Theodore Forrest was rich, the most important member of a powerful family. If Emily Kramer went up there and tried to get Forrest to exchange his cash for her proof, Forrest was going to end up with the proof and the cash, and probably all that would be left of Emily was a couple of parts from her aging Volvo scrapped in a local junkyard. The Central Valley was his country, and she would never get near him. She would simply disappear at the hands of some hireling. It occurred to Hobart that he was the hireling. He had taken the job of killing Emily Kramer, but he hadn’t done it yet.
He watched her take the Westlake exit, and he felt relieved. When he came to it, he followed, and as he was coasting down the ramp he saw her turning right onto Westlake Boulevard. After a few minutes and a couple of turns, he came up with her in time to see her going to the door of a small brick-fronted house. As he passed, the door opened and a tall black man wearing jeans and a red T-shirt admitted her.
Hobart was sure it was the other detective, the man who had interrupted him when he had been trying to take Emily Kramer out of her house. He began to search for a good spot to park and wait.
He couldn’t let another night come and go before he had her.
29
Emily stepped in so quickly that Dewey Burns had to step backward to keep from being bumped. He closed the door.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“I don’t know. Everything. I assume you know that the office and my house are gone?”
“Of course,” Dewey said. “Ray called Billy and me around four in the morning. There’s still the stuff we put in storage. It’s possible that we missed what we were looking for and it’s still hidden inside something.”
“If it was there, we missed it, all right. And if we look again, we’ll miss it again.”
“I’m not so sure. We moved all the records that we went through. I think we know which ones we can eliminate, but there are some that are still possible. We haven’t found anything yet, but it’s too early to say we won’t.”
“No, it isn’t. You and Ray are both professionals. You don’t miss things like that. I was Phil’s wife for twentytwo years, but that didn’t help. He hid this really well, and the information looked like something else-exactly like something else. That’s the way Phil hid things. But I think the reason we didn’t find it in the house or in the office is that it wasn’t there. I need your help.”
“What kind?”
“I was just at April’s house. She and I talked about things-about Phil, and about his plans. She knew some things I didn’t. She didn’t know all of them at the time, but she’s figured them out since. I realized that was part of my problem. Phil was a secret-keeper. Each person who knew Phil knew a different Phil. It wasn’t that he was lying to everybody. To be honest with you, the only one I’m sure he actually lied to is me.”
“Don’t do this to yourself.”
“I’m not doing anything to myself. I have a problem. There’s a man out there who is willing to murder me. He wants this evidence Phil had against a powerful man, and I still don’t have it.”
“I know. I’ve been trying to help.”
“Phil almost certainly had multiple copies. He probably gave one-or at least a taste of one-to this powerful man. He would have needed to show the man he had something, right?”
“I suppose,” Dewey said. “He would have to show a sample, at least, to get the man scared. And he would have to give him something tangible when he got paid. But he would have to let the man know he had retained something to keep the man from killing him.”
“And somehow that went wrong.”
“Apparently. He got killed. There doesn’t seem to be anything that he left for us-for you, or for me, or for anyone else-to find after he was dead. There should have been something. If not the evidence, at least a letter.”
“I think there was,” said Emily.
“And we missed it, and it got burned up last night?”
“April had it at one time.”
“What? Where?”
“Phil hid the box under her bed for some time while he was collecting the evidence.”
“Why didn’t she tell us she had it?” She could see that Dewey was angry.
“She wasn’t about to tell me my husband hid anything under her bed. At first she didn’t even know what it was. She didn’t figure that out until after Phil was dead, and the man came to my house to get it. By then, she didn’t have it anymore.”
“Well, where is it now?”
“Phil came over to her apartment one day and picked it up. He took it away, and moved it to a place that he knew was safer.”
“What was safer than that?”
Emily spoke quietly and carefully. “Dewey, you said Phil would have known he was doing something dangerous, and that he would have left the evidence for you, for me, or for April to find. But there’s somebody important that you’re leaving out of this. She might be the most important one of all.”
“No,” he said. He was irritated, uncomfortable.
“Yes. She would be the perfect person, the one of us no stranger would know was connected with Phil.”
“She isn’t involved in this. It’s blackmail. It’s dishonest. It’s probably the worst thing he ever did in his life, just a momentary lapse when he was having some midlife crisis-maybe financial trouble. She would never have gotten involved in that, or in anything he did.”
Emily said, “I need to meet her.”
“No.”
“I have to talk to her, Dewey. Phil had the box at April’s because that was safer than our house or the office. But there was somebody much safer than April. The only person who knew about her was his only living son.”
“She doesn’t have it.”
“Let me talk to her. Please. I have a right to know her. And she has a right to know me. If I have to go through all the files in storage to find her name and address, I’ll do it. If I have to, I’ll hire a detective to investigate you.”
Dewey turned away from her and walked to the kitchen. She heard him rustling around out there, putting dishes in the dishwasher, then standing silent for thirty seconds.
Finally he came back into the living room. “I’ll call her.”
30
Lee Anne Burns was beautiful, with smooth caramel skin and light brown eyes flecked with gold. She had to be Emily’s age, but she looked thirty, with long, thin limbs and a graceful neck. Emily fought to keep the jealousy away. She had expected someone else, someone she could pity, but this woman was formidable.
Lee Anne said, “You look at me and you see the other woman, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to look at you strangely,” Emily said.
“I’m not the other woman, you are.”
Emily drew in a breath. The words didn’t seem to mean the same thing to the two women. “What do you mean?”
Lee Anne Burns held her eyes on Emily. She hesitated, as though she were deciding how much to say. “He wasn’t married to you when I knew him. He hadn’t met you yet.” This time Emily understood. Lee Anne was revealing a secret that she had kept for a long time, a secret so familiar to her that she was sick of it. And getting sick of it had affected nothing, because she still had been required to live with it and think about it.
“Oh, my God,” Emily said. “I didn’t know. He never said anything, never mentioned…” She knew how much it
