“You never know what you might need,” Mendoza said. “Sometimes you just want to blend in.”
“I have a hard time believing you ever blend in.”
His mouth curved as he took a right at the next corner and headed for the interstate. “Are you flirting with me, Mrs. Kelly?”
“Just pointing out the obvious,” I told him, grateful for the darkness inside the cab since it covered the color that had flooded my cheeks. The curse of a natural redhead: we blush easily.
And then I compounded my idiocy by adding, “I thought it might be your personal car. I’ve been wondering what you drive, when you’re not in that little gray sedan.”
He gave me a look. “Maybe I bike to work.”
Maybe he did. I tried to picture it, and failed. “Ducati? Or Schwinn?” Neither squared well with the Armani suits and Italian leather shoes.
He chuckled. “Neither. I’m just messing with you. I have a kid. Can’t take him places on a Ducati or a Schwinn.”
True. “Do you see him often?”
“As often as I can,” Mendoza said, speeding up as he hit the entrance ramp to the interstate. “The job makes it harder. Like yesterday morning. He had a game, and I couldn’t be there, because Harold got shot.”
“How often does that happen?”
“More than I want it to,” Mendoza said, keeping an eye on the mirrors as he merged with traffic going north. “But catching the people who kill other people is my job, so there’s not much I can do about it.”
No. Not unless he wanted another job, and he obviously didn’t, since it wasn’t that long ago that I had suggested that, and he had looked at me like I was an alien.
“Lola and I share custody,” Mendoza added, “but Elias lives with her and Mitch. I don’t want him to feel like he doesn’t have a real home, so he stays with me as much as he wants—I have an extra bedroom, and Lola’s good about letting him come—but he lives with her and visits me.”
“That’s nice.” That he was putting his son’s needs above his own. “I’m sure you would like to have him with you more of the time.”
“All the time,” Mendoza nodded, “but the job makes it hard. And I want him to feel secure, not like he has to move from one home to the other every other week. That’s no way for a kid to grow up.”
“As long as he knows that you love him, and that he’s always welcome, I’m sure that’s fine,” I said.
We sat in silence a minute as he navigated north toward Nashville. The WSM radio tower appeared and then disappeared on our right.
“Heidi said Cressida spent the summer with Harold for the first time this year.”
That might have been the reason Tara left Knoxville, actually. The neighbor had said she sold the house and left in the summer. She had installed Cressie with Harold in Somerset, and then she had found herself a place to stay in Nashville so she’d be nearby in case Cressida needed her.
“That must have been tough,” Mendoza said. “For all of them.”
Oh, most definitely. Introducing children to the new wife is never easy, and in this case, Cressida might have believed Harold guilty of her mother’s murder, too.
“David had Kenny and Krystal when I met him,” I said. “It was always awkward when they came to visit. They hated me, and they didn’t like David much, either.”
And David hadn’t pushed for joint custody. He’d been perfectly happy to leave his kids with Sandra, and to have me, and the house, to himself.
Much like Mendoza, although Mendoza hadn’t replaced Lola with a new, younger wife.
“Elias likes Mitch just fine,” Mendoza said. “And he knows I’m the reason his mommy and daddy aren’t together anymore.”
My eyes widened. “Did your wife tell him that you cheated on her?” Would a five-year-old understand what that meant?
“Not in those terms,” Mendoza said. “But she’s managed to get the point across. Mommy’s married to Mitch now because Daddy didn’t want to be married anymore.”
“Jeez.”
He nodded, but said, “It’s my own fault. I did it to myself.”
“Why did you?” I heard my own words, much too late to stop them, and shook my head. “Don’t answer that. It’s none of my business.”
“It’s a fair question,” Mendoza said, and took the exit for the I-440 bypass. “Occupational hazard.”
Excuse me? “Cops cheat? More than other people?”
“I don’t know if it’s more than other people, but a lot of us do.”
He merged with traffic on I-440 without looking at me. “The opportunities are plentiful. Lots of grieving widows and badge bunnies and prostitutes trying to get out of a solicitation charge.”
My face twisted. “You slept with a prostitute?”
“No.” He shot me another look. “No, I didn’t. Nor did I seduce any grieving widows. Although I’ll admit to a few badge bunnies, but that was before I got married.”
“And badge bunnies are…?”
“Women—usually young women—who go after cops. Also known as holster sniffers.” He grinned at the look on my face.
“That’s disgusting,” I said. “And also degrading for the women for you to talk about them that way. And besides, I find it hard to believe that any woman would go after you just because of your profession. You—”
I stopped before I could wedge my foot any further into my mouth. It wasn’t quite in time, however.
“I’ll take that in the spirit I prefer to think it was meant,” Mendoza told me, with a smirk that said he knew exactly what I hadn’t said. “No cops in your past, I guess?”
I shook my head. “I married David when I was twenty-two. I’d had a couple of boyfriends before then, but none of them were cops.”
He nodded. And chuckled.
“What?” I said.
He glanced over, white teeth gleaming in the darkness. “It’s funny. You keep telling me how young I am.”
I opened my mouth to say that yes, he was young, but he continued before I had the chance. “And meanwhile, you’ve only been with three men in your entire life. You’re practically a virgin.”
“A forty-year-old virgin,” I reminded him. “And it’s not like David and I didn’t have sex.”
“I’m sure you did. But there, at least, I have more experience than you do.”
That I could believe. “You say it like it’s a good thing.”
He grinned at me. “When you’re a man, it is.”
Maybe it was. “Weird conversation,” I said, as he signaled and switched lanes into the far right, to exit at West End Avenue.
“You started it.”
“Well, now I’m stopping it.”
The corner of his mouth closest to me turned up. “Does talking about your sex life make you uncomfortable, Mrs. Kelly?”
“Talking about my sex life with you makes me uncomfortable,” I said.
“So what do you want to talk about instead? We have another ten minutes of driving before we get there.”
Crime. Crime sounded like a safe topic. “Did you discover anything interesting today?
“You mean, did I discover who shot Harold? No. If I had, I wouldn’t be here. Neither would you.”
“Are you any closer? Have you eliminated anyone? Discovered anyone else with a motive? Anything like that?”
“No sign that Harold was cheating,” Mendoza said. “Everyone I spoke to said he adored Heidi.”
Hard to believe, but OK. “She didn’t specify that that was the reason she wanted me to follow him around, so I guess he wasn’t. Did you talk to Mitch?”
He made a face. “Yes.”
“Did he know anything more than he told me on Friday?”
“He knows a lot more than he told you,” Mendoza said, zooming down West End Avenue past Montgomery Bell Academy in the stillness of the night. “But not about this. As far as Harold goes, Harold hired him because he was being followed. He wanted Mitch to figure out who was following him. Mitch found you.
”
“So just what we already knew.”
He nodded. “I asked him about the blonde in the yellow car, and he said he might have noticed someone like that, but he’d thought you were more conspicuous.”
I probably had been. “I was there all the time, trailing Harold from place to place. Tara just showed up once in a while. It was like she knew where he was going to be ahead of time, and just went there. If she was following him from place to place, too, she was better at it than me.” And frankly, that bright yellow Beetle didn’t make for a good surveillance car. Although she might have access to another car, that she used some of the time, the way I’d been using Rachel’s.
“Maybe he and his daughter were in communication,” Mendoza said, slowing down for the traffic light outside St. Thomas Hospital, “and Cressida kept Tara updated.”
Maybe. “It’s a shame this happened, tonight. I was looking forward to talking to her.”
“Me, too,” Mendoza said grimly.
“I don’t suppose you have any idea what happened to Zachary? He was supposed to follow her home after we spoke. I haven’t heard anything from him.”
And then I realized… “Oh, my God! What if she discovered Zachary and hurt him? She had a gun! What if she shot Zachary and he’s dead somewhere and we just haven’t found him yet?”
I fumbled for my phone, and then hesitated with it in my hand.
“What?” Mendoza asked, glancing down at it. “Message?”
I shook my head. “We agreed that he shouldn’t try to let me know where he was until it was over. That way, Tara wouldn’t notice him using his phone if she saw him.”
“Then give him a bit more time,” Mendoza said. “There are cops crawling all over that area. If Zachary’s there, dead or alive, they’ll find him. But I have a lot of respect for Zachary’s ability to get the job done.”
“I just don’t want him to get hurt again,” I said.
Mendoza nodded. “But Zachary’s an adult. He can make his own decisions. If he didn’t want to do what you asked, he could have said no.”
“I’m paying him. It’s his job.”
“Then maybe you should fire him,” Mendoza said, turning onto Hillwood Boulevard, “and give up this idea of being a private investigator. Your husband left you plenty of money. You don’t have to work.”
I could feel my hackles rise, even as I acknowledged, silently, that he had a point. “I like what I do. And I’m only forty. God willing, I have half my life to go. I can’t spend the next forty years doing nothing.”
“You could,” Mendoza said. “But here’s an idea. Why don’t you marry Greg Newsome, since you had such a good time with him last night? Travel from Wyoming to Italy and back, and go on book tours with him. Make sure he eats when he gets lost in writing about crime.”
His voice held a hint of scorn when he emphasized that Greg was writing about crime. Instead of, I assumed, solving it, the way Mendoza did.
I had bigger fish to fry than that one, though. “Really? You think I should marry Greg Newsome?”
He didn’t answer, and I added, “I thought he was a suspect.”
“He is,” Mendoza said.
“Don’t you think maybe we should wait and see if he’s guilty first?”
Mendoza didn’t answer that, just kept his hands on the wheel and the truck headed down the winding, dark road toward my house.
Chapter 13
“You know,” I told him, “it was one date. I liked him, and I think he liked me—”
Unless he’s been faking, because he was sleeping with Heidi, “—but it’s too soon to talk about marrying anyone. And besides, I’m not sure I want to get married again. I spent eighteen years with David. And while they were mostly good years, at least up until he told me he was in love with Jacquie, I’m not sure I want to jump into doing it again.”
Mendoza grunted something.
“Although if I did, I guess Greg would be a good choice. Mature. Well-off.”
He didn’t say anything to that.
“It’s up ahead,” I said helpfully. “The red mailbox.”
He shot me a look. “I know where you live, Mrs. Kelly.”
“Just making sure,” I said.
He accelerated up the winding driveway, and pulled up in front of the house. Everything looked the way it should, with the light on beside the front door and inside the foyer. I reached for the door handle.
“Stay,” Mendoza said.
I glanced at him. “I’m not Edwina, Detective. You can’t tell me to sit and stay and expect me to obey you.”
Whatever mood had seemed to possess him there for a few minutes must have passed, because he grinned. “Want to bet?”
No. If he put his mind to it, he could absolutely tell me to sit and stay, and I would obey. I’d roll over and play fetch, too, if that’s what he wanted.
Naturally I didn’t say so, just gave him a stony stare in return.
He put out a hand. “Give me your keys.”
“Why?” But I dug in my purse for them.
“So I can make sure the house is safe before I let you in. I asked the officers to make sure Heidi’s house was safe. I can’t do any less for you.”
“Nobody’s trying to kill me,” I said, as I handed the key over.
“I wouldn’t be too sure.” He pushed his door open. “That shot came at you, not Heidi. Whoever was shooting may not even have known she was there. Sit here and think about that until I come back.”
He slid off the seat and slammed the door shut. I watched as he walked up on the porch and fitted the key in the lock. When he disappeared inside the lighted foyer, I let out a breath I wasn’t aware I’d been holding.
Was it me, or had that been a really weird conversation, on a lot of different levels?
Granted, I probably shouldn’t have started it. He was right about that. It wasn’t any of my business what had happened in Mendoza’s marriage or how many women he’d slept with or how his relationship was with his kid. His life was none of my business. We had a professional relationship, and that was all. With maybe a little bit of mutual appreciation, since we’d solved two murders together by now. And of course I was attracted to him. Anyone would be. But he was thirty-three. Off-limits.
So what I should do, instead of sitting here and obsessing over the conversation and Mendoza’s age, was do what he’d told me to do, and think about the fact that someone had tried to kill me earlier.
And he was right about that, too. If it had been Tara up there on the hill, she couldn’t have known that Heidi was in the car with me. She wouldn’t have had any reason to think that Heidi was driving the SUV, and the first shot had come when the door—the driver’s side door—of the SUV had opened. Whoever was up there, pulling the trigger, was shooting at the driver.
At me.
And it had to be Tara. No one else knew I was going to be there.
Except Zachary, of course. And Heidi. And anyone she might have told. Like Gwendolyn and Jacquie.
It obviously hadn’t been Heidi. Not only did she not have any reason to want me dead, she’d been sitting next to me. And try as I might, I had a very hard time picturing Gwendolyn Oliver or Jacquie Demetros crawling around on top of the hill with a rifle.
Not that Jacquie wouldn’t be happy to see me dead. But at this point, my death wouldn’t give her David’s money, so I was pretty sure she wouldn’t take the trouble of killing me. Not enough in it for her.
And that went for Gwendolyn, too. As far as I knew, Gwendolyn didn’t even dislike me. At least Jacquie had that going for her. As far as motive for murdering me went, I mean.
That only left Tara, unless Heidi had told someone else where we were going. I should ask her whether she had.
I fished my phone out of my purse, gave it a dissatisfied look—Zachary still hadn’t called or texted—and dialed Heidi.
“Gina!” She picked up on the first ring.
“Are you home and safe?”
Sh
e said she was. “The police went through the house and there’s no one here. What about you?”
“I’m sitting outside,” I said, “waiting for the all-clear.”
There was a beat, but she didn’t ask whether Mendoza had driven me home or not. Maybe she didn’t care. Or maybe the question hadn’t occurred to her. Maybe Mendoza loomed larger in my mind than in hers. “I wanted to ask you something,” I said. “After I left your house this afternoon, did you tell anyone what we were doing tonight?”
She didn’t respond, and I decided to be more specific, “That we were going to meet Tara and when and where?”
“Gwendolyn and Jacquie,” Heidi said.
“Anyone else?”
“No,” Heidi said. “Why?”
“I’m just trying to figure out who knew that we were going to be there. Whoever shot at us was lying in wait, so it was someone who knew we were coming. They were there before us. And only a few people knew.”
“It had to be Carly’s sister,” Heidi said. “Who else had a reason to want me dead?”
I opened my mouth to tell her that nobody wanted her dead, that the shot had been aimed at me, but I closed it again. “So you didn’t tell anyone but Gwendolyn and Jacquie. Not Greg, or—I don’t know—Harold’s mother?”
“Harold’s mother is almost eighty,” Heidi said. “She wouldn’t drive up to the top of a hill and shoot at me. She doesn’t like me very much, but she wouldn’t shoot me.”
And she had no reason to shoot me, since I was trying to figure out who had killed her son.
“I appreciate it,” I told Heidi. “I’ll check in with you tomorrow. Let me know if there’s anything you need in the meantime.”
She told me she would, and I hung up, just as my front door opened and Mendoza appeared, Edwina at his heels. I reached for my door, and he shook his head as he walked toward me. I made a face, but I stayed in the car until he’d made his way to the truck and opened my door. “I’ll cover you.”
“I would prefer for you not to get shot either, you know,” I told him as I slid out of the seat and onto the ground.
Haunting Harold Page 14