Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) (13 page)

“Whew. I’d say so. But, sweetheart, you didn’t steal the Pearl of Allah, did you?”

“No, but I bet the one I got is worth plenty. I mean if it
is
a pearl. Whoever heard of a pearl as big as a Ping-Pong ball?”

“Just about nobody, I guess. So where did you get this pearl of great price?” I tried to keep my voice casual.

She pleated the coverlet. “From Ricky.”

“Ricky? The model-maker?”

“I was going to put it back! I was always going to put it back!”

“Okay, take it easy, honey. Just tell me what happened, and you’ll feel better, I promise.”

She kept looking at her ever-smaller pleats. All she gave me to look at was the top of her head.

“Well, Amber and I wanted to play Ping-Pong, but there weren’t any balls. And she had to go to the bathroom, so she told me there were some balls out in the garage. I found this paper bag with six-packs in it—you know what they look like? They’re like a piece of cardboard and then a plastic thing on the balls.”

“You mean plastic with little pockets? Like the way they package small toys?”

“Uh-huh. Only one of them had a ball in it that wasn’t a ball. I only noticed because I pulled it out first. It didn’t feel right. It was heavy.” Finally she looked up, wanting to make contact. “I saw a picture of the Pearl of Allah when I was doing my report. You know why it’s called that?”

I shook my head.

“It’s supposed to look like Mohammed’s turban. But it really looks just like a brain. And so did this one. There it was, just lying there, in my hand.
Looking exactly like the Pearl of Allah
! Only smaller.”

Her eyes were shining with treasure-lust; she wouldn’t be the first person to have had a sudden criminal impulse regarding a great gem. “I wanted to have it for a little while.”

“I know, honey.”

“I asked Sadie if it was real, and she said she’d have to do some research on it, and then—she got
killed
! What if it really is real and somebody found out she had it and they killed her for it?”

I decided to confront her fear head-on: “It wouldn’t be your fault, honey. It wouldn’t, wouldn’t, wouldn’t! Do you believe me?”

She nodded, looking down.

“No, you don’t. That’s really why you wanted to drown, wasn’t it? Because you think that?”

The small head bent once more.

“And that’s why you sent your dad back to get the pearl—I mean, the white thing. Because if it was in Sadie’s desk, or her house, then that would mean she couldn’t have been killed for it. Right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, I’ll find out.”

“You will?”

“Somehow or other, I will.”

“And you won’t tell anybody?”

That was another matter. “Not tonight. I can promise you that much.”

“You said you wouldn’t tell anybody, ever! You said you could get in trouble with the bar.”

Okay. All right, already.

“Well, I did and I won’t. But I want to give you a chance to sleep on it. Maybe things will look different in the morning, and you’ll feel like talking the whole thing over with your dad by then. Could you think about that?”

“I guess so.”

“There’s one other thing that worries me. Did you tell Amber about the white thing?”

“No.”

“Why do you think she’s grounded?”

She spoke reluctantly. “I think Ricky thinks she took it.”

“Don’t you think we need to get her off the hook?”

Tears spilled out of her eyes. “Oh, Rebecca, she’ll never be my friend again!”

“Sure she will.” But I thought she’d gone as far as she could for one night. “Listen, let’s talk more about it in the morning, shall we?” I patted her leg.

“Okay. Could you send Libby up now?”

Her face was completely innocent of worry. If confession is good for the adult soul, it’s a positive transfusion for the youthful one. The idea that this girl, now ready to play Barbies with her friend, had tried to kill herself that afternoon seemed ridiculous.

Her dad, on the other hand, was now looking ready to take his own life. He also looked pretty silly sitting on Marty’s terra-cotta sofa in her short pink robe, and I thought he must surely be uncomfortable entertaining guests that way. But Mary Ellen’s voice floated everything else out of my consciousness:

“Warren wanted to quit, you know—” Julio had found peanuts, and she took a handful “—but I hate a quitter. I said, ‘Warren, you have to make your own opportunity.’” Warren’s face couldn’t have looked more pinched if his nose had been caught in a vise. Mary Ellen swallowed the handful of peanuts, looking as if they satisfied her like a multiple orgasm. “And I was right. Good things happen to people with gumption, people who stick it out no matter what.” She was on her second glass of wine.

I said, “Warren, I didn’t know you were unhappy at the aquarium.”

He looked bewildered and a bit rabbity. “I—uh—wasn’t.”

“Warren, you were! You knew you’d never go to the top with Sadie there. She was just too good.”

He shrugged, looking apologetic, I thought, though whether for his own sorry self or for his pushy wife, I didn’t know. “I wasn’t really thinking of ‘going to the top.’”

Mary Ellen snorted.

“I’ve always wanted to write a book,” he said wistfully.

Julio stood. “I think I’d better get some clothes on.”

Warren stood as well. “We won’t keep you any longer. We just wanted to make sure Rebecca and the kids didn’t need anything.” He looked at me, affording Julio an opportunity to slip out. “Is there anything else we can do for you?” He was the perfect picture of an acting director, a person who has achieved seniority taking care of the also-rans—in Marty’s case, more than an also-ran. A possible serious loser.

“No, thanks.” I started to walk toward the door, hoping he and Mary Ellen would take the hint and follow, but Mary Ellen began to gather up wineglasses, a practice I truly hate in a guest. Rather than take her cue and flutter guiltily about in her wake, I continued toward the door.

To my surprise, Warren plucked at my sleeve. “Rebecca, I need to talk to you.”

I’m afraid I stared, more or less speechless. He glanced furtively up the stairs. “I didn’t know you were involved with Julio.”

“I’m not!” The angry, self-justifying words were out before I could stop them, and I was furious at myself for being manipulated into a defensive posture.

“You’ve got to be careful.” He was whispering. “He was at the aquarium last night. I was in the parking lot about seven-thirty. I saw him coming out.”

“Warren! Warren, where are you?” Apparently it was her husband whom Mary Ellen had expected to flutter in her wake. She caught up with us before I could ask him what
he
was doing in the parking lot.

I put away the ham and washed the damned wineglasses while Julio got dressed. It was getting on toward six o’clock, and I was thinking of having my long-postponed glass of wine with Julio when he returned—and wondering if it would loosen my tongue enough to tell him what Warren had said. I tried Judge Reyes again. No answer.

Keil and Ava came in, Keil’s step light in his Reeboks, Ava’s heavy not so much with weight as with judgment. She carried it in her aura like a coat of mail.

“Rebecca! We got the thermometer!” There was triumph in the boy’s voice that had nothing to do with sickroom equipment. Another job well done by Trap Door.

Ava followed him heavily into the back hall, where I met them, dishtowel in hand. “Thanks so much, you two, but I don’t think we’ll need it. She’s fine now—Libby’s with her.” I could have sworn Ava looked disappointed. Her lips set as she resigned herself to giving up a sick child to nurse. I was trying to handle the implications of that, to deal with the ominous fluttering it made in my gut when Keil hollered, “Rebecca, it’s for you!”

I realized the phone had rung and been answered. The receiver clattered on the counter, and the refrigerator door clicked open almost simultaneously.

I was annoyed. The caller, of course, could be only one person, and he’d phoned at an extremely inconvenient time.

“Hello, Rob,” I said, making my voice cold enough to raise goose bumps back in Cambridge.

“Rebecca? Is this Rebecca Schwartz? The lawyer?”

“Sorry. I was expecting someone else.”

“This is Ricky.”

“Who?”

“Ricky Flynn. I met you at Julio’s. You’re Marty’s lawyer, right?”

“Yes. Hi, Ricky.”

“Listen, would it be unethical—I mean, would you have a conflict of interest… ? Look, I need a lawyer.”

“Your three minutes are up,” said the operator.

“Ricky, give me your number. I’ll call you right back.” I’d suddenly realized his voice didn’t sound right. This wasn’t the cocky Ricky of the morning. This one sounded scared. When I had him on the line again, I said, “Okay, talk slowly. Is this about Sadie?”

“No. It’s not. I think someone else is dead.”

“You think?”

“Can you meet me in Pebble Beach? Now?”

“Ricky, listen to me. If you’re not sure this person’s dead, call the police.”

He gave me the address and hung up. Damn! Why did the term bimbo apply only to women? Frenzied, I dialed the number Ricky had given me and held my breath. Someone answered on the fifth ring. “Ricky?”

“You want the guy who was just here?”

“Please. It’s an emergency.”

“Hey!” Whoever it was shouted in my ear. “Hey! Some lady wants you. It’s an emergency.”

To my surprise, Ricky came back. A good sign. He was behaving like a little boy afraid to defy his mother. If you had to have a kid for a client, it might as well be an obedient one.

“I can’t take your case if you’re not going to follow instructions.”

“Okay. She’s dead. I’m sure. I’m certain. Okay?” He sounded more frightened and more childlike with each word. He hung up again, this time resoundingly, now the petulant child. But I believed him. Whoever the woman was, I didn’t think anything could be done for her. I hoped my instinct was right.

Ava was hovering, starting to wash the dirty wineglasses. I was sure she’d heard every word, but too bad, I wasn’t used to using a kitchen as an office. “Tell Julio I had to go out,” I said briskly. I’d memorized the address Ricky gave me, but now I wrote it very deliberately on the memo pad beside the phone. “If you don’t hear from me in two hours, call the police and give them this address, will you?”

I hoped that thus being taken into my confidence would discourage her from telling Julio or anyone else what she’d heard—and it would serve as a genuine backup in case Ricky was up to no good. But somehow I wasn’t really nervous about that. For all I knew, he had killed the woman he’d called about, but I didn’t see him doing any more damage in his current state.

I found him pacing outside a mammoth Spanish-style house, a beautiful house up a long driveway with a gate. The gate had been left open.

Ricky’s face was red. I was sure he’d been crying. He was no longer wearing the baseball cap, and he’d changed to fresh jeans and a clean shirt.

“Come,” he said, and he led me to a side window, a broken one, broken from the outside, the shards of glass resting on thick carpeting inside. The room was a kind of library, or perhaps a study, lined with books (though many had been tossed on the floor) and furnished with desk and chairs. It was a good, functional workroom and would have been a lovely, restful area as well if it hadn’t been for the revolting spectacle of a woman dead on the floor, and the disarray of her fight for her life. A Lhasa apso rose from its post beside the body, trotted to the window, and nearly tore its tiny paws to shreds on broken glass as it tried to climb the wall, barking, snarling, and protecting. “Does she look dead to you?”

“Yes.”

“She is. I did a dumb thing.”

“Yes?”

“I’m the one who broke the window. She didn’t answer the door, and Mellors was barking, back here—that was the funny thing. He should have been up near the front door, where I was. So I came and looked in the window. I saw her like that and—I just didn’t think—I broke the window and jumped in. Mellors bit me.” He held up his right hand, punctured at the wrist.

I murmured something about a tetanus shot, my mind racing, trying to take it all in.

“She was cold. I think she’s been dead a long time.”

“Why didn’t the alarm go off when you broke the window?”

His boyish face registered utter bewilderment. “The alarm?”

“A house like this must have an alarm. Did you turn it off when you came in?”

“No. My God, if it
had
gone off—”

“And why didn’t you phone from here?”

“I panicked. I made sure she was dead and I jumped back out the window—I even forgot to let Mellors out, the library door is shut, that’s why he couldn’t get to the front—and I got in my car. All I wanted was to get out of there. Pretend it never happened.’’

“Pretend what never happened?” I was acutely aware I was sounding like Sergeant Jacobson.

He was unfazed. “That she was dead.” He let a moment go by, apparently trying once more to assimilate her death.

“But I couldn’t go anywhere. I was shaking. I shook for a while, all over, like someone with hypothermia, and finally I cried. And then when I could see, I drove. I don’t know where I was going—but I didn’t go very far. I guess some adrenaline kicked in or something and I realized I had to report it and that I could be in trouble about the window—and I thought of you. I thought you’d know what to do. Rebecca, did you ever see
Harold and Maude
?”

I gasped. As we talked, we’d been gradually moving away from the window, or more precisely, away from the shrill barking, but I could still see inside. The woman in the room was dressed in white slacks and some kind of pink silky blouse. She looked very slender and she had short blond hair. From the twenty or so paces I was staring from, I could see her cheekbones. Her body was crumpled, her mouth was caught in a grimace, and her head was tilted at a hideous angle; I could see ugly bruises on her neck and a rope or something around it. And yet there was no doubt in my mind she had been elegant—not flashily, ephemerally pretty, but lovely in her bones, as the saying went. She looked about thirty-five. I had assumed from Ricky’s distress and—I had to admit—from the dog’s name that she and Ricky had been close, but I wasn’t prepared for any
Harold and Maude
talk.