“Wait a minute,” Rho said. “Five in the afternoon is too late for abaloneing.” The divers usually went out at first light.
“Yeah, it is. What happened was we filled our cooler that morning and were starting to leave when Alex spotted these guys he thought were DFG. They weren’t, I knew that, but Alex is sorta — no, he’s completely — paranoid. So he insisted on hiding the cooler in one of the caves off the cove and coming back for it later.”
“All right, you were there around five and...?”
“And that murdered woman... What’s her name?”
“Chrystal Ackerman.”
“Yeah, now I remember. She called herself Chrys. Anyway, she just popped outta this clump of pampas grass where she’d gone to take a pee. Was acting kind a freaky, like we’d caught her doing something she shouldn’t, but she seemed nice enough. Told us her car was broke down and her cell phone wouldn’t work, asked us to call Triple A for her, plus some number in Las Vegas. I said we would, and she wrote down the Triple A card number and the message to leave at the other number and gave me a twenty-dollar bill to cover the long-distance charge. When I told her it was too much she said we should use what was left to buy a drink on her.”
“What was the message for the person in Las Vegas?”
“Number was for some kind of hospital. I was supposed to ask whoever answered to tell Judith Ackerman that Chrys got in and out okay.”
Rho glanced at Guy, who nodded.
Got in and out of Cascada Canyon with a quarter of a million dollars.
“And did you make the calls?” she asked.
Lily looked down into her drink. “No,” she said in a small voice. “I wanted to stop in Signal Port and use a pay phone, but Alex said we were going straight to Tai Haruru, they were waiting on the abalone. He said we’d have our drink on Chrys in the bar there. And then the bastard took the paper she’d written the numbers on and tossed it out the window.” She paused, shaking her head. “I think that was when I started to hate him.”
Rho waited. When Lily didn’t go on, she said, “I gather this isn’t everything you have to tell me.”
“Not by half. There’s the Samantha Lindsay thing. But they’ve already got Alex on that, and I said I’d testify if they don’t charge me with receiving. At first I felt bad about it, but you know what? It’s starting to feel like the right thing.”
“Which detective made the deal with you?”
“The little guy. Shepherd.”
Rho suppressed a smile, imagining what Denny’s reaction to “the little guy” reference would have been. “Okay, what else?”
A sly look crept across Lily’s face. She, Rho sensed, was about to play her ace in the hole.
“This could really help your case.”
“Then tell me.”
Lily took her time, holding out her glass to Guy for a refill. This was her moment in the spotlight, Rho thought, and she was determined to enjoy it. When Guy returned with the wine, she sipped, set the glass down, and sat up straighter.
“Me and Alex, we know where the killer put Chrys’s body into the water.”
Guy had been annoyed at being relegated to the role of waiter, but Lily’s revelation made him forget that. He watched Rhoda conceal her surprise as she asked, “Where’s that?”
Lily seemed deflated by the cool response. She folded her arms and pouted.
“Lily?” Rhoda said. “Cooperation is key to making a deal.”
“Okay. You know where Quinley’s used to be?”
Rhoda nodded. To Guy she said, “In the fifties and early sixties it was a gas station, the only one on this stretch of coast. When the big oil companies came in, it sat empty for about fifteen years. A man named Quinley bought it in the eighties, turned it into a little burger stand, but there was concern about toxic contamination from leaking underground storage tanks, and he was forced to shut down. The building partly burned a few years later — probably Quinley was trying to collect on his insurance — and the land has been for sale ever since.”
“I think I’ve seen the place. All overgrown, with a chain-link fence around it, on the west side of the highway a few miles north of Point Deception?”
“Right.”
“Well,” Lily said, “what most people don’t know is that the cove behind it has some of the best abalone beds in the county, and the gate in that fence is never locked. Me and Alex, we’d pull in there and climb down the cliff, collect enough abs to fill our cooler in record time.”
Rhoda looked shocked. “Lily, the runoff from the contaminated soil could be affecting the shellfish. That’s why nobody ever harvests there. You and Alex may have been poisoning people!”
She shrugged. “That’s not the point. We were down there at dawn on Sunday, and that’s when we found it.”
“Found what?” Guy heard a note of impatience in Rhoda’s voice now.
“Chrys’s purse and sweater. I guess the guy who killed her tossed them off the cliff after her body and didn’t notice them get hung up on a bush. Everything was still inside the purse: money, credit cards, cell phone. When I saw it I knew something had happened to her, and I wanted to turn it in to the substation, but Alex...” She bit her lip.
Guy said, “Alex wanted to keep it.”
“Yeah. We left the sweater.”
Rhoda flashed him a warning look: This is my interrogation. He moved his hand in an apologetic gesture.
She asked, “How much money was in the purse?”
“Sixty-seven dollars and eighty-one cents. She wouldn’t’ve gotten far on that. And her credit cards... the one for Chevron worked, but when I tried the Visa it was turned down for being maxed out.”
“You tried to use it?”
“Alex made me.”
Guy watched Rhoda’s lips tighten. She was getting as tired as he of the Alex-made-me routine. Alex may have been the abuser, but basically he and Lily were both predators, feeding off others’ misfortunes.
“What else was in the purse?” Rhoda asked.
“The usual crap we drag around with us. One thing was weird, though: Her Triple A card was in some guy’s name.”
“Sean Bartlow?”
“Sounds right. Oh, and there were these handwritten notes, looked like directions. Go north so many miles from Westhaven, park here, go there.”
“D’you still have them?”
“No. Alex tossed everything we couldn’t use into a Dumpster up in Calvert’s Landing where they’re building the new community center. The cell phone, too. Turned out her service provider doesn’t have sites up here, so it wouldn’t work.”
Rhoda made a note on a pad. She asked, “You see any evidence that somebody had been at the Quinley property before you?”
“Well, the gate wasn’t latched like it usually is.”
“Anything else?”
Lily thought and shook her head. Rhoda sighed and turned the recorder off. She said, “I’m going to have to place you in custody, Lily.”
Panic flooded the young woman’s features. She turned, open-mouthed, to Guy. He said, “It’s for the best.”
“But what about my deal?”
Rhoda said, “I’ll try to work that out for you, but till I can, I want you to be safe.”
“Safe?” Her voice rose an octave. “Safe from who?”
“Alex, if he makes bail. His poacher buddies from Oakland. Wayne.”
At the mention of her brother’s name, Lily’s face twisted. She leaned forward, breathing hard and clutching at her stomach. Guy squeezed her shoulder, trying to comfort her, but she didn’t seem to feel his touch.
He looked grimly at Rhoda and she nodded. For now, both predators would be caged.