Nocturnal (20 page)

“Yeah, it sounds like an open and shut case,” I said. “But I’d still like to track down the Piper children.”

“For reasons you won’t bore me with?”

“That’s right.”

Izzy groaned his displeasure. His expression turned flat. “Fine, have it your way. My answer’s no.”

“No,
what
?”

“No, I won’t help you find them. Hire a private eye.”

“Izzy, I need answers
no
w. The Tribune must have information on file.”

“Sure.”

“Then it should be easy. I don’t need much, just numbers and addresses….” I cut my plea short. A small smile had appeared on Izzy’s lips. He knew he had the upper hand.

I rubbed a hand over my face, muffling the blast of hot air through my nose. “Okay, you win. What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” Izzy said without hesitation. “From what happened eight years ago, to the reason you’re here now, wearing sunglasses at night and searching for a dead man’s kids. Give me the whole shebang, and I’ll have your information within twenty-four hours.” 

I stared down at my beer. A few days earlier, I wouldn’t have dreamed of opening up about my past. My affair with Lucy, the assault on Sterling, my complicity in a bloody murder-suicide – at best they weren’t details I was particularly proud of, and at worst they could land me in jail. But while I wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of full disclosure, I realized it was the only way forward. In order to avenge Bruno, I had to expose himself.

Izzy must’ve sensed my defensive wall crumbling. “And don’t forget the sex,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “I want all the juicy details.”

22. “Why are you following me?”

It was ten-thirty when I arrived back at the Sacramento Park Royal. The hotel lobby was deserted except for two young clerks at the front desk. They stiffened when they saw me, greeting me with formal nods. I nodded back, but that didn’t stop them whispering as soon as I passed by. Their rudeness amused me more than anything. I was barely a passing curiosity in San Francisco, but in a small city like Sacramento, I felt like the main attraction.

Riding up the elevator, I wondered how I was going to entertain myself for the rest of the evening. Normally I’d be at the office, but under the circumstances, work was out of the question. My mind was focused on bigger things.

If Izzy came through for me, I was only one sleep away from unmasking a killer. Izzy’s eyes had grown bigger and bigger as I’d recounted my story. By the end, he seemed almost as eager as me to locate the surviving Piper children. He said if he couldn’t find them himself, there was a private investigator who owed him favor. Either way, he’d have the information in my hands within twenty-four hours. Leaving me with a nervous wait.

Halfway down the corridor to my room, I spun on my heels and walked back to the elevator. I couldn’t face watching pay-movies in my hotel room again. There had to be a quiet bar on J Street where I could get a drink and a plate of nachos. If not, I could always pick up a cheap bottle of bourbon from the liquor store instead of wasting money on the mini bar.

My plan was instantly forgotten when the elevator door halved, and the white-pillared lobby came into view. Hawk Nose was leaning over the front desk, wearing the same camel overcoat he’d worn a few nights ago. His eyes lazily followed the ding of the elevator. He looked at me blankly for a moment before recognition tightened his features. Then he abruptly turned back to the concierge, slapping his hand decisively on the desk. “Great! I’ll be going then,” he told the concierge.

“Sir?”

“Thank you.”

His shoes clicked over the marble floor, but I was already hot on his tail, mowing down the distance between us. Just before the hotel entrance, he stole a furtive glance over his shoulder. When he saw me closing in, he made a break for it, bursting through the revolving doors.

I chased him out onto the street. Hawk Nose already had half-a-block’s head start. He was an ungainly runner, but
fast
, his long legs bouncing off the sidewalk like he had springs in his shoes. On a straight track he would’ve burned me off easily, but he hesitated at every corner, like he was afraid of running into traffic.

Suddenly he cut across the road, heading towards the trees of Capitol Park. With room to run, he started to stretch his lead. My lungs were gasping for air. The chase seemed hopeless. But then I heard Hawk Nose cry out, and I saw him pitch towards the grass. He landed awkwardly on his elbows and knees. I reached him just as he scrambled to his feet, grabbing him by the lapels.

“Don’t hurt me!” he howled.

“Shut up,” I said, walking him backwards into the shadows. When we were sufficiently camouflaged from the road, I shoved him to the ground.

He held up a protective hand. “I don’t want any trouble,” he said. “I’m only doing my job.

“What job?”

“I’m a private investigator.”

I lifted my sunglasses, studying the cowering man in front of me. He looked even younger close-up, more like a student reporter than a private eye. “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true!” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a business card, holding it up like a winning lottery ticket. I swiped it off him, tilting the type into the glow from a distant streetlight. “Gordon Conway?”

“Yes, that’s me.”             

The card said he worked for Adelphi Investigations of San Francisco. I’d never heard of the firm, but the card looked legit. “Why are you following me?”

“It’s a surveillance job.”

“Yeah obviously, but
why?
Who hired you?”

“I don’t know. Jack never lets me in front of the clients.”

“Jack’s your boss?”

He nodded. “My uncle.”

“Ah-ha.”

I offered him a hand up. “C’mon,” I said as he stared blankly at my hand. “I won’t bite.”

Gordon allowed me to pull him to his feet. He stood quietly, awaiting further instructions. Even with a slight stoop, he was at least five inches taller than me. But he was a harmless beanpole. I was pretty sure I could make him squeal without exerting any pressure.

“Gordon, you’re going to tell me everything you know about this job. Start from the top, and don’t hold anything back. I’ll know if you’re holding back.”

“I won’t,” he promised.

“And don’t even think about running off,” I said, aware that Gordon could easily give me the slip if he kept his balance. “Next time I catch you, I will hurt you. You understand?”

He nodded; fully compliant. From the confession that followed, I learned that Gordon performed low-level tasks for his uncle’s firm: checking phone numbers, tracing people on the internet and, more recently, general surveillance work. He couldn’t deal directly with clients because he wasn’t licensed yet – something to do with a drug conviction when he was a minor – but his uncle had hired him in a provisional capacity.

The surveillance job was simple. Gordon would receive a text message from his uncle advising of my location, and how long I needed to be tailed for – usually a few hours. The jobs only started a week ago, and so far Gordon had followed me on three separate occasions, with tomorrow scheduled to be the fourth. The client didn’t require pictures or detailed reports, only the basic facts: where, when and with whom. After the allotted time, Gordon would call in with a summary of my movements. He presumed his uncle then briefed the client.

“So you don’t know
why
I’m being followed?”

He shrugged. “All I got was your photograph and a license plate. I don’t ask questions.”

“Your uncle didn’t say anything about the client?”

Gordon shook his head, but his eyes slid off to the left.

“Okay then,” I sighed, studying the fine print on his business card. I pulled out my cell phone.

“What are you doing?” Gordon said.

“Calling your uncle.”

Gordon drew a quick breath. “Please don’t. It’s late…”

“–It’s not
that
late. And I’m guessing the office line forwards to his cell.”

“No…I mean yes, but he won’t give up client information.”

“There’s no harm in asking. He can only say no.”

I punched in the digits and lifted the phone to my ear. Gordon’s breathing grew agitated.

“It’s ringing,” I said, even though I hadn’t pressed the send button.

“Stop!” Gordon yelped, his hand jerking towards me.

I took a step back, throwing him a cautionary glare.

“I’m begging you,” Gordon pleaded. “I’ll give you something. Just hang up.”

I lowered my cell. “Not something, Gordon.
Everything.
”

“Everything I know. It’s not much.”

“Then start talking. And remember, I can tell when you’re lying.”

He took a deep breath. “The client’s a woman.”

“Go on.”

“That’s all I know,” he said, looking down at the ground.

And suddenly, I was tired of being mucked around. I aimed a straight right at Gordon’s bony nose. He flinched just in time, turning his head a few degrees and taking the punch on his cheekbone. It was a glancing blow, but he still dropped to the ground. I crouched beside him and drew back my fist. Gordon covered his head with his hands, groaning.

“Stop lying to me, Gordon. Now, for the last time, tell me about this client. Full fucking disclosure.”

Gordon spoke frantically behind his forearms, his paltry resistance crushed. “I haven’t met her and that’s the God’s honest truth. But my uncle said she was pretty, a pretty young woman with a killer body. He also said she was too good for you. Like he couldn’t picture the two of you together.”

“But I‘m not in a relationship.”

“I’m just telling you what he said. Maybe she’s a jealous ex. I mean, why else would she be tailing you?”

I thought for a moment. A woman didn’t make sense. The phantom caller, Ralph Emerson’s impersonator, had been a man. Unquestionably a man.

Then it occurred to me. “Have you ever called my office?”

“What? No.”

“Have you ever made threatening phone calls? As part of the job.”

“No. Fuck no.”

“What about your uncle?”

“
No.
He’d never do that. He’d lose his license.”

I stood up. Regarding the phone calls, at least, Gordon was telling the truth. “You got a name for me?”

A moment’s hesitation. “But I told you my name,” he fudged.

“Fucking hell, Gordon. If you don’t give me the name of your client right this second, I swear I will kick the living shit out of you.”

“Lucy,” he said quickly, stopping my heart dead. “Her name was Lucy Piper.”

23. “Are you ready for the black sheep?”

I couldn’t get to sleep that day. Every time I closed my eyes, a fresh deluge of questions swarmed my head.
Was Lucy still alive?
It was something I hadn’t even remotely considered before. Two people had died in the Piper house eight years ago. If the murdered woman wasn’t Lucy, then who was she? An unwitting stand-in? Could Lucy have pulled off such an elaborate trick?

More than once I’d dismissed the theory as absurd. Pretending to be dead didn’t get Lucy’s hands on Sterling’s fortune. And why, after all this time, would she have returned to carry out a vendetta against her ex-lovers? It didn’t add up.

Yet part of me wanted to believe it.
Despite the fact Lucy had lied to me, hung me out to dry, and cast a long shadow over my life, the mere possibility of seeing her again was exhilarating. It stirred emotions in me I hadn’t experienced in years. I even entertained a twisted fantasy that she’d murdered Ralph as a sort of apology, proving to me that I was her one true love.

But before I got carried away, I reminded myself that Gordon’s client had simply given a name. Just because she said she was Lucy Piper didn’t make it so. And when I thought with my head instead of my heart, I realized there was a far more rational explanation for recent events.

I’d been focused on the wrong sibling.

I was relieved when Izzy called me late in the afternoon, giving me a break from my thoughts. We arranged to meet in the hotel’s lobby bar at seven. I was fidgety from the sleepless day, so I headed down to the bar early and secured a dark corner table. I nursed a beer as the after work crowd drifted in. Even though I’d come to my senses about Lucy, I checked out every blonde who walked in. I still had that compulsion.

Izzy arrived on the dot of seven, breathless but clearly excited. “You can thank me later,” he said, pulling out a seat and slapping a file folder down on the table.

“You found them?”

“I found them,” he confirmed, opening the file and shuffling through the handful of papers inside. “Actually, my private eye did most of the work. You owe him eight hundred bucks, by the way.”

“Is it money well spent?”

“Yeah, he did a good job. So, who first?”

“The eldest son?”

Izzy nodded wisely, like he’d anticipated my response. He thought I was hitting the prime suspect first, but in fact, I was saving the best till last. He handed me a sheet of paper densely lined with dates and abbreviations. Reading from a second copy, Izzy proceeded to translate from the top. “Oliver James Piper, born January 3rd 1984, which would make him thirty now. Went to Casa Roble High, mediocre student by their standards, but he played junior varsity football and was a member of the sailing club. Undergrad at Sac State and then on to Berkeley, where he majored in Marketing. Enrolled in the Master’s program, but he dropped out soon after. That was in 2007.”

He paused for effect. The significance of the year wasn’t lost on me.

“Moved back to Sacramento to take over the family business, and within three years, he’d run it into the ground. Construction delays, over-leveraging, and poor pre-sales on a Fair Oaks condo development forced a massive liquidation auction, and suddenly the sixty year old company was no more. He licked his wounds for a while, renting an apartment in midtown and keeping a low profile. Then in 2011, he began working for Greenfield and Thompson, the luxury estate agents who do a lot of business in Granite Bay. I’m guessing Daddy’s old connections helped him out there. But he didn’t stay long. In 2013 he resigned, telling the agency he wanted to see the world. Within a month he’d sold his car, closed out his bank accounts....and that’s the last we hear from him.”

Izzy waited for a response, eyebrows raised.

I nodded slowly, giving the information due consideration. “Yes, very interesting. And the sisters?”

He frowned. “Hold on, maybe I wasn’t clear. The trail
ends
. One minute Oliver’s starting a new career in the realty business, and the next he’s disappeared without a trace.”

“He went traveling. That’s not so strange.”

Izzy shook his head. “There’d still be an audit trail. Electronic transfers, credit card transactions, something.”

“Your man checked all those in one day?”

“Oh sure. He said ninety-nine percent of people show up on a basic electronic sweep. And of the one percent that don’t, most are lying low for a reason.”

I sipped my beer, trying to hide my skepticism. “Okay, I’ll admit that Oliver looks pretty suspicious on paper. But let’s not jump to conclusions. Just because he’s fallen off the radar doesn’t mean he’s a murderer.”

“Jesus, you sound like a defense attorney. But you’re right, the other kids have some red flags, so we won’t condemn Oliver just yet.” He went back to the file. “Do you want to hear about the youngest son – Evan?”

“Not really. He killed himself, right?”

Izzy nodded. “Hanged himself in his bedroom the day after his eighteenth birthday. Right before his older brother disappeared.”

“Well there you go – that’s why Oliver ran off. He was shaken up by Evan’s suicide, and he needed a change of scenery. He wouldn’t be the first person to jump on a plane to escape problems at home.”

“I suppose that’s possible,” Izzy said, eyes narrowing. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“Yeah, but can we finish this first? I want you to keep an open mind.”

Izzy chuckled and shook his head. “Okay. You’ve kept me in suspense for eight years – I guess another five minutes won’t kill me. So, eldest daughter next?”

I nodded, leaning forward.

“Right,” Izzy said, handing over another sheet of paper. “Tiffany Dawn Piper, born July 10th 1987, making her twenty-eight. Educated at Granite Bay High School. A-grade student, played on the tennis team, and was her class salutatorian. She went to Berkley like her brother, but then she transferred to Sac State in 2008 to finish her BA in English and Spanish. Taught ninth and tenth grade English at Oakmont High from 2010 to 2014, then left to do the same job at Mission High School in San Francisco earlier this year. Doesn’t own a house or a car, and the only other detail we have is that she’s a member of the Adele Fan Club.”

“Adele the singer?”

“Adele the singer,” he confirmed.

I took a measured sip of beer, pondering Tiffany’s bland resume. Could she be the killer? There weren’t any light-bulbs flashing. The only significant aspect of Tiffany’s story was the fact she’d recently moved to San Francisco, just before Ralph Emerson’s impersonator took up residence in my office. But thousands of people left Sacramento for the coast every year – it wasn’t an out-of-the-ordinary move. And everything else about Tiffany’s profile was respectfully ordinary: a top student, a schoolteacher, and fan of middle-of-the-road pop. I could picture her now – her hair styled with a flip, wearing a pale sweater and a long pleated skirt, singing Adele songs in her Prius.

“What about personal stuff,” I said. “Marriage? Kids?”

“Never been married, never had kids. And no records of joint accounts or mutually held assets. The same goes for Oliver. They’re about as single as you get.”

I nodded slowly, wondering if there was anything to read into the siblings’ solitary lives. It was probably easier to moonlight as a killer if you didn’t have a family to worry about, but beyond that…

“Are you ready for the black sheep?” Izzy said.

My ears pricked up. “That sounds promising.”

“It’s quite a story,” he said, handing me another printout. “Kendall Louise Piper, born March 1st 1992, so she’s twenty-three. Went to Granite Bay High like her sister and younger brother. Straight A student, school choir, debating club, hockey team – a real goody-two-shoes. Then out of the blue, at fourteen, she’s expelled for drinking on school grounds.”

“Let me guess. The year her father died?”

“Exactly, in 2007. Someone must’ve pulled a few strings, because she transfers to Loretto High School and keeps her head down for the next three years, graduating in 2011 with a 4.1 GPA and gaining admission to Brown. Except she never makes it to Providence. In September 2011 she’s arrested in New York for possession of cocaine. She’s sentenced to five days community service, fined $1,000, and then she drops out of sight for a while.”

“And she’s still just a teenager?”

“Yeah, and she’s only warming up. Next she pops up in Vegas, February 2012, to marry one Lee Archibald. They file for divorce four months later, citing irreconcilable differences. Skip to March 2014 – Kendall gives birth to a son in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, but the baby dies before he leaves the hospital. Father unknown. She marries again in August 2014, to a Larry Jewell, and they buy a $280,000 house on the outskirts of Albuquerque. Then in January 2015, Kendall Jewell is arrested for brandishing a firearm at her neighbors after a compliant about a domestic dispute. She’s not charged, but soon after her credit card starts making its way north. Flagstaff, LA, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz…”

“–San Francisco,” I guessed.

“You got it. Since March this year, the transactions are all from the Bay area. I’m guessing she left husband number two.”

“Hmmm,” I said, leaning back. “Interesting.”

Izzy stared at me. “What are you hmmming about? I know she sounds crazy, but you don’t seriously think she’s the killer.”

My silence said everything.

“What about Oliver?” Izzy said. “Surely he’s the prime suspect.”

Rather than wasting my breath on defending Oliver, I told Izzy about my run-in with Gordon Conway, and how he’d been hired by a woman.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Izzy said. “You’ve spoken to the killer on the phone, and he was a
he
.”

“Maybe that wasn’t the killer. Kendall could’ve easily found an out-of-work actor to make a few prank calls. I only spoke to him three times – twice when he was Ralph Emerson, and then once when he was calling me Johnny. Everything else could’ve been done by a woman. Changing the script, setting up the photos of Ralph’s family, spraying cheap aftershave round the office…”

Izzy was shaking his head. “You think a twenty-three-year-old girl could’ve bludgeoned Ralph Emerson to death, and then forced your friend to drive off a cliff?”

“She has a history of violence.”

“Waving a shotgun around is not the same.”

“Yeah, I know. I had a hard time imagining it myself. But my gut tells me she’s the one. Did your man happen to get a current address?”

“No, not in San Francisco. She’s probably hiding from her husband.” Izzy’s eyes suddenly lit up. “But he did send through a picture. Kendall’s mug shot from the Albuquerque arrest.”

He reached into the folder and handed me a printed photo. “She’s got that sexy goth thing going on.”

Kendall Piper had matted black hair, pale skin, and dark eyes that were filled with resentment. She wasn’t happy about being photographed, that was for sure. The longer I stared, the more I saw something familiar in Kendall’s confronting gaze, and the haughty set to her jaw.

I knew that look.

I knew that woman.

Bruno would’ve been caught off guard, thinking she was a friend of Chloe’s.

“Do you
know
her?” Izzy said.

“I was on a blind date with her last week.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was. She’s had a makeover since this picture was taken, but it’s definitely her. She’s going by the name Maxine.”

“Jesus. Who introduced you?”

“A friend of a friend….” My eyes shifted to the groups of office workers in the bar. I’d been completely fooled by Maxine’s polished, corporate façade. But I hadn’t been the only one…

A cold sweat tickled my scalp. “Fuck. I have to go.”

“What’s wrong?”

I was already on my feet, edging out from behind the table. “My friend – the one Kendall’s attached herself to. I have to warn her.”

Izzy put a hand on my forearm. “Wait a second, Pete. Think for a….”

“–
No
,” I said, pulling my arm away. “I’ll think on the road, but I have to leave
now
. That bitch has killed the last of my friends.”