Murder Over Cocktails: The 2nd Nikki Hunter Mystery (Nikki Hunter Mysteries) (5 page)

“Any questions?” Maggie asked.

“No questions,” I said, in a noncommittal tone. “I like it.”

“But you don’t want to make a decision after viewing only one property. I have some other listings I’d like you to see. I’m done for the day. Why don’t I buy you a drink and we can look at some pictures?”

“That sounds like a fine idea,” I said, smiling demurely.

I could hardly believe she was buying my act. It had to be the Chanel suit.

“There’s a quaint little pub on Main Street,” she went on. “It’s quiet and relatively private.”

“Perfect.”

Maggie locked up the house and we got back into her car. As we were driving down El Monte Road I asked if she thought the price of the property was firm.

“In real estate nothing is ever firm.” She said. “They’ll probably take a reasonable offer. The builders invested more than expected in construction and landscaping. The pond is man-made, of course, and all the land around the house had to be cleared. They have to make a profit, but you could probably pick it up for five million five hundred thousand.”

“The house has never been lived in? It’s brand new?”

“Positively virginal,” she said, with a sly smile.

We were delayed at an intersection on San Antonio Road by an elderly crossing guard wearing a fluorescent orange vest and carrying a stop sign. Two preteen girls in Catholic school uniforms crossed in front of Maggie’s car, holding hands. They reached the other side of the intersection and the crossing guard returned to her corner. Maggie sat frozen behind the wheel, watching the girls as they skipped away down a side street. Her lips were compressed into a hard line, but I couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses. Eventually the car behind us honked. Maggie jerked her gaze to the rearview mirror and proceeded down San Antonio to Main Street.

Oh great,
I mused to myself.
The goose bumps are back again.

We parked in front of the pub and Maggie popped the trunk and retrieved a black Gucci briefcase. I peered through the plate glass windows of the establishment. From what I could see, it was beautifully decorated, a classic Irish pub. Lots of gleaming dark wood, a scattering of little round tables, and half a dozen booths with leather upholstery. There were two unoccupied patio tables out in front.

“Do you mind if we sit out here so I can smoke?” I asked.

“Of course not. I quit two years ago and I still miss it.”

A barmaid came outside and placed cocktail napkins on our table. I ordered a Guinness Stout and Maggie ordered a Stoli on the rocks with a twist. I lit a cigarette and inhaled hungrily. Maggie set her briefcase on her lap and took out a small stack of pictures which she placed in front of me.

“See if there’s anything here that you like,” she said. “If not, I have more at the office.”

The waitress brought our drinks and I glanced at my watch. It was 5:40, and I had told Bill I would call him by 6:00.

I stubbed out my cigarette and looked up at the waitress. “Where’s the ladies room?”

She pointed through the window to a hallway beyond the bar and said, “I’ll show you.”

“Be right back,” I said to Maggie.

As soon as I was locked safely in a stall, I took out my cell phone and dialed.

“Detective Anderson,” he answered after a partial ring.

“You know if you sit on the phone like that you’re going to hatch a litter of something that wants to reach out and touch someone.”

“Very funny. Where are you?”

“I’m at a bar on Main Street in Los Altos. I can’t talk, but I wanted you to know I’m okay.”

“Are you still with Sectio?” he asked.

“Yes. We’re looking at pictures of houses.”

“Call me when you get home,” he commanded.

“Yes
sir
.” I saluted the phone.

Dating a cop is great if you don’t mind being ordered around some of the time. Bill is sensitive, creative, and has a great sense of humor, but he’s seen what the underbelly of humanity is capable of, and he takes that knowledge very seriously. Even though he wasn’t convinced the videotapes actually existed, he was concerned. So was I.

I came out of the stall, washed my hands, and scrunched up my curls. I looked at Lily’s suit in the mirror. After more than four hours of wear there wasn’t a single wrinkle. Amazing.

I arrived back at the table just as Maggie was ordering a second drink. I took a sip of my Guinness and picked up the stack of photos. After slowly looking through the pictures I set the stack on the table and looked up. Our eyes locked and my heart stuttered in my chest. This lady was disturbingly intense.

“If you were in the market,” I said casually, “which one of these would you select?”

She lifted the pictures and fanned them out in her hands, withdrew one, and placed it in front of me.

“This one,” she said.

The picture she’d chosen was of a two-story Spanish style home in Atherton. I noticed another agent’s name at the bottom of the page. The house was pale peach stucco with a terracotta roof. The photo only showed the front view, and the grounds were in shadow. It was a nice enough house, but there was nothing special about it that I could see.

“Why?” I asked.

“I know it doesn’t look like much in the photo, but you have to see the interior and the grounds. It’s an absolute steal for a million two. You could flip it in a year and double your investment.”

“Wow. When can we look at it?”

“How about tomorrow?”

I wondered if Lily had any more Chanels up her sleeve.

“That works for me,” I said. “What time?”

Maggie opened her briefcase and took out her iPhone. “I’m free at noon,” she said. “We can tour the house and then discuss it over lunch.”

After we finished our drinks Maggie drove me back to Millennium and we shook hands again before parting. Her grip was even more aggressive that it had been earlier in the day, and she showed me some teeth when she smiled. She leaned in a little, still holding onto my hand, and said she was looking forward to seeing me tomorrow. Maybe she was feeling the vodka.

I ducked around the corner and watched her cross the parking lot to the office. Then I went back and checked her license plate. It was personalized.
S CROW
. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before.

I hiked the block to my BMW, locked myself in the car, and breathed a deep sigh of relief. I wasn’t used to dealing with killers one-on-one. In fact I’d only had one prior investigation that compared, when I’d unmasked a multiple murderer while interviewing the victim’s friends and family members. I was almost a statistic before I even knew what was happening.

When I arrived home I slipped out of Lily’s suit and carefully hung it in the stateroom locker. Then I grabbed a Guinness Stout from the fridge and called Bill. I caught him still at work. I told him I had an appointment to look at another house and have lunch with Maggie the next day. Although he didn’t approve, as a concession he said it sounded harmless enough. We talked about getting together over the weekend, unless he caught a case. That meant I’d need to get more of my regular restaurant and bar surveys done during the week.

I paged Jack, and finished my Guinness while I waited for him to call me back. I was just dozing off on the settee when the phone rang.

“Hunter Investigations,” I answered automatically.

“How’d it go? Did she sell you anything?”

“Hi, Jack.” I pulled myself into a sitting position. “Not yet, but we’re looking at a property in Atherton tomorrow, then we’re having lunch. Is there any chance you could sneak those videotapes out of the house and copy them while I keep her occupied?”

He was quiet for a moment. “Tomorrow’s Wednesday,” he said. “What time are you meeting her?”

“At noon.”

“So you’ll be through with lunch no earlier than what, two? That should give me enough time. Her cleaning woman comes in on Wednesday mornings, but she’s usually gone by twelve.”

“You really do your homework don’t you?”

“Let’s not talk about this on the phone. Have you had dinner?”

“No. But I need to take care of some of my regular clients tonight,” I sighed.

“I’ll get take-out. Do you like pizza?”

“Sausage and mushrooms. But I can’t. I have to work.”

“See you in an hour.”

“
Wait.
When you get here you’ll have to call me to come let you in. The gates are locked.”

Jack chuckled and hung up without saying goodbye. I wondered what was so funny, and then I remembered that he was a professional burglar. It probably wouldn’t take him more than a minute to figure out that the marina gates are accessed with magnetic key cards. He wouldn’t be able to pick that lock. I smiled.

I grabbed a towel, my shower bag, and the Chanel suit.

Chapter 10

M
aggie had avoided taking a lover close to home since Holly, the first woman she had seduced, when she was in college. Holly had never been with a woman before. Destroying someone else’s innocence, as hers had been destroyed, was incredibly arousing for Maggie. She had reveled in Holly’s astonishment at being taken forcefully by another woman.

Afterwards the rage had taken hold of her and she had grabbed the first weapon she could find, a pair of scissors. She hadn’t been prepared for her reaction, or for the bloodbath, but she had gotten herself under control and cleaned up the mess. The difficult part was remembering everything she’d touched.

She had placed Holly’s body in a bathtub filled with hot water and added bleach, which she also used to clean every surface in the apartment, not finishing until after 4:00 a.m. The cleaning had calmed her. It was like doing penance. The police never even questioned her. She hadn’t been a friend of Holly’s, only a classmate.

Maggie found herself fiercely attracted to Nicoli Sinclair. The botched liaison in Atlanta had left her feeling unfulfilled, and eager for relief. She wondered if Nicoli had resented her late husband’s ‘libido’ because she preferred the touch of a woman. She had definitely felt a spark between them. She hoped it hadn’t been her imagination, her own desperation transmitting a message to her brain.

Tomorrow they would tour the Atherton property and Maggie would suggest lunch at her home in Woodside. A bottle of wine later, she would know more.

Chapter 11

D
’Artagnon was out on deck when I passed his boat on my way to Lily’s. I stopped to scratch behind his ears and reminded him what a good dog he was. Though I was fond of all the marina dogs and considered them my personal friends, D’Artagnon had a special place in my heart, even before he saved my life. He’d recently developed a limp, and although he was only six years old I suspected arthritis. At least that’s what I told myself. It worried me some. Hip dysplasia is also common in large dogs, but I knew Kirk, his owner, was conscientious about taking care of the boy. I ruffled his ears one last time and moved on. 

When Lily answered my knock, I held the suit aloft with a smile and she invited me aboard.

“You want me to have this dry cleaned?” 

“Did you sweat a lot?” she asked.

“I don’t know, I was pretty nervous.” I sniffed the suit and handed it to her. “Could I possibly borrow something else for tomorrow?”

Lily replaced the Chanel in its garment bag, and we looked over the contents of her closet together. We decided on a sleeveless, red Jil Sander dress with simple lines. I tried it on. It fit well enough and I could probably wear the black Stuart Weitzman pumps with it.

After showering I dressed in a clean pair of cargo shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt. I know white doesn’t go well with pizza, but for some reason, after spending time with Maggie, I needed to wear something that made me feel virtuous. The white shirt was the closest I could come to that objective.

I tidied up the boat, opened a few portholes to air the place out, and sat back to wait for Jack. After a few minutes I felt the boat rock gently and there was a knock on the pilothouse door.

“How did you get in the gate?” I asked, as I pushed the door open. “How did you know which boat was mine, and why didn’t D’Artagnon bark at you?”

Jack smiled behind his sunglasses and handed me the pizza box before walking past me and backing down the steps into the galley.

“I asked a red-headed pixie which boat was yours,” he said. “And the answers to your other two questions are trade secrets.”

“You met Elizabeth?”

“Is that her name? She’s charming.”

“The trawler on the right at the bottom of the companionway?”

“Yes.”

“That’s Elizabeth.” I’d be getting a call later. “Sit down,” I said, gesturing toward the galley settee. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Absolutely.”

Jack took off his sunglasses and surveyed the interior of my home while I checked the fridge.

“I have Guinness Stout, spring water, diet root beer, and I think I’ve got some Irish whiskey around here somewhere.”

“What was that last thing you said?”

“Irish whiskey?”

“Ah,” he sighed.

I located the bottle of Jameson under the sink and poured Jack a double shot. Then I grabbed myself a Stout and set out some paper plates. I sat across from him at the galley table and inhaled the aroma of the pizza. I love pizza, but salty greasy foods are not on my diet, so I require an excuse to eat them.

“Nice boat,” Jack said, downing the whiskey.

“Thanks. You want another?”

“No, thank you. So what did you learn today?”

I took a bite of pizza before answering, chewed, savored, and swallowed.

“I learned that Maggie Sectio is a very intense individual, she has an extremely firm dry handshake, and she’s a low pressure salesperson, in spite of her forceful personality.”

“You judge people by their handshakes?”

“I pay attention to the handshake.” Handshake, eye contact, body language, all the subtle nuances of nonverbal communication.

“What makes you think she’s low pressure?”

“I told her I liked the Los Altos house and she still insisted on showing me the one in Atherton tomorrow.”

I got up to grab some more paper towels.

“She
insisted
?”

The alarm in Jack’s voice stopped me in my tracks. “Yeah, kind of. She said I shouldn’t make a decision after seeing only one property. We stopped for drinks and she showed me pictures of some other houses. I asked her which one she would choose, and she said the one in Atherton. It wasn’t much to look at, so I asked her why. She said the grounds and the interior were outstanding and that the price was ridiculously low. It’s only a million two.” I snorted. I couldn’t help it. “I guess that’s a good price for any property in Atherton. I agreed to look at it tomorrow and she suggested we have lunch afterward.”

“Where?”

“Where what?” I asked. “Where lunch?”

Jack nodded.

“I don’t know. What’s the problem?”

“Maybe nothing,” he said.

“You sure you don’t want anything else to drink?”

He shook his head. “So you said you liked the house in Los Altos. Did you talk price?”

“I asked her what she thought the owners would accept.”

“And?”

“And she said they’d gotten themselves in the hole building it, and they’d probably take five million five hundred thousand.”

“But she steered you toward another property, for a lot less money.”

“I told you she was low pressure. Maybe this is part of her strategy. Maybe the house in Atherton is a dog and she thinks after looking at it I’ll be thrilled to pay five and a half million for the one in Los Altos.
I
don’t know.”

Even I wasn’t convinced by my explanation, but I pushed the anxiety aside.

Jack was silent. I drank some Guinness and returned my attention to the pizza.

“You don’t want to be alone with her, Nicoli. Maybe I should follow you, just to be safe.”

“Please call me Nikki,” I said. I actually reserve that privilege for friends, but I was growing fond of Jack, in spite of his profession.

“You can’t be in two places at once,” I said. “I need you to copy those tapes. There’s a high speed dubbing service on Middlefield.”

I wiped my hands on a paper towel and fished the card for the dubbing service out of my Rolodex. I have an old fashioned Rolodex on board the boat, an address book on my smartphone, an application on my computer with the same address book and calendar features as the smartphone, and yes, I have control issues. I wrote the dubbing service address and phone number on a slip of paper and handed it to Jack.

“If you call them in advance they can probably schedule the job and copy the tapes while you wait.”

“Fine,” he said grudgingly. “Will you let your friend the cop know what you’re doing?”

I nodded. “I’ll take my own car tomorrow, and when I know where we’re going for lunch I’ll give Bill a call and tell him. Will that make you feel better?”

“It will,” he said. “When you see the videos you’ll understand why this makes me nervous. Page me when you get to the restaurant tomorrow, so I’ll know how much time I have.”

“Sure, no problem.”

We ate more pizza, but the conversation lagged and finally Jack set his napkin on top of his plate and said, “I should go.”

As he walked toward the steps I caught a glimpse of the logo on his pager. I followed him up on deck and when we were outside he turned and put his hands on my shoulders.

“Please be careful, Nikki,” he said softly, looking into my eyes, and then he stepped off the boat.

My heart fluttered in my chest. I thought of Bill and how well we were getting along. I almost never date more than one guy at a time. Besides, I didn’t want to get involved with a professional criminal, but holy
cow
this guy had sex appeal. I went back inside and bit into another slice of pizza. While I was pondering what I was getting myself into with Maggie, the phone rang. I swallowed before answering.

“His name is Jack McGuire and he’s a client,” I said, without preamble.

“What?” said Bill.

Shit
. “Sorry. I was expecting a call from Elizabeth.”

“So who’s Jack McGuire and why are you telling Elizabeth about him?”

“He’s just a client she saw me with today. You know how nosy she is.”

“Uh-huh,” he said.

“What’s up?”

“I’m just getting off work and I thought you might want to have dinner. I could pick up a pizza.”

“Pizza sounds great,” I said, casting a guilty glance at the half empty box on my galley counter. “But I have to work. Sorry.”

“Sausage and mushroom?”

“You know that’s my favorite, but seriously, I need to do a couple of restaurant and bar surveys.”

“Okay. Maybe I’ll see you this weekend.”

We disconnected moments later, and as I dressed to go out I thought about my relationship with Bill. I haven’t had the best of luck with men—just ask my three ex-husbands—but Bill was intelligent, funny, kindhearted, and easy on the eyes, plus I really enjoyed spending time with him. Who was I trying to convince, anyway?

I snatched up the pizza box and stuffed it in a garbage bag along with my empty Guinness bottle, grabbed my shoulder bag and made a dash for the dumpster. The phone started ringing again as I was sprinting away from my boat. I stopped to give D’Artagnon a few bites of sausage and cheese, and then continued toward the gate. I heard Elizabeth calling my name before I made it halfway up the ramp.

Elizabeth and I met not long after I moved aboard my boat. I was doing laundry one night and saw her sitting out on her dock steps with her cat, K.C., which is short for “Killer Cat.” He’s a beautiful big ball of orange fluff. I was immediately enchanted with the kitty and introduced myself to Elizabeth, because it would have been rude to ignore her while I was mooning over her cat. Elizabeth is just over five feet tall and weighs about a hundred pounds. She’s thirty-three years old, but looks closer to twenty-three, with strawberry blonde hair, a dusting of freckles over her nose, hazel eyes, and dimples. She’s divorced and childless, as am I. We’d bonded quickly, which was uncommon for both of us.

“Hey, I was just calling you!” she shouted at my retreating posterior.

“Be right back,” I yelled, holding up an index finger in the universal
one minute
sign.

I slammed out the gate and power-walked to the dumpster. When I came back down the companionway, Elizabeth was perched on her dock steps, sipping her customary Kahlua, vodka, and milk through a straw. She twinkled at me.

“What?” I asked, sitting down next to her.

“Who’s the hunk?” she said.

“Which one?” I asked, knowing perfectly well who she meant.

“Red hair, mirrored sunglasses, muscular physique, pizza box. Who is he? Spill!”

“Oh, you mean Jack. He’s a client.”

“Since when do you entertain clients on your boat?”

She had me there.

“He wanted to talk over the case and neither of us had eaten.”

“What’s the case about? Lily told me you borrowed her black Chanel and her red Jil Sander.”

Elizabeth and Lily have been friends since high school. They’re so close, in fact, that when Elizabeth decided to move from Louisiana to California for college, Lily followed.

“There are no secrets in this marina,” I complained half-heartedly. “You know I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation.”  

Elizabeth made a face that translated to
who do you think you’re kidding?
In truth, I discuss all my interesting cases with her. She’s my sounding board. 

“Okay,” I said. “But you can’t say anything to anybody.”

“No problem.” She held up her right hand in a pseudo pledge.

“Jack has stumbled onto some tapes of a woman killing her lovers,” I whispered.

Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open. “Oh my
God.
What does he expect
you
to do?”

“Find a way to get the evidence to the police, so she can be stopped before she kills again.”

“Wait a minute,” she said. “How did Jack stumble onto these tapes? Videotapes, I assume?”

“Yes. He was in her house without her knowledge.”

“I see. And how are you supposed to arrange for the police to find them?”

“That’s kind of the problem.”

Elizabeth took a sip of her drink and tilted her head to one side. “What if the police pursued a criminal onto her property? Would that constitute probable cause for a search of the house?”

This is why I discuss my cases with Elizabeth.

“A search of the premises maybe, but not of the locked cabinet that contains the videotapes, unless the criminal they were pursuing was two feet tall.”

“What if she was accused of stealing something? Where does she work?”

“She’s a real estate agent. Not a popular profession for embezzlers, as far as I know.”

“I’ll give it some thought.”

“You do that. I’ve gotta go do a couple of surveys.”

“Okay, sweetie. How’s Bill, by the way?”

“Bill is excellent,” I said, giving her a peck on the cheek. “I’ll see you later.”

I stopped at the office to pick up some blank survey forms, which I sometimes use when I’m working. I like to make note of any significant details while they’re still fresh in my mind.