Yesterday's Echo (11 page)

Moretti chuckled and kept his seat. That scared me more than if he'd tried to stop me.

I got to within a step of the door when it opened. Detective Coyote came in carrying a brown paper evidence bag.

“You might want to sit back down, Rick.” He walked over to the table and set the bag down.

I followed him over, but remained standing. He pulled a black
Callaway Golf cap out of the evidence bag. It looked just like the one I couldn't find in my hall closet the morning Melody disappeared.

I sat down.

“We found this hat in the Shell Beach Motel room where Adam Windsor died.” Dan took the seat across from me. “Looks like the one you wore when we golfed together. See how it's frayed at the tip of the bill. Even has a Lake Tahoe Golf Course ball mark clipped on its side, just like yours. Too many smudges on the ball mark for a good print. But forensics found a few hairs inside the cap.” He leaned toward me and his eyes searched mine. “Anything you want to tell me?”

Melody had obviously grabbed the wrong hat before she left my house that first night. Her hair would be in it as well as mine. All perfectly innocent. Except for the dead guy in her motel room.

Could she have set me up? Was mine the only hair in my cap? Had she taken it to plant in the room? None of this made sense. They couldn't prove something I hadn't done. I was innocent. But my body betrayed me. I wiped my forehead, my breathing audible. The sweat under my arms reeked fear.

I'd waited too long before I called a lawyer in Santa Barbara. It had cost me a week in lockup and almost a lot more. “It's probably time for a lawyer.”

“Sure, if that's what you want, Rick.” Dan had his friendly face back on. “You haven't even been arrested. We just need some help to get the facts straight.”

I looked at Moretti peering down at me. “Your partner has already made up his mind on the facts.”

“You lawyer up and I'll know I was right.” Moretti gave me the smirk.

“We just have a few more questions, Rick,” Dan said.

I didn't know any criminal lawyers and I'd seen all I needed to of public defenders in Santa Barbara. I wanted to believe Dan. But I'd wanted to believe Melody, too, and now I was in a liars' room with cops wanting the truth. A truth I didn't know. I just wanted to get it over with. All of it. Now.

I pointed at the Callaway hat on the table. “That looks like a hat I lost.”

“How do you suppose the hat ended up in the motel room where Windsor was murdered?”

“Someone might have borrowed it without asking or mistook it for their own and it ended up in the motel room where he OD'd.” I didn't think Melody had killed her ex-husband, but I wasn't going to take the fall for it if she did.

“Who could that be?” Moretti pretended like he didn't know.

“Possibly someone who stayed at my house a few nights ago.”

“And this person's name?”

“Melody Malana.” I forced her name out in a low hum and felt like a kid who ratted out his sister to his parents for smoking cigarettes in the bathroom. Only Melody wasn't my sister, the cops weren't my parents, and the stiff wasn't a cigarette.

“Which night did Miss Malana stay at your house?” Dan asked.

“Sunday.”

“Sunday night, October seventeenth. Correct?”

Dan was calm, relaxed. An insurance agent asking a few necessary questions.

“Yes.” I waited for Dan to tighten down the timeline.

“And what time did Miss Malana leave your house Monday morning?”

“I'm not sure.”

“What do you mean you're not sure?” Moretti moved in behind my ear. “She drop a sleeping pill on you, too?”

Dan squinted at Moretti and the two of them eyed a silent conversation. Moretti had cracked out of turn. The sleeping pills were to remain a secret. I didn't know what it meant, but I locked it away, a bullet to be used later if I could figure out how.

Dan turned back to me. “Why is it that you don't know when Miss Malana left your home?”

“She left while I was still asleep.” Could Melody have drugged me so that I'd sleep through the night and give her the alibi she needed? I didn't remember leaving her alone with my drink, but if I'd been drugged maybe I wouldn't. No. I'd woken up when she got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. I wouldn't have if I'd been drugged. Would I?

“So you don't know where she was from approximately six a.m. 'til nine a.m. Monday morning, October eighteenth?”

Eight years ago, in another small, square room with detectives bearing down on me, I'd lied. This time I told the truth. “No.”

“And where were you during that same period of time?”

“At home, then at work.”

“Can anyone verify that?” Dan studied me. I felt Moretti at my back.

“My dog, the two guys who jumped me that you stopped looking for, and Turk Muldoon.”

Dan ignored my dig. “How well did you know Adam Windsor?”

“I didn't know him at all.”

“But he was in your restaurant the night before he died.” Moretti was back in my ear.

“A lot of people come into my restaurant. Doesn't mean I know them all.”

“When were you last at the Shell Beach Motel?” Dan asked.

He knew the answer, that's why he'd asked the question. Hoped to catch me in a lie. Someone at the motel had seen me with the Lookie-Loos. That meant the cops had been showing my picture around or someone at the motel had recognized me. Heather Ortiz? Maybe information was a two-way street.

“I was there around noon on Monday, watching the police with everyone else.”

“Is that why you went there? Because a dead body had been discovered.”

“No.” The walls pinched in on me and the stink under my arms
rivaled Moretti's cologne. “I didn't know about a dead body until I got there. I was looking for Melody, but she'd already checked out.”

Moretti's voice came over my shoulder. “You sure you weren't there to retrieve the hat you'd left there earlier?”

“I think you got what you wanted, Detectives.” I stood up. “I'm going back to work.”

“One last question, Rick.” Dan rose and stood between me and the door. Moretti circled around behind him. “Why did you lie to us the other day when we questioned you about your assault?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Except I did.

“You lied about not knowing the woman that the men were looking for.” Dan folded his arms across his chest, a sentinel on the Blue Line. “It was obviously Miss Malana, the woman who'd just spent the night at your house, and who you'd been looking for at the Shell Beach Motel three hours before we spoke to you. Why'd you lie, Rick?”

I'd lied because Melody hadn't wanted to get the police involved, back when she was innocent and fragile. Now I had a better idea why. But admitting it now would only make me look more guilty. And I wasn't the only one holding things back. How could the cops be so certain the thugs were looking for Melody unless they questioned them? And then let them go.

“It wasn't obvious to me, Detective. But I guess it was to the big guy who jumped me. The same guy who worked security for Mayor Albright yesterday. You know, Chief Parks's buddy.”

I walked around the detectives to the door and held my breath when I turned the knob. Unlocked. I opened the door and walked down the hall, fighting the urge to run. Any second I expected to hear the clink of handcuffs and feel Moretti's breath on my neck. I hit the door to the stairwell and thundered down the steps and out the back door of the Brick House.

Still a perfect day in the Jewel by the Sea. The sun blinding down through a cloudless sky mocked me.

Muldoon's was only a few blocks from the Brick House. Even if it had been a thousand, I wouldn't have gone back inside and asked for a ride. Hopefully, I was done riding in cop cars, front seat or back, for the rest of my life.

I threw a hand up to block the taunting sun and wished I'd remembered to grab my sunglasses when the cops escorted me away. I fled the Brick House parking lot and headed for Muldoon's, passing by the front of the police station. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw brown curls and white teeth coming at me.

“Rick!” Heather Ortiz waved as she hurried toward me from the front walkway of the Brick House. She wore her reporter's uniform: sweater, jeans, heels, and leather shoulder bag. Just like the outfit she wore at the Shell Beach Motel. And like the one she'd worn when we'd slept together two years ago.

Behind Heather, a man with a camera clicked photos of me.

I moved my hand from the sun's assault to block the camera's and kept walking. The camera kept clicking.

I'd become news. Again. I could make Muldoon's in two minutes if I sprinted full-out the whole way. How much farther would I have to go to outrun the spotlight? I kept walking.

“Rick.” Heather finally caught up to me. “Please, do you have a minute?”

“Lose the photographer.”

She stopped and turned to the man, his face one big camera lens. “Sam, I'll meet you back at the car.”

The photographer peeled off, and I continued walking with Heather nipping at my heels.

“Come on, Rick.” She hustled up alongside of me and pulled a notepad and pen from her purse. “Why were the police questioning you?”

“No comment.”

“Did it have to do with the Windsor murder?”

I stopped. “What murder? You called it a drug overdose in the newspaper yesterday.”

“I got a scoop.” She flashed me a big dimpled smile, like having inside info on dead bodies was sexy. “But keep that to yourself. We want to break it in tomorrow's edition of the
U-T
.”

“No comment.” I started walking again, faster this time.

Pepper and palm trees splattered shadows across the sidewalk, providing brief cover from the pressing sun. We passed the T intersection of Cave Street and Ivanhoe. Another couple blocks and I'd be back at Muldoon's. Sanctuary from the intruding glare of the sun and the media.

“Why not tell your side of the story so you can control the spin?” Heather's high heels clacked along the sidewalk beside me.

“There's no side.”

“Come on, Rick.” She put a hand on my arm. I kept moving forward. “Maybe if you would have talked to the press back in Santa Barbara the story wouldn't still be following you.”

I stopped and turned toward Heather, biting down anger. “It's not a story, a ten-second sound bite, a prime-time TV show. My wife was murdered. And she was still dead when the media moved on to exploit someone else's grief and she's still dead now.” I stepped out of the shadow of a palm tree, the sun knifing my eyes. “No fucking comment.”

I started for Muldoon's again. First walking, then jogging, then running. The clacking of Heather's heels fading, then silent in the background. My bum knee ached and Heather would never catch me, but I kept running. Still, no matter how fast I ran, my past stalked me like a coyote on the scent.

I hit Muldoon's at full sprint.

I pulled into my driveway a little after one a.m. Inside the house, I went through the kitchen to the back door to let Midnight in. I could usually hear him snorting outside, eager to greet me. But when I opened the door there was only the silence of the night. I threw on the backyard light and saw Midnight lying on his side next to the front gate, a circle of vomit pooled near his head.

“Midnight!”

I bolted across the yard to him. He didn't move. His tongue hung out of the side of his mouth and his eyes were white slits underneath his eyelids. I pushed opened his lids, but his pupils hung unmoving at the top of his eye sockets. Tears welled in my eyes as I held my hand to his nose. It was dry and the temperature of the night. Then a weak brush of warm air grazed my fingers. He was alive!

I scooped up some of the vomit in my hand. It looked like raw ground meat and was still warm. I ran into the kitchen and put the vomit into a Ziploc bag, then shoved it into my pocket and ran back out to Midnight. I picked him up. Eighty pounds of dead-weight. His head hung limp off to the side. I got him through the gate and into the backseat of my car and peeled out of the driveway. When I turned onto the main drag, I heard Midnight's body slide along the backseat and thump against the armrest. He was running out of time.

My vet in La Jolla only kept normal office hours, but I knew of a twenty-four-hour emergency clinic in Mission Valley. I'd been there before when a cat dashed out of the darkness in front my car
one night on my drive home from work. Neither the cat nor I had been quick enough to save its life.

I slammed to a stop in the clinic's parking lot and pulled Midnight's limp body from the car, and the memory of that cat leapt into my mind. I prayed that I'd been quick enough this time.

As I ran to the entrance with Midnight in my arms, the sliding glass doors opened, and a woman in a green smock wheeled a gurney out to me.

“What happened?”

“I don't know!” I set Midnight down on the gurney and we pushed him inside the clinic. “I came home and found him in the backyard. He was unconscious and there was vomit on the grass. He's barely breathing.”

She stopped in front of a counter in the center of the room and picked up a phone and pushed a button. “Dr. Ramsey, we have a code red.” She hung up the phone and turned to me. “I'm going to take your dog—what's his name?”

“Midnight.”

“I'm going to take Midnight into the emergency room and the doctor will be out to ask you a few questions.” She wheeled Midnight toward swinging doors leading to a room off the left side of the clinic.