some and spritzed under my arms. Then I redressed, knotting my tie in a Windsor knot. I plastered on a jaunty, no-worries grin and looked at myself in the mirror.
Hidey-ho, ready to go.
I descended from my temporary sleeping quarters on Mount Olympus and joined Hitch in the kitchen. He was cooking.
'Good, you're up,' he said as I entered. 'I was just about to come get you.'
Hitch had placed cubes of bread with the crust cut off in a greased nine-by-thirteen-inch pan with some sauteed sausage slices layered on top. He was sprinkling grated cheddar over the sausage.
'What is that?' I said. 'It smells great.'
'What you smell is the sausage I just browned. What you're about to taste is a culinary miracle known as the Hitchmeister's amazing eggs Portugal. Good at any time of day including dinner.'
He went to the refrigerator and took out a concoction in a plastic blender. 'Our eggs, milk, and mustard,' he explained. 'My secret sauce is a couple of jiggers of vermouth.' He poured it on top of the bread, cheese, and sausage then popped the pan into the oven.
'We've got to wait an hour for it to cook, but I thought we could use the time to go over the case.'
'Sounds good.'
'I just got off the phone with NHMC. CSI did a test on the residue in those two thermoses we found in the truck. Both had strong traces of ketamine, so the two dead guards were drugged first. Coroner said both skeletons had bullet chips in their bones, making the probable cause of death gunshot.'
'So the GIB drugged his two buddies then once they were asleep he executed them.'
'That's what it looks like,' he said.
'What about Del Cristo?'
'He just called over there and wants to talk to us. I was waiting until you got up to call him back because I know how much you, as senior partner, like to push the big red buttons.'
'You da man,' I said, and we slapped palms.
He handed me a cup of Brazilian coffee and we walked into the den to call Jose Del Cristo. As soon as he was on the line Hitch put him on speaker.
'What'd you find?' I asked.
'I ran an X-ray fluoroscopic and your gold bar checked out. I could do a few more tests if you want but in my opinion, the brick is good. Twenty-four-karat perfect.'
I looked at Hitch to see if he wanted to add anything. When he shook his head, I said, 'Okay, Jose. Thanks again. Don't do any more. We'll send somebody over to pick up the bar.'
'I'm just getting set to leave now. I'll put it in our safe. You can pick it up first thing in the morning. I get in at eight and we close at five.'
After he hung up I looked at Hitch.
'Makes no sense,' he said.
'It makes perfect sense. The only problem is we just aren't looking at it in the right way yet.'
We sat on the bar stools thinking. After a while I could smell the great aroma of eggs Portugal wafting in from the kitchen.
'Okay, look,' I finally said. 'The gold is real and we know that nobody in their right mind is gonna park that much loot in a sealed garage and just leave it. If it was hot, maybe, but then it would only be for a year or two to cool it off before moving it. But nobody's gonna leave it there for over a quarter century. That defies reason.'
'Exactly.' Hitch nodded.
'Unless whoever stole the money and hid it in that well house got killed himself. Maybe he was tortured by someone trying to find it, and when he didn't talk, they went too far and he ended up dead. Or less dramatically, it could be as simple as he got hit by a bus or killed in a freeway accident. If it happened that way, then it could sit there unopened for a quarter century with nobody finding it.'
Tin liking this. It ties Dunbar to Vulcuna.'
'Not necessarily, because if the Dunbar family knew about it, wouldn't they pull the gold out of there and use it?'
'Then who planted out the well house with those holly bushes?' he asked.
'Maybe that was an independent event. Maybe it's just what you said. The well house was ugly, so they hid it.'
'That means our great gold bullion heist with all these dead bodies ends back in eighty-three with our master villain going tits up in Act One.' He was scowling.
'Kinda fucks up the movie, doesn't it?'
'What about Stender Sheedy and Thayer Dunbar and their crazy-need to keep that house empty and unsold?'
'Rich people are often eccentric,' I countered. 'Too much money bends the mind. I offer young Brooks as Exhibit A. As you get richer it's something you might also need to keep your eye on going forward.'
He looked at me or through me. Not sure which.
Then he said, 'So your big idea is the GIB kills all three Vulcunas for some still completely unknown reason, then two years later he steals the truck, whacks the other two guards, and hides the truck with the gold inside at Vulcunas' well house, again for unknown reasons. Then the GIB goes out and gets picked up by a person or persons unknown who torture him to death without him talking or, better still, he gets hit by a bus, and the gold is lost, parked for decades in a well house owned by the estate of a pudgy twit whose father is a fucking multibillionaire. Now J'm gagging.' He chewed a cuticle. It was a nervous twitch I'd not seen before. 'We're running out of moves,' he said.
'We still have two obvious ones,' I countered. 'Go out and brace Stender Sheedy is one. Lean hard on that asshole and see if he cracks. The other is we check with Axeis Cargo Insurance. If they examined the gold, see if we can get ACI's old assay tests. Then we find out who collected that insurance dough.'
'Let's do Sheedy first,' Hitch said. 'I'd like to grind on that asshole a little just for fun.'
'We have less than seventy-two hours before Chase Beal gets microphone fever and starts messing us up. We already lost five getting the truck open and the gold assayed. We just slept away another five. I think in the interest of time, we should split up.'
He looked at his watch. 'Business hours are over.'
'That's why we got badges. So we can stop by a suspect's house unannounced and hassle him.'
'No wonder you're so popular at Internal Affairs,' he said.
I made a call to the research center. They gave me the name and address for the current CEO of Axeis Cargo Insurance, a man named Russell Meeks. They also told me where Stender Sheedy Sr. lived.
While I did that Hitch went into the kitchen and pulled the eggs Portugal out of the oven. He got a spatula and cut me a large section, placing it carefully on a china plate. He reached into the fridge and took out some cold mixed fruit squares in a honey sauce for a side dish, then made up a second plate for himself.
We took our food out onto the deck with two German lagers to eat dinner and watch the sun go down.
Hitch handed me a silver fork wrapped inside a green linen napkin and said, 'Let me know what you think.'
He waited for me to go first, eyeing me carefully as I took my first bite and swallowed.
'Aughhhh,' I said. 'Dry! You could caulk a boat with this.'
'Huh.' He seemed perplexed as he forked in a bite of his own.
'Go fuck yourself,' he said. 'It's great. Melts in your mouth.'
'Yeah.' I grinned. 'It's pretty damn spectacular.'
We finished our first helping and both had seconds. Twenty minutes later we were loading up and getting ready to go.
Til take Sheedy,' I said. 'You take this Russell Meeks character who runs Axeis Cargo Insurance.'
'He lives all the way out in Thousand Oaks,' Hitch complained. 'Your guy is right down the hill in Bel Air.'
'That's the problem with being junior man,' I explained. 'Junior man always gets the shit jobs. You're lucky we haven't been getting any flat tires.'
We left his house in separate cars, riding down from Mount Olympus like mythic warriors.
We had no idea what awaited us. But to paraphrase my new partner, Act Three was certainly getting
