“We’ll see.”
“Christ, I hope not,” Kate said fervently. Two was quite enough, and she’d just as soon leave a question rather than have a third body to confirm Al’s theory. However, the question was further complicated just before noon when the preliminary results from the Banderas car search came up with an empty insulin pen, found in the back of the glove compartment, with no name on it of either patient or pharmacy. They had planned on searching the Banderas apartment later that afternoon, but with the possibility that a diabetic had been found in the possession of a chocolate bar, they called Marin to let them know that the SFPD was serving a search warrant in their jurisdiction, put on their coats, and left.
Banderas had lived in a condominium north of Mill Valley, a modern apartment complex filled with successful young singles and childless couples where both partners worked. Parking was in a three-story garage connected to the buildings by walkways, not outside the apartment doors, and the Banderas apartment was near the complex’s entrance; none of his neighbors would ever know when he was home or not.
His apartment was unrevealing, the living quarters of a bachelor who ate out a lot and brought work and women home. There was an assortment of exotic condoms in the table beside the bed, a stack of the classier kinds of frozen dinners in the freezer, and a set of copper cook-ware that looked as if it had never been used. He wore expensive clothing, with a flashy taste in suit lapels, shirt collars, and neckties, and owned five more pairs of shoes as expensive as those he had died in, plus an assortment of loafers and athletic shoes. The paintings on the wall were splashes of bright color that did not mean much of anything except that he knew walls needed to have them, a painting in the bedroom showed a well-endowed naked blond woman either making love with or struggling beneath a clothed man, and he owned a lot of very hard-core pornographic videos, some of them violent, with one player in the living room and another in the bedroom. The room did not have a mirror on the ceiling, but the place looked as if Banderas might have thought of it.
Kate stood with a copy of a video entitled
“No, Martinelli. So far as I know there’s no law yet that says we have to like our victims.”
“Good thing,” she told him, and went back to work.
The most interesting discoveries, however, were those the search team had already found in the bathroom. Two different discoveries, actually, although the detectives could have predicted the presence of a pouch of fragrant leaves and a small vial of white powder, with the attendant paraphernalia for marijuana and cocaine. The other find was even more interesting: a small machine for testing blood sugar, used by diabetics, and two disposable needles in the wastebasket. There was also a multi-use insulin pen like that found in the car, only this one was half full and had Banderas’s name on the pharmacist’s label.
Matthew Banderas had indeed been a diabetic; a diabetic who died with a candy bar in his pocket.
Professionally, Banderas was a computer man, in software sales. Going by the bank statements in his desk drawer, he was good at his job. Kate copied down the telephone number for the company, and its Santa Rosa address.
The last incoming call had been from a woman, who had left a message on the answering machine. A series of messages, in fact. Her name was Melanie, and she had started out teasingly inquiring where he was and ended up, five messages and six hours later, just plain mad. “Damn it, Matty, where are you?” her voice demanded, and the phone went dead. Hers were the only calls, beginning at 8:32 Friday night, ending at 3:14 Saturday morning. By the last one, Melanie had been more than a little drunk.
One of the apartment’s two bedrooms had been made over into an office, with boxes of forms and sample disks, three computers, and two filled filing cabinets. Kate flipped open the man’s laptop, Al pulled a chair over to the filing cabinets, and silence fell.
Half an hour later they were startled by a deep male voice in the next room saying in a plummy English accent, “There is a visitor at the door, sir.” Kate was out of her chair with her gun in her hand before she realized what she was doing; Al was on his feet almost as quickly. They both stared at the door expectantly, and Al said in a loud voice, “We are the police; please identify yourself.”
There was no response, not even the sound of startled movement. Kate held her gun up and edged toward the study door, where she popped her head out briefly for a cautious glance at the living room. There was no one visible. She opened her mouth to make her own demand, and another voice came, this time that of a woman, sultry and slow.
“Open up the door, you sweet thing, you.”
Puzzled now, Kate looked at Al, and the two of them made their way cautiously into the living room, checking out every nook and broom closet in the intervening space. Bedroom, bath, and kitchen were cleared, and they stood in the living room between the black leather sofa and the huge gilt-framed mirror, waiting. When a voice came for the third time—this one a smarmy-sounding male with a heavy French accent declaring, “Eh, beeg boy, you have a fren‘ at ze door”—Kate whirled and nearly shot out the speaker next to the front door before she finally registered the mechanical quality of the sound. A fourth voice sounded immediately on the heels of the stage Frenchman (this one a Southern belle drawling “Hey there, honeybun, there’s somebody here to see y’all”), and then a fifth, which was the same English butler’s voice they had first heard. The pounding started as the person with a finger on the voice-doorbell got tired of waiting.
“Matty,” a woman’s voice called. “Matty, come on! I know you’re home, your lights are on. And don’t tell me you’ve got them on some kind of timing device, I’m just going to stand here with my thumb on the bell until you get sick of these goddamn voices and—”
It wouldn’t take long to get sick of the cycle of announcements, Kate thought. Under the repetition of the four voices, coming from a box next to the door where clever-boy Banderas had adapted the normal chimes to a high- tech version of a doorbell, Kate slid her gun away and pulled open the door, to find herself face-to-face with a gorgeous, polished young woman who could have been a fashion model, dressed in skintight jeans, a low-cut and extremely well-filled top that did not quite reach a very shapely navel with a gold ring in it, a black leather bomber jacket, and shiny high-heeled boots that she might well have bought from one of the shops that Kate had gone into inquiring about recreational handcuffs. All she needed was a whip in her hand, but in truth, she seemed quite unconscious of the dominatrix overtones in her attire. She might have been a six-year-old dressing up in net stockings, makeup, and a miniskirt for Halloween, having not the faintest idea why it was incongruous.
As this was going through Kate’s mind, the woman was in turn staring at her, looking surprised at first, then suspicious and resentful until finally, taking a closer look at Kate’s undistinguished form and uninspired trousers and shirt, surprise again took precedence.
“Where’s Matty?” she demanded.
“Matthew Banderas?”
“Yeah. Of course Matthew Banderas, this is his house. Who the hell are you?”
Kate pulled her ID out of her pocket and showed it to the young dominatrix. “You’re a friend of Mr. Banderas?” she asked.
“Yes, I am. Where is he?”
“Come in please, Ms., um—?”
“Melanie Gilbert. Where’s Matty? What’s happened to him?”
“I’m very sorry, Ms. Gilbert, but Mr. Banderas was killed last night in San Francisco.”
“What? Oh, no.” The woman gaped at Kate, looking astonished but not teary. She scarcely noticed Kate’s hand on her elbow, gently but firmly drawing her inside to the leather sofa. “Oh, poor, poor Matty. I can’t believe it. What happened?”
As soon as she was safely inside and the door shut behind her, Kate let go of the slim, leather-jacketed arm. Gilbert was not exactly devastated to hear of her friend’s death, Kate was relieved to see. Telling loved ones was hard; telling friends and acquaintances, once they were past the initial shock of it, often led to interesting pieces of information being shaken out of the tree of knowledge.
“Can I get you a glass of water, Ms. Gilbert?” Kate asked. She had never known why this was the traditional means of offering support; the times she had received shocks the only drink she’d wanted was alcoholic and preferably bottomless. Still, it did give the woman a chance to gather herself together, while allowing Kate to look as if she cared, and in this case let Al Hawkin sit down beside Matthew Banderas’s girlfriend with the heaving breasts and the demure navel ring. This was one female who would respond more readily to the masculine touch. At which Al Hawkin was an expert.
