Chapter Twenty-Two

Mira Loma PD, Friday 10:00 a.m.

Dressed in a pale lime pantsuit with my hair tied back, I projected cool-as-a-cucumber style as I arrived to meet Callahan. Oliver had been delayed on a case, but he provided me with strict instructions on what I could say. Instead of the interview room, Callahan led me to his cluttered desk in the open squad area.

“Did you talk to Lindy?” I asked.

“Detective Torres is interviewing her. Tell me why you think you’re being followed.”

I repeated the information from the first moment I felt uneasy. Callahan jotted notes on a tablet, nodding every so often, but he never asked a question.

When I concluded, I reached into my purse. “I’ve come up with a list of people who might want to kill Rick.” I pulled out a duplicate of my suspect list.

He put it on the desk, not checking it as he flipped through pages of the notebook. “Let’s talk about Wells for a minute. Tell me about his gambling.”

Of all the things he could ask, that surprised me. “What do you mean?”

“Did he do a lot of gambling?”

Where had this come from? “Super Bowl, World Series, March Madness. Football pools.”

He nodded, his eyes cool, giving nothing away. “No Lakers, no boxing, no Vegas?”

With his financial problems? I almost asked. “We used to go to Las Vegas quite a bit. For a while we went every month.”

“Uh-huh?” His eyes flickered to me, scrutinizing me. I sensed he was searching for something. “Did he enjoy it?”

“Rick could have developed a serious gambling problem. A couple of weekends he lost thirty thousand dollars. One weekend it was creeping toward sixty, before he started winning it back. At that point I put my foot down. I wasn’t going to lose thousands just to stay in a gaudy hotel room and get free meals. We stopped going.”

Callahan stroked the side of his face as though he had a beard. What did he know? Was this something to tell Sam?

“Was he gambling?” I asked, thinking about my lost money.

“Possibly,” he said and turned back to a folder on his desk.

Gambling made sense. We had a lavish lifestyle, but this might answer how he managed to spend so much of my money.

“I worried he could become compulsive about it,” I continued, hoping for a response. “His eyes would glaze over at the slot machine or he’d sit at the blackjack table for hours, convinced he had a system. Every roll of the dice was going to bring a fortune. I could watch when he was winning, but when he lost, he became morose and mean.”

“Mean?” That grabbed his attention and he sat forward. “In what way?”

“He’d get verbally abusive. Not to me. He knew better, but to others. Waitresses, dealers.”

“What do you mean he knew better than to be abusive to you?”

That sounded like a question Oliver wouldn’t want me to answer, but I sensed Callahan might read more into it if I didn’t. Besides, the reason was simple. “I’d leave him there and come home. Several times I took his car so he had to fly back.”

Callahan stared at me for a moment, and he started to say something and then stopped. Could Rick have been going to Las Vegas without me? We never questioned each other if we made separate weekend plans. There were weekends he had business meetings or I might go to a spa. We kept in constant touch by cell, texts, and email. It would have been easy to say he was in San Francisco and be in Vegas instead.

I glanced around the room, digesting what I’d learned, and spied Hank. As though he knew I was there, his eyes flashed across the expanse of desks and met mine. I turned away, but I could sense him moving toward us.

He stopped by the desk, not acknowledging me, addressing Callahan. “I’ll send you notes on what Brookings said about the threat against his daughter.”

Callahan leaned back on his chair and nodded. “Thanks for going over, Chief. Brookings is a prick. Where does he get off saying he’ll only speak to the chief? Like we’re nothing but errand boys. What the fuck was so important?”

Brookings? As in Bobbi the Bimbo? As in the Pilgrim—Miles Standish Brookings? Callahan’s frustration amused me. Finally! Someone he couldn’t push around!

Hank handed him a manila envelope. “See what you think. You might send that glass to the lab, but they passed it around, so if it had viable fingerprints, they’re gone. Might be something on the note, though.”

Hank fierce blue eyes flickered to me for the first time. “Miss delaGarza, can you come by my office before you leave? I need to discuss the security work my father was doing on your behalf.” His voice was loud enough to carry beyond me and Callahan. He was attempting to get my connection to Sam out in the open.

I started to say no, but Callahan emptied the contents of the manila envelope onto his desk. Inside were two plastic bags. One held a lethal looking sliver of glass, the other a note written in large red block letters.

I gasped and both Hank and Callahan jerked toward me.

“Has anyone sent you anything like this?” Callahan asked.

I stared at it, shaking my head and realized that Hank had become very still. My eyes met his, and I could see he was starting to catch the significance.

“Are we finished here?” I asked Callahan, my hand beginning to shake.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, distracted by the glass.

I sensed Hank watching me, but I couldn’t meet his eyes. Because I knew the origin of the glass and the note.

****

Hank stood by his desk, absently rummaging through a folder when I tapped on the open door. He waved me inside without looking up.

“Hank, I need to talk to you. About that note...”

He held up a hand. “Let the lab handle it.”

“But...”

His eyes avoided mine, eyes focused on the folder. “I mean it, Kimberly. If you have anything to say, you’d better have your attorney with you. I don’t want to hear...”—he held up his fingers in a quote sign—“anything ‘off the record,’ that might get it disallowed in court.”

He was right. I needed to discuss this with Oliver. It had been a joke. A terrible joke.

Even though my afternoon at Geneva with Delia was a boozy fog, I recalled that part with the clarity of yesterday. We’d stumbled along the cobbled walkway as we waited for her driver to take us home. We stopped when we saw Rick’s Jaguar convertible.

“I thought you said he wasn’t with her,” I told Delia.

“I’ll bet the lousy Weasel went up the back walkway to avoid us. He probably saw our cars and knew we were in the bar.” She paused beside the open convertible. “We should smash his windshield. There’s a rock garden over there and the valets are all busy.”

“We’d get busted for vandalism.” At least I hadn’t been drunk enough to do that.

“Then let’s leave a note saying we’re after him. Remember what we did to the creep who dumped me senior year? We’d leave notes on his car and it made him crazy. I’ve got a notepad and pen. Think of something obnoxious to say.” She opened her purse and reached inside and shrieked.

“What?”

She lifted out a napkin and unrolled it to show the sharp glass stem from my broken martini glass. “Let’s leave this. I’ll get a key envelope from the valet. You write the note.”

While she was gone, I searched in her purse for a pen. Not finding one, I opted for a red lip liner pencil and scribbled on the napkin. I couldn’t remember the exact words—something about death. I figured Rick would know my handwriting and write it off as the nasty joke it was supposed to be.

When Delia returned with the envelope, we put the glass and note into it and tossed it onto the passenger seat of the car. As Delia’s limo pulled into the drive, we rushed toward it, giggling like school girls.

How Bobbi ended up with the broken stem was a mystery, but it could be another nail in my coffin. I let the memory fade back into its drunken fogbank and turned to Hank.

“Why did you want to see me? Thanks for bringing Sam to oversee the security installation. He said he stayed with you last night.”

“Sam made it sound like the two of you are investigating.” He looked at me, eyes sharp as darts.

“Someone needs to find the killer. What if he’s after me too? Think about Lindy. She was driving my car. The hit and run driver might have been after me.”

Hank waved an impatient hand. “Torres is talking to her, but from what I’ve heard, she was driving too fast and may have been racing the other car.”

“She told me she was careful.”

“You think she’d tell the truth if she was racing? Look, I would appreciate it if you hired a PI and left my dad out of this.”

“All you’re worried about is looking bad for your mayor and people like the Brookings family. I’m sure they’ll give you a nice contribution to your next campaign for providing personal attention.”

“I am not elected,” he said through gritted teeth.

“But you are worried about your job and appearances. Isn’t that why you were making such a big deal out of my ‘security arrangement’ with your dad?” It was my turn to hold up the quote fingers.

The coldness that grew in his eyes was like an approaching glacier. “Look, I know what’s happening. You’re doing your normal Kimberly crap.”

His harsh words smacked into me like a slap of hard wind to my face. “My what?”

He unloaded on me with the force of a blizzard. “You’re a pampered princess who is so damned used to getting your own way that you can’t handle it when the real world invades your private fantasy life! Well, it’s here, lady, and it’s real. But I won’t stand by and let you hurt my father by getting him involved.”

****

Friday, 3:00 p.m.

I wasn’t certain how much to tell Sam about my confrontation with Hank. He had remained at the house working with the security company while I drove to the police station. Now he wanted to go through my list of suspects. He sat in my office, leaning back on his chair, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose as he examined my notes. A bony finger tapped the page. “Girly colors, but this is good.”

His comment was the equivalent of a good grade from a teacher and it improved my dismal mood. My nerves had been on edge since I left the police station. Thank goodness for Sam and the glass of scotch at my fingertips.

“I have Rick’s books,” I said, patting the pile on my desk. “I don’t know if they’ll be much help.” Callahan had them waiting when I left Hank’s office.

Sam leaned over and opened one, frowning at the lines of neat little figures. “Why isn’t all this on a computer?”

“Rick was a techni-phobe. He did most things, like take orders, by hand. I fought to get him to switch from a Filofax planner to a Blackberry and he only recently got a smartphone.”

“What we need to do is to go through the wine shop. Do you have a key to the place?”

“No, and now that Jennifer controls things I doubt she’ll give me one.”

He peered at me over the top of his glasses. “You’re part owner. That counts for something whether she likes it or not.”

“Wouldn’t the police have taken anything of interest?”

“They might have missed something that only you could peg as important. They’re looking for the obvious. We need to look beyond that. How are your skills of observation?”

The question made me smile. “I can tell you the exact way to pick out a copy of a designer dress.”

The fierce frown that washed over his face reminded me of Hank, though it was an older version. “You better take this more seriously, missy.”

His displeasure had an equal effect as his earlier praise, but in the opposite direction. Lurching to my feet, I walked to the sliding glass door and yanked it open. As I stepped onto the patio, I took a deep breath, pressing my lips together.

Hank’s granite expression at the police station haunted me. I once described his blue eyes as dreamy warm pools I’d like to dive into. But they were hard as polar ice today. I’d have cracked my skull if I had tried to jump into them.

Why did his words hurt so much? Was that how he saw me? Sam said that Hank had loved me, but I doubted anything was left of those feelings. Maybe they were dead when we broke up and that was why he let me go so easily.

“Do you think I’m a pampered princess?” I asked, turning to Sam.

He was staring at a notebook, deep in thought. As my question floated through the door, his head jerked up like a deer startled by a sudden sound. “What?”

Not revealing the cause of the argument, I related portions of my battle with Hank. “He called me a pampered princess who lived in a fantasy world.” The words stung as I repeated them and Sam seemed to recognize my pain.

He stood and walked over to me, placing a gentle hand on my arm. His smile was as warm as Hank’s glare had been cold. “Why shouldn’t you be a princess?”

“That’s how I’ve always felt—special. The bartender at Geneva called me a Queen.”

His chuckle was as soothing as scotch. “Okay, a promotion.”

“Good things happen to me. Even Delia teases me about my good luck. I’m like a star in my own private movie. Is that so bad?”

Sam’s lined face grew thoughtful. “It can be, especially since your luck is for shit right now. From here on, if you come up with a movie scene, think crime dramas. This ain’t no romantic comedy.”

A gavel rapped sharply in my head. I could see myself standing at the defense table in a nicely cut blue suit. Vera Wang, maybe. No! Enough about the clothes! I thought of a judge in a severe black robe with eyes as hard as Hank’s facing me from the bench, reading the verdict:

“Regarding the count of murder in the first degree, we the jury find the defendant, Kimberly Rose delaGarza, guilty.”

The gavel rapped.

Was that how it happened?

I shivered, blinking away the offending image. I didn’t like the thought of a courtroom thriller. Not if I was the person standing at that defense table. It didn’t matter what designer suit I chose to wear. My next outfit would be an orange prison jumpsuit. I hated jumpsuits. And my mother said I looked horrible in orange. What kind of shoes would I wear? Nikes? Keds? Certainly no Manolo Blahnik.

Maybe I should forget movies. I turned to Sam as the sidekick to his Sherlock Holmes. Except I wasn’t even a good Dr. Watson. “What’s next, boss?”

He waved at the board and held out a dry erase pen. “Let’s go through these names. Maybe we can come up with more on why they should be suspects.”