Midnight barked from the backyard. Someone hard-knocked my front door. I went to the door and checked the peephole. I saw the top of a woman’s head and opened the door.
“Rick Cahill?” Her voice sounded like pocket change rattling around in a clothes dryer. Loud. Jarring. Unexpected.
She couldn’t have been taller than five feet or weighed more than ninety pounds. Brown eyes the size of coasters took up most of her face. Lips took up the rest. Auburn hair in a bob cut. Late thirties, early forties, but wearing it easy. Everything fit together. Not pretty, but attractive. She wore jeans and a gray sweater.
“Yes.” I expected her to shove a piece of paper at me and tell me I’d been served.
“Why do you have to be such an asshole?”
Not the first time I’d been asked that question. But never upon meeting someone for the first time.
“If I knew who you were, I might have an answer for you.”
“You cost me a job!”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” I’d dealt with crazy before. Sometimes I played along. Sometimes I called it out. Either way, I’d yet to come home and find Glenn Close waiting for me with a knife in my bathtub, so my reads had been good so far. I needed braille to read this one.
“The Cowboy Lawyer hired me and then fired me because you wanted to play Hamlet.”
Oh. Not crazy. Just pissed off. And rightly so.
“Buckley didn’t tell me he’d already hired someone else. Sorry.”
“I passed on another job to take the Eddington case.” Her Betty Boop eyes narrowed in accusation. “Now, I don’t have either.”
“You may be in luck. I’m still playing Hamlet.” I opened the door wide. “You want to come in or just yell at me on my porch?”
She tilted her head and half-eyed me, then walked into the house.
“You want a beer?”
“I guess I could have a beer since I don’t have a job anymore.”
This was going well.
I grabbed two Ballast Point IPAs from the fridge. Maybe alcohol would help defuse the burning stick of dynamite standing in front of me.
“You got a name?” I handed the woman a beer.
“Moira MacFarlane.” She didn’t stick out a hand or give me a smile. I swept a hand to the sofa in the living room. She sat down. She had to point the toes of her boots down to reach the floor. “You said something about Hamlet and me being in luck.”
“I think I’m opting for ‘not to be.’”
“You really are Hamlet. First you say ‘no,’ then you say ‘yes,’ now you say ‘no.’ ” Moira smiled for the first time and shook her head. “You’re worse than a woman.”
“You read the police report?”
“No.”
“The kid did it.”
“Of course he did.” She flattened a smile and shrugged her shoulders. “You’re opting out because the client’s guilty?”
“I draw the line at murder.”
“If I pulled down six figures at La Jolla Investigations, I might draw the same line. But I can’t afford to be so picky.” She took a swig of beer and looked at me without blinking for so long that I thought we were playing a game of blink. Finally, “A lot of people in this town think you draw the line right after murder.”
“Is that what you think?” A harder edge in my voice than I expected. “That I murdered my wife?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think.”
“You’re right.” I stood up. “It doesn’t.”
“But I don’t think you did.” Moira remained seated.
“Either way, now we’re even.” I remained standing.
“No.” She set her beer down on the coffee table and finally stood up. “That was inappropriate. I let the job thing get the better of me. That wasn’t fair. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Her Kewpie Doll face dropped and she headed for the front door.
“You insult me and then leave behind a half-empty beer?”
She turned around.
“Sit down and finish your beer, and I’ll see if I can get you back your job.”
Moira went back to the couch and sat down. “I’m all ears.”
More like all eyes.
“I owe Buckley and the family an interview with a witness. Anything short of a video showing someone else murdering the Eddington family, I’m off the case.”
“Funny you should mention a video.”
“Why?”
“The Eddington clan is an interesting group.” She hit her beer and leaned toward me. “I’m going to tell you a little story because you’re not the asshole I thought you were.”
“I’m a different kind of asshole.”
“Exactly.”
She held up her beer bottle and waved it. I went to the fridge and got her another. A hint of pink had slid under her olive skin. She seemed a bit buzzed. Maybe that’s all it took when you weighed ninety pounds.
I sat down on the recliner. “Give me your story.”
“About six months before he died, Thomas Eddington hired me to tail his father for about a week.”
“Jack?” She had me. “Why?”
“Thomas didn’t tell me. The gig was to just follow the old man and report back daily.” She took a swig of beer and smiled at me. A nice smile. “Turns out Jack liked the ponies. Every day after he left the Eddington Golf warehouse in Carlsbad, he’d drive south to the racetrack in Del Mar.”
“Never saw him leave the track happy.” Another swig. Another smile. “One day, I’m following the old man after he leaves the warehouse, and he goes north on I-5 instead of south to the racetrack or his home in La Jolla. I tail him all the way up to a golf store in LA’s Koreatown. He parks around back and starts unloading long thin boxes from his SUV to a Korean guy.”
“I’m guessing Jack Eddington didn’t drive ninety miles to LA to make a delivery for Eddington Golf.”
“Guessed right. The Korean guy didn’t even put the clubs in the store. He put them in his own SUV. Then he handed Jack a thick envelope. Got it all on video.”
“Cash for clubs, then onto the black market. How did Thomas take the news?”
“I showed him the video and his expression never changed. Wrote me the biggest check I’d ever earned and showed me the door. A month later, I saw a story in the paper that Jack Eddington had retired as CEO of Eddington Golf and that Thomas had taken over. Five months later, Thomas and his wife and daughter were dead.”
“Did you tell LJPD after the family was murdered?”
“Yeah, but they had their narrative and evidence.” Another gulp of beer. A goofy smile. “Anyway, the kid did it.”
“You tell all of this to Buckley?”
“Hell no! Jack Eddington is bankrolling the investigation.” A burp, then a giggle.
This put a new spin on the ball, but not enough for me to jump on the “Free Randall” bandwagon. Maybe Trey Fellows could give me another nudge.