“Before you go on, I’d like to see some ID,” he said.
I showed him my California’s driver’s license. He wrote down my name and address and then asked for my phone numbers.
“You told me how you entered the house and what you saw, but you haven’t told me why you came here in the first place.”
“I had some personal business to discuss with him,” I said.
“What kind of personal business?”
Before I could answer, one of the officers returned from the house.
“The place is clear, Nick,” the cop said to Trujillo. “The vic is dead though, no need for the paramedics.”
“Have them confirm anyways,” Trujillo said. “Then secure the scene. And where the hell is CSI?”
The officer spun and headed back to the house.
“Now, you said you were here for some personal business,” Trujillo said. “What kind of personal business would that be?”
“Andrew Norris works for a client of mine. I came here to interview him about a matter concerning the employer and Norris.”
“Are you a lawyer?”
“No. Private investigator.”
“Why do I not like the sound of that?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you carrying?”
“A weapon you mean?”
“No, a baby. Yes, a weapon.”
“Not my style.”
“I need to pat you down anyway.”
He frisked me, a little too aggressively in my opinion. I didn’t like the way this was going.
“I need to go inside right now,” he said. “I don’t want you going anywhere until I personally tell you that you can leave. Clear?”
“Yes.”
“If you’re not here when I come back outside, I’ll have you arrested.”
“I’m not a suspect here am I?”
“You are a person of interest. I’ll upgrade you to suspect in a heartbeat if you leave before I say so.”
Now I really didn’t like the way this was going.
twelve
I met Rubia at seven-thirty the next morning at Southside Park. The sun had risen about fifteen minutes earlier, revealing an overcast sky, one that might bring rain. I wore blue sweat pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt with “Bridge to Bridge Run” printed on the front, which I’d earned with my $40 entry fee about five years before, when I still ran 10Ks. Rubia wore baggy gray shorts and a green and gold Sac State t-shirt.
“Loser buys breakfast,” she said. “Winner picks the restaurant.” These were our usual stakes, though I’d often protested them because while I might eat a fried egg, a piece of toast and some coffee, Rubia could down a four-egg omelet, hash browns, a stack of pancakes and a bowl of fruit and still be looking for more. She was the biggest eater I’d ever had the pleasure to observe though her weight never rose above the 110 pounds she’d been since high school.
“Sure thing,” I said, passing her the basketball. We used to play one-on-one, but Rubia tired of repeatedly trouncing me so we changed our weekly game to a less strenuous and more competitive game of HORSE.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” she said. “Sounds like you had a rough one last night.”
“That’s why I need it.”
Without warming up, Rubia sank a twenty-foot jumper on her first shot. She smiled smugly as I retrieved the ball.
“Gotta shoot it from right here,” she said pointing to her approximate shooting spot.
“We’re starting?”
“Bet your ass.”
“Ever hear of a cop named Nick Trujillo?” I asked. “A real hardass. He all but arrested me for murdering Norris.”
“I don’t know too many of the guys in homicide. The gang unit, those guys I know. I can ask around about him if you want.”
“Thanks,” I said.
My shot bounced off the front of the rim.
“H for you, professor.”
For her next shot, Rubia started at the top of the key, drove the lane, did a 360-degree spin, then kissed the ball off the backboard, where it dropped through the hoop. She possessed remarkable agility and athleticism for someone who’d never played sports until she learned basketball in jail. Had she not fallen prey to the streets by middle school, she almost certainly could have earned a basketball scholarship, maybe even made it to the WNBA.
“Do I have to do the spin?” I said, knowing that under our personal ground rules that I did.
“Please, don’t even try to con your way out of it.”
I attempted the shot, spin and all, and somehow threw an air ball while just two feet from the basket. On the plus side, I didn’t hurt myself.
“That was ugly,” she said. “H-O.”
“Like I told you last night, Trujillo had me wait over an hour before he decided to interview me. Then he spent two hours grilling me.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Everything. Up to a point.”
“What point is that?”
“I told him I worked for Stroud and that he had concerns about whether Norris might be stealing clients so he had me keep an eye on him.”
“Sounds like the truth to me.”
She sized up her next shot, which looked like it might be a corner jumper, before settling for a running hook shot from ten feet. This time the ball hit off the back rim and bounced away. Finally, I could go on the offensive.
“I just didn’t tell him that Norris was spooking his clients about their accounts. Trujillo is going to talk with Stroud sometime soon. He can tell the cops as much as he wants about Norris and the clients. Stroud would ream me if I told the police anything to do with his business.”
I needed to put some pressure on Rubia so I opted for a very simple, makeable shot, a ten-footer just left of the key. I swished it, retrieved the ball and tossed it to her.
“Don’t choke,” I said as she lined up the shot.
“What did you tell the cop about why you were at Norris’s place?”
“I just told him I wanted to talk to him. That’s when he asked me what I thought of a hypothetical where I entered through an unlocked door, shot Norris then stashed the weapon somehow, before calling the police.”
Rubia made the shot. I followed with a shot from the free throw line that bounced off the front and back rims before it bounced away. She made the next shot and the one after that. I missed both attempts, leaving me with H-O-R-S.
“I asked him why I would call the police if I had killed the guy. He said he could think of a lot of reasons.”
“You better lawyer up, professor. I think this guy wants your ass.”
“I know.”
“You talk to Jill yet?”
“I tried her cell last night and this morning but she didn’t pick up. I checked with the Athletic Department secretary and she said the team flew a red eye last night to Idaho for a couple of games. Maybe there’s no cell reception up in the mountains.”
“What about Stroud?”
“I’m heading over there as soon as we’re finished. By now I’m sure Trujillo has contacted Stroud and asked him about me. It should be a fun meeting.”
We traded several missed shots as I tried to climb back into the game by attempting ridiculously hard shots, she trying to put me away by doing the same. By now five more players, guys in their twenties and thirties, had drifted onto the court to shoot at the basket at the far end of the court. They kept eyeballing us, either to see if we were worthy of being invited to their soon to be started full court game or to encourage us to get the hell off the court so they could begin.
“Have you made any progress on those names I gave you the other day?” I said.
“Sorry professor. I’ve been swamped. I’ll get on it today. I promise.”
Rubia then drilled a thirty-foot jump shot. I retrieved the ball, walked to the spot of the shot, dribbled five times, and promptly missed the shot.
“H-O-R-S-E, that’s horse for you,” she said.
>
“I can spell, chica.”
“Just can’t shoot.”
thirteen
To my displeasure, I found myself at Del Paso Country Club for the second day in a row. My planned confrontation with Lionel Stroud at his Emerald Tower office never happened because Stroud had gone directly to Del Paso to play golf. I didn’t learn this until I’d driven to his office and had to convince Ms. Helmet Head that I had an urgent message for Mr. Stroud that could only be delivered in person. She never did tell me Stroud’s whereabouts, but when she told me Wednesday mornings were his personal time I figured that meant he was playing golf.
A light drizzle began to fall, not enough to dissuade the country club’s diehard golfers. The club pro told me Stroud’s threesome would probably be on the third or fourth hole by now.
Since I wasn’t a member, he said I couldn’t wait in the members grill, but could sit outside, in the rain, and wait for Stroud when he made the turn at the ninth hole. I accepted the offer. When the pro put me safely out of his mind a few minutes later, I gave myself permission to borrow a golf cart from the cart barn and drive past the first tee, ignoring the hard stares from the foursome teeing off. I found Stroud just as his group walked off the fifth green.
“What the hell?” I said, startling him as my golf cart skidded to a stop within inches of his.
“Courage? You’re not… this is a private club…
how the—”
“Never mind. One of your employees gets murdered and you go out and play golf? Or did you even hear about Andrew Norris? Maybe you were too busy working on your short game.”
Stroud’s anger meter notched up to ten, his face instant scarlet. I doubted anyone, except for maybe the rare client, had ever talked to him so pointedly.
“You have some nerve,” he said. “You defied my explicit and direct orders not to contact my clients and the next thing I know two of them are calling my secretary about some quality control person named Courage talking to them about something amiss with their accounts.”
“If you are so goddamned concerned about me poisoning your reputation with your clients, then why haven’t you called them back? Tell me that.”
“You’re fired!”
“Fine.”
“And you can expect legal proceedings to begin immediately. Before I’m done I’ll own you, your home and whatever paltry business interests you possess.” In the Great American Tradition, Stroud played the lawsuit card.
“Knock yourself out,” I said.
“Now get the hell out of here.”
“Is everything all right, Lionel?” A cart with two of Stroud’s golfing companions approached. Both were about Stroud’s age, one fat, the other thin, both wearing lightweight rain gear, Del Paso logos on the breast of their jackets.
“We’re almost done,” Stroud said. “Go ahead and tee off and I’ll join you in a moment.”
The cart’s driver paused for a moment, started to say something, and then drove off. The fatter guy, in the passenger seat, stared at me until the cart rounded the corner for the sixth tee. Guess I didn’t look the country club type.
“I’d say you have much bigger issues to deal with than my contacting a couple of clients,” I said.
“We are done.” Stroud started to put his cart into reverse to create some space between it and my cart.
“Norris was telling his clients that there were problems in their accounts and that they should either pull their investments or talk to you about it.”
Stroud blinked and stopped backing up. He shook his head once.
“He wasn’t planning on stealing your clients. He was trying to protect them. Explain that.”
“Andrew Norris was a young man who went off the rails emotionally and mentally. I am deeply saddened by his death but his actions of the past few days confirm that he was dealing with some personal issues that left him unable to act rationally.”
“Sounds like something your PR agency came up with. Is that what you told your clients or are you still not returning their phone calls?” I said. “Charles Burke is not a happy camper right now.”
“Charles and I go back almost forty years. Our relationship is rock solid and I will call him when the time is appropriate. Not before.”
“What were these improprieties Norris was referring to?” I asked.
“There are no improprieties. As I said—”
“Norris wouldn’t make that up. He had nothing to gain by it, except to lose his job. The only one who supposedly handles the investments, the money, is you.”
For the first time something gave way in Stroud’s demeanor. The angry façade faded, the clenched jaw eased.
“You have no idea what you are talking about. Nor did Andrew Norris.” His head dropped down to his arms, which were firmly braced on either side of the steering wheel.
“Andrew Norris was killed last night,” I said. “It can’t be a coincidence. He was suggesting there were problems with your firm. He was scaring investors.”
“What the fuck are you implying?” Stroud said. The use of the F-word shocked me coming out of his upper crust mouth.
“I’m just stating the facts. The same facts that the police will soon find.”
“What have you told them?”
“I didn’t tell them that Norris was spooking clients, only that you suspected him of stealing them away from you and that that’s why you hired me. I’ll leave it to you to tell them as much or little about your business as you see fit.”
The group behind Stroud’s finished putting and had returned to their carts. Our discussion appeared to interest them, all four men looking our way, apparently unhappy with this intrusion into their Temple of Golf. Maybe I needed one of those rain jackets with the Del Paso logo to help me fit in.
“For god sake, you’ve succeeded in making a scene,” Stroud said. He looked ahead to the sixth hole, where the two men in his group had already teed off and were half way down the fairway.
“What is going on? You owe me that, getting me mixed up in a murder.”
“You came to me,” Stroud said, dropping his voice so that the four golfers now passing in their carts couldn’t hear. “Remember? I told you that it went against my better judgment to hire you.”
“And yet you did.”
“Which may be one of the biggest mistakes that I ever made, especially if you had anything to do with Andrew’s death.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“I talked with the detective last night on the phone. Trujillo. He wanted to know all about you, why I hired you, and so on. We are meeting today at the police station for my formal statement.”
“What did you tell him? What are you going to tell him?”
“I’m just stating the facts” he said. “The same facts that the police will soon find.” He drove off, pleased with turning my own words against me.
Bastard.
fourteen
When I returned the cart to the barn, a kid, maybe 19, greeted me. He was short and skinny, with curly hair, and judging from his slits for eyes, had rolled and smoked a fatty for breakfast.
“I was looking for this cart, dude,” he said. “When did you take it?”
“Sorry. I had to meet up with a client on the course. Urgent business.”
“No worries,” he said. “Just couldn’t figure out where it went is all.”
“Hey,” I said, getting out of the cart. “Do you know a member here by the name of Andrew Norris?”
“Not really. I mean I know who he is and all. That’s about it.”
“Who does he play golf with? Does he have a regular group?”
“Oh, wow, let me think.” He actually put his thumb and forefinger to his chin, looking very much like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz after the Wizard had bestowed him an honorary degree and thus imparted the much-wanted brain. I thought the kid might pull a muscle thinking so hard. “He doesn’t play in a regular foursome like a lot of the guys, but he does pl
ay with Tom Crawford a lot it seems like.”
“Is this Tom Crawford a member?”
“Of course. You can’t play here unless you’re a member or a guest. But Mr. Crawford, he’s a member. Good dude, too. Tips well.”
“Do you know what he does for a living?”
“Plays golf.” The kid thought that was hilarious, breaking into spasms of laughter. “No, sorry,” he said, composing himself. “I have no clue about how he spends his days when he’s not golfing.”
“Any idea how I could get a hold of him?”
“Sure.”
“Really?” That was not the answer I was expecting from this latter day Jeff Spicoli.
“Yeah, he’s right over there. On the driving range. He’s the guy in the blue rain jacket.”
“The one with the Del Paso logo on it?”
“One in the same.”
I gave him a twenty dollar tip, partly out of guilt for hijacking the cart, partly for the information. I held out little hope that the twenty spot would not be invested in the thriving cannabis economy.
“Nice shot,” I said, just after the man finished hitting a drive well past the 250-yard sign on the driving range.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Are you Tom Crawford?”
“Yeah,” he said, warily. Crawford was a short, wiry guy, but from the shot he’d just uncorked, quite the athlete.
I introduced myself and asked him if he knew Andrew Norris.
“Of course I do,” he said.
“There really is no easy way to say this. Andrew was killed last night.”
“Andrew? Are you sure?”
“Someone shot him at his home last night,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“I just played with him a couple of days ago. This is awful.” He put his club back into his golf bag, his face ashen. “Are you the police?”
“No. I am helping with the investigation.” It bordered on the truth.
“I don’t understand. Are the police contracting out work?”
“Something like that.” Maybe not so close to the truth now. “Did Andrew seem upset or different in any way the last time you played golf with him?”
Courage Matters: A Ray Courage Mystery (Ray Courage Private Investigator Series Book 2) Page 6
