Alex hands him the phone. With one eye on the road and one eye on Davis Klink, Gus tries to intuit. Davis Klink is smiling a million-dollar smile. He’s got the eyes of a man who knows everything, owns everything, and will someday control everything. Sparkling teeth, sparkling eyes, sparkling champagne. In a sudden vision, the man’s making a toast. Every diamond on his cuff link represents a thousand people he’s cut from the workforce. Gus doesn’t know this for sure, but, with a vibe that pulses through his fingertips, he senses that Davis Klink is the master of layoffs. He almost runs a red light. Slams on the brakes. Alex is not amused. Gus is about to hand the phone back to the detective when it issues a strong vibration. But the phone, itself, isn’t vibrating. There’s percussion from deeper inside, from somewhere in the life of Davis Klink. And it stops, starts again, a loop of memory and music.
“Gus?”
“Yeah?”
“The light’s green.”
“Oh. Sorry.” He hits the gas. The vehicle rumbles forward.
“What’s up, man?” Alex asks. “I know when you’re having one of your vision things.”
Gus nods. “Right. But not exactly a vision thing. I’m hearing a song. I know the words are in Spanish, but I don’t speak Spanish.”
“No bueno,” Alex says. “No bueno.”
5
Not exactly the ideal Sunday either, Alex Mills has arranged to meet Shelly Newton at her home in Chandler. Jan Powell is with him. On the way Mills calls into the Office of the Medical Examiner to inquire about a mole on the Valley Vista corpse. While waiting on hold for the technician to check, he slips into a Starbucks drive-through and decides after a few sips that Starbucks might not have the same jolt for him as it used to. “Yup,” the tech says. “A mole under the chin. You want a picture?” Mills answers affirmatively and pulls into traffic.
Shelly Newton’s house is a stucco-and-tile replica of every other one in her neighborhood, and, like every other one in her neighborhood, it sits on a postage-stamp lot with desert shrubbery and one anemic palm tree. Inside it’s a smallish box of Southwest décor (earth tones, potted cacti, pottery, and cheap, patronizing prints of Native Americans), which happens often when people move from Michigan or Illinois to their new homes in Arizona. Shelly says she’s from Minnesota, and she sounds like it. She moved here ten years ago when her husband took a job with Southwest Airlines. He’s working today, but she got his permission, she assures Mills, to talk to them.
Mills can’t recall Kelly ever asking his permission for anything.
The small talk ended in the foyer.
He and Powell are sitting on an overstuffed sofa opposite Shelly, who sits in a recliner. The room is bright and smells like cinnamon. She’s a petite woman with a heart-shaped face. Her hair is shoulder-length and curly, not exactly what he’d call stylish, but Mills is the first to admit he doesn’t understand style. There’s just something dowdy about her, though she couldn’t be more than thirty-five. She’s wearing a pink-and-gray Illumilife T-shirt, as if she dressed for the occasion.
“I believe our victim is your boss,” Mills tells her. “I’ve confirmed the mole under his neck. I have a picture, but it’s a close-up of the mole, not the injured face.”
“I’ll know it.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes,” she says. “I’ve been after him to get it checked. I set up two appointments with a dermatologist, and he was a no-show for both.”
“You sound like his wife,” Mills says as she glances at the JPEG on his phone.
“That’s it,” she says without hesitation.
“Seriously? You can tell in a split second?” Powell asks her.
The woman smiles grimly. “It kind of looks like the profile of a penis. There can’t be many moles like that.”
Mills takes the phone back, finger tweezes for a zoom, and nods. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
Shelly leans in intimately. “Don’t call me crazy. I’m not some kind of pervert. But it’s a memorable mole. It just kind of juts out like an erection, you know, with a blob at the end and a blob and a half underneath, like testicles. You see it?”
“I said I did.”
“Totally irregular as moles go,” she persists. “Asymmetrical, odd edges.” Then she looks away, her chin trembling. She’s a portrait of grief. Tears begin to fall, and she wipes them away with her wrist.
“We’re so sorry,” Powell tells her. “Do you need a minute?”
The woman turns back to them. “No,” she replies softly. “I tried to prepare for this. I think I knew deep down inside. It’s not like him to go completely off the grid for more than a few hours.”
“Then you must know what he was doing Friday afternoon,” Mills says. “I’d like to account for his time before that flight was scheduled to leave.”
“Well, he was scheduled for meetings all afternoon,” Shelly begins. “But he got a call from his daughter Jordan around three o’clock. It was unexpected and unscheduled.”
“Would he normally require his calls with family to be scheduled?” Powell asks.
Her eyes narrow as if she doesn’t understand the question. “Pretty much every second of his day is scheduled. He’s a CEO of a global company. You wouldn’t understand.”
Mills leans forward. “We’re going to have to understand if we hope to find his killer.”
Shelly puts her hand to her heart and says, “Of course. I didn’t mean it that way. What I’m trying to say is that Davis is always overscheduled.”
“What happened when the daughter called?” Powell asks her.
“Jordan sounded really sick, like I almost didn’t recognize her voice,” the woman says. “But I put the call through, and the next thing I know he comes rushing out of his office, says he doesn’t need the driver, and he’s out the door.”
“And that’s the last time you saw him alive?” Mills asks.
“Yes.”
“You assume he took his own car?”
“Yes.”
“To see his daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Devoted father,” Mills says with measured snark.
“Your words, not mine, Detective Mills.”
“Other children?” Powell asks.
“Two others.”
“Strained relationships with them?”
“I’d rather not get into his personal life any further,” the woman says. “That’s a bit out of my lane.”
“Your lane?” Mills asks.
“Hmm, I guess that’s a corporate expression.”
“Guess so,” Mills says. “But you seem to run every other aspect of his life. Did you not provide personal assistance?”
“I did,” she concedes, “but I just don’t want to talk about it.”
“Is there anyone in his personal or professional life who, in your opinion, would want him dead?” Powell asks her.
The woman fidgets in her chair, dabs her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“But that’s not a no?” Powell prods.
“I would hope not. But I don’t know. He made many unpopular moves.”
“Like?” Mills asks.
She leans forward. “Look, every CEO makes unpopular decisions. He’s no different. You close factories, sell brands, unfortunately cut jobs to stay profitable. If he got killed for that, alone, there’d be a lot of dead CEOs today.”
That thought has occurred to Mills. For all he knows, there are more CEOs out there in shallow graves. That could be the killer’s MO and motive.
“You probably worked closer to him than anyone at your company,” Powell says, and Shelly beams proudly at the recognition. “He might have even trusted you more than anyone else.”
“I often suspected that. No one had better access to him than me.”
Like he was Springsteen, for Christ’s sake.
“Do you recall him arguing with anyone? Or having a heated phone call recently?” Mills asks.
“Well, he had a big blowout with our hum
an resources officer on Friday morning.”
“About?” Powell asks.
“I wasn’t in the room.”
“Then why would you characterize it as a big blowout?” Mills asks.
“Because I could hear it through the walls. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but they were going at it.”
“Did he have blowouts often with people?”
“Sometimes. He’s demanding. Was demanding,” she says. “About two hours after his blowout with Claire from HR, he had another one with Peter in Legal.”
“Wow,” Mills says. “Friday was certainly a stressful day for a man who ends up dead later that night.”
Shelly shakes her head. “No. I don’t think so. I don’t think either of those arguments have anything to do with his murder.”
“But you can’t say for sure?” Powell asks.
“I wasn’t there when he was killed,” she says and begins to sob.
They let her weep. They let her stare up at the ceiling. They let her dry her eyes and take a deep breath.
“For the record,” Mills says when Shelly recovers, “where were you Friday night?”
“Here at home with my husband.”
He knows he doesn’t really need her alibi, but it’s an important reflex. “Do you have children?” he asks.
“Three.”
“Ages?”
“Twelve, ten and seven,” she replies. “Those are their pictures on the shelf.”
Mills turns to look. All-American towheads, with blue eyes and bright faces, stare back at him. “Handsome family,” he says.
“Thank you.”
“Any way you can arrange for us to meet Claire from Human Resources and Peter from Legal?” he asks her.
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
She scrunches her face. “Jeez, Mondays are hard. They might be traveling. I can check with their assistants.”
Mills says he’ll call in the morning to confirm. “And one more thing, Ms. Newton? Klink’s wife. Has she ever returned your calls?”
She looks down, shakes her head. “No. But I checked her itinerary. She’s due back from Italy tonight.”
“Did you indicate that her husband was missing in the messages that you left?”
“Not in so many words.”
“What did you say?” Powell asks.
“I said I was having trouble reaching him.”
“And does Mrs. Klink normally return your calls?” Powell asks.
“Greta lives in her own world,” Shelly says, her tone bitter.
“When she hears that her husband is dead, she might come back to this world,” Mills says. “I’ll need for you to give us her telephone number, and I’ll need for you to cease calling her immediately. If she does call you back, give her my contact information.”
“Would she want her husband dead for any reason?” Powell asks.
“I don’t know. I mean, no. I mean, how would I know?” she says, exasperated. “I told you I don’t get into their personal lives unless I have to. I’m happy to help, but keep me out of their personal business.”
Then yes, Mills infers, there were marital issues. Were the issues lethal? Greta Klink should have the answer to that question. Maybe she wasn’t in Italy, after all.
Gus has already been home twice to walk Ivy since spending the night in Billie’s bungalow at the Desert Charm. When he returns to the resort for the second time, Billie is just starting to stir. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon.
“Have you been out?” she asks as she hoists herself up in bed, a sleepy smile on her face.
“Ivy.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want me to call room service for coffee?”
“Sure,” she says, and then she adds, “Is there something wrong?”
He shakes his head. Nothing’s wrong. But something, Gus senses, isn’t right. He can’t put a finger on it, but there’s an unprompted distance between them. Nothing happened. No words were said. He came in last night to find her writing in her journal. She had asked what he discovered at the graveyard, and he told her, and, as he did, he could sense a momentary shiver within her. Then she went back to writing. And he went to sleep. Today the light around them seems more tentative than usual. In the silence of this exile, there are no expectations.
The bungalow opens to a private courtyard with a splash pool. High walls, adorned with flowers and vine, surround them. The place makes him want to go to Tuscany or maybe to a villa in Capri. The coffee arrives, its fierce aroma wafting, and they’re sipping out here when Billie turns to Gus and announces that she’s leaving for LA.
“When?”
“Tonight.”
He nods. She’s impulsive, if nothing else. And there’s little middle ground with her. She can be distant like the lowest of tides, and she can be, like a high tide at full moon, all the energy you’ll ever need. He’s okay with that. He’s still a surfer at heart, and he’s had a long, dreamy relationship with the ocean. He understands it. Even now, after many years in the desert.
“I’d rather you didn’t leave,” he tells her. “We can stay at my place if you don’t want to go back to your house.”
She turns to him, confusion in her eyes. “But why would I need a place to crash, when I have the house in Malibu?”
“A place to crash? Maybe I’m misunderstanding something about us,” he says.
“This has nothing to do with us,” she insists. “I just need to be someplace that’s mine, that’s safe, where no one has broken into. I need to be in my own comfortable surroundings. Can’t you understand that?”
She’s not accusatory but clearly desperate for affirmation.
“I can,” he replies.
“And of course you could come with.”
He loves returning to the ocean, loves the house in Malibu, but the difference between them is that her week begins when she wants it to begin, and his week begins tomorrow. “I have to work,” he says.
“Well I’m not going back to PV unless Alex can assure me the house is impenetrable.”
“I don’t think anyone can guarantee that,” he says. “Besides, Alex is now up to his neck in this graveyard case.”
She gets up, closing her robe around her. “Then I gotta go, Gus.”
“And I can’t stop you, Billie.”
6
Mills is up before the sunrise. But, contrary to the plan, Kelly is up before him and she’s beaten him to the shower. “Hon! I need to get out of here,” he groans.
“What’s your hurry?”
“Hmm, let’s see . . . a killer on the loose?”
“And let’s see . . . I have jury selection,” she reminds him from behind the steam. “Because somebody actually caught my perp.”
“Nice,” he says. “What shit-for-brains are you defending today?”
“I told you. That pinhead who robbed the pet store in Tempe.”
He laughs. “The one the cops tracked down with the fecal DNA from the goldfish?”
“Turtle,” she says.
“Same difference.” He feels the throb of morning wood in his briefs, and he presses himself against the shower door. “Let me in, and I’ll make it worth your while.”
“Are you kidding me, Alex?”
“What?”
“I can’t be late for jury selection because of your erection.”
“You’re a poet,” he says. “Not even a quickie?”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“Do you know how many IOUs you’ve given me in the past month?”
“I’m not keeping track.”
“Well, that’s great,” he groans. “If you’re not keeping track, then how’re you supposed to honor them?”
She opens the door a crack, flashes a saucy grin, and shuts him out again just as quickly. Duly dismissed, he steps out to the kitchen and pulls out the yogurt and granola for breakfast. He slices some fruit for Kelly. In the process, his dick withers and he worries that by the time
Kelly’s trial is over, the morning wood will be permanent pulp and he’ll be beholden to Viagra. They’ve always been explosively compatible—not Fifty Shades, but still—and he misses the frequency of sex.
He just about jumps out of his skin when he hears his son’s booming voice. He turns and finds Trevor hulking at the edge of the kitchen, in sweats and a T-shirt.
“What do you want? Shouldn’t you be getting ready for school?”
The kid snickers. “Yeah. But I need sixty dollars.”
“Sixty? What for?”
“Yearbook.”
Mills shakes his head but doesn’t argue. The kid’s a senior, expected to get into both Arizona State University and the University of Arizona on a football scholarship. Trevor’s really turned himself around after a few adolescent setbacks. His grades are stellar again, confirming that the brain he inherited is likely his mother’s.
“Hang on ’til I get out of the shower,” he tells his son. “In the meantime make some coffee for your mom and me.”
Later, on the way into work, while listening to a pair of morning radio clowns trying to be clever, funny, and shocking, and failing at all three, Mills’s phone rings. He doesn’t recognize the caller but answers on the off chance that someone is calling with a lead or, less likely, that Davis Klink’s killer is reaching out to confess.
“This is Greta Klink,” the caller says. And that’s it. She drops her name, as if that’s enough. As if the dead silence is Mills’s cue to jump. Instead of jumping, Mills lets the silence sink in for a moment. He listens for grief and hears nothing but the cacophony of rush hour.
“Thanks for calling, Mrs. Klink. I’m sorry I have bad news about—”
“So I’ve heard.”
“You’ve spoken with Ms. Newton?”
“Yes. Shelly told me to contact you.”
“Are you home this morning, Mrs. Klink?”
“I am.”
“We’d like to come by and talk.”
“I’ll text you the address. Goodbye.”
After the widow’s abrupt departure, Mills swings into the Starbucks close to headquarters for another fill-up.
He’s in his office, jacked up on caffeine, when about ten minutes into the workday the sergeant calls and kills the buzz. Woods wants to meet with the squad.
Dig Your Grave Page 5