How to Succeed in Murder (6 page)

“Oh.” We had no idea. But…“Aren’t most people killed by someone they know?”

“I suppose.” Brenda was looking slightly deflated again, but she shook it off to sum up our findings.

“So we’ve learned that the killer could have been a man or a woman, and that the gym has increased security since Clara died.”

“At least that’s something.” I looked out at the empty parking lot. “But I think I’ve just realized something else.”

“What?” Brenda pulled out onto a deserted street.

“Morgan Stokes said Clara left for the gym around ten that night, but according to her membership card she didn’t get here until 10:47.”

Brenda nodded slowly. “That seems like kind of a long time, if there was no traffic.”

We looked at each other.

“Check your watch,” Brenda said. “We’re going to Zakdan.”

Chapter Ten

It took us sixteen minutes to reach the offices of Zakdan, Inc.

Which left roughly half an hour of Clara Chen’s time unaccounted for.

Brenda pulled to the curb across the street from the Zakdan building and squinted up through the drizzle. “There are still lights on.”

“Morgan did tell us that people work late here. Look at how many cars are still in the garage.”

There was a parking garage below the building, and we could see through the grating that at least a dozen cars were still there.

“Hey, someone’s coming!” Brenda grabbed my arm.

A thin man in a black raincoat had come through a door at the back of the garage.

“An elevator must go straight down to the garage,” I said. “Can you tell who it is?”

“I don’t know anyone at Zakdan,” Brenda said. “I haven’t even met Morgan—Oh! Charley! I do know who it is!”

“Who? How?” She’d gripped my arm so tight I was losing circulation.

“It’s the Chief Technology Officer! Oh, what’s his name? Lalit…Kumar! Lalit Kumar!”

“It is?” I strained my eyes. “How can you tell?”

“I got his picture off the internet when I was doing the research. Look! I’m sure it’s him!”

Now that he got a little closer, I recognized him from the dossier Brenda had compiled on all the Zakdan execs.

“I wonder what he’s been doing here until almost one o’clock in the morning.” Brenda was a little breathless, and she still hadn’t let go of my arm.

“I don’t know,” I said doubtfully. “Working? Although when I think about people working all night at software companies, I assume it’s the programmers, not the executives.”

“Me too.”

“He’s getting into the Jag.” I watched him unlock the car and toss what looked like a laptop bag into the back seat. Then he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a cell phone.

“Is he calling someone?”

“No.” I squinted. “I think he’s answering.”

“Who calls a person at one in the morning?” Brenda asked.

“Stay here.” I was out the door before Brenda could yell at me, and I dashed across the dark, wet street as quickly and quietly as I could. I took a position at the bottom of the driveway, hidden by a concrete pillar, and peeked around through the bars of the electronic garage door.

Brenda’s question was a good one. Who would call at that hour? And who would make Lalit Kumar as angry as he looked, now that I got closer and could see his face?

The CTO was clearly not happy with what he was hearing. I couldn’t make out everything he said, but I did hear snatches.

“No. No way.”

“Forget it—I’m not getting involved.”

“How dare you!”

I took another peek at that, in time to see Kumar bring his fist down on the roof of his pricy sports car.

“Dammit, this is the last time!” With that he slammed the cell phone shut and opened the door to his car.

I sprinted back across the street to Brenda, gesturing wildly for her to start the car. I threw myself in the passenger’s seat, panting and dripping.

“Quick! He’s leaving!”

“Get down!” She ducked down and pulled me with her. The Jaguar’s headlights illuminated the interior of Brenda’s car as it pulled out of the garage. As soon as it was dark again, Brenda released her grip on me and scrambled to get moving.

We didn’t even discuss it.

We followed him.

***

Brenda pulled a U-turn on Townsend and waited until Zakdan’s Chief Technology Officer had crossed Fifth Street heading south before she put on her lights.

“I can’t believe you did that! What if he’d seen you?”

“He didn’t see me,” I protested. “And I had to do it to find out who was calling him.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But whoever it was got him pretty ticked off and talked him into something he didn’t want to do.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, but we’re probably going to find out if we don’t lose him.”

I watched the taillights ahead of us through the rainy windshield. We were practically the only two cars on the road.

I thought back to what I’d overheard. It could have been anyone, asking him to do anything.

“I’m going to be awfully disappointed if he’s just going home to his wife and kids,” I said.

Brenda shook her head. “No, he isn’t married. I remember all about him from the research we did, because I was thinking he might be kind of perfect for Eileen.”

I stared at her. “You’re matchmaking during a murder investigation?”

She shrugged. “Not actively, just for future reference.”

“You mean in case he doesn’t turn out to be a murderer,” I clarified.

“Anyway.” she ignored me. “If I recall correctly, he lives in North Beach, just like Eileen.”

“Brenda—”

“My point is,” she cut me off. “He’s not going home.”

He wasn’t. He’d taken a left on Potrero, heading uphill, and now he took a right on Sixteenth Street. He was heading for the Mission district, which was a good thing for us because the neighborhood had enough bars and twentysomething residents to still be hopping in the middle of the night.

Brenda let a car come between us as Lalit made a left onto Valencia. We followed.

“Where do you think—” But I didn’t have time to finish the question, because the silver Jag came to a stop ahead of us, double parking in front of a darkened restaurant.

“Yikes! What should I do? Should I pass him? I can’t—”

But I grabbed her arm before she could finish. “Pull in! Pull in! Pull in!”

“Charley! What? Oh!” She saw the space I was pointing at and slammed the wheel to the right.

It wasn’t the safest maneuver, but it got us parked about half a block behind Lalit’s car. Okay, we were illegally parked in someone’s driveway, but I had a feeling we wouldn’t be staying long.

“Now what?”

Good question. “Is he getting out?” I asked. The rain was coming down harder and I had to squint to see what was going on.

“No. He’s put his blinkers on. I think he’s waiting for someone.”

The block had several bars, and all of them had clusters of people out front, huddling under scant awnings while they stole a smoke. I scanned the groups, but nobody seemed to be taking notice of the idling sports car or its occupant.

“Charley!” Brenda dug her fingers into my arm again. She pointed to a figure dashing across the street, a newspaper held overhead to keep off the rain.

“Who is it? Where did he come from? Is he—”

“I can’t tell.” Brenda pushed her glasses up and strained forward, putting the wipers on high. “I’m not even sure it’s a guy. Oh!” She dropped my arm and reached for the gearshift. “He’s getting in!”

The figure had crossed in front of the silver Jaguar, but the brief glare of headlights was of no use. Lalit, apparently expecting company, opened the passenger door from the inside, and the figure vanished within.

“He came out of one of those bars,” Brenda said. “He must have been watching for the car.”

I glanced to the other side of the street. The bars were all busy, with the usual crowds in front. Nobody seemed to be chasing after Lalit’s passenger. “I thought you said you weren’t sure it was a guy.” I gripped the dashboard as Brenda swung the car out into the flow of traffic again.

“I’m not. What was he wearing?”

I rewound the scene in my mind. “Black jeans and a black leather jacket?”

She nodded vigorously, keeping her eyes on the cars ahead. Two had gotten between us and our quarry. “I think so too. Could you see anything about the face?”

“Nothing. He’s taking a left!”

He was, so we did, and we kept following him as he made a series of turns that took him out of the Mission and across Market Street. I was so busy trying to keep my eyes on the low set of taillights that I didn’t even pay attention to the streets we were taking until things started to look familiar.

“Brenda, are we going to Pacific Heights?” At least I thought I recognized my own neighborhood.

“We’re in Pacific Heights,” she told me. “I think we’re going to the Marina.”

It looked like she was right. We crested the steep hill, crossing Pacific, and saw the lights of the waterfront Marina neighborhood below us. There was now only one car between us and Lalit, and with a stop sign on just about every corner, it was getting easier to keep our eyes on him.

I hoped that didn’t mean it would be easier for him—or his unknown passenger—to keep an eye on us.

“Can you see if they’re doing anything in the car?” Brenda asked.

“I see their heads, and I think I see the passenger’s hands every now and then. Do you think they’re arguing?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s just one of those people who talks with his hands?”

“You said ‘he’ again.”

“But I’m still not sure. Maybe when we get down by Lombard the streetlights will be brighter.”

Lombard was a busy street, the main artery between the Golden Gate Bridge and Van Ness, which cuts across the city to the freeways that come up the peninsula.

“If he takes a left on Lombard he’s probably going over the bridge,” I said.

“But if he goes right he might just be going home.” Brenda started closing the distance between us and the car just ahead as we got nearer to the intersection. “I mean, we’ve just come from the other end of town, so why would he double back? A right would take him over to North Beach.”

“If he was just going home from the Mission there are a lot easier ways to get there,” I said doubtfully.

I squinted, straining to see inside the silver Jag as we came to a stop at the last cross street before Lombard. Lalit’s car moved into the intersection.

“Brenda! Did you just see that?” I grabbed her arm.

“I did! There was a flash of something!” She shook my hand off and strained with impatience behind the car ahead of us.

“Something metal!” I gripped the edges of my seat. “Was it a gun?”

We crossed the street and made for Lombard. “Do you think it was?” Brenda asked breathlessly. “The light only hit it for a minute—Damn!”

The light ahead had turned yellow. Lalit’s car picked up speed and turned neither left or right. It raced through the intersection while the car ahead of us braked for the light.

“Brenda! Go around!”

“I can’t!” But she did go around the car before slamming on her brakes at the red light.

“There’s nobody coming!” I checked both ways, the seatbelt cutting into my neck as I strained forward.

“Go! Look—he’s turning! We’ll lose him!”

The Jag had made a left further down the street. If we didn’t catch up soon we’d never find it.

“Hold on!” Brenda yelled, and hit the accelerator.

“Wait!”

“What!?”

“Cop!”

She braked, and we lurched to a stop two feet into the intersection. A black-and-white police car was parked on the other side of the street, and the officer inside was looking at us grimly.

“Shit,” I muttered through clenched teeth, while giving him a hugely apologetic smile. “If we get a ticket we’ll never catch up to him.” And I’d never hear the end of it from Jack.

Brenda mouthed “I’m sorry” to the officer, who apparently decided we weren’t worth getting out in the rain for. He shook his finger at us, then waved us through as the light changed to green.

“Where did they turn?” Brenda asked.

“The first left, I think.” But by the time we got there, there was no sign of the silver sports car.

We drove up and down the blocks for a while, but nothing turned up.

“Should we go back and tell that cop?” Brenda asked.

“Tell him what? That we’ve been following a perfect stranger all over town for no particular reason?” At least, I figured, that’s how it would seem to the cop.

She took a minute to think about it. “What about the gun?”

“Are you sure it was a gun?” In the absence of adrenalin, I was starting to have doubts.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It could have been a cell phone or something.”

I nodded glumly. “Anything shiny, really.”

She sighed, and turned up a street that would take us to my house.

“Do you want to spend the night? It’s awfully late for you to drive home.” Pushing two, I realized.

“I’ll be fine. Besides, where exactly would I spend the night at your place? On your nonexistent couch?”

She must be cheering up if she was picking on me again.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” she asked.

I winced. “More furniture shopping.”

Chapter Eleven

For the first time since our wedding, Jack had gone to bed without me.

I couldn’t blame him, considering the hour, and I should have been relieved, considering the steam-room-followed-by-rainstorm state of my appearance—and the fact that nobody would believe an outdoor experimental piece of performance art could run on for four hours.

Nevertheless, it was very strange to slip into bed next to him, causing only a brief grumble and change of position on his part.

I looked at him in the moonlight. If I told him about the night’s activities, he might be able to help figure out what had delayed Clara half an hour on her way to the gym the night she died. And he might be able to find out whether Lalit Kumar made a habit of picking people up outside bars and driving around town with them.

He might do both those things. But he was guaranteed to do something else, and that was to tell me to stay out of the Clara Chen investigation. Which, at this point, I was going to do anyway. Particularly since my ideas for detective work were exhausted.

So I decided to think about it in the morning.

***

In the morning Jack was gone, and Simon was at the door.

Jack’s note said he’d decided to let me sleep since I’d gotten in so late. Simon’s knock said he wanted to come in and he expected coffee. He drank it while I showered and got dressed.

***

Simon had spoken to a decorator, who had suggested I stop focusing on furniture and concentrate instead on fabric. “It makes perfect sense,” he explained as we scouted for a parking spot in the depths of the Union Square garage. “The types of fabric you’re drawn to should tell you what your style is. Whether it’s simple stripes or elaborate florals or whatever. So that helps you figure out the style of the furniture, and the colors feed in to the paint choices. It’s all perfectly simple.”

“Maybe.” I’d heard this sort of thing before.

“Of course, you could just do the sane thing and hire my decorator friend and let him worry about it.” Simon squeezed into a spot at the end of a row.

“I could,” I agreed, getting out of the car.

“But you won’t.”

“Then it would look like his house, and I want it to look like my house.”

“Well, darling.” Simon slung his arm around my shoulders and propelled me toward the elevators. “It certainly doesn’t look like anyone else’s.”

***

Britex Fabrics is heaven, if you’re into that sort of thing. Four floors, in a grand old building off Union Square, with contents ranging from faux furs to bridal laces, and about a jillion bolts of fabric in between. We spent an hour looking at fringe and tassels alone—which at least was enough to convince me that I wanted no part of fringe or tassels.

It also reinforced the fact that I really shouldn’t attempt this sort of thing after a late night of tailing suspects.

By late afternoon we’d succeeded in amassing a huge pile of upholstery options and thoroughly confusing a very nice saleswoman.

“Well.” She surveyed the pile. “I wouldn’t have thought of putting the French silk damask in the same room as the tropical monkey print, but I suppose if you’re going for some sort of mid-century Polynesian…”

She was trying, I had to give her that.

“I think where we’re going is for a drink,” Simon told her.

***

Twenty minutes later, over the sugared rim of a watermelon martini at the Four Seasons bar, things were looking better.

“It’s all my fault, darling. I simply shouldn’t have dragged you there. I blame my own monumental boredom as much as your inadequacies as an interior designer.” He sipped. “I shouldn’t have looked to your shopping challenges to distract myself from the vast hollow emptiness of my life.”

“Perhaps not.” I dug into the silver bowl of nuts between us.

“Definitely not, darling. Not when there’s a much juicer distraction just staring the both of us in the face.” He waited.

I’ve spent enough time around actors to know when I’m being prompted for a line.

“What distraction?”

“The investigation into the mysterious death of Clara Chen.”

I’m sure, in Simon’s mind, sinister organ music accompanied his words.

I knew he’d just moan about not having been invited, so I’d resolved not to mention what Brenda and I had been up to the night before.

“I’m going to Clara’s funeral on Saturday with Brenda,” I told him. “That’s about the extent of the future investigation.”

“Right. And what’s Jack up to?” Simon’s raised eyebrows spoke volumes.

I told him about the bug in the Zakdan software that Mike was exploring. “The problem is, it doesn’t provide a motive for anyone other than Morgan Stokes. And I hardly think—”

“Not so fast,” Simon interrupted. “It provides a motive for the person who sabotaged the software in the first place.”

I downed the last of my candy-colored drink. “Jack would point out that we’re not sure the software was sabotaged, and even if it was, the person who did it wouldn’t have known Clara was on to him.”

“That sounds like Jack,” Simon agreed. “But Jack’s not here, is he? And besides, who knows if the saboteur booby trapped the software somehow to warn him if his bomb had been detected?”

“Okay.” I nodded to the bartender. I was going to need another drink. “First, let’s avoid the use of the word ‘saboteur’ from here on out, all right?”

Simon rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

“And it isn’t a bomb in the software, it’s a bug.” He was perhaps the only person in the greater Bay Area who knew less about computers than I did.

“Nevertheless,” he persisted. “We should be doing something.”

“Such as?” Reinforcements arrived, in the form of watermelon flavored vodka. Simon waited until the cocktail waitress was out of earshot. Then he leaned across the small table.

“Such as going undercover at Zakdan,” he hissed.

***

I told him he was insane. I told him this repeatedly, over more drinks and an order of mixed Asian appetizers. But the more he kept talking, the less insane he sounded. Which probably meant it was time to switch to coffee.

“But darling, if you just think of it as live theatre, reality-based theatre, a sort of improv in the round…”

Which did sound kind of interesting. I’d given up any delusions about being an actress years ago, but I’d loved all the workshops and classes I’d taken before realizing I had no talent.

“And for the things where we’d need a script—for the technical bits and so on—we could enlist Eileen. You know she could give us enough to bluff our way through a couple of meetings…”

And I knew she felt like she was in a rut these days, so she was likely to agree to the crazy idea.

“In a company that big, if we just act casual, nobody will take any notice of us. Haven’t you seen
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying?
It’s all in the attitude.” There was no stopping Simon’s fevered imagination. “Eileen could give us a plausible cover story, and once we were inside, we could talk to people and figure out what’s really going on, and who might really know something about Clara’s death.”

I wasn’t sure about that, but I thought Simon was right about being able to talk to people. Morgan Stokes didn’t think Clara had told anyone else about the pattern of technical problems she’d noticed, but how could he be sure? For that matter, she might have told more people about her engagement, and her imminent promotion.

I doubted many of Morgan’s employees would feel comfortable chatting with him about his girlfriend’s death. He was their boss, after all. But those same employees might spill their guts at the water cooler with a harmless temp who was going to be gone in a few weeks. One thing I’d learned in the theatre—gossip will out. And how different could an office be?

“Okay, that’s enough.” I signaled for the check. “This is all starting to sound perfectly logical, which means it’s time for us to call a cab and go home.”

“But, Charley—”

“No but Charleys. You shouldn’t drive.”

“Well, that’s not in dispute, darling. But—”

I held up my hand. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”

“Promise?” His eyes lit up.

“I promise.”

“Will you talk to Jack?”

Ah. Um. Well. “I’ll have to think about that.”