Murder Mile High

by Lora Roberts

  Tony was in there, too—with several scratched-out addresses under his name. The last one, with a big angry X drawn through it, was the same as Kyle Baldridge’s. So Tony had moved in with Kyle at some point. Perhaps he had still lived there at the time of his death. I had looked at his driver’s license but I couldn’t remember now what had been written there, and I knew from my own experience that licenses weren’t always accurate.

  I needed to talk to Kyle, even if I had to drive to the Four Corners to do it.

  Leonard Tobin snored again. I tucked the notebook back into his pocket and tiptoed out of the house.

  Chapter 10

  Maud Riegert was a lot closer than the Four Corners. I drove back across town to her apartment, which was near the Capitol Hill area of older mansions and elegant apartments.

  I found a place to park on the street. Barker let me know in no uncertain terms that he was growing tired of staying alone in the bus. I promised him a nice walk later, and went into the lobby of the building. The marble floor shone, and so did the plate glass of the locked door between me and the elevators. I wondered if Maud would let me in.

  The elevator on the other side of the glass door opened and a rottweiler charged out, towing a woman in jogging clothes. She pushed the inner door open, and as the dog pulled her inexorably toward the sidewalk, I caught it before it could close.

  Maud was on the sixth floor. I rang the doorbell, waited, rang again. The door had a peephole, but she probably wouldn’t recognize me—it had been a long time, and we hadn’t seen that much of each other. I might not recognize her, if given the chance.

  The door opened to the length of the chain lock; a narrow sliver of suspicious face appeared in the opening. “Who are you?”

  “Ms. Riegert?”

  “What do you want?”

  I cleared my throat. “The county has some questions. About the death of Tony Naylor.”

  She sighed. “I’ve already talked to the police. Can’t you get your information from them?”

  “It’s better if I talk to you.”

  The one visible eye looked me up and down and found me non-threatening. My anonymous outfit—khaki pants and windbreaker jacket from the Junior League Thrift Shop—makes me look like thousands of other nondescript women in their mid-thirties who can’t be bothered to fix up. She shut the door briefly and then opened it without the chain.

  “Come in.” She hustled me into the living room. “Make it snappy, can’t you? I’m busy.”

  She certainly was. Through an open door I could see her bedroom; the bed was piled high with clothes and suitcases. A big cardboard packing crate took up center stage in the living room.

  “Are you moving?”

  She gave me a sharp look. “I’m going on sabbatical for a little while, and I don’t want the sublet to ruin my things.”

  “That’s sensible.”

  “You don’t mind if I work while we talk, do you? I don’t have long before the truck comes.”

  “It’s fine.” I fidgeted with the notebook I had taken out of my knapsack in the interests of verisimilitude. “Actually, I’m not from the county, although I imagine they do have questions about Tony’s death.”

  She froze in the act of wrapping a towel around a watercolor depicting the quaint Main Street of an old mining town. “Who—what—”

  “I’m Liz Sullivan. I called you earlier, but you wouldn’t talk to me. I really need to know some things, Maud.”

  “Liz?” She put the watercolor down and peered at me. “You don’t look at all the same. Your hair’s short, for one thing.”

  I could see by her expression that she had no great opinion of my hairstyle. “It’s low-maintenance. Do you know where Tony’s been working lately?”

  She sat down on the love seat opposite the one I occupied. “You don’t beat around the bush. Why do you care? You’ve been out of the picture for a while.” Her eyes narrowed. “Say, how long have you been back in Denver, anyway? Do the police know you’re here?”

  “Yes. They think I had something to do with Tony’s death.”

  “Did you?” Her gaze turned speculative. “You tried something like that before, I recall.”

  “I had nothing to do with it.” I cleared my throat. “Can’t even quite take it in that he’s really dead.”

  She shook her head. “I know. It—it’s been a shock.”

  “Is that why you’re going away? Because of grief over Tony?”

  “Grief?” She laughed, a harsh sound. “It’ll be a warm day on Pikes Peak before I spend any tears on that two-timing, lying bastard.”

  “Then why are you going away?”

  She laughed again. “Boy, you don’t give up.” Her voice held a contemptuous tolerance. “Honey, you never did have a clue. The times Tony and I had sex in your bed while you were out at your dreary job! I had him in his car, in my car, at my place—even at the office, one night, on the vice president’s desk.” She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself and smiling. “He was quite a guy, Tony. You didn’t have a prayer of handling a man like that. He liked it rough and wild, and so did I.”

  “Did you like the black eye, too?” I studied her thin, well-toned body, picturing her with my husband in all those places she’d mentioned. It stirred nothing but a faint wish for a nice hot shower.

  “Who told you about that?” She jumped up. “The bastard. He was writing you about me or something, wasn’t he?”

  “I know a bit about it.” I fiddled with my notebook. “You left the brokerage firm after that.”

  “I told him off, and I got a new job.” Her gaze slid away. “Oh, hell. You might as well know. He was scaring me a little—really acting out of control, and talking wild about how he could make people do anything he wanted them to. I heard later that he was caught cooking an account, and he implicated poor old Leonard. That was mean.”

  “So when he blackmailed you, it wasn’t a total surprise.”

  She collapsed back into the love seat, her eyes blank. “How did you know that?”

  “I heard he had your credit card, that you gave it to him.”

  “He stole it.” She recovered a little. “I reported it stolen.”

  “When was this?”

  “Look, what makes you think you can ask me these questions? You’re not the police.” Her lips pressed together in a firm line.

  “The police think I had something to do with it, and I didn’t. I’m trying to find out what Tony’s been doing since he left the brokerage house. I thought you might know. Did you start seeing him again?”

  Her gaze slid away. “It was stupid, wasn’t it? I knew what he was like. But he came around—so charming. He brought me that picture.” She nodded toward the watercolor. “We had spent such wonderful weekends there—our private place. I—let him take me out to dinner and everything.”

  “Was this recently?”

  She twisted away. “Oh, well, I already told the cops, so I guess I can tell you. We went around for a little while. Other people will tell them that, I’m sure—my so-called friends. Then he got offensive again, and I told him to get out. That’s when he said—that’s when he stole my credit card. I realized it the next day and reported it missing, and they closed the account. That was a couple of weeks ago. I hadn’t heard anything from him since.”

  “He took you out.” I spoke slowly. “So he had money. Where was he getting it?”

  “He had money then.” She shrugged elaborately. “I didn’t know where it came from, and I didn’t ask.”

  “He ran out of money.” I leaned forward, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Is that when he blackmailed you?”

  She scooted farther away on the sofa. “I don’t—look, this is none of your business. Tony was a bastard, only interested in himself.”

  “He seemed to be hitting a lot of folks up for money about then.”

  She gave another bark of that humorless laughter. “I’m not surprised. He was really sweating for some cash—” She stop
ped.

  “Why?”

  “How should I know?” She wrapped the towel tighter around the picture. “Probably cooked the books again and needed to cover. That was his style.” Her lips snapped together tightly.

  “You know where he was working.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Leaning forward, she looked deliberately into my eyes. “I don’t know anything. And you can tell anyone who asks you that I said so.”

  “Okay. I’ll tell them that. But why don’t you tell me what you’re so afraid of? Maybe I know something that will help.”

  “You are so naive!” She jumped up and shoved the painting into a crate. “I’m giving myself a nice vacation in a mountain cabin until this all blows over. So if anybody’s looking for me, they won’t find me.”

  “Tony was doing something illegal, is that it? Drugs?”

  “I suggest you leave now.” Maud came over to stand beside me. “I can’t help you anymore.”

  “Maud, you don’t have to tell me. But you should tell the police. Maybe they can protect you, if you need it. And they need the information to conduct an investigation.”

  “Look, as far as I’m concerned, whoever killed Tony was just cleaning up one of Mother Nature’s mistakes.” Her gaze slid away from mine. “I mean, it was only a question of time before he took someone out, if you ask me. The way he was acting—” She stopped again, then took my arm and jerked me toward the door. “You should feel the same way.” She stood there, her hand on the doorknob. “You tried to kill him, too, after all. The police can find out stuff on their own, if they’re inclined.” For a moment she looked almost sympathetic. “I’ll tell you this much. It wasn’t the police Tony was afraid of, probably because he had something on someone there. He had something on a lot of people. He would have been rich if he’d had any idea how to manage money.” She opened the door.

  “Wait, Maud. Did he tell you what he had on them?”

  She pushed me out the door, firmly. “Good-bye, Liz. Hope you manage to avoid the rap this time.”

  The door closed behind me, and a moment later I heard the rattle of the chain lock.

  Chapter 11

  I still didn’t know what Tony had done for the past year, but it seemed likely to have been shady. And the harder it was to find out, the more it looked like a clue to his murder. Obviously, he’d had enemies. In fact, some members of my family could look suspicious, as O’Malley had pointed out.

  But I preferred to scrutinize other potential murderers. Both Leonard and Maud looked good for this purpose. Of the two, I would pick Maud as cold-blooded enough to kill someone who got in her way or threatened her. Had Tony threatened her? And why the panic-stricken flight?

  With Barker on the leash, I roamed through Cheesman Park and the botanical garden. I couldn’t keep my mind on the flowers or the distant view of Pikes Peak to the south. I kept thinking about Maud’s description of Tony as a lover. It was hard to deal with having Tony on my mind, after years of carefully screening myself against a single thought of him. He had been a totally different person to her than to me, and yet I knew he could woo and seduce. He had always said his violence toward me was my own fault; perhaps I had brought it on by my lukewarm response to him.

  Collapsing onto a bench, I stared at a bed of late roses. There it was, the victim mind-set I’d inhabited far too long. In the past couple of years, I’d started to come out of that, to take my place among ordinary people who don’t automatically cringe when a man raises his voice. The only blame I accepted was for not leaving town before I tried to shoot my husband, instead of after the jail term I served for doing so. I wouldn’t be responsible for Tony’s actions anymore.

  “He’s dead.” I said it out loud, trying to convince myself. “He’s dead.”

  “Just tired, I think.” The elderly man walking by looked at me reproachfully. “He could use a drink of water.”

  “Huh?” I gaped at him a moment before I realized he was talking about Barker, who sprawled at my feet, tongue lolling out. The man went on by, shaking his head over my obtuseness, and I led Barker to the water fountain, where he politely accepted some water from my cupped hand.

  Then I really looked at the roses for a little while. The bushes were small; I had forgotten, after years in California where a grandiflora like Queen Elizabeth could reach to the eaves, that in the Mile High City, roses must be covered every year against frost, and are extensively cut back for that purpose. Many old favorite hybrid teas were blooming, as well as some newer ones I didn’t recognize.

  Back at the bus, I got Barker a bowl of water and looked at Kyle Baldridge’s address in my notebook. He didn’t live that far away, and perhaps one of his neighbors would know how I could get in touch with him.

  “Can you believe it?” I spoke to Barker while I maneuvered through traffic. He was in his favorite spot in the front passenger seat, sitting up tall to observe the action. “I forgot to ask Maud where Tony was living!”

  For a moment I debated going back to her house. But she might already be gone, and I might not be so lucky next time at getting through that lobby door.

  Instead I stopped at the next pay phone. Maud’s answering machine answered after the third ring. I debated leaving a message. When it beeped I said, “Maud, this is Liz Sullivan. There’s one more thing I’d like to ask if you’re still there. Would you pick up the phone, please? It won’t take—”

  She picked up, cutting into my flow of words. “What is it? I told you, I know nothing.”

  “But you know where Tony was living, right?”

  She was silent a moment. “Not really,” she said, grudgingly. “Around, is my best guess. Here when I let him, with Kyle sometimes, with other people probably—women, no doubt.”

  So my ex-husband had also become a kind of vagabond—the moocher kind. “How do you know?”

  “He gave me his pager number, not a real phone number. Then he’d call back. And when he stole my credit card I called Kyle’s to tell him to give it back, and Kyle said he hadn’t seen Tony for quite a while. So he didn’t always live there. Look, I’ve got to go. The movers are here.”

  She slammed down the phone. I got back in the bus and headed on to Kyle’s. I had to find some way to get in touch with him. He might know something, even if Tony hadn’t been living there recently.

  It was after four. Traffic was thick on Eighth Avenue. I turned off on Pennsylvania, partly to escape the traffic, and also to look at the last place Tony and I had lived together, an old brick apartment building with ten small units. I drove slowly down the block, searching for it, but there was no trace. The building had vanished, along with several of its equally rickety neighbors. Southwestern-style condos with tiny patios covered the area.

  I drove on to Kyle’s, feeling disoriented. Denver had changed more than I had. I kept trying to turn onto streets that were now one-way in the other direction. I kept looking for familiar landmarks and not finding them, or finding them metamorphosed. An old house whose mini-turrets and battlements I had always admired had been modernized with a huge, featureless addition across its backside. The strip mall I had patronized now housed offices— chiropractor, orthodontist, and optometrist—instead of dry cleaners, bakery, and convenience store.

  Larimer Square and all of what Amy called LoDo was also changed. The area had been undergoing a renaissance ever since I could remember, but it was still a pretty funky place when I’d left Denver. Now it resonated with expensive, urban-rustic chic. Kyle’s apartment was in an old warehouse converted into living units. Mailboxes and doorways crowded the front hall; years of use had polished the wooden handrail along the curving stairs.

  The mailbox with Baldridge on it was for apartment 2D. I started up the stairs just as Officer Eva Gutierrez turned the corner down them. She looked at me, unsmiling, and I looked back. Finally she spoke. “So what brings you here?”

  “I could be looking to rent an apartment.”

  “There’s n
o vacancy here.” She nodded toward the front door, where a plaque announced that we had entered the Glenarvon Apartments. Beneath the plaque were two empty hooks, obviously meant to hold a VACANCY sign.

  “Well, I’m looking up an old friend, actually. Kyle Baldridge. He was a friend of Tony’s, too, so that’s probably why you’re here.” I’m not too good at being ingratiating, but I gave it a try. “If I’m in the way, I’ll come back later.”

  Officer Gutierrez stood there for a moment, planted squarely on the landing above me. She appeared to come to a decision. “Come up here for a minute. We’ll have a chat.”

  At the end of the upstairs hallway, a bench beneath a window gave a view of the street. Officer Gutierrez settled herself on it, gun and baton clanking, as if she had the rest of the afternoon. “Now,” she said. “What have you been up to?”

  “Why should I have been up to anything?” I leaned against the wall and glanced out the window. My bus was parked a little way down the street. I could see Barker doing sentinel duty in the driver’s seat. He likes climbing up there when I’m not in the car.

  She studied me for a moment. “I spoke with Leonard Tobin this afternoon.”

  “Oh.”

  “He said you were asking him questions. That’s our job, Ms. Sullivan. All we want from you is to stay put while we investigate.”

  “That’s not what I heard this morning.” I studied her in turn. She looked brisk and competent, but I wondered how much clout she had in the department.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your Detective O’Malley was at my mom and dad’s this morning, and he pretty much told me he’d decided I fit the bill perfectly as a suspect. I expect he’ll arrest me soon.” Either me or my poor old dad. Or my obnoxious nephew Biff.

  She frowned. “O’Malley said that?”

  “He said women rarely do jail time anymore for killing their abusive husbands, and that I’d probably get off lightly.”