She walked back to her small apartment, stopping for a bottle of grapefruit juice and an egg-and-potato breakfast taco at a small convenience store up from the harbor. She sipped at the juice and ate her taco as she headed past Port Leo’s shopping and arts district and the courthouse square, watching the tourist birders heading out with the cameras and binoculars from the bed-and-breakfasts near the square, eager to spot the coast’s famed, precious whooping cranes. At home she stood under the shower’s hot spray, then turned the water icy cold for a deliciously long minute, then hot again. When she got out and toweled off, she went into her bedroom to dress. The message light on her answering machine was blinking and she frowned, hoping it wasn’t work calling since she’d put in well over sixty hours this week.
She listened to the message. ‘Ms Salazar? This is Barbara Zachary at Chyme Investigations. Please call me as soon as you get this message. Please.’ The voice was shaky.
Claudia dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and dialed the phone. She knew Barbara Zachary slightly, a single mother who did occasional support work for Harry. If there was a break in Whit’s case, she couldn’t imagine why Harry would call her with that news first instead of Whit.
‘Chyme Investigations.’
‘Barbara Zachary, please.’
‘This is she.’ The woman’s voice sounded wooden.
‘Hi, this is Claudia Salazar. You had left a message for me?’
‘Yes.’ Then silence. ‘Harry is dead.’
Claudia’s nice warm muscles turned to jelly. She sat on the edge of her unmade bed. Her breath seemed frozen in her chest. ‘Oh, my God.’
‘He was shot in Houston. Down near the port. Yesterday afternoon. It took them a while to ID him. He didn’t have any ID on him, but his rental car was parked nearby. The license plates were taken off. That slowed them down until they traced the VIN number.’ Barbara’s voice broke again. ‘I cannot believe Harry is gone.’
‘My God.’
‘I know he had a case in Houston he was working,’ Barbara said. ‘For Whitman Mosley, and Harry told me you were the referral.’ The barest hint of accusation tinged her voice, as though Claudia bore a terrible share of responsibility. ‘There’s no answer at Judge Mosley’s house. Can you contact him for me? The Houston police will want to talk to him.’
‘I’ hunt him down right now. Who’s the investigating officer in Houston?’ Claudia grabbed for a pad.
‘His name is Arturo Gomez.’ Now Barbara broke into sobs. ‘I’m sorry. This is… difficult. He was so sweet to me.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I’d worked for him from the beginning,’ Barbara said. ‘He never took any dangerous cases.’
‘I want you to tell me,’ Claudia said. ‘Everything you know.’
‘They found Harry in an insurance office near the Port of Houston with some man, I don’t know his name. I don’t know anything about him.’
Five minutes later, Claudia was at the door of the guest house where Whit lived, behind the main Mosley house. No answer at the door, but Whit’s Ford Explorer sat in the driveway. She hurried back up to the main house, rapped on the door, rang the doorbell.
Irina Mosley answered the door in a cotton robe, hair looking disheveled, like she’d had a long night. She was a beautiful woman but the sudden weight of Babe’s illness had thinned her already waifish face. Claudia didn’t particularly like Irina, thought of her as the trophy wife who’d seen a rich old man as a passport out of Russian poverty, but the thought that her husband was dying softened Claudia’s heart.
‘Claudia, hello,’ Irina said. She always spoke so quietly, as though an eavesdropper lurked nearby. She looked exhausted, dark blotches under her eyes.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you so early. Where’s Whit?’
‘Off to Houston.’ Her voice hardened.
‘Why?’ Some man, Barbara had said. They found Harry with some man . Claudia’s skin prickled beneath her windbreaker. Oh, Jesus, Whit.
‘He didn’t tell me,’ Irina said. ‘He left right after court yesterday.’
‘Did he fly? His car’s still here.’
‘No,’ Irina said. ‘He went with that Gooch person.’ She frowned in distaste.
Claudia thanked Irina. She went back to her car, tried Whit on her cell phone. No answer on his. Please, not Whit, too.
She drove home and called Barbara Zachary. ‘Apparently Whit’s in Houston.’
‘Oh, my God. What if Judge Mosley’s the man with Harry?’
‘I’m sure Whit’s okay,’ Claudia said. She thanked Barbara, gave her sympathies again, and hung up. Then she called Whit’s cell phone again. Got his bright drawl on his voice mail, asking her to leave a message. She did, asking him to call her. Hung up and lay back down on the bed, a sick twist in her heart, her back, her throat.
She called her police chief, said she was going to Houston for the weekend. He wasn’t happy but she was quietly insistent and told him that a friend had been murdered. She did not say that possibly two friends had been murdered. Then she left a message for Arturo Gomez at HPD headquarters, explaining that she had information on the Harry Chyme case and asking him to call her as soon as possible. Then she packed her gun, her permit, two extra clips, her badge – although, of course, she had no jurisdiction in Houston, but she felt she needed it – and her clothes, called her mother to tell her she was going out of town for a couple of days, and headed for her Honda.
Whit is okay, she told herself. He is okay. Repeat as needed.
Claudia drove fast, a steady twenty miles above the speed limit.
18
‘Don’t bother talking to the hit men,’ Bucks said. ‘Let me. Best that you don’t know who’s doing what in case the police ask questions.’
‘Wrong,’ Paul said. ‘That’s been part of the problem.’ He stood at the window, watching the sun start its slow peek above the oaks. Early morning haze lay on the grounds of the Bellini estate, off Lazy Lane, and Paul had awoken Bucks with a 6 a.m. phone call, demanding he get to the family house. Bucks had been sleeping on Frank’s sofa in the faint hope Eve would return to the house. Not likely, but he couldn’t take the risk of not putting forth a clear and visible effort.
‘Chad Channing says it’s really important to delegate, and you do that beautifully,’ Bucks said.
‘Delegate your ass,’ Paul said. ‘Don’t lecture me this morning. I’m not in the mood.’
‘The money being lost is a matter of trust, not delegation,’ Bucks said. ‘You trusted the wrong woman.’
‘I don’t trust anyone, Bucks. Except my mom.’
Bucks, nervous, no coffee yet, lit a cigarette, blew smoke away from the comatose figure of Tommy Bellini.
‘Don’t smoke in here around my dad, for God’s sakes.’
‘He doesn’t have a lung problem,’ Bucks said, but he inched open a window and thumbed the cig out into the garden.
‘If the trellis catches fire, I’m kicking your ass.’
‘Paul. Has it occurred to you I’m pretty much all you’ve got right now?’ Bucks said. ‘If you and I don’t stick together, we’re sunk. Frank’s useless. Eve’s gone. Kiko’s gonna go nuclear if we can’t deliver the money. You’ve got Nicky dead after the moron shoots up a diner. I’m the one who’s standing by you, man, and you treat me like I’m a leper.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Gratitude lightens the heart.’
‘Did Chad Channing say that, too?’
‘No, Sister Mary Clarence.’
‘That was Whoopi Goldberg in those nun movies.’
‘And my algebra teacher back in school.’ Bucks shut the window. ‘Fine. You want to talk with the hit guys, that’s fine. They get caught, they sing, they finger you instead of me. It’s really no skin off my back. All I want is this thieving bitch caught and punished for the hell she’s put us through.’ Bucks forced himself not to glance over his shoulder at Paul to watch for a nervous tic of reaction.