by Ellen Crosby
“Coincidence?” he said. “Maybe they were as haunted by those deaths as Thiessman is. Racine was in his sixties, Charles said. That’s not old, but he wasn’t a spring chicken, either. As for Paul, who knows what demons tormented him that made him decide suicide was a better option than sticking around?”
“It’s possible, I suppose. I don’t know,” I said as our waitress set down our seafood. “Right now I’m totally confused.”
I bent my head and dug into my Seafood Louie. The timing of Charles’s request and the deaths of Mel Racine and Paul Noble bothered me. After so many years of silence, why should what happened to Stephen Falcone and Maggie Hilliard rise up out of the past all of a sudden? Charles thought Theo was behind all this, but who or what had provoked Theo? That is, if he was still alive and living under an alias as Teddy Fargo.
Someone else must have surfaced and vanished like a ghost.
But who was it?
Mel Racine’s bank, which he’d transformed into wine storage for serious collectors needing a safe place to store their priceless bottles, was on Main Street in the historic district of Half Moon Bay. I fell in love with the romantic Spanish Mission Revival building the minute I laid eyes on it. It looked like classic early California architecture with its putty-colored stucco walls, orange tile roof, and arched wooden front doors decorated with filigreed ironwork and surrounded by brightly painted ceramic tiles.
Connor O’Hara stood under the eaves in front of the massive doors, talking into his cell phone as Quinn and I parked next to a black Mercedes sporting a license plate with a realtor’s logo. He was of medium height with bright red hair sticking out from under a flat tweed cap, trimmed beard, dark trousers, white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a tailored linen vest.
His eyes went to the Porsche first. Then he took stock of the two of us as we walked toward the bank, slowly focusing on me as he registered my unabashed appreciation of the elegant old building.
He shook hands with Quinn, then me. “I’m Con O’Hara. Mr. Santori, Ms. Montgomery. Welcome to the Wine Vault. We’ve had a lot of interest in this place, don’t you know? I’m sure we’ll be havin’ a contract on it any day now.”
I liked the lilt in his voice. He’d already checked my hand for a wedding ring. Probably trying to figure out if this was a business deal between two partners or which one of us was the potential buyer.
“It’s still on the market, though, right?” Quinn asked.
“Oh, sure, sure.” O’Hara pulled a round metal ring with what looked like old-fashioned jailers’ keys on it and a smaller ring with half a dozen modern keys from his pocket. “This one’s a wee bit special. A historic building datin’ back to the early 1900s. Not often something as fine as this comes available.”
“I suppose that explains why the seller is asking so much more than the assessed value of the property?” Quinn asked.
I pretended to study the patterns in the glazed ceramic tile. We were supposed to be casual lookers, not acting like we might actually purchase the place.
“I believe we’ll get it.” O’Hara unlocked the front door with one of the jail keys. I felt a rush of cool air like the building had been holding its breath.
If potential buyers had besieged Mel Racine’s bank, they must have floated through here on a magic carpet. Dust motes hung suspended like fine silt in the dim sunlight filtering through two small, high windows. Shadows cast by the grillwork made a graceful design on the marble floor. I brushed my fingers across the back of a saddle-colored leather sofa that had been pulled up to a glass coffee table and felt grit.
“The former owner used the upstairs as a gathering place to host wine tastings and the like,” O’Hara said. “Set up a small kitchenette in the back and turned the counter where folks did their banking into a bar. He liked to feature a different wine at each of the tellers’ windows. Clever, wasn’t it?”
Quinn nodded, hands behind his back, as he wandered around the large room, peering behind the counter to check out the kitchenette setup. A moment later, O’Hara and I heard the ding of a cash register drawer popping open next to one of the tellers’ windows.
“He loves toys,” I said to O’Hara. “He’s just a kid at heart.”
“Where’s the vault?” Quinn shot me a dirty look that O’Hara couldn’t see. “I understand the owner redid it as high-end wine storage.”
“That he did.” O’Hara grinned. “You’d not be guessing the place has such a large basement as it does, would you? Perfect temperature to store wine, and the adobe foundation keeps it nice and cool.”
Two closed doors were on the other side of the room. I pointed to them. “Do you get to the basement through one of those?”
He nodded. “The one on the left leads to the corridor where the offices are located. The stairway to the vault and another storage area is through the door on the right.”
“Can we see the vault, please?” Quinn asked.
O’Hara pulled out the jail keys again. “Course you can. Right this way.”
I leaned on my cane. “Do you mind terribly if I stay up here? The stairs … I’m sorry … I don’t feel up to … maybe I could check out the office space while you two have a look at the vault?”
O’Hara looked alarmed. “Can I get you a glass of water or something, Ms. Montgomery? There’s a sink in the kitchenette and I’m sure I can find a glass in one of the cupboards. There’s no elevator, I’m afraid.”
“No, no, I’ll be fine. Take your time. Quinn, you’ll tell me all about it?”
“You bet, sweetheart. Just take it easy, okay? I don’t want you to overdo it.” He gave O’Hara a knowing look. “The little woman doesn’t know when she’s pushed herself too hard.”
The little woman was going to kick him in the shins as soon as we left the bank and O’Hara disappeared.
“Are the offices unlocked?” I asked.
“I’ll take care of that for ye.”
He opened the door on the left and began matching keys to doors.
“Keep him downstairs as long as you can,” I said under my breath to Quinn. “Stall, do anything. Talk to him about collecting expensive wine.”
“Look, Nancy Drew, I’ll do what I can, but it’s not like I’m touring Fort Knox. It’s a damn vault. Four walls, floor, ceiling …”
“You know, you could be a little more supportive—”
“Everything all right, folks?” O’Hara asked.
“Fine,” we said in unison.
“Grand.” He made a sweeping gesture toward the door. “All right, then, after you, Mr. Santori.” To me he added, “Sorry, Ms. Montgomery, but there are still items from the owner in those offices. The place is a bit of a mess, I’m afraid.”
Hallelujah. Now if I just had enough time to look around while Quinn chatted up O’Hara in the vault.
“No apology necessary,” I said. “I’ll just have a quick peek at everything.”
He nodded and they clattered down the stairs. A minute later I heard the clank of a metal door opening followed by Quinn’s amazed whistle and his voice, indistinct but nevertheless sounding impressed. The vault must be quite a place. I pulled my phone out of my purse and checked the time. One forty-five. I’d give them five minutes; if Quinn got garrulous and O’Hara was intrigued by cases of wine that cost more than his Mercedes, maybe ten minutes.
The three rooms off the small corridor with its arched ceiling, wrought-iron sconces, and whitewashed walls all had the same fusty, abandoned look about them, as though the occupants had left temporarily, expecting to return but never did. I glanced into each of them, beginning with the smallest, which was nearest to the outside door.
It had been used as an office supply depot—computer paper, printer cartridges, envelopes, invoice forms, a carton of light-bulbs—everything stacked on the floor or piled pell-mell on an otherwise unused desk. Another office belonged to a secretary, judging by the desktop computer bristling with sticky note phone numbers tacked to the monitor,
a multiline telephone, and an overflowing in-box. Surprisingly, there were no personal effects, no family photo or calendar with circled dates or corny newspaper cartoons tucked under the desktop glass. Probably removed before the place went on the market. My heart sank. What if Mel Racine had a wife or kids who’d come in and cleared out his personal things, and all that was left was just paperwork related to the Wine Vault?
The largest office had obviously been his, the walls lined with framed posters of vintage cars—Vauxhall, Bugatti, Citroën—as well as brochures and catalogs from his dealerships piled like snowdrifts on a credenza across from his desk. He, too, had a full in-box. I rifled through it, but everything appeared to belong to the wine storage business and his tasting events—leases, catalogs for auctions, wine price lists, an old issue of Decanter, a couple of copies of Wine Spectator. No family photos or memorabilia on his desk, either, except for an expensive silver-framed portrait of an Irish setter with JENNY written in calligraphy on the mat, and a small hand-painted oval frame with a candid snapshot that could have been Jenny or another dog.
I checked my phone again. One forty-nine. I’d been counting on Mel to have pictures from his old life hanging in his office as Charles had done. All he had was two photos of his dog sitting on his desk. I pulled open his top right-hand desk drawer, stifling my guilty feelings. As it turned out, I needn’t have felt bad. Nothing but the usual desk junk in that drawer and the two others below it.
The top drawer was locked. I looked around the room for a place to hide a small key and hoped O’Hara didn’t have it swinging from a key ring. Where—?
One fifty-three. I lifted the blotter and there it was. The drawer, predictably, stuck and I had to yank it open. It banged into the desk chair and my heart thudded against my rib cage. Downstairs had gone quiet all of a sudden. Had Quinn and O’Hara heard the noise and figured I tripped over something in my weary state and fell over? Were they on their way upstairs to check on me?
I went through the top drawer as quickly as I could with fumbling hands. My time was running out. The envelope was all the way in the back, taped to the top of the desk. I unstuck it and pulled out half a dozen faded color photographs. And there they were: the Mandrake Society.
It must have been one of their parties at the beach house, possibly at sunset. The colors had gone a little orangey after so many years, but the rich warm light burnished the five of them like beautiful bronzed statues. They could have been posing for a magazine cover shoot or a Christmas card photo of the perfect family, sitting on sand-rumpled towels and sprawled in beach chairs with the flat horizon line separating the cobalt ocean and the sunlight-and-cloud-threaded sky behind them. What shocked me was how young they were. Charles had said so, but I hadn’t taken in the fact that they were kids, barely out of college.
They’d been a close-knit group, tactile and comfortable with one another, changing the order of who stood or sat next to, or on, whom, but always arms draped over shoulders, someone’s legs in someone’s lap, one of the girls tucked into a protective embrace with one or two of the guys. I couldn’t stop staring; they didn’t look cold and heartless despite Charles’s sybaritic depiction of their drinking and sexual habits. In fact, they looked enviably happy and carefree, as though their futures were something wonderful they held in the palms of their hands.
I wondered when it all changed.
Instinctively I knew who was who, somewhat by process of elimination. I recognized Paul Noble well enough to pick him out. He had the same sharp features, but back then his hair had been dark and glossy and he’d been a lot slimmer and fitter. Mel had to be the one with sandy blond hair and horn-rimmed glasses, looking somewhat professorial and bookish. Theo Graf was the oldest of the group by a number of years and the only one not wearing a bathing suit. Instead, he had on a pair of bleached jeans and a tie-dyed Woodstock T-shirt. Maggie was the dark-haired beauty with an upturned nose and radiant smile. In one photo she sat on Theo’s lap clowning around; the camera had caught them both in profile, heads thrown back in laughter, arms twined around each other. That made Vivian the perky blonde, petite and a little pudgy.
Quinn’s easygoing baritone and O’Hara’s higher-pitched tenor floated up the stairs and I nearly dropped the photos. It sounded like they were wrapping up the tour. For a moment, I was tempted to shove the pictures back in the envelope and stick it in my purse. Who would know now, anyway? Instead I turned on my camera phone and quickly photographed them one by one. These were not my pictures. They were someone else’s sweet memories. Already I felt like a grave robber.
O’Hara slammed the vault door shut and I jumped. His voice and Quinn’s grew louder, along with the sound of quick footsteps on the stairs. I taped the envelope back where I’d found it and pulled my hand away. My fingertips brushed something glossy that seemed to have gotten stuck between the drawer and the desk. I tugged on it. More photos, two of them.
These hadn’t been with the others and they were completely different. A school yearbook picture of a young man dressed in a tuxedo. His features seemed somehow off-kilter, or unaligned, and he looked askance at the photographer. I turned the picture over, though I already knew it was Stephen Falcone. He had printed his name in irregular uphill letters and the date: September 1967.
The second picture was blackmail, pure and simple. Maggie Hilliard and Charles Thiessman making love outdoors somewhere. After seeing the photos in the hunting lodge the other night, I recognized Charles, even in profile. The two of them were lying on what looked like a daybed on a sunporch or balcony and obviously unaware of the photo being taken since they were in the middle of having sex. Maggie was half sitting, half lying against a couple of pillows with Charles on top of her, fondling her breasts. I turned the explicit picture over. My face felt hot, as though I’d been the one to catch them in the act.
So that’s what Charles had left out of his story. Maggie, who was supposedly Theo’s girlfriend, was also having an affair with Charles. Had Theo known? If he’d seen this picture, he did. I wondered who had taken it, but it was probably another member of the Mandrake Society.
Charles said he didn’t spend time with them at the Pontiac Island cottage, but the wicker furniture and the blurred background in that photo looked sort of beachy. Had Charles been there the night Maggie died, and lied about that, as well?
I heard Quinn’s muffled voice shout my name. “Where are you?”
“Here! I’m coming!”
If O’Hara caught me rifling through Mel Racine’s desk … I swept up the photos and put them in my purse, along with my phone, and joined Con O’Hara and Quinn.
There was no going back from here.
Chapter 15
“What’d you find?” Quinn said after we’d decoupled from O’Hara and were back in the Porsche. “Obviously it’s something. You’ve gone quiet ever since we left the bank.”
“Photographs of the Mandrake Society,” I said. “I took pictures of the pictures. They’re on my phone.”
We were on the Pacific Coast Highway heading north, the sunlight now softer, filtered through a thin haze of clouds. From here I could no longer see the water. This time I hadn’t put on the Giants cap and Quinn hadn’t turned on the music. Whatever giddy sense of adventure we’d been caught up in earlier in the day had vanished, just like the ocean. We drove past fields and farmland baked by the summer sun and arid from months with no rain, the colors faded and dusty: subdued greens, golds, browns, and tans.
“What else?” he said. “You keep looking at your purse like you’re waiting for a bomb to go off inside.”
How did he know? “A picture of Stephen Falcone, the kid who died during the Man-drake Society’s field tests.”
“And? Something else is really bugging you.”
“Never take me to Vegas and let me play poker. I’ll lose everything.”
He laughed. “So what is it?”
“A picture of Charles Thiessman having sex with Maggie Hilliard. I’m sure they did
n’t know anyone was taking that picture since they were sort of … busy.”
“Those pictures on your phone with the others?” He used that lazy, laconic tone of voice that meant we both knew he already knew the answer. It always put me on the defensive.
“There wasn’t time. You and O’Hara came up the stairs like someone was chasing the pair of you, so I nicked them. Now I wish I hadn’t. They weren’t mine to take. They were Mel Racine’s. He’d tucked them all the way in the back of his top desk drawer. Which he’d locked.”
Quinn gave a one-shoulder shrug of indifference.
“Well,” he said, “you figure if Racine had any family, they would have already cleaned out whatever they wanted. The vault was empty, so someone had been in there taking care of business. My guess is that whoever buys the building will trash all that stuff anyway. So it’s not exactly like you stole the pictures. You just helped with the cleanup.”
“I didn’t borrow them.” I twisted and untwisted the shoulder strap to my purse. “But you have a point. Whatever is still there is going straight into some Dumpster when someone finally buys the building.”
The ocean had slipped back into view. We were only about fifteen miles from San Francisco and Quinn was driving like he had a destination in mind.
“I thought we’d have a drink at the Cliff House,” he said. “We’ll be there in about twenty minutes. I wouldn’t mind looking at those photos, if that’s okay with you?”
“I dragged you into this, didn’t I? Of course it’s okay.”
“Story of you and me.” His voice was light, teasing. “You’re always dragging me into something.”
That was the nearest we’d come to bringing up what had been hanging over us since yesterday: whether or not I’d succeed in dragging him back into my life. Back to Virginia.
