Never mind, either, that he was still the best lover she’d ever had, maybe the best she would ever have. It was just sex now, wasn’t it? Sure it was; she didn’t love him anymore, not the way she had before he dumped her for another cellist in the Philadelphia orchestra. Served him right that Mary from Rochester dumped him for some other guy after he’d gone and put a ring on her finger.
Sex, no matter how good… well, it just wasn’t as important as it had been when she was living with him. She was older now, smarter (most of the time, anyway), she had responsibilities and a job she loved, she didn’t need or want Horace complicating her life and maybe messing it up again. She’d told him that, and he swore he’d never hurt her again, he was a changed man. Maybe fact, maybe bullshit. Whatever, he wouldn’t go away and leave her be. And she couldn’t seem to just say no, just tell him adios, and lock the doors every time he came sucking around…
This was what was going through her mind when the phone rang and the same dude as before started another rap about needing to see Bill ASAP. He sounded even more tight-assed this time, as if he were upset about something and working to keep himself under control.
“Where is he? Not in the hospital, is he?”
“The hospital? No. Why would you think that?”
“Out of town, then, or what?”
“I can’t tell you that. What’s your business with him?”
“That’s between him and me. Can you get a message to him? Have him get in touch with me right away? Not by phone, in person.”
“I might be able to, if it’s important enough.”
“It’s important, all right.”
“Who am I talking to?”
Long pause before he countered with, “Who’re you?”
“Tamara Corbin. Partner in this agency.”
“Partner.” Another pause. “This is Frank Chaleen.”
Tamara wasn’t surprised. The hospital question had tipped her. The other thing Bill had told her last night was a brief account of how Margaret Vorhees had tried to brain him with a whiskey glass.
She said, playing the dude, “What was that name again?”
“Frank Chaleen. You know who I am.”
“Do I? What makes you think so?”
Pause number three. Then, “Don’t you people talk to each other?”
“Usually. When there’s good reason.”
“Your partner didn’t say anything to you about me?”
“I didn’t say that. How do I know you’re who you claim to be? Just a voice on the telephone.”
Chaleen didn’t like that. She could tell she’d gotten under his skin; his voice had an angry wobble when he said, “You get a message to him, tell him to come talk to me.” He rapped out the address of Chaleen Manufacturing. “Tell him he’d better show up soon if he knows what’s good for him.”
Like hell I will, Tamara thought. She said, “Good-bye, Mr. Careen,” deliberately mispronouncing his name, and hung up on him this time.
Jake Runyon came in a little before one. She was expecting him; he’d been in the city all morning, finishing up a hit-and-run investigation for the victim’s attorney, and had told her yesterday that he’d stop in with a report and to see if she had anything new for him.
She let him get his business out of the way first. Pulled up the hit-and-run casefile and made notes on it while he talked, in between bites from the sandwich she’d brought from home. When he was done, she said, “News, Jake, none of it good,” and told him, first, about Cybil Wade dying. She’d thought about notifying him last night after Bill’s call, but why lay a load of gloom on the man after he’d put in a long day on and off the road? There was nothing he could do. Nothing she could do, either.
Jake had one of these immobile faces that seldom showed emotion, made it hard to guess what he was thinking. Not so much now, though. The news had the same effect on him that it had had on her. The way one side of his mouth twitched and he muttered, “Damn,” told her that.
“Bill said Kerry seems to be coping all right so far, but after all she’s been through…”
“Yeah.”
“Be a while before he comes back to work. So we’ll have to take up the slack, maybe put in even more overtime.”
“That’s no problem.”
Tamara said, “He got the news just after talking to Margaret Vorhees yesterday. That went down hard for him, too.”
“What happened?”
“She was drunk, belligerent. Wouldn’t believe she was in any danger. He told her as much as he could… a little too much, maybe, he said. Dropped Chaleen’s name, intimated Cory Beckett was screwing him as well as her husband, and she went ballistic. Called him a liar, threw a glass at him that he didn’t see coming in time to duck.”
“He all right?”
“Cut on the forehead, otherwise okay,” Tamara said. “But he must’ve got through to her despite the tantrum. Enough for her to yank Chaleen’s chain and put him in a snit.”
“How do you know that?”
“Man called up twice this morning, looking for Bill. Must be real anxious to know how Bill found out enough about him and the Beckett bitch to warn Mrs. Vorhees.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Put him off for the time being. He didn’t like it, made a half-assed threat against Bill.”
“Worried. Nervous, if not scared.”
“Right. But worried enough to call off whatever they’re planning?”
“If they think Bill knows too much about it.”
“His idea or hers for Chaleen to talk to him, try to find out?”
“His,” Jake said. “He may not even have told her about Bill’s warning. Waiting to get more information first.”
“She’s the one pulling the strings.”
“So it would seem.”
“Anyhow,” Tamara said, “Bill stirred things up pretty good yesterday. What do you think of stirring ’em up a little more?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“You go see Chaleen instead. Walk in on him cold, let on you know what Bill knows without saying what it is. Same careful approach he took with Mrs. Vorhees.”
Jake thought it over. “Tricky,” he said. “And it means getting in deeper than we already are. We’re putting a lot of faith in an emotionally damaged kid’s story as it is.”
“You still believe Kenny told you the truth?”
“The truth as he perceives it, yes.”
“Doubts, Jake? Second thoughts?”
“About some of the details, maybe.”
“But not about the gun?”
“No. Cory’s got one, all right.”
“And not that there’s a murder scheme?”
“My gut feeling says Beckett’s right about that.”
“So if you talk to Chaleen,” Tamara said, “and come on strong enough, you might be able to shake him up enough so he backs out on Cory. No murder scheme without him, right?”
“Theoretically.”
“It’s worth a shot. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Tamara said, “Just watch out he doesn’t get pissed enough to chuck something at your head. And make sure you duck in time if he does.”
13
JAKE RUNYON
Frank Chaleen’s factory was on Basin Street, on the southeastern side of the city near the Islais Creek Channel. Basin ran at an angle off Evans: four blocks long and lined with small factories and warehousing companies, an auto-body shop, an outfit that made statuary for gardens and cemeteries, and midway along the last block, a pair of buildings crowded behind a chain-link fence topped by strands of barbed wire. Signs on the fence and on the largest of the two buildings identified the place as Chaleen Manufacturing, Inc.
The main structure was an L-shaped hunk of rust-spotted corrugated iron; a much smaller building, a squat trailer-like affair that sat behind and to one side like a broken-off piece of the factory, figured to be the office. Both buildings had a neglected look, not quite rundown yet but getting to that point. There were two double gates in the fence-truck-wide and standing open-that gave access to a trio of bays in the facing factory wall, one of the bays filled by a semi being loaded or unloaded. The asphalt yard needed resurfacing: cracked, pitted, buckled in a couple of places.