Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [99]
“And Navarro?”
“She’s a little harder to figure out, Has never been allied with any cause except furthering her own interests. Her people are poor, live somewhere in southern Baja, but they managed to scrape up the money to send her to school in California. She never finished, married a U.S. citizen, got her green card, then divorced him. In the years before she met Brockowitz, she developed three successful retail operations. She and Stan got together, I’m told, when he wandered into her shop in San Juan Capistrano a couple of years ago. They must’ve recognized a mutual acquisitiveness and lack of scruples. One guy I know calls their marriage ‘an unholy little alliance.’”
“Not too well liked, huh?”
“Not by environmentalists or anti-environmentalists. So far as I know, neither had a friend in the world except each other.”
“And now he’s dead, and she’s alone.”
“Or she may be dead, too, if that’s who was shot at Fontes’s place.”
We were silent for a moment. The antiquated VW bus began to rock; a big guy with a beard halfway down his chest and practically no hair on his head stumbled out. He wore a rumpled tie-dyed shirt and jeans and a pained scowl. Genus, hippie; species, unreconstructed. He shambled over to the edge of the lookout, unzipped, and urinated. Turned while zipping up and nodded casually to us, then climbed back into the bus.
Hy and I exchanged wry smiles, I asked, “How does all this sound to you so far?”
“Pretty solid. The Terramarine thing was just a cover, because Brockowitz knew they were one group that wouldn’t deny it if the press got hold of the kidnapping story. Where d’you suppose they’ve been keeping Tim all this time?”
“Well, Brockowitz and Navarro have a big isolated house in eastern Orange County.”
“Why keep him alive at all?”
“I suppose they thought they needed to be able to produce him for RKI until they collected the ransom. Navarro probably didn’t know what to do with him when Stan didn’t show up again.”
“She doesn’t know Stan’s dead?”
“I doubt it. By the time they got an I.D. on the body, Navarro’d already come to Baja. And when I spoke with the detective in charge of the case yesterday afternoon, he said they were withholding Brockowitz’s name from the press pending notification of next of kin.”
Hy nodded. “Okay, another question: who decided to bring Tim Mourning down here, and why?”
That was one of the things I’d considered as I sat outside the shack before dawn. “Fontes and Salazar probably figured out where Mourning was—after all, Salazar must’ve taken Brockowitz’s I.D. off his body after he shot him—and sent Jaime to Blossom Hill for him once Navarro was down here. As for why they all came here, I think they gathered at the villa to bargain. Fontes has the L.C. Navarro has the contact who can put it through. Mourning wants her cut. Salazar’s either got a stake in it or is working for Fontes.”
“You know all that for sure?”
“I don’t know anything, but it’s the feeling I got from watching them on the terrace last night. It reminded me of a plea-bargaining session. Navarro acted forceful, as if she had all the evidence on her side—the defense attorney. Mourning seemed frightened, but stubborn—the defendant. The men played good prosecutor–bad prosecutor. Salazar’s function was to intimidate, and his tactics weakened Diane, Fontes—he stayed cool, said very little, but exerted a strong presence. And then they dropped their bomb.”
“Timothy.”
“Right. When Timothy stumbled out there, Diane panicked. And Navarro was shocked, kind of chagrined. She knew their grabbing him had tipped the scales.”
“And that brings us to the big question: what happened there this morning?”
“A question we can’t answer until Tomás shows up.” I looked at my watch. Amazingly, it was only quarter to nine. Had I reset it since I got it going again? Yes, last night while we talked.
The door to the VW bus