Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [115]
“I see. … Yes. … I’ll …” She glanced at the gun I held. “I don’t know exactly when I’ll return to California, but I’ll be in touch with you.”
Viner spoke some more.
“Yes, she’s here.” Navarro handed the phone to me.
“McCone, what the hell is going on?” Gary demanded.
“I told you I’d have Ms. Navarro contact you. And I—”
“I’m tired of this runaround. I want you in my office—”
“I’ll see you in less than twelve hours.” Saying it gave me a rush of confidence. Maybe saying it would make it so.…
“What time?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“McCone—”
I was tired of arguing with him, so I broke the connection. When I glanced at Hy, he looked amused.
Navarro sat with her head down, hands twisted in her lap, still clutching the slip of paper. “It’s true,” she said, a desolate note underscoring her words.
“It’s true.”
She raised her head, turned to look at Hy. “You were there with him?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
He squatted beside the car, described the scene more tersely than he had to me. Navarro listened silently, flinching when he got to the part about Stan being shot.
After Hy finished I said, “Everything’s coming unraveled, Ann. You’d better cooperate with us.”
No reply.
“You’re in very big trouble,” I added. “Kidnapping, accessory to transporting a kidnap victim over an international boundary. If Mourning dies, it’s special circumstances—carries the death penalty.”
When she still didn’t say anything, Hy asked, “Where’s Fontes?”
“… He flew to Mexico City with the letter of credit late this afternoon. He was going to … He said he was going to meet Stan there and put the L.C. through in the morning. Then they’d come back here to divide the money. But now I know that Stan’s—” She shook her head.
“What about Timothy?”
“At the villa. They’ve kept him doped up since … since this morning.”
Hy said, “You know they’re going to kill him.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be that way!”
He gave her a skeptical look, but didn’t comment.
I said, “You also must realize what Fontes and Salazar plan for you.”
Navarro still didn’t want to believe what was happening. She put out her hands, fending off reality. “How do I know any of what you say is the truth?”
“You talked to Viner. That wasn’t a setup.”
“But about Diane—how do I know she’s really alive?”
I picked up the phone and held it out to her. “Call Cabrillo Hospital in San Diego. Ask for a report on her condition. When I saw her earlier, she was critical but stable. She was even able to talk with me for a while.”
Navarro looked at the phone but didn’t take it. “Okay, maybe that’s so. But if Fontes is going to kill me and keep all the money, why did he send Diane back to the States? He could’ve just let her die.”
“Her continued existence, as well as Tim’s, is insurance that he’ll get the money. He won’t know for sure that you’ve been straight with him until the L.C. clears. If anything goes wrong in Mexico City, he’s got the ammunition to force you to cooperate. Diane’s a co-conspirator; Tim’s a victim. They could testify against you.”
“But he’s treated me like a business associate, a guest in his home. He hasn’t restricted me in any way.”
“Of course not. He doesn’t want you to suspect what he plans to do. He’d probably have let you go on believing you were to get your share of the money right up till the end. But finally the time would have come for him to dispose of his liabilities—namely Tim, Diane, and you. Easy to get rid of you and Tim, and Diane wouldn’t be that much of a problem. If I could get to her in the hospital, so can Salazar or one of Fontes’s people.”
Panic seeped into her eyes as she finally accepted reality. “I can’t go back to that house!”
“Well, where do you expect to go?” Hy gestured at the darkness around us.
Her gaze moved from me to him, pleading.
“No,” he said, “we’re not going to help you.”
“Unless you help us,” I added.
Silence. Hy’s eyes met mine. We waited.
“All right,” Navarro said heavily. “What do you want me to do?”
“Help us get Mourning out of there.”
“That’s impossible. You’d have