All or Nothing (32 page)

It was simple, built of wood, white with a small cupola and a bell, and it was Episcopalian.

The Reverend Samuel Witty, a rotund man with a monk’s tonsure fringe of silver hair and a paunch, looking like a modern–day Friar Tuck, greeted her warmly enough despite her lack of shoes and stockings, and asked how he could help her.

“You look as though you need aid, my child,” he said worriedly. “There is no need for a young woman like you to walk shoeless on our streets. The Lord would not wish it this way.”

“Thanks, Reverend,” Marla said breezily, “but it’s information I need, not shoes. I’ve got some of those back there in the red Corvette.”

The reverend seemed rather astonished that she was shoeless yet driving an expensive old car, but he asked no questions, letting her speak for herself.

Marla had already been through this a dozen times today. She showed the Reverend Witty the photograph of the more glamorous Laurie in her California–blonde estate agent role, as well as the other, dowdier, churchgoing Laurie, in the photograph given her by John MacIver. None of the other pastors had recognized either woman and this one was no different.

“Sorry I couldn’t help you, my dear,” the reverend said, frowning with concern as she walked, barefooted, away. “And you really should put on your shoes,” he added. “There are no flower children in San Francisco anymore.”

“How very sad, Reverend,” Marla commented, as she stepped into the Corvette, gunned the engine and swung into the exit lane. Just as a small blue car making a left into the lot came out of nowhere, almost clipping her wing.

“Silly bitch,” she snarled, glaring at the woman driver. Then suddenly it seemed the woman changed her mind. She backed dangerously out into the traffic amid a blast of horns and curses and drove away, fast.

Marla stomped on her brakes, staring after her. In the back window of the car she caught a glimpse of a small black dog. It was wearing a red bandanna.

Her heart bounced into her throat and she could hardly catch her breath, she was so excited. Her hands were trembling as she backed out of the exit lane, almost hitting another poor woman who had just avoided serious injury by the driver of the blue car.

“Sorry.” Marla waved her hands helplessly, as the woman braked then sat with her head in her hands, looking shaken. “Sorry,” she yelled again, sliding into a parking spot and trotting shoeless back to the Reverend Witty’s study.

“’Scuse me, Rev,” she said breathlessly, “but does a member of your congregation drive a blue car and have a little black dog?”

She waited impatiently while he thought about it for a long minute. She could practically see the wheels clicking inside his silver–tonsured head.

“Why,” he said at long last, “that’ll be Maria Joseph.” He smiled. “If ever a woman loved a dog, it’s Maria. She rescued that little mutt from the pound, takes it everywhere with her.”

“Her address,” Marla said eagerly, stopping herself from jumping up and down with excitement with an effort. “Where does Maria live?”

“Well now, I couldn’t give out personal information like that, even if I knew it. Which I don’t,” he added, looking surprised at Marla’s loud, exasperated sigh.

“Well then, where does she work, you know, what does she do   .   .   .   ?”

“I’m not sure I should be telling you this,” he said, suddenly suspicious, “but Maria works as a waitress. And no I don’t know where. And if I did I would not tell you. If you care to leave your name and phone number, then I’ll make sure, of course, that she gets the message, next time I see her.”

“Reverend,” Marla said, already on her way back to the Corvette, “you will never see Maria Joseph again. I can guarantee that.”

“So Maria Joseph works as a waitress––somewhere in the city’s ten thousand restaurants,” Giraud said sarcastically, when Marla told him. “She’ll never go back to that church, not now she knows we’re on to her. Why didn’t you get the car’s make and number, Marla? What kind of detective are you, anyway?”

Marla balled her fist and gave him a hard punch to the gut. “Shut up, you jerk. I’ve just thought of something. That night when I went to meet Vickie at her house, there was a blue car. I remember noticing it because there were only two vehicles parked on the street. It was an old model pale blue Acura,” she said solemnly. “And I’ll bet it was Laurie’s.”

Giraud was already on the phone to the police department. “Marla, cancel the Post Hill Ranch,” he said over his shoulder, “we’ve got work to do.”

“Ohhh . . . shoot,” she said crossly. “I should never have told you!”

The evening traffic was hell and Laurie fumed at the wheel of the old blue Acura, still raging at the near miss with Marla Cwitowitz. It had given her quite a jolt when she had seen that red Corvette. It was definitely not the kind of automobile the elderly members of the congregation of the Highlands Episcopal Church would drive, and it should have given her fair warning that Giraud was around, even before she had spotted who was driving it and made a quick getaway.

Had Marla seen her? she wondered, fingers tapping nervously on the steering wheel as she waited at yet another red light. And why was it when you hit one on red all the others were on red too, miles and fuckin’ miles of them? Nerves strung out, she glanced at Clyde, curled up on the backseat. “You okay, little honey?” she called to him, and heard his tail thump on the seat in response.

“Well, thank God
you
are, because
I
sure as hell am not.” Her fiery eyes met those of the man in the car next to her at the light and she scowled, causing him to jolt his eyes back on the road. He threw her another startled glance as the light changed and she beat him out, shooting away in the old clunker like she was at Le Mans.

Slow down, she warned herself, you don’t want to be getting a traffic ticket . . . not now, baby. . . . Just calm yourself down and think of what you need to do.

The failure of the letter bomb still rankled. She should at least have got Giraud with that one. Marla would just have been the bonus, but somehow they had both escaped.

She frowned, concentrating on the traffic. And fuckin’ Beau was still going strong. All she had done was give him an easy way out from Loretta. Plus he had inherited her money. She had done Beau a favor instead of killing him. Not that she wasn’t glad Loretta was dead, sure she was, but Beau had been her main aim.

She glanced out of the corner of her eye again at Clyde curled into a tight ball, nose to tail, sleeping. She would have to try again with Beau, find out where he was, what he was doing. Take care of him once and for all. He was not going to get away with murdering her baby. No, sir, the old Clyde would be vindicated.

Meanwhile she had a more urgent problem on her hands. Marla being at the church was too close for it to be mere coincidence. Giraud was on to her, though she didn’t know how. And if Marla Cwitowitz was here, Giraud could not be far behind. She’d bet they were staying in some fancy San Francisco hotel, and she also knew it didn’t take a genius to find out exactly which one.

First, though, she drove to a used car dealer and traded in the blue Acura for a secondhand black Ford pickup. The transaction took precious time, but she had to get rid of the Acura, just in case Marla had recognized her.

“Home”––such as it now was––loomed at the end of the busy street. The shabby apartment building seemed even more desolate and the pang of anger as she remembered her beautiful Laguna condo almost tore the guts out of her. She had sacrificed everything because of Jimmy Victor. But no more. She would get Giraud and Cwitowitz this time. Then she would be free again.

There was a little flicker of hope in her eyes as she parked the pickup beneath the building then stalked outside, letting Clyde run around and take care of his own affairs for a minute or two before she called to him and entered the dingy building that smelled of mildew and rotting carpet, bad drains and too many dirt–poor students who lived on cheap takeout and beer. Her stomach roiled as she paced up the uncarpeted concrete stairs to her own domain, and she closed her door thankfully behind her, trying not to notice the shoddiness of it all.

All her life she had fought to better herself. Everything––with the exception of her schoolgirl friend Jennifer Vanderhoven––had been done to further her ambition for a beautiful home, expensive clothes, jewelry. To be a millionaire, that’s all she ever wanted. And what was so bad about that? Seemed like the normal kind of American dream to her.

She filled Clyde’s water bowl, opened a can of Alpo, mixed it with some dry nuggets, then stood watching him while he tucked in, tail wagging slowly from side to side. Clyde never forgot his manners, he always said thank you.

She slumped onto the sofa with the phone beside her, looked up the names of the best hotels in San Francisco, then systematically dialed each one and asked to speak to Mr. Al Giraud. And at every hotel she was informed that no one of that name was registered there. “Try Cwitowitz,” she demanded, starting all over again––but the Ritz said no Cwitowitz, and the Mandarin Oriental said no Cwitowitz, and the Fairmont and the St. Francis and the Mark, and the Stanhope and all the other chic little boutique hotels it suddenly occurred to her that perhaps Marla might prefer.

She slumped even farther into the hard sofa, longing for her white rugs, her soft pink velvet chaise in her pretty bedroom, the kind of girly room she had never had as a kid with the turquoise chenille throw and the immaculate white–canopied bed with its gilt Louis headboard. . . .

She had to find them. If she did not, she would never have that kind of home again.

Picking up the phone she started again, with the Hilton, the Hyatt, the Ramada, the Holiday Inn. . . .

“Mr. Giraud, please,” she demanded.

“Just one moment,” the clerk replied. And then the room phone was ringing.

She was smiling as she cut it off. And there was confidence in her swagger now, as she went to the bedroom and changed into the nondescript black suit, picked up her purse and headed for the door.

“Bye, Clyde,” she called as the dog trotted hopefully after her. “Be back soon. Don’t wait up for me, boy.” And she was on her way in her new Ford pickup heading across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco.

As she walked into the lobby of the Holiday Inn, Laurie was confident that her new persona was perfect. She looked completely different with her black hair and heavy black–framed glasses, she even walked differently, held herself differently, like an older woman, clutching her handbag, peering around nearsightedly through the big black–framed eyeglasses. Her disguise was complete. Apart from the snake ring, which she never took off.

She peered around now, checking the busy lobby, then took a seat near the door. Unfurling a copy of the
Chronicle,
she held it in front of her. She looked like any woman, waiting for a friend to show up.

Giraud was on the phone with Bulworth, telling him about Marla’s sighting of Clyde in his red bandanna, in the blue Acura that she also remembered seeing on the Mallards’ street the night of the attempted murder.

“Whoever was driving––and my bet is it was Laurie––certainly recognized Marla, and the Corvette. She made one of the fastest about–turns in history, according to Marla. Almost sideswiped my Corvette in the process. Anyhow, my guess is now that we’re on to the car, Laurie will dump it, and that means she’ll have to sell it because our girl does not have much money.”

“I’ll have the boys check out every used car dealership in the Bay Area,” Bulworth promised. “Just one thing, Giraud.”

“Yeah?” Giraud gazed absently out the window. He was waiting for Marla to return from what she had said was a shopping expedition. Said she needed things for the Post Hill Ranch––though as far as he knew that was off. At least until they had tracked down Laurie Martin and he could concentrate again. On Marla, that is.

“Just don’t go out there on your own after this woman, okay?” Bulworth begged. “Work with us this time, Giraud. Any further info you get, I want to know. Okay?”

“You got it, buddy.” Giraud grinned. Of course he wouldn’t share––at least not immediately. He had a job to do and he intended to do it.

He was in the shower when Marla got back, laden down with expensive–looking shopping bags.

“What y’got there, hon?” he asked, wrapping himself in a towel and emerging to give her a welcoming kiss.

“Oh, just a little trousseau, you might call it,” she said with a sunny smile.

He eyed the bags doubtfully. “You gettin’ married, then, hon?”

“You never know,” she said archly. “Of course, I haven’t asked the orthodontist yet, but Mom has him on hold.”

He was laughing as he embraced her and she didn’t object, even though he was still wet and drops of water spotted her pale green cashmere sweater that was so light it looked as though it was knitted from cobwebs.

“What d’you say we have a drink at the bar,” she suggested. “I have a little proposition you might be interested in.”

“It’s a deal. And I’ll bring you up to date on what Bulworth said.”

He was dressed in less time than it took her to freshen her lipstick and comb her hair, which today hung straight and silky, curving gently upward where it met her shoulders the way it had the night he first met her at the Hollywood party. Al liked it that way.

They didn’t even glance Laurie Martin’s way as they walked arm in arm through the lobby, heading for the bar. Didn’t notice her get up and follow them at a discreet distance, hidden anyway by the milling crowd. Didn’t look twice at the dark–haired older woman who brushed past them and took a seat at a nearby table, and who ordered a straight tequila then disappeared behind her
San Francisco Chronicle.

“Tell me about Bulworth later,” Marla was saying as she sipped her vodka martini. “I’ve decided it’s time for
us,
Giraud.” She held up a warning hand at his
“But.”
“And I don’t want to hear any “buts.’ This is you and me, and less of the private eye. Tonight I’m going back to being plain old Marla Cwitowitz and you are going to be the guy I picked up at the party that night.”