But it was doubtful he or one of his associates had put the bullet in my head.
That left the case Julia was working on, which she was going to present to me this afternoon. And if my shooting wasn’t connected with that-then what?
A run-of-the-mill burglary that I interrupted? The random situation of being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
No, that didn’t feel right.
One in the afternoon. I could actually turn my head a little to see the small crystal clock that Hy had bought me. The agency staff were coming at one-thirty. I felt like a kid who was having a birthday party.
A bald-as-an-egg kid.
The nurses kept reassuring me that my hair would grow back in. But when they’d removed the bandages, I’d wondered. Jesus, what vanity! But I’d always had such thick, manageable hair-probably my best feature.
No, from now on your best feature will be walking and talking. Making love with Hy. Eventually driving and flying. Living-pure sweet living.
Promptly at one-thirty they filed in-Julia, Mick, Craig, Rae, and Adah. In the interest of keeping the meeting small, we’d decided against including Patrick, Derek, and Thelia. Hy had come a few minutes earlier and leaned against the wall, making room for the others.
Adah chaired the meeting, asking first Craig, then Mick, and finally Rae to sum up the city hall investigation. The indictments had come down, the accused had lawyered up. Lee Summers was being held without bail for the murders of Teller and Janssen. The chief evidence against him was the document Teller had made Janssen sign, admitting to collaborating with Summers in choosing his victims for the sex videos: instead of destroying it, Summers had carelessly left it in a locked drawer in his office. The Pro Terra Party-which had only been a vehicle for getting into office lawmakers whose votes would financially benefit Summers and a handful of associates-had been disbanded, although some environmentalists Hy knew were thinking of reviving it in its original incarnation. There was no tangible evidence to link Summers or any of his cohorts to my shooting, but the authorities were investigating Summers’s involvement in his daughter Alicia’s murder.
One case closed.
“The mayor,” Hy said, “is weathering the storm with his usual diplomacy. City operations go on uninterrupted.”
Adah said, “Julia? Your case?”
She stood, visibly nervous. I knew why: everybody else had closed their investigations; she-a relatively new kid on the block-had hit a wall. I tried to smile reassuringly at her, but smiles were not my forte these days.
She gave a detailed synopsis of the case, holding up pictures from her file as she had the last time.
“What bothers me,” she ended, “is why Larry Peeples would leave a hundred thousand dollars at his parents’ place and not try to retrieve it till recently.”
Think, Julia. Maybe he didn’t leave it.
Maybe he couldn’t retrieve it.
“And if he attacked Dietz for it, why did he nurse her back to health?” Julia went on, “The attack was savage-no simple mugging. And the perp brought along his own bag to stash the money in. I asked the parents what Larry’s blood type is-O positive. It was AB negative in the duffel.”
Because Peeples didn’t attack her. It was the perp’s blood.
“But it stands to reason he put the money under the floor in that tack room. Whoever did it had knowledge of the place, and an excuse to be there in case somebody saw them. I called Ben Gold before I came over here, asked him for yet another follow-up interview later this afternoon. And tomorrow, I’ll talk with the parents again.”
I moved a finger toward the file-a tiny gesture, but Hy caught it and told Julia to hold it up where I could see it. She turned the pages slowly until I found what I was looking for.
Somebody else was familiar with the property. And could’ve explained away his being there.
I said, “Pebbers.”
“I don’t-”
“Pebters!” God, this was aggravating, knowing what I wanted to say but not being able to articulate it.
Hy said, “She means pictures. She wants to see the pictures again.”
Thank God somebody could understand me.
Julia turned to the pictures: formal headshot of Dietz before the attack; group shot with the staff at the financial management firm where she’d been employed; informal and badly lighted snap of her in front of her apartment. Formal shot of Peeples; Larry with his parents at the vineyard; Larry and Ben Gold with Seal Rock in the background. I studied them.
Yes!
I wanted to point to the picture, but my strength was flagging. Everybody was watching me, but I could only twitch a finger. I glanced at Hy; he nodded, encouraging me.
I said, “Bole.”
Dammit!
They waited. I looked around, then focused on Mick. He was wearing a silver bracelet that he’d bought on vacation in Santa Fe a couple of years ago. Intricate handcrafted links, like the ones my hand had grazed when the flash from my assailant’s gun briefly illuminated them. Like the metal links in my hallucinations when I’d crashed. Like the bracelet the man in the photograph wore.
I stared fixedly at Mick’s bracelet. No one spoke; I supposed they all thought I’d lost it. Mick shifted his stance, I shifted my stare. He glanced around and frowned. I kept staring.
He said, “Shar? What’s wrong?”
I didn’t take my gaze off the bracelet. He looked down, frowned again.
It was Julia who got it. She glanced from Mick’s wrist to the photos she’d shown me. Looked into my eyes.
I blinked once.
“Ben Gold,” she said. “Dietz told Peeples about the embezzlement, and he told Gold.”
I blinked once again.
There was a stir in the room, a collective hiss of anger and sigh of relief. Then everybody started talking.
“Gold ripped off Haven Dietz, then hid the money at the Peepleses’ place.”
“He waited till he was sure nobody suspected him before he asked Larry to go away with him.”
“Larry refused-he was moving back to Sonoma to learn the wine business.”
“Did Gold kill him?”
“What did he do with his body?”
“Gold’s kept in touch with the family, plans to go back and get the money someday. He thinks it’s still in the tack room.”
“So who was it that was skulking around the night Julia spent there?”
“Haven Dietz, of course. She overheard my conversation with Judy Peeples. I should’ve figured that out sooner.”
“When Gold found out the parents hired us to investigate, he broke into the pier, looking for our case files.”
“Why’d he take a gun along?”
“Maybe he knew about the guard. Or maybe he just felt safer armed.”
They’d summed up what I was thinking: it wasn’t personal. I’d just gotten in the way.
I looked for Hy, but he was gone.
Now the craziness starts…
HY RIPINSKY
He stopped at the RI offices to pick up a weapon, some handcuffs, and a voice-activated tape recorder. He had carry permits and kept.45s in locked bedside tables in all three of Shar’s and his homes, but he didn’t like to keep one on his person or even in his car. Too much chance of theft, too much chance of having it turned against him.
The previous year, after the offices of the company then called RKI had been bombed, he’d relocated the business to a very different type of building from the converted warehouse on Green Street: a newish high-rise on Second Street near the Transbay Terminal. Building security was top-notch, RI’s additional security on its three floors even better. It would take a lot more than a homemade explosive device to bring the firm down again.
In his office-spartan, functional, the only luxury item being a leather sofa that was comfortable on long nights when a situation was brewing-he paused by the phone, considering a call to Len Weathers for assistance. No, he’d already decided Weathers was out of his life for good. Instead he called home and spoke to Brother John.