Cat's Claw (34 page)

Sheila was getting into her Impala when her cell phone chirped. It was Bartlett, calling from his desk at the station.

“We’ve caught a break,” he said curtly. “The information is just coming in now. About a half hour ago, there was a traffic incident on Blanco, three blocks from Kirk’s computer shop. Henry Palmer was riding his bike in the bicycle lane, on his way to work, I guess. He was sideswiped by Gino’s Pizza delivery van. As it happened, Jerry Clarke and her partner—that new officer, Rita Kidder—were in their patrol car, almost on top of the hit. Clarke saw the whole thing. When she called in the report, she said it looked deliberate, like the van swerved into the bike lane. No sign of braking, and the driver didn’t stop. Squealed the tires, drove off like a bat out of hell.”

“Palmer.” Sheila pulled in her breath. “How’s Palmer, Jack?”

“On his way to the ER. No word on his condition, although Kidder reports that it looks bad. Touch-and-go is what she said. Broken bones, concussion, internal bleeding.” Bartlett paused, said something to someone else on the other end of the line, then came back.

“But here’s the kicker, Sheila. When Clarke saw the hit, she dropped Kidder off to deal with the victim and get EMS on the scene. She called
in backup, put on her siren and lights, and took out after the pizza delivery van, which was heading east on Blanco. Spahn and Botts happened to be a couple of blocks away. They blocked the intersection of Blanco and Laramie, in front of the Roundup Restaurant. The driver of the pizza van saw the roadblock, veered to avoid it, and smashed into that big brown-painted steer that sits out in front of the restaurant. Wiped out the steer, then ran head-on into a utility pole. He was dead at the scene.”

Sheila felt her heart jump, then settle. “Damn,” she muttered. She felt sorry for Palmer, who seemed like a nice guy. And sorry, too, for Betty and Steve Baker, who’d bought Gino’s Italian Pizza Kitchen a couple of years before. They were good kids, doing their best to compete with national franchises in the local market. To cut costs, Steve often handled the deliveries himself. She hoped he hadn’t been driving the van this morning.

She took a breath. “Any idea yet who—”

“Yeah. We got a positive ID—and that’s our break.” To somebody else, he said, “Hey, cancel that APB. And start drawing up the search warrant for the Pecos Street address.” To Sheila, he said, “The driver was Jason Hatch.”

“Hatch!” Sheila exclaimed.

“Right. He was wearing a ski mask and gloves. The van was stolen from Gino’s parking lot—Steve Baker reported the theft about the time the hit-and-run happened.” He chuckled dryly. “Hatch probably didn’t want to run the risk of leaving traceable evidence at the scene. Looks like he knew the route that Palmer usually took to work, and maybe even knew what time he’d be riding this morning. So he planned to steal the van, wipe Palmer out, ditch the vehicle, then run for it. And he wasn’t going to leave any prints behind.”

“Ah,” Sheila said. “Sounds to me like a falling-out of thieves.”

“That’s what I’m thinking, too,” Bartlett said slowly. “Like, maybe Palmer knew that Hatch was blackmailing customers and decided to blow the whistle. Hatch found out, and tried to off Palmer.”

“More likely, they were in it together,” Sheila replied. “It would have been tough for Hatch to have access to the computers without Palmer tipping him off. And Hatch wasn’t supposed to be in the shop, so he was probably taking the machines off-site. Or maybe Palmer was taking them to him. However the operation worked, Palmer had to be in on it.”

She sat back in the seat, seeing the pieces of this thing suddenly snap together as if they were magnetized. Hatch and Palmer. Palmer and Hatch. Partners in a blackmail scheme. Not big blackmail, probably, just two-bit jobs, a couple of thousand here, another thousand there, enough to buy Hatch a truck and Palmer a Madone bicycle. Back last summer, Kirk had uncovered Hatch’s role in the game and given orders that he wasn’t to work any more jobs out of the shop. But he hadn’t suspected Palmer, who was his cousin, so Palmer and Hatch had slightly shifted their modus operandi and kept their game going. It had been a tidy little low-risk racket—until Timms had come along and refused to pay up. Maybe he didn’t trust them to keep the lid on his explosive secret. Or maybe he feared that once he gave in, their demands would escalate and he’d be paying through the nose for the rest of his life. So he had burgled the shop in an attempt to get his machine back, and the break-in had brought the police.

Then what? Had Palmer called Hatch when he went home the previous night, and told him that Kirk was dead and the cops had a search warrant for the shop and were asking more questions about Timms’ machine? That they were printing everyone who worked at the shop, that they had his name, that they’d be looking for him?

Or maybe it had gone another way, Sheila thought. Maybe Palmer
suspected that Hatch might have killed Kirk. It was a logical assumption, after all—one that she and Bartlett had considered. Maybe he had even accused Hatch of the murder, and threatened to come clean to the cops about their little blackmail racket. At that point, Hatch might have decided that his partner couldn’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut. Palmer had to be taken out, and the safest way to do it was to arrange a bicycle accident.

“Prints,” Sheila said. “We need to make sure that Clarke gets a set before Hatch’s body leaves the scene. Butch may be able to match them up with whatever he finds on Timms’ computer. That will tie it up for us—until Palmer can tell us what really happened between him and Hatch.”
If
Palmer could tell them, she thought. An important
if
. They needed Palmer. If he didn’t make it, there’d be nowhere to go with this.

“Clarke took care of the prints already,” Bartlett said with an evident satisfaction. “The cards are on their way to the station now.” His voice darkened. “Whether we can tie Hatch to Kirk’s murder is a different question, though. Unless we turn up something when we search his Pecos Street address, I don’t see that we’ve got enough to make a case.”

“Hatch didn’t kill Kirk.”

“Hatch didn’t—?” He stopped, sounding incredulous. “Hey, you know that for sure?”

“I know that for sure,” Sheila said. “Listen.”

When she had finished telling what she had learned from her stop at Kirk’s house that morning and her just-finished talk with Tina Simpson, there was a long silence. Finally, Bartlett let out his breath with a swoosh.

“Holy cow,” he said.

Sheila chuckled. “No kidding. But what we have is entirely circumstantial. There’s motive, yes. We can trace the email she wrote to Kirk
back to her machine, but we can’t prove that she herself sent it. And while the lipstick seems to put her in Kirk’s house—especially if her prints are on it—some smart defense attorney will argue that Kirk was carrying it around in his pocket, and that she was never within a mile of the place.” She frowned. “What we need is somebody who actually saw her there around the time of the murder. Did Matheson have any luck with those garbage guys?”

“Dunno,” Bartlett replied. “He hasn’t reported back in. I’ll connect with him—see what he’s found. What’s your next move?”

“
Our
next move,” Sheila said. “I need to talk to Harmon. And I don’t want to do it solo.” She gave him the address she had jotted in her notebook.

“Got it,” he said, then, “Hold on a minute.” A moment later, he was back. “Somebody just handed me a message that was called in to the duty desk. Yesterday, you mentioned China Bayles—the woman Kirk emailed about the stalker. B-a-y-l-e-s. That the one? Your friend?”

“Right. What about her?”

“Well, she telephoned the station a couple of minutes ago. Seems that a bunch of the little old ladies who live around Kirk’s place have created a neighborhood watch, and they got together and compared notes. They told Bayles that they’ve been seeing some hotsy hanging around Kirk’s place, and they’re convinced that she’s the killer. Bayles doesn’t have a name for the woman yet. Says she’s working on it. So far, the description is…” He paused. “Not sure I’m reading this right, but here’s what it says. ‘Tight red/blue suit, high heels, too much red lipstick, black hair, silver foreign car, maybe Hyundai.’ Tell you anything?”

Too much red lipstick
. “It sure does,” Sheila said.

T
EN
minutes later, Sheila and Bartlett were standing in a brick-paved parking lot, adjacent to a two-story frame building, painted a classy gray, with blue shutters. The building, which had once been a house, was located just a block off Pecan Springs’ business section. The parking lot was empty except for a late-model silvery Hyundai. Bartlett phoned for a make on the car. It was registered to Jacqueline Harmon. No outstanding warrants, no priors. Home address same as the business. She must live upstairs, Sheila thought. And she was here, which was a good thing. Maybe they could get this business wrapped up quickly.

The porch was decorated with Victorian gingerbread, and the small square of front yard was carpeted with green ivy. In the middle of the ivy, a decorative wooden sign was planted. harmon insurance, it said, in an antique script.
Create a little harmon-y in your life
.

Bartlett regarded the sign quizzically. “You know this part of the story a helluva lot better than I do,” he said. “Why don’t you take the lead?”

“Works for me,” Sheila replied.

The two of them went up the neatly painted stairs to the front door, its oval glass pane a stylish addition to the building’s Victorian look. Beside the door, a green Boston fern grew on a white wicker plant stand. come in, please, a small sign invited, with discreet hospitality.

A bell tinkled as Sheila opened the door onto a wood-floored hallway, spread with Oriental-style rugs. The gold-lettered sign near the telephone on the reception desk said that this was Tina Simpson’s desk, but the chair was vacant. The walls, painted a silvery gray, were hung with gilt-framed paintings of fields of spring bluebonnets, Hill Country vistas, and nostalgic scenes of abandoned barns surrounded by yellow flowers. On the left, a cordoned-off stairway led up to a second floor. An open door to the right gave a view of what had once been a living room or
parlor, now furnished as a small but elegant conference room, also carpeted with an Oriental rug. An open doorway at the end of the hall led to a room with a visible bank of filing cabinets—the files where Tina found the premium notices on Kirk’s COLI policy, Sheila thought. Another door appeared to lead to the backyard.

“I’ll be with you folks in a minute,” a woman called cheerfully from another room on the right. “I’m just finishing something up.”

“No hurry,” Sheila replied pleasantly. “We’ll wait.”

A few moments later, the woman came down the hall toward them, striding confidently on three-inch red suede heels. Early forties, Sheila judged, perhaps a little older. She had a competent, in-charge look and wasn’t unattractive. But her firmly angled jaw and peaked dark brows gave her a calculating look that was emphasized by jet-black hair, worn straight, with bangs, and blunt-cut just above her shoulders. Her dark eyes and mouth were dramatically made up. She was wearing a bright red suit with a short red skirt so tight that it looked as if it could be sprayed on. The color exactly matched her bright red lipstick.

“Hello,” she said, extending a manicured hand, first to Sheila, then to Bartlett. Her long, pointed nails matched her lipstick. “My secretary is out sick today, and my agents are attending a training session in Austin. I’m here all by my lonesome, and the phones just keep ringing.” Her self-deprecating smile revealed teeth so dazzlingly white and improbably even that they might have been made of porcelain. “Now then. I’m Jackie Harmon. We offer a full range of insurance services—life, health, casualty, and property—and as I’m sure you know, our uncertain times call for insurance. How may I help you?”

“Police,” Sheila said, and held up her badge wallet. “Chief Sheila Dawson, Detective Jack Bartlett. We’re investigating the murder of Lawrence Kirk. We’d like to talk to you about it.”

Under her pancake makeup, Jackie Harmon’s face went white. “Murder of—” She swallowed, then made a visible effort to pull herself together and tough it out. “Lawrence Kirk,” she murmured, frowning. She tapped a red-painted nail against red lips, as if she were trying to think. “I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I can’t help you. I don’t know anyone by that name.”