Rogue Wave (12 page)

“What would he have given up for Robin Matucci?”

For the first time Zack looked surprised. “He tell you about him and Robin?”

“No way else I’d know. Way it sounded,” Kiernan said, embellishing her suspicions, “he was crazy about her, but maybe she wasn’t so sure.”

“She coulda done a lot worse than a guy like Ben Pedersen. With him, she’d never have had to worry. He’d have done anything for the boat.”

The light turned yellow. She stepped on the gas and pulled hard on the wheel, cutting off a sports car revving up to jump the light. Good thing Tchernak couldn’t see this. “You won’t buy the guy a beer because you don’t want him to die of cirrhosis,” Tchernak would be saying. “Never occurs to you people die in crashes?” She looked at Zack, but if he had any qualms he was concealing them. “Zack, did you ever hear Robin talking to her sister?”

He sat up. “She didn’t have a sister.”

“The red-haired woman who met her at the wharf from time to time?”

“That wasn’t her sister,” he said as if announcing a herring wasn’t a salmon.

“Who was she then?”

“Pull over here. On the right. Behind that truck.”

“Do you know who she was?”

“Yeah. But that’s not part of breakfast.”

“Fair enough. How much?”

“Hundred.”

“A hundred! No way, unless the redhead was Dan Quayle in drag.”

“Okay, seventy-five.”

She extricated two twenties and held them out.

“Jessica Leporek.”

“Jessica Leporek, the head of the Initiative Campaign here?
She
was Robin’s friend?”

But Zack had already snatched the bills and left.

“Jessica Leporek,” Kiernan said to Brad Tchernak, “was Robin’s friend.”

“Our
Jessica Leporek, head of the initiative drive in San Francisco?” Tchernak whistled.

Ezra howled.

“Then Robin Matucci must have supported the initiative. From everything I hear around headquarters down here, the initiative is Jessica’s whole life. She wouldn’t waste her time with someone who isn’t for it. And, frankly, I don’t think anyone who wasn’t a fanatic could put up with her.”

“Would you like to guess who one of Robin’s main passengers was?” Kiernan leaned back and pictured Tchernak at the other end of the line, his tan, beautifully muscled chest half visible over the blankets he’d never admit he was still under at seven-thirty in the morning. But she could interpret Ezra’s whines in the background.

“Who?”

“Dwyer Cummings.”

Tchernak whistled again. Ezra howled louder. “Did Jessica know that?”

“I’ll ask her as soon as I see her. She’s not at the office yet.”

Ezra whined.

Kiernan pictured Ezra, his wiry muzzle resting anxiously on Tchernak’s bare arm, his skinny gray tail wagging hopefully. She could hear canine toenails scraping the floor, then a more distant whine, faint enough to mean Ezra had crossed the room and was waiting at the door. “Tchernak, you clod, you haven’t taken him for his run yet, have you?”

Ezra whined louder. He had already had his customary phone “talk” with Kiernan.

Turning back to the question that had been gnawing at her, she said, “Robin Matucci’s smart enough to make herself the most successful captain at the wharf. But she made a point of hiring the dumbest deckhands, and she played both sides on Prop. Thirty-Seven. What was she up to?”

“Got me. But I’d be willing to bet, if Jessica found out about Dwyer Cummings, Robin would have heard about it. And so would everyone within a hundred yards of the dock.”

“Get the word on both of them. And run background checks on the following: Ben Pedersen, Skip Olsen—”

“Skip Olsen? Hey, what’s going on up there? Can’t you trust even him?”

“Probably. This is just insurance.” She hesitated so long Tchernak said, “And?” “And while you’re at it, get one on Marc Rosten, M.D.” Tchernak guffawed. “The old boyfriend. Never split from a private eye, huh?”

Kiernan started to protest, realized there was no good protest, and said, “I’ll call you back at noon.”

“Hey, remember.” No fenestration. Stay out of other people’s windows.”

“Tchernak, nagging is such an unattractive quality in a servant.”

K
IERNAN PARKED ON UPPER
Market Street, at the top of the Dixie Alley staircase, and walked down the twenty or so steps to number 17.

Skip Olsen was standing on the narrow deck outside his door, staring out at the panorama of Oakland and Berkeley across the Bay. He was wearing a red-and-gold Forty-niners’ sweatshirt: Back-to-Back Superbowls XXIII-XXIV. Glints of sun broke through the fog, highlighting his cheekbones. For a moment Kiernan felt she was looking at a much younger man—a Skip Olsen who was angular, healthy, and almost handsome, she realized with a start.

“Kiernan,” he said as she opened the gate, “you don’t waste any time.”

“I don’t have any time. I’ve been up since four.”

“Come in. Coffee?”

“Unless you’ve got straight adrenaline,” she said, following him through the sliding glass doors to the dining area.

“Cream?” he asked, already pouring. He handed her the cup.

She took a swallow, trying hard not to scowl in disgust. She was a coffee snob, and she knew it. It was one of her few food snobberies that predated Tchernak. Many more had been added since he’d taken over her kitchen, but none equaled her distaste for weak coffee.

“Doctor told me to cut it out,” Olsen said, “but I figure the vices will still be there when I get around to curing them. So what’ve you got to report?”

Kiernan laughed. A little jockeying for control? “You first.”

“Okay. Maureen Brant just got off the horn.”

“This early? I arranged to call her at ten.”

Olsen shrugged and took a swallow of coffee. “She couldn’t wait. Called the minute the grocery opened.”

“What’d she say?”

“The obvious. She wants to know if you’ll take the case. I told her I thought so. Right?”

“As it happens, you
were
right. But I might have found something at the wharf that would have made me decide differently. Don’t presume for me, okay?”

“Sor-
ry
,” he said, in an adolescent cadence that negated the apology.

“Is Maureen waiting at the store for me to call?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll get back to her before I leave.” Sliding into the chair across from him, she told him what she’d learned.

Olsen leaned forward eagerly, settling forearms on the table, never taking his eyes from Kiernan’s face. “Dwyer Cummings, huh? Very interesting.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Only what I read in the paper and the business magazines. I’ve got a lot of time to read. I figured I’m not going to get any boost from having been a cop, but I grew up in the city. I dare you to find anyone who knows San Francisco better than me.”

“So, Skip,” Kiernan said impatiently, “what is it you know about Dwyer Cummings?”

“Dwyer Cummings is probably in his late forties. Big, blond, football-hero type,” he said with undisguised scorn. “Career oilman, went from engineering to administration. Been on the pipeline. Now he’s spokesman for the Energy Producers’ Group.”

“What’s that?”

“PR wing of the oil companies, all the ones that deal in the state. They’ve got professional PR people; what Cummings does is speak on technical issues with the authority of someone who’s been an engineer in the drilling areas. He’s the point man battling this initiative business.” Olsen laughed decisively.

Kiernan raised an eyebrow.

“Well, Dwyer Cummings does have a kind of folksy charm, intelligent folksiness. He’s a damned good speaker, well-informed. But don’t let his charm snow you. The word in the industry is that Cummings was involved in something no one is willing to talk about.”

“Specifically?” Kiernan said, surprised at the edge to her voice.

Olsen caught it too. He picked up his cup, but continued to stare belligerently as he drank. Then he said, “Best I can tell you is that something happened in Alaska and then Cummings was sent down here.”

“Sent down here to be spokesman for an initiative that could be devastating to the oil industry, and not only in California? Environmentalists in every coastal state are watching Prop. Thirty-Seven. So whatever Cummings was involved in up there, it couldn’t be important enough to endanger the ‘No’ on the Thirty-Seven campaign.”

“I said I didn’t know what it was yet.”

“Okay. Maybe it’s nothing. Cummings seems pretty peripheral to Delaney’s death, and even more so to Garrett Brant’s accident. But we’ve got so little we’re going to need everything.”

“I’m working on it. Stuff like this, it’s not info you get off the wires. For this you need to cozy up to one of his rivals.”

“Cozy away,” Kiernan said with a smile, realizing as she said it that this was exactly the kind of work that would appeal to Olsen. “Okay, what have you heard about Ben Pedersen and Robin Matucci?”

Olsen leaned forward, eyes widening. “As a twosome?”

Clearly, Kiernan thought, this is a man who loves the whispered word. “Sense I got from Pedersen is he would have liked that.”

Olsen nodded knowingly. “Could be. I didn’t hear anything when I was down there. Saw the two of them together once, but nothing lovey-dovey going on. You want my opinion, it’s all in Pedersen’s head. Understandable, set of knockers like that. If he was banging her, there wasn’t any reason to keep it a secret.”

“None we know of,” Kiernan said irritably. Working with Olsen was a big mistake. The man was driving her crazy. “I need someone undercover on the dock,” she said, shaking off her irritation. “Maybe nothing more to be got there, but then again … You know anyone?”

“Let me think. My contacts aren’t too good yet. It’s not the best way”—Olsen fingered his cup thoughtfully—“but I guess I’ll have to do it myself.”

Kiernan stood up. “Skip, you’ve already been spotted.”

“I’ll go after the boats leave. Or I’ll catch the deckhands off the dock.”

“They’ve already broken your windshield.”

“Guess I’ll just have to be more careful.”

“No.” Kiernan put a hand on his shoulder. “This is my case. I decide who does what. And I’m telling you, this isn’t a wise plan.”

Olsen shook off her hand.

“I’m serious. Skip. Either you work on my case my way, or we don’t work together. Got it?”

It was a moment before he grunted out what she took to be a yes.

Kiernan smiled. “Good. ‘Harpoon’ is something or someone Robin called on the ship-to-shore radio. Delaney asked Zack, the deckhand, about it. Zack figured Delaney thought it was a place. Pedersen’s deckhand said something like ‘time to find Harpoon’ as they got ready to leave, and Pedersen nearly took his head off. See what you can find.”

Olsen grinned, showing square yellowish teeth. “If it’s there, I’ll find it. Come this way.” He limped into the bedroom.

All Kiernan had seen of this room the previous day was the end of the bed. What she had missed were three walls covered with bookshelves, one of them entirely filled with phone books and directories. A computer, two phones, Xerox, and fax were lined up on a counter, while a clothesline strung above them held three streamers of drying negatives.

Kiernan laughed. “I hope you didn’t have all this here to shake free during the earthquake. You’d have been so far under that they’d have sealed the house and left it, like in Pompeii.

“It was here, or most of it. Took me the better part of a day to get everything back in place. And San Jose and Eureka”—he pointed to two phone books—“took it hard.”

“When can you find me Harpoon?”

He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost nine now. Noon, no problem. Depending on what else you need and how fast.”

“My office is getting background on the principals. But that’ll only be current to last month. I’ll probably need you to search records downtown.”

“I could have done the background for you.”

“You didn’t tell me. Last night you were only an ex-cop. This morning you’re Sherlock Holmes on line.”

He shrugged. “What’s an out-to-pasture cop to do?”

She nodded, pleased not to have to explain that she didn’t farm out work if she could help it, particularly not to a man who hadn’t been completely honest. On the other hand, some things had to be farmed. “Can you get me a list of Robin Matucci’s and Delaney’s addresses, and their heirs? Also their lawyers. Robin’s not married, right?”

“Not unless it was to
Early Bird.”

“Then maybe that one will be easy.” She glanced out the window over his bed. A slice of sun glistened on the feathery leaves of a jacaranda tree, cut a swath across the steep ivy-covered hillside and disappeared. Olsen was still at the windowless inside wall, straightening his out-of-town directories, which, Kiernan noted, were in neither alphabetical nor geographical order.

She leaned against the doorjamb. “What do you know about Jessica Leporek?”

“Married a pile of money,” Olsen said, turning around and resting his hips against the edge of the desk. “Been a volunteer with Bay Watch and the Marine Mammal center, a docent at the Asian Art Museum, and probably worked with a couple other environmental groups. She’s fanatic about the antidrilling initiative. No one questions her sincerity. She’d cut off her right leg to get this thing passed. But …” There was a different quality to Olsen’s speech now, none of the condescension he’d shown when discussing Cummings.

To just what kind of person would Olsen feel kinship? Kiernan wondered. “But what? What’s her flaw, Skip?”

“Not lack of knowledge, that’s for sure. It’s more subtle than that.” He hiked up one shoulder and caught his hip higher against the edge of the desk. “Thing is, she’s not a girl the boys like. Know what I mean?”

She nodded.

“She’s one of those women in public life people make fun of. You know? Like Margaret Thatcher.” He tapped his foot nervously on the carpet.

“Go on.”

“Like the clumsy kid the other kids don’t want on the team. No matter how hard he tries, he’s never going to be one of them. They’re going to snicker at everything he does, and make it so everyone in school understands he’s the goat.” He turned around to face his computer. The movement was too fast. He gasped and grabbed his hip.