by Jessa Archer
“I don’t know. Do you have the address for her condo?”
“Not the number. But I know it’s in Oceanside Villas in Nags Head. Maybe we could see if her car is there? I drove by earlier and didn’t see it, but…”
He seemed to be expecting me to come along for moral support, and I didn’t have the heart to say no. “Park the rental,” I told him. “We can take my car.”
I ran back into the house and told Paige that Andrew needed some help with the funeral arrangements and to tell Travis I’d be back within the hour if he stopped by before then. The teens were too engrossed in the movie to pay much attention, but Caroline said, “Funeral arrangements on a Sunday night? Really?”
Since I couldn’t exactly answer her, I just gave a little shrug and headed back outside.
As I backed out of the driveway, I explained to Andrew about Compound 1080 being used on ranches in New Mexico. “You said Rick’s family owns a sheep ranch, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s how Audra met him. Her dissertation is on this particular type of sheep and how their introduction affected the development of the Navajo society. That’s one of the types of sheep they raise.”
“How long has she known him?”
“About two years.”
“You said that your mom had disinherited your sister, but they had started to patch up their relationship. Did she put Audra back in the will? And what about Rick?”
“I don’t know about Audra,” he said. “But he insisted on a prenup, and my mom agreed. I think the cash accounts were joint, but that should be all he could get his hands on. I need to check, though.” He pulled out his phone. “If he’s emptied those out, he’s probably already gone.”
“He drives that black BMW, right? Does it still have the New Mexico tags?”
“No. He got NC tags a few weeks ago. But he has this tassel thing hanging from the rearview mirror. It’s a bundle of leather…feathers, I guess? Or maybe they’re supposed to be leaves.”
“Really? Are they all different shades of blue?”
“Yeah,” he said. “So you noticed it before?”
“No. But your sister has a matching purse, Andrew.” I let that sit for a moment, and then added, “You said Audra and Rick were friends. Any chance it might have been more than that? Maybe the marriage was a ploy to get Audra back in the will. They could have agreed to split the money. Or maybe they were just planning to…share it?”
Chapter Eighteen
Andrew Whitley was quiet for several minutes as we drove along Route 12 toward Nags Head. I glanced over at him several times, and it looked like he was thinking pretty hard. Finally, he said, “It’s possible. There were a couple of times where I thought maybe Audra had…maybe she’d had a crush on the guy at one point? And she was talking about moving in, which might have made things more convenient if they were meeting on the sly. I mean, Mom got blitzed and passed out a few times a week. Maybe that’s why he was out of town a lot. And when she visited, Audra would sometimes make comments that I didn’t really get, but they seemed to annoy Rick. So yeah, it wasn’t blatant, but I’d say it was possible.”
“I’m thinking it might be a good idea to call this in to Travis. Are you okay with that?” When he nodded, I asked, “What’s Rick’s last name?”
“Ramsey. Fredrick P. Ramsey. I think the P is for Paul. From a place called Lordsburg, in the southwestern corner of New Mexico, about twenty miles from the Arizona border.”
I got Travis on the line and brought him up to speed. “I can’t say for certain that the ranch Rick’s family owns uses the collars containing Compound 1080, but it seems like a far more credible potential source for the poison than the mere fact that someone traveled to Mexico, right? And from what Paige was able to find online, there’s not even a clear indication that stores down there carry it commercially.”
Travis agreed, even though he wasn’t exactly overjoyed to hear that we were on our way to Nags Head to look for Audra and Rick. “Listen, I get that Andrew is worried and that you’re curious.”
I was tempted to argue that curiosity had nothing to do with it, but Travis knew better.
“The trouble is,” he continued, “I’m heading over to Mayor Winstead’s house right now.”
“Oh,” I said. “So he’s not waiting until Monday to chew you out.”
“Apparently not. Why not hold off until I’m done, and I’ll go with you? It’s outside my jurisdiction, but we have a reciprocal agreement with Nags Head for investigating crimes that occur on our home turf. The two of you shouldn’t be out there on your own, if there’s any chance this guy could be involved in Whitley’s murder—”
“I’d say it’s more than a chance,” I told him. “Andrew checked his mom’s room. Someone stole her jewelry.”
“He’s sure about that?” Travis asked.
“Yes,” Andrew said when I relayed the question. “Positive. There are a few inexpensive items left in the case on her dresser, but most of it is gone. And the three most expensive pieces were in the safe, along with maybe eight hundred in cash.”
“We didn’t know about the safe,” Travis said. “But I checked the case in her room. It looked pretty full. So that probably means someone else was in the house today. His stepdad, or maybe his sister. Does Audra have a key?”
Andrew said that she did, plus the code to open the garage.
There was a pause, and then Travis said, “I know it probably won’t do even a bit of good, but I’m going to reiterate what I said about thinking this is a bad idea. I’m heading in the other direction right now, Tig. Winstead lives up near Duck. So if you run into problems—”
“We won’t,” I assured him. “We’re almost there, Travis. All we’re going to do is check to see if their cars are in the lot. After that, either way, we turn around and head back to Caratoke. I promise we will not engage.”
Five minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot of Oceanside Villas. There were hundreds of condos in the complex, which had five buildings and three separate parking lots. We drove through slowly, scanning the cars in the lots and also the ones parked under the raised apartment buildings. Checking those wasn’t as easy, because Monday was apparently trash day, and everyone had their garbage and recycling bins out at the curb. There were quite a few black BMWs in the first two lots, but none with the leather tassel on the rearview mirror. In the third lot, however, we spotted a Beemer in one of the under-the-building spaces. It was parked facing inward, so there was no way to tell if it had a tassel from within the car. I stopped at the edge of that building and idled the engine while Andrew got out to check.
He was nodding when he came back. “That’s him. He must be in this building.”
“Are those assigned spaces?”
“If so, I couldn’t find a number,” he said.
I glanced upward. The building had at least eight floors, and judging from the number of balconies, twelve apartments on each floor. We had narrowed the location of her apartment down, but not by a lot.
Looking ahead a few spaces, I spotted a green car. “Is that Audra’s Prius?”
“Yeah, that’s her.”
“We need to call Travis,” I said. “But let’s go over to one of the other lots, just in case they’re keeping a lookout.”
Just as I put the car into drive, someone rapped against my window. I jumped, and my foot hit the gas pedal, sending the car crashing into a row of trash bins. They made a screeching noise as the wheels slid sideways on the pavement, then tipped, sending white trash bags cascading into the road.
I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Audra sitting on the pavement. She must have lost her balance when the car lurched forward. Before I could caution him to stay put, Andrew was out of the car. “I’ve been calling you all day! Why didn’t you—”
“Shh!” Audra said, pushing him back toward the car. She opened the back door, shoved him inside, then crawled in behind him. “Get us out of here!”
I didn’t
argue, although I couldn’t help but notice that Audra was still carrying her bag. A bag plenty big enough to hold a weapon. And, for that matter, a lot of stolen jewelry.
When we reached the next parking lot, she told me to stop, but I ignored her and kept moving toward the highway.
“We need to get out of here,” I told her as I punched the button on my phone and said, “Call Travis.”
“Who’s Travis?” she asked.
“Chief of police,” Andrew said.
“No!” Audra reached forward across the seat, snatched my phone, and ended the call. “You can’t bring in the police.”
“Chief Lamm already knows we’re here,” Andrew told her.
“That’s not good,” she said, panic rising in her voice. “Rick said specifically not to call the police. It’s only a little over twelve hours until the banks open, and this will be over.”
“We could have the police here well before that to arrest him for killing your mother. I think they’re probably going to have some questions for you on that count, as well.”
“I didn’t kill my mom. But you can’t call the police. If you do, you’ll be responsible for the next death. He’s got Leo up there!”
Of course he does, I thought as I pulled into a parking space on the far side of the complex. “Does Rick have more of the poison?”
“How would I know? I told you I didn’t have anything to do with that. I didn’t even know he’d killed her until Andrew called this morning, and I still thought it might have been an accident. That’s what he said at first. But Rick wouldn’t need poison to kill Leo. He’s so tiny.” She turned to her brother, eyes pleading. “All I wanted was to get back into her will, Andrew. What she did to me wasn’t fair. You’ve said so yourself. The whole point of becoming a cultural anthropologist was so I’d have a reason to travel. And I wasn’t going to have enough money for more than a couple of years of that with just what Dad left me. I’d have to get a teaching position or something, and then I wouldn’t have any time to travel. And I probably still wouldn’t have enough money, because Mom was right about one thing—cultural anthropologists don’t make squat. Then, when you came to visit in November, Mom told me she had five months to live. I promised her I wouldn’t tell you, but she showed me an actual CAT scan and pointed out the brain tumor.”
“The CAT scan?” Andrew said. “You fell for that? She pulled that one on me two years ago. You should have looked a little more closely at the printout. Personally, what tipped me off was the fact that it said in the bottom corner that it was a scan of a twelve-year-old boy. So I poked around, and sure enough, if you do a search on Google images for CAT scan brain tumor, that one usually pops up in the third or fourth row.”
I kind of felt like I should take a walk and give them some privacy. Or maybe kick them out of the car so that they could hash things out in the parking lot.
“Oh, sure. Because you’re so smart, Andrew. Is that why you flunked out of Princeton? Listen, I was getting desperate. I thought maybe she’d be in a better frame of mind if…well, if she wasn’t, you know, lonely.”
Andrew snorted. “So you found her a gigolo?”
“No. I sort of…loaned her my fiancé. Or at least, that’s how Rick pitched it. I knew she’d check up on him, so I gave him what money I had to put in his savings account, so that she’d see he wasn’t broke. And you really shouldn’t be so nasty to me, Andrew. I was doing this for you, too. So that maybe you’d get out of there. Have a life.”
“Except…you said you believed she was dying,” I noted, even though I’d really planned to stay out of it. “So you didn’t think he was going to be stuck there much longer anyway.”
“That’s a good point,” Andrew said. “Why not just admit it was about the money?”
“Okay! Fine. It was about the money. Are you happy now?”
“You could have just trusted me. I told you I’d see to it that you got half. No matter what. I meant that.”
“Maybe you meant it then. Maybe you even mean it now. But people change, baby brother. You know that as well as I do. The point is, I didn’t kill her. I never imagined Rick would do it either, but she had this moment of honesty a few weeks back where she decided that Rick deserved nothing but the truth. She admitted that she was scared of being alone, and so she faked the illness. And then he realizes he’s married to her for God only knows how long. So he told her he’d forgive her if she could find it in her heart to forgive me. For whatever it was she thought I’d done…I still don’t know. The next day, she called her attorney and had the will redrawn. She added my name to one of the checking accounts, too. All Rick had to do was be patient, but I guess he got tired of waiting. And that’s why he’s got Leo up there right now. As insurance. I’m supposed to go to the bank and close out that account tomorrow. I give him the cash and her jewelry, and he’ll give me Leo. And then he’ll leave. With every single thing I own. He said I could still come with him, but…I told him no. I mean, he killed her. I can’t just pretend that didn’t happen.”
“But you probably should have told him you could pretend,” I said. “That you could forgive and move past this. Because now he’s going to think you’ll turn him in as soon as he leaves that apartment. He’s going to believe his safest course of action is to kill you, too, and leave here with the dog and the cash and, presumably, no one the wiser.”
Audra was silent for a moment, and then she shook her head. “Rick wouldn’t do that.”
“Really?” Andrew said. “You don’t think he’d kill you to save himself?”
“No. He’d definitely do that. I meant he wouldn’t take Leo. He hates that dog.”
“It sounds like Rick has something in common with my…” I began, trailing off as an idea hit me.
Travis’s police car was now pulling into the lot. I flashed the headlights so that he could spot us. The only way he could have been here this quickly was if he’d reversed course and left Caratoke right after he hung up, without going to Mayor Winstead’s house. And even then, I think he’d have needed to exceed the speed limit. Why had he turned back?
“Rick sounds like he has something in common with your what?” Audra asked, pulling my mind back around to my idea. Which just might work…
“Something in common with my cat.”
Chapter Nineteen
“It could work,” Andrew said.
Audra frowned. “It sounds crazy to me.”
“I’d have thought that, too,” said Travis. He was now in the front passenger seat of my Sonata, where I’d just mapped out my plan for rescuing Leo. “But then I had to help Tig separate them. My son has been in the middle of those battles, too. He had scratches all the way up his arms. It’s like Leo and Attila both live for the fight.”
I nodded. “He’s right. If Leo’s outside, Attila hides behind the curtain, behind the sofa, wherever he can in order to be ready for that moment when the door opens.”
“And if he gets an opportunity when Leo is in the yard,” Travis added, “then it’s on. As a legendary swordsman once said, there will be blood tonight.”
I smiled at the reference, which neither of the Whitleys appeared to get.
“As you wish?” I prompted. “Inconceivable…?”
“Hmph.” Audra rolled her eyes and turned back to Andrew. “It’s a dumb movie quote.”
“Oooh.” Travis laughed. “You should probably avoid comments like that if you want Tig to help you. She’s been known to measure someone’s soul by whether or not they get certain pop-culture references.”
That’s not entirely true, although for people within a certain age range, failure to get a Princess Bride reference definitely makes me suspect they might have a fatal personality flaw. Or that they might be an alien. Mostly, Audra’s comment made me feel sorry for the two of them. They probably didn’t get Disney or Simpsons references, either. Rebecca Whitley had been pretty bad at the whole parenting enterprise. It was a miracle that Andrew—and yes, even Audra—had turned o
ut as well as they had.
“What if Rick has him in a cage of some sort?” Audra asked.
Andrew raised an eyebrow. “Do you even have a cage in your apartment?”
“Well, no. But Rick could have him locked in the bathroom or something. As I said, he really doesn’t like him. And pets aren’t allowed in the building. I had to carry Leo in inside my bag to get past the security guard. Will your cat put up with that?”
“No. He definitely wouldn’t put up with being in a bag. But we don’t have to bring the actual cat. We just have to make the dog think we did. On two different occasions, Leo has come dashing into my yard, ready to do battle because he smelled Attila, even though I was just clearing the vacuum cleaner of the pound or so of hair the beast sheds every week. My mom said the same thing happened one time with the litter box. That one didn’t end well. And if Leo needs extra incentive, there’s this…” I pulled up a video on Paige’s YouTube channel and pressed play. A screech that could have sprung from Satan’s own hellcat filled the car. “That’s the sound Attila makes when Leo is outside watering our bushes.”
“And Leo doesn’t run from that?” Audra said. “I certainly would.”
“No,” Travis replied. “I’ll give it to the little guy. He’s gutsy. He hears Attila’s war cry and dashes into battle without a second thought. As for the guard, that’s not going to be a problem, though. You’ll have a uniformed officer in tow. He’d probably let you take a tiger up those stairs if you tell him we’re here on official business.”
“Okay, then. If we want to move forward quickly, I can call Paige and see if Nathan is still at the house.” According to the dashboard clock, it was still only nine fifteen, which seemed insane, given everything that had been going on. “Paige vacuumed yesterday, and she never dumps the container, so we have cat hair ready for transport. They could meet us halfway.”
“Better yet, I can get Grady to stop by and grab it,” Travis said. “He’s currently on duty. That would probably be quicker, and I’d have armed backup here.”