I sat in the dark, hot closet for as long as I could stand it. Then, my ears quivering to catch the slightest sound, I eased the door open and stood up, holding onto a woolly coat for balance. The only plan I had was to get out of here as fast as possible. Or, was it? What if they were still outside?
I should call for help. I couldn’t call the police because they wouldn’t be happy that I’d been in the apartment, especially if I told them their chief suspect gave me the keys and asked me to clean up. Also because, for whatever reason, Dermott didn’t trust them. Part of me itched to call Dickie, but not the smart part. First, he was mad at me, and explaining my hiding in the closet while someone who had tried to kill me stood a few feet away wasn’t going to improve his temper. Second, he had Isabella to take care of, and I didn’t relish the idea of him telling her how I’d gotten into this mess. I had the feeling she and her dimples didn’t get cornered in closets. By now, Charlie was out of reach and would be until he arrived in San Francisco.
Maybe I should wait until dark and sneak out, but I was too stressed to stay here much longer, even though the bad guy was unlikely to come back if he believed the place was empty. My heart was returning to normal operations and my head was clearing. As long as I was in the apartment, I’d take five more minutes to look around. What I’d overheard proved Dermott not only didn’t stage his own injury, but that he was being framed for Gabby’s death. Charlie had been told it appeared the same gun was used for both shootings. Okay, connect the dots. Easier said than done.
Could the driver who rammed my car be someone hired to scare me off, someone who wasn’t otherwise involved and, therefore, someone I wouldn’t be able to connect with Lynthorpe? Based on his side of the phone conversation, it didn’t sound as if he was the shooter. His voice didn’t sound like a criminal’s, though. Whatever that means.
What about his mention of Rory Brennan and Coe Anderson? The president of Lynthorpe was tough under his smooth surface, but I was blanking on what payoff could possibly tempt him. Maybe he and the dean knew the pieces weren’t legitimately Margoletti’s to give away, but they were such prizes that they were willing to help cover up some evidence of that. Could it be that Margoletti was being tricked into signing off on List A while someone else intended to substitute List B in the final document? But you don’t earn the reputation as one of Silicon Valley’s top lawyers if you can be fooled that easily.
Was the man in the apartment sent by Vince Margoletti? What if the college leaders were all in the dark about something and Margoletti was using Lynthorpe to hide a theft, or cover up a money laundering scheme that went wrong, or foist off some high quality fakes?
I pulled out my cell phone, noting with another lurch of my heart that the ringer had been on the whole time I was in the closet. Thank you, Dickie, I thought, for not picking that precise moment to call and bug me about something really significant like whether or not I’d like to take another test ride in your new car.
Quentin, my lawyer, was the logical person to talk to. I dialed his office but the call went immediately to voice mail. I tried again. Same thing, damn. This was hardly the kind of message I could leave on a recording device.
I had to tell someone and Charlie was it for now, even if he couldn’t help right away. My finger hovered over his number. I had promised him I would avoid doing anything rash, and what was going to Dermott’s apartment if not rash? Maybe I could kind of skip over how I got here, and give him the basics. I hit the call icon.
Of course it went directly to voicemail, but that was all right since I didn’t want to answer any awkward questions about how I wound up in this situation. I told him that I’d come in, that all I’d seen was Macho Cop’s toothpick, and that I’d heard some scary talk that made it clear someone was looking for me, someone who had maybe tried to kill me already and who was trying to frame Dermott for his wife’s death. I finished by saying I was going back to the hotel and calling the detective, then tossed the phone back in my bag, already unsure I should have confided in him. I would call Kirby but not from inside an apartment where I had no business being.
By now, a half hour had passed since the mysterious man had left, and I tiptoed down the stairs to the first floor. Going out the front door still felt too exposed, so I explored the rest of the first floor hall. Sure enough, there was a door at the opposite end, a single one with no window. I opened it partway and peered out. A large Dumpster occupied part of a wide driveway that merged with a paved alley. A couple of cars were parked along the alley, but no one was in either one. A flicker of something tickled my memory. What? I couldn’t bring it into focus and I couldn’t stand around much longer. I could see the tree-lined main street at one end of the alley only five hundred feet away, with car traffic moving normally. I walked as briskly down the alley as my shaky legs would allow toward the stretch of small stores. Nothing seemed out of place.
I had almost reached the end of the alley when a hand came from somewhere behind me and slammed over my mouth and nose. I was so shocked I couldn’t think, plus my nose hurt where the hand had banged against it. Tears stung my eyes as my brain scrambled to make sense of what was happening.
A man’s voice said, from behind and far too close to my ear, “I have an idea. Why don’t you come for a ride with me?” The last time I heard that voice, I was standing behind a rack of clothes in a stuffy closet. I tried to turn to see what he looked like, but his other hand was on my arm, holding me tight to his body, turning us both around and away from the street.
I couldn’t breathe. I grabbed for his hand, desperate to pull it away from my face, but he was strong and I couldn’t do more than move his fingers slightly so my nose was clear. My legs were buckling under me. I dropped my bag, which was getting in the way of my attempts to pull him off me.
“Hey, we can’t leave that lying here,” he said, yanking me to one side as he leaned down to scoop it up. I lost my balance and would have fallen, but he pushed me up against a car. I was looking at a shiny black roof. It flashed on me then. This must be the new car I saw out in front of Dermott’s apartment. Hadn’t I seen it somewhere else before that? It couldn’t be the college president’s car, could it?
No time to think. “Yell and I’ll use this,” he muttered in my ear at the same time I felt something hard poke into my ribcage. He let go of my face as he reached for the car’s door handle and I sucked in a ragged breath of air and yelled, “Help” as loudly as I could. It sounded like a soprano frog croaking. I hoped someone in the apartment building might hear. I took another breath to try again, and then something went crack against the side of my head. The world went black.