Pious Deception (15 page)

“I told you, I never gave him the chance.”

“When you refused, didn’t he dangle some information, some observation in front of you?”

Vanderhooven slammed down his glass. “He wouldn’t have dared.”

Behind them Grace started and then settled back on the couch. Philip busied himself reconstructing his drink. And Kiernan watched his abrupt movements, wondering just what Joe Zekk had suggested that so outraged him. When he turned back to her she said, “We need to know what Zekk knew, or suspected—”

“He
knew
nothing. Austin was not the type of man who would confide in Joe Zekk. Austin didn’t confide in anyone. Never had. He would not begin with someone like Zekk.”

Kiernan took a breath. Speaking even more calmly to balance Philip’s mood, she said, “Can you give me directions to his place.”

“It’s somewhere up in the mountains past Globe. I don’t know any more than that,” Philip added in a softer voice, glancing at his sleeping wife. The tension in his face had not lessened, but the look of anger had given way to a general tautness. “What’s the third thing you needed?”

“Access to Bishop Dowd, and the photographs he took of Austin’s body.”

Philip’s eyes flashed. “In the church!”

Checking Grace out of the corner of her eye, Kiernan said, “Yes. Didn’t the bishop tell you about the photos?”

He, too, glanced at his sleeping wife. “No. What the hell did he—?”

Lowering her voice, Kiernan said, “Those photographs show that Austin did not have the flexibility in his shoulders to get his hands into the position Dowd found them in. The photos are clear enough to make any sheriff think twice before saying Austin died by his own hand.”

His fingers pressed white on the glass. “I will not have that type of picture of my son shown to anyone. Even if they in themselves prove Austin—”

Grace murmured.

Philip lowered his voice. “—didn’t do it, once word of them got out everyone we know would be talking about them, speculating about them, and about Austin, and us. Look at my wife; she can’t take much more of this. And certainly not that!”

“Mr. Vanderhooven, I know this is hard on you, both of you. I’ve had experience investigating things people want to keep hidden, and believe me, very little stays hidden forever. You will be better off seeing those photos, dealing with them now, rather than having them surface in six months, or six years. Or forever wondering if someday your wife will answer the phone and it will be someone who’s got a set of prints.”

“It’s Bishop Dowd who has these pictures, not some common blackmailer. He will destroy them. You will forget they existed. Do you understand!” He banged the glass down again.

“Philip!” Grace murmured.

Vanderhooven ignored his wife. “Miss O’Shaughnessy, you will obey my instructions. Or you will be off the case.”

Kiernan breathed deeply, trying to control her anger. “Your son was set up. Someone killed him, and you would let that person go free, let your son be branded as a suicide, or worse, because you’re afraid to know the truth about him.”

“Consider our arrangement over.”

Kiernan took another slow breath. Austin Vanderhooven’s memory would not be sacrificed to his parent’s fear of humiliation. “I know how you feel, believe me. I know how you’ll feel if you suppress the truth too long to vindicate your son.” She shut her eyes momentarily, and when she continued her voice was colder. “Regardless of the personal arrangements you and Bishop Dowd may have, my contract is with him. Bishop Dowd hired me to find the truth, and that is what I will do.”

I
T WAS NEARLY SEVEN-THIRTY
when Kiernan walked into her motel room, still fuming from her scene with Philip Vanderhooven. She understood Philip’s desperate urge to bury the questions about Austin with him. She knew that was impossible, that Philip would realize it was impossible, and that that realization would come too late for Austin, and for this investigation.

A sensible person, a sensible businesswoman, would get off the case right now, she told herself. She could call Chase and have him negotiate a settlement, a damned good settlement. She could probably get the full twenty-five thou. Instead, what was she doing? Working on a case that her client would be pressured to drop, doing it for no more money than she’d get if she flew home now, and all because she couldn’t stand to have Austin Vanderhooven branded as a suicide or a pervert.

And because she had to know the truth. And, she admitted, she wasn’t about to be bullied off the case.

She dialed the number for the archdiocese, and when there was no answer there she dialed Dowd’s residence. Gone for the evening, the housekeeper, a Mrs. Johnarndt, said. Yes, she would certainly tell him Miss O’Shaughnessy had called, again. She understood he could call her no matter how late. But she couldn’t say how late he might be; she was, after all, only the housekeeper.

Dowd was probably sitting five feet from the phone! Kiernan resisted the urge to slam down the receiver. If the Catholics are right, I should get a couple of hours off Purgatory for this.

She looked toward the bathroom, the wonderfully synthetic luxury of the bathroom. She’d never have admitted it to Sam Chase, or even to Brad—it doesn’t do to have your houseman laugh at you—but she loved all the accoutrements of motel bathrooms: the spotless tile, the endless supply of tissues, the little bottles of shampoo and conditioner. At home she never bothered with conditioner—her hair was too thick, too curly, too short—but in a motel she smeared it on every time she got in the shower. She lolled under the endless supply of hot water, letting the soap melt down to nothing. When there was a bottle of bubble bath, she dumped the whole thing into the tub at once and let the bubbles cascade over the sides. She used each towel only once, wadded it up and tossed it on the floor. And, in penance, she left the maid a tip worthy of a maharajah.

She picked up the phone and dialed Brad, picturing Ezra bounding toward the phone, tail smacking into whatever Brad had left on a table. She missed Ezra. It would be nice to have a canine head to scratch. She missed Brad, too. The phone rang. It would be almost dusk in San Diego. Were Brad and Ezra loping along the beach? Brad with his wiry, sun-bleached hair flying out in all directions, his San Diego Chargers T-shirt spanning the muscles he’d worked so hard to restore during his convalescence, and a grin of pleasure that transformed his unquestionably ugly face into one that drew smiles from every woman on the beach.

Brad Tchernak was hardly what she had had in mind when she advertised for a housekeeper. But he had arrived—not called, just arrived—with the best lasagna she’d tasted, an instant love for Ezra, and a need for a job with lots of small tasks to keep him busy while he figured out what was left in a life without the thing that had always been central to it. Kiernan knew that dilemma intimately. And Brad, she observed as the months passed, was handling it better than she had after she’d been fired from the coroner’s office. For her the adjustment had been more philosophical. For Brad it meant redefining the focus of nearly every activity: learning to eat a meal without wondering if this combination of food would make him faster off the line of scrimmage, to run for pleasure rather than endurance, to think beyond the football season.

No answer. She replaced the receiver, stripped off her sweat-sodden clothes, grabbed a towel, and started for the shower …

Bud Warren would be an easy interview, just to verify Elias Necri’s alibi. Either Necri had been up in the mountains dining with the oil-shale man or he hadn’t. An easy loose end to tie up tonight. She dialed the number Necri had given her.

He answered on the first ring. “Warren here.”

“Mr. Warren, I’m Kiernan O’Shaughnessy—”

“Necri’s detective.” Was that laughter in his voice? “You had dinner?”

“No.”

“Neither have I. Pick your ethnicity and time, and ask me whatever you want.”

The Warren interview was business, but the man sounded pleasant. Was this the cosmic compensation for Brad Tchernak’s not answering the phone? “Mexican. Eight-thirty.”

Kiernan hadn’t asked for a description, but there was no mistaking Bud Warren when she walked into Enrique’s. He was the lone male idling by the potted palm near the door. He was tall—he had spoken with the assurance that comes more easily to a tall man—and his dark brown hair was just beginning to show featherings of gray. He didn’t have the star quality of Elias Necri—he was probably twenty years older—but there was a rugged appeal to him.

As they headed to the table, he patted her arm.

The small square dining room, with its dark wooden tables, hard wooden chairs, and tile-accented white stucco walls, looked as if it had come from a kit marked Mex. Rest. Three-generation families were gathered around tables, laughing and talking in Spanish. Their exuberance was echoed by the music that came from a radio near the kitchen. Warren’s voice, deep but with a sharpness that cut through other sounds, was just loud enough. A vague overlay of Western drawl—superimposed on what, she couldn’t tell—suggested he was a man who had spent years in the Southwest.

They ordered beer, and after the waiter had arrived with the bottles and glasses, Warren said, “So tell me, how’d you become a detective?”

“Got fired from my last job.”

“Doing autopsies?”

“Right. I missed a key indicator in one of the postmortems. There was a lot of insurance money at stake.”

“And they fired you? For one mistake? Couldn’t you have fought it?”

She shrugged, trying hard to maintain a dispassionate air. “I probably should have. There were plenty of people ready to support me. I could have forced them to keep me on. But that incident hit a nerve.” It had ended more than her career.

“And?”

“And I gave my furniture to the Good Will and bought a ticket for Bangkok. For the next two years I roamed around Asia, a week in Rangoon—you can’t stay longer in Burma—a couple of months in Indonesia, nearly a year in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, another week in Rangoon, and so on.”

“What made you come back to this country?”

She smiled. “I woke up one morning in Madras; all my clothes were filthy. Suddenly I wanted a California laundromat and a life that had some focus. So I bought a ticket to San Diego.”

“And then?”

“Hey, which one of us is the investigator here? You certainly ask a lot of questions, and you knew a lot about me to begin with.”

Warren leaned back, his blue eyes twinkling. “I’ll take that as a compliment. I guess the oil business isn’t too different from the investigation trade. I’ve gotten in the habit of finding out what I can. And frankly, lady, you’ve got a more interesting story than most.”

“But you didn’t know that before. Or did you?”

“I hate to tarnish my image here, but the truth is that I didn’t do a background check on you. Elias just needed to talk.” His smile faded. “Poor guy, it’s been a helluva week for him. I’ll tell you, the state Elias is in now, I wouldn’t want him making a diagnosis on me. He was worried about his practice before all this.… But you want to know about Tuesday night when Austin died, right? Elias was with me from eight-thirty till nearly one in the morning.”

Recalling Elias’s explanation of the meeting, she said, “That’s a long time to spend with a potential investor who has nothing to invest.”

Warren shook his head. “Elias! Did he tell you he was an investor?”

“What was he after?”

“A job. He thought I might need a doctor on call at the site. Figured that might help pull him through financially till the retreat center opened.”

“Sounds like a pretty meager income. He must be desperate.”

“He
is.
” Warren signaled the waiter. To Kiernan he said, “The chimichangas are straight from the ovens of the Aztec gods.”

“Do they take long? I really am starved.”

“We’ll get chips and some guacamole in the meantime.”

Kiernan took a drink of her beer and pondered Bud Warren. There was an air of confidence about the man; it might not go too deep, but she could see how it would comfort someone as unstable as Elias Necri. Would Warren lie to protect Elias? She doubted it. She downed another swallow of beer and said, “I understand you’ve got a shale-oil process.”

“In a general sense.” He leaned forward. “You know much about shale?”

“Not a whit.”

“Well, then let me tell you. Now you stop me if I’m boring you.” Warren’s eager expression belied his words. “Shale’s the wave of the future. We’ve got billions of tons of rock out there with oil just waiting to be boiled out. Most of it’s north of here, but we found enough in Arizona desert for my purposes. Doesn’t take a great mind to see that someday, and not too far away, the Arabs are going to turn off the tap. Or maybe their tap will run dry. But we have lots of land with lots of rock, and lots of oil in that rock.”

“I thought the problem was the expense of getting the oil out.”

Warren nodded so eagerly Kiernan wondered if he had misunderstood her question. The radio music came back on. At the table behind her a woman began to hum. “Sure, it seems like a problem now, with Arab being dirt cheap. When there’s no Arab, no price will be too big. And the technology’s getting cheaper all the time. How long are you going to be here? Maybe you can get out to my site and see the process firsthand. The semi-works are about two hours east of town.”

“Near Hohokam Lodge?”

Warren looked surprised. “Right.”

“I might be up that way.”

Warren beamed. “Great! I’ll give you the top-of-the-line prospective investor’s tour.” He leaned forward as if staking out a claim, dropped his elbows onto the placemat, and hung his hands over the middle of the table. “What we do is grind the rock, put it in a huge retort—a covered vat—and cook the oil vapors out of the shale. The kerogen boils down and the oil rises off with the rest of the vapors. Now that part is standard.”

Kiernan nodded, wondering how close Warren’s works were to Hohokam Lodge, and whether Austin Vanderhooven’s undesirable friend Joe Zekk was also nearby.

“But that’s not my process,” Warren continued. “See, the problem with the system is how to get the gases free of the dust. You can imagine how much dust there is mixed with the gases. The conventional way is to run the whole thing through a cyclone, swirl the gases around and get rid of some of the dust, and then pipe it into a hot baghouse.”