Dead Midnight (v5) (epub) Page 19

  “You flew to Portland, Ms. McCone?”

  “Yes, on the eight o’clock shuttle.”

  “And rented a car?”

  “From National.” Of course they would already have checked with the airline and rental-car company.

  “When did you return to San Francisco?”

  “Late Saturday afternoon, the four o’clock flight.”

  Glenn said, “Gentlemen, may I ask why you’re questioning my client about her travel arrangements?”

  Scanlon said, “We’re trying to establish a time line.”

  “To prove what?”

  I said, “Glenn, I don’t mind answering their questions.” He shot me an exasperated look, but didn’t say anything else.

  Scanlon took over the questioning now. “There’s a four-hour period between the time our department finished taking your statement and when you caught your flight home. What did you do during that period?”

  “An officer drove me from Tillamook to Eagle Rock, where I’d left my rental car. That took … well, you’d know better than I. Then I drove to Portland, which took over two and a half hours because of heavy traffic. I dropped off the car, arranged for my flight, and went straight to the gate.”

  “No stops? Snack bar? Ladies’ room?”

  Glenn said, “Detective Scanlon, is this necessary?”

  I said, “No stops. I didn’t want to miss my flight.”

  “Now”—Glenn’s voice overrode the beginning of Scan-lon’s next question—“Ms. McCone’s been forthcoming with you. It’s your turn to be forthcoming with us.”

  The two exchanged glances. Parsons nodded. “Fair enough. This bag was recovered from a trash receptacle in one of the ladies’ rooms at the airport. According to the maintenance schedule, it was placed there sometime after noon and before midnight on Saturday.”

  “And its contents?”

  “As Ms. McCone describes them. Except there was a knife wrapped in a bloody pair of jeans and T-shirt. The blood on the clothing and the knife is a match for J.D. Smith’s.”

  I shut my eyes, again saw the stains on his sweater, the jagged tear. It would have been difficult to pull the knife from his chest without getting covered in blood.

  I asked, “What color were the jeans and tee?”

  “The jeans were pale blue,” Parsons said, “the tee white.”

  “Not mine. Was there also a pair of black jeans and a matching tee?”

  “No.”

  “Ms. McCone,” Scanlon said, “do you own a set of kitchen knives?”

  I did—a very good set of German manufacture. The last time I’d cooked they were all there, but that had been a while ago. If someone wanted to frame me for J.D.’s murder …

  A coldness crept over me. I’d had a client who had been tried and convicted on weaker evidence than that.

  Glenn said, “I’m instructing my client not to respond to that line of questioning, unless you’re prepared to charge her.”

  With a show of reluctance, Scanlon backed down. “I would like to ask Ms. McCone to recap her statement about the investigation that took her to Oregon.”

  “I’m sure you would, but you have her statement on file.”

  “There’s additional information we need—”

  “Sir, that was a confidential inquiry, conducted at my request. Ms. McCone is not only my client but my employee. I’ll have to ask you to limit any further questions to matters contained in her statement.”

  Legal privilege. How many times I’d been frustrated by it. How fully I embraced it now.

  “They don’t really suspect me of killing J.D., do they?” I asked Glenn.

  He shook his head, biting into one of the deli sandwiches the office gofer had brought in after the detectives departed. “I know how these people think. From the remainder of their questions, I gather their theory is that Houston killed Smith, cleaned up before you arrived there. Hid the knife in her bloody clothing and took the bundle with her when she saw an opportunity to slip out of the house. She picked up your travel bag on the way, drove south. Abandoned her car where they located it down the coast in Newport, hitched a ride to the airport in Portland, dumped the bag, and flew to God-knows-where.”

  “So why come all the way down here to talk with me?”

  “That was a fishing expedition. And they don’t know you, so they have to cover all the bases. They must not have much evidence, though, if they’re clutching at straws like that.”

  I took a bite of corned beef on rye, pushed the food aside. “So what did they hope to accomplish with me?”

  “They’re aware you withheld details of your investigation when you made your statement, and feel one of them may contain a potential lead. They probably hoped they could intimidate you into giving everything up. Of course, they didn’t count on my forceful protection of your rights.”

  “I admit it shook me at first when they asked if I owned a set of knives, but when you think about it, it’s not logical that I’d carry one around with me. Most likely the killer took the knife from Houston’s kitchen, but they haven’t been able to match it to any of the others that’re there.”

  “You say ‘the killer,’ not Houston.”

  “She claims she didn’t do it.”

  “And you believe her?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Let me tell you, my friend, they always claim they didn’t do it. That was the reality I had the most difficulty dealing with when I was new to the profession: the clients were so damned guilty and such good liars.”

  “And now?”

  “I still have my sleepless nights.” He balled up the wrapper his sandwich had come in and lobbed it at the waste-basket. It missed by a good two feet. “No, I don’t think you have to worry about their question about the knife. I would, however, take an inventory of your set without delay.”

  “And if one is missing?”

  He flashed me his wolf look. “I can’t advise you on that, but I know what I’d do.”

  Lawyers!

  My brown-shingled house looked peaceful and sleepy in the afternoon sun; there wasn’t a press van or lurking reporter in sight. Still, I pulled the MG into the garage and glanced around as I hurried up the front steps. I expected the interior to feel stuffy on what had turned into a warm day, but instead a fresh breeze filtered down the hallway. Michelle Curley must’ve decided to air it out.

  I hurried to the living room, where a tidy stack of mail and newspapers sat on the sofa. Through the archway to the kitchen I could see my knife rack; two were missing, and a loaf of sourdough that I didn’t remember buying sat on a board by the sink—

  In the bathroom down the back hall the toilet flushed. Water ran in the sink. I stiffened, stepped back from the arch. Listened as heavy footsteps shuffled toward the kitchen. Not Michelle or her petite mother—a man. Hy, back from the Philippines? No, not yet. An intruder … ?

  I peered around the archway. Ted entered, looking unkempt and dejected. He went to the sink, picked up a knife from the counter, and began slicing the bread.

  Relief was quickly followed by a sense of violation. I stepped into the room, hands on my hips, and demanded, “What the hell’re you doing here?”

  He started and turned. “Shar, you scared me!”

  “Well, you scared me too, so we’re even. How come you’re here, and not at the office?”

  “I didn’t feel well, so I took the afternoon off.”

  “And?”

  “I didn’t have anyplace to go. Mick said you were away for a few days and loaned me his key.”

  “I take it you and Neal are still on the outs.”

  “Yeah. And Adah and Craig threw me out. Last night I crashed with a couple of other friends, but their place is awfully small, and I could tell I was wearing out my welcome.”

  He looked so hangdog that I couldn’t stay angry. “Well, feel free to use the guest room here.”

  “Are you sure it’s okay?”

  “I wouldn’t say so
if it weren’t.”

  He sighed and set the knife down, leaned against the counter.

  I asked, “Have you talked with Neal?”

  “Once. After Adah and Craig threw me out … D’you know I barfed on his new SUV?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “God, I still can’t believe I did that. Anyway, the next evening I went to the apartment to patch things up with Neal. But he had some guy there—handsome guy, no less— and he told me I’d have to leave. He and the guy went into his study while I packed up some stuff. Neal came out and asked where I’d be staying, and I told him Adah and Craig’s. Then I got out of there before he could ask for my key back.”

  “He introduce you to this guy?”

  “No. He acted kind of preoccupied.”

  “But not angry?”

  “Not really. I decided to give him some space over the weekend, then try to talk with him again. But every time I’ve called the phone’s been tied up, and Craig says he hasn’t tried to reach me at their place.”

  “I can’t believe he’d just move somebody else in.”

  “Neither can I. But if he wants to, he can; it was his apartment originally, and his name’s the only one on the lease.”

  “What about Adah and Craig? Since you went back there, I gather the barfing incident wasn’t why they threw you out.”

  “No, it was the thing with the cat.”

  “Charley? Because you’re allergic to him?”

  “No. I insulted him.”

  “How on earth can you insult a cat?” It certainly wasn’t possible with Ralph or Alice; a creature that feels it’s the center of the universe is impervious to insult.

  “Actually, Adah took offense for him. When she fed him a leftover filet mignon that I’d been eyeing for my lunch the next day, I told her the cat was a pig and if she didn’t stop stuffing him someday he’d choke to death and she’d find him lying facedown in his food bowl like an enormous beached whale.”

  With a perfectly straight face I said, “Why, you swine. You dreadful swine of a skunk.”

  He frowned, then burst out laughing as he realized I was making fun of his own outrageously mixed metaphor. He began making noises like Ralph does when he’s trying to bring up a hairball, and I began snorting like Alice does when she gets foxtails from the neighbors’ weedy yard stuck up her nose.

  “Lord,” he said, “if you can’t laugh …”

  “I know.” I got myself under control, asked, “So d’you want me to stop by and see what’s going on with Neal?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “No problem. In the meantime, make yourself at home. The neighbor kid—”

  “Michelle. I’ve already met her. She wants to play gin rummy later.”

  “Don’t play for money; she’s a card shark, is investing her winnings.”

  “Young kid like that?”

  “Yes, and she tells me it’s only seed money.”

  “Saving up for a car?”

  “Real estate. She claims land is where the money’s really at. By the way”—I motioned at the rack—“have you seen the midsized knife?”

  “In the sink. Why?”

  “Long story, and I’ve got to go now. Will you please rest up so you can go back to work tomorrow, before the agency falls apart?”

  Before I went by Telegraph Hill to check on Neal, I wanted to stop in at the office to see what manner of chaos might be reigning there. I hadn’t been flattering Ted when I’d said the agency would fall apart without him; his calm and efficient presence was essential to its functioning properly, and any number of bizarre incidents had occurred on the few occasions he was absent. Today I was pleasantly surprised to find Julia monitoring the phone lines while she studied a handbook on skip tracing, and the others working quietly at their desks.

  I gathered my message slips, went to my office, and returned a few phone calls. Then I took out the scribbled piece of paper that I’d found in J.D.’s raincoat pocket—tattered now from many handlings—and studied it once again. One of the unfamiliar notations caught my eye: Afton. The English river of song? A woman’s name? A company?

  I went down the catwalk to the office Mick and Charlotte shared. She’d stepped out, but he was industriously typing. I peered over his shoulder at the screen, saw he was running a property search for a low-priority investigation, and said, “Put that aside for a while, will you?”

  “Gladly.” He saved the information and put the computer into sleep mode. “What d’you need?”

  “Afton. A-f-t-o-n. What is it?”

  “Can’t you give me more to go on than that? I mean, it’s just a word.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Oh, one of those.” His eyes narrowed in concentration as he began formulating a way to proceed.

  I looked at my watch. “I’m on my way out. I’ll check with you in an hour or so.”

  A slow smile spread over his face. “Your cell on?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “What’s it worth to you if I have the info in less than an hour?”

  “You know, I’d be better off putting you on a cash-incentive program than buying you all these restaurant meals.”

  “I’d probably be better off too. Sweet Charlotte tells me I’m getting fat.”

  True enough. He had bulked up a bit. “So let’s talk about it. Have you put together those figures on the computer forensics program yet?”

  “They’ll be on your desk tomorrow morning.”

  “We’ll talk then. Be prepared to bargain hard.”

  Ted and Neal’s apartment was in an elegant art deco building on Plum Alley, a narrow half block in the shadow of Coit Tower at the top of Tel Hill. When no one answered my knock, I took the elevator back down to the ground floor— mesmerized as always by the rippling effect of light through its glass-block enclosure—and crossed the tiled courtyard to the unit of the manager, Mona Woods. Mrs. Woods, an athletic septuagenarian who today had three pencils and a pair of reading glasses anchored in her thick, upswept white hair, welcomed me warmly.

  “Perhaps you can tell me what’s going on up there.” She motioned toward the third floor.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I haven’t seen Ted in days. Another young man began coming and going at all hours since last Thursday. And yesterday afternoon I saw Neal and the new one carrying in some boxes. Don’t tell me he and Ted have broken up?” Mrs. Woods looked genuinely distressed; she took a personal interest in the lives of her mixed bag of tenants.

  “They had a falling-out, but it isn’t like Neal to simply move someone else in. Of course, he hasn’t been himself since he had to give up the bookshop. D’you know where he is today?”

  “He left a couple of hours ago. With the new one. Probably to get more boxes.” She sniffed disdainfully.

  “If you see him return, will you give me a call?”

  “I certainly will, dear. No one wants to get to the bottom of this business more than I. Ted and Neal are meant to be together—even if they’re both too stubborn to admit it.”

  When my cell rang, I was maneuvering back and forth to extricate the MG from the tiny space where I’d wedged it at the end of the alley. My foot slipped off the brake as I reached for the unit, and the front end banged into the rubber bumper of the car in front of me. Startled, I took my other foot off the clutch, which stalled the engine. Then I dropped the phone and had to double over looking for it on the passenger-side floor.

  Sometimes I wondered how I could be such a klutz when answering a simple phone call in a type of vehicle I’d been driving since I was sixteen, yet fly a plane while minding the radios and other instruments in a manner Hy described as “graceful.”

  Mick. “Count this as one more bargaining chip in my pile.”

  “Show-off. What’ve you got?”

  “Afton Development. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Isn’t InSite magazine located in Dogpatch?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, there’s y
our tie-in. Afton’s been buying up large and small parcels there for an office-and-residential complex, as well as a hotel. On the quiet, because they don’t want to get the residents in an uproar—especially the Hell’s Angels, whose clubhouse they covet.”

  I told him the location of InSite’s building. “How is it positioned relative to the properties they’ve already acquired?”

  A pause. “Right smack in the middle.”

  I thought of Charlotte’s statement that sometimes investors wanted a company to fail because it had valuable assets that could be sold off. Remembered Jorge Amaya telling Max Engstrom that the building was the only tangible asset they owned. Had Amaya forced the magazine into failure in order to make a lucrative deal with Afton Development?

  The magazine’s doors stood open, but the ground-floor work area was empty. Gone were the desks and the computers, the chairs and tables. Cardboard boxes were scattered here and there, filled with what looked to be the personal belongings of employees who had not yet bothered to remove them. I continued toward the rear and up the staircase to the loft. At first I thought nobody was there, then I heard a squeak that sounded like a chair turning in Engstrom’s office.

  The stocky publisher sat with his back to the door, staring out at the floor below. I cleared my throat and he swiveled to face me. He looked as if he hadn’t changed his rumpled shirt and chinos in days; deeply shadowed circles bagged under his eyes. In his right hand he held a tumbler full of clear liquid, and a gin bottle stood on the desk.

  “Ms. McCone. How kind of you to attend the wake.”

  I went over and looked down at the main floor. From here the scene was even more desolate. The stains from the fire-retardant chemicals outlined where the furnishings had stood. Trash was scattered across the floor and drifted in the corners. Without the staffers and their bustle of activity, the building was merely another abandoned factory waiting to be demolished.

  “Sit,” Engstrom said. “Join me in a toast to the demise of an excellent publication.”

  I took a chair, poured a small amount of gin into a smudged glass. Raised it and pretended to drink. “I’m sorry things turned out this way.”

  Engstrom rubbed his eyes. “Ah, who am I kidding? InSite was a shitty publication. All these online rags are. Short on intellectual content, long on nonsense. But why should they be otherwise? Consider the readership. God knows, in fifty years no one’ll remember what a real magazine or newspaper looked like.”