Double

“What do you mean?”

“It sounded pretty final.”

He was silent for a moment. “Yes, I suppose it was.”

“Will you fire him?”

He laughed harshly. “I doubt I’ll get the opportunity.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I know Victor, he’s already—” Beddoes broke off.

“Already what?”

“Never mind.”

“Making plans to run and leave you holding the bag? That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?”

He turned slowly, his face reddening. His hands were clenched into fists, and for a moment I thought he was going to rush at me. Then he seemed to deflate. The fists unclenched, and he crossed his arms, clutching each elbow with the opposite hand. He looked at me quietly, his eyes growing bleak and dead, as if some inner resource had finally been depleted. Then he said, “You’d better go, Ms. McCone.”

“You know, if you went to the sheriff now, you wouldn’t be stuck holding that bag.”

He shook his head. “There’s nothing to go to the sheriff about.”

“Sooner or later it will all come out about Roland Deveer.”

“Will you please go!”

I finally complied. I would get nothing out of him by continuing the pressure. People are funny when they’re at the end of that proverbial rope. Some will break down and tell you everything in a gush of relief; others will cling to their lies because that’s all they have left.

26: “Wolf”

Lieutenant Tom Knowles was a hard man to connect with. When I left Priapus Books and Curios I drove back downtown to the sheriff’s department, but he still hadn’t returned. And probably wouldn’t until late, if he came in at all today, the deputy I talked to said; he was somewhere up in Escondido on a case. The deputy wouldn’t tell me if it was the Elaine Picard case or not.

So all right. That left me with nothing more to do for the time being — until I talked to McCone and we could compare notes. There was a chance she wanted to get in touch with me, too, and that she’d left a message at the Casa del Rey. If not, maybe I could reach her through her parents; she’d told me she was staying with them, in an area of the city near Old Town, so I figured they’d be listed in the phone book.

It was almost four by the time I got back to the hotel. There weren’t any messages. In my room I looked up the McCone name in the directory: only one listing, and it turned out to be the right one. The man who answered said he was Sharon’s father, but that she wasn’t there and he hadn’t seen or heard from her since early morning. I left a message for her to call me and he said he’d see that she got it.

I switched on the TV, looking for an early newscast that might give me some additional information on Lauterbach’s murder. There wasn’t one; I would probably have to wait until five o’clock. I left the thing on, with the sound turned off, and got out the map of Mexico and the Mexico guidebook, just to have something to do, and went over them again for some hint of that “town on the water with monkeys in it” where Timmy Clark’s father lived. I was still getting nowhere when the telephone rang.

McCone. “That was quick,” I said.

“Quick?”

“I called your parents’ house not ten minutes ago and left the message.”

“Message? Oh,” she said. “No, I didn’t get it. I’m up in Point Loma. I just thought I’d check in with you. What’s up?”

“You already know if you’ve been listening to your car radio.”

“I haven’t. What—?”

“Jim Lauterbach’s been murdered. Shot sometime yesterday morning in the lavatory down the hall from his office. I happened to be there this morning when he was found.”

She breathed in my ear for a time. Then she said, “Any idea who did it?”

“None I’d want to go on record with.”

“Wolf, a second killing this soon... It has to be connected with Elaine’s death.”

“Looks that way, yeah,” I agreed. “And there’s a definite connection between Lauterbach and Elaine. I was in Lauterbach’s office for a while before a secretary stumbled on his body, and I did a little snooping. His briefcase was hidden under his desk, with a file folder in it — seems Henry Nyland hired Lauterbach to investigate Elaine.”

“He did? Why?”

“Couple of reasons. He thought she was seeing another man. And he thought she was involved in quote something bizarre unquote.”

“Such as what?”

“If he had an idea, it wasn’t in Lauterbach’s notes. Have you talked to Nyland yet?”

“No. I’m on my way to do that now. When did he hire Lauterbach?”

“Six weeks ago.”

“What’d Lauterbach find out?”

I filled her in on the details of the file. “Looked to me like he held back some of the stuff from Nyland for his own purposes — blackmail, maybe. But I couldn’t make enough sense of the notes to figure out exactly what he’d uncovered.”

“Well, there might be something in that club angle. Nyland mentioned a club in the love note I found in Elaine’s house. And Rich Woodall had a funny reaction when I mentioned the club to him.”

“What kind of club is it?”

“‘The one I told you about yesterday, I think. The House of Slenderizing and Massage, downtown.”

“Is there a branch in Borrego Springs?”

“I don’t know. Why?”