by Joanne Pence
His smile vanished and a flash of irritation filled his face.
“Thank you for the lovely meal,” she said quickly. “I had a nice time.”
His countenance relaxed as he took her hand. “Me, too. Maybe we can do this again?”
“I hope so,” she said.
He leaned forward and gave her a kiss. She didn’t stop him, but she did nothing to deepen the kiss or to encourage him. He stepped back as if knowing her heart wasn’t in it. “I’ll call,” he promised.
“Thanks. Good-night.” With that, she entered the breezeway, shut the door behind her, and then took a deep breath of relief. But as she walked along the breezeway, working her jaw because it actually had begun to ache from all that smiling, she was suddenly struck with guilt that she hadn’t been nicer to him. Logically, there was nothing wrong with the man. He might have been excruciatingly boring simply because it was their first date, or “almost” date, and he was nervous. Maybe she should go out with him again. To give him another chance and all.
Was she being unfair?
She stepped past the breezeway into the yard and froze.
Richie sat on the bench by the planter box playing catch with Spike. He wore a heavy black turtleneck sweater and black slacks. For some reason, she always found a black turtleneck on a man wonderfully sexy. “Where’s your friend?” he asked with a smile and a too jolly tone to his voice.
Her initial reaction was joy at seeing him, but his smile squashed that. And then she had to wonder why he was there. He had a cup of coffee at his side—she recognized the cup from her apartment. Nothing like making yourself at home, Amalfi, she thought. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more irritated she grew, as if all the smiles and niceness she had forced upon herself while with Seymour, had drained her of any further good will. “What in the hell are you doing here?”
His infuriating smile grew broader. A lot broader. “I’m glad to see you didn’t invite him in. That would have been awkward.”
“Only for you when I threw you out!” she shouted. “If you’re through spying on me, you can leave now.”
Her apartment door was wide open so she stormed inside, took hold of the door and spun around to slam it, when Spike trotted forward to enter the apartment with Richie right behind him.
“You look nice,” he said softly as he took the door from her and shut it. “Real nice.” His gaze drifted over her dress and high heels. He seemed to swallow hard.
So did she. Something in his gaze made her feel warm inside. “I don’t always wear jeans, you know.” She tried to keep an angry tone. It wasn’t working.
“I know.” He stepped towards her.
Her breathing quickened and she stepped back. “Aren’t you supposed to be working tonight?”
“They can manage without me.”
She tossed the handbag and coat she’d been carrying onto the sofa. “I won’t even ask how you knew I went to dinner with Bran—to talk about my case, by the way—but since you did, why put yourself in the position of being here if I invited him in?”
“Bran, is it? How chummy. And I’m sure his interest was totally about your murder investigation.” His mouth tightened, and he marched into the kitchen. “Want some coffee? I’m here because I’ve got news about the case.” His voice was curt and hard now. “And that would be true even if that muscular bobble head-looking FBI honcho had come in here with you.”
And then he added, “Of course, seeing me here, he might not have stayed …”
So he did care that she went out with Brandon. For some reason, she found the thought exceedingly pleasing. “No thanks on the coffee. What’s your news?”
He took from his pocket what she immediately recognized as Audrey Poole’s cell phone. He then sat beside her, turned the phone on and showed her some of the most interesting findings. “The first thing you need to know is the phone was under Audrey’s mother’s name, Cynthia Poole. Audrey apparently also used her deceased mother’s credit card to pay for it. That’s why you couldn’t find anything connected with this phone.”
Rebecca nodded. “Clever.”
He continued. “There are a number of calls between Audrey Poole and Sean Hinkle. She told me they were in bed together more because of business than love, and I mean that literally. Particularly the past two weeks, Audrey and Hinkle spoke daily, sometimes more than once a day. The last day of her life, a number of phone calls passed between them, including one at eleven, a couple of hours before her death.”
“Eleven?” That was enough time for them to arrange to meet at Pinocchio’s on Union a little before midnight. Rebecca now had a good idea who Audrey might have met with the night she was killed.
“Shay told me that the details of her offshore holding company are kept on an overseas private server in the Bahamas, and she would log into it from the phone. Just about everything was done on it, particularly setting up her real estate deals.” He stood, handed her the phone and then moved to the rocking chair facing the sofa, as if he was uncomfortable sitting so close to her. She had to admit, she found his nearness a definite distraction.
He quickly added, “Audrey also had a number of calls from my friend, the building inspector.”
She tried to pay attention to what he was saying. “Your friend?”
“Not really. He’s a big, balding fellow who I suspect helped her find distressed property to sell, although she denied it when I asked. Still, a lie or two meant nothing to Audrey.”
She was finding this tale confusing. “Audrey lied to you?”
“She lied.”
“I see,” Rebecca said, trying to put this together with the details she had learned from Brandon. “So your pal the building inspector found places for Audrey to buy for less than they were worth.”
“Exactly. From what I’ve seen, if he found a house that fit what Audrey wanted, the fix was in,” Richie said. “He would give the owner some bad news, the owner would then call Audrey for help, and, like magic, she’d come up with foreign investors for a prime piece of real estate at a distressed property price.”
“Are you sure?”
He shook his head. “I have no proof, if that’s what you’re asking. But it makes sense, especially in light of the reaction of the building inspector to my attempt to bribe him.”
Did she hear that right? “You tried to bribe a building inspector?”
“Of course. I’ve been fairly lucky getting ‘extras’ from people in city government for a few bucks. Not all, by any means, but let’s just say quite a bit of business is done under the table. I tried that, and the inspector said he wasn’t interested. He wouldn’t consider doing anything with the property other than suggesting the owner have Audrey sell it. That tells me a lot.”
She just shook her head. She wondered if she’d ever ‘get’ these people the way Richie did. She had been scrolling through the list of personal contacts as they talked, but now she stopped. “There are so many names here.”
“She was in business a long time,” Richie offered. “Let me show you something else Shay came up with.” He opened up a spread sheet. It showed a great number of high payments going into an offshore bank account, and also a lot of payments leaving it. “Shay found payments from the holding company going to one name in Audrey’s contacts that isn’t an investor. The name is Sean Hinkle.” Richie continued.
“Sean,” she murmured. “Again, the city government connection.”
“Which means a lot of people you probably don’t want to upset,” Richie said. “Especially since you work for them.”
“I’ll go wherever this investigation takes me.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Richie muttered. “So tell me, who is your prime suspect?”
“You know I can’t discuss an on-going investigation.”
“Motive?”
She shook her head.
“What can you tell me?”
Her shoulders sagged. “Only that we’re going in circles, and nothing
makes sense.”
“Earlier today, I met with one of the most influential people on Audrey’s phone contacts, one she’s exchanged a number of calls with. Milton Jang, head of the Five Families Association in Chinatown. He knew a lot about Audrey’s business. More than she had admitted to, in fact.”
He explained everything to her, from Audrey’s offshore holding company, to the involvement of Yan Jian Sheh, aka Timothy Yan, aka “The Cobra,” in wanting to purchase the building with Kiki’s spa.
She frowned. She’d already run into several Chinese names in this investigation, and they were still pretty much a mystery to her. “Okay, so this Cobra apparently wants the building with Kiki’s spa,” she said. “So, by attacking her and Inga, especially if he killed them both, the spa would be closed and Audrey could make the sale, and the Cobra would be happy, right?”
“Right.”
“So, why would he kill Audrey?” she asked.
He thought a moment. “Maybe because she was the only one who could point to him as the killer. Or, I should say, his men. Guys like the Cobra never do their own wet work.”
“Wet work? That sounds like something Shay might say.”
“Except it’s true. Audrey said she had an idea who might be behind all this, but she was scared to name him. With the Cobra, that would make sense. I’d be too scared to name him, too, frankly.”
“That’s awful,” Rebecca murmured.
“I want to help you find whoever killed her, Rebecca.” His words were firm and harsh.
“I know you do, and we’ll find him—or her. We won’t give up,” Rebecca said.
“Audrey wasn’t a bad person,” he said. “And she didn’t deserve to die this way.”
Rebecca studied him a moment, then nodded. “The hardest part of my job is to face friends and families of victims because so often they’re exactly that—good, innocent people, trying to get along and make a go of it in a tough world, and they pay the ultimate price. That’s also why I care about my job. If I do it right, I can get some justice for those victims. I know it’s not much in the end, but it’s better than them being forgotten.”
His gaze met and studied hers a long while. “I have to agree with you,” he murmured. “Still, you can’t forget that Audrey was involved with big money players, and they know you’re involved in the search for her killer. Milton Jang is a friend, somewhat, and he tried to warn me. He doesn’t think the Cobra or any triad was involved in Audrey’s murder, but they could well be involved in her business. If you dig too close to them, things will become very dangerous for you.”
“I hear you,” she said. “I don’t really believe I’m in any danger at this time.” She sighed. “But now, I’ve got to get some sleep. I’m on-call tonight.”
He walked to the door. “No, you’re not. Was that the excuse you used to give Brandon Seymour the heave-ho tonight?”
She studied him a long moment. “You’ll never know, will you?”
He rolled his eyes and faced the door, but then turned back, put his hands on her shoulders, pulled her close, and as he wrapped his arms around her, he gave her a kiss that could have set her hair on fire. She didn’t want to think that she kissed him back, but she probably did. Probably, definitely did.
All she knew for sure was that she could scarcely catch her breath as he let her go and left the apartment.
Poor Brandon, she thought, as she contemplated the difference between the two goodnight kisses. He didn’t stand a chance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Bridget McMillan stuffed a bunch of clothes into her suitcase and put them in her car. She should have left as soon as she heard Audrey Poole had been murdered, but she’d wanted to finish a couple of accounts first. Stupid, stupid! But she took pride in her work. She’d been an accountant for over thirty years, and she was a darn good one.
And Audrey Poole’s Bay-to-Breakers Realty was her top client. Bridget had never before known anyone who’d been murdered. Even living in a big city where crime was fairly common compared to her hometown, Laramie, Wyoming, she still hadn’t known anyone violently killed, or even assaulted. Not a single robbery or burglary, in fact. Until now.
At least, she told herself, no one should care what she was doing with “B2B,” which was how she showed the company’s name in her books, or that she might know much at all about the offshore holding company. And no one should care that she had access to the names connected to the accounts, should they? Of course not. Nothing to worry about.
She took a few deep breaths to calm herself as she finished packing her car and put a bag of Funions, a box of Ding Dongs, and a package of Pecan Sandies on the passenger seat in case she got hungry as she drove. Plus a sixteen-ounce bottle of diet Pepsi. Ms. Poole’s death was a random robbery attempt, she told herself, not anyone wanting to murder her because of who, or what, she was. This was so because it had to be.
But Bridget couldn’t be sure of that, and some of the people Audrey had worked with were well-known, too well-known. And some were dangerous.
Bridget was heading up the coast to the small house she’d bought a few years back, a vacation get-away just for her. She’d stay there until the police caught Audrey’s killer. A week or two should do it, she hoped. The house was on a half-acre, near the town of Jenner.
She told her friend Dory where she was going, but other than that, no one particularly knew or cared what she did. She pretended she liked her life that way, pretended she didn’t, at times, ache with loneliness. But other times, such as now, it wasn’t a lie at all. She wanted nothing so much as to hide.
At seven o’clock, she got into her car and headed north. It would be dark before she reached the Sonoma coast and Jenner, but she knew the road well. It didn’t scare her.
Truth be told, the scariest part of the drive was along Highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway, which was filled with treacherous sharp curves along the sides of cliffs that, if missed, would result in a deadly drop to the rocks and water far below. She was always careful driving that highway, despite the people who would tailgate and give her the finger for her cautious speed. Better safe than sorry was her motto.
She soon saw the Golden Gate Bridge in her rear-view mirror. Being no fool, she stayed on the multi-laned Highway 101 as long as she could, but at Petaluma, she had to turn westward towards the ocean. By nine o’clock she had reached Highway 1. This part of the road, this part of the state, was quite empty. A couple of cars came up behind her, and as soon as she found a space to move over, she did, or they took a chance on one of the infrequent straight stretches of road to pass her. She hated people passing, but she hated speeding even more.
She was past Bodega Bay and going along a patch of highway edging the ocean when a large truck pulled up behind her. It came so close she could make out its Dodge logo. She slowed down a bit, hoping the driver would pass. Instead, he slowed down and came even closer. She would have pulled over except there was no room. The ocean was on her left, and a hillside on her right. She tried speeding up, but the truck stayed with her.
All right, she thought. If he was going to be that way, she’d slow down until he was forced to pass.
The truck hit her back bumper. She jolted forward as fear coursed through her. Was he crazy?
She sped up again, hoping to find a space to pull over, another road, a driveway, anything, to get away from the madman.
The road curved, and she could feel her little Nissan Versa trying to hug the pavement as she went into the turn far too rapidly. It was a great car for city driving, for those times when she didn’t simply take the bus. It was especially great for squeezing into tiny parking spaces so she didn’t have to spend $20 for a half-hour to park in a lot. But at the moment, she wished she were driving a tank.
The back of the car skidded from side-to-side, scaring her. She automatically put on the brakes, only to find the truck right behind her again.
She kept going, driving fast when the road straightened, and slowing down bef
ore hitting a curve. No one else was anywhere out here. She would have tried to call for help, except that she knew from experience there was no cell service in this area.
She might have tried to flag down a passing driver, except that she couldn’t imagine anyone stopping for her. And besides, there were no passing drivers.
Perspiration beaded on her forehead. She didn’t know if her car had begun to shake, or if she was doing it.
The truck hit her again.
What’s wrong with him?
She felt tears come to her eyes. Tears of fright and frustration. There were no street lights out here. Nothing except the small headlights of her car, and the enormous beams from the truck that filled her car and bounced off her rear view mirror, all but blinding her. Fear tried to paralyze her, but she fought it. She kept her gaze glued to the white line between the lanes, though at times, she drifted way over it when taking a curve.
Why is he doing this to me?
The truck hit her again, much harder this time, causing her neck to snap forward and back. The thought flashed momentarily that some damage might have been done; that she would have to go to the doctor and probably wear a neck brace. But that thought immediately vanished for one much more pressing.
The truck all but latched onto her rear bumper, and was now pushing her. She tried to steer around a curve. She turned, but only a little. And her car no longer gripped the road.
Soon, she felt nothing beneath her tires but air.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Rebecca spent Saturday and Sunday with Kiki’s children. Kiki’s doctors reported that there was no longer any fluid leakage, and the brain swelling was receding. Kiki wasn’t out of the woods yet, but everyone was hopeful.
Rebecca didn’t hear anything more from Brandon or Richie, so it turned out that the only male she met with all weekend for a little food and wine was her landlord, Bradley Frick.
At times, life was the pits.
First thing Monday morning, Rebecca headed for City Hall. Although it was still located on Van Ness Avenue, in the same place as always, a few years ago the good superintendents of the city decided to change the street name of its location to “Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place,” named after a medical doctor, civil rights leader, newspaper publisher, and local political force. That simple change caused an untold amount of confusion to newcomers to the city, and even, for a while, the US Post Office.
