A Fatal Vineyard Season (10 page)

Her voice was as hard as her words, and although my hands were not trembling, I felt as if they were. I nodded. “Okay. I get the message.”

“Make sure you do. I've been on these guys' case for a couple of years now, but I can't get to them. And now, my God, they've beaten one of my officers half to death and I can't even pin that on them. If they can beat a cop like that and get away with it, they won't think a thing about a civilian like you.”

“You've made your point. I'll stay away from the Vegas boys. But in the meantime, the two girls up in the Crandel house are planning to go up-island for the day. Can you have somebody trail them out of town just to make sure that Alexandro doesn't follow them?”

Lisa sat back. “Sure. I'll have somebody escort them in an unmarked car. The girls won't even know they're being followed.”

“Thanks.”

“How long are they going to be on the island, do you know?”

I didn't. “A couple of weeks, maybe?”

“I'll be glad when they're gone.”

I could agree with her about that.

I headed home to make calls to the West Coast, thinking about what Lisa had said and feeling more sympathy for Eddie than I had earlier in the day.

I thought of Zee and the children and was again glad they were away. Then I thought about how soon they'd be home and felt a knot forming behind my eyes. By the time I got home, my head was aching. I swallowed some aspirin, but they didn't help. I made my calls anyway, because such things must be done, headaches or not. Though Icarus fell, the farmer kept plowing and the ship sailed on.

Ivy's lawyer was named Herman Glick. Herman wasn't too happy to hear from me, but warmed up a bit as we went along. Lawyers are trained to be cagey, but can be almost human if you give them a chance. On Martha's Vineyard you can spot a lawyer at a hundred yards: they're the only people on the island wearing coats and ties. I don't know what they wear in California.

“Can you fax me copies of the letters from Mackenzie Reed?” I asked. “I don't have a fax, but there are some places on the island that do.”

“I wouldn't want these to get into anybody else's hands,” said Glick.

“I can understand that. But I'd like to see them.” I told him where he could send them and asked him what he knew about them.

“Not much,” he said. “Somehow he managed to get them out of prison and into the regular mail. They're all addressed to Ivy, and they read just like the ones he sent to her before he killed Dawn Dawson. The guy's a certifiable nut.”

“What's he say in the letters?”

I could almost see his shrug. “That he loves her like no one has ever loved anybody before. That he knows she loves him, too. That no one can keep them apart. That her friends aren't really her friends, but her enemies. And he describes what they'll do together when she finally realizes that he and she are meant for each other. It gets pretty
graphic. I'm not a shrink, but I'm told they're pretty classic letters. I guess Reed's a familiar type, as stalkers go.”

I'd been in on the arrest of a stalker once when I was on the Boston PD and had later read about such people, trying to get a handle on them. Most of them didn't end up killing people, but it wasn't unusual, often taking the form of murder followed by suicide. Most of them seemed to believe that their victims either loved them or should. Shrinks had names and descriptions of different kinds of stalkers, but no useful explanations or cures.

So it goes. I didn't have any explanations or cures for anything humans did.

“Reed must have a colleague outside the walls,” I said.

“For sure. The letters were mailed from L.A. I don't know how they got there.”

“You've talked to the cops and the prison authorities?”

“Yes, of course. They don't know how he does it, either, or at least they haven't told me. And of course he says he isn't doing it. Lying bastard.”

“If they knew, they'd probably tell you. Prisons can have pretty sophisticated communication systems. All it takes is a little friendliness or carelessness on the part of somebody working there.”

“I know. I've read about drug lords still running their businesses from inside, and that sort of thing. Getting a letter out probably isn't too hard. Maybe his lawyer does it for him.”

“He's got a lawyer?”

Glick laughed. “Everybody's got a lawyer, Mr. Jackson. Reed's is working his ass off, trying to get him a new trial. He's kept his face in the papers pretty well, doing it.”

“You know the guy?”

“Name's Bill Calhoun. William Peterson Calhoun, also known as Wild Bill. Pretty well known out in these parts. Loves a lost cause, especially if the police work has been sloppy and there's some money to be made.”

“Is there money to be made in this case?”

“Mackenzie Reed's old man owns a lot of timber and mills up north, and Mackenzie is his only child.”

“What can you tell me about Calhoun?”

Glick's voice became cautious. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, is he honest? Can you trust him?”

There was a time of silence at the far end of the line. Then Glick said, “Yeah. I'd say you could trust him. That's not to say he wouldn't cut your throat in court, of course.”

Of course not. “I'd like to talk to him. Do you think he'll talk with me?”

Glick was instantly cool. “Why do you want to talk with Calhoun? He's representing the man who tried to kill Ivy, remember?”

“He might tell me if he smuggled letters out of prison for Mackenzie Reed.”

“Fat chance of that!”

“Well, you may be right. On the other hand, maybe he'll tell me something else that you and I don't know yet.”

“It wouldn't surprise me that he knows a lot we don't know, but if it's something that might be detrimental to his client, he sure as hell won't tell you about it.”

“Will you give me his telephone number?”

“I don't think it'll do any good. I don't think he'll tell you anything. Hell, he might not even take your call.”

“I'll get the number from somebody else, if I have to. It'll save me some time if you give it to me. And could you fax those letters to me today? I'd like to look at them as soon as possible. And one other thing: if you have any of Reed's earlier letters, I'd like to see copies of them, too, so I can compare the early ones with these late ones. Can you do that?”

“I don't like it, but I can do it,” said Glick sourly, and he gave me Calhoun's number.

“Thanks. We'll talk again later.”

“Swell,” said Glick, and the phone clicked and buzzed in my ear.

I dialed Western Security Services and asked for Peter Brown. Julia Crandel was going to have some pretty good sized phone and fax bills to pay, but maybe she could afford them.

Peter Brown's voice was muffled.

“It sounds like you're eating lunch,” I said after giving him my name.

“Doughnut. It may be lunchtime where you are, but it's only nine-thirty
A.M.
here. Ivy Holiday called just as I got in. Says you're her man back East. What's your agency?”

“I don't have a license. I was a cop once, and Ivy's roommate, Julia Crandel, asked me to work for her. For both her and Ivy, I guess you could say. I think I've talked them into hiring Thornberry Security up in Boston, but she wants me, too, so here I am.”

“Thornberry, eh? That's a pretty big outfit. Why do they need you and them when Ivy's already got me?”

“I think Julia thinks she does because I know the Vineyard, where she and Ivy are staying right now, and because I'm close and a known quantity. I suggested Thornberry because I know them and I don't know Western Security. Are you and I going to be able to do business?”

He sighed. “Ivy says we are, so I guess we are. What can I do for you?”

“First, let me tell you what's going on back here.” I did that while he listened.

When I was through, he said, “Well, well. And they think Mackenzie Reed is still after them back there. It sounds more like your local racist hood, to me. Vegas, is it?”

“That's the name. The brothers from hell, from everything I hear. But they're the cops' problem; Mackenzie Reed is mine. I'd like to know what you know about the case, especially about what's happened since Reed got put away.”

“The killing and the hit-and-run, you mean.”

“And the letters that keep coming. I'd like a summary of
what you know right now, and then you can fax more stuff to me here, if you need to.” I gave him the same fax address I'd given Glick.

“Remember when there weren't any fax machines?” said Brown. “No computers, no E-mail, none of that electronic stuff? Remember the good old days?”

“You can have the good old days. I prefer now.”

“Me, too. Okay, let's start at the beginning. I wasn't involved then, but I've read the records and talked to people.”

The beginning was about Mackenzie Reed. He was the only child of a moneyed lumbering family in northern California and had, by his own admission, fallen for Ivy Holiday after seeing her in one of her movies. Since he had money and didn't need to spend time working, he had devoted his life to winning the love he was sure she'd give him once she really knew him. She'd moved, but he'd always found her again; he wrote her letters every day; she'd changed her telephone number and kept it unlisted, but he'd found it again and had called her again and again. She'd gotten a restraining order against him, but he'd stayed after her, just outside the limits of the order.

Then he'd killed Dawn Dawson and been caught literally red-handed and had gone to jail in spite of William Peterson Calhoun and a couple more of the best high-powered attorneys his father's money could buy.

“And that seemed that,” said Peter Brown. “But then the letters started coming again and Jane Freed got killed and I entered the picture.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I went back over Reed's records. I talked to everyone I could think of to talk to.”

“Jane Freed's friends and enemies?”

“Yeah. And her patients, too, those of them who would talk to me.”

“How'd you get that list?”

He never missed a beat. “Hey, I'm a licensed private investigator. I get paid for being smart. Anyway, I talked to everybody it made sense to talk to and didn't come up with a thing to explain how the letters were getting out or who knocked off Jane Freed. The cops say it was probably a drug robbery gone wrong, and everything I've seen says that they're right. She caught some dope head in her office and he bashed her head in. Like the man says, the obvious is usually right. They may get him eventually, when he makes another mistake or one of his pals talks.”

A lot of criminals are caught because they talk about their crimes and whomever they talk to talks to somebody else and finally it's a cop who's listening. If most perps were smart enough to keep their mouths shut, a lot fewer crimes would be solved. Fortunately for the police, most criminals are pretty stupid.

“How about Ivy's friends and enemies?” I asked.

“Yeah, I talked to them, too, just in case one of them was a mad killer or worked for Mackenzie Reed or knew somebody else who was or did. Nothing. Bunch of Hollywood yuppie types, mostly, or people on the fringes. A little nutty as a class, maybe—you'd have to be nutty to do that kind of work, you ask me—but nobody who caught my eye or smelled funny.”

“You check out Julia Crandel and her cousin Buddy?”

He knew why I was asking such questions. Most killers are family or friends or at least acquaintances of the victims. We often get killed by people we know. Strangers may scare us, but it's the people we love who are dangerous.

“Buddy Crandel is a kid Ivy dated before all this happened,” said Brown. “He works for a talent agency here in town. He was dating Dawn Dawson when Dawn got killed, so he would have been a logical suspect in her murder if we didn't have Mackenzie Reed caught in the act. I checked Crandel out pretty good anyway, but he came up clean. He was out of town when Reed killed the girl.

“And Julia Crandel is just as clean. Or if she isn't, she's the slickest little number I've ever come across. She and Ivy are very close, and I read Julia as being the genuine article. She's more scared for Ivy than Ivy is herself.”

“Lot of dead ends.”

“You got that right. If it was my money, I wouldn't be paying me to stay on this job, but it's Ivy's money so I'm still on the payroll.”

I liked Brown's attitude. “What about Reed's family? Any of them likely to be in on all this with him? Smuggling out the letters, for instance?”

“There's only his parents. They say he's innocent, and they're still spending a lot of money to get him out of jail, but if they're killing people for him or helping him mail those letters, I haven't seen any sign of it. They're a couple of middle-aged rich people living up in Eureka. The old man's a bit stove up from some logging accident years ago, and the wife's right there with him night and day.”

“Maybe they hired somebody. Sounds like they could afford it.”

“They could afford it, all right, but there's no reason to think that they did. They seem to be pretty ordinary people.”

“But you're checking it out, just the same.”

“That and going back over everything I've already done.”

“What about the landlord getting hit by that car?”

“What was it that Bond said? Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action? That sounds pretty good, but I don't see any tie-in between the hit-and-run and any of these other things. Some guy stole his car and Dick Hawkins tried to stop it and got himself run over and almost killed. The car was found a couple of miles away in the parking lot of a shopping mall. No prints except Hawkins's, and nobody saw who parked the car in the lot.”