“If you do hear, try to get together with him again in person and convince him to do the right thing. From what you’ve told us, he’s not too coherent on the phone. And you seem to be the only person besides his sister he’ll listen to.”
Tamara said musingly, “You know, one thing bothers me. That gun Kenny found. He claims Cory never owned a piece before. And Chaleen didn’t use it or need it last night. Then why did she buy it?”
“Protection’s the obvious answer.”
“Who from? Chaleen? No reason for her to be afraid of lover boy Vorhees.”
“That we know about,” I said. “She may not have either of them as tightly controlled as we surmise, Chaleen in particular. The gun could be an insurance policy.”
“Here’s another idea. She bought it for some new scheme she’s cooking up.”
“Such as?”
“Who knows? Bitch is capable of anything, right? Any damn thing at all.”
“Whatever the reason,” Runyon said, “I wish I knew what she’s done with it. I don’t like the idea that it’s still in the apartment.”
“If it is, she’s got it hid this time where Kenny can’t find it.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“You don’t think she’d use it on him?”
“That’s not what worries me.”
“Kenny using it on her?”
“Not that, either. I doubt he’s capable of harming her, or else he’d have done it long ago.”
“Uh, oh. Use it on himself, then?”
“That’s it.”
I said, “He strike you as potentially suicidal, Jake?”
“No, but there’s no way to be sure. He’s weak, scared, on the ragged edge. Hates himself as well as his sister. If the trial goes badly, if there’s enough pressure to push him over the line, he might decide killing himself is his only way out.”
The phone rang just then, as if to add an exclamation point to Jake’s words. Tamara slid her chair around to answer the call. Listened, raised an eyebrow in Runyon’s direction, listened some more. “I’ll see if he’s available,” she said, tapped the hold button, and said to us, “Andrew Vorhees’ secretary. Man wants to see Jake ASAP.”
Well, we might have expected it, though not this soon. Runyon and I exchanged glances; he nodded, and I said to Tamara, “Go ahead and make an appointment.”
She did that. “Vorhees’ office at eleven,” she said when she broke the connection. “Man’s wife dies last night, he’s in his office bright and early this morning. Business as usual.”
Runyon said, “He’d say it was his way of keeping his mind off his loss.”
“Yeah, sure. What’ll you tell him when he asks why you were out at his house?”
“Nothing that’ll reflect badly on us. Play it by ear.”
“Right.”
“There’s another way to handle it,” I said.
Tamara raised an eyebrow. “What way?”
“Jake and I both keep the appointment. Double up on him. Two are more convincing than one.”
“What do you mean, convincing?”
“There doesn’t seem to be much we can do to prove Cory and Chaleen are murderers, at least not directly. But there is something we can do to rock the boat she doesn’t want rocked. If we work it right, we might even be able to punch enough holes to sink it.”
17
When you faced Andrew Vorhees in his plush Civic Center office, it was easy enough to see how he’d been able to forge a successful political and business career despite his scandal-ridden private life. He cut an imposing figure behind a broad cherrywood desk: lean, athletic body encased in a black silk suit that must have cost a couple of thousand dollars, thick dark-curled hair whitening slightly at the temples, craggy features, piercing slate-colored eyes. The kind of self-confident, strong-willed mover-and-shaker who dominates most any room he’s in.
If he was bothered at all by the fact that I’d accompanied Runyon, he didn’t show it. There was no delay when his secretary announced us, and no visible reaction when she showed us in. Just one question to me: “Who are you?” I told him and he nodded and let the matter drop.
He wore a tight, solemn expression this morning; that and the black suit were his only sops to being newly widowed. If he’d had any feelings left for his dead wife, they were well concealed. When I said, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Vorhees,” and Runyon added his condolences in turn, he made a vague gesture as if we’d expressed sorrow over the fact that the weather wasn’t better today. He tight-gripped each of our hands for a few seconds while his eyes probed ours: trying to read us and at the same time let us know he was the alpha male here. Jake and I showed him about as much of the inner man as he was showing us, just enough so that he understood we were not intimidated by him.
The first thing he said after we were seated was, “I’ve never known any private detectives before.” He didn’t quite make the words “private detectives” sound like an indictment, but close enough.
“A business like any other,” I said.
Vorhees picked up a turquoise-and-silver letter opener, held it between thumb and forefinger and tipped it in Runyon’s direction. Bluntly, he asked, “Were you working for my wife?”
“No.”
“Never had any dealings with her?”
“Not before last night. I never met her while she was alive.”
“Then what were you doing at my house?”
“I went there to talk to her.”
“About what?”
“Things I felt concerned her.”
I said, “The same things I spoke to her about three days ago.”
Vorhees frowned at that. “Oh, so you had dealings with her.”
“Of a sort.”
“What does that mean? What did you speak to her about?”
“Relationships, mainly.”
“Margaret and I were separated-I suppose you know that.”
“I’d heard as much.”
“Well?”
“Not your relationship with your wife. Yours with Cory Beckett.”
Vorhees’ spine stiffened. He made another jabbing motion with the letter opener, toward me this time, before he said, “Even if that were true, my private life is none of your affair. Nor was it any of my wife’s affair. I told you, we were legally separated.”
“Are you denying a relationship with Cory Beckett?”
“I don’t have to confirm or deny anything to you.”
“No, you don’t. But it so happens I saw you coming out of her apartment building about a week ago. I mentioned it to her, but evidently she didn’t mention it to you.”
She hadn’t. His effort to hide the fact didn’t quite come off. “What were you doing there?”
“She was my client at the time. I don’t have to tell you she hired our firm to find her brother when he disappeared three weeks ago. One reason I went to see her that day was to inform her that we’d located him, or rather Mr. Runyon had.”
“One reason?”
“The other is that I don’t like being lied to.”
“By Cory Beckett? About what?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“I’m asking you.”
“The theft her brother’s charged with,” I said. “The fact that it was a frame-up and she was the intended target, not him. The fact that it was her idea he take the blame and that she had help shifting it to him.”
The skin across Vorhees’ forehead bunched into ribbed rows. He let the letter opener drop with a small clatter on the desktop.
“Bullshit,” he said.
“Facts.”
“How could you know all that?”
“We’re detectives, remember?”
He didn’t say anything for a time. Then, “Why would Cory want to frame her brother?”
“Ask her.”
“The hell I will. I don’t believe it. She loves the kid, she’s doing everything she can to get him off. She’d have to be crazy to do what you’re accusing her of.”
“Or sane and full of schemes.”