Yesterday's Echo (19 page)

“Rick.” He blew out an exhale that sounded like a whale spouting and the anger washed out of his face. “It's going to have to be something more permanent.”

My gut felt like Turk had stuck a knife in it and twisted. I had to fight not to lose my balance. Muldoon's and Midnight were the only two things
permanent
in my life. He couldn't really be taking one of them away.

“What do you mean?”

“Business has been down for a while, and we can't afford to lose any more customers. I've been away from the day-to-day operations for too long. It doesn't make sense to pay you when I can do the same job.” His eyes left mine. “I'm sorry, Rick, but I'm going to have to let you go.”

Go where? Muldoon's was all I had.

“You can't fire me, I'm your partner.”

“My partner!” His eyes went big and his shoulders went back. “You've given me fifteen grand over the last two years. That doesn't even get you two percent. We're not partners. You're an employee.”

Fifteen thousand dollars, seven years of sweat equity, twenty years of friendship, and I was just an employee. “You shook my hand. We had a deal.”

“You haven't upheld your end. You needed to come up with a real business plan and get a loan. Buying the restaurant has been a fantasy, man. I should have put an end to it a long time ago.” He sighed and put his hands in his pockets. “I wish I had so you could have gotten on with your life.”

“Fifteen grand isn't a fantasy.” My face splashed hot and I stepped in on Turk. “It's real money earned working here sixty, seventy hours a week while you're out chasing your childhood up a mountain or around a bar. Don't talk to me about fantasies.”

“Don't make this personal, Rick.” He flashed red again. “It's a business decision. You've gotten reckless and you've become a liability. Use this time to get your life back under control.”

“Keep the self-help shit to yourself, Turk. Just give me my money and then you and I are done. It's not personal. Just business.”

He looked down at me and sadness passed over his blue eyes, then flickered away. Back to business. He pulled a thick envelope out of his back pocket and handed it to me.

I ripped it open and saw a wad of hundred dollar bills.

“There's five grand in there,” Turk said.

“Where's the rest?” I waved the envelope at him.

“That's severance.” He folded his tree-trunk arms across his massive chest. “It's the best I can do right now. You'll get more when business starts to pick up. You know we've been losing money for the past few months. We don't have the extra cash right now.”

“I don't give a shit! Go to the bank with a real business plan and get a loan. Just give me my money back.”

“You can't expect to get your full investment back. While you were part owner the restaurant lost money. You'll have to take a hit.”

“What investment? I'm an employee, not an owner. Remember?” I shoved the envelope in my pocket. “Consider the money a loan that just came due. I'll give you until the end of the month for the other ten.”

“Then what?” He jabbed a finger the size of a roll of quarters into my chest. It felt like a jackhammer. “Are you threatening me?”

The whites of his eyes got big and he wasn't the Turk I knew anymore. He was a man mountain you didn't want to be on his wrong side. But he no longer had a right side. Something had
changed in him. The whole morning was wrong. Everything about today was an overreaction. The Turk I used to know wouldn't have fired me. But this one had and his finger was still pounding my chest. I'd taken down bigger men before, and I welcomed the pain of a battle to go with the ache my life had become.

“Call it whatever you want.” I knocked his hand away with my left forearm.

He exploded into me like I was the blocking dummy in a tackling drill. My straight arm glanced off his left shoulder, and we both spun sideways, but his momentum drove me down onto the rooftop gravel. I landed on the back of my left shoulder with the majority of Turk's two hundred fifty pounds on top of me. Gravel bit into me and the air exploded out of me, but I shot an elbow to his temple before he could leverage his superior position. The blow stunned him and I pushed off, rolled away, then spidered up to my feet. Turk was slower to rise. His ribs and head were exposed as he hand-and-kneed his way up. A kick to the head and I could finish him. I stepped back and dropped my hands to my sides.

We were already finished.

I pulled the restaurant keys out of my pocket and threw them down onto the gravel next to Turk. He picked them up and slowly rose to his feet. When he straightened up the rage was gone from his eyes.

I sat down hard on the air compressor and stared out at the ocean below. The office building behind Muldoon's blocked my view of the morning surf, but I could see the water out past the breakers. It lay still and gray and blended with the morning haze to smudge the horizon.

“Sorry it had to be this way, Rick.” His eyes went soft like he wanted to say more. Like he was still my friend. But then he turned and walked back to the door that led off the roof. The crunch of gravel under his feet, an army marching away from ruin.

I left Muldoon's at 10:25 a.m.

Alfonso's, the Mexican restaurant across the street, opened in a half hour. A friendly bartender there was sure to serve me a liquid lunch of two-for-ones. A pathetic start to the rest of my life. There'd be plenty of time to wash down feeling sorry for myself and a less public place to do it. My car and a chance to further recede from life was three blocks up the hill. Melody's arraignment was three blocks in the opposite direction.

I started walking. The gray morning closed down around me and my pulse picked up. I felt eyes on me. There weren't many people on the sidewalk that time of day, but I sensed someone watching me. It could have been because of my starring role in the YouTube customer-abuse video or it could have been paranoia born from the residue of the last week. I scanned both sides of the street, but everyone seemed to be engulfed in their own little worlds.

I was trapped in mine.

The arraignment had started early, and I'd gotten there late. The gallery of the tiny courtroom was almost full. I sat in the back to keep out of view of the media types I saw scribbling on notepads. Thankfully, it looked like the judge had banned cameras from the courtroom.

Melody, in jailhouse orange scrubs, was already standing before the judge. Next to her was what looked to be a homeless man in a wilted business suit. Except he was her lawyer. He had a gray ponytail, a scraggly beard, and looked like he couldn't argue himself out of a drunk and disorderly.

I had to get to Melody and tell her about Stone's offer to
bankroll Alan Fineman for her defense. I didn't get the chance. The judge ruled Melody remanded for trial. Bail set at one million dollars. Back to jail. She turned and scanned the gallery as the bailiff cuffed her wrists. I didn't know if she'd killed Windsor or if she'd try to implicate me to cut a deal. Right then, I didn't care. I just wanted her to know that, in the worst moment of her life, she wasn't alone.

Not like I'd been in mine.

I stood and caught her eye just before she went through the door. She smiled for an instant and then her eyes clouded with pain and, maybe, shame. She dropped her head, and the bailiff led her out of the courtroom through a door near the jury box.

I turned to leave and saw Heather Ortiz standing near the front row of the gallery talking to a silver-haired man dressed in a three-piece banker's suit. Only thing missing was a pocket watch. He looked sad, yet resolute. Jules Windsor, father of Adam. Next to him stood Chief Parks in dress blues. His black mustache pulled his mouth down into a permanent snarl. He caught me looking and his coal eyes could have crushed diamond.

He broke from Heather and Windsor and headed right at me, his uniform snap-creased, polished brass gleaming. He was about my height, but heavier. The kind of weight that comes with age and fills up space, creating a presence. I held my ground at the door leading out of the courtroom. Parks looked like the kind of man you didn't want coming up behind you.

“Cahill.” His voice sounded like a Mack truck radiator boiling over. “I'll lock you up if I find you're obstructing this murder investigation.”

Something beyond hatred poured out of his eyes. I'd seen hatred before. Colleen's father, Santa Barbara cops, my own eyes in the mirror long ago. This was different, darker, malevolent. I felt it in my gut and on the back of my neck.

“How could I be obstructing your investigation?” Did he know about the flash drive? “I've got a right to be here, just like any citizen.”

“If you have any information or evidence about the death of Adam Windsor, you need to hand it over to me right now.” He leaned in on me, sending hate and cologne my way. The same strong cologne Detective Moretti wore. “This is your one chance. Next time it'll be jail.”

Maybe Parks was right. This was my one chance to hand over the drive and the key and move on. Nothing I'd seen on the drive could hurt Melody. I could tell the cops the truth exactly as it happened. I found the evidence in the dog food. Melody must have put it there. Ask her why, not me.

I'd been in jail. I wasn't going back for anyone.

Parks pushed his face in closer, trying to read me. His cologne seeped under my skin.

Then it clicked like a nine millimeter chambering a round. The stink I'd smelled on my carpet the night someone broke into my house and poisoned Midnight. Cologne, mixed with sweat. The same cologne worn by Parks and Moretti.

One of them had broken into my house, poisoned my dog, and been willing to risk prison to find the evidence Melody had hidden. What else were they capable of?

I wondered if the man staring me down had been the one who poisoned Midnight. My hands closed into fists and my neck flexed tight. I held his hatred and gave it back to him. If he wasn't wearing the badge, I'd be the one asking the questions.

“If I find any of your evidence, you'll be the first to know, Chief.” The last word came out like spit.

I spun away from Parks and out of the courtroom slamming the door behind me, sending an echo through the halls of justice.

I bolted out of the courthouse, the wooden steps creaking under my feet. A voice floated over my shoulder before I hit the sidewalk.

“Excuse me, Mr. Cahill? May I have a word with you?”

I turned and saw the homeless man who couldn't get Melody reasonable bail.

“Timothy Buckley.” There was a trace of Texas hidden under
years of Southern California in his voice. He stuck out a leathery hand. “I'm Melody Malana's attorney.”

I one-pumped his hand and waited.

“I understand you're a friend of Melody's. Is that true?” Buckley made it sound like it wasn't.

He squinted at me under the eaves of the wooden courthouse that was once a church. The steeple had been torn down to separate church from state, but Buckley sounded like he had me in the confessional.

I didn't have anything to confess. At least, not to him. “Why don't you ask her?”

Buckley smiled creamed-corn teeth at me. “You don't like lawyers much, do ya, pardna?”

“Compared to what?”

Buckley let out a hoot like he was calling the pigs back to the barn.

“You hungry, Rick? You like flapjacks?”

I didn't have a job anymore. Best to grab a free meal whenever I could. And the one thing I could do for Melody was convince this homeless cowboy to tell her that she needed a new lawyer.

“I could eat.”

“Well then, follow me.” Buckley slung an antique leather satchel over his shoulder. “There's a little ol' cafe around the corner that makes great pancakes.”

I walked next to him along the sidewalk that led into downtown La Jolla. The morning haze still hung low, filtering pale sunlight.

Joe's Waffle Shop was a little hole-in-the-wall that stood as a civic treasure on Girard Ave. in Old La Jolla. Girard mostly maintained the small-town feeling that the whole village had once exuded. Family owned stores and restaurants populated nothing-special concrete buildings under palm trees that were as old as the town they towered above.

We sat on two bolted-down red and chrome stools at the counter. A glass pie case on the wall opposite us made me think of
having a slice of pecan after the sock hop. And I didn't even like pie.

I'd always had waffles when I'd eaten at Joe's, but I followed Buckley's recommendation and the pancakes didn't disappoint. We small talked San Diego sports for a few minutes, but the whole time I felt Buckley measuring me. When I'd pause to eat, he'd narrow his eyes down on me like a scientist peering into a microscope.

Maybe there was more to this guy than a tired suit and whiskey eyes.

“Melody speaks very highly of you, Rick.” Buckley wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Thinks you're a man of integrity.”

I didn't like being schmoozed, but I didn't know where he was going. So, I stayed quiet and let him take me there. If he didn't know about the Angela Albright sex tape, I wasn't going to tell him. That would have to come from Melody.

“Is there anything you can tell me about the morning of Windsor's death that'll help Melody?” Buckley grabbed a pen and legal pad out of his satchel. “Now, you were actually at the motel that morning. Right?”

Buckley could play my “pardna” over flapjacks, but his job was to keep Melody out of prison. And he could do that by showing the jury that his client didn't commit murder because someone else did. Back on the force it was known as “SODDI.” Some Other Dude Did It. Well, the cops had already looked at me once as that other dude. Buckley was sure to remind the jury of that fact.