“Not him. All he cares about is not losing his bond money.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, given the way he’d fawned over Cory Beckett in his office; but then again, he’d always been a businessman first and foremost. “In that case, we’ll have to drop it. You know we can’t continue an investigation without a client.”
“Yeah. Damn, though. I’d sure like to know what that woman’s up to.”
“So would I,” I said. “After the fact, with nobody hurt, and from a safe distance.”
Abe Melikian was another Saturday workaholic, in his office and busy with a client when I rang up. I told the staff member I spoke to to let him know I had news for him and would deliver it in person within the hour.
Runyon checked in as I was about to leave the agency, with the news that Cory Beckett had brought Frank Chaleen along with her to Belardi’s. The woman was brazen as hell. Lied in her teeth to me about not knowing Chaleen, then as soon as I was gone, called Chaleen in to help her fetch her brother home.
As Tamara had predicted, Melikian didn’t want us to do any more investigating. He was upset that we’d probed into her background as much as we had. He already knew that Kenneth Beckett had been found and Cory was bringing him back well ahead of his trial date because she’d called to tell him so, and why the hell hadn’t I notified him right away myself instead of going to her apartment and harassing her?
I tried to explain about her background, her ties to Vorhees and Chaleen, the lies and manipulations we’d uncovered, but I might as well have been talking to a statue. He refused to consider that she might be anything other than the selfless sister she pretended to be; kept defending her and her intentions. Kenneth Beckett was unstable, he said, parroting what she’d told me; the kid’s sudden run-out proved that, didn’t it? The story he’d told Runyon was “a load of drug-raving bullshit.” Cory had her brother’s best interests at heart, was doing everything she could to keep him out of prison.
Old Abe was hooked, all right. So deeply hooked that I couldn’t help wondering if she was sleeping with him, too. He was always paying lip service to family and family values-he’d been married thirty years, had two grown daughters and a son in high school-and I had taken him for a straight arrow. But when a sexy piece half a man’s age makes herself available to him, the temptation for some can be too strong to resist. Not for me, and never with a woman like Cory Beckett-that’s what I told myself. I hadn’t succumbed in her apartment, but how could I be absolutely sure I wouldn’t under different circumstances?
I said, “Okay, Abe. Have it your way. We’ll back off.”
“Damn well better. Beckett’s back, I’m not gonna lose my bond-case closed. You want any more business from me, stay the hell away from Cory and her brother.”
So that’s the end of it, I thought. Kenneth Beckett gets convicted or acquitted at his trial, his sister goes right on lying, manipulating, using men to her own ends, and we forget the whole sorry business and move on. Case closed.
Only it wasn’t.
No, not by a long shot.
8
KENNETH BECKETT
He didn’t know what to do.
Scared all the time now. Scared of the trial, scared of going to prison, but mostly scared of Cory.
She didn’t trust him anymore. Made him give her his car keys, wouldn’t let him go out alone after dark, locked him in his room at night when she went off with Mr. Vorhees or that bastard Chaleen. She said it was just until after the trial, for his own safety, even though he’d promised he wouldn’t skip out again like he had when she flew to Las Vegas with Mr. Vorhees and left him all alone. Well, maybe it was for his own good, but did she have to treat him like he was a snot-nosed kid? Or worse, a half-wit the way Chaleen did?
She wouldn’t confide in him anymore, either. Or give him a hint of what her plans were. She had secrets again. Her and Chaleen. Ugly secrets, crazy secrets. He was sure of that much.
She was out with Chaleen now, in the middle of the afternoon. Hadn’t said that was where she was going, just said she’d be out for a while, but he’d heard her on the phone through her bedroom door before she left and it was plain enough who she was talking to.
He didn’t understand it. What did she want Chaleen for? She had a good thing going with Mr. Vorhees, a decent guy to work for, a guy who treated her right-bought her things, gave her money to help pay the rent on the apartment. Mr. Vorhees treated him decent, too, never talked down to him. Tried to get his wife to drop the theft charge, but Cory said the woman was too full of hate to listen to reason. Sure, Mr. Vorhees was still married, but legally separated, and Cory’d had affairs with married men before-“I don’t subscribe to society’s moral standards,” that was always her excuse. Besides, she said, it was different with Mr. Vorhees because he loved her and she loved him and they were going to get married after his wife was out of the picture. So why was she risking everything by sneaking off and letting Chaleen do it to her, too?
She’d turned into a different person since they moved to San Francisco. Most of the time they’d lived in Marina del Rey and Newport Beach, she’d been loving and kind and caring, but now she was back to being the wild thing she’d been when that other bastard, Hutchinson, got his hooks into her. Or maybe she’d been that way all along, just didn’t let him see it.
He didn’t like that Cory at all. Lying to him. Telling people he used drugs when he never had. Making him do crazy, hurtful things like being arrested for stealing Mrs. Vorhees’ necklace and then not explaining why, just saying over and over, “Don’t worry, Kenny, don’t I always do what’s best for us?”
No, she didn’t always do what was best. She’d done a lot of crazy stuff he knew about and probably some he didn’t. Like messing with that damn rich teenager in L.A. for money. And all the sick shit with Hutchinson. And treating poor Mr. Lassiter so bad he’d ended up killing himself. That wasn’t her fault, she said, she had no idea he was suicidal, but it was her fault. Sneaking around with other guys, taking money she wasn’t supposed to have, fighting with the man all the time. Maybe she’d even planned it. There was something kind of funny about the night Mr. Lassiter died, too-Cory making him say he was there with her in the house when it happened, when she and Mr. Lassiter had been alone together. The lie was to keep people from getting the wrong idea, she’d said, and he believed her, but still it bothered him whenever he thought about it.
All these things preying on his mind scared him, made him nervous as hell. He couldn’t sit still, just kept prowling the apartment. It wasn’t so bad when Cory went away at night and locked him in, not that she had to do that-he knew he had to stay in the city now, he was resigned to it, so he just watched TV or read one of his nautical books until she came home or he went to sleep.
But it was different when he was by himself like this during the day, free but not free. He could go out if he wanted to, but the trouble was, he had nowhere to go. Well, down to the yacht club to look at the boats, Cory was okay with that, but he had to tell her ahead of time in order to get the bus fare. She wouldn’t let him have any money otherwise, and he didn’t have any now. The only other thing he could do was walk around the neighborhood, up and down the steep hills, and all that did was make him more nervous, more restless.
God, he wished he had somebody to talk to besides Cory. A friend he could unload his troubles to, who’d understand what he was going through and maybe give him an idea of what to do. He might’ve been able to talk to Mr. Vorhees, but Cory wouldn’t let him on account of that damn necklace. Even somebody like the guy who’d found him at Belardi’s might be okay if he wasn’t a detective-he’d told Mr. Runyon more that day than he’d ever thought he could tell anybody, it had just come spilling out of him. He’d had a couple of casual buddies in Newport Beach, but they were just guys who worked in the marina like he did, guys he could have a beer and talk boats with. Up here he didn’t even have anyone like that. Hadn’t made one single friend in San Francisco. Except for Cory he was alone, all alone.