The Voxlightner Scandal

by Don Travis

  “You could tell she was a beginner. She wasn’t comfortable with a weapon. She handled a little .25 like it might bite her. I noticed one thing. Her first shot was usually reasonably accurate, but after that, they went all over hell and gone. Like she steeled herself for the first one but then became unhinged. You see that sometimes in new shooters.”

  A sudden anger heated the back of my neck as I thought of our ambusher in the backyard. The first shot drilled the windowpane where Paul was standing before I pushed him out of the way. We couldn’t even find where the other two shots ended up. And if this was her pattern with a peashooter, it would probably be even more so with the heavier .38. I tamped down my emotions. This required professional work, not personal reactions. But I now viewed her through different eyes.

  MY MISSION became making life as miserable as possible for Sarah Thackerson. Tim and Alan double-teamed her. I wanted Sarah to know she was under the microscope, but one watcher was always within easy eyesight, the other less obvious. We recruited two more retired cops to watch the front and back doors to her apartment house during the night. I occasionally appeared on her horizon as an added irritant.

  This went on for seven straight days as she did her holiday shopping and met with a few friends. Any confidential investigator must have three characteristics. He must be at least slightly paranoid—that’s how he remained healthy—and he must be persistent and patient. I prided myself on having all three, but this wasn’t moving fast enough to satisfy me, so I went to see Spence. I found him at the Belhaven place. He did not look happy to see me.

  “Hell of a Christmas present, having you show up on my doorstep.” He couldn’t quite hide the irritation lacing the quip. “Lawyer, remember?”

  “Do you have one yet?”

  “Not yet, but I can get one in a hurry.”

  I switched on him. “Only two more shopping days left. Are you ready?”

  “Doesn’t take much for me to be ready.”

  Now came my shot in the dark. “Spence, something’s bothering me. So I wanted to check it with you. Okay?”

  “Shoot… figuratively speaking, that is.”

  “Both you and Sarah claim you despise one another, but our surveillance showed you paid her a few visits in the middle of the night. What gives?”

  A frown tried to blot his features, but he retained control. “Don’t know what you mean.”

  “My operatives said you visited her at least once.”

  “Then they’re scamming you. Maybe you need to pay the help better and get reliable information.”

  “They’re two of the best,” I said. My fabrication wasn’t producing much of a reaction. Then I had a thought. “Ah, I see the source of our problem. You didn’t know I set them on you before I put them on Rocky. They’d been watching you for a few weeks before that.”

  He thought for a minute, giving the pruning shears he held a click or two. “Love-hate thing, I guess.”

  “Unless you were lying to us about your feelings.”

  “Nah, she’s a bitch. But Rocky arranged it.”

  “How?”

  He shrugged and tossed the shears on top of the cuttings in the barrow. “Said I oughta give it a try. She was pretty good in bed.”

  “But—”

  “But how do you climb in bed with someone you won’t even talk to? Rocky again. He told me to show up one night, and she’d open the door to me. I did, and she did. End of story.” He sniffed. “She wasn’t as great as he claimed. But okay, I guess.”

  “Why would Rocky do that?”

  “You have to ask him—” His breath caught in his throat. “I still can’t believe he’s gone. But I guess he is. So I don’t have an answer except he shared damned near everything with me.”

  I studied the handsome man in front of me for a moment. “You tell a nice story, Spence. But there’s one problem. The time I’m talking about was before Rocky was on the scene.”

  His face fell. He pivoted on his heel and muttered, “Lawyer,” as he walked behind the house.

  I left the conversation mentally shaking my head. Two macho ex-military men sharing drinks and friends and stories, I got. Sharing a woman while they got it on with one another? No way, unless they did it together in the same bed. But maybe I shouldn’t have clued Spence I knew he’d lied to me.

  When I told Roy and Paul about my interview, Roy was all for picking up the two of them for a session down at APD. I discouraged it.

  “I’d rather keep up the pressure,” I said.

  “Hauling them down to the station is pretty good pressure.”

  “I want them free to do whatever they’re going to do. Make a break for it, walk into the station and confess… whatever.”

  THAT AFTERNOON Sarah cracked. As I later read in my operatives’ report, she was shopping in Macy’s with Tim hard on her heels when she suddenly whirled, sprayed him with Mace, and yelled “pickpocket.” It took Tim a good ten minutes to wash out his eyes and convince the security personnel he was a private investigator on the job. By that time Sarah had disappeared.

  But Sarah didn’t know Alan was watching from a distance and followed her out of the store. Remaining as invisible as possible, he trailed her from Coronado Center straight to a house in the North Valley where Spencer Spears was working. According to the report, they didn’t greet as foes. She collapsed into his arms.

  Maybe I didn’t owe Spencer Spears an apology after all.

  Chapter 31

  ARMED WITH the report from Tim and Alan detailing their surveillance of Sarah Thackerson, Gene agreed to haul both her and Rocky down to APD for a grilling. Paul and I watched the monitors in the communications room with Gene as Roy Guerra went at first the one and then the other. Spence handled himself well, although before the interview was over, he grew a bit sullen.

  Sarah was tough, but she had been under the microscope for over a week and was showing the effects. She probably realized by now the ploy in Macy’s with Tim was a mistake as it effectively tied her to Spencer Spears. Nonetheless she managed to hold her own. Neither of them asked for an attorney.

  After several hours they were released and departed separately. I caught Spence as he was leaving the building.

  “Thanks for wasting my day,” he said, not bothering to hide his anger.

  “Spence, this was only a prelude. We’re going to waste a lot more of your time before long. Your girlfriend made a bad mistake leading us to you. You know she’s going to fold, don’t you?”

  He mustered what passed for a grin. “Don’t bet on it.”

  “I can interpret that a couple of ways. Let me just say she better remain in good health. At least for the foreseeable future.”

  He merely looked at me for a long moment before turning and tripping down the steps. I watched him out of sight before joining Paul and Roy in Gene’s office.

  “I got bupkus, boss,” Roy said, looking like he had been through the wringer. Being a bad-ass interviewer wasn’t always easy.

  Before Gene could respond, the phone on his desk rang. He answered and handed the receiver to Roy. Most of the conversation occurred on the other end of the line. He grunted a couple of times before handing the receiver back to Gene, who cradled it.

  “That was Tibedeau of Tri State Insurance giving us a heads-up. They’re paying the Belhaven insurance policies.”

  “Really?” Paul asked. “Aren’t beneficiaries considered suspects?”

  “Yes,” I acknowledged, “but there are four policies in this case. That means there are four attorneys threatening to sue the insurance company because of an unjustified delay. It’s not surprising the company folded.” I slapped my forehead with a palm. “That’s what they’re waiting for. Once they get their hands on the insurance money, they’ll take a powder.”

  “Someplace that’s got no extradition,” Roy added. “We need to arrest them.”

  Gene shook his head. “For what? We’ve got no proof they killed Belhaven. Or Lodeen, for that matter.”<
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  “We’ve got to push them. Sarah’s already weakening,” Paul said.

  BY FRIDAY I could no longer delay my Christmas shopping. I have no idea why I procrastinated each year, but I did, even though my gift-exchanging circle was small. I was actually ahead of schedule by a few hours. For the last two years, Christmas Eve had found me in the stores, and that wasn’t until tomorrow night. I picked out a silver tea set and delicate porcelain cups I knew Hazel was hoping to catch on sale. A new fishing rod for Charlie, gift certificates for the other guys on staff and Gene’s clan, and potted African violets for my neighbor, Mrs. Wardlow, to transplant into her backyard flower garden.

  For Paul—and me—I got matching friendship rings, simple golden circlets with the Zia sun symbol engraved on them and filled with white gold. They could easily have been mistaken for wedding rings, and that’s the way I would treat them, although I was old-fashioned enough to remain uncertain about formal vows. I was up-front with the world, never denying my homosexuality but never volunteering it either. And here I was hung up on an outdated attitude toward marrying the man I considered my natural mate. Why are we humans so damned complicated?

  Between Vinson and Weeks, Confidential Investigations and the Albuquerque Police Department, we ruined Christmas for Spencer Spears and Sarah Thackerson. Roy made a point of hauling them down to APD separately on Christmas Day, despite the fact it was both a major holiday and a Sunday. By then both Spence and Sarah were yelling “lawyer” and threatening to sue for harassment. Even so we intended to ruin their New Year’s celebration as well. But time was getting short. Roy confirmed with Tri State the insurance checks were already cut and mailed.

  Monday morning I fielded a call from Dorothy Voxlightner and reassured her we were making progress in identifying Belhaven’s killer. I didn’t go into details. Thereafter the day turned slow, and then insufferable, when Hazel decided it was time to do administrative things like go over the ledger books, sign a couple of contracts, and la-di-da. My eyes crossed before I escaped the office and ran for home. By then it was my usual quitting time… if such a thing even existed.

  The weather had turned over the holiday and dumped a couple of inches of snow on the Albuquerque landscape. By now most of the white stuff had disappeared, leaving muddy places and icy patches. Black ice was sometimes a problem, so as I approached a spot where a gigantic cottonwood forced the road to jiggle right and shielded the asphalt from sunlight, I slowed the car and pulled the wheel to the left to avoid a sheet of ice covering the right side of the road.

  My windshield starred and cracked, clouding my view. It took a second to realize someone was shooting at me. But when I did, I hit my seat-belt release, flopped over into the passenger’s seat, and took my foot off the brake. As the car idled forward out of control, more shots rang out. Two more holes appeared in the shattered safety glass. The Impala bumped into something solid and stopped.

  Hardly daring to breathe, I pulled the Ruger .57 Magnum from my belt and twisted over on my back. Those had been rifle shots. The shooter was Spence, a marksman, not Sarah, an amateur. Would he retreat or press his advantage? He likely didn’t know if he’d hit me or not, but from the way the car meandered into the tree, he might suspect so. Sunlight dancing through the big cottonwood’s leaves was distracting, almost stupefying. But that same sunlight saved me. I caught a shadow. He was approaching from the driver’s side. A moment later he stood framed in the window, his rifle at the ready. He was obviously having trouble seeing through the window because of the dancing sunbeams, but I had no trouble seeing at all. I lifted the Ruger and pulled the trigger.

  I wiggled out of the passenger’s side door and slid out of the car onto all fours in the icy mud. Spence had disappeared when my shot shattered the window, but I had no idea if I’d hit him or if he’d ducked. I lowered myself to the cold ground and looked under the car and found my answer. Spence lay sprawled on his back. Before I could move, footsteps raced toward the Impala, and Sarah dropped to her knees to embrace her lover, crying his name over and over again. Her tone morphed from grief to rage. She snatched a little pistol from her coat pocket and got to her feet. Her footsteps brought her to the side of the car.

  “Where are you, you murderer!” she screeched. Her voice died away leaving only the silence of this semirural stretch of land. A crow cawed from the tree umbrellaing us.

  The woman was clearly enraged because their effort at murder resulted in Spence’s death. She wasn’t accurate with the pistol she held in her hand, except—as the rangemaster said—with her first shot. There was a hard way and an easy way to handle this. I took the easy way and shot her in the left foot.

  Epilogue

  AS WE drove to Voxlightner Castle to report to our client, I asked Paul if he’d found a market for the piece he was writing on the case.

  “Three of them, actually,” he said. Gonna hit Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine with one approach, Suspense with another, and the London Mystery Magazine with a third. I’ve got feelers out already. But there’s one thing I’ve gotta clear up.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why did Spencer Spears confide to you that Rocky bought a handgun for Sarah? That pointed a finger right at his girlfriend.”

  “We’ll never know for sure, but this is the way I have it figured. Spence knew we thought Rocky might be Belhaven’s killer. But Rocky had no motive except for money. Who was the only person to give Rocky money? Spence was. I think it was deliberately done to confuse the issue and take our focus off him.”

  “Confuse matters until the insurance company paid, you mean,” Paul said.

  “Exactly. And perhaps to give himself an out if things went wrong.”

  “At the expense of his girlfriend. What’s that they say? There’s no honor among thieves… or killers either, I guess.”

  DOROTHY VOXLIGHTNER answered the door herself. I’d called earlier to let her know Paul and I would be over with our final report. Gracious—as usual—she invited us into the parlor where her daughter, Lucinda Caulkins, stood beside a coffee table holding a splendid sterling tea set, the demitasse cups beside it on the tray very similar to my mother’s bone china.

  After polite acknowledgments were made and cups poured, we took a moment to savor Dorothy’s excellent brew. I did not recognize the leaf, but I strongly suspected it was terribly expensive.

  As requested during the phone call making the appointment, I handed over both the final report and the final bill to my client.

  I cleared my throat. “To summarize, Dorothy, John Pierce Belhaven was murdered by Spencer Spears and Sarah Thackerson.”

  “His two lovers,” she murmured in a distant voice. Then she spoke in a stronger tone. “I understood there was a third man involved.”

  “You’re referring to Rocky Lodeen. He wasn’t involved in the murder but was recruited later to do some things.”

  “Like wreck my car and nearly kill me,” Paul added.

  “But he wasn’t in on the scheme. I believe he figured it out later and was trying to deal himself in for a full share of what the others expected to collect. A total of $4,500,000 if Sarah’s and Spence’s insurance policies paid double indemnity.”

  “Was that why Spencer killed this Rocky person?”

  “It wasn’t Spence. Sarah did it. Our investigation panicked Rocky to the point where he wanted to bolt, but he wasn’t about to leave without some serious money.”

  Sarah Thackerson had confessed all from her hospital bed. The loss of Spence, whom she apparently loved deeply, drained her spirit and prompted her to bring everything out in the open. She and Spence truly detested one another at first, each considering the other a rival. But over time, they grew closer. Probably as a result of this, Belhaven’s attentions grew oppressive. Spence’s apartment’s proximity to hers wasn’t an accident. They’d used the back entrances to their apartment buildings for quite some time.

  After it became clear our investigation into Belhaven’s death was ser
ious, Spence drew Rocky into the conspiracy because he wasn’t under suspicion or surveillance. Rocky engineered the car wreck with Paul. Sarah attempted the ambush on Paul and me on her own without consulting either man. Spence, a complicated young man, was willing to share his lover with his buddy in order to lure Rocky into the scheme. Sarah suffered Rocky’s attentions at her lover’s insistence.

  But when Rocky made monetary demands before leaving for parts unknown, Sarah bowed her back. To disturb her inheritance money in a serious way would compromise her in the investigation. She lied and told Rocky she had converted some of her assets into gold and coins stashed in a 24-hour storage facility on the Westside. This was how she induced Rocky to drive up West Central in the middle of the night while she lay prone on the back seat to avoid being seen by passersby.

  Once they were close to Ninety-eighth, she put her pistol to his head and forced him to drive to the abandoned shed where she killed him. Then, as we surmised, she walked back to Central and caught an early morning bus. Spence picked her up in the downtown area and drove her home. All this while Alan Mendoza kept watch on their back doors.

  I observed Dorothy as I explained a few remaining details, noting her drawn, sallow features. Perhaps I’d done her no favor in undertaking her quest. But there was also a peacefulness about the eyes that wasn’t there when I first met her. Cause and effect. She’d wanted the truth… and now she had it. Justice had been rendered to two of the three conspirators and would be dealt to the third. Sarah Thackerson would likely spend the rest of her days in a prison hobbling around on a crutch.

  “Thank you, BJ. And you too, Paul. You’ve lived up to your reputations.” She sighed. “That was quite a crooked path, wasn’t it? The place you started had nothing to do with the place you ended up. But that’s all right. My sweet Barron is resting now as he should be, not lying in a mine shaft. That gives me a measure of peace….”