CHAPTER FIVE

 

I'd checked my phone a total of fifteen times by mid-shift the next morning, anxious for word from Irene about Bryan Steele. The silence on her end was making me jumpy. That and the four cups of coffee I'd downed trying to pump some life into my veins as I took the early shift—which started at 5 a.m. to prep pastries and lattes for the students who'd pulled midterm all-nighters. As early as it sometimes started, I actually kinda liked my job. The coffee bar sat on the mezzanine floor of the Stanford Bookstore, filling my days with the heavenly scents of dark roast and freshly printed paperbacks. The tips paid the bills (mostly), free caffeine was an employee perk (no pun intended), and being on the university campus gave me unfettered access to dozens of classes, of which I'd audited (or crashed) enough to qualify as a PhD candidate. Unfortunately, since college tuition had never been in the budget for the single mother who'd raised me, and auditing classes didn't earn actual credits, a degree eluded me. Which was fine. It saved me the trouble of picking just one subject to focus all my time on. My brain was a virtual Jill-of-all-trades, full of the random facts I'd picked up over time. All very useful in my career of filling paper cups for cramming college students.

My fellow barista, Pam Lockwood, slipped behind the counter with an armful of empty cups, which she dumped in the recycling bin. Pam was one of those rare always-happy people, pink-cheeked with a general air of softness about her, in appearance and in personality. She'd only worked at the coffee bar for a few quarters, but she was convinced she'd find her Mr. Right someday behind a macchiato or a cappuccino, if only she kept flossing. Pam was a big believer in good oral hygiene and the appeal of a winning smile.

"Do you see that blond guy sitting by the stairs?" She blew a wisp of brown hair from her eyes. "Maybe I should ask him out. What do you think?"

Blond guy? My mind went instantly to Watson. I glanced over, relieved and irritated to see it wasn't him. Of course it wasn't. Watson was buried in his cinderblock Batcave solving the eternal mysteries of unexplained death. "You mean the guy in head-to-toe leather? With the motorcycle helmet on the chair beside him?"

"I don't think he's a student," she said. "He doesn't have any books or a laptop or anything. Just his helmet. And his…leather."

The way she breathed that last word, whispered of hidden fetishes. One I wanted to know nothing about.

"Motorcycles are so sexy," Pam said with a little shiver. "I mean, sure, there's the chance you could get flattened into ribbon by a tractor trailer on the freeway, but it's the fear of death that makes you live, right?"

Except Pam's idea of living was hitting up Bed Bath & Beyond on payday to browse for the latest kitchen gadget and stock up on fluffy bath towels.

"You can just tell he's born to be wild," she added in a rapturous whisper.

"I think he might be just passing through," I told her. "You might want to wait for someone more…rooted."

"That's good advice, Marty." She bent to retrieve a spray bottle of cleanser from the storage cabinet. "Do you know where I can rent a motorcycle helmet?"

So much for good advice.

"Why don't you start with buying him another coffee?" I suggested.

Pam considered it. "You're probably right. I can work a coffee into my budget. I'm trying to be frugal, since I've got my eye on a new juicer." She found the folded newspaper. "Thanks, Marty. Let me know if I can give you advice sometime."

I hoped she didn't mean that.

After checking my phone for time number sixteen, I decided to take advantage of the lull in the customers by wiping down the tables. Ten minutes later, I gathered two abandoned cups from the last one, turned, and nearly bumped into a tall blond man. And not one dressed in leather and carrying a motorcycle helmet this time.

Watson. Apparently he'd escaped from the Batcave after all.

I blinked up at him, trying to cover my surprise. "I'm so sorry," I said on a gasp. "Did I spill anything on you?"

"I don't think so." Smiling, he patted down his chest and stomach just to be sure, while I thought, I could do that for you. A thought followed immediately by an intense flush of heat in my face.

"Not a drop," he said. "Have you got a minute?"

For that smile, I have a lifetime.

Good Lord. I really needed to get a grip. I glanced at the emptiness around us. "Sure."

I suddenly felt nervous. Watson and I weren't exactly on drop-by-your-work-to-hang terms. Granted, what terms we were on was still a bit ambiguous. Sure, we'd had dinner together before, but that had been purely work related. Sure, he'd been to the Victorian, even in the bedroom—which hadn't been as exciting as it might sound since he'd been chasing after an intruder at the time—and he'd even been to my apartment. But in all that time he'd been a perfect gentleman.

That just had to end.

"Do you want something to drink?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "No, thanks. I just came to talk to you."

The nerves kicked up a notch. We certainly weren't on drove-all-the-way-to-Palo-Alto-just-to-talk-to-you terms.

"Is there a problem?" I asked, gesturing to a table we could sit at.

"There might be." He held a chair for me. "I wanted to chat about Mr. Holmes."

I froze. This was it then. The end of the Sherlock Holmes ruse. I'd known it would come someday, but I hadn't expected it so soon. Well, that wasn't entirely true. I'd kind of expected it as soon as Irene had first showed Watson that fake PI license. It seemed strange that he'd question its validity now, but the gears of bureaucracy ground slowly.

I stifled a sigh, thinking the least I could do was offer an explanation. I owed him that much.

"Listen," I said, "let me—"

"Detective Lestrade paid me a visit this morning," he said.

The words stuck in my throat. It was worse than I thought. Lestrade had made the discovery and had issued a warrant for our arrest on fraud charges. Watson probably thought he'd warn me in case I wanted to turn myself in. I arranged my features into an expression of complete neutrality while I raised my eyebrows in question, pretending my heart wasn't trying to crash through my ribs.

He sat back, crossing his legs. He wore gray slacks and a black shirt with a burgundy tie and looked like a recent med school graduate. I wondered if he'd visit me in jail.

"Someone hacked into the police database yesterday," he said. "Specifically, the Internal Affairs database."

"Did they?" An image of Irene bent over her phone at the police station sprang to mind. "You read about things like this all the time," I said. "No one is safe from hacking these days, are they?"

"Apparently not. Funny thing, though. He said the files that were hacked had to do with an officer named Bryan Steele." He paused. "Ever heard of him?"

I thought about lying, but that shtick seemed done to death in this situation. "Of course," I said. "I'm a detective." Oops. There went another lie. "I know that Steele dated Rebecca Lowery."

"Whose body just happens to be missing."

"Talk about coincidence," I said. I gave him my toothiest grin.

"Yes, let's talk about coincidence." He crossed his arms.

Crossed legs and crossed arms were a bad sign. It meant he was closed off to a perfectly innocent explanation. If only I had one.

"Does Mr. Holmes happen to know anything about this?" he asked.

"Mr. Holmes?" I scrubbed at a nonexistent stain on the table. "No. In fact, I'm sure he doesn't." Mostly because he didn't exist.

"How about you?"

"Me?" I squeaked out on a laugh that sounded totally forced even to my own ears. "I wouldn't know how to hack into anything. I can barely figure out most of the apps on my phone." I gave him a sheepish grin meant to impart my embarrassing lack of technical know-how, when the cell phone in my pocket chimed with an incoming text.

I didn't move. Not even my frozen grin.

He frowned. "Aren't you going to check that?"

"Oh, was that mine?" I pulled the phone from my pocket.

Steele lives at 479 7th Ave.

I put the phone facedown on the table, resolved to talk to Irene about her timing. "It's nothing important."

"You seem upset."

"Do I?" Dang, the grin had thawed.

"Do you need to call someone back?"

I shook my head. "It was a wrong number."

Another text chimed.

Watson's eyes dropped to my phone before rising to meet mine. "Maybe you want to let them know that."

"Good idea," I said. Except if I did that, he might catch a glimpse of the screen. "I'll do it later. This happens all the time. Now, what were we talking about?"

"Hacking."

"Oh. Yeah. Right." Rats. So much for my seamless change of topic. "So, uh, do the police have any leads as to who might have been the hacker?"

"Not yet," he said, watching me closely. "But they're working on it. I thought you might want to talk to your boss about it."

"My boss?"

A frown flirted with his perfect features. "Yes."

I glanced behind myself, checking to see if Alberta, the day manager, was at the coffee bar. "I don't know what she'd have to do with—"

"Sherlock Holmes," he said flatly.

Oh, right. That boss. I swallowed hard. "I'll be sure to let him know," I said. "Or see if he knows. Or anyone else. I mean, I'm not the only detective."

He stared at me.

"Sure I can't get you some coffee?" I asked brightly.

"Thanks, no." He made a move to stand, then hesitated. "One more thing."

Customers were starting to trickle in again, much to my relief, lining up at the counter for service.

I grabbed my phone and leaped to my feet. "I'm sorry. Pam's on break, and I'm working alone right now. I have to go take care of them."

"Marty, wait."

The urgency in his voice compelled me to turn back to him.

"Are you available for dinner tomorrow night?" he asked.

Pure adrenaline surged through me. Dinner? I'm available for dinner, dessert, a midnight snack, and breakfast. In bed. But probably I should play it a little cooler than that.

"I'm not sure," I said. "I'll have to check. Why?"

He sighed. "The thing is, I'd really like a chance to discuss what you've learned about Rebecca Lowery. To be honest, the circumstances of this…" He ran a hand through his hair, his expression pained. "Let's just say it's concerning to me. Professionally."

My excitement was swept away in a flood of disappointment. And sympathy. "But you had nothing to do with it. You didn't lose the body. You followed protocol."

"I know, and I wish I could put it out of my mind," he said. "But I can't. What do you say? Dinner?"

How could I refuse? He was genuinely disturbed by the case, and I couldn't blame him. In fact, I felt the same way. Still, did I want to sit through another dinner with him while posing as a detective, afraid that I might say the wrong thing at any moment and reveal my flagrant deception?

I glanced at his wide shoulders and pouty lips.

On second thought, maybe I'd take the chance.

My cell phone chimed with another incoming text. I shoved it into my pocket without looking at it.

"Alright," I said. "Dinner tomorrow night."

He smiled. "I'm looking forward to it."

I wished I could say the same.

 

*   *   *

 

I felt like I'd worked a double shift by the time I slid into the passenger seat of Irene's car idling in the Tresidder parking lot.

"Hey," I said wearily.

"Hey, yourself." She paused, giving me a quick once-over. "What happened?"

"Huh?"

She rolled her eyes. "Your cheeks are flushed, you've been biting your nails, and your forehead is so wrinkled it's screaming for Botox."

I sighed. She knew me so well. "Watson came to see me today," I confessed.

"Nice." She pulled out onto Mayfield, toward Campus Drive. "How'd he look?"

Hot. "That's not important."

"It's always important. So what'd he want?"

"We're going out to dinner tomorrow night," I said as casually as I could.

She hit the brakes at a stop sign, lurching me forward. "He asked you out on a date? This is huge, Mar!"

"It's not a date. We're just…having dinner."

Irene grinned. "Uh-huh. Dinner. Together?"

"Yes."

"Alone?"

"I guess."

"Someplace nice?"

"He hasn't specified yet…" I trailed off.

"Dude. That's a date. That man's hot for you."

I felt my cheeks grow warm. "He's hot—that much is true. Hot for me? That's debatable."

"You've got to wear that cute little drop-waist Moschino dress and—"

"That's not all," I cut in.

"Of course it's not! You need shoes too. I've got just the pair." At the insistence of the cars behind her, she finally pulled forward again.

"No, I mean, that's not all Watson said. He told me the police know someone hacked into their database," I told her.

She shrugged. "So what?"

"So Watson asked me if I knew anything about it," I said. "I said no, of course, but I don't know if he believed me. Which is why he asked me out to dinner. Purely to interrogate."

"He can't prove anything," Irene said. "And neither can the police." She narrowed her eyes. "You didn't confess, did you?"

"Of course not," I snapped. "I played dumb." I paused.

"Then we're fine."

"You seem pretty sure of yourself," I hedged.

"There's a reason I make the big bucks," she said lightly.

Which was true. She did make the big bucks, but she was the most low-key billionaire I'd ever met. Granted, she was probably the only billionaire I'd ever met.

"Don't think I'm going to let you off the hook about that dress," she said. "

"It's just a business meeting," I insisted. "With a side of interrogation."

"Just don't let him tie you up." She paused. "Or maybe you should." She waggled her eyebrows at me suggestively.

I shook my head. "Pay attention to the road, will you?"

Nearly an hour later, we found Bryan Steele's house sitting in the middle of the block in the Inner Richmond District. The place was a monument to boring, a square, two-story building with four square windows above a square garage door and gated front entry. The outside was 1970s baby-poo-brown stucco, the windows all barred, and the garage door was a utilitarian rust color. No flowerpots, no kitschy architecture The City was known for, and no personality. Even the windows were boring, covered in simple white horizontal blinds beyond their prison cages. Clearly there'd been no feminine touch at play here.

Irene turned to me. "Ready to talk to Officer Steele or what?"

My choice was "or what," but she was already out of the car, so I hurried after her, trying to ignore the anxious flutters in my stomach. It was one thing to play PI with Barbara Lowery Bristol. It was another to do it with a police officer, especially a police officer with a temper. I wasn't at all sure we could pull this off.

When he answered Irene's knock on the door, Bryan Steele's appearance immediately betrayed his profession. He stood a little over six feet tall, with a broad chest, close-cropped brown hair, and suspicious brown eyes. He was not smiling, and I wasn't sure if he ever had. "Yeah?"

Irene stepped forward, unflinching. "Bryan Steele? We'd like to ask you some questions about Rebecca Lowery."

"I don't talk to reporters," he said flatly.

"Good thing we're not reporters then." She smiled at him, to no discernible effect. "My name is Irene," she said. "This is my partner, Marty."

"Partner," he repeated. "You on the job?"

"Private," she said. "We've been hired to find Rebecca Lowery. Her body, that is."

"Hired," he repeated. If he felt any grief at the mention of his deceased girlfriend, he hid it well.

She nodded. "We're private investigators. We work for Sherlock Holmes. Have you heard of him?"

"No."

This was like trying to interview Mt. Rushmore.

To Irene's credit, she forged ahead. "You do know Rebecca Lowery's body is missing, right?"

He crossed his arms, making his biceps bulge, probably as a means of intimidation. "Who hired you, exactly?"

So he could form actual sentences.

I stepped forward so that Irene didn't have to do all the heavy lifting. "Barbara Lowery Bristol," I said. "Her sister."

He let out a derisive snort. "That's rich. Barb couldn't have cared less about Rebecca."

Irene's glance silently entreated me to continue.

"Why would you say that?" I asked. "She cared enough to hire us to find her."

"Probably wanted to make sure she's really dead," he said. "She tell you they hadn't spoken in years?"

I nodded. "Yes, she did."

"She feels bad about that," Irene added.

"Suckers," he muttered under his breath.

I bristled. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Steele leaned a shoulder against the doorframe, arms still crossed, perfectly at ease in his derision. "She also tell you Rebecca was going to sue her?"

I tried to hide my surprise. "Maybe she didn't know."

"Oh, she knew. Just like she knew what she was doing when she moved into their dead parents' house instead of selling it and splitting the proceeds like she was supposed to. Barb is all about the money."

My shock must have registered on my face, as his expression held a hint of a smile for the first time. "Bet she didn't mention that, did she?" he pressed.

"You said going to sue her," I said instead of answering. "Does that mean Rebecca never went through with it?"

He focused on a point somewhere over our heads, out in the trees. "Rebecca gave her sister a break and waited, hoping she'd come to her senses. I told her that wasn't going to happen, but she wouldn't listen. Finally, when she realized the truth, Rebecca decided to sue for her rightful half of the inheritance."

That couldn't be farther from the story Barbara had given us. True, she hadn't been wracked with grief when it came to her sister, but she had flown halfway across the country and hired private investigators—or at least us—to find her. That had to count for something.

"When, exactly, did she finally decide to sue?" Irene asked.

Bryan pinned us with a stony look. "A couple weeks ago. Rebecca called her sister and warned her about it."

If Bryan Steele was telling the truth, it was hard to deny the timeliness of Rebecca's death as far as Barbara was concerned. If she was as money-hungry as he suggested, Barbara could have removed the threat to her inheritance by removing her own sister.

Which meant we could be working for a killer.

"When was the last time you saw Rebecca?" Irene asked him.

He reverted to his default scowl. "I dunno. Why?"

"You were seen at the theater arguing with her just days before her death."

"What do you care? Her death was an accident, right?"

"Officially," Irene said.

He narrowed his eyes. "What kind of crap is her sister trying to stir up, huh?"

"Is there anything to stir up here?" Irene pressed.

I bit my lip. The way Bryan's jaw was setting and his muscles tensing, I wasn't too keen on stirring anything else up.

"What, you thinking I killed her and dumped her in a vat of acid or something?"

Ugh. Now I was.

"Let me help you out. I didn't." He glanced at his watch. "You finished?"

"Not quite," Irene said. "What did you two fight about at the Bayside Theater?"

His expression turned to granite. "We're done here." He stepped back and slammed the door in our faces.

Irene stared at it. I could feel her eyes narrowing and her spine straightening. Irene was not used to doors slamming in her face.

"Let's go," I urged her. "Before he gets his gun."

She let me pull her away from the house. "What a charmer. How could any woman resist him?"

"It might be grief talking."

"It might be guilt talking."

We got into the car.

"Do you believe him?" I asked.

"You mean that not-so-subtle implication that Barbara had her own sister killed?"

I nodded.

"I don't know. I mean, he is being investigated by Internal Affairs. Doesn't exactly paint him as an upright citizen."

"But it seems an odd thing to make up," I reasoned. "It would be easy enough to check public records to find out about the inheritance from the parents."

Irene chewed her lower lip, thinking. "Okay," she said finally, "this is diabolical, but let's say Barbara did have Rebecca killed. Why go to the trouble of hiring us then?"

"As a red herring," I said slowly. "I mean, maybe she thought it made her look innocent."

"So, Barbara stole the body herself to cover up the crime, then hired us to look for it?"

"Assuming we'd never find her sister." Suddenly I felt a dip in my stomach. Had Barbara Bristol hired us not because we had a stellar reputation but because we had virtually no reputation? Had she hired us because she thought we'd fail?

I blew out a breath so hard it ruffled my hair. I didn't feel good about cashing a possible killer's check. And I certainly didn't want to help one cover up her crime.

"So, what do we do now?" I asked. "I mean, what do we tell Barbara Bristol? 'Thanks but no thanks for hiring us…'" I hesitated.

"Even though it was because you thought we'd never be skilled enough to find her?" Irene finished, following my same train of thought.

I nodded. "Yeah. That."

"It's pretty clever, really," Irene mused. "It also supports any future claim of innocence Barbara might need to make. Can't you just imagine it? 'But Judge, if I'd killed her, I'd never have hired a private investigator to find her.'"

"Believing she wouldn't be found." I paused.

"Like I said, diabolical."

I sighed. "Normal baristas don't need to worry about dealing with this kind of thing."

"They also can't afford to renovate pricey Victorians," she pointed out.

I knew that. I just didn't know if it was enough.

"Know what I think?" Irene started the car. "I think we need to find out more about our client. Maybe Steele's story wasn't even true."

I could only hope. The case was unsettling enough without working for a body-snatching murderer.