McCone and Friends (31 page)

I asked, “Do all of you know what brainstorming is?”

Seven heads nodded.

“What we’re going to do,” I went on, “is to share information about Kirby and Adrian. I’ll ask questions, throw out some ideas, you say whatever comes into your heads. Anything, no matter how trivial it may seem to you, because you never know what might be important in an investigation.”

The kids exchanged excited glances. I supposed they thought this was just like
Pros and Cons
.

“Okay,” I began, “here’s one idea—shoplifting.”

Total silence. A couple of furtive looks.

“No takers? Come on, I’m not talking about any of you. I could care less. But think of Adrian and Kirby.”

The angelic-looking blonde—Cat—said, “Well, Adrian took stuff from the place where she worked sometimes. We all suspected that.”

“I didn’t,” Harry protested.

“Well, she
did
. At first she thought it was a giggle, but then…” Cat shrugged. “She just stopped talking about it. She’d get real snotty if you mentioned it.”

“When was this?” I asked.

“Sometime last spring. Right about the time things started getting very heavy between her and Kirby.”

“When she started sleeping with him,” Del added.

“Okay,” I said, “tell me about Kirby’s scams.”

Beside me, Tom muttered, “Dope.”

“Test questions.” Anna, a pretty Filipina, nodded knowingly.

Cat said, “He sold stuff.”

“Like L.L. Bean without the catalog.” The one sitting cross legged on the chopping block was Jenny.

I waited, letting them go with it.

Harry said, “Kirby’d get you stuff wholesale. He sold me the new Guns ‘n Roses CD for half price.”

“You wanted something,” Anna added, “you’d give him an order. Kirby filled it.”

“A real en-tree-preneur,” Del said, and the others laughed. All of them, that is, except Lee, a tiny girl who looked Eurasian. She sat on the far side of the oak table and had said nothing. When I looked at her, she avoided my eyes.

Jenny said, “It’s not funny Del. Kirby was
so
into money. It was like if he got enough of it, he’d really be somebody. Only he wouldn’t’ve been because there was no one there. You know what I mean? He had nothing inside of him—”

“Except money hunger,” Tom finished.

“Yeah, but don’t forget about his power trip,” Cat said. She looked at me and added, “Kirb had a real thing about power. He liked pushing people round, and I think he figured having money would mean he could push all he wanted. He really was a control freak, and the person he controlled best was Adrian.”

“Jump, Adrian,” Harry said. “How high, Kirby?”

Anna shook her head. “She was getting out from under that, though. Around the week before she disappeared, we were talking and she said she’d about had it with Kirby, she was going to blow the whistle and the game would be over. And I said something like, ‘Sure you are, Adrian’ and she goes, ‘No, I’ve worked it all out and I’ve got somebody to take my side.’ And I go, ‘You mean you got another guy on the line who’s going to stand up to Kirb?’ And she goes, ‘Yes, I’ve got somebody to protect me, somebody strong and fierce, who isn’t going to take any shit off of anybody.’”

“Did you tell the cops about that when they came around?” Del asked. Anna tossed her long hair. “Why should I? If Adrian took off with some guy, it’s her business.”

I caught a movement to one side, and turned in time to see Lee, the silent one, slip off the table and through the swinging door to the hall. “Lee?” I called.

There was no answer but her footsteps running toward the front of the house. I was off the counter top and out the door in seconds. “Help yourself to more Cokes,” I called over my shoulder.

By the time I spotted her, Lee was on the sidewalk heading downhill toward Mission. As I ran after her I realized what truly lousy shape I’d let myself get into these past few months, what with the caseload I’d been carrying and spending too much time with Willie. There’s only one kind of exercise that Willie likes, and while it’s totally diverting, it doesn’t do the same thing for you as aerobics.

Lee heard my feet slapping on the pavement, looked back, and then cut to the left and started running back uphill through the little wedge-shaped park that divides the street in front of All Souls. I groaned and reversed, panting.

At the tip of the park two streets came together, and two cars were also about to come together in a great blast of horns and a shout from one of the drivers that laid a blue streak in the air. Lee had to stop, I put on some speed, and next thing I knew I had hold of her arm. Thank God she didn’t struggle—I had absolutely no wind left.

Lee’s short black hair was damp with sweat, plastered close to her finely fashioned skull, and her almond-shaped eyes had gone flat and shiny with fear. She looked around desperately, then hung her head and whispered, “Please leave me alone.”

I got my breathing under control—sort of. “Can’t. You know something, and we have to talk. Come on back to the house.”

“I don’t want to face the rest of them. I don’t want any of them to know what I’ve done.”

“Then we’ll talk out here.” There was a makeshift bench a few yards away—a resting place one of the retired neighborhood handymen had thrown together for the old ladies who had to tote parcels uphill from the stores on Mission. Hell, I thought as I led Lee over there, he’d probably watched me trying to jog around the park before I totally lost it in the fitness department, and built the thing figuring I’d need it one of these days. Eventually I’d keel over during one of my workouts and then they’d put a plaque on the seat:
Rae Kelleher Memorial Bench—Let This Be a Warning to All Other Sloths
.

I gave Lee a moment to compose herself—and me a moment to catch my breath—and looked around at the commuters trudging up from the bus stop. The day had stayed gray and misty until about three, then cleared some, but new storm clouds threatened out by the coast. Lee fumbled through her pockets and came up with a crumbled Kleenex, blew her nose and sighed.

I said, “It can’t be all that bad.”

“You don’t know. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done. When my father finds out, he’ll
kill
me.”

I tried not to smile, thinking of all the kids down through the ages who had been positively convinced that they would be killed on the spot if they were ever caught doing something wrong. I myself was in college before it occurred to me that parents—normal, sane parents, that is – don’t kill their offspring because kids are too damned expensive and troublesome to acquire and raise. Why waste all that money and effort, plus deprive yourself of the pleasure of becoming a burden to them in your old age?

“Maybe,” I said to Lee, “he won’t have to find out.”

She shook her head. “No way, not this.”

“Tell me about it, then we’ll see.”

Another tremulous sigh. “I guess I better tell somebody, now that Kirby’s been murdered and Adrian…but I’m afraid I’ll go to jail.”

Big stuff, then. “In that case, it’s better to come forward, rather than be found out later.”

Lee bit her lip. “Okay,” she said after a moment. “Okay. I didn’t know Kirby very well, just to say hi when I’d see him around, you now? But then one day last August he came to my house with these pictures while my parents were at work.”

“What pictures?”

“Of my taking stuff from where I work. You know that stationery and gift shop at Ocean Park Plaza—Paper Fantasy? Well, I worked there full time last summer and now I go in three days week after school. I kind of got into taking things—pen-and –pencil sets, jewelry, other gift items. I didn’t even want them very much. I mean, the stuff they sell is expensive but pretty tacky. But it made me not feel so bad about having this crummy job…Anyway, that’s what Kirby’s pictures showed, me taking jewelry from the case and stuffing it under my sweater.” Lee’s words were spilling out fast now; I was probably the only person she’d ever told about this.

“There was no way you could mistake what I was doing,” she went on. “The pictures showed it clear as could be. Kirby said he was going to go to my boss unless I did what he wanted. At first I thought he meant, you know, sex, and I could have died, but it turned out what he wanted was for me to steal stuff and give it to him. I said I would. I would have done anything to keep from being found out. And that’s what I’ve been doing.”

“So Kirby got the merchandise he was selling by blackmailing people into shoplifting for him. I wonder if that’s the hold he had over Adrian?”

“It might have been. When they were first going together, they were, you know, like a normal couple. But then she changed, dropped all her friends and other activities, and started spending every minute with Kirby. I guess he used her shoplifting to get control of her.”

“What about the other kids? Do you know anybody else who was stealing for Kirby?”

“Nobody who’ll talk about it. But there’s a rumor about a couple of guys, that they take orders and just go out and rip off stuff. And a lot of the things he has for sale come from stores where I know other kids from school work.”

Kirby had had quite a scam going—a full-blown racket, actually. And Lee was right: there was no way this could be kept from her father. She might even go to juvenile hall.

“The pictures,” I said, “did Kirby say how he took them?”

“No, but he had to’ve been inside the store. They were kind of fuzzy, like he might’ve used a telephoto.”

“From where?”

“Well, they were face on, a little bit above and to the left of the jewelry counter.”

“Did you ever see Kirby in the store with a camera?”

“No, but I wouldn’t’ve noticed him if we were busy.”

“Would you have taken something while the store was busy?”

“Sure. That’s the best time,” Lee seemed to hear her own words, because she hung her head, cheeks coloring. “God, those pictures! I looked like a
criminal!
”

Which of course, she was. I thought about Kirby and his corps of teenage thieves. What if he’d tried to hit on the wrong person? Homicides committed by teenagers, like all other categories, were on the upswing…

“Lee,” I said, “you’re going to have to tell the cops investigating Kirby’s murder about this.”

She nodded numbly, hands clenching.

The phrase, “shit hitting the fan” isn’t a favorite of mine, but that was exactly what was about to happen, and a lot of perfectly nice parents were going to be splattered, to say nothing of their foolish, but otherwise nice children. Parents like Donna Conway. Children like Adrian.

I pictured the pretty redhead in the photo Donna had given me—her quirky smile and the gleam in her eyes that told of a zest for living and an offbeat sense of humor. I pictured her quiet, concerned, sad mother—a lonely woman clinging to her stacks of self-help books for cold comfort. Maybe I could still find Adrian, reunite the two so they could lean on each other in the tough times ahead; if Adrian was still alive, there had to be a way.

And if she was dead? I didn’t want to think about that.

VII

Lee and I went back to All Souls, where the rest of the kids were standing around the foyer wondering what to do next, and while she escaped to my office to call her father, I thanked them and showed them out. Tom Chu hung back, looking worried and throwing glances at my office door. Since he was the one who had put this together for me, I filled him in on some of what Lee had told me, after first swearing him to secrecy.

Tom didn’t look too surprised. “I kind of suspected Lee was in trouble,” he said. “And you now what? I think Del might’ve been mixed up with Kirby, too. He got real quiet when Lee ran out on us, and he left in a hurry right afterwards.”

“Those’re pretty shaky grounds to accuse him on.”

“Maybe, but Del…I told you he’s basically just hanging out this fall? Well, where he’s hanging out is Ocean Park Plaza.”

Ocean Park Plaza—the focus of the whole case. I thanked Tom and gently chased him out the door so Lee wouldn’t have to deal with him when she finished calling her dad.

Her father arrived some fifteen minutes later, all upset but full of comforting words, and agreed to take Lee down to the Hall of Justice to talk to Adah Joslyn. I called Joslyn to let her know a witness was on her way. “Adah,” I added, “did Sharon ask you what was in Adrian Conway’s backpack?”

“Yeah. I’ve got the property list right here.” There was a rustling noise. “Some raunchy-smelling yogurt, makeup, a golden Gate Transit schedule, a couple of paperbacks—romance variety—and an envelope with the phone number of the Ocean Park Plaza’s security office scribbled on it.”

“Security office? You check with them?”

“Talked to a man named Waterson. He said she’d lost her i.d. badge the week before she disappeared and called in about getting it replaced. What is this—you trying to work my homicide, Kelleher?”

“Just trying to find a missing girl. I’ll turn over anything relevant.”

When I got off the phone, Lee and her father were sitting on the lumpy old couch in the front room, his arm protectively around her narrow shoulders. He didn’t look like much of a teenager-killer to me; in fact, his main concern was that she hadn’t come to him and admitted about the shoplifting as soon as “that little bastard”—meaning Kirby –had started hassling her. “I’d’ve put his ass in a sling,” he kept saying. I offered to go down to the Hall with them, but he said he thought it would be better if they went alone. As soon as they left, I decided to head over to Ocean Park Plaza, check out a couple of things, then talk with Ben Waterson again.