Vixen (19 page)

In his office again, not looking at what lay on the carpet, he took two long pulls from the bottle of Glenlivet. The whiskey burned like fire, stayed down, but did little to quiet his screaming nerves or ease the feeling of suffocation. Unsteadily, he went through the front office, opened the outer door, stepped outside to suck in deep breaths of the cold night air—

Christ! Vorhees had left the gates standing wide open.

The thought that somebody, one of the homeless that hung around the area, might've come wandering in ran a shudder through Chaleen. No cars on the street now, nobody in sight, but he ran across the night-lit yard anyway, closed the gate, snapped the padlock. His chest heaved like a bellows on the way back.

Inside again, he locked the outer door. Sat down at Abby's desk to try to get his breathing under control, try to think.

What was he going to do?

Dead man in his office. Bastard deserved to die, but not like this, not here. The other night with Margaret had been bad enough, but all he'd had to do then was make sure she drank enough to pass out, then carry her out to the garage and fire up her Mercedes. No blood, no violence, no body to worry about. And he hadn't had to watch her die.

But it wasn't a detached murder this time, wasn't murder at all. Vorhees had hit him, knocked him down, grabbed him, threatened him … he'd acted in self-defense. Call the police? Tell them how Vorhees had bulled in here, but not the reason, and then the rest of it just as it had happened. They'd believe him. Wouldn't they?

Maybe they wouldn't. No marks on him to show that he'd been attacked; he felt his head and neck to be sure. Common knowledge that he and Vorhees had had trouble before. There'd be an investigation and the cops would find out about him and Cory from those two private dicks. And what if they got it in their heads to question Margaret's death despite the accident verdict, somehow managed to tie him to it? He wasn't sure he was in any shape to stand up to police questioning tonight, or at any time. Calling the law was out, it would only make things worse.

Get rid of the body. That was what he had to do. Take it somewhere and hide it, bury it, or at least make it look like Vorhees was killed someplace else by somebody else. But what about Vorhees' car? That damn Aston was parked right out front. He couldn't leave it there, and he couldn't drive two cars. Didn't dare run the risk of ditching the Aston after ditching the body and then taking a taxi or public transportation to come back for his Caddy—

Cory!

She'd know what to do, she'd help him. Call her, explain what had happened, tell her—

Tell her he'd just killed her future husband, the man who was going to make her rich? Tell her all her carefully laid plans had been for nothing and both of them might be up shit creek now? She wouldn't care that it had been self-defense, she'd blame him for letting it happen. Never forgive him, never let him near her again. He'd lose her for good.

No, he
couldn't
ask her for help, couldn't ever tell her what had happened here tonight. Didn't make any difference whether Vorhees was found dead or just disappeared without a trace; either way, Chaleen's only hope of keeping her was to plead ignorance and make her believe it.

The body, the car … he'd have to get rid of them by himself. No other choice. But how?

Think, think!

He went back into his office for another jolt of Glenlivet. This one steadied him, helped him focus. And pretty soon an idea began to form. He clung to it, shaped it until it was complete. Or almost complete. There was still the problem of the two cars, getting back here to claim his own after he got rid of the body and Vorhees' Aston.…

One more drink, a small one this time, and he had the answer. George Petrie. Old George, factory foreman at Chaleen Manufacturing from the day the old man opened the plant. Loyal as they come. Do any favor he was asked to, even after business hours, and without asking questions of his own. And he was guaranteed reachable by phone; a widower, old George never went out on weeknights by his own admission.

Chaleen made himself go look at the body. The way Vorhees had fallen, half over on his left side, most of the blood from the wound glistened on his face and shirt and coat. Not much on the carpet, just a few spots. More spots on the desktop, smeared on the paperweight. The clean-up wouldn't be too bad. But he'd have to get that started first, before the blood dried. Then he'd get a tarp from the factory and roll the body into it before he carried it out to the Aston.

All right. Now that Chaleen had a plan in place he was steady-handed again, his control regained. When the salvage job was finished, there'd be nothing to tie Vorhees' death to him. He'd still have Cory, and before long they'd figure a way, or she would, to get their hands on the kind of money she coveted and he needed.

It could, it would work out that way. It
had
to!

 

22

Tamara and Runyon were discussing Andrew Vorhees' no-show when I came into the agency. Vorhees still seemed to be missing this morning; there'd been no word from him, and when Tamara called his office, she got the kind of tight-lipped runaround that indicates something amiss.

“Something's happened to him,” she said ominously, “and you can bet Cory Beckett had a hand in it.”

Jumping to conclusions as she often did, I thought at the time, but it turned out that on this occasion she was at least half right. Something
had
happened to Andrew Vorhees, the kind of something that would be overheated media fodder for days to come.

We had advance word before the news became public. Tamara had texted her Hall of Justice pipeline, a woman named Felicia who worked in the SFPD's computer section, asking for any information the Department might have on Vorhees. The answer she received prompted a furious series of back-and-forth texts to learn the details.

Vorhees was dead. Bludgeoned to death, the apparent victim of a carjacking. A patrol unit had spotted his Aston Martin speeding on Geneva Avenue near the Crocker Amazon Playground shortly after 2:00
A.M.
; the driver, a nineteen-year-old youth from the projects, refused to stop and there'd been a brief high-speed chase that ended when the kid missed a turn and ran the Aston into a light pole. When the cops checked the trunk, they found Vorhees' body stuffed inside.

The ghetto youth and his passenger cousin admitted they'd stolen the car, but swore they hadn't committed the murder, hadn't had any idea there was a dead man in the trunk. Their story was that they'd seen the Aston parked on a street in Visitacion Valley, the keys in the ignition, and decided to take it for a ride. The police weren't buying. Both suspects had juvenile rap sheets for stealing and stripping cars, and though the murder weapon hadn't been found with the body, the assumption was that the youths had tossed it and were heading somewhere to get rid of the body when they were spotted.

“Crap,” Tamara said. “Pure crap.”

“You don't think it was a carjacking?” I asked her.

“No way.”

I didn't think so, either, but I said, “Why not?”

“Bunch of reasons. Too big a coincidence, for one—Vorhees suddenly turning up dead so soon after his wife and just when he's getting ready to hire us.”

“Go on.”

“Carjackers and guys that jump iron off the streets are different breeds of cat. No 'jacking on these two kids' sheets.”

“They're only nineteen. Maybe they decided to change their MO.”

She made a face to indicate what she thought of that explanation. “You ever hear of a 'jacker whacking a car owner with some kind of round blunt instrument? Uh-uh. Guns or knives.”

“Good point,” Runyon said, and I agreed.

Tamara said, “Then there's the preliminary coroner's report. Felicia says Vorhees'd been dead for hours when the body was found, maybe as many as seven or eight. No streetwise kids are gonna waste somebody, hang onto the hot car
and
the corpse for seven or eight hours, and then go out speeding with it on a city street.”

An even better point.

“So if it wasn't a 'jacking,” she said, “and those dudes are telling the truth, why was Vorhees' expensive wheels on the street in Visitacion Valley with him dead in the trunk and the keys in the ignition? So it'd get stolen, right? So whoever swiped it would get stuck with the corpse, right?”

“Assume a setup, then,” I said. “Who's responsible?”

“Cory Beckett, who else.”

“All by herself? A woman who has a history of not dirtying her own hands?”

“I didn't say that.”

“Who did the job, then? Frank Chaleen?”

“Sure. Got him to do Vorhees' wife, didn't she?”

“We don't know that for sure. If Margaret Vorhees' death was premeditated murder, then it was strictly for gain. Cory's whole focus is money and power; presumably that's why she took up with Vorhees in the first place. Why would she suddenly want him dead?”

“On account of he dumped her and she was pissed at losing her meal ticket.”

“That's another thing we don't know for sure, that he dumped her,” I pointed out. “Confronted her about Chaleen, yes, but that's all.”

Runyon agreed. “Seems to me her reaction if he tried to walk away would be the opposite of violence—use every trick she knows to get him back on the hook.”

“Right. And if that didn't work, she'd just lick her wounds and start looking for another mark. Vorhees isn't the only wealthy yachtsman around who can be seduced and bled.”

Tamara wanted Cory Beckett to be guilty of both homicides. She said stubbornly, “Her motive doesn't have to be revenge. Maybe offing him is what she was planning all along.”

“Same objection,” I said. “Nothing in it for her.”

“… Well, suppose Vorhees changed his will, put her in for a big slice of his estate? She'd want him dead before he could change it, right?”

“Now you're reaching. No matter how smitten Vorhees was with her, he'd have to be a fool to change his will in her favor while he was still married or immediately after his wife's death. Whatever else he was, he was no fool when it came to money. He'd have waited until he was married to Cory before he made her his heir, and then not until he was completely sure of her. Same reasoning if she wanted him dead: after they were married, not before.”

Tamara scowled, but she didn't argue the point. “All right, then how about this? She found out somehow he was hiring us to investigate her and there's something heavy in her past she's afraid we'll find out.”

“A skeleton she wants to keep closeted desperately enough to toss the rest of her plans and commit murder? Doesn't seem likely. Besides, you'd have already picked up a hint if there was.”

“Not necessarily. I dug pretty deep, but I didn't hit bottom.”

“Close to it, though. You can keep digging, but do you really believe you'll find those kind of buried bones?”

No, she didn't—I could see it in her expression—but she wouldn't admit it. And she still wasn't ready to let go of the subject. She said, “So maybe Cory didn't have anything to do with it. Maybe Chaleen did Vorhees on his own.”

“For what reason?”

“So he could have her all to himself.”

“Blow up her plans, do both of them out of a piece of Vorhees' money? That doesn't wash, either.”

“He wouldn't dare cross her,” Runyon agreed. “She'd eat him alive.”

“Okay, okay,” Tamara said grumpily. “So it wasn't Cory and it wasn't Chaleen. But it wasn't any freakin' carjacker, either.”

“Vorhees was the kind of man who made enemies,” I said. She opened her mouth, but I held up a hand before she could say anything. “I know, I know. The long arm of coincidence again.”

Runyon said, “SFPD'll find out who did it and why. High-profile victim, high-priority investigation.”

“The kind that might just bring Cory and Chaleen down, whether or not they had anything to do with what happened last night.”

“Believe it when I see it,” Tamara said. Then she said, “Cops are bound to get around to us sooner or later. What do we tell them?”

“As much as we know to be fact,” I said. “Nothing more, nothing that crosses legal and ethical lines.”

“Otherwise we stay out of it.”

“That's right. Even if Vorhees had signed a client's contract, we'd have to stay out of it. The police wouldn't give us permission for an independent investigation in a case like this.”

Tamara sighed. “Stuck in neutral again. Sometimes I wish we didn't always have to go by the book.”

“We wouldn't stay in business long if we didn't.”

*   *   *

As expected, the media—local and national both—milked Vorhees' murder for all it was worth. Statements from and interviews with the chief of police, union and City Hall officials; editorials on crime in the streets; rehash features on Vorhees' scandal-ridden personal life and the recent death of his wife. I didn't see or read any of the reportage; secondhand commentary from Tamara and Kerry was enough for me. I tend to avoid all direct contact with print and broadcast journalism, particularly where sensational crime news is concerned. Kerry says, only half kidding, that I'm an ostrich in the current events sandbox. Guilty.

Evidently the SFPD wasn't any more satisfied with the carjacking explanation than we were. Except for the usual stock handouts, they put a tight lid on their investigation. So tight that Tamara's friend Felicia refused all further requests for progress information.

The homicide inspectors in charge got around to us soon enough. They interviewed Tamara alone first on Thursday; Runyon and I weren't in the office at the time. They talked to me at home, and Jake at the Hall of Justice where he went voluntarily.