The Accused Coroner, page 21
“What’ll you do now?” Sarah said, brushing her cheeks, a rose tint subtly glowing. “Are you going to Mexico?”
“I don’t know,” Fenway said. “I don’t think my new identity has been compromised, but I don’t want to find out when I’m crossing the border.”
“Maybe Piper can get an update on whether the police have your fake name.”
“Maybe.” Fenway tapped the wheel. “She was monitoring the police bands earlier. I read the news in Estancia. I’m the main story.”
Sarah nodded. “It’s all very exciting and dramatic.”
Fenway was quiet for a moment, then she said, “Do we have the box with all those microcassettes in the back seat, or are they in the trunk?”
“I think they’re in the back seat,” Sarah said. “Want me to get them?”
“Yeah.”
Sarah twisted around to the back, rustling boxes around. “Found it.” She came back holding the shoe box.
“What did you want to see?”
“There’s no recorder in there, right?”
“Right.”
“Next time we stop, we need to get one of those microcassette players.”
“Do you think the tapes will prove anything?”
“I don’t know. They might be classroom lectures. They might be empty. Or they might have a confession from one of the cops.”
Sarah nodded.
“Dig through there and see what the last date is.” Fenway pointed to the open box. “I told Piper that Darren Ellsworth worked in the Thirty-Third as a detective, and he harassed the Godwins. I also told her that he’s the only one who quit.”
“You think the tapes might have had something to do with it?”
“Maybe. It might have been the excuse that the brass needed to fire him. Or it’s possible that he’s the only one who said something that was caught on tape.”
Sarah nodded and typed again on her phone.
Fenway turned onto the 405. Ocean Highway was only ten miles farther, and from there, another two and a half hours, maybe three, to get home.
Home.
Where she couldn’t go.
The police would be swarming the apartment complex. Even if Fenway tried to avoid the police and meet up at a mutual friend’s house or a hotel, she was sure there would be eyes on her.
She realized with muted panic that everywhere she could go would likely be watched. Her parents’ house for sure. Charlotte probably had a tail on her from morning till night. Her father was still stuck in the physical rehab center, but Fenway would put money on a plainclothes officer hanging around the lobby of the center.
McVie, Dez, Piper—all being followed.
Sarah was the only one she knew for sure wasn’t being tailed.
And although Sarah had said that Sheriff Donnelly made the announcement that Fenway was back in town specifically as reverse psychology so she wouldn’t show up, she knew the police were still waiting for her. In case the reverse psychology didn’t work.
Sarah finished sending her text, then stared out the window. The hill to the Getty Center threw Fenway off. She’d always pictured Los Angeles as a flat valley of a metropolis spreading its flat fingers out as far as the eye could see. But the hills, sometimes steep, that interrupted the sprawl and separated the valley from the city seemed surreal. The Getty Center, too, in its perch atop the highest hill in the area, looking down upon the perpetually busy freeway, seemed like an afterthought to the landscape, a cake topper that didn’t match the formality of the icing.
“Are we going to the train station to send you off to Mexico?”
“No,” Fenway said. “Back to Estancia to clear my name.” The words sounded crazy coming out of her mouth. She wondered if they’d even be able to make it through Santa Barbara and up to Estancia without getting pulled over. If the trunk hadn’t been full of her grandparents’ boxes, she’d have suggested that Sarah drive and Fenway get in the trunk once they hit the Air Force Base north of Santa Barbara.
“Piper respond yet?”
“No,” Sarah said. “But—you’ll never guess who came into Dos Milagros over the weekend.”
“Me,” Fenway said.
“I’m sure you did, but that’s not who I was thinking of.” Sarah cleared her throat. “Karen Ordridge.”
Fenway’s lip twitched. Was that a name she should know?
“You know, Darren Ellsworth’s assistant.”
Fenway nodded; she remembered the woman but hadn’t caught her name. “How did you know it was her? You didn’t go on the calls with me.”
“I read your reports. You didn’t mention the assistant by name, but I thought if we ever needed her to be a witness, I’d need her contact information.”
“How did you get that?”
“She donated to the Yes on 540 campaign last year. Had to put her employer on there. Those campaigns are a matter of public record, you know.”
“You mean to tell me you went to every political campaign’s public information record until you found what you were looking for?”
“Of course not. That’s what search engines are for.”
Fenway shook her head. “That’s something Piper would have done.”
“I’m learning a lot from her.”
“So,” Fenway said, “Karen Ordridge.”
“I have a feeling she’s lonely,” Sarah said. “She works all day in a P.I. office with an owner who she’s having a relationship with. Well, not exactly a relationship. Co-workers with benefits, maybe.”
“Dangerous territory.”
“Especially for someone who thought the relationship would be a little more serious. She can’t break it off without quitting, and she doesn’t feel like anywhere else would hire her since she’s slept with the boss at this job.”
“She told you all of this at Dos Milagros?”
“Don’t be silly. I invited her to the bar down the street. Got some tequila shots. She said she wanted to carry on the theme of the evening. For a woman who parties hard with her boss, though, I would’ve thought she’d be less of a lightweight.”
“When was this?”
“When she and I had an unexpected girls’ night out? Saturday.”
“Interesting.”
Sarah grinned. “I haven’t gotten to the interesting part yet.”
“Oh. Do tell.”
“She tells me that she thinks Ellsworth is secretly rich because she doesn’t see enough clients come into the office to keep the place afloat.”
“Does she do their books?”
Sarah shook her head. “It’s dawning on Karen that she’s only there for Ellsworth’s, uh, entertainment.”
Fenway nodded. “I see. So she thinks it’s a lifestyle job. He likes owning his own P.I. firm. What do you think is going on?”
“I was comparing some of the information you’ve uncovered with the cases against the business owners who were arrested for money laundering, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“Ellsworth’s business fits the profile of the other companies that were laundering money,” Sarah said. “Invoices that don’t match any real people.”
“What?” Fenway asked. “Did you see those invoices?”
“Well—no,” Sarah admitted, “but Karen said it was weird that she saw invoices in the files for clients she never met, and saw they were paid even though she never sent the bills out.”
“Did she ask about them?”
“A couple of times she brought them up to Ellsworth. He supposedly told her that the client wanted complete secrecy and didn’t want anyone but Ellsworth knowing about them.”
“Not a bad lie, considering.”
“Now,” Sarah said, “here’s where it gets even more interesting.”
“Yeah?”
“Karen said that for the last couple of months, the business has changed. Ellsworth is taking on more clients that are, as she says, ‘above board’—ones that she meets and bills. And Ellsworth usually gives her a Christmas bonus, but he said the business had some unexpected expenses and he couldn’t do it this year. Last week, he made some excuse about being a week late with payroll.”
Fenway squinted. “Hmm.”
“So what do you suppose that’s about?”
Fenway leaned forward and arched her back, still keeping her hands at nine and three on the steering wheel. “Any number of explanations,” she said. “Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe his under-the-table clients left. Or maybe Ellsworth was laundering money, and the gravy train dried up in November when that whole plan was uncovered and so many people were arrested.”
Sarah was quiet.
“What? You don’t think that’s it?”
“It’s a plausible scenario,” she said, “but even a guy like Ellsworth has to have a savings account, right?”
Fenway chuckled. “I don’t think you know the average American very well.”
“Hear me out. He’s had a successful business for over twenty years. You don’t get that by being bad with money.”
“I don’t necessarily agree with your point. Blackmail and money laundering can hide—”
“Hang on a minute,” Sarah said. “It’s pretty clear that something happened with the death of Eddie Drake that people don’t want out in the open. Your mom changed her name and never saw her parents again. Barry Klein got close to finding out something, and a few days later, both he and his wife are dead.”
Fenway squinted and bit her lip. “Yeah… but that suggests my involvement, right?”
“But you didn’t do it—and the only way any of this makes sense is that you’re being set up. Now, tell me again what Barry Klein has.”
“The shell casings from the evidence box, and then he bought my father’s old Wagneritz SL.”
“I know you say Klein was obsessed with your father,” Sarah said, “but there has to be another reason he focused on the Wagneritz.”
“Right—well, I’m pretty sure he focused on the fingerprints from the shell casings. Guns are easy to wipe clean, but when people load bullets into a gun, they forget that they can leave fingerprints on the bullets themselves.”
Sarah nodded. “I’ve heard that.”
“Something else you got from Piper?”
Sarah shook her head. “Ishikawa & Knapp. I was getting paid like an admin, but I was doing investigative work. Making sure our clients weren’t hiding things from us. Which they usually were. I learned about guns and hiding accounts overseas and all kinds of jiggery-pokery.”
Fenway arched an eyebrow. “Jiggery-pokery?”
“I agree with you that Barry Klein found out something that got him killed. But I think Ellsworth’s business was about to go under, and I have to wonder if those two things are connected.”
Fenway pressed her lips together. “Are you suggesting Barry Klein blackmailed Ellsworth?”
“I’m saying it’s a possibility.”
Fenway turned the statement over in her mind. The evidence pointed to Ellsworth being a blackmailer—not being a victim of blackmail himself. The uncashed check from Joanne Stevenson to Ellsworth for nearly ten grand was the biggest smoking gun. And Fenway hadn’t gotten the chance to ask Ellsworth about it—actually, that wasn’t true. She’d had the chance. But she hadn’t been able to come up with a line of questioning that wouldn’t trigger the fight-or-flight response.
She had, however, looked up the statute of limitations for extortion in California. Five years. If that check could prove anything, it could only prove a crime was committed which Fenway was fifteen years too late to catch.
If Ellsworth had continued to blackmail Joanne Stevenson, though, it probably—based on their financial situation in those early months in Seattle—had gone on for years. In fact, it probably went on for as long as Joanne Stevenson was getting money from Nathaniel Ferris—which included the payments for college tuition right up until Joanne Stevenson’s death.
And extortion across state lines was a federal crime—and certainly that was well within the statute of limitations.
Barry Klein could have found out many things. Maybe Ellsworth was the one who killed Eddie Drake. Maybe he found out that Ellsworth had been blackmailing Joanne Stevenson. Maybe he found out that Ellsworth was part of the money laundering scheme and he threatened to turn him in.
“You won’t like it,” Fenway said, “but this is making me want to go to the Kleins’ house even more. Whatever Barry found out—and maybe it was on Monday, but maybe he’s known it for a long time—I think it’s what got both him and his wife murdered. And if we find out who the evidence points to, we might find our killer.”
Sarah nodded.
“And that will probably be enough to get my life back,” Fenway muttered under her breath.
She looked in the rearview mirror and swooped into the fast lane, pushing the accelerator to the floor.
Sarah turned around in her seat and looked out the back window between the boxes. “Did we miss the turnoff for Ocean Highway?”
Fenway nodded. “Yeah. I—I have a bad feeling about that route. I got a feeling the police will watch for me approaching Estancia from the south on Ocean Highway.”
Sarah faced forward again. “So—what’s the plan? Take the Grapevine to I-5?”
“I think so. That’s what, another two hours?”
“Till we’re over the grade, yeah.” Sarah clicked her tongue. “Uh—where exactly do you think you’ll go once you get to Estancia?”
Fenway pressed her lips together. “Like I said, the Kleins’ house.”
“Okay,” Sarah said, “but you can’t go right away. The cops are waiting for Catherine Klein to get back. You can’t go to their house—you’ll be caught for sure.”
“I don’t know,” Fenway said carefully. “Once Catherine Klein’s body is found, it’ll be reported soon enough. As soon as the police know she’s not coming home, they’ll abandon their posts.”
“Not necessarily,” Sarah said. “Now that both Barry and Catherine Klein are dead, the police could come up with any number of theories that keep a watch on the Kleins’ house.”
“Like what?”
“Like, for example, if they find out that Barry stole those casings. If Barry didn’t have the evidence bag on him and Catherine didn’t either, maybe looking at the house would be a good idea.” Sarah paused. “After all, it’s why you’re going there.”
Fenway sighed. “I’ll have to figure out how to get in without being seen,” she said.
“Don’t the Kleins have a security system with cameras?”
“Maybe. Now that they’re both dead, I’m not sure if anyone will mind if I disconnect it.”
Sarah’s lip curled. “That’ll be great for anyone who comes on their property afterward. But they’ll get you on film as soon as you set foot inside their perimeter.”
“Their perimeter?”
“You know what I mean.” Sarah sat back in the seat and closed her eyes.
The miles ticked off one by one, and Fenway couldn’t figure out how to get into the Kleins’ house. She didn’t have a friendly judge to get a warrant signed. She didn’t have the power of the badge behind her—and every sheriff’s deputy in town had their eyes peeled for her.
Sarah mumbled. Fenway looked over, expecting to see Sarah asleep. Instead she was staring intently ahead.
“What?”
“The long way is through Windkettle.”
Fenway nodded, smirking. “If you’re too chicken to take the winding road through—”
“No, no.” Sarah waved her hand dismissively. “It’s not that. It’s that my parents live in Windkettle. And they’ve got my old bedroom and a pull-out couch. And high-speed internet.”
Fenway nodded. “It’s far enough from Estancia that people probably won’t be looking for me.”
“There are some other things in Windkettle too,” Sarah said cautiously. “I have some old clothes. I have a couple of old wigs, too, but they’re good quality.”
“Yes,” Fenway said. “More disguises. That might help me after I figure out how to break in.”
“Or…”
Fenway looked at Sarah out of the corner of her eye. “Or what?”
Sarah was silent for a moment, then spoke in a rush. “I’ve been looking at train schedules ever since we got off the phone on Tuesday. They’ve got a train station in Santa Clarita right off the freeway—that’s in about ten minutes. Take the Antelope Valley commuter back to Metropolitan Station, and you’ll make the next Southwest Devil train in plenty of time. You can get off in Yuma and take a taxi to the border. Or take the train to Tucson and transfer to the Nogales bus. The police already think you got on a train to Estancia, so the Southwest Devil will be safe. You can be in Mexico by dinnertime. Then we can work on proving your innocence here. Your dad can wire you all the money you need.”
Fenway felt her stomach drop. “I—I don’t want to go to Mexico. My life is in Estancia. My family is in Estancia.” She barely believed the words were coming out of her mouth, but it felt true. She wanted to see her father get better, learn to walk and speak again. She wanted to help Charlotte transition Ferris Energy to the new owners. And it wasn’t only her father and Charlotte—Rachel and Piper and Dez were her family too.
And as much as she didn’t want to admit it, she had to include McVie.
“It won’t be forever, Fenway,” Sarah said gently.
“It might,” she said. “You don’t know who’s setting me up. As long as I’m not around to defend myself, I won’t be—” Her voice caught, and she blinked once, twice, three times.
Sarah turned and looked at Fenway, whose ears burned. “I’ll keep thinking about how to get you into the Kleins’ house,” Sarah finally said.
Fenway was quiet as they passed Sylmar and billboards for the big amusement park came into view. “I’m sorry I got you into this,” Fenway murmured. “This isn’t what you signed up for when you took the job.”
Sarah waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.”
Fenway opened her mouth to keep apologizing, but something in Sarah’s tone made her close it again.
They drove in silence for another ten minutes.
