The two cops were back over by the car, guarding it, I guess, until they were relieved. Bowie had his feet propped up on his desk, going over invoices and watching the action outside.
“So, what do you think?” he asked, tilting his head toward the Corliss.
“I think it probably wasn’t a suicide,” I said. “Why?”
“I dunno. You see a white guy come in here, dressed nice, looks like he’s probably got a house in the ’burbs, coupla kids, swimming pool in the back yard. He gets himself killed and stuffed into the trunk of a car. What did he do? Get caught cheatin’ on his wife? Forget to pay his taxes? No, man. What we got here is some high-class drama.”
Two cars pulled up outside — the reinforcements. We got up to investigate and were put through the twenty-questions routine again by a plainclothes-man while a guy dusted the car for prints and a tiny girl who couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds took photos of the guy in the trunk.
A few minutes later a wagon from the coroner’s office arrived, and a few minutes after that, a news truck from one of the networks.
The plainclothes cop who talked to us was a cholo named Miggy Hernandez I used to deal with on the phone back when he was in auto theft. He was an okay guy.
He herded us back into Bowie’s shack when he saw the news truck and asked us not to talk to anyone but him. He slipped a leather card case out of his pocket and handed each of us a card with his San Diego P.D. number on it.
As he was leaving, one of the guys from the coroner’s office walked up and said, “He’s been pronounced. You want us to take him so you can dust the trunk?”
Hernandez looked around. The fingerprint guy and the tiny photographer seemed to be done. “Yeah. Get him out of here before the cameras are set up, if you can. Any I.D. on him?”
“Driver’s license in his wallet. Says his name was John Schroeder. The photo pretty much matches.”
“Anything interesting?”
“His pockets were rifled, but nothing was taken, looks like. Money’s still there.”
“I’ll send Robbie down to the morgue when he’s done here to see if he can lift any prints off the stuff. How soon can you have the report?”
The guy from the coroner’s office glanced over at the news truck, then back to Hernandez. Bowie and I were pretending to be real busy doing paperwork in the shack. “We’ll put a priority on it.”
Hernandez and his partner watched the loading of the body, then talked to the reporters. Meanwhile, I got the Creeper on the phone and told him what was going down. He said he’d cover for me for the rest of the day. Alicia showed up a few minutes later, called the general manager and told him she and Bowie were splitting due to general shock and trauma, and to avoid giving the dealership any bad publicity by accidentally talking to the reporters milling around. He went for it. The three of us drove down to a little Mexican restaurant to have a couple of beers. It ended up being an all-evening thing, with dinner and then a trip out to Mission Bay for ice cream and a walk on the beach.
We talked about everything except the dead guy, and as the evening progressed, I decided I liked Bowie. He was quiet, but he had a good sense of humor. It wasn’t until I got home to my apartment about midnight and got into bed that what he had said earlier about Schroeder started rolling around in my head. What could a white-bread kind of guy like Schroeder have done to get offed like that?
Thursday, Bowie and I had our names in the paper. Standley kept me and the guys out on the road most of the day, I guess to cut down on the rehash with the other teams, which was fine by me. I’d had a little too much excitement in my life lately.
I didn’t get home until around seven. The minute I walked in the door I knew something was wrong — someone had been there while I was out. Nothing seemed out of place, but I could smell garlicky body odor and maybe cheap cigar hanging in the apartment.
I checked around but nothing was missing, which made me think right away that this was somehow connected to Schroeder. I didn’t know how or why, but whoever had been tossing Schroeder’s office when I had walked in now thought I had what he’d been looking for.
I opened a beer and turned on the Padres game to help me think. Should I call Miggy Hernandez? Nah. He’d probably think I was nuts or, worse, some kind of wimp. There was only one thing I could do. I showered, changed, and went back out.
“Who is it?” The voice sounded a little scared.
“It’s Joe Camacho. I’m the guy who found John Schroeder’s body in the car.” Apparently she knew he was dead. She didn’t seem surprised. I like people who keep up on current events.
“What do you want?”
“Schroeder’s office was tossed when I went there yesterday to look for the car, and today, someone broke into my apartment. Schroeder listed this address on his credit app for the car, and I was hoping you could tell me what’s going on.”
I heard the latch click and. the door opened the length of the chain.
“Let’s see some I.D.”
Her hands trembled as she took my driver’s license and Standley’s I.D. card.
A moment later the door shut, then opened wide. C. Hendricks was a tall blonde with the deep brown eyes of a frightened doe. She ushered me into a kitchen that was larger than I expected and motioned me to a bar stool at the center island. She offered me a soda, and while she was pouring it, she said, “He listed my address? Why?”
“Beats me.” I shrugged as she handed me the glass and sat down. “Were you his girlfriend?”
“No. His secretary — up until Monday. He told me he was leaving town for a while and wouldn’t need me any more.” Something seemed to be bothering her. Finally, she said, “What really happened to John?”
“I don’t know much. I just brought the car in; the body was in the trunk. The cops were talking about a bullet wound, but I don’t know where he was shot.”
“Oh.”
“What did he actually do up there in that office? I couldn’t tell.”
“I don’t really know. He was supposed to be a toy designer, but I never saw him do anything.”
“I saw drawings in his studio.”
“Yeah. There’s a two-month-old coffee stain on the top one. That’s how I caught on that he wasn’t actually working.”
“How did he spend his time?”
“He was out a lot. When he was there, he was mostly on the phone.”
“With who?”
“I don’t know. I don’t speak Spanish. Most of the guys who called seemed to be Mexican.”
“He spoke Spanish?”
“Yeah. I started thinking he was maybe smuggling drugs or something. And then, when his car got stolen, he got really scared. I had just about decided to start looking for another job when he told me he was going away. I was getting really nervous about all the weird stuff that was going on.”
“Did he say where he was planning on going?”
“No.”
“How about the guys he talked to on the phone — do you remember any of their names?”
“One. A guy named Enrique Moreno. He and John were back and forth on the phone a lot lately.”
“You wouldn’t happen to remember his phone number, would you?”
“No. But it was long distance. I dialed it a couple of times for John. It would be on his phone bills at the office.”
She hesitated for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. She left the room and came back a few minutes later with a piece of paper and a key in her hand. “Here. This is John’s home address and the key to the office. I never gave it back to him.” She paused and looked me in the eye. “Whatever happens, I don’t want to be involved, okay?”