The Simeon Chamber (15 page)

Mayhew removed the toothpick from his mouth and seized the only initiative left. “Ten o’clock, sharp. Central Homicide Division, downtown.”

Bogardus smiled as the detective 167

turned and sauntered away in the direction of his visibly unmarked car. A patch of oil-laden road grime stained the right cheek of his tan slacks where they’d rested against Sam’s fender.

“What was that all about?” Nick looked at the lawyer.

“That, my friend, was the ghost of bureaucratic bullshit, wearing clothes and walking upright. I’m sure you’ve seen him before.”

“Ah yes,” said Nick. “Distant cousin to the Dean of the Academic Senate.”

The table was small, tucked in a back corner of the restaurant in an area of semidarkness pierced only by the occasional flicker of candlelight. The two men sat nursing drinks that the waitress had just delivered.

“They have the parchments.” The tall, thin man looked intently across the table at his friend.

“Maybe you can tell me how they got them?”

“How should I know?”

“She gave them to the lawyer.”

“How do you know that?”

“Let’s just say that I know.”

“What have you done?” The shorter man’s eyes burned with fire as he stared across the table. He knew something was wrong when he’d read about the murder in the paper.

“Well, you weren’t going to do anything. So i had to.” The tall man spoke imperiously. “Let’s just say I got a little information. And that’s not all. They’ve traced the things back to the Jade House.”

“What?”

“Ah,” he paused. “So now I have your attention. How long do you think it will be before they find out about the committee?”

“Come on, they’re not that resourceful. They’re a pack of amateurs.”

“So were we—when we started.”

He couldn’t deny it. It was true. One would not have thought it possible. In a fleeting instant he had made a decision that had changed him forever. It could not have been more life-altering if he’d consumed Jekyll’s potion.

The conversation was interrupted by a slender waitress approaching with two salads. She placed the dishes in front of the men and leaned over the table with a foot-long pepper mill. The taller man dismissed her with an impatient 9

wave of the back of his hand. The movement revealed the shiny brass handle of a walking cane resting on the arm of his chair. Fashioned in the form of an eagle’s head, the sharply down-turned bill scratched into the oak armrest of the chair as the man lowered his hand. The waitress shot him a contemptuous look, turned and walked briskly from the table.

“Listen,” said the shorter man. He played nervously with his fork. “There’s no way they could find the members of the committee. The man took care of that years ago. I’m telling you there’s nothing to worry about. Besides, even assuming they could find some of the committee, there’s no way they could tie us in.”

“You’re sure of that? Well I’m not. Not sure enough to gamble a long prison sentence or worse.”

The shorter man nibbled on bits of lettuce, avoiding any commitment as he listened.

“It’s too late for half measures. We have to get those parchments and deal with whoever has seen them. We’ve got to talk to the girl and find out who knows about them.”

“No!” The shorter man dropped his fork with the lettuce on it and looked across the table. “Listen to me. I don’t know if you had anything to do with the murder of that lawyer or not. I don’t want to know. But if you so much as contact Jennifer Davies the cops will be the least of your worries.”

“What are you going to do—turn me in? You think they’re going to let you walk away?” While the question was rhetorical, he would have been wise to press for an answer. What he did not know was that his companion no longer cared.

“Who was with you?” The shorter man answered the question with a question.

“When?”

“When you did the lawyer.”

“You have too vivid an imagination. All I did was poke around a little trying to get the parchments back. Without those papers they have no hard evidence. You were a damn fool to leave them in that locker the day of the crash. If they hadn’t been found and recorded by the navy we wouldn’t be in this mess now.”

“Have it your way. Who was with you when you went poking around, as you say?”

“My man, the big one.” 1

“And you’ll trust your life and liberty to the likes of that? How long do you think before he fingers you if they pick him up? He’s not exactly inconspicuous. What if somebody saw him?”

“There was nothing to see.” The denial lacked conviction. The taller man sat silently, his eyes staring off into the distance past his companion. The question had hit its mark. The tall, slender man laid down his fork and sat back, placing his hands on the armrests of his chair. He fingered the picklike point of the brass beak on the handle of his cane and considered the loyalty quotient of his chauffeur.

Her mind was absorbed in the transcript of a deposition, a minor fender bender that was headed for arbitration, when her office door opened.

Jennifer swung around casually and lowered the bound transcript, peering over the top of the document.

Centered in the open doorway, an obscure smile on his face, stood Sam Bogardus.

“Hello, Counselor.”

Jennifer was too stunned to reply. While her face remained unyielding, the surprise was evident in her eyes as Bogardus locked onto them like a polygrapher studying his instrument for telltale signs of deception.

“What are you doing here?” She finally managed to speak.

“I might ask you the same thing. You never bothered to mention the fact that you were a lawyer.”

“You never asked.”

“Guess I didn’t, did I.”

Something had caught in his subconscious the morning when he called her at her stepfather’s house from the hospital. It wasn’t just her sudden change of manner, the hostility in her voice, but something more, her mastery of legal jargon. What was it she’d said? “The attorney-client privilege means nothing …” They were not the words of a layman. Clients might talk of confidentiality, or privacy, but not “the attorney-client privilege.” And later that same day in the hospital when she’d goaded him to find a set of fingerprints for Raymond Slade, she’d slipped again—she’d asked him to find a set of “latents.” He hadn’t heard the term since leaving the public defender’s office. It was only a hunch, but while he waited on the telephone for Carol 3

to check Parker’s Lawyers Directory he knew in his bones that she would find a listing in Napa County—that is, if Jennifer Davies was her real name. At least she hadn’t lied about that.

“Now do you want to tell me what it’s all about?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the hustle. The cock-and-bull story about wanting to search for adoption records.”

Any lawyer who’d ever handled an adoption knew that under the circumstances of the Davies case adoption records would offer no information she didn’t already have or that wasn’t available from other, easier sources. James Spencer was presumed dead. Neither his identity nor his consent to the adoption were at issue. Sam had never bought the lame excuse that she was interested in finding his place of birth. That could have been obtained in a dozen ways from Social Security, from records that her mother must surely have kept somewhere.

“This time I want the truth.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way. Perhaps I should find someone else.”

“Two days ago that would have been fine, but it seems I’m working for myself now.”

“For yourself?”

“Yeah. I’m looking for somebody—somebody who killed a friend.”

Except for the most calloused and hardened, news of death, particularly violent death, is mirrored in subtle degrees of shock and compassion in the eyes. In the case of Jennifer Davies the expression of alarm was almost instantly followed by an acceptance, as if the event somehow confirmed her most deep-seated fears.

“Oh, no.”

“Yes. Her name was Susan Paterson. And now you’re going to help me find out who killed her.”

“Me? How can I help?”

“By telling me everything you know.”

There was a deep sigh. “You’re right, i didn’t come to you for information concerning the adoption.

I came to you because I thought you would be able to trace the parchments and because I thought you would take a real interest in my father and how he died. I didn’t tell you the truth the day we talked in your office.” 5

“The truth about what?”

“You asked me how I met your mother.”

“I remember.”

“I told you I hadn’t, that my aunt knew her.”

“Yes.”

“That wasn’t exactly true. I mean I do have an aunt and she does work with your mother at the hospital auxiliary. But I have met your mother. One time. It was in the hospital cafeteria over coffee. After my aunt told me about you, I wanted to check some things before I called your office. The following week I went to the hospital and talked with your mother.”

“What did you want to know?”

“My aunt had mentioned that you were tired of your practice, she said your mother had told her about some of your outside interests, a treasure-hunting escapade somewhere in the mountains. She also said that you had a driving curiosity concerning local historic events in the city.”

“What did that have to do with anything?”

“I wanted to be sure that you would take the case and that you would pursue it. Your mother confirmed that her family was familiar with the crash of the navy blimp. That they actually remembered seeing it back during the war.”

Suddenly it all made sense. Angie had told her about Nick and their exploits in Alleghany. In a talkative mood she probably had mentioned that her son nearly quit law school to pursue an advanced degree in history. Jennifer knew that Sam would have available all of the technical resources to trace the parchments and a burning curiosity concerning the blimp and the fate of its crew.

An unquenchable rage began to settle over Bogardus. Without knowing it Angie had set in motion the events that would lead to Pat’s murder.

Her idle gossip had cost him the love of his life. But he saved the greatest portion of reproach for himself. Pat had asked him to hire an investigator for the Davies case. He had refused. He insisted on pursuing the leads himself over her repeated objections. If he’d only listened she would not have gone to Chinatown, she would still be with him. A rancorous virus flooded his mind and inflamed his being. The familiar yearning for revenge, so long absent, returned to invade his soul. 7

“The parchments and the note came in the mail just as I told you. You have to believe me. I have no idea who sent them or why.”

“Why didn’t you chase down the leads yourself?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“My stepfather. It would kill him if he thought I was searching for my father. As far as he’s concerned he’s the only father I ever had. Each time I raise the question of James Spencer it’s like tearing one more thread in the fabric that bound us together as a family. I had to distance myself from the search, if only to protect him.”

There was a brief pause, as if she’d stopped in mid-sentence.

“There is one other thing. Something I never told you, because I have no hard evidence.”

Sam said nothing.

“I think that whoever wrote that note on the parchments was lying. I think my father is dead.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It’s just a feeling, call it intuition, call it what you like. But I think he was killed by the other man on that blimp—the man named Raymond Slade.”

Ninety minutes later Sam was back in the apartment in Angie’s basement.

“Looks like we’ll be bunking together for a while, so we’d better make the best of it.” Sam looked at Nick’s mournful expression as the big man tested the lifeless mattress on the bottom bunk of what was obviously a child-sized bed. Finding it unsatisfactory, he moved to the cot that was in the other corner.

The basement was spacious and surprisingly warm given the damp overcast that shrouded the yard. A large gravity furnace fed the floor above with heat through a maze of ducts strapped to the exposed floor joists. To the left was a small kitchen, bath and shower. The three men stood in the room that had been Sam’s playroom as a child and his bedroom during high school. Deeper into the basement beyond the furnace was an immense workroom with a bench that swept across the entire front of the house. It was covered with an array of old tools, most of which had long since become antiques, once belonging to Sam’s grandfather, one of two blacksmiths in old Colma. A large window over the workbench looked out on the 179

street in front of the house. To the left of the workbench through a grid of lattice was the garage—

enough space for a single car sealed behind an overhead garage door that opened onto the street.

“You don’t expect us to sleep here? I have classes to make. I can’t stay away from my place forever.” While he complained Nick’s eyes were glued to Jake Carns. He’d seen his share of big men before, but none with the grace exhibited by Carns. Nick was mesmerized by Jake’s combination of grace and raw power, with the facial profile that belonged on a Greek statue, crooked nose and all. There was nothing ponderous or awkward about the man. Jake moved with the poise and carriage one would expect from a professional dancer rather than a prizefighter. Realizing that he was staring, Nick diverted his eyes from Carns.

“All the comforts of home,” he said, “and none of the worries.” There was a mocking laugh. “Come on, Sam, how long do we stay?”

“As long as you can put up with my mother,” said Sam, with a half smile.

“If I remember right I can deal with her cooking for some time.” Nick remembered the sumptuous suppers put on by the old lady during Sam’s college days, when he would be invited over for Sunday dinner. He looked at Jake. “Do you like to eat?” He laughed at his own superfluous question.

Jake cracked a grudging grin and nodded.

“Leave it to you to find the silver lining,” said Sam. “Where are the parchments?”

“There on the table.” Nick pointed to the cylindrical tube capped at each end that lay in the center of the small pine table.