Compulsion (13 page)

I stopped in Santa Barbara for a late lunch on Stearn’s Wharf, the site of my aborted meeting with Donald Bragen.

The tourist stream was skimpy but enthusiastic-smiling, gorging people believing in immortality. Ducks and seagulls followed the food stream, content with the leavings. Out in the harbor, big gray pelicans floated, biding their time as they scanned the surface for prey. Their smaller brown cousins swooped and dove and sometimes came up with wriggle.

All kinds of ways to hunt.

I finished and continued up the pier, passing the breakfast place where Bragen said he’d meet me. Maybe he’d paid closer attention to Mavis Wembley’s lead than she believed but had come up empty. Or she was right and he had ignored her. Either way, flashbacks wouldn’t be as much fun as fishing.

Leaning over the railing and sucking in salt air, I phoned Milo’s cell.

Rick answered. “Hey, Alex. His phone ran out of charge so we exchanged. He told me if you called to tell you he’ll be tied up until ten or so, maybe later.”

“Any idea where?”

“Out on the job is all he said. I had the day off so we managed to schedule lunch. Soon as we ordered, he got a call and left. Something about finding a car. Made him grumpy.”

“Missing a meal does that.”

“He doggie-bagged.”

No one answered Rick’s cell. Milo sometimes switches off when he’s concentrating. I got back on the highway, tried a few miles later.

This time, his bellow rattled the little bones in my ear. “Found Kat Shonsky’s goddamn Mustang.”

“Yet, you are not happy.”

“Guess where the hell it’s been all this time? Department contract tow yard. Called in as an abandoned vehicle at five a.m. the same damn night she disappeared. Found midway up the Pass, just like you guessed.”

I said, “Any idea who called it in?”

“No record,” he growled. “They treated it as a routine nuisance call, sent a tow driver. Genius shows up, there’s no reg or insurance in the car and the plates are gone. He hooks it up anyway and dumps it in the yard. Where it’s been sitting.”

“What about the VIN?” I said.

“They got around to logging the VIN a few days later, filed and forgot. All this time, I’m checking bulletins, wasting my time on the phone, and the damn thing’s in plain sight, blocks from my office, accumulating birdshit and storage fees. If I hadn’t been nagging every yard the department does business with, it probably would’ve ended up at a police auction. As is, I just spent an hour untangling the paperwork to get it to the motor lab. Eyeballed it, first. No obvious blood or sign of mischief. And here’s another good guess for you, Professor: Gas tank was bone-dry, talk about wrong place, wrong time.”

“Or someone siphoned it in the club parking lot and followed her until she shut down.”

“There you go,” he said. “That’s why we’re buddies.”

“I have a suspicious mind?”

“You know how to think like a really evil person. Let’s see what the motorheads turn up, but with the tow driver and Lord-knows-who-else pawing it and a suspect careful enough to strip I.D., I’m not expecting much. I’m on my way back to where it was found right now. After that I’ll be driving the hillside roads again, narrowing it down to the immediate vicinity. If I can get K-9 to help, we’ll do a sniffathon tomorrow. So what’s up in Toonerville?”

I told him about Mavis Wembley’s tip.

“Scary brother,” he said.

“A lock picker could’ve fooled with the chain at the rental lot, freed the Mercedes. Toss in Mancusi and we’ve got two crimes featuring stolen black luxury cars, bloody knifework, and a possible inheritance motive.”

“Unfortunately, Tony’s a homebody leading us nowhere and the tips have dried up. In terms of his being ‘kinky,’ I wouldn’t be surprised if that was Lamp Guy – Hochswelder – or one of the other loving relatives finking on him for being gay just in case we didn’t get it the first time. With the Mustang showing up I’m gonna concentrate on Shonsky as a possible corollary homicide, and that gives me cause for a warrant on her apartment. Judge Feldman’s at a fundraiser, said if I meet him at his house at ten, he’ll sign the papers. Hopefully Kat’s mother didn’t straighten up too much. Speaking of which, if I have time, I am gonna ask her for that cheek scrape ’cause if the chief meant what he said, he’ll get the mitochondrial prioritized. But even if we get a match to the stain, it just tells us what we know anyway.”

“Kat’s dead.”

“I wouldn’t sell her life insurance. Lord, I’m busy.”

Not the time to remind him of his lament last week. “If the chief meant what he said, maybe you can get more help watching Tony.”

“Hard to see Tony having anything to do with Shonsky.”

I said, “The link doesn’t need to be direct. If Tony contracted his mother’s murder, someone could’ve hired the same killer to do Kat. And the women in Ojo Negro.”

“Traveling pro with a taste for stolen wheels?” he said. “What kind of money motive could there be for Kat? She wasn’t exactly an heiress.”

“From what we’ve heard she could be abrasive. Maybe that one was personal.”

“She blew the wrong guy off so he pays for an elaborate scheme to do her?”

“Or she blew the killer himself off,” I said. “Clive picked her up in a bar and there’s no reason to believe he was the only one.”

“Even really bad guys have feelings.”

“Everyone has feelings. Depends what you do with them.”

Big-rig mishaps and the usual Cal Trans idiocy stretched the drive back to L.A. and it was dark when I got home. I drank Chivas out by the pond, put Blanche in my lap, and tossed food to the fish. She wanted to watch them eat so we kneeled by the rock rim. The babies were almost big enough to swallow the pellets, kept worrying the bobbing circles until they disintegrated. The adults indulged their attempts and managed not to pull a Jonah.

Robin came out and joined us, chopsticking leftovers and forgoing her glass of wine because she was thinking of working some more.

Quieter than usual.

I said, “Mr. Dot-com call again?”

She shook her head. “There’s a wolf-note somewhere on the mandolin fretboard. If I don’t fix it, I won’t sleep.”

“My soul mate.” I kissed her, walked her to her studio, carried a now sleeping Blanche back to the house.

My e-mail was the usual blather and one message that interested me, sent a few minutes ago.

dr. delaware: found leonora bright’s brother’s name in the obit on their father. nothing criminal on him so far and it was too late to access s.f. property rolls to see if he owns a house there. see what i can do tomorrow.

george cardenas

I sent back a thanks and downloaded the e-mail attachment.

San Francisco Chronicle
obituary section. Someone important enough to merit a piece with a byline.

The late Dr. Whittaker Bright, a New York native, trained at Cornell and Columbia, had been a professor of engineering at UC Berkeley with an expertise in transformers and a patent for a now obsolete switching device that had paid him royalties for over a decade. Death had come after a protracted illness. Widowed and remarried, “Whit” Bright was survived by his second wife, Bonnie, a daughter, Leonora, of Ojo Negro, and a son, Ansell, of San Francisco. In lieu of flowers, donations were to be sent to the American Heart Society.

What caught my eye was the date of death. Eight days before the butchery in Ojo Negro. Mavis Wembley’s story was looking better and better.

Just as I prepared to run a search on
Ansell Bright,
my phone rang.

“Doctor, this is Amber from your service. I had a Mr. Bragen calling from Alaska. He didn’t want to hold, said you can call him if you want. Didn’t sound like he cared one way or the other.”

Bragen’s number had an 805 prefix. Fishing up north but using a cell phone with a Ventura-Santa Barbara code.

A gruff voice said, “Yeah?”

“Sergeant Bragen? Alex Delaware.”

“The psychologist,” he said, as if the title amused him. “An earlier flight came up. Weather changes are quick up here, the connectors get iffy. I’ve spent too many days in the airport waiting for storms to pass.”

“Makes sense.”

“You want to know about Bright and Tranh. There’s not much to know. Big loser whodunit from day one and if there was anything forensically worthwhile the moron they hired as sheriff screwed it up. We had one suspect but he didn’t pan out.”

“Who’s that?”

“Bright’s ex-husband,” he said. “Ironclad alibi and he passed a poly.”

“Why’d you suspect him?”

“’Cause he was the ex. But forget it, it’s not him.”

“Could I have his name, just for the record?”

“Jose something. Mexican, probably illegal, in those days we weren’t allowed to ask. He worked at the feed store, unloading hay and whatnot. Claimed he was a big-time chef back in Guadalajara or wherever, but they all claim that.”

“Immigrants.”

“If everyone was so better off, why do they come here? Anyway, he’s not your guy, that woulda been nice. He and Bright were married six months, got divorced, he moved to Oxnard, got a job cooking at one of the hotels. Which is where twenty people saw him during the entire time frame of the murders. We also had witnesses eyeballing before and after. At his apartment complex, then at a bar that night dancing with his new girlfriend, so no way. I asked him to take a poly anyway, he agreed. Passed with flying colors. Claimed he and Leonora parted friendly, had a Christmas card from her to prove it. Also, he seemed real broken up about her dying. And for all I know, Bright wasn’t even the target, maybe Tranh was. Not that I ever found anyone who’d talk about her. Took the time to visit her family – big clan, down in Anaheim. Everyone crying and weeping and lighting candles to Buddha. Listening to them, Vicki was a nun, had no enemies.”

“You had reason to doubt that?”

“No,” he said. “But I’m not a trusting guy, by nature. You get up there today?”

“Sure did.”

“Still a one-horse town?”

“Maybe half a horse.”

“Place that rinky-dink, you’d think someone would’ve known something. But all those hicks could say was how nice they both were.” Harsh laughter. “Nice people is the bane of a detective’s existence.”

“While I was there, I met a woman named Mavis Wembley-”

“Oh, that one,” said Bragen. “Old Fatso. Stuck her nose into everything, couldn’t shut her up. But she had nothing to say, either.”

“You don’t buy her story about Leonora’s brother?”

“Yeah, right. You want to work that, good luck, pal. Can’t believe she’s still alive. Big as a cow. Like that alien in
Star Wars –
Jabba the whatever. She used to
summon
me. Her word. ‘Detective Bragen, may I
summon
you for a little talk?’ You’re working a case, you can’t close off anything, so I’d get over to her place and she’d sit in her chair and try to pump me for information. But like I said, you’ve got to follow up on everything so I talked to the brother. He also had an alibi – working, some gay job – we’re talking featherlight here. Even more emotional than Jose… Castro, that’s what it was. Jose Castro, like Fidel.”

“So much for Ansell,” I said.

“Ansell?”

“That’s his name, according to the father’s obituary.”

“Guy I spoke to called himself Dale. And that’s what his mother called him, too, and I’d expect she’d know. She’s the one I got his number from in the first place. And don’t waste your time with her, she died a few months after Leonora. Cancer, the father was heart problems I think. Bad-luck family. Dale was taking care of her, he was at her place when I called.”

“Maybe Dale’s his nickname,” I said.

“Whatever. Guy
fluttered
over the phone. It was like talking to a girl. This is not the caliber person who could overpower two healthy women and do what was done to them. You want to lose your lunch, get hold of those autopsy photos.”

Over the phone.
He’d never met Ansell “Dale” Bright in person, had no inkling of the man’s size and strength.

I said, “I see what you mean.”

“I put it all in the file, Doctor.”

“Where is the file?”

“Probably storage,” he said. “They moved everything a few years ago, lots of stuff managed to fall off the truck. Not my problem. Shouldn’t be yours, either. This is a dead one.”

Mavis Wembley hadn’t mentioned Jose Castro. I found her number in my notes.

It was nearly ten p.m. I bet on her being a night owl.

She picked up on the first ring. “Cutie! Have you solved anything?”

“Far from it. But I have learned that Leonora was married-”

“To Jose. You talked to Bragen, right? That fool fixed on Jose even before setting eyes on him because you-know-why.”

“Why?”

“Jose was a Mexican. There was lots of loose talk about it being a Mexican murder – all this gossip about drugs, gangs.”

“Any reason for that?”

“Back then we were a downright racist town. Most of the people are Mexican now, so no one opens a mouth except some of the older cowboys when they come into town and have a few too many. My second husband was half Mexican and you should’ve seen the looks I got. Jose was a nice young fellow.”

“Younger than Leonora.”

“In his twenties. Handsome, too.”

“You never thought he was responsible?”

“Nicest young man you’d ever meet, Doctor. Muscles out to here. After they broke up, Leonora said she still liked him as a friend, it just didn’t work out as a marriage. You want to know my opinion? They were
never
more than friends, the whole marriage was a put-up so he could get immigration status.”

“Leonora would do that for a friend?”

“That’s the kind of person she was. And Jose did get his papers, Leonora told me, she was all thrilled about it. Shortly after that, they broke up and Jose moved down south, somewhere, and it didn’t seem to trouble her. Besides, what motive would Jose have to hurt her? Neither of them had any money to speak of. Unlike Leonora’s family. Who had plenty. I’m telling you the brother’s where to look. Bragen probably said I was a meddling old nut but anytime he wants to have an IQ contest, I’m ready.”