Read Online McCone and Friends by Marcia Muller - Free Book Online

for how long?”
    “Three, three and a half years before Mr. Homestead bought it. My wife had died, and I wanted to be closer to downtown, but I’d had difficulty selling, so I let it out instead.”
    “What can you tell me about Mr. Chaffee?”
    “He was a good tenant, kept the house and yard up. He installed an alarm system and didn’t ask for reimbursement. He paid his rent on a six-month basis, with a cashier’s check drawn on Wells Fargo Bank.”
    “I suppose you ran a credit check on him before he took possession?”
    Mr. Trujillo stopped pacing and gave Lottie a stern, somewhat astonished look. “Young woman, are you familiar with that neighborhood?”
    “Uh, sort of.”
    “Then you must be aware of the problems involved in owning property there. A house is very difficult to rent when drug dealers are camping on the front lawn, intimidating everyone who comes and goes. Mr. Chaffee gave me a cash deposit as soon as he looked at the place. He returned within the hour with a bank check for the balance. Frankly, I wouldn’t have cared if he had the credit rating of Saint Anthony.”
    “Huh?”
    “Patron saint of paupers,” I explained. I was raised Catholic, although most of it didn’t take.
    “Oh.”
    Lottie seemed thrown off her stride, so I questioned Mr. Trujillo. “Can you describe James Chaffee?”
    “Certainly. He was around forty. Five-foot ten or thereabouts, slender build. He had blond hair that looked like a toupee, or maybe a wig. Very regular features.”
    “Anything else? Facial hair? Distinguishing marks? So far, the description could’ve fit a lot of people.
    Mr. Trujillo thought, staring up at the ceiling. “There was…Yes! He had a mole on his right earlobe. Quite a large one. I couldn’t help but stare at it, and that seemed to make him uncomfortable.”
    As Lottie and I exchanged looks, the phone rang. Mr. Trujillo went to dig it out from behind a mound of clippings on the desk. He spoke with his back to us, then held out the receiver to me. “It’s your employer, Ms. McCone.”
    How the hell had Shar known to call here? “So you’re one step ahead of me,” she said when I picked up.
    “You found out about the house in Ingleside, and Mr. Trujillo?”
    “Uh-huh. After you left I decided to run another background check on Homestead, in case the police missed something.”
    “Were you messing around with my computer?” Shar’s only now becoming computer literate, and she doesn’t really know what she’s doing. Besides, nobody but me touches my office computer or laptop.
    “It’s the agency’s machine, Mick.”
    And that was that. She wasn’t going to tell me how she came up with the information. Sometimes I think the only reason she resists technology is to bother me.
    I decided to one-up her. “Well, Lottie and I have found out that at the time his wife disappeared, Homestead was renting the Ingleside house under an assumed name. Here’s what I think happened: Old Harry had arranged to meet Susan someplace other than the Saint Francis that day. After all, we’ve only got his word about their lunch date. She thought he was gonna take her to meet his mother, who was living in what she called horrible circumstances.”
    “In a house held siege by drug dealers.”
    “Right. He took Susan there, whacked her, hid the body—maybe in a freezer. Then he activated the alarm system he’d had installed and went to the Saint Francis, where he made sure the staff saw him. And then he put on his act for the people he called and the cops.”
    “So the body’s been in the house for all seven years?”
    “Protected by the alarm system. For added insurance, Harry bought the place after enough time had gone by that the cops had back-burnered Susan’s disappearance. If he’s visited since, he’s been real careful.”
    Shar didn’t say anything. Sometimes those silences of hers unnerve me. “So do we go to the cops with this?” I asked.
    “I think you’re right about what