“That’s apparently legit,” Charles said. “Because of the phone calls, Katy Melcher really was worried that you were coming after her.”
“In other words, Marina and Jeffrey expected that the local cops would focus on me to the exclusion of anyone else.”
“Exactly,” Charles Rickover agreed. “It might have gone just that way had it not been for Pop. Without him, you would have been a goner. Had you decided to forgo a public defender in favor of hiring your own defense attorney, you would have been forced to sell the Roundhouse to the first available buyer just to cover legal fees. You’d be amazed to know how much a top flight homicide defense team costs these days.”
Evening was settling in. Across the street, lights switched on in various units as people came home from work or whatever it was they did during the day.
“So what happens now?”
“The two cops from Las Vegas . . .” he paused.
“Detectives Jamison and Shandrow,” I supplied.
“They may be a bit slow on the uptake, but they’re not stupid. Bright and early tomorrow morning, I expect Harold will point them in the right direction. It may take a few weeks to straighten all this up, but sooner or later your name will be cleared, as though nothing ever happened, and Jeffrey and Maria Fuentes will be up in Vegas facing first degree murder charges—both murder and conspiracy to commit. They’re the ones who are goners now.”
Rickover reached down, turned the ignition, and the Corvette rumbled to life.
“Where to?” he asked. “Back home?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to stop off in Sun City on the way. I need to see Tim O’Malley and tell him thank-you.”
“Great,” Charles said. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
When Tim let us into his house that night, I shook his hand and said, “Thank you, Pop. It was the first time I ever called him that—the first but not the last.
“How on earth did you find all those guys?” I asked. “Harold, Roger, Matt, and even old Charlie here.”
Charles Rickover and I had been through enough together that I thought my calling him Charlie was . . . well . . . long overdue.
Tim and Charlie both grinned. “You’ve heard of how cops used to be called the Thin Blue Line?” Tim asked.
I nodded.
“Our little group calls itself the Old Blue Line,” Tim said. “Some of us are thinner than we ought to be and others are wider, but when one or the other of us has a problem and runs up the flag, we all come on the double.”
“Thank you,” I said again. “More than you know.”
Pop served us iced tea and apologized that he’d already eaten his TV dinner and didn’t have any food to offer. I said I knew a place where we could find some grub if we needed it.
Later, as we were leaving, Pop gripped my hand with both of his. “Aggie would be so happy about this,” he said, “so very happy.”
And I knew it to be true. Grandma Agatha Hudson would have been pleased as punch.
I took Charlie back to the Roundhouse and treated both of us to the biggest and best steaks we had in the kitchen. When I came upstairs, much later, there was no sound from the guest room and no sign of a light under the door, either. I tiptoed past, hoping not to disturb Harold Meeks. He had worked his tail off for me that day, and he deserved a good night’s sleep.
It turns out, so did I. I crawled into bed and slept like a baby. It was ungodly early when I woke up the next morning. Staring at the clock, I saw it was 5:30 A.M. What had awakened me was the unaccustomed sound of people talking away in my apartment. Out in the main room I discovered Harold Meeks was up, dressed in his preferred courtroom attire, and chatting up an enthralled Matty, who had just brought his breakfast up from the kitchen—two fried eggs and a double helping of bacon along with his own pot of freshly brewed coffee.
“It’s about time you showed up,” Harold growled at me. “We’ve got places to go and things to do.”
“I’ll need to see if I can rent a car,” I said. “I didn’t have time to do that yesterday.”
He shook his head as though dealing with a recalcitrant toddler. “I’ve got a driver and a limo,” he said. “We’ll take that. And when we leave here, I’d like you to bring along my two suitcases. By later this afternoon I think we’ll have this little difficulty well in hand and I’ll be able to go back home.”
THE NEXT FEW days passed in a blur. Just as Charlie Rickover had predicted, once Harold pointed Jamison and Shandrow in the right direction, they ran with it. The woman named Marina Ochoa never came back to clean my apartment. She and Jeffrey Jones were arrested the following Wednesday. They fought extradition, but it didn’t work, despite the fact that they had hired a high profile defense guy from California. It wasn’t a surprise that Jeffrey suddenly had to liquidate his real estate holdings in order to pony up attorney’s fees.