Two O'Clock Heist: A Rebecca Mayfield Mystery (The Rebecca Mayfield Mysteries Book 2) (16 page)

Then they said their good-byes and Uncle Silvio first gave Rebecca a hug, and then Richie. She guessed she had made a hit.

As Richie drove away, Silvio continued to wave until they were no longer in sight. She felt warmed by the elderly man, even as she steeled herself for the meeting to come.

CHAPTER 17

Richie’s navigation system directed him through the busy streets of Santa Rosa. From a sleepy town not that many years ago, it was now not only the biggest city in Sonoma County, serving as the county seat, but had the dubious distinction of being one of the few towns in the area with commute-time traffic jams. Richie stopped for a quick take-out at an In-N-Out Burger. Rebecca could scarcely eat as she pondered her upcoming meeting.

They then went to Kenneth and Faye Larkin’s home in the older part of Santa Rosa.

Faye was trim, and stayed fit walking, gardening, and going to yoga practice. Rebecca had once thought her quite youthful looking, but now her age weighed heavily on her, and her face was lined with sadness. Kenneth, a big-bellied man of medium height, looked devastated. His face was puffy, his eyes bloodshot, and his nose red.

Rebecca had gone to lunch with Faye and Karen a few times, and Faye remembered her well. She introduced Rebecca to Kenneth and thanked her for coming to see them. When Rebecca introduced Richie, she found herself surprisingly touched by his warm words of condolence. He said that although he had never met Karen, he had heard much about what a kind person and good friend she had been to everyone around her.

It was all Faye could do to control her tears as she served iced tea and peach pie to her visitors. “Thank you for coming, Rebecca. I know Karen would appreciate you trying to find out what happened to her. I just don’t have any faith in the Sausalito police.”

“They don’t have much experience with homicides, that’s for sure,” Rebecca said, trying not to bad-mouth her fellow officers, but knowing much more should have been done. “I had hoped the Marin County Sheriff’s department would be more involved. Normally, they handle homicides for the county.”

“I’ve only talked to a Detective Wong from Sausalito,” Faye said. “Are you able to help him?”

“Not officially,” Rebecca said. “It’s not my jurisdiction.”

“That’s the party line,” Richie added. “But unofficially she’s looking into it and asking all the right questions.”

Faye and Kenneth looked relieved to hear that. “Can we hire you as an independent investigator?” Kenneth asked.

Rebecca glanced quickly at Richie, then said, “I don’t have a license to do that, and my boss would more than object. But I will do all I can, believe me. I want to find out who would … harm … such a lovely person. Do you have any ideas as to who might be involved?”

Faye and Kenneth turned to each other a moment. Finally, Faye said, “We liked Yuri for the most part. He seemed nice, but Karen told us she didn’t like his friends at all. His Russian friends, I should say. He didn’t ever seem to connect with Americans, except for Karen. Sometimes, when Karen talked about his friends, she sounded afraid of them. Normally, Karen is, was, never afraid of anything.”

Kenneth only nodded, but his eyes grew troubled, and even angry as Faye spoke. He added, “Karen told me a couple of times that she didn’t want his friends anywhere near the baby. And now, that Yuri guy has our granddaughter. It’s not right. They weren’t even married.”

“The Sausalito police told us that since he’s shown as the father on Nina’s birth certificate, we can’t interfere, and he has the right to keep her,” Faye said.

Rebecca nodded. “Unless you can get a ruling that he’s unfit, she is his daughter.”

“It hurts even more to lose them both,” Faye said, rubbing her hands so hard it hurt to watch her.

“Did Karen give you the names of any of Yuri’s friends?” Rebecca asked.

The two shook their heads.

“Any idea where his friends lived?”

“I imagine San Francisco,” Faye said, “but I don’t know.”

For the first time, Richie asked a question. He looked at Kenneth. “What are your thoughts about all this?”

Kenneth looked surprised to be asked, but then his face began to redden. “I can tell you real easy. I couldn’t stand Yuri. And Karen knew it. I objected to everything about him, and to Karen living with him and having a child without getting married. I told her it was wrong. But all that did was alienate her from me. I went for nearly a year without seeing her. And now …” He couldn’t continue.

Faye spoke softly. “I continued to visit her. For a while things weren’t working for her and Yuri. He couldn’t get a well-paying job, and she didn’t know what to do or which way to turn. I told her that she and Nina were welcome here. We even talked about her moving to Santa Rosa, that I would take care of Nina while she went to work. But then, things changed. Two weeks ago, she said something had turned up—something special—and if she handled it right, all their problems would be over.”

“What new job? What did she mean?” Rebecca asked.

“She wouldn’t say. She was meeting new people, but she refused to tell me anything more.”

“Were those new people friends with Yuri as well?” Rebecca asked.

“I doubt it. I had the impression he didn’t know what she was up to either.”

“Could he have been jealous of them?”

Faye’s eyes widened at the question’s implications. “I just don’t know.”

“From the time Yuri entered her life,” Kenneth said, his hands forming tight fists, “I was afraid something would happen to her because of him. I warned her over and over, but she wouldn’t listen.”

Faye touched his arm in a silent request to calm himself. “I’ll admit I didn’t understand it either,” Faye said. “She was a cop when she met Yuri. You’d think with that training, she would have known better than to associate with a shady character like him.”

“Shady in what way?” Rebecca asked.

Faye glanced at Kenneth, then folded her hands on her lap. “We’re certain he had friends in the Russian mafia—and suspect he was a member himself. We aren’t stupid. We read the papers, watch movies. We know about people like him. And she did as well. That was why she quit the force. There was too much deception going on. He once had a student visa, but he dropped out of school. That meant he should have gone back to Russia or Ukraine or wherever, but he didn’t. If I knew all that, Karen surely did. She couldn’t uphold the law while at work, and then go home and ignore the mess Yuri had created all around them. So she quit.”

All were quiet until Richie said softly, “Sounds like she loved him a lot.”

“Mrs. Larkin is right,” Rebecca said, facing him with a scowl. “Karen should have known better. There was no reason for her to get involved with Yuri. She should have broken it off as soon as she became suspicious of him, not waiting until after they had a child.”

“Sometimes,” Richie glared at her, his tone harsh, “people fall for someone that they know is completely wrong for them. And despite all the logic and common sense in the world, there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.”

She tightened her jaw. “Yes there is. A person can be strong and not let wayward emotions rule her, or his, head. That’s the road to ruin.”

Richie smirked.

Okay, Rebecca thought, maybe ‘road to ruin’ was a bit melodramatic, but she meant it. All she had to do was think about how close she was to losing her job with all the craziness going on around her. And as their conversation last night proved, she and Richie were completely incompatible. So, she didn’t want to hear about anyone falling in love with the wrong person.

She faced the Larkins who, she noticed, had watched the exchange between her and Richie with obvious interest. Time to get back on point. “What can you tell me about Yuri’s jobs and income?”

Kenneth said they didn’t know much. All they knew was that Karen found work at times waitressing, and other times Yuri found work in San Francisco. But neither had a regular income, so Karen filed for food stamps and benefits. As a single mother, she got them.

“Do you think Yuri killed her?” Rebecca asked quietly.

Kenneth squeezed Faye’s hand and answered. “All we know for sure is that they fought about his friends. At one time, she threatened to go to the FBI with information about them. That scared us. We were afraid for her life.”

“Yuri didn’t want to lose her or his daughter,” Faye said. “But I’m afraid she may have realized she was better off without him, and he couldn’t handle it.” She began to cry. “I was afraid for her when she told us she had threatened to go to the FBI about Yuri and his friends. But then she admitted that she would never have done so. I suspect he believed her, but what about the others? The whole thing worried me terribly, and now …”

Rebecca felt her cell phone vibrating on and on. The tech department must have finished their work of transferring all her old data and phone number to her new cell phone. All the text messages and voice mail messages that had been sent to her since she reported her last phone stolen were now hitting all at once. She took a quick glance at the phone, expecting nothing special. One particular text jumped out at her.

Yuri Baranski at 2150 van dyke sf apt 8. Hurry.

It had been sent three hours earlier. She didn’t recognize the phone number of the sender.

She met Richie’s eye, then faced Karen’s parents. “I think that’s enough for today. Thank you, both, so very much. I’ll get back to you as soon as I learn something. Karen was my friend, and someone will pay for the sadness and loss they brought to everyone who knew her.”

They soon said their good-byes and left.

CHAPTER 18

Rebecca tried phoning the number connected to the text message about Baranski, but no one answered. She got Bo Benson to check on the owner of the number, only to learn it was a cheap burner phone. “I have no idea who would have sent me that text,” Rebecca said while Richie drove as quickly as he dared back to San Francisco.

“Which means, as I said,” Richie warned, “the text could be a ruse to trap you again.”

“But why? If Charkov did send the text, it's to tell me where Yuri's body is. The last thing Charkov wants is for Yuri to be taken alive. Once in custody, he could talk about Charkov's gang and maybe give the FBI all the intel they need."

"That's true," Richie said, "if Yuri is dead. But what if he's alive? Then, what’s going on? I’d like to call Shay to check to see if the place we’re headed is dangerous.”

She thought a moment. “Okay. If anything looks suspicious, I’ll call Eastwood to make sure we aren’t stepping on Federal toes. But as far as he knows, the FBI doesn’t know or care anything about Baranski.”

Richie shook his head and made the call.

Traffic was heavy and it took nearly an hour and a half before he pulled into a red zone near a run-down apartment building. The Bayshore was one of the few remaining inexpensive areas in San Francisco. Many parts of the city that once housed the poor were now in various stages of “gentrification.” Practically overnight, San Francisco had turned into a city where eight-dollar cups of flavored imported lattes washed down thirty dollar octopus sandwiches at the same time as the working poor crowded together in small apartments, sometimes sleeping in shifts. As rents rose to an average of thirty-five hundred dollars a month, finding legal loopholes to boot people out of “rent-controlled” buildings had become a major money-maker for lawyers. It was a city with extreme wealth, extreme poverty, and an ever-shrinking middle class.

“Maybe you should wait in the car for Shay to show up,” she said, getting out of the car.

But Richie also got out and looked at his phone. “He’s already here. He texted that it seems safe, but he’s still watching.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Okay. I hope he watches your Porsche while he’s at it.”

“Funny,” he muttered, giving a steely eyed stare at the area around his car.

The door to the entryway was unlocked. Inside, an overpowering stench of urine hit. Dank, graffiti-laden and trash-covered stairs led to the apartment Rebecca had been told was Baranski’s. She knocked on the door. Richie hovered close behind her.

When no one answered, she tried again, louder.

A woman opened the door to the next apartment and looked from Rebecca to Richie a moment, her eyes zeroing in on Richie’s Nikes and platinum Rolex.

“Are you a friend of the man who lives there?” she asked.

“Yes,” Rebecca replied without hesitation. “Do you have any idea when he’ll be home?”

She was an older black woman, her face saggy as if she’d recently lost a lot of weight. “I don’t know what’s going on. His baby cried all morning. I haven’t heard him since last night when he was shouting to high heaven in some strange language. Then the door slammed, and all went quiet until the baby began to cry some hours later. Usually, she doesn’t cry at all.”

“I don’t hear anything now,” Rebecca said.

“I think she’s exhausted. She was crying as if her heart was breaking not thirty minutes ago. I suspect the poor little thing is hungry. I told the manager, but he says, ‘Mavis, mind your own business.’ I thought maybe I should call someone, but I didn’t want to make trouble.”