Broken Vows Mystery 02-For Richer, for Danger

by Lisa Bork

  After an hour of watching for Theo and his girlfriend, I felt drained. My knees ached. My mouth was parched, and the food aromas made my stomach growl. Every broadcast over the loudspeakers sent pains shooting through my forehead. I sidled toward the concession window with my eyes still on the wagering ones. Then I bumped into someone.

  I turned to apologize.

  “Jolene Parker. What a surprise.”

  Dave Barclay stood behind me with Kim on his arm. She curled her lip when she recognized me. That must be her standard reflex instead of a smile. I guessed she must have taken a few hours off from her father’s bedside vigil.

  Both of them were the height of fashion. Dave wore linen pants and a silk shirt with his sandals from the other day, and Kim, a gauzy sundress and a wide-brimmed hat. They looked ready for the Hamptons, not Canandaigua.

  I greeted them and tried to make polite conversation, dreading the moment when they asked me about the Datsun 240Z. On Friday night I had decided to wait to call them until I reopened the shop on Tuesday, in no rush to deliver the bad news. I decided not to inquire about Kim’s grandfather’s health. Why head the conversation in a direction I didn’t want it to go? After commenting on the weather, I settled on another neutral topic. “Are you here for the races or the gaming?”

  “Both.” Dave held up a handful of betting slips. “Our horses are in three of the races.”

  “Really? You mean you own racehorses?”

  “Sure do. Major Ed, Sire Burg, and Speed Demon.”

  “Speed Demon?”

  Dave rolled his eyes. “I let my nephew name him. He’s a NASCAR fan.”

  Kim’s lip curled again, in reference to the nephew or NASCAR. Probably both.

  Dave lightly touched my arm to regain my attention. “We’re glad we ran into you. Any luck with the Datsun?”

  Darn it. “I’m afraid not.” I explained about my meeting with the owner and his son. Dave seemed understanding, but I feared Kim’s lip curl might become permanent.

  “But you found a whole list of Z car owners?” Dave looked at Kim and she gave him a shrug. “Who owns car number eighteen?”

  I didn’t dare to hope this meant they would be interested in purchasing a different Z. “I can’t tell you off the top of my head. I’d have to check the list. Can I call you tomorrow?”

  Dave gave me his cell and work numbers. I promised to get back to him with the information first thing in the morning. As he and Kim walked away, it occurred to me they hadn’t seemed all that disappointed in my results. Maybe I would still be able to sell them a car.

  I swung around to check the line at the wagering booth, scanning the ten people waiting. My eyes passed over then returned to a guy staring back at me. He had dark, almost black hair, cut spiky, a sprinkling of acne on his chin and eyes that flickered with recognition as they met mine. Theo Tibble.

  He leaned toward a teenage girl standing by his side and said something. The girl had shoulder length light-brown hair that curled in soft waves around her face, hair very much like Noelle’s. When she turned to look at me, I saw Noelle’s eyes: wide and blue. I started toward them.

  Theo grabbed the girl’s arm and tugged. They took off running down the aisle toward the parking lot.

  I heard the starting bell for the first race. The announcer’s voice came over the loudspeaker proclaiming, “And they’re off.”

  How appropriate. I broke into a run, wishing I had thought to wear sneakers instead of sandals that refused to stay on my feet. After scuffing along, I kicked them off and ran barefoot. Not the best idea because my foot struck a sharp edge like a bottle cap. I yelped, but kept on running, falling farther behind Theo and Noelle’s birthmother with each painful stride.

  The people in the aisles didn’t seem to notice me coming. “Excuse me. Excuse me. GET OUT OF MY WAY!”

  I bumped roughly into one woman’s arm.

  “Hey!”

  I kept on running, knowing I’d lost precious minutes. Theo and Noelle’s birthmother had disappeared. A stone from the roughly paved lot dug into my heel, increasing my agony. After a few more steps, I had to stop to dig it out of my foot, which now bled in two spots.

  Theo and the girl were nowhere in sight.

  I limped across the parking lot, remarkably full of cars for a Monday. Didn’t anybody work anymore?

  The cars glistened in the heat of the afternoon sun. I squinted and scanned each row, left and right, as I entered the lot, listening for the sound of an engine turning over. Nothing. The car owners were all inside already, playing the games or eating or cheering on their favorite horse.

  I heard a woman scream.

  I ran in the direction of the scream, which rose in volume not only with my proximity but the woman’s apparent distress. It took me a couple minutes to find the source.

  The woman faced the space between two cars. A man stood with his arm around her shoulder. He appeared to be dialing a cell phone.

  I moved closer as two more men ran past me and stopped dead next to the couple. More people joined them. When I reached the back of the group, I realized the man on the cell phone was summoning the police.

  I stood on my toes and peeked over shoulders. Then I ducked to try to catch a glimpse under elbows. I spotted the cause of the woman’s screams.

  Between the cars, Theo lay on the ground in a pool of blood that pulsed from his slashed neck. His eyelids fluttered. His eyeballs looked glassy.

  Noelle’s mother’s left wrist was trapped in his right hand. She was trying desperately to disengage it. In her shaking right hand, she held a broken beer bottle, covered with blood.

  She freed her hand. Theo’s body shook with a spasm. His eyelids stopped fluttering and his gaze became fixed. Noelle’s mother raised her stricken eyes in our direction.

  The woman stopped screaming. One of the men rushed forward and attempted CPR. The rest of us watched in silence.

  I heard a jingling noise. It sounded familiar. I wrenched my eyes from the scene and scanned the parking lot. I expected the jingling noise to move closer—another curious passerby. Instead it moved away.

  I looked back at Theo and Noelle’s mother. I heard more screaming. This time it was inside my head.

  The Canandaigua police arrived in three separate cars, one cop per car. The first officer on the scene checked Theo, approached the girl, and asked her to place the broken bottle on the ground. She did. He cuffed the girl and sat her in the back of his patrol car. At no time did she resist or speak.

  I hadn’t moved from my spot two car lengths away. The man who performed CPR to revive Theo deserved an A for effort, but his final grade was an F for failure. Theodore Tibble was dead. I made another mental tick mark. Two people from my town dead in less than a month. Was a third death looming?

  An ambulance careened into the parking lot. The attendants examined Theo. They didn’t pull out any life-saving equipment. The word “dead” spread through the crowd. The attendants sat back, waiting for the medical examiner to arrive.

  The police continued to work the scene, interviewing the first couple and the two men who happened on the scene immediately after them. The medical examiner arrived. Now a good-sized crowd formed around the area roped off with yellow crime scene tape.

  I stood outside the tape, but still close to the action. I forced myself to stop staring at Theo’s body. All the blood had made me nauseous. I turned my back and pulled out my cell phone to call Ray. He answered on the second ring just as I noticed a news crew pulling into the lot.

  I swallowed the bile in the back of my throat. “I found Theo and the girl.”

  “Great. Did you talk to them?”

  I inhaled deeply and proceeded to fill him in.

  When I finished, Ray whistled. I almost dropped the phone from the screech he caused. “Did you actually see her cut Theo?”

  “No.”

  “Was anyone else there?”

  “Yes. A couple spotted them first. Then a group formed. I saw them
after that.”

  “Did they see her cut Theo?”

  “I’m not sure. The police are interviewing them now.”

  “Who’s the lead investigator?”

  I looked over at the three officers hovering around the medical examiner. “I’m not sure. The patrol officers are here now.”

  “Okay, I’ll make some calls in a few hours to find out the status.”

  “Do you think the police will want to talk to me?”

  “Did you see anything other than what you told me?”

  I thought about the familiar jingling noise. For all I knew, it could have been collar tags on a stray, frightened animal. “No.”

  “Then let’s wait and see if anyone noticed you chasing Theo and the girl out of the track.”

  ____

  Ray arrived home a little after five o’clock. I was in the kitchen feeding Noelle her favorite Gerber squash and peaches. She had plenty of it on her face, but Ray kissed her cheek anyway, then mine. Once again, I wondered why not on my lips. I asked about the girl instead.

  “The girl’s not saying anything. Not even her name.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Ray popped open a Corona and perched on a stool at the breakfast bar. “She refuses to speak. She even refused her phone call. They’ve been working her for the last three hours and she hasn’t even asked to go to the bathroom. She’s still got Theo’s blood all over her. The guys thought for sure she’d at least ask to wash it off. But she hasn’t.”

  “What did the witnesses say?”

  “Not much more than you. No one saw her attack Theo. They said they found her standing over him with the bottle in her hand.”

  “Does she have a lawyer?”

  “She didn’t ask for one. When she goes to arraignment tomorrow morning, they’ll assign her someone through the public defender’s office.”

  “Will that person have murder trial experience?”

  Ray sighed. “That’s assumed.”

  We all know what happens when we assume. “What if she continues to refuse to talk?”

  “They’ll probably have her mental health evaluated.”

  “Maybe she’s in shock.”

  “They say she’s quite alert, just unwilling to talk.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the scene, Ray. I heard something. Do you think I should tell the police?”

  He leaned forward. “What was it?”

  I closed my eyes and tried to get the sound back. “I don’t know. It was a noise, but it faded. It seemed familiar and made me think another person was there.”

  “Like running footsteps?”

  “No, more like jingling.”

  He took another swig of Corona. “It’s not much. It might cast doubt on the case against the girl if you could place someone else at the scene.”

  “I wish I had seen someone.” I pulled out a baby wipe and mopped the remains of Noelle’s dinner off her face. She swung her head side to side, trying to avoid my efforts, and banged her palms on the highchair’s tray table. Then she fixed those wide blue eyes on my face. The same eyes her birthmother had fixed on me hours earlier.

  I knew the right thing to do. “We have to get her a lawyer. We should call Greg Doran. See who he recommends.”

  Ray choked on his beer. He slammed the bottle onto the countertop. “Are you kidding? We can’t afford a lawyer for a murder trial. It could go on for months. Besides, I look bad enough having failed to report Theo’s whereabouts. Now you want me to aid an alleged felon? Not to mention that you were chasing Theo minutes before he was killed.”

  I picked up Noelle and faced him. I looked him right in the eye.

  “We need to help Noelle’s birthmother. If we don’t help her, do you think she’s going to help us finalize Noelle’s adoption?”

  Ray glanced from my face to Noelle’s. She reached her arms out to him. He pulled her into his and looked into her eyes. His own softened, emphasizing the creases at their corners. “I’ll call Greg tonight. Maybe he can handle the arraignment tomorrow.”

  That’s my man.

  I threw my arms around both him and Noelle and held my cheek against his for a long time.

  ____

  Ray refused to attend the arraignment the next morning. He insisted we should let the justice system take its course before we took any more action. In short, he wanted to know all the facts in evidence to finalize our new plan, and he preferred to hear them from a neutral source. He had me so confused by the time he stopped talking that I had to agree. But I suspected there was more to the story.

  I packed Noelle and her toys up and took her into the office. At seven months old, she didn’t seem to mind this pattern to her life, but I knew once she started to walk and talk, I was going to have to improve the quality of her time beyond home, work, toys, the park, and rides in her stroller. When Ray’s office was fully staffed, he got two days off to spend with Noelle. Sometimes one was a Monday, so we could have a family day. Some were Daddy Days while Mommy worked in the shop. Would we ever be able to work a schedule where one of us was home with Noelle all the time or were self-employment and a cop’s life not conducive to stability? Worse yet, were the seeds of Noelle’s future psychosis already sown? Now that I knew her birthmother might have killed her father, I had to wonder if Noelle would be the child I dreamed of or the one I always feared. The thought had occurred to me more than once before, but after yesterday, it was foremost in my mind, even as I tried to shut it out.

  I looked over at her bouncing up and down in the Jolly Jumper positioned in my doorway. From all appearances, Noelle was normal and happy. Of course, I knew only too well how quickly a personality can change. Erica had once appeared normal and happy. Did I have the strength to take on another Erica?

  I needed to think about something else. After booting my computer, I found the article from the car club again and checked for the owner of the car with serial number eighteen. “Not Found Yet.” So the owner was unknown. I doubted Dave and Kim Barclay would be happy to hear that, but I started to dial his cell anyway.

  My cell phone rang. I dropped the office phone back onto the hook and opened my cell.

  “Okay, so you are still alive.”

  “Last time I checked.”

  “I thought I was your best friend.”

  “You are, Isabelle.” Actually Ray was, but he got listed in the husband category.

  She sighed. “Then tell me why I spotted you on the five o’clock, six o’clock, and eleven o’clock news last night, standing beside a police barrier surrounding a very dead body.”

  Oh dear. “Sorry. We don’t get the paper and I missed the news last night.”

  “You’re missing the point now. I’m your best friend. Your confidante and sounding board. The one you come to in a crisis. Isn’t a murder a crisis situation to you anymore, or has it become old hat?”

  Way to lay on the guilt.

  I spent the next twenty minutes filling Isabelle in. By the time I finished, Noelle had bounced herself to sleep with her head resting on the tray of the Jolly Jumper. I thought about moving her into the crib, but remembered the never wake a sleeping baby rule.

  “So you and Ray will hire this girl a lawyer? Where are you going to get the money for that?”

  “I don’t know.” The sports car boutique didn’t make a profit. I had a business line of credit, but that would only go so far. Last year I sold my family home, but with the rising property values in Wachobe, our new cozy bungalow had eaten the sale price of that much larger but older home. The purchase of my Lexus pretty much ate the rest of our disposable income, not to mention the subsidy of Erica’s apartment. “Maybe we’ll get a home equity loan.”

  “Jack and I could loan you some money.”

  Those pesky tears welled in my eyes again. “Isabelle, you are a true friend. But I want to keep you as a friend. I can’t take your money. Ray and I will work it out.”

  When we hung up, I turned on the thirteen-inch televisio
n in my office to see if the local news had additional coverage on the story. They were talking about something else, but I knew they looped stories every twenty minutes or so. I left the television on and picked up the phone to call Dave Barclay.

  “Dave, this is Jolene Parker. I wanted to get back to you about the Datsun Z with VIN eighteen. I’m really sorry, but no owner is listed for that car.”

  “So she still has it.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Kim’s wicked step-grandmother. She and Kim’s grandfather had a bitter divorce. She took everything she could from the man, including his balls. She claimed she sold the car years ago, but it makes more sense that she held onto it. Kim’s grandfather talked about being buried in that car for years, since he not only drove it but owned it. She’s just being vindictive.”

  Ed, the owner of the Z car I visited, had mentioned a woman who recently made an offer on his car. Was the ex-wife vindictive enough to try to buy that car out from under the grandfather, too? How mean could one person be? “I’m sorry, Dave. I wish I could help you.”

  “Maybe you still can. Kim’s grandfather’s ex is named Sylvia Wilder. She lives in Chautauqua, or at least she did. Can you figure out a way to convince her to sell the Z to you?”

  “I don’t …” I was going to say I don’t think so, but it occurred to me I shouldn’t walk away from a potential deal, no matter how tenuous. Besides, I didn’t like this lady already and I hadn’t even met her. Maybe I could help. “I don’t see why I couldn’t give it a try.”

  I promised Dave I would look into the wicked ex-grandma and disconnected. Cory appeared in the doorway behind Noelle. He held up this morning’s paper. “I take it you know about Theo Tibble.”