Zigzag (24 page)

Better idea: he was the strong link, so go after the potential weak link instead.

Melanie Vinson.

If my take on her was accurate, she was a long way from being a mental giant—an easily manipulated follower who'd gone along with the murder scheme out of greed or love or a combination of both. In over her head, and at least a little scared; her twitchiness yesterday in Erskine's office, on the eve of her part in delivering the deathblow, suggested that.

Fear can be a weapon in serving justice, too, if you use it effectively. Turn hers back on her and it might well crack her wide open. And if she cracked, the odds were good she'd take Erskine down to save herself.

 

15

The offices of Peter Erskine, Financial Advisor were locked up tight. I hadn't expected otherwise, but the building was on my way out of Menlo Park and I had nothing to lose but a few minutes by stopping there first. I programmed Melanie Vinson's home address into the GPS, followed the disembodied voice's directions into Palo Alto and through a maze of residential streets not far from the Stanford University campus.

It was after five o'clock and already dark when the voice told me I'd arrived at my destination—a block of facing rows of town-house-style apartments extending back from the street in the shape of a broad horseshoe. Not a new complex, but well maintained, in a neighborhood so thick with shade trees it had a bucolic atmosphere. I'd seen modern rent/lease places like this before, often enough to know that there would be a courtyard with a communal swimming pool and recreation area in the middle of the two wings. Driveways angled up adjacent to each wing, along which were shedlike structures where the tenants parked their cars.

I wedged mine into a spot at the curb across the street. Before I got out, I transferred the voice-activated tape recorder I keep in the glove compartment into my coat pocket. The night was clouding up and a cold wind had begun to blow; I pulled up the collar on my suit coat as I followed a walkway into an open foyer in the front curve of the horseshoe. Melanie Vinson occupied apartment #11; I rang the bell—once, twice, three times, leaning on it the last two. No response. Not home or ducking visitors if she was.

Thanks to Tamara, I had Vinson's landline and cell numbers written down in my notebook. Landline first: four rings, and an answering machine with one of those smart-ass-cute “you know what to do at the beep” messages kicked in. I clicked off before the beep sounded and tried the cell number: straight to voice mail.

Damn. Now what?

I went back outside. Crosswise paths led to the driveways along both sides. On impulse I followed the one that hooked around to the right, where the parking space for Vinson's apartment would be. Night-lights shone brightly back there, both inside and outside the covered parking structure. Each slant-in space had a unit number spray-painted on the tarmac. And tucked into #11 was a sleek black BMW Z4 sports car with a personalized license plate: MELSBBY. Mel's Baby. Mel for Melanie.

So either she was home and avoiding calls and callers or, more likely, she'd gone off with somebody. Erskine, probably. They had to be feeling good about the way the plan had gone, considering themselves inviolate despite my suspicions. Why not get together and celebrate the successful elimination of the woman who'd stood in the way of their lust for wealth, the sick woman who'd never done either of them any harm?

There was nobody in the parking area. I made sure of that, then moved in alongside the BMW to the driver's door. Locked—naturally. I bent to peer through the window, but the overhead light was not strong enough to give me a clear look inside. About all I could make out was that neither of the bucket seats had anything on them.

I straightened up. More than a few people have a tendency to lose or misplace their car keys, or leave them in the ignition and then snap-lock the door when they get out, and as a safeguard some hide a spare key inside one of those little magnetized cases somewhere on the vehicle. If Melanie Vinson was one of them …

I eased around the front of the BMW, bending low to run my fingers behind the license plate and then along the underside of the bumper from one end to the other. All I felt was grit. I'd just started on the frame beneath the front fender and driver's side door panels when headlights splashed in along the driveway from the street.

I dropped to one knee and stayed there, in close to the car. Neither the beams nor the incoming vehicle reached as far as the #11 space; they angled into one closer to the street and immediately went dark. A man and a woman got out, chattering to each other, and drifted away toward a side entrance to the building wing. I didn't raise up until I heard a door slam over there.

There was nothing along the BMW's underbelly on this side, nothing under or inside the rear bumper. But then I got lucky. My fingers touched metal, felt the little square shape clipped up inside the rear wheel well on the passenger side.

I tugged the case loose. The spare key was inside. I fished it out, replaced the case where I'd found it. The spare had a couple of remote buttons on it, but I wasn't familiar with this make and model and had no idea if the remote made beeping sounds when you used it; some vehicles of this vintage operated that way. So I unlocked the driver's door with the key.

Quickly I wedged myself in under the wheel to cut off the interior light. Tight fit—I had a lot of pounds and girth on Melanie Vinson—but I could maneuver all right without adjusting the seat control.

The console storage compartment was locked, but the spare key opened that, too. I used my pencil flash to fast-check the contents. Registration slip, insurance card, half full package of menthol coffin nails, unopened packets of Kleenex and tampons … nothing to hold my attention. The slender pockets in both doors were empty. I squeezed out again, levered the driver's seat forward so I could look behind it and the one on the passenger side. The only items on the floor were a couple of empty Starbucks coffee containers and some wadded-up tissues.

I pushed the seat back in place, located and freed the trunk release before shutting the door. Around to the rear, then, to lift the trunk lid.

There was one item on the carpeted floor inside: a large, bulky laundry sack closed at the top by a drawstring. I loosened the string, widened the opening to see what was inside the bag.

Antanas Vok was inside the bag.

Shabby, ripped, dirt-caked black suit that stank of rotting meat. Stained white shirt. Old, dirty black shoes. Wide-brimmed black slouch hat. Realistic theatrical mask with dark bushy eyebrows and Vandyke beard glued on, the malleable latex material coated with some sort of luminous paint to give it an eerie glow in the dark. A pair of black gloves, fingers and thumbs on each painted to resemble skeletal hands.

There was a handgun, too, a .32-caliber Smith & Wesson five-shot revolver. I picked it up by the trigger guard, using the back of my index finger, and sniffed the barrel. Fired recently. With a couple of knuckles I broke the weapon to peer at the chambers. Three empty shells, two loaded ones. And all of them would be blanks.
I shot him three times, but he wouldn't fall down; he just kept coming at me.
Yeah, blanks.

No surprises in any of this. Vinson had to have been the one impersonating Vok; Erskine was too smart to bring a third party into the scheme. She was the right height, the same approximate size. With that outfit and the mask on, and the hat pulled down low over her forehead, she'd have passed easily for a middle-aged man. Plus she'd had acting experience, enough to pull off the menacing act with Erskine's help and guidance.

I stuffed everything back into the sack, retightened the drawstring, then lifted the bag out. I couldn't risk leaving it here without constant surveillance on the BMW; she might decide, or Erskine might tell her, to make it all disappear. I closed the trunk, relocked the driver's door, and pocketed the key in case it became necessary to return the sack at some point. Then I swung it up over my shoulder and quick-stepped down the empty driveway.

Two cars passed on my way to where I'd parked mine, but so far as I could tell none of the occupants paid any attention to me. Tenants hauling their laundry to a nearby Laundromat were common sights in almost any neighborhood. Just the same, I felt an easing of tension once the bag was locked away in the trunk.

*   *   *

What had taken place at the Erskine home last night was clear now. It must have gone something like this:

In costume Vinson slips onto the property same as the other times, catches Marian Erskine unaware inside the house or already sitting out on the terrace, advances on her in a threatening manner. Victim has the gun in hand or close to hand, fires three of what she believes are live rounds. Vinson keeps coming, the way a genuine revenant would. And in horror and sudden savage pain down goes Marian Erskine.

Then Vinson makes her first mistake. She's supposed to be certain the victim is dead before calling 911, but haste and nervousness cause her to misdiagnose; she doesn't realize until the firefighters arrive that Mrs. Erskine is still alive. Bad moment for her, but she manages to hang on to her nerve. By then she's retrieved the gun, gone to wherever she stashed her regular clothing, changed, loaded the costume and weapon into the laundry bag, and hid the bag in the trunk of her car.

Her second mistake was leaving the bag there. Maybe she was supposed to get rid of the contents somewhere, or at least hide the revolver inside her apartment until she could return it to Erskine. Or maybe she just didn't think there was any hurry. From her perspective, no one had any reason to search her car.

I had a case now against the two of them: my testimony, Marian Erskine's dying words, the array of sure to be fingerprint-laden evidence in the sack. But it was by no means conclusive, not where a wealthy Atherton citizen and allegedly bereaved widower was concerned. Enough, maybe, to convince the local authorities to mount an investigation, but just as likely not. I needed more solid proof.

So?

Couple of options. Pack it in for the day, go home to my family, and take steps tomorrow to see Melanie Vinson alone and try to crack her as I'd originally intended. Or stay put for a while in the hope that she'd return at a reasonable hour and I could brace her tonight. If she was with Erskine and he went into her town house with her, all the better. I liked the prospect of bracing the two of them together in a place he had no good reason for being the day after his wife's death, catching them off guard, making an effort to provoke her if not him into an incriminating slip with the tape recorder running. I'd settle for Vinson alone, but it was Erskine I most wanted to confront.

The second option, then. I dislike stakeouts after sitting through scores of them over the years, but I was angry and determined enough to tolerate one more of short duration. And I had a good vantage point from here, a clear look at the front entrance to the complex. Seven-thirty now. Give it a couple of hours at least.

I called Kerry to tell her I'd be home late, then tried to make myself comfortable. Good luck with that, in Tamara's vernacular. My aging body tends to cramp up if I sit more than a few minutes in any one position, and shifting around only increases the pressure on my tailbone. I had to get out twice and take short walks in the cold wind to stretch the kinks out of my lower back.

Eight-thirty, nine o'clock. A few cars arrived and parked on the street or pulled into the nearside driveway, and half a dozen people went in through the front entrance. None of them was Vinson or Erskine.

Hunger pangs increased my discomfort. I hadn't eaten since a light lunch. In the old days I kept a bunch of light snacks—potato chips, peanut butter crackers, cookies—in the car for unplanned-for downtime such as this, but now that I did little fieldwork and had pretty much given up junk food for health reasons, I no longer bothered to stock up. All I found when I rummaged around in the glove box was one of the dinky little energy bars Emily is fond of. Apricot, except it didn't taste much like apricot; it tasted like chewy cardboard and only made me hungrier.

Nine-thirty.

Quarter of ten.

The hell with it. It had been a long day, I was tired and stiff and cold as well as hungry, and it was a forty-some-mile drive back to the city. No sense in pushing myself past a sensible limit. Start fresh tomorrow.

I got the engine going and headed for home.

 

16

But home was not where I went. I took an impulsive and ill-advised detour instead.

I was on Page Mill Road, nearing the intersection with Highway 280, when the thought began to nag at me that Erskine might have taken Vinson home with him. Would the son of a bitch be that bold, that callous? Sure he would. Dinner first, maybe, someplace where they weren't known, then a return to the scene of the crime to finish up their celebration. No risk to him; he'd committed the perfect murder, hadn't he? It wasn't likely any of the neighbors would notice them arriving, but if they were spotted and the fact was later mentioned to him, why, he'd just say she was helping put his wife's affairs in order, or comforting him in his time of need. He wouldn't give much of a damn what the neighbors thought anyway.

Couldn't hurt to swing by his house, could it? It was more or less on the way, a round-trip detour off 280 of only a few miles. If the place was dark I needn't stop; if it showed lights I could ring the bell, late as it was, and see if I could get him to let me in—feed him a story about being on my way back from San Jose, where I'd uncovered some information about the Leno brothers. Might just work. Then what I could do was make it plain, without actually accusing him, that I had the entire scheme figured. Escalate the war of nerves—the Javert treatment. If Vinson was there and stashed someplace where she could listen to the conversation, it might scare her enough so she'd be easier to crack when I tackled her alone.