Stone Eater (Will Finch Mystery Thriller Series Book 2)

by D. F. Bailey

  She laughed again and Finch gazed into the menu, already knowing what he would order. Pleased that she seemed comfortable, he felt able to relax. Finally. Maybe she, too, wanted to assign their first two meetings to the distant past and start over. As she read the menu he studied her a moment. Her green blouse, perhaps too sheer for a cool spring evening, was layered with a black silk pashmina that she adjusted over her shoulders. Her auburn hair swept down to her shoulders in one long wave. Her face was clear, with a sheen of makeup covering the faded bruise, now barely visible below her left eye. He noticed a gloss of color on her lips. Moist.

  He ordered the Pollo Alla Giovanni, she the Rolatini Al Fattore.

  “No wine, for me,” she said when Tony asked.

  “Me neither. But give us a liter of San Pellegrino,” Finch said.

  When Tony departed he turned to her. “You don’t drink?”

  “Not alcohol.” She raised an eyebrow. “Is that a problem?”

  “No. It’s just unusual these days. I don’t drink, either.”

  “Well then, we have something in common after all.” She pouted as if she wanted to rephrase this. “And maybe more things we don’t know about. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Maybe.” He felt a moment of bafflement, of wanting to charge forward — and to rewind every minute he’d spent with Eve up to this moment. Would it be possible to start over?

  “So. You want to interview me.”

  “It’ll keep Gianna’s story alive. At least until we can find another angle to her murder.”

  A serious look crossed her face and she nodded.

  “But first I want to suggest something.”

  “Yes?”

  “What politicians these days call a reset.”

  She leaned forward and in a low voice she said, “Mr. Finch, you mean you don’t like the way things started for us?”

  “Do you?”

  She considered this. “Somehow you bring out the cop in me.”

  “Ex-cop. And please, call me Will.”

  “Will.” She smiled. “So. All the more reason to try a reset, I guess.”

  Despite her ironic tone, he felt as if they’d established a truce.

  “One more thing. Do this interview as Gianna’s dearest friend. Then refuse to do any further interviews about her. At least not with me. If we’re going to work together after tonight, I can’t permit any suspicion of conflict-of-interest. Understood?”

  “Is that what you told Gianna?”

  He set his eyes on her and frowned. “No.”

  “Okay.” She paused a moment and then fluttered her right hand above the table. “Sure. I know how it works.”

  Of course she did. But he needed to move beyond her obsession with his night with Gianna. He set his phone on the table between them and clicked the recording app.

  “All right. Let’s begin. Why should we remember Gianna Whitelaw?”

  She raised her eyebrows, surprised at this first question. “Because no one loved life more than Gianna Whitelaw. Sure, she had a privileged life. But like everyone else, she had her struggles. She was able to get past the barriers of her family. She found a way to live in the moment. Genuinely. And everyone who met her was touched by that. And made a better person. She had a gift for living that everyone wanted. You felt you could trust every moment you shared with her. I know I did.”

  She blew a stream of air through her lips as if words now betrayed her love of Gianna. Was this all she could muster? She tried to elaborate and after a few moments, paused and waved a hand to erase everything she’d said.

  “Wait. You can’t use that. It’s just too personal.” She glanced at the ceiling. “A lot of what you respect about someone should remain as a memory only.”

  He kept his eyes on her, waiting.

  “So. Some people invent phones and apps.” She tipped a finger to Finch’s phone. “Others make money. Some of them give it all away. Gianna didn’t do any of that. But you can say this about her: she taught people the art of living. She showed them that once you give up pretense and social conformity, living can be just as easy as breathing. And once you learn how to breathe, all you want is fresh air. In Gianna’s case, she required pure oxygen.”

  “Pure oxygen. Nice. I can work that into the headline.” Finch closed the recording app, leaned forward and studied her face. He could feel himself drawn to her and immediately pushed his desire aside. “I’ll start the story with some quotes from you, then I’ll raise the question of her fall from the bridge. That will maintain public suspicions until the ME report is made public — ”

  She waved a hand to cut him off. “The ME report will never see the light of day. Not after her suicide posting on Facebook. Not with the family request to respect their privacy. And definitely not with the Whitelaw money and power at play.”

  “Okay, okay. I know this interview is a long-shot. It won’t even make the top of the homepage, but like I said, it’ll keep her story alive for one more day.”

  “Her story. But not Gianna, herself.”

  A moment of gloom ebbed between them. Then the waiter delivered their meals and made a fuss about setting their napkins across their laps.

  “How European,” she said and inhaled the aroma steaming from her plate. “I love prosciutto.”

  With the meal in front of him, Will wondered if he could enhance their mood somehow. He felt his appetite surge and he sliced a small wedge of the chicken breast with his knife. He closed his eyes on the first bite and savored the flavors diffusing through his mouth. He glanced at Eve who also seemed to be lost in a moment of delight. She looked quite beautiful as she ate, he decided. As if food offered a rare pleasure, not mere sustenance. Perhaps she lived her life the same way, savoring it bite by bite.

  She turned her head toward him. “So. Your text said you had a surprise.”

  He smiled at her directness. She had a conversational tick, her realized. Whenever she wanted to press on with her agenda, she began with “so.”

  “Yes.” He wondered what he should tell her about the diary. “Gianna’s mother called me. We met the other day. For tea,” he added.

  “Sophia Pecorelli called you?” Her eyebrows arched with a look of surprise.

  “Yeah.”

  “Gianna told me her mother reverted to her maiden name after her divorce from Senator Whitelaw. I met her a few times. I don’t think Gianna really wanted me to get to know her very well.”

  “No?”

  “I guess Gianna imagined I’d be confused. The Catholic Italian background, the formality, the rituals. Gianna hated all that.”

  “Sophia certainly exudes a distinct European charm. And more.” He took another piece of chicken into his mouth and glanced around the room as he chewed. A line of patrons formed at the door, a few of them chatted with Tony, then they all broke into wild laughter. In the midst of the boisterous cheer, Finch knew he could talk in confidence without being overheard.

  “And?”

  He studied her. Could he trust her? He decided to plunge forward. “And she gave me Gianna’s diary.”

  Eve held her fork above her plate. A pause. “Really?”

  He nodded and took another bite.

  “And you’ve read it.”

  He nodded again. An expression of satisfaction formed on his face.

  “So? What’s in it?”

  “It covers a little more than a year. I think it’s a continuation from a previous diary. Probably several of them. Did you know she kept one?”

  “No.”

  “At first it seemed like little more than a date book. With a score card attached. But all that changed when she got involved with Raymond Toeplitz. She had something for him.”

  “She really did. Maybe for the first time.” She took a sip of San Pellegrino. “Are you in it?”

  He frowned at this. The woman certainly knew how to piss him off.

  “If she does mention you, that’d be reason enough for you to keep it off the record.” She narr
owed her eyes as if to dismiss any hint of jealousy. “Which makes me wonder why you’re telling me this.”

  “I thought we had an agreement. That we’re working together on this.”

  “Yeah, we do.” She glanced away, and then back to him. “Of course.”

  “Which means you have to give me something, too.”

  “What do you suppose I have that would help us?”

  “Her cell phone, for one thing. That’s how you texted me the first time. From her phone.” Will steadied his voice. Why was she so evasive? “Somehow you got your hands on her phone before she was murdered. My guess is that it cost you that bruise on your cheek. And if I had two guesses, the second would be that you wrestled more than Gianna’s cell phone from your sparing partner.”

  She smiled. “Not bad, Mr. Finch.”

  “Goddamnit,” he whispered and then restrained himself. “You know, Eve, you’ve got to do better than this if we’re going to collaborate.”

  “All right.” She set her fork and knife on the plate and pushed it away. “I also got a thumb drive. I think it belonged to Raymond Toeplitz. But I had to give up her computer and four or five file folders.”

  “Give up?”

  “To some Brit carnival bear.” She pointed to her bruised cheek. “I wrestled her phone and flash drive from him, he took the computer and files.”

  “The computer she used to post the suicide note?”

  “I guess. Looking back, I’d trade her computer for the flash drive any day.” She shrugged off a look of disappointment. “Especially since I can’t break the password on the flash drive. Neither can my tech guy.”

  He offered a sympathetic shrug. Now that she’d opened up to him, he felt some minor satisfaction. “Okay, let’s try to piece this together. Chronologically, I mean. Sophia had an early dinner with Gianna just hours before she was murdered. Obviously Gianna was already worried. The fact that she’d give her mother the diary and asked her to pass it on to me if anything happened to her, meant she was — ”

  “Very worried. And by eight that same night, she began to panic. That’s when she texted me. Told me to get to her condo ASAP. And to take the thumb drive, cell phone, computer and the paper files. All from her dresser drawer.”

  “You had a key to her apartment?”

  “Yeah.” She offered a smile that suggested a warm memory of her friend. “We always traded house keys. Since we were students at Berkeley together. It gave us a kind of security, in case either of us needed a safe house.”

  Finch considered the alliances women were forced to build and maintain, the shared self-interest at the heart of it all. He held a hand to his mouth and scanned the crowds passing along Howard Street.

  “The key.” A look crossed her face as if she’d just recalled a critical fact. “The Brit had a key to her condo. Where did he get it? From Toeplitz?” She shook her head in disbelief. “How the hell would he have done that?”

  Finch despaired at the impossibility of answering so many unknowns. “You’re the only one who knew her well enough.”

  “Toeplitz,” she said again. “The second key had to come from Toeplitz.”

  Finch considered this. “In the diary she said Toeplitz told her that his life would be over if anyone discovered the files on GIGcoin.”

  “GIGcoin?”

  “I don’t know what it means. Maybe it has something to do with bitcoin.” Finch shook his head with a look of doubt. “I interviewed Toeplitz and wrote a few articles about it. He was supposed to testify about the bitcoin fraud. Then he was murdered.” Was she interested in the details? He studied her face to see if she was following. When she nodded, he continued.

  “It’s a digital payment system supposedly developed by a guy named Satoshi Nakamoto. Truth is he’s little more than a mythical being among the digital elites — no one really knows who invented bitcoin. But the critical fact is this: bitcoin facilitates untraceable financial transactions through the internet. Think about it. Bitcoin allows money laundering without a laundromat. The problem is, the bitcoin value crashed when one of the bitcoin exchanges, Mt. Gox, lost almost half a billion dollars in bitcoin deposits.”

  “Just last year, right?”

  “An utter disaster.” Finch pushed the last morsel of chicken onto his fork and into his mouth. When he finished eating he pushed his plate aside. “Now in the last diary entry about Toeplitz — I guess it was just after Gianna drove up to Oregon, and a few days before Toeplitz followed her — she says that he put the files and flash drive in her dresser ‘to keep them safe’.”

  “So he was worried,” Eve said and wiped her lips with the linen napkin. “He could have secured them in a safe. Unless he wanted her to expose them in case something happened to him.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Finch gazed into the distance. He felt as if they’d explored all the possibilities and that none of them offered a way forward. After a moment of silence, he had an impulse to move on.

  The waiter stopped at the table and cleared their plates. Eve didn’t want dessert or coffee and Finch asked for the bill. He paid at the till and as they left the restaurant Tony commented that Finch looked much better now that he’d been able to enjoy a decent meal.

  “Perhaps you are suited for this gorgeous woman after all,” he offered.

  They laughed at his joke, uttered with the slightest Italian accent. Finch shook his hand and Tony made an elaborate display of kissing both of Eve’s cheeks.

  “You would have been good company on the Titanic,” Finch said as they stepped onto Howard Street.

  “No way,” he called after them, “Too chilly for me!”

  Half a block down the road, Eve came to a stop and said, “I wouldn’t mind skimming through Gianna’s diary. I might find something that wouldn’t occur to you. Like you said, because I knew her so well,” she added when Finch looked hesitant.

  “How about a trade,” he offered. “I’ll give you the diary in exchange for the thumb drive.”

  Now she hesitated. “Sure, but I doubt you can open it.”

  “You never know. I’ve got my own tech guy.”

  “All right.” She studied his eyes, searching for something. “How about tomorrow. There’s a dim sum bar near my place. My turn. I’ll treat you to Sunday breakfast. Eleven A.M.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I’ll text you the address.”

  She smiled and for the first time Finch could see through the veneer of her police persona, past her grief about Gianna, and into an inner life that he could barely glimpse. He felt encouraged, as if they’d turned a corner and now that they’d arranged their next meeting, she’d opened a door for them that lead … where precisely? He had no idea. He smiled back at her and thought, maybe I can press my luck.

  “You know, sometimes on a third date, people get asked up for coffee.”

  Eve laughed. She moved back a step and brushed a hand through her hair. Her face betrayed a mix of surprise and encouragement. She laughed again, then pressed her lips together to contain her emotions.

  When she recovered she stepped closer and set her hand on his forearm. “You thought our first two meetings were dates?”

  He liked to see her laughing. “Well … you were a little harsh.”

  “Harsh?” She laughed again, not quite able to believe he was hustling her. “Mr. Finch, you must be hard up. Very hard up.”

  He took a step away but she pressed forward and touched his arm again.

  “Just for the record, I’m a fourth date kinda girl.”

  As she walked away, she called over her shoulder, “And don’t forget to bring Gianna’s diary tomorrow.”

  ※ — SIX — ※

  TO DISTRACT HIMSELF from what he knew was coming, Toby Squire looked through the French doors that led onto the lawn of his small bungalow and studied the view. He glanced at the familiar form of the inukshuk that he’d built five years ago, the stone man assembled from seven massive granite blocks. Miles behind the sculpture an
d across San Francisco Bay, the towers of the financial district climbed into a narrow finger of fog. In the bay itself, a dozen freighters lay anchored in the water, and around them a variety of sailboats slipped back and forth, playing the invisible breeze.

  He imagined himself afloat on a boat, and the little rhyme of this idea made him smile. Afloat on a boat. He’d never been on a sailboat and the fantasy held all the appeal of an untouched pleasure and a dream of something that lay ahead. One day he would set sail, he told himself. Slide under the Golden Gate Bridge and make his way to Tahiti. He’d seen videos of Tahitian girls dancing topless, their brown, full breasts swaying as they shook their hips back and forth to the wild rhythms of the wooden drums. Could a place like that really exist?

  He leaned over the coffee table and pulled the Concise Oxford English Dictionary into his thick hand. It took a moment to search for Tahiti and he felt a mild disappointment when he could find just a single reference: Tahitian. The descriptive phrases mentioned only the island inhabitants and their language. Nothing about dancing or drums. He cast his eyes away from the book and for a moment he could almost hear the throbbing beat, the hollow chocka-chocka-chocka of wood sticks hammering on the goat skin drums.

  Despite the rattling in his head, the knock on his door came as an abrupt shock. Before Toby could pull himself from his chair, Dean Whitelaw pushed the door open and stepped across the small living room and stared down at Toby. Dean set his jaw and Toby wondered if he was about to be fired.

  “Finally some good news. Maybe,” Dean added, and sat on the footstool beside Toby and touched the screen on his iPad. “This story just appeared on the eXpress website.”

  He clicked a link and the screen displayed an image of Gianna. She wore a black formal gown that extended to her ankles. A string of white pearls, a necklace that Toby had often admired, lapped her neck in three strands. He guessed that the picture had been taken four or five years ago as she made her way into the Museum of Modern Art or the Davies Symphony Hall. She never really liked those kinds of places, not compared to the jazz clubs and bars she’d discovered in the Mission district. Below Gianna’s picture the caption read, “Gianna Whitelaw was ‘pure oxygen’ to those who knew her.”