Everyone Dies

by Michael McGarrity

  “That’s a pretty expensive hobby his wife has.”

  “Clifford could afford it. He owns, rather did own, a number of resort hotels up and down the coast.”

  “You said you knew him well,” Lowrey remarked.

  “For about the last ten years,” Jardin replied, “after he married his second wife. I met them when they were first looking to buy racing stock. After that, I’d see them at the track, and we’d get together occasionally for dinner and drinks. Claudia, his wife, is a good twenty years younger. She divides her time between Santa Barbara and Santa Fe. Clifford built a house for her out there where she could keep some horses. I think she’s in Santa Fe now.”

  “If you usually dealt with Spalding’s wife, why did he come here this time?” Lowrey asked.

  “Claudia had her eye on a horse she liked, and Clifford said he wanted to buy it for her as a surprise anniversary present.”

  “Do you have Mrs. Spalding’s Santa Fe address?”

  “My ranch manager should. He made the arrangements to have the horses she keeps in Santa Fe transported there.”

  Jardin glanced at his wristwatch, an expensive, wafer-thin gold timepiece that probably cost more than Lowrey’s personal vehicle.

  “Just a few more questions,” she said, “and then we’ll be done.”

  Kerney waited on the porch outside the office with the ranch manager, Ken Wheeler, and watched the coroner come and go. No longer a jockey, Wheeler had still managed to keep weight off his wiry frame. He sported a wide mouth that seemed ready-made to break into easy smiles, and had tiny ears that lay flat against his head. At six-one, Kerney towered over the man.

  Wheeler told Kerney that he had two twelve-year-old halterbroke mares, four three-year-old geldings that didn’t seem to have the heart to race, and a young stud named Comeuppance available for sale.

  Wheeler thought the mares, once saddle broke, would serve well for pleasure riding, the geldings were sure-footed and quick enough to be good cutting horses, and the stallion would do just fine at stud, if the new owner didn’t expect fast runners from his lineage.

  Kerney knew if he decided to buy it, the stud horse would be his most expensive purchase. “Is that his only flaw?” he asked.

  “I believe so,” Wheeler replied, his deep baritone voice quite a contrast to his diminutive size. “But you’ll get to see for yourself. He’s got good bloodlines, but none of his yearlings or two-year-olds look promising for the track. The boss says we sure aren’t going to make any money keeping him, and I agree.”

  Before Kerney could reply, Sergeant Lowrey stepped onto the porch.

  “Mr. Wheeler,” she said, “could you get me Mrs. Spalding’s Santa Fe address?”

  “Sure thing,” Wheeler said, as he slipped past Lowrey into the office.

  Kerney raised an eyebrow. “Santa Fe, New Mexico?”

  “She has a house there,” Lowrey said, “and according to Mr. Jardin that’s where she is. Do you know her?”

  Kerney shook his head. “Do you want my department to make contact with her?”

  “That would be helpful, Chief.” Lowrey handed him a business card. “Ask your officer to call me first.”

  “Will do.” Kerney reached for his cell phone. “What did the coroner have to say?”

  “So far, Spalding’s death appears to be from natural causes.” Lowrey paused and gave him a once-over. “Quite a coincidence, isn’t it, Spalding’s wife having a place in Santa Fe?”

  “In this particular instance, I would say that it is,” Kerney replied.

  “Are you sure you’ve never met her while you’ve been out riding the range?”

  “That’s very funny, Sergeant,” Kerney said, slightly piqued at Lowrey’s sarcasm. “Actually there are times when we still ride the range. But now that the streets of Santa Fe are paved, my officers mostly drive squad cars.”

  “Maybe you met her at a horse show or a rodeo,” Lowrey countered.

  “Not that I recall,” Kerney said. He turned away from Lowrey and dialed Larry Otero’s home number.

  After talking to Larry, he waited for Lowrey to reappear. Instead, Wheeler came out of the office and told him Lowrey had a few more questions to ask and would be with him shortly. Kerney agreed to meet Wheeler at the track when he was finished, and cooled his heels waiting on the porch.

  It didn’t surprise him that Lowrey wanted another go-round. The “coincidence” that both Kerney and the dead man’s wife lived in the same city would spark any competent officer’s interest.

  Finally, Lowrey called him back into the office. Kerney sat in a straight backed chair, while Lowrey perched against the office desk and studied the coral and turquoise wedding band on his left hand.

  “You’re married,” she finally said.

  “Yes,” Kerney replied.

  Lowrey’s eyes searched his face. “And your wife didn’t come here with you.”

  “She’s a career military officer serving at the Pentagon. Her schedule didn’t allow it.”

  “You must not be able to spend a great deal of time together,” Lowrey said.

  “We manage to see each other frequently,” Kerney said, watching Lowrey, who was busy scanning him for any behavioral signals which might signal deception.

  “Have you been married long?”

  “A couple of years.”

  “Children?”

  “One son, ten months old.”

  Lowrey smiled. “Your first?”

  “Yes,” Kerney said. “Now, why don’t you get to the part where you stick your face in mine and ask me if I might be lying about not knowing Spalding’s wife?”

  Lowrey laughed. “As I understand it, Mrs. Spalding is about your age, and spends a great deal of time alone in Santa Fe, away from her husband. You seem to be in the same situation with your marriage.”

  “I am happily married, Sergeant. Don’t turn a perfectly reasonable coincidence into a soap opera about two lonely, unhappy people.”

  “Obviously, you and Mrs. Spalding share an interest in horses.”

  “Along with about five million other horse lovers.”

  “Mr. Spalding was rich and considerably older than his wife.”

  “So I understand, from what you’ve said.”

  “And neither you nor Spalding have ever stayed here before,” Lowrey noted.

  “Apparently not,” Kerney replied. “Do you find a chance occurrence tantalizing, Sergeant? That would be quite a stretch.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. Do my questions upset you?”

  “Not at all.” His cell phone rang. Kerney flipped it open and answered.

  “What kind of fix have you gotten yourself into out there?” Andy Baca, Kerney’s old friend and chief of the New Mexico State Police, asked.

  “What’s up?” Kerney asked, raising a finger to signal Lowrey that he’d only be a minute.

  “I just got a call from my district commander that some deputy sheriff, a Sergeant Lowrey out of San Luis Obispo County, wants an officer sent to inform a Mrs. Claudia Spalding of her husband’s death and to determine your relationship to the woman, if any.”

  “Interesting,” Kerney said.

  “I’ve got two grandchildren in my lap, one on each knee,” Andy said, “ready to head off to the Albuquerque zoo to see the polar bears. What’s going on with you?”

  “I’ll call you when I know more.”

  “That’s it?” Andy asked, sounding a bit exasperated.

  Kerney laughed. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “I’ll be home by dinnertime,” Andy said. “Unless you get locked up, call me then.”

  “I’ll do that. Have fun.” Kerney disconnected and smiled at Lowrey. “Are we done here, Sergeant?”

  Lowrey smiled back. “We’ll talk again after I’ve heard back from your department.”

  “I’ll be around,” Kerney said, thinking Lowrey was doing her job and doing it well. Still, he didn’t have to like it.

  Ellie Lowrey made an
other visual sweep of the cottage before the EMTs took Spalding’s body away. After they rolled him out, she gathered up the dead man’s luggage, put it in the trunk of her cruiser, and drove a back road to the sheriff’s substation in Templeton.

  The station was housed in a fairly new single-story faux western frontier style office building with a false front and a slanted covered porch. It had been designed to fit in with the old buildings on the main street left over from the town’s early days as a booming farming and ranching community. Now the charm of the village and its convenience to Highway 101, which ran the length of the West Coast, drew droves of newcomers looking to escape the sprawl of the central coast cities, creating of course more sprawl.

  As second-in-command of the substation, Ellie Lowrey served under a lieutenant who was on vacation with his family in the Rocky Mountains. She parked in front of the closed office, carried Spalding’s luggage inside, and placed it on her desk.

  She’d secured the dead man’s effects to ensure their safekeeping, which required her to do an inventory. She got out the forms she needed and glanced at the wall clock, wondering how long it would take to hear back from the New Mexico authorities.

  Ellie had decided not to rely on Kerney’s department for information until she knew for sure whether there was or wasn’t a personal relationship between the chief and Mrs. Spalding. Of course, if there was something going on between the two, both of them could lie about it. It was best to get corroborating information from an independent source such as the New Mexico State Police, in case they did have something to hide.

  Spalding’s overnight bag yielded nothing but toiletries and a change of clothes. The attaché case was a bit more interesting. A manila envelope contained a photograph of the horse Spalding was planning to buy, along with a record of its race results and bloodlines. The cover letter from Jardin listed the price at a few thousand dollars more than Ellie’s gross annual salary.

  Other paperwork in the case pertained to Spalding’s hotel holdings. Lowrey recognized a few of them by name: very swanky places in upscale California resort communities. A sleeve held a small number of business cards. Lowrey thumbed through them. One was from a Santa Barbara police captain who headed up the Major Crimes Unit. What was that all about?

  Lowrey wrote the information in her notebook. Tomorrow was Sunday. She doubted the autopsy would be done quickly given the likely absence of foul play. If the results came back as death due to natural causes, she’d drop the matter completely. Until then, she would keep the case open and call the Santa Barbara PD captain on Monday to satisfy her curiosity.

  Ellie got up and poured a cup of coffee. She felt good about how the morning had gone. She’d spent five years as an investigator before earning her stripes and taking a patrol assignment. It was fun to work an investigation on her own again. In truth, she missed her old job, but accepting a promotion to the patrol division had been the only way to move up in the ranks.

  She returned to her desk and started in on the paperwork, hoping it wouldn’t take all day for the New Mexico cops to find Spalding’s widow and report back.