It took me longer to get dressed and out of the hotel than I anticipated and I arrived at Claire's house long after my appointment with Ed Thomas.
Most of my injuries were superficial, but I had a sliver of glass wedged between my shoulder blades that I could not reach no matter how I tried. I didn't want to involve the hotel. Security was already in a snit.
In order to explain the mess in the room, I reported that I'd lost my balance and had fallen through the mirrored door. That was the truth, but it wasn't the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and the woman in the blue blazer didn't believe it for a minute. In the end it didn't take much to convince her. I was a guest, after all, and if a guest said he just lost his balance and fell over, then okay, it happens all the time. Sorry about that.
There was nothing she could do. She was too bright not to notice the cut on my forehead but she didn't mention it. I'd refused medical treatment, signed a release that the hotel was not at fault in any way, refused a voucher for a free meal in the hotel's restaurant. I even offered to pay for the damage.
“That won't be necessary, Mr. Caine,” she said. “You're certain there's nothing we can do for you?” She had to ask that question. Her report would go to the general manager.
“Nothing. I'm sorry about the door. It was my fault.”
“You didn't have a fight in here, did you?”
“Why?”
“We spoke with two men in the lobby about ten minutes before you called. They had both been injured. One severely. Their injuries looked as if they'd been fighting.”
“Two men?”
She nodded. “Said they'd fallen on the quay wall and got lost and were cutting through the hotel grounds to get back to Harbor Drive. My boss recognized one of them from a previous incident. They're strong-arm robbery types. The guest opens the door and they push their way in, beat the hell out of the guest, rob him, and leave. We called the police but we couldn't detain them. No reason to. No guest had complained.” She looked me directly in the eye when she said that, almost a sneer on her face.
“Did they knock on your door?”
I shook my head. “Do I look that stupid? Open a door in a big-city hotel without knowing who was out there?”
“People do that When they're on vacation, Mr. Caine. People get relaxed. They make mistakes.”
“Sorry. Didn't happen.”
She frowned. “Well, I can't make you say something you don't want to say. You look like you've been in a fight. They look like they've been in a fight. You can't get into trouble. You were the victim. If you were robbed, you should report it.”
I pulled out my wallet, showed her my watch. “See. Everything's all here.”
She sighed. “Okay. You fell through the door. That's what you want, that's what I'll write in my report. I sure wish you'd change your mind.”
“You really think they tried to rob me?”
“Do I look stupid?” She smiled. It was a conspiratorial smile, just between the two of us, letting me know she knew but didn't really care. The guest wasn't going to sue.
I smiled back. “No, ma'am. You do not.”
She took my signed release, started to say something else, but pursed her lips together as if she'd decided not to waste more time or breath. We both knew she'd tried her best, and we both knew I wouldn't cooperate. I'd made a deal with those two, and I would stick with it, regardless of the circumstances. I didn't think they'd be too active for a while, and my civic conscience was clear. They'd probably had
more punishment this afternoon than the court system would give them in a year, and it didn't cost the taxpayers anything at all.
As I showed her out, she turned and looked at the room once more, at the broken glass in the closet and its proximity to the door, at my forehead and its vertical gash. She took it all in, shook her head, and left.
The sliver of glass was biting into my flesh and still bled freely. I'd wrapped one of the hotel towels under my shirt and could feel that it was already saturated. I went into the bathroom, stripped off my jacket and shirt and the bloody towel, wrapped the remaining clean towel around me, and pulled my clothes back on. I rinsed out the bloody towel and hung it over the tub.
Before I left the room I reached under the bed and pulled out my briefcase. After the incident I no longer felt safe keeping it in the hotel. It was secure only when it was with me. I took it along, thinking to have Juanita stash it at the house. I knew I could trust her.
I had to hunch over the steering wheel on the drive to Point Loma to keep the glass shard from moving around. The rain kept coming down in sheets, decreasing visibility and giving me an excuse to drive slowly. By the time I arrived at Claire's house, I was over an hour late.
An elderly pickup truck sat in the driveway, looking out of place. I parked behind it and made a dash for the house. Juanita opened the big oak door before I got to the porch, almost as if she had extrasensory perception. She grimaced when she saw my face, but said nothing. My forehead felt hot and swollen around the injury.
“It is raining,” she said. “And you are all wet again. Let me take your coat.”
I nodded, shrugging out of the sodden leather jacket. When I did, I heard her gasp.
“You are bleeding here, too!”
“Had an accident,” I said.
“What happened?” Ed Thomas came into the entry from the kitchen, trailed by another man.
“Tell you later. Can you get a piece of glass out of my back? I'd appreciate it.” I set down my briefcase, and had some trouble straightening up again after I set it down. The glass rode with the muscle one way and cut the other.
“Come in here,” said Ed. “The light's better.” I followed him into the kitchen. I stayed stooped over.
“Take off your shirt and lean over the sink there.” I did. The towel dropped to the floor. Juanita picked it up and said something in Spanish too fast to understand.
“Juanita, you got some pliers?” Thomas asked. “Needle-nose would be good.”
Juanita took the towel and hurried from the room.
“What happened? You looked okay when I saw you this afternoon. Who needs the bodyguard? You or the lady?”
“Long story, Ed. Where is Claire?”
“Upstairs. On the phone. Something to do with her company. Juanita let us in. You called her, I guess, or she probably would have shot us. She made us show our badges and ID before she unlocked the door. When she did, she was carrying a piece.”
“You guys are her backup,” I said.
“This hurt?” Ed wiggled the glass back and forth with the tip of his finger.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Juanita returned with needle-nose pliers. When Ed tried and failed to grasp the sliver, complaining about his vision, she took over. She was not afraid to dig the tips of the tool into my back to get purchase on the glass and she tugged it out of the wound the first time.
“That's a big one,” said Ed. Juanita held it up for me to examine as if it were a trophy I should be proud of. It didn't look as big as it felt.
Juanita poured something on my back. It was cold and I could feel it bubble inside the wound.
“Stay that way for a minute, Meester Caine.” Juanita patted my back with a cloth, wiping the blood from my skin. “I'll get you a bandage and another shirt.” It would be another
of Peters's shirts, I thought. I was cutting deeply into his wardrobe. The thought troubled me until I thought about it some more. Peters wouldn't be coming back, no matter how this thing settled out. He was either the ex-husband or the dead husband. Claire knew that from the moment she had seen him in Mexico. I might have been the only one who had thought about him as Claire's husband.
“Mr. Caine, I'd like you to meet Hatley Farrell. He's retired San Diego PD. Best man for this kind of thing.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said, turning my head toward a compact, balding man dressed in rumpled khaki trousers and an old blue sweatshirt. What little hair he had was snow white. A pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. He looked to be in his late seventies, a benign presence, like someone's favorite grandfather.
“How long have you been retired, Mr. Farrell?”
“Twenty-two years.”
“Hatley was SWAT commander,” said Thomas. “I've used him for years. Good man.”
I nodded, thinking I'd either hired the Gray Panthers or the striking arm of the AARP. Thomas told me the man had been retired, but he'd neglected to tell me how long. This was the guy who was supposed to work evening to midnight. Claire now had two grandfathers and a maid guarding her. But then, she did have the skeet gun.
Juanita returned with the bandages and another shirt. I dressed and she bandaged my forehead. I had to sit in a chair and slump low so she could reach.
“What does the other guy look like?” Thomas grinned at me. My wounds weren't serious and he knew it now and could joke about it.
“You don't want to know.”
“Connected to this?”
“I doubt it. Just a misunderstanding at the hotel. That's why I was late.”
“You feel up to giving us a rundown on this case?”
“Sure.” I told them everything I knew and suspected about the previous night. I told them about the attorney and his
young gangster companion so they would have a feeling for the opposition, if in fact that was the source, and if there really was an opposition. I told them about Peters's death, and the missing millions, and his wife seeing him alive after he'd been cremated. I left nothing out. They were both cops. They'd both been in situations like this before and probably had over seventy years of combined experience between them. I needed their experience as much as their presence.
“It could have been just some kid,” said Thomas.
“Not with the graffiti on the car.” Farrell shook his head.
“That was a warning. And the fact that the kid didn't leave when the maid went out. Even after you arrived. A casual prowler or a Peeping Tom would have been long gone.”
“You're talking as if the kid in the backyard and the kid with the lawyer were the same,” I said.
Juanita finished dressing my wound and I sat up. I could see my reflection in one of the windows. A white bandage decorated the center of my forehead. Already a drop of blood leaked through. It looked like a target.
Farrell peered at me through thick lenses. “You think?”
“I'm keeping my options open. He's my employer.”
Thomas smirked. “That's right. He's paying you.”
I nodded. “He's paying you, too. Mrs. Peters is his client. Ultimately the money is coming from her, but he's your boss, and it's always a good idea not to screw with your boss unless you've got a real good reason.”
“So we look for a kid, a gangster,” said Thomas. “We look for low-rider cars because that's what they drive. Or stolen muscle cars. That's what they use when they drive-by. And we wait.”
“That's what you do. And if Mrs. Peters sees something, or thinks she sees something, check it out. But don't get into trouble.”
Farrell chuckled. “I've been in trouble my whole life.”
“You armed?”
“Shotguns and side arms,” said Thomas. “Big flashlights tonight. Hatley wants to rig up temporary lights in the backyard
with motion sensors, something to give us an edge if somebody calls.”
“Do it. If it ever stops raining.”
“Sunny Southern California.”
“Yeah. Maybe Seattle slipped south or something. I don't remember it raining this much when I was stationed here.”
“You were in the navy here?” Farrell squinted at me. He had baby-blue eyes like Paul Newman's, startlingly young in the old, weathered face, except Farrell's eyes were cold. Killer eyes.
“Naval Amfib Base, Coronado. Couple of times in the seventies and the early eighties.”
“I ever arrest you?”
“Never been arrested in this country, Mr. Farrell,” I replied. “Nothing that ever stuck, anyway.”
“Meester Caine, Mees Claire wants to see you.” Juanita wore a worried expression. She knew Claire would react when she saw me.
Claire had endured some great stresses over the past several months. Her habit of taking a drink before turning in or even getting slightly sloppy might or might not have been something she did before I knew her. I wasn't the one to judge. Like Old Blue Eyes, I was a firm believer in whatever it takes to get you through the night.
I saw her as coping well. Before me, only Barbara had believed her. There were even indications that her trusted legal adviser might have set her up, betrayals piling upon betrayals.
And there were those missing seven million dollars, and a company she'd built, fallen into ruins.
On reflection, had those same blows fallen on me, one right after another, I'm not sure how I would have reacted. Probably grabbed the skeet gun and holed up in the bedroom.
“Oh, my God!” Claire said when she saw me, her face pale. “Juanita said you'd been stabbed.”
“I fell through a looking glass. Like Alice. I met the Mad Hatter and his faithful Indian companion Tonto.”
Claire stared blankly.
“Juanita took a piece of glass from my back. I couldn't reach it. It was an accident.”
“That's not what Juanita said. She told me you'd been attacked at your hotel.” I winced. Juanita had been there when I'd briefed Thomas and Farrell. I wondered what else she'd said, but I didn't worry. She wouldn't say anything to Claire that would intentionally upset her. She had to tell her boss something about my injuries because they were impossible to
ignore, but I was confident she wouldn't report my suspicions about Stevenson.
“It was just a simple tourist mugging,” I said. “It wasn't related to you. A couple of guys picked my room out of a thousand others, probably. because they saw room service deliver and knew someone was there.”
Her eyes told me she didn't believe me.
“It was random, Claire. Like getting hit by lightning.”
“Do you feel okay?” she asked. “Would you like a brandy?” She had a snifter next to her with only a swish of amber liquid at the bottom. A crystal decanter and an empty snifter sat next to hers.
“That sounds fine. Thank you.”
She smiled. “I didn't think you wanted to drink with me.”
“I just didn't want to drink that night. It didn't matter if I didn't drink alone, or with someone.”
Claire turned the snifter on its side and poured the brandy until it reached the brim, righted the glass, and handed it to me. She had done this before.
“Cheers.”
“And all the ships at sea,” I agreed. I sipped the brandy and immediately regretted it. The alcohol discovered a cut in my mouth I hadn't been aware of and it burned until the brandy numbed it. I took another sip, a small one. It didn't hurt as much.
“So how are you? I hope you're better than you look.”
“I usually am,” I said. That was the whole truth. There wasn't much pain, nothing a couple of aspirin couldn't cover.
“Those men downstairs,” said Claire. “They're so, so old. Are you sure they can do the job?”
“They were recommended by the police department. They're both ex-cops. They're both armed. They've done this before.”
“But,” she said, “they don't look like they could run very far or very fast.”
“If they're guarding you, you don't want them to run.”
She nodded, a point conceded. “All right. I'll take your word for it. You spoke to them?”
“They know what's happening and they know how to handle the situation. You're in no danger.”
She looked out the window as if to assure herself of my honesty. It was black outside, reminding me of the other thing I wanted to tell her.
“They want to install temporary lights in the backyard. With motion sensors. Leave the switch on and if something moves across their field, the lights will come on. It will give you some control over what you can see out there, and it will discourage a repetition of last night.”
“Okay. If you think it would help.” The tone of her voice was flat.
“I think it would be best.”
“Then fine. Let them do it.” She said it as if it were a favor she was doing them, allowing them to work on her house. “John,” she said, “I want you to move out of the hotel. I thought about it last night, but I didn't say anything and thought I'd better think about it some more. Now with this mugging, I think we'd both be better off if you were to stay here until this thing is over.”
I was happy at the hotel, but the prowler changed the equation. A while back I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and a woman was killed because of it. I wanted to be here if something were to happen again. The only thing I feared was losing my privacy. I needed a place to get away and think. I could insist on that when I needed it, and I could use
Olympia
once the paperwork was done.
“Okay,” I said.
I wondered what Stevenson would do when he heard it. Not much, I guessed, since the client was paying the bills. He didn't want me moving in on her. He had warned me about that. Was that what I was doing?
“Stay here tonight,” she said, “and you can check out tomorrow morning.”
“Okay.”
“You went to the office today?”
“I met Adrian. He seems angry.”
“He was working under one of the finest minds in the business. Now he's presiding over the funeral of what would have been a great company.”
“Who does he blame?”
“Me, I guess. He idolized Paul. He had dozens of offers when he graduated from Cal Tech. He came to Petersoft for only one reason. Paul. He's very bright. Now he doesn't know what's going to happen. Yesterday, federal investigators were there. There's talk that they're going to indict me.”
“What's your attorney say?”
“He says wait and see.”
That didn't sound like advice I'd want to take, considering the consequences. She needed a criminal attorney, a good one, and she needed one now.
“That's all he said?”
“He believes he and his exâTreasury agent are closing in on the money. That will take the pressure off me if they can recover it.”
I almost asked her if she believed that, but I didn't. I wondered if there really was an exâTreasury agent. That would be something I could find out. If he lied about that, the rest would follow.
I switched the conversation back to Adrian. “Adrian is going to get Paul's Day-Timers for last December. Do you have his pocket ones here at the house?”
“He used an electronic one. It had everything in it. I'm not sure, but I think it might be here. No. He had it on him when heâwhen the explosion occurred.” She stuttered the last phrase, and I wondered if she had started questioning what she had seen.
“I'm going to Ensenada with the police in the morning,” I said. “Finally going to Mexico.”
She nodded. “You're going to look at Calafia?”
“And the fuel dock. And I might speak with Teniente de la Peña, for what it's worth.”
“Be back before dark, John. I know these guys are supposed to be good, but they're old.”
“If we're lucky, we all get that way.”
“And if we're not?”
“Then we find out what comes next,” I said, thinking about Kate and a green cliff face on the north shore of a beautiful tropical island in the middle of the Pacific.