We both nodded.
“You made the 911 call,” Mendoza said. “We thought maybe you’d noticed something. Anything. Someone moving around outside, a car driving away...”
Harrison shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I had to get up to use the bathroom. It’s in the front of the house. I happened to look out the window and saw the glow of the flames. So I made the call.”
Mendoza nodded. “Were you already awake, or did something happen to wake you?”
Harrison’s eyes, pale blue, turned distant. “I was asleep,” he said. “I don’t know what woke me. Or if anything did. But I was awake. So I went to the bathroom. And I saw the flames.”
“But you didn’t see anything else? Like, maybe, a dark pickup truck driving away?”
Mendoza frowned at me. “No leading the witness, Mrs. Kelly.”
“Sorry.” I smiled apologetically.
“No,” Mr. Harrison said. “No dark pickup truck last night. I saw a small, light-colored car go by just after the fire trucks pulled in, but no trucks.”
“Were you able to get a make and model?” Mendoza had pulled his notebook out.
“I’m a football field’s distance from the road, Detective,” Mr. Harrison answered. “No. All I know is that it was fairly close to the ground—not a truck or an SUV—and the color was light.”
Mendoza nodded. “Did it slow down as it went by?”
“Yes,” Harrison said, “but there was a fire going on. I’m sure the driver was curious.”
Mendoza closed his notebook with a little snap. “Thank you for your time, sir. If you think of anything else, would you give me a call?” He extended a card.
“Of course.” Harrison took and pocketed it before turning to me. “My condolences on the loss of your husband, Mrs. Kelly.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“And on the loss of your home. I trust it was insured?”
“I’m sure it was,” I said. This was the first time I had thought about that, at least today. I lived there, but it was David’s house.
But David had had life insurance policies on me, on his business partner, and on both his kids, so he’d probably had insurance on his house as well. Someone else I’d have to contact tomorrow, along with the contractor and the life insurance company.
“I don’t mean to pry,” Mr. Harrison said, “but has there been a determination made as to the cause of the fire?”
Mendoza nodded. “We just finished talking to the fire chief. Apparently it was arson.”
“Ah.” Harrison didn’t say anything else, but his silence spoke volumes.
“That’s why we were wondering whether you’d seen anyone drive away in the middle of the night,” I said.
Harrison shook his head. “No, Mrs. Kelly. I’m afraid not. Not a soul.”
There was a pause.
“What do you do, Mr. Harrison?” Mendoza asked. “For a living?”
“Claims adjuster,” Harrison said.
Of course. I could see Mendoza’s lips quirk, but he didn’t speak. Just wished Harrison a pleasant afternoon and nudged me out of there.
“He thought I tried to burn my house down!” I said indignantly when we were back in Mendoza’s car and on our way up the curving driveway.
He wasn’t trying to hold back the grin anymore. “Yep.”
“The fire chief didn’t think that, did he?”
“If he did,” Mendoza said, “he didn’t say so.”
After a second he added, “Although he did mention a couple of times how lucky it was that you were able to make it out alive.”
Almost as if I’d known that the fire was going to start. Right.
“If I’d set fire to my own house,” I said, “I would have made sure to put on pajamas before I jumped out the window.”
“That nightgown was very effective, though.”
I squinted at him. His voice sounded uneven, although his face was solemn. There was, perhaps, a slight curve to the lips.
“Are you laughing?” I asked suspiciously.
He glanced at me. And while his face may not have been laughing, his eyes were. “Not at all.”
“Liar,” I said.
“It was a very nice nightgown. I would have liked it even better if I hadn’t known you’d probably bought it for your husband.”
Since he was right—I had bought it for David—there wasn’t much I could say to that.
“I need to go back up to the house,” I said instead. “I didn’t get a chance to check and see whether any of my clothes survived.”
“And won’t get to now.” He turned in the other direction instead.
“Hey!”
He shot me a look. “Did you see the underside of your bedroom floor? I’m not letting you walk up to the second story of that house.”
“I survived the window,” I said.
“You survived jumping into the bushes. If the floor gave way, it would dump you into a pile of debris.” He shook his head. “No. When you meet the contractor tomorrow, you can check your closet then.”
“So what do I do in the meantime?” I wanted to know. “I can’t spend the rest of the day in David’s silk boxers and this trench coat.”
Mendoza sent me a look.
“Are you coming shopping with me?”
He shuddered. “No.”
“Then what am I supposed to do? You didn’t even let me get my car!”
“There’s a Walmart just up Charlotte Avenue. We can stop there.”
“At Walmart?”
He shot me another look. “Too good for Walmart?”
“No!” I said, stung, in spite of the fact that I hadn’t been inside a Walmart in the time David and I had been married.
Perhaps it was time I got used to shopping like the rest of the world did.
I have to say, the Walmart experience did not make me want to repeat it, though. There were a lot of people in the store, and a lot of pushing and shoving. The dressing rooms were tiny and the light garish. And they didn’t sell anything I would normally consider putting on my body, apart from the active wear. I grabbed a couple of pairs of yoga pants and tops, a package of cotton underwear, and two sports bras.
The first thing I was going to do once I got my car back, was make a trip to Victoria’s Secret. Not that I had anyone to wear Victoria’s Secret for anymore, other than my own self, but sexy underwear makes a woman feel good. The cotton stuff with small sprigs of flowers made me feel like I were twelve.
I hesitated in front of the jeans.
“Problem?” Mendoza inquired. He’d been trailing behind me, trying to keep a straight face as I turned my nose up at the offerings.
I glanced at him over my shoulder. “David didn’t like me to wear jeans. He said they weren’t ladylike.”
“I bet you wore jeans when he met you,” Mendoza said.
“I was twenty-two then.” And a few years after that I stopped, because jeans weren’t appropriate for David Kelly’s wife.
“Jacquie wears jeans,” Mendoza said.
Low blow. I narrowed my eyes at him. “She’s twenty-five. I’m forty.”
“You don’t look forty,” Mendoza said. “And you’d look good in a pair of jeans.”
He was probably just saying that to make me feel better about being forty while Jacquie was twenty-five. Nonetheless, I bought a pair of jeans. Tight ones. And if I looked ridiculous, then I’d just not think about that. Although compared to some of the people around me—who went shopping in sleep-pants and slippers and with rollers in their hair—I probably didn’t look too bad. Even in my trench coat and boots.
We ended up walking out with several plastic bags. I bought a new pair of sneakers, too, so I could go to the gym in my new yoga pants—so I could make sure I’d continue to fit into my new jeans—and a couple of T-shirts in various colors. It was all a bit on the juvenile side, but the selection would see me through the next couple of days, at least, until I could assess the damage to my closet at home. If I needed to replace my
entire wardrobe, a trip to the Green Hills Mall would be in order. No way was I buying a whole new wardrobe at Walmart. Not unless the judge left me destitute and I had no other choice. The one thing I will say for it, is that it was cheap.
We were getting in the car when Mendoza’s phone buzzed. He answered it, his voice businesslike. “Mendoza. Yes. Yes. Right now. Yes. We’ll see you then.”
“We?” I said after he’d gotten behind the wheel and was reversing out of the parking space. There was a camouflage-painted pickup truck rumbling behind us, waiting for a ten year old Camaro belching exhaust to get out of the way. When they both had moved on, Mendoza finished backing up and then turned to me.
“That was Zach.”
At the Apex? “Is everything all right?”
“Fine,” Mendoza said. “He’s spent the time since we left going through the security tapes. He has found a suspect he wants us to look at.”
“Nick,” I said.
Mendoza glanced at me. “Nick Costanza?”
I nodded. “I just thought of this while we were out at the house. Listen—”
I proceeded to outline my theory of Jacquie being the mastermind—or at least the instigating factor—in the last few happenings, while Nick was her muscle. “I don’t think she had anything to do with killing David. She had no reason to. Nick might have done that on his own. But if she believes I killed him, she could have decided to torch my house. And she wouldn’t want to dirty her own hands. She’d send Nick to do it.”
“Maybe,” Mendoza said.
“What do you mean, ‘maybe?’ It makes perfect sense.”
“Maybe,” Mendoza repeated. “Your neighbor didn’t see Nick’s truck last night.”
“He didn’t see anyone at all last night,” I said. “He thinks I did it.”
“He saw a small, light-colored car.”
“But that could have been someone driving by. It needn’t be anyone with any connection to the fire. If I were out driving around at 3 AM—” And OK, that was a bit unlikely, especially in our quiet, upscale neighborhood, “and I saw a bunch of flashing lights, I’d slow down to take a look.”
Mendoza shrugged. “Who do you know who drives light-colored sedans?”
“Rachel,” I said. “She has a white Toyota. Farley has a white BMW. Shelby, Farley’s new...” I hesitated over the word ‘mistress’ and ended up saying, “assistant has a pale blue Volvo. Heidi Newsome has a tan Mercedes. Diana has a white Mercedes.”
“Diana Morton?”
I nodded.
“I don’t think Diana burned your house down,” Mendoza said.
I didn’t, either. I didn’t think any of the people I mentioned had burned my house down. “You asked who I knew who drives light-colored sedans.”
“I assumed you’d edit out the people who can’t possibly be involved,” Mendoza said. “What about your husband’s family? What do they drive?”
“I don’t know about Kenny. Krystal has a black BMW. Daniel has the truck. Sandra must be driving something, but I don’t know what. Other than funerals, I haven’t seen her in years. Martha Hollingsworth has a dark blue Cadillac. Gwendolyn Oliver has a burgundy SUV. Her husband has a Porsche, like David’s. He’s probably thinking of cheating, too.”
“Not everyone cheats,” Mendoza said.
“That isn’t what you said yesterday.”
He opened his mouth, and I held up a hand. “Never mind. I’m sorry. I don’t want to start that conversation again. Did Zachary say anything more?”
“No,” Mendoza said.
“That’s too bad.”
“We’re five minutes away,” Mendoza said. “You can wait.”
I daresay I could. It was annoying that he could be so calm about it, though.
“This is like an everyday thing for you,” I said, “isn’t it?”
He glanced at me. “Going to Walmart to buy women’s clothes? Not at all.”
I rolled my eyes. “The fire, and the break-in, and David’s accident.”
He quirked a brow in my direction. “You know what I do for a living, right?”
“Police,” I said.
“Homicide detective. So yeah, I deal with a lot of dead bodies. Some burglaries, because sometimes people get dead when they try to break into someone else’s house. And sometimes I deal with fires, because people sometimes end up dead in fires, even if you didn’t.”
Right.
“So yeah, I’ve seen it all before.” But then his voice turned serious. “I don’t want you to think that this is all just another day on the job, though. Ho-hum, another dead body. Each case is important. Each victim deserves justice and each family deserves closure. I work hard to close my cases and make sure the guilty party goes to jail.”
Good to know.
“Do you know who killed David?”
He looked at me.
“Do you think you know, but you can’t arrest that person, because you can’t prove it?”
“I have an idea,” Mendoza said. “But no, I don’t have the proof for an arrest warrant yet.”
“Who?”
He shook his head. “I’m not going to tell you that.”
“It isn’t me, is it? Are you suddenly going to turn around and arrest me?”
That got me an almost-smile. “It’s not you. At the moment, I’m working on the assumption that if you cut your husband’s brake lines, you wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave the knife in your garage during his funeral, where anyone could stumble over it.”
“Thank you,” I said sincerely.
He shrugged. “If I discover differently, I’ll arrest you in a heartbeat. But you’re not top of my list right now.”
“And you’re not going to tell me who is?”
He shook his head.
“Don’t you think I ought to be warned? Someone tried to burn me to a crisp last night. What if it happens again?”
“Let’s go see what Zachary’s got,” Mendoza said. “If it is what I think it is, then we’ll know.”
“Fine,” I said. “But I bet you it’s Nick.”
Mendoza glanced at me, but didn’t take the bet.
Chapter 19
IT WASN’T NICK.
“Holy crap,” I said, staring at Zachary’s monitor. “That can’t be right.”
Mendoza looked at me. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Yes, of course it is. But...”
Mendoza turned to Zachary. “What makes you think this is our guy?”
“The timing’s right,” Zachary said, pointing to the red, digital numbers in the corner of the screen. A few minutes after three-thirty on Saturday. Time enough to go upstairs, ransack the apartment, and then vamoose before Zachary got the call from the neighbor about the open door, and headed upstairs. “He looks nervous.”
Yes, he did. His face had a furtive expression as he came through the door from the garage to the back hallway and the service elevator.
“Where would he get a key?”
“David might have had a spare at the office,” I said.
Zachary nodded. “All the tenants get two. Even when there’s only one of them.”
So unless David had given his spare to Jacquie, or left it in the kitchen drawer upstairs, he would have probably left it in the safe at the office. It was the logical place for it. Somewhere he could get at it if he lost his other set.
“Anyway,” Zachary added, “I’ve seen him before. With Mr. Kelly.”
No doubt. David must have taken his best friend and business partner down here not just once but several times, to show off his new place. He had probably showed the penthouse to Farley both before and after he bought it.
“I don’t understand it,” I said. “Farley had no reason to ransack David’s condo. Or his office at home. All the files David had were copies. The originals are at the office. Where Farley could just look up whatever he wanted.”
“I’ll be sure to ask,” Mendoza said, “when I talk to him.” He nodded to Zachary.
“Send a copy of that to my phone, would you?”
Zachary nodded and began to type. His fingers flew across the keyboard.
“With skills like that,” I told him, “you could get a good job as an administrative assistant.”
He glanced up while he kept typing. “I don’t want to be an administrative assistant. I want to be a cop.”
“While you wait to be a cop.”
He shrugged. I turned to Mendoza. “Are you going over there now?”
He nodded.
“I want to come with you,” I said.
He shook his head. “Can’t.”
“Of course I can. I don’t have anywhere else to be.”
“This is a police investigation,” Mendoza said. “I can’t bring a civilian to a suspect interview.”
“I don’t want to listen to you talk to Farley. I want to be there for Martha.”
Mendoza just looked at me.
“Listen,” I said. “I’ve known her for eighteen years. She and Sandra were friends. When I first married David, she could have ignored my existence and left me to flounder on my own. Instead, she helped me become the kind of wife a man like David needed.”
Mendoza muttered something.
“What?”
“I said, ‘some favor.’”
Yes, well... “Be that as it may, if you’re going to go over there and arrest her husband for breaking and entering, and vandalism, and God knows what else—”
“Murder,” Mendoza said.
I swallowed, “—and murder, she’s going to take it hard. And when she finds out about Shelby, she’ll take it even harder. She’ll need someone to stay with her. She’d probably prefer Sandra, but I can at least do what I can.”
Mendoza hesitated.
“Please,” I said. “I won’t interfere. You won’t even know I’m there. I’m just going to stay with Martha and leave Farley to you.”
Mendoza sighed. “Fine. Do you want to take your bags upstairs?”
“No.” If I did, he might decide to leave without me. I wouldn’t put it past him. “You don’t mind holding onto my bags until I get back, do you, Zachary?”
I accompanied the request with a smile.
“Not at all,” Zachary said, turning pink. Mendoza snorted, and Zachary blushed harder.
Ditching David Page 19