Cate was momentarily inclined to walk off and leave Kim to her gullibility or whatever it was, but a frustrating concern for the vulnerable woman kept her from doing so. She couldn’t just leave Kim in the clutches of a killer. Finally she decided there was no way to be subtle about this.
“Kim, could I talk to you for a minute? Alone,” she emphasized. Cate thought for a moment that Travis was going to jump in and veto that. His hands balled into fists. She tossed out a diverting statement. “I really need your help with something.”
Kim looked up at Travis again. His glance at Cate narrowed, but he apparently decided protest would look suspicious, and stepped back. Or maybe he was already confident enough of his hold on Kim. Cate led Kim over to the far side of some straggly but head-high bushes.
“Kim, what is going on here?” she whispered frantically. “I can’t believe this. Yesterday you were convinced Travis may have killed both your mother and Ed, and trashed her apartment too. And today you’re taking his advice about cremating her?”
“I thought you needed help on something.”
“I do! I need help understanding what you’re doing!”
“I can see why you might have reservations about Travis.” Kim spoke with an I’m-trying-to-be-patient note in her voice, as if Cate were just too dense to understand. “I did too, when he called me last night from Tigard—”
“How do you know he was calling from Tigard? On a cell phone, he could have been standing here in this parking lot.”
“I thought of that,” Kim admitted. “But when he got here this morning, he had flowers for me. They were from a florist’s shop in Tigard. My favorites, anthurium, from Hawaii.”
If Travis had staged a couple of murders, he could certainly stage the production of flowers that looked as if they’d come from a florist’s shop in Tigard. And remembering Kim’s favorite flowers. A nice touch.
“Anyway, we talked and talked last night when he called, and we’ve been talking ever since he got here this morning.”
“So just like that, you’re jumping into a hot new romance with him?”
“Of course not!” Kim’s eyes flashed as if that suggestion both shocked and offended her. “I’m still in mourning for my husband. Travis is just trying to help out. He told me how sorry he is about everything. He’s changed, Cate, he really has.”
Okay, people could change. Cate could grant that. But she wasn’t yet ready to jump on Travis’s bandwagon. The ex-husband may be saying he’d changed, but the difference between saying it and actually doing it was like the difference between misdemeanor and murder.
“Did he tell you why he left you? Or where he’s been? Or why he came back?”
“He left because he just got tired of the responsibility of marriage and wanted out. It was as simple as that. Now he realizes how immature that was, and he’s ashamed of himself. He also says he was really stupid. That he was too dumb to realize what he had when he had it.”
“And now he wants to jump back into the role of husband?”
“No! I told you. We’re not into some instant romance. He’s been down in Guatemala. But the buddies he knew who’d gone down there were living like jungle rats while they grew pot. He found out he doesn’t want anything to do with that kind of life. He says he got lost out in the jungle one time, lost for ten days out there alone, and it changed him. Straightened out his priorities. He came back to Oregon because he’s different now, and his life is going to be different too.”
For Kim’s sake, Cate hoped that Travis’s claim to change was real. But the hope was pockmarked with a dread that if Travis was the killer Cate thought he was, Kim might be risking her life in accepting his claim.
“How long has he been back?”
“He worked down in California for a while after he left Guatemala, so he’s only been in Tigard for a couple months.”
“Long enough ago for him to make that call to your mother.”
“That wasn’t him. I asked. He didn’t know anything about any phone call. Like I told you, I felt like it was him on the phone with Mom that time, but my feelings about most things are about as reliable as infomercials. It must have been some salesman on the phone that day, just like Mom said. Travis didn’t find out until just a couple days ago that I was here in Eugene.”
Kim asked. Travis denied. Kim believed.
Which meant she was also believing he couldn’t have been involved in either Ed or Celeste’s deaths, because he hadn’t known where Kim was until a couple of days ago.
Cate wanted to pound Kim the way Kim had pounded that purple pillow back at the house. Wake up, girl. Smell the lies! Frustrated, she asked, “What does he plan to do now?”
Cate was thinking in terms of the next few days, but Travis had already filled Kim with loftier plans.
“He’s realized he needs more education,” she said. “He’s thinking, if he can find a job here, he could start taking classes at the university.”
“Classes in what?”
“I don’t know.” Kim sounded impatient with these picky details. “Maybe architecture or social work, something like that. Something worthwhile.”
“That’s a rather wide area, from architecture to social work,” Cate pointed out.
Kim waved a hand, as if this were irrelevant. “I just know he’s already been a big help in deciding what to do about Mom. He says maybe I should go back to school too.”
Kill Celeste and then kindly jump in to help decide what to do with the body. Way to go, Travis.
“Kim, don’t do this! You can make decisions on your own. You don’t have to have someone tell you what to do. Maybe you should go back to school. But decide it for yourself. You’re not dumb.” Naïve about men, maybe, but not dumb.
Look who’s talking, Cate had to remind herself. Before good-guy Mitch came along, her past had included a fair number of frogs who hadn’t a clue about turning into princes.
“I remember back to a decision I made on my own,” Kim said with a certain defiance.
“Marrying Travis.”
“A very dumb, very bad decision,” Kim said.
“So you think letting him help and advise you now is a good decision?”
Kim managed a smile. “I know. That sounds, um, a little muddleheaded, doesn’t it? But we were both so young back then, and we’ve matured now. He’s changed, and I need his help. Neither of us is thinking romance now.”
Kim turned, circled the bush, and headed back toward the Mustang and Travis. Kim might not think Travis had romance on his mind. Cate thought otherwise.
The even bigger worry was, what else was on Travis Beauchamp’s mind?
On the way home, Cate pulled over to the curb and did a quick search with her cell phone for a number for Melissa Bair in Tigard. She expected voice mail, answering machine, a delay of some kind, but instead a woman answered on the third ring. She sounded harried even in her one-word hello.
“Hi. Is this Melissa Bair?”
Cate had a feeling the woman would prefer to say “maybe” rather than “yes,” wary of what the call was about. Instead the woman detoured answering the question by saying, “And this is?”
“Cate Kinkaid. I’m a private investigator here in Eugene. I’m not investigating you or collecting a bill or trying to sell you something,” she added quickly. “I’d just like to talk to you. But if this is a busy time, I can call again later.”
“With three kids under five, it’s always a busy time,” Melissa said. Curiosity, however, apparently outweighed the busyness. Or maybe hearing from a private investigator was preferable to a call from a bill collector. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“A situation has come up concerning Travis Beauchamp. I believe he was a former neighbor, and you knew his wife Kim too?”
“You said you’re a private investigator?”
“Well, uh, an assistant private investigator, actually,” Cate said. Sometimes she wished honesty about that minor detail wouldn’t kick in at
inopportune moments.
“Travis has done something that needs investigating, no doubt. What do you need to know?”
“Travis came to you awhile back because he was trying to locate Kim. Could you tell me exactly when he contacted you?”
“Well, let’s see. Aaron broke his tooth about three weeks ago, and it was quite a while before that. Maybe when he put the mustache on Tiffany with a marking pen, and I had to—no, I remember now. It was the day Tiffany tried to flush my Cosmo magazine down the toilet. Which would make it right about six weeks. I paid the plumber’s bill just yesterday.”
Motherhood made for a different time line for keeping track of events, Cate realized, but it sounded like an accurate system. Six weeks. That would definitely put Travis’s contact with Melissa back before Celeste got that phone call at the Mystic Mirage. Before Ed Kieferson was killed too.
“I was thinking at the time maybe I should call Kim and tell her Travis had been snooping around, looking for her, but I couldn’t find a phone listing for her or her mother. I didn’t know then that she’d remarried.”
“Did you see what kind of vehicle he was driving?”
“Motorcycle.”
“With high handlebars?”
“High handlebars? Hey, come to think of it, that’s exactly what they were. The kind where your hands are up higher than your shoulders. They look about as comfortable as trying to chin yourself while riding a bike. Tiffany Jean, stop that!” she yelled. A clunk and then a few moments of silence on the phone before Melissa returned. “Sorry about that. Tiff was trying to put our new puppy in the crib with the baby. Where were we? Oh yeah—I knew both Kim and her mother were down there in Eugene, but you can bet your diapers I didn’t tell Travis that. He was bad news back when they lived in the apartment next door to us, and I figure he’s still bad news.”
“Someone else could have told him?”
“Oh, sure. Some of his sleazy buddies are still around, and they probably knew. Is he down there making trouble for Kim? I hope not. When she called me, which was after Travis had been here trying to find out where she was, she said she’d gotten married again.”
Even though both Ed’s and Celeste’s deaths had been big news in Eugene, that importance hadn’t carried statewide. At least the information hadn’t blipped on Melissa’s radar.
“Both Kim’s husband and her mother have recently met their deaths under suspicious circumstances, so Kim is going through a very bad time now.”
“Oh no! Poor Kim.” With no pause for introspection, Melissa immediately added, “And Travis was involved?”
As if, if there were trouble, and Travis was in the vicinity, it was a foregone conclusion that he was involved.
“No one has been arrested yet.”
“You know,” Melissa said, “now that I think about it, Travis asked about Celeste first. Then, when I wouldn’t tell him anything about her, he gave me that song-and-dance about Kim’s name being on the title of some old pickup, and he had to find her. But now that you say something happened to Celeste, his asking about her first strikes me as odd.”
Yes. Odd. Of course, Travis may have figured if he found out where Celeste was, that would also lead him to Kim. Maybe he just hadn’t wanted to admit an interest in his ex-wife. And then, maybe it was Celeste he really wanted to find.
Why?
“Do you know what Travis has been doing since he got back to Tigard?”
“Actually, I don’t think he was here very long. I never saw him again. I figured he’d just slunk back into his dark hole under a rock, or wherever he came from, but maybe he’s been down there in Eugene.”
Maybe that’s exactly where Travis had been. And still was. Pulling Kim into another trap.
Back home, Cate looked in her notebook for the names and phone numbers she’d copied off Celeste’s calendar. Uncle Joe and Rebecca weren’t home. With Cate handling much of Belmont Investigations’s work, they’d taken to helping with renovations on the church or going to yard sales, even an afternoon movie now and then.
An answering machine picked up on the call to the first number, listed on Celeste’s calendar as D. Dustinhoff, and a woman’s perky voice said, “I can’t come to the phone right now. Maybe that means I’m off on a honeymoon in the Caribbean! Maybe I’m hiding in the next room, paranoid about this strange machine that keeps ringing! Maybe I’m having a romantic interlude and don’t want to be interrupted! Leave a number, and if you’re one of today’s lucky chosen few, I’ll get back to you. Have a nice day!”
When the machine beeped, Cate, feeling as if she’d inadvertently stepped into the world of the strange and loony, hung up without leaving a message. Although this did sound like someone who’d gleefully romp around in previous lives.
On the second call, Cate was relieved to hear a nice, everyday, “Hello.”
19
Cate identified herself as a private investigator and said she needed to talk to a woman named Susan Linderman.
“About what?”
Now the woman didn’t sound quite so nice. The question bristled with hostility, as if Cate had instantly hit a hotline to her nerves.
“Is this Susan Linderman?”
Silence, as if the woman was undecided about admitting anything, although the silence itself told Cate this was the woman she was looking for. She went on as if the woman had agreed that yes, she was Susan Linderman.
“You may have heard about the recent death of a local woman, Dr. Celeste Chandler?”
“Yes, I saw it in the newspaper.” She sounded wary, but reluctantly interested.
“I’m involved in a private investigation of her death, and I understand you had an appointment with her within the last couple of months?”
“Who told you that?”
“In the course of my investigation, I found your name and number in her records.”
“How do I know who you are? You could be her killer. I don’t have to talk to you!” Mrs. Linderman’s blustery voice held an undercurrent of panic.
“Of course you don’t have to talk to me,” Cate soothed. “But I’d be so grateful if you would. I’d be glad to show you my identification and talk to you in person.” Cate half-expected an instant hang-up, but to her surprise Susan Linderman wilted almost instantly.
At the end of a sigh, she said, “I probably should talk to someone.” She sounded resigned now, as if it was actually not a surprise someone had surfaced to interrogate her. “I thought about calling the authorities, but then …” Her voice drifted off, apparently lost in lack of any good reason she hadn’t contacted them.
So what was the reason she should have contacted them? Cate felt a shiver of excitement. Susan Linderman knew something!
“May I come over now?”
“Yes, I guess so.” Mrs. Linderman gave an address, again with that aura of resignation.
Cate Googled the address, and the map took her to an area of modest older homes on the west side of town. She momentarily wondered if Susan Linderman’s name had been on Celeste’s calendar for some reason other than a regression-into-past-lives session. Somehow she expected a person interested in past lives would occupy a house more esoteric than this ordinary gray, ranch style with a neat chain-link fence surrounding a children’s slide and swing set and a flock of pink plastic flamingos.
Past-middle-aged Susan Linderman opened the door before Cate even rang the bell. “I’d, uh, like to see some identification,” she said. Her demand tried for belligerence but didn’t make it past uncertainty, and Cate suspected a library card would get a nervous nod of okay.
She wore blue slacks with an elastic waistband, pink blouse, old tennies, and an apron. Cate couldn’t remember when she’d last seen an apron. The woman apparently noticed Cate’s glance at it because she added, “I’ve been making peanut butter cookies for my grandson. He comes here after school every day.”
“I’m sure he appreciates that.” Cate offered a Belmont Investigations card and also opened her
wallet to a driver’s license as identification.
Both could have said Cate Kinkaid, Hired Killer, Discount for Senior Citizens, for all the care Mrs. Linderman took in examining them. She’d obviously just been going through the motions trying to make Cate think she wasn’t as nervous about this interview as she was.
“Okay, come on in. We can have some cookies. And tea. Would you like orange-cinnamon delight? Or apple spice?”
Cate had the feeling making tea would help put the woman at ease. “Orange cinnamon would be great.”
“Come on in the kitchen then.”
Cate followed the woman into a cozy room that reminded her of Jo-Jo Kieferson’s country-house kitchen. White cabinets, family photos plastered on the refrigerator, old-fashioned iron skillet on the stove, plastic-topped table. A scent of freshly baked cookies fluttered angel wings over the mundane room and furnishings.
When the tea was ready, Mrs. Linderman started to load a tray to take to the living room, but Cate stopped her. “Let’s stay right here in the kitchen. It’s so nice and cozy.”
Mrs. Linderman took off her apron, and they sat at the kitchen table. Her tennies shuffled the floor, and she studied her tea as if it held secrets of the universe. Cate nibbled a cookie and remained silent, hoping the woman would feel a necessity to fill the silence with something. It worked.
“This is about my taking that stuff when I went into my past lives, isn’t it? Dr. Chandler said it was okay, just a mild relaxant. But …” Mrs. Linderman started to pick up her cup, but her shaky hand sloshed tea into the saucer. She jumped up to rip a paper towel off the holder and sop up the spill.
“I’m looking into all aspects of Dr. Chandler’s life.” Cate carefully kept both her comment and tone neutral, although what she wanted to do was yell, “What stuff?”
“I didn’t murder her!”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Cate agreed.
Mrs. Linderman sank back into the chair. “I didn’t want to take anything. I told her that. But I just couldn’t seem to relax enough to get hypnotized, so she said that was the way she’d have to do it. She wanted me to take it with some red wine, but I never drink, not even wine. Duane’s father was an alcoholic, so he was dead set against anything alcoholic. So then she said we could use whatever I had on hand, and what I had was root beer, so I went to the fridge and got a can of that. But I still felt uneasy about it.”
Dolled Up to Die Page 18