Hot Start (31 page)

“Whatever it is you’re selling, we don’t want any.” An older bottle-blonde who looked like the “before” facelift picture in a cosmetic surgeon’s office squinted out at me from behind a screened window. She had bloodshot eyes and was nursing a red plastic party cup of what looked like white wine.

“I’m looking for Carmelo Pelusi.”

“What for?”

“He sold my friend a car. Cool ride. I just wanted to ask him a couple of questions about it.”

“Which car?”

“ ’Eighty-two Firebird.”

“That hunk of junk?” She topped off her cup from a bottle of Two Buck Chuck. “He was always working on that darned thing. Something always needed fixing, I’ll tell you that. You could never get it to start. Couldn’t ever find no parts for it either. Best thing that ever happened, him getting rid of it.”

“Is Carmelo around?”

“Fishing.” She nodded toward the beach. “If you see him, tell him we’re out of toilet paper.”

Pelusi wasn’t hard to find. He was plopped on the sand a few feet from the surf, line in the water, the butt of his fishing pole propped between his legs. Tank top. Tribal tats. Canvas shorts. White, sun-bleached hair, long and unkempt. A leathery surfer, long past his prime. He was nipping from a bottle of wine cloaked in a paper bag.

“Catching anything?”

“Some peace and quiet from the old lady. Other than that, not a damn thing.”

I returned his smile, shook his hand, and said I was interested in buying a muscle car similar to the Pontiac he’d sold to Eric Ivory. I was lying, granted, but it was a conversation starter, and that’s what I needed.

Pelusi went on for five semi-inebriated minutes about the virtues of two-barrel carburetion and forged crankshafts before the tip of his pole suddenly curled toward the ocean and his line went taut.

“Hey, hey, will ya lookie there?” Laughing excitedly, he scrambled to his feet and reeled in a ten-inch perch with a spiny dorsal fin.

Happy distraction can be an effective interrogation method— which the fish was, whether Pelusi realized it or not.

“How do you know Eric Ivory?” I asked as Pelusi carefully unhooked the perch.

“I don’t.”

“You sold him your Firebird.”

“Doesn’t mean I adopted him. I put an ad on Craigslist. He showed up the next day and paid me cash. Didn’t try to grind me or nothing. Listen, I sell a ton of cars online. Big demand for the classic Detroit stuff. You can make some good coin if you know what you’re doing.”

“That didn’t seem unusual to you, him not trying to get you to lower the price?”

“A little, maybe, but he wanted the car bad and he wasn’t hurting for money, I can tell you that. Crisp, new hundred-dollar bills. Kept ’em in a toolbox. ’Scuse me.”

I watched him wade into the surf line and gently return the perch to the water before trudging back up the beach and grabbing his wine bottle off the sand.

“That’s the fifth time I’ve caught that same fishy this week,” Pelusi said, offering me some wine.

“No, thanks.”

He took a long swig. “I got a sweet Mercury for sale if you’re interested. Cougar. Seventy-nine. Rebuilt engine. Power everything. Make you a helluva deal.”

“Let me think about it.”

“Yeah, well, don’t think about it too long, cuz I got it priced to move.”

“How much?” I asked, hoping to build a little rapport and keep him from asking me questions before I got the information I wanted.

“Seven nine hundred,” he said. “But I’m willing to take seventy-five.”

“Tempting.”

He cast his line out once more, the sea breeze blowing his snowy curls.

“You know, one thing I don’t get,” I said. “Eric told me he tried to buy the Firebird from the owner before you, only the previous owner wasn’t interested, even with all that money. I’m wondering why that guy sold the car to you and not Eric?”

“Because I happen to be friends with the previous owner, that’s why. We’re in the same car club—used to be anyway.” Pelusi reeled in the slack on his line. “Kid goes overseas to Afghanistan with the army, comes home, tries to do a little bit of good in this miserable world, saving the animals and so forth, and now they got him locked up on some bogus murder beef. A veteran who honorably served his country. If that don’t beat all, you know?”

“A real shame.” My breath came fast and, for a moment, my heart seemed out of rhythm. “Your buddy locked up on that bogus murder beef, his name by any chance wouldn’t be Dino Birch, would it?”

Pelusi looked over at me. “You know Dino?”

“Yeah.”

More significantly, I now realized, Eric Ivory knew Dino Birch. Their connection was a game changer. It affirmed in my mind that it was Ivory’s Firebird, not Birch’s Camaro, seen outside the Hollisters’ mansion that night. If Dino Birch had been the victim of a frame job as he claimed, it seemed increasingly likely that it was Ivory who’d done the framing. It also bolstered my belief that it had been Ivory who’d popped off those shots at my apartment, hoping to scare me off whatever investigative trail he feared I was on.

I thanked Pelusi for taking the time and wished him good fishing.

His cowhide face conveyed puzzlement. “I thought you said you wanted to talk cars.”

“Next time.” I was walking away when I remembered. “Oh, by the way, your old lady told me to tell you you’re out of toilet paper.”

The aging surfer rolled his eyes.

TWENTY-SEVEN

I
had Taco Bell for lunch, a couple of Burrito Supremes that I ordered at the drive-through window and ate in the parking lot. I was anxious to meet with Dino Birch, to ask him about his ties to Eric Ivory. But when you’re a garden-variety civilian and your ambition is to meet with an inmate pending arraignment on no-bail, double-murder charges, you don’t simply waltz into the county jail and chat. Weeks can elapse before you get in, if you get in at all. You need somebody with pull. I’d already hit up Buzz once too many times. The only other influential person I know who came to mind, who had an inherent familial interest in Birch’s well-being, was Gil Carlisle, my former father-in-law.

“Last time you and I spoke,” he said over the phone in that sugary drawl of his, “y’all but told me my nephew was guilty. Now you’re saying he’s not?”

“I never said he was guilty, Gil, and I’m not saying he’s innocent now, but something’s come up. I’ve developed information on a possible other suspect who Dino apparently had contact with in the past. I need to find out when he had that contact and to what extent. That’s why I need to get in to see him ASAP.”

“I’ll talk to his lawyer.”

“Lawyers take forever and they always say no. I need to see your nephew right away, Gil. As in today.”

“What’s so important, it can’t wait ’til tomorrow? The boy’s locked up tight. He ain’t getting out anytime soon.”

“He might be if this lead pans out.”

Carlisle said he’d see what he could do.

Two hours later, I was sitting at a scarred, green metal table inside a five-by-seven-foot lawyer’s conference room at the Rancho Bonita County Jail. Shackled opposite me in an orange jail jumpsuit was a recalcitrant Dino Birch. He refused to even look at me.

“I got nothing to say to you.”

“You don’t even know why I’m here,” I said.

“I could give a flip why you’re here. My uncle told me to talk to you. I’ll give you two minutes.”

“Do you know a guy named Eric Ivory?”

“Why?”

“Humor me and answer the question.”

“Yeah, I know Eric—or
did,
until he screwed me.”

I sat back and let Birch vent. It was like sticking a pin in a balloon. They’d met months earlier, he said, after Ivory left a message on the windshield of Birch’s Firebird, expressing interest in buying the car from him. Ivory’s note told Birch to name his best price and he’d exceed it by $1,000. They arranged to meet afterward over a beer at Dooligan’s, an Irish-themed pub downtown, and quickly struck up a friendship of sorts despite their nearly twenty-year age difference.

“We had stuff in common,” Birch said.

“Define stuff.”

“Beer. Babes. Helping wild animals. Plus, he said he was a vet. National Guard. Never deployed, but he seemed like he could definitely relate to all the shit we went through over there.”

Birch said he was desperate for money to keep his nonprofit, Helping Endangered Animals Thrive, afloat and told Ivory that he might be potentially interested in selling his Firebird for the right price, but that he’d first have to do some research to determine the car’s fair market value.

“He tells me he’s coming into some money soon and will pay anything for the car,” Birch said. “I tell him I’m not out to take advantage of him or anything, and that it’s gonna take me awhile to get back to him with a number. He asks me what I’m so busy with. I tell him I’m organizing a fund-raiser for endangered species—locking in the venue, booking the band, all that. He says he might be interested in helping out. I tell him we’re having a silent auction. He tells me, ‘Hey, I have a mobile cleaning company. We detail cars and planes.’ He tells me he’ll donate one free detail. I’m like, wow, that’s cool. Here’s my card. Call me.”

“He told you he was coming into money?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Did he tell you how much?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“OK, so then what happened?”

“Nothing. I finished my beer and never heard back from him. I sold the Bird to some old dude down in Windward Cove and bought a Camaro for cheap off a lot down in Oxnard. Different engine and tranny but the same basic body styling, which I like, so, you know, whatever.”

“You gave Ivory your business card?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Did you write anything on the card?”

“Why would I have written anything on . . .” Birch stopped himself. He’d been looking down and away. He was now looking directly at me. “He said he worked for Toni Hollister. He said Toni might be interested, privately, in helping me out with my fund-raiser because she felt guilty about how Roy made his money, slaughtering game animals and all. I was like, hey, I’m hurting bad enough for funding I’ll take anybody, so he gives me her address and cell number. There wasn’t anything to write it down on, so I got out another one of my cards, but the bar was getting loud—happy hour—and I couldn’t hear all what he was saying, so he reached over, took the card, and fixed what I wrote. Then the tab came. We wrestled over that for a little while, and I guess he just forgot to give that other card back. It seemed like a stupid idea to me, anyway, asking Toni Hollister for money. I never thought about it again until just now.”

“OK, that should do it for now.” I got up and patted the window with my palm. The deputy standing guard in the hallway unlocked the door. “Thanks for the two minutes.”

Birch looked confused. “You want to tell me what the hell this is all about?”

“You’ll know soon enough if I’m right.”

D
INO
B
IRCH
’
S
business card had been found in the hills above the Hollister mansion, in the lair where a sniper had lain in wait one steamy summer night. On the back of the card, in Birch’s own handwriting, was the couple’s address and Toni’s cell phone number. That kind of evidence in a criminal investigation would ordinarily be considered a slam dunk. I knew it to be otherwise. Eric Ivory had shot the Hollisters and planted that card to make it look as if Birch had been the triggerman. Ivory had done work for the Hollisters, cleaning their airplane and, apparently, their cars. He’d grown especially fond of Toni—or so he claimed. Why, then, would he have shot her and her husband? Were she and Ivory sleeping together? Had he really served in the National Guard? If so, what sort of weapons training had he received? Did he own any rifles? Could he account for his whereabouts that night?

As I walked out of the jail and through the parking lot toward my truck, I still had more questions than answers. I was distracted and off my game. You couldn’t have picked a more perfect moment to jump me.

He came up from behind me without warning and clamped a hand on my left shoulder as if to turn me. Reflexively I rammed my left elbow into his solar plexus and spun right, catching him in an arm bar, when I realized the he was a she—reporter Danika Quinn, whose skull I was about to slam into the pavement. I let her go immediately.

“Sorry. I didn’t know it was you.”

“You’re
sorry
?” She was bent over, clutching her stomach. “I’m trying to lighten your day, have a little fun, and you almost
kill
me? Jesus, Logan.”

“I told you. I didn’t know it was you. Are you hurt? Do you want me to call the paramedics?”

“And pay them with what insurance? I work for a local news station, not NBC. Just gimme a minute.” She breathed deeply, stooped and wincing, hands on her hips.

“Have you been following me, Danika?”

“What? Following you? No. Definitely not. OK, maybe a little.” She’d been digging deeper into the Hollister case, she said, and had begun to seriously doubt Dino Birch’s guilt. “I got to thinking about that Arab guy you mentioned with the whole, you know, don’t-be-too-hasty-before-accusing-somebody-of-murder thing?”

“Publilius, you mean.”

“Yeah. That guy. By the way, Grant Kessler, the Creatures United guy? I checked him out with my sources. He was on a river cruise in Germany when the Hollisters bought it. So I think we can pretty much rule him out.”

She straightened herself, rubbing her lower back, wincing.

“You sure you’re OK, Danika?”

“You better hope so,” she said, “or you’ll be hearing from my lawyers, Greed and Associates.”

I smiled. Quinn may not have been my cup of tea in the dating department, attractive as she was, but I had to admire her spunk.

“Anyway,” she said, “what I was going to tell you before I was so rudely roughed up is, I just can’t believe Birch or anybody would’ve left their card up there by mistake. The cops think he messed up but, I mean, c’mon, nobody’s
that
incompetent. And I know for a fact from my sources in the department that they haven’t found the gun yet, so . . .”

“So you figured that by following me, I’d lead you to the real killer.”