Crazybone (13 page)

Gray haze filled it, the deadly kind I’d seen once before on a case. Through its puffy, hanging layers I could make out one car. Dale Cooney’s Mercedes, its top still down. Somebody was behind the wheel, head thrown back and to one side; I thought it was a woman but I couldn’t be sure.

I broke the window with my elbow. The seal in there must have been pretty tight; stinking carbon monoxide fumes came pouring out, driving me back and to one side. I went along the wall to the door and threw my weight against it. Jammed, not locked — it gave inward, scraping along the cement floor. I kicked it all the way open, releasing more of the gray poison, and then ran over to the house and hunted up a hose bib and soaked my handkerchief in cold water. Back to the garage, where the outpour through door and window had thinned. I took a couple of deep, slow breaths, held the wet handkerchief over my mouth and nose, and ducked inside.

The woman in the car was Dale Cooney. Dead — long dead. Her face was a bright, shiny cherry red.

The monoxide was in my lungs in spite of the handkerchief, tearing loose coughs and making me lightheaded. I got out of there into the fresh air, stood sucking it with my head down until I could breathe all right again. Then I hurried to the car, glanced at the mobile phone, unclipped the flashlight from under the dash instead. No hurry in making a 911 call. And there was something I wanted to check on first, something I’d noticed when I peered at the woman’s face up close.

I soaked the handkerchief again before I returned to the garage. The air in there was better now but still not breathable. I switched the flash on, held the beam on her face. Her eyes, wide open with the pupils rolled up, were like iridescent milk-glass in the beam; her mouth hung open, a ghastly rictus. I tasted bile in my throat, but it didn’t keep me from using the edge of the flash to gently turn her face toward me. Her head moved loosely on the stem of her neck — and when I touched and then lifted one of her hands, it felt cold, rubbery. Rigor had come and gone; she’d been dead since last night, maybe even yesterday afternoon.

On the seat beside the body was a leather handbag, a remote-control garage door opener, and a half-empty bottle of Speyburn single malt Scotch. Both the car and the dead woman reeked of whiskey. I checked the floor and the shelf seat in back; they were empty. Before I clicked off the flash and got out of there I took note of what she was wearing: expensive dark brown pants suit, the jacket adorned with an elaborate turquoise pin, and a full complement of lipstick and makeup. Out somewhere before this happened that required looking her best.

Outside I filled up on oxygen again. I had a brief flashback image of Dale Cooney walking out of the Greens Room, stiff and straight and on her dignity; it brought the taste of sickness back into my throat. Maintaining dignity, not making a spectacle of herself, had been important to her. There were few worse ways for a person like that to die.

When my lungs quit hurting I went to the car and put in the 911 call. I would have preferred to drive away from there and make the call anonymously from a pay phone — now more than before, after what I’d seen in the garage. But I couldn’t do it. Ethics, duty. And the fact that I was already involved, with one part of her life and possibly with her death as well.

On the surface it seemed simple enough. Alcoholic drives home drunk, nipping on a bottle of Scotch on the way; makes it inside her garage, presses the button to lower the door, then passes out with the engine still running. Tragic accident. Happens all the time.

Except that I doubted it had happened that way in this case. The thing had a staged feel. And the bruised area I’d seen on the side of her head, just above the hairline, said she might’ve been slugged unconscious before her lungs started to fill with carbon monoxide.

Not an accident — murder.

Motive related to the Hunters in some way? Something she knew about their past, something Jack Hunter had told her? If so, it made this whole business a hell of a lot more sinister and deadly than I’d imagined.

The local cops were polite and no more suspicious or adversarial than most law-enforcement officials when dealing with a private investigator. They did keep me hanging and rattling for more than two hours, answering the same questions from different minions, but it was professionally handled all the way. I told them exactly why I’d come to see Mrs. Cooney, about my talk with her at the country club, about the investigation I was conducting for Intercoastal Insurance. The only things I held back were my suspicions about the Hunters’ past and of the nature of Dale Cooney’s death. It was not my place to call attention to the bruise on her temple; they’d spot it themselves, or the coroner would, and interpret it however they saw fit. The quickest way to antagonize public officials is to try to tell them their business. Cooperate and otherwise keep your own counsel, and cordial relations can usually be maintained for the duration.

Another smart thing to do is to keep your ears open while your mouth is shut. I found out that Frank Cooney was away on a business trip, had left last Friday for New York; one of the cops got that information from a neighbor and passed it on in my hearing. I also learned that the Cooneys lived alone, no children or relatives or in-home domestic help. So it wasn’t surprising that Dale Cooney hadn’t been found until I showed up. And the fact that she’d been here alone for the weekend, coupled with the property’s relative isolation, would have made it easy for somebody to put her and her Mercedes into the garage, and take his — or her — time arranging things to look like an accident.

Who? Sheila Hunter? Most likely suspect, if the motive was connected to her hidden past. Except that she’d been on the run with Emily since Friday afternoon...

Or had she?

The gates at the foot of the driveway — that was the thing about the Hunter place that had been bothering me. Why were the gates still open when everything else was closed up tight and the alarm system turned on?

It came to me after the Greenwood police let me go, as I was rolling away from the Cooney property. I drove straight across the village to Whiskey Flat Road. The gates were still open, and it didn’t look as though anyone had been through them since my earlier visit. To make sure I was alone I walked close enough to the house to see that the alarm system was still activated. Then I veered over to the garage.

I was conscious of a tightness in my chest and across my shoulders as I approached the side door. Sharp in my mind was the picture of Dale Cooney’s corpse, head flung back, eyes milk-white, mouth in rictus, skin that hideous cherry red. If I had to look at a sight like that twice in one day...

No smell of exhaust fumes here: I took several deep breaths to be certain. The door was still locked. I bent to peer at the knob and locking plate. Push-button, not a dead bolt, and the fit didn’t appear to be tight. I went to work with one of my credit cards. More often than not, despite what Hollywood would have you believe, that kind of maneuvering gets you nothing but frustrated; and if it does work, it takes a lot longer than three or four seconds to pop the bolt. But I got lucky in both categories: the card trick not only worked, it took me less than four minutes.

I sucked in a breath before I pushed the door all the way open and poked my head inside. The air in there was clear, no trace of monoxide, but there was a car parked in the gloom — big, dark-colored. I went in and along the driver’s side to peer through the window.

Empty, front and back.

I let the breath out and tried the door. Open. I leaned in and felt along the front seat without finding anything. The glove compartment yielded three packets of tissues, a couple of pieces of hard candy, a bundle of maps, and not much else — no registration or insurance papers, nothing to identify the owner. I found the trunk release and went and looked in there. Nothing.

The car was a new or nearly new Audi, four-door, maroon with a black interior. The license plate wasn’t personalized; I made a mental note of the number. Then I went back outside, shutting the door but leaving it unlocked.

In my car I called Emerald Hills. Trevor Smith was in the pro shop: he answered right away.

“Any word from Sheila Hunter?” I asked him.

“No. Nothing. But I heard about you finding Mrs. Cooney dead in her garage — it’s all over the club. What—”

“Never mind about that now. What kind of car does Mrs. Hunter drive?”

“Why do you want to know that?”

“Answer the question.”

“An Audi. New this year.”

“Color?”

“Dark red. Maroon.”

“Is that the only car she owns?”

“Yeah. Listen, why are you asking about her car? You find out where she went?”

“Not yet. Working an angle, that’s all.”

“You’d better not be holding out on me—”

“I’ll be in touch,” I said, and broke the connection.

So where was she? Had she and Emily left here with someone else on Friday? Or had they gone in her car and she’d come back for some reason, alone or with the kid, then left again with someone else? Was Emily still with her or not?

Dammit, I didn’t like this. Mother and daughter missing was bad enough, but the complications made it even more disturbing. There had to be a third party involved — the Audi in the garage said so, and Dale Cooney’s sudden death pointed that way.

Who? And how did he or she fit in?

At the office Monday morning I gave Tamara a couple of research jobs to work on first thing. Number one priority was to try to get a line on the woman named Karen, the stained-glass artist, through North Coast galleries, antique collectives, artists’ associations, and the like. The task was one I should’ve put her on Friday — but until Trevor Smith’s call and the events of yesterday, it hadn’t seemed urgent. Now it was. Karen’s identity was the only lead I had to Emily and her mother, and at that it was a tenuous one.

As good as Tamara was with the computer, her chance of success depended on a number of intangibles. First, on whether Karen was the woman’s real name — Emily calling her “Aunt Karen” wasn’t proof of that or of a blood relationship. And even if it was her real name, she might not use it to sign her work. There was how successful and well-known she was, whether she was a joiner, whether she displayed her pieces in galleries or other retail outlets. If she happened to have a website, she’d be easy to locate. If she was a contract artist working for a manufacturer or a wholesaler, or a hobbyist whose creations were limited to a few pieces for herself, relatives, friends, she might be damn difficult to track down.

Tamara’s second job was Cybil-related: Find out who or what Inca or Inco was, when the San Francisco phone number had been disconnected, the name of the person representing Inca/Inco (if in fact it was a company or organization) who had applied for the phone number in the first place, and the billing address. That one should be easy enough when she got around to it. Tamara had developed a cyber contact in Pac Bell’s main office, and it had taken her only a few months to do it. Whereas I’d spent years establishing a personal contact there, using what charm I possessed supplemented by small bribes — and a couple of years ago my contact had quit unexpectedly and moved to Minneapolis. Good old technology. It even simplified ethics bending.

I fidgeted at my desk while Tamara tapped away on her Mac, paying a few bills and getting a bank deposit ready. Then I went to work on the phone. I returned a couple of calls, one of which earned me a minor commission for an employee background check. It was after ten by then, so I rang up Emerald Hills and spoke briefly to Trevor Smith. Still no word from Sheila Hunter. Or if she had contacted him, he wasn’t admitting it.

On impulse I punched out the Hunters’ number. No answer; no answering machine. Was that Audi of hers still in the garage? Only way to find out was to drive down there, but I wasn’t ready for that just yet. Wait a while, see how Tamara’s searches shaped up.

I called Archie Todd’s attorney, Evan Patterson. Not in the office yet. Some lawyers keep bankers’ hours, I thought in my cynical fashion, and left my name and number. Dr. Leonard Johannsen next. He was in, and willing to answer my questions when I said they pertained to a routine insurance investigation. I didn’t say anything about suspicious circumstances.

What the conversation amounted to was a medical confirmation and little else. No, there wasn’t any reason for Archie Todd to have taken a larger dosage of digitoxin; his daily maintenance dose was sufficient and had in fact stabilized his condition. Now and then, Johannsen said, a patient would attempt self-medication, often with disastrous results, but Captain Archie had not been that kind of fool. And yes, a large dosage of the drug could easily induce a heart attack in a CHF patient. The peak toxic effects following an acute overdose could take up to twelve hours, but fatal ventricular fibrillation might happen a lot sooner, depending on the individual and the size of the overdose.

Tamara wasn’t getting anywhere with the Karen search; she shook her head at me when I asked her. Restlessness prodded me out of the office and downstairs to see if the mail had come. The mailman was there and just putting it up. I sifted through mine as I went back upstairs.

Nothing much until I came to the next to last envelope. Handwritten address, no return address, and the handwriting had a careful, slanted roundness — more the hand of a child than an adult. I ripped open the envelope. Folded sheet of ruled paper tom from a notebook. When I opened the fold, something fell out: an address label, one of those small printed mail-order kind, torn off a red envelope.

I looked at the label first. The name on it was K. Meineke; the address was 410 Port Creek Road, Gualala, CA.

Gualala. A little town on the coast, in southern Mendocino County. A town noted as something of an artists’ haven, among its other attractions.