The younger woman winced. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “It’s okay. The sixties were just real good to her, is all.” In a normal tone, she went on, “We can’t leave an open hole. It’s unsightly and dangerous. We’d be liable if someone fell in.”
Damn. A grave could not be reopened inconspicuously in the middle of the night, either, not when lifting a vault lid needed several men or a crane.
Still squinting him, the older woman said, “Except only one of those vaults went in yesterday. The rest had to wait until this morning.”
The younger one looked around in surprise. “Why?”
The older woman broke off studying him to grimace at the younger. “The crane broke down again. You were out of the office when Mr. Daniels came in fussing about equipment maintenance and covering up the plywood over the holes to keep an ‘esthetic appearance’. Gilbert was still in the shop working on the crane when I left last night.”
So Tankersley stayed late in the cemetery and three graves stood open all night. Cole wanted to grab the ladies and kiss them. “Thank you. That’s very helpful.”
He strolled toward the door hoping they would go back to what they were doing before. And the younger woman did return to her desk. The older one, though, resumed staring at him. Oh well, what the hell. He went ahead and passed through the door.
From outside, he zipped back to Macy’s.
A different young woman stood behind the reception counter of the salon…just as blonde as Tiffany, glossy in a silk slack suit, but presumably a policewoman. Willner sat in the waiting area, picking through the magazines as if fearing contamination, looking like a put-upon husband waiting for his wife. He called to the receptionist, “Is there anything to read that isn’t about what my man really wants or how to lose weight while making delicious desserts?”
She grinned.
Galentree, nearby, wore work clothes with the Macy’s logo and seemed to be fiddling with lights under a cosmetics counter.
Where was Razor? Finally Cole spotted him at the top of a ladder, his back to the salon area, fiddling with a vertical banner printed with autumn leaves. Oh, right. Tomorrow was the first day of September.
Cole climbed a virtual ladder to join him. “Are you four all that’s waiting for Irah?”
“There are store security officers in plainclothes at all the doors. At this door, they’re the window washers outside.” Razor shook the banner, then began fussing with its attachment again. “How’s it going in Colma?”
“Hamada needs help cracking Tankersley and I think you can give it to him.” Cole briefly recounted the interrogation and his trip to Pacific Hills.
Razor stared at him. “You want me to pass that information on to Hamada? How am I supposed to explain knowing it?”
“You have many and mysterious sources of information.”
Razor snorted. Then he sighed and took out his cell phone. Punching in the number, he said, “You realize that after this everyone will definitely consider I’m a wack job. Yo, Hamada…a little bird tells me that yesterday Tankersley dug four pre-need graves and didn’t put in three of the vaults until this morning.” He paused. “Hamada?”
At the other end of the connection, Hamada said, “Are you down here, too?”
“Nope. I’m up a ladder in Macy’s waiting for Carrasco to keep a hair appointment.”
Another silence, much longer, came over the phone. “You’re shitting me.”
Razor grimaced. “No, I swear.”
“A hair appointment? And you know what’s what’s happening down here in Colma? What the hell is going on?”
“Ask me again some night when this is over and we’re both half blitzed. Gotta go.” He jammed the phone back in his work pants.
“How much time do we have?” Cole asked.
Razor checked his watch. “Ten to fifteen minutes.”
“Then I want to see how Tankersley reacts.”
He zipped to the interview room.
Hamada stood hefting his phone and shaking his head. After a few moments he raised a brow at Tankersley. “What was that number for the Pacific Hills office?”
Tankersley recited it.
Hamada punched it in. “This is Inspector Hamada again. I need to verify some information I just received. Did you have three graves sitting open last night?”
Tankersley froze.
On the cemetery end of Hamada’s phone, the voice of the younger woman in the office said, “Yes. Didn’t the other detective tell you?”
Hamada’s eyebrows rose. “What other detective?”
“The one just here, that we told about the pre-need graves.”
Hamada frowned. “I think he told someone else. What was his name?”
“Come to think of it, he didn’t say his name.”
In the background, the older woman said, “He looked a little like Jimmy Stewart.”
Hamada eyed the telephone as if it had turned into a bomb. Disconnecting, he gingerly dropped it back in his pocket, then shook himself hard and pinned Tankersley with a grim stare. “You think I’m jerking you around? Just keep lying to me, amigo, and see what I do. Which of those graves did you put Inspector Dunavan and the woman into?”
Tankersley yawned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now either arrest me for something or I’m leaving.”
Hamada bared his teeth. “If we have to pull all those vaults up, I’ll charge you with everything I can think of, starting with being an accessory after the fact in the murder of a police officer. I will, in fact, make your life a living hell. So why don’t you cooperate and not piss me off any more than I am already?”
Tankersley stared up at him for a long minute, then dropped his head. Despite his muscles, he seemed to shrivel in the chair. “She never told me he was a cop. She said they were her husband and a bimbo she’d caught him fooling around with. I–I never did anything like that before.”
In a pig’s eye, Cole reflected. He was lying through his teeth. Which hardly mattered at the moment.
“I needed the bread and a friend in L.A. knew that, so he suggested I help the lady out. She brought ‘em down Thursday night and I stashed ‘em in an old mausoleum until- ”
“Cut to the chase, amigo,” Hamada said. “Where do we dig?”
Tankersley sighed. “I’ll show you.”
32
A ziptrip to his virtual ladder at Macy’s found Razor still on the real one fussing with fall banners. In the salon area, Willner continued playing the waiting husband.
“How’s our time?” Cole asked.
“Almost there.” Excitement ran under the quiet words. Cole heard Razor’s heart speeding up. “What happened in Colma?”
“Tankersley’s going to lead them to my body.” Urgency beat at him. Lead Hamada, but not too quickly. Please let them capture Irah first.
Please let her show up.
He looked down, checking out all females near the salon, hoping he recognized her. She was bound to have changed her appearance again. He just hoped those model’s bones gave her away.
His gaze started to slid past a stocky, butch woman carrying shopping bags and a suit bag, then jerked back, feeling a prickle. Not stocky. Her baggy cargo pants and heavy knit turtleneck, with sleeves coming down her hands to her fingers, just made her look that way. So did her square jaw. But the ears revealed by hair slicked back and darkened by gel had no lobes.
Relief matched a chill at how easily she might have gone unrecognized. He had guessed right. She really was arrogant enough to keep her appointment.
“She’s here!” he whispered, and scrambled to the floor.
Above him, Razor murmured into his radio. Willner peered over the top of his magazine, catching the eye of the policewoman at the reception desk.
She gave Irah a radiant smile. “Welcome. Are you Miss Benet?”
“Yes.” Irah eyed her. “What happened to Tiffany?” Her voice sounded different, as if she were talking through clenched teeth.
Cole’s antenna vibrated, seeing tension in her body. “Watch it,” he called to Razor, backing down the ladder. “I think she smells the trap.”