by R. J. Lee
Mitzy took her time. “Do I have to answer that right away? ”
“No, I don’t suppose so. I’m nowhere near having my feature put together yet.”
“Then remind me when you are. I’ll give you my decision then. I kept all of this about my grandfather on the down low for a reason. I wanted the privacy. I needed the privacy. Can you understand that?”
“Yes, of course I can.” Then feeling a heightened camaraderie with Mitzy, Wendy decided to push ahead and go for it. “Strictly off the record, who do you think killed Brent Ogle?”
Mitzy seemed hesitant but finally said, “Strictly off the record? You won’t repeat this to anyone?”
“You have my word.”
Almost as a reflex action, Mitzy lowered her voice, although there was no one near to eavesdrop. “I’m leaning toward Gerald Mansfield. His job was on the line, and Brent Ogle was bound and determined to get him fired. I’m told he and Mr. Voss had been working on it for some time. I think Gerald felt threatened enough to take the risk of committing murder. Now, don’t get me wrong. I like Gerald. He’s easy to work with and has never given me a minute’s trouble. But he’s a little on the dim side. I don’t think he even finished high school. Maybe in a moment of desperation he thought that was the only way he could keep his job. Of course, he didn’t have to go to those lengths, if he actually did it.”
Wendy was surprised by Mitzy’s accusation but tried valiantly not to show it. It seemed a bit meandering and equivocal. She also knew that Gerald Mansfield was someone capable of stalking, but she did not see him as a murderer; and there was still no proof that he had even been at the RCC on that fateful evening. Mitzy’s opinion had not been of much help.
“You think I’m off base, don’t you?” Mitzy said, interpreting Wendy’s facial expression correctly. “I hesitated to tell you, but you asked. In fact, you drew all of this out of me, and I have to admit, I never expected anyone to discover my secret. Unless I chose to tell them, that is.”
“I really don’t know what I expected you to say in answer to my question. I’m not sure why I even asked you. But I know I just mentioned to you that I’ve run out of believable suspects for Brent Ogle’s murder. As a result, I don’t think Gerald Mansfield fits the bill, but that’s just my opinion.”
“Not everyone is as up-front with who they are as Brent Ogle was. With him, you didn’t have to guess about anything. You knew he was bad news through and through, and you just tried your best to stay out of his way. But there are people who can hide behind masks and fool you. That way, they can preempt you from realizing the truth about them. I prefer people who are at least up-front with their problems and prejudices. At least you know what you’re dealing with and have time to develop a strategy,” Mitzy added.
Develop a strategy.
Where else had Wendy heard that phrase? After a few moments, it came to her. Deedah Hornesby. She had used exactly those words in referring to putting up with Brent Ogle.
Meanwhile, Mitzy’s unsolicited observations were resonating immediately and strongly with Wendy. There it was again: preempt. The word she had trotted out for her mini–bridge lesson before the first session of the Bridge Bunch had begun. It now seemed like light-years ago, though it was only a week. She had explained to her fellow bridge players—and quite well, she thought—the tactic of interfering with your opponents’ ability to perceive the deal clearly, to lessen their ability to communicate with each other and reach a successful contract and conclusion. It was an artificial but patently aggressive move. And it often worked in the game of bridge. But this was a game of sorts, too—a game of life and death.
And then, one of Mitzy’s last sentences was branded upon Wendy’s brain: That way, they can preempt you from realizing the truth about them. She knew she needed to file that away for safekeeping. The reality had to be that the person who had actually committed the murder had executed such a maneuver to perfection and therefore thrown everyone off their game.
What had been continuing to be extremely difficult for Wendy to dismiss was her perception that no one among the suspects seemed capable of killing Brent Ogle, though all had their well-known reasons. That much was out in the open. Perhaps difficult to dismiss, but it could not possibly be a correct assumption now; and Mitzy had just volunteered a helpful reminder that greatly clarified things.
There was a preemptive murderer among them. A very clever one, who had covered his or her tracks with an elaborate illusion about what they were or were not capable of doing, hiding their true moral compass from view. From that new perspective, then, everyone was back on the list of suspects. Every single one of the innocent-appearing, professional-acting, artistic, cathartic, church-going, secret-confessing, or even some combination of those, was a possibility again—even Mitzy herself, despite her calm and collected presentation. At least one of them had audaciously and opportunistically prevailed in murder via sleight of hand and word in a narrow time frame in the darkness. It simply could not be otherwise because Brent Ogle had not committed suicide—that much, thankfully, was certain.
They all had continued to come forth to Wendy or her proxy in law enforcement, Ross; one by one, revealing this and that, sometimes solicited, sometimes not. But one of them had made the ultimate mistake in engaging Wendy’s gift of puzzle solving. Eventually, she would fit all of the right pieces together, and the perpetrator—the raging bludgeoner masquerading as a guileless soul—would be revealed, caught, and made to pay.
CHAPTER 14
Wendy stood before her full-length bedroom mirror primping in her fairy princess costume a half an hour before Ross was scheduled to pick her up for their Halloween dinner date at The Toast of Rosalie. She decided to allow herself a conceit: no more fascinating adult fairy princess had ever waved a wand and granted a wish. This was going to be so much fun tonight as the other diners looked on and whispered among themselves about the “fascinating” couple in costume who had dared to throw caution to the wind and appear in public that way. Were they coming from or going to a Halloween party? Were they husband and wife, or something else to each other?
Husband and wife.
The phrase had crossed Wendy’s mind more than a few times over the past year since Ross had tried to propose to her by offering up that little black box with the engagement ring inside. But she had not let him open it, saying that she just did not think she was ready for the whole nine yards yet. That they would continue seeing each other as they had been and that she would know when the time was right to stage the wedding with all the trimmings that her father had been pressing her for, and not so subtly at that.
“Ross is a fine man and one of my most meticulous detectives. If I’d had a son, I’d want him to be just like he is,” Bax would remind her from time to time.
And she would always respond practically the same way. “Daddy, I do love Ross, and we are seeing each other seriously. But we’re not rushing into things, either. Just let us work it out our own way in good time.”
Wendy had felt it far more important to take the past year to become truly comfortable in her new position as the Citizen ’s first full-time investigative reporter, and her relationship with Lyndell Slover was making that as seamless as could be expected. So, was it time to reconsider Ross’s proposal of marriage and give in to his agenda of starting a family?
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Ross had made it clear in their most private moments together that he wanted children. At least two, maybe three. There, Wendy was not quite so sanguine. She had liked being an only child, enjoying the exclusive attention Bax and Valerie Winchester had lavished upon her. Did she want that same experience for a son or daughter of her own? Or did she want to try her hand at bringing up siblings?
Then she considered the genetic makeup of any children she and Ross made. They would be fair and Nordic looking, what with her strawberry-blonde and his dirty-blond locks, barring a throwback to some unknown ancestor. They would be “sunblockers,” and wouldn’t tan well as a
result. She found herself chuckling out loud. The phrase burn, baby, burn popped up next.
But enough of surface appearance. What sort of intellect would they have? Probably sharp, given the sleuthing skills she and Ross both used to maximum effect. Maybe they’d even be artistic as her mother, Valerie Lyons Winchester, had been. Then she frowned. When it came to the roulette wheel of genetics, who knew anything? Because anything could show up or dominate—she hoped nothing negative.
She stared intently at her reflection in the mirror. “Look at how I’m dressed while I’m going on like this,” she said out loud as if she were auditioning for a play or a part in a movie. “This proves I am nowhere near ready for motherhood yet,” she added, sticking her tongue out at herself. “You, Wendy Winchester, do not merely wave a magic wand a couple of times to become a good mother, no matter how many children you have or what they inherit.”
Then, she reverted to her internal monologue. Was it possible she was suffering from that old male bugaboo? Fear of commitment. She let that sink in for a while. Could it be one of those ironic reversals where Ross was the one who’d made the ultimate romantic leap while she remained stubbornly protective of her independent streak as a woman?
Her smartphone’s ringtone instantly brought her out of her intellectual reverie. She walked over and saw that it was Ross calling.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said. “I was just thinking about you.” She did not, however, qualify that any further.
“Listen, something’s come up,” he told her, sounding rushed. “I’m gonna change the reservation to seven-thirty. We’ve got what may be a break in the murder case, and I’m gonna have to interrogate someone who’s come forward. I’m at the station right now with Bax, in fact. This could be the breakthrough we’ve been looking for, and we have to act on it quickly.”
Wendy instantly forgot all about Ross moving the reservation and pressed on. “Are you at liberty to say which suspect? ”
“Not any of our suspects,” he told her. “Someone new.”
“Ross, you have me on the edge of my seat. Can’t you tell me anything? Don’t tell me there’s a witness to this thing. Come on, now, you can leak just a little to me like Daddy always does. You know he doesn’t mind.”
There was brief silence, and then Ross said, “Okay, we don’t know yet about the witness part, but I’ll go ahead and tell you that it involves Carlos Galbis. Seems he had someone on the side, so to speak, that called us up and says she has some information to share with us that she thinks we ought to know about.”
Wendy had to blink a couple of times. “Someone on the side? You mean as in a mistress?”
“Yes, she told us that much over the phone in so many words. Listen, sweetie, I’ve gotta run. Our person on the side just walked into the station dressed to kill. I’ll get back in touch as soon as I can. In the meantime, don’t you dare spoil your appetite by nibbling on anything. I’ll talk to you later.”
After Wendy had said goodbye and put the phone down, she sat on the edge of the bed with her chiffon fairy princess gown making all sorts of rustling noises and began shaking her head in silence. Carlos Galbis with a mistress? She could not envision such an improbable thing. Quiet, family-oriented, religious Carlos having an affair? In her conversations with him at the RCC, he had never impressed her as the type of man who would even consider doing something like that. He was so the opposite of macho and spoke so glowingly of his wife and children all the time.
Who on earth was this woman who claimed to be close enough to Carlos to come forward with information about him concerning the murder case? Would she be telling the truth, or did she have an agenda of some kind? Had she even been paid to besmirch his name and reputation? It all seemed so theatrical, so film noir-ish, like someone playing a part or following orders. For not the first time, Wendy was tossing that phrase around in her head: following orders. She’d had that exact same impression of Gerald Mansfield at first, even though he’d insisted to Ross that he’d been stalking her on his own and that no one else had been behind it.
Wendy temporarily shut down her speculations and headed over to the kitchen, despite Ross’s playful suggestion that she not spoil her appetite. She opened the fridge and took out a small block of Monterey Jack that she had wrapped in cellophane after sampling it a few times. A little bit of cheese and maybe a small glass of wine would hold her for now. Being the sleuth she was, however, she realized that she was far more interested in what Ross pulled out of this mystery mistress than the dinner they were going to order and eat a bit later in the evening. Even the excitement of their doing that in costume was taking a back seat.
* * *
Ross was staring across the table in the interrogation room with Bax sitting next to him. This woman, who had identified herself as Berry Passman, reminded him of a certain “exotic dancer” he’d paid good money to see at a Memphis strip club in his wild and woolly college days. As he recalled, her name had been Vanilla Swirl and he and some frat buddies had gone up to Beale Street one Saturday evening to “eat, drink, and be merry,” more or less. In fact, it had been just before the beginning of Christmas holidays that they’d set out on their macho mission, and Ross had ended up contributing more than a few singles to the growing collection hanging out of Vanilla Swirl’s G-string.
But Berry Passman was not scantily clad. Her clothes were expensive while still managing to show off her spectacular figure, and her makeup was not overly applied. It was mainly something about the way Berry held her mouth in an inviting little pout that brought back Ross’s “gentlemen’s club” memories. And the hair—the straight, dark hair—which was pulled back away from her face toward the crown, where it was tied in a ponytail that hung all the way down to her waist. All of which seemed to suggest that wild horseplay was there for the taking. It flashed into Ross’s head that whatever else Carlos Galbis was, he was only human.
“So before we get to this information you have for us, how did you and Mr. Galbis meet?” Ross was saying after they’d gotten the preliminaries out of the way. Namely, that she had moved to Rosalie about six months ago from Jackson to live with her cousin for a while until she found new work, that the gentlemen’s club she had been working for had gone out of business, and that she was through for good with that line of work.
For his part upon hearing that last part, Ross had had to struggle mightily from pumping his fist and saying, “I knew I recognized the type,” out loud. But he had managed to restrain himself and continue his questioning in a dignified, professional manner.
“I met Carlos at the country club, of course,” she told Ross. “My cousin had told me what delicious mint juleps they had out there, and so I went just to try one. I do have a fondness for well-made cocktails. And when I got there, here was Carlos, and then he started mixing one up for me. He looked so cute in his little tux, and I was fascinated with the way he worked that mortar and pestle thing, or whatever you call it. I guess it was the grinding motion that really got me interested, if you catch my drift. So I started flirting with him. He flirted back, and then one thing led to another, you see. Not right then, but soon after. I mean, no one was forcing his hand, believe me.”
“So you were having an affair with him, then.”
“Duh. I would not know what I know if I hadn’t been.”
Ross glanced at Bax briefly and then continued. “Did you not see the ring on his finger, or did that not matter?”
Berry flashed on him. “I did not come all the way down here to be judged, Detective. I came here to tell you something you need to know for your investigation. And besides, we are not seeing each other anymore. Carlos . . . well, he broke it off with me a few days ago.”
“He did, did he? And did he tell you why?”
The anger Berry had just conjured up did not dissipate in the least. “He said it was because of that Mr. Ogle’s murder. He said something about life being too precious and too short and keeping in mind what really mattered.” Her voice sudden
ly went all high-pitched and mocking with a greatly exaggerated facial expression to match. “That his precious family was the only thing that really counted, and he had let them down—and what was he thinking even getting involved with me in the first place? That sort of old-fashioned, corny thing. But we all know the answer to that, don’t we? You men are all alike. You only want one thing, and when you get tired of it with someone, you walk away.”
Ross and Bax again exchanged furtive looks. “Not all of us,” Ross said after taking a deep breath.
Berry shot him a disgusted glance but said nothing further.
“All right, then. Let’s get to this information you came down here to give us, Miz Passman,” Ross continued.
She took a few moments to compose herself and then said, “As I told you before, I know this because of our . . . well, our pillow talk. People tell other people things they would never mention after they’ve gotten a little, you know. And no wisecracks, please. You really need to hear this.”
Ross managed a grin. “We’re listening.”
“Anyway, there were a few times when we got together that he would rant and rave about that Mr. Ogle. He told me his life would be perfect if it weren’t for that man—the way he ran Carlos down and humiliated him, and all Carlos could do was sit there and take it because of his job. And there was this one time I remember that Carlos said to me something like, ‘I swear, if I could find a way to do it, I’d kill him. Under the right circumstances, I know I would.’ ”
Berry took the time to throw out her impressive chest and then added, “And here’s the payoff. I distinctly remember Carlos ending with, ‘I’d like to bash his head in.’ ”
Bax and Ross waited for something more out of her mouth, but there was only silence.