That was his problem, and Hardy let him wrestle with it.
"You got a paper trail, anything at all?"
All Hardy had was the offering circular and the prospectus from the library, which he'd fax down if Restoffer needed it.
"How much money we talking about?"
"I figure about seventeen million dollars."
"Seventeen million?"
"You think that could motivate somebody to do something serious?"
Restoffer grunted. "Seventeen dollars does it down here, sometimes seventeen cents." The line hummed, empty and open. "Okay," he said, "why don't you send your stuff down? I'll take a look at it."
Now it was Hardy's turn to hang up, but much as he wanted Restoffer's help, he didn't want to mislead him. It was full-disclosure time. "Inspector…" he began.
"Floyd," Restoffer said.
"Okay, Floyd, there is one other thing you ought to know that argues against this hit man theory. It might make the whole exercise not worth your time. l"
"I'm listening."
"I don't know what the practice is with professional killers – if they do this. But Witt was shot with his own gun."
The silence hung. Hardy thought he heard Restoffer let out a deep breath. "So was Crane," he said. "Send down your stuff."
At least some things seemed to be falling together, even the details that did not appear to have particular relevance. For example, the FedEx package.
While Hardy was filling out his subpoena form to call Ali Singh as a witness for the defense, it had come back to him that the FedEx invoice had been entered as an exhibit, and all he had to do was look up who had sent the package.
He had done that, and seeing that it had come from Nancy DiStephano, he had remembered – putting things together – that Tom had gone over to Jennifer's house the week before the killings to deliver his own present, but that Nancy was going to wait to deliver hers in person when the Witts came to visit on Christmas. So what had happened was that after the Witts had blown off the family visit, Nancy had sent her present to her grandson Matt by Federal Express. What the gift had been didn't matter – it had obviously vanished into the gaping and insatiable mouth of Christmas presents, into the mountain of Matt's new toys.
But, like Restoffer's cooperation, and though it was not what he'd call hot evidence, the information gave Hardy some small consolation. The unanswered questions had been distracting, and there weren't many left now.
There seemed something fishy in the YBMG takeover. Hardy's theory was a long way from completely developed and even further from proven, but what he was beginning to suspect drew him like a moth to a candle. Hell, any possibility did. Suppose that both Larry Witt and Simpson Crane had, for different reasons and by differing paths, somehow threatened to expose and undermine an extremely lucrative and shady business transaction. So whoever was behind it had these two obstacles to eliminate – Simpson and Larry – before the deal could proceed. Someone was hired to do the dirty work, and the murder of Simpson Crane (and his wife, who just happened to be there) looked like some kind of radical union hit, while the murder of Larry Witt (and his son, who just happened to be there) got laid off on his wife. It was at least a tantalizing parallel.
Sunday morning, frying eggs and bacon in his metal pan. Frannie in her bathrobe reading the paper in the sunny kitchen. Rebecca and Vincent enjoying the special treat of sitting next to each other, Rebecca the big girl helping her mommy, feeding the baby, getting fully twenty percent of the squashed banana into Vincent's mouth.
Hardy taking it all in out of the corner of his eye, one of the life moments that he'd committed himself to recognizing, savoring. From the front of the house came the strains of the Grand Canyon Suite – more Freeman influence. He walked a couple of steps across the kitchen and planted a kiss on Frannie's forehead.
"Um," she said, kissing the air distractedly near his face.
And the telephone rang. It always did.
"Don't get it," Hardy said. He was standing right next to it and was fighting the temptation pretty well.
But Frannie was already up. "I know it's Susan. She said she'd call me. She might be pregnant." She picked it up, listened, then frowned. "Just a minute, he's right here."
He gave her a look, but what could he do?
It was Floyd Restoffer. "I've got good news and bad news," he said, getting right to it. "The bad news is I'm off the case."
"You're off the case?" Hardy had gone around the corner to the workroom off the kitchen. "What happened?"
"My guess would be politics. After I got your stuff on Friday I talked to the younger Crane, Simpson's kid, Todd. Asked him if he didn't mind, which he didn’t, if I interviewed some of his partners, although he had no idea what I wanted from him. Anyway, I didn’t tell him much – just following up a new lead on his parents' deaths. I asked if his dad did any work with Yerba Buena."
"And?"
"No. It was this guy Bachman and a couple of associates."
"Okay."
"So Bachman and I have a chat. He seems like a nice guy, cooperative." Hardy remembered that had been his take on Bachman, too. "I ask him if he knows Witt. He says he's heard the name. Then he remembers – you'd called him, Bachman, I mean. He says he forgot to call you back, the message got lost. He writes himself a note this time – I'd expect a call from him if I were you. So we talk for a while about the deal, if Simpson had been involved somehow. Bachman can't think how, and I don't have any more questions, so that's that. I get the impression he doesn't know Witt from Whinola."
"Did you mention the seventeen million?"
"Yeah, he said he thought that figure might be pretty exaggerated but he'd look into it. There might have been some slush, as he called it, given as bonuses an so on, and he was pretty sure the members of the Board had a buy-back option, but none of this was a secret."
"So why are you off the case? Somebody took you off?"
"Somebody asked, that's all. Yesterday, called me at home."
"Who?"
"My deputy chief. But there wasn't any pressure, more like a suggestion – what am I doing messing with a ten-month-old murder when I'm counting four months to pension city? Clear my plate and get out, that's what I ought to do."
Hardy was staring out at the city's famous skyline across the rooftops in the Avenues. The thought occurred to him: "How did he know you were on it to begin with? Did you tell him?"
"I asked him the same thing. Evidently it came down from the chief himself, who in turn got an earful from Mr. Kelso."
"Who's Mr. Kelso?"
"Oh, that's right, you're not a local. Frank Kelso is one of our illustrious supervisors. Called the chief and wanted to know why we were hassling – that was the word – why we were hassling the pillars of our legal community, and grief-stricken ones at that. I took it he meant the son, Todd."
A Los Angeles supervisor! My, Hardy thought, but this is heating up. Whatever else he might be doing, he had touched a nerve here. It pumped him up. "So where do we go from here?"
"Me? I'm afraid I don’t go anywhere. I'm in don't-rock-the-boat mode, Hardy. The brass wants me to leave it, I leave it."
"They just tell you to forget about a murder?"
"Every few years, yeah." After a beat, he said seriously, "I asked the same question. You know what the answer was? Did I have anything solid to go on or was I just fishing? So I told him a little about your client, what you'd told me – just the high spots but enough – and he said it sounded like I was fishing. I told him sometimes it pays to fish and he said it wasn't one of those times." Restoffer sighed. "It's all a numbers game here, and I do have five live ones they want cleared up by the time I'm gone."