Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [76]
So Diane Mourning and Ann Navarro were going to Baja together. Why? What was the relationship between them? Not close, that much I could tell. But I hadn’t sensed hostility, just a mutual wariness—
The blast of a horn interrupted my thoughts. A Porsche that I’d cut off roared around me, its driver flipping me the bird. I gripped the wheel and concentrated on the road all the way to La Jolla, using the mechanical activity to calm my anger at losing the best lead I’d had all day. Before I went to La Encantadora, I stopped at a shopping center and bought coffee, more sandwich fixings, a deli salad, and a bottle of chilled white wine.
The bungalow had trapped the day’s heat. I opened a couple of the windows to let in the cool breeze that blew up from the cove. Still too tense to eat, I poured some wine and sat down at the little desk. There were a few sheets of stationery in its drawer, also pilfered from Hotel Del. I pulled them out and began scribbling.
“What relationship betw. Navarro & D. Mourning? Husbands? Why Baja? Where Brockowitz? Who man in morgue? Where his Jeep? Where Hy’s rental? Call Avis. H’s credit card used since Bali Kai? Call Kate.”
Now I drew a diagram with the names Brockowitz, Navarro, T. Mourning, D. Mourning, and Hy inside circles and linked by dotted lines and arrows. Around its periphery I added Marty Salazar, Terramarine, RKI, Phoenix Labs, and Colores Internacional. Under Colores, I drew another arrow and inked in the name E. Fontes. Added that of his brother, Gilbert, for good measure.
All of it was intermeshed. None of it made any sense.
I pulled the phone toward me and tried to call Kate Malloy. The Spaulding Foundation offices were closed, and Information had no listing of a home number for her. Then I tried to call Gary Viner to see if he’d gotten an I.D. on the body in the morgue. Viner was off duty, his home number unlisted. I phoned the nearest Avis office, but they couldn’t give me any information on Hy’s rental car. Yes, the man said, their cars could be taken into Baja. I reserved one for the next morning, just in case.
Finally I went to the kitchenette, found a fork, and wolfed down my salad, barely tasting it. Made a sandwich and poured another glass of wine. Wolfed that down and went back for seconds. And decided to call it a day and see if there was anything worth watching on TV. Maybe tomorrow things would seem clearer.…
But what was that big pink plastic bag on the bed? Oh, my God—W.C. I’d totally forgotten about my seventy-five-bucks-plus-tax silk parrot! I pulled him out of the sack, glared into his eyes as grumpily as he glared into mine. “You cost me a bundle, fellow,” I told him, “and my cats are going to hate you.”
Then I set him on the bed, leaning against one of the pillows. Stripped off my clothes and switched on the old TV. A rerun of “Cheers” was on—one of the wonderful old episodes with Shelley Long. During a commercial break I picked up W.C. and checked under his wing to see if the saleswoman had removed the price tag. She had, but there was another tag attached near the seam where the wing joined the body. I flipped the feathers up and leaned toward the dim bedside lamp to read it.
Colores Internacional, Mexico City.
The firm owned by Emanuel Fontes, environmentalist. The firm to which the Mourning kidnap letter of credit was drawn.
I clutched W.C. in a stranglehold. Flopped back against my pillow. Coincidence? I doubted that.
At first the kidnapping had appeared to have been engineered by its victim. Then a photograph of him that radiated terror had erased that suspicion. Now his wife had traveled to Baja with a woman who bought merchandise for her store from the firm