by Joseph Badal
Susan turned to face Marge. “You didn’t answer your cell phone,” she said. “I called several times.”
“I left it in the living room,” she said quietly. “I can’t hear the phone from the back yard.” Then she settled into the back seat of the sedan and muttered something unintelligible.
They booked her into County Jail before they returned downtown to the squad room. They found Marge’s father seated just inside the building entrance. Roger Stanley looked stricken. He sat bent over, elbows on his knees, hands clasped between his legs. He was pale and seemed to have aged considerably since the detectives had seen him a little while ago. The older woman, Cybil Stanley, Marge’s mother, a robust, red-faced woman who outweighed her husband by a good fifty pounds, paced and fumed. The desk sergeant watched the Stanleys with particular attention, as though he expected them to go off at any moment.
Roger stood when he saw Susan. “What the hell is wrong with you people?”
“Roger!” Cybil Stanley admonished her husband. “Watch your language.”
The desk sergeant came out from behind his elevated desk, stepped toward Roger, and poked a sausage-sized finger at him. “You got a couple choices, Mister,” he said. “Sit down and be quiet, get out of this office, or go to jail until you settle down. What’s it going to be?”
For a moment, Roger looked totally defeated. His face reddened even more and he wobbled on his spindly legs as though he might collapse. But Susan raised a hand toward the sergeant, which immediately defused the situation. The sergeant returned to his desk and Roger regained his seat and mumbled an apology to his wife.
Cybil sat down next to Roger and placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be all right, Roger,” she said. “We’ll get this all straightened out.”
“Look, folks,” Barbara said, “there isn’t a thing you can do down here this evening. You can’t see your daughter until tomorrow morning. You might as well go home and come back to the jail during visiting hours.”
Roger looked up at Barbara under hooded eyes and, in a feeble voice, said, “Marge is in prison?”
Susan had gotten fairly immune to the trauma experienced by families of criminals when their loved ones were arrested. Immunity was the only way to stay sane. But, for some reason she couldn’t fathom, she felt differently about the Stanleys. They appeared to be solid people who believed in right over wrong and, most of all, believed in the innocence of their daughter.
She listened to Barbara explain that their daughter had been arrested on suspicion of murder.
The Stanleys appeared to struggle just to get out of their chairs. They supported one another as they left the building.
At 9 p.m., Barbara and Susan drove back out to the jail on Albuquerque’s west mesa. They had Marge brought to a room about twice the size of the homicide department’s interrogation rooms. The furnishings were equally sparse, but here the gray metal table and four chairs were bolted to the floor. The room was also equipped with a one-way window.
Susan put Marge in a chair opposite Barbara and then sat at the end of the table. She reminded Marge that they had read her rights to her a couple days earlier.
Marge waved a hand as though to say, yeah, I know; let’s get on with it.
“Ms. Stanley, I am telling you again that you don’t have to talk with us without an attorney present,” Barbara said.
The hand wave again. “I haven’t done anything wrong; why would I be afraid to talk with you?”
Susan knew that was a pretty naïve point of view on Marge’s part. For an instant, she wanted to tell the woman to keep her mouth shut until her attorney showed up, but that wasn’t her job.
“Okay,” Barbara said, “then I presume you won’t mind if we record this conversation.”
Marge shrugged.
Barbara stood and moved to the door. She pressed a button on the wall and started the recording and video equipment. She came back to the table and sat down, recited all of their names, Marge’s address, and the time and date.
“Why were you out at the Comstock place early on the morning on June 25?”
Marge’s mouth dropped open, but she quickly recovered. “How’d you know?”
“You shouldn’t have hit the neighbor’s fence,” Susan said. “Why were you there?”
Marge nodded her head. She laughed bitterly. “What would you have done if you didn’t know where your daughter was and some psycho bitch was doing everything she could to keep you apart?”
“I wouldn’t have committed murder,” Susan said.
“Don’t be so sure,” Marge replied. “I suspect you would have taken a knife to Victoria if you discovered she was messing with your husband.”
Susan coughed to cover a laugh. That’s exactly what she would do. Plus, the thought of a “knock-out” like Victoria messing with Manny, who didn’t have a dime to his name, was impossible to imagine.
Marge told them she’d driven to the Comstock place around 2 a.m. hoping to find Connie. “Shawn Navarro told me he’d been informed by one of Connie’s friends that she was staying there, but he hadn’t actually seen her. He told me Connie was driving a VW bug Victoria had given her. I hoped to spot the car.”
“Why at that time of the morning?” Barbara asked.
“I’d been on the road all day. I couldn’t sleep, so I called my number in Farmington and checked for messages. There was a call from Connie’s psychiatrist. I had left a message for him the previous morning and asked for an update on my daughter. He told me in his message that he hadn’t seen her in weeks. I was scared to death something had happened to her.”
Susan felt the tension build inside her. Marge had just admitted that she was at the murder scene at the approximate time Victoria was killed.
“Was Connie at the Comstock house?” Barbara asked.
“Not that I could tell. I drove up the driveway and stopped by the fountain near the front. That little VW wasn’t there. I thought about knocking on the door. You know, confront Victoria or her husband, get them to tell me where my daughter was. But I decided that would be pretty stupid. I had just put my pickup in gear to drive away when Victoria charged out of the house with a shotgun.” Marge bent her head and rubbed her face with her hands.
“What happened next? ” Susan asked.
“Shit, are you kidding? I floored that sucker so hard, I bounced the front bumper off that god-awful fountain. My heart was racing so fast I thought it would burst. Then that bitch fires both barrels at me. Peppered the hell out of my tailgate.”
Barbara glanced at Susan. They had noticed small dents in the tailgate. “Why do you think she shot at you?” Barbara asked.
“Hell, how do I know? She was nuts. Could have thought I was a prowler, or an ex-husband, or even me. She sure didn’t come outside to talk.”
CHAPTER 34
Barbara and Susan returned to the squad room. While Barbara went to the ladies room, Susan walked to her desk. She had just sat down when Lieutenant Salas entered. Susan was shocked to see him. It wasn’t often he stayed past 6 p.m. It was now 11:15 p.m.
“Where the hell is Lassiter?” Salas shouted.
“In the loo.” She tried hard not to show any reaction to Salas’s raised voice. Normally he was easy-going. Political pressure on the Sheriff’s Department by Comstock and his influential friends was obviously getting to the lieutenant.
“What did you learn from Marge Stanley?”
Susan briefed him on their conversation with Stanley.
“So, that Stanley broad admitted she was at the Comstock place with her truck the night of the murder.”
“That’s correct. But I still don’t think she did it.”
Salas’s face went from red to magenta. Veins stuck out in his forehead and neck. “What the fuck else do we need, Martinez?”
Susan felt her face go hot. She clenched her fists under her desk. “Marge Stanley told us Victoria Comstock fired both barrels of a shotgun at her at 2 a.m. Comstock was still alive then.”
>
“According to Marge Stanley. What do you think she would say?”
“Look, Lieutenant, we want to solve this case. But I assume you want us to find the real killer, not just a convenient suspect.”
Susan hadn’t even tried to keep sarcasm from her voice. Salas pointed a finger at her. “I want you and Lassiter in my office the minute she gets back here. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Susan watched Salas march to his office and slam his door shut, then unclenched her hands and steadied her breathing. She’d never been involved in a murder case where there were so many possible suspects, where the victim was so unsympathetic a figure, and where every time they thought they had narrowed their suspect list to one, that person suddenly had to be scratched off the list. Unless Marge had returned later that night and killed Victoria—and Susan didn’t think that was likely—they were wasting their time focusing on Marge while the real killer was still out there. Even as tough and self-reliant as Marge was, she would probably have been pretty shook up about getting shot at, running into the Comstock’s fountain, and taking out part of the neighbor’s fence. Susan just couldn’t see her going back to confront an armed Victoria.
Susan ran the names of other suspects through her brain.
Maxwell Comstock hadn’t been at home that night. He was shacked up with his secretary, Judy Turner. They had alibied each another. Sure, they could have lied, but Susan didn’t think so.
Connie Alban was still a possibility. She’d hid out on the property next door and didn’t have an alibi, other than the word of the boyfriend who had driven her car to California. They would have to question the kid as soon as possible. But Susan didn’t believe Connie had faked her reaction when she learned Victoria Comstock had been murdered.
Victoria’s former husbands formed the strangest fraternity Susan had ever observed, but she still felt there wasn’t a one of them who had the nerve to kill anyone, especially not Victoria.
She and Barbara had questioned two other people—the horse people, mentioned by Maxwell Comstock as having grudges against his wife—but they’d been out of state when the murder took place.
Susan turned as the squad room door opened and Barbara entered. “The lieutenant wants to see us,” she said. “He’s in a pissy mood.”
Barbara frowned and held out her hands in a “what gives?” gesture.
“He wants to know what the hell you’ve been doing on the Comstock case, besides eating donuts and drinking coffee.”
“”What I’ve been doing or what we’ve been doing?”
“I think he believes I’m busting my ass on this case. It’s you he’s worried about.”
“I can sense that behind your sense of humor you’re worried.”
“Uh hunh,” Susan said. “You could say that.”
CHAPTER 35
“She admits to being there just before Mrs. Comstock is killed,” Salas said. “What more do you need?” Salas looked from Barbara to Susan and back to Barbara. He looked desperate, as though he were drowning and hoped someone would throw him a lifeline. When neither of the detectives spoke, he fell back into his chair.
“You two are no longer on this case,” he said. “Give your notes and files to Gabelli. He’ll take over.”
Barbara gasped. “You can’t do that, Lieutenant. We’ve busted our butts on this case. Gabelli can’t find his ass with both hands. Don’t let the politicians pressure you into doing something stupid.”
Salas leaped from his chair and jabbed a finger at her. “Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do, Lassiter. And don’t come in here and insult me. You two screwed up. You pissed off Maxwell Comstock, one of the most powerful men in New Mexico. You chased around half the state, and what have you accomplished? Nothing! Now get out of here. I’ve got work to do.”
Susan stood and stormed out of Salas’s office. Barbara followed her. They both stopped dead in their tracks when they saw Gabelli seated at his desk with his feet propped on a drawer. Susan started in his direction, which caused Gabelli to drop his feet to the floor and scoot his chair back against the wall.
“You’d better take that shit-eating grin off your face before I knock it off,” Susan said. Then she turned and walked to her desk, where she jerked drawers open and piled files on the blotter. She ripped pages from her notebook, put them on top of the stack, and lugged everything over to Gabelli’s desk.
“Gee thanks, ladies,” he said, as he slid forward on his chair and rested one of his hamhock-sized hands on the pile of documents Susan had placed there. “Maybe now that a pro is on the case, we’ll see results.”
Susan reached around Gabelli’s desk and grabbed the man’s trashcan. He skidded his chair backward into a corner. Susan hoisted the can, as though she would bean him with it, but then dumped its contents on his desk and threw the can on the floor. Then she walked back to her own desk.
Barbara decided she would put off giving her notes and files to Gabelli until she’d had the chance to copy certain parts. Names and telephone numbers, in particular.
“My theory about Marge Stanley,” Gabelli said, “is that she killed Mrs. Comstock.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Susan said. “Guess what? We think she didn’t do it.”
“I guess that’s why the case was taken away from you.”
“Fuck off, Gabelli!” Susan shouted.
CHAPTER 36
The night sky matched Barbara’s mood. Gloomy and dark. Not a star evident. “Looks like we might finally get some rain,” she said.
Susan ignored Barbara’s weather report. “If Salas thinks I’m going to back away from this case, he’s got his head up his ass,” she shouted in the confines of the department vehicle. “Dammit! Can you believe that Neanderthal, Gabelli, is going to keep Marge Stanley locked up in the County Jail? We told him about the shotgun damage to the truck.”
“The only good thing I can find in the whole mess,” Barbara said, “is that Gabelli will look like an idiot when the truth comes out.”
“Not to mention Salas, the sheriff, the D.A., and the whole department,” Susan added. “Marge ought to have a hell of a lawsuit.”
Barbara didn’t think there was a whole lot she and Susan could do with no forensic evidence from the crime scene, no known eyewitness to the crime, and with a victim who seemed to have gone through life making enemies. She slammed a fist against the steering wheel. “You realize Salas had already made the decision to take the case away from us. It wouldn’t have mattered what we told him.”
“Unless we agreed that we’d arrested the killer,” Susan said.
Barbara shook her head. They reached the Osuna/San Mateo exit off Interstate 25 before Susan spoke again.
“If we want to find Victoria Comstock’s killer we’ll have to do it pretty damn fast. Salas will dump a bunch of new cases in our laps first thing tomorrow morning.”
Barbara glanced at Susan. “It’s not like we haven’t tried to solve the case.”
Susan didn’t reply. She obviously didn’t have any better idea than Barbara did as to how to proceed.
Barbara stopped in front of Susan’s house and put the car in Park. “Get some sleep, partner. Just imagine how happy Gabelli will be tomorrow.”
Susan pondered that as she opened her door and put one foot on the curb. She twisted around to look at Barbara. “How long do you think we could go AWOL before Salas gets pissed off and puts us on suspension?”
“Maybe twenty-four hours. I’ll bet he already feels bad about taking the case from us. He’d surely give us some leeway.”
Susan expressed no confidence in Barbara’s comment. “How about you pick me up at 7?” she said.
“And?”
Susan smiled. “Who were we talking about before we learned that Marge Stanley made her 2 a.m. visit to the Comstock place?”
“You mean besides Maxwell Comstock, his secretary, Connie Alban, Victoria’s former husbands, and the women who were married to men who dumped them for Victoria?”
“Yeah,” Susan said. “Other than that cast of hundreds.”
“Why, Doctor Nathan Stein, of course.”
Barbara drove slowly away from Susan’s house, not in any hurry to get to her empty place. Besides, a rain shower had begun and the roads were slick. She took Wyoming Boulevard, past the Albuquerque Academy, and stared off to her right at the private school’s grounds there. Her husband, Jim, had graduated from there. Barbara smiled at the thought of “her Jim” as a high school student. He’d told her he’d been a nerd—great in science and math; a klutz on the athletic fields; a social retard. He’d sure as hell come into his own by the time she’d met him. No nerdiness left in him. Tall, ramrod straight, and handsome, Jim had taken her breath away.
Barbara felt tears dampen her cheeks and knew she couldn’t go home. Not in this mood. Not when the image of the liquor cabinet flashed in her mind. It had been days since she’d had a drink, but it seemed like years.
She drove west, with no destination in mind. Driving just felt good. The rain suddenly went from a shower to a downpour. She cranked the wipers to high, yet they barely cleared away the water. But there was something soothing, cleansing about the downpour and the syncopation of the wipers. She told herself there was something sick about being afraid to go home, about being afraid of her own weakness. And, in that instant, she admitted she had a problem. Sure she wasn’t a knockdown drunk. She could function without a drink, but for years now, since Jim’s death, she’d actually believed she could function much better with one.
She thought of Shawn Navarro’s bright smile and piercing blue eyes and how nice it would be to talk with him, to find out how he’d kicked the booze habit.
She made a U-turn at San Antonio Boulevard, turned west a couple minutes later onto Academy Boulevard, and wound her way to the strip joint where she had met Navarro. Maybe he’s on the case that had taken him there. If his car’s in the lot, she could just go in and maybe give him a progress report on the Comstock case. Tell him she was on her way home and happened to see his car in the lot. Decided to stop on an impulse.