Authors: Charles Knief
Sand Dollars (6 page)
“Okay,” I said. “You decide. But decide right now, because if you don't like the way I work, you can fire me. I haven't cashed your check.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, this is getting us nowhere.” She uncrossed her arms and looked down at the tops of her Nikes. I waited, standing fifteen feet away, but feeling her heat. I hated the fact that she felt so alone.
“Thank you,” she said after a minute. “I had to get control of myself. I hate losing my temper.”
“Me, too.”
“But you didn't. You were, once again, a perfect gentleman.”
“Don't you just hate that?”
Despite the emotions boiling within, she smiled, a kind of forlorn and ragged smile, but genuine. “Yeah. It could give me a case, wondering about you.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“Come on,” she said, walking across the room and taking my arm. “There are some things I need to show you. After that, I'll stop interfering with what you're doing. But you really can't start a serious investigation without knowing these things.”
She tugged me toward the door. “You've been acting like one, so I'll treat you like one.”
“Like one what?”
“A priest. You are so uninvolved and distant. I need to make a full confession,” she said. “And you're Father John.”
She led me out of the den to the hallway, pulling me up stairs.
“This was his bedroom.” Claire Peters pushed me into something that might have been put together by the set designer for
Out of Africa.
Decorated in dark woods and rich, brown leathers, it was masculine-macho, the kind of bedroom you might expect to see in the home of a man unsure of what he was, or of a child pretending to be a big-game hunter. A child with an unlimited allowance.
Out of Africa.
Decorated in dark woods and rich, brown leathers, it was masculine-macho, the kind of bedroom you might expect to see in the home of a man unsure of what he was, or of a child pretending to be a big-game hunter. A child with an unlimited allowance.
Half-closed wooden shutters blocked out bright sunlight. Green tropical plants shaded the glass, giving the impression the room was somewhere in the middle of a dark jungle.
The head of a magnificent male lion dominated the far wall, surrounded by the heads of other trophy cats and game animals. A zebra skin was artfully thrown across the bed, and a tiger skin lay diagonally across the plank floor, green glass eyes tracking us as we entered.
They reminded me of Claire's eyes.
“You didn't sleep here.”
She barked a harsh, brittle laugh. “Not once.”
In an alcove, unseen from the door, were half a dozen Nautilus machines. The latest models.
“He use these much?” I asked, remembering what Stevenson had told me about Peters's physical condition.
“Only at first. It was his passion for a while. To get in shape. But he lost interest. That was about the same time he started taking all those vitamins and herbal remedies.” Claire's eyes closed, while she peered into the past. “Now Juanita dusts them every day. That's the only activity they get.”
A gun cabinet stood against the wall next to the lion. “Did he shoot these?” I asked, pointing toward the animal heads.
Claire shook her head. “No. He bought them from an estate sale. He bought the guns, too, but he never fired them. It was all part of the look, I guess.”
I opened the cabinet. “May I?”
She shrugged.
I took from the rack a short, double-barreled rifle that looked like a shotgun, but the walls of the stubby barrels were thicker. I opened it. It was a .505 Gibbs, an elephant gun, guaranteed to drop anything that walked on any number of legs on any continent. It had been well used and well maintained. I'd never fired one. Never wanted to. The kick from this thing would be punishing.
I replaced the Gibbs and picked up a long, scoped rifle, something I was more familiar with, a Remington 700 ADL in 7mm Magnum, bolt-action with a variable scope. Not an elephant rifle, but still a lot of gun. I used to be fairly good with one of these back in the bad old days when I'd been assigned as a sniper in some rotten, stench-filled jungle half a world away. Holding the weapon brought back memories I'd have rather kept buried. I put both the rifle and the memories away and closed the cabinet. All the other rifles and shotguns looked new.
“He never fired any of these?”
She shook her head. “Not to my knowledge. He had some pistols, too. A twenty-two he took with him on the boat and a thirty-eight he kept here, but I don't think he ever fired a gun in his life. It just made him happy to have them, so I thought, good for him. I was a good wife.”
“You sound wistful.”
“Just resigned, I guess.”
“Why did you show me all this?”
“Until we came to this house, we were a couple. Even the first few years here I could count on Paul to be there for me. In the middle of the night if I couldn't sleep, he'd rub my back, like you would a baby, and gentle me back to sleep. He
was my husband and I believed he would do anything for me.”
was my husband and I believed he would do anything for me.”
She shifted her gaze toward the Nautilus machines and wrinkled her brow.
“About a year ago,” she continued, “all that changed. I know exactly when it was. Just before Christmas. He went out of town to a seminar on real estate investment and when he came back, he was different.”
She turned those green eyes on me, that confrontational look returning.
“Put on your priest's hat, because you need to hear this. It's embarrassing, but I think it's important for you to know. Our life together, including our sex life, was better than good for all the years of our marriage. It was everything that it should have been, or so I thought. I was happy, fulfilled, and I thought he was, too. Until last year. Then it just turned off like a light switch. I didn't know if it was me that turned him off, or if someone else turned him on better, but when he came back from Palm Desert, he was a different person.
“That's when he redecorated this room. That's when he bought all this Hemingway crap and those machines.”
I watched her eyes. She was getting angry relating the betrayal.
“Hold on a minute,” I said. “Did you discuss this with him?”
“Of course. I'm not stupid. I didn't need to find any notes or lipstick on his collar or long blond hair on his coat to know what was happening. We'd been married nearly fifteen years and I thought, at first, that it was just a fling.
“I mean, we had so much together. He was my best friend! We didn't even have other friends, we were so involved with each other. And then this! It threw me off balance. I wasn't sure what was wrong for a while, but I did press him.
“When he hired this sweet young man to come in and change his home office into another bedroom, I thought maybe he'd had a sea change, that maybe it wasn't another woman after all. But that didn't seem to be the case.
“After he decorated the place and moved out of our bedroom, I fought back the only way I knew how. We went to Europe for what was supposed to be a month. It lasted only a week. It was the worst week of my life, until recently.
“We didn't fight. It was worse. He ignored me. In every hotel room we had separate beds.
“One night I slipped in beside him and tried to get him to make love to me. He recoiled from my touch! Like I had a disease or something! It was too much. I dressed and went downstairs and sat in the lobby until the sun came up. We checked out later that morning, flew home, and never spoke of it again.
“When we got back, I decided to make my own life, apart from Paul. I still loved him, and I really didn't have any proof that he was doing anything wrong. He was always cordial, never mean or nasty. But he wouldn't sleep with me. There was nothing I could do about that, so I had to make a decision. I didn't divorce him. Nothing changed in the business. I wanted to give him some time to see how it would work out.
“Now I know that a month or two after we returned from Europe, he started moving money out of our accounts.
“And now, a year later, he's gone.”
Dappled light coming through the half-closed shutters played across her features. As she related her story, her body became more and more rigid. She stood near the window, arms wrapped around herself in a tight embrace. She looked like a painting of a beautiful, suffering woman, something from the Middle Ages, when suffering was equated with a high morality. Well, maybe some things don't change. “Why tell me this?”
“You don't seem judgmental. You seem aloof, apart from everything. And despite what I said earlier, I can't really trust Joe. He was Paul's friend. I have no one.”
“Do you think Joe helped Paul disappear?”
She wrinkled her brow. “Joe is too ethical, and I don't think he could really keep that kind of a secret. No. I think he was taken in by Paul, too.
“Remember, Paul is smart. Very smart. If he wanted to pull something like this, he would do it and not have to involve anyone else.”
“Except?”
“There was an except?”
“You know there was, the way you said it.”
She sighed. “Okay. I'll say it. There was another woman. There has to be.”
“You know who she is?”
She shook her head. “I don't have a clue. There's this void where my heart used to be. I'm mourning him, but I'm so angry I can't think deeply about it. I saw him! He's alive! That was no mistake! And I can't think of any reason why he'd leave me unless it was for another woman.”
“And you want to find out why he left. That's the most important thing.”
She looked at me as if I were some special kind of idiot. “No. Regardless of what I said last night, the most important thing is the money. I need it back. The company needs it back. That was my company, too. I helped build it, right alongside him. If the son of a bitch stole it, I want it back. And while you're getting it back, you can find out where he is and why he did it.”
It is exactly five miles between the Intercontinental Marina and Spanish Landing, a tiny park wedged between the harbor and the highway. A fast, flat run, ten miles out and back. A stiff breeze blowing in off the harbor chilled me, but five minutes into the run I was glad I'd left my sweatshirt in the hotel.
Despite the wind, I was running effortlessly. A little before Paul Peters disappeared, I'd been shot in the right thigh pursuing a serial killer in Honolulu. I lost my boat, my only home for over a decade, and most of my possessions, but those were unimportant compared to the loss of Kate Alapai, a woman I discovered too late that I loved, and who in turn had loved me.
Now I was back in the best physical condition possible for a man my age. It felt good to be nimble again. Several times in my life I'd been close to death; too often I'd seen those whom I loved die. Survival had given me a deep appreciation of life and the joy of living it. In Hawaii I am a rainbow junkie and enjoy nothing more than watching them float along the green slopes of the Ko'olau Mountains. I can watch them for hours. Nothing else gives me the same kind of peace. Here, with the weak winter California sun reflecting brightly off the surface of San Diego Harbor and the tall, graceful buildings beside it, I got a similar infusion of harmony.
Heading along the Embarcadero toward downtown with the wind at my back, I reviewed why I was here. Barbara Klein said it best: Claire Peters needed someone on her side. I knew nothing of the abilities of the local police and had my doubts about Stevenson's agenda. I told myself she had no one else.
I was new in town, didn't know the layout, didn't know the players, had no contacts, and wasn't certain why I'd been
hired from so far away. Teniente José Enrique de la Peña wasn't returning my pages. I wanted to visit Petersoft, Ltd., after leaving Claire's house, but there was some kind of audit going on and the acting manager couldn't be bothered. Claire told me she'd handle it and get back to me. So far, I'd done nothing but bother the widow and annoy her attorney.
hired from so far away. Teniente José Enrique de la Peña wasn't returning my pages. I wanted to visit Petersoft, Ltd., after leaving Claire's house, but there was some kind of audit going on and the acting manager couldn't be bothered. Claire told me she'd handle it and get back to me. So far, I'd done nothing but bother the widow and annoy her attorney.
With nothing to do, I ran, amused at the job I'd been talked into accepting.
I finished my run along the wide promenade at the rear of the hotel and walked by the marina to warm down. A wizened, suntanned boat salesman dressed in clothes as wildly colored as a Third World postage stamp leaned crepey bare forearms on the teak railing of a million-dollar. motor yacht, the old boat the marina sales office.
Seeing the yachts reminded me of that other thing I had come here to accomplish.
Duchess
, my home for more than a decade, lay at the bottom of the Pacific, sunk by hubris and a hurricane. Living on land made me itchy, the feeling of something solid beneath my feet unwelcome.
Duchess
, my home for more than a decade, lay at the bottom of the Pacific, sunk by hubris and a hurricane. Living on land made me itchy, the feeling of something solid beneath my feet unwelcome.
I'd lived aboard boats for most of my adult life. The illusion of freedom, the idea that you could slip the restraints of civilization and sail out to sea as easily as untying the dock linesâthat illusion is addictive. I liked having the option. Somehow, it had become a part of being John Caine. Chawlie's assessment had been on target. I still thought of myself as a boat person, even though I had no boat.
Self-mockery can last only so long. Pulse and breathing under control, I approached the salesman.
“Nice marina,” I said.
“Finest harbor on the coast, friend.” He looked at me with interest, predatory instincts alerted. About sixty years old, he looked ninety, with a nut-brown face from years spent in the sun, creases and lines superimposed over the wrinkles, a budding basal-cell carcinoma on the bridge of his nose. “Staying at the hotel?”
I nodded.
“You in the market for a boat?”
“One of the reasons I'm here.”
He brightened at my reply. “Jack Kinsman,” he said, extending
his hand over the railing. He had to stretch and I had to reach over the shore rail to take it, but we managed. “What are you looking for?”
his hand over the railing. He had to stretch and I had to reach over the shore rail to take it, but we managed. “What are you looking for?”
“Ketch. Sixty feet or so. Diesel engine. Rigged for long-range cruising.”
“Got nothing like that here, friend, but there's a Sparkman and Stephens on the market. Built in nineteen thirty-eight. It's a sixty-four-footer, and it's a schooner, not a ketch. You have any objection to a wooden hull?”
“Prefer it to Tupperware,” I said.
He laughed, a generation of whiskey and unfiltered cigarettes degrading it into a coughing fit. “Don't get many like you,” he said when he recovered. “Live aboard?”
I nodded, smiling back. “Can I see it?”
Kinsman shook his head. “Yes and no. Have to arrange it in advance. Belongs to a man who wants to sell it, but he's picky about when he shows it. You ready to buy now? Or just looking?”
“I'm serious. With cash.”
“How can I reach you?”
I gave him my room number and the cellular phone in Peters's Range Rover. He gave me his card. I was certain I'd hear from him.
The hotel had a gym and I spent another hour there earning my standard daily rate, then went up to my room to shower and change. There were no messages. I ordered room-service coffee and croissants and took a quick, hot navy shower. By the time the knock came, I was dressed, sitting by the window, looking at the hundreds of yachts tied to their moorings fifteen stories below.
When the server was gone, I went back to the easy chair by the window and made my daily round of telephone calls.
“Admiral MacGruder's office,” said the young male voice on the other end of my first call. “Please be advised this is not a secure line. Yeoman Becker speaking. How may I help you, sir?”
“My name is John Caine. I'm looking for Chief White.”
“Would that be Senior Chief White, sir?”
“Big fella. Vile temper. Sits around, coasting toward retirement. That Senior Chief White.”
“The chief is unavailable at this time, sir. May I direct your call to his voice mail?”
I sighed. Voice mail had invaded the SEALS. I hated voice mail. “Please, Mr. Becker,” I said. “And thank you.”
“You're welcome, sir.”
I left my whereabouts on Max's voice mailbox. I wouldn't call him again. If he came back from wherever he was, he'd call. Knowing Max, he was off somewhere furthering the policies of the United States of America. I remembered something I'd recently seen on CNN, an item about American troops in a place that was cold and snowy and nasty and filled with people who were friendly to neither Americans nor each other. If he was there, I'd be long gone before he was available again.
The file didn't contain the names or phone numbers of the police officers who had handled the case on this side of the border. I called Information for the business number of the San Diego Police Department, dialed it, and explained what I wanted to a succession of very bright, very eager people, none of whom seemed able to help me. I gave up and telephoned Stevenson. When I told him what I wanted, he seemed confused.
“I don't understand,” he said. “Everything I have is in that file. You say it's not there?”
“Nope,” I said. “Everything but. No names. No numbers.”
“Then I must have it here. I'll have to look. Can I call you back?”
“I'm in my hotel room, playing phone tag. Call me when you remember the name, or when you find the phone number.”
He promised to do so and hung up. Odd, I thought. That was odd. He seemed such a put-together guy. I didn't like him because something in me didn't trust him. But he did seem as if he could find his way around a legal file. Or at least write down the telephone numbers of the people connected to a case.
A second attempt proved successful. Starting over at the main switchboard, I found a young woman who knew exactly what I wanted and with whom I had to speak. She gave me the number of the Southern Division, an outlying police station near the Mexican border. I was to ask for Sergeant Esparza. He
was in command of one of the teams in the Special Intelligence Division, handling the cross-border problems and liaising with the Mexican police. If anyone knew how to contact Teniente de la Peña, it would be Sergeant Gregorio Esparza.
was in command of one of the teams in the Special Intelligence Division, handling the cross-border problems and liaising with the Mexican police. If anyone knew how to contact Teniente de la Peña, it would be Sergeant Gregorio Esparza.
One more phone call and I was speaking with Sergeant Esparza himself.
“Can you come down tomorrow?” he asked. “I'm kind of busy right now, but I'd be happy to help tomorrow morning. Nine o'clock?”
“Where are you, exactly?”
“You know San Diego?”
“Used to be stationed here, but it's changed.”
“Mexico is still south, though. Take I-Five south to the Fourteenth Street turnoff. Take that east for two miles. We're right there. Just give your name to the desk sergeant. Uh, what is your name again?”
“Caine. John Caine.”
“You got anybody I can call that'll speak for you? Or would you prefer I see what NCIC can spit out?”
“Help yourself. But there's a couple of people at the Honolulu Police Department who can tell you about me. Try Lieutenant Kahanamoku, of Homicide.”
“Kahaka what?”
I spelled it for him, dug deeply into my memory and pulled out Kimo's direct number. “Call him.”
“I don't know that I have the budget to call Hawaii. You got anybody closer?”
“Nope. Everybody I knew here is long gone.” There was an admiral in Coronado, but I hadn't even asked for him when I called Max, and I wondered why.
“Too bad. I'll do something. What are they, three hours behind us?”
“Two now. Three when you go on daylight saving time.”
“Thanks. See you tomorrow.”
My last call was to de la Peña's pager, knowing it was a wasted effort, but doing it for no other reason than to torment the bastard.
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