Vixen (11 page)

“Where is he? Not in the hospital, is he?”

“The hospital? No. Why would you think that?”

“Out of town, then, or what?”

“I can't tell you that. What's your business with him?”

“That's between him and me. Can you get a message to him? Have him get in touch with me right away? Not by phone, in person.”

“I might be able to, if it's important enough.”

“It's important, all right.”

“Who am I talking to?”

Long pause before he countered with, “Who're you?”

“Tamara Corbin. Partner in this agency.”

“Partner.” Another pause. “This is Frank Chaleen.”

Tamara wasn't surprised. The hospital question had tipped her. The other thing Bill had told her last night was a brief account of how Margaret Vorhees had tried to brain him with a whiskey glass.

She said, playing the dude, “What was that name again?”

“Frank Chaleen. You know who I am.”

“Do I? What makes you think so?”

Pause number three. Then, “Don't you people talk to each other?”

“Usually. When there's good reason.”

“Your partner didn't say anything to you about me?”

“I didn't say that. How do I know you're who you claim to be? Just a voice on the telephone.”

Chaleen didn't like that. She could tell she'd gotten under his skin; his voice had an angry wobble when he said, “You get a message to him, tell him to come talk to me.” He rapped out the address of Chaleen Manufacturing. “Tell him he'd better show up soon if he knows what's good for him.”

Like hell I will, Tamara thought. She said, “Good-bye, Mr. Careen,” deliberately mispronouncing his name, and hung up on him this time.

*   *   *

Jake Runyon came in a little before one. She was expecting him; he'd been in the city all morning, finishing up a hit-and-run investigation for the victim's attorney, and had told her yesterday that he'd stop in with a report and to see if she had anything new for him.

She let him get his business out of the way first. Pulled up the hit-and-run casefile and made notes on it while he talked, in between bites from the sandwich she'd brought from home. When he was done, she said, “News, Jake, none of it good,” and told him, first, about Cybil Wade dying. She'd thought about notifying him last night after Bill's call, but why lay a load of gloom on the man after he'd put in a long day on and off the road? There was nothing he could do. Nothing she could do, either.

Jake had one of these immobile faces that seldom showed emotion, made it hard to guess what he was thinking. Not so much now, though. The news had the same effect on him that it had had on her. The way one side of his mouth twitched and he muttered, “Damn,” told her that.

“Bill said Kerry seems to be coping all right so far, but after all she's been through…”

“Yeah.”

“Be a while before he comes back to work. So we'll have to take up the slack, maybe put in even more overtime.”

“That's no problem.”

Tamara said, “He got the news just after talking to Margaret Vorhees yesterday. That went down hard for him, too.”

“What happened?”

“She was drunk, belligerent. Wouldn't believe she was in any danger. He told her as much as he could … a little too much, maybe, he said. Dropped Chaleen's name, intimated Cory Beckett was screwing him as well as her husband, and she went ballistic. Called him a liar, threw a glass at him that he didn't see coming in time to duck.”

“He all right?”

“Cut on the forehead, otherwise okay,” Tamara said. “But he must've got through to her despite the tantrum. Enough for her to yank Chaleen's chain and put him in a snit.”

“How do you know that?”

“Man called up twice this morning, looking for Bill. Must be real anxious to know how Bill found out enough about him and the Beckett bitch to warn Mrs. Vorhees.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Put him off for the time being. He didn't like it, made a half-assed threat against Bill.”

“Worried. Nervous, if not scared.”

“Right. But worried enough to call off whatever they're planning?”

“If they think Bill knows too much about it.”

“His idea or hers for Chaleen to talk to him, try to find out?”

“His,” Jake said. “He may not even have told her about Bill's warning. Waiting to get more information first.”

“She's the one pulling the strings.”

“So it would seem.”

“Anyhow,” Tamara said, “Bill stirred things up pretty good yesterday. What do you think of stirring 'em up a little more?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“You go see Chaleen instead. Walk in on him cold, let on you know what Bill knows without saying what it is. Same careful approach he took with Mrs. Vorhees.”

Jake thought it over. “Tricky,” he said. “And it means getting in deeper than we already are. We're putting a lot of faith in an emotionally damaged kid's story as it is.”

“You still believe Kenny told you the truth?”

“The truth as he perceives it, yes.”

“Doubts, Jake? Second thoughts?”

“About some of the details, maybe.”

“But not about the gun?”

“No. Cory's got one, all right.”

“And not that there's a murder scheme?”

“My gut feeling says Beckett's right about that.”

“So if you talk to Chaleen,” Tamara said, “and come on strong enough, you might be able to shake him up enough so he backs out on Cory. No murder scheme without him, right?”

“Theoretically.”

“It's worth a shot. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Tamara said, “Just watch out he doesn't get pissed enough to chuck something at your head. And make sure you duck in time if he does.”

 

13

JAKE RUNYON

Frank Chaleen's factory was on Basin Street, on the southeastern side of the city near the Islais Creek Channel. Basin ran at an angle off Evans: four blocks long and lined with small factories and warehousing companies, an auto-body shop, an outfit that made statuary for gardens and cemeteries, and midway along the last block, a pair of buildings crowded behind a chain-link fence topped by strands of barbed wire. Signs on the fence and on the largest of the two buildings identified the place as Chaleen Manufacturing, Inc.

The main structure was an L-shaped hunk of rust-spotted corrugated iron; a much smaller building, a squat trailer-like affair that sat behind and to one side like a broken-off piece of the factory, figured to be the office. Both buildings had a neglected look, not quite rundown yet but getting to that point. There were two double gates in the fence—truck-wide and standing open—that gave access to a trio of bays in the facing factory wall, one of the bays filled by a semi being loaded or unloaded. The asphalt yard needed resurfacing: cracked, pitted, buckled in a couple of places.

Another set of gates, farther along and smaller, provided direct access to the trailer-like structure. Runyon pulled up near these. They, too, were open; he walked on through and up to the office entrance. A promotional poster headed W
E'RE
E
CO-
F
RIENDLY!
was pinned to the door; words underneath proclaimed that Chaleen's X-Cel Packing Peanuts were nontoxic, reusable, biodegradable in compost, and dissolvable in water. One of the poster's corners had come loose, some time ago judging from the way it was curled up.

Runyon stepped inside. The interior appeared to have been cut into two more or less equal halves by a center wall. Four desks, only one of them occupied, were jammed into the near half. In the bisecting wall were two closed and unmarked doors, one of which would probably lead to private quarters in the rear half.

Runyon told the lone employee, a young dark-haired woman wearing a pair of red-rimmed glasses, that he was there to see Frank Chaleen. She said, “Mr. Chaleen is out in the factory. He should be back shortly. If you'd like to wait…”

“I'll just wander over there, if there's no rule against visitors.”

“Well, no, there isn't, but—”

“He's anxious to see me. Whereabouts in the factory?”

“The manufacturing section. One of our extrusion machines has broken down again. He went over there to look at it.”

Extrusion machine. Whatever that was.

Runyon thanked her, walked out and across the yard to a set of cracked concrete steps that led up onto the loading dock. A warehouseman driving a forklift was loading a pallet laden with cardboard drums into the maw of the semi parked in the nearest bay; he didn't seem to be working too hard at it. He paid no attention as Runyon entered the warehouse, a cavernous, fluorescent-lighted space crowded with more of the drums, as well as stacks of cardboard cartons and bundled plastic bags.

Only one man was working in there, checking off items on a clipboard. He had no interest in Runyon, either. The clatter and hum of machinery coming from beyond the open inner end drew Runyon into the factory proper. The complicated maze of manufacturing equipment in there meant nothing to him; he focused on a group of men in front of a machine that wasn't making any noise, two of them in overalls working on it with hand tools, the other two standing by watching. One of the watchers, wearing a shirt and tie but no jacket, was Frank Chaleen.

Chaleen didn't see Runyon until he came right up next to him. First reaction: a frown. Then, on recognition: a small double take followed by a scowl and a slitty-eyed stare. Neither of them said anything for five or six beats. Then Chaleen turned to the foreman, saying, “I'll be right back, Ed,” and moved away in hard strides, Runyon following.

Chaleen stopped abruptly at the warehouse entrance, turned, resumed the hard-eyed glare. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“You wanted to talk to my boss; he's not available. So you get me instead.”

“I don't have anything to say to you.”

“Not even if I know what he knows?”

The muscle quirk at the corner of Chaleen's mouth twitched it open on that side, curling the upper lip and revealing a canine tooth—an expression like a dog's silent snarl. As much a nervous reaction as one of either belligerence or anger.

“Knows about what?”

“What you wanted to talk to him about.”

“Don't play games with me, man. I don't like it.”

Runyon said, “Margaret Vorhees.”

“Well? What about her?”

“She told you about his visit to her yesterday.”

“So? What if she did? He gave her a load of crap about Cory Beckett and me being out to get her.”

“That's not what he said. He didn't make any accusations against either of you.”

“How do you know? You weren't there.”

“He doesn't operate that way. All he tried to do was make Mrs. Vorhees aware of a potentially volatile situation.”

“Volatile, my ass. I ought to sue the son of a bitch for slander.”

“Waste of time and money,” Runyon said. “We both know you don't have grounds.”

Chaleen made a fist of one hand, but it wasn't meant as a threat; he banged the fist against his thigh before allowing the fingers to relax. “Margaret doesn't have anything to fear from me,” he said. “From that asshole she's married to, maybe, but not from me.”

“Nothing to fear from Cory Beckett, either?”

“Hell, no. Why would Cory want to harm her?”

“The diamond necklace her brother allegedly stole. Mrs. Vorhees refuses to drop the charges.”

“I know that. So what? Cory says the kid didn't steal it. Her lawyer'll get him off.”

“The two of you seem to be pretty close.”

“Wrong. Casual acquaintances, that's all.”

“You were with her when she picked up her brother at Belardi's.”

“Don't try to make anything out of that. I wasn't the first person she called that day.”

Runyon didn't say anything.

“Listen,” Chaleen said, “there's nothing going on with Cory and me. I haven't even seen or talked to her since.”

“Not even to tell her about my boss's visit to Mrs. Vorhees?”

“Hell, no. Why should I bother her with his crap?”

Nothing to say to that, either.

“Crazy notion that the two us have it in for Margaret. Where'd your boss get it, anyway? You the one put a bug in his ear?”

“Where would I get a bug like that?”

“How the hell do I know?” Pause. Then the mouth corner twisted up again. “Unless somebody put a bug in yours.”

“Somebody like who?”

“Her screwed-up brother. Yeah, sure, that's it. Kenny. You spent a lot of time with him up there at the river.”

Runyon didn't like lying, but it was called for here. “We didn't talk much. Nothing was said about you and his sister.”

“No? Maybe he got in touch with you later. Told you a pack of lies.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because he doesn't like me. Because he's got a few screws loose. Cory says he makes up stories all the time.”

“I haven't seen or talked to Kenneth Beckett since Belardi's,” Runyon lied again. “I don't know anything about his mental state. But you seem to know him pretty well.”

“Well enough to tell he's a sick kid. Druggie, too. Addicted to amphetamines.”

“So his sister claims, but he wasn't high when I found him. And I didn't find any evidence of drugs in the shack or his van.”

“So maybe he used up his supply,” Chaleen said. “How would you know if he was stoned or not? You're no damn doctor.”

Runyon let that go. “Have you ever seen him stoned?”

“Couple of times, yeah.”

“So then you must have spent a fair amount of time with him and his sister.”