The 20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(49)

Joe said he had to make arrangements, but he’d try to be at the bail bondsman by 4:00 p.m.

“Thanks, Joe.”

“Take it easy,” he said, but the call had been disconnected and there was a dial tone in his ear.

Over the next couple of hours Joe spoke to Lindsay, made an arrangement with Mrs. Rose, squared away his notes, and wrote a couple of emails. He went to the bank, and then he was on the road, heading north to Napa Valley.

As he picked up speed, Joe was starting to look forward to what would come next. He wanted to see the new documents Dave had mentioned, and more than that, he wanted to have an honest conversation with Dave.

There was a question he’d never asked him, and he wanted to watch Dave’s face when he finally did.





CHAPTER 73





DAVE WAS USING a disreputable wheelchair that had been ridden hard in the Napa County Jail for a couple of decades.

Dave’s own chair had been lost and there was no finding it.

He said, “Don’t worry, Joe. I have a spare at home.”

A guard helped Joe transfer Dave from the chair into his passenger seat, and Joe got behind the wheel. He checked to see that Dave was buckled in, then drove away from the jail and took the first right turn onto the highway. Dave thanked Joe effusively for all he’d done and then sagged against the car door.

When they’d cleared the town limits, Joe asked, “Tired?”

“Yeah. Tired and beat. That was fucking brutal. Real jail. Real bad guys. No joke. I was afraid to sleep.”

Joe winced. He said, “You fix the damage, make some promises and keep them, get a good lawyer …”

“Do you know anyone?”

“I’ll ask around.”

It got quiet again and Joe turned on the car radio, fiddled with the dial until a classical station came in strong. He tried to relax. He was fine with Beethoven and an open road. But it was seven thirty. He was hungry and he needed to think. He wondered, not for the first time, what the hell he was doing here.

Nearly an hour after leaving the jail, Joe pulled onto the dirt road leading up the side of the hill to the winery. A minute or two later he’d parked in front of Dave’s cottage and, following his directions, located the key under a stone rabbit and entered the dark house. He located the lights and the spare wheelchair folded up in the hall closet.

Returning to the car, he found Dave sitting with the door open, his legs outside the car and a look of mortification on his face.

“Dave? What’s wrong?”

He waved his hands in the general direction of his lap until Joe got it. Dave had peed his pants.

Joe felt heartsick for Dave and positively ashamed of his own selfish feelings.

If he took Dave at his word, his friend had suffered an incalculable loss. His father was dead. He was facing one to three for the childish vandalism, and a good lawyer might or might not keep him out of jail. It was becoming clear to Joe that even if Dave was acquitted, he couldn’t run the winery by himself.

This was an awful and desperate situation.

Joe helped Dave into the chair and pushed it to the foot of the ramp. Dave was saying, “I’ve got to clean up.”

“Do you need help?”

“No, no, I can do it. And I need to go online for a couple of minutes. Make sure no one is suicidal. I never go twenty-four hours without checking into my website.”

Joe knew he was speaking of his support group for paralytics.

“I’m good to go now, Joe. Just hold the door.”

“Sure.”

“There should be a bottle of wine around somewhere.”

Joe cracked a smile.

“We’re fifteen or twenty minutes from a steak on the fire.”

“Take your time,” Joe said. “I’m fine.”

As Dave rolled his chair to his quarters at the back of the house, the thought Joe had had so many times before came back to him. What had happened to Ray? Had he simply died? Had Murray killed him, as Dave insisted?

Or was Dave behind it all, doing a head fake, playing the victim, and in so doing, covering up his real crime?





CHAPTER 74





JOE SAT AT Dave’s big plank dining table and called Lindsay.

“I have to stay overnight,” he told her. “Dave’s a wreck.”

“Call me after lights-out,” she said. “I want to hear about Dave, and I have a few things to talk about.”

“He’s in the shower. Tell me now.”

Lindsay filled him in quickly on the Houston cop, Carl Kennedy, who had been part of her task force. Her voice was strained when she told him that Kennedy had been killed, shot from behind, and that Moving Targets might be involved.

“They had an office,” she said. “By the time the cops got there, it had been cleaned out to the walls. And of course no one witnessed the shooting.”

“So who do you think shot him?” Joe asked.

“Hang on a sec,” Lindsay said. “There’s more. Clapper just spoke with Houston’s forensics lab. Kennedy was armed when he was shot. One bullet had been fired from his gun, and he had a shell casing in his pocket.”

“I’m not getting it.”

“Here’s the thing, Joe. A drug dealer who was killed in Houston yesterday was found with crack hidden in her bra, and when the slug was removed from her neck, it matched—”