Liar Read online

  “No matter how much she did or didn’t have,” I said, “I don’t want any of it. And I have no idea why she named me in her will.”

  McCain studied me for a moment, then seemed to come to some decision; he appeared to relax a little. He asked me a few more questions about my childhood relationship with Briana, then said, “Any idea why someone might want to kill her?”

  “No. I don’t know anything about her recent life that Mary didn’t tell me tonight. As I said, I haven’t been in touch with Briana in a long time.”

  “You’re certain this was premeditated?” Frank asked.

  “Not absolutely. But a couple of things bothered us about it, or I wouldn’t be here,” McCain said, seeming to loosen up a little more. “First, a high rate of speed, coming down a street that isn’t exactly known for drag racing. Second, no skid marks—and yes, maybe the car had antilock brakes, but we’ve got two wits that say the car didn’t stop at all. You and I both know that very few people would accidentally hit someone and never apply the brakes.” He turned to me. “Most hit-and-run drivers are surprised, you might say—they stop or try to stop at some point. Maybe panic sets in or they have some reason for avoiding the police— drugs in the car, car’s stolen, they’ve got warrants out on ‘em, whatever—so they take off after they realize what they’ve done. But they seldom just hit somebody and keep rolling as if nothing’s happened. In this case, no one heard brakes or saw the driver swerve to avoid her.”

  “Any chance the driver just didn’t see her?” I asked.

  “Your aunt was in the middle of an intersection on a bright and sunny morning, wearing light-colored clothing. The direction of the vehicle’s travel was away from the sun, so nothing impaired the driver’s vision. In fact, the witnesses say that after the initial impact, the driver deliberately drove the car over her after she was down.”

  I shuddered.

  “The witnesses give you a make on the vehicle?” Frank asked.

  “They can’t agree on the make, but between what they’ve given us and some of the physical evidence, we think we’re looking for a Camry.” He paused, then looked over at me. “As I said, the witnesses agreed that it looked deliberate. The vehicle wasn’t out of control—it maneuvered to hit her. The car hits her, knocks her down, rolls over her, and drags her body a few yards. The collision breaks a headlamp and does some other damage to the car, and makes a noise loud enough to bring people running out of a little store on the corner. No brake lights, no slowing, no horn.”

  Even though I hadn’t seen her in a long time, it was hard for me to hear this description, to imagine someone doing that to Briana. Frank took my hand. I held on.

  After a moment, McCain said, “Any idea where your cousin is these days?”

  “Travis? No.”

  “Your aunt’s ex-husband?”

  “He wasn’t really her husband. But no, I don’t know anything about him.”

  He asked a few more questions, then walked over to the kitchen door.

  As he opened it, it was clear from both her startled expression and her nearness to the door that Mary had been eavesdropping. She recovered herself quickly though, and I had to admire her regal bearing as she continued on into the living room. “Thank you, Detective McCain,” she said. “It was insufferably hot in that kitchen.”

  McCain gave a little laugh. As he came back to where we were seated he smothered a yawn, then said, “Excuse me. I think I’ll call it a night. You’ll be in the area for the next few weeks, Ms. Kelly?”

  “As far as I know.”

  He took out a card. “Give me a call if you have any questions, or if anything comes to mind.”

  “One moment,” Aunt Mary said.

  He waited.

  “I assume you aren’t charging Irene with any crime?”

  “No, as of now, I have no reason to do so,” he said.

  “Is there any reason why she can’t visit Briana’s apartment, take things out of there?”

  He hesitated, then said, “It’s no longer sealed, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I don’t want—” I began.

  “Hush!” she snapped at me. “I want you to go over there tomorrow morning and clear her things out. You can keep them in boxes and give them to Travis when we find him. That’s fine.”

  “But her furniture—we don’t have room—” I began again, grasping at the first argument that came to mind.

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ll even arrange to have movers bring the furniture here. I’ll store it for you until we find him.”

  “What’s your hurry?” McCain asked.

  She folded her arms across her chest. “I drove over to Briana’s apartment the other day. I’m sure one of your men mentioned that to you.”

  McCain just smiled.

  “Well, he wouldn’t let me in the apartment, but I spoke briefly to Briana’s neighbors. They said up until you and your patrolmen started hanging around, there had been problems with break-ins in that building. I don’t want thieves looting what belongs to Travis.”

  “Neither do I,” McCain said, looking right at me.

  Frank rose halfway out of his chair. I placed a hand on his arm and said, “That won’t help anyone.” He sat back down.

  “What’s your real reason for wanting her to go over there?” McCain asked Mary.

  “That’s real enough,” she said, narrowing her gaze on him. “I don’t lie as readily as some people do.”

  He didn’t say anything, just kept smiling.

  “I do have another reason. I want her to find her cousin. I’m very worried about him.”

  “We’ll find him.”

  “Hah! Listen here, Mr. McCain. There are only about six or seven states that have a bigger population than Los Angeles County—you’re going to tell me that you’ll find the needle I want out of a haystack as big as that? And that’s if he stayed local. Besides, you just mentioned to us that things are kind of busy in your division.”

  “We have other professionals who—”

  “So does she!” Mary crowed. “One sitting right next to her.”

  “I’m sure Detective Harriman won’t want to cause jurisdictional problems.”

  “No,” Mary answered for him. “Even though you’re in his right now. But he’s going sailing tomorrow morning. Irene’s going to hire that private investigator friend of hers to help us look for Travis.”

  It took all the acting skill I have not to betray my surprise at this announcement. I’m not sure I succeeded. McCain seemed skeptical. Frank was cooler under fire.

  “Rachel Giocopazzi,” he supplied, not missing a beat. “She worked homicide in Phoenix. She’s my partner’s wife.”

  McCain’s working smile suddenly brightened into the genuine article—this one lit up his face with pleasure. “Giocopazzi? Rachel Giocopazzi got married?” He laughed. “‘Pazzi! Well, I’ll be damned!” He quickly looked over at Mary and said, “Pardon me, ma’am.”

  She waved that away. “You know her?” A bold question, since Mary had never actually met Rachel, only heard us talk about her.

  “Know her?” McCain said. “Yes. I know her. Lord, yes. We worked together on a long, tough case—two victims killed here, bodies taken to Phoenix.”

  This led to some grisly shop talk between Frank and McCain, during which it was obvious that Jim McCain’s unspoken reminiscences were not strictly about the case.

  “Married,” he said again. “Your partner must be quite a guy. I don’t think there was a man in the Phoenix department that didn’t dream about ‘Pazzi. They’d call her that, or ’the Amazon.”“

  I wondered what he’d think of Pete Baird when he met him. I had a feeling he was in for a shock. I’m fond of Pete, but a page off the Hunk-A-Day Calendar he ain’t.

  “So you’ll give Irene the keys to the apartment?” Mary asked.

  He rubbed his chin, then said, “Sure, but I don’t have the keys with me. I tell you what, I’ll meet you and Rachel over there
.”

  “But we go through the apartment on our own,” I said.

  Again he hesitated, looking at me curiously before he said, “All right, meet you there at ten o’clock. But you’ll tell me if you come across anything that has a bearing on this case?”

  “If someone murdered my aunt, Detective McCain, I’ll do everything in my power to help you find her killer.”

  “Good. And no trying to get in there before ten, all right?”

  “Fine. I’ll see you then.”

  “You sure Rachel can make it?” he asked.

  “I’m almost certain,” I said, praying Rachel wouldn’t mind giving up sailing, too.

  “Families,” Rachel said on a sigh, her eyes not leaving the heavy traffic in front of us. “My brothers, we might not speak to each other for years, but one of ‘em calls up and says, ”Hey, Rach, I need a little something from the dark side of the moon,“ and even though my mouth might say, ”Are you nuts? I’m not going to any damned moon,“ I’m already thinking, Gee, wonder how I’ll look in a spacesuit?”

  “You’re just as good to your friends as you are to your family,” I said. “Thanks for giving up the sailing trip.”

  Uneasy about McCain’s suspicion of me, Frank had talked about canceling, too—but Rachel had shooed him out the door with the other men. When we first mentioned McCain to her, she frowned a little, glancing over at Pete, then said, “Yeah, I think I remember him.”

  She helped me gather up some empty boxes, and offered to drive us over in her Plymouth sedan, which was better suited to hauling boxes than my Karmann Ghia.

  Now we were on the Vincent Thomas Bridge, high above LA Harbor. Rachel hit the brakes as a pickup truck made a sudden lane change into the space in front of us, and I heard her muttering something in Italian.

  “Starting to regret this?” I asked.

  “Aw, I don’t mind this at all. Glad to come along. You think I’d be happier stuck on a sailboat all day with those clowns? No way.”

  “If you needed an alternative, you could probably think of something more fun than going through a dead stranger’s possessions.”

  “Hell, I’m used to it.”

  “I guess you are,” I said. Rachel had retired in her early forties from her job in Phoenix homicide, after putting in twenty years in the department—where she’d started as a meter maid, back when they called them that.

  “Am I horning in on something you’d rather do alone?” she asked.

  “No—not at all. Even if you hadn’t been so willing to offer your car or to help pack boxes, I’d be grateful just to have you with me. I’m glad I’m not facing this alone.”

  “That’s understandable. You said you don’t know how much stuff is in this apartment, right?”

  “Aunt Mary said the place is small and that it wouldn’t take long to pack up, but she’s never moved from the first house she bought in Las Piernas, so I’m not sure she’s much of a judge.”

  After McCain left her house, Aunt Mary said she hoped we didn’t mind the way she’d rescheduled our Saturday. Apparently it was her guilt over this that led her to make a generous offer—to call my sister and explain a few matters to her about the cemetery. But I had a score to settle with Barbara, so I told Mary that I would make the call myself.

  Barbara’s an early riser, so I called before leaving for San Pedro, and started by telling her that the “stranger” in what she thought of as her grave was our mother’s sister.

  That led to a brief bout of hysterical exclamations regarding Briana’s unworthiness to be buried in the same cemetery as our mother, let alone in an adjoining plot. Listening to Barbara’s version of family history, it would have been more appropriate to bury Benedict Arnold in Arlington National Cemetery.

  I nocked my first arrow. “Then you should call the person who owns the gravesite and tell her off.”

  “I will!” Barbara fumed. “Who is it?”

  I let the arrow fly. “Aunt Mary.”

  Utter silence. Bull’s-eye.

  I loosed the next one by saying, “Of course, if you make too much of a fuss about it, you might be the one who ends up buried in some other cemetery. Aunt Mary owns most of the nearest plots.”

  “She does?”

  “Yes, she does. And Barbara? If I ever hear from Mary that only one half of our parents’ gravestone is being cared for? I’m going to beg her to sell those remaining plots to me. And I think she’ll do it, don’t you?”

  She hung up on me. William Tell never had a better day.

  Briana’s apartment was on the east side of San Pedro, an area named by Juan Cabrillo when he sailed into its bay in 1542. San Pedro was once a city itself, but became part of Los Angeles near the turn of the century; Briana’s apartment was near the old downtown, an area once known as Vinegar Hill, on one of the streets between Gaffey and the harbor.

  We turned onto Sixth Street, driving past an old theater and Vinegar Hill Books. At the corner of Centre and Sixth was Papadakis Taverna, Frank’s favorite Greek restaurant. We had dined there not long ago, and now I thought of how close we had been to Briana’s home that night.

  We turned off Sixth and drove through the surrounding neighborhood, a mix of homes and apartments that ranged in style from Victorian mansion to postwar crackerbox. Briana’s apartment wasn’t hard to find: there was a black-and-white LAPD patrol car sitting in front of it.

  “Old Mac didn’t trust us to wait for him,” Rachel laughed.

  “Mac?”

  “McCain. He called me ‘Pazzi, I suppose? He picked that up from those boneheads I worked with in Phoenix.”

  “How well do you know this guy?” I asked.

  “Well enough,” she answered, in a tone that made me change the subject. She was doing me a big favor and her past was none of my business—my own is by no means sterling. I was curious about her connection with McCain, but it was clear I’d have to wait to learn more.

  The apartment was in a run-down fourplex. The crown of the building was a flat roof skirted by three irregular rows of red Spanish tile. The exterior walls were sun-faded brown with white pockmarks; as we came closer, we could see that the stucco was coming off—large, broken, dry bubbles of it clung to the walls—wounds in the building’s hide.

  The windows at the side of the building were barred. Four large picture windows faced the street; at the center of the building, a wide doorway opened onto a concrete porch. Inside this door were a short entryway and a steep set of stairs; at the top and bottom of the stairs, apartment doors faced one another. On the right-hand side of the entry, a short row of black mailboxes was attached to the wall. Self-adhesive gold numbers—the type one might find in a hardware store—adorned the locking mailbox doors, numbering them one through four. Three of the four boxes also had red-and-white tape labels bearing the occupant’s first initial and last name.

  The officer in the patrol car waved at us. Rachel smiled and waved back, saying under her breath, “Yeah, putz, we know you’re watching us.” I glanced at my watch. We were only about fifteen minutes early.

  The building was quiet; I decided to see if any of Briana’s neighbors were home. I knocked on the door across from Briana’s and heard a parrot squawk, but no one came to the door. I heard a phone ring in one of the upstairs apartments; it rang about ten times. I climbed the stairs anyway, but got nothing but a little exercise.

  When—right at ten o’clock—Rachel saw McCain’s car pull into an empty parking spot down the street, she glanced at me nervously and took a deep breath. I had never seen her less than ready to take on the world, so I was surprised by her reaction. But when McCain stepped out of his car, dramatically clutched his chest and shouted, “Married? Married?” she was already grinning and hurrying toward him. There was nothing sexual about their dancing embrace in the middle of the street, nothing desperate. If anything, it was the sort of happy, enthusiastic hug two football fans might give one another after their team scored a crucial goal on a Hail Mary pass. Friends
, I told myself, they were just friends.

  Told myself that until they came walking back toward me, Rachel a little ahead of him, and I saw how McCain watched her, saw the hunger with which he took in her way of moving, and saw her glance back at him and smile.

  Show him a picture of Pete, I wanted to say, but didn’t. She must have read something on my face though, because she stopped smiling and said, “I guess you two have already met.”

  “I guess you two have, too,” I said, hating the snide little note I heard in it.

  “Well,” McCain said uncomfortably, bringing out a keychain with a St. Christopher medal on it. “Here are your aunt’s keys.”