Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [107]
“What time?”
“I’m not sure. Fairly late.”
“I’m on night duty this week—ten P.M. to six A.M. So call me at the department. McCone, did the wife kill him?”
“I know for a fact she didn’t.”
“Then why all this …? You know, I’m getting real tired of—”
“Got to go, Gary. I’ll be in touch.” I hung up and moved toward the exit.
Hotel Del’s terrace stretches between the outdoor swimming pool and the white sand beach. On it is a bar housed in a white turreted gazebo that matches the main building’s Victorian architecture, and a profusion of white umbrellaed tables. Most were occupied this afternoon, and on the beach a few sunbathers were still soaking up the rays. I moved through the crowd, checking it out from behind my dark glasses; stopped at the bar and bought a glass of their fresh-squeezed lemonade. Kept going toward the south end until I spotted Gage Renshaw at a table wedged between the beach-side wall and a planter containing an evergreen shrub.
Renshaw slumped spinelessly in a molded plastic chair that was dwarfed by his long body, right foot propped on the chair opposite. From the way he was dressed, I assumed my earlier phone call had summoned him from the golf course—although what self-respecting course would admit someone wearing such disreputable-looking golfing clothes was something I couldn’t begin to fathom. There was, however, no place under the faded yellow knit shirt and shabby madras pants for a concealed weapon. I scanned the people around him, a couple of families and a hand-holding pair who looked like honeymooners. Unless RKI’s operatives went in for elaborate camouflage, Renshaw was here alone.
As I approached the table, he saw me and stood. Bowed mockingly and pulled out a chair for me. “How nice of you to favor me with your company,” he said.
I set my lemonade on the table and took off my dark glasses. “How are you, Mr. Renshaw?”
“Not as well as I could be, thanks to you. Satisfy my curiosity on one point: it was you I saw change directions at La Encantadora yesterday?”
“Right.”
“The haircut threw me off. As it was meant to, no doubt. You’re quite skilled at evading surveillance.”
“Let’s not dwell on our past difficulties. I asked to meet with you to tell you that as of last night Tim Mourning was alive and reasonably well. Ripinsky’s alive and reasonably well, too, and innocent of anything except, perhaps, bad judgment. He plans to deliver Mourning and possibly Phoenix Labs’s letter of credit to you by daybreak tomorrow.”
Renshaw shook his head. “I don’t believe you.”
I reached into my bag and took out the packet of photos I’d picked up at Gooden’s. Removed the picture of Mourning stumbling onto Fontes’s terrace and passed it to him.
He studied it for a moment, then dropped it carelessly to the table. “This could be an old picture.”
“Look at the date stamped on the back.”
He turned it over. “So? All this proves is that you had it developed today.”
“Now, where would I have gotten my hands on an old roll of film that just happened to have a picture of Mourning on it? I took that last night, in Baja. Mourning had just been brought there from the place where his kidnappers were holding him in eastern Orange County. As you can see, he’s not in the best of shape.”
Renshaw turned the photo over again and scrutinized his client.
I removed the second picture from the envelope and slid that toward him. “I took this one a few seconds later.” It was of Tim stumbling toward Diane; her hands were extended to ward him off, and fear distorted her features.
Renshaw’s eyes narrowed. He picked the photo up and looked closely, turned it over and checked the date. “We wondered why we hadn’t been able to contact Diane.”
“She’s been in Baja since Friday night, at the home of a man called Gilbert Fontes. So has one of the kidnappers, the contact woman, Ann Navarro. As well as an evil man named Marty Salazar, who took the letter of credit off Ripinsky and shot the other kidnapper, Stanley Brockowitz, Navarro’s husband.