Seven O'Clock Target (An Inspector Rebecca Mayfield Mystery) Read online

  Seven O’Clock Target

  Joanne Pence

  Quail Hill Publishing

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Plus …

  About the Author

  1

  The decaying inner-city street was deserted except for two children. And him.

  He stood in the shadows of a gutted, vacant building and watched them.

  A little girl wearing blue denim overalls and a pink T-shirt followed her brother. He walked fast, the way older brothers often did, and the girl had to run to keep up. Her curly brown hair, pulled back into a ponytail, bounced and swung with each step.

  The boy wore a San Francisco Giants baseball cap. He wasn’t much taller than his sister, but stockier. His hair was a lighter shade of brown and cut short.

  The sun was setting and the evening fog had already rolled in off the bay making the dank, dingy area gray and forbidding.

  Those kids shouldn’t be alone in this neighborhood, he thought, and especially not on this street. It was dangerous. The buildings, mostly warehouses and factories, had closed years earlier and were either empty or taken over by squatters. Used syringes, condoms, shell casings, and worse littered the nearby grounds.

  If you were my children, I wouldn’t let you play out here.

  The two stopped and stared at the smallest building on the block. One story tall, its ugly, ash-colored outer walls looked like painted cement. The sign over the front entry—VENTURA BROS MORTUARY—had weathered so badly it was hard to read.

  He wondered if those kids had any idea what a mortuary was. If so, they’d run from it. He had worked there one summer when he was young, and it still gave him nightmares.

  But instead of running, the little boy studied the low, flat structure with curiosity. He turned onto what was once a driveway along the side of the building. It led to the back lot where, when the business was live so to speak, the bodies had been delivered. Now, the driveway was nothing but chipped and broken asphalt with weeds sprouting up through the cracks. At the back of the building, near the empty lot, was a metal door and beside it a wood-framed window. The bars that once protected the window from intruders were now on the ground, rusted and propped up against the wall.

  He crept nearer the children. He especially enjoyed looking at the pretty little girl. Her cheeks were apple-red and her large blue eyes showed spunk and character as she glared at her brother.

  “I don’t like it here,” the little girl firmly stated.

  With good reason.

  “Molly, look. This window isn’t locked.” The boy ignored her complaint as he pushed on the double-hung window. It slid upward a fraction of an inch, just far enough for his small fingers to get under the opening and lift.

  “I said I don’t like this,” Molly insisted, louder. “I want to go home.”

  “Not me,” big brother announced. “I want to see what’s inside.”

  “It’s almost seven o’clock. Daddy told us to be home by seven. Besides, I’m hungry!”

  “So?” The boy, trying to sound tough, wrinkled his mouth in disgust at his sister’s lamentations. “Anyway, it’s not a mortuary anymore.”

  “I don’t know what that is, and I don’t care. Let’s go, Porter!” Molly folded her arms. Her scowl was even fiercer than her brother’s had been.

  As the man watched her, he couldn’t help but chuckle. He had to smile at the way even young girls could pout, whine, and get their way around their brothers. Around all men, if his experience was at all usual.

  The boy pushed the window up as high as he could and boosted himself onto the windowsill. “You wait here, and I’ll tell you all about it … maybe.” Porter tumbled inside.

  The girl stood on tiptoes peering in.

  Such fun! He covered his mouth to stop his soft chortles from bursting into a boisterous guffaw. He remembered times like that with his own sister, times so long ago. She was the only person he allowed himself to remember, the only person he missed. He never knew his father and tried his best not to remember his mother. And he certainly didn’t miss her.

  “What if somebody catches you?” Molly cried.

  Framed by the window, Porter looked out at her and grinned. “Who would do that? Nobody lives here. You’re such a scaredy-cat.” Then the boy disappeared from sight.

  He wondered what the boy was up to and grew increasingly frustrated until he heard the youthful voice cry out, “Whoa! Awesome!”

  His breath caught. What, he wondered, had the boy found?

  “I want to see.” Molly tried to boost herself onto the sill the way Porter had done, but couldn’t. The boy reappeared, grabbed her arm, and pulled her into the building.

  When the children didn’t come out again, he followed. It was easy for him. He had a key to the side door.

  He entered a small back office. His eyes went to the desk that the mortuary’s last boss, a mean son-of-a-gun, had used. The fat, bald ogre would sit there, large hands with pudgy, hairy fingers folded over a protruding stomach as he bellowed orders to his intimidated workers all day long. It heartened him to see the desk now covered with dust, as were the office’s three gray file cabinets, a table, and an old black rotary phone.

  He peered into the hallway.

  He didn’t see the children.

  Damn!

  He hurried down the hallway, over a yellowed, linoleum-covered floor, and past doors labeled “Men” and “Women” to the foyer at the front of the building.

  To one side of the foyer was the mortuary's main entrance, and across from it was what had once been its largest viewing room.

  The doors to the viewing room were open, and he heard the low murmur of voices. Childlike voices.

  He peeked inside.

  Old, half-rotted drapery hung beside the windows and along the back walls, while thin sheets had been pinned up to cover tall windows. Some sheets had fallen, allowing a few beams of sunlight to stream in, just enough to show that the green paint on the walls had become streaked and faded, and that the dark hardwood floor was scuffed, scratched, and littered with rat droppings.

  Only a few wooden chairs remained in the room, facing a far wall that had been set up to look like a stage.

  “This place is creepy,” Molly murmured.

  Yes, little girl. You don’t know the half of it.

  If he were a nicer guy, he would scare them, make them run away and never come back. But he wasn’t all that nice.

  “This is where they put dead people in coffins so their friends can come and see them.” Porter did his best to ap
pear smart and worldly.

  “After they’re dead?” Molly sounded horrified.

  “That’s what I’ve heard.”

  The two walked up to the front “stage” and noticed a cut-out area on the floor. The boy knelt down to inspect it. “I wonder what this is. It looks like a trapdoor.” He tried to find a spot where he could take hold of it and lift it open, but was having no luck.

  The man smirked. He knew what the cut-out was. He doubted any mortuary used such a thing these days. But many decades ago, when this place was first built, it was considered quite a practical innovation.

  He saw Molly eyeing the nearby wall. It had two large buttons. No! He wanted to scream, to stop her. But he kept watching.

  She pushed the upper button, and nothing happened. But then she pushed the lower one, and the platform Porter was studying made a whirring sound. The boy eased back.

  “What’s it doing?” Molly stepped to Porter’s side, and both stared, amazed, as the platform descended to the basement.

  “Maybe you’d better bring it back up.” Porter’s voice lost it toughness and now sounded a little scared and nervous.

  That’s right, kids! You don’t want to have anything to do with what’s down there.

  Molly ran to the wall panel and pushed the upper button. The platform slowly rose up and settled back in place.

  “Wow!” Porter shouted. Then, in a fit of daring, he jumped onto the middle of the platform. “Push the button again.”

  Molly did, and Porter rode down to the dark basement. “Hey, I see buttons here just like the ones by you.” He pushed the upper button and jumped on the platform as it climbed.

  “I want to ride, too,” Molly announced when Porter reached her once more. Hitting the down button she jumped onto the platform next to Porter. Both children laughed, a strange mixture of delight and fright as the platform descended with them on it.

  He crept toward the opening. He had been in that basement many times, but he’d always taken the stairs.

  Down there the mortuary owners not only stored unused coffins but also those that held the dead after being embalmed, awaiting the trip upward to the viewing room.

  “What is this place?” Molly’s scared voice wafted up to him.

  He could imagine how scary she must find the basement. It had no windows and the light switch was on the far end of the room, at both the top and bottom of the staircase leading up to the main floor. For the children, the only light came from the platform opening, a light that now grew fainter as dusk deepened. He bent low so he could see and hear them better.

  The hollow sound of their footsteps echoed on the cement floor as they walked away from the platform. The footsteps matched the sudden pounding of his heart as a startling realization struck him.

  “Look at those big boxes.” Molly’s voice was tiny, fearful.

  “Coffins,” Porter said. “I wonder if they put the bodies in coffins down here and then use that platform to get them upstairs where people could see them.”

  Exactly! His heartbeat drummed so loudly in his ears his whole body trembled. Even so, he was impressed that Porter could work out the reason for the platform. It saved the morticians and their staff from having to carry heavy coffins up the stairs.

  “What if they have people inside them?” Molly’s voice was little more than a whisper.

  “Don’t be silly. Nobody leaves bodies lying around,” the boy announced. “Besides, they stink after a while.”

  “Eeuwww. But who would be here to smell them?” she asked.

  “You’re just being a dumb girl.”

  He heard the girl cry out, “Porter! Look! What… who… are they?”

  “Oh, child,” he whispered, his shoulders sagging from the weight of his decision. “You shouldn’t be so nosy.” And with that, he pushed the up button, and the platform rose.

  2

  At seven o’clock Monday morning, San Francisco Homicide Inspector Rebecca Mayfield was already at her desk on the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice building in San Francisco’s South of Market district. She hadn’t been able to sleep and decided to get a head start on the problem that was bugging her. More than bugging her. It was disrupting her life; even preventing her from attempting any plans for the future.

  Someone had targeted her. Not necessarily to kill her—although more than once, that could have been the result. But, she believed, to cause her to leave her job. And she was sick of being anyone’s prey.

  Her face was pinched from weariness and her pale blond hair pulled back into a barrette at the nape. She wore little makeup, and her blue eyes had a tinge of red she hoped Visine and black coffee would help fade. Her clothes reflected her personality, practical and logical—black slacks, a crisp white blouse, and a black woolen jacket now hanging on a nearby coat rack.

  As she waited for her computer to go through its log-in and security routines, her expression was dark, hooded, and almost as grim as the homicide bureau itself. Soot-covered windows along the back wall and burned-out bulbs in several of the light fixtures lent a solemn air to the open room filled with gray and green metal government issue furniture—desks, file cabinets and bookshelves—along with a water-cooler and the world’s oldest still-functioning percolator-style coffee urn.

  Recently, several of her cases had overlapped in a way that presented her with a picture of corruption emanating from City Hall. All fingers pointed at some person or persons in City Hall having directed a real estate scheme that laundered money. The scheme had ended, many of the bankers involved were now serving time, but Rebecca hadn’t yet been able to determine which government officials were involved.

  The problem was for a cop, any cop, to get past the wall of protection that both politicians and bureaucrats always erected around themselves. But she wasn’t about to give up.

  Her problem was that, as long as she was being targeted because of her investigations, she refused to do anything that might cause others to be in jeopardy because of her.

  Specifically, Richie Amalfi, the man she had somehow, crazily, fallen in love with, had asked her to move in with him. As much as she would have liked to, there was no way in hell she would move into the home while someone was trying to kill her! If she did, and anything happened to him, she didn’t know how she could bear it. It was best to live as she always had since her early twenties—alone. Except for Spike, of course, her little dog, a strange looking but lovable mixture of a hairless Chinese crested and a Chihuahua.

  She believed the key to figuring out who was behind the attacks on her could be found in the death of the mayor’s former chief-of-staff, Sean Hinkle. A couple of other homicide inspectors had investigated the suspicious death, but after finding a suicide note—plus receiving more than a little pressure from Homicide’s chief to get the story off the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle—the inspectors quickly and quietly determined that Hinkle had committed suicide.

  Rebecca wasn’t buying it. She never had, and that was the reason for her early morning appearance at work. She was determined to sift through the case and to look for any clues that might have been overlooked. But she couldn’t let anyone know she was doing an unauthorized review of a closed case. That type of “initiative” top brass frowned on. Especially when it involved the city’s mayor, deputy mayor, and those close to them. That the deputy mayor had direct supervisory responsibility over the police commissioner only made the situation more complicated.

  That morning, Rebecca had no sooner looked up the case number of the Hinkle files when her phone buzzed. It was the dispatcher.

  So much for looking into Sean Hinkle’s death that day. A homicide had just been reported.

  Richie Amalfi awoke to an empty bed.

  He sat up and ran long fingers through wavy black hair, trying to get it to fall at least somewhat in place. He knew a night of tossing and turning played havoc with it, and with a small spot at the crown that had thinned as he approached age forty, he needed to take good care
of every strand he had.

  But hair problems were the last thing on his mind right now. Rebecca was. As usual.

  A part of him wished he could end this off-again, on-again craziness of their relationship. He hated it, and she did, too. A part of him even wished he could walk out of her life and not look back. But he’d tried that.

  And failed.

  Like some idiot, or stunad, as it mother, Carmela, would say, he had asked her to move in with him. He’d never done that with any other woman.

  Rebecca had refused his offer.

  And she wouldn’t tell him why.

  It was crazy. He’d never had to work so hard at getting a woman to want to be with him. He was used to the women he was seeing wanting their relationship to move along much faster than he did. More than once he had to all but batten down his doors and windows to keep them away.

  Even his mother had tried to push him into a marriage with the daughter of one of her Italian friends. Talk about a vision of hell!

  Ironically, of all the women he’d dated, the one he fell the hardest for Carmela didn’t much like. Maybe it was because she and Rebecca were both strong, both used to getting their way, and neither took guff from anyone. If he was smart, he’d have nothing to do with either of them.

  He guessed he wasn’t smart because he loved them both.

  He put on his robe and headed out to the kitchen to make his morning Americano. As he crossed the living room, the scent of flowers hit him. He glared at the pale pink peonies in a silver vase. They all but turned his stomach. Even worse was the small colorful bouquet of mixed flowers on the kitchen table.