E is for EVIDENCE Page 11

  I could see what an exhausting proposition that must be.

  We heard someone at the entrance, then footsteps along the hall. By the time Terry Kohler reached the bedroom door, he was already in the process of removing his coat and tie.

  “Hello, Kinsey. Olive mentioned you’d be stopping by. Let me grab a quick shower and then we can talk.” He looked at Olive. “Could you fetch us a drink?” he said, his tone peremptory.

  She didn’t exactly perk up and pant, but that’s the impression she gave. Maybe her job was harder than I thought. I wouldn’t do that for anyone.

  Chapter 13

  *

  I waited in the living room while Olive stepped into the kitchen. The place was handsome; beveled windowpanes, pecan paneling, a fieldstone fireplace, traditional furniture in damask and mahogany. Everything was rose and dusty pink. The room smelled faintly spicy, like carnations. I couldn’t imagine the two of them sitting here doing anything. Aside from the conventional good taste, there was no indication that they listened to music or read books. No evidence of shared interests. There was a current copy of Architectural Digest on the coffee table, but it looked like a prop. I’ve never known rich people to read Popular Mechanics, Family Circle, or Road 6-Track. Come to think of it, I have no idea what they do at night.

  Olive returned in ten minutes with a tray of hors d’oeuvres and a silver cooler with a wine bottle nestled in ice. Her entire manner had changed since Terry walked in the door. She still had an air of elegance, but her manner was tinged now with servitude. She fussed with small linen cocktail napkins, arranging them in a pattern near the serving plate she’d placed at one end of the coffee table. She’d prepared ripe figs stuffed with mascarpone cheese, triangles of phyllo, and chilled new potato halves topped with sour cream and caviar. If I called this my dinner, would all of my nutritional needs be met?

  Olive crossed briskly to a sideboard and set out liquor bottles so we’d have a choice of drinks. The room was beginning to darken and she turned on two table lamps. The panels of her taffeta skirt made a silky scritching sound every time she moved. Her legs were well muscled and the spike heels threw her calves into high relief.

  I glanced over to see Terry standing in the doorway, freshly showered and dressed, his gaze lingering on the picture she presented. He caught my eye, smiling with the barest suggestion of proprietorship. He didn’t look like an easy man to please.

  “Gorgeous house,” I said.

  Olive looked over with a rare smile. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Have a seat,” he said.

  “I don’t want to hold you up.”

  Terry waved dismissively, as if the pending conversation took precedence. The gesture had the same ingratiating effect as someone who tells his secretary to hold all the calls. It’s probably bullshit… maybe no one ever calls anyway… but it gives the visitor a feeling of importance.

  “He’d never pass up a chance to talk business,” Olive said. She handed him a martini and then glanced at me. “What would you like?”

  “The white wine, if I may.”

  While I looked on, she opened the bottle, pouring a glass for me and then one for herself. She handed me mine and then eased out of her shoes and took a seat on the couch, tucking her feet up under her. She seemed softer, less egotistical. The role of helpmeet suited her, which surprised me, somehow. She was a woman who had no apparent purpose beyond indulging herself and pampering “her man.” The notion seemed outdated in a world of career women and supermoms.

  Terry perched on the arm of the couch, staring at me with guarded interest. He took charge of the conversation, a move he must have been accustomed to. His dark eyes gave his narrow face a brooding look, but his manner was pleasant. He made only an occasional digital reference to the fact of his moustache. I’ve seen men who stroke their facial hair incessantly, as if it were the last remnant of a baby bunting, comforting and soft. “Lance says someone tried to frame you,” he said. He ate a new potato half and passed the plate to me.

  “Looks that way,” I said. I helped myself to a fig. Heaven on the tongue.

  “What do you need from us?”

  “For starters, I’m hoping you can fill me in on Ava Daugherty.”

  “Ava? Sure. What’s she got to do with it?”

  “She was there the day I did the fire-scene inspection. She also saw Heather give me the envelope full of inventory sheets, which have since disappeared.”

  His gaze shifted and I watched him compose his reply before he spoke. “As far as I know, Ava’s straight as an arrow. Hardworking, honest, devoted to the company.”

  “What about Lance? How does she get along with him?”

  “I’ve never heard them exchange a cross word. He’s the one who hired her, as a matter of fact, when it was clear we needed an office manager.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “God, it must be two, three years now,” he said. He looked down at Olive, sitting close by. “What’s your impression? Am I reporting accurately?”

  Olive shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t say she’s crazy about him. She thinks he plays too much when he ought to be getting work done, but I don’t think she’d devise any scheme to do him in.” Olive passed the hors d’oeuvre tray to me. I thought it only gracious to sample something else so I selected a potato half and popped it in my mouth.

  “Who might?” I asked, licking sour cream from my thumb. This shit was great. If they’d just leave the room for a minute, I’d have a go at the rest.

  Both seemed to come up blank.

  “Come on. He must have enemies. Somebody’s gone to a lot of trouble over this,” I said.

  Terry said, “At the moment, I couldn’t name one, but we can give it some thought. Maybe something will occur to us.”

  “What can you tell me about the Wood/Warren engineer who killed himself?”

  “Hugh Case,” Olive said.

  Terry seemed surprised. “What brought that up? I just got a call from Lyda Case this afternoon.”

  “Really?” I said. “What did she have to say?”

  “It wasn’t what she said so much as her attitude. She was completely freaked out, screaming at the top of her lungs. Said his death was my fault.”

  Olive looked at him in disbelief. “Yours? What bullshit! Why would she say that?”

  “I have no idea. She sounded drunk. Ranting and raving. Foulmouthed, shrill.”

  “That’s curious,” I said. “Is she here in town?” Terry shook his head. “She didn’t say. The call was long distance from the sound of it. Where’s she live?” “Dallas, I believe.”

  “I got the impression she intended to fly out. Do you want to talk to her if she shows up?”

  “Yes, I’d like that,” I said, careful to omit any reference to the fact that I’d met with her the night before. She hadn’t seemed paranoid to me at all and she’d never mentioned Terry’s name.

  Olive stirred on the couch, shifting positions. “Just in time for New Year’s. Everyone’ll be here.” She glanced at Terry. “Did I tell you Bass gets in tonight?”

  A look of annoyance flashed across his face. “I thought he was broke. I hope you didn’t pay his way.”

  “Me! Absolutely not. Ebony sends him money, but you wouldn’t catch me doing it,” she remarked. And then to me, “Bass and I had a falling-out at Thanksgiving and we haven’t spoken since. He’s got a big mouth in matters that are none of his business. I think he’s loathsome, and he’s just about that fond of me.”

  Terry glanced at his watch and I took that as my cue. “I should let you go if you’ve got a party,” I said. “I don’t feel we’ve been any help,” Olive said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got other sources. Just let me know if you come up with anything you think might pertain.”

  I left my card on the coffee table. Terry walked me to the door while Olive excused herself to fetch her coat. He watched her disappear into the bedroom. “I didn’t want to mention this in front of her,” he said, �
��but Lyda Case scared the shit out of me this afternoon.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t want to make Olive nervous, but the woman threatened me. I don’t think it has anything to do with Lance or I’d have said so up front. This is different. I don’t know what it’s about, but she really sounded cracked.”

  “What kind of threat?” I asked.

  “Out of nowhere, she asked me how old I’d be on my next birthday. I didn’t know what she was getting at, but when I told her I’d be forty-six, she said, ‘Don’t count on it.’ And then she laughed like a fiend. Jesus, the sound made my blood run cold. I can’t believe she was serious, but my God! What a thing to say.”

  “And you have no idea why she suddenly got in touch?”

  “I haven’t talked to her for years. Since Hugh died, I guess.”

  “I understand there’s some question about the manner of his death.”

  “I’ve heard that too and I don’t know what to think.”

  “How well did you know him?”

  “I wouldn’t say we were close, but I worked with him, oh, probably five years or so. He never struck me as the sort who’d commit suicide. Of course, you never know what someone under pressure will do.”

  “Pressure?”

  “Lyda’d threatened to leave him. Hugh was a sweet guy, but he was terribly dependent on her and I think it just knocked the props out from under him.”

  “Why was she leaving? What was that about?”

  “I wasn’t privy to the details. Lance might know.”

  Olive reappeared, white fur coat across her shoulders, the green dress over her arm. Terry and I abandoned the topic of Lyda Case. He made no comment when she gave me the dress. Maybe Olive always gave away her clothes. The three of us left the house together, confining ourselves to small talk.

  It was fully dark by then and the night was chilly. I turned on the heater in my car and drove to a pay phone in Montebello Village, putting a call in to Darcy at home. I wanted to stop off and see her before I went back to my place. But she told me Andy’d worked late, so she hadn’t had a chance to search his office. She was going in early the next morning, and said she’d call if she came up with anything.

  I hung up, realizing then how exhausted I felt. In addition to the jet lag, I was operating on a bad night’s sleep, and the fragmentary nap I’d picked up this morning wasn’t helping anything. I headed home. As I turned the corner onto my street, I spotted Daniel’s rental car, still sitting at the curb in front of my apartment. I parked and got out. Even in the dark, I could see him slouched in the front seat, feet on the dash as they had been before. I was just opening the gate when he rolled down his window. “Can I talk to you?”

  I felt something snappish rise up in me, but I forced it back down again. I don’t like being bitchy, and I hated admitting to myself that he still had the power to distress. “All right,” I said. I approached the car and halted about six feet away. “What is it?”

  He unfolded himself and emerged from the car, leaning his elbows on the open car door. The pale glow from the street light gilded his cheekbones, touching off strands of silver in the cloud of blond hair.

  “I’m in a bit of a bind,” he said. His face was dappled with shadows that masked the remembered clear blue of his eyes. After eight years, it was amazingly painful just to be in his company.

  I thought the safest course was to repeat information back to him without comment. “You’re in a bind,” I said. There was a brief silence wherein I assumed I was meant to quiz him on the nature of his problem. I clamped my teeth together, waiting patiently.

  He smiled ruefully. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you for money and I’m not trying to get in your pants.”

  “This comes as a big relief, Daniel. What do you want?” The bitchy tone was already back, but I swear I couldn’t help myself. There’s nothing more infuriating than a man who’s manipulated your emotions once and now thinks he can do it again. I could still remember the charge that ran between us early in our relationship, sexual electricity infusing the very air we breathed. It had taken years for me to realize that I had generated most of it myself out of my own neediness. Maybe that’s what was making me so churlish in retrospect. I was still chafing at myself for what a fool I’d been.

  “I need a place to stash my gear,” he said.

  “What gear?”

  He shrugged. “I got a two-thousand-dollar acoustic guitar I can’t leave because the trunk lock is busted on the rental car I picked up. It’ll get ripped off if it’s in the back seat.”

  “You brought a guitar like that all the way from Florida?”

  “I thought maybe I’d pick up a gig out here. I could use the bucks.”

  “What happened to your friend? I thought you got a ride with someone. Why not take it to his place? Or is it a woman? I guess I never asked you that.”

  “Well, no, it’s a guy,” he said. “The problem is, he doesn’t actually live here in town. He was just passing through on his way to San Francisco and he won’t be back till late on Sunday. That’s why I had to rent a car of my own.”

  “Where are you staying? Don’t you have a place?”

  “I’m working on that. The town’s booked solid because of the holidays. Meantime, I can’t even pull into a gas station to take a leak without hauling everything in with me. It’s just for a couple of days.”

  I stared at him. “You always do things like this, you know that? You’re always in a bind, shifting your weight from foot to foot, hoping someone’ll bail you out of the hole you’re in. Try the Rescue Mission. Pick up a woman. That shouldn’t be so tough. Or sell the damn thing. Why is it up to me?”

  “It’s not up to you,” he said mildly. “It’s a simple favor. What’s the big deal?”

  I ran out of steam. We’d had this same exchange a hundred times and he’d never heard me before. I might as well save my breath. I might as well give him what he wanted and get it over with. It was probably just an elaborate excuse to prolong our contact. “Never mind,” I said. “No big deal. You can park the damn thing in a corner until Sunday and then I want it out of here.”

  “Sure. No problem. Thanks.”

  “I’m warning you, Daniel. If you’ve got a stash anywhere within six blocks of here, I’ll call the cops.”

  “I’m clean. I told you that. You can look for yourself.

  “Skip it ” I said. I knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t bluff on that, because he knew me well enough to know I’d have him thrown in the slammer if I caught him.

  Chapter 14

  *

  I took a couple of Tylenols and slept like a stone-deep, dreamless sleep that soothed my frazzled nerves and restored my good spirits. I was up at 6:00, ready to jog as usual. There was no sign of Daniel parked at my curb. I did a perfunctory stretch against the fence post and headed toward Cabana Boulevard.

  The run felt great. The sky was a pearl gray streaked with pink. To my right, a dark-gray surf boomed against the hard-packed sand, leaving snowy froth in its wake. The wharf was mirrored in the glistening pools that remained when the waves receded. The sea seemed to shush the birds that shrieked overhead. This was the last day of the year and I ran with a sense of optimism the new year always brings. I’d find a way to sort it all out: Lance, Mac’s suspicions about me, even Daniel’s sudden appearance on my doorstep. I was alive and healthy, physically fit. Rosie’s would open again on Monday. Henry would be home in another six days. I had the sassy green dress Olive had given me, and maybe a New Year’s invitation if she came through as hoped. I did my three miles and slowed to a walk, cooling off as I headed home.

  I showered and dressed in jeans as usual, savoring the morning at home. By then it was 7:00 ��� too early for phone calls. I ate my cereal and read the L.A. Times over two cups of coffee. Daniel’s guitar sat in the corner in mute testimony to his renewed presence in my life, but I ignored it for the most part.

  Darcy called at 7:35 from
California Fidelity. She’d done a thorough search. Andy’s office was clean.

  “Shit,” I said, “What about a typewriter? I was hoping we could get a match on the phony fire department report, but I didn’t find one at his apartment.”

  “Maybe he keeps it in the trunk of his car.”

  “Oh, I like that. I’ll see if I can find a way to check that out. In the meantime, keep an eye peeled. Maybe something will surface. Andy’s gotta be tied into this business somehow. It would help a lot to know who he knows at Wood/Warren. Did you go through his Rolodex?”

  “That won’t help. He knows all those guys because that was his account. He’s bound to have the number handy. I’ll check it out, though. Maybe something else will come to light.” She clicked off.

  At 8:00, I put a call through to Lyda Case in Texas. Her roommate said she was out of town, maybe in California, but she wasn’t sure. I left my number and asked her to have Lyda get in touch with me if she called home.

  I called my pal at the credit bureau, but she was out until Monday. I had the feeling the rest of the day was going to come down about the same way. It was New Year’s Eve day. As with Christmas Eve, businesses were closing early, people taking off at noon. Olive called me at 10:00 to say that she was indeed putting together an impromptu cocktail party. “It’s mostly family and a few close friends. Half the people I called already had plans. Are you free? We’d love to have you, if you’re not already tied up.”

  “Of course I’m not,” I said. “I’d love to come.” I hated to sound so eager, but in truth I was. I didn’t want to spend this New Year’s Eve alone. I was worried Daniel might start looking too good. “Can I bring anything?”

  “Actually I could use some help,” she said. “I gave the housekeeper the weekend off, so I’m throwing the whole thing together by myself. I can always use an extra set of hands.”

  “Well, I’m not a cook, but I can sure chop and stir.

  What time?”

  “Four-thirty? I’ll be back from the supermarket by then. Ash said she’d come about five to help, too. Everybody else will be coming about seven. We’ll keep going till the food and alcohol give out.”