Where The Bodies Are Buried Read online

  “Come on, Charlie. I need something more specific than that. Two men? Two women?” I watched for body language, some giveaway in his bloodshot blue eyes. He didn’t react to either suggestion. “Or one of each?”

  Now Kellerman’s eyes flickered, and he stared at me for a moment. He raised his hand to his chin again. Then he looked away. Okay, I thought. Progress. It was a man and a woman. “You’d seen one of them, or both, before. Where?”

  He licked his lips again as the woman next to him made her selection, picked up her basket, and moved off. He took a step in that direction, the Scotch bottles in his basket clinking together as he moved. One of them tipped precariously near the edge, and I reached out to straighten it. He gazed at the amber liquid in the bottle as though he hated the thought of losing a drop. His voice was a whispery rasp. “What’s it worth to you?”

  I’d figured someone had slipped him some cash, when I’d seen the pricey liquor in his grocery sack last Monday. From the looks of his basket, he was still drinking the good stuff. I wondered if he’d gotten another infusion of capital from whoever wanted to keep him quiet. A recent payoff, I thought, mindful of the fact that Leon Gomes had just been at the Alice Street building.

  “Is there an asking price?” I countered.

  Charlie narrowed his eyes as though he were deciding how much to charge me for the information I wanted. Then someone bumped into me, an elderly woman with one of those small wheeled shopping carts. Charlie took advantage of the distraction to make a break for the cash register. I followed, keeping some space between us, noting the large denominations of the bills he used to pay for his liquor. For someone who didn’t have a job and supposedly relied on the kindness of his brother for spending money, Charlie had quite a bankroll. I didn’t know if the twenty bucks I’d been prepared to slip him would buy me much more than the information I’d already pried out of him.

  “Are we going to talk?” I asked him when we were outside the market.

  Charlie ignored me and walked quickly back in the direction he’d come. I kept up with him. He didn’t speak until we were back on Alice Street, in front of his building. “Maybe I’ll call you,” he said.

  I dropped one of my business cards into the sack of Scotch bottles. “You do that. And soon.” I watched him scurry up the sidewalk and into the building.

  I drove over to my office on Franklin Street and started a background search on Charlie Kellerman. He must know one or both of the people who were in Rob’s apartment before he died. They knew it, too. I was betting that’s how Charlie got the thick wad of bills I’d seen in his wallet at the market.

  A man and a woman, I thought, leaning back in my chair. Could it be Leon Gomes and Carol Hartzell?

  Charlie might know who they were, if he’d seen them in the hall during a visit to Rob. I couldn’t picture Carol being involved in Rob’s death, though. Both times I’d seen her, she behaved like a woman who was genuinely grieving the loss of her brother. Unless she was a better actress than I gave her credit for. That was certainly a possibility.

  Leon had been at the apartment building earlier this afternoon, with the men who’d helped him clear out Rob’s apartment. He could have given Charlie some of those greenbacks. And it was Leon who’d been telling everyone that Rob had killed himself. Were his words a ruse to direct attention away from the fact that Leon knew Rob’s death wasn’t a suicide?

  Why would Leon want to kill Rob? It must have something to do with that argument they’d had more than a week before Rob’s death. Something to do with work, Robin Hartzell had told me the last time we’d talked. I wondered if she’d been able to find out anything more.

  The phone rang. Somehow I wasn’t surprised to hear Robin’s voice, as though she knew I’d been thinking about her. “I saw Leon this afternoon,” I told her. “At Rob’s building.”

  “Yeah, he and a bunch of guys from the plant went over there to clear out Rob’s apartment. He even arranged for a cleaning service to come in afterward. He didn’t even tell us he was going to do it, until right before he left. I offered to help, so did Doug. But Leon said he wanted to spare us all the trouble, Mom included. Spare us.” Her voice was edged with scorn. “Can you believe that?”

  “Sounds like you don’t. Why?” I wasn’t sure I did, either. Leon’s gesture would feel more altruistic if I hadn’t just been auditioning him for the role of Rob’s killer.

  “I dunno,” Robin said. “He’s just such a control freak. And we’re Rob’s family. I think he should have consulted us before he jumped right in with his usual take-charge trip. Besides, I can’t help feeling he wants to pry into Rob’s stuff.”

  “So do I. Where did he take it?”

  “They were unloading all of Rob’s things into the garage when I left. I’m calling from the library, where I’m supposed to be studying. Mom says she’s gonna keep all that stuff there until she decides what to do with it. We might use some of the furniture, and she’s already said Doug could have Rob’s bike. I’m pretty sure she wants to go through the papers and books and pictures and all that. I don’t know when she’s going to start, though. She’s still pretty weepy, especially after the funeral. You want to come over some time this week?”

  “Yes, I do. Soon. I need to get a look at Rob’s things before your mother does. But I’ll have to see how the week plays out. Any luck in remembering what Leon and Rob were arguing about?”

  “Not so far,” Robin told me. “But I’m sure it had something to do with Bates. I could just come right out and ask Leon about it.”

  “Not yet. I don’t want Leon to know anyone’s interested.”

  “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “But if I find him prowling around in Rob’s stuff, I’m sure as hell gonna ask him why.”

  Nineteen

  IT SEEMED AS THOUGH EVERYONE WAS INTERESTED IN Rob Lawter’s things. On Monday morning I caught Hank Irvin rummaging through the drawers in Rob’s desk. He was only the first of many.

  I had just left Cube City, heading for the copy room off the north hallway. As I walked toward the corner, I saw light through the clouded glass door of Rob’s office. I stopped, listening to the sound of drawers being pulled open, then slammed shut.

  When I opened the door, Hank was sitting at the desk, his hands rifling impatiently through the files on the surface, a frown on his face. Then his eyes came up to meet mine. There was a startled expression on his face that he quickly smoothed over.

  “Looking for something?” I asked, pasting on a cheerful smile.

  “Rob was working on something for me, before he died. I can’t seem to find it.”

  “Can I help? Where would it normally be filed?”

  “It’s a corporate matter,” he said, looking distracted. “I thought maybe it got stuck in the wrong file folder by mistake.”

  “I’ll help you look.” I stepped through the doorway toward the desk. Hank pushed back from the desk and stood up, shaking his head.

  “No, it’ll turn up. It’s not time critical, and I’ve got other stuff for you to do that is. I’ve got to go to Texas this afternoon, and I won’t be back till Wednesday. Before I go, that document you did Friday afternoon has to be revised as soon as possible. It’s in my out basket.”

  “Why are you going to Texas?”

  “Oh, business.”

  I’d assumed that, but I wanted details. He wasn’t giving me any.

  I followed Hank back to his office and picked up the separation agreement concerning Ed Decker from the out basket. I pulled off the large paper clip that held the pages together and sifted through them, assessing the extent of the additional revisions, which Hank had scribbled in red ink. Behind this was a fax copy, one sent, according to the date and time information on the upper margin, on Saturday afternoon. It was from Eric Nybaken at Rittlestone and Weper, and it, too, contained a lot of handwritten comments. It looked as though Hank had incorporated Nybaken’s changes and added a few of his own.

  As I left Hank’s office I
saw that Patricia’s light was off. Just to be sure, I opened the door. There was no sign that she’d arrived at work yet. Must have been a terrific weekend in Mendocino. I crossed the hall to Cube City.

  So Hank was looking for something that might have been misfiled. Why then was he looking in Rob’s desk drawers, and only belatedly at the files on Rob’s desk? I was sure I’d heard him opening and shutting drawers.

  Gladys and Nancy were both in their cubicles. Nancy had been transcribing a dictation tape. Now she stood up and walked over to the printer, waiting for the document to appear in the tray.

  Gladys was sorting some filing. On her way to work, she had stopped at the same place I had, the coffeehouse on the Embarcadero. I recognized the logo on the disposable cup. Now she leaned back in her chair and took the lid off what looked like a mocha.

  “Did you have a nice weekend?” I asked her, taking a sip from my own latte.

  “Went to a funeral,” she said, wrinkling her face.

  I nodded. “Rob, that paralegal who died?”

  “Yes. I just hate funerals, especially for people who are younger than me. That reminds me.” She looked in Nancy’s direction. “I guess one of us needs to go over to Rob’s office and clean it up. There’s a lot of filing piled up on that desk.”

  “Leave it,” Nancy said, her back to us as she stood at the printer.

  Gladys looked exasperated. “But you know there are files in there people will be looking for. Both Hank and Patricia were in there last week. We need to get that stuff back to the file room, the sooner the better. So why shouldn’t we?”

  Nancy took her time answering. I’d noticed she was stingy with information. She operated on a need-to-know system, and she usually figured that Gladys and I didn’t need to know. I could understand her attitude in terms of letting me in on the company secrets, since I was a temporary worker. But Gladys was a long-term employee. It was plain that Nancy’s reticence irritated her.

  Nancy frowned and ran one hand through her straight black hair. “Buck Tarcher and the police want to look at the office.”

  “Tarcher?” Gladys wrinkled her nose. “And the cops? Whatever for? Do they think Rob was selling the secret formula for Bates Best ice cream?”

  “Just routine, I guess.” Nancy’s tone was deprecating, and she shrugged her shoulders. “Rob did die in unusual circumstances.”

  “Yeah, I guess taking a flyer out a window is unusual,” Gladys snapped back, shaking her head. “But I don’t see what it has to do with work.” She took another swig of her coffee and went back to her cubicle.

  Had Alex Campbell told his secretary the reason Tarcher wanted a crack at the office? Looking at her now, I had the feeling he had. Nancy knew something, and she didn’t want to share it. If I was correct in assuming that threatening note Rob had received was the reason Tarcher and Sid had visited the Bates general counsel on Friday, Tarcher must be trying to find a reason someone would tell Rob to back off.

  Over the weekend I’d driven over to Alameda to visit an acquaintance, a retired Navy admiral named Joe Franklin. I wanted to find out if he knew Tarcher, who was an ex-Marine. Joe knew him, but not well. Tarcher, he told me, was an uncompromising, by-the-book officer, and likely to have the same mind-set now that he was head of security at Bates.

  I’d first encountered Joe about a year and a half earlier, while working on a case. I hadn’t liked him at the time. Then, about a year ago, his daughter Ruth had been the prime suspect in the murder of her estranged husband, and Joe had worked with me to clear her. In the process, he’d become interested in helping the Bay Area’s burgeoning homeless population. Now he ran a food bank staffed by other military retirees. Earlier this year, he’d rented a storefront on Santa Clara Avenue in Alameda, where the Franklins lived, and Ruth managed his office, with an occasional assist from Joe’s wife, Lenore.

  “Do you get much in the way of donations from Bates?” I asked Joe. We were drinking beer on the patio of the Franklin house on Gibbons Drive. “I mean, it is a food processing company, so I’d guess they donate food.”

  “Yes, canned goods, pasta, nonperishables.” He squinted, gazing out at the lawn where Ruth was playing croquet with her young daughter, Wendy. Lenore was on her hands and knees in a flower bed, separating iris rhizomes. “But their donations are way down this year. And people I’ve talked with say Bates’s monetary contributions to local charities have dropped drastically since that leveraged buyout.” He sighed and shook his head. “That happens with a lot of corporations, I’m finding out. In the midst of plenty…”

  “Some of the plenty seems to be in the executives’ salaries,” I said, thinking of the well-padded severance package Ed Decker was getting.

  “They say corporate executives nowadays make more than two hundred times what most of their employees make.” He downed some beer. “Even as an admiral, my salary didn’t attain such heights. We’re living in strange times, Jeri. With people getting laid off all over the place, requests for food are going up, and donations are going down. Some people just don’t have enough to share. But there are a lot of others who don’t seem to care.”

  My recollection of the conversation with Joe was interrupted by a buzzing sound from Nancy’s intercom. She picked up the receiver, then said, “I’ll be right there.”

  When she’d left the office, I stood up and peered at Gladys over the partition. “Do you know why Hank’s going to Texas this afternoon?”

  “Beats me,” she said, sounding huffy. “That must be why the legal staff meeting’s been moved to ten o’clock. It’s usually at two. Nancy makes all the travel arrangements, for everyone. As you can see, she likes to keep me out of the loop.”

  “No idea what it’s about? Not even a guess?”

  She shook her head. “Must be one of those hush-hush projects. The attorneys do it all the time. Cloak-and-dagger stuff, like they were buying nuclear weapons instead of some bakery in Oakland. They label the file folders ‘Project Umbrella’ or some such nonsense and keep them locked in their offices. I think it’s kinda silly.” She stopped and took a swig of her mocha. “If I had to guess, I’d say Bates must be planning to build a new plant. Or buy one.”

  Acquisitions and divestitures, I thought. I’d seen several folders on the subject in the file room. But now my nose was twitching at the prospect of some top-secret project Hank might be working on. Maybe while he was gone I could pick the lock on the file drawer in his desk.

  “I thought all the Bates plants were here in the Bay Area,” I said. “Has there been any talk of expanding to other states?”

  “Come to think of it, there was. Right before the LBO, there was some talk of expanding our sales area, selling Bates products in other states. I’ll bet that’s what it’s about. Maybe we’ll pick up some information in the staff meeting.”

  “If the company’s broadening its market, maybe that’s a good sign.”

  “Hold that thought,” Gladys said, saluting me with her coffee container.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect from the staff meeting, but I hoped Gladys was correct in her assumption that we might be able to find out what was going on at Bates, at least in the legal department. I finished making the revisions Hank wanted in the settlement agreement and took the new printout to him. After he’d skimmed through it, he told me to send the original back to Nybaken, by messenger. By the time I’d returned from the mail room, where the messenger service would pick up the envelope, it was nearly ten o’clock.

  Nancy, Gladys, and I filed out of Cube City and trooped across the hall to Alex Campbell’s corner office. Hank and Patricia were already there, Patricia looking windblown and not quite put together, as though she’d just driven down to the Bay Area from her weekend getaway in Mendocino.

  We took seats around the circular conference table in front of Alex’s desk. The general counsel told us that he’d gotten approval from human resources to fill Rob Lawter’s job and that an ad would start running in the Bay Area legal n
ewspapers, The Recorder and The Daily Journal, the following week.

  “That’s good news,” Hank said. “What about a secretary to replace Martha?” He nodded at me. “Not that we’re dissatisfied with Jeri’s work. Very pleased, as a matter of fact.”

  “Perhaps you’ll consider applying,” Alex said to me, seconding the compliment with a pleasant smile. “An internal memo has gone around, as is customary, giving secretaries within the company the chance to apply first. But if you’d like to stay here with us, we’ll put in a good word with human resources.”

  Gladys flashed me a grin. She thought it was a good idea. Nancy, however, gave me a look, as though she wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of having me around on a permanent basis.

  Neither was I. I fervently hoped I could get some leads, wrap up this case, and get back to my own life. I returned Alex’s smile, even as I hedged. “I hadn’t really considered a permanent position right now. Let me think about it.”

  Personnel matters out of the way, Alex launched into the next phase of the meeting, which turned out to be reports from the attorneys on their various projects. Alex was working on a company-wide survey regarding compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. He also said the company was making progress in the labor negotiations. Could this be the source of the possible strike I’d heard Leon Gomes mention at Rob’s funeral? If there was a problem between Bates and the union, I wouldn’t have guessed from Alex’s brief, bland description.

  When it was her turn, Patricia looked preoccupied, and not by work. “The FDA food-safety proposals,” she said quickly. “I’ve been analyzing them, with the help of Nolan Ward in production. In fact, I’ve got a meeting with him at one. We should have a report ready in a week to ten days.”

  Alex nodded, then glanced at Hank, who reported on the status of Bates’s plans to go public again. It sounded like the timetable for this was the end of October.

  “What about that trademark infringement lawsuit?” Alex asked him.