The 20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(52)

“I was standing my ground, but he was coming toward me. I started backing up. This was his parting shot, Lindsay: ‘I don’t appreciate you barging in here. We’re done.’”

“Yow,” I said.

“I’m mortified,” she said. “I almost said, ‘I don’t give a flip what you appreciate.’ Am I trying to get fired?”

“Are you?”

“When I quit before, I was sad all the time. Len begged me to come back.”

“I remember.”

“I emailed him an apology, but I didn’t grovel.”

“Good. On both counts. What now?”

“I’m going to avoid Red Dog for a couple of days if I can. I’ve got to tell Zac that I saw his client and what happened, and he has to get a continuance for the latest possible date.”

I said, “Could be when cops come to take Clay back to jail, his mother will change her mind. Get him to give up the crime boss in exchange for witness protection.”

She said, “Yeah, I saw GoodFellas a few times, too.”

I smiled, and my phone buzzed. I glanced at the screen.

“It’s your dearly beloved,” I said. “I gotta take it.”

Just as I hung up with Lieutenant Brady, Yuki’s phone rang. She handed it to me. “It’s Conklin.”

I looked over my shoulder and saw Conklin through the glass wall. He signaled to me and at the same time spoke into my ear, “Need you, Lindsay. We have to make a plan.”

“I’m coming,” I said. I walked Yuki to the elevator, hugged her good-bye, and rejoined Conklin. “We’ve got to get organized for the funeral tomorrow,” he said. “And please do not fight me on this. In the interest of domestic harmony, I’m bringing Cindy.”





CHAPTER 77





CONKLIN AND I were attending the Barons’ funeral because there was a chance that their killer might show up.

It happens. Sometimes a killer will return to the scene of the crime to gloat or bathe in the memories. Funerals are the after party, not only to exult in and rerun the bloody memories but also to enjoy the grief of the bereaved.

We were in the town of Bolinas, population sixteen hundred, on the edge of the Pacific. If the Barons’ killer paid a call, he would see that it was a beautiful day for a funeral. Soft sunlight warmed the clean lines of the old Presbyterian church. The cemetery was across the road, an acre of sloping clipped grass, marked with old tombstones and ringed with a stone wall. There was also an imposing wrought-iron gate.

Dozens of people would be in attendance, but the hundreds of fans, press members, tourists, and curiosity seekers were not welcome.

Warren Jacobi, former chief of police and my close friend, had volunteered to be a consultant, my undercover escort for the day. Partnering with him was like old times, and as clueless as we were about whodunit, the whole team was revved up. We were hoping that Leonard Barkley or Jacob Stoll or a previously unknown suspicious character might crash the funeral.

I wore a skirt and a boxy black jacket to hide the holster at the small of my back. Jacobi and Conklin were both armed, and Cindy wore a somber gray dress, playing her part as Conklin’s civilian date.

We all blended in and took our seats in pews at the front and the rear of the church. The church was lovely inside and out, and the funeral service was touching and hopeful, given the circumstances. Reverend Grandgeorge was elderly and sweet; he talked about the Barons being at home in heaven and said that he knew we hoped they were comfortable and at peace.

I had a different take on that.

I thought that if there was a heaven and they were in it, they would be enraged that their lives had been cut short and that their children would be raised by other people.

The organ played. People prayed. And when the service ended, we all left by the double-wide front doors.

Outside the church, in parked cars camouflaged by a fringe of woodland around the parking area, our colleagues Chi and McNeil, Lemke and Samuels, were armed with guns and cameras, ready to pursue a fleeing suspect.

Jacobi offered me his arm and I took it, tottering a bit on my high heels as we crossed the dirt road between two lines of yellow tape, backed by local police who were charged with keeping the press in check. Which wouldn’t be easy.

Photographers jostled for good angles as reporters shouted questions about the police investigation. Paul Baron’s parents were long dead, but we accompanied Ramona’s family—her parents, Jill and Charles Greeley; her sister, Bea; and the two small children, DeeDee and Christopher—through the cemetery gates. We mingled with mourners, walked a few hundred yards across the acre of grass, coming at last to the white tent over the two open graves.

The mourners gathered. Remembrances of Ramona as a child were offered, as well as shared laughs, hugs, and tears. The children clung to their grandmother.

I looked around surreptitiously and noticed a beefy man in a canvas jacket, red-faced with clenched fists, standing off to the side. I nudged Jacobi. Conklin was already looking at the big man as he stepped toward the tent.

When he was standing near the open graves, the man in canvas said loudly, “What a load of crap.”

He then coughed up a wad of phlegm and spat on Paul Baron’s coffin.





CHAPTER 78