Buyer's Remorse

by Lori L. Lake

  "Yes, I do. You've been most kind, Brian. Thank you for helping a naïve old lady."

  "I hardly think you're naïve, Mrs. Sinclair."

  "The technology of this world has outstripped my ability to keep up."

  "It seems to me that it's the avarice that's done that, ma'am." He rose. "I'm very sorry for your troubles, and if I can be of further assistance, please call on me. Here's the manager's business card."

  "Thank you," she said as she tucked it into her wallet.

  "May I have George bring you some dessert?"

  "Goodness, no. I ate enough pastry already. If he could bring the check, I—"

  Brian brought up a hand to halt her. "Please accept this meal on the house. It's the least we can do considering the situation."

  "I couldn't."

  "Yes, you could, and I hope that one day you'll visit Chez René again under happier circumstances." The maître d' winked as he spun on his heel and strolled to the front of the restaurant.

  She didn't leave right away. Another sip of Scotch called to her, and she sat thinking about the fact that the world was full of many decent people. She didn't understand why there had to be so many rotten ones, too.

  When she finally gathered up her bag and slid out, she left George a nice tip—a ten and four ones.

  Chapter Fourteen

  LEO'S AFTERNOON PASSED in a haze of periodic focus on the Rivers' Edge report, punctuated by long spacey periods of nervousness. Each time she felt weepy, she forced back the feelings, upbraided herself for weakness, and redoubled her efforts to study documents and write the report on her investigation. She didn't want the whole office to know what was happening to her. With any luck at all, nobody would ever know.

  But that was assuming she didn't lose her eye. Each time the thought flitted through her mind, she wanted to throw up. And what if cancer had spread through her body? At one point, she was sure she'd sat frozen to the chair for at least ten minutes, trying to force the fear of death out of her mind. She shook herself, rose to take some deep breaths, and seated herself again just as Thom Thoreson appeared.

  "Oh, good, you're here," Thom said. He rolled up next to her and in a whisper said, "Fred came in from lunch and asked me if I thought you got high."

  "W—what?" Leo sputtered, her face heating up uncomfortably. "What's he talking about?"

  "He said your eyes were all weird at lunch."

  Leo couldn't help the bitter laugh that escaped. "You mean the weird dilation a person gets from going to the eye doctor?" She pointed at the clunky plastic sunglasses on top of her valise.

  Thom straightened up, threw his head back, and let out a honking bray. Leo thought the decibel level was astounding, but he recovered and said, "The man is an ass—a complete and total mental midget. Didn't I tell you he was worthless? For an investigator, he can't even figure out the most rudimentary things."

  "I mentioned I'd been to the doctor, but to be truthful, I don't think I said what kind. So I'll cut him a tiny bit of slack."

  Thom crossed his arms, all the while shaking his head. "God, I wish he'd retire."

  "Any chance of that?"

  "I'll have to sneak a peek at his record. I think he's only in his fifties, though he seems to be about eighty sometimes."

  "He told me he's fifty-four."

  "Oh, my God, really? That's what fifty-four looks like?" Thom rolled his eyes comically. "I better go. Had to check in since my take on you didn't include druggie in the description."

  "Hey, before you leave, one question. Is it possible for me to get access to credit bureau information?"

  "Sure, so long as it's for a case. We get the 3-in-1 credit report summary from all the major credit bureaus." He glanced at his watch. "If you want to come to my cube at about three, I can show you what you have to do to pull up the database."

  "I'll be there."

  "See you then."

  Thom was still giggling when he left. Leo decided that Thom might be a good friend and ally. Fred Baldur, on the other hand, was now on her shit list. She'd have to watch out for him.

  She concentrated on the notes she'd scribbled on her legal pad, lifted her pen, then stopped. With a sudden sense of disbelief, she scanned the drab gray cubicle. She'd been working at DHS for three days now, and what for? Why bother? Why didn't she get up and walk out right now? She could cite medical leave as an excuse.

  The thought brought to mind the gut-slamming news from the eye doctor. She dropped her pen, brought her hands up to her head, and leaned forward with her elbows on the desk. Everything was a mess. Her job. This assignment. Daria's Dunleavey case. But most of all, the cancer.

  Cancer. The word gave her chills. Bad enough that cancer had killed her mother, but was she going to die of the Big C as well?

  She wanted to get up and scream. Throw things. Destroy every gray cubicle in the sterile gray office. Above all, she wanted Dr. Spence to be wrong. Couldn't he be mistaken?

  Her instincts said no. He'd shown her the internal photographs of each of her eyes. Something gray and spotted with fuzzy black patches interrupted the normal-looking orange circle and pattern of red veins that made up the inside of her right eye. In the photo of the left eye, no such blur appeared anywhere.

  Something was very wrong, and nothing she said or did would change that.

  Leo sagged in the chair and let her hands drop into her lap. Since Monday, her life had turned upside down. She was off her regular job, she had cancer, and she was such a poor investigator, she couldn't even figure out who killed a little old lady in a semi-secure apartment complex.

  Tears pricked at the back of her eyelids. She took a deep breath and composed herself. Throwing herself into her work was the one thing guaranteed to block out all the sorrow and confusion.

  She picked up the phone, dialed the Minneapolis Police Department, and asked for Detective Flanagan. He wasn't in. She asked for DeWitt. He was out, too. Of course the two partners would be off investigating together. She found the card Dennis Flanagan had given her Tuesday, dialed his cell phone, and listened to it ring.

  When she thought it would roll over to voicemail, he answered. She identified herself, but before she could form a question, he said, "We're in the middle of something here. You in your office?"

  "Yes."

  "Why don't we come by later, say around four? We can compare notes then."

  "All right." She told him how to find her and hung up, all the while wondering why Flanagan would go out of his way to come over to Saint Paul.

  She ripped off the top page of notes and drew a giant box on a clean page. Slicing it into four quadrants, she labeled them Suspects, Alibi, Unlikely, and Out of Left Field.

  In the Suspects box, she inserted Habibah Okello and Walter Green. After a moment's thought, she added Ted Trimble. He seemed like a good guy, and Eleanor Sinclair loved him, but who could tell. A lot of people liked Charles Manson, too. She'd heard that Jeffrey Dahmer had a charming side. Ha.

  Under Alibi, she wrote aides Silvia Garcia, Hazel Bellinger, and Sherry Colton. Ernesta Campion and Shani Okello were out of town, so they went in that box, too, along with the two cooks and the housekeeper, Missy McCarver. None of the Merry Widows could have done it. She didn't bother to write their individual names, just jotted "MW." All of them gave Franklin Callaghan an alibi. Eleanor Sinclair wasn't home when Callie Trimble died, and the final resident, Norma Osterweiss, was out of town.

  Into the third box, labeled Unlikely, she put Rowena Hoxley. She almost wrote Habibah's name there, too. She had a hard time believing that the young woman would do harm to anyone.

  She wasn't sure what to put in the last box, which she'd called Out Of Left Field. What about Habibah's boyfriend, Chuck? She didn't know his last name, but she scribbled him in. Martin Rivers would also be an entirely unexpected possibility. Claire Ryerson and her colleague, Iris Something-or-Other. Where were all the managers Monday night? Had anyone asked Rivers if he had an alibi? She made a note to check wit
h the detectives. Perhaps she ought to listen to the tapes again.

  Granted, neither Chuck nor the Rivers administrators seemed to have a motive.

  She went back to Suspects and in block letters wrote: Unknown Outsider—Thrill Kill Motive. She'd hate to think that was what happened. In her years on the police force, she knew of a couple of gang initiation murders and a pair of thrill killings committed by two teens. So that category of homicide had been known to happen, but all of them occurred on the streets.

  Who was left? The gardener? Any repairmen? Who else had access? Who else had any kind of motive at all?

  Her phone rang. Thom's cheery voice informed her that he was ready early if she wanted to come over and learn all about the credit report process.

  Leo parked herself in the visitor's chair in Thom's cubicle and tried to take in the intricacies of the complex computer program. Thom's nimble fingers flew over the keyboard, and Leo wished she typed with that speed and ease.

  After she learned how to access the database, she asked, "What do I do with all the cassette tapes I have with witness interviews?"

  "You file them with your report and hope and pray nobody ever asks you for them."

  "They sometimes get asked for? That's no big deal. Doesn't the State have a department—or contract with somebody—to transcribe them?"

  "It's not that easy. They have to be typed word for word."

  "And is there a department they go to?"

  "Yes. It's called the Transcription Department of Leona Reese."

  Leo laughed. "We don't have any clerks or typists?"

  "Almost never. Budget cuts. If there was an emergency, we might prevail upon the typing pool, but that's rarely happened."

  "So I'll get paid big bucks to type up interviews?"

  "Uh-huh. Waste of resources, isn't it?"

  "How often do they get requested?"

  "Often enough. That's one thing Fred's good at. The guy makes more than any other investigator on the floor, and he spends most of his time transcribing tapes so he doesn't have to go out in the field."

  "I see. Well, in that respect, it's not all that different from the police department. We don't have enough clerical support either."

  Back in her own cubicle, Leo pulled up the credit bureau database and scanned records for workers at Rivers' Edge. Hazel Bellinger was in hock up to her eyeballs. House, car, credit cards from JC Penney, Best Buy, Kohl's, Sears, Target, and two Visa cards.

  Habibah and Shani Okello had no debt, and Missy McCarver only had one charge card, which Leo found interesting since it seemed the vast majority of Americans charged up a storm on a regular basis. For all of them to be so young and not owe significant amounts was either seriously suspicious or a testament to their thrift.

  Rowena Hoxley had recently purchased a car for $32,879 from Buerkle Honda, but she must have had a trade-in or made a significant down payment because the monthly amount owed was only slightly over three hundred dollars. Sherry Colton and her husband had bought a house in south Minneapolis six months earlier.

  The staff's bank accounts ranged from a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars—nothing terribly notable. Hazel Bellinger's checking account was overdrawn, and she was behind on her payments to several creditors, but not criminally so. Everyone's purchases looked "normal," though Leo did wonder why one of the cooks spent a minimum of one hundred dollars per month at Victoria's Secret.

  She moved on to view accounts for the residents. The Merry Widows had pots of money. So did Norma Osterweiss and Walter Green. How had his great-uncle amassed nearly a million dollars? No wonder Walter had been so smug. And now she knew why Hazel Bellinger was sucking up to the old guy.

  The credit reports for Eleanor Sinclair and Callie Trimble were eye-opening. Callie had one savings account into which her monthly social security check was deposited. The balance of the account was only eleven thousand dollars. In contrast, Eleanor had a portfolio of investments and a couple of bank accounts stuffed to the gills with money. Eleanor had recently withdrawn large sums from one of the bank accounts, reduced the funds in a money market account, and spent heavily on a credit card. How odd. From Eleanor's interview and the comments of others, it seemed that she lived a simple life. Her apartment was spare and elegant. What would she have charged to the tune of twenty thousand dollars in the last month?

  Without warning, pain sliced from Leo's temple, through her eye, and deep into her head. Again, and again, like an ice pick jabbing her in the eye.

  She closed her eyes and bent forward in her chair, tasting the club sandwich bacon from lunch. For a moment she thought she was going to vomit, but the intense pain gradually abated.

  When she sat up, feeling cold all over but also perspiring, she was startled to see a giant form step into her cubicle's doorway.

  Detective Flanagan hesitated, his suit jacket over one arm and one hand using a handkerchief to mop his brow. His eyes narrowed. "You okay?"

  "Yeah, yeah." She couldn't prevent her face from flooding with heat. "I'll be all right. Bad food at lunch, I think."

  He stepped into the small cubicle, followed by DeWitt. They lowered themselves into the two visitor's chairs. The tight space made them seem even more broad-shouldered than they actually were. Leo felt claustrophobic.

  Flanagan pulled a notepad out of the pocket of his rumpled dress shirt and thumbed through the pages. "This case is the damndest thing."

  "Have you nailed the killer?"

  "No. That's the thing—we're not making any headway. Can we compare notes?"

  "Sure. I don't know that I can help you, but I'll try."

  "We were sure it was a mercy killing. Then Habibah Okello's boyfriend came up with a half-ass alibi for her."

  "He was with her at the time?" Leo asked.

  DeWitt crossed his arms. "On the phone."

  "And that checked out?"

  "Yeah." He looked so fatigued Leo wondered if he might be hung over. His eyes were bloodshot, and the intricate webbing of veins in his nose and craggy face stood out more than before.

  "Her phone was connected to his during the time they say it was," Flanagan said.

  "Phone sex," DeWitt said, his voice so raspy he almost sounded like he was growling.

  Flanagan shook his head. "She could have put down the cell and gone off to do the job. But Kippler says she was on the phone whispering sweet nothings in his ear the whole time."

  "Kippler?" she asked.

  "Charles Lavondre Kippler. Her boyfriend's full name."

  Leo picked up a pen and crossed Habibah Okello off her quadrant of suspects. "I never thought Habibah killed Callie Trimble anyway."

  "They could have been in cahoots."

  "I seriously doubt that. So who's left?"

  "Our best leads are the two men, Trimble and Green. That Walter Green is a real piece of work, and of course, there's always the son. What'd you get on him?"

  "I spoke to him briefly, but I didn't interview him at length. I couldn't compel him to talk to me since he doesn't live in the facility, and he was apparently gone by the time Mrs. Trimble died."

  "That's where you may be wrong. As you so handily illustrated when you hopped up on the garden wall," Flanagan said, and his face took on an expression of distaste, "anybody could have come into the garden and entered the premises. Kippler has admitted to occasionally getting in that way, and the flower beds on the outside showed plenty of scuffs and indentations. He has an alibi, though. So I like Trimble for the murder."

  "But why would Ted kill his mother?"

  "Mercy killing."

  "I don't think so. From what Eleanor told me—and the aides and housekeeper said as much, too—Callie still had a lot of brain cells left. Ted Trimble seemed to genuinely care for Eleanor and Callie. Killing his mom makes no sense."

  "Then we're stuck with Walter Green," Flanagan said. "Or it's some unknown. Do us a favor. Let's go through the facts for every interview you did."

  "Okay." One by one, in chr
onological order, she detailed her interviews and impressions. The detectives asked few questions and occasionally scribbled in their notebooks.

  When Leo finished, Flanagan put a big meaty paw over his mouth and sat, eyes downcast, for a good ten seconds. When he looked up, he let out an exasperated sigh. "That all pretty much jives with what we've got."

  Leo met DeWitt's gaze. "Do you have any theories?"

  "Money." DeWitt said.

  Flanagan chuckled. "That's Hal's answer to everything. He's always following the money train."

  DeWitt said, "The money train is almost always the answer in cases like this. I'm pretty rarely wrong about it, Denny, you know that."

  Leo was surprised at the sound of DeWitt's voice. He'd said so little until now that hearing him speaking in a melodic deep bass seemed strange. She wondered if the guy sang. She thought his singing voice would come out sounding like the crooning soul-singer Barry White's: low-toned, sexy, resonant. The contrast between that and his rode-hard appearance was remarkable.

  Leo gestured toward her computer. "I've been going through credit reports for these people."

  DeWitt asked, "Did you happen to peruse Ted Trimble's credit records?"

  "No, I haven't done that."

  "Go ahead, pull him up," DeWitt said. "Here's his social."

  Leo went through the complicated steps of tracking down the correct Theodore Trimble and waited for his file to download. She paged through the report, surprised by how many accounts were delinquent. "He's not doing so well, especially considering he's an accountant."

  Flanagan said, "He ought to know better if he's supposed to be a financial wiz. He trades in his car every two years and gets a spendier model. His condo payment is twenty-four-hundred bucks a month. He likes fine food, nice things, and exotic vacations."

  "Money," DeWitt repeated. "I tell you, it's the root of all evil."

  "Actually," Leo said, "it's the love of money that's the root of all evil. At least according to the catechism classes I took when I was younger."

  DeWitt shrugged. "Whatever."