“Pity unrequited love,” Harry murmured as they left her. “Well, do we take her at her word or start questioning some of the other ladies? You’ll have noticed how many really beautiful ones there are here.”
“Maybe we ought to think about guys, too,” Garreth said. “That would be a better reason for keeping it quiet.”
“You talk to beautiful young men, then; I’ll stick to the ladies. Just find someone who went out with him.”
Garreth found no one. He worked his way across the exhibition hall talking to personnel manning the booths and convention members visiting the booths. As far as he could determine, Mossman had said to hell with the convention on Tuesday. Checking with Harry later, he found his partner having no better luck.
“Maybe you ought to start on the cab companies,” Harry said. “I’ll keep working here.”
“Let me bounce one more idea off you. You mentioned that he may have met someone Monday evening. So let’s talk to the people he was with Monday.”
“Good idea. Verneau gave me their names.” Harry scribbled two names on a notebook page and handed it to him. “You take this pair; I’ll see the others.”
Garreth made it easy on himself. He rounded up both men and talked to them at the same time, hoping one might stimulate memory in the other. “Where did you go?” he asked them.
Misters Upton and Suarez grinned at each other. “North Beach. That’s some entertainment up there.”
He gave them a neutral smile. “It has a little of something for everyone. Do you remember the names of the clubs you visited?”
“Why do you want to know about Monday?” Suarez asked. “Wasn’t Gary Mossman robbed and killed Tuesday night? That’s what’s going around.”
“We need to know about people he met Monday. Please, try to think. I need the club names.”
They looked at each other and shrugged. “We just walked around, stopping anywhere that looked interesting,” Upton said. “We’d get a drink, watch a girl or two dance, and go on. I don’t remember any of the names.”
Neither did Suarez.
“Did you talk to anyone?”
They blinked. “What do you mean?”
Garreth gave them a man-to-man smirk. “You were five guys out on the town alone. Didn’t you meet any girls?”
The contractors grinned. “Well, sure. We kind of collected four along the way.”
Or were collected by the girls. “Did Mossman pay special attention to any of them? Did he ask one of them back to the hotel?”
“No. He didn’t pair up with any of them.”
“Do you remember the girls’ names? I also need to know if he met anyone outside your group.”
Upton hesitated before replying, with a show of straining his memory, “I think Mandy was one of them. I don’t remember her last name.”
Mandy being the one who came back to the hotel with
“Lana was another,” Suarez said. “Mossman didn’t talk to anyone except us and them.”
“Describe the girls please.” Though what were their chances of finding them by first name, probably not even real ones, and description? Probably zip.
“Except the singer,” Upton said.
Garreth looked up from his notebook. “Singer?”
The contractor nodded. “We were in this club — I don’t remember that one’s name either — and Mossman couldn’t do anything except stare at this singer. Not that I blamed him. She was something special, and boy could she sing. She kept giving him the eye, too. I remember he hung back as we left, and when I looked around, he was talking to her. Just for a minute, though.”
“What did the singer look like?”
Suarez grinned. “A real babe! Tall, and I mean really tall, man. She had these boots with spike heels that made her legs look like they went up to her shoulders. Nice set of jugs, too.”
Something like electric shock trailed up Garreth’s spine, raising every hair on his body. He stared at Suarez, hardly breathing. “Do you think she was five-ten?”
“Who could tell with those boots? She looked taller than me in them, and I’m six feet.”
“What color was her hair?”
“Red. Not that Las Vegas red but darker, like mahogany.”
Red-Haired Woman
1
Harry was dubious. “He had a few words with a red-haired singer Monday night. What makes you think he went back for more than that on Tuesday?”
“A feeling.”
Certainly he had no other reason. No real evidence connected Mossman to this woman any more than evidence connected Adair to that other redhead. Only the similarity in height and coloring suggested that the two women might even be the same. Still…two mysterious deaths and two memorable redheads…
Harry quirked a brow at him. “A feeling…like the ones your grandmother has?” He sang the Twilight Zone theme: “Doo-doo doo-doo.”
If only. Harry might consider his Grandma Doyle full of blarney and superstition but everyone in the family took her Feelings seriously. They rarely missed. Harry himself had witnessed one instance, when she came for a visit after they learned Marti was pregnant. At Harry’s with them, watching his brother play for LA, she went outside suddenly, saying she could not bear to watch Shane get hurt. Sure enough, just before the half, he went under a pile-up. Scratch one knee and one pro football career. Let Harry call it coincidence; Garreth wished he had some of that gift.
“No, it’s just a hunch. But I want to check out this redhead. Crazies come in all shapes and sizes.”
Harry considered. “That I can go along with. First we need to see if Mossman went back to North Beach Tuesday.” He checked his watch. “Too bad the evening doorman isn’t on duty yet. He might remember Mossman catching a cab. Let’s get on those cab companies, then.”
At the Hall they let their fingers do the walking…still a slow process. Each call met the same initial response: did they have any idea how many pickups the company made at the Westin in an evening!
Garreth tried to simplify their task. “This would be for a single passenger…” Easier to find on their trip logs since he estimated most of the fares would be couples or groups. “…picked up between eight and eight-thirty.” Figuring Mossman used an hour or so to return to the hotel, shower, call home, and dress in his red coat.
By the end of the afternoon he and Harry learned that only six cabs from four companies picked up single fares in that time period. Four went to North Beach, one to the Opera House in the Civic Center, one to the Haight-Ashbury district. Yes, those drivers routinely picked up fares at the Westin.
Now they needed to determine if any of those fares were Mossman.
Harry checked his watch again and stood, stretching. “The evening doorman might be on duty now. Let’s go show him Mossman’s picture.”
And the cabbies, too.
The doorman did remember Mossman…at least the coat…but not the cab company nor the destination he gave the driver. They missed the driver whose fare had gone to the opera but eventually caught the others. The one remembered his Haight-Asbury fare, and it was not Mossman, nor was one of those going to North Beach. The remaining three drivers could not identify Mossman’s photo.
“That doesn’t mean I couldn’t have taken him,” one female driver said. “I just don’t remember him. They get in, ride quietly, don’t stiff me on the tip or give me a big memorable one and they’re just another fare, you know?”
