Scot Free

by Catriona McPherson

  “Barbara?” I said, looking into her eyes. Her puffy, mascara-streaked, sleep-deprived, and slightly crossed from all the whisky eyes. “I take it you’ve heard? About Clovi—”

  “Don’t say that bastard’s name to me,” she said. “He dumped me. He led me on and got my hopes up and then … he dumped me. He didn’t even have the guts to tell me to my face. So you can go right back to … who are you anyway?”

  “I’m Clovis and Visalia’s … ” I considered it. I should have checked with Mizz Vi that it was all right to go public. But therapy isn’t as embarrassing in California as it is in Dundee. And being in therapy isn’t as embarrassing as being arrested for murder anywhere. “I’m their marriage guidance counsellor,” I said and then gasped as the whisky hit me.

  “Thanks for not throwing the glass,” I said, dripping.

  “So you helped them work it out?” said Barbara. She spun away to get a refill and bounced off a couple of walls en route. Looking at the trailing dressing-gown belt, I thought I should follow.

  “Apparently,” I said. “I thought I was helping them through an amicable divorce. I’m sorry.”

  “And was it your idea for him to let me know by not turning up at the fricking airport?” she said, slopping a good belt into the glass and then holding the bottle out to me. “Want some?” she said. “More?” she added, with a smile.

  “I’m driving,” I said. “Are you telling me you didn’t know? You actually went to the airport?” I took another look at the hibiscus-printed playsuit. It was exactly what someone might wear to run off to the Cayman Islands with their sugar daddy. She must have been sitting drinking and crying nonstop since she finally gave up and came back here.

  “Four hours I waited,” she said. “And he hasn’t answered his phone since I got back. So you can go tell him from me that he’s an asshole and a jerk and he does look his age and his hairpiece is lame and his breath from those cigars could stun a monkey.”

  “Oh God,” I said. “The newspapers on the drive!”

  “Oh gimme a break,” said Barbara. “I get it every day from little Miss Yoga Pants next door. The yard, the mail, the raccoons in the attic.”

  “Ha!” I said. “Grey Gardens fan?” As a marriage guidance therapist, I don’t approve of infidelity. And as the recent dupe of Branston and Brandeee, I wasn’t too keen on mistresses at a personal level, either. But it would be pointless to deny that I quite liked Barbara on first impressions, whisky-throwing and all. I didn’t relish what I was going to have to do to her.

  “The thing is,” I said, sitting down so she would sit down, “Clovis didn’t stand you up.” It was a technicality, but it might help. “He met with a mishap on the Fourth of July. Around teatime. Happy hour,” I translated. I had seldom felt so disoriented (strictly, disoccidented) as the day I realised no one knew when teatime was. It was like being on another planet, where the days didn’t have twenty-four hours anymore. How could there not be teatime? I shook myself back to the dim little living room where Barbara, eyes focussed, was waiting to hear more.

  “He was very seriously hurt,” I said. “By a firework.”

  “But he’s okay,” she said. Then, when I didn’t agree, she turned it into a question. “Is he okay?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I told her. “He didn’t survive.”

  It took her a blink or two to process that. It always does. That’s what makes it such a good way to break the news, a nurse once told me. “He died instantly,” I added, once she had taken in the first fact. Why not say that if you possibly can, is my philosophy. “He didn’t suffer,” I added. And in this case it was true. Clovis’s face—I would never get it out of my head if I lived to be a redwood—had clearly shown that he died thinking “What—?” and hadn’t even made it to “the—?”

  “Clovis is dead?” said Barbara. “A firework accident? I don’t believe it! He was killed by a firework? After seventy Fourth of Julys? Fourths ofs … No way. I don’t believe it. He was a lot of fun to hang out with until—until!—you got him on to firework safety and then you wanted to tear your own arm off and beat yourself to d— I don’t believe it. And he wasn’t working this Fourth anyway. He was coming away to the Caymans with me.”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” I said. “Barbara, you need to prepare yourself for a shock.” She blinked and then took a slurp of whisky like a good girl. “Clovis was murdered.”

  She nodded, took another healthy glug, and then smacked her lips. “Have you found his will?” she said. I managed not to look surprised, but she went down in my estimation a little.

  “I’m not sure what paperwork the family has gone through yet,” I said.

  “Because I wasn’t interested in his money,” she said, surprising me and going up again. She didn’t quite get the syllables dispersed around the words in the usual way, but I could tell she meant it. “I was adamant that he shouldn’t leave that twisted old bitch penniless while he came off with me to enjoy the rest of his life.”

  It was halfway to being kind. In a nasty sort of way.

  “So I had no motive, you see,” she said.

  “But you’ve got an alibi anyway,” I reminded her. “Were you checked in?”

  “Are you kidding?” said Barbara. “I was so angry with him for standing me up, if I was checked in I’d have got on the plane without him. I’d be there now. No, I hadn’t gone through security yet. I have no alibi.”

  “But someone must have seen you,” I said. I glanced down at the play suit and up at her face again. She was sixty if a day and either she spent a lot of time outdoors or she’d worked on her tan in preparation for the trip, but she did look quite memorable.

  “San Francisco airport on the Fourth of July?” she said.

  “Have you got that Fastrak in your car?” I said. “For going over the bridges? That’s always giving people alibis in Harlan Coben books. The New Jersey one, whatever it’s called.”

  “Cash lane,” said Barbara, shaking her head.

  “But I bet there’s loads of cameras on the freeway,” I said. “I really wouldn’t worry if I were you. If you didn’t know he had changed his mind about the divorce and you were waiting at the airport, you had no motive, alibi or not.”

  She had gone very still. I wondered if she was going to throw up. From the empty jars and wrappers strewn around, she had eaten quite a bit of raw biscuit mix and neat peanut butter and the level in the whisky bottle was low enough so’s you’d put it on the shopping list for next time you were at Bevmo.

  I was wrong. Drunk as she was, she was still thinking straighter than me.

  “He changed his mind?” she said.

  “Shit.”

  “He changed his mind about the divorce?”

  “Bugger it.”

  “He only didn’t dump me because he died before he got the chance?!”

  “Barbara, I’m really sorry,” I said. I had done so well with the didn’t survive decoding task and the died instantly bullshit, and now I had destroyed her anyway. “Yes, I’m afraid so. Clovis and Visalia had reconciled in the days before his death and were planning to go to Trapani together.”

  “In the days before?” she echoed. “But he was round here on the third. We were online looking up seafood restaurants for our first night’s dinner. Clovis was useless at all that. That’s why we weren’t checked in. He wouldn’t let me pay and he couldn’t do it himself. He was the only man in the world who still used a travel agent.” She shook her head and smiled. Then she shook it faster, scowling. “I am so wasted,” she said. “I forgot what you told me! The bastard went back to that swivel-eyed bitch for more, did he? And where’s Trapani? If it’s the resort we were booked in at, I will kill … Yeah, well, I’ll dance on his grave.”

  “Sicily,” I said. “They were going home to Sicily.”

  “Home!” said Barbara. “Unless Sicily is a neighbor
hood in Bakersfield they were no more going home than me heading for the Caymans.”

  I couldn’t help myself, I still liked her.

  “Can I make you a pot of coffee?” I said. “You need to speak to the cops and see if you can help them—they’re baffled at the mo. But you know what they’re like. If you go in hammered, they’ll hold it against you.”

  “You make the coffee and I’ll go and stick my toothbrush down my throat,” she said. “Half an hour, I’ll be good as new.”

  ∞

  “You again,” said Mike as I ushered Barbara into the Cuento cop shop not much more than half an hour later, indeed.

  If Barbara had purged, she had done it quietly and without making her eyes water. She had emerged from her bedroom dressed in a black wrap dress and with her hair in a chignon. She added patent court shoes and huge dark glasses and looked like more of a widow than Jackie and Yoko combined. She drank the coffee I made like a drain drinks bleach and scarfed down a breakfast burrito she made me stop for and, by the time Mike clapped eyes on her, she was frail from grieving rather than wrecked from booze.

  “I’m bringing a witness,” I said and Mike, who had been crossing the foyer with a bouquet of helium balloons in one hand and a toddler’s tricycle in the other, stopped, wheeled round, and came over. I wondered if she’d explain. I felt I was owed it for not mentioning the teddy bear the other day, but here’s a newsflash: Cops never explain anything. You could find a cop sliding naked down a banister at the mall with a carnation up his … let’s say nose … and he would just give you the cop scowl and tell you not to loiter.

  “Witness?” she said, scowling. “You saw Clovis Bombaro die?”

  “No!” said Barbara. “But I can assure you that he hadn’t decided to stick with the devil he knew and go die in an olive grove. If you check his financials you’ll see he had two first-class seats booked for Grand Cayman and a cottage right on the beach on Little Cayman rented for a month. He was divorcing her and coming away with me. She killed him. You can bank on it.”

  “Whoa!” I said. “Where did that come from? I didn’t bring you down here to drop Mizz Vi in the shitter.”

  “We did find airline tickets,” Mike said. “They were in his safe. Paper tickets in a cardboard folder, from a travel agent. Paid for with Mr. Bombaro’s Visa card.”

  “There you go then,” said Barbara. “And you let her out on bail?”

  “Barbara,” I said, “I know you’re angry, but you have no evid—”

  “We didn’t find any divorce papers,” Mike said.

  “So she burned them,” Barb said.

  “Not anywhere at the house,” Mike said. “There’s no burn barrel and there was no ash in any of the fireplaces.”

  “She flushed them.”

  “We checked the drains.”

  “So she shredded them and put them in a dumpster at a rest stop on the freeway!” Barbara said. She was making a disturbing amount of sense, actually. I marvelled at Mike’s thoroughness, going through bin bags and peering into drains, but I didn’t see her point. If I had a pile of paper I wanted rid of, it wouldn’t be beyond me. A dumpster at a rest stop on the freeway—exactly. I might not use those words but I could chuck a load of A4 in a big bin at a motorway services with the best of them.

  “Let me take care of one thing,” Mike said, presumably referring to the balloons and tricycle, “and then if you have time right now, I’d like to interview you.”

  “I’m eager to help in any way I can,” Barbara said. “Until the murderess is brought to justice my poor Boom-Boom won’t really be at rest.”

  Mike nodded, did a bit of eyebrowology, and backed away.

  I followed, calling over my shoulder to Barbara, “I’ll get you a nice cup of tea, Barb.” Quietly to Mike I said, “I’m Miss Truman’s therapist. And she’s had a severe shock. I’d like to accompany her to the interview.”

  “No way,” said Mike.

  “A very severe shock,” I said. “And she’s here without her service animal.”

  “There is no need and there is no way,” said Mike.

  “Unless you’re actually detaining Miss Truman?” I said. “Of course if you Samantha her, I withdraw my request.”

  “Miranda,” said Mike.

  “Her too. Look, what’s the harm in me being there to support her?”

  “Ms. Campbell,” said Mike, “Ms. Truman is a person of interest in a murder enquiry. This isn’t a quilting bee.”

  “What is it you know?” I said.

  “Well,” said Mike, “I know you’re not her therapist and I know she has no service animal.”

  “I don’t mean that,” I said. “I can tell you don’t believe her about the Caymans, but why not?”

  “I can’t share information about an ongoing investigation with my mother,” said Mike. “Why would I share it with you?”

  “Right,” I said. “Good point. I’ll get her that cup of tea.”

  “You wouldn’t,” said Mike. “What harm did she ever do you?”

  ∞

  I thought of a better information source anyway. After cooling my heels in the lobby of the cop shop for an hour, slowly learning that a Tuesday morning was the dead time in small-town law enforcement, when even the dispatcher is finding out which ten child stars grew up insanely ugly, I dropped Barbara at home, promised to tell her when the funeral was, and went back to Vi. I couldn’t get the memory of her in that enormous gold kitchen out of my mind, so small and crumpled in her little dress and cardi, while her family left her to it.

  I had forgotten the hairdresser had been. Visalia looked much more like her old self when she came to the door. She had heels on. Peep-toe slingbacks and bare legs, and as she turned and walked away again, leading me to the sun room, I could see that her heels were round and smooth. I felt my own scrape against the rubber of my flip flops with every step and marvelled at her. Her hair was teased up into the usual pastel cloud and she had put a little make-up on. More adeptly than usual, I thought.

  “You seem more … ” I said, sweeping my gaze all the way up and down. I stared at her toenails. “Have you actually had a pedicure?” I said. Her toenails were ten perfect little shells. No way a woman of eighty-six with her knees and her eyes could bend down and see to do that.

  “My hairdresser,” she said. “She stayed an hour and a half. Cancelled her next two appointments and straightened me out. A facial, a massage, mani-pedi, and my hair. It helps. You should know, Lexy. You don’t look like yourself this morning, either.”

  “Well, good for her,” I said. “People can be kind when push comes to shove, can’t they?”

  I was thinking of Todd and my new short fringe and whatever it was he did that helped Kathi, and thank God I did because it reminded me that I had to find a minute today to buy a goldfish.

  “I could face the police now,” Mizz Vi said. “I hid when they came back yesterday with their warrant.”

  “Warrant?” I said. “Who did they arrest?”

  “Search warrant,” Mizz Vi said. “They opened the safe and took everything. Bank statements, house title, insurance documents. They took all the paperwork for the Trapani condo. I mean, they gave me receipts; I’m not worried. But they were everywhere, Lexy. They went through the trash. They took out the sink traps.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “So I heard.” What I hadn’t heard was that Mike had found deeds for the Sicily property. That must be why she wasn’t buying Barbara’s story. Did the Trapani deed drop Barb in it? Who knew, but maybe it put Mizz Vi in the clear.

  “Did they find airline tickets?” I asked.

  “Everything is on the receipt,” she told me.

  “Does it say where the tickets are for?” I said, thinking he was maybe hedging his bets, buying the condo, renting the cottage, buying two sets of plane seats, hoping there’d be a sign at the
eleventh hour to help him decide where to fly off to and with whom.

  “We can check,” said Mizz Vi. “I put it right in the safe as soon as they left and changed the combo. I think the receipt probably just says ‘miscellaneous papers.’ But then I guess … you see it on the police shows all the time. One crooked detective when no one’s looking and poof! A suitcase of drugs with a street value of millions and it’s gone, and the case collapses, and his partner doesn’t trust him and he can’t sleep and his wife is out of her head with worry and can’t tell anyone what’s wrong.”

  “I don’t watch that kind of show,” I said. “But I tell you what. Why don’t I check the receipt and you can change the combination again after I’ve gone?”

  She gave me a sharp look.

  “I just want to save you running about,” I said. “You look so much better. You should conserve your energy. You’ll need it later.”

  “I will,” said Vi. She smiled suddenly. “Father Adam is coming to discuss the funeral. And when Sparky gets back she’s going to help me draw up the guest list. It’s 1234. Upstairs in our—in my bedroom.”

  “1234?” I said. “That’s a very bad idea, you know.”

  “I’ll change it, like you said,” she said. “Run along like a good girl and save my old legs. You’re kind to think of it, Lexy. You were always so kind.”

  I got to my feet and headed back to the hallway. In truth, sitting in a conservatory in California in July was extremely uncomfortable. The sun was beating in fit to bounce off a watch face and start a wildfire and so Visalia had the a/c cranked up to ‘gulag.’ I was freezing. It had been the one argument that Bran and I had managed to settle into properly during our short marriage. He kept the car like a meat safe and I thought it was daft to have to put a jumper on to drive when the sun was cracking the flags. And we only had one car so we couldn’t go in a convoy.