Reilly 13 - Dreams of the Dead (34 page)

“And you plan to resolve that how?”

“I plan to tell him what happened to Jim. Can’t wait any longer on this. Then the cops.”

“He just got discharged from the hospital. Tonight’s not the right time.”

“Okay, but this has to stop soon. I have an idea. Call Kurt and ask him to keep Bob for the evening.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Paul said, “it’s Brinkman. He knows Hendricks. He wants that money and he’s figured out some way to get it through that escrow office. I’m going to confront him. You in?”

“Don’t go. I think you’re wrong. It’s not Eric and this is not your case. I’ve been warned off speaking with you about it.”

“If we can stop a major crime and help Philip, to be thinking ahead about saving my own ass, but that’s the way of my people, it may help when I fess up to Philip and the police. I’m going to Eric’s place at Incline. Will you come?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Nina said. “Maybe I can keep you from making a huge mistake.”

“H
e seems to like risks. I wonder if he was planning to blackmail me,” Paul said.

“Where are you?” Nina asked.

“Moving through Zephyr Cove. You?”

“I don’t see you, but close enough. We probably shouldn’t be talking on the phone.”

“Focus, Nina. I think we need to have this conversation.”

Nina and Paul were in separate cars, talking on their hands-free phones, driving up toward Eric Brinkman’s place in Incline Village, located about forty minutes north of South Lake Tahoe.

“Why do you believe Eric followed you in the first place?” Nina asked. Beyond the tree line the moon followed her. She was beginning to tire but she wasn’t going to say anything about that.

“Now there’s an interesting subject. I think he’s a rich guy who likes to play PI.”

“He does it for fun?”

“My profession is fun, in a postapocalyptic sort of way. He got himself a license and he got himself some jobs around Tahoe, and one of them was to see who was pilfering from Paradise two years ago. Maybe he knew where Jim was in the days after he disappeared and was following him. Maybe he followed me that night from your house the night I took Jim out. Maybe he followed me when I buried the body. Then he would know where the grave
was. Then he heard about the pending sale and realized he might be able to separate out some of that money and pounce on it, like a hungry lioness separating out a tasty emu.”

“But the money will be in a bank,” Nina said. “He might be able to separate it out, but how could he get at it? Ah. How about by offering Nelson Hendricks a share?”

“That’s how the scam works,” Paul said. “Hendricks has to be involved.”

“The escrowed money gets wired somewhere else the minute it gets into his hands,” Nina said. “Paul, that’s tomorrow morning! Wednesday. The wire’s due in first thing!”

“I’m realizing there’s gonna be an embezzlement that’ll stand as one of the big ones. Except for one thing. We’re gonna prevent it. And it’s Brinkman, like I keep saying. He forged the paperwork from Brazil. He dug up Jim’s body when there was a danger someone might figure out Jim was definitely dead.”

Nina wasn’t convinced but had nothing else to offer as a substitute theory. “How about this? Philip said he called Eric to tell him about the grave being found, and about the tip. Eric could have gone straight there, if Philip passed on the GPS numbers, and taken the body right before the police arrived.”

“Good point,” Paul said. “It would take a couple of hours, but sure he could. Cyndi—maybe his girlfriend? He fits. He sure does. And Brenda saw him that day. He was worried she might identify him.”

“You have nothing on Eric, really, though I agree we may have the bones of a conspiracy worked out, and I think Hendricks has to be one of the coconspirators.”

“There’s something off about this guy. He’s dirty. I feel it. He’s got secrets.”

Nina zipped left toward Incline Village at Spooner Pass. The last of winter hung in the air in front of her headlights like tiny clouds, dissipating in the oncoming traffic, insubstantial.

“Actually, Hendricks doesn’t even need to be here for the
escrow. This kind of transaction’s all done with smoke and mirrors. Maybe he’s packing up, leaving town as we speak. Your phone is smarter than mine. Why don’t you google Hendricks?”

“I’m truly amazed and agog and horrified I can google while driving late at night at sixty-two hundred feet above sea level through a deep forest split between California and Nevada,” Nina said. She pulled over and played with her iPhone, punching and pillaging the Net. A few minutes later, she drew back out into traffic and called Paul. “Nelson Hendricks is a member of the Elks. And the Chamber of Commerce. The Methodist Church. The NAACP Big Brothers. Not a complaint to Better Business in decades of business. Not a hint that he’s anything but straight.”

Paul was silent for several moments. “I’m calling Wish on this. I’ll call you back.”

Silence. Nina listened to the radio. Then her phone sang its jarringly inappropriate song. She answered. Paul came on the line. “Wish is such a dog! Sandy should be proud. He’s far more intelligent than he appears at first glance.”

“What did he find out?”

“Listen, Nelson Hendricks’s wife doesn’t have MS. She has a blood disease. Something to do with anemia. It’s not always fatal but usually is within a year or two. There’s a new treatment but Hendricks’s insurance company refuses to pay for it. They claim it’s experimental.”

“Wish got into an insurance company’s private files?”

“I won’t reveal his methods. When the insurance company denied Hendricks’s request, he appealed and lost. I’m sure he’s got a nest egg, but you know how expensive medical care is. Desperate times require desperate measures. Nelson and Rayanne Hendricks have been together for twenty-five years, since he was twenty-four and she was twenty. They have three kids getting started in the world, one in college, so no financial help there. They celebrated their anniversary and announced his upcoming retirement two months ago at a private party at the Edgewood Inn with fifty close
friends. The
Tahoe Mirror
gave them a quarter page, they’re that well-known and loved.”

“And this pillar, this good man, Nelson Hendricks, made a deal with Eric Brinkman to steal the sales proceeds? For money for his wife?”

“Has to have. He’s not the type to embezzle for anything less than saving his wife’s life. Hendricks might get away with claiming he had nothing to do with it,” Paul went on. “Brinkman would never be identified as the recipient of the funds. Neither of them could ever do this more than once on their home grounds.”

“It all sounds sort of razor-sharp and extremely bold. Based on what you’ve said, though, I’d say the chances of Eric Brinkman succeeding in siphoning off the escrow funds are slim, Paul. I think he’d be caught.”

“Maybe he wants to be caught.”

“Maybe he thinks he’s invulnerable,” Nina countered.

“Yeah, that’s him. What time is it?”

“After six. Never have an honest man for an accomplice,” Nina said. “Nelson Hendricks is ripe to rat Eric out. He might be desperate, but he’s not a born criminal.”

“I’ve done things for you, honey. I can relate.”

“I said an honest man,” Nina teased, but her heart had gotten heavy. “Sorry. It’s nothing to joke about.”

“I’ll ignore that gallows humor as being all too appropriate at the moment.”

She turned up the hill toward Diamond Peak. Ahead of her a fast car came in the opposite direction. She pulled down the sunshade.

“Believe it or not, I believe I just passed Brinkman’s Porsche Cayenne,” Nina said with a calm she hadn’t known she could possess. “I don’t think he saw me.”

“Which means he’s not home. Excellent.”

“Which means our plans are foiled. We can’t confront him.”

Paul said, “Park down the street, not on his property.”

*   *   *

N
ina pulled her RAV up a block from Eric’s house. In the distance, she spotted Paul’s Mustang.

Hidden behind a gate and a fence, a curved, short concrete-paver driveway led to Brinkman’s low-profile mansion.

Paul met her near the gate, which was not locked.

“Let’s explore the perimeter,” Paul said.

She hesitated. He removed various items from a small pack on his back.

“What if his alarm system goes off?”

“We run,” Paul said.

T
hey walked up to the house like bold solicitors. No bells rang. No dogs barked. The surrounding forest was silent. A single light shone from the nearest neighbor’s house across a sea of soft mule-ears. They listened to the breeze.

Paul said, “I’m now going to make the garage door go up.” The door inside the gate rose, unresisting.

“How did you learn—amazing! How could Eric not be guarding against it?”

“Here’s the way things work now, honey. A controller controls things. Another controller actually bosses the first controller. Then there’s the übercontroller, the big man, the higher power, whatever. That’s what I’m using, the one that can override his security systems. It reads what he’s doing and then jams or starts allowing electronic emissions in those frequencies. It’s not going to work long. Pretty soon the private security firms will figure out how to block this fellow with an über-überfellow.”

“Then you’ll find an über-über-überfellow.”

“Yep.”

“Men exhaust me,” Nina said.

He pulled a flashlight from his pack. They went directly into the garage. Beside them Nina could see a shadowy automobile. Paul shone the flashlight on a white convertible, which was empty, and on a large motorcycle, then looked at his handheld screen. “The back door of this garage connects to the rest of the house. Okay?”

His hand grasped the knob, which opened easily.

“Not locked,” Nina marveled. “I lock every window.”

They slipped out of the garage and up wooden stairs to an interior landing with a small mat at the door. Paul tried the handle, and it opened. “This is a bad idea,” Nina said.

“Guy doesn’t lock his interior doors.”

“He didn’t expect you to be able to open the garage. Agh, I don’t like this.”

“Shh.” Paul yanked her into the house through the open door and turned on a light. “We’re in.”

A large, dim room lay ahead of them, curtains closed, blinds drawn.

“Motion detectors,” Paul muttered, holding her arm, nodding toward a blinking light. He went to work again. While he fiddled with technology, Nina looked around.

“All clear,” Paul announced.

“What if he’s an innocent man?”

“No such thing. However, if he’s not involved in the Strong scam, we leave and no harm done.” They walked into Brinkman’s living room.

A pebble-textured, black leather couch faced a large flat-screen TV next to the hearth. The room seemed impersonal to Nina. A few professional journals lay on the floor beside the couch. There were no rugs. A carved Balinese daybed, piled high with cotton pillows, ran along the length of the window that faced toward Lake Tahoe.

She inspected the view. A long geologic decline swept all the way down the mountain to the lakeside, miles away. The distant view was unobscured. You could see the mountains ringing the southern side of the lake twenty-six miles away. Redwood decking, cantilevered from the house, behind double doors in the living room, seemed to drift toward the lake.

She examined the items on the coffee table carefully while Paul made his own quick exploration.

What she saw first, on a side table, was an oversize, kitschy,
white porcelain dog sitting on an ornate stand. Nina picked it up carefully, turned it over. “Jeff Koons,” she said, recognizing the style now. “Brinkman spends money on art. He likes contemporary art.” She replaced it gingerly.

“Is that what this is?” Paul called, and Nina turned toward his finger, pointing at a large aquarium near the hall door.

They walked over together, and Nina’s disbelief grew: it was a fish, and that fish was not alive, but hanging from wires inside a solution she realized must be formaldehyde. “I know this kind of art,” she said.

“This is art?”

“Well, it could be a biological specimen. Maybe he collects them. But I think this is an installation by Damien Hirst. His works bring the highest prices of any artist in the world. He’s one of the most famous, too.”

“It’s got to be four feet long.”

“The original was a fourteen-foot shark. It sold for millions.”

“So, he has expensive taste.” Paul continued to stare at the fish. “I wonder if he caught it and pickled it himself. Where’d he get the money for this house and art?”

A large, bare room on the right, tableless and carpetless, had been turned into a gym. A ROM exercise machine had been set up in the center of the room.

“I’ve been wanting one of those for years. Keeps you hard working out just four minutes a day, if you believe the ads. He’s dirty,” Paul muttered. “I know it like I know my name. Come on. Here’s the kitchen, and then let’s find the office and his bedroom.”

All the small appliances were European stainless steel. Every surface sparkled. “He had a decorator put the interiors together, I think,” Nina said. “There’s not much personal aside from the art. He’s a clean freak. A little compulsive.” She opened a drawer. Rows of utensils, sorted and matching. “Bet he’s a Virgo.”

“We haven’t seen everything yet.”

Since there was no dining table, the bar stools at the counter
constituted the dining room. Nina went around the tall marble counter and on impulse opened the refrigerator door. She saw cans of Red Dog, a vitamin-caffeine drink, bottles of vitamin water, a box of Rice Krispies, a carton of soy milk, fish oil, and some dark juice in a pitcher. She saw prescription pills in their container and took a look—Provigil. What was that? She had been reading about it.

Right, a recreational drug. A
neuro-enhancer
, that was the word. College kids took it without being prescribed it because it was supposed to make you feel more alert, more able to concentrate, maybe a little smarter.

She put the pills back and checked out the freezer, saying, “One sec,” to Paul. A Dutch gin called Damrak, frosty on the top rack; frozen steaks below. A container of coffee ice cream. On the way out she glanced into the pantry; endless supplies of paper products and Duraflame fire logs and cases of water and juice, probably from Costco, the bulk-buy store in Carson City.