John Lescroart - Nothing But The Truth

Hardy shook his head and went back to the cupboards. ‘OK, but while we’re on this, let me just say that I am appalled to find Spam in your larder.’

This finally got a rise out of Abe. ‘I love Spam. It’s the great unsung food of our time. And PS, you like canned corned beef hash.’

‘That’s because hash has flavor.’

‘Spam does, too. In fact, it has more .’

‘Yeah, but it’s a bad flavor.’

Glitsky shrugged. ‘It’s the number-one snack food in Hawaii.’

‘ There’s a strong recommendation. You’re talking the same Hawaii where they actually eat poi? You ever eat poi? I wonder how they feel about Spam in Alaska, where they eat blubber?’

But Glitsky wasn’t to be denied. ‘They make it with seaweed and rice. It’s a sushi dish, called spam musabi or something.’

Hardy turned around in his best announcer’s voice. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, in tonight’s entry on “Bad Food Ideas,” we’re hearing that perennial favorite Spam and – are you ready for this? – seaweed linked as a gourmet treat. We’re waiting for your calls to vote on whether this is, as it appears to be, a… Bad Food Idea.’ He focused on Glitsky. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘I didn’t make it up.’ He got off his chair, though, and crossed the small room in a couple of steps. ‘Come to think of it, though, I could eat something. What did you pull down?’

Hardy had selected two large Spaghettios with franks, an extra-large Chef Boyardee Ravioli. He was going to mix them, and was opening the cans. ‘You got anything green in the refrigerator that’s supposed to be?’

Glitsky went to check.

But now the dishes were in the sink and there wasn’t much good-natured anything going down in the kitchen.

Hardy had gotten the short version of the immensely relevant Caloco document from Glitsky and now was leafing through it on his own. It was a ‘Separated Employee’s Audited Statement’ and it did not make pretty reading.

While Bree worked for Caloco, it seemed she had a Platinum-Plus company Visa card with a credit limit of a hundred thousand dollars. When she quit the company, they had of course closed that account. But an auditor’s review of Bree’s records – routine after a certain level employee’s termination or resignation – had subsequently revealed the existence of a second name authorized to sign on the account – Ron Beaumont.

Ron didn’t work for Caloco and so this was unusual, but if it had stopped there, that would have probably been the end of it. According to the audit, Ron had never used the card and so the presence of his name on the account made no obvious financial difference to Caloco.

(Hardy couldn’t help but recall the object lesson in Caloco’s corporate culture that he’d learned earlier in the day when Jim Pierce, straight-faced, told him that some clerk in some department might notice a missing three billion dollars, but the corporate entity would never miss it. If three billion was a drop in Caloco’s bucket, a mere hundred grand was a molecule – invisible to the naked eye.)

But the audit had turned up something else that was very disturbing. The electronic superhighway created its own version of a paper trail, and Bree Beaumont’s card was linked going forward as the security instrument to another, Mellon Bank, Visa account. That account, with a credit limit of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, did show a regular history of purchases in San Francisco, all of them paid every month. The monthly accounts were sent to a Ronald Brewster at a post-office box. And nobody at Caloco had ever heard of Ron Brewster.

Hardy got to here and his stomach went hollow. He looked up. ‘Didn’t Caloco try to close the second account, the Brewster account?’

Glitsky had been sitting quietly, arms crossed, waiting for this. He shook his head. ‘That’s page three. The Mellon account had only used the Caloco account for security to open it. Far as Mellon was concerned, Ron Brewster was a great client with a five-year history of regular payments. No way are they closing the account. Plus the Mellon account, it’s not using any of Caloco’s money. So Ron’s got himself a hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar line of credit.’ Glitsky leaned forward, elbows on the table. ‘You’ll also notice that the Mellon account doesn’t include Bree as a signatory, only Ron. And guess what? Ron Brewster’s signature looks a whole lot like Ron Beaumont’s writing. We’re dealing with a white-collar whiz kid here, Diz, on the run with a phony ID.’

Even for Hardy, familiar with the purported excuse for Ron’s duplicity, it was difficult to remain neutral in the face of this. And he figured it would be impossible for Glitsky.

Which proved to be true. ‘I’m going to throw Coleman and Batavia on to him first thing in the morning.’

‘They working Sunday?’

‘They are now.’ A look. ‘Are you telling me this doesn’t make you sit up around Ron?’

‘No,’ Hardy agreed, ‘I’ll admit it makes him look a little weak.’

If Glitsky had a smile, he was wearing it now. ‘A little weak, that’s good. Weaker than a signed murder confession at any rate, but not by much. And that’s not all. Check out page five.’

Hardy turned the pages quickly, glancing over the information, and as he scanned, Glitsky kept up the color commentary. ‘That electronic linkage Caloco can access finds four other accounts connected to the Mellon Visa.’ Hardy read the names. Ron Black. Ron Blake. Ron Burns. Ron Blanda. ‘Guy’s got a million dollars in credit. Five phony identities. You gotta believe he’s got passports for all five.’

No argument there. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me at all. And you know how I hate to say this, but-’

Now Glitsky was smiling. ‘But that doesn’t make him a murderer. But I’ll tell you something. It doesn’t make him a boy scout either.’

Hardy had to agree. ‘No. But why would any of this make him want to kill his wife? You got a theory on that?’

Clearly, this was still unsettled water for Glitsky. The scar through his lips went white as he thought about it. ‘She must have been ignorant of the accounts. When she found out he was using them on her collateral from Caloco, she busted him for it, they fought, and it got out of hand.’

‘So it was just a fight?’ Hardy wasn’t grinding any ax, but he did have a point to make. ‘That’s not murder one. It’s not usually murder anything. At the most it’s manslaughter, maybe even self-defense, which is no crime at all.’

‘I don’t care what the lawyers call it. It gets me the guy who killed Bree.’

‘Maybe.’ In the longish silence Hardy was aware of Abe’s father’s regular breathing in the living room. ‘Maybe,’ he repeated. ‘But what about the guy who killed Carl Griffin?’

This brought Glitsky up short. ‘What guy is that?’

‘You’re homicide. You tell me.’

‘Are you telling me they’re related, Bree and Carl?’

Low-key, Hardy shrugged. ‘Are you telling me they’re not? Seems likely they could be, unless you’ve got a suspect with Carl.’ It was a question.

Glitsky took a moment before answering. ‘We’ve got nothing on Carl. I’ve told you this. He was going out to the Western Addition to talk to one of his snitches, who apparently got some kind of drop on him.’

‘And what?’ Hardy ladled on the sarcasm. ‘He asked the snitch to hold his gun a minute while they talked, and it went off accidentally? Is that what happened?’

‘Must have been,’ Glitsky replied sardonically. But Hardy had something and Glitsky, perhaps for the first time, was seeing it. ‘He was sitting in his car, Diz. Even Carl wasn’t that dumb.’