Murder For Comfort

by John L. Work

  There was someone else to find. He believed there might even be more than the two he already knew about, but he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was a cop’s intuitive hunch – and perhaps he was wrong. If there were just two of them, he didn’t have any idea how he’d find the second one. If there were three, he was no closer to an arrest than if there were just two.

  He was at a loss to figure why Slaikovitch had been murdered, although that was primarily Reilly’s problem to solve. But then, again, the two murders were forever and ever entangled. Was Slaikovitch killed by his accomplice in the McCowell killing – perhaps to keep him from ever speaking about it? Or was he done in for some other reason? What was that saying – three can keep a secret if two are dead?

  He knew from long experience that there are three reasons why people kill – sex, money and booze. And you could throw drugs in with the booze. So, what was involved here in Sheila’s death? There was no evidence of rape. Was it a jealous lover or ex-lover? According to her best friend, Janet Rogers, no on both. There was no lover. But what about the Iron Maiden email? How could Welch explain that? He couldn’t – not yet. Janet’s name was still on his suspect list. If there was a link between her and Jimmie Slaikovitch, he’d have to find it. He couldn’t imagine classy, good looking women like Janet or Sheila having anything to do with someone like Slaikovitch. But then again, stranger things had happened.

  Was it money? That was always possible, but nothing of value had been taken from Sheila’s home. Her purse was in the BMW when the cops towed it in from the mountains for evidence, and all of her credit cards were inside it. Her bank accounts were intact. Did she leave her home with the killer, or did she go somewhere to meet him? The dog was dead. She left with her killer, probably against her will. There was a life insurance policy, which Sheila had purchased for herself. Her ex was the beneficiary. Could the killer have been someone else who might have believed he or she would be the beneficiary? Probably not. Jim McCowell certainly didn’t need any more money than he already had. Money wasn’t an issue between the two ex-spouses, or at least that was what the evidence thus far indicated.

  The last item on the reasons for murder agenda was alcohol or drugs. Sheila wasn’t a heavy drinker, by anyone’s description. The toxicology reports from the autopsy showed no illegal substances in her blood or in her hair, and she hadn’t been drinking on the day of her death. There was no evidence in the house of any illicit drug use or dealing. So, that motive was out, for sure. She had no financial need to deal in drugs, because her ex-husband had left her set for life.

  Welch narrowed his thinking to the possibility – no, the probability – that it was a love or love triangle killing. With Sheila’s cash assets, money might also be a factor. But he was pretty sure it was more than likely an affair related murder. He just needed to find the mystery lover – male or female. That left a whole lot of mathematical possibilities. It could be someone Welch had already encountered during the investigation, or it could be another person to this point unknown. He was due for a week’s vacation and he needed it. It would be time away from the job, but definitely not time for fun and relaxation.

  32

  Ten days later he was back at work. During the prior week he’d flown to Arizona to help move his parents to Colorado. Following the thousand mile drive to Welch’s home, his father and he sat together one morning and watched the television screen as the World Trade Center Towers collapsed. It was a day he would recall for the rest of his life.

  With his mother and father pretty well settled in, he’d been more than ready to get back to solving the McCowell murder – rather, to answering all of the unanswered questions necessary to solving the mystery of the Iron Maiden’s true identity.

  The first item on his agenda, even prior to clearing the stack of new cases from his desk, was making phone calls. He called Bob Stafford first, because he didn’t want to tip off Jim McCowell about what he intended to do. He could’ve gotten his information from McCowell, but it’d be much better if Sheila’s ex had minimal knowledge about where the investigation was going. If her ex had been involved in her death, keeping him in the dark wouldn’t give him the chance to make any phone calls that might tend to obstruct Welch’s next inquiry. If he wasn’t involved, as the detective was more inclined to believe with each passing day, there’d be no gain and no loss for McCowell in not knowing where the case was heading.

  “Bob, this is J.D. Welch with the Roberts County Sheriff’s Office.”

  “Yes. How are you?”

  “I’m doing well, sir. I called to ask you if Sheila ever mentioned the name of the gym where her ex-husband met his new wife. I know Sheila confided in you quite a bit about her divorce and I just wondered if she happened to share that piece of information with you.”

  “Let me think for a minute, here. Yes, it was the Condition Plus Fitness Center on the west side of town. She said it wasn’t too far from their home in the foothills, maybe about a twenty minute drive. How’s your investigation going? I saw on television that you identified the man who killed her.”

  “It’s going slowly. I’m working with a detective from Park County to try to tie all of the pieces together and it’s taking us awhile to do that.”

  “Well, you have my best wishes for good luck and I hope you can find out everything. Don’t hesitate to call me if there’s anything else you need. We miss Sheila terribly. She was the heart and soul of my business here. Everyone loved her and I’m still training her replacement.”

  “I’m sure that’s true. Well, I should get going here and let you get back to your work. I thank you for your assistance.”

  “Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, sir.”

  He decided to take a drive to Condition Plus and take a look around. And the best way to do that would be to pay for a workout. He called ahead to ask if they took walk in workout payments and got an affirmative answer. It took him about forty five minutes to make the trip. The parking lot was surprisingly full for the middle of the day. He walked into the front desk and reached inside his coat for his wallet.

  He went to the weight room, since that was where Marnie was supposed to have done most of her personal training work. It was a huge, fully equipped wing with the latest in resistance strength building machinery and a seemingly limitless setup of free weights. All four walls were lined with six foot high mirrors, an accoutrement for the serious competitive body builders – or maybe the just plain narcissists. He was amazed at the strength of some of the lifters who were doing their workouts. While Welch had spent many hours over the years pumping iron in the sheriff’s gym, he couldn’t come close to matching the strength of some of the men he was seeing here. He wondered how many of them were using steroids – they were huge specimens.

  But it was the women who were there that particularly caught his eye. The well conditioned female bodies could certainly provide a distraction for a normal heterosexual male in his late forties, especially if he were divorced. He didn’t see anyone he recognized and decided he’d come back again, but next time on the night shift. He did a few sets of bench presses, military presses and triceps extensions, then called it quits. He promised himself he’d do a more complete workout the next time he came in.

  At seven thirty that night he was back in the gym, just to see if he would run into any familiar faces. The place was packed with people who’d just finished working at their jobs and were getting some exercise in, prior to going home. He went to the dumbbell racks, grabbed a couple of twenty five pounders and began to do some warm-up curls. As he counted repetitions he scanned the immense room, standing with his back to the mirrors, looking for he knew not whom. He finished his warm up set and grabbed a couple of thirty five pound weights to begin a little more work. After three sets of eight with the dumb bells he put a few plates on a French curl bar, squatted, grabbed it with both hands and used his legs to raise it to his upper thighs in preparation to begin the exercise.

  He saw them far acr
oss the room at one of the leg extension machines. Now, this was interesting. Janet Rogers and Samantha Newsom were doing a weight workout together. They were both wearing shorts, muscle shirt type tops and sneakers. Janet was spotting Sammie as she forced a final few reps on her set. When she finished and stood up to spot Janet, Welch did a double take at Sammie’s legs. What a pair of quads and calves. He hadn’t noticed that on his visits to the bank, perhaps because she was always sitting behind the front desk or in her office.

  In defiance of the basic instincts which were tugging at him to keep watching Sammie Newsom lift some more weights, he turned his back to them and put the curling bar down. They hadn’t seen him. He didn’t want them to see him, or for them to know that he’d been in the gym at all. He worked his way through the crowded weight room toward the men’s lockers and, once inside, got dressed to leave. He was wondering how long they’d been meeting here to exercise together, and if they’d ever encountered Jim McCowell or Marnie Sullivan while they were in the place. He was already preparing the report in his mind as he drove to the field substation.

  Somehow he knew intuitively that Iron Maiden was among the five major players in the drama. One of the five was already dead, and he didn’t believe that Jimmie Slaikovitch could ever have convinced a woman like Sheila McCowell to willingly get into bed with him, even on the very best day of his life. That left Jim McCowell, Marnie, Janet and Sammie. Yes – he was sure of it – Iron Maiden was one of the four.

  Now, would Sheila have carried on an affair with her ex-husband – the same man who’d just left her for a fitness babe twenty-plus years younger than he was? It didn’t seem likely, but Welch knew of several women who continued to have sex with their ex-husbands, even after the divorces were final. He didn’t know why they did that – perhaps in some desperate, last gasping hope that they could lure their wandering men back into the marriage and repair what had been damaged. Sometimes the sexual relationship continued even if the husband had taken up with another lover. So, it was possible, but not probable, that Jim McCowell was Iron Maiden.

  Now he considered Marnie McCowell. He didn’t see how Marnie and Sheila could ever have gotten involved in any kind of intimate relationship. Marnie was the one who stole Sheila’s mate. While it was interesting, certainly a coincidence that would be difficult to explain, that Sammie, Janet and Jim all frequented the same health club where Marnie had once been employed as a trainer, Welch didn’t have anything to connect all of them to using the facility contemporaneously. He could certainly connect Marnie and Jim, by their own admissions during the police interviews. They’d made no attempt to cover that or deny it. It was how they met and how they eventually became man and wife.

  He could now connect Sammie and Janet to the gym, by his own observations. But he didn’t yet have a common link among the four to tie them to being in the club during the same time period. Based on Marnie’s de facto adversarial relationship to Sheila, by virtue of having stolen Sheila’s man while her back was turned, the detective eliminated the realistic possibility of Marnie being sexually involved with Sheila in this scenario. So, in all probability, Marnie McCowell wasn’t Iron Maiden.

  Next came Janet Rogers. As Sheila’s best friend, she was certainly an intimate confidante. The two had known each other since their college days and, as lifelong friends, must have shared their innermost secrets and struggles. So, while it might be unlikely for the two women to have carried on a long term friendship that somehow transformed to a lesbian love affair, Welch couldn’t rule out the possibility. It was very possible, if not too plausible. They could’ve been secret lovers since their college days.

  Sammie was the newest player in the picture. She and Janet Rogers were good enough friends that they came to the same health club to exercise together. Did their relationship go any deeper than that? Welch didn’t know. He knew very little about Sammie’s background and nothing about her sexual orientation. Was she a lesbian? A bi-sexual? Straight? Who could know?

  Two things were certain. Sheila McCowell had taken considerable care to conceal the existence of her Iron Maiden connection. And for reasons yet unknown, Iron Maiden had taken extra care to conceal her, or his, identity.

  Then the thought that should already have been so obvious occurred to him. All of the players in the mystery lifted weights at the same gym. Perhaps that was the Iron part of the internet handle. So, which one among them was it?

  33

  Park County Detective Steve Reilly wasn’t making much headway in his search for Jimmie Slaikovitch’s killer. The only factor that kept him from inactivating the case was that he knew his victim had committed a murder in Roberts County – and not just any murder. He’d killed the ex-wife of a rather wealthy construction company owner. Reilly had done a complete background investigation, including an employment history, a credit check, police and criminal history records, and the dead man’s files at the State Department of Corrections in Canon City.

  Tattoo Jimmie hadn’t been a model prisoner, either in the prison system or in the Denver County Jail. He’d been written up in both institutions for fighting and possession of contraband. He was hostile to the officers and didn’t seem to fear anyone among the other inmates. One of the prison guards who talked with Reilly said that Slaikovitch always had snacks from the commissary stored inside his cell, even when he didn’t have money in his inmate account. Somebody, or more than one somebody, kept him supplied with chips and candy, either out of respect or fear. He was surely not a prostitute or some stronger inmate’s bitch. He’d been in too many fist fights for anyone to believe that was possible. There were no records of him ever receiving any visits, except from his lawyer, and no one had mailed him any money. He was a man who didn’t seek out friends and had enough respect among the other prisoners, because of his willingness to fight, that people pretty much left him alone.

  Reilly even contacted Jimmie’s attorney in the hope of gleaning some helpful information. The lawyer politely refused to speak with the detective, citing his life-long obligation to the attorney-client privilege. Even with Jimmie dead, Reilly knew before he drove to the lawyer’s office that this would happen – but he had to at least give it a try.

  He’d made several visits to the Larimer Street A.A. club in an attempt to find where Jimmie might have been staying and who his friends were. All he could find for sure was that Bill Blake, the chairman of the A.A. group that met on Friday nights, regularly signed off at the end of each evening’s activities on the Court-ordered attendance verification form. Slaikovitch never spoke during the meetings, except to introduce himself by his first name, as was customary for everyone in the group. He always sat at a table in the rear of the room, sometimes next to a very attractive dark-brown-haired woman of about thirty-five, who looked liked she spent some time in the gym. She, too, only introduced herself by first name and said nothing more. Blake thought her name was Anna, but had no way of knowing if that was her real name or not.

  As a long-term member of the group, with over twenty years of continuous sobriety, Blake knew that many people who came through the door for help with their drinking problems were at first reluctant to reveal their true identities. Some were still in trouble with the police and on the run. So, he didn’t worry about who was really who – he just did his best to run the meetings and encourage the people in attendance to do the things that would help them to sober up.

  Reilly had gone so far as to sit in a few Friday night meetings in the hope of locating the dark-haired beauty and speaking with her. The room was always filled. He estimated there were about one hundred people in attendance. He found no one who matched the mystery woman’s description, and after a few weeks of striking out, he figured she no longer attended – either by omission or by design – and he knew not which.

  He did some checking with his intelligence section, as well as with the Denver P.D. narcotics and gang units, to see if anyone knew who Jimmie’s drug dealers were. Slaikovitch had been busted severa
l times for possession of crack cocaine, but not for dealing – yet. No one on the street knew who sold to him. At least that was the story told to the cops by the locals. Even if someone had known who kept Jimmie supplied with crack, it’d be very risky for an informant who didn’t need a favor from the police to come forward with information that would betray either a dealer or a buyer. Hell, it was risky for someone who did need a favor to tell on a doper. Snitches could end up dead. Snitches did end up dead.