Bill Pronzini: Vixen

“Hutchinson. Who’s he?”

Headshake.

Ramblings. Yet as improbable and inconsistent as Beckett’s story sounded, it didn’t strike Runyon as lies, delusions, or drug-induced fantasy. The kid was an emotional weakling strung out on fear, not a chemical substance. Fear of his sister, it seemed, as much as of being sent to prison.

“Anything more you want to tell me, Ken?”

“No. I shouldn’t have... I... no.”

“So what’s it going to be? Back to San Francisco voluntarily, or do I notify the authorities?”

A rapid series of headshakes this time. “I want to stay here,” he said. “I like it here.”

“You can’t do that. I told you, it’s either your apartment or a jail cell on an unlawful flight charge. Be smart. Let me take you back.”

“No.”

“Then let your sister come and get you—”

“No!”

“I have to tell her as well as the authorities where you are.”

Beckett flattened himself facedown on the cot again, yanked the blanket up to his neck. “No more talking... my head hurts, I can’t think. Go away, leave me alone.”

“Listen to me—”

“No! Go away!” Another upward jerk on the blanket so that it covered his head. Burying himself under it. Hiding. “Go away, go away, go away !”

Runyon had no choice now. He went outside to call the agency.

I seldom go into the office on Saturdays anymore; it was pure chance that I happened to be at my desk when Runyon’s call came in. My weekends are usually reserved for family activities, but this day was an exception.

Emily was one of the leads in a musical production her school was putting on and had to attend a semifinal rehearsal, and Kerry had gone over to Redwood Village, the Marin County care facility where her mother, Cybil, lived. Cybil is eighty-eight and in fragile health, not quite bedridden but no longer able to get around much by herself. The three of us had visited her the previous Sunday, but Kerry was worried about her and wanted to see her again, even though they talked on the phone nearly every day now. I offered to go along, but she said no, too many visitors at once was too tiring for Cybil and she would rather just make it a mother-daughter visit this time.

That was fine with me, but it left me at loose ends. I did not have anything I particularly wanted to do by myself, didn’t feel like spending the day alone at the condo. There was some paperwork to be finished up on the employee background check, so I decided I might as well go on down to South Park. I had company while I slogged through the notes and printouts on my desk because Tamara had decided to work today, too, as she often did on Saturdays. She was even more of a workaholic than I’d been in my prime.

She was busy at her computer, so I took Runyon’s call. Good news that he’d found Kenneth Beckett, but the details of their conversation didn’t set any better with me than they did with him. Jake’s instincts are pretty well honed; if he believed Beckett’s story was straight goods, then it probably was. Which, as Tamara had suggested, made Cory Beckett the complete opposite of the person she’d pretended to be in Abe Melikian’s office. Control freak, sex addict, schemer. With motives that didn’t seem to make much sense. Why would she talk her brother into taking the fall on a bogus theft charge? How could it benefit either of them?

I’d told Tamara that it didn’t matter if a client lied to us as long as it had no effect on the job we’d been hired to do, and that was true enough up to a point. But if the lies and misrepresentations involved a felony, we had a legal obligation not to ignore them.

“You haven’t notified the client?” I asked Runyon.

“No. I thought I’d give Beckett a few minutes to calm down, then make one more try at reasoning with him.”

“Likely to do any good?”

“I doubt it. He’s pretty strung out.”

“But not on drugs.”

“No. Doesn’t look to be any in the shack, but I’ll search it after we’re done to make sure.”

“So that’s probably another lie by his sister. She didn’t want us talking to him, but in case we did we’d put down anything he said to junkie ravings.”

“Same take here.”

“Okay,” I said. “Suppose I break the news to her, see if I can find out what she’s up to. If you can convince Beckett to let you bring him back, go ahead. But in that event deliver him here to the office for the time being, not to their apartment.”

“Right.”

“Let me know if that’s how it plays out. Otherwise, hang around the shack and keep an eye on him until you hear from me.”

“He’s not going anywhere,” Runyon said. “I’ve got his van blocked with my car and his keys in my pocket to make sure.”

After we rang off, I went in to brief Tamara. She said, “Weird. What d’you think the Beckett woman’s up to?”

“No idea... yet.”

“How about I do a deep backgrounder on her? That stuff I pulled up last week only scratched the surface.”

“Go ahead when you have the time.”

“Like right now.”

The Beckett apartment on Nob Hill was only ten minutes or so from South Park, but street parking up there is always at a premium and garage parking fees are exorbitant. It took me another ten minutes to find curb space, one that was only marginally legal and two steep uphill blocks away.

I was short of breath by the time I reached the building, a venerable four-story pile near Huntington Park that may or may not have been some fat cat’s private mansion a hundred years ago. Nob Hill, or Snob Hill as the locals sometimes call it, is where many of the city’s upper-class families and affluent yuppie transplants hang their hats. It takes big bucks to live there, and I found myself wondering if Cory Beckett had dragged enough out of her two marriages to pay the rent, or if somebody else — not her deckhand brother — was contributing to the monthly nut.

Right. Somebody named Andrew Vorhees.

In the coincidental and serendipitous way things sometimes happen, I had probable confirmation much sooner than I could have expected. About ten seconds after I reached the building, as a matter of fact.

Just as I stepped into the vestibule, the entrance door opened and a lean guy with tanned, craggy features came striding out. His glance at me as he passed by was brief and dismissive; I was nobody he knew. But I’d seen his picture and I knew him: Andrew Vorhees in the flesh.

I managed to catch the pneumatic door just before it latched, slipped inside as Vorhees turned out of the vestibule. He had to have been visiting Cory Beckett; that he knew one of the other tenants would be stretching coincidence to the breaking point. It was possible the visit had something to do with his former employee and the theft charge, but more likely his reasons were the same personal ones that had brought her to his yacht the day of the alleged theft. Nice conquest for a scheming woman, if they were lovers — a man in the same wealthy yachtsman class as her two ex-husbands. The fact that he was married wouldn’t mean much to a playboy with his reputation, but it might mean plenty to his wife. If Vorhees was having an affair with Cory Beckett, it was a possible explanation for the alleged attempt to frame her.

But I was getting ahead of myself. I did not have enough information yet — and most of what I did have was secondhand and hearsay — to form any definite opinions. If I handled things right, I’d know more after some verbal sparring with Cory Beckett.

The Beckett apartment was number 8, top floor front. I rode the elevator up, pushed a pearl bell button. There was a one-way peephole in the door, but Cory Beckett didn’t bother to look through it. The door opened almost immediately, wide enough so I could see she was wearing a shimmery lavender silk negligee at one o’clock in the afternoon, and she said, “Did you forget—” before she saw me standing there.