McCone and Friends Page 13

  I speeded up, then slowed to the inconspicuous, zombie-like pace of a window shopper, stopping in front of the cookware shop next door. Kirby hadn’t gone all the way inside, was standing in the entrance talking with a man I recognized as Ben Waterson. They kept it up for a couple of minutes, and it didn’t look like a pleasant conversation. The security man scowled and shook his head, while Kirby went red in the face and gestured angrily at the store. Finally he turned and rushed back my way, nearly bowling over a toddler whose mom wasn’t watching her. I did an about-face and started walking toward Lucky.

  Kirby brushed past me, his pace fast and jerky. People in the mall and the grocery store gave him a wide berth. By the time I got back to the Wreck, he was already burning rubber. The Wreck picked that minute to go temperamental on me, and I knew I’d lost him.

  Well, hell. I decided to run by his house again. No RX-7. I checked the parking lot and streets around McAteer. Nothing. Then the only sensible thing to do was drive over to the McDonald’s on Ocean and treat myself to a Quarter Pounder with cheese, large fries, and a Diet Coke. The Diet Coke gave me the illusion I was limiting calories.

  I spent most of the afternoon parked on Teresita. I’d brought along one of those little hot apple pies they sell at McDonald’s; by the time I finished it, I’d had enough excess for one day.

  I’d had enough of stakeouts, too, but I stayed in place until Kirby’s car finally pulled up at around quarter to five. I waited until he was inside the house, then went up and rang the bell.

  While I was sitting there, I’d tried to figure out what was so off-putting about Kirby Dalson. When he answered the door, I hit on it. He was a good-looking kid—well built and tall, with nice dark hair, even when it was wind-blow and full of bits and pieces of eucalyptus leaves like now, but his facial features were a touch too pointy, his eyes a touch too small and close-set. In short, he looked rodenty—just the kind of shifty-eyed kid you’d expect to be into all kinds of scams. His mother wouldn’t notice it, and young girls would adore him, but guys would catch on right away, and you could bet quite a few adults, including most of his teachers, had figured it out.

  The shiftiness really shone through when he saw me. Something to hide there, all right, maybe something big. “What do you want?” he asked sullenly.

  “Just to check a few things.” I stepped through the door even though he hadn’t invited me in. You can get away with that with kids, even the most self-assured. Kirby just stood there. Then he shut the door, folded his arms across his chest, and waited.

  I said, “Let’s sit down,” and went into the living room. It was pretty standard—beige and brown with green accents—and had about as much character as a newborn’s face. I don’t understand how people can live like that, with nothing in their surroundings that says who or what they are. My nest may be cluttered and have no particular décor, but at least it’s me.

  I sat on a chair in a little grouping by the front window. Kirby perched across from me. He’d tracked in wet, sandy grit onto his mother’s well-vacuumed carpet—another strike against him, even for a lousy housekeeper like me—and his fingers drummed on his denim-covered thighs.

  “Kirby,” I began, “why’d you go to see Ben Waterson today?”

  “Who?”

  “The security head at Ocean Park Plaza.”

  “Who says I did?”

  “I saw you.”

  His little eyes widened a fraction. “You were following me? Why?”

  I ignored the question. “Why’d you go see him?”

  For a moment he glanced about the room, as if looking for a way out. “Okay,” he finally said. “Money.”

  “Money? For what?”

  “Adrian, you know, disappeared on payday. I thought maybe I could collect some of what she owed me from Left Coast.”

  “Owed you for what?”

  He shook his head.

  “For what, Kirby?”

  “Just for stuff. She borrowed when she was short.”

  I watched him silently for a minute. He squirmed a little. I said, “You know, I’ve been hearing that you’re into some things that aren’t strictly legal.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “Scams, Kirby.”

  His puzzled look proved he’d never make an actor.

  “Do I have to spell it out for you?” I asked. “The term-paper racket. Selling test questions when you can get your hands on them.”

  His fingers stopped their staccato drumming. Damned if the kid didn’t seem relived by what I’d just said.

  “What else are you into, Kirby?’

  “Where’re you getting this stuff, anyway?”

  “Answer the question.”

  Silence.

  “What about Adrian? Did you bring her in on any of your scams?”

  A car door slammed outside. Kirby wet his lips and glanced at the mantel clock. “Look,” he said, “I don’t want you talking about this in front of my mother.”

  “Then talk fast.”

  “All right, I sold some test questions and term papers. So what? I’m not the first ever who did that.”

  “What else? That wouldn’t have brought in the kind of cash that brought you your fancy car.”

  “I’ve got a job—”

  “Nobody believes that but your parents.”

  Footsteps on the front walk. Kirby said, “All right, so I sell a little dope here and there.”

  “Grass?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Coke? Crack?”

  “Adrian use drugs?”

  “A little grass now and then.”

  “She sell drugs?”

  “Never.”

  A key turned in the front-door lock. Kirby looked that way, panicky. I asked, “What else are you into?”

  “Nothing. I swear.”

  The door opened.

  “What did you get Adrian involved in?”

  “I didn’t—” a woman in a raincoat stepped into the foyer, furling an umbrella. Kirby raised a hand to her in greeting, then said in a low voice, “I can’t talk about it now.”

  “When?”

  He raised his voice. “I have to work tonight, I’ll be at the garage by seven.”

  “I’ll bring my car in then. What’s the address?”

  He got a pad from a nearby telephone table and scribbled on it. I took the slip of paper he held out and glanced at it. The address was on Naples Street in the Outer Mission—mostly residential neighborhood, middle-class. Wherever Kirby wanted to meet, it wasn’t a garage.

  By seven the rain was really whacking down, looking like it would keep it up all night. It was so dark that I had trouble picking out the right address on Naples Street. Finally I pinpointed it—a shabby brown cottage, wedged between two bigger Victorians. No light in the windows, no cars in the driveway. Had Kirby been putting me on? If he had, by God I’d stomp right into his house and lay the whole thing out for his parents. That’s one advantage to dealing with kids—you’ve got all kinds of leverage.

  I got out of the Wreck and went up the cottage’s front walk. Its steps were as bad off as the ones at June Simoom’s place. I tripped on a loose board and grabbed the railing; its spindles shook. Where the bell should have been were a couple of exposed wires. I banged on the door, but nobody came. The newspapers and ad sheets that were piled in a sodden mass against the threshold told me that the door hadn’t been used for quite a while.

  After a minute I went back down the steps and followed the driveway alongside the house. There were a couple of aluminum storage sheds back there, both padlocked. Otherwise the yard was dark and choked with pepper trees. Ruts that looked like they’d been made by tires led under them, and way back in the shadows I saw a low-slung shape. A car. Kirby’s, I thought.

  I started over there, walking alongside the ruts, mud sucking at my sneakers. It was quiet here, much too quiet. Just the patter of rain in the trees overhead. And then a pinging noise from the car’s engine.

  It w
as Kirby’s RX-7, all right. The driver’s side door was open, but the dome light wasn’t on. Now why would he leave the door open in a storm like this?

  I moved slower checking it out, afraid this was some kind of a set-up. Then I saw Kirby sitting in the driver’s seat. At least I saw someone’s feet on the ground next to the car. And hands hanging loose next to them...

  I moved even slower now, calling out Kirby’s name. No answer. I called again. The figure didn’t move. The skin on my shoulders went prickly, and the feeling spread up the back of my neck and head. My other senses kicked into overdrive—hearing sharper, sight keener, smell… There was a sweet but metallic odor that some primitive instinct told me was blood.

  This was Kirby, all right. As I came closer I identified his jeans and down jacket, caught a glimpse of his profile. He was leaning forward, looking down at his lap. And then I saw the back of his head. God. It was ruined, caved in, and the blood—

  I heard somebody moan in protest. Me.

  I made myself creep forward, hand out, and touched Kirby’s slumped shoulders. Felt something wet that was thicker than rainwater. I pulled my hand back as he slumped all the way over, head touching his knees now. Then I spun around and ran, stumbling through the ruts and the mud. I got as far as the first storage shed and leaned against it, panting.

  I’d never seen a dead person before, unless you counted my grandmother, dressed up and in her coffin. I’d never touched one before.

  After I got my wind back, I looked at the car again. Maybe he wasn’t dead. No, I knew he was. But I went back there anyway and made myself touch his neck. Flesh still warm, but nothing pulsing. Then I turned, wiping my hand on my jeans, and ran all the way down the driveway and straight across the street to a house with a bright porch light. I pounded on the door and shouted for them to call 911, somebody had been murdered.

  Afterward the uniformed cops who responded would ask me how I knew it was a murder and not natural causes or an overdose. But that was before they saw Kirby’s head.

  IV

  I sat at the oak table in All Souls’ kitchen, my hands wrapped around a mug of Hank Zahn’s super-strength Navy grog. I needed it more for the warmth than anything else. Hank sat next to me, and then there was Ted Smalley, and then Sharon. The men were acting like I was a delicate piece of china. Hank kept refilling my grog mug and trying to smooth down his unsmoothable wiry gray hair. Every now and then he’d take off his horn-rimmed glasses and gnaw on the earpiece—something he does when he’s upset. Ted, who likes to fuss, had wrapped me in an afghan that he fetched from his own room upstairs. Every few minutes he’d tuck the ends tighter around me, and in between he pulled on his little goatee. Men think that women fiddle with our hair a lot, but really, they do more of it than we do.

  Sharon wasn’t saying much. She watched and listened, her fingers toying with the stem of her wineglass. The men kept glancing reproachfully at her. I guess they thought she was being unsympathetic. I knew differently. She was worried, damned worried, about me. And eventually she’d have something to say.

  Finally she sighed and shifted in her chair. Hank and Ted looked expectant, but all she did was ask. “Adah Joslyn was the inspector who came out from Homicide?”

  I nodded, “Her and her partner…what’s his name? Wallace.” Joslyn was a friend of Sharon’s—a half-black, half-Jewish woman whose appointment to the top-notched squad had put the department in good with any number of civil-rights groups.

  “Then you were in good hands.”

  I waited. So did Ted and Hank, but all Sharon did was sip some wine and look pensive.

  I started talking—telling it once more. “He hadn’t been dead very long when I got there. For all I know, whoever killed him was still on the scene. Nobody knows whose house it is—neighbors say people come and go but don’t seem to live there. What I am afraid of is that Adrian Conway had something to do with Kirby’s murder. If she did, it’ll about kill her mother. I guess I can keep looking for her, can’t I? I mean, unless they tell me not to?”

  Sharon only nodded.

  “Then maybe I will. Maybe I ought to take a look at that bedroom wall of hers again. Maybe…” I realized I was babbling, so I shut up.

  Sharon finished her wine, took the empty glass to the sink, and started for the door. Hank asked, “Where’re you going?”

  “Upstairs to collect my stuff, and then home. It’s been a long day.”

  Both men frowned and exchanged looks that said they thought she was being callous. I watched her leave. Then I finished my grog and stood up, too.

  “Going to bed?” Ted asked.

  “Yes.”

  “If you need anything, just holler.”

  “I’m upset, not feeble,” I snapped.

  Ted nodded understandingly. Sometimes he’s so goddamn serene I could hit him.

  Sharon was still in her office, not collecting anything, just sitting behind her desk, where I knew she’d be. I went in there and sat on the end of the chaise lounge. After a few seconds, I got up again, and began to pace, following the pattern of the Oriental rug.

  She said, “I can’t tell you anything that’ll help.”

  “I know.”

  “I’d hoped you’d never have to face this,” she added. “Unrealistic of me, I suppose.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But maybe not. Most investigators don’t you know. Some of them never leave their computer terminals long enough to get out into the field.”

  “So what are we—unlucky?”

  “I guess.” She stood and started putting things into her briefcase. “You’re going to keep looking for Adrian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  I stopped by the fireplace and pickup up the gorilla mask she keeps on the mantel. It had a patch of hair missing right in the middle of its chin; I’d accidentally pulled it out one day during a fit over something that I couldn’t even remember now. “Shar,” I said, “it never gets any easier, does it?”

  “No.”

  “But somehow you deal with it?”

  “And go on,” she put on her jacket, hefted the briefcase.

  “Until the next time,” I said bitterly.

  “If there is one.”

  “Yeah.” I suspected there would be. Look at what Sharon’s life has been like. And yet, seeing her standing there—healthy and reasonably sane and looking forward to a good night’s sleep—made me feel hopeful.

  She came over to me and gave me a one-armed hug. Then she pointed at the gorilla mask and said, “You want to take him to bed with you tonight?”

  “No. if I want to sleep with a gorilla, I’ll just call Willie.”

  She grinned and went out, leaving me all alone.

  After a while I put the gorilla back on the mantel and lay down on the chaise lounge. I dragged the blanket over me and curled up on my side, cradling my head on my arm. The light from the Tiffany lap was mellow and comforting. It became toasty under the blanket. In a few minutes, I actually felt sleepy.

  I’d stay there tonight, I decided. In some weird way, it felt safer than my nest upstairs.

  Donna Conway called me at eight-ten the next morning. I’d already gone to my office—a closet under the stairs that some joker had passed off as a den when All Souls moved into the house years before—and was clutching a cup of the battery acid that Ted calls coffee and trying to get my life back together. When my intercom buzzed, I jerked and grabbed the phone receiver without first asking who it was.

  Donna said dully, “The backpack I told you Adrian always took to school with her? They found it where poor Kirby was murdered.”

  I went to put my cup down, tipped it, and watched coffee soak into my copy of the morning paper. Bad day already. “They—you mean the police?”

  “Yes. They just brought it over for me to identify.”

  “Where was it? In the yard?”

  “Inside the house. It’d been there a long time because the yogurt—she always took a cup
of yogurt to work to eat on her break—was spoiled.”

  Not good at all.

  “Rae, you don’t think it means she did that to Kirby, do you?”

  “I doubt it.” What I thought it meant was that Adrian was dead, maybe had been dead since shortly after she disappeared—but I wasn’t going to raise that issue yet. “What else was in the pack besides the yogurt?”

  A pause. “The usual stuff, I guess. I didn’t ask. I was too upset.”

  I’d get Sharon to check that out with her friend Adah Joslyn.

  Donna added, “The police said that Kirby was the one who rented the house, and that there was a girl with him when he first looked at it who matched Adrian’s description.”

  “When?”

  “Late last July. I guess…well, with teenagers today, you just assume they’re sexually active. Adrian and I had a talk about safe sex two years ago. But I don’t understand why they thought they needed to rent a place to be together. I’m not home all that much, and neither are Kirby’s parents. Besides, they couldn’t have spent much time at that house; Adrian worked six days a week, after school and on Saturdays, and she was usually home by her curfew.”

  I thought about Kirby’s “job” at the nonexistent garage. Maybe Adrian’s had been a front, too. But, no, that didn’t wash—the store’s manager, Sue Hanford, and the plaza security man, Ben Waterson, had confirmed her employment both to me and the police.

  “Rae?” Donna said. “Will you keep looking for her?”

  “Of course.”

  “Will you call me if you find out anything? I’ll be here all day today. I can’t face going to work.”

  I said I would, but I was afraid that what I’d have to tell her wouldn’t be anything she’d want to hear.

  “Yeah, the little weasel wanted to pick up her pay, in cash.” Ben Waterson plopped back in the metal chair behind the front desk in the Ocean Park Plaza security office. Its legs groaned threateningly under his massive weight. On the walls around us were mounted about two dozen TV screens that monitored what was going on in various stores in the center, switching from one to another for spot checking. Waterson glanced at one, looked closer, then shook his head. “In cash, no less, the little weasel said, since he couldn’t cash her check. Said she owed him money. Can you imagine?”