by Lora Roberts
“Even an old guy can off someone if he has a gun,” O’Malley pointed out. “Course, it could have been the young guy. You know him?”
“I wasn’t here, as you said yourself. I was home, peacefully trying to make an honest buck. And if you want confirmation—”
“We got that already.” He gave me a sly smile. “Friends on the force, that’s what you have. Too bad your cop buddy didn’t come along to Denver with you. What an alibi that would be!”
I was about to make a heated reply, when it occurred to me that what was missing in this conversation was any sense from O’Malley that it mattered. He didn’t have the air of a man intent on doing his job. These offhand, leisured remarks were his way of going through the motions.
“If you really believe my dad would kill Tony, when I was the one he was mad at, then you’re obviously hard up for valid suspects. Why don’t you go find some, and stop bothering us?”
Even that didn’t get him riled. He stepped back from the bus, smiling a little. “We’re looking. Everywhere. Depend on it, Missus. And we’ll be having some more chats with you sometime soon. Eva will keep in touch with you on that.”
He waved, climbed into the nondescript car, and drove off. I watched him go, feeling hollow.
Then, before my dad could come out and harangue me, I drove off, too. I didn’t have a destination in mind. No point in going back to Andy’s house so Renee could give me the cold shoulder. No point in hanging around my mother, either. I was surprised at how much her rigid disapprobation hurt. I thought I’d cured myself of ever needing my parents’ approval years ago, but deep down, that “I’ll show them” attitude still lingered. And I hadn’t managed to show them. Though just getting through each day without a financial crisis was a triumph for me, they naturally didn’t see it that way.
Aimlessly, I drove through the streets of little houses, finding myself finally at a small park I remembered from high school, where the disaffected youth used to hang out evenings and weekends until the police would come and make them move. This time of day it was deserted except for a couple of moms at the tiny playground, pushing their toddlers in swings. I clipped the leash on Barker and walked slowly through the park, scuffling in the leaves, admiring the bed of dahlias that rose stiff and triumphant from their knobby bark mulch.
It sounded as if O’Malley would settle for me, or, if he couldn’t figure out some way to blame me for masterminding the killing, my dad and Biff. Much as I thought Biff deserved the chastising of Fate, a murder charge was probably overdoing it. And yet, did I want to take the rap myself? Was there any way out of that? I couldn’t marshal any coherent thoughts about my situation; instead I was awash in stoic helplessness.
Rabbits caught in headlights must have something of that heavy passivity, that acceptance of a danger so overwhelming that the only thing to do is hunker down and hope it goes over you without hurting too much.
Usually, it kills you.
What I needed was a plan. What I had was a primal need to call Drake and blubber in panic.
Barker strained at the leash after a squirrel. I didn’t know if Denver had a leash law, and under the circumstances I didn’t care about the wrath of the animal control department. I took off his leash and let him run.
Watching him dash from tree to tree, I tried to control my fragmented thoughts. I didn’t want to be the premier suspect, and I didn’t want my family suspected either. I certainly didn’t want the murderer out free under the blue sky while I was locked up for killing my ex-husband.
Given O’Malley’s snide remarks about Drake, the Denver police must already have contacted him to see if I’d actually been hanging around the Rockies longer than I’d said. Maybe Drake was already calling Renee’s, looking for me. Anxious for me. I allowed myself the comforting warmth of that thought. Drake, I was pretty sure, was genuinely interested in my welfare—at the least, as a friend. Perhaps even as more.
But that was too scary to think about—even scarier than O’Malley’s friendly concern. I couldn’t—didn’t want to—confront the possibility of a close, loving bond with a man. The very idea had been anathema to me for too long, because of Tony. And now Tony was dead.
That was the most disorienting thing that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. Tony was truly dead, gone out of my life, unable to personally threaten me again. I kept feeling that he was about to sit down beside me on the park bench any moment, grabbing my arm in that affectionate-looking squeeze that left bruises behind.
Barker panted up to flop in front of me, tongue hanging out. I put the leash back on him and sat awhile longer, staring at the path, waiting for Tony to feel dead to me.
He had been so exciting when I was nineteen, so different from the rest of the college boys. I had felt sophisticated and glamorous with him—and grateful, because no one had ever before treated me as if I were a beautiful woman. Later, I knew he treated any woman that way when he wanted something from her—sex or power or just an afternoon’s amusement. His insistence had led to our marriage—I was too infatuated, too envied by other girls, to care whether we married or not.
And afterward it didn’t take long before I became clumsy, awkward, dowdy, too shy—or so he told the friends he’d made at the brokerage house—to mingle socially in the evenings. I believed all that, even when I defied him, left him. I still believed it, on some level.
So I pushed the thought of Drake away. I wasn’t ready to give him the right to be concerned about me, involved in my actions. I would stand on my own two feet, and I would take care of my own problems. if I had to do it alone, without friends, I would do it, and not just be the blind, panic-stricken rabbit, paralyzed by its own fear and relentlessly squashed.
I got up, leading Barker toward the street and trying to kick-start my brain. I knew nothing about Tony’s friends and associates these days. But I had known some of them years ago, and they might know what he was up to that had gotten him killed.
Just as I opened the side door for Barker, a name slipped into my mind. Maud Riegert. Tony had been carrying her credit card, and now I remembered her—a thin, chain-smoking junior commodities broker at the same firm where Tony worked. I had met her a couple of times at office parties Tony couldn’t get out of taking me to, and the reactions of his coworkers at the second party had made it clear to me that Tony and Maud were linked in office gossip. That night I had offered him a divorce—a mistake I paid for with a black eye and a chipped tooth. When Maud called a month or so later to ask why I wouldn’t let Tony go where his heart was, I was so overcome with hysterical laughter I couldn’t speak.
The branch library was still in the same place, though I got lost on some one-way streets flying to get to it. I started with the Denver telephone directory and hit pay dirt right away. She was listed, though her address was not.
I used the pay phone next to the library, without much hope that she would be home this late on a Wednesday morning. But a sleepy female voice answered on the third ring.
“Maud?”
“Yes, who is it?”
“This is Liz Sullivan.” I cleared my throat. “Tony Naylor’s ex-wife.”
There was a moment of silence. “Who?”
“Tony Naylor. He’s dead, you know. He was killed last night.”
More silence. Then she whispered, “Who told you to call me? Was it Kyle?”
“Er—no one told me. I just remembered that you and Tony—I wondered if you knew—”
“Look,” she interrupted. “I don’t know you or what you’re talking about. The police already asked me about this Tony person. Evidently he’d stolen my credit card somehow. I don’t know anything more about it, okay? Just leave me alone!”
The phone banged in my ear, and the dial tone buzzed gently. I set the receiver back in its cradle.
Ten years is a long time to remember anyone’s voice, but I thought she’d recognized mine. No matter what she said, Maud Riegert knew something about Tony. And she’d told me somethi
ng, too.
Kyle. Kyle had been Tony’s buddy, and I’d met him many times—mostly when they were both drunk, but sometimes on ordinary occasions, when he’d been kind to me. A couple of times, when Tony had taken a swing at me, Kyle had stopped him. Once, shortly before the end of my life in Denver, he’d come over when Tony wasn’t home, and I’d received the distinct impression that he would be glad to comfort me, especially in the bedroom. By then sex was not my idea of a treat, and fear of Tony’s retaliation would have kept me from enjoying it anyway, but I had appreciated the offer, which briefly made me feel like a woman again instead of a cowed, beaten thing.
I tried to remember Kyle’s last name, standing there with my hand on the receiver, but it eluded me. Instead, I went back into the library and consulted the phone book again. Among a list of brokerage houses I found the one Tony had worked for.
Digging out all my change, I lined it up on the little shelf by the phone where a phone book was supposed to be but wasn’t. I summoned my best office-temp voice, and when the receptionist at Baker Mulshine Hollenbeck answered, I asked dulcetly for personnel.
“I’m verifying a reference,” I cooed when personnel answered. “This is for a job that requires a great deal of background checking.”
“Oh, at Rocky Flats?” The woman on the other end sounded inclined to be chatty.
“I’m not allowed to say,” I said primly. “But you’re close.”
“How can I help you?”
“The applicant wrote down your firm on his employment history—although his handwriting is difficult to read.” That much was true, anyway—Tony always had a horrible scrawl. “One of his references also works for you, but I can’t make out more than Kyle Something.”
“Can you tell me the applicant’s name? We have two Kyles here.”
“It’s Anthony Naylor.” I held my breath hopefully.
“Naylor, Naylor,” she muttered. “Was he recently employed here?”
“The date he left is smudged, but the start date was several years ago.”
“Oh, Tony. Tony Naylor. He was—terminated—over a year ago.” Her voice was a blend of curiosity and formality. “It must be Kyle Baldridge he put down as a reference. They were always close.”
“Was Mr. Baldridge his supervisor?”
“No, that was Mr. Tobin—Leonard Tobin. He recently retired. And Kyle’s been on leave for the past month—he won’t be back until the beginning of October. Just a minute.” She put me on hold, long enough to make me wonder if she had some way of tracing my call. I fed the phone when the digitized voice told me to, and hoped it wouldn’t ask for more.
“Sorry about that.” She was back. “When did you get an application from Tony?”
Someone had obviously just filled her in. Suppressed excitement simmered in her voice.
“It was a couple of weeks ago.” I made my voice sound apologetic. “I’ve been on vacation, too, and it came in while I was gone. I can’t get hold of Mr. Naylor to verify these names.”
“That’s because he’s dead,” the woman in personnel said triumphantly. “Gladys just told me that the police were here this morning, trying to find out where he’s been working since he left.”
“Goodness, I’d better get in touch with them. And I guess I won’t need to check references after all. The police have probably already talked to this Kyle person.”
“I don’t know if they have.” She sounded thoughtful now. “He’s volunteering on a dig in the Four Corners area—he likes that archaeology stuff.”
“Thanks for your help.” I hung up quickly, before she could demand information from me. At least I had gotten Kyle’s last name—and I remembered Leonard Tobin, too. I’d met him at one of those functions, and then Tony had railed loudly about him more than once, about Leonard taking his credit and obstructing his advancement. I hadn’t paid much attention—Tony suspected most people of those crimes. I didn’t think Tobin was that much older—certainly not retirement age. But perhaps, as senior broker, he’d made his pile and was ready to spend it.
Back to the phone book again. This time I was lucky. Both Kyle and Leonard were listed, Kyle in the chic old section near downtown that Amy had referred to as LoDo, for Lower Denver, and Leonard in the Cherry Creek area. I wrote down their addresses and phone numbers and went back to the bus, where Barker munched dog food while I munched peanut butter and jelly, trying to figure out how I would talk to these people, and hoping that somehow what I heard could help me.
Chapter 9
Since Kyle Baldridge was out of town, I decided to head for Cherry Creek to see if Leonard Tobin was at home. After my experience with Maud, I didn’t phone first. It’s too easy to hang up on someone.
Leonard Tobin lived in one of those subdivisions with roads winding through landscaping that captures the dichotomy of Colorado—one house sprawls in a Southwestern jumble of cactus, sand, boulders; the next one is a mock Tudor enveloped in a lush cottage garden. Tobin’s was discreetly middle-of-the-road ranch style, with foundation shrubs and a brick path to the door. A FOR SALE sign swung in the front yard.
I parked on the street. My bus was an anomaly among all the gleaming Cadillacs and sport utility vehicles that ornamented the driveways. There was no car in Tobin’s driveway; the garage was shut.
The doorbell made a hollow sound inside the house. I was about to turn away when the door opened.
“Yes?”
I suddenly felt jittery—I hadn’t really thought he’d be home, framed the right approach.
“Uh—Mr. Tobin?”
“Yes?” He peered at me suspiciously. I recognized him when he moved into the sunlight: the thin face, the high-bridged nose. His hair was much sparser. “What do you want?”
“I’m Liz Sullivan. Tony Naylor’s ex-wife.”
His face changed; for one instant, fear lanced out. Then he looked down. “Sorry. I don’t know you.”
The door began to close. “Wait. Mr. Tobin—I just want to ask you some questions. Tony’s dead. Did you know?”
He froze, one hand on the doorknob. “Dead?” His other hand passed, trembling, over his mouth. “I—didn’t know.” He looked up again. “What do you want? Why have you come here?”
“Some answers.” I could see I was losing him. “The police suspect me.”
“And you want to throw suspicion on me?” His face tightened. I could see that the past decade had left a heavy mark on him. “Look, if I’d killed Tony, I would have done it awhile ago, when it would still have benefited me. But now—” he pointed at the sign on his front lawn—”now there’s no reason. I’ve already lost it all. My job. My wife. My home’s next to go.” He leaned toward me, his mouth twisted, and I smelled the whiskey on his breath. “He won, you see. He won over a year ago. Why would I wait so long to kill the bastard?”
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. “But weren’t you his boss? How could he get that much power over you?”
“You’re his wife. Didn’t you know?” For the first time he seemed to see me. “Oh, you might as well come in. I’ve got to leave in a little while—the realtor is showing the house. But you might as well have a drink.”
I followed him down the hall; he staggered a little. The living room contained a couple of plastic lawn chairs with a brass-and-glass coffee table between them, and some nicely framed and matted photographs on the wall. “My wife took most of the furniture—my ex-wife,” he said, settling into one of the lawn chairs. “Yeah, now I remember. You shot Tony—tried to kill him a few years ago, right? He was on sick leave for a couple of months. So were you more successful this time?”
“I wasn’t even in Denver, but the police think I was behind it somehow.” I sat in the other chair, uninvited. A huge bottle of Jack Daniels stood on the coffee table, next to a glass.
Tobin poured himself a drink. He didn’t offer me one.
“That Naylor. What a bastard.” He raised his glass in a salute, then drank half the whiskey.
“I wondered where Tony had been working recently. Can you tell me? I gather he was fired from the brokerage.”
“He was blackmailing me, you know.” Tobin looked at me earnestly, clutching his glass. “Just a little mistake—little bad margin call on my part. Had to cover myself. Dipped into a trust fund I was managing.” He took a morose sip. “Tony found out somehow. I was a VP by then. Couldn’t let them know.”
“So what did he want?”
“Money.” Tobin gave me a sharp look, the muzziness momentarily gone. “And immunity from his own depredations. I told him I couldn’t protect him forever, but he pushed. Got found out, and took me down with him, the bastard.” His hand clenched on the glass. “God, I hate him.” Then he focused on me again. “But I didn’t kill him. Didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. I had enough trouble on my own account.” He sloshed a little more whiskey into his glass.
“Do you think Maud Riegert might know more? Were they still—friends?”
He shrugged and tossed off his drink. “Good old Maudie. She moved on a few years ago. Dunno if she still saw Tony. Got a job in another firm.” He giggled a little. “She had a black eye once, you know. Said she got it in the shower. Then she left. Nice little ass that girl had.” He made a vague gesture in the air and reached for the bottle, but his hand groped without finding it. Then slowly, peacefully, his eyes closed. A breathy snore bubbled out of his mouth, followed, in a moment, by another.
I pitied the real estate agent who was bringing a client over. And though I had gotten some information, it wasn’t the information I wanted.
Tobin slumped farther in his chain. His sport coat fell open, revealing a small notebook in the inside pocket. As I looked at it, he snored again.
He didn’t move when I stood beside him for a while. So I fished the notebook out. It was one of those little pocket daily calendars with an address section in the back. Maud Riegert’s address and phone number were written down under R. The phone number was the same one I had reached her at earlier. I copied the address, and then leafed through the book again. Kyle’s name was there, but I already had his location.