C is for Corpse (26 page)

It had occurred to me that if Lila was running some kind of scam on Henry, she might well have a prior record. There was no way I'd have access to the National Crime Information Center except through an authorized law-enforcement agency. Jonah could have the name run through the computer and get feedback in minutes and at least then I'd know if my instincts were accurate.

I tidied up my office, grabbed the bank deposit, and locked up, going next door for a few minutes to chat with Vera Lipton, one of the claims adjusters for California Fidelity Insurance. I stopped off at the bank on the way over to the courthouse, depositing most of the money to savings, with enough to my checking account to cover current expenses.

The day, which had started out on preheat, was cranked up to broil by now. The sidewalks shimmered and the palms looked bleached out by the sun. Where occasional potholes in the street had been filled, the asphalt was as soft and grainy as cookie dough.

The Santa Teresa Courthouse looks like a Moorish castle: hand-carved wooden doors, towers, and wrought-iron balconies. Inside, there's so much mosaic tile on the walls, it looks like someone's covered them with patchwork quilts. One courtroom sports a cycloramic mural that depicts the settling of Santa Teresa by the early Spanish missionaries. It's sort of the Walt Disney version of what really went on as the artist has omitted the introduction of syphilis and the corruption of the
Indians. I prefer it myself, if the truth be known. It would be hard to concentrate on justice if you had to stare up at some poor bunch of Indians in the last stages of paresis.

I cut through the great archway toward the sunken gardens in the rear. There were about two dozen people scattered across the lawn, some eating lunch, some napping or taking in the sun. Idly, I catalogued the merits of a good-looking man coming toward me in a pale blue short-sleeved shirt. I was doing one of those visual surveys that starts at the bottom and moves up. Uh-hun, nice hips, dressing left . . . uh-hun, flat belly, great arms, I thought. He'd almost reached me when I checked out the face and realized it was Jonah.

I hadn't seen him since June. Apparently the diet and his weight-lifting regimen had worked like a charm. His face, which in the past I'd labeled “harmless,” was now nicely honed. His dark hair was longer and he'd picked up a tan so that his blue eyes now blazed in a face the color of maple sugar.

“Oh, God,” I said, stopping dead in my tracks. “You look great.”

He flashed me a smile, loving it. “You think so? Thanks. I must have lost twenty pounds since I saw you last.”

“How'd you do it? Hard work?”

“Yeah, I did a little work.”

He stood and stared at me and I stared back. He was exuding pheromones like a musky aftershave and I could feel my body chemistry start to shift. Mentally, I shook myself. I didn't need this. The only thing worse
than a man just out of a marriage is a man who's still
in
one.

“I heard you got shot,” he said.

“A mere .22, which hardly counts. I got beat up too, and that's what hurt. I don't know how guys put up with that shit,” I said. I rubbed at the bridge of my nose ruefully. “Broke my schnoz.”

He reached out impulsively and ran a finger down my nose. “Looks O.K. to me.”

“Thanks,” I said. “It still blows pretty good.”

We endured one of those awkward pauses that had always punctuated our relationship.

I shifted my bag from one shoulder to the other, just for something to do. “What'd you bring?” I said, indicating the paper sack he held.

He glanced down. “Oh, yeah. I forgot. Uh, subs and Pepsis and Famous Amos cookies.”

“We could even eat,” I said.

He didn't move. He shook his head. “Kinsey, I don't remember going through this before,” he said. “Why don't we fuckin' skip lunch and go over there behind that bush?”

I laughed, because I'd just had this quick flash of something hot and nasty that I don't care to repeat. I tucked my hand through his arm. “You're cute.”

“I don't want to hear about cute.”

We went down the wide stone steps and headed toward the far side of the courthouse lawn, where shaggy evergreens shade the grass. We sat down, distracted by the business of eating lunch. Pepsis were opened and lettuce fell out of sandwiches and we exchanged paper
napkins and murmured about how good it all was. By the time we finished eating, we'd recovered some professional composure and conducted most of our remaining conversation like adults instead of sex-starved kids.

He shoved his empty Pepsi can in the sack. “I'll tell you the scuttlebutt on that Costigan shooting. The guy I talked to used to work Homicide and he says he always thought it was the wife. It was one of those situations where the whole story stank, you know? She claimed some guy broke in, husband gets a gun, big struggle, boom! The gun goes off and hubby's dead. Intruder runs away and she calls the cops, distraught victim of a random burglary attempt. Well, it didn't look right, but she stuck to her guns. Hired some hotshot lawyer right off the bat and wouldn't say a word until he got there. You know how it goes. ‘Sorry my client can't answer this.' ‘Sorry I won't let her respond to that.' Nobody believed a word she said, but she never broke down and in the end there wasn't any proof. No evidence, no informant, no weapon, no witness. End of tale. I hope you're not working for her because if you are, you're screwed.”

I shook my head. “I'm looking into Bobby Callahan's death,” I said. “I think he was murdered and I think it connects back to Dwight Costigan.” I sketched the whole story out for him, avoiding his gaze. We were stretched out in the grass by then and I kept having these images of sexual misbehavior that I didn't think would serve. I plowed right ahead, talking more than I should have just to create a diversion.

“God, you come up with something on the Costigan killing and Lieutenant Dolan's gonna crochet you a watch,” he said.

“What about Lila Sams?”

He held a finger up. “I was saving the best for last,” he said. “I ran a field check on her and came up with a hit. This lady has a string of wants and warrants as long as your arm. Priors going back to 1968.”

“What for?”

“Fraud, obtaining property by false pretenses, larceny by trick and device. She's been passing bad paper, too. She's got six outstanding warrants on her even as we speak. Well, wait. Take a look for yourself. I brought the print-out.”

He held out the computer print-out and I took it. Why didn't I feel more elated at the notion of nailing her? Because it would break Henry's heart and I didn't want to take responsibility for that. I ran an eye down the sheet. “Can I keep this?”

“Sure, but don't jump up and down like that. Calm yourself,” he said. “I take it you know where she is.”

I looked over at him with a weak smile “Probably sitting in my backyard drinking iced tea,” I said. “My landlord is head over heels in love with her and I suspect she's on the verge of taking him for everything he's worth.”

“Talk to Whiteside in Fraud and he'll have her picked up.”

“I think I better talk to Rosie first.”

“That old bag who runs the dive down the street from you? What's she got to do with it?”

“Oh, neither one of us can stand Lila. Rosie wanted me to do the background check for the aggravation if nothing else. We needed to know where she was coming from.”

“So now you know. What's the problem?”

“I don't know. It just feels crummy somehow, but I'll figure it out. I don't want to rush into anything I'll regret.”

There was a momentary silence and then Jonah gave my shirt a tug. “You been up to the shooting range lately?”

“Not since we were there together,” I said.

“You want to go up there sometime?”

“Jonah, we can't do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it might feel like a date and confuse us both.”

“Come on. I thought we were friends.”

“We are. We just can't hang out together.”

“Why not?”

“Because you're too good-looking and I'm too smart,” I said tartly.

“We're back to Camilla again, right?”

“Right. I'm not going to interfere with that. You've been with her a long time.”

“I tell you something. I'm still kicking myself. I could have gone to the other junior high school, you know? Seventh grade. How did I know I was making a decision that would haunt me in middle-age?”

I laughed. “Life is full of that stuff. You had to choose between metal or woodshop, right? You could
have turned out to be an auto mechanic. Instead you're a cop. You know what my choices were? Child psychology or home ec. I didn't give a shit about either one.”

“I wish I hadn't seen you again.”

I could feel my smile fade. “Well, I'm sorry for that. It was my fault.” I could tell we'd been looking at each other too long, so I got up, brushing grass off my jeans. “I have to go.”

He got up too and we said some good-bye things. We parted company shortly thereafter. I walked backward for a few steps, watching him head back to the station. Then I continued on toward my office, turning my attention back to the matter of Henry Pitts. I realized then that there wasn't any point in talking to Rosie about it. Of course I'd have to tell the cops where Lila was. She'd been a con for nearly twenty years and she wasn't going to reform and make Henry a happy man in the twilight of their days. She was going to cheat him silly, thus breaking his heart anyway. What difference did it make how she got caught or who turned her in? Better to do it now before she took every cent he had.

I'd been walking rapidly, head down, but when I got to the corner of Floresta and Anaconda, I did an abrupt left and headed for the police station.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was at the police station for an hour and forty-five minutes. Fortunately, the Missing Persons Department and Fraud were nowhere near each other so I didn't have to worry about running into Jonah again. First, Whiteside was at lunch and then he had a quick meeting to attend. Then when I explained the situation to him, he had to place a call to a county in northern New Mexico where three of the warrants had been issued. While he was waiting for a response to that inquiry, he contacted the county sheriff in some little town up near San Francisco, trying to get confirmation on a no-bail warrant that originated in Marin. The charge on the fifth warrant in Boise, Idaho, turned out to be a misdemeanor and the fraud detective said he couldn't afford to come get her in any event. The sixth warrant, in Twin Falls, had been recalled for reasons unspecified. So far, Lila Sams was home free.

At 3:20, Marin County finally returned Whiteside's call, confirming the no-bail warrant and indicating that they'd have someone pick her up once they knew she
was actually in custody. Their cooperation was largely due to the fact that one of their deputies was vacationing in Santa Teresa anyway and had agreed to accompany her back to Marin. Whiteside said as soon as a telexed copy of the warrant came through, he'd send the beat officer over to make the arrest. He didn't really have to have the warrant in hand, but I think he'd sensed by now that she was slippery. I gave him Moza's address, my address, and a thorough description of Lila Sams.

It was 3:40 by the time I got home. Henry was sitting on a chaise in the backyard, surrounded by books. He looked up from his legal pad as I came around the corner.

“Oh, it's you,” he said. “I thought it might be Lila. She said she'd stop in and say good-bye before she took off.”

That caught me by surprise. “She's leaving?”

“Well, she's not really ‘leaving.' She's going to Las Cruces for a few days, but she hopes to be back by the end of the week. I guess a little problem came up on some property she owns and she has to get things squared away. It's a darn nuisance, but what can you do?”

“She's not gone already, though, is she?”

He checked his watch. “I can't imagine she would be. Her plane takes off about five. She said she had to go to the title company and then she'd toss a few things in a suitcase. Did you want to talk to her?”

I shook my head, unable to say yet what needed to be said. I could see that he was mapping out a new
crossword puzzle, jotting down preliminary notes. At the top of the page, he'd written two titles, “Elementary, Dear Watson!” and “Home Sweet Holmes.”

He smiled shyly when he saw me take note. “This one's for the Sherlockeans in the crowd,” he said. He set the legal pad aside, as though self-conscious at having someone watch him work. “Well, now, how are things with you?”

He seemed so innocent, nothing more on his mind than his passion for words. How could she deceive a man like that?

“Something's come up I think you ought to know about,” I said. I unfolded the computer print-out and handed it to him.

He looked down at it. “What's this?”

Lila's name apparently caught his eye then, because his gaze settled on the page. His face lost animation as he assimilated the facts. When he finished reading, he gestured aimlessly. He was silent for a moment and then he glanced up at me. “Well. Makes me look like a fool, doesn't it?”

“Come on, Henry. Don't talk like that. I don't think so at all. You took a risk and she brought you some happiness. Hey, so later it turns out she's a crook. That's not your fault.”

He stared at the paper like a kid just learning to sound out words. “What made you check into it?”

I thought there might be a tactful explanation, but nothing occurred to me. “I didn't like her much, to tell you the truth. I guess I felt protective, especially when you talked about doing business with her. I just didn't
think she was on the level and it turns out she's not. You haven't given her any money, have you?”