Kim turned to look at her. “What do you think?”
Cate resisted the urge to jump up and wave her arms and shout “No, no, no, don’t help him get out!” Instead she said, “You have to decide this, Kim. It’s one of a lot of decisions you’re going to have to make for yourself now.”
Kim hesitated for a long moment. “No, it isn’t a good idea, is it?” Another long moment of thought as she weighed the decision. “And I’m not going to do it.”
Cate again resisted an urge, this one to stick two fingers in her mouth and blow a raucous whistle of approval. Instead, she merely nodded and said, “I think that’s a good decision.”
“But I think hocking or selling something is definitely a great idea. I need money to pay the bills. Maybe I could even sell enough to get the house out of foreclosure!” Kim jumped up. She grabbed a free-form sculpture from the coffee table, small and squiggly looking but undoubtedly expensive. “I don’t need all this stuff!” She sounded unexpectedly amazed about that discovery.
If Travis’s threatening call had made Kim see that she didn’t need all the stuff that surrounded her, then it had accomplished something worthwhile after all. Kim set the sculpture back on the coffee table, then picked up an elaborate vase filled with drooping flowers, gave it an appraising inspection, and decisively set it beside the sculpture.
Cate was about to suggest Kim could add that strange sculpture out in the yard to a list of disposable items, but Kim suddenly dropped back to the sofa. She clasped her arms around her body as if she’d gone cold again.
“But he’ll manage to get the bail money somehow, even if I don’t give it to him. Travis can be … resourceful.”
Oh yes. He’d blackmailed his way to a trip to Guatemala. Gotten hold of a cell phone in jail. Definitely resourceful.
Kim’s throat moved in a convulsive swallow. “He’ll get out.”
That realization obviously scared Kim. It scared Cate too. Because what the words told Cate was that this was no time to feel complacent or safe simply because Travis was behind bars. He would get out on bail, so she had a very limited window of time to get evidence against him about murder before he came after one or both of them.
“But I’m not going to worry about that now,” Kim declared with determination in her voice. “He surely can’t get out on bail for a few days yet. Probably not until they take him up to Tigard. There are small weddings scheduled for both Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at Lodge Hill. LeAnne says she’ll handle the Tuesday one, and I’ll be there with her to learn all I can so I can do the Wednesday one alone. I don’t even know exactly what she does or how the food for receptions is coordinated with the restaurant. Or a lot of other things.”
“Thursday is the rehearsal dinner for my friend Robyn’s wedding. I don’t know anything about weddings, but I’ll be there and help any way I can. And then Friday is Robyn’s wedding.”
“That’s a big wedding, isn’t it?” Kim’s brief burst of confidence sounded on the edge of crumbling.
Yes, that herd of bridesmaids, a wedding gown from San Francisco, and a color-coordinated hair scheme probably qualified as big and complicated. “You can do this, Kim. Remember all those weddings you had for your dolls? All those wedding articles you read? And you wanted Ed to let you manage Lodge Hill, didn’t you? Now you can do it.”
“But even if I manage that, there are so many other problems! This house and the vineyard and the restaurant. The Mystic Mirage too.”
“Take them one at a time. You’re not dumb. Or helpless.”
“You think so?” The sideways glance Kim gave Cate looked hopeful, but her voice sounded skeptical.
“God gave us all talents or abilities of some kind. Running a wedding business may be one of yours. I’ll pray for you.”
“Pray?” Kim looked surprised. Her gaze darted around as if she suddenly feared God might be spying on her through a glass wall. “What good will that do?”
“You might be surprised.”
Cate offered to stay the night with Kim, but Kim shook her head and smiled wryly.
“With Travis behind bars, I’ll be fine.”
Cate called Kim’s cell phone number right after church the next morning, and Kim was indeed fine. She surprised Cate by saying she was at that moment at the Mystic Mirage, putting bargain-basement prices on everything for a going-out-of-business sale. She’d gotten hold of Rolf. He and a friend were coming by the Mystic Mirage that afternoon to pick up the key to the motorcycle, and then he’d ride the bike out to the vineyard for storage.
“I decided I don’t want it at the house,” Kim said. “I also called the motel and asked them to store Travis’s things until he could pick them up. They weren’t happy about it, but I don’t want his stuff at my place either. Monday evening I’m meeting LeAnne out at Lodge Hill, and we’re going over information about how things work there.”
“You sound as if you have everything under control,” Cate said. “I’m impressed.”
“Maybe it was that pep talk you gave me. Or the prayer.”
Cate and Mitch went for another ride on the motorcycle that afternoon. Cate still wasn’t putting bike riding at the top of her list of favorite activities, but it had edged off of her Things I Never Want to Do list. Even though the day was sunny and unseasonably warm, she prudently took along her garbage bag.
They rode east from Springfield on the highway that followed the McKenzie River and wound back into the mountains. Fall colors blazed on the forested hillsides, and they took side hikes, once to see a covered bridge, another time to stand close to a waterfall. Mitch swung her hand as they walked. They had a late lunch and turned around at a little place called McKenzie Bridge.
“Well?” Mitch said when they coasted to the curb back at the house just before dark.
Cate flexed her hands. She’d kept a lifeline grip on the handholds most of the time. “I had fun. I enjoyed the ride. There’s a nice sense of freedom on a bike.”
“Good.”
“But I’m still not rushing out to buy a motorcycle of my own,” she warned.
He leaned over and kissed her. “You’ll always have a place on mine.”
Midmorning on Monday she drove back to the motel to see what she could find out about Travis. Yesterday’s warm fall day had given way to blustery clouds, and rain spattered the windshield as she parked by the office door.
The motel looked the same as it had when Cate and Kim were there on Saturday. Baby stroller by a door and nondescript cars in the parking lot, although today a cleaning cart stood by an open door to a room. She was surprised to see Travis’s motorcycle still angled at the curb. Rolf obviously hadn’t come for it yet.
Then a red Camaro pulled in right behind her and parked beside the bike. Rolf got out on the passenger’s side. He was wearing jeans and a heavy denim jacket and carried a plain black helmet in one hand. A curvy blonde got out of the driver’s side of the car. She looked as if she’d just stepped out of an ad that said “Don’t you wish your jeans fit you like this?”
Cate didn’t want to explain her presence here to Rolf. She scrunched down in the seat. She’d just sneak away before he saw her, and return later.
Fat chance.
Rolf, apparently equipped with invisible antenna that detected redhead vibes from across a parking lot, turned and instantly spotted her. He waved, dropped the helmet on the seat of the motorcycle, and headed toward her as if they were old friends. Reluctantly, reminding herself she should be nice to him because he was helping Kim, she opened the window. She probably owed him nice anyway, since she’d had unwarranted suspicions of him. The blonde shot eye icicles across the parking lot.
Rolf braced his arms on the window frame and leaned down to peer inside. “Hey, I didn’t expect to see you here.” He gave her a raised eyebrow and smirky grin. “Meeting someone?” He glanced around the parking lot as if looking for likely prospects. “You should tell him you deserve better than this rat hole.”
Cate i
gnored his insinuation that she was here for some midday tryst. “Kim said she’d asked you to pick up the bike and take it out to the vineyard. I’d thought you were doing it yesterday.”
“Got busy,” he said. “You and Kim BFFs now?”
Best Friends Forever. Cate was surprised Rolf knew the term. She jumped the conversation in a different direction. “A friend is getting married at Lodge Hill Friday night. She was concerned the place might be closing down, but Kim is planning to keep it going.” Which wasn’t an answer to anything he’d asked, and didn’t explain why she was here, but she hoped the small avalanche of irrelevant information would muddle his attention.
“I’ve been wondering about the vineyard and whether I ought to start job hunting.”
“I don’t know about that. Did you know Travis was here in town before Kim called you about his bike?”
“This is Travis’s bike?” Rolf turned and gave the motorcycle a reappraisal. The blonde looked ready to storm across the parking lot and grab him by the ear, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Kim didn’t mention that. She just said a friend’s bike was here, and asked if I could take it out to the vineyard and store it for a while.”
Me and my big mouth.
“So, isn’t that interesting,” Rolf mused, his gaze still on the bike. The blonde crossed her arms and started tapping a toe. “Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Ol’ Travis shows up, and pretty soon both Kim’s husband and mother are dead. I guess I’m not surprised Kim decided she needed to hire a private investigator.”
“It’s not Kim I’m working for.” Too late Cate thought she should have phrased that differently, because her words made it all too obvious she was working for someone else, but Rolf just laughed.
“For a while there, when you dropped the Belmont Investigations card that day I gave you the tour of the vineyard, I wondered if you were investigating me.”
“Guilty conscience?” Cate smiled to suggest it wasn’t a serious question.
“I’ll bet you know all about my little brush with the law at the vineyard where I worked before, don’t you? Six months incarceration, two years probation. Enough to scare a good ol’ farm boy like me straight for life.”
He didn’t sound worried about what she might know, and Cate didn’t let on whether or not she knew anything about his marijuana growing. “So, you want to tell me all the details about that?” she asked as if it were a playful challenge.
“Sure. Over drinks and dinner? Anytime,” he shot back. He grinned, and she couldn’t tell if he actually thought she might accept the invitation or if he was just making flirty small talk. “But now I’m wondering, where is Travis, that he’s not around to take care of his own bike?”
Cate hesitated, but she didn’t see any reason not to tell him what had happened. “Travis had a little brush with the law of his own. They arrested him here at the motel a couple days ago.”
“Hey, couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy, could it? What for?”
“I think it was a burglary charge up in Tigard.”
“Is Kim all shook up about it? Or is she thinking Travis maybe did something a lot worse than burglary right here in Eugene?” He gave her a meaningful lift of eyebrows. He, too, had quickly jumped to a suspicion of murder.
“I’m just a private investigator, not a mind reader.”
“Too bad. Mind reading could be really helpful for a private investigator, couldn’t it? Maybe that’s what Kim’s mother should have been. She liked digging around in people’s minds and lives.”
“I only met her once, so I didn’t really know her.”
He slapped the window frame as if putting a punctuation mark on the conversation. “Well, you tell Kim that if there’s anything else I can do to help, just let me know. She’s had a rough time. You might tell her Rolf says to watch out for ol’ Travis too. He came down here for a reason, and I doubt it was because the lattes are better here. Travis is always looking out for Travis.”
Cate wouldn’t argue with that. “I’ll tell her.”
“I’ll be happy to help you out too, you know. Any way I can. Any time.” His grin gave the offer a sly double meaning made even plainer when he winked and added, “And I don’t do cheap motels. First class, all the way.”
Cate wanted to be angry with him. First he suggested she was meeting someone here at a motel room. Now he was offering … something. With a girlfriend standing only fifty feet away. He was an egotistical jerk. But maybe he couldn’t help it. Once a lady-killer, always a lady-killer. It came out of him as naturally as hot air escaping a balloon.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You know, there is something.” His tone unexpectedly went serious. “If you are investigating Travis in connection with the deaths …” He lifted a questioning eyebrow.
Cate didn’t acknowledge any connection with an investigation of Travis, but curiosity made her say cautiously, “And if I were?”
“You might want to make a run up to Tigard and ask some questions.”
“Ask questions of whom?”
“Go to a bike shop called Ric’s Rough Riders. Travis and his friends always hung out there. Let ’em know you’re not expecting anything for free, that you’re willing to pay for information. Travis likes to brag about his exploits, and his friends are the kind who’ll sell each other out for a dollar-ninety-eight. You might pick up some interesting information.”
“I doubt Travis was going around bragging even to his friends about murder.”
“But he might have said something about how rich his ex-wife was now. About how he figured on getting her back, and he wasn’t going to let her crazy mother or her overage husband stand in his way.” He nodded meaningfully. “You don’t know just what you might find out.”
There was also, Cate remembered, that friend of Travis’s named Jesse whom Travis said had connected him with a burglary he hadn’t been involved in. Jesse might have some interesting information, if Cate could get it out of him.
“You heard something about Travis up in Tigard?” she asked.
“Me? Nah.” Rolf slapped the frame again and backed away from the window. “I haven’t been in Tigard for a while now. I’m just a grape grower, minding my own business, workin’ hard, staying on the right side of the law.”
Cate resisted a glance toward the blonde. Workin’ hard. Yeah, right. “Okay. Well, thanks.”
He swept the few moments of seriousness away with a jaunty grin. “Don’t forget my offer.”
Cate pulled out of the motel parking lot. She drove several blocks, parked in the parking lot of a boarded-up restaurant, and waited for fifteen minutes before cautiously returning. Both bike and Camaro were gone. She went into the office and handed the older man at the counter her Belmont Investigations card. He stared at it as if he thought it might catch fire any moment.
“We run a family business here,” he stated. “Nothing that needs investigating.”
Cate wasn’t sure that was true, but she gave him her most winning smile. “It’s not you or the motel we’re interested in. It’s a guest who stayed here for a while. Travis Beauchamp? The man who was recently arrested.”
“His wife sent you for his stuff? She wanted us to store it, but we’re not in the storage business. People forget something in a room, we hold it three days, then out it goes.” He made a pfft sound and twitched a bony thumb toward the door.
Cate was surprised. Weren’t there laws or regulations about what a place like this was required to do with left-behind belongings? Maybe not. Or, if there were, this guy just twitched his thumb at them. She also noted that Kim had identified herself as Travis’s wife, apparently trying to give herself some authority over his belongings. Cate started to say no, she didn’t want Travis’s belongings, but on second thought she cut off the words. Maybe this was an unexpected opportunity.
“Did he have a gun? Or drugs?”
“A gun or drugs?” The man sounded outraged that she’d think anyone in his establ
ishment might possess such items. “If there was anything like that, I’d of been calling the cops the minute we found it. All he left is some clothes, the usual stuff. Jeans and shirts and underwear. Shaving gear, a few papers in an envelope. Some fancy skin lotion and hair gel stuff. Smells like rotten roses. Can you imagine that? Biker guy like him using skin lotion and hair gel.”
Cate would have doubted the guy ever smiled, but the skin lotion and rotten-roses hair gel brought a snicker. He yelled back into the living quarters at someone named Elsie, then motioned Cate to follow him outside. He unlocked a room holding various cleaning and yard supplies and pointed to a couple of boxes on a bottom shelf. The tops of the boxes were folded over, so Cate couldn’t see what was inside.
“How long did Mr. Beauchamp stay here?” Cate asked.
“I dunno. I’d have to look it up.” His surly tone suggested he’d do that about the same time he offered free lodging for the homeless. “Week or ten days maybe.”
Which meant Travis had been here long enough to murder Celeste and search/trash her apartment, but not long enough to kill Ed. Although he could have been in Eugene much longer at some other motel, of course. So what would he have done with the gun that killed Ed? Toss it, probably. But just maybe he’d stuck it in the saddlebags or trunk of the bike.
Although there was still the possibility Celeste herself had killed Ed before Travis arrived in town, and his murdering her had been unrelated to Ed’s death. There seemed to be more than enough hostility for two murderers here.
“Did he have any visitors while he was here?”
The man drew his skinny frame up indignantly. “We don’t spy on our guests.” But, after a brief pause, he added, “I figured him for having women friends. Good-lookin’ guy, you know? But I never seen any.”
“Did he pay with cash or a credit card?”
The money question apparently reached the motel owner’s limit on information sharing. “You got any business asking all these questions?” he demanded. He eyed the boxes as if he might be about to change his mind about them.
“I’m just trying to help the family,” Cate said. She hastily scooped a box off the shelf. “And I do thank you very much for the help.”
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