“Uh-oh,” Jake said. “I’m starting to lose you. I think I’ve just hit an area where there’s no cell service.”
“There aren’t any of those on the way from Monterey, you moron.”
“See you later this afternoon, Suze. Bye, Suze.” Jake hung up.
I lowered my cell phone and then sat there, feeling like punching something. Lucia had said everything was going to be all right, but as far as I could tell, her prediction was about as accurate as the local weather forecaster’s. It had called for sunshine, but as usual a thick marine layer hid the “mountain” view—and just about everything else, as well—outside my windows.
Gina was already up and out of the apartment—a text she’d left on my phone said she’d gone to an audition (Carmel-by-the-Sea’s outdoor theater was always putting on musicals), then to run errands.
This was fine with me. I had plenty of errands of my own.
“What’s this?” CeeCee asked, looking at the laptop and cashbox I set down on the table between us at the Happy Medium an hour later, after I’d showered, dressed, and met her for a breakfast of grits (her) and pancakes with extra tofu bacon (me, and only because the Happy Medium is vegetarian).
“Oh,” I said, swallowing a large gulp of coffee. “Just everything you need to break the story of the decade. Well, maybe not the decade, but the year, at least. Your editor is going to love you. You could probably get a job at the San Francisco Chronicle with a story this big.”
“I don’t want to work at the Chronicle.” CeeCee opened the cashbox. It was easy to do so, since the lid was broken, and hanging sadly on its hinges. “I just want off the police beat. Geez, Suze! How much money’s in here, anyway?”
“Fifty grand. Don’t look at what’s on the thumb drives around here, or in front of anyone under eighteen.” I glanced around the café, which was bustling. It did some of its best business during the breakfast hour, which was why Gina was dying to snag the Saturday morning shift. CeeCee’s aunt had assured her she’d get her chance, but only after she’d “paid her dues” with the less busy night shifts. “It’s pretty gross.”
“Oh, yeah?” CeeCee, unfazed, was already working on deciphering the password on the laptop. “What’s up?”
“Pretty soon a guy is going to walk into the Delgado Photography Studio over on Pine and find his boss, James Delgado, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. That stuff you have there was locked inside his desk. When you get a look at what’s on it, you’ll know why he chose to off himself. There are two client lists—one for his regular photos, and one for photos he was distributing illegally according to U.S. federal child exploitation laws.”
CeeCee made a face. “How charming.”
“Yeah. I think a good thing for you to say in the story you write about it—before you turn all this stuff over to the police—is that you found it in a padded envelope on your doorstep this morning. You have no idea who could have left it there, but you assume it was Jimmy himself, out of shame and remorse for all the terrible things he did. But that’s for the police to determine, of course.”
One of the many things I liked about CeeCee Webb was that she didn’t waste time asking stupid questions. Her sense of morality was well honed, but highly flexible. And she was professional to the core.
She also knew a good thing when it walked up and was presented to her at the breakfast table.
“Great,” she said, her gaze never leaving the screen in front of her, even as she occasionally reached over to consume a mouthful of grits. “No problem. One thing, though. What if they ask me for the envelope?”
“Sadly,” I said, “you threw it away, and it already got taken to the dump. How could you know it contained something so incredibly important?”
“True. So I take it, since you’re involved, this Delgado didn’t really commit suicide?”
“Oh, no, he really did. Maybe you could mention in your story how there’ve been a number of studies suggesting people like him would rather die than face the social stigma of having their crimes exposed—or quit committing them.”
“Nice line, thanks, I’ll use it.” She continued to type. “What was that other thing you mentioned you wanted to speak to me about?”
“Oh, yes. Well, considering I’m giving you this truly enormous story, I was wondering if you could stifle another one.”
Now she did look up from the screen, her violet eyes playful. “Susannah Simon, are you trying to impede the freedom of the press?”
“Absolutely. Since you write the local police beat, could I ask you not to report in it that Jesse got arrested last night for assaulting Paul Slater?”
The look in the violet eyes went from playful to gleeful.