The Taxman Killeth (16 page)

“Is that what Todd told you?”

“No, his sister told me the
story. She said that her husband hasn’t dealt in drugs ever since.”

“Doesn’t he? Listen, don’t
accept any calls from Coleman. Don’t meet him anyplace.” Amy shook her head. “Or
one day I might remember your name.” Roger bit into his sandwich. He laid the
rest of the portion on the plastic wrap and reached into his bag to take out a
small bottle of spring water. Amy silently watched. “I’d rather not. Remember
your name. I like the way you look. Joey was right, Todd got all the lucky
breaks.” He twisted off the cap from the plastic bottle and took a sizable swig
of the water.

Amy was frightened. She worried
that she had put Todd in danger. Could they have already tapped her phone line?
Then she realized that Todd had always called from a public telephone. She’d
make it a point to keep all conversations short in the future, perhaps set up a
secret rendezvous where they could share information.

“What are you people doing to
find Joey’s murderer?”

“That’s the San Francisco Police
Department’s job, not ours.”

“He was one of your agents.”

“I told you they were into
drugs. It had nothing to do with their work for us.” After finishing one of the
sandwiches, Roger pulled out a bruised apple and was about to take a bite but
hesitated. Instead he put the apple back in the bag. “I’ve got to get back to
work. Listen, I’d like it if you’d forget you ever heard about or met me. I’ll
reciprocate the favor.” When Amy didn’t answer Roger shook his head. “Damned if
I can understand why some woman would want to tie up with Todd Coleman.” He got
up and walked to a trash basket, where he dropped his plastic wrap and plastic
water bottle. Then he went off down the street and back to work.

Amy was left worrying her bottom
lip. They’ve abandoned him. Todd had known they would. He had also put her in
contact with his sister. Had even asked that she stay in touch with the sister,
perhaps to act as an unwitting go-between in their sordid schemes, she thought.
She was beginning to have doubts. Why had he selected her? And why her law
firm? Confused, Amy headed for home.

A block away from her house Amy
saw a familiar dark shape panhandling in the street. She didn’t know whether to
run in the opposite direction or hug him. The latter would have looked
inappropriate in this neighborhood. Amy kept walking.

“Hey, Miss, spare some change?”

She reached inside her purse and
pulled out a quarter. She was about to drop it into his outstretched palm when
he muttered an address and time to her.

“Thank you.”

Amy nodded and continued on to
her apartment, where she quickly wrote down the address before she could
forget. She fretted over whether or not she should meet him. Roger Davidson
might be right. He might be giving her good advice, advice her mother would
have given her, most probably. Amy decided to keep her appointment with Todd.

The address belonged to an old
Victorian house at the end of a dead-end street. The front yard was neatly
mowed, and wisteria grew along the balustrade of the porch. The house was
painted a baby pink with white trim, and most of the windows still had the
original wavy glass. There were no lights on inside the house, although
twilight was settling all around. There was a note attached to the
free-standing mailbox, reminding the post person that mail was being held at
the post office.

Oh, my God, she thought, he’s
broken in to a stranger’s house. Amy couldn’t believe how careless the
residents of the house had been to advertise their departure.

The dog next door barked,
forcing Amy to decide whether to go up to the door or return home. She hurried
down the cracked cement path and climbed the unpainted wooden stairs. The
knocker was oddly shaped. It seemed to have the body of a dragon and the head
of a eagle. Whoever owned the house must be a bit strange, she thought as she
raised her hand to touch the dragon’s long tail. However, the door opened a
crack before she touched the iron knocker. Then the door opened wide enough to
allow her to enter. The interior was full of evening shadows, but there was no
sign of Todd. Once she was beyond the door, she felt a body move behind her to
close and lock the door.

“Todd?” she asked, afraid to
turn around in case it wasn’t him.

He spun her around to face him
and kissed her full on the mouth. There was a pleasant, soapy smell, and his
tongue tasted of sweet chocolate. He dropped his head to nuzzle in the curve of
her neck and to nip at her earlobe.

“What are you doing here?”

“Like it?” he asked huskily.

She wasn’t sure whether he meant
what he was doing or the house. But she knew what had to be clarified first.

“Did you break in here?”

Todd pulled away, a shocked look
on his face.

“Me? No,” he hissed.

“You’ve been known to...”

“Yes, I have the ability to
break into this place, but I didn’t have to. I had the key.”

“You stole the key?”

“Why must you always think I’ve
done something wrong?”

“But this couldn’t be your
place, or you wouldn’t have dared to come near here.”

“It’s a friend’s.”

“The friend is letting you hide
out here. That’s wonderful. It’s so much better than that awful neighborhood I
found you in.”

“Hmmmm.”

“Your friend left the note for
the mailman to keep others away?”

Todd had moved down the hall. He
beckoned her to follow. They entered a large wood-paneled room. A chandelier
with real candles hung down from the center of the ceiling. The room looked as
though it had once been someone’s library, but now it contained knickknacks on
the rows of shelves. A few leather-bound books were scattered across a cocktail
table, which rested on a richly colored Persian rug. Todd sat down on a couch
that had an off-white slipcover. Two matching chairs were placed across from
the couch.

“Come sit down,” he said,
tossing several throw pillows up against the opposite arm of the couch.

Unsettled by Roger Davidson’s
warning, she almost opted for one of the chairs but stopped herself, knowing
that would make him suspicious. Instead she sat down next to him and grabbed
one of the pillows to fondle.

“What’s the matter, Amy, has
something happened?”

“No, Todd. I feel awkward in
this place. It seems so...”

“Overdone. Kay does everything
that way.”

“Who’s Kay?”

“She’s a friend of mine and the
owner of this house.”

Amy’s muscles tightened. Todd
noticed.

“An old friend. We met about ten
years ago during one of my investigations and have remained friends ever since.”

“Is that typical?”

Todd laughed. “You’ll splinter
your teeth if you don’t relax that jaw.” Todd rubbed the back of his fingers
against the softness of her skin. He had missed the feel of her. He wanted to
kick the rest of those damn throw pillows off the couch and make love to her,
but he kept his emotions under control. “Kay and I had a brief fling way back
when. We liked each other too much to continue the affair.”

“What?”

“I’m getting myself in deeper,
aren’t I? What I meant is that there was no way the relationship would have
turned into anything permanent, but we didn’t want our friendship to sour, so
we...”

“Stopped making love.”

How was he going to be able to
explain the difference between Kay and Amy without making a commitment for
which he wasn’t ready?

“It has nothing to do with
our...”

“Fling.”

“I don’t think of us like that.”
Todd saw that Amy’s cheeks were flushed a deep rouge. Her green eyes had turned
a shade darker. “Amy, I care about you, more than I ever felt for Kay.”

“Or any of the other women you
ran across in the line of duty?”

“What the hell are you talking
about? I go to all the trouble to set this meeting up. I even risked calling
your office. When I was told you weren’t there and couldn’t get you at home I
stood on that street corner waiting for you to return to your place.”

“Make any money?”

“Damn, what’s the matter with
you? You’ve been whining about wanting to see me. I thought you would be
thrilled.”

“To meet you in an ex-girlfriend’s
house? How did you manage to manipulate her into giving you the key, anyway?”

“I’ve had the key for years. And
she’s a photographer who always goes away to Europe this time of year.”

“So you did break in!”

“I told you I had the key.”

“A technicality. She doesn’t
know a murderer is hiding out in her house.”

Todd slapped the cushions with
the palms of his hands and rose. “Get the hell out.”

Words knotted in her throat. Amy
stood up and dropped the pillow back down on the couch. Her hand reached out
for him, but he moved away to the far corner of the room. Before she crossed
the room’s threshold, he called her back.

“Wait! I’m not going to have my
sister suffer because of you.” Todd moved to the cocktail table, opened the
thickest of the leather bound books, pulled out a fat white envelope and
carried it to where she stood. “Give this to Jennie.”

Robotically she took the
envelope.

“What’s in it?”

“Money. I had some stashed away
in a locker. I might not be able to send her any more.”

Money! Amy was perplexed. Was
this Michael’s pay-off for some drug deal, and were the two women innocent
go-betweens?

“Please, Amy, see that she gets
it.”

God, was that love for his
sister she saw in his eyes, or was it an excellent theatrical performance?

“Todd, I...”

“Go.” His voice was firm, his
lips had tightened around the word, and the softness in his eyes had
disappeared. He moved to the front hall, peered through a peephole, then opened
the door. She didn’t have a chance to talk.

Chapter 17

Joey’s Girl

Todd cursed how foolish he had
been to set up the meeting with Amy. He had taken ridiculous chances for which
he deserved to be caught. Lord, he was getting sloppy, he thought. Never would
he have done this for any other woman. But lying in bed remembering what it
felt like to cuddle spoon-fashion against her back drove him out into daylight
to reach her. Yes, he also needed to get the money to his sister, but there
were other ways. He couldn’t afford to worry over a neat-looking fickle broad.
Why did she bother to come if she believed he had killed his partner? Todd
wished he hadn’t gotten involved with her. Forget her and go back to saving
your own neck, he commanded himself.

First he’d have to get his
things together and clean up the bathroom. He didn’t want Kay to suspect he had
been in the house, even though it was the usual time of the year when he
house-sat for her. A friendly lumbering Labrador was usually part of the deal,
but Kay must have put him in a kennel after she read the newspapers.

Night had come on, and it made
Todd’s chores more difficult, but he dared not turn on a light for fear that
the neighbors would call the police. Luckily, there was a full moon, which cast
an eerie glow across the massive, intricately carved wooden bed that he had
planned on borrowing for the night. He couldn’t sleep in the ornate beast now.
It was meant for two, not for a lonesome, wanted man.

Todd adjusted the eye patch over
his left eye and pulled the smelly knit cap and jacket on over the clean shirt
and jeans he had washed that morning in Kay’s machine.

He took one last look at the
bed. “Flighty woman,” he murmured. He’d clear his name and thumb his nose at
her the next time he saw her.

Todd left the house by the back
door. Trees surrounded the property, and he was able to find his way to a dirt
path that took him onto the streets of San Francisco.

Hours later he was back on his
unsavory beat, attempting to find someone who could piece together Joey’s last
days. Morgan, the man who had tried to pick up Amy, had claimed to be a friend
of Joey’s. It could have been a line, but Todd couldn’t afford to pass Morgan
up, even if he might turn out to be a bad lead. Todd had spent several nights
at the same bar looking for Morgan. Tonight he had planned on skipping Morgan’s
watering-hole for more pleasant company. Amy’s mouth nipped that idea.

It was fortunate she had,
because as soon as Todd entered the bar, he saw Morgan. Same seat, same
hang-dog look, and same boiler-maker.

“Hey, Morgan, how goes it?” Todd
said slapping the guy on the back.

Morgan turned his head toward
Todd. His forehead furrowed. His nose twitched. A dim light shone in his eyes.

“You’re the guy who chased that
dame away. Fanny, or whatever the hell her name was.”

“Names aren’t important, Morgan,
only the bod is.”

“Yeah, and she had a winner.”

Todd grimaced. Somehow,
discussing Amy like this didn’t sit right with him.

“What you drinking?” Morgan
asked.

“Same,” Todd answered, nodding
his head at Morgan’s drinks.

The bartender served up a shot
of whiskey with a foamy beer.

“Just as well she disappeared,”
Morgan grimly said. “She looked like she would have been a dud, anyhow. All
show and no action, you know what I mean. But man, you sure didn’t help when
you plopped yourself down next to her. She ran off so fast, there wasn’t
anything I could do to stop her. Bartender says he never saw her here before. I
wouldn’t mind running into her again, even if she is a tease. Load them up with
enough booze and—”

“You hang around here a lot?”
Todd interrupted. He had tired of Morgan’s demeaning chatter.

“Funny, that dame asked me the
same thing. She was looking for somebody.”

“Who?”

“A guy who used to float in and
out of here from time to time. Only spoke to him a couple of times. Toward the
end he used to show up with a dark-haired cutie. Didn’t bother with the rest of
us when he was with her. Couldn’t blame him. Hell, the more I think about it, I
might have scored with that babe Fanny that you chased away.”