by Don Travis
I’m certain my eyebrows showed surprise. “When arson is involved, either AFD or the insurance company seals the site until the investigation’s complete.”
“They did, but they released it… according to Roy anyway.”
“Anyone staying there now?”
“Pierce’s daughter drove over from Grants and plans on staying there temporarily. Why?”
“How’s Roy going to explain our presence?”
Paul brightened. “We’re APD consultants.”
“So I can bill the department?”
“I wouldn’t carry it that far.”
I grabbed my digital recorder and fixed it to my belt before joining him. We walked down the back stairwell and exited the building to recover my Impala for the ride. From long habit the car practically drove itself to Post Oak Drive NW but wanted to proceed home instead of parking in front of 4818. Roy was already there, waiting in his departmental Ford. And he’d been right. The house was now occupied.
The woman who answered the door introduced herself as Melanie Belhaven Harper. She was pretty enough in the face but a bit dumpy, with the hausfrau look about her. She welcomed us graciously and invited us inside.
“Your people”—she indicated Roy—“have already been through everything, but you’re welcome to search all you want. My brother and I were going over my father’s will in his office, but I suspect you’ll want to look in there. We’ll move to the dining room table.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Roy said, “but would you mind if we take a look at the will?”
“I don’t see why not. It’ll all be a matter of public record soon.”
“Did your husband come with you?” I asked.
“He’s in the middle of overseeing renovations to the El Malpais Visitor Center, so I suggested he remain behind. He’s with the Bureau of Land Management,” she added. “He and my father were not close.”
As soon as Harrison Belhaven rose from the desk in his father’s office, I realized I’d met him a couple of times in social settings but knew him as Harris. I pegged him as a year or so younger than my thirty-nine years and put his sister at a couple of years younger. There was nothing elegant about the man. His most distinguishing characteristic was a palpable anger riding his wiry frame. It settled in his brown eyes, rendering him dangerously sensual.
“BJ,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“He’s consulting with us on your father’s death,” Roy said.
I indicated my companion. “This is Paul Barton, who works with me.”
After everyone shook hands, Harris swept up the documents he’d been studying and prepared to vacate the office.
“Just a minute,” his sister said. “They’d like to look at the will. And I see no harm in that.”
Harris looked momentarily undecided. “Yeah, sure.”
Melanie handed over the will. “We’ll be in the den when you’re finished.”
“Hmm, no lawyer mediating the settlement of Pierce’s estate,” Paul noted when they were gone.
“There’s probably one named as trustee. But this looks like an amicable disposition of assets.”
“Not what I heard,” he said. “I figured Pierce cut Harrison out of the will.”
“Let’s see for ourselves.”
John Pierce Belhaven had not cut off his son despite the rift between them. His will was simple. He bequeathed the princely sum of $250,000 each to Sarah Thackerson and Spencer Spears. After a few other minor bequests, the remainder of the estate was split equally between his son and daughter, Harrison Belhaven and Melanie Harper.
“Remind me. Who are Thackerson and Spears?” I asked.
“His girlfriend,” Paul said.
“And his boyfriend,” Roy added.
“Whoa. A bimbo and a bimbob? How old was this guy when he died?”
“Sixty,” the detective answered.
“And he had a girlfriend and a boyfriend? I’d like to have met the guy.”
Paul grinned. “You wouldn’t have learned a thing. I knew about the girlfriend but didn’t know Spence did anything but trim the bushes and mow the lawn. Actually Pierce was sorta wimpy.”
“Still waters run deep,” Roy observed.
“You sure about the boyfriend part?” Paul asked.
Roy shrugged. “The kid admitted it to me. And Belhaven’s last will and testament backs him up.”
“I’d say so. He bequeathed his two love objects a sum certain and split the remainder between his progeny. So Thackerson and Spears get theirs, and the other two get whatever’s left… if anything.”
Roy rubbed an eye. “Like I said, I haven’t seen the financials yet, but my guess is his heirs’ll do all right. Belhaven was supposed to be loaded up with Voxlightner family money. And his wife had more of it than he did. The two kids are already blessed with trusts from her death.”
Roy delivered the will to the Belhaven offspring while Paul and I continued to nose around in the office. When the detective returned from the den, Paul pitched in to help with the search. He took on the filing cabinet while Roy worked on the desk. I poked around in Belhaven’s appointment book. I often found such books a productive place to start. After we finished we all took chairs facing one another.
“No computer. I assume it’s already down at forensics,” I said.
“Yeah, for what it’s worth. Somebody smashed the hard drive.”
“Paul, was Belhaven a cyber man or a pen-and-ink guy?”
“From what I saw at SWW meetings, he did both. I heard him making notes to himself on his iPhone and saw him writing things on a pad.”
I turned to Roy. “The phone?”
“Also down at the lab.”
“Do you see his notebook anywhere?” I asked Paul.
“Nope. And I was keeping an eye out for it.”
“So the killer removed everything relating to the book Belhaven was working on.”
“And I understand it was a whopper of a file. Pierce was big on research.” Paul looked thoughtful for a moment. “But I think Sarah did most of it for him.”
“His girlfriend?” I asked.
He nodded. “She was also his typist and researcher.”
I looked at Roy. “You’ve interviewed her?”
“Sure. Needed to find out where she was and everything, but….”
“But you didn’t ask her about any research on the new book.”
“Guess not.”
“We’ll have to plug that hole. Roy, see if she’ll meet us here tomorrow morning.”
“Here?”
“So familiar things will be handy while she’s remembering. Now let’s go see the crime scene.”
Like many cops and ex-cops, I have a near-mystical belief in walking the scene of the actual crime, usually more than once. We trooped to the garage. The origin point of the fire was near the water heater. A scorched lawn mower occupied the center of the violent scene. There wasn’t much physical damage to the rest of the garage, probably because an alert neighbor returning home spotted the glow of the fire. An AFD unit from merely blocks away doused the flames in short order. The garage rafters were lightly charred but remained essentially intact. Had the conflagration pierced the fire-resistant tile over the garage, the flames would have spread quickly through the ceilings and consumed the house. But quick action prevented that.
What the crime scene screamed at me was murder. Someone rendered Pierce Belhaven dead from a blow to the head and cleaned out his research on the new book before dousing him with gasoline, throwing matches on him, and escaping through the side door.
Belhaven’s next-door neighbor invited us in and seemed to relish telling of seeing a curious orange glow reflect off the fence and investigating to find a fire in his neighbor’s garage. He immediately called in an alarm and then beat on the front door trying to rouse someone. Of course, no one remained in the house to be roused. Belhaven lay dead at the center of the mini-inferno. As was becoming the pattern, Roy left most of the
questioning to me. I took it that both he and Paul were going to school on my technique.
We called it quits for the day after concluding the interview, but I insisted the appointment book I’d reviewed in Belhaven’s office needed to be entered into evidence.
When we arrived home, I put my finger in the top of Paul’s tank top and pulled it down, exposing the tiny black dragon occupying his left pec. “The little guy looks restless.”
“Oh yeah. But right now he’s hungry. After a feeding he’ll be raring to go.”
Once fed, Pedro prowled for an hour, steaming up our bedroom so much I was afraid one of our neighbors would call the fire department.
Chapter 3
THE NEXT morning we returned to the Belhaven house to meet Sarah Thackerson. Sarah looked like what she was, an older-than-average college student who also did secretarial and research work. What she did not look like was the main squeeze of an aging author. At five four she had curves where they were supposed to be and was cute but too mousy. I suspected this was by design. By primping a little, she could probably be quite fetching. Why hide her candle under a basket? To camouflage her real relationship with Belhaven, perhaps.
She regarded Roy, Paul, and me through wary brown eyes while seated at her own desk in the Belhaven home office. “Yes, I did research on the new book,” she answered Roy’s initial question. “Quite a lot of it actually.”
I eased into my interrogation with something simple. “Had Mr. Belhaven selected a title for the work?”
“He’d settled on Voxlightner Metals as a working title. The title he’d publish under hadn’t been determined, and it probably wouldn’t have ‘Voxlightner’ in it. He was a member of the family, you know.”
“How so?”
“Pierce’s mother was one of old Mr. Marshall Voxlightner’s sisters.”
“So he was a nephew of the oilman.”
She nodded. “Mr. Belhaven’s deceased wife, Esther, was a Voxlightner as well. Although I understand it was a different branch. Esther had money in her own right and left it in trust for Harrison and Melanie.”
Curious. Sarah volunteering such information almost seemed like trivializing her own $250,000 inheritance. I picked up on it.
“I understand you benefit from Mr. Belhaven’s will. You and a groundskeeper named Spencer Spears.”
She flushed slightly and studied the spot where her wrecked computer had once stood. “That’s true. Pierce…. Mr. Belhaven believed in rewarding loyalty. I saw him through two of the first three books he wrote.” She glanced up at me defiantly. “And they were better books for it too. I-I did research on those and made a few suggestions….” She ran out of steam—and defiance.
“Do you know what sparked Mr. Belhaven’s interest in writing about a family scandal?” I asked.
“He wanted to correct the perception the Voxlightners were responsible for what happened.”
“He didn’t believe his cousin Barron perpetrated fraud upon the investors?” I asked.
“Definitely not.”
“How did he explain Barron’s disappearance?”
“He didn’t, but he was working on a theory.”
I leaned forward to see if invading her space bothered her. It didn’t. “Which was?”
“Someone else was the culprit. He was certain Dr. Stabler was involved.”
“That’s the engineer who disappeared along with Barron?” Paul prompted.
“Yes. But Pierce maintained they didn’t disappear together. He always thought his cousin was disposed of some way.”
I noticed she gave up the pretense of calling her employer Mr. Belhaven. “Disposed of? You mean killed?”
Sarah nodded without comment.
“Barron had no family of his own?” I pressed.
“He was married briefly when he was younger but divorced. No children.”
“You’ve told me what motivated Belhaven’s interest in the book, but you haven’t indicated what caused him to pick it up at this precise time.”
“He wasn’t very forthcoming. I know it was something he’d chanced upon while he was a New Mexico Power and Light Company executive.”
“He was retired, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. Just recently. But it was something he remembered that had relevance for him when he started looking into the scandal.”
“What was it?” I asked.
She frowned, uncertainty stamping her features. “He never told me. He said it was the key to everything, and to share it would be dangerous.”
Roy straightened in his chair. “Any idea what it was? Any clue? Any thoughts?”
She shook her head, dislodging some of her tightly pinned hair and making her more attractive. “Not really. I got the feeling it had something to do with some meter readings he saw some time ago.”
“Meter readings?” Roy asked. “You mean like electrical meter readings? How could readings be relevant?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea.”
Something tugged at my memory. “Roy, I need another look at Belhaven’s appointment book.”
“No problem. The crime scene lab should be finished with it by now. I’ll drop it by your office. You onto something?”
“I remember seeing a notation but can’t quite get a fix on it.”
For the next hour, Sarah Thackerson searched her memory and shared what research on Belhaven’s new book she could recall. It fleshed out some of the bits and pieces, including the fact Belhaven had discovered Dr. Stabler was involved in a scam years before the Voxlightner thing. Following the collapse of VPMR, half a dozen civil suits were filed, but the two targets of these procedures were missing and widely believed to have absconded with most of the company’s funds. At least two other deaths had been attributed to the brouhaha besides Everett Kent’s, one from a heart attack and the second from suicide. Both were stockholders heavily invested in the corporation.
According to Sarah, she was on her way back from a visit to her family in Bisbee, Arizona on the day Belhaven died. She’d started later than anticipated and stopped in Las Cruces for the night, arriving in Albuquerque around noon on Thursday morning. She drove straight to her apartment in the Northeast Heights, where she learned of her boss’s death from a voicemail message left by Spencer Spears. I didn’t ask why he didn’t reach her by cell. Roy had indicated earlier they weren’t on good terms.
Not much of this was new. Roy had already confirmed her visit to her parents’ home and an overnight stay in Cruces. The drive to Bisbee was something over 400 miles, so this sounded reasonable.
We were more or less finished questioning Sarah when a sound caught my ear. A lawn mower purred, pulling my glance to the window. Beyond the glass panes, a broad backyard looked better than it should have. New Mexico’s vaunted monsoon season hadn’t kicked in yet and, in any case, was predicted to be a bust this season. That was not good news for the driest year on record to date.
Belhaven’s secretary and researcher returned to her work as the three of us went outside to confront a hard-bodied young man with a small birthmark. Already handsome, the strawberry imperfection on his left cheek rendered him sensual as well. Here was the lawn boy, except Spencer Spears was no boy. He was a man in his midtwenties… and knew it. Masculine grace rippled across his shoulders as he cut the motor, ran a hand through thick hair as dark as roasted coffee beans, and regarded us warily.
“Spencer Spears?” I asked.
He nodded. “That’s me.”
“Yard and garden look great.”
“You the water police?” He referred to water restrictions imposed by the city fathers for the duration of the drought. I shook my head and smiled at his joke. He continued. “I got pretty good at irrigating. Figured out the best time for it and exactly how long to leave the sprinklers on without violating the mayor’s ration.”
I introduced us and fixed on the lawn mower. “The mower looks new. Where’d you get it?”
“Bought it at Lowe’s this morning. I usuall
y cut the lawn on Thursdays, but Pierce’s…. Mr. Belhaven’s services are tomorrow. So I came in today.”
“Admirable. But who’s going to reimburse you for the lawn mower and pay you for your time?”
“If Harris or Melanie don’t, then I’ll eat it. But the place has to be kept up in case they want to sell it.” He frowned to himself and seemed to be reasoning things out in his own mind. “Melanie probably won’t move in. She and her husband live in Grants. But Harris might if he can get over being pissed at his dad.”
“Why was he on the outs with his father?”
“You’ll have to ask him. All I can tell you is I never saw Harris at the house until today. Not even for Mr. B.’s sixtieth birthday party a couple of months ago.”
Roy Guerra spoke up. “Was he hostile to his dad?”
Spencer screwed up his left eye in a thoughtful way. “Oh, I see. Hostile, as in setting the old man on fire, you mean. Nothing like that. He just gave his dad a good letting alone.”
“How long has the rift been going on?” Paul wanted to know.
“All I can tell you is I’ve worked here for five years, so it’s older than that. Like I said, I never saw Harris in this house until his father’s accident.”
I ignored the reference to an accident. “What are your responsibilities here?”
He looked around the large backyard. “Everything outside the house is mine. I landscape, mow, mulch, fertilize, and trim. I also repair things inside the house. Electrical, mechanical, masonry, that kind of thing. I’m pretty handy.”
“Do you live on the premises?” Roy asked.
Spencer shook his head, setting dark curls to dancing. “Nope. Have my own pad. But there’s a room in a little building out back where I sometimes rest my head when something keeps me here late. My place is down by CNM. Just off Morris on Lagrima.”
“Is this your sole place of employment?” I asked.
“Mostly. I go to school there. Central New Mexico, that is. I’ve got the GI Bill, but Mr. B.’s gig—plus a few other customers—keep me solvent.”
“What branch were you in?”
“Army. Rangers,” Spence said.
“How long did you serve?”