Bill Pronzini: Vixen

“A skeleton she wants to keep closeted desperately enough to toss the rest of her plans and commit murder? Doesn’t seem likely. Besides, you’d have already picked up a hint if there was.”

“Not necessarily. I dug pretty deep, but I didn’t hit bottom.”

“Close to it, though. You can keep digging, but do you really believe you’ll find those kind of buried bones?”

No, she didn’t — I could see it in her expression — but she wouldn’t admit it. And she still wasn’t ready to let go of the subject. She said, “So maybe Cory didn’t have anything to do with it. Maybe Chaleen did Vorhees on his own.”

“For what reason?”

“So he could have her all to himself.”

“Blow up her plans, do both of them out of a piece of Vorhees’ money? That doesn’t wash, either.”

“He wouldn’t dare cross her,” Runyon agreed. “She’d eat him alive.”

“Okay, okay,” Tamara said grumpily. “So it wasn’t Cory and it wasn’t Chaleen. But it wasn’t any freakin’ carjacker, either.”

“Vorhees was the kind of man who made enemies,” I said. She opened her mouth, but I held up a hand before she could say anything. “I know, I know. The long arm of coincidence again.”

Runyon said, “SFPD’ll find out who did it and why. High-profile victim, high-priority investigation.”

“The kind that might just bring Cory and Chaleen down, whether or not they had anything to do with what happened last night.”

“Believe it when I see it,” Tamara said. Then she said, “Cops are bound to get around to us sooner or later. What do we tell them?”

“As much as we know to be fact,” I said. “Nothing more, nothing that crosses legal and ethical lines.”

“Otherwise we stay out of it.”

“That’s right. Even if Vorhees had signed a client’s contract, we’d have to stay out of it. The police wouldn’t give us permission for an independent investigation in a case like this.”

Tamara sighed. “Stuck in neutral again. Sometimes I wish we didn’t always have to go by the book.”

“We wouldn’t stay in business long if we didn’t.”

As expected, the media — local and national both — milked Vorhees’ murder for all it was worth. Statements from and interviews with the chief of police, union and City Hall officials; editorials on crime in the streets; rehash features on Vorhees’ scandal-ridden personal life and the recent death of his wife. I didn’t see or read any of the reportage; secondhand commentary from Tamara and Kerry was enough for me. I tend to avoid all direct contact with print and broadcast journalism, particularly where sensational crime news is concerned. Kerry says, only half kidding, that I’m an ostrich in the current events sandbox. Guilty.

Evidently the SFPD wasn’t any more satisfied with the carjacking explanation than we were. Except for the usual stock handouts, they put a tight lid on their investigation. So tight that Tamara’s friend Felicia refused all further requests for progress information.

The homicide inspectors in charge got around to us soon enough. They interviewed Tamara alone first on Thursday; Runyon and I weren’t in the office at the time. They talked to me at home, and Jake at the Hall of Justice where he went voluntarily.

The three of us had worked out exactly what we would and wouldn’t be free to say, and for once Tamara held herself in check and followed instructions. Runyon’s private conversations with Kenneth Beckett were one of the off-limits topics; our suspicions that Margaret Vorhees’ death was premeditated murder was another. This is what we admitted to:

That Runyon and I had spoken to Andrew Vorhees in his office the day before he was killed, at his request. That he’d wanted to know what we knew about his wife’s death, which was nothing more than what Runyon had told the police after his discovery of Margaret Vorhees’ body. That it was common knowledge Vorhees had been involved with a woman named Cory Beckett, who had at one time been our client, and her name had come up during the course of the conversation. That a former friend and campaign worker of his, Frank Chaleen, was reputed to also be having an affair with the Beckett woman, and that Vorhees had been upset about it. And that Vorhees had called in person the following day with the stated intention of hiring us, saying he would explain what he wanted us to do when he met with Runyon that evening on his yacht.

There was enough inference in all of this to put the inspectors onto the Cory Beckett cabal, if they weren’t already headed in that direction and whether or not either she or Chaleen was involved in the Vorhees homicide. The two of them would tell different stories than we had, of course, but it was their word against ours and we were on pretty solid ground. For all we could tell, the closemouthed inspectors seemed to think so, too. There had not been a suspicious or adversarial edge to the interview with me, nor to the ones with Jake and Tamara.

That was the way things stood through Friday. No more visits from the police. No new information leaked to or revealed in the media. And no word from Cory Beckett, her brother, or Frank Chaleen.

On Saturday, Kerry and I had a small argument over her mother’s cremains. It started when I suggested that it would be a good day, the weather being clear and sunny, for the three of us to drive over to Marin County and honor Cybil’s wish to have her ashes scattered in Muir Woods.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said.

“Why not? Too soon?” She’d gotten the box of cremains from the Larkspur mortuary on Wednesday.

“No, not exactly.”

“What then, exactly?”

“I’m not so sure we ought to do it at all.”

“Why not? It’s what Cybil wanted.”

“I know that, but... Muir Woods, a national park full of people on nice weekends.”

“We can find a private place off one of the trails.”

“Even so. You know as well as I do it’s against the law to scatter human remains in a public place.”

“A misdemeanor that a great many people don’t happen to believe should be a crime at all. Loved ones’ ashes are scattered in natural surroundings every day with no harm done.”

She gave me one of her sidewise looks. “You’ve always been such a stickler for following the letter of the law,” she said. “This bizarre business with Andrew Vorhees and the Becketts, for instance. And now you want to step over the line.”

“A stickler professionally, yes, for the most part, especially when a case involves a couple of homicides and the integrity of the agency. But I freely admit to having bent and stretched points of law a few times, and even to committing a couple of small felonies when it seemed necessary.”

“So you’re honest and law-abiding only when it suits you.”

I said gently, “Kerry, I’m going to make an observation. Think about it before you snap back at me.”

“What observation?”

“That you’re reluctant to scatter Cybil’s ashes for the same reason you have her personal belongings displayed in your office and you’re determined to get all her fiction back into print.”

“What are you saying? I’m trying to keep her with me even though she’s dead and gone?”

“Yes, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Up to a point. But buying an urn for the ashes, putting it in your office with the rest of her stuff—”

“I wasn’t going to do that.”

“The box is in there now, isn’t it? On the bookcase?”

She had no answer for that.

“I’m not criticizing you,” I said, “and I’m not saying this to hurt you. I know how important it is for you to keep Cybil’s memory alive; I’m in complete agreement there. But holding onto her cremains is not only borderline morbid, it goes against her express wishes and your promise to honor them. You never defied your mother when she was alive. Don’t start now.”