NIGHT WATCH Read online

  The truck door opened.

  Rowena held her breath, waiting.

  He climbed out.

  A cop. Definitely a cop. There was no doubt in her mind.

  Nothing specific eliminated his being a thug or a private investigator. Nothing specific, even, blared police. But Rowena knew. She just knew.

  Down on the street, his back to her, he stretched his arms above his head, then turned and drummed his fingers on the roof of his truck. He looked impatient and irritable. He was, Rowena saw, a thickly built man with very dark—almost black—-hair and a face that was more striking than handsome, the nose crooked, the mouth rather severe. She expected that up close she would see scars. Suddenly she wanted to see him smile. What would he look like if he smiled? Would she change her mind about him? Would he have bad teeth, look goofy, menacing, dishonest?

  No, she thought. A smile wouldn’t erase the gravity and the stubborn sadness that seemed to cling to him.

  From her position, she could see the gray sweatshirt that was stretched across his broad chest. A pair of jeans went with it. Close-fitting jeans. He would, she imagined, have muscular legs, particularly his thighs. His was a sprinter’s build; he would use speed and power in a physical encounter. Any kind of physical encounter.

  Heat rushed to her cheeks at the unexpected, unruly thought.

  What was she thinking?

  He took a deep breath, pounded the truck roof with the flat of his hand and climbed back in the driver’s seat as if he’d had enough for one day. Three floors up, Rowena heard the engine race and watched him drive away.

  She finished her tea, in no particular hurry.

  Then she looked up the main number for the San Francisco police department. She used her cordless telephone and took it into the sunroom, where she stood in front of the windows above the now-empty parking space and made the call. She identified herself to the woman who answered and said she would like to speak to the person in charge of the undercover officer staked out on her Telegraph Hill street. She gave the name of her street and the number of her house and spelled her name. She was put on hold. In another minute a man picked up. She repeated what she wanted. He said, “You’ve got to be kidding,” and put her on hold, and in a moment another man picked up.

  “Good afternoon,” she said, “my name is Rowena Willow and I—”

  “I know who you are, Ms. Willow. I’m Sergeant Ryan. Hank Ryan. What’s up?”

  She recognized the name at once. He was the policeman who had investigated her report on Eliot Tyhurst. He had come to her house to make sure she wasn’t some kind of lunatic; she wasn’t sure that he hadn’t decided she wasn’t. But he had taken her findings to higher authorities. Ultimately Tyhurst had been arrested and convicted.

  She wondered if she’d been handed off to him just because she was a known eccentric and he’d dealt with her before.

  The thought made her angry, if not defensive. She had almost grown accustomed to people’s stereotypes of her.

  “Well,” she said coolly, “I’ve spotted your man on Telegraph Hill—”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your man. I spotted him. I was afraid since I spotted him, someone else might have as well. I’m particularly concerned that the subject he’s watching might have seen him. I wouldn’t want anything untoward to happen simply because those of you in authority didn’t realize your man isn’t very... subtle.”

  “I see.”

  There was a note of caution in his tone: She bit the corner of her mouth, hoping she didn’t sound weird; sometimes she just didn’t know. “I don’t mean to be insulting.”

  Hank Ryan cleared his throat. ‘‘You’re saying that since you made our man, some bad guy he’s after might have made him, too.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “What makes you think he’s a cop?”

  “Oh, that’s obvious.”

  She thought she heard Ryan chuckle. She remembered him as a competent, rigorous individual who had made no derogatory remarks about her, her life-style or her work. He said, “Thanks for the tip.”

  Rowena bristled at being dismissed. “Check him out. He’s approximately five feet ten inches tall, thickly built. He has near-black hair cut in no particular style. He doesn’t shave every day. I would say his nose has been broken once or twice. My guess is a Mediterranean ethnic background, probably Italian.”

  Hank Ryan was silent.

  “He has driven four different vehicles.” She described them in detail and recited their license plate numbers which, she explained, she had memorized. “I’m observant but not suspicious by nature. Someone up to something illegal is likely to be both observant and suspicious and... well, I’m sure you don’t want your officer stumbling into a situation in which he’s dangerously over his head.”

  “I’m afraid he already has,” the sergeant grumbled under his breath. “I’ll see who we’ve got out there and warn him. Thanks.”

  She hung up wondering if she would ever see the dark-haired man again.

  * * *

  Rowena Willow had one hell of a boring life, so far as Joe could see. Four days now and the only glimpse he’d had of her was in that damn tower room above the street. He had to crane his neck, so it was never much of a glimpse. She showed up every afternoon promptly at five-ten. What she did there he had no idea. Water plants? But he couldn’t make out any plants.

  He sat at Mario’s bar, waiting for hot pastrami on rye. He already had his beer. Ah, reality.

  Mario, a balding, good-humored man ten years Joe’s senior, shoved the sandwich in front of him. “Working, Joe?”

  “Doing a favor for a friend, keeping an eye out on a crazy woman.” He decided not to tell him it was Rowena Willow, the financial genius who had put Eliot Tyhurst in prison.

  “Pretty?”

  “Doubtful. I haven’t seen her yet, though.”

  “How can you keep an eye on her if you haven’t seen her?”

  Joe shook his head. “She doesn’t lead a normal life, that’s how. She’s weird, Mario. Weird, weird, weird. So far as I can tell, she never leaves her house.”

  “Where’s she live?”

  “Telegraph Hill.”

  Mario paused to greet a regular customer and slide him a beer, not waiting for his order. “Fancy neighborhood.”

  “Yeah. It’s quite a place. She has her groceries delivered, works there, doesn’t seem to have any friends— and this house, Mario. Put a full moon in the background and we’re talking bats and vampires. She probably has her own torture chamber.”

  His cousin laughed. “Maybe after this job, police work will look good again.”

  Joe wondered if it would.

  In the mirror across from him, he saw Hank Ryan walk grim-faced into the bar. Without a word he sat down on the stool next to Joe. Mario poured him a ginger ale and Hank took a sip. Then he looked at Joe. “She made you the first day.”

  At first Joe didn’t know what he was talking about. “Who?”

  “Rowena Willow. She spotted you, Joe.”

  “The hell she did!”

  Hank nodded. “The hell she did.” He nibbled on a pretzel and repeated his bizarre telephone conversation.

  Down the bar, Mario was laughing with a customer, demanding to see the I.D. of another, acknowledging the designated driver of another group—all, it seemed, at the same time. Or maybe, Joe thought, his brain was jumbled from his strange assignment. He didn’t want to think about crazy ladies who lived in strange houses.

  In his twelve years as a cop, five working undercover, Joe Scarlatti had never—not once—been made.

  He glanced sideways at Hank, who looked tired, still in his uniform. Joe hadn’t asked about Hank’s day and wouldn’t. “She had the license plate numbers of all four vehicles?”

  “Yep. Memorized them. Said she didn’t write them down because she thought she was just being paranoid.” Hank’s mouth twitched. “Must be a hobby of hers, memorizing license plate numbers of suspiciou
s characters like you.”

  “Hell, she just made up those numbers. You know damn well she—”

  Hank withdrew another of his infamous crumpled scraps of paper from a pocket and laid it on the bar. Joe took a bite of his sandwich and had a look. One, two, three, four sets of numbers.

  “Are they correct?” Hank asked.

  “How would I know? You don’t think I have nothing better to do than memorize license plate numbers?”

  “She got the one on your truck right. I checked with motor vehicles.”

  The one on his brother’s Porsche, too, Joe thought, and probably the other two—Mario’s wife’s minivan and another friend’s econobox.

  “Do you realize,” he said to his fellow cop, “how incredibly dull her life must be if she takes the time to memorize license plate numbers? She must think staring at parked cars is high entertainment.” He swallowed a mouthful of beer. “What a weirdo.”

  “You’re just ticked because she made you.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Your pride is wounded.”

  “Hank, my pride is not wounded. Name me one cop a woman like that wouldn’t have made.”

  Hank was close to grinning. “Admit it, Scarlatti, you underestimated her.”

  “Okay. I’ll admit I underestimated the sick life she leads.”

  “Beware of stereotyping, my friend. Any sign of Tyhurst yet?”

  Joe sighed. “Not a peep.”

  “He’ll show, Joe. My gut says so. I’ve got reports he’s in San Francisco.”

  “Where’s she staying?”

  “Don’t know—I’m trying to find out. Like I say, he’s a free man. He’s served his time, says he’s reformed.”

  “Maybe he has.”

  Hank didn’t comment. He didn’t need to. He would know Joe didn’t believe his own words. Eliot Tyhurst had been born an arrogant, slippery con man and would die an arrogant, slippery con man.

  “Rowena Willow put him away for a while,” Hank reminded him. “Think about that before you leave her to the bastard. Tyhurst has had three years and then some to figure out a way to pay her back.”

  Joe slid off the bar stool and started out, but double-backed for his sandwich. He muttered a goodbye to Hank.

  “Joe, where are you going?”

  “Obviously,” he ground out, “the indirect approach isn’t going to work with Ms. Weirdo Willow.”

  Hank looked worried. “What are you going to do?”

  “Try the direct approach.”

  Two

  The next morning Rowena remembered to check her street for the undercover cop. She took her tea and the three daily newspapers she received into her third-floor sunroom and arranged a bunch of pillows close to a tall window. Her hair was pinned up, but she was still in her silk bathrobe and had yet to shower and dress.

  She scanned the street even before checking the newspaper headlines.

  Nothing unusual caught her eye. There was no unidentified vehicle. No glimpse of a dark, solid male figure. Just empty, ordinary parked cars.

  Rowena acknowledged a sense of disappointment and wondered at it. What was wrong with her? She wasn’t looking for any excitement! Certainly none involving undercover policemen and criminals. She had had enough of that sort of thing three years ago with Eliot Tyhurst.

  “I wonder what kind of criminals the police are after up here,” she mused aloud to no one. Even Mega and Byte weren’t present. Her short-haired tabbies seldom ventured all the way up to the sunroom.

  What if her telephone call yesterday had prompted the police to assign someone else to the case? Someone more competent, who wouldn’t be so easily spotted by a resident?

  Someone, Rowena thought uncomfortably, who wouldn’t intrigue her as much.

  Dissatisfied with her train of thought, she jumped up and went back downstairs to her kitchen. She popped a fresh peach whole wheat scone into the microwave, her one addition since Aunt Adelaide’s day; she’d ordered it from a catalog. She put the scone on a small plate, added a small pat of butter and headed back up to the sunroom, feeling calmer.

  Down on the street, a neighbor was buckling her toddler into a car seat. A car was waiting to take her spot. The driver was an elderly man.

  Rowena situated herself among her pillows, making herself comfortable, and while the butter melted on her scone, she opened her first newspaper of the morning, the San Francisco Chronicle. Her heart stopped. Every muscle in her body tensed. She didn’t move. She had no idea how long she stared at the headline.

  Tyhurst Returns to San Francisco. In smaller headline print: Out of prison, mastermind of multimillion-dollar bank fraud say he’s reformed. She couldn’t read the article, not until her eyes could focus and her heart had resumed its normal beat. Eliot Tyhurst was out of prison. She hadn’t kept track, hadn’t known. Hadn’t wanted to know. After three years, she had finally come to the point where she didn’t think about the brilliant, handsome, scheming financial operator she had put in prison. Now he was back.

  But Tyhurst had put himself in prison. He was responsible for his actions, not she. She had only unraveled his tangled, corrupt financial system and reported her extraordinary findings to the authorities.

  Her mind flashed back to the image of the crowded courtroom when the jury had brought in the guilty verdict. The defendant, formerly one of San Francisco’s most prominent and trusted savings and loan owners, had looked at only one person: Rowena Willow. She would never forget how his blue eyes had bored through her. He hadn’t said a word. But she knew. He would never forget who had ruined his life.

  Now he was a free man.

  Reformed, he said. Rowena Willow, the brilliant financial analyst who brought Tyhurst down, the newspaper account continued, couldn’t be reached for comment about his release.

  Of course not. Her number was unlisted and if someone rang her doorbell during the day, it was unlikely that she would even hear it. Her concentration was that intense while working. A reporter would have to be intrepid to reach her, and reaching her, it seemed, hadn’t been that important. Eliot Tyhurst, she realized, was old news. His return to San Francisco merited a front-page mention only because it was a slow day.

  Well, he was bound to be released sometime, she reasoned. And San Francisco was his home. It was logical that he would return to the city. If he had indeed reformed, he had a right to return, start over, mend fences... but I don’t want anything to do with him.

  She ate her scone and finished her tea, then had another look out at her street.

  Nothing.

  Was it possible Hank Ryan had ordered her house watched in the aftermath of Tyhurst’s release from prison?

  It was. The police had put her through to Ryan when she had called in her warning about the undercover policeman on her street.

  Was he worried about her? About any intentions Tyhurst might have toward her?

  “No,” she said aloud, firmly, reining in her increasingly wild thoughts. “He would have had to tell me.”

  Surely that was true. She reminded herself that her undercover cop was nowhere to be seen this morning.

  She calmed down. Eliot Tyhurst was a footnote in America’s financial history; he had served his prison sentence. The police wouldn’t—couldn’t—spend the time and money worrying about him, about whether he would come after the woman who had put him in jail and cost him millions. They were yesterday’s news.

  Well, she thought, that would teach her to jump to conclusions based on nothing more than “gut feeling.” She had learned the hard way to rely on logic, experience, facts—to always remain in control of her feelings.

  Even feelings that insisted against all logic and fact— as hers did now, again—that she had not seen the last of her undercover cop.

  * * *

  Joe could hear the doorbell to Rowena Willow’s mausoleum of a house groan and echo, probably reaching every corner of the bizarre stone building. Hank was right, it looked like a minicastle. The facade was sto
ne, the windows heavily paned and leaded and draped, the door something for a bunch of knights with a battering ram. Weird stuff. He half expected Lurch to open up.

  But no one did.

  He rang twice more. Rowena Willow, the recluse, had to be home. Where the hell else would she be?

  When there was still no response, he pounded on the solid door with his fist in case she just couldn’t hear her booming doorbell. At least she would know he meant business.

  Not that he gave a damn about Rowena Willow or even, really, this job Hank had put him on. It just bugged him that a dingbat like her had spotted him. As Hank had guessed, his pride was wounded. But if his old cop-friend thought that meant Joe was back in the game, he was wrong.

  Not a sound came from the castle.

  “Hell,” Joe muttered through gritted teeth, wondering why he was even bothering. Why not just go on back to Mario’s for a beer and burritos?

  He went out to the wide sidewalk and glared up at the three-story building, looking for a cracked window, a moving shadow, anything that hinted where she might be. Then he could throw a rock or something and get her attention.

  “Hey,” he yelled, “anybody home?”

  As if Rowena Willow would be anywhere else.

  Still nothing.

  Joe exhaled in disgust and went back to the massive front door and rang the bell three times in succession, not waiting between rings. He was considering tear gas through a second-floor window when he heard what sounded like someone pounding down a flight of stairs.

  He peeked into a narrow side window.

  There was a whirling flash of blue, the clicking of locks being thrown free, then the creak of the door as it was drawn open.

  Rowena Willow—he assumed it was her—stood before him, breathing hard. She was a hundred times prettier and a thousand times sexier than Joe in four days’ watching her had expected.

  He was stunned.

  He didn’t like being stunned. It reduced his sense of control over himself. Even as Rowena Willow’s gorgeous, wild, smart blue eyes narrowed on him, he could feel himself putting up mental barriers around himself.