Chapter 24

David Nussbaum called to tell me that The Light would be running a story the next day about Victoria McKimber. They’d been following the case, but nothing had run for a few days because nothing reportable had happened. Only now, something had. Just as Heather suspected, the police had decided that Richard McKimber was a “person of interest.”

“They’ve got a terrible picture of the guy, Copper,” David said. “It won’t do much to vindicate him in the public eye.”

It wasn’t hard to imagine a bad photo of Richard McKimber. All you’d have to do to capture a Pulitzer-worthy snarl would be to knock on his door and say you were from the paper.

It also wasn’t difficult to jump to the conclusion that he’d killed his wife. I’d tried the theory on myself, and even without an insurance policy to motivate him, it was easy to imagine that being married to a self-proclaimed hooker would be enough to make a guy snap.

“He’s really not a bad guy,” I said. “He spends most of his time trying to take care of his son. The only person he might murder is the president of his homeowners’ association, but so far, he’s only sprayed him with a hose.” I paused. “Actually, American Beauty has more to gain from Victoria’s death. Do you know if the cops are looking into that?

“All I’ve heard is that they have shifted their attention from Bobby Marks to the husband,” David said, “but if I hear anything else, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, and Ed Bramlett’s funeral is Thursday morning at Davis Mortuary. His gay daughter is organizing it, and a couple of other family members have shown up from Utah.”

“His gay daughter?”

“Yup. They hadn’t spoken since she came out of the closet a couple of years ago, but I guess he didn’t quite disown her. I heard through the grapevine that she’s already taken up residence in his house.”

“So I guess he must have had a wife somewhere along the line?”

“Yeah. Charlotte Inman of Hurricane, Utah. They divorced in 1984. I’ve got the obit in front of me. Want to hear the rest?

“No, thanks.” God. Old Ed had a lesbian daughter, and I have a gay father. It’s almost like we had something in common.

“Anything new on the Julia Saxon front?” David said.

I hesitated. I trusted David, but he was still “the press.” He proved it with his instant suspicion.

“I smell a story,” he said.

“I’m not ready to talk,” I said. “I’ve—I’ve had a very tough day.”

“Are you alone?”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you know what I mean.”

I sighed. David really is a born newshound. “Yeah. I’m on my own.”

“Well, if you need anything, you know how to reach me,” David said. “I’ve got another date with Clint tonight, but he’s very understanding. Never complains a bit when I mute him.”

“Clint again? You going steady or something?”

“Yeah, we’re getting serious. Tonight I’m watching The Bridges of Madison County.”

“You’re joking.”

“I am. But if I weren’t—?”

“I’ve got to have dinner with Michael and Sierra,” I said.

“The gauntlet,” David said.

“Well, not exactly,” I said. “But I do need to talk to them.”

“No, The Gauntlet,” David said. “That’s the Clint flick I really do have for tonight.”

After we hung up, I dug through my backpack and found the pictures from Victoria’s old camera. I flipped through them, considering their value as evidence. The two men in the dark restaurant were easily identifiable. Heather had already recognized one of them, and I had a name that probably went with the other. But would the pictures be helpful enough to the police to risk being outed as a thief? Did they prove anything more than that two guys who worked together were in a dark restaurant at some point on December 15th? The only thing that suggested Victoria had taken the pictures was her tape recorder sitting on the table. The date stamp was suggestive, though. I checked to make sure that December 15th was the day before Victoria’s body was found.

I looked through the rest of the pictures again. They all had date stamps on them, including the ones of Jason.

I looked more closely at the vampire boy in his mirrored sunglasses. Heather was right. It was easy to see that Jason had taken the pictures himself. His hand and the camera were reflected perfectly in his lenses.

I was about to go back to the other photos when I noticed something else. Behind Jason’s head, on the back window of the car, I could see a round decal. It looked familiar, even though it was reversed. Damn! I’d seen that decal that morning! It was the American Beauty logo. There were beads hanging from the rearview mirror. I’d seen those this morning, too. When Jason took that picture, he was in his mother’s car, in the driver’s seat. On December 15th.

I pulled the negatives out of the film envelope. He had not only taken the pictures on December 15th, but he’d taken them sometime after Victoria had snapped the American Beauty dudes. Jason’s self-portraits were the last two shots on the roll and, judging from the light, they were taken around dusk. I noticed one other thing as I looked at the pictures again. In one of them, a shoulder and part of an arm in a black sleeve were barely visible on the far right-hand edge. Somebody had been in the passenger seat.

Well, so what? I asked myself. It wasn’t weird for a kid to be in his mother’s car, even if it happened to be the day before her body was discovered.

Except it was weird. Victoria wasn’t at home that day. She was at the Beavertail quarreling with Bobby Marks after meeting the men from American Beauty. The pictures were telling a story, but it wasn’t one that I could make sense of.

:: :: ::

Daniel called. He had made it to Austin.

“Just wanted to let you know I’m okay,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Bye for now.”

I had tried to talk him out of the “bye for now” earlier, but damned if it didn’t sound nice now. Except—hadn’t we broken up? The guy walked out on me—couldn’t even hang around for New Year’s. Right?

Oh, Daniel. What the hell happened to us? Couldn’t we make room in our relationship for ourselves and our lives? If we didn’t, maybe Victoria was right all along. Maybe we were just a hooker and a john, getting together for no-fuss sex.

Damn it. We never did talk. Not really. I wondered if we ever would.

:: :: ::

Dinner at the vicarage was a very casual affair. Sierra had picked up a pizza on her way home. She asked if Daniel would be joining us.

“He’s playing poker at the Golden Nugget,” I said. I just wasn’t up for telling the truth. Fortunately, my little lie was enough to ward off further questions.

Michael had been home most of the afternoon, on the phone trying to convince all his board members and donors that he really knew what he was doing.

“I’ve been worried all day that Julia was going to figure out a way to weasel out of our agreement,” Michael said, “but at about four thirty, she sent a new set of escrow instructions by courier, just as we agreed this morning. Sierra’s got to look them over, but as far as I can tell, the Willow Lake deal’s together again, and it’ll close by Friday.”

“I delivered Richard McKimber’s check, too,” I said. “Now he can afford to send his son off to Cottonwood Ranch.”

“Really?” Michael said. “That’s where he’s going?”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“I’ve been there. It’s got a good reputation for helping troubled kids.”

“Well, this kid’s definitely troubled,” I said. “It was bad enough that he’s bipolar. It didn’t help that he found out his mother was a prostitute a couple of days before she died.”

“So now you can bow out of the whole sordid mess?” Sierra asked.

“We still don’t know who killed Victoria,” I said.

“Might be best to leave it to the cops, baby sis—Copper,” Michael said.

“Maybe,” I said.

But I wasn’t about to let somebody get away with murder.

:: :: ::

Wednesday, December 28

The story in the morning Light made me sad. David was right about the unflattering photo of Richard McKimber. He looked like a raving lunatic. And he wasn’t wearing a hat, which made him look older and nuttier than he actually was. The story also included quotes from neighbors who seemed all too eager to say things like, “We’ve always been suspicious of him,” and “Richard McKimber has a hair-trigger temper. I won’t let my kids go anywhere near him.”

The story also included this disturbing tidbit:

McKimber left his home Tuesday afternoon with his son Jason, 15. According to a neighbor, the two were carrying luggage. “It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the last we see of him,” said the neighbor, Al Ternullo, 74. “And I say good riddance.”

The piece closed with a boilerplate request for anybody with information helpful to the police to call “Secret Witness,” a program that promises that the identity of tipsters “shall remain protected and anonymous.”

The pictures from Victoria’s camera tugged at my conscience. If they provided clues about Victoria’s last hours, did I have the right to withhold them from the police? I toyed with the idea of turning the pictures over to Secret Witness, but it seemed like a cop-out. Besides, they would have lost half their value if I weren’t around to explain the timeline and say where I’d gotten them.

Damn. I couldn’t say I wanted to, but I needed to make another trip down to Chantilly Court. Old Mr. Ternullo was going to be very disappointed, but I was willing to bet that his neighbor would be back tonight after dropping his son off at Cottonwood Ranch.

I had lunch in the lunchroom with David Nussbaum. It felt great to eat a sandwich without worrying whether an old lecher was going to ask if we’d made a mattress squeak.

“Want to go to Ed’s funeral with me tomorrow?” David asked.

“I can’t say I want to, exactly, but sure,” I said. “I have the day off, so I guess I’ll meet you there. It’s at ten, right?”

“Yes,” David said. “We could have lunch afterward.”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” I said. “I’ve got an errand.”

David looked at me questioningly.

“In fact,” I said, “I’ve got stuff I should be doing right now.”

It was risky to keep hanging around David. I knew myself well enough to know I might reveal too much about my involvement with the McKimber family.

“How about dinner tonight?” David said.

“What? No date with Clint?”

David leaned forward and lowered his voice. Even without Ed Bramlett around, the lunchroom had a lot of attentive ears.

“I was hoping for a date with you.”

There it was, out in the open—kind of like a flower bulb that finally sends a leaf above ground. We’d been flirting with the idea, of course, but until David popped the bare question, we could pretend we weren’t really doing it.

“I can’t tonight,” I said. “I’m sorry.” And before he could come up with another offer I might not be able to refuse, I fled to my cube.

He didn’t follow. He didn’t call. With luck, I told myself, I’d escape at five without bumping into him.

The irony was that I would have liked nothing more than to bump into David. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have minded bumping into him for a good long time.

:: :: ::

I saw them as soon as I turned the corner onto my street. Not one but two cop cars in the vicarage’s driveway. My heart stopped beating, I stopped breathing, and I had an almost irresistible urge to pull a U-turn and start driving to Connecticut. All I could think was that Julia Saxon had decided to nail me for extortion. That or somebody had figured out I was withholding evidence in the Victoria McKimber investigation. Either way, the law was there to arrest me. I looked at my hands. They were shaking even though I had the steering wheel in a death grip.

I slowed to a halt and took a few deep breaths. Gradually, my world came back into more realistic focus. Maybe the cops were there because they had figured out who had broken into my apartment. That was a much more pleasant thought, especially if they had connected the break-in to Julia. I liked the image of her in handcuffs, preferably on the front page of The Light.

A couple of neighbors were standing on the front lawn of the house across the street. They were all looking at a silver Lexus, and it was easy to see why. The front end was up on the sidewalk and crunched into a pine tree. As I pulled closer, one of the cop cars in the driveway began backing out. As it turned and passed me, I caught sight of a face through the back window. Jaz Cutler! And wasn’t this the same silver Lexus that chased me down Dean Martin Drive?

I let the other police car pull out, parked in the driveway, and headed toward the house. The front door was ajar, and I heard voices coming from the kitchen.

I found Michael and Sierra there.

“Copper,” Sierra said. “Are you okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “What about you?”

“We’ve had some excitement around here,” Sierra said.

“So I gather,” I said. “What happened?”

“Michael and I both came home about three hours ago to work on letters to Alliance board members. All of a sudden, somebody started pounding on the door and yelling.”

“Jaz Cutler?”

“Yes!” Sierra said. “Michael tried to calm him down, but he was drunk. He kept calling us thieves and demanding his money back.”

“Sierra managed to sneak off and call the police,” Michael said, “which turned out to be a good thing. The guy pulled a knife on me.”

Whoa! Sort of like what he did to me at the liquor store in Green Valley.

“Then, when he heard the sirens,” Sierra said, “he jumped in his car and tried to drive away.”

“Didn’t get very far,” I said.

“Good thing that pine tree’s as big as it is,” Sierra said, “or he might have gone right on into the Stecklers’ living room.”

“It was good in another way, too,” Michael said. “In addition to assault and battery, the cops nailed him for drunk driving. He had an open quart of tequila in his car. Oh, and a gun.”

“It didn’t help that he called the male cop the N-word and the female cop the C- word,” Sierra said.

“God,” I said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“We’re fine,” Michael said. “And a tow truck is supposed to come and haul the car away.”

“When I saw the police cars, I thought maybe Julia had—”

“You and Michael must’ve really terrorized her,” Sierra said. “The deal’s set to close on Friday, no problem.”

And Jaz Cutler was on his way to jail. Things were definitely looking up. I thought about telling Michael and Sierra the whole story about Jaz and me, but decided to save them the angst. Plus, I didn’t want them telling Mom, who’d be even more upset. Justice had been served, and I was happy to leave it that way for now.

“Where’s Daniel?” Sierra asked suddenly.

“In Texas,” I said. No point in lying again. “Family emergency.” Well, maybe just a little.

I knew Sierra didn’t buy it, but she didn’t pry.

:: :: ::

Thursday, December 29

Ed Bramlett’s funeral wasn’t bad, all things considered. The best part was that the body had been cremated, so there wasn’t any plasticized mannequin to gape at. Ed’s daughter read “O Captain! My Captain!”, and a minister of the nonspecific Protestant variety gave a eulogy so flattering it sounded as though he thought Ed should be deified. Then a man who had gone to high school with Ed spoke briefly, ending with the line, “He was the best man who ever lived.”

I had a hard time believing my ears. David and I looked at each other, which was a huge mistake. We both had to feign major coughing attacks to cover our laughter. Then I noticed that quite a few other people in the assembled multitude suddenly had throat problems, too.

I thought about what Ed Bramlett himself would have thought about a line like that. He would have laughed, too, but he wouldn’t have tried to cover it up. He would have just guffawed, and to hell with what anybody thought.

Ed Bramlett might not have been the best man who ever lived, but as we all sat there trying not to snicker, I appreciated Ed for the first time. He was an unapologetic, opinionated, politically incorrect curmudgeon, and his last few deeds on earth included saving my brother’s ass. He might not merit deification, but maybe he deserved membership in the brotherhood of excellent old bastards.

After I said good-bye to David, Chris Farr waylaid me on my way back to the Max.

“Copper, I’m glad I caught you. I just wanted to say—well—thank you for how you handled Ed. I know it was tough.”

“I had no idea he was dying.”

“Very few people did. That’s how Ed wanted it.”

“Sounds like him, all right.”

“Look, is there any way you can stop by The Light this afternoon? I know you’re on vacation, but—”

“I have an errand I can’t postpone, but after that I guess I can,” I said. “What needs to be done?”

“Oh, nothing!” Chris said. “I just forgot to give you your share of the New Year’s swag yesterday.”

It turns out the arts and entertainment editor is second only to Norton Katz and Alexandra Leonard in terms of how many “comps” he gets offered. If I made it to The Light before he left at five, Chris would let me paw through whatever tickets to New Year’s Eve parties were left. Too bad Daniel cut out early, I thought. But Michael and Sierra might enjoy a night at a fancy club. Especially if the Alliance’s property deal really did close on Friday.

:: :: ::

I called Heather to get a McKimber update.

“Yeah, Richard’s back home,” she said. “Things went as well as we could hope at the school. Jason isn’t thrilled, but he didn’t fight it, either.”

“Are you driving?” I said. I thought I could hear highway noise in the background.

“Yeah, I’m on my way to Reno. Life and business must go on.” She paused. “Thanks for getting the money from Julia, Copper. I don’t know what you did, but I swear Victoria’s smiling at you from heaven.”

“I’m hoping to get Julia to keep up the squeeze on American Beauty.”

“Me, too, but the important thing was to save Jason and Richard from their meltdown. Everything else can wait. Richard has decided to stay in business with me, by the way, although I’m pretty sure he’s going to sell that house. Some people just aren’t cut out to live with homeowners’ associations.”

“Yeah. He needs to be able to wash his car without getting in trouble.”

“You saw him wash a car?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Victoria’s Taurus. In the driveway.”

“Weird. They always took it to a car wash on Blue Diamond. He’s pretty crippled, you know.”

“Yeah, well, maybe he was just rinsing it off.”

But Heather was right. It was kind of weird. His wife’s body had been discovered just the day before, and he was washing her car?