John Lescroart - Treasure Hunt

“I’m going to guess Irving Pizza.”

“And creativity still flourishes,” Hunt said.

He pulled his cell phone out, punched in 411, and in a moment had gotten connected. Though it was lunchtime and there was a lot of background noise, the manager found time to come to the phone and listen to Hunt’s question, preamble and all. “Yeah,” he said. “The old guy was here all right. Came in a little after the lunch rush, ate a small pepperoni, and had most of a pitcher of beer. Nice guy. Jim something, I think. We shot the shit for an hour or so. He left under his own power. Is he all right?”

“We’re trying to run him down,” Hunt said. “Thanks for your help.”

When he hung up, he looked across at Alicia Thorpe.

“I’m not lying,” she said. “Not about any of this.”

Hunt said, “You lied about Dominic firing you. Did you forget that one?”

She shook her head. “I was afraid. But I told Mickey about that. I told him why I did it. I’d never gotten grilled by the police before. I thought they’d arrest me because it might give me a motive to have killed Dominic.”

“No ‘might’ about it.”

“But it wasn’t like that. And it wasn’t like I even needed the job. I’ve already got a job, you know. I mean a real, paying job, not that it’s making me rich. But I’m okay with that for now. Besides, Dominic didn’t just kick me out. He explained the whole thing about Ellen to me. He was really sorry, but he just couldn’t deal with his home life anymore with our relationship making Ellen so crazy, even though there was nothing sexual to it.”

“Nothing sexual?”

“That’s right. Ian can tell you, I-”

“Who’s Ian?”

“My brother. He can tell you, I don’t do sexual with older guys anymore, especially married older guys. In fact, I don’t do much sexual anymore, period. It screws everybody up. Not to mention that it screws me up. I’m kind of hoping I get an actual boyfriend someday, then maybe start over with that stuff. But nobody seems to want to take the time, find out if we get along first. You know?”

“I’ve heard stories,” Hunt said. But this was what he’d steeled himself against, this urge to connect, to believe her. And before he got to that place, he was going to take another shot at breaking her story. “But let me ask you something else: If there was nothing sexual going on with you and Dominic, how do you explain the fact that there was semen on your scarf?”

Again, if this was acting, it was brilliant. She straightened up, her face a mask of confusion. “Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“The police didn’t tell me that.”

“No. They sometimes don’t tell you everything they know all at once. They’re hoping maybe you’ll slip and tell them first, before you were supposed to know.”

“Well.” She did not hesitate, did not even seem overly concerned. “I don’t have any idea about that. How am I supposed to know what happened to my scarf after I lost it? Doesn’t that make sense that I don’t?”

Hunt realized that her relentless apparent guilelessness was wearing him down. She had either thought all of this through to a degree that would have been unique in his experience, or she was in fact telling the truth. Mickey believed her, Jim Parr had believed her, Tamara couldn’t bring herself to think ill of her.

“You know what I wish?” she asked him.

“What’s that?”

“That I’d just never met Ellen. Then I’m sure none of us would be going through this. At least certainly not me.”

Hunt felt an unexpected little frisson of interest at these words. They made him recall his first meeting with Ellen Como, when she’d set his own mind-and by extension Juhle’s and Russo’s, since Hunt had passed it along to them-onto the idea that Dominic had been in love with Alicia, certainly a believable scenario given his reputation and her desirability. But what had never quite registered with Hunt was he had accepted this bare fact-Dominic’s love of Alicia-because he’d taken Ellen’s word for it.

The other bare fact-from Hunt’s personal experience-was Ellen’s enmity toward her husband, and her rage and jealousy at Alicia for being young and beautiful.

“How did you even meet her?” Hunt asked. “I’d heard she didn’t have much to do with Dominic’s work.”

“She didn’t. But one of the causes she did believe in was the Sanctuary House-battered women and their kids. And back when I first came on, Nancy Neshek had their big yearly do at her place and it was my night off and I thought-well, Dominic thought also, since I was just starting to work on my networking-that I ought to go. Besides, the rest of the Sunset professional staff was going, too, so I wouldn’t be all alone with just people I didn’t know. It would be fun, and great food-always a good thing.

“But then Dominic, just being his usual charming self, you know, he kind of pulled me away from Lorraine and the other Sunset women and escorted me over specially to introduce me to Ellen as one of his new drivers, trying to make me feel at home, and I could just tell from the second she laid eyes on me that she was going to make trouble if she could. I mean, I was wearing this nice simple black cocktail dress-totally appropriate since it’s this like formal party-and Ellen looks me up and down and says something like, ‘Oh, hello, dear. Is that the new driver’s uniform?’ or some such bullshit. I could tell she wanted to scratch my eyes out, and this was long before Dominic and I had any relationship at all. So later, when we got to be friends, I guess he’d mention me sometimes, and she didn’t forget. She wasn’t going to be happy until I was toast.”

As he listened to this, Hunt’s eyes had gone vacant and faraway. For one thing, almost without his conscious assent, he found that he had crossed over the line regarding Alicia. She sat facing him with no agenda and no sense of drama, just telling him what she knew as an unadorned truth.

And something else besides.

“Mr. Hunt?”

“I’m here.”

“Is everything all right?”

“No,” he said. “Not everything. Do you think Jim went to Sunset after he got finished at Irving Pizza?”

“Absolutely. If he made it. But it’s only a few blocks, so he should have.”

Hunt made the quick count in his head. San Francisco’s east-to-west streets run south through the avenues in alphabetical order; Irving at Nineteenth was therefore only six blocks from Ortega at Nineteenth. An easy walk, even for an old man with a beer buzz in a light rain.

“Mickey’s out there now,” Hunt said. “At Sunset, using their phone to check some alibis. I’ve got to make another phone call.”

“I’m here with her now,” Hunt told Mickey. “She’s fine.”

“Did she drive Jim home yesterday?”

“No.” Hunt paused. “She drove him out there.”

“Where?”

“Where you are right now. Sunset.”

“But he promised me…” Mickey stopped midthought. A promise might be a promise, but another cliche holds that a promise is made to be broken. And Mickey knew which one Jim had accessed yesterday. “That wily bastard. So where is he now?”

“That’s what I’m calling you about. We still don’t know. He hasn’t come home as of a half hour ago. The campus was closed when they got there, him and Alicia. So she dropped him off at a place called Irving Pizza…” Hunt filled him in on it.

“And you believe that?”

“It happened,” Hunt said. “I called the place. The manager corroborates it. He remembers him.”

Mickey hesitated. “So… you believe her?”

“Starting to. Maybe.”

“Whoa. Rein in that enthusiasm, Wyatt.”