Karma (16 page)

“But there must have been a time when the full realization hit you.”

She shook her head. “There might have been a time when it could have, but you see, it really didn’t matter. I told you, I’m not much interested in doctrine. Frankly, I think you believe whatever you want to believe and you have as much chance of attaining nirvana as anyone else. I’ve been so busy taking care of the boys and you—” She turned to coo at the sleeping baby. “The doctrine, it was just gift wrapping. Inside of the box, it’s still the same. It’ll go on being the same.”

“I doubt that.”

“Oh, no. It has to go on. This is a good place for these boys. They’d be on the streets otherwise, into drugs.”

“This place hasn’t always been drug-free,” I commented, and was immediately sorry I’d mentioned it. Leah drew back, and the expression of hurt couldn’t have been more real had she been at the ashram during the time Bobby Felcher had lived here.

“There are no drugs here now,” she said firmly. “I see to that. I take care of these boys. This is my place—watching out for these boys. Their parents don’t have to wonder about them here. Nothing’s going to happen to them.”

I decided not to pry loose Leah’s certainty about the future. She’d know soon enough that the ashram would have to be closed. Instead, I mentioned Paul Lee’s words at the last ceremony.

“He got very serious toward the end,” she said. “He began to resemble a holy man. He looked less like one of the boys. In the beginning, I think he really cared about the boys. I don’t know whether he would have left them. But he said he would, so I suppose he would have.”

“Then what would have happened?”

“Just what’s happened now. Mr. Braga would have gotten another guru. I thought for a while he’d promote Chupa-da. I never thought he’d wait around for Preston. Only Heather was
that
naive. But I did figure he’d move fast.”

“But suppose Paul had exposed the fraud?”

“Oh, he wouldn’t have done that.”

The baby opened an eye, stretched, half whimpered and Leah picked him up, cooing at him again.

“Leah,” I said, “if Paul Lee had exposed the operation here, if the whole operation had gone under, how much of a financial loss do you think that would have been for Rexford Braga?”

She concentrated a moment on adjusting the baby on her hip. “Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t think about finances above what it takes to feed and keep the boys. And I knew Padma would never have done anything like that.”

I made no reply. Leah didn’t want to hear anything negative about one of her boys. Up until now I had enjoyed talking to her. I had assumed her observations to be shrewd, but now I wondered how clear her vision was. I wondered if she saw the real world or one skewed to fit her wishes.

“Officer Smith.” A rookie whose name I couldn’t remember stood in the doorway.

“Yes.”

“The warrant you wanted. It’s here.”

I
HURRIED ACROSS THE
courtyard, followed by the rookie—Olson was his name—and down the steps into the basement room.

There everything was as I’d left it. Braga was pacing, and despite the presence of the Penlops, he was smoking. Crushed butts lay on the floor like buoys marking his path. Beside the metal strongbox stood the backup men who had replaced me and, beside them, the two Penlops. The one with his eyes half closed was slumped back against the pile of tea boxes; the other, blond, alert, looked almost eager. I wondered how long it would be before word of Padmasvana’s fraud spread to the Penlops. And, when Leah realized how thoroughly they had been used, what form their retribution would take.

I held out the warrant, but Braga shook his head. Silently, he extended a key. The blond Penlop holding the box stepped forward impatiently.

I took the box. It was light, much lighter than I’d expected. Could it be, after all this, empty?

The key turned easily. The Penlop leaned forward as I pulled up the top.

Inside was a sheet of paper, folded once. I lifted it gingerly, trying to touch only its edges and, much to the consternation of the blond Penlop, walked into Braga’s office and shut the door.

I admit to killing Bobby Felcher. I let him have some downers, then I injected him with heroin so it would look like he had overdosed. I did it by myself. No one asked me to. I decided to do it because I found out Bobby had been watching me and saw me reading English and figured out that I was a fake.

It was dated six months ago and signed Paul Cheung Lee.

So Paul Lee had killed Bobby Felcher.

We would run the normal check on the note, of course … I replaced it in the box and called Rexford Braga in.

“How did you make Paul write this, if indeed it is Paul’s writing?”

Braga slumped into his desk chair. “It’s his writing. The paper must be covered with his fingerprints. They all saw him write it and put it in the strongbox—Joe and Heather and Leah. I called them together, had them watch, so Paul couldn’t deny that note later. You ask them.”

“Okay, I’m assuming it’s real. How’d get you him to do it?”

“We struck a deal. I suspected Paul had killed Bobby. Paul wanted out. I wanted to be sure he wouldn’t blow the whistle.”

“How do I know you didn’t first make him kill Bobby?”

Braga looked up, a genuine expression of amazement on his face. “Come on, Officer. If I couldn’t convince Paul to stay here, in a perfect setup for a nineteen-year-old, do you really think I could have talked him into murder? I wish I had that much power.” He let his head sag, not bothering to wait for my reaction.

Giving him the usual warning about not leaving the area, I walked out and headed for the station.

I glanced quickly through Pereira’s reports in my in box, and caught Howard as he was leaving. Together we entered Lt. Davis’s office.

I placed the strongbox on his desk. Pereira’s report lay on the near corner. So the lieutenant already knew that Padmasvana was a fraud.

“Paul Lee killed Bobby Felcher. He gave him an overdose.” I sat on one of the hard wooden chairs and recounted the whole series of interviews.

Carefully, lifting the confession note by one edge, Lt. Davis examined it. Finally he said, “So what have we got here?”

“First, Paul Lee killed Bobby,” Howard said.

“But did anyone besides Braga know that?” the lieutenant asked.

“Heather, Joe and Leah—they saw him write the confession. And Paul, as Padmasvana, did say he was responsible for the death of the Penlop. He said it at several ceremonies. That would be enough to confirm anyone’s suspicion.”

“It gives Vernon Felcher a nearly peerless motive,” Howard put in.

“And Kleinfeld, his partner?” the lieutenant prodded.

“I doubt it,” I said. “Paul Lee’s death didn’t affect their dealings with Braga substantially. If Felcher killed him, it was mainly a personal vendetta.”

The lieutenant rubbed two fingers over his mustache. “And the suspects at the temple?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “None of them would have killed Paul to avenge Bobby. On the contrary. If one of them murdered him, it had to be to prevent his leaving.”

“Which, unless we’ve missed something, leaves us where we were before you found the box, Jill.”

I stared at Howard, feeling as deflated as Braga had looked half an hour ago. “Yeah.”

Lt. Davis sat back, his eyes half closed, his unspoken demand for thinking space dominating the room. “Let us speculate on what would have happened if the operation had been exposed.”

“Braga’d have gone to jail,” I said.

“And when he got out, he’d be a felon, an aging felon, with no chance of doing anything big again,” Howard said. “He’d be lucky to pull off anything small, after that. Bad for the old male ego.” He nodded knowingly at me.

“And dangerous if he couldn’t pay his debts,” I added.

“I think we’ve established sufficient motive for Braga,” the lieutenant said.

I jotted down the names of the other suspects. “Okay, the ashram would fold. Leah deVeau would probably have to apply for welfare. She might get a foster-care license to keep children, but she’d have to have a place to do that in, and I don’t know if she could swing it. In any case, she wouldn’t be able to keep the same type of setup as she has at the ashram.”

The lieutenant did not look impressed.

“Her position there is important to her. She seems to care a lot about the Penlops.”

“Yet and still, Smith, it’s not like having loan sharks at your throat.”

I couldn’t dismiss Leah’s loss that way, but there seemed little point in pressing the issue. “Joe Lee would be in jail. He voiced a lot of resentment about his younger brother this afternoon—‘My brother got everything.’ I could see him getting into a rage at the idea of his brother undercutting the operation he helped set up.”

“Particularly if he was planning on being the next guru,” Howard said. There was no hint of a smile on his face now; it was all concentration. “Look, here’s Joe Lee’s choice—Paul blows the whistle and lands him in jail, or Paul dies and Joe becomes guru. There was no reason for him to suspect that he wouldn’t make it as guru. For motive, that’s got everything that Braga’s does.”

“Right. Who does that leave, Smith?” the lieutenant asked.

“Heather Lee, Paul’s wife or mistress.”

“What happens to her?”

“Well, right now I think she’s hoping to take off with Chattanooga Charlie Spotts, the country singer. Before that she was planning on being regent till her baby became old enough to become guru.”

Lt. Davis checked the sheet before him. “The child is not a year old. That’s quite long-range planning.”

“Plans aren’t too clear in Heather’s mind. If she wants something enough, it seems to her that she should have it. I’m sure she never considered the work or the politics involved in protecting the child’s position for twenty years. She’s only twenty years old herself.”

“What I’m asking, Smith, is how she felt it would affect her future if Paul Lee revealed the fraud.” His fingers began tapping.

I ran my tongue over my lower lip. It was hard to think of Heather having such clearly defined thoughts. Still, she knew how to look out for her interests. She had got Paul Lee to allow her to set up her tepee in the courtyard, where it had to have caused comment and potential dissension. She had maintained a position within the ashram community while apparently doing nothing to aid the movement. No, Heather was not the laid-back young woman she appeared.

“I’d say her motive was as good as Braga’s,” I said. “Either Paul keeps his role and she becomes Mother Divine, or he tells all and, if she avoids jail, she goes back home in disgrace, or she gets a job as a cocktail waitress and spends her off-hours changing diapers.”

“Knowing about Paul Lee’s fraud clears up very little,” Lt. Davis said. “Well then, Smith, what about Garrett Kleinfeld and Vernon Felcher?”

“Felcher stands to save about thirty thousand dollars on the property now that Padmasvana’s dead. And, of course, he is convinced someone in the temple murdered his son.”

“Right,” Lt. Davis said. “So much for his motive. What about Kleinfeld?”

“Kleinfeld. Well, knowing about the fraud might have given him material for blackmail or, more probably, he would just have turned in Braga and the crew. He has a pretty strong dislike for them. But he’s under control. I can’t see why he would have killed Padmasvana, and let…”

“Smith?”

“Well, lieutenant, there’s something going on with Garrett Kleinfeld that I can’t quite figure out.” I took a breath, deciding what was the best way to phrase my suspicions. “At the time Paul Lee was murdered, Kleinfeld says he was with a married woman whose name he can’t reveal.”

“You haven’t pressed him, Smith!” The lieutenant’s fingers hit the desk.

“Well, no sir.”

His fingers lifted and poised tight above the desk. “You think you
could
do that, Smith?”

“Yessir.”

“What about the weapon?”

“Nothing new,” I said. “It’s a cheap knife. No chance of tracing it. As for the insignia, or whatever, on it—the markings that look like a box with lines extended down and to the right—Pereira couldn’t find anything in the library. You’ve got her report. I’ve asked Braga and Joe Lee if it was some Bhutanese symbol, and they both said no.”

“I think, Smith,” the lieutenant said, making an ill-concealed effort to control his irritation, “that we can assume Braga and Joe Lee would have no more familiarity with a Bhutanese symbol than we would. No one connected with the temple would.”

He was right. Was I losing my grip? Or was I merely tired after a grueling day? “Of course,” I said, half to myself. “Now that we know the temple has no real link with either Bhutan or Buddhism, doesn’t that make it even more likely that the markings are not a Bhutanese symbol?”

“Check it out yourself, Smith. You can start your day tomorrow with that.”

“J
ESUS
C
HRIST.
I
’M LUCKY
to be still on the case, much less in charge.” I glared at Howard, who was waiting in my desk chair, legs extended across the aisle. I’d spent the night—too worried to sleep—surrounded by questions that either defied solution or whose answers only increased my anxiety. Why hadn’t I checked out the knife with real Buddhists in the first place? And when I learned Padmasvana was a phony, why hadn’t I seen immediately that that raised more questions about the markings on the knife? And the whole temple fraud and Paul Lee’s confession—what leads did they give me?

Now it was Saturday afternoon. Lt. Davis’s Sunday deadline was closing in. The sleepless night had taken its toll; I felt like I was running on coffee alone.

I sat atop the desk, looking down at Howard.

“I didn’t pressure Kleinfeld,” I said. “Even a rookie would have.”

“Jill—”

“I spend ages waiting for Berkeley’s slowest judge to get off his duff and issue the warrant, and then the box gives us not a thing…”

“That’s not exactly true, Jill.”

I waved off his palliative. “And then there’s the knife.” I shoved the picture of
that
under his nose. “And who knows what, if anything, the scratchings on it mean?”