Eleventh Hour (27 page)

“But no one told us that Weldon had called before,” Sherlock said.

“That’s right,” Dane said. He sat back, leaned his head against the seat, and closed his eyes. “No one called at all to tell us. You know, of course, that I left my card with every sentient employee at the nursing home.”

Savich didn’t say anything else. He pulled out of the studio and onto Pico Boulevard, crammed with traffic and blaring horns. “First things first,” he said.

Because of heavy traffic, it was forty-five minutes before they exited 405 and wound up Mulholland Drive to Frank Pauley’s glass house. The surrounding hills were dry, too dry.

FiFi Ann, in her French maid’s outfit, the little white cap on her hair, answered the door and stared at Dane’s arm in its blue sling.

“Somebody bring you down, Agent?”

“Yeah, a Harley.”

“Dangerous fuckers,” FiFi Ann said, leaned down, and smoothed her black-latticed pantyhose.

“We’d like to see Mrs. Pauley,” Sherlock said.

“Come with me,” FiFi Ann said, straightening, and turned on her stiletto heels.

Belinda was drinking a cup of coffee by the blue swimming pool, wearing a very brief bikini, pale pink.

Both men froze in place for a good six seconds, eyes fixed on her.

Sherlock went right up to her and said, “Nice-colored Band-Aids you’re wearing, Belinda.”

“Yes, aren’t they?” Belinda set down her coffee cup and rose, stretched a bit, knowing very well the impact she was having on the men. She grinned at Sherlock. “I like pink. It does wonderful things for my skin.”

“All shades of pink look great with my red hair. Aren’t we lucky?”

Belinda laughed, grabbed a cover-up, and slipped it on.

“That’s better,” Nick said. “Now the guys can breathe and get their pulses back down below two hundred.”

“Okay, Belinda,” Sherlock said, pulling her chair close, “tell me why you didn’t call me last night the minute you realized episode three was on?”

She didn’t say anything for almost a full minute. Then she got up and walked to the edge of the kidney-shaped swimming pool and stuck her foot in the water. She turned slowly, looked at each of them in turn, and said simply, with no attempt to excuse herself, “I wanted to see what would happen.”

Nick nearly fell into a wildly blooming purple bougainvillea. “You what?”

Belinda shrugged. “You see, I never really believed that the first two episodes were blueprints for those murders. I thought it was at best a stretch, that the police and FBI had just latched onto them because they were close to actual crimes that they couldn’t solve. Listen, my role in this show is a good one. It’s a solid stepping-stone for me. With the show canceled nobody’s going to see me, which means I’m going to have trouble getting another good part. Of course, you, Sherlock, knew I lied to Detective Flynn and Inspector Delion this morning when I told them that I’d taken sleeping pills before the show started and simply fell asleep even before the show was over.”

“Yeah,” Sherlock said. “They were very angry at you. I think Detective Flynn came this close”—she pinched her fingers nearly together—“to arresting you for malicious mischief. So what you’re saying now is that you—just like that fool Norman Lido at channel eight—wanted to see what would happen.”

“I wanted people to see me, to see what a good actress I am, to realize that they want to see more of me, not that meathead Joe Kleypas, who’s always rubbing his fingers over his stomach so women will notice his abs. You know, the more I think of it, the more I think it was Joe who sent episode three to channel eight. He’s hungry. He knew, just like I did, that
The Consultant
is a winner. He even laid off the booze he was so hyped about the role. Then all this happened. It isn’t fair.”

She toed the water, shrugged, but didn’t look at them. “I’m really sorry if more people die, but who knows, maybe they would anyway.”

“Don’t even try to excuse what you did,” Sherlock said. “It was a really low thing to do.” She got up from her lounge chair, walked to Belinda at the side of the pool, looked her in the eye, and said, “I am personally very disappointed in you, Belinda.” Sherlock shoved her into the water, and walked to the others, not looking back.

She heard a sputtering cough behind her, then, oddly, laughter. “Good shot, Sherlock,” Belinda yelled out.

Sherlock still didn’t turn around to look at her. She said, “I think it’s time we went to Bear Lake. Weldon told them he wouldn’t be at the nursing home until late afternoon.”

Dane said, “Detective Flynn’s got the place covered and Gil Rainy is there with a half dozen agents. If he shows early, they’ll get him.”

“I still want to go,” Nick said. “I want to finally see Weldon DeLoach.” She turned to Savich. “He really is over forty. Isn’t that interesting? Why would he lie about his age?”

“Who knows?” Savich said. “Maybe ten years ago he thought it was necessary. Hollywood is a town for young people, after all.”

“Maybe,” Dane said. “But he may have had another reason to lie. I really want to look him right in the face and ask him.”

Sherlock looked over her shoulder one last time at Belinda Gates, treading water in the deep end of the pool, her white cover-up ballooning around her. Sherlock called out, “I was going to show you another photo of Sean at his grandmother’s swimming pool. Dillon is holding him and he’s in a swimsuit, too, and you just don’t know who’s cuter. But I’m not going to show it to you now, Belinda.”

Belinda just kept treading water. She laughed again.

TWENTY-SEVEN

It was another beautiful day at Bear Lake. There was no more snow on the ground, and the air was winter-clear and smog-free. The calm water sparkled under the late afternoon sunlight. It had taken them just a little over an hour and a half to drive I-5.

“Not bad time,” Dane said. “Considering.”

“Considering what?” Sherlock said.

“Considering that it’s LA and there are more cars per square foot here than any place in the country,”

Dane said. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stories Michael used to tell me when he was just out of the seminary, living in a parish in East LA. I’ll never forget how he’d say that—” Dane’s voice fell off. His jaw tightened and he seamed his mouth together. Control, Nick thought, looking at him, keeping control was very important to him.

Savich said easily, “Gil Rainy was telling Sherlock and me that sometimes it takes him a good hour just to commute into the field office, and he only lives four miles away. Of course, Washington, D.C., ain’t no picnic either, is it, Dane?”

Dane just nodded, not ready to speak yet.

“How about where you’re from, Nick? Bad traffic?”

“No,” Nick said. “Not bad at all.”

“And you’re Dr. Nick, a Ph.D. in medieval history. Do you teach college?”

Nick said, “Yes, I do.”

“Ah. I thought college campuses were usually all jammed up with all sorts of gnarly traffic,” Sherlock said.

“I guess it depends on the campus,” Nick said, then turned to look out the window. Dane saw that her hands were stiffly clasped in her lap.

They parked in the small lot and walked to the entrance of the Lakeview Home for Retired Police Officers, founded in 1964.

They were met by Delion, Flynn, and Gil Rainy, all wearing buttoned-up sport coats but still looking a bit chilly.

Flynn said, “No sign of him. Gil’s got two agents posted out of sight at the turnoff. They’ll call when he shows so we can be ready.”

Dane said, “Anyone speak to Captain DeLoach?”

“No,” Gil said. “A heavy woman with a mustache named Velvet Weaver said that Nurse Carla told her that he wasn’t with it today, he was just sitting in his chair drumming his fingers on the wheels, humming to himself.”

“I’d like to see him,” Dane said.

“Go,” said Savich.

As Dane and Nick walked down the long corridor, they heard laughter, lots of it. The laughter was coming from old voices, and sounded wonderful. They paused at the doorway to a big recreation room where there were several televisions, a quality Brunswick pool table, card tables, and a small library section with bookshelves loaded with paperbacks.

There was a pool competition under way, and half a dozen people were seated around, taking sides, cheering or booing. Mainly they seemed to be laughing because both players—an elderly woman in a loose-fitting loud print dress, and an old codger in gray flannel slacks and a Harry Potter T-shirt, high-tops on his feet—were dead serious about the game, only they weren’t very good. Dane smiled and said to Nick, “You think maybe we’ll want to come here someday?”

“I don’t know. I don’t play pool all that well.”

They walked past the rec room and down another fifteen yards to Captain DeLoach’s room.

She hadn’t laughed much in the past month, she thought.

The door was closed. Dane tapped lightly and called out, “Captain DeLoach?”

There was no answer from inside.

Dane called out more loudly, “Captain DeLoach? It’s Agent Dane Carver here to speak to you again.”

Dane opened the door, careful to keep Nick behind him, which was really stupid, she thought, what with his left arm in a sling.

The room was empty.

Dane breathed out real slow. “Right. Let’s go see if he’s one of the cheerleaders back in the rec room.”

They found Captain DeLoach literally holding the eight ball, the old guy in the Harry Potter T-shirt trying to get it away from him.

Captain DeLoach was yelling, “Come on, Mortie, you lost to Daisy. She beat you fair and square. You can’t throw the eight ball at her or I’ll have to arrest you!”

“She deserves to eat it,” an old woman yelled, and thumped her cane on the floor.

Dane realized then that at least a third of the old people were women. They were retired police officers?

He didn’t think things were so enlightened in law enforcement forty years ago.

Mortie wasn’t happy, but he fell back, obviously still fuming. At that moment, Captain DeLoach tossed him the black eight ball, laughed, and said, “Make her eat it if you want to.”

“Just let him try it,” Daisy yelled, shaking her fist at Mortie.

“Excellent,” Dane said. “Carla was wrong. Captain DeLoach isn’t out to lunch. Looks like he’s with us today, thank God.”

In another minute, they had Captain DeLoach off to the side.

“Do you remember me, sir?”

Captain DeLoach looked Dane up and down, stared at his left arm in its blue sling, then very slowly raised his arm and saluted him.

Dane saluted back. He smiled at the old man.

“I’ve got a gun,” Captain DeLoach said.

“Do you?”

“Yes, Special Agent, I do.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Don’t want anyone to know, might scare ’

em. I bribed Velvet to buy it for me. I told her no one could prove that I wasn’t attacked, and as a senior law enforcement officer I should be armed. It’s even registered in her name. It’s a twenty-five-caliber Beretta. Eight rounds in the clip and one in the chamber. All I have to do is pull back the hammer and I can kill anyone in the blink of an eye.” He pulled his hand from his pocket and in his arthritic old palm was the elegant small black automatic pistol.

“How long have you had the gun, sir?”

“Velvet got it for me yesterday. I didn’t want my son coming back to try to kill me again.”

“We heard that he called yesterday, said he was coming to see you in just a little while. We want to meet Weldon. Why don’t you let me deal with him, Captain? I doubt you’ll have to shoot him.”

“Will you shoot the little cocksucker for me then?”

“Maybe,” Dane said. “Just maybe I will. Why is it that he wants to kill you, sir?”

The old man just shook his head, stared down at his arthritic fingers.

“Captain DeLoach,” Nick said, “how old is your son?”

Captain DeLoach looked over at the pool match, then down at his hands and said finally, looking up at Dane, “He’s so young he’s barely on this earth, but the thing is, Special Agent, he just won’t stop trying to keep me quiet. It pisses me off, you know?”

Captain DeLoach looked toward Daisy, who was cheering because she’d just made the three ball in the corner pocket. “They’ve started another game. Old Mortie doesn’t have a chance. Do you know that he was once a police commissioner in Stockton? Daisy was married forty years to a desk sergeant from Seattle who died the day after their anniversary, fell over with a massive heart attack. She’s got spunk.”

He thought a moment, then said, “You know, if Daisy weren’t so old, I just might be interested.”

“Yeah, you’re right, sir,” Dane said. “I’d guess she’s all of seventy-five.”

“More like seventy-seven,” Captain DeLoach said. He slipped the small Beretta into the pocket of his jacket. He was wearing the sports jacket over his blue pajama tops. “I’ll bet she was hot when she was younger.”

“Maybe so,” Dane said, and thought of his own grandmother, who’d died some years before.

Suddenly, Captain DeLoach said in a soft, singsong voice, “I can feel him. He’s near now. Yes, very close and coming closer. I always could tell when he was near. Isn’t that interesting?”

“Your son Weldon, Captain DeLoach, when exactly was he born? What year?”

“The year of the rat, yes, that was it. I really got a good laugh out of that. A rat.” The old man threw back his head and laughed out loud. The pool match stopped. Slowly, all the old folks began turning to look at Captain DeLoach laughing his head off. “Or maybe,” he said finally, wheezing deep in his chest, “

it was the horse, yes, that was it. The year of the horse.”

Daisy called out, “Hey, tell us the joke.”

Captain DeLoach’s head fell forward and he gave a soft snore.

Dane started to shake the old man, then drew back his hand. “I should take that gun,” he said to Nick. “I really should.”

“I’ll bet you that Velvet would just buy him another one.”

Dane nodded. “You’re right. Let’s go wait with Sherlock and Savich.”

An hour later there was still no sign of Weldon DeLoach. Everyone stayed at their stations until it was dark. Then Detective Flynn and Gil Rainy called everyone in.

Sherlock said, “All a hoax. A distraction, to get us all focused on Captain DeLoach and away from him.”