The Survivors Club (11 page)

“The shoes,” he said. “They were expensive. Athletic shoes.”

Tess thought:
So the kid had money.

If it was a kid.

CHAPTER 19

Michael DeKoven had fallen asleep with the light on. He awoke at midnight beside his lover. Martin had crawled in under the sheets and was kissing his neck.

They made love. First urgently. Then slowly.

Martin was a model for those underwear ads they had in
GQ
and
Esquire
. He had the sleek but muscled tanned body that shimmered under the lights, perfect against the tight white underwear he wore while posing by swimming pools or against the sand, often with an equally disinterested female model.

Michael called Martin his “Tighty-Whitey,” in reference to the underwear—and other things.

Martin cradled Michael in his arms and said, “How’d your day go?”

“A man was murdered today.”

“Anyone we know?”

“An acquaintance. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re going to question me.”

“
You?
Why?”

Michael shrugged. “It’s a high-profile case, and I’ve had dealings with the guy.”

“Well. I’m sure you’ll pass with flying colors.”
Michael said nothing.

“Are you worried about this? If the detective is rude, I’ll—I’ll slit his throat. How about that?”

“That’s a little extreme.” Martin was always threatening violence against anyone who might hurt Michael. Which was ridiculous. Michael doubted Martin had a violent bone in his body. It was all swagger. But it was cute.

Michael
was the one who pushed the limits. Now he said, “Look, I’ve got everything under control. You can be a little too protective—and we only have until this afternoon.”

Martin would be winging his way back to New York for another shoot. They saw each other less and less, and to be honest, Michael preferred it that way. The few times a year they were together, it consumed them both. It left Michael sated but also drained. His thinking was less sharp. And he couldn’t afford to make a mistake, not even on a micro level.

Sometimes, too, Michael’s dark side took over, and things got…out of hand.

He always felt bad afterward. But while Martin would act hurt and betrayed for a while, he always came back for more.

It was as if he hated himself for some reason, and felt he deserved punishment. He’d once said to Michael that he had always wanted to be someone’s slave.

They made love and then shared a breakfast out by the pool. Michael’s wife was, as usual, nowhere in evidence. She didn’t mind his dalliance with Martin, because they weren’t really a couple anymore anyway.

She said he kept too many secrets.

Martin bit into a strawberry and stretched his long, tanned legs out on the flags. Instead of the tighty-whities that made him famous as a model, he wore a long black pair of trunks with white laces at the fly. Delicious white laces, if you wanted to know the truth.

“What are you thinking?” Martin asked.

“You don’t want to know.”

“I know you have a dark side,” Martin said. “I know you have secrets. I wish you wouldn’t keep secrets from me.”

Did he actually pout?

Suddenly, Michael couldn’t take it anymore. He had too much on his mind. “I’m calling a car for you,” he said. He happened to look up at the shiny windows of Zinderneuf and saw his wife staring down at them. He smiled and waved, and she flipped him the bird.

CHAPTER 20

DAWN PATROL

Laguna Beach, California

Chad DeKoven’s mornings started the same way every day. His board clamped under his left arm, he opened the low gate to his pocket yard and took the narrow sidewalk to the steps leading down to the beach.

This morning he’d awakened early—four a.m. Couldn’t wait to get out there. Even the slight wine hangover couldn’t take away the excitement he felt. His hands tingled and so did his legs, and his stomach pricked with excitement. Every morning, he was always impatient, the only time during the day that he wasn’t easygoing. For anything else, he wasn’t goal-oriented. He didn’t care about jobs or politics or even getting the girl. But pulling on his wetsuit, even after all these years, he couldn’t wait to get out there.

He’d passed on his favorite Stewart board for his new fave, Sacrilege—Rolf Baer’s latest work of art, shaped for him to perfection and ideal for the day. This would be his first time out with the Sacrilege board, and he
could not wait
.

The fog was dark blue gray and clung to everything. The smell of seaweed tumbled up by the waves permeated his nostrils. He loved the smell of seaweed in the morning! He loved it all. His life was very simple. Surf. Hang with his friends. Find a lady who wanted to sleep with him—no strings.

He might have been born for another decade—the sixties, maybe the seventies. In fact, he even had an original Volkswagen Microbus, which he had painted the color of the sunrise, with the rocks black in the distance and a wave like glass.

At twenty-nine years old, Chad had an associate’s degree in business (didn’t do jack shit for him, either), a marriage that had lasted seven months, no kids (incredibly fortunate, because he didn’t think he’d be much of a father), and the beach house in Laguna. He had enough money for his needs.

And he had his boards—he’d built himself quite a collection, enough so he had to add on a little room off the shed and got into a ton of hot water with the zoning people.

The moisture clung like pearls to the iron railing edging the steps. The neighbor’s place was dark—his neighbor was a hippie lady who came from money like he did and just wanted to be left alone to enjoy life and occasional weed. He peered into the darkness and saw the white of the churning surf and the dark shine of the sodium arc lights, way up on poles, shimmering off the hardpacked sand over by the park. The forecast was good but not spectacular—waist high to chest high.

A light rain started up, dimpling the sand.

Chad was debating which beach to hit when he heard something he didn’t expect. The scrape of a shoe on the concrete behind him.

Maybe it was Bobbert, a surf bum who lived across the street. He turned halfway, said, “Hey bro, what you—”

Something heavy thudded into his back and pressed into him
hard
, and a meaty arm shot out of nowhere, pulling him backward and off his feet. An elbow crunched his neck like a vise, closing his air passage. He tried to tuck his chin
down
, tried to reach up and pull at the elbow, but he couldn’t get a grip. His board hit the walk with an ugly
crack!
and maybe it was broken but it didn’t matter because all that mattered was trying to
breathe
, and his vision was swimming—

And that was when full-blown panic set in.

CHAPTER 21

The next morning Tess was up early—first the coyotes and then the birds woke her. While she ran a wash she took her coffee and breakfast out on the porch and took notes on what had happened the day before.

The case was shifting. At first it had looked like a cartel hit—or some unaffiliated bad guy trying to act like one. Someone sending a message. You cross us and you’re dead. Not just dead, but we’ll torture you first.

But in this case, there was no message. She was pretty sure of that now.

Someone had tried to make it look like a hit.

Which meant someone knew what he was doing.

Steve Barkman had been obsessed with Hanley’s death. To be more accurate, Steve Barkman had been obsessed with the way Hanley died.

Multiple gunshots.

Tess had checked out George Hanley’s MacBook Pro from evidence. Maybe now she’d get some answers.

She spent an hour going through his files. There were very few. She went through his bookmarks on Firefox and his history. There was very little in history, mostly stuff that didn’t mean much. How to fix a leaky faucet. A few cop sites and a gun catalog. Cabela’s online.

There were a number of photos of places in southern Arizona. Many of them of buffelgrass and the volunteers. Pictures of Credo, some of the tours he led there. A few homes—maybe because he thought he’d be moving out of his apartment soon. One of them quite nice, up on a hill, with tall trees around it.

And there were photos of Adele.

Tess had a Mac, too. The first view in “Finder” was not of the photos themselves, except for little squares you couldn’t see to the right of the print, but letters and numbers: DSC120234.JPG through DSC120240.JPG. So at first Tess didn’t know what the photos would be, except for a brief description. But she figured “Adele” was a pretty good signpost.

Tess clicked through the photos of Adele. Pretty dog. One side of her face was colored brown. Her chest and legs were white. The rest of her was that blue-gray color populated with black spots. One of the spots looked a little like a bow tie.

There were times when her memory was a pain in the ass. Times when she didn’t want to remember the terrible things she saw. Like George Hanley’s desecrated body.

But this time, she was grateful for it. This time it made her job a whole hell of a lot easier.

Jaimie Wolfe stood in the center of the riding ring, shouting instructions to her students. When she saw Tess, she turned her back and ignored her.

That was fine with Tess.

The dogs came up. They milled around her, asking to be petted. Tess patted each one, rubbed their ears, let them sniff her hands, massaged their chests and rumps. Inundated with slavering tongues and wagging tails. She took a knee, the better to pat them, and let them surround her with doggy attention.

Jaimie glanced back at her once, then pointedly ignored her once again.

Tess rubbed her hands in the Australian shepherd’s luxurious coat. “Good Bandit,” she said. “Nice Bandit.” Jaimie Wolfe’s boy dog. Tess reached down and around the dog’s tummy. Slid her hands back, reveling in the soft, luxurious fur. Reached down and between the dog’s legs. She was gentle but thorough. “Good boy,” she said.

Jaimie glanced her way.

“Good
boy
!” But by that time, Tess knew Bandit wasn’t a boy at all.

It wasn’t even Bandit.

Back at the sheriff’s office, Tess pulled Jaimie Wolfe’s DL and put together a photo lineup. She chose five other women of approximately the same age and body type. All of them were photos from driver’s licenses. Then she took off for Animal Control and found Sally, the woman who had processed the dog’s adoption.

“Do you recognize any of these women?” Tess asked.

Sally pointed to the photograph of Jaimie. “That one. She was the one who adopted the dog you were asking about.”

“You’re sure?”

“I can look it up. But I’m sure. I remember, because I really like her hair.”

Yes, Jaimie Wolfe had glorious hair.

In the car, Tess had the SABEL list printout. One of the members of SABEL was a woman named Bernadette Colvin—the woman who supposedly adopted George Hanley’s dog, Adele.

Tess drove to her townhome and rang the bell.

It was the same as last time. The street was empty. The blinds pulled in the window. The garage door closed.

Tess was about to get back into her Tahoe when a car drove up the street and parked across the way. She hailed the woman when she got out.

“Do you know the woman who lives here?” she asked. “Bernadette Colvin?”

The woman saw her badge and her brow knitted. “Something wrong? I thought she was already gone.”

“Gone?”

“She’s in assisted living. Her family is putting the house up for sale.”

Tess said, “Do you know how I can contact her?”

“Her daughter used to come by here with her kids,” the woman said. “To see their grandma. But I honestly don’t know how you’d get in touch with her.”

“Anything you can tell me about her family?”

The woman thought for a minute. “One time they came over and the little girls were dressed to go riding.”

“Riding?”

“Boots, breeches. Like you see in the Olympics.”

The DeKoven family:

Tess started with what she knew: Michael was a financial advisor whose office was at the top of the highest building in the city. Jaimie was divorced and ran a riding school. The youngest, Brayden, was divorced with a little girl. She practiced real estate law and had put up her shingle at her home in Tucson. And the second youngest, Chad, lived in Laguna Beach, California.

Tess spent some time looking for and accessing a
Tucson Lifestyle
article on the DeKoven family from a couple of years ago. There had been stunning photographs of the ancestral home—Zinderneuf—named by the great-great-grandfather after the doomed fortress in P. C. Wren’s epic novel,
Beau Geste
. The house was Moorish, built in the 1940s at the height of the architectural style’s popularity, on a bench of land overlooking the Rincon Valley not far from the old and now-defunct Rita Ranch. Michael and his wife and two children lived there.

The article profiled the family in all its glory: the four heirs to the DeKoven dynasty.

Instead of bored kids standing out in the sun for a ribbon-cutting ceremony, these were polished adults, posing for the beautifully orchestrated family photo. Inside the exquisite Moorish house, the light from the picture window filtered in, catching them perfectly coifed and handsome.

A beautiful family, the DeKovens.

Tess’s gaze fell on Jaimie. Why would Jaimie take George Hanley’s dog and pass her off as one of her own?

The woman smiled vacuously into the camera.

Tess knew Jaimie enjoyed the game. And it was a game. She’d bird-dogged her own brother, sending Tess his way by telling her Michael was George Hanley’s financial advisor, when in fact he wasn’t. Tess got the feeling that Jaimie enjoyed playing people one against the other.

Tess found a few newspaper articles and accessed public records as she tried to put together a picture of the family.

The history of the DeKoven family was similar to other cattle baron/mining magnate/politicians who made a fortune in the state in the early part of the twentieth century: wrangling over land, water and mineral rights, Apache attacks (back in the 1890s), and various ventures in the new era, including aviation and moving pictures. The story was always colorful and sometimes heartbreaking, like the time DeKoven’s great-grandfather lost his daughter when she played in a creek during a thunderstorm and was swept away.

A couple of incidents were dramatic. Quentin DeKoven, Michael’s father, was the lone survivor of a small single-engine plane crash in northern Arizona. After dragging the dying pilot nearly three miles though rugged country and spending the night in frigid temperatures, DeKoven was found by the search team, nearly dead from exposure.

He subsequently lost two fingers on one hand and a foot to frostbite.

Tess read between the lines. Despite his heroism, Quentin DeKoven was not a nice man. He steamrolled over congressmen and governors, mowing down his opposition with money and lies. His businesses flourished. His business practices rode roughshod over the competition. He ran for governor and lost.

He and his wife, Eloise, had five children. The eldest, Quentin Jr., died at ten in a freak accident—a baseball hit him in the head during a Little League game.

According to the magazine, life was never the same again in the DeKoven household.

Zinderneuf was a beautiful place—but it was also an unhappy one. After Quentin Jr.’s death, Eloise rarely went out in public and wrote bitter letters to the editor of the local newspaper—screeds. Mostly about politics, but her vitriol regarding just about every subject, no matter how insignificant, was legendary.

She died at a relatively young age—she’d been ill.

Quentin DeKoven died ten years later almost to the day, when his private plane abruptly lost altitude and crashed into a wilderness area in the Pinaleño Mountains. The ensuing fire consumed a couple hundred acres of pristine forest.

Tess called Cheryl Tedesco at TPD. “Have you interviewed Michael DeKoven yet?”

“I’m doing it later today.”

“You mind if I come along as an observer?”

“Can you get here in an hour?”

“Make it an hour and twenty minutes, and I’m there.”

“See you then.”

Tess took I-19 to I-10, amazed as usual at the sprawl. Tan-colored houses spread like a circuit board across the desert valley. She’d been to Vail a few years ago, and was surprised by the change in the area. Once Vail had been a collection of old buildings and a beautiful Catholic church in a rural area. Now it was a sprawling outlet-mall-slash-fast-food jungle. She spotted Cheryl Tedesco’s car at a pull-out just off the freeway. Cheryl flashed her lights and pulled out onto Colossal Cave Road. Tess followed.

By the time they reached Old Spanish Trail, the jillions of Monopoly houses had disappeared in favor of more expensive homes on larger lots, and finally to open land. Tess glanced at the wrinkled flanks of the Rincon Mountains, still pristine for the most part, especially the higher you looked. The road curved and dipped in and out of a mesquite bosque. Now they were in ranch country. There was a sprinkle of expensive new homes in the foothills—Thunderhead Ranch. On the right a dirt road headed up into the wilderness. Cheryl turned onto the dirt road.