Faye Kellerman - Blindman’s Bluff

“Tonight. I told him we’d be there as soon as we could. He lives in Long Beach so we better get a move on it. Want me to pick you up?”

Decker’s brain was still in a fog. He checked the nightstand clock. It was quarter to eight. He’d slept for seven hours. “Uh, sure. That sounds fine.”

“That’s good ’cause I’m right outside your door.”

“You are?” Decker stood up and stretched. “I need about ten minutes to shower and dress. Come inside and wait.”

“Sounds good to me. Tell me, Rabbi. Does your wife still bake?”

Decker laughed. “We’ve got some leftover layer cake. I believe it’s chocolate. You can have as much as you want.”

“Just a slice if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. I’ll ask her to put a pot of coffee on. We working dogs live on caffeine and sugar.”

UNLIKE MOST COASTAL regions, Long Beach never commanded the spectacular real estate prices common in other So Cal beach communities, probably because the city’s tenor was more industrial than resort. From the 405 south, Decker was offered a bird’s-eye view of the refineries belching out smoke followed by acres of car lots. That didn’t mean there weren’t some nice areas: certainly the old downtown area with its hotels and the famous aquarium had been revamped to attract the tourists. Still, most of the residential areas were made up of modest homes when compared with other shoreline districts.

Milfred Connors lived in a small California-style bungalow-stucco exterior and red-tiled roof illuminated by a streetlamp. It was one story sitting on a bumpy lawn almost devoid of landscaping.

The cracked walkway led up to a dilapidated porch. The light was on and Decker rang the bell. The man who answered was stoop shouldered and rail thin. He had wisps of gray tendrils atop his head and a long, drawn face. He appeared to be around seventy plus or minus five years. He had on a white shirt, slacks, and slippers. He stepped aside so that the detectives could come into the house.

The living room was neat and spare, the furniture including a floral couch, a leather recliner, and a flat-screen TV sitting on a plywood bureau. Scarred wood floors but quarter sawn oak, Decker noticed. They were original to the house.

“Have a seat.” He offered them the sofa. “Would either of you like some coffee or tea?”

“I’m fine,” Decker said, “but thank you.”

“Me too, thanks,” Brubeck said.

“Then just give me a minute to get my tea.” He disappeared and came back a minute later holding a steaming mug. He sat on his leather recliner but didn’t recline. “Is the visit about the Kaffey murders?”

Decker said, “Yes, in a way.”

“Horrible thing.”

“Yes, it is.” Decker paused. “You worked for the company for a long time.”

“Thirty years.”

“Ever get a chance to see Guy interact with his brother or his sons?”

“All the time.”

“What would you say about their relationships?”

“Well, now…” Connors sipped tea. “Guy could be rough. But he could be nice, too.”

“Did you get along with him?”

“I wasn’t on the same plane. Guy Kaffey was up here.” Connors extended his arm. “I was down here.” The accountant lowered his arm.

“Yet you saw him all the time.”

“He was always checking the books. Not just me, everyone. I was one of about twenty.” There was a long pause. “You want to talk to me because I was fired for embezzling.”

“We want to talk to a lot of people, but you did make the list.”

“Lucky me.” Connors took a sip of tea. “It isn’t what you think. I was fired, but no criminal charges were ever filed against me.”

“Yet you didn’t protest the termination,” Decker said. “You didn’t file any wrongful suit against the company.”

When Connors didn’t answer, Brubeck pulled out his notebook and a pen. “Why don’t you tell us what happened?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’m sure it is.” Decker took out his pad of paper and a pencil. “How about if you start from the beginning.”

Connors took another sip of tea. “I worked for Kaffey for thirty years. Never asked anything from him, but he sure as hell asked a lot of me. Unpaid overtime, on-call twenty-four/seven, especially during tax time. I did it all without a complaint. But then my wife got sick.”

Decker nodded.

“It was only me and my wife,” Connors told him. “We never had kids. Lara was a preschool teacher so I suppose she got her kid fix by her job. And me, I’m a numbers person, not a people person.

Lara made all the social decisions.”

“That’s usually the way it is with married folk,” Brubeck said.

“Well, that was the way it was for us.” He warmed his hands on the tea mug. “I went to work, I came home. Whatever Lara planned was okay by me.” His eyes welled up with tears. “She died five years ago from the big C. I can’t seem to move on.”

“My sympathies,” Brubeck told him.

“Must have been hard,” Decker said.

“It was hell, Lieutenant. She was in pain constantly. Even doped up, she was in pain. It was a very long illness. We had insurance, but it didn’t pay for everything. When regular medicine didn’t work, we tried experimental things that insurance wouldn’t cover. We ate through my paycheck, we ate through our savings. The next stop was selling the house. I couldn’t do that to her, but I didn’t want to give up on treatment either.”

Decker nodded and asked him to go on.

“I swallowed my pride and asked Mace Kaffey if he could arrange a loan for me. I knew Mace better than Guy, and everyone at the company knew that Mace was an easier touch than Guy.”

“How long ago was this?” Decker asked Connors.

“Maybe six years ago-at the beginning of the end.” Connors let out a deep sigh. “Mace told me to write off the loan as an inventory expense. And he told me to cut the check for thirty thousand, that he’d take a little extra in case I needed more. The company does business with hundreds of suppliers so it wasn’t hard to bury it somewhere. I knew it was wrong but I did it anyway. Two days later, I had cash in my pocket. I rationalized it by telling myself that I was just following the boss’s orders. I had every intention of paying it back.”

“How did you plan on doing that?” Decker asked.

“Doing freelance work. I told Mace that I’d pay back every cent, but he told me not to worry about it. Just get the wife better and then we’d talk. It sounded too good to be true, but I wasn’t going to question him. Twenty thousand was a lot, but I knew I could make that amount up. The problem was…”

He put the mug down on an end table.

“It wasn’t just twenty thousand. It was twenty thousand, then forty, then sixty. By the time she died, I was one hundred and fifty thousand in the hole. That’s a lot of money to pay back considering that my life savings, my pension plan, and my wife’s pension plan had been totally wiped out. I had nothing left to my name except the house.”

Connors rubbed his eyes.

“I went to Mace to tell him that I was going to sell the house to pay back the loan and he told me to hold off and not to do anything rash. I wasn’t going to insist.” A long pause. “He also told me to keep on borrowing from the company for just a while longer. He said that there were other people in bad straits. I needed to keep at it a little bit longer. And for my effort, he’d knock off some of the loan money.”

“And you went along with it,” Decker said.

“I was in debt and he was my boss. If he said to keep doing it, I kept doing it. I did summon up enough nerve to ask him if it was okay with Guy.”

“What’d he answer?” Brubeck said.