Dreams of the Dead

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “Two separate alarm systems and companies,” Paul whispered, following him inside the door, but stopping short of the kitchen. “Told you he’s got something to hide.”

  “Paul, listen,” Nina said, “you’re right about that, but you’re wrong about what he’s hiding.” She fought a sudden need to burst out laughing. “I—”

  “The alarm companies know which room was triggered,” Eric said, coming into the living room, eyes hard on Paul. “Systems are sophisticated these days. Strange you got as far as you did.”

  “No system is perfect. Malfunction all the time,” Paul said.

  “You want to explain to me why the hell you two broke into my home?”

  “You have some interesting art,” Nina said.

  Now his eyes turned on her. She could see he wondered exactly how much she had seen of his collections.

  “Is that a real Damien Hirst?” she asked.

  “My parents collected modern art, and I’ve followed in their footsteps.”

  “Your home is stunning.” She knew that was an idiotic remark the moment she made it.

  “I’d be complimented if I had invited you into it,” Brinkman said, cutting Nina short.

  Paul did what he always seemed to do when Brinkman was around, blew up like a puffer fish. “You’re right. We came here to tell you we’ve got you figured out.”

  A half smile floated at the edge of Eric’s angry lips. “How do you mean?”

  “You’re a man with secrets.”

  “Like all men.”

  “We know exactly what you’ve been up to.”

  A certain hesitation showed a decided unhappiness with how this scene was progressing. “What, exactly?” Eric asked, but Nina could see his nervousness.

  “Nelson Hendricks.”

  At this point, something about Paul’s tone must have signaled Eric. The half smile playing at the edge of his lips grew slightly larger. “The escrow officer for the Jim Strong case?”

  “As if you didn’t know.”

  “I don’t know the man well. I only know the Strongs vouched for him and seem to trust him. My own research shows he’s been in business a long time and there are no shadows on his record.”

  “Don’t bullshit me,” Paul said. “You two have cooked up a scheme to take that two point five million bucks tomorrow, the instant the money’s wired to escrow.”

  “You’re wrong, Mr. van Wagoner.” Eric said. “I’d laugh if this wasn’t so serious. Quit wasting your time.”

  “You forged documents that indicated Jim Strong was alive. You love money, obviously.” Paul looked around.

  “You have nothing on me. Even you must know that. I inherited money. My father was a textile manufacturer. Maybe that annoys you? I understand your upbringing wasn’t so easy.”

  “You’re obsessed with the Strong case.”

  “You found my office.” Eric offered them drinks, which they declined, but poured himself a glass of amber-colored liquid. “Okay, I’ll tell you a few things that don’t reflect well on me.” He directed this comment to Nina. “This case has driven me crazy. I spent months on it, first trying to figure out who was embezzling.”

  “But,” Nina said, “it was Jim, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m telling you now I never had absolute proof. I suspected all along that Jim masterminded the embezzlement, but Jim was dead. I went through a lot of possibilities, that he was mixed up with Marianne, that he had a deal going with Kelly. But I never found any connections.” Eric set his drink down. “Two years I’ve considered this case and gotten nowhere. On the plus side, I met you, Nina.” He smiled fully this time.

  “You stink,” Paul said. “I smell it.”

  “Why don’t you get the fuck out of my house now, Paul? Nina, you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”

  He walked them to the door.

  Paul left first. Before Nina could follow him, Eric took her arm. “Whatever you know about me, I know you and Paul broke into my house. I could cause you to lose your license to practice law.”

  “Don’t even try,” Nina said evenly.

  “So.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet. He put a $5 bill in her hand. “You’re representing me in a small matter yet to be determined. You can’t tell anyone anything about me. I’m your client. And I won’t bring up the burglary.”

  “All I took was my own property back.”

  Eric rubbed his mouth. “Ah. I do apologize for that.”

  She took the five and put it into her bag. “You wouldn’t want to do anything to Paul, either.”

  Eric frowned. “Him, I’d throw to the dogs. You—I like.”

  She walked out, wondering if it was her he liked so much or something else about her. By the time she reached Paul’s car, where a fuming Paul had taken the wheel and turned on the heat, she was chuckling.

  Paul lowered his window. “What’s so funny?”

  “He’s dirty. You are so right. But he’s dirty in a totally harmless way. Paul, I don’t think he has anything to do with scamming Philip out of any money. I think he’s really tried to figure out what’s going on, and he’s failed.”

  Paul struck his steering wheel. “I don’t like that guy.”

  “You’re jealous because he’s rich and attractive.”

  “Maybe, but that’s not all. What did you mean back there, that I was wrong about what he was hiding?”

  All the anxiety, the fear, that crazy alarm that made her heart beat five times faster than it should, caught up to her and she began to laugh again. She laughed until tears fell. Only Matt could make her laugh so hard, but here she was, crying with laughter.

  “You’re my investigator in this, and I’m his lawyer in this, so it’s protected and confidential information, Paul. Do you agree to that?”

  “Okay, okay!”

  “I turned a knob in the bathroom and found Eric’s secrets.”

  “What?”

  “Shelves full of stiletto heels.”

  Paul reeled back. “He’s a cross-dresser?”

  “Not exactly. He collects shoes. He only needs one of a pair, though.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “He likes what they call limo shoes these days, ones where women can barely walk without help. And he had this.” She reached into her bag and held up an outrageous pump. “My January mortgage payment, a red-soled Christian Louboutin peep-toed stiletto. Soon to be reunited with its twin. I won’t wear them again around him, though.”

  “His passion is shoes? That’s the big secret?”

  “He has a collection. Dozens and dozens. He must steal them. I looked at the bottom of one of them and it had been worn. All of the shelves were lit tastefully like a mini-gallery.”

  Paul mulled this over. “Did he ever try to handle your foot?”

  “What? No. Why do you ask?”

  “Because that’s molesting. Sick.”

  “He’s only interested in the shoe. Maybe it’s like the art. He has fabulous taste.”

  Paul shook his head. “I’d almost rather he was the killer. I’m feeling confused. Men aren’t exactly men anymore. Except me, of course.” He clammed up after that.

  Nina shivered. “It’s so cold. I need to go. Where will you be?”

  “Out and about,” Paul answered, looking toward Eric’s house.

  “Please, Paul. No more trouble.”

  “Nothing planned.”

  But he had a look she didn’t quite trust. “Stay in touch?”

  “You bet. I’ll check in on you soon.”

  CHAPTER 31

  With a quick cell phone call, Nina checked on Bob, learning that Hitchcock had already had his evening walk and that Bob had locked up properly after getting dropped off.

  Her energy was fading, but she couldn’t feel it. All she could feel was a driving worry now. She had been all too willing to go along with Paul’s theories about Eric because she badly, very badly, needed to feel that her own case was controllable, if not under contro
l. It had been a relief to say, He’s the one, and know what to do.

  They had found nothing linking him to the killings. Paul had jumped to a conclusion that was wrong. But if Eric was not the author of the Brazilian scam, she was at a complete loss. A huge sum of money was going to be transferred into a separate account in a few hours, and that money wasn’t going to be secure. It might disappear, and she and Paul hadn’t managed to catch the watcher. They had been weakened by their own distraction, their own vulnerabilities, Paul’s jealousy, maybe.

  Maybe they were wrong about Hendricks, too. It was all theory and potential motive, without any evidence at all.

  An idea crystallized in her mind. She would call Nelson Hendricks right now and warn him strongly and demand that some further protections be put in place first thing in the morning before the money was wired. He could switch banks at the last moment, certainly change all passwords, notify the bank that there might be some attempt to forge his signature and thus to permit no wires out—he would have to listen to her—

  She had Hendricks’s number on her phone. She pulled over to the side of the dark highway before the turn onto Jicarilla Street and her own neighborhood and called.

  The office recording took her to his voice mail. He didn’t give any emergency number.

  What time would the wire arrive? No one had been able to specify that. Sometime in the morning. Maybe as the doors opened. The rustlers would be there, but unlike the rustlers of yore, the ropes would be unseen and the calves wouldn’t bellow and the sound of the gate’s opening would be silent and electronic.

  She went to Wi-Fi and onto the Net, clicking on the car light. Hendricks was on LinkedIn, but without a home address, not on Facebook, not on Twitter. Not a connected guy, and a cautious one, as she would have expected.

  She went to a pay website that archived recorded real estate transactions and found that Nelson and Rayanne Hendricks, man and wife, had purchased property at Lot 36 in Block 12, as shown on a certain recorded map, in the City of South Lake Tahoe, State of California, for a valuable consideration, some six years earlier.

  Now she accessed the County Planning department and its maps and found that the property was a house in the Tahoe Keys neighborhood, not on the water but close to it. All she could find was the Assessor’s Parcel Number and a map, but it was plenty to find the house.

  There was more. She was directed to a list of homes delinquent for more than a year in payment of property taxes, and the Hendricks parcel number was on it. Hendricks was in money trouble, as she had already been warned. The title company executive was not solid.

  She decided to go to his house and talk to him. If he didn’t let her do that, she decided to go to the police. She called Paul’s cell phone. No answer. Irritation made her bite her lip.

  She drove to the Keys.

  Newer and more affluent than Gene’s block, the neighborhood had bright streetlighting, but even though it was only nine o’clock, there was no activity at the tiny shopping center she passed. She found her way to the third house on the left on Clement Street. A standard two-story model with a double garage in front below a small, useless-looking balcony, it had no cars visible. After all this adrenaline expenditure Hendricks might not even be home. She parked in the driveway, activating a motion floodlight, grabbed her purse, and marched up to the covered doorway, where the front door was already opening.

  “What are you doing here?” Hendricks said, standing in the doorway in black sweats, his wife beside him in matching red sweats. Behind them Nina could hear a TV program, the frenzied music of which announced the climactic moment was arriving.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “It’s what may happen tomorrow.”

  “Come to my office in the morning. We open at eight a.m.” His astonishment was turning to suspicion, and for a moment she considered herself, a woman standing in a stranger’s doorway at night making vague pronouncements. She might look nuts.

  “The escrow account isn’t safe,” she said.

  “What? How do you know that? Of course it’s safe.” But his face went ashen. “Better come in, then.” He opened the door wide and Nina followed them into a big, clean family room dominated by a stone fireplace. To the right was a massive television on a massive stand. There were two couches, a chair and a lamp, a couple of unobtrusive pictures on the walls. It was the room of a vacation home, bare and unassuming, and she remembered that they were trying to sell the place. But she had seen no sign outside, and she had looked at the multiple-listing service on the Net without result. “Take your boots off, please,” Rayanne Hendricks said, and Nina unzipped them and for the first time since 7:00 a.m. felt her toes in their damp socks. In the warm room she suddenly felt a wave of fatigue. She sat down on one of the couches uninvited, as Hendricks turned off the TV and sat down opposite her.

  “Now what is happening?” he said. “What’s this about the escrow?”

  “I’m Ray,” his wife said. She sat down next to him, close, their legs touching. She was Chinese-American, with sallow skin and big eyes. Nina’s eyes went to the electric scooter visible in the kitchen. It seemed to sparkle under the bright kitchen light like a tiny, brand-new car. Yet Rayanne Hendricks had walked to the door, sat down. Nina flashed to her mother, who had also suffered from a serious illness that sometimes didn’t show. She looked at the woman with sympathy.

  “I’m waiting,” Hendricks said.

  “All right, I’ll get right to it. I told you earlier today that the money being wired tomorrow into the account for which you are the trustee has been more or less channeled there as a result of false affidavits from Brazil.”

  “What do you have new to tell me? Besides the baseless information you already gave me?”

  “You have to take additional steps to protect it.” She explained her ideas. Hendricks frowned. “The body of Jim Strong was stolen from a grave it has lain in for more than two years, and the police will have forensic proof of that soon enough,” she said. “But not soon enough to protect the wired money, if it comes in tomorrow.”

  “Are you going to court to ask for some sort of delay?” Hendricks asked. “Wouldn’t that be more in keeping with your, er, procedures, rather than coming to my home late at night and repeating the same stories to me?”

  “There isn’t time. You can protect the money, Mr. Hendricks. You can refuse to accept the wire.”

  “A violation of my contractual agreements and fiduciary responsibilities,” he said pompously. “And a court order. I can’t do that. I am the only person authorized to withdraw money from the account once it is received.”

  “Whoever came up with this scheme in Brazil is a gifted forger who’s had close contact with the Strong family. Who else would know how to mimic Jim Strong’s signature so well?”

  Hendricks paled. “Who exactly do you think could do such a thing?”

  “I’m not sure. Someone you work with?”

  “No one has access to my passwords and codes. We keep bank account numbers and so on in a safe. I locked it up personally tonight. It certainly is not one of my staff. I’ve known them all for years and years.”

  “Has any stranger been in your office recently while you were working with those numbers? Please think carefully. Who have you spoken with about this account?”

  “Well, besides you, Philip Strong and his family, and Mr. Stamp, the lawyer. And Mr. Brinkman. I have spoken about this account in open court in front of Judge Flaherty. It’s been discussed in the newspaper. Ms. Reilly, you’re obviously very tired, and this has all been a strain on you. You’re not thinking straight. I think you need to go home.”

  “Oh, please. I didn’t invent those affidavits, and I didn’t murder two women.”

  Both of them sat up straighter at hearing that, and Nina told them about the link between the sale and Cyndi Backus’s lover. She saw Ray cast a quick glance at her husband and thought, She wondered there for a second if it
could be him, but she doesn’t believe it is. He’s faithful and she knows he loves her.

  Ray seemed shaken. “I don’t understand. What a mess.” Hendricks put his arm around his wife’s shoulder and glared at Nina. “It’s late, and you haven’t brought me anything but wild suspicions. You should go. My wife needs her sleep.”

  But Ray had something to add. “I hate it here. I’m glad we are leaving the country, moving to Taiwan, where I grew up. This is a good example. Women killed over money, like they are nothing and nobody. I don’t feel safe in the streets, and Reno, where I used to work, is worse. I can’t stand it here one more minute.”

  “When—,” Nina started, but Hendricks gave his wife a little push and said, “Darling, you’re going to bed right now.” He was firm but loving, helping her stand.

  “Nice meeting you,” Ray said. “Good luck. I’m sure Nelson will keep your money safe.” She looked lovingly into her husband’s eyes. “He’s good man.”

  Her husband blinked a few times, watching her progress as she walked slowly into the hall and shut the door.

  Nina kept her eyes steady on him. She said nothing. She was processing the information his wife had given her.

  A seismic shift took place in her mind, and Hendricks saw it.

  “Now you get out of here,” he said, voice as tight as his thin lips. “I’ll sue you for blackening my character in the community. Now you’ve come around and upset my sick wife. I’m coming after you just as soon as this deal goes through. You won’t get another client in this community. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Nina didn’t move. “Quit blustering. It’s a major thing, moving to another country, and it’s expensive. How can you afford it? I wonder. Are you expecting big money for some reason?”

  “I expect I’ll call the police.” But he made no move to do so, and Nina felt a mad rush of excitement as the facts continued to realign in her brain. Nelson Hendricks was breaking, knew that she was putting things together in her mind, that the notion they all had, that he was a good man, had crumbled with those few innocent words of his wife. He breathed hard, his body writhed, as if enduring a titanic struggle.