The Baker Street Letters Page 10

“Your brother. Hmm . . .” She studied Reggie a bit more closely, and something seemed to be clicking. “So—someone who sounds like you, looks sort of like you, only a little bit—” She hesitated for just an instant.

  “Shorter,” Reggie interrupted.

  “Younger,” she continued.

  “Slightly.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, I think we’re talking about the pizza guy. Although, come to think of it, not the regular pizza guy.”

  “A substitute pizza guy?”

  “Apparently.”

  “What did he want?”

  “What all pizza guys want, I hope—to deliver. Although it was looking doubtful at first.”

  “How so?”

  “I saw him through the window, driving real slow, up one end of the parking lot and down the other, like he’s looking for a parking space or something. Finally he stops right in front of the entrance, like every other pizza guy in the world, comes running in, drops the pizza on my desk, and then takes off again without even waiting for a tip. But at least he got the order right. One pepperoni with onion, and one veggie.”

  “What did he do then?”

  “Beats me. Finished his route, I guess. Bunches of people eat pizza on this lot.”

  “I expect so. Would you mind taking a look at this?”

  Reggie showed her his list of the names of all the production companies Nigel had called.

  “If I wanted to deliver pizza to every production company on this lot,” he said, “would this be an accurate list?”

  “Not much of a pizza list if you don’t write down what they ordered,” she said. “But if you’re asking whether that’s a list of all the production companies on this lot, the answer is yes. No secret there; you can get the same from a phone book.”

  Reggie thanked the young woman and left Selman’s office.

  He returned to his cab. He considered, and then immediately rejected, the idea of visiting each of the companies in turn. The result for each would almost certainly be the same—Nigel drives the truck slowly, Nigel runs in with the pizza, Nigel leaves. There was nothing useful in that.

  And in any case, now his mobile was ringing.

  It was Ms. Brinks.

  “I showed your fax to a friend at King’s College,” she said.

  “That was quick,” said Reggie.

  “Of course,” said Ms. Brinks. “You know I don’t dally. It’s from some sort of a geological survey report.”

  “And?”

  “That was pretty much all he could say, not being at all familiar with the area. But I checked about, and I have the name of someone local to you. Professor Rogers at the Pasadena Geological Institute. He can see you today. He said he has an opening at one.”

  “It’s past eleven now,” said Reggie.

  “Well, he’s gone for the rest of the day after that. Said to be quite the expert—had a top-notch firm before he became an academic, according to his curriculum vitae. And the institute looks to be only about fifteen miles from where you are.”

  “Fair enough,” said Reggie.

  Reggie’s cab negotiated its way through the motorway exchanges to get out of downtown Los Angeles, and then they drove toward the foot of sagebrush-covered mountains, dirty green and brown.

  Reggie got out of the cab into air that was visible but dry and that stung the eyes.

  The institute was housed in a dispersed arrangement of Spanish-style structures with red tile roofs and white plaster archways, and a plaza that reflected too brightly as Reggie walked across it to the geological sciences building.

  He located the main office for the department and learned that Rogers was the department chairman. Reggie was admitted almost immediately.

  Rogers, a smallish, white-haired man of about sixty, cordially offered a chair in front of the desk and asked how he could be of help.

  “I’ve only got a scrap of it,” said Reggie. “You may not be able to tell me much.”

  Rogers smiled condescendingly. “Better let me be the judge of that, shall we? After all, you came all this way.”

  Reggie gave Rogers the piece of paper he had stolen from Mara’s keepsakes.

  Rogers looked it over with a bemused expression. “It’s part of a geological analysis,” he said. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “I had taken a wild guess for that much,” said Reggie. “But what you’re looking at is twenty years old. What I need to know is, what significance would it have to anyone today?”

  “Did someone tell you it is significant?”

  “Not in so many words,” said Reggie.

  Rogers shrugged. “There’s not much remarkable here,” he said, perusing it. “You’ve got clay, and some sand, more sand, a layer of flinty shale, some groundwater, some gaseous concentrations—all pretty much typical for the general area.”

  “What area is that?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The general area?”

  “Could be almost anywhere in the Valley—or any number of valleys in Southern California, as far as that goes. I’d have expected a little igneous stratification—granite—if it were the mountains.”

  Rogers gave the sheet back to Reggie now, and he began to gather together some papers of his own.

  “What would have been the purpose for this particular analysis?” asked Reggie.

  “Anything that breaks ground,” said Rogers. “Just from this scrap, there’s not much I can tell you. I’d have to know where this data is from, and need a lot more of it, for any kind of real analysis. Right now I have a seminar, but if you’d like to come back tomorrow with the complete document, I’m sure I could be of more help.”

  “I wouldn’t want to take any more of your time.”

  Rogers shrugged. “No big deal. Just drop it by.”

  Reggie said that perhaps he would do that.

  But truth was, he was not inclined to wait that long if he could help it.

  He walked down the corridor toward the exit. In the open lab to his right, a graduate student was shutting down the devices she’d been working with and was about to leave. Reggie paused at the entrance of the lab. No one is more eager to tell all they know than a dedicated graduate student.

  Reggie knew she had to be a graduate student because the age was right, because she was working alone in an open lab, and most important, because of the tired shadows under her eyes.

  She had short brown hair, a pleasant face, and a complexion that said that while everyone else was at the beach getting tanned and toned, she was working long indoor hours and living on caffeine and junk food.

  He liked her immediately.

  “I’ll be done here in a minute,” she said without turning away from a spectrograph, as if Reggie were another student waiting to use the equipment. But then she glanced over at him and revised her appraisal. “You looking for someone?” she asked.

  “Anyone who can tell me what this is,” said Reggie, holding up the page fragment.

  “Torn,” she said.

  “Thank you. If it were complete and I had the remaining pages, what would I have?”

  “You’re serious? It’s a geological analysis.” She took the paper for a closer look. “Pretty old one.”

  “Is there a usual purpose to this sort of map?”

  “Sure. Somebody wondered what it would be like to dig through the stuff.”

  “For what purpose? A construction foundation? Office building, housing, or—”

  “No, no, deeper. Tunneling. Please tell me you’re not a student in our program.”

  Reggie admitted that he wasn’t and asked what else she could tell him.

  She settled back on her lab chair.

  “Well, it’s from 1976—these numbers in the corner are the date and county.” She smiled. “Okay, you probably knew that. And it’s somewhere in the Valley—this note here about ‘Fernando formation’ is referring to the typical kind of clay composites you find around here. The site number—which you’re missing, it would be o
n the opposite corner of the sheet—would tell you exactly where. But even without that, I suppose the data could be cross-matched.”

  “Where might I do that?”

  “You might not do it at all, if you’re not a student here. We have a database that goes a long way back, but you need an account. Or are you an alumnus?”

  “No, not that, either.”

  “You might ask Professor Rogers about this; he used to do a lot of work in the area. I bet he could place this right off the top of his head.”

  “He didn’t quite have the time to do that,” said Reggie.

  “Oh. Well, he’s like that sometimes. Be grateful he’s not sitting on your thesis committee.”

  She’d packed her kit and was ready to leave, but she paused.

  “So,” she said after studying Reggie for a moment, “just what is it exactly you want to know about this?”

  “For a start, what the missing part of the page says.”

  “I think I can manage that. I have to go teach Intro—tell a bunch of undergrads what a rock is—but I’ll be in the library later tonight.”

  “And the remainder of the entire report would be helpful.”

  She laughed. “Don’t push your luck,” she said. “If you want major printing, you’ll have to buy your own card. Where can I reach you?”

  “Here,” said Reggie. He gave her his card and wrote down the number at his hotel. “I’m Reggie.”

  “Anne,” she said.

  “Thank you. Your help is invaluable.”

  “Right,” she said with a quick little laugh, “I’m the expert.” Anne brushed her hair back and went away down the corridor, her satchel swinging from her shoulder, with an attitude that made Reggie nostalgic for university.

  Reggie’s taxi took him back to the Bonaventure.

  He entered the lobby, intending to order room service and call Laura, but he didn’t make it to his room—the American detectives were at the lobby desk, and Reggie spotted them too late.

  “Just the man we wanted to see,” said Mendoza, stepping up alongside Reggie before he could get to the lift.

  “Lucky me,” said Reggie. “Will this be quick, or should I call my embassy now?”

  “You’re not under arrest,” said Mendoza. “We just want to talk.”

  “We did that.”

  “We have information you might want to hear.”

  This seemed doubtful, but it seemed better to be forewarned.

  “Join me for coffee if you like,” said Reggie.

  He pointed the detectives into the hotel’s formal dining room. The waiter came over to declare the area off-limits until dinnertime but went instead to get the coffee urn when Mendoza produced his badge.

  Reynolds looked about as they took their seats. “Five-star kind of place, isn’t it? I’d blow my whole vacation budget—if I had a vacation budget—if I stayed here a day.”

  “You said you had something to tell me.”

  The waiter brought the coffee. Reggie resisted the temptation to reach for it immediately; they would think his mouth was dry.

  “At first, it was you I liked for our friend under the overpass,” said Mendoza, “but it seems you’re off the hook.”

  He paused, waiting apparently for Reggie’s reaction.

  “Pass the sugar, would you?” said Reggie.

  “Want to know why?” asked Mendoza.

  “If you want to tell me. Robbery is my guess, if we’re going to make a game of it.”

  “Bad guess,” said Mendoza. “Still had his wallet, and his money. No, what gets you off the hook is, we have a witness that places a guy in a nearby café, just hours before the murder, who sounded just like you,” said Mendoza, “but it wasn’t you. It was your brother.”

  Reggie said nothing. The witness had to be the waitress at the café—but he couldn’t see how they’d made the connection to Nigel.

  “I expect you can understand our confusion at first,” said Mendoza. “We were working from a sketch based on our witness’s description. The guy in the sketch looked an awful lot like you, once you get past your having a little less hair, and of course that could’ve just been a rug.”

  “I don’t require a rug.”

  “And no one gives a rat’s ass. Point is, things have cleared up considerably.” Mendoza paused, for effect, apparently. “You should have told us you have a brother.”

  “I don’t see how my family structure concerns you.”

  “And that he was here in Los Angeles.”

  Reggie didn’t respond to that.

  “And that he was at that café, just sort of hanging around for two days before the murder.”

  “My brother’s a grown man; I don’t have a bell on him. He was in London when I saw him last.”

  Mendoza said nothing; he poured himself some coffee and sat back for a moment. Then:

  “He’s sort of the black sheep, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Oh, you don’t have that expression? It means—”

  “I get the bloody expression; I don’t get how it applies.”

  The detective shrugged. “Not even by way of comparison? I mean, you yourself are a pretty successful guy. By most standards.”

  “Hell,” said Mendoza’s partner, handling the fabric of Reggie’s coat lapel, “I know I couldn’t afford this stuff.”

  “Remove your hand,” said Reggie. And Reynolds did let go of the lapel, but Mendoza didn’t stop talking.

  “You took highest honors at Cambridge. A barrister at age twenty-four. A QC—that’s sort of like senior partner here, right?—at thirty. Really big companies call you when their mergers and acquisitions fall through and they just get pissed at each other and finally have to duke it out in court. Lots of money in that.” He paused, then, “A little out of your element right now, maybe.”

  “Not entirely,” said Reggie, though he hadn’t touched criminal law in years.

  “Hey, you’re only one guy, you can’t do everything,” said Mendoza. “But you don’t rest on your legal laurels when it comes to making bucks—you also made a bundle in foreign securities. And you’re an actual Name in Lloyd’s of London. Very impressive. I’ll bet you were a rugby captain or something like that when you were at Eton, right?”

  “Something like.”

  “Now your brother—he’s a different story.”

  The detective paused and picked up another folder, in a manner that Reggie guessed was a practiced effect. “Takes him six years to finish the program at King’s College. You have contacts, and you get him a job as a junior solicitor. He sticks with that for a couple years, more or less. But then something happens. He breaks down in the middle of Piccadilly Circus—as if anyone could tell, from what I hear of the place—and it’s off to the funny farm.”

  “The what?”

  “We having a language problem again?”

  “It was a health and recreation center in Bath.”

  “Of course, a health and recreation center is what you call it. I stand corrected.”

  “Will you be getting to a point soon?”

  “I’m getting to motive. Means and opportunity, those I already had—a witness that places your brother in the vicinity; a murder weapon that we’ll tie to him when we find him, and—”

  “My brother doesn’t own a weapon, he wouldn’t know what to do with a bloody gun. They aren’t household items where we—”

  “Did I say it was a gun?”

  Everyone paused. The two detectives looked expectantly at Reggie; he looked expectantly back at them.

  “Fine, I’ll bite,” Reggie said finally. “How was the man killed, then?”

  “You saying you don’t know?”

  “Of course I don’t know.”

  “His larynx was crushed,” said Mendoza. “A hard blow from something with a long, rounded edge, right across here.” Mendoza touched one finger across that area on his own throat.

  “I’m sure in time you’ll
develop something a little more precise,” said Reggie.

  “Like the long end of an umbrella,” said Reynolds.

  “An umbrella,” seconded Mendoza, nodding. “He also had some cuts where he hit his head on something—but it was the forceful contact with a long, rounded edge, like on an umbrella shaft, that killed him.”

  “I take it you attach some special significance to umbrellas, but the nature of it escapes me,” said Reggie.

  “Nobody in L.A. carries an umbrella,” Reynolds said in a self-satisfied tone. “So our killer is from out of town. From someplace where it’s green and damp and rains all the time, where everyone always carries an umbrella.”

  “I’ve heard that’s Seattle,” said Reggie.

  “There’s more,” said Mendoza. “We found these.”

  He took a plastic bag out of his pocket and spilled several small, disk-shaped objects onto the table. Most of them had been more or less flattened, but one or two were intact.

  “We found these at the crime scene. Know what they are?” asked Mendoza.

  “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

  “I’m sure I don’t need to. They’re Smarties. Not M&M’s, not Pokies, and not Hersheyettes—my own personal favorite, God rest them, which you can practically only get at Christmas. But Smarties. A fine chocolate candy, I’m told, which you cannot buy in the United States, because the shells on the nice little blue ones—or maybe the red ones, I forget—contain a dye not approved by the FDA. Which means our killer arrived recently from someplace—you can probably guess where—where you can buy Smarties in any Seven-Eleven.”

  “What’s a Seven-Eleven?”

  “So that put him—or at least some Brit, and he’ll do for the moment—not just in the area, but at the actual scene of the crime. All we needed now was motive.”

  The detective paused, arms folded, and leaned back smugly.

  “I know you’re going to tell me,” said Reggie.

  “Your brother had a thing for the girl. This guy was in the way. So he killed him.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Why?”

  “Nigel’s much too good a sport for that,” said Reggie.

  “Uh-huh. Well, I ran it by our profiler. She sees a classic stalker personality here,” said Mendoza. “She said, ‘Look for a triggering event. An emotional trauma of some kind that pushes him over the edge.’ So I did. And I found it.”