P is for Peril

At nine A.M, I put a call through to Fiona. Naturally, I didn't reach her. In the message I left, I told her I was hoping to track down the missing thirty thousand dollars and I implied, perhaps truthfully, that someone in Crystal's household might be responsible for the theft. I proposed putting in a couple more hours' work if she'd approve the expense. I was hoping she'd take advantage of the possibility of incriminating Crystal or someone dear to her. If not, I'd probably pursue it anyway just to satisfy myself. Not everything in this business is about the bucks.

It was not quite noon by the time I cleared my office calendar and dealt with phone messages from the day before. Jeniffer had called in sick, which meant she and her pals were off to Los Angeles to hear their favorite band in concert. She'd told Jill she'd dropped the outgoing mail at the post office on her way home from work the day before. It's not that I doubted her. I was simply curious as I settled in her chair and began to go through her desk. I found what looked like a week's worth of letters piled together in the bottom drawer, among them my newly paid bills, all stamped and ready to go. I promptly ratted her out to Ida Ruth, who swore up and down she'd tell Lonnie and John and get her booted out the door.

Meanwhile, I put the batch of mail in a box and dumped it off at the post office myself. I wondered how soon Richard Hevener would get my letter and what he'd do when he figured out he couldn't cash my check. Too bad for him. He should have made the deposit the day I gave it to him. I walked from the post office to the police station hoping to catch Detective Odessa before he went out to lunch. Apparently, he and another detective had left on foot five or ten minutes before I arrived. I asked the desk officer if he had any idea where they'd gone. "Probably the Del Mar. They've been doing that a lot. If not, try the take-out window at the Arcade. Sometimes they bring back sandwiches and eat at their desks."

I put a business card on the desk. "Thanks. If I miss him, would you have him call me?"

"Sure thing."

I zipped up my windbreaker and trotted down the outside steps to the street. When I'd checked the weather report in the morning paper, the satellite photo showed a thick, white whirly-gig where yet another storm system spiraled toward the coast. The forecast was for morning low clouds and fog, with a 40 percent chance of rain in the afternoon. Temperatures were hovering in the mid-50s. Soon the local citizens would turn all cranky and mean-spirited, depressed by the bitter cold and the partly cloudy skies.

There was no sign of Odessa in the Del Mar so I hoofed it the half block to the Arcade, a sandwich shop with a pint-sized interior consisting of a counter, three marble-topped tables, and assorted bent-wire chairs. The take-out window was located around the side of the building, where two picnic tables and four wooden benches had been added in the shelter of a black-and-white striped awning. Detective Odessa was hunched over a red plastic basket that contained a massive paper-wrapped burger and a load of fries. The detective sitting across the table from him was Jonah Robb. This was better than I'd hoped.

I'd met Jonah initially about four years before when he was working Missing Persons and I was looking for one. He'd since been transferred to Homicide, promoted to lieutenant, and made unit supervisor-Paglia's boss, in effect. At the time we became acquainted, Jonah's on-again, off-again marriage was in one of its off-again phases, and we'd dallied for a season on my Wonder Woman sheets. Subsequently, his wife, Camilla, returned with their two girls in tow. The next time I ran into him, he told me she'd taken a job as a court clerk, a career move cut short when she left him again. This time, she'd returned pregnant with someone else's child. The purported father took off, leaving poor Camilla to fend for herself. Of course, Jonah'd taken her in and the last I heard he was busy parenting his patched-together brood. From the onset of our relationship, there'd been entirely too much melodrama to suit me. I'd finally bowed out, but I hadn't yet reached the point where I could see him without feeling a flicker of embarrassment.

Vince Odessa spotted me and waved.

I said, "Hi, guys."

Jonah turned on the bench and we both made a point of greeting each other with a pleasant distance in our voices, eyes not quite meeting. We shook hands as you would with the pastor of your church. He said, "How are you?"

"Fine. How's the baby?" I said. "He must be what, four months old by now?"

"He's great. He was born July 4, right on schedule; weighed in at eleven pounds, eight ounces. What a brute."

"Wow. What'd you call him?"