Burn Out (23 page)

Again Lark glared at me. “Not relevant.” She turned her attention back to Sheppard. “Okay, you knew Hayley in Vegas. When?”

“When she was first there, I don’t remember how many years ago. Then I did a stretch for possession. I was railroaded.”

I said, “That’s what they all claim.”

“And after you got out?” Lark asked him.

“I decided to go to Vernon. I had connections—”

“Drug connections,” I said.

Lark gave an exasperated sigh. “You see Hayley in Vegas beforehand?”

“Yeah. I stayed with her a few days till my parole officer gave me permission to leave the state. She said she had family here and might visit me sometime. And she did—late September, I think. She needed a place to stay. She’d come up HIV-positive, was already feeling sick.”

So that was why she’d taken out the insurance policy with Amy as beneficiary. The county’s pathology reports hadn’t showed any evidence of her illness because they hadn’t been looking for it. Which meant the life-insurance policy benefiting Amy would pay off.

“And?” Lark asked.

“I let her stay. Next thing I know, she’s talking about cashing in on something, living out the rest of her life in luxury.”

“Something that was in the note Miri left for her with Bud Smith.”

“I guess.”

“Did Hayley own a gun?”

“Hayley? Jesus, no. What would she need a gun for?”

“Violent johns?” I said.

“McCone, I’m warning you!”

“Sorry.”

“Okay, Boz, do you own a gun?”

Silence.

“Part of your deal.”

“. . . Okay, I’ve got a thirty-two I bought off of a guy in Reno.”

“Where was this gun the night Hayley was killed?”

“. . . In the trailer.”

“So Hayley had access to a weapon of the caliber that killed her.”

“Yeah, she did.”

All three of us were silent. Then I said, “Don’t you want to discuss the deal you’ve got here in Inyo?”

He shot me a look of pure rage. “Who the hell’re you, coming in here and trying to take over from
her
?” He motioned at Lark.

“Somebody who thinks you’re pond scum. All right if I tell him about his deal down here, Lark?”

“Sure, be my guest.”

“There isn’t any.”

“But she said—”

“She said that she talked with the authorities and DA in Mono and down here. She said ‘I can offer you a deal.’ Not we—I.”

“You stone bitches!” He started to rise from his chair, but the guard, who had been standing by the door the whole time, stepped in quickly to restrain him.

Lark and I exchanged glances. Then she extracted the tape from the machine on the table, and we left Sheppard in the hands of the Inyo County authorities.

“Amazing!” Lark said. “I thought we were headed straight for Tufa Tower, but that’s June Lake down there. I didn’t even notice when you turned.”

“Because you had your eyes closed again. You didn’t notice that it was a steep bank, either.”

“No kidding.”

“Want to close your eyes one more time?”

“Uh, why?”

“It’d be interesting to know if you could tell when we were upside down.”

“No way!”

“Just one little spin.”

“Spin! Jesus, like a tailspin—?”

“Then I guess you’ll have to keep your eyes open and enjoy the scenery.”

Back at the ranch house, I found a message from Mick: “Call me ASAP. I’m at the rehab place and Nurse Ratched has confiscated my laptop. Says I can only speak to you for three minutes.”

I dialed, and a woman’s voice answered. I almost asked her if she was Nurse Ratched, then realized it was Charlotte Keim.

Well, well . . .

She passed me along to Mick.

“Charlotte’s forwarding you the information on Hanover that I accessed—
she’s
allowed my laptop—but I thought you’d want to hear this.”

“How’re you feeling?”

“Okay. But listen, they really mean it about the three minutes. What I found out is that Trevor Hanover owns property in Mono County. A lot of it—one thousand acres.” He gave me the parcel number, adding that a map was on the way via e-mail.

I booted up my laptop in preparation for Keim’s incoming file, while asking Mick more questions about his health. The nurse wrested the phone from him as the e-mail arrived.

The map showing the location of Hanover’s property didn’t really surprise me. I guess at some level I’d suspected it all along: Hanover was the owner of Rattlesnake Ranch.

A wealthy man from the East Coast, who flew to his private airstrip in his own jet. A man who had been a New York City bartender who happened to get lucky because of his ingratiating manners and impressive knowledge of finance. A man whose financial empire and private life were now crumbling.

A man who, under his real name, held a degree from a prominent Eastern business school. Who had ceased to exist shortly after attaining that degree because he couldn’t risk the future possibility of being named a rapist, if for some reason his brother decided to tell the truth.

A man who used to be called Davey Smith.

Time to proceed slowly and cautiously. Build a case that no high-priced defense attorney could tear apart.

I couldn’t confide what I knew to Lark. In spite of her elation at our handling of Boz Sheppard, the woman seemed on the ragged edge. In fact, she’d called earlier from her home to tell me her superior officer had told her to take a day off. Her voice had been slurred, and I’d heard ice tinkling in the background. I didn’t want her alcohol-impaired judgment to get in my way.

Ramon was at the stable when I went out there, cleaning King’s stall. I asked if Amy was still at his house. Yes, she was. I said I was going over there, I needed to talk with her.

Before I left, I slipped King the carrots I’d brought for him.

Amy was clad in a bathrobe that enveloped her petite frame; I assumed it was Sara’s. She sat on the living-room couch, listlessly watching a game show while her aunt bustled around in the kitchen. I turned the TV set off and sat down next to her.

“How’re you doing?”

She shrugged.

“I hear everything went well with Kristen Lark.”

“Yeah, I like her.”

“I understand Hayley gave you a letter for safekeeping.”

“More like a big, thick envelope.”

“Did you open it?”

“No.”

“One thing in the envelope is a letter Boz Sheppard was looking for when he came to your cabin and cut you. I think he was going to look for it here too, when he saw the light on in the stable, spooked the horse, and hit me. He didn’t find it either place. Where is it?”

“. . . At Mrs. Ivins’ house. Dana Ivins, who runs Friends Helping Friends. I knew it wouldn’t be safe at Willow Grove or here, so I snuck over there and hid it in her garage.”

“Why didn’t you entrust it to Dana?”

“She’s nosy. I knew she’d read it.”

“But you didn’t read it.”

“I told you no. Hayley asked me not to.” Her eyes welled up and tears spilled down her cheeks. “I was upset with Hayley when I found out she’d been hooking all those years, and when I found out she was living with that loser Boz I felt even worse. But I still loved her, I would never pry into her private business. Now I wish I had; maybe she wouldn’t’ve gotten killed.”

I didn’t tell her that Hayley probably would have died of AIDS anyway since she apparently had forgone treatment. Amy didn’t need that kind of memory of her big sister.

Instead I said, “The other thing that’s in the envelope is a life-insurance policy Hayley took out on herself, with you as beneficiary. Since she was murdered, the double indemnity clause goes into effect. Eventually you’ll receive a hundred thousand dollars.”

Amy stared at me, her mouth opening in a little O.

“It’s up to you what you do with the money,” I went on. “Blow it on expensive cars and clothes and bad boyfriends. Or use it to give yourself a much better life than your mother and sister had.”

For a moment she looked away at the blank TV screen, envisioning any number of scenarios. Then: “I could finish up my GED and go to college.”

“Yes.”

“I could do something that would’ve made Mama and Hayley really proud of me.”

“That, too.”

Amy put her hands over her face and shook her head. “Oh, God!”

“What?”

“Oh, God, I’m all of a sudden so afraid.”

“Of what?”

“I’m afraid I’ll fuck up like I have over and over again.”

I grasped her wrists and pulled her hands from her face, looked into her eyes. “You have Ramon and Sara. You have Hy and me. You can be sure if you start to fuck up, one or the other—or all four of us—will tell you.”

Dana Ivins opened the side door to her garage, snapped on an overhead light. I followed her inside.

“There’s the storage cabinet,” she said, motioning to a hulking white assemble-it-yourself piece of the sort you can buy at Home Depot. Its doors were misaligned: one was at least two inches higher than the other.

I went over and reached behind the cabinet. Wedged against the wall beams exactly where Amy had described to me was a thick nine-by-seven envelope.

When I pulled it out, Ivins said, “Why, for God’s sake, did she hide it there, rather than give it to me? I could’ve put it in my safe.”

I shrugged. “She’s young and she wasn’t thinking too clearly, I suppose. Or maybe she thought your safe was too obvious a place and this envelope’s presence might’ve made you a target.”

“Amy always was a considerate girl. I’m so happy she’s safe with her uncle. What’s in the envelope?”

And she’s right, you
are
a nosy woman.

“I don’t know. Amy just asked me to retrieve it.”

“Maybe, for her sake, we should open it.”

“No, it’s her private property.”

“But it could shed some light on these killings—”

“If it can, Amy will turn the information over to the sheriff’s department. She’s been talking with them.”

“About what?”

“I haven’t been in on the conversations.”

Ivins looked disappointed. For a person who insisted on her organization’s right to confidentiality, she certainly played fast and loose with other people’s.

I drove a couple of blocks along the main street before I pulled to the curb and opened the envelope, as Amy had given me permission to do. It contained the insurance policy Hayley had taken out with her sister as beneficiary, and a smaller pink envelope with Hayley’s name written on it in erratic, badly formed penmanship. It had previously been opened, then closed with the flap slipped inside. I slid the letter out.

Dear Hayley,

I know you never want to lay eyes on me again and I dont blame you. I been a bad mother and a bad woman but that dont mean I dont love you. Bud Smith has been good to me. So I’m leaveing this with him in case you ever come back home or he hears where you are. What you need to know is Jimmy Perez wasnt your father. I was raped when I was 13 by a bastard named Davey Smith. Thats Bud’s little brother. He got off scotch free because he was some kind of genius and Bud took the rap for him so he could go away to school. My family wouldnt let me have an abortion, but they treeted me real bad so I ran away and had you. And I kept you—thats how much I loved you. The other thing you need to know is Davey Smith is a rich man now. Goes by the name of Trevor Hanover and lives back east someplace tho he has a big ranch outside of Vernon. Rattlesnake its called. I found out from the woman who cooks for him when he’s there—Linda Jeffrey, she lives on Yosemite Street. You can ask her if you want to. The way she knew he was Bud’s brother is that Bud went there to dinner once and she heard them fighting. I guess Davey tried to give him money, but he wouldnt take it. Bud told him to put the money in the bank for you and hire a lawyer to help you out because you were bound to get in trouble in Vegas. I guess you must of kept in touch with Bud because he knew where you were. But baby, Davey owes you more than that. Talk to Bud and have him set up a meeting with Davey. Your his daughter. You have rights, you claim them. I know I’ll never see you again baby, but you deserve a good life.

All my love,
Mama

Okay—slowly, cautiously. First I’d talk with this Linda Jeffrey.

Her tidy home was in the center of one-block Yosemite Street. A TV flickered in the front window. I rang the bell. After a moment the porch light came on, and a tall, slender woman in sweats, whose gray hair was pulled back into a ponytail, looked out at me.

“Yes?”

I said my name, gave her my card.

“Oh, you’re Hy Ripinsky’s wife. You’ve been helping out the Perezes. Come in, please.”

The room she led me to was cluttered, but in a clean, comfortable way. Books and magazines stacked on tables, a hand-knitted afghan thrown carelessly over the large sofa, videotapes and DVDs piled high atop the TV. Jeffrey turned off the program she’d been watching and said, “Sit anywhere, but before you do, look for cats.”

The chair I went to did contain a cat—a light-gray shorthair, whose sleepy gaze dared me to move it. I did, picking it up and setting it on my lap; instantly it curled into a ball and started purring.

“They run our lives, don’t they?” its owner said, taking a place on the sofa and pulling the afghan around her.

“Yes, they do.”

“I figured you for a cat person. And I assume you’re here to ask about what goes on at Rattlesnake Ranch.”

Her statement surprised me. It showed, because she added, “I know who Trevor Hanover is—or was—and I’ve been debating whether to go to the sheriff’s department about him. Your visit has more or less resolved that issue.”

“Why were you only ‘debating’?”

“For two reasons. When Mr. Hanover hired me to cook for the family, he had me sign a contract with a confidentiality clause. I was not to talk about him, his family, or anything that went on at the ranch.”

“But you’ve already broken that agreement by talking to Miri Perez.”

“How do you . . . ? Well, that doesn’t matter. I did it for Miri’s safety; it was only right that she know her real rapist had property so close by.”

“And the second reason?”

“I don’t really
know
anything—at least not about the times when Hayley, Tom Mathers, or Bud Smith were killed. The way my arrangement with Mr. Hanover worked, someone would call and tell me when the family would be there and what to prepare. But as far as I know, the Hanovers haven’t visited the ranch for five or six months.”