“Oh, yes . . . and I had them the other days. I let myself into Cahill House several times while you were recuperating.” Nervously she adjusted her scarf and reached into the pocket of her lavender jacket, her fingers searching for the missing keyring. “But now they’re gone.”
“We’ll have all the locks changed,” Alex said.
“Make a list of every key you had and what it opened.”
Marla panicked. She’d have to work fast. She’d have to break into Alex’s office the first chance she got. “I’ll need a set,” she said, forcing a calm smile. “Mine were lost the night of the accident.”
“I’ll ask about them when I call Paterno tomorrow,” Alex said. “Not that they’ll do any good as we’re going to change the locks.”
Marla didn’t argue but knew that she’d call the detective herself. If the keys belonged to Marla Cahill, then they should open every existing lock in this house. If the keys didn’t fit, then maybe she was, as Conrad Amhurst had insisted, an imposter after all.
Nick reached into his duffel and found his cell phone, then he headed down the back stairs and through a door off the kitchen. Taking a brick path leading through the trees, he made his way past the arbor and swing set, deeper into the estate to a sanctuary where he’d come often as a kid, a thicket of firs along the back fence, the place he’d climbed over whenever he was hell-bent on escaping the demands of being Samuel Cahill’s son.
God, he’d hated the old man, despised how he’d ruled the family with an iron fist that was sure to bend the laws and break his wife’s spirit. “Bastard,” Nick growled, flipping open the cell phone and retrieving his one message. It was from Walt Haaga, who only stated that he’d landed in San Francisco this afternoon. Nick called the Red Victorian, and asked to be connected to the room under his name.
“Yep,” Walt answered on the second ring.
“It’s Nick.”
“About time I heard from you,” the PI said. “I checked in at the hotel this afternoon and since then I’ve been busy.”
“You’ve found out something?”
“Quite a bit. Why don’t you meet me at the bar around the corner—what’s it called?”
“Ivan’s.” Nick checked his watch. “I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”
He made it in ten. By the time Walt sauntered in, Nick had already taken a seat in a booth near the back of the pub and ordered a couple of beers. A few regulars were hanging out at the bar and a middle-aged couple was eating fish and chips in a corner booth. The floor was covered with peanut shells, compliments of the earlier after-work crowd, and a couple of pool tables, now empty, stood in the back.
Walt slid onto the bench on the other side of the table. A short, compact man, he wore a trimmed beard that was more the result of being too busy to shave than from any sense of fashion. He was going bald, but didn’t seem to mind, and his skin was tanned, from the hours he spent outside working on his sailboat. “It’s been a while, Cahill,” he said as he picked up the beer that was sweating on the table, waiting for him. He tapped his long-necked bottle to Nick’s.
“A couple of years,” Nick allowed.
“And now you’re in San Francisco.”
“Temporarily.”
Walt snorted. “If you say so.”
“I do. So, what’ve ya got?”
“Interesting stuff.” Walt took a long drink from his bottle. “Let’s start with your cousin.”
“Cherise?”
“No, her brother. Montgomery.” Walt scratched his beard and eyed the bowl of shelled peanuts on the table. “Now that one, he’s a piece of work.”
“What about him?” Nick asked, his muscles instantly tightening. In all the time he’d been in San Francisco, he hadn’t once seen Cherise’s brother.
“Your basic lowlife. Never worked a day in his life, that I can see. Tried the military but that didn’t take. Sponged off his old man until he died, then a string of women, including his sister. One of his ex-girlfriends filed assault charges against him, but it never went to court. Either she changed her mind or was paid off. I haven’t figured out which yet.”
Nick frowned. “Swell guy.”
“Yep. He’s been in several scrapes with the law—drunk and disorderly, that kind of thing. Got himself into a barroom brawl one night about ten years ago. He and the other guy started taking punches and it turned pretty ugly. They ended up pounding the shit out of each other. Monty ended up with three cracked ribs, a rearranged nose and new dental work.” Walt paused for effect, took another pull on his Coors. “The real kicker is this: At one time good old Monty was seeing Marla.”
All of the muscles in Nick’s shoulders bunched. His fingers tightened around his bottle. Something inside him snapped. “Seeing her? As in . . . ?”
“As in doing the horizontal bop.”