Troublemaker (17 page)

At the foot of the drive, beside the garage-cum-stable, Heather Wendell and her gaunt husband sat horses, she the little paint mare
(Buffy doesn 't like men)
and he the sorrel gelding. The woman wore a plaid shirt, jeans, a black charro hat; the man Levi's pants and jacket stitched for someone bulkier
—his son, no doubt. A bowl-brimmed
straw sombrero shaded his long, rutted face. The horse hoofs moved noiselessly on the pine needle cushion of the yard. The man and woman drew rein and stared.

"What is it?" Heather Wendell asked Yoshiba. "I told you to keep him"
—she jerked an angry nod at Dave—"away from here."

"You don't want to be ungrateful," Yoshiba said. "He got you back quite a chunk of money you'd never have seen again. Close to twelve hundred dollars."

She sat up straight, blinking puzzlement.

"From that brown bank envelope on Rick's desk," Dave said.

"Remember? You let me take it away the other morning, with the wrapper tabs, each marked five hundred dollars. A check with the bank showed Rick had withdrawn that amount Monday afternoon."

"What for?" she said.

"Rick had promised it to Larry Johns. On the telephone at noon. You picked up the phone for that call. He told you his name. But you made out to me you'd never heard it until that night." Her mouth twitched. "I'd forgotten."

"Come on now, Mrs. Wendell," Yoshiba said.

"Now, look here!" Billy Wendell tried to make himself sound ominous. He shifted in the saddle, kicking a foot free of its stirrup, as if he were going to dismount. But he didn't. He finished lamely, "I don't like your tone."

"It's possible the name didn't mean anything to you at that point," Dave said. "Johns says he was up here before with your son. A few weeks ago. But it was after the bar closed. You told me your hours differed, so maybe you didn't know about it. But if you did and then Larry Johns turned up again, you'd have had reason to suspect he represented the same threat to you other boys had done
—Monkey, Savage."

She paled and seemed to sag in the saddle. "You're guessing," Billy Wendell blustered. "Based on this," Dave said. "That your wife and Ace Kegan had
a
conference Monday night." He looked at Heather. "You didn't go to that horse film as you told me. You went to the Chardash restaurant next to the theater and talked the situation over with Ace. He'd had a phone call where Larry Johns gave his name too. And you both knew it spelled trouble. Possibly disaster. That was why neither of you ate."

She touched dry lips with a dry tongue.

"Then you drove up here," Yoshiba said. "To try to stop the thing before it could get under way. Your son didn't like being interrupted and browbeaten and he went for his gun to run you off. Kegan rushed him and your son ended up dead. Wasn't that how it was?"

"No!" she said loudly. "Ace wasn't even here. He has a dreadful temper. It was still under control when he got into his car in the theater parking lot but by the time he got up here to the house, he'd worked himself into a fury. He said if Rick didn't listen to reason, he'd beat it into him. And he could do it. He was a prize fighter. His fists are like hammers. Yes, I know Rick was bigger, but he hadn't any fight in him."

"He had the gun," Dave reminded her.

"The gun never came into it." Heather swung out of the saddle. The stocky little horse took a step backward, shaking her head, clinking bridle fastenings. "Because Ace didn't see Rick that night. He was raving. I won't repeat what he said he'd do to that boy."

"Raving," Dave said. "But you made him go?"

"It wasn't easy but he respects me and finally through his rage he heard me. He knew what had happened before. He's very nearly gone to prison for beating people. And he'd be heartsick afterward if he hurt Rick. They were very close."

"And he left?" Yoshiba asked.

"With bad grace," she said, "but yes, he left. I watched him get into his car and start it before I went on up the stairs."

"What about this twelve hundred dollars?" Billy Wendell's big hand smoothed the sorrel's mane. "Have you got it with you?"

"It's evidence," Yoshiba said. "The court will hold it till the man who stole it is tried."

"Who was he?"
                                                                            
Dave told the story of Dwayne Huncie.

Yoshiba said, "It's too bad about the three hundred. Especially when you see the clothes he got himself with it
—if you could call them clothes. But the balance—once the trial's over, it'll be released to you. I don't know how soon that will be."

"What do they need with it?" Billy Wendell asked. "The bank won't have a record. Not if the bills were only twenties. They don't record them unless they're hundreds or larger."

"You've been watching 'Police Story,' " Yoshiba said. "But you're right. I'll see if I can shake it loose for you."
                                   

"There's a feed bill," Heather explained.
                                       

"There's also three weeks' back rent at Billy's motel," Dave told her. "You didn't see anyone, hear anyone, after you shed Ace?"
       

She shook her head. "Was there someone?"

"There had to be someone, Heather," Billy said.

"There did not!" she snapped at him. "All there had to be was that boy Larry Johns. Yes
—I saw
him.
" She shut her eyes a moment. "I'll
never forget it."

"Are you absolutely sure Ace Kegan left the area?" Yoshiba tilted his head. "Up at the top of your driveway there are tire marks that indicate cars parked beside the road. He didn't drive up there and
 
walk down the back way, here, so you wouldn't see him? He didn't get to your son before you did? You stopped to fix hot milk, remember?"
                                                                                                 

"Ace had shaken me. I'm aware I don't look as if anything could, but you've never had to deal with him when he's angry. I wanted to calm down before I confronted Rick."

"Should have had a drink," Billy Wendell grunted.

"So," Yoshiba began, "it's possible that Ace
—"

"It is not!" she cried. "I heard the shot while I was climbing the stairs. Ace had driven off and Rick was dead when I got to the door of his room. I told you."
                                                                    

"You did," Dave said. "Was it true? Do you know why Lieutenant
 
 

Yoshiba came with me this morning?"

"Because of you." The heavy old woman pulled herself into the saddle again. "Because you won't rest until you can involve me in my son's death. Or prove it was suicide. To save your company twenty-live thousand dollars. Which I'm sure it desperately needs."

"Wrong," Yoshiba said. "I'm here because you lied to me. Innocent people don't have to lie."

Billy Wendell snorted. "They do if they want to stay out of trouble."

Dave asked, "Why couldn't it have been suicide? He wasn't so humiliated when you burst in on him that he shot himself? It's been known to happen. Your kind of mother love can get to be too much to live up to."

Yoshiba jerked his head back, like a batter from a high inside fast ball. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It's abnormal psychology." Dave smiled thinly. "Not your field
— remember?"

"It wasn't like that," Heather Wendell said stubbornly. "He was dead on the floor and Larry Johns was standing over him with the gun." She slapped the pinto's rump and it stepped out, startled, past the standing men. Billy Wendell nudged the sleek sides of the sorrel with the heels of cowboy boots that must also have belonged to his dead son. Nodding, the sorrel followed the paint.

"Not Ace Kegan?" Yoshiba asked.

Heather Wendell's back stiffened but she didn't answer. Above the clop of hoofs, she and her scarecrow ghost of a husband swayed on up the scabby drive, leather creaking. Yoshiba looked at Dave, shrugged, stepped off in their wake
—not to follow them but to reach the car.

"Let's go find out," he said. "Who's the old joker?"

"Ex-husband," Dave said. "Father of the deceased."

"Back to cash in?" Yoshiba frowned. "Where was he?"

"Forget it," Dave said. "He was at a birthday party at a tavern in Torrance. For a long-lost small-time movie star named Lilian Drill."

"Who?" Yoshiba said.

"Sorry," Dave said. "Before your time."

Floor-to-ceiling curtains blinded the glass front of Ace Kegan's apartment. The deck was blanker than the beach. The sun had possession of both. But the sand had a few gulls and sandpipers. Yoshiba found a bell button in the redwood frame to the right of the glass sliding panels and pushed it. Nothing happened. He pushed it again. And a third time. Then there was sound from the apartment. Dave felt the deck shock faintly under him. The curtains jerked back. Kegan winced at them. His broken hands knotted the tie of a short gold velour robe. He clicked the lock on the aluminum doorframe and threw the panel aside. "For Christ sake!" he said to Dave.

"Yes, early," Dave said, "right. This is Lieutenant Yoshiba of the Los Santos police." Yoshiba looked at his watch. "It's after ten."

"I work till two," Ace Kegan said, "but if I didn't, I still wouldn't want to see you."

"We don't want to see you, either," Yoshiba said. "It's duty. You've heard of duty?"

Kegan said, "I told you to get him off my back." He glowered at Dave from under his lumpy brows. "Instead, you jump on too."

"And I'll tell you why," Yoshiba said. "You didn't tend bar at The Hang Ten Monday night. You sent your friend, there"
—he nodded, Kegan turned, Bobby Reich dodged out of sight, Dave had an impression of blond nakedness and scared eyes—"to fill in for you."

Kegan's fists made clean, bumpy little clubs. He took a step. "Bobby!" he roared. A door slammed and no answer came. Kegan drew breath, turned back, working at a wry, broken-toothed smile. "All right. So Bobby filled in for me. It wasn't the first time."

"No, but it was the first time your partner got murdered," Yoshiba said. "And I doubt if you had dinner that often with his mother."

Kegan's mouth fell open a little.

"At the Hungarian place next to the theater where she was supposed to be seeing a film in which they mistreated horses," Dave said.

Kegan gave a grim little laugh, pushed his hands into the pockets of the robe, turned away. "Okay. Come on in. I'll tell you all about it." He shouted, "Bobby, come and make coffee." He jerked his head at the long, shaggy white couch. "Move the books and sit down." He went into the kitchen and ran water. A kettle clattered onto a stove burner. He stood beside the bank of false flowers. "She was worried about Rick, afraid he was up to something."

"And she wasn't the only one," Dave said. "You told me he wasn't bright, that he didn't have any defenses, that he couldn't keep his mouth shut. Or words to that effect. Isn't that what you said?"

"You remember just fine," Kegan said.

"He'd talked to his mother about Larry Johns, hadn't he? After he'd first met the boy. That was why she was upset Monday. She'd recognized Johns's name when he gave it on the phone."

"She hoped he'd gone away," Kegan said. "Yeah, Rick met the kid in the bar
—how long ago? Six weeks, couple months? Rick took him home. I wasn't supposed to know but Rick was clumsy. He sent the kid to wait for him up the beach at the all-night coffee stand and after we closed he picked him up in the VW. Just by watching him, I knew he was up to something. I followed him and I saw it happen. Next day, Rick was off his head, like the other times, with Monkey, with Savage. Couldn't talk about anything but Larry Johns. When the kid didn't come back, it died down. But Heather remembered."

"And so did you," Yoshiba said. "And we've got a witness that Johns gave his name when he called her to try to get hold of Wendell."

Kegan looked sourly at Dave. "All right, so he gave it. So I also knew there was going to be trouble. It doesn't change anything. We got together to talk it over, figure out a way to stop it."

"And you didn't waste any time," Yoshiba said.

"We decided to catch him
in flagrante delicto
and show him
what a fool he was making of himself before it could go any farther."

"So you left the cafe without eating and each of you took your own car. Yours is a Fiat sports model, right? The new one parked in your space out back here?"

Kegan turned his head, wary, watching from the corners of his eyes., "Yeah. That's the one. I followed her. That was the first mistake. I could have been there ten minutes sooner. Then, when we did get there, she had to argue with me."
                                                   
;

"Right. You had a fight at the foot of the stairs. She didn't trust you because you were too angry. She was afraid you'd hurt her son. She was also afraid of what you'd do to Johns. You made a lot of threats."