The Dark Room(46)

“Okay,” Cain said. He looked at Fischer. It was her turn for a while, if she wanted it.

“Mrs. Castelli,” Fischer said. “I’m Special Agent Karen Fischer, with the FBI.”

“The FBI?”

“We’re looking into this too.”

“Okay.”

“After you found Harry, what was the first phone call you made?”

“To 911.”

“And you made that on your cell?”

Mona Castelli nodded. She opened the purse on the floor next to her and took out a phone. She put it on the coffee table, then flipped to the call log.

“May I?” Fischer asked.

She leaned across and looked at the phone, then showed it to Cain. The call to 911 had gone out at 3:03. It was the last call she’d made or received. The next closest thing on the log was a short outgoing call at 11:05 p.m. Yesterday evening, when she was supposed to have been down in Monterey.

Fischer handed the phone back.

“What’s this one at 11:05? Short call, lasted five seconds. There wasn’t a name in your contacts list. Whose number was that?”

Mona Castelli looked at her phone screen. Her face scrunched up.

“I think that’s Meredith Miles.”

“The actress?” Fischer said.

“The actress. She was at the fundraiser. She asked for my number, but I didn’t know it—I was—I’d been—”

“Drinking,” Cain said.

Mona Castelli nodded.

“So she used your phone to call hers,” Fischer said. “Is that it?”

“It didn’t seem important. It’s not important.” She looked at Cain. “When will it be all right to use my house again?”

“You’ll be in a hotel the next couple of days.”

“I’ll need to get some things.”

“Tell me what you want, and where I can find it. I’d rather you not go in.”

“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll just go to a store.”

Cain resisted looking at Fischer to see how she was reacting to that. She was too good of an investigator to show anything on her face, and of course it might not mean anything at all. Mona Castelli had just lost her husband. She was in shock, humming with the tail end of the lorazepam injected by the paramedics. If none of this had happened, she would have been in bed until sunset, sleeping off the gin.

“I have one more question,” Cain said. “You understand I have to ask it.”

“Okay.”

“Did your husband have life insurance?”

She shook her head, then nodded. She seemed to consider another sip of her coffee but never reached for the mug.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sure he would. Probably something on top of whatever the city had for him. He doesn’t believe in skimping.”

“Who’d know?”

“Who do you think?” she asked. “Melissa Montgomery has all of that. If you go to his office, I’m sure she’ll be able to show you where it is.”

“Okay,” Cain said. He looked at Fischer. “Did you have anything else?”

“No.”

“The officer here will drive you to a hotel,” Cain said. “He can take you to a shop, too.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the kid said. “Happy to.”

“Just a hotel,” Mona said. “The Palace—Harry and I always stayed at the Palace in between moves.”

“You know where that is?” Cain asked the patrol officer.

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. Go ahead and take her.”

“Yes, sir—but can I have a word first, Inspector?”

The kid led Cain to the kitchen, then gestured through the window of the breakfast nook to the tiny backyard. Fischer shadowed them, standing close enough to overhear the officer without losing sight of Mona Castelli.

“You should talk to them,” he told Cain. “The people who own this house. The Petrovics. Roger and Dana. They were home when it happened—they heard the shot.”

Cain read the name tag on the man’s shirt pocket.

“You’re doing good work, Combs.”

“Thank you, sir,” he said. He started toward the living room to collect Mona Castelli but turned back to Cain when he thought of something else. He dropped his voice so it wouldn’t leave the kitchen. “I think they know something. But they didn’t tell me.”

“What makes you think that?”

“They were in the study, talking to each other. Looking at the computer and whispering.”

“All right, Officer. We’ll check it out.”





16


THEY STEPPED INTO the backyard through a sliding glass door and found the Petrovics sitting in a pair of wet redwood deck chairs beneath a canvas awning. The fabric overhead was sodden with rain, big drops beading up on the underside and running toward the edges, where it ran in streams onto the grass and onto the low rock wall at the cliff’s edge. Beyond that was an empty gray void, booming with the sound of waves breaking on the rocks below them. The foghorn growled, low and long. A ship, invisible out in the Pacific, answered.

Roger Petrovic climbed out of his chair, brushing rainwater from his fleece vest with the back of his hand. He stood a head taller than Cain. White beard and close-cropped hair, the muscles in his bare forearms like coiled hemp ropes. His wife was shorter and lithe. Her tanned face was framed by brown hair, parted down the middle. Roger took the badge that Cain handed him, looking at it for a moment before passing it to his wife. He did the same with Fischer’s.