Murder by Numbers (19 page)

Hake turned to Michael. “Is this skirt of yours spouting some dialogue from your latest script? It might make a good potboiler mystery movie—but I don't see how it has anything to do with me.”

He stepped away and continued down the street. Liza noticed, though, that Hake's big hands had clenched into fists.

“Well, that was pretty stupid, wasn't it?” she asked in self-disgust as she and Michael walked along.

“I think it was pretty optimistic of you, expecting him to break down and confess to anything, much less everything,” Michael told her. “Dealing with intrusive questions has to be part of his job description, doesn't it?”

They drove back to Hackleberry Avenue. As they came onto Liza's block, she realized something was parked at the end of her driveway.

“Oh, dear God!” she groaned.

“Mrs. H. checked with the garage. When she learned how long your car was going to be out of commission, she decided to lend you her Oldsmobile. She had to struggle with her heart to let go of it for a while. But she's so fond of you. She means it in the kindest possible way, you know.”

“Michael, that thing was old while Reagan was in the White House. The first term! And I don't think it was running right then.”

“Well, it's sturdy—not to mention an interesting shade of greenish blue, too,” Michael said. “Can't wait to see you behind the wheel. I'm planning on breaking out my camera to immortalize the moment.”

Liza stomped off into her house. A few minutes later, she came stomping over next door. “I need the keys,” she announced grimly. “I'm taking the Olds for a twirl around town. There's nothing in the refrigerator.”

“Just let me get them for you…and my camera!”

 

After an errand run in the embarrassing car for supplies, Liza came home, made supper, and tried to do some more sudoku work. Rusty hoped for an evening walk, but Liza was already yawning. She only took him out as far as the bushes. Then she dragged herself upstairs and went to bed.

Liza didn't know how long she'd slept. It was still dead dark outside when Rusty's barking roused her. She pried her eyes open and called out, “What do you want, you crazy dog?”

Staggering to her feet, she went to the upstairs landing and looked down. Rusty wasn't jumping around as usual. He stood rooted before the front door, his hackles up, using a deeper, nastier bark, interspersed with low growls.

This was Rusty at his most serious—not the sort of barking he directed at the mailman, but at a burglar.

Burglar!
Liza whirled back to her bedroom to peer out the window. All she saw was a confusing mass of shadows, but she clearly heard the sounds from some sort of struggle—grunts and thudding blows.

She stepped back, wrestling her way into an old, worn terry cloth bathrobe that had once belonged to her father. Scooping up her cell phone, Liza plunged back downstairs and turned on the lights. When that didn't stop the sounds outside, she hit the speed-dial button for 911 with one hand while grabbing hold of Rusty's collar with the other.

Liza shouted her address to the operator who answered, reporting an assault in progress. Then she flung the door open, yelling, “I've called the police!”

She stood frozen in the doorway, staring out at the scene illuminated by the light streaming out from behind her.

Peter Hake lay writhing in the driveway while Michael, her husband, stood over him—kicking the stuffing out of the bigger man.

Michael looked up, his face pale. “You called the cops?” he gasped. “Thank God! I don't know how much longer I can keep this up!”

“Michael?” Liza had to struggle to keep herself from screaming at her estranged husband. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Doing?” Michael stared up at her, then quickly turned back to Hake, who'd managed to push himself up on one arm. Rearing back, Michael lashed out with his right foot, which thumped into Hake's ribs, knocking him flat again.

“I think that's pretty obvious, isn't it?” He grunted as he kicked Hake again, making him curl up into a ball.

Liza stood there in horror as that went on for minutes more until a police cruiser arrived. Peter would swear and threaten to kill Michael, try to get up off the ground, and Michael would kick the supports out from under him. Hake would lay there and get his breath back, then threaten to kill Michael again, and the whole thing would repeat.

Liza was overjoyed when the deputies bailed from the vehicle, their pistols already drawn.

“Police! Freeze!” Curt Walters shouted.

Michael took a long jump back from the prone form in the driveway, then stopped all movement.

“Hands above your head!” the other deputy ordered.

Michael immediately complied.

“Now what's going on here?” Curt demanded.

Hake awkwardly pushed himself up on one elbow. “This man attacked me.” His voice was rough with pain—and was that embarrassment?

Curt looked in bafflement from one man to the other. It would take about one and two-thirds Michaels to make one Peter Hake. “He attacked you?”

Peter Hake nodded, croaking, “From behind.”

He shifted again, and Michael shouted, “Don't let him get up!”

Curt turned his pistol on Hake. “You stay.” Then he glanced at Michael. “You tell me why.”

“I've been staying next door, trying to keep an eye on things out here,” Michael said. “Tonight, I saw this guy doing something under the hood of that car over there.” He nodded toward Mrs. Halvorsen's Oldsmobile.

“So I came down to see what was going on, and he threw a wrench at me. I ducked, ran up, and slammed the hood on him a couple of times. He staggered around, and I managed to kick his legs out from under him. He kept threatening me about what would happen to me if he got his hands on me. I believed him. I knew if he got back on his feet…” Michael gestured, comparing the two of them. “You know Hake is a pro—a leg breaker. If he got up, I figured he'd kill me.” Michael shrugged. “So I did my best to make sure he didn't make it up.”

“By kicking the crap out of him?” Liza still couldn't believe it.

“You got a better plan? It worked. I'm still alive, and he's still around and breathing. He's right here for the cops to catch,” Michael told her.

“I think you'll both be heading downtown,” Curt said.

“Fine. But before we go, I'm not kidding about the car. He was doing something in there before I came up, and he dropped a tool or something when I interrupted him. And that's in addition to whatever it was he threw at me.”

“I didn't—” Hake rasped.

“Yes, you did!” Michael whipped round on him. “You were doing something to that car, and you didn't want to leave fingerprints. Why else would you go for a walk in a quiet residential neighborhood—wearing rubber gloves?”

Hake stared down at the hand he'd extended to bear his weight. It was torn and a bit tattered from scrabbling on the driveway gravel, but that was obviously a surgical glove he was wearing.

Curt's partner pulled up the hood of the Oldsmobile and, using his flashlight, peered into the cavernous depths of the engine well. “The tool you heard drop didn't fall—exactly,” he reported. “The handle must have banged against something when it fell out of this guy's hand. Looks like some kind of ice pick, stuck through the brake line.”

“When Terence Hamblyn had his car accident on the highway, they were talking about brake failure,” Liza spoke up.

“Maybe Hake was trying to see if history would repeat itself.” Michael put his hands behind his back for the cuffs. Curt's partner put them on carefully.

Curt looked much less gentle as he restrained Hake.

It took both deputies to get Hake to his feet, and even so he staggered and groaned. Mainly, though, he glared at Michael.

“You know,” Curt said as they led Hake to the patrol car. “We still have what's left of that director guy's Beemer in the impound lot. It was pretty well totaled, and he's still in the hospital. Might be worthwhile, though, to compare what happened there with what happened here. I bet we could try to match that ice pick to any holes in the hydraulic system. Pull a CSI on our friend's shenanigans.”

Hake's shoulders sagged. Even a professional can only take so much.

As the deputies drove off with their prisoners, Liza went back into her house, one hand still holding on to a growling Rusty's collar, her other hand clutching her robe together. It had begun to gape embarrassingly as she'd watched the drama unfolding outside.

Just hope you weren't giving the boys a show of your own
, that critical back-of-the-head voice told her.

She quickly went upstairs to get dressed, then called Ava Barnes to inform her of the story—and also to find out about a lawyer for Michael.

Ava gave her the home phone for a man she described as a good local criminal attorney who owed her a favor.

It must have been a good favor. At least when Liza mentioned Ava's name, some of the sleepy surliness left the man's voice. Then she made a call to the local cab company—no way was she driving the Olds. It was a crime scene!

The cab arrived and Liza was soon headed off for downtown.

She arrived at the police section of City Hall to hear Hake's voice echoing down the hallway. “I didn't kill Chissel! I couldn't—I was busy knocking over that actor guy's house in Santa Barbara, trying to find a clue about where the hell he stashed his money.”

Caught in the act and likely to have at least something of the sabotage stick to him, Hake had apparently decided to cut his losses and cop to some minor crimes in hopes of escaping a murder charge.

“Let's not worry about what you didn't do then.” Sheriff Clements's voice wasn't quite as booming. “Just stick to the things you did.”

With that, the floodgates opened, and Hake gave a detailed rundown on his activities for thwarting progress on the
Counterfeit
set. Liza was surprised to hear him even admit to tampering with Terence Hamblyn's brakes to get the director out of the way.

“You understand that you're admitting being party to a fairly serious crime,” Clements pointed out.

“It's better than facing murder one,” Hake responded. “I didn't kill my boss. And I didn't break those windows.”

“We have a record—” Clements began.

“I know—I did a job like that once for Chissel. But that was years ago,” Hake said. “This time around, Chissel was trying to keep the suckers sweet—to string along the people in town who were looking for money from the movie. He figured he could either stiff them, or sell the studio and let the buyers worry about paying off.”

“Sounds like a really charming guy, your late boss,” Clements said.

“You wouldn't think it to look at him.” Hake's voice got almost reverent. “Maybe that was the whole thing, you didn't expect it. But when he put his mind to it, Chissel could convince you of almost anything—that up was down, that black was white. For him, the bigger the lie, the bigger the challenge. He started out as a broker in L.A., and that's what happened to all his clients—they got broker. When he came back there to head up Mirage, I asked if he worried about meeting any of the people he'd conned. You know what he did? He laughed.”

Hake chuckled himself. “Chissel said he was so far out of the league of those losers, they'd never get near him. And if they did, well, if he conned them once, he could do it again. All it took was a bit of carrot and stick.”

Judging by the sound of things, by the time Hake finished giving his statement, she'd probably be able to take Michael back home with her.

The other thing she noticed—thug he might be, but Hake had an almost superstitious awe of Oliver Chissel. His confession cleared away some of the underbrush—the same way that eliminating candidates on a sudoku puzzle pruned the one true solution into view.

There were still lots of questions, though—Derrick's money, the Main Street vandalism, and, the biggest puzzle of them all, finding Oliver Chissel's murderer. The picture should be clearer. Liza felt like a sudoku novice wrestling with a puzzle over her head. With the right techniques she should be able to slice away the encumbering candidates and get to the real clues. Her puzzle master instincts told her so.

Instead, even more frustratingly, the patterns seemed just beyond her reach.

The lawyer arrived while Liza was giving her statement. By the time Sheriff Clements was done with her, Michael had been released. He rose from one of the benches in the outer office as she came out. “They tell me Ma's Café is open by now. Feel like getting something to eat?”

Liza splurged, allowing herself French toast, maple syrup, and sausages. “I'll run tomorrow,” she told herself, chewing happily. “Hell, I'll run all week.”

The tall back of the booth seats kept her from seeing Kevin Shepard until he was almost on top of them. Besides, there was no getting away from one of Ma's booths. Failing escape, what was she going to do, hide under the table?

“Sheriff Clements tells me one of my guests is now a guest of the county,” Kevin said. “He also mentioned how he was arrested outside your house, monkeying with your car.”

“Not mine. Mine had already been monkeyed with. It was Mrs. Halvorsen's car, actually. But the accident was meant for me,” Liza said.

Kevin sent a doubtful glance over at Michael. “And he said that you took Hake down.”

Michael shrugged, dabbing a bit of toast into his runny fried eggs. “I grew up in a fishing town not all that different from up here. If somebody had a beef, we didn't debate using Robert's Rules of Order—or even the Marquess of Queensberry Rules. I've been in fights, and I knew that fighting Hake was biting off more than I could chew.”

“So I cheated.” His face got a little pale as he looked back on last night's adventure. “This was a fight I had to win.”

“Yeah.” Kevin's eyes went from Michael to Liza and back again. “I know what you mean.” He nodded and headed out of the café.

Liza gazed after him for a moment, then returned to her French toast. The rest of breakfast was finished in silence.

Kevin's status as a knight in shining armor had taken a considerable dent with his revelations of the seamier side of his innkeeping. How strange that Michael's dirty fighting had buffed up his tarnished armor considerably.

Liza returned home with only one thing on her mind—sleep. She yawned for the entirety of Rusty's quick walk. When she got upstairs, she'd make sure the bedroom curtains were arranged so no chink could allow sunlight in to stab her in the eye. Then she'd make like a dead person until sometime in the afternoon.

A muted beeping from the answering machine told Liza she'd gotten a call while she was out with Rusty. “Armando Vasquez again,” the familiar voice came from the speaker. The Santa Barbara detective sounded considerably more cheerful than usual. “Your sheriff called to say he got the doer on my break-in…and that the guy hadn't found what he was looking for. So I started wondering—what if the thing he was searching for wasn't there anymore? I checked over our evidence list, and guess what? We've got a laptop computer that belonged to Derrick Robbins in our lockup.”

There went all hopes of any rest. Liza got on the phone to Michelle, rousting her out of bed, and to Buck Foreman—he was up already. Then she called Sheriff Clements to inform him of what was going on if Vasquez hadn't, and to ask if Jimmy Perrine was available.

Liza got some sleep on the way to Santa Barbara, though she felt stiff and cramped from her position in the copilot's seat.

Worse than flying coach
, she silently complained.
Of course, if you're flying the plane—or even helping—they wouldn't want you so comfortable that you'd be drifting off.

Buck met her at the airport, but when they got to his car there was someone already inside. At first glance, Liza would have taken him for a car thief—he looked like a skinny kid in a faded black T-shirt, baseball cap crooked on his head, heavily tinted sunglasses making his eyes almost invisible.

However, Foreman introduced him. “This is Bradley.” He didn't explain if that was a first name or a last. “Bradley's served as a technical expert on computers for several local police departments, including the SBPD.”

“How ya doin'?” the man responded.

Liza looked at him with interest. Most technonerds she'd met had been of the chubby, high-water-pants variety. It was interesting to see one that aspired to cool.