Nothing but the Truth (56 page)

Authors: John Lescroart

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller, #Suspense

BOOK: Nothing but the Truth

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“Do you clean the whole building?”

“No. There are, I believe, twenty-three or -four units, all individually owned. We contract through the superintendent for the public areas, and many residents are happy with our service.”

“And Bree Beaumont was one of them?”

“Yes.” Mr. Lee shot a glance at Hardy, ventured a personal comment. “It was very sad about her.”

“Yes it was,” he said. Sadness was all over this case. He gave the sentiment a moment. “So what is your schedule there, for cleaning? I gather you go on Tuesday and Thursday, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“So you do each place twice a week?”

“No. Generally, we clean once. Half the units on one day, the other half on the other.”

“And which was Bree?”

“Thursday. Every Thursday.”

Hardy saw the reason for Griffin’s earlier visit. If Heritage had come on Tuesday, possibly within an hour or two of Bree’s death and before the crime scene unit had arrived, then trace evidence might be found among the cleaning supplies, in the vacuum cleaner bags and so on. But evidently this had not happened.

Still, he wanted to be certain. “So you didn’t go to her apartment on the day of her death?”

“No. That’s what Sergeant Griffin asked us.”

“Did he ask if any of your staff saw anybody unusual in the hallways? Anything strange that they noticed?”

“Yes, of course.” Mr. Lee was still seated, and now sat back, folding his arms patiently. “But—have you been there? yes?—then you know. It’s really not that type of apartment building. There’s only two units on each floor, except for the penthouse, where there is one.”

Hardy remembered. At Bree’s twelfth floor, there was simply a landing with a window and a door. Residents weren’t exactly out wandering in the halls, loitering about in the locked lobby. “So there was really nothing to be found in any of your supplies. The crime scene had already been there by the time you came on Thursday?”

Mr. Lee shook his head. “I don’t know that. But Inspector Griffin . . . just one minute.” Pulling open the drawer again, Lee pushed junk around for a minute, found what he wanted, extracted it, and handed it up to Hardy.

It was a crinkled piece of paper. Hardy’s pulse quickened as he realized what it probably was—a sheet torn from Griffin’s notebook. In the by now familiar scrawl, Hardy read: “10 01. Received from Heritage Cleaners. One Gold and Platinum Movado Men’s watch, serial number 81-84-9880 /8367685. Evid/case: 981113248. C. Griffin, SFPD Badge 1123.”

“Where did you get this?” Hardy asked. “Where is the watch?”

Mr. Lee shrugged eloquently. “When the inspector came here, he said he still needed the watch. I should hold the receipt. If no one claimed it, eventually it might come to us.”

“But how did you get the receipt in the first place?”

“The inspector gave it to my supervisor in the building. They found the watch when cleaning.”

“And this was when your people found the watch? On the Thursday?”

Lee considered a moment. “Yes. The date on the receipt is October first, see? A Thursday.”

“And no one has claimed it since? Reported it missing?”

“No,” Lee said. “Not to my people.”

Hardy wasn’t surprised to hear this. If the watch inadvertently got left behind, say snapping off during a struggle at the crime scene, it would be the height of folly to go back to try to get it. But stranger things had happened.

Of course, Hardy realized, it might also be Ron’s watch. With the upheaval in his life since Bree’s death, he simply might not have missed it. But Griffin would have just asked Ron about that. Wouldn’t he?

Instead, he’d taken it as evidence, logged to the Beaumont case number. The problem was that by this time, Hardy knew the file backward and forward, and there wasn’t any watch in the evidence lockup or anywhere else.

Hardy asked if he might have a copy of the receipt. When Mr. Lee returned from making one, he handed Hardy the copy, then clucked sympathetically. “I’m sorry I can’t help more, but I haven’t even heard about Sergeant Griffin’s death until just now.” Mr. Lee wasn’t rushing him, but clearly he felt this investigation had little to do with him or his staff. It had taken enough of his time on a workday.

Hardy couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more here. There had to be. He’d referred again to the notes before coming and Griffin had included his maddening exclamation points.

But now they were moving toward the exit. The words “fabric wash” came to him, so he stopped at the door. “Mr. Lee, one last question. Do you do any clothes cleaning at all? Laundry work? Say one of your clients leaves a pile of clothes by a washing machine—would you dump it in for them? Or dry them?”

The proprietor considered this, then shook his head. “We remove window drapery occasionally, or upholstery fabric, but no. Generally, we don’t clean clothes.”

“And what about Bree’s drapes or furniture? Did you remove either of those for dry cleaning? Were there any stains you needed to remove?”

“No. That would have been a special order, and I checked into that with Sergeant Griffin when he came here. And again, I am so sorry to hear about him.”

Scott Randall heard the rumor from one of the other assistant DAs, who in turn had heard it from one of the forensic guys who’d worked with Inspector Leon Timms, unhappily cleaning and cataloguing through the night under the backseat of Griffin’s car.

Although Glitsky had cautioned Timms and his staff not to discuss any possible relationship between the murders of Bree Beaumont, Carl Griffin, and Phil Canetta, by some inexplicable mystery of nature the word had leaked out.

Now Randall was at a hastily called late lunchtime strategy session with his boss and his investigator, Peter Struler. They had just taken their seats at Boulevard, an incredibly fine restaurant that was well off the beaten track of the rank and file of workers at the Hall of Justice.

Pratt, still smarting from her dressing-down by the mayor, was inclined to dismiss the rumor, but Randall needed her support to move ahead, and he wasn’t going to let it go. “I think we have to assume it’s true, Sharron. It sounds right. It
feels
true, doesn’t it?”

Peter Struler was a fifteen-year, no-nonsense investigator and he spoke with a veteran’s confidence. “It’s true,” he volunteered. “Everybody assumed Griffin got hit on some dope sting, but he was doing Beaumont. Ballistics confirms the same gun whacked Canetta.”

Pratt’s mouth hung open for a moment. “Is that a fact? You know that for sure?”

Struler nodded. “As soon as Scott told me what he’d heard, I moseyed on down to the lab, checked it out with some of the good guys. Same gun.”

“The same gun.” Pratt was trying to fit this information into her worldview.

“The same gun that killed Griffin,” Randall explained again.

“But what was Canetta’s connection to Beaumont?”

“Well, isn’t that funny you should ask?” Randall tried to control an arrogant smirk and wasn’t entirely successful. He leaned over the small table. “You know the Frannie Hardy we took such grief about this morning? Poor little innocent thing.”

Pratt’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

“Well, our old friend, her husband the lawyer? He’s up to his ears in this. Canetta was freelancing for him.”

“For him? What do you mean?”

Struler butted in harshly. “Hardy was using Canetta’s badge to get information he couldn’t get on his own.”

“On what?”

Randall gestured expansively. “All of this. Anything he could.”

“But why?”

“He’d probably tell you he wants to help his wife get out of jail, but that doesn’t hold up. Despite the mayor, she doesn’t get out until we let her go, and I’m not too inclined to go there.” Randall tossed a conspiratorial glance at Struler. “I’ve got a theory on the real reason Hardy’s involved, and Peter here doesn’t think it’s too bad.”

Pratt took a sip of her sparkling water, nodded attentively. “Go on.”

“Hardy is Glitsky’s best friend, right? You heard our good lieutenant in your office the other day, about what a true friend of his this Frannie is, what a great person. She took care of his kids when his wife died. Blah blah blah. Well, ask Marian Braun what a sweetheart Mrs. Hardy is.”

Pratt waved that away. “So what’s your theory, Scott?”

“All right, listen. We all agree Ron did this, right?”

Struler, if anything, was more certain than Randall. “Absolutely.” He turned to Pratt and gave it to her one more time, so she would be clear on it. “Straight insurance scam, ma’am. Bree was heavily insured. She was also Ron’s support and had decided to throw him out on the street.”

“Why?” Pratt asked.

Struler continued. “He had another girl on the—”

“Woman,” Pratt quickly corrected him. They were talking about multiple murder, but some things just couldn’t be tolerated even for an instant.

The inspector made a quick face, fixed it, moved on. “Another woman on the side.”

“Not Frannie Hardy?”

“No, ma’am. We don’t believe so. Anyway, I’ve got four witnesses from the building saying they’d seen Ron with another woman—same one—during the day when Bree was out working. They’d just walk out through the lobby holding hands, maybe sit on the bench out front.”

“So who is she?”

“That we don’t know. Yet. We’ll find her. Anyway, the point is, Bree found out about this.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s a reasonable conjecture,” Randall interjected, “maybe she didn’t. Either way it doesn’t matter. But you’ll see, it fits.” He nodded back at Struler to continue.

“So what finally happened was Bree got herself another boyfriend, got knocked up, was going to marry him.”

Scott Randall whispered, “We’re hearing it was Damon Kerry.” He exulted in his boss’s stunned expression— there was nothing, he thought, like a good surprise. And he was going to have a couple more for Frannie Hardy tomorrow.

“Damon Kerry.” Pratt’s eyes shone with excitement.

“That’s the word on the street,” Struler said.

“It’s really pretty smart the way they’ve figured it all,” Scott said.

“What? Who?”

“Hardy and Glitsky. Knowing Kerry would have to get involved . . .”

Pratt held up a hand. “I’m afraid you’re getting ahead of me. How is Kerry . . . ?”

“Why do you think the mayor wants us to pull back on this, just at this time? Democratic mayor. Democratic— now—front-runner for governor.”