the better. I don’t have all my facts lined up yet, but I will soon, in the next couple of days. Maybe my coming to see Cassie, and you, is premature. But I should have someone watching my back while I blow the whistle.”

  “Then what do you want me to do?” I asked, feeling intrigued and frustrated. “It’s difficult for me to watch your back if you don’t tell me why someone is threatening you.”

  “I know. But I think I would like to have you in place.” He glanced at the clock on my wall. “I hate to cut this short, but my lunch hour’s almost up. I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll give you a retainer now, and we’ll talk details in a day or so.”

  Turns out a day or so was all the time Rob Lawter had left.

  Three

  MEMORIES OF WEDNESDAY DISAPPEARED, AND I CAME back to Friday morning. My coffee was cold. I set the mug aside and opened Rob Lawter’s file, staring down at the photocopy of his retainer check that I’d deposited Wednesday afternoon. The only other contents were a copy of the anonymous note and a single page from my yellow lined notepad. On this were written Rob’s address and phone number, and the words “paralegal” and “Bates Inc.” The answers, or some of them, must be at the company where Rob had worked.

  I got up to get another cup of coffee. My office door opened and Cassie walked in, so I poured her some coffee, too. She wore her usual cheery smile and a copper-colored linen dress that set off her warm brown skin. Her feet were shod in running shoes and thick white socks. She used to wear high heels all the time, but an ankle injury a few months back had changed that.

  I handed her the coffee mug and she took a sip. “Mmmm... thanks. You want to walk down to the Farmers’ Market at noon? I need a few things. We can have lunch at Ratto’s.”

  She didn’t know about Rob. She couldn’t have known, since news of his death wasn’t in this morning’s newspaper. And I knew she wasn’t in the habit of listening to the radio in the morning.

  “Sit down, Cassie.” I sounded as somber as I felt.

  She frowned. “Why?”

  “I have something to tell you. Sit down, okay?” Playing along with me, she perched on the chair. “Rob Lawter’s dead.”

  I watched Cassie’s lips move from a smile to a stunned O. “What? When? How did it happen?”

  “Early this morning.” I told her what little I knew of Rob’s death. “What can you tell me about him?”

  “Not much.” Cassie shook her head and sipped the coffee. “I wouldn’t even call him a friend. An acquaintance, a person I knew from work. And when I didn’t work there anymore... well, you know how people drift away. I hadn’t seen him in years.”

  “You pick up a few things, even if you only know a person at work.”

  “True,” Cassie said thoughtfully. “Let’s see... We met about six years ago, at Berkshire and Gentry, that big law firm I worked at right after I got out of law school and passed the bar. I only stayed there a year. I knew right away a huge firm like that wasn’t for me. I wanted my own shop, though it took me a few years to get it. I did run i
nto Rob now and then, because he lived here in Oakland. Rode his bike everywhere, and commuted to the city on BART or on the ferry.”

  “Did he ever say anything about family?”

  “Grew up in the Bay Area, I think, and his parents died some time ago. He had a sister. But I don’t know her name.”

  “Would someone at that law firm know, or have access to the information? I know it’s been four years since he worked there, but maybe his next of kin’s name would still be on file.”

  Cassie set the mug on my desk and stood. “I still know plenty of people who work at Berkshire and Gentry. Let me call in a few markers.”

  “Lunch and the Farmers’ Market,” I said. “Noon?”

  Cassie nodded and left me to my thoughts and the Lawter file. I reached for the phone and punched in the number, that of the Oakland Police Department’s Homicide Section, asking for Sergeant Vernon. Sid picked up his extension, with a terse “Sergeant Vernon.”

  “It’s Jeri. What have you got on Rob Lawter’s death?”

  “Nothing I can tell you,” he growled, sounding much as he had earlier that morning.

  “Hey, you’re the one who called me at one A.M. I’m assuming you wanted me to know. You could have just let me find out when it hits the Trib. Have you notified his sister?” I sent Sid a vibe through the telephone wires, willing him to tell me the sister’s name.

  He didn’t cooperate. “We’re trying to locate the next of kin right now. Until that’s done, I’m not going to tell you anything.”

  “Don’t you want to know why he hired me?” I asked, glancing at the photocopy of the note Rob had received, the one warning him to back off.

  “You mean you’ll tell me?”

  “It might have some bearing on his death. But I won’t know until you tell me the autopsy results.”