“He’s played violin with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for nearly three years. Word is he’s very good.”
“Sounds straightforward,” Dix said. “But all of you know it isn’t, it simply can’t be.”
Sherlock chewed more popcorn. “Dillon will let you know if anything else pops. Now, what did Thomas Pallack say to Jules Advere when he was lying on the floor?”
Dix didn’t have to consult his notebook. “He said, ‘My wife’s name is Charlotte. Do you understand? Don’t forget it.’ ”
Sherlock hummed. “Seems a mite of an overreaction, doesn’t it? Rather than showing concern about Mr. Advere’s collapse? Surely that’s odd.”
Savich said, “To us, sure, but to them? Who knows? Okay, Thomas Pallack and Charlotte Pallack have been married two years and eleven months, not that long a time after Christie disappeared. ”
“Other than a big-time politico,” Dix said, “what else is Thomas Pallack?”
“There’s no shortage of information on him. Pallack made a huge fortune in oil—drilling, refining, distributing, had his fingers in every slice of the pipeline pie. Like Chappy told you, he’s invested broadly now.
“When he got out of the oil business in the early nineties, he went big into private equities. It wasn’t all that risky for him because he knew a whole lot of powerful financial people who probably owed him. He’s made several killings in those ventures working with his high-roller cronies. The SEC has wanted to chat with him over the years, but they haven’t gotten past his phalanx of lawyers yet. The lawyers plow the IRS under every couple of years too, when they have the gall to audit him.
“Recently he’s expressed an interest in an ambassadorship, not to Chad or Slovenia, but a major country in Europe. That may be why he’s raised such big bucks on the national political level. On the surface he’s like any number of other wealthy individuals looking for a payoff from a sitting president, but there’s quite a snag—” Savich gave them a manic grin.
Ruth finally threw popcorn at him. “Talk, boss.”
Savich said, “Well, the thing is, Thomas Pallack speaks to his parents.”
Sherlock said, “That’s a big crime?”
"Well, the thing is—they’re long dead, more than thirty years dead.”
CHAPTER 20
Everyone stared at Savich. Dix said slowly,"You’re telling me this wealthy old guy believes in spirits? Believes he actually speaks to them?”
Savich nodded. “I was looking into another case for Agent Cheney Stone in San Francisco, and Pallack’s name appeared on a client list of a psychic medium who was murdered six months ago. Pallack has been seeing one since his parents’ deaths in 1977, every Wednesday and Saturday. I assume he’s still doing it. Interesting, isn’t it?”
Dix said, “Why would anyone do that?”
Savich said, “Well, that info led to something else about Pallack that could explain a great deal. Pallack’s parents were brutally murdered in their Southampton estate on February 17, 1977.”
Ruth sat forward, hands on her knees. “Whoa—bad ending. That makes the spirit deal more understandable, I guess.”
Dix asked, “Was the murderer caught?”
“Yes, but not by the local cops. It was their forty-one-year-old son, Thomas Pallack, who hired a battalion of investigators to find him. They nailed him when the police finally searched the basement of a neighbor’s house. Courtney James is his name; he’s in Attica for life. James was a trust-fund baby, lots of old money. After James’s parents retired to Italy, he lived alone in the family manse. He was quiet, smart, kept to himself. He managed his father’s banks, commuted into New York City every day, regular as clockwork. No one had a bad word to say about him.
“The investigators found the knife he’d used on the Pallacks in the basement. Their dried blood was on it—at least it was their blood type, no DNA then. Rumors began to churn that he’d killed some other people before the Pallacks, that he was a serial murderer, and they were just his latest victims.
“He went to trial and was found guilty despite all the big-bucks lawyers he hired for himself.”
Ruth said, “So Courtney James is still alive?”
Savich nodded. “He’s nearly eighty now, one of the grand old men of Attica. Since he’s got money, he spreads it around to his cellmates, for respect, for loyalty, for protection. No one gives him grief. He even gives the guards and their families Christmas presents.”
Ruth said, “How did his lawyers keep him from a death sentence?”
Savich said, “Back then there wasn’t a death penalty in New York, so he got two consecutive life sentences.”
Dix said, “You said the word got out that he killed other people in addition to the older Pallacks? What happened with that?”
“That was the scuttlebutt, but there were no specifics. Courtney James was tried only for the murder of the Pallacks, but you know what the jurors were thinking about whenever they looked at him.”
Ruth said, “Sounds to me like Thomas Pallack may have been the source of the scuttlebutt to make sure James would be found guilty.”
Dix said, “I think Pallack would make a great ambassador to France, don’t you?”
Ruth laughed. “Yeah. I’d like to find out what Thomas Pallack has to say to Mommy and Daddy every Wednesday and Saturday. ” She looked over at Dix, saw the sudden draw of pain in his eyes, and knew he was thinking about Christie. She jumped to her feet and headed to the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, “Tea for you, Dillon, and bottled water for the rest of us, okay?”
She was carefully measuring some of Savich’s special black tea into an old Georgian pot, pouring the boiling water over the tea leaves, when she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“You’re doing good, kiddo. I know this is hard. Be patient, we’ll resolve everything, and then you and Dix can get on with your lives.”
Without a word, Ruth turned and buried her face against Savich’s shoulder, but she didn’t weep. She wasn’t about to let tears break through the floodgates. She was afraid they’d never stop, and that was the last thing Dix needed. Savich held her until she was together again.
He pressed her back. “You look beautiful, and my tea’s nicely steeped. Let’s talk about Atlanta, okay?”
Ruth and Savich had no sooner handed out the drinks when the front door burst open and three kids came tearing in, two of them reeking of teenage testosterone and a sugar high, Sean so excited he was bouncing up and down. Lily and Simon followed behind them, smiling and exhausted.
Savich sent a thank-you to his sister and her husband.
Rob said, “Hey, Dad, Fatal Vengeance II—we had to cover Sean’s eyes a couple of times, but it was cool.”
Rafe said, “Well, not enough blood and guts, but it still wasn’t too bad.”
“Mama, the popcorn was great and I told the hero just how to cut the bad guys down.”
“It was a bad girl, Sean,” Rob said. “She was gorgeous but bad to the bone, Dad. She was tough, moved real cool, you know? Just like Ruth.”
When the boys finished their blow-by-blow, Sean said with great relish, “Then she got her head blowed off.”
Ruth said, “Fourteen large popcorns, Lily?”
“Maybe twenty,” Simon said, laughing. “Don’t worry, the movie was more action-adventure, not all that much gore.”
“Yeah, kind of tame,” Rob said and headed toward the bowl of popcorn on the table in front of his father.
Before Dix and Ruth and the boys headed out, Savich said to him, “I’ll e-mail you everything I’ve got. Then you and Ruth can visit David Caldicott in Atlanta.”
CHAPTER 21
SAN FRANCISCO
Sunday morning
Julia held a protesting Freddy close as she wiggled farther toward the wall beneath the kitchen table.
"Don’t move, Julia! Keep Freddy quiet if you can.” Cheney, SIG drawn and ready, walked quietly to the closed kitchen door, pressed his cheek to the wood, and listened.
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He looked back to see Julia straining to hold Freddy still. Freddy suddenly stiffened in her arms and hissed again.
Cheney went through the maid’s quarters to a back door that gave way onto the enclosed garden. He listened, then opened the door onto the overcast morning.
The backyard was large, the back wall lined with huge oak trees. It didn’t lead to another backyard, but to an alley. It was filled with flowers nearly ready to bloom, trees and hedges and an ivy-covered fence. He saw no movement. He pressed himself against the wall right outside the closed door and listened.
Nothing.
He walked quietly back into the kitchen, and shook his head at Julia. She whispered, “Freddy’s hissing toward the front of the house now.”
Cheney moved quickly toward the front hallway, pulled up, and listened again. He heard the front door rattle, then open. He heard footsteps, heard men speaking, then a woman’s voice.
They weren’t trying to be quiet. They were coming toward him.
Cheney came out of the kitchen, raised his SIG and said, “All of you, hold it right there.”
The woman threw up her hands and shrieked.
One man tumbled over the over, both of them nearly stumbling onto the Italian tiles.
The woman yelled, “Oh God, it’s the man who’s trying to murder Julia! Mrs. Masters told me all about you the minute we got home. Is my poor Freddy all right? I’m his mother!”
To Cheney’s surprise, both men rushed forward, the woman right behind them, swinging her big red purse. He ducked.
Julia yelled, “No, no, don’t hurt him. He’s an FBI agent!”
SFPD Officers Blanchin and Maxwell burst through the front door after them. Everyone simply froze where they stood. What had taken the cops so long? Cheney wondered. After all, they’d been assigned to watch the house.
Not long after Blanchin and Maxwell withdrew, their guns back in their belts, muttering between them, Julia sitting in the living room, cozy on one of the sofas next to an older man she’d introduced to Cheney as Wallace Tammerlane. Tammerlane was holding her hand, whispering quietly to her. Thankfully, Freddy’s mother, still clutching her huge red purse, and Freddy himself had left right after the two officers.
Julia introduced both of the men as psychic mediums. Great, just great. Psychic mediums, which meant that in addition to the woo-woo, they also claimed to speak to the dead. More like con artists. The older man, Wallace Tammerlane, looked up, studied Cheney’s face and frowned, then said something quietly to the other man, a younger man, about Julia’s age. They looked like father and son, both wearing casual designer clothes, shooting him looks to kill.
Cheney had heard of Tammerlane. He’d had a TV show a couple of years back, had written some books, and he lived right here in the city. He evidently wasn’t married since he kept easing his tall lanky body closer to Julia’s. He looked about fifty, hard to tell since his face was smoother than a streambed rock.
The other man, Bevlin Wagner, Cheney hadn’t heard of, which fact he said aloud, with the result that the man looked at him like he was dumber than a turkey and put his thin nose into the air. He was lanky like Tammerlane, who really did look like his father, down to his large dark eyes. But when junior tried to look brooding and intense, he only managed to look like he wanted a drink.
Cheney grinned at him. “You need to practice that in front of a mirror. That’s the ticket,” to which Bevlin Wagner replied in a voice not quite as deep as Tammerlane’s, “You’re not in a good place, Agent Stone. I see conflicting shades of black around you.” He shook his head and poured himself some coffee from a beautiful silver carafe.
“My dear Julia,” Wallace Tammerlane said, voice low, flicking a look toward Cheney, “I was distraught about what happened last night, nearly worried myself into a psychic block. Are you all right, my dear girl?”
“Yes, Wallace, I’m fine, really.”
He gave her a longer brooding look. “And this nonsense a few minutes ago, this man waving around a gun.”
“He’s here to protect me, as are the two police officers who came rushing in.”
Tammerlane said, “Let me get rid of Bevlin and this philistine agent fellow, unnecessary, both of them. I’m with you now. I can protect you. We can go over to Cecile’s for an espresso. I need to talk to you, take you away from all this. Perhaps August will have something to say.”
Cheney said, “If August Ransom is ready to check in, Mr. Tammerlane, perhaps he can tell you who killed him.”
Mr. Tammerlane raised dark intense eyes. “It isn’t like that, Agent Stone, isn’t like that at all. August doesn’t concern himself with the past, with what came before—”
“He doesn’t care that someone cut his life short? That the same person may be trying to kill his widow?”
Wallace said patiently, “Agent Stone, when a person has crossed over, all his past pains, past insults, all of it ceases to be important. Indeed, all of life’s difficulties cease to exist. However, the truth of it is that August doesn’t know who killed him. Whoever it was came at him from behind. He told me only that he heard movement behind him, but he didn’t have time to turn around. He’d been taking cocaine, a regrettable habit of his, but he said it helped him focus, made him understand things he couldn’t have otherwise, and it slowed his reflexes, flattened any fear he might have felt. August felt only a sudden awful sharpness in his throat, then immense cold. That was the end of it, and he crossed over and everything changed. He was in The After.
“But he is concerned about Julia. He loves her, has always loved her. He is here for her, not in this room with us, mind you, but close.”
“He doesn’t know who hired that man to kill me, Wallace?”
“No, my dear, he doesn’t know. Those who have crossed over do not become omniscient. They remain themselves.”
“But he was a psychic,” Cheney said. “Didn’t those abilities carry over to The After?”
“No, Agent Stone, they did not. He’s there, you see, no need for those abilities now.”
“Perhaps,” Cheney said, his eyebrow arched, “Dr. Ransom could put the word out, ask around with the other spirits, you know. Or maybe he could hang around a bit here, keep an eye on his wife, tell her when evil is closing in on her.”
“Evil, Agent Stone? I don’t know that I’d call it evil.”
“When someone wants to murder another person, what would you call it?”
Wallace shrugged. “Anger, rage, necessity, probably all those things, but not evil. Evil seems to me to be without motive, to exist for its own sake.”
Bevlin Wagner surged to his feet, the energy nearly crackling off him. “You said August isn’t here, Wallace. Well, I agree with you. He isn’t here now, but he was before. Then I sensed he had to leave.”
Julia jumped to her feet. “He was really here, Bevlin? You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I felt him.”
“But why would he leave, Mr. Wagner?”
“Who knows, Agent Stone? There’s lots of things for him to do. It isn’t all lying around and singing ‘Kumbaya.’ No, I don’t sense Dr. Ransom at all now, and I would like to. I called to him with my mind voice, trying to call him back, but he said nothing at all.
“I do agree with you, though, Agent Stone. If I were August, I’d be here with Julia, not off somewhere counseling some departed soul.” He shrugged, stroked his chin with long thin fingers. “But August always went his own path, and dying wouldn’t change that.”
Cheney wanted to throw up his hands and tell the both of them to go away, but one of them might be Dr. August Ransom’s murderer. One of them might have hired the man who tried to kill Julia.
Cheney said, “Do you speak to many dead people, Mr. Tammerlane? ”
“Yes, of course. It is a gift, a responsibility, and obligation. I will admit that August fades in and out quickly, that it is difficult for him to maintain a link with me, thus I’ve gotten only brief images and spurts of his th
oughts. I don’t know why. Neither does he.”
“May I come and speak to you tomorrow, sir?”
Wallace gave him a penetrating look, a very effective look, Cheney imagined, to make you believe he knew things, things that were beyond you, things not necessarily of this world. Cheney knew he had to try to keep an open mind about this, but when push came to shove, he was a lawyer, steeped in skepticism. It was hard-wired in his brain not to accept anything he couldn’t see, couldn’t manipulate with his hand and his brain.
“Of course, if it could be of assistance to Julia.”
“Dr. Ransom was your friend and colleague, was he not?”
“Yes. Poor August and I were close for many years.”
“And Julia, how do you see her, sir?”
“She is a dear girl. We were to have dinner Thursday night, but alas—you know what happened, Agent Stone. I will be at home at eleven o’clock. Does that suit you?”
Cheney nodded, turned his attention to the prowling Bevlin Wagner. “Are you related to Mr. Tammerlane?”
“Related? Goodness no. I’m Croatian. Wallace is from Kansas.”
He sounded so insulted Cheney wanted to laugh. He cleared his throat. “Would you also be available to chat tomorrow morning, Mr. Wagner?”
He agreed, shooting Julia an intense look. But, Cheney thought, neither man really looked anxious to speak to him. Why was that? Cheney wondered. Because he was FBI? Because one or both of them had murdered August Ransom?
Julia said, “I’ll come out with Agent Stone. He’ll want to keep me within sight at all times. He’s the one who saved me Thursday night, you know.”
And it was done. She’d nailed coming with him very efficiently, no fuss at all. Cheney could have told her he actually welcomed her company, and he did want her close, but he liked that smug, triumphant expression on her face. It was better than the empty fear.