Allison Brennan - Playing Dead

“I don’t know anything about that.” He picked up a rag and started wiping down the clean bar.

“The fact that both men were killed within twenty-four hours has us suspicious. Both of them. Murdered.”

“Those kids didn’t know Frank was inside.”

“And you believe that?”

Claire had almost forgotten Lora was sitting next to her until she leaned over and, practically right in Claire’s face, said, “Why are you being so mean to Tip?”

Claire really wished she had Tip Barney alone. He knew something important. She ignored Lora and said, “Tip, please. An innocent man will die if you don’t tell me what you know.”

He shook his head back and forth. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, girl. I’m sorry about your dad, but there’s nothing I can help you with. Nothing.”

“Frank could have been killed before the fire even started, and the arson was to cover it up.”

“You have an overactive imagination, missy. Look. I’m sorry about your father, really, but there’s nothing I can do for you. Frank didn’t tell me anything. And it doesn’t matter anymore because he’s dead.”

“It does matter. It matters to my dad. To me.” Her voice caught. She’d planned on appealing to his humanity to talk, but the emotion wasn’t planned. This whole miserable situation was getting to her.

Her cell phone rang and she grabbed it. It was Phineas. Lora was staring at her with a frown on her face. Claire swiveled in the seat and put her finger in one ear as she answered the phone. “Hey, can I call you back?”

“I think I found something important.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“Your friend Jayne came by and we went out to the data warehouse. She’s damn brilliant.”

“She is. And?”

“Nothing was deleted. When the reports were scanned, blank sheets were scanned in place of the two reports you asked about. So the right log was generated, but unless someone had rechecked the data, they wouldn’t have known the reports were blank.”

“Damn.”

“I thought that would help.”

“I need to see those reports, Phin. What about hard copies?”

“We only keep hard copies for three years, then they’re preserved at the data warehouse and destroyed.”

Shit! “So we don’t have them at all. Anywhere.”

“If they’re not in the court file, I don’t know where they would be. Unless the prosecutor kept a copy for some reason. And I’m sure the D.A.’s office has their own archive system.”

“Thanks. I’ll think on it.”

“I do have one more thing, though. I have the name of the head tech who performed the autopsies and filed the reports. The employee number is in the log as part of the file. Reny Willis. He’s not here anymore, he went to Contra Costa County in 1994, according to his employee file.”

1994. The year of the trial. “When in 1994?”

“His last day here was August 31, 1994.”

Her father was sentenced the week before that. The trial had ended two weeks earlier. Coincidence? “Phin, is Jayne still with you? I need to talk to her.”

“Here she is.”

Jayne got on the phone. “What-”

“Find Reny Willis. Phin has his personnel file. I need to find out exactly where he is, preferably an address. I think he knows exactly why those two coroner’s reports are missing.”

“I’ll do it for you, Claire, but promise me you won’t confront him alone.”

Who was she supposed to bring? Call up the FBI and ask Agents Bianchi and Donovan to join her? But. . Bill would do it. Or Dave. She felt bad about throwing him out last night, but at the same time she was still furious that he continued to dig into her personal life when he promised he wouldn’t.

“I promise,” she said and hung up.

Tip Barney had moved to the opposite side of the bar, serving up drafts to the men at that end. Lora had migrated to that end of the bar as well. Good, the woman was a bit freaky. Since she’d arrived, more people had come in. It was nearing five o’clock. People getting off work. Tip was avoiding her, Claire could tell. What more could she get out of him? She was certain he knew more than he was telling her. She sipped her beer. She’d pushed him hard, appealed to his sense of humanity and justice, and he hadn’t budged. Maybe he knew Frank had been murdered and he was scared. He had left Sacramento shortly after the fire, for Los Angeles. A big place. She’d need to go back to the Rogan-Caruso offices and run a more detailed search on Tip Barney, focus on L.A., see if she could find a pattern to anything. Maybe he’d been paid off. No, that didn’t fit. He seemed genuinely upset that Frank was dead. Upset and scared.

Tip lived upstairs, and he was working down here in the bar.

Claire drained half her beer, put a five-dollar bill under the glass, and walked out.

Out of the corner of his eye, Frank Lowe watched Claire O’Brien leave the bar. When she was gone, he was still tense.

First the law student, then the Feds, now Tom O’Brien’s daughter.

For fifteen years Frank Lowe had led a quiet life off the grid. And now it was over. He should never have come back to Sacramento. But after his dad died, he had nothing left in L.A. And even though his mother thought he was dead, he felt better being here than there. Isleton was perfect. No one should have been able to find him. He’d taken Tip’s identity-it had been his dad’s idea in the first place-and he thought he could simply run the bar here until he was as old as Sanderson.

But for the first time in fifteen years, he feared his days were numbered. In the single digits.

“Tip? You okay?”

He smiled brightly at Lora. The dim woman was really a sweetheart, but sometimes she was too nosy. Because her father was the chief of police, Frank made sure Lora was well taken care of. He didn’t need Henry Lane looking too hard at his past. He might find out that Tip Barney was supposed to be sixty-one years old.

“Just fine, Lora.”

“That woman was mean.”

“She was just doing her job.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She’s a private investigator. I just didn’t have the information she wanted.”

What he knew would get him killed. If they knew he was still alive, they would burn down this bar with everyone in it. Frank didn’t want anyone else getting hurt. It was bad enough that the woman Taverton was having an affair with had been killed, but. .

Claire O’Brien was that woman’s daughter. Guilt washed over Frank. While he didn’t know for certain that the husband wasn’t guilty of murder, he knew in his gut that Jeffrey Riordan and his partners were responsible for Taverton’s death and the fire that killed Buddy, the poor bum whom Frank and Tip had let sleep in the storeroom on those nights when the temperature dipped below thirty-two.

It was sheer luck that Frank had been able to climb out the window and into a tree; then he’d hopped a fence and gotten out into the neighborhood. He’d walked the twenty-seven blocks to Tip’s small house and told him what happened.

“It was Riordan’s people, I know it.”

“Did you see them?”

“No, but on the news they said D.D.A. Taverton was killed today. He knew. Somehow, Riordan knew I was turning state’s evidence. I couldn’t get to Buddy-he’s dead, I’m certain. I don’t want to die, Pop.”

“I’ll figure something out.”

What Tip decided was to let everyone think Frank was dead-including Frank’s mother. Frank felt bad about that, but he’d never been close to his mom. Always wrapped up in her own life, she had never really cared what he did or who he did it with. She had sent him to live with Aunt Rose, who was ancient.