Life Without Parole: A Kate Conway Mystery (33 page)

On the drive to Vera’s house, I sat in the passenger seat staring out the window. Somewhere deep inside me were tears. Maybe they were for what Brick and Tim had said, maybe they were for me, or maybe they were just the result of tiredness and stress. Whatever the cause, I didn’t want the guys to catch me.

Andres took my silence as annoyance and started making jokes. When they didn’t work, he tapped my shoulder. “You know I feel bad for these guys too,” he said. “But you can’t save them.”

“I’m not trying to save them,” I said. “But it’s nice to see that you’ve softened your stance.”

He shrugged. “We all make bad decisions. Maybe not as bad as theirs, but we all make them.”

“What bad decisions have you made, Andres? A good wife who loves you, nice kids, a house you can more or less afford. It seems to me you’ve made all the right choices.”

“
I started working with you.” He smiled. “And that’s been no end of trouble.”

I laughed, and for the time at least, the tears receded.

“Hi guys.” Vera greeted us at the door, her two dogs at her side, flanking her like bodyguards.

“Are you alone?” I asked as Andres, Victor, and I moved past the dogs into the house.

“Yes. He’s gone,” Vera said. “He had to leave. I told him he had to direct any questions to my lawyer.”

Finally, a little common sense.

“I also hired a lawyer for Victor,” she continued. Victor began to protest, but Vera wouldn’t hear of it. “I know you don’t think you need one, but you do.”

“It’s just so…” Victor was at a rare loss for words.

“Adult,” I said.

“Necessary,” added Andres.

“Freakin’ chicken,” Victor jumped in. “Like I gotta hide behind someone.”

“He’s at a different firm than my lawyer, and he has a very good reputation. He comes highly recommended,” Vera told him. “I’ve given him a retainer and he’s said that you have to tell Makina that he can’t speak to you without your lawyer present.”

“What about tomorrow?” Victor asked. “How am I going to do my job?”

“You just have to mic the guy; you don’t have to chat him up,” Andres said.

Once we were all settled in the kitchen, with the dogs lounging beneath the table and all of us with coffee and those crumbly bakery cookies on our plates, Vera sat down.

“Done playing hostess?” I asked.

“Unless you need something?”

“No.”

“Then I’m done.”

“So…”

Vera smiled. “It’s fine. Doug’s
alive. It was all a big misunderstanding. I called him after you left.” She paused. “I called him quite a few times. I think the wine had something to do with it.”

“It usually does,” I said.

“Finally he picked up. He said that I was in no danger as long as he stayed away. He said that the restaurant was in trouble. I was right about the offshore accounts. There’s some mess with the money. It’s gone missing or something.”

“‘Or something’?”

“I didn’t get the whole story. Doug had to hang up. He had to meet someone.”

“Did he say who?”

“No.” She looked at me. She must have seen the worry in my face, because her expression changed from optimism to panic. “What don’t I know? Detective Makina came over and he wanted to talk to me but I told him he had to talk to my lawyer and I sent him away. What did he want to talk to me about?”

“After your call with Doug, something happened,” I said. “Victor said you spoke to Doug around ten.”

“Ten twelve.” She showed me the call on her cell phone. “We talked for four minutes.”

“I got to his apartment around ten forty-five, maybe a few minutes later,” I said. “His place had been messed up, like someone was looking for something. And Doug was missing.”

“So, he’s not okay?” she asked. “What’s happened to him?”

“Vera, it’s more than that. You spoke to Doug at ten. Forty-five minutes later his hiding place is turned inside out and Doug is missing. Guess who the police suspect?”

“Me?”

“You and Victor.”

Vera tapped the table. “So do I tell the police what I found out or do I just tell you?”

“That depends,” I said. “On what you found out.”

D
oug told me that Erik was embezzling,” Vera said. “He didn’t want to say anything bad about him, of course, but I made him tell me.”

“How did he know that?” I asked.

“Doug was hired to help on the investment end, but he didn’t have access to the checkbook. When I got those threatening calls, Doug got worried that I was right, that it did have something to do with the investors.” She said. “He started looking into things.”

“He told you it was an ex-girlfriend,” Victor pointed out.

“He didn’t want me to worry.” She blushed a little, which made me want to sock her.

“You buy that?” I was too annoyed to worry about Vera’s feelings. “Then why did Doug run after Erik got killed?”

“I’m getting to that,” Vera said. “Erik, as the restaurant manager, did have access to the checkbook. And when Doug went to Ilena, they looked into it, and it turns out that money is missing. Lots of it. The investment account and the day-to-day checking account are almost dry.”

“But Roman and Ilena can write checks too,” I said. “So how do you know it’s not one of them who embezzled?”

“Almost all of it is their money,” Vera said. “What would be the point of embezzling from yourself?”

Andres leaned back, seeming satisfied by Vera’s story. “So someone killed Erik because he took the money. That could be Roman, or Ilena. Or even Walt, if he felt it meant the restaurant wouldn’t open.”

“Or Doug,” I said. “His money was in that bank account.”

“Or Vera.” Victor looked at us. “I mean, she’s got the same motive as Doug, so this isn’t going to get us off the hook with Makina.”

Vera didn’t skip a beat. She’d obviously thought of that herself. “I asked Doug about the other investors you mentioned, Kate. He said
Ilena gave him a thumb drive. It was supposed to have the numbers of an account where Roman sometimes hid money. She handed it to him at the restaurant.”

“When?” Andres asked, but he looked at me. “That must have been what Ilena handed Doug during the taping.”

“Why didn’t she e-mail him the numbers?” Victor asked.

“A thumb drive is easier to hide from a prying husband than an e-mail account,” I said.

“So why did she trust Doug?” Andres asked.

Andres, Victor, and I looked toward Vera, hoping she was reaching the same conclusion we had, that he and Ilena were more than business partners.

“Obviously Doug is trustworthy,” Vera said. She caught me frowning and shrugged. “Or he’s been sleeping with her. But we don’t know that for certain, and if Tim’s story teaches us anything it’s that you shouldn’t convict people without solid evidence.”

“What happened to the thumb drive?” I asked. I decided to ignore the ethics lecture, as I’ve ignored all past ethics lectures.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess Doug still has it. The scary thing is when Doug looked at the drive, it contained a lot more than one bank account number. It had dozens of account numbers, and the names of some of Roman’s associates. Doug thinks she gave it to him so he would take it to the police and get Roman arrested.”

“So why didn’t he?” I asked.

Vera didn’t have an answer, but I did. Doug wasn’t an innocent. Going to the police would get him in trouble for some reason. Or he was working with Roman, and Ilena didn’t know it. Either way, he was more than a nerd with a bucket list.

“You’re both assuming Doug’s still alive,” Victor said. Vera looked frightened at the suggestion, so I gave Victor my best “shut up” look. He shook it off. “Look, Kate, I’m just saying. Someone was at his place looking for something. It has to be the thumb drive. And if the person looking for it found it, why keep a witness around? Especially if that witness knows the identity of Erik’s killer.”

Vera turned to me. “
That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Shockingly, yes,” I had to admit. “Victor’s probably a hundred percent right.”

Victor smiled. “See? I don’t need a lawyer. I can just talk to Makina. I’ll set him straight.” Victor was getting excited. “I have a few theories about how this all went down, and I think once he hears me out, everything will be fine.”

“Tomorrow is going to be fun,” Andres said. “Once Victor is led away in cuffs, you want to do audio, Kate, or should I?”

“I’ll do audio,” I said. “You’re going to have to shoot the arrest so we have an ending to the show.”

That night, like so many other nights, I went home with the intention of lying on the couch, watching bad television, eating takeout, and going to bed. There was another missed called from Dugan on my throwaway cell phone, but no message. Tim probably couldn’t leave a message, I decided, since it was a collect call.

There were too many things on my mind, too many people’s lives I was forced to understand. I wanted a break from human interaction, and the conflict that went with it. I ordered General Tso’s chicken for two, and when it arrived, I poured myself a sparkling water and settled on the couch to watch a movie. Just as I was finally relaxing, the phone rang. I went to the kitchen. It was Dugan.

“Will you accept a collect call from Joseph Tyler?” The computer voice asked.

It took me a second to remember who that was. “Yes,” I said. I heard a clicking sound. “Brick?”

“Yeah. Kate,” he said, “you’re all done with the documentary?”

“Yes. It was our last day today,” I said.

“And this number. This ain’t your real number?”

“Why?”

“This is just a number you give out to guys you don’t trust?”

“Why?”

“Get rid of it.”

“The phone?”

“Get rid of it,” he repeated. “Toss it.”

“Brick, what’s this about?”

Another click. Brick had hung up.

I turned the phone off and put it in a drawer, then I took it out of the drawer and turned it on again. I left it on the kitchen counter near the trash, but I couldn’t decide whether to throw it away or not. After about twenty minutes of standing in my kitchen debating, I called Dugan. I didn’t know what information I was looking for, so I told the guard who I was and asked if anything unusual was going on.

The guy thought I was crazy. “We don’t really discuss that,” he said. “Especially with TV people.”

“Can I talk to Brick, Joseph Tyler? I have his inmate number somewhere,” I said. “I can find it if you need it.”

“It’s after hours,” the guard told me.

“But he just called me.”

“They can call until nine p.m. It’s six minutes after.”

“Right. It’s just six minutes after nine,” I said. “I just want to…” I didn’t really know what I wanted, so I stopped there.

“You can call in the morning if you want, but not tonight.” I could hear the guard hesitate. “One of these guys harassing you or something?”

“No, it’s fine. I just had a question.”

“Tomorrow, after nine.” He hung up.

After the call, I tried to go back to the movie, but I couldn’t follow the plot. Something about a woman who becomes friends with a shy dog-walker in New York. Secretly, the guy is a prince from some made-up European country and is slumming to see how the other half lives. Naturally the two fall in love. And naturally love conquers all.

Vera was right. They had sold us a bill of goods.

W
alt was early for his interview, and he’d brought muffins, a recipe he’d gotten from some restaurant he’d visited in Vermont. We stood in the dusty dining area of Club Car drinking coffee and waiting for Andres and Victor to be ready with the lights.

“Do you go from kitchen to kitchen trying to get their recipes?” I asked Walt.

“Yeah.” As if it was the most natural thing in the world. “It’s good. Try it.”

I bit into the muffin, cherry streusel, and it was good, but that wasn’t the point. “Would you share your recipes with anyone who walked in off the street asking for them?”

“Any chef, yeah. Why not?” Walt glanced toward Andres. “In fact, I’ll show you something. In the kitchen.”

“The kitchen’s off-limits,” I said.

“No, they cleared it.”

“When?”