Nemesis (21 page)

Suppose she hadn't picked them herself, but had had help from somebody who knew the city better than she did. Somebody to share the thrill of her little game. An accomplice if not a coconspirator. A lover.

The same somebody who'd picked Lake Merced as the place to dump her body and abandon her car: her murderer.

Vincent Canaday?

He'd lived in San Francisco. He'd been her lover for years. And he'd been incommunicado lately.…

I warned myself not to jump to conclusions. I could be way off base here, manufacturing suppositions to fit Canaday because I wanted him to be guilty. But the feeling persisted that Baker Beach and Lands End had been suggested or chosen by somebody other than Verity Daniels.

Which raised another question. If she'd had an accomplice, and she must have to make that fake recording for her lawyer, why hadn't she used him to pretend to be the extortionist caller in the first place? Let Runyon hear an actual recorded voice, make her hoax story even more plausible, instead of pretending to accidentally disconnect the recording interface? Even in the unlikely event the individual was a woman, you couldn't tell the gender of a caller if the right kind of filter was used.

Now something else had begun to nag at me, the kind of memory flicker that keeps eluding you the harder you try to recall it. Something I'd read or heard about Verity Daniels that might be significant if it were viewed in the right way. I read Runyon's report one more time, then Tamara's again. Nothing there triggered a recall. Something somebody had said, maybe?

Whatever it was, I couldn't get hold of it.

*   *   *

I did not sleep well that night. Lay awake for a long time, while Kerry slept deeply beside me, unable to shut down the mental engines. And when I did finally drift off, I had the old nightmare again—a distorted, subconscious replay of the three months I'd spent shackled to the mountain cabin wall and left there to die.

Only this one was different. Relentless, episodic: I woke up twice, drenched in sweat, only to be dragged back into its depths. And I was not alone in the cabin. Kerry was there, wrapped and bound like a mummy, her terrified eyes staring up at me, pleading, but I couldn't reach her, help her because the chain was too short. Runyon was there, too, trapped in a cage no larger than a closet, his big hands clutching and shaking the bars while the cage slowly contracted around him. And the chain wouldn't let me reach him, either.

 

22

There was no way I was going to spend another day hanging and rattling in the city, going through motions, waiting for something to happen. The nightmare had left me tense, raw-nerved; I needed movement, aggressive purpose. Vincent Canaday still hadn't gone back to work at Gateway Insurance, still wasn't answering his cell or his home phone. But he was the best lead I had, and he had to be somewhere. Holed up in his house, avoiding people, was the most likely prospect. At least it was a place to start. And if I couldn't find Canaday, I'd have another shot at Hank Avery—keep him on the list of suspects or eliminate him, if I had to use threats or roughhouse methods to do it.

I let Tamara know by phone where I was going, rather than stopping at the agency on my way to the Bay Bridge. It was a few minutes past ten when I pulled up in front of Canaday's home in the Lafayette hills. Mine was the only car parked anywhere in the immediate vicinity, except for a gardener's truck and trailer farther up the block. The pulsing whine of a leaf blower made me clench my teeth as I went to the front gate, opened it, stepped into the front patio. There are a few unbearably loud, intrusive noises I hate more in this clamorous world than any others, and those created by leaf blowers top the list above back-up beepers, chain saws, and electric hedge trimmers.

The patio was empty. So was the driveway in front of the matching stucco garage and its closed overhead doors. I went up the tile stairs and rang the bell four times. I couldn't hear the chimes inside this time because of the damn blower, but it didn't matter; they were either echoing in empty rooms or being ignored.

Down off the steps, across the patio to the driveway. So I was trespassing—the hell with it. The near-side wall of the garage was a smooth blank, no windows or doors. But there had to be another entrance besides the doors in front. I moved at an angle to the rear, where more yuccas and rows of bird-of-paradise plants partially screened a rear patio. When I rounded the corner there it was, a door recessed into the rear garage wall.

The door was closed, but when I pressed a decorative wrought-iron latch, it opened into oil-scented gloom. Plenty of room for two cars in there; now there was just one, drawn up in the middle of the concrete floor. Enough sunlight spilled in through the open doorway to let me see that the vehicle was a light-colored four-door sedan. I went in, around to the front, and squatted there. The light color was tan, the make was Chrysler, the model Town and Country. And the personalized license plate read GWAYINS.

Canaday was here, all right.

I backed out of the garage, shut the door. The leaf blower racket had stopped; it was quiet now except bird cries and distant street sounds. I made my way through the jungly profusion of plantings onto the rear patio. An inlaid tile fountain rose up in the middle of it, water trickling down into a squared off trough, which in turn trickled into a koi pond on one side. Fish swam murkily and sluggishly underneath a skim of green algae in the pond.

After half a dozen steps I could see the rear of the house under the overhang of a second-floor balcony. There were two sets of French doors, the larger of the sets closed and flanked by draped windows; the smaller, toward the far side, stood wide open. When I got over there, I could see into what looked to be an unlighted office: desk littered with stacks of loose papers, computer workstation, some furniture. A couple of steps closer and I could see the man sitting in the half light, not at the desk but on a leather couch set an angle opposite.

He wasn't doing anything, just sitting there with his hands knuckled together between his thighs. Unmoving, like a piece of statuary propped up for show. I climbed a single step to within a couple of paces of the open doorway. From there I had a better look at him. Forties, ruddy complexion, yellowish gray hair that hadn't been combed recently; wearing a short-sleeved sports shirt and a pair of rumpled slacks, his feet bare. His eyes were open and staring outward, but not at me. He didn't know I was there until I moved up next to one of the open door halves, rapped on it, and called out, “Mr. Canaday?”

Even then it was a couple of seconds before the knock and the sound of my voice registered. Then he blinked, shifted position slightly, but not as if he were startled to find that he had company.

“I thought you might be here,” I said. “I rang the bell several times.”

Six-beat. Then, in a voice without inflection or animation, like one generated by a computer, “Who're you? Police?”

“No. Were you expecting the police?”

No answer.

“It's important I talk to you. All right if I come in?”

“Go away, leave me alone.”

I went in anyway. Even with the French doors open, the room had a dusty, boozy smell sharp enough to dilate my nostrils. There was an empty bottle of Scotch lying on its side next to the couch, a spill from it staining a portion of a mostly white Navaho rug. Another bottle, half full, and an empty glass stood on an end table. Now that I was inside out of the sunlight and shadow, I could see irregular patches of beard stubble on Canaday's face, discolored pouches under bleary eyes, another liquor stain on the front of his shirt. Two- or three-day bender, I thought. Though if he was drunk now, he wasn't far enough gone to slur his words.

“Go away,” he said again.

“Not until we talk.”

“No right to be here. Leave me alone.”

I said, “Verity Daniels.”

He reacted to the name, the first real sign of life he'd shown. His head jerked, his eyelids went up and down in little birdlike flutters; he leaned forward, squinting up, as if seeing me for the first time.

“Who are you?”

I told him. “Your relationship with her—that's why I'm here.”

“She's dead,” he said, and there was what sounded like genuine pain in the words. “Somebody killed her.”

“The police think it was an associate of mine, but they're wrong. Jake Runyon is innocent.”

“Runyon.” Blankly. Then, “Her lover?”

“No. But you were, for years. Before and after her inheritance. Your idea, or was it the other way around? She pressure you into the affair?”

“Pressure?”

“Your insurance tricks.”

“… I don't know what you're talking about.”

No, he didn't. His blank, muddled look made that plain enough. So she hadn't caught him defrauding one of his companies; just another of her fabrications. He'd been the aggressor in their relationship, not her.

“I loved her,” he said after a little time. “But she didn't love me anymore. All the things I did for her, and she wouldn't help me when I needed her the most.”

“Help you how? Loan you money?”

“Rich, for God's sake, she could afford twenty thousand … I'd have paid back both loans. But she said no, ten thousand was all I'd ever get out of her.”

“When was this?”

“Last week. Last Friday. Last chance.”

“The ten thousand. When did she give you that?”

“Wasn't enough. I thought it would be, but it wasn't.”

“When, Canaday?”

“Right after she inherited, moved to the city. No problem then … she still cared then. But then she changed.”

“How did she change?”

“New life, new lover. New world that didn't include me.”

“The new lover. Who?”

Headshake. “Always had to have a man. Bed partners, another husband when I couldn't marry her. All right for a while after Avery drowned … just me, I was enough for her until that money, all that goddamn money.…”

“Listen to me. Who was her new lover?”

“Wouldn't tell me his name. Somebody close by, that's all she'd say. Always like that with her. Secrets. Lies. Games.”

“Maybe she was lying. Making up the new lover as an excuse to break things off with you.”

He didn't seem to hear me. “The screwing you get for the screwing you got,” he said.

“Why did you kill her, Canaday?”

“… What?”

“Because she wouldn't loan you the twenty thousand? Because she didn't want anything more to do with you?”

“You think I killed her?”

“Didn't you?”

“No. Me? No!”

He reached out blindly for the bottle of Scotch, almost knocked it over, caught it in time, and hauled it to him with both hands. Took a long pull, shuddering as he swallowed. Started to set the bottle back on the table, then changed his mind and cradled it against his chest with one hand. With the other he raked fingernails down along one unshaven cheek, hard enough to leave marks, as if trying to inflict pain on himself.

“I loved her,” he said again. “Tore me up when I found out she was dead. Even after the way she treated me, all her lies, all her crap, I never stopped loving her. Wouldn't hurt her. Couldn't. Never.”

The denial and the emotions behind it seemed genuine enough, but sober, calculating individuals like Verity Daniels aren't the only ones who can lie expertly. Maudlin drunks can manage it, too, if their guilt is too great and their desire for self-preservation strong enough.

I said, “If you loved her so much, why didn't you divorce your wife and marry her? Or didn't she want that?”

“She wanted it. Divorced her husband so we could.”

She divorced Ostrander? No, but that must be the reason she'd told him about the affair—to force him to divorce her.

“But I couldn't do it,” Canaday said. “I couldn't. My business, everything I worked for … Nancy would've gutted me financially, taken Susie away.”

“Your wife and daughter are gone now, aren't they?”

Muscles rippled along his jaw, creating a facial tic that lasted for several seconds. His eyes had that vacant stare again.

“Because she found out about you and Verity Daniels? Is that why she left you?”

Headshake. “All those years … Nancy never knew about us. Or any of the others until that stupid one-night stand … but Christ, when it falls into your lap, you take it, don't you? Don't you?”

I didn't say anything.

Canaday was silent, too, for several beats. Then, in a low mutter, “But Nancy didn't really care. Excuse, that's all. Money, money, always money. Hated the idea of being poor again. Ready to leave for a long time. Rat deserting a sinking ship.”

Oozing self-pity. Making excuses for his behavior, his shortcomings, while condemning those made by his wife and his mistress.

I said, “If you didn't strangle Verity Daniels, who did? The new lover, if she had one?”

Headshake. A little bulb of spittle appeared at one corner of his mouth, broke and trickled down over his chin.

“My money's still on you, Canaday.”

No reaction at all this time, except to take another long swallow from the bottle. It must have burned going down because he coughed, grimaced, then thrust the bottle away to the table. It tipped over when he let go, rolled off onto the rug.

“You'll talk to the police,” I said. “If you did kill her, they'll get it out of you. One way or another.”

He'd stopped listening again. Abruptly he shoved onto his feet, made his way in a groping stagger past me to the cluttered desk. Sat down hard in the chair and began pawing among the litter of papers.

“Gone,” he said, “all gone.”

“What's all gone?”

“Too late, all gone.” More drool crawled out of his mouth. “Knew it two days ago, couldn't make myself do it, but now … now…”