John Lescroart - A Plague of Secrets

“And why do you want to know all this, exactly?”

The question seemed to stump Hardy for a minute. “If I’m going to defend her, it would help to know who she is.”

“But you’re going to bill her to find out something she doesn’t want you to know?”

“If it’s going to help her in the long run. If it turns out I need her history, which now I’m thinking I might. Otherwise, I step in it without ever seeing it coming. And she winds up screwed.” He tipped up his glass, brought it down slowly. “So what do you say?”

Hunt nodded. “I could give it a couple of days. See what pops.”

“That’s all I’m asking. She gave me three thousand as a retainer. You can spend a good chunk of it. How’s that sound?”

“Doable,” Hunt said. “I’ll give it a run.”

Hardy wasn’t wrongwhen he said that Schiff and Bracco wouldn’t be far behind him in coming to the conclusion that Dylan Vogler was blackmailing Maya Townshend.

They’d gotten to it almost by osmosis the next morning. At a few minutes after nine A.M. they knocked at the front door of Jansey’s house, figuring that she would most probably have known what dirt her man had had on his boss that he had used not only to keep himself gainfully employed, but that also allowed him to treat her as an underling when she came into her own store.

Last night, in spite of their great frustration at having Dismas Hardy show up at the Townshends’ to limit the free flow of information, the inspectors had learned a great deal. Most importantly, Maya had lied to them about her alibi on Saturday morning. Beyond that, she’d admitted that she’d actually been called down to the murder scene by the victim and had discovered his body and then opted not to call the police and report it. In the eyes of the inspectors these two revelations elevated Maya in a hurry to a person of interest in the homicide.

She had had both the means and the opportunity to have killed Dylan Vogler. If Bracco and Schiff could establish a compelling motive, they would be well on their way to establishing her as their prime suspect. And the fact that Maya had apparently been at Vogler’s beck and call-coming down to the store before dawn on a Saturday morning?-argued strongly, in spite of Hardy’s disclaimers, that theirs was not a simple business relationship.

Vogler must have had something on Maya that she didn’t want revealed. And maybe he’d been threatening her with just that-upping the ante on what she was paying him, making new demands. Maybe she’d just had enough and decided to put an end to it.

It wasn’t much of a leap for either of them to imagine her killing him. And the why of it led them to Jansey’s door again this morning.

She was barefoot in cutoff jeans and wearing her usual T-shirt. “You guys put in some serious hours, you know that? You got another warrant?”

“Not this time,” Schiff said. “We were hoping you’d talk to us about Maya.”

Her forehead crinkled. “Why? I don’t even know her.”

“You know who she is,” Bracco said.

“Well, yeah, of course I know who she is. She owns the shop. Do you guys hang out with the chief of police?”

“I take your point.” Schiff didn’t want to antagonize Jansey, who was at this point about their best hope. “Do you think we could come in and talk for a minute?”

“About Maya? Look, I really don’t know anything about Maya.” But the cops simply nodded until Jansey hesitated, looked behind her, then shrugged, indicating they should follow her. “Robert’s over having some coffee with me,” she explained in advance.

As Maya turned to lead the way back into the house, Bracco flashed his partner a knowing look, and Schiff acknowledged it with a nod as they fell in behind their witness.

In the kitchen Robert Tripp sat at the table, again in his green medical scrubs. He’d heard the doorbell and then the discussion at the door and appeared, if not actively enthusiastic about the police presence, then at least engaged. “Hey.” He stood up, coming around the table and shaking both of their hands. “Jansey and I are just having a cup,” he said. “It’s hot and fresh. Bay Beans’s finest.”

“Sounds good to me. Black.” Schiff would take anything that would give her and Bracco more time to chat with Jansey and Robert. “Where’s Ben this morning?” she asked.

“Preschool. Eight to twelve.” Jansey looked at Bracco. “Inspector? Coffee?”

“Sure,” he said. “Why not? Two sugars, please.”

Jansey was grabbing mugs and putting them on the counter when Tripp declared, “White sugar’ll kill you.”

Bracco let out a halfhearted chuckle. “That,” he said, “or something else. I promise you, sugar’s the least of my worries.” He pulled a chair around and straddled it backward. “So, Robert, let me ask you this. When do you go to school?”

The question, perhaps intended to get a rise, drew only a muted reply. “I got off at midnight. I’m back in at noon. Twelve on, twelve off, this week. Oh, and I’m on call during the off hours every third day, lest we start to catch up on sleep. That would be wrong.”

“They don’t want you to sleep?” Schiff asked. “Isn’t that dangerous for patients?”

“If it turns out it is,” Tripp said, “you’re out of the program. If sleep’s more important to you than medicine, you don’t want to be a doctor bad enough anyway. If lack of sleep affects your performance, you don’t have what it takes. I don’t think there’s an American-trained doctor in the world who hasn’t gone through five years of serious sleep deprivation. It’s part of the culture. If you can’t hack it, get another gig.”

Jansey set the mugs in front of the inspectors. She put a quick hand on Tripp’s shoulder. “Robert’s record is four days without a minute of sleep.”

“That’s a long four days,” Bracco said.

Tripp broke a tired smile. “That was a long month, Inspector, let me tell you. I finally fell asleep outside an OR, standing up in the hall, which I didn’t think was possible until then. Luckily, one of the nurses noticed and got me onto a gurney, pushed me into an empty room.”

Schiff blew over her coffee. Bracco took his first slurping sip and pulled his tiny portable tape recorder out and put it on the table.

Jansey got herself settled into the chair next to Tripp, reached over and touched his hand on the table, then brought her hands back, clenched in front of her. “So, back to what you came for, I don’t really know what I can tell you about Maya. I’ve only met her a couple of times.”

Bracco and Schiff exchanged a glance and Bracco took the lead. “We’re looking at the possibility that Dylan might have been blackmailing her.”

The news didn’t seem to startle Jansey. Still, she asked, “Why do you say that?”

“Couple of reasons,” Bracco went on. “First, his salary. She paid him ninety grand a year. For comparison the same job at Starbucks pays around forty.”

“Yeah, but he’d been there nine years.”

“Okay, so say he got raises every year. That brings him up to fifty, or even sixty. Ninety’s still a good ways out of the box. Second, some employees at the shop have told us that when Maya came in, which wasn’t very often, Dylan treated her like she was the help, like he had something on her. And if he did, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t have mentioned at least something about it to you at some time.”

The young woman stared down at the table.

“Jansey,” Schiff put in, “if he was blackmailing her, it may have been part of the reason he was killed.”

This brought her head up. “You mean she might have killed him?”