Two O'Clock Heist: A Rebecca Mayfield Mystery (The Rebecca Mayfield Mysteries Book 2)

by Joanne Pence

  “Don’t forget these,” Richie said, dropping in her black Victoria’s Secret undies. Normally, she would have had a choice word or two for him that would have wiped the smile from his face into the next county, but right now, she couldn’t manage more than a grimace.

  She zipped the carry-on shut. “Wait! I can’t go. What about Spike? What if he comes back home and no one is here?”

  “While you were packing I called a couple guys, explained the situation. If anyone can find him, they can.”

  She had no reason to believe him, knew it might be next to impossible for his “guys” or anyone else to find her pet, and knew the odds against finding him alive. But at this moment, it felt good to have someone to put her trust in.

  He took her suitcase and hurried towards the sidewalk, but before they left the breezeway, she halted.

  “Stop!” she said. “I’ll leave, but I’m not going to your house. I can find a hotel somewhere.”

  “Do you know the price for a decent one in this city? And, trust me, you do not want to go to a cheap place. Especially if anyone there finds out you’re a cop.”

  She drew in her breath, but he was right. She rubbed her forehead, trying to think, but her mind felt empty. “I guess Kiki’s flat isn’t far enough away.”

  “I’d say not.” He looked at her with a strange combination of exasperation and something akin to pity.

  If the Russian mob was in fact after her, how could she put any friend at risk? She thought of her co-workers. All men, and all engaged or married except for Bo Benson. She didn’t want to put him in an awkward position by asking if she could stay with him. People gossiping about them living together might not be a career enhancer for him. “Stop. I’ve got to report this.”

  They walked to his car and he put her suitcase in the trunk as she called her boss, Lieutenant James Philip Eastwood. She didn’t bother with preliminaries, but told him about going to a business looking for the husband of a friend, and it turned out to be owned by the Russian mafia. They didn’t like her questions, and fire-bombed her car and trashed her apartment. She left out details of her friend’s death.

  “Good God!” Eastwood exclaimed. “Was this connected to one of your cases?”

  “Not at all,” she said.

  “I’ll send CSI to go over both car and apartment. Keep away from your apartment. Do you have a place you can stay? A friend’s house maybe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’ll let you know what we find out. In the meantime, I’ll warn others in the department. Sometimes the Russians take their threats out on anyone close to the one they’re upset with. That could be any of us.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said.

  “Well, how were you to know? Anyway, come in tomorrow at nine so we can deal with this.”

  “Yes, sir.

  “Now, wait for CSI, then clear out. Let them do their job.”

  “I will, sir.” Last of all, she gave him the location of her car and the Golden Gate Garage, then threw in her apartment to save him the trouble of looking it up.

  Richie had waited outside the car as she spoke to her boss, and when the call ended, he got into the car. “I’ve got to wait for CSI to arrive,” she told him.

  He nodded. “Did Eastwood offer protection or a place for you to stay?”

  “No. He knows I can take care of myself.”

  He studied her. “My offer still stands—my place.”

  She realized he was her best choice. But still … “How do I say this? If I’m there, I don’t want any”—she struggled for the words—“funny business.”

  He grinned at the old-fashioned term. “Just think of me as your guardian angel.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Sorry, but you’re no angel. On the other hand, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Good.”

  They waited in silence for CSI. After a while, he asked, “So, are you seeing anyone?”

  That surprised her. “Not that it has anything to do with anything, but yes. There’s a pharmacist.”

  “A pharmacist? My.”

  Something about his comment made her grit her teeth. She had no idea why, but she felt compelled to add, “And a guy who works at Kiki’s spa.”

  “Oh, a spa guy. Super. Does he put the cute little umbrellas in the fruit fizz?”

  She grimaced. “He’s a masseuse.”

  “A hands-on guy. I see.”

  “Not funny.”

  “Finally, something I agree with.”

  She was glad to see the CSI pull up. She got out of the car, showed Crime Scene Inspector Pacheco to her apartment, gave him her keys, and then left.

  o0o

  Richie drove in silence to Twin Peaks boulevard, taking a number of small winding streets up to his house, a mid-century modern structure with a garage on street level and directly over it, the living room with an enormous picture window taking full advantage of the view of the Bay Bridge and East Bay hills in the distance.

  His silence made her feel both awkward and overwhelmed by all that had just happened to her dog, his friend, her crummy little apartment, and even the conversation they just had about “funny business” and the men—or lack thereof—in her life. That last conversation had broken off with too much left unsaid. She wanted to explain.

  He pulled into the garage and stopped the car. Instead of getting out, she stared at her lap a moment, then said, “My staying at your house like this is awkward for me. But I want to be clear. You once told me you could never see yourself dating a cop.” She faced front, still not looking at him. “This situation, this danger, only shows that you’re right. It shows why a cop shouldn’t get close to civilians ... not even to an ugly little mutt that nobody else wants.” Her voice broke, but she kept her shoulders square, her jaw rigid until she regained control.

  He turned towards her. “Rebecca, don’t.”

  She opened the passenger door and got out.

  She tried to open the front trunk to get her things, jerking on it several times, but it was locked.

  “I’ll get it.” He released the lock. He started to lift her carry-on out of the trunk when she took it from him.

  “I can handle it!”

  He clamped his jaw tight, and picked up the clothes on hangers.

  She marched towards the stairs up to his kitchen. At the top of the stairs, she tried to open the door, twisting the knob back and forth, but it, too, was locked.

  He shifted her clothes, dangled the house key in the air a moment, then without a word, casually slid it in the lock and opened the door.

  She stepped into the middle of the large kitchen with blue, gray, and white granite countertops and white cabinets, and felt like a cranky teenager having a temper tantrum. “I’m sorry, Richie. You’re trying to be nice and I’m treating you horribly. It’s not you, it’s me. I appreciate your help. I really do.”

  He met her gaze. “I know you do, even if you have a hard time admitting it. Come on. I’ll show you to your room.” He headed across the living room to the side of the house with the bedrooms. She followed.

  The guest room was quite nice, decorated in pale blues and taupe. It wasn’t in any way frilly, but had a crisp, clean feel to it. He opened the closet door and she helped him hang her clothes in it. That done, he pointed to a door on the far wall. “You have your own bathroom.”

  “Thank you.” She faced him. “Just give me a minute, and then we should go to the hospital.”

  He started out of the room, but stopped and looked at her. “Someday, Rebecca, I hope you and I can be together and think of nothing but having a good time.”

  She gave him a small smile as she admitted. “Me, too.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Richie’s head felt like the Tsarist Army was trampling through it with heavy boots and a gazillion horses. Maybe a Siberian wooly mammoth or two.

  He and Rebecca didn’t get back to his house until 3:30 in the morning. Carlo Fiori was lucky in that the worst of
the burns were on his hands and arms as he protected his face and ran free of the car. Still, he faced a painful recovery.

  Richie heard Rebecca walking around at 7 a.m. He tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t stop his brain from racing over all that had happened the day before. When he learned about her morning meeting with Eastwood, he had given her the keys to his BMW. He hoped the Russians who fire-bombed her Explorer—and he was sure they were behind everything—didn’t go after his Beemer in the same way.

  He knew she would be tied up with Eastwood for a while, and since he couldn’t sleep, he decided to take care of business. But first, he had to deal with his mother.

  Early Sunday morning always—religiously—found her at 9 a.m. mass at Saints Peter and Paul Church in North Beach. She always sat in the same pew with her Italian lady friends. In fact, they even rotated the assigned “duty” to get there early to save seats. He went there and told her he couldn’t make it to dinner that Sunday the way he usually did.

  She and her friends had him sit next to her to talk and then persuaded him to stay for mass. It didn’t take much persuading when he imagined crazy Russians after him and Rebecca. Deep down, he probably wanted to stay, which was why he hadn’t simply phoned his regrets.

  From the church, he continued down Powell Street to Big Caesar’s.

  He parked in the back of the club next to Uncle Silvio’s truck, a truck filled with cases of unlabeled wine bottles. He again wondered who had snitched to the ABC.

  His Uncle Silvio had produced red wine for himself, family and friends for years. Over that time, people constantly said he should bottle and sell it. So, three years ago, when he had a particularly fantastic crop of grapes, he decided to get serious. A couple of goombas convinced him that obtaining a license to sell wholesale was no big deal.

  Yeah, as if doing anything with the government was ever easy, Richie thought. Who were they kidding?

  Plus, this was California. Everything was a problem here, and you never knew which group you’d come up against. On one side was the “anything goes” crowd, those who held their hands out and looked the other way as long as their palms were sufficiently greased. On the other side were the obstructionists, those who followed the letter of the law so closely and carefully, they would go back to the time before California was even a state if it meant finding a reason to deny you whatever simple little thing you wanted to do.

  The California department of Alcohol Beverage Control was firmly in the latter camp. Despite assurances that Silvio’s wine could be bottled and sold, when all 5000-plus bottles of it were ready to go, the ABC refused to give him a license because he hadn’t gone through all the steps required by the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, an arm of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. When Uncle Silvio went to the ATTB, however, they pointed to California ABC’s rules and regulations saying that they weren’t being met, and that state law had to be complied with.

  Richie’s elderly uncle was going crazy with all these rules and regulations written in a style no normal human being could begin to understand. The party of the first part …

  Eventually, Silvio put all 420 cases of wine into a truck and drove it to Richie’s house. He asked Richie to “get rid of it” for him.

  When Richie opened a bottle, he was stunned to realize that although it hadn’t aged long, it tasted a lot like a great Italian Barolo Riserva, one of the more expensive reds around.

  His uncle told him that if he could sell it for four dollars a bottle, he’d recoup the money he put into making and bottling it. All he wanted was to get his twenty-thousand dollars back. Since California had recently enacted a law saying it was okay to sell homemade wines at charity events, that was good enough for Richie. Charity began at home, and without this money, his uncle might go broke and become a burden to the state.

  Richie contacted a number of friends who owned restaurants, and offered them the wine for free, along with a donation of six dollars a bottle. He’d keep the extra two bucks a bottle for himself, and make about ten large for his time. He figured that if the guys who took the wine happened to mix Silvio’s wines with the house wines used to serve their customers, it wasn’t his fault.

  He sold about a third of Uncle Silvio’s wine that way; and that was when his problems began.

  As restaurant owners served the wine as a house red, customers who knew wines started to rave about it, and sent friends to taste the great red being poured.

  Word spread, and people soon began asking about the brand and year. As the restaurant owners said it was a secret, curiosity and interest grew.

  Three people who weren’t even friends came to Richie with requests for ten cases each. Richie was surprised. He charged the first person ten dollars a bottle; the second fifteen; and when the third gladly paid twenty dollars per, Richie knew he was sitting on something special.

  And that, he guessed, was what brought the state license bureau nosing around.

  He got into the truck and drove it to Vito’s driveway in the Marina district. Vito was at work. He did indoor house-painting when he wasn’t making more money by helping Richie with his various projects, which was most of the time.

  Richie left him a message saying the truck was at his house, and then took a cab back to Big Caesar’s to pick up his Porsche. He was tempted to drive over to the Hall of Justice to make sure his Beemer was okay out there in the parking lot, but he guessed if a parking lot filled with cops’ personal cars wasn’t a safe place to leave in car in the city, there was no hope for the rest of them.

  Not that he wanted to go there because he was worried about Rebecca Mayfield.

  Or, so he wanted to believe.

  o0o

  Earlier that morning, on the way to work for Eastwood’s special meeting, Rebecca drove to her apartment and spent twenty minutes looking for Spike with no luck. She didn’t try Bradley and Kiki’s flats. If either of them had found Spike, they would have called her. Besides, she and Richie had stopped by her apartment after leaving the hospital and had spent more time searching. But they found no trace of him.

  Feeling as if her heart had been ripped out, she continued on to Homicide.

  She kept her mouth shut as her boss, Lieutenant Eastwood strode out of his office to Homicide’s main room. He was of medium build, 49 years of age, but had grayed prematurely and now had a thick head of silver-colored hair that he wore swept to one side with a perceptive wave and a small pomp above his forehead. He had also called her partner and the weekend on-call team, Luis Calderon and Bo Benson, into the bureau for the meeting. He put his other two detectives, Paavo Smith and Toshiro Yoshiwara, on speaker phone.

  Eastwood began to speak in a grave tone, repeating Rebecca’s tale to him, and warning everyone that if the Russian mafia was after one of their own, they all needed to take special precautions. No one had noticed anything out of the ordinary so far. The meeting ended with everyone telling Rebecca to be on the alert and wishing her well.

  Bill Sutter stopped in front of her on his way out the door, a cup of Starbucks in his hand. “You should have called me as well as Eastwood.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think they would want to escalate things.”

  “Except that they’re mafia, and that’s what they do,” he said scowling. “What if I’d gotten into my car this morning and it blew up? How would you feel then, Mayfield?”

  “I’m all but positive you’re safe, Sutter. I’ve knocked over a hornet’s nest all by myself,” she said.

  Sutter put down his coffee then flattened his palms on the desk and leaned close. “I saw you leave day before yesterday with Richie Amalfi, and next thing I know, you’ve got the Russians after you.”

  “One has nothing to do with the other.”

  “Doesn’t it? I don’t like the guy. We should have jailed him when we had the chance and thrown away the key.” He straightened and rubbed the spot on his jaw where Richie had nearly knocked
him out.

  “This has nothing to do with him.” She tried to sound calm and not vexed.

  Sutter’s eyes narrowed. “All I know is, the last time you went all secretive on me, it had plenty to do with him.”

  “That was long ago.”

  “A couple months? The two of you seemed to hit it off surprisingly well. He’s no good for you, Mayfield.”

  She was tempted to point out that Richie had saved her life when Sutter decided to leave her on her own to go to dinner. Instead, she simply muttered, “I know,” and then turned to her computer, pushing buttons and staring at the screen.

  Sutter picked up his coffee. “Do yourself a favor and keep away from him.”

  “You have a beef with Amalfi,” she said, her voice low and hard, “take it up with him. Leave me out of it.”

  o0o

  Before long, Rebecca was alone in Homicide once again. She immediately phoned her neighbor, Kiki, and after that, her landlord, Bradley Frick. She told them about the break-in, and discovered they had talked to the CSI team who assured them she was all right. She asked them to be on the look-out for Spike, and also promised she wouldn’t return to her apartment until she was sure her being there wouldn’t endanger anyone. Both sounded simultaneously worried about her safety and relieved for their own.

  Next, she phoned Detective Larry Wong on his cell phone. She thought it was time to introduce herself, and hoped he would have time to meet her today.

  “Hello.”

  “Detective Wong? This is—”

  “Sorry. He’s not here. He’s gone for a run. Left his cell behind. This is Jason, his husband. Can I take a message?”

  “Yes. This is Inspector Mayfield in San Francisco. Just ask him to give me a call, please.”

  “Oh, yes. He told me you’d shown up at a crime scene. Interesting. You’re trying to find out about the houseboat murder, we take it.”

  She was stunned. The cops she knew weren’t supposed to discuss their current investigations with their spouses or anyone else outside the force. “Yes, I hope to meet Detective Wong to—”

  “It’s quite sad,” Jason said. “Young woman with a kid. Such a shame the way people get into things they shouldn’t.”