Someone Always Knows (11 page)

I guessed I did, and I'd been up north for decades. Proves you can't lose all your background characteristics.

“What about education?”

“He said he went to UC San Diego for a couple of terms. Majored in earth sciences, but he left because he couldn't afford it.”

“And after that?”

“He came up here.”

“When?”

She shrugged.

God, what was
wrong
with her? With the dangers of date rape, STDs, and plain craziness, people today were usually careful about whom they hooked up with. But Chelle, whom I considered bright and practical in the extreme, had let this stranger into her life and bed—well, sleeping bag—without knowing the bare facts about him.

I asked, “How did you meet Nemo?”

“He answered one of my ads for rehabbers. I'd put it on my Web site that I'd be needing extra help if I bought the Webster Street house. I guess I shouldn't have publicized it, but I was so damn hopeful. And then, like I told you, I broke my own rule and slept with him. Stupid, really stupid.”

“We all make mistakes.”

She looked down and ran a hand over her brow, sweaty now from the flames. “Shar, do you think we could cut this short? I'm feeling pretty bad right now.”

“Sure we can. You want to stay here tonight?”

Her tense face flooded with relief. “Can I? I'd really appreciate it. I don't want to spend the night in any of my buildings or the flat my friends loaned me, but I don't want to go home and tell Mom and Dad how badly I fucked up.”

“You didn't fuck up, you liked the guy, and I could tell he liked you.”

“But I didn't know anything about him.”

“What, are you supposed to pay us to run a deep background check on everybody you spend time with? There were things I didn't know about Ripinsky till we were practically married. Probably still are.”

Chelle looked unconvinced by my argument. “But my folks, they're so conventional…”

I tried not to smile, thinking of a few of the elder Curleys' youthful exploits that they'd confessed to me. “I'll call them and say you're helping me out around here for a few days. But right now you need your rest. Guest bedroom's upstairs, the second door on your left, towels and linens in its closet.”

“Shar, you're the greatest!” She got up and leaned over to hug me, nearly falling on me in the process. Not inebriated, only tired. I watched her totter on the stairs, my heart going out to her.

So Nemo had received a call on his cell and rushed to the Webster Street house, cautioning her not to follow him.

Why? Did it have something to do with the bearer bonds?

One thing figured: the fire had been deliberately set. And that made Nemo's death murder.

Late as it was, I called Mick and asked him to run deep background on Nemo. He's always been a night owl, so he said he'd get to it right away. Then I went to bed and fretted until I decided to watch the late-night movie, hosted by a crazy man with furry black eyebrows and a fondness for rubber chickens, which the technicians on the set frequently hurled at him.

The phone beside my bed rang. Hy? Or Renshaw again? I muted the old Bette Davis movie I was dozing to, and picked up.

It was neither. Rae, sounding excited. “Shar, I've been staked out at your building all day, and I've finally hit pay dirt. Early this evening I spotted Renshaw slinking around there.”

Now I was fully awake. I sat up, turned on the bedside lamp. “What was he doing?”

“Trying to find a way in, I think.”

“He still there?”

“No, he's been on the move ever since. It's a curious thing: each of the places I followed him to has been a building housing long-term document storage businesses. Classic Containers, Stor-for-You, Safety Systems, the Depot, Kelley's Warehouse, Secure Spaces. I lost him after the last one.”

“And he acted like he was trying to get into them?”

“Yeah. He actually was let into Kelley's—it's a twenty-four-seven operation. Stayed quite a while.”

“What the hell d'you suppose he's after?”

“Well, according to my research in the phone book, the places I named all store old files and documents for businesses. Listen to these slogans: ‘Your secrets are safe with us.' ‘Tighter security than Fort Knox.' ‘The NSA has nothing on us.' I wouldn't trust any of them with the contents of our trash bin.”

A memory was stirring in the back of my mind. When we'd merged our companies, Hy and I had decided to retain all our old paper files. Since there were so many of them, secure off-site storage was necessary. But I couldn't remember which facility we'd picked.

I asked Rae, “Did Renshaw have anything with him when he left Kelley's?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. Thanks. You did good.”

“I think I ought to get a gold star on my forehead. When he lost me I even scrounged the nearby Dumpsters to see if he'd thrown something in one. No results except rancid applesauce in my hair.”

“I'll pick up some gold stars. Maybe some red and green ones for the holidays.”

Neal Osborn, Ted's husband, sounded wide awake when he picked up my call. “His Highness is sleeping,” he told me. “I, of course, am sitting up late, putting Brodart dust jacket protectors on my latest purchases.” Neal is a rare-books dealer with a worldwide mail-order clientele.

“Do you mind waking him?”

“You're the one who called. You wake him. I'll place the phone on his pillow.”

Moments of silence; then Neal said, “Go ahead.”

I did, and received a squawk from Ted that blasted my eardrum. “What the hell are you doing, calling at this hour?”

“After all these years you ought to be used to it.” Ted and I had been together forever; in fact, the first sight to greet me the day I'd been hired by All Souls had been his big bare feet resting on top of the reception desk.

He said, “Let me gather my wits—such as they are.” Long pause, lots of moaning and snuffling. “Okay—what?”

“Quick question: what company did we contract with to store our out-of-date paper files?”

“You woke me up to ask
that
?”

“I wouldn't have if it wasn't important.”

“Let me think.” Another pause. “Duggan's? No, that's a funeral home.
D
something. Aha! The Depot.”

“Can I get in to look at the files?”

“Sure. But there're a ton of them.”

“I know approximately what time frame I'm looking for. Do I need to show ID or anything?”

“Your investigator's license and business card should do the trick. Most of them probably know who you are anyway.”

“Thanks, Ted. Go back to sleep now.”

“I've been asleep the whole time I've been talking to you.”

7:01 a.m.

I
tried Hy's cell first thing in the morning and received no answer. I wondered if Craig's contacts from his FBI days had reported anything about his whereabouts or the reason for his ongoing silence, but I knew that if they had, Craig would have immediately been in touch with me. Unless the news was so bad that…

No, Craig would have informed me no matter what. If the worst had happened, both he and Adah would have been here by now, to try to cushion the blow. And if his former colleagues had had even a hint of where Hy was now, they'd have let me know, to give me hope. This was simply one of those wait-it-out situations, during which the one who did the waiting felt cold and helpless as a creature trapped in ice.

I shook the feeling off, pulled myself together, and drove to the Depot on Mission Street near the Goodwill Industries' outlet, arriving one minute after the storage facility opened. Already there was a long line of people waiting to get at whatever they kept there. After inching forward for several minutes, I was able to present my license and my request to the man on the door. Soon I was seated in a cubicle that resembled those in the safe-deposit vault at my bank, and soon after that a young guy with a hand truck hauled in and off-loaded four oversize file boxes, the top one covered in dust. He told me to press the buzzer under the shelf when I was done.

I blew the dust off the box on top and started in. By the time I reached the third carton, I was no longer sneezing, because the dust had settled, I thought—and then I realized the box had been wiped off and recently handled.

Maybe Renshaw had gained access to the Depot after all.

I pressed the buzzer and the same young man who had rolled the boxes in came to the cubicle. “Has anyone else asked for these files recently?” I asked.

“Not that I know. You want me to check our log?”

“Please do.”

He went away, and I contemplated the file box. What could be so important about our old records—?

The man came back. “Nobody's asked for these since you stored them here, Ms. McCone.”

“Are you open twenty-four hours?”

“No. Eight to six, Monday through Friday.”

“What if somebody needed to get at their documents outside of those hours?”

“There's an eight-hundred number to call, and a guard will let you in. But it's only available to renters and there's a code they have to present. You must know that—”

“Normally my office manager handles document storage. You mentioned a guard. Does that mean there's only one on duty?”

“At night, yeah. I mean, who's gonna break into a place that's full of old papers?”

I could think of one. “What's the name of the guard who was on duty last night?”

“George Bender.”

“You have a phone number and address for him?”

He hesitated. “You don't want to go bothering old George, Ms. McCone.”

“Why not?”

“Well, because he lives up to his name. Bender. He's sleeping off one in a back room right now.”

No, I didn't want to bother him; he probably wouldn't have made any sense.

“What about your alarm system?”

“Oh, that. It's pretty old.”

“Is it hooked into the police or fire departments?”

“I don't think so. Like I said, it's kind of old. I'm not sure it even works any more.”

The place was like a sieve. I said, “Thanks…I don't think I caught your name.”

“Mac. You're not gonna report me—”

“No worries.” Although I was going to get Ted started on finding a new document storage company.

Mac exited, and I turned my attention to the third file box.

Finally I found a report written in blue ink in a crabbed hand that I recognized as Dan Kessell's. To my knowledge Kessell had never used a computer, probably owing more to secrecy issues than to his technological abilities. I suspected a great deal of what Kessell had undertaken in the guise of his partnership in RKI had been illegal.

There was no recommendation as to what should be done about the family.

I looked up and stared at the cubicle's blank white wall. While I was surprised my two cases were connected—one of those crazy coincidences that sometimes happen in detective work—I thought that I should have caught on to the fact before this. Should have at least suspected connections among Renshaw, the Webster Street house, the bearer bonds, and the Smithsons. Yet how could I have, really? The only association I'd had until now was the fact that Renshaw had taunted me about the fire, and that was tenuous at best.

Somehow Renshaw had found out about Kessell's long-ago case and come looking for details. Now he had discovered them, and was only a short jump ahead of me. How had he found out? Not from Kessell; the man had survived torture during the Vietnam War. The aura of corruption and danger that had since surrounded him had put even his worst enemies at a distance.

I thought back to Kessell's death: he'd been shot at close range with a .38-caliber handgun, survived without recovering consciousness, and died of cardiac arrest after extensive surgery. And then it had turned out that his entire existence had been a sham.

Could Renshaw have gotten close enough to Kessell to fire the fatal shot after forcing information about the bearer bonds from him? No, in spite of years of suspecting he'd killed his partner, I didn't think so now. For one thing, Kessell had known exactly what kind of animal Gage was. For another, if Kessell had given up the information about the bonds to him, why had Renshaw waited years before searching for them?

In any event, Renshaw's current activities were much more important. He'd known I'd been at the scene of the Webster Street fire. Now that I could link him to the bearer bonds, I suspected he might've been there too. Was it he who had set the fire, thus causing Nemo's death? Was he the man I'd seen running away and chased?

I flipped the file pages to the rear and found a page left blank for notes, onto which Kessell had scribbled the name Bernardo Ordway. And an address: 10 Via Enero, Santa Iva.

A few more pages were covered with Kessell's crabbed writing.

Again, Santa Iva.

I Googled the name on my iPhone. The only place I found with that name was a mere dot on the map halfway down Baja California Sur on the Pacific. Population: 1,570. Principal occupations: fishing and livestock.

Below Kessell's notation was travel information: Southwest to San Diego, flight 399, 11:55 a.m. Connection: Aeromexico to Santo Ignacio, flight 2, 4:37 p.m. Rental car: Hertz, confirmation number 54.

I checked Airnav.com. Santa Ignacio was the nearest airport to Santa Iva, but if that was his final destination, Kessell would still have had to drive about a hundred miles to the coast.

I wondered if Kessell had made the trip. Too late to find out, though: airlines and rental-car companies don't store such information very long.

Okay, if Kessell had made the trip, what, if anything, had he found out? And what the hell had happened to the Smithson family?

I'd just called an emergency staff meeting for two thirty, the earliest Ted and I could get all my operatives together, when Patrick came into my office. His face looked pinched, as if he'd smelled something particularly nasty.

He said, “This morning I talked with Glenn Solomon. He claimed he knew nothing about John X. Williams or his judgment in the dispute of the ownership of the Webster Street property.”

“That's bullshit! He was buddies with old John X. They talked almost daily.”

“Maybe they only talked about their golf games.”

“Glenn hates golf. He's not really into anything but the law.”

“Yeah, well, now he's denying knowing anything about the case.”

“I don't understand what's happening with him,” I said. “He used to be like an uncle to me, but he's become an adversary.”

“Would be interesting to know why.”

“Heartbreaking is more like it.”

“Want me to find out? I can.”

“Not a priority.” I wasn't sure I wanted to know Glenn's reasons for turning on me. “Why don't you help Rae out on trying to locate Renshaw? He's given her the slip again.”

“Rae? She's working for us again?”

“Yeah, she's between books and claims she needs material for the next one.”

Patrick shook his head. “Man, if I had her bucks, I'd be sitting around peeling grapes and spooning up the caviar.”

“No you wouldn't.”

“A moot point. Right now I'm scrimping to add to the boys' college funds.”

I made a mental note to look up Patrick's employment file and see if it was time for a raise in his salary. He certainly deserved one, and as a single father of two adolescent boys whose mother was long out of the picture, he needed one. He managed to juggle the responsibilities of parenthood and his job with a skill that I found nothing short of amazing. Almost every week he had a tale of his new adventures with the kids, but I'd often caught him at the office late at night doing paperwork or on the phone. As a person who frequently forgets to tend to her cats, I was impressed.

As we entered the conference room, people were assembling around the big round table—taking out files, pads, pencils, and laptops.

Once we were all settled, I said, “This vendetta Gage Renshaw has against us is heating up, and I've found a strong connection between it and another case—the Webster Street fire.”

A few of them blinked and sat up straighter, and others made notes as I explained what I'd realized. They all looked as surprised as I'd been earlier, then contemplative.

“Our best lead to Renshaw is the only friend of his we've been able to identify—one Don Macy. They were seen on Market near New Montgomery by a reliable source on Monday of last week—the day Renshaw paid his visit to these offices. We have to make locating him a top priority. Unfortunately, we know very little about him.”

“How little?” Adah asked.

Derek said, “We don't know where he lives or what kind of job he currently holds. He has no listed phone number or accounts with the water department or PG&E. No accounts with any cable TV or Internet providers either. No bank accounts, driver's license, or auto registration. No state identification, voter's registration, or passport. Our search was Bay Area–wide, and we'll be expanding it to Northern California. Southern, if necessary.”

“The invisible man,” Patrick said. “Except he's been seen by a reliable source on the street with Renshaw—and not too far from here. Maybe Don Macy is an assumed name?”

“Could be,” I said. “James Tilbury, the man who told me he'd seen him on the street with Renshaw, had employed him under the Macy name up until a year or so ago, but he told me in a phone conversation earlier today that he'd had an SSN for the guy and had tried to file a 1099 tax form with the IRS, but it was rejected for having too many digits.”

“Can't this Tilbury count?” Derek said.

“How often do you count the numbers of your own, much less somebody else's SSN?”

“You got a point there.”

We all were silent for a moment. Then I added, “As I said, finding out anything we can about Macy and locating him are our top priorities. I can't stress that enough. He may be our only key to Renshaw's whereabouts. Mick and Rae—between the two of you, you probably have the most informants. Work them, and work them hard.”

“I already have been,” she said, “and I'm beginning to pick up hints that some people have spotted him.”

“What people?”

“Ones with street cred. For instance, Boo LaDoo—not his real name, of course. Boo's already stretching out his grimy tentacles. And Astro Turf. He lives in a Dumpster behind the Old Mint and knows every wino and druggie South of Market.”

For a moment the outlandish names distracted me. “I once had an informant, Junk Yard Cat, who lived in a chain-link enclosure with seven garbage cans. He alternated nights in each of them. Mick, are you still having drinks with Lester, the reformed firebug?”

“Most every night. I'm his big bud now.”

“Keep it up; I still don't think he told us all he knew about the fire.” I swept the assembled faces with my eyes. “Renshaw is extremely dangerous. Physically he's gone to seed, but his mind is as sharp as ever. Please use extreme caution and discretion if you spot him. Call for backup from one of us or the PD if necessary. Now, our next issue is Nemo James, the man who died in the fire—any input?”

Mick spoke up. “I talked with the coroner's office. Their preliminary finding is that James died of blunt-force trauma to the head before the fire started. That's based on the condition of what was left of his cranium and the lack of smoke residue in his lungs.”

“Murder, then.”

“The PD's treating it as such.”

“You get any additional information about James's past?”

“Some of it checks out with what he told you and Chelle Curley, some of it doesn't. There's no record of him being born in Utah. No record of any schooling before he did a couple of terms at UCSD on a now-defunct program for disadvantaged individuals. I asked for his records, but they've been disposed of. After that he enlisted in the army and was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Was a clerk in their department of procurement, which sounds racy, but isn't—mainly means buying supplies like toothpaste and soap. Honorably discharged five years ago. After that he's not easy to trace. I'll keep trying.”