Bill Pronzini: Vixen

No, he couldn’t ask her for help, couldn’t ever tell her what had happened here tonight. Didn’t make any difference whether Vorhees was found dead or just disappeared without a trace; either way, Chaleen’s only hope of keeping her was to plead ignorance and make her believe it.

The body, the car... he’d have to get rid of them by himself. No other choice. But how?

Think, think!

He went back into his office for another jolt of Glenlivet. This one steadied him, helped him focus. And pretty soon an idea began to form. He clung to it, shaped it until it was complete. Or almost complete. There was still the problem of the two cars, getting back here to claim his own after he got rid of the body and Vorhees’ Aston...

One more drink, a small one this time, and he had the answer. George Petrie. Old George, factory foreman at Chaleen Manufacturing from the day the old man opened the plant. Loyal as they come. Do any favor he was asked to, even after business hours, and without asking questions of his own. And he was guaranteed reachable by phone; a widower, old George never went out on weeknights by his own admission.

Chaleen made himself go look at the body. The way Vorhees had fallen, half over on his left side, most of the blood from the wound glistened on his face and shirt and coat. Not much on the carpet, just a few spots. More spots on the desktop, smeared on the paperweight. The clean-up wouldn’t be too bad. But he’d have to get that started first, before the blood dried. Then he’d get a tarp from the factory and roll the body into it before he carried it out to the Aston.

All right. Now that Chaleen had a plan in place he was steady-handed again, his control regained. When the salvage job was finished, there’d be nothing to tie Vorhees’ death to him. He’d still have Cory, and before long they’d figure a way, or she would, to get their hands on the kind of money she coveted and he needed.

It could, it would work out that way. It had to!

Tamara and Runyon were discussing Andrew Vorhees’ no-show when I came into the agency. Vorhees still seemed to be missing this morning; there’d been no word from him, and when Tamara called his office, she got the kind of tight-lipped runaround that indicates something amiss.

“Something’s happened to him,” she said ominously, “and you can bet Cory Beckett had a hand in it.”

Jumping to conclusions as she often did, I thought at the time, but it turned out that on this occasion she was at least half right. Something had happened to Andrew Vorhees, the kind of something that would be overheated media fodder for days to come.

We had advance word before the news became public. Tamara had texted her Hall of Justice pipeline, a woman named Felicia who worked in the SFPD’s computer section, asking for any information the Department might have on Vorhees. The answer she received prompted a furious series of back-and-forth texts to learn the details.

Vorhees was dead. Bludgeoned to death, the apparent victim of a carjacking. A patrol unit had spotted his Aston Martin speeding on Geneva Avenue near the Crocker Amazon Playground shortly after 2:00 A.M.; the driver, a nineteen-year-old youth from the projects, refused to stop and there’d been a brief high-speed chase that ended when the kid missed a turn and ran the Aston into a light pole. When the cops checked the trunk, they found Vorhees’ body stuffed inside.

The ghetto youth and his passenger cousin admitted they’d stolen the car, but swore they hadn’t committed the murder, hadn’t had any idea there was a dead man in the trunk. Their story was that they’d seen the Aston parked on a street in Visitacion Valley, the keys in the ignition, and decided to take it for a ride. The police weren’t buying. Both suspects had juvenile rap sheets for stealing and stripping cars, and though the murder weapon hadn’t been found with the body, the assumption was that the youths had tossed it and were heading somewhere to get rid of the body when they were spotted.

“Crap,” Tamara said. “Pure crap.”

“You don’t think it was a carjacking?” I asked her.

“No way.”

I didn’t think so, either, but I said, “Why not?”

“Bunch of reasons. Too big a coincidence, for one — Vorhees suddenly turning up dead so soon after his wife and just when he’s getting ready to hire us.”

“Go on.”

“Carjackers and guys that jump iron off the streets are different breeds of cat. No ’jacking on these two kids’ sheets.”

“They’re only nineteen. Maybe they decided to change their MO.”

She made a face to indicate what she thought of that explanation. “You ever hear of a ’jacker whacking a car owner with some kind of round blunt instrument? Uh-uh. Guns or knives.”

“Good point,” Runyon said, and I agreed.

Tamara said, “Then there’s the preliminary coroner’s report. Felicia says Vorhees’d been dead for hours when the body was found, maybe as many as seven or eight. No streetwise kids are gonna waste somebody, hang onto the hot car and the corpse for seven or eight hours, and then go out speeding with it on a city street.”

An even better point.

“So if it wasn’t a ’jacking,” she said, “and those dudes are telling the truth, why was Vorhees’ expensive wheels on the street in Visitacion Valley with him dead in the trunk and the keys in the ignition? So it’d get stolen, right? So whoever swiped it would get stuck with the corpse, right?”

“Assume a setup, then,” I said. “Who’s responsible?”

“Cory Beckett, who else.”

“All by herself? A woman who has a history of not dirtying her own hands?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Who did the job, then? Frank Chaleen?”

“Sure. Got him to do Vorhees’ wife, didn’t she?”

“We don’t know that for sure. If Margaret Vorhees’ death was premeditated murder, then it was strictly for gain. Cory’s whole focus is money and power; presumably that’s why she took up with Vorhees in the first place. Why would she suddenly want him dead?”

“On account of he dumped her and she was pissed at losing her meal ticket.”

“That’s another thing we don’t know for sure, that he dumped her,” I pointed out. “Confronted her about Chaleen, yes, but that’s all.”

Runyon agreed. “Seems to me her reaction if he tried to walk away would be the opposite of violence — use every trick she knows to get him back on the hook.”

“Right. And if that didn’t work, she’d just lick her wounds and start looking for another mark. Vorhees isn’t the only wealthy yachtsman around who can be seduced and bled.”

Tamara wanted Cory Beckett to be guilty of both homicides. She said stubbornly, “Her motive doesn’t have to be revenge. Maybe offing him is what she was planning all along.”

“Same objection,” I said. “Nothing in it for her.”

“... Well, suppose Vorhees changed his will, put her in for a big slice of his estate? She’d want him dead before he could change it, right?”

“Now you’re reaching. No matter how smitten Vorhees was with her, he’d have to be a fool to change his will in her favor while he was still married or immediately after his wife’s death. Whatever else he was, he was no fool when it came to money. He’d have waited until he was married to Cory before he made her his heir, and then not until he was completely sure of her. Same reasoning if she wanted him dead: after they were married, not before.”

Tamara scowled, but she didn’t argue the point. “All right, then how about this? She found out somehow he was hiring us to investigate her and there’s something heavy in her past she’s afraid we’ll find out.”