Suicide King (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series)

by Shelley Singer

  “Isn’t it possible?” Rosie asked. “Possible that there’s someone in the party who would do that?”

  “Oh, I suppose it’s possible,” he admitted. “But not for just any madman. You’d have to have money, you’d have to be able to get to people. And you’d have to be getting something out of it.”

  “And who does that describe?” Rosie asked.

  “It used to describe Joe Richmond.”

  “Would it describe someone who was now going to get the backing Richmond had?”

  He rubbed his eyes and looked at her. “It could.”

  The bikini-clad man squatted. His girlfriend climbed onto his back, skates and all. They were laughing hysterically. He skated off, wobbling, carrying her on his shoulders.

  “Could it describe Philip Werner?” I asked.

  “Really? That’s what’s going on now? That son of a bitch. Sure, it could describe him.”

  “I guess you don’t like him.”

  “Not much, no.”

  “Because he was planning to defect if he got Vivo’s backing? Sell his support base to a major party? His status? Isn’t that what you told Noel Chandler?”

  “That’s right. He figured the governorship was unreachable in any case— he might as well get a place in a real power structure.” He sighed, drank, shook his head. “If he’s got enough of Richmond’s people, he’ll get the endorsement.”

  “Well, he could still follow up on his original plan,” Rosie said.

  Carney looked baleful. “Sure, unless he thinks he’s come up with a way to actually win the election.”

  That did sum things up in a nutshell, I had to admit. We all sat there looking at each other for a while, drinking our cold drinks, thinking cold thoughts.

  “Where did you hear that Werner was going to bolt the party?” Rosie asked.

  “One of his own campaign people. He was feeling me out— I’m a bit of a wild card in this game, after all. I didn’t want us to have a candidate, see. And, as it turned out, Werner wasn’t going to be a candidate if he won, anymore than I was. So his people were sort of interested to know what I was ‘really planning.’ If I could see my way clear to support him and promise the support of my people if he got the endorsement. They wanted a deal. They didn’t exactly admit he was going to take his supporters and go somewhere else, but that was the implication. The clear implication. They thought maybe I could go along with that, if I got a piece of what they thought they’d get. I couldn’t. Dishonest piece of shit.”

  “But why would you tell that to Noel Chandler, of all people?” Rosie asked.

  “Because he was sleazing around me in the same kind of way. Trying to get me to throw my support to Richmond. I laughed at him. Told him I’d gotten a better offer.”

  Again, we were all quiet for a moment.

  “Maybe,” he continued, “I’d better get a little more serious about this governor thing. I’ve been thinking about it anyway, since Joe died. I could have lived with him as a candidate. But not Werner. It didn’t matter so much when I thought he wouldn’t run anyway. But if what you say is actually true, and he’s got some idea he can actually win, he has to be stopped. If it’s true. Hell, even if it isn’t. Dishonest piece of shit. Maybe I need to drop out of the thing, turn my support over to Rebecca. Before they get a chance to blow up Bakersfield or merge with the Democrats or whatever they plan to do. They. Werner. What a mess.”

  “Why the hell don’t you just run for real?” I wanted to know. “Go after the endorsement? I mean aside from all those terrific political reasons you gave us a while ago.”

  “Because I don’t want the damned thing, that’s why.”

  I believed him. He didn’t want the damned thing.

  “Tell me this,” I said. “Did Rebecca know you might swing over to her if Joe was out of it?”

  He nodded. “As a matter of fact she did. It’s something we discussed once. And she brought it up again, after he died.”

  When Carney said good-bye to us at our car, I took his arm, made him look me in the eye.

  “James X.,” I said. “Don’t go off half-cocked on any of this. Give us a few more days. Bakersfield isn’t going to get blown up yet. Not for months. Sit on it until you hear from us, okay?”

  “You’ve got a week,” he said. “No more.”

  – 26 –

  MOSTLY, Sacramento is a place I pass through on my way to the Sierra, a not-quite-halfway mark in the trek to Tahoe. Close enough to the Bay Area so some people actually commute, and so government people with nothing better to do can take their nightlife where no one’s paying attention.

  Werner knew we were coming. The night before, I’d called Pam to confirm what she’d learned earlier in the week. He was spending the weekend at his home base. Then I’d called him at home to make an appointment. I didn’t say anything about his skip in Minneapolis; neither did he.

  Rosie and I spent the night in L.A. and flew to Sacramento first thing Sunday morning.

  I had thought about not calling first, about sneaking up on him. But that would have given him an excuse to disappear. If he walked out on me again, with an actual commitment to meet, I swore I’d find some way to skewer the bastard.

  We were supposed to meet him at his law office at 10:00 a.m. It was easy to find. A five-story red brick office building downtown, within sight of the waffle dome of the capitol building. When we got to his office building, it was closed, but the guard checked us off his list, alerted Werner, and sent us upstairs.

  Werner, true to my first impression of him, was dressed in those dumb-looking clothes people wear for hiking. Shorts, camouflage shirt, clunky boots, clunky socks. He looked ten years younger than he’d looked in a suit at the funeral. He was already standing when we walked in, smiled pleasantly, shook hands, and asked us to sit down.

  “I came in for an hour just to talk to you. Then I have to take off.” He gestured vaguely at his hiking gear. “Coffee?” We accepted. He poured us some from a machine near the window and got our orders for milk and sugar. Real milk, from a tiny refrigerator. He sat back down.

  “I’m surprised you’re actually here,” I said, smiling.

  He smiled back. “Look, Samson, I’m sorry if you think I was trying to avoid you in Minneapolis. I wasn’t. It just worked out that way. I got an urgent message from one of the groups I’m working with— a problem we thought we had another month to work on was moving along too fast. I had to catch the next plane back and, to be honest, I forgot about you.” He continued to smile, which did not succeed in making the words friendly.

  “And what problem was that, the important one that came up?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “A new pesticide. Supposed to solve the selenium runoff problems. We think it may be even more dangerous. There’s some big money behind the company, of course.” Selenium. That was the stuff that was poisoning a wildlife refuge somewhere in the state and killing the ducks.

  I accepted that for the moment. I looked appraisingly around his expensive-looking office. “Are you doing it for the cause— or for a fee?”

  “You know, Jake, you’re not exactly charming me.”

  “I’m not trying to.”

  He turned to Rosie. “Is he always this easy to get along with?”

  “Always,” she said.

  He laughed. “Well, good. I’d hate to think I was getting special treatment.” He leaned back in his swivel chair and looked at us benevolently. “You didn’t travel to Sacramento to insult me. What’s up?”

  I was having a problem. It would have been easier for me to distrust him if he’d been dressed in a business suit. He looked too much like a real person dressed as he was. I hadn’t been able to make him hostile, either.

  “There are one or two people who think you’re the perfect candidate for murderer of Joe Richmond. We thought we’d ask you about that,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Sorry, you’ll have to draft someone else.” He sipped his coffee and put his hik
ing boots up on his oak desk. “Why me?” He managed to look mildly curious.

  Rosie answered. “Because you’re second in line for the Vivo endorsement. And whatever support that brings. First, now.”

  He looked surprised. He was not convincing. “Where’d you get that idea? I’m running strong, yes, but Rebecca’s at least as strong. Maybe stronger.”

  “That’s not what everybody else in the party says,” she insisted.

  He gave her a wry smile. “Who have you talked to?”

  “We talked to Maddux,” I said. “And Chandler.”

  “And who else? Ron Lewis? James X. Carney? And Pam Sutherland, what about Pam?” He laughed. “Surely you’ve heard the famous story that I’m a turncoat? How many votes do you think that’s going to win me?”

  Damn, I thought. He stole one of our best questions.

  “Who do you think started the story?” Rosie asked. “Carney?” He shrugged. “Rebecca Gelber?” A much smaller shrug.

  “I think it was started to benefit another candidate, certainly.”

  “Rebecca doesn’t believe the story about you is true,” Rosie said. “That’s what she told us.”

  He pursed his lips, a judicious look I thought he probably practiced in front of the mirror. “She’s the other candidate. She has to look clean and generous.”

  That was true, of course.

  “Chandler says it was all a lie made up by Carney,” I said. “To confuse everyone and make a mess of the convention.”

  Again, he only shrugged.

  “If your supporters can convince people that’s true, you’ll probably get the endorsement.” He gazed out the window, trying not to look bored.

  “And we heard something else, too,” Rosie said. “Although it wasn’t exactly a rumor. More like a tip.” She told him about the anonymous phone call.

  His reaction was odd. Others we’d told had reacted with shock, fear, even anger. Some of their reactions had seemed somehow exaggerated, as if they were trying to convince us that they were appalled. But Werner was a very cool character. He paled slightly, but showed only a moment’s surprise, then, gazing thoughtfully at neither one of us, nodded slightly. He thought for what seemed like a long time.

  Then, to me: “Do you believe it?”

  “I think it’s possible. I don’t want to believe it.”

  “It would be incredibly risky,” he said. “One mistake could destroy Vivo as a party and every serious career politician involved in it.”

  “Not only that,” Rosie said sharply, “They’d make a big mess.”

  “I understand that,” he snapped. “I was merely commenting that it’s also extremely risky.”

  He got out of his chair and walked to the window. He stood there, looking out, hands clasped behind his back, flexing his knees. From where I sat, I couldn’t tell if he had a view of the capitol dome, or maybe could catch a corner of the governor’s mansion. I sighed. Sometimes I miss Jerry Brown.

  “Do you two have a line on who might be hatching a plot like that— if there is one?”

  “We thought it might be you,” I said.

  He turned and frowned at me. “I wish you’d get it through your heads I’m not the only Vivo in this race.” He sat down again. “Since you seem to be going in the wrong direction on this thing, maybe I’ll look into it myself.”

  “If it’s true,” I warned, “that could be dangerous.”

  He laughed, stirred his coffee with his finger, finished it off. “It already is. Was there anything else you wanted to know about?”

  I told him we wanted to know where he was when Richmond died, and where he went after Richmond’s funeral.

  “The day Joe died, I was here in town. I was meeting with some people who are part of a statewide conservation group. We were working on that pesticide crap I was telling you about. And I told you where I went after the funeral. I flew back here for another meeting the next day. Some of the same people.”

  “I hate to keep sounding suspicious, Phil, but how about you give us their names and numbers, just so we can double-check?”

  “No problem, Jake,” he said, imitating my ironic friendliness. He consulted a leather-covered address book, and wrote out three names and numbers. “And maybe it would help if I showed you this stuff.” He went to an oak file cabinet in the corner, opened it, and pulled out a file labeled “Fielding Agricultural Products.” He handed it to me. I looked through the papers, passing them on to Rosie. Correspondence, newspaper clippings, copies of testing information. I read some of it. He was definitely involved in working on the project he described. There was definitely some time pressure involved in it. Other than that, we’d have to talk to the people whose names he’d given us.

  “Where were those meetings in Sacramento?” Rosie asked. He gave her the name of a motel. Good move, I thought. A backup check in case some of the people whose names we had weren’t telling the truth. Rosie obviously trusted Werner as much as I did.

  We said good-bye, wished him a pleasant hike, or whatever it was he was planning on doing in his hiking clothes, and left. The sky was clouding up. Looked like a late-season rain was coming, probably the last of the year. We climbed into our rental car and prepared for a damp Sunday in the metropolis of the central valley, checking up on Philip Werner. I hoped his pretty hiking clothes got wet.

  – 27 –

  WE didn’t reach everyone on our list, but close enough. We even found a motel employee who remembered the meetings, and Werner was on the books— he’d reserved and paid for the meeting rooms. It wasn’t until late evening that we finished, so we stayed over and drove home the next morning.

  We had agreed, by this time, on a couple of possible solutions, and were planning return visits with several people in the Bay Area. We weren’t sure how we could force the issue and knew it would have to be attacked from more than one side, since there was no way to be sure yet who was involved in what. But we were beginning to feel we were coming close.

  Rosie went off to pick up Alice from the friend who’d been keeping her and I took care of my own housekeeping. Tigris and Euphrates had stayed home, fed by a neighbor who had also carried my mail to the front porch and stuck it under a long-unoccupied flowerpot. The cats were waiting in the kitchen, with numerous complaints. I fed them, told them they were gorgeous, dropped my suitcase on the bed, and glanced through my mail. My dentist was concerned that I was neglecting my dental health and urged me to call for an appointment soon. A couple of bills. I checked my answering machine for messages.

  Marietta had called.

  “Hello, Jake. This is Marietta Marple— just a joke, she was old. Marietta Richmond, of course. I wanted you to know that I have continued to be hot on the trail of my daughter-in-law. Actually, she’s my former daughter-in-law now, isn’t she? That, at least, is a relief.

  “I stole Emily’s little diary, or journal, or whatever it is. I went to visit her to extend my mutual grief and I stole it. I don’t think she had anything to do with killing my son. There’s nothing in that book but poetry. Not a word about murder, although with poetry it’s hard to tell, isn’t it?

  “Anyway, I can’t think of anyone else in the family who could have done it and Emily’s gone back to L.A. I need your advice, dear. Please call and set me moving again. Bye.”

  Set her moving again? That was the last thing I wanted to do.

  The second message was from Gerda.

  “This is Gerda Steiner. This is Saturday afternoon. I am calling because I think something is funny with Cassandra. She will not talk to me. I think you must talk with her again.”

  The third message was from Cassandra.

  “Hello. This is Cassandra calling. It’s Monday morning. I don’t know why I’m calling you, but I don’t know where else to go. Please call me back.”

  Hearing her on the phone helped. It was a habit of speech, her way of saying “I don’t know,” with strong emphasis on the “know.” Something small, that stuck in a crevice in m
y brain. I’d heard her say it when we’d talked to her about Richmond’s fling with Gelber. And the anonymous caller had whispered it the same way. I was almost sure.

  There was a fourth message, too, this one from Rebecca Gelber.

  “Jake, please call, or come over. I’ll be home all day and evening— this is Monday. It’s very important.”

  This was still Monday. I tapped out Gerda and Cassandra’s number. No answer. No machine. I called Rosie and told her about the messages, about Cassandra’s voice. We met in the driveway, jumped into Rosie’s pickup, and drove the few blocks to the storefront apartment.

  “Gerda’s car isn’t here,” Rosie said. “Or Cassandra’s.”

  I banged on the front door. Nothing. Put my eye to a two-inch gap in the canvas window covering. No one. Rosie had found another gap in the one on the other side. She didn’t see anything, either. We went around to the back of the building and found the outside stairs. The back door had no window. I banged on it. There was a good-sized, uncovered window about two feet from the tiny, railed back porch. I climbed up, one foot on the railing and the other on a narrow ledge that ran just below the window, holding tight to the back door molding and grabbing the window frame, and looked in. A clean kitchen, with two doors leading to two bedrooms just beyond. All very tidy. No immediate sign of any violence. If there were any corpses, they were lying tucked up on a bedroom floor in a corner. I edged my foot backward along the ledge, brought it to the railing, turned, and jumped back down to the porch floor. I looked at Rosie and shrugged.

  “Should we break in?” she asked.

  I was reluctant. There was no sign of anyone, no cars. Everything pointed to an empty apartment. I looked around. Just down the block, an elderly woman was peeking over her fence, watching us. All we needed at this point was to have to waste time with the cops.

  We drove to College Avenue, found a phone booth, and called Gelber.

  The husband answered.

  “Samson? Good. Rebecca’s been trying to reach you. You’d better get over here right now.” He hung up. Wonderful. I loved the guy.