Betrayers (Nameless Detective Novels) (2 page)

BOOK: Betrayers (Nameless Detective Novels)
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I shouldn’t have taken the chance with you.
Now she understood what he’d meant by that. She’d as much as said it herself, when he asked her how she’d gotten Mama’s phone number.
I run a detective agency, remember?
All just a spicy game for him, laying a woman who worked on the right side of the law. In a way, that was more galling to her than any of the rest. She hadn’t even been human to him; all she’d been was a sex object, no more real to him than a piece of meat.

And what about Alisha? Really his mother? Girlfriend, wife? Whoever she was, she couldn’t be ignorant of any of the games he played. Grifter herself, likely. They might even be a team, working separately or together.

Tamara thought about fessing up the whole ugly business to Bill, bringing him and Jake Runyon into the hunt. Even considered going to Pop because of his connections at the Redwood City PD. But she ended up not telling any of them. Bill would be sympathetic, nonjudgmental, but she was too
embarrassed to face him with her stupidity unless absolutely necessary. Pop would go ballistic; she’d never have a minute’s peace. Besides, it was personal. And she knew almost as much as they did about how to find somebody who didn’t want to be found, didn’t she? More, when it came to using the Net.

Sure, fine. Except that she couldn’t get a line on the man.

She tried everything she could think of, but the available data was just too sketchy. Trying to trace the phone number she had for Mama was a dead end: no record of the number, so no user’s address. One of those GoPhones that had a built-in number and limited amount of call minutes and that didn’t have to be registered. James had told Vonda he didn’t know how the man could be reached except by phone. And even if she had that number, there’d be no point checking it; it’d just turn out to be another GoPhone and probably out of service by now, too.

She knew what kind of car he drove, had ridden in it on their first date—a five-year-old light brown Buick LeSabre. It had a scrape and dent on the right front fender, the result of a minor accident, he’d told her; she’d noticed that, but she hadn’t paid any attention to the license plate. No reason she should have. You go out on a date, you’re interested in the man, focused on him, not details about his ride.

Was he still in the city, the Bay Area, California? No way of knowing. Her phone call, Mama reminding him of the mistake he’d made messing with a detective, could’ve been enough to send both of them packing. Chances were he was a floater anyway, moving to fresh territory every few weeks to stay one jump ahead of the law. For all Tamara knew he was in L.A. or Miami or New York by now.

On the other hand, he could be the reckless type, overconfident
enough to hang on in the city or the Bay Area. Say he was working a con and had a sucker on the hook—that might keep him here until he made his score. In that case, would he keep on using Lucas Zeller’s ID? She hoped so. If he was using a different name now, he’d be even harder to track down.

She got in touch with Felice, her contact in the SFPD’s computer department, and talked her into checking local, state, and federal files for known African American thieves and grifters who answered his description and operated with an older woman who might or might not be his mother. Two possibles came out of that, but neither turned out to be the phony Lucas. Evidently he’d been lucky and hadn’t had been busted . . . yet.

Tamara talked to several of the sixty or so people who’d been at Ben and Vonda’s wedding reception—trying to get a handle on why he’d gone there. Not to see James, who’d been pissed when he showed up uninvited. To meet somebody else? Cruising for victims or a male or female bed partner? Nobody had any answers or leads to his whereabouts. Most didn’t remember him, and the ones who did hadn’t seen or talked to him since and couldn’t tell her anything about him she didn’t already know.

That left her with one other option: a face-to-face with James, a prospect that didn’t appeal to her any more than it would to him. Hostile witness. Man hadn’t wanted anything to do with her since he’d tried to hit on her back in his gangsta days and she’d blown him off and wounded his pride. Liked her even less, he’d told Vonda, after she’d gone to work for a white detective. It wouldn’t be easy dealing with James, if she could get him to talk to her at all. They were like a couple of
pieces of flint whenever their paths crossed: friction and sparks.

And if she couldn’t get anything useful out of James? Well, she’d figure something out. No way that slippery bastard Lucas would get away with walking into her life, turning it upside down again, and then walking out free and clear to mess up somebody else’s. Somehow she’d find him, find out his real name. No matter where he was. No matter how long it took.

And then she’d be there, front and center, when a cell door slapped his sorry black ass on the way inside.

2

T
here’s a short story by John D. MacDonald called “I Always Get the Cuties,” about a cop named Keegan whose specialty is solving cases in which amateurs devise elaborate plans to commit the perfect crime. He calls them his “favorite meat.” They’re a lot easier to work on, he says, than cases involving professional criminals.

Seems like I always get the cuties in my profession, too. Different kinds than Keegan’s, but cuties nonetheless. Only they’re not my favorite meat by any stretch. Give me a simple skip-trace, insurance claim investigation, employee background check, or any of the other routine jobs that make up the bulk of the agency’s caseload. But for some reason, we seem to draw more than our fair share of the cuties, and even though I’m semiretired now, they usually fall into my lap. Screwball stuff. Like the one where a successful and seemingly rational businessman suddenly began attending the funerals of strangers for no apparent reason. Or the one I’d had recently that started off with the allegedly impossible theft of some rare and valuable mystery novels and ended up with cold-blooded murder in a locked room. Keegan would have loved that.

Or the one that had walked into the agency offices this morning.

A new cutie with seriocomic overtones, no less. A little of this and a little of that all mixed together into what was bound to be a not very appetizing stew. City bureaucracy, real estate squabbles, nocturnal prowlings, petty vandalism, threatening phone calls, poisoned cats, and, ah yes, one more ingredient that had been left out of the recitation of the original recipe . . .

 

Y
oung man,” Mrs. Abbott said to me, “do you believe in ghosts?”

The “young man” surprised me almost as much as the question. But then, when you’re eighty-five, a man in his early sixties can seem relatively young.

I said politely, “Ghosts?”

“Poltergeists, malevolent spirits?”

“Well, let’s say I’m skeptical.”

“Loved ones from the Other Side?”

“Likewise.”

“I’ve always been skeptical myself. But I can’t help wondering if it might be a ghost who is responsible for all that has happened.”

Beside me on the sofa, my client, Helen Alvarez, age seventy and likewise a widow, sighed and rolled her eyes in my direction. She hadn’t mentioned ghosts in my office; this was the ingredient that made the cutie even cuter.

She smiled tolerantly across at Mrs. Abbott in her Boston rocker. “Nonsense. When did that notion come into your head?”

“Last night. I’ve been reading a book.”

“A book? What book?”

“About spirit manifestations and the like. It’s quite a fascinating concept.”

“It’s a load of crap,” Mrs. Alvarez said.

“I can’t imagine why a poltergeist would suddenly invade my home. Carl, on the other hand . . . well, that does seem possible.”

I said, “Carl?”

“My late husband. His shade, you see.”

Mrs. Alvarez emitted an unladylike snorting sound.

“Don’t you think it’s possible, Helen?”

“No, I certainly don’t. Carl has been gone ten years, for heaven’s sake. Why would his spirit come back
now
?”

“It could be he’s been angry with me since he passed over.”

“Why would he be angry with you?”

“I’m not sure I did all I could for him when he was ill. He may blame me for his death—he had a nasty temper, you know, and a tendency to hold a grudge. And surely the dead know when the living’s time is near. Suppose he has crossed over to give me a sample of what our reunion on the Other Side will be like?”

There was a small silence.

Mrs. Alvarez, who was Margaret Abbott’s neighbor, friend, watchdog, and benefactor, shifted her long, lean body and said patiently, “Margaret, ghosts can’t ring the telephone in the middle of the night. Or break windows. Or dig up rosebushes.”

“How do we know what spirits can or can’t do? Perhaps if they’re motivated enough . . .”

“Not under any circumstances. They can’t put poison in cat food, either. Now you
know
they can’t do that.”

“Poor Spike,” Mrs. Abbott said. “Carl wasn’t fond of cats. He used to throw rocks at them.”

“It wasn’t Carl or his spirit or anybody else’s spirit. Living people are behind this deviltry and you and I both know who they are.”

“We do?”

“Of course we do. The Pattersons.”

“Who, dear?”

“The Pattersons. Those real estate people.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Why would they poison Spike?”

“Because they’re vermin. They’re greedy swine.”

“Helen, dear, don’t be silly. People can’t be vermin or swine.”

“Can’t they?” Mrs. Alvarez said. “Can’t they just?”

I put my cup and saucer down on the coffee table, just hard enough to rattle one against the other, and cleared my throat. The three of us had been sitting here for about ten minutes, in the pleasantly old-fashioned living room of Margaret Abbott’s Parkside home, drinking coffee and dancing round the issue that had brought us together. All the dancing was making me uncomfortable; it was time for me to take a firm grip on the proceedings.

“Ladies,” I said, “suppose we concern ourselves with the facts. That’ll make my job a whole lot easier.”

“I already told you the facts,” Mrs. Alvarez said.

“I’d like to hear them from Mrs. Abbott as well. I want to make sure I have everything clear.”

“Yes, all right.”

I asked Mrs. Abbott, “This late-night harassment started two weeks ago, is that right? On a Saturday night?”

“Saturday morning, actually,” she said. “It was just three a.m. when the phone rang. I know because I looked at my bedside clock.” She was tiny and frail and she couldn’t get around very well without a walker, and Mrs. Alvarez had warned me that
Mrs. Abbott was inclined to confusion, forgetfulness, and occasional flights of fancy. At least there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her memory today. “I thought someone must have died. That is usually why the telephone rings at such an hour.”

“But no one was on the line.”

“Well, someone was breathing.”

“Whoever it was didn’t say anything.”

“No. I said hello several times and he hung up.”

“The other three calls came at the same hour?”

“More or less, yes. Four mornings in a row.”

“And he didn’t say a word until the last one.”

“Two words. I heard them clearly.”

“ ‘Drop dead,’ ” Mrs. Alvarez said.

“Yes. It sounds silly, but it wasn’t. It was very disturbing.”

“Can you remember anything distinctive about the voice?” I asked.

“Well, it was a man’s voice. I’m certain of that.”

“But you didn’t recognize it.”

“No. It was as if it were coming from . . . well, the Other Side.”

Helen Alvarez started to say something, but I got words out first. “A long way off, you mean? Indistinct?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Muffled. Disguised. “Then the calls stopped and two days later somebody broke the back porch window. Late at night again.”

“With a rock,” Mrs. Abbott said, nodding. “Charley came and fixed it.”

“Charley?”

“My nephew. Charley Doyle. Fixing windows is his business, you see. He’s a glazier.”

“And after that, someone spray-painted the back and side walls of your house.”

“Filthy words, dozens of them. It was a terrible mess. Helen and Leonard cleaned it up.”

“Leonard is my brother,” Mrs. Alvarez said, purse-lipped. “It took us an entire day.”

“Then my rosebushes . . . oh, I cried when I saw what had been done to them. I loved my roses. Pink floribundas and dark red and orange tears.” Mrs. Abbott wagged her white head sadly. “He didn’t like roses any more than he did cats.”

“Who didn’t?” I asked.

“Carl. My late husband. And he sometimes had a foul mouth. He knew all those words that were painted on the house.”

“It wasn’t Carl,” Helen Alvarez said firmly. “There are no such things as ghosts; there simply
aren’t.

“Well, all right. But I do wonder, dear. I really do.”

“About the poison incident,” I said. “That was the most recent happening, two nights ago?”

“Poor Spike almost died,” Mrs. Abbott said. “If Helen and Leonard hadn’t rushed him to the vet, he would have.”

“Arsenic,” Helen Alvarez said. “That’s what the vet said it was. Arsenic in Spike’s food bowl.”

“Which is kept inside or outside the house?”

“Oh, inside,” Mrs. Abbott said. “On the back porch. Spike isn’t allowed outside. Not the way people drive their cars nowadays.”

“So whoever put the poison in the cat’s bowl had to get inside the house to do it.”

“Breaking and entering,” Mrs. Alvarez said. “That’s a felony, not a misdemeanor. I looked it up.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Not to mention the final straw. That’s when I decided it was time to hire an investigator. The police weren’t doing a thing, not a thing.”

She’d told me all that before. I nodded patiently and asked, “Were there any signs of forced entry?”

“Not that Leonard and I could find.”

Mrs. Abbott said abruptly, “Oh, there he is now. He must have heard us talking about him. He’s very sensitive that way.”

I looked where she was looking, off to one side and behind where I was sitting. There was nobody there. I almost said,
You don’t mean your dead husband’s ghost,
but changed it at the last second to, “Who?”

BOOK: Betrayers (Nameless Detective Novels)
2.88Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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