“Who do I make the check out to?” Alex asked Colleen, poised over her checkbook. The two of them were sitting at a corner table in the Cliff House, the sandy shoreline of Ocean Beach off to the south stretching into misty fog. Seal Rock peered through the haze directly in front. Gulls hunkered down en masse. The bar was half full, with quiet conversations muted by soft jazz drifting out of hidden speakers. Ferns abounded. A dampness hung in the air.
“‘One Step Ahead Temporary Agency,’” Colleen said, tapping ash from her Virginia Slim into the ashtray. “They’ve been doing some work for me.” She took a sip of her white wine and set the glass down on its coaster. “They’ll be making the phone calls.”
“And when do you think we’ll know something?”
“Close to one hundred opticians and optometrists in San Francisco? I’m told a team of three hitting the phones can get to all in a day—maybe two. Sort out who was in business eleven years ago, narrow the list down. With that, and a little luck, we can hopefully find the perp’s optician. Whoever might have done an emergency order for a pair of glasses shortly after November the 21st.” And Colleen was hoping that order was for a young Kieran Skinner.
“One Step Ahead,” Alex repeated, swiping her hair behind her ear as she wrote out a check. She wore a purple and lavender paisley blouse made of the finest polyester money could buy. A floppy black wool hat hung on the chair by her bag. She tore off the check, dropped it in front of Colleen, next to the open pillbox that contained the fragment of Zyl.
“When do they start?” she asked, pulling the stick of celery from her Bloody Mary and biting off a miniscule piece.
“As soon as I get this to them,” Colleen said, picking up the check. “This afternoon—thanks to you.” Folding the check in half, she slipped it in the side pocket of her suit jacket. The tone of the conversation had been tense and drawn, a far cry from the flirtations they had shared the night before. But she hadn’t forgotten the other Alex.
Alex used her celery stick to stir her drink, then lifted the glass to her lips and guided the straw into her mouth before she took a very large drink. Her head shook slightly and she closed her eyes. Colleen knew she had to be hurting from last night’s champagne bout at Peg’s Place. On top of preparing to lose her father and the overdue grief being dredged up over her sister, Margaret, Alex had a full plate.
And now this. The possibility that Margaret’s murderer was not only out there, but nearby. Soon to be known, with any luck. As much as she wanted to know, needed to know, the tension had to be nerve-racking.
“This all hangs on the fact that your suspect ordered glasses,” Alex said. “In San Francisco after … Margaret …”
Colleen nodded, taking a puff of her cigarette. “It is a gamble. Maybe he had a spare pair and didn’t need an emergency order. But”—she tapped ash—“maybe not.”
Alex closed her eyes for a moment, as if to relax, then reopened them. “It would make sense that his optician would be in the same city where his family lived.”
Colleen showed Alex her crossed fingers.
“Will an optician give out that kind of information, Coll?”
“The callers at the agency will be posing as a relative.”
Alex gave Colleen a crooked smile. “What an evil mind you have.”
Colleen took a sip of her Chardonnay. “I try.”
“A woman of many talents,” Alex said.
A small jolt of electricity flowed between them.
“And then you’ll have what you need to nail this bastard?” Alex said.
“I already have his car at the scene where …” She left the sentence unfinished.
“But there must have been more than one green Ford Falcon in a city the size of San Francisco the night Margaret was murdered.”
“Not one without registration, sold back to the dealer shortly after it was purchased, right around the time of the murder. I’m verifying all that now.”
Alex sipped her Bloody Mary. “So his father wanted to cover his tracks.”
“He has the clout to do it.”
“Does he have any kind of record?”
Colleen drank some wine. “No. I checked at City Hall. Nothing. No employment record that I can find. Odd.”
“It’s as if he’s spent ten years being invisible,” Alex said. “Hiding in his room.”
Colleen nodded. “Indeed.”
“And then there’s this,” Alex said, touching the small box containing the fragment.
“Not enough to put a murderer away but, with the car, and, hopefully, the glasses, we’ll have enough.”
Alex touched the fragment almost reverently with her fingertip. “To think that this was the last thing Margaret … did.” She moved her hand away, as if startled.
“Yes,” Colleen said quietly.
“Why, Colleen?” She touched it again. “Why this?”
Colleen tapped some more ash. “Your sister knew what was happening to her, despite the drugs in her system. She wanted her murderer caught. And this”—Colleen indicated the fragment in the pillbox—“was how she did it.” Colleen shivered inwardly, thinking of Margaret Copeland in her last few moments. She saw a desperate woman facing death, struggling with Kieran. Breaking his glasses. Doing what had to be done, hoping it would connect with someone down the line. After her death. “She swallowed evidence. Hoping that someday, somehow, someone would find it and piece it together.”
“Like you did, Colleen.”
“Don’t pin any medals on me yet, Alex. I’m going by instinct.”
“You mean feel,” Alex said, drinking, putting her chunky glass down, rubbing her eyes.
“Sometimes it’s all you have.” Colleen shut the pillbox, slipping it in her other pocket. If she had followed her gut when her ex was violating Pamela, she would have known much sooner. Maybe even put an end to it before it did so much damage to her daughter. Before she killed her ex. Spent a decade in prison. Drove Pamela away from her.
“And when do I know?” Alex said, opening her eyes. “Who he is?”
“Soon.”
“I want to know who this bastard is now, Colleen.”
Colleen shook her head.
“She was my sister.”
“This is the only way it can work, Alex.” No vigilante stuff. She had seen that. Done that. “Believe it or not, I’m doing you a favor.”
Alex squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her temples with her fingertips. “You don’t know what it’s like—to be so close after so long. Knowing that you know who he is. But not know myself.”
“I can’t imagine what it must be like for you, Alex. It’s just that I don’t know for sure—yet.”
Alex’s eyes jerked open. “I want to see him dead.”
“Precisely why I’m not telling you yet,” Colleen said, taking one more drink of her wine, setting it down, gathering her bag. “Not until we’re one hundred percent.”
“And what if it isn’t?” Alex said. “What if you don’t find enough evidence to convict this animal? Who’s been hiding under our noses for eleven years? Protected?”
Colleen reached over, took Alex’s hand, squeezed it. Alex smiled, squeezed back.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, Alex.” She released Alex’s hand, checked her watch. Running late. She stood up, hoisted her bag over her shoulder. “Soon. Please give my regards to your father.”
Alex’s remark about Kieran hiding in his room for ten years gave her pause. After she dropped the check off at One Step Ahead so they could start calling opticians, she made a phone call.
To Millard Drake, the forensic analyst. She had promised to keep him up to date.
And she had a question for his wife, Alice, former Chief Forensic Psychiatrist at Atascadero State Mental Hospital. Although Colleen didn’t agree with her hypothesis—that Margaret had swallowed the fragments in a symbolic act to put off some kind of mental torment during her murder—she had a question for her.
She spoke to Millard Drake, who was surprised to learn that the fragments were pieces of glasses, most likely the killer’s. But not that surprised.
“It makes sense,” he said.
“If any of this does,” Colleen said. “I’m wondering if I might speak to your wife for a moment, Mr. Drake.”
Alice Drake was put on the line. Her tone was aloof. Colleen now understood that the woman’s cold bearing was more unintentional than not. She sensed she could trust her.
“I’m wondering if I can ask you a huge favor,” Colleen said. “And a confidential one.”
“What is it?”
“I’m looking for someone who might have been in a facility from the time shortly after Margaret was murdered until fairly recently.”
“Why?” Alice Drake said icily.
“It’s related to this case. I understand you don’t want any part of it but I think I have a possible suspect. But one without a history since Margaret’s murder.”
“And you think he was locked up for a period of time?”
“Call it a hunch.”
There was a long pause while Millard Drake hammered in the background.
“Very well,” Alice Drake said. “What is the name?”