McCone And Friends

IF YOU CAN’T TAKE THE HEAT

The private investigation business has been glamorized to death by writers and filmmakers, but I can tell you firsthand that more often than not it’s downright tedious. Even though I own a small agency and have three operatives to take on the scut work, I still conduct a fair number of surveillances while twisted into unnatural positions in the front seat of my car, or standing in the rain when any fool would go inside. Last month I leaped at the chance to take on a job with a little more pizzazz-and even then ended up to my neck in mud. Quite literally.

The job came to me from a contact at a small air-charter company-Wide Horizons-located at Oakland Airport’s North Field. I fly in and out of there frequently, both in the passenger’s and pilot’s seat of my friend Hy Ripinsky’s Citabria, and when you’re around an airport a lot, you get to know people. When Wide Horizons’ owner, Gordon Tillis, became nervous about a pair of regular customers, he called me into his office.

“Here’s the problem,” he told me. “For three months now, Sam Delaney’s been flying what he calls ‘a couple of babes’ to Calistoga, in the Napa Valley. Always on the same day-the last Wednesday. On the flight there they’re tense, clutch at their briefcases, don’t talk much. A limo picks them up, they’re gone a few hours. And when they come back, it’s a whole different story.”

“How so?”

“Well, I heard this from this airport manager up there, and Sam confirms it. They’re excited, giddy with relief. Once it was obvious they’d been drinking too much; another time they had new hairdos and new clothes. They call a lot of attention to themselves.”

“Sounds to me like a couple of rich women who like to fly, shop and do some wine tasting-and who don’t hold their alcohol too well.”

“It would sound that way to me too except for two things: the initial nervousness and the fact that they come back flush with cash.”

“How do you know?”

“They pay cash for the charter, and one time I got a look into their briefcases. Even after the plane rental and a big tip for Sam, there was plenty left.”

The cash did put a different spin on it. “I assume you think they might be carrying some illegal substance?”

Gordon nodded.

“So why don’t you tell Sam to search their cases? The FAA gives him the authority to, as pilot in command.”

Gordon got up and went to the window, opened the blinds and motioned at the field. “You see all those aircraft sitting idle? There’re pilots sitting idle, too. Sam doesn’t get paid when he doesn’t fly; my overhead doesn’t get paid while those planes are tied down. In this economy, neither of us can afford to lose paying customers.”

“Security at the main terminal X-rays bags-”

“That’s the main terminal – people expect it there. If Sam suddenly demands to go through those women’s personal effects the word gets out, people might take their business elsewhere. If he does it in a way that embarrasses them-and, face it, Sam’s not your most tactful guy-we’re opening the door for a lawsuit.”

“But you also don’t want your planes used for illegal purposes, I see your problem.”

In the end, Gordon and I worked out a plan where I would ride in the fourth seat of the Cessna that Sam would fly to Calistoga the next Wednesday. My cover story was that I was a new hire learning the ropes. I found myself looking forward to the job; it sounded a whole lot more interesting than the stakeout at a deadbeat dad’s apartment that I had planned for the evening.

“They’re babes, all right,” Sam Delaney said, “but I’ll let you judge for yourself.” He grunted as he stowed his bag of take-out cartons in the back of the plane-his lunch, he’d informed me earlier. Business had been so bad recently that he couldn’t even afford the relatively inexpensive airport dinners. Eating bad take-out food, I thought, probably accounted for the weight Sam had gained in the year or so that I’d know him. He’d always had a round face under his mop of brown curls, but now it resembled a chipmunk’s, and his body was growing round to match. Poor guy had probably hired on with Wide Horizons thinking to build up enough hours for a lucrative job with the airlines; now he wasn’t flying enough to go to a decent restaurant.

“Here they come,” he whispered to me. “Look at them-they make heads turn, especially when they’ve had a few pops of that Napa Valley vino.”

The women were attractive, and a number of heads did turn as they crossed from the charter service. But people take notice of any woman tripping across the tarmac in high heels, her brightly colored silk dress blowing in the breeze. We women pilots are pretty much confined to athletic shoes, shirts and pants in cotton and denim-and the darker the color, the less the gas and oil and grease stains will show.

The woman Sam introduced as Melissa Wells had shoulder-length red hair and looked as though she could have used a few more hours’ sleep; Angie Holbrook wore dark hair close-cropped and spoke in a clipped manner that betrayed her tension. Neither had more to say than basic greetings, and they settled into the back seats quickly, refusing headsets. During the thirty-minute flight, Melissa sipped at a large container of coffee she’d brought along and Angie tapped her manicured fingernails against her expensive leather briefcase. Sam insisted on keeping up the fiction that I was a new Wide Horizons pilot by chattering at me-even though over the noise of the engine the women couldn’t hear a word we said through our linked headsets.

“Gordon’s real strict about the paperwork. Plan’s got to be file and complete. Weight-and-balance calculation, too. It’s not difficult, thought; each of us has got his own routes. Mine’re the Napa and Sonoma Valleys. I’d like to get some of the longer trips, build up more hours that way, but I don’t have enough seniority with the company. At least I get to look at some pretty scenery.”

He certainly did. It was springtime, and the length of California’s prime wine-growing valley was in its splendor. Gentle hills, looking as if someone had shaped bolt after blot of green velvet to their contours; brilliant slashes of yellow where the wild mustard bloomed; orchards in pink and white flower. It made me want to snatch Sam’s takeout and go on a picnic.

We touched down at Calistoga shortly before ten. The limo was there for Melissa and Angie, as was the rental car Wide Horizons had arranged for me. I waited till the limo cleared the parking lot, then jumped into the rental and followed, noting the other car’s license number. It took the main road south for several miles, past wineries offering tours and tasting, then turned off onto a secondary road and drove into the hills to the west. I held back, allowing a sports car to get between us; the sports car put on its brakes abruptly as it whipped around a curve, and by the time I’d avoided a collision, the limo had turned through a pair of stone pillars flanking a steep driveway. The security gates closed, and the car snaked uphill and disappeared into the trees.

I pulled my rental into the shade of scrub oak on the far side of the road and got out. It was very quite there; I could hear only birds in a grove of acacia trees on the other side of the high stone wall. I walked its length, looking for something that would identify the owner of the heavily wooded property, but saw nothing and no way to gain access. Finally I went back to the car to wait it out.

Why did everything always seem to boil down to another stakeout?

And three hours later was when I found myself up to my neck in mud.

The limo had departed the estate in the hills and, after a few wine tasting stops, deposited Melissa and Angie at the Serenata Spa in Calistoga. Calistoga is famed for is hot springs, and initially I’d fancied myself eavesdropping on the pair while floating in a tub of mineral water. But Calistoga is also famed for its mud baths, and in order to get close enough, I’d had to opt for my own private wallow. As I sunk into the gritty stuff-stifling a cry of disgust-I could clearly hear Angie’s voice through the flimsy pink partition. In spite of the wine they’d sampled, she sounded as tense as before.

“Well, what do you think? Honestly?”

“They’re high on it.”

“But are they high enough?”

“They paid us, didn’t they?”

“Yes, but…”

“Angie, it was the best we could come up with. And I thought it was damn good.”

“It’s getting more difficult to come up with the stuff without making it too obvious what we’re doing. And this idea of yours about image-the charter flights cut into our profits.”

“So, I’ll pay for it out of my share from now on. I love to fly. Besides, it’s good for Carlos’ people to see us getting off a private plane. It established us a cut above the competition.”

Silence from Angie.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing-people getting high; difficulty coming up with the stuff; Carlos…In the eighties, nine out of ten fictional arch villains dealing in terrorism and drugs had been named Carlos. Was I to assume that one had materialized in the Napa Valley?

“Angie,” Melissa said impatiently, “what is with you this week?”

“I don’t know. I’m really spooked about getting caught. Maybe it was the way Sarge looked at me last night when I told him we wouldn’t be in HQ today.”

“He can’t possibly suspect. He thinks we’re out in the field, that’s all.”

“But all day, every fourth Wednesday? We’re going to have to shift the deliveries around among our clients. If Sarge finds out we’ve been stealing-“

“Stop, already!”

Now what I couldn’t believe was that they’d discuss such things in a public place. A sergeant, headquarters, being out in the field, deliveries, stealing…Was it possible that Angie and Melissa were a couple of undercover narcs who were selling the drugs they confiscated?

After a while one of them sighed. Melissa’s voice said, “It’s time.”

“Yeah. Back to the ghetto.”

“Listen, if you can’t take the heat…”

“Funny. Very funny.”

When we got back to Oakland I hung around Wide Horizons while Melissa paid for the flight in cash and gave Sam a two hundred dollar tip. Then I went to Gordon’s office and made a verbal report, asking him to keep the information confidential until I’d collected concrete evidence. I’d have that for him, I said, before the woman’s next scheduled flight.

As I drove across the Bay Bridge to my offices at Pier 24 ½, one of the renovated structures along San Francisco’s Embarcadero, I thought over what I’d heard at the mud baths. Something was wrong with the picture I’d formed. No specific detail, just the nagging sense that I’d overlooked an item of importance. I wanted to get my computer researcher, Mick Savage, started on the case as soon as possible.

The next morning, Mick began by accessing the Napa County property-tax assessor’s records; he found that the estate in the hills belonged to Carols Robles, a prominent vintner, whose wines even I-whose budget had only recently expanded to accommodate varieties with corks-had heard of. While Mick began tracking information on Robles in the periodicals indexes, I asked a contact on the SFPD to check with the National Crime Information Center for criminal histories on the vintner, Angie Holbrook, and Melissa Wells. They all came up clean.

Mick started downloading news stories and magazine articles on Robles and his winery, and soon they formed an imposing stack on my desk. I had other work to do, so I called in Rae Kelleher, my field investigator, and asked her to check with our contacts at Bay Area police departments for detectives answering to the women’s names or matching their descriptions. At six o’clock, I hauled the stack of information on Robles home to my brown-shingled cottage near the Glen Park district, curled up on the couch with my cats, and spent the evening reading.

If you believed Robles’ press, he was a pillar of the Napa Valley community. His wines were considered excellent and frequently took gold medals at the various national competitions. Robles Vineyards hosted an elegant monthly wine, food, and music event at their St. Helena Cellars, which was attended by prominent social and political figures, many of whom Carlos Robles counted among his close friends. I couldn’t detect the slightest breath of scandal about his personal life; he’d been married to the same woman for thirty-three years, had four children and six grandchildren, and by all accounts was devoted to his family.

A paragon, if you believed the press…

As the next week passed, I dug deeper into the winemaker’s life, but uncovered nothing significant, and I finally concluded that to get at the truth of the matter, I’d have to concentrate on the two women. Rae had turned up nothing through our PD contacts, so I asked Mick to do an area-wide search for their address-a lengthy and tedious process, as far as I was concerned, but he didn’t seem to mind. Mick, who is also my nephew, has a relationship with his PowerBook that I, no fan of the infernal devices, sometimes find unnatural.

The search paid off, however: He turned up two Melissa Wells’ and three Angela Holbrook’s in various East Bay locations, from Berkeley to Danville. I narrowed it down by the usual method- surveillance.

The building I tailed Angie Holbrook to from her Berkeley apartment was vine-covered brick, set well back from the sidewalk on Shattuck Avenue, only two blocks from the famous Chez Panisse restaurant in the heart of what’s come to be known as the Gourmet Ghetto. Polished brass lettering beside the front door said HQ Magazine. By the time I went inside and asked for Angie, I was putting it all together. And when she started to cry at the sight of my I.D., I knew I had it right.

But even after Angie, Melissa Wells and I sat down over a cappuccino at Chez Panisse and discussed the situation, something still nagged at me. It wasn’t till the Monday before their next flight to Calistoga that I figured out what it was, and then I had to scramble fast to come up with the evidence.

“Open their briefcases,” I said to Sam Delaney. We were gathered in the office at Wide Horizons-Sam, Gordon Tillis, Melissa, Angie, and me.

Sam hesitated, glancing at Gordon.

“Go ahead,” he prompted. “You’re pilot in command; you’ve got the FAA in your corner.”

He hesitated some more, then flipped the catch of Melissa’s case and raised its lid. Staring down into it, he said to me, “But…you told Gordon we had big trouble. This is…just papers.”

“Right. Recipes and pictures of food.”

“I don’t get it. I thought the babes were into drugs.”

Unfortunate word choice; the “babes” and I glared at him.

“Ms. Wells and Ms. Holbrook,” I said, “are chefs and food writers for a very prestigious magazine HQ-short for Home Quarterly. Unfortunately, like many prestigious publications, it doesn’t pay well. About a year ago Melissa and Angie started moonlighting-which is strictly against the policy set by the publisher, Sarge Greenfield.”

“What’s this got to do with-”

“I’m getting to that. For the past six months Melissa and Angie have been creating the menus for Robles Vineyards’ wine, food, and music events, using recipes they originally developed for HQ. Recipes that Sarge Greenfield would consider stolen. Since they didn’t want to risk their jobs by leaving a paper trail, they arranged for Robles and their other clients to pay them in cash, upon acceptance of the proposed menus. Naturally they’re always somewhat tense before their presentations to the clients, but afterward they’re relieved. Relieved enough to indulge in wine tasting and spending.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “You say these recipes are stolen?”

“I suppose Greenfield could make a case for that.”

“Then why don’t you have them arrested?”

“Actually, the matter’s already been settled.” Angie and Melissa had decided to admit what they’d been doing to their employer, who had promptly fired them; they had now established their own catering firm and, in my opinion, would eventually be better off.

Gordon Tillis cleared his throat. “This strikes me as a good example of how we all rely too heavily on appearances in forming our opinions of people. Not a good practice; it’s too easy to jump to the wrong conclusion.”

Sam looked down, shuffling his feet. “Uh, I hope you ladies won’t hold this against me,” he said after a moment. “I’d still like to fly you up to the valley.”

“Fine with us,” Angie replied.

“Speaking of that-”I glanced at my watch “-isn’t it time you got going?”

Gordon and I walked out onto the field with them. The two men preflighting the Piper next to Sam’s plane cast admiring glances at Angie and Melissa, and I was surprised when one of them winked at me. When we got to the Cessna, I snapped my fingers and said, “Oh, there’s something I want to check, just out of curiosity. May I see the paperwork Sam gave you for this flight, Gordon?”

Sam frowned, but Gordon, as prearranged, handed the folder to me. I opened it to the weight-and-balance calculation that a pilot always works up in order to know the best way to arrange the passengers and their baggage.

“Uh-huh,” I said, “fuel, pilot…Sam, you’ve really got to stop eating that junk food! Passengers one and two, plus purses and briefcases. Additional baggage stowed aft. Hmmm.”

“Just get to the point.” Sam said, glancing around nervously.

“In a minute.” I slipped inside the Cessna and checked the rear compartment. One bag of takeout. One large bag of takeout.

Sam was leaning in, reaching for my arm.

“Golden Arches?” I asked.

“KFC. Leave it!”

I picked it up. Heavy KFC.

“Sam,” I said, “you really ought to go on a diet.”

After the DEA agents who had been hanging around the Piper with their warrant had opened the take-out containers full of cocaine and placed Sam under arrest, Gordon, Angie, Melissa and I slowly walked back to Wide Horizons in subdued silence.

“What I don’t understand,” Gordon finally said, “is why he always entered the stuff he was carrying on the weight-and- balance.”

“To cover himself. He knew if you caught him stowing any package he hadn’t entered, you’d start watching him. But why he put down the accurate weight for the bag is beyond me. Nobody would believe he could eat that much for lunch-even with his weight problem.”

Gordon sighed. “And here I thought Sam was just getting fat because of bad eating habits, when all the while he was eating too well on his profits from drug running.”

I grinned at him. “Widening his horizons at the expense of Wide Horizons,” I said.