Vixen

17

When you faced Andrew Vorhees in his plush Civic Center office, it was easy enough to see how he’d been able to forge a successful political and business career despite his scandal-ridden private life. He cut an imposing figure behind a broad cherrywood desk: lean, athletic body encased in a black silk suit that must have cost a couple of thousand dollars, thick dark-curled hair whitening slightly at the temples, craggy features, piercing slate-colored eyes. The kind of self-confident, strong-willed mover-and-shaker who dominates most any room he’s in.

If he was bothered at all by the fact that I’d accompanied Runyon, he didn’t show it. There was no delay when his secretary announced us, and no visible reaction when she showed us in. Just one question to me: “Who are you?” I told him and he nodded and let the matter drop.

He wore a tight, solemn expression this morning; that and the black suit were his only sops to being newly widowed. If he’d had any feelings left for his dead wife, they were well concealed. When I said, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Vorhees,” and Runyon added his condolences in turn, he made a vague gesture as if we’d expressed sorrow over the fact that the weather wasn’t better today. He tight-gripped each of our hands for a few seconds while his eyes probed ours: trying to read us and at the same time let us know he was the alpha male here. Jake and I showed him about as much of the inner man as he was showing us, just enough so that he understood we were not intimidated by him.

The first thing he said after we were seated was, “I’ve never known any private detectives before.” He didn’t quite make the words “private detectives” sound like an indictment, but close enough.

“A business like any other,” I said.

Vorhees picked up a turquoise-and-silver letter opener, held it between thumb and forefinger and tipped it in Runyon’s direction. Bluntly, he asked, “Were you working for my wife?”

“No.”

“Never had any dealings with her?”

“Not before last night. I never met her while she was alive.”

“Then what were you doing at my house?”

“I went there to talk to her.”

“About what?”

“Things I felt concerned her.”

I said, “The same things I spoke to her about three days ago.”

Vorhees frowned at that. “Oh, so you had dealings with her.”

“Of a sort.”

“What does that mean? What did you speak to her about?”

“Relationships, mainly.”

“Margaret and I were separated-I suppose you know that.”

“I’d heard as much.”

“Well?”

“Not your relationship with your wife. Yours with Cory Beckett.”

Vorhees’ spine stiffened. He made another jabbing motion with the letter opener, toward me this time, before he said, “Even if that were true, my private life is none of your affair. Nor was it any of my wife’s affair. I told you, we were legally separated.”

“Are you denying a relationship with Cory Beckett?”

“I don’t have to confirm or deny anything to you.”

“No, you don’t. But it so happens I saw you coming out of her apartment building about a week ago. I mentioned it to her, but evidently she didn’t mention it to you.”

She hadn’t. His effort to hide the fact didn’t quite come off. “What were you doing there?”

“She was my client at the time. I don’t have to tell you she hired our firm to find her brother when he disappeared three weeks ago. One reason I went to see her that day was to inform her that we’d located him, or rather Mr. Runyon had.”

“One reason?”

“The other is that I don’t like being lied to.”

“By Cory Beckett? About what?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“I’m asking you.”

“The theft her brother’s charged with,” I said. “The fact that it was a frame-up and she was the intended target, not him. The fact that it was her idea he take the blame and that she had help shifting it to him.”

The skin across Vorhees’ forehead bunched into ribbed rows. He let the letter opener drop with a small clatter on the desktop.

“Bullshit,” he said.

“Facts.”

“How could you know all that?”

“We’re detectives, remember?”

He didn’t say anything for a time. Then, “Why would Cory want to frame her brother?”

“Ask her.”

“The hell I will. I don’t believe it. She loves the kid, she’s doing everything she can to get him off. She’d have to be crazy to do what you’re accusing her of.”

“Or sane and full of schemes.”

“Schemes? What kind of schemes?”

“That’s not for us to say.”

“Why the hell not, if you think you know?”

“Legal and ethical reasons.”

“Legal and ethical,” he said, as if they were dirty words.

Runyon said, “Aren’t you going to ask us who arranged the frame in the first place?”

“If I thought it was true, I wouldn’t have to ask.”

“Or who allegedly helped her shift it to her brother?”

“… All right. Who?”

“The same person allegedly recruited to frame her.”

“Goddamn it, who?”

“Allegedly,” I said, “Frank Chaleen.”

The name rocked him like a blow. He got abruptly to his feet, stood woodenly for a clutch of seconds, then leaned forward and flattened his hands on the desktop.

“Bullshit,” he said again.

“Fact.”

“Cory hardly knows Chaleen.”

“She knows him a lot better than you think.”

“How do you know she does?”

Runyon said, “When Kenneth ran off, he went to a place called Belardi’s on the Petaluma River. That’s where I found him. He wouldn’t leave with me, so she drove up to convince him and bring him home.”

“I know that. So what?”

“Chaleen was with her.”

Vorhees started to say something, changed his mind, and opted for a stony silence.

On the ride down here from South Park, Jake and I had decided to push the envelope with him as far as possible. I’d already taken the biggest chance in suggesting, if not directly accusing, Frank Chaleen of complicity in a crime. Now it was time for the capper.

“Chaleen gets around, doesn’t he,” I said. “One woman at a time’s not enough for him. Wives and mistresses, both fair game.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“What do you think it means, if he was involved in the original plan to frame Cory Beckett for theft? It’s common knowledge he’d been having an affair with your wife. Seems pretty clear the only thing that would make him switch his allegiance from her to Cory is that he’s sleeping with her, too-cuckolding you twice.”

A rush of blood put a wine-dark stain on Vorhees’ smooth-shaven cheeks. The veins in his neck bulged.

“Sorry,” I said, “but it stacks up that way, doesn’t it?”

He said between clenched teeth, “That son of a bitch! I’ll make him wish he was never born.”

Runyon and I let that pass without comment.

The sudden fury didn’t last long. Vorhees had not gotten where he was by letting his emotions run away with him. I watched him make a visible effort to control himself.

“You better not be lying to me about any of this,” he said at length.

I said, “We’re not in the habit of lying.”

He lowered himself into his chair, folded his hands together. All business again, except for the fact that the knuckles on both hands showed white. “I’ve got enough to deal with as it is without the media busting my chops again. What would it take for the two of you to keep all of this quiet?”

“Are you offering us a bribe, Mr. Vorhees?”

“Hell, no. A favor for a favor. I have a fair amount of influence in this city. I could do your agency some good-”

“No, you couldn’t. You can’t trade for or buy our silence. You already know that if you’ve checked us out and I’m sure you have. But we’ll give it to you for nothing. We didn’t intend to make trouble for your wife and we don’t intend to make trouble for you. That’s not why we’ve disclosed as much to you as we have.”

“No? Then why did you?”

“We don’t like to see a good kid like Kenneth Beckett facing a prison sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. Or a newly bereaved husband jerked around by lovers and former friends.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“Believe what you like.” I got to my feet; Runyon followed suit. “We’ve said our piece-it’s in your hands now.”

He made a derisive noise. But his face was set, hard and brittle, like a ceramic sculpture fresh out of the kiln. He believed it, all right. And his simmering anger was not only directed at Chaleen but at his lying, conniving mistress.

Mission accomplished.

Boat rocked and holed and taking on water, fast.