Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake (лучшие книги без регистрации txt) 📗

“They were a gift,” she said quickly. “From my aunt.”

“Lucky you,” I said dryly. I pulled a photo of Lauren Parkus from my jacket pocket. It was one of the special ones I’d taken for myself. “Do you know this woman?”

She gave the picture a quick glance. “Was she using my credit card, too?”

I just looked at her. She sighed and looked at the picture again. I studied her face to see if I could detect a reaction. What I saw was a woman afraid of being stuck with a thirty-five-hundred-dollar bill. I didn’t see anything else.

“Who is she?” Jolene asked.

“Her name is Lauren Parkus,” I said, looking again for a reaction and not getting one. “We suspect your ex-husband was seeing her in LA, that she might be involved.”

When I said that, Jolene sighed with relief. “So, you’re not going to make me pay. You believe me.”

I pocketed the photo. “I’ve still got to verify what you’ve told me. But if it checks out, we’ll pursue Mr. Pelz for the money. If we decide to press charges, you may be hearing from the FBI.”

“The FBI?”

“He crossed state lines in the commission of a felony,” I said. “That makes it a Federal offense.”

I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. I was making it up as I went along. But I wanted to scare her. Then I remembered something I read in a detective novel once, I couldn’t remember which one, but it confirmed my faith in learning-by-osmosis.

“I’ll be staying at the Sno-Inn for the night,” I said, referring to one of the two motels I saw on opposite sides of the highway as I drove in. “If you think of anything that might help me locate Arlo, give me a call.”

I headed for the door, opening it slowly, my hand behind my back near my gun, in case Arlo was waiting on the other side to clobber me.

He wasn’t.

I relaxed and walked out. She stood in the doorway and watched me go to my car.

“The Sno-Inn Motel is a dump,” she said.

I smiled at her. “I’m frugal.”

I got in the car, made a wide U-turn, and drove off. I checked my rearview mirror for a glimpse of Arlo as I left the clearing, but if he was there, he didn’t come out of hiding.

Overall, I was pleased with my performance. I learned a lot of useful information. In my estimation, I was getting pretty slick.

I would have liked to stake the place out, but I didn’t see a way to pull it off. I wasn’t about to park the car and creep back up there. If he was there, he’d be expecting that, so that would be stupid. And if he decided to flee in the Lumina, I’d be stuck up there on foot. And if he wasn’t around now, there was no place to stash the car and still keep my eye on the dirt road without him spotting me when he came back. I just didn’t see a way to go after him for the moment that didn’t put me at a big disadvantage.

But I wasn’t concerned. I had a feeling I wouldn’t have to go after him. I had a feeling he’d come after me.

Chapter Fifteen

On my way back to Seattle to see Mona Harper, Lauren’s mother, I took an hour out to do a little sightseeing. I did it to reward myself and work up the courage to talk with her.

I stopped in Pioneer Square because that’s what my guidebook recommended. It also recommended I take the tour of underground Seattle, but I figured if they decided to bury it, nobody thought it was much to look at to begin with.

So I parked on a side street near the cobblestone plaza and walked around the neighborhood, seeking shelter from the drizzle under a Victorian-looking, iron-and-glass pergola.

I studied the passers-by and thought about what I’d learned from my visit with Jolene. I learned that cheerleaders may have it great in high school, but that things evened out later. And I learned that Arlo Pelz used to be a drug dealer and served time in prison, so blackmail wasn’t a big moral dilemma for him.

He’d definitely seen his ex-wife since he’d returned from Los Angeles. I knew that from the tennis shoes by the bed. And I was pretty certain the new TV and couch were bought with the piss-soaked blackmail money. What I didn’t know was whether Jolene knew that’s where his money came from. I was sure she gave Arlo the credit card, but she might not have known about the trip to LA or anything about Lauren Parkus.

But now they both knew I was on the case and, judging by Arlo’s reaction to me in Santa Monica, I knew he wouldn’t be too happy about the news, especially if he caught a peek at me and recognized me from the elevator. I figured he might do something rash and save me the trouble of cooking up some way to sneak up on him.

I’d be able to get more out of Arlo if I could make him think I knew more than I actually did. Private eyes pulled that trick all the time.

I didn’t come to any new conclusions about the case while I was standing there, but I discovered I could tell the tourists from the locals pretty easily. The tourists were the ones hiding from the drizzle under umbrellas. The locals were the ones who only needed a lid for their espressos.

Just about everybody, except the obvious tourists, seemed to have a cup of coffee in one hand and a novel in the other. Apparently, there was a city ordinance that required everybody to join Oprah’s book club and declare a favorite coffee blend. Even the bums were sipping Starbucks and reading Barbara Kingsolver.

So, before going back to the car, I stopped at the Elliot Bay Bookstore, bought an Anita Shreve novel, and snagged an empty Starbucks cup from the trash can outside, in case I ever needed to blend in with the crowd.

I drove east on Madison Street until it ended at the lake and a little shopping village that seemed to cater to well-heeled retirees and rich, young couples.

There was a small park and beach, but otherwise the shore was lined with apartment buildings that jutted out on pilings into the cold, emerald water. I wondered what would happen to the buildings in an earthquake. Californians can’t help but wonder about that.

Mrs. Harper’s apartment building was the tallest, at about ten stories, and the apartments on the end had big decks that commanded unobstructed views of the floating bridge and snow-capped Mount Rainier in the distance.

I parked the car in front of her building, walked up to the lobby, and found her name on the directory by the locked front door. I punched in the number of her unit on the security keypad and rang her up.

“Yes?” her voice crackled with static. There were Jack-in-the-Box drive-thrus with better speaker systems.

“Mrs. Harper?” I replied.

“Yes?”

“My name is Harvey Mapes, I’m a detective with Westland Security. Your son-in-law, Cyril Parkus, hired me to investigate your daughter’s death.”

I waited for her to say something, but the speaker just hissed.

“I’d like to come up and ask you a few questions.”

“Cyril didn’t say anything to me about this,” she said.

“I was afraid of that,” I said. “I’m sorry. I guess he didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“Is this really a conversation you want to have over a loudspeaker? There are other people waiting to come in out here.”

She buzzed me inside. I took the elevator to the seventh floor and walked down the long, wide corridor to the very end. It smelled like disinfectant and fried food and shag carpet. It smelled like retirement.

I knocked on her door but she didn’t open it right away.

“Do you have some ID?” she asked, her voice muffled behind the door.

I was glad I’d decided to stay as close to the truth as I could with my story. I wasn’t exactly lying, but I was certainly implying a lot more than was true.

I held my Westland employee ID up to the peephole. The ID didn’t say anything about me being a security guard, it just had my name, my picture, a barcode, and their badge-and-eagle logo. It must have impressed her, because she slid off the chain, turned the deadbolt, and opened the door.