How to Succeed in Murder (11 page)

Chapter Twenty

The following day I had a choice. Make the most of my last day before going undercover at Zakdan by studying my Fake Book and burning through as many of Chip’s manuscripts as possible, or make the most out of it by sleeping in, booking spa appointments for the afternoon, and making reservations at some decadent restaurant for a quiet little dinner with Jack.

I was just trying to decide which spa appointments to book when the phone rang.

“Charley, I’m working on my opening speech for tomorrow.”

It was Eileen, sounding uncharacteristically flustered.

“What speech?”

“Haven’t you talked to Jack yet today?”

“He was gone when I woke up,” I yawned.

“Don’t tell me you’re not out of
bed
yet?”

I sat up and put my feet on the floor. “Of course I am. Do you think I’d spend the last day before our operation just lazing around? Give me a little credit.”

“Oh, sorry.”

So was I. Briefly.

I started stripping the bed while Eileen talked.

“Jack spoke to Morgan Stokes this morning, and Morgan told him that he’s arranged an executive staff meeting for first thing tomorrow. So we can meet all the major Zakdan players at once.”

“That’s great.” Then a horrible thought struck. “When, exactly, do you think ‘first thing in the morning’ might be?”

“Around ten.”

Thank God. “Okay, so we’ll go to the meeting. What’s the problem?”

“Well, obviously, I’m going to have to say something.”

Well. Obviously.

“I mean,” she went on, “the people in the meeting won’t know they’ve been assembled in order for us to look them over as suspects. They’ll be expecting to meet this crack team of consultants. So, however much we can avoid and evade in follow-up conversations, as the team leader I’ll be expected to make some sort of opening remarks.”

I sat on the bed, a bundle of sheets in my lap. “Damn. I guess you will.”

“Which is why Jack called this morning. He says I should prepare a speech.”

“I don’t suppose he gave you any idea what it should be about?”

“He said I should be vaguely reassuring while vaguely intimidating. Something that conveys a sense of urgency without getting into specifics about what we’re supposed to be doing there.”

“All subtext and no text.” I nodded. “Tricky.”

“Then help me! I only know money—you’re the one who knows speeches.”

“Sure, sweetie.” I got up, stuffed the sheets down the laundry chute, and returned to the bed, picking up a bathrobe along the way. “What have you got so far?”

I heard the rustle of paper. “‘Good morning.’”

Uh huh. “Well, it’s a start.”

***

After an hour on the phone, Eileen had a reasonable draft of the speech and I had a must-have-caffeine-now headache. I went looking for Jack in his office and didn’t find him, but when I stumbled into the kitchen I found a note.

Right. At least I’d managed to calm her down. I couldn’t say the same for myself. Now that the whole scheme was becoming a reality, I had to admit to a tiny case of nerves. Okay, a raging case of anxiety.

I entertained the brief hope that some evidence in the truck might lead the police to the killer before tomorrow morning. But that was probably something I shouldn’t count on.

I saw Jack had put fresh grounds into the French press for me, so I filled the kettle to boil water.

It wasn’t that I was nervous about how we’d perform, or that we’d be dramatically unmasked as spies. I was of the firm belief that most people go through life too self-absorbed to notice minor discrepancies in those around them. They’re too busy trying to cover their own discrepancies.

No, what was eating at my nerves was the fear that it wouldn’t work. That, even if we didn’t blow our own covers, we might just be really bad at gathering information. Or even worse, what if we turned out to be great at getting people to spill their guts, but we picked the wrong people?

Sure, Clara had been a member of the exec staff, but did that mean her murderer was one of her close colleagues? Suppose it was some dweeb in the mail room that she’d turned down for a date once? Suppose it had nothing to do with the software glitch? Did high tech companies even have mail rooms?

These were not productive thoughts.

I poured the water into the carafe, grabbed a mug, and took it all back to the bedroom. After a shower and a pot of coffee I’d be able to deal. After a shower and a pot of coffee I’d tear through the stack of manuscripts so they wouldn’t be hanging over my head anymore. Then I’d study Mike and Eileen’s Fake Book until I knew everything cold. It would all work out.

All I needed was a shower and a pot of coffee.

***

“Charley, have you read the paper?” Brenda’s voice on the phone was a good octave higher than usual.

“I’ve been reading plays all morning. Why? What’s in the paper?”

I heard her gulp. “Lalit Kumar is dead.”

“
What?
” I pushed the scattered manuscripts aside and jumped out of the bed. “What do you mean, dead? Since when? Who—”

“Just listen,” she interrupted. “Here’s what it says. ‘Police are investigating the apparent suicide of local software executive Lalit Kumar. The Chief Technical Officer of San Francisco’s Zakdan, Inc., Kumar was last seen Wednesday evening at the Zakdan offices. Concerned friends contacted the police when Kumar failed to appear at a weekend social engagement—’ I wonder if that means Clara’s funeral?”

I swallowed. “Maybe. What else does it say?”

Brenda continued reading. “‘Investigation of the software executive’s home revealed no clues to his mental state. His body was found in a remote region of the Presidio, near his abandoned car. At this time, information regarding the apparent suicide is being sought by the SFPD.’” She paused. “Then it gives a number to call if you know anything about it.”

I’d held my breath while she finished. “They don’t say anything about a connection with Clara’s murder?”

“Nothing.”

I wasn’t sure if that was good news or bad.

“Charley.” Brenda’s voice was shaking. “They think the last time he was seen was at work on Wednesday.”

When, in fact, we’d seen him pick someone up outside a bar in the Mission District and vanish into the rainy night.

“Charley, we have to call the police.”

“It’s worse than that,” I realized. “We have to call Inspector Yahata.”

***

First, I called Jack. I wanted to give Brenda enough time to come over from the East Bay. And somehow I figured Jack would get less upset over me lying about where I’d been Wednesday night if he heard it from me instead of from the police.

I reached him on his cell phone.

“Are you still with Inspector Yahata?” That thought hadn’t struck me until he answered.

“No, he was gone by the time I got there. I just took a look at the truck and confirmed it was the right one.”

“It was? So what happens now?”

“The police scraped some paint from our car to send to the lab, but whoever stole the truck did a good job of cleaning it up before ditching it in Pacifica. Why did you want to know if I was with Yahata?”

I took a deep breath.

“Jack,” I began. “Do you remember that conversation we had about not keeping anything from each other anymore?”

There was a foreboding pause. “Yes.”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly keeping this from you, because I really didn’t think it mattered at the time, and because I did it before we had our little talk and everything…”

“This is going to be bad, isn’t it?”

“No,” I said hastily. “No, not really, it’s just that…”

I got through it quickly from that point on. It was less painful that way. Just like ripping off a bandage.

With slightly less yelling.

***

Being questioned by Inspector Yahata was excruciating. Particularly since we had so little to tell.

He and Brenda arrived at the same time, and the three of us sat awkwardly in Simon’s beach chairs for the ordeal. At least, Brenda and I were awkward. The inspector seemed to have an uncanny ability to make the chair sit up straighter when he was in it, as if it dared not insult his impeccable posture.

He tapped a small leather-bound notepad with his sleek silver pen. “You can recall nothing particular about the person you saw get into Kumar’s car?”

It was not the first time he’d asked that question. The sharpness of his gaze had increased with every repetition, and I had the feeling he would slice me open with it if he said it again.

“It was dark and it was raining, and we were at least twenty feet away,” I told him. “All we saw was someone in black jeans and a black leather jacket holding a newspaper over his head.”

“Or her head,” Brenda offered.

The detective’s lips grew thinner. “White? Black? Asian?”

Brenda and I looked at each other and shrugged.

“And this glint of something metallic that you saw the passenger holding before you lost sight of the car—are you sure it was a gun?”

“I thought so at the time,” I told him, unconvincingly.

“But when we talked it over afterward, we weren’t sure,” Brenda explained. “It was so…”

“Dark, yes, I understand. And raining.” Yahata held us with that gaze a moment longer, then snapped his notebook shut.

“I just keep thinking that if we hadn’t lost him that night he wouldn’t be dead now,” Brenda spoke softly, saying exactly what I’d been thinking.

“On the contrary,” the inspector responded swiftly. “If you had witnessed anything more, or been seen by Mr. Kumar or his passenger, I might very well be investigating three suspicious deaths at this point, rather than one.”

I blinked. That put things in perspective, but I don’t think it made either of us feel any better.

“I’m so sorry we can’t be more help,” I said.

The detective stood. “This has been extremely helpful.”

“At least it seems to make it clear that foul play was involved in Kumar’s death.” I realized the cheap melodrama of the phrase ‘foul play,’ but I couldn’t help myself from saying things like that around the inspector.

He gave me one of those frowns that are over so quickly you can’t be sure they even happened. Then he looked at me curiously. “Do you think so?”

Well, yes—at least I had until he’d said that.

***

Jack came home late to find me in soaking in a hot tub. He’d brought up a bottle of Chianti and two glasses, and he poured while I told him how things had gone with the interrogation.

“It must not have been too bad,” he observed. “At least Yahata left some skin on you.”

I drew a leg up out of the bubbles. “Are you going to take the rest of it off?”

“Are you keeping anything else from me?”

“Nope.” Really, I wasn’t. At least nothing I could think of.

“Well then, since it’s such nice skin, let’s just dry it off.” He held out a towel.

I sighed and took it, using it strategically as I got out of the tub. “I just wish I knew more about Kumar’s death. The paper hardly had any details.”

Jack regarded me with interest. “What would you like to know?”

I stared at him. “I think I’d like to know why Inspector Yahata tells you this sort of thing.” But there was slim chance of that.

He sipped his wine. “A suicide note was left on Kumar’s computer work, in an email that wasn’t addressed to anyone.”

I reached for my robe and followed him into the bedroom. “What did it say?”

He shrugged. “Something along the lines of the pressure at Zakdan getting to be too much and a realization that his life was empty and meaningless.” He sat on the bed and crossed his legs at the ankles.

I watched his face. “You don’t buy it.”

He looked at me, and I could tell he was considering his answer. “I don’t.”

I plopped onto the bed next to him. “Why? What else do you know?”

He took a minute to dab at the wine my move had caused to slosh out onto his shirt.

“Jack! What else do you know?”

He took a deep breath. “I know that from every account I’ve heard, Lalit Kumar thrived on stress. He wasn’t someone who would have issues with pressure. And as for his life being empty and meaningless, I know that he was in the process of adopting a child from an orphanage in Bangalore. The paperwork would have been finalized next month.”

“Oh.” I sat back. “How awful.” Not just one man killed, but another life damaged.

“Yes.” There was anger in Jack’s voice. “And also not well known around Zakdan.”

“So whoever faked the suicide note didn’t know Lalit very well.” I thought about it, and about the call I’d overheard on the night of Kumar’s death.

“But,” I said slowly, “the killer did know him well enough to call Lalit in the middle of the night, talk him into picking him up at a bar, and convince him to drive all the way across town.”

Jack nodded, watching me.

“So it probably wasn’t a close friend, or he’d have gotten the suicide note right. But it was an acquaintance who knew him well enough to exploit both the fact that he worked late and that he’d be nice enough to go to the bar in the first place.”

Jack was still watching me.

“It was someone he worked with.”

It was someone I was going to meet tomorrow.

***

It took me a few minutes to recover from my realization, but eventually I noticed that Jack had started talking again. It sounded like he was telling me about his day.

“…We got into Zakdan and did a few things that should make it possible for us to see what’s happening to the codebase.” He got up and stretched.

It took me a minute to realize he wasn’t referring to breaking and entering. “You mean you hacked into the company computers?”

He shrugged. “Stokes did tell us to do whatever it takes.”

“Are you going to tell him? How did you do it? What did you plant?” I assaulted him with these questions while following him down to the kitchen. There was a large box from Pizza Orgasmica on the island counter. Jack must have stopped on his way home.