by Lora Roberts
The video transfer shop was just a countertop, with a lot of samples of racy-looking video stills hanging around. The woman behind the counter was too bored even to look at me when I ran in.
“Do you do audiotape transfer as well?”
Slowly she turned her head, making me aware that I had interrupted her contemplation. She sighed. “Yes,” she said.
“Can you do these little tapes?” I opened the tape recorder gingerly, copying the way Amy had done it. I had seen Drake do the same thing with his, but even so it eluded me for precious seconds. Then the back popped open and the tiny tape glinted up at me.
The clerk barely glanced at it. “Yes.”
“Well, can you do it now, or can someone, while I wait? On a regular cassette?”
She looked into the distance over my head. “Yes.”
I pried the tape out while she languidly assembled a printed envelope and a pen and put them on the counter in front of me. Hastily I scrawled my name and Andy’s phone number, and stuck the tape in. It was taking Officer Eva a long time to disentangle herself from the traffic. That was good.
The clerk disappeared into the back room with my tape just as Eva burst through the front door.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She had one hand on her nightstick, as if she thought she would need to club some sense into me.
“I’m getting the tape duplicated. Then you can have it if you want it, and we can part company here.” I tried a polite smile. “You’ll understand if I have a fear of police stations.”
Some of the anger died out of her face. “Liz—” She stared at me, shaking her head. “You should be under lock and key now, if you ask me. This is no way to behave with the law.”
“I did everything right the last time.” I shoved my hands into my pockets and returned her glare. “I called the cops, I cooperated—I ended up in jail. This time I figure I’ve got nothing to lose. I’m looking out for myself, and not depending on the poor understaffed police to do it for me.”
“You’re endangering yourself every minute,” she sputtered. “Any one of these people you’re getting so cozy with could be planning how to get you in deeper right now. Just lay low, why don’t you, and let us do our job?”
“Because your job is looking for evidence against me, and my job is looking for the truth. Truth gets swallowed by expediency nine times out of ten.”
The clerk came back in. “That’s right,” she said in a monotone. “Ten minutes.” She looked at Officer Eva.
Officer Eva looked back. “We’ll wait.”
For the first time a trace of animation appeared on the clerk’s face. “Here? You’re going to wait here?” She turned to me. “We don’t do police work.”
“I’m not the police.”
“You’re not?”
“No.”
“But she is!”
“Yes.”
Sullenly the clerk retired to the far end of the counter.
There were no chairs. Eva and I leaned against the counter and looked at each other for a moment.
“Oh, what the hell,” she said finally. “Come on. There’s a burger joint down the street. I’ll buy you something greasy.”
“Okay.” I was hungry, I realized. Very hungry. But not anxious to eat Andy’s food. “Back soon for the tapes,” I told the clerk.
“Pay in advance, please.” She punched a button or two on the cash register and showed me the amount. “And we close at five-thirty. Sharp.”
“Sharp, it is.” I pocketed my change and followed Eva out the door.
Chapter 13
It was only five. We had the fast-food place mostly to ourselves. My chicken sandwich was actually not bad. Eva had some coffee and a little bag of french fries that she appeared to enjoy.
“So what did the others say on this tape of yours?” She wiped her fingers on a napkin, then looked at me over the rim of her coffee cup. “See if you can give me the gist of it.”
I thought about it while I contained an eruption of sauce from the side of my sandwich. “Leonard’s hitting bottom and blames Tony for it because Tony was blackmailing him and finked to the bosses.”
She blinked. “Well, that about covers it. And you saw Maud Riegert, too? What did she say?”
This was harder. “You’ll get the tape. Then you’ll know.”
“I want to know now.” She pointed a french fry at me. “I think you owe it to me, Liz.”
“Maud,” I said reluctantly, “has been involved with Tony since before I—”
“Before you tried to kill him.”
“The first time, as your O’Malley kept saying this morning.”
She waved that away. “He’s not my O’Malley, thank heavens. So they were carrying on behind your back. Or did you know?”
“Yeah. It went on for quite a while.” I looked down at the molded plastic tabletop, tracing a coffee ring with my finger. “Several times I told him he could have a divorce, but he would laugh or say something mean, or—hit me. The last time, he said that ‘till death do us part’ wasn’t just rhetoric to him. I said that divorce was preferable to death from my perspective, and he went berserk. That’s when I shot him.”
She whistled softly. “I hadn’t realized you were discussing her when that happened. It must have been pretty uncomfortable to confront her today.”
“She didn’t know why I shot him.” I glanced up at Eva. “It never came out then. My court-appointed attorney said it would make me look like a jealous cat, so it kind of got lost.”
“What did she say today?”
“Lots of stuff. But she didn’t know where Tony was living lately or what he was doing. Last she heard was a few weeks ago when they got together, and it ended with him stealing her credit card.”
Eva was silent for a moment. “She didn’t report it stolen.”
“Huh? She said she did.”
Eva shook her head. “Nope.”
I pushed away the last bit of sandwich. “That’s interesting.”
“Is it?”
I ignored her bland question. “She must have let him have it. So he was blackmailing her. What would he have on her?”
“Something she didn’t want her current employer to hear about, maybe.” Officer Eva got to her feet, stretching a little. She was a strapping woman, not one of your anorectic types, with sturdy legs and big, capable hands. She wore no rings. “Well, let’s go pick up the tape, and hope it sheds some light.”
“It’s not admissible for evidence, right?”
She shot me a look. “O’Malley and I will listen to it. And then we’ll reconfirm what we hear in follow-up interviews, which will be admissible as evidence.”
“Uh, Maud said she was planning to leave right away. She was spooked by Tony’s death. Packing up stuff and everything.”
“What?” Eva stopped short, then strode faster down the street to the tape transfer shop. “Thanks for keeping that till last.”
“I told you she was leaving.” I hurried to keep up with her—she had five or six inches on me, and just then it all seemed to be in her legs. “And she might still be around. When I called her just before I got to Kyle’s, the movers were there.”
“Movers.” She was almost running now.
The clerk had my tape and the copy on the counter, along with the paid invoice. She pretended she hadn’t seen us, so I snatched the tapes and gave Eva the copy.
“Keep your nose clean,” she said from the sidewalk. “I’ll probably be checking up on you tonight, so if you get together with your friend back there, make it short. I want to be able to talk to you whenever I feel the need.”
She had the police cruiser in traffic, screeching into a U-turn at the next traffic signal and roaring back the way we’d come, before I even opened my door. Barker regarded me expectantly from the passenger seat.
“Okay,” I told him. “We’ll go see Amy.”
That met with his approval. I drove back to Andy’s house, my head whirling with informat
ion overload. Also, I puzzled over Officer Eva’s perplexing friendliness. I’d thought she was just stringing me along so I’d spill my guts to her. But then she’d given me that little nugget about Maud’s credit card to chew over—why? I couldn’t help her with inside knowledge about people I hadn’t seen for close to ten years.
And that made me wonder about Kyle. His insistence about dinner was surely not just for the pleasure of my company. Despite his earnest science-fair approach, Kyle had always been popular with women. Perhaps because of it.
At any rate, I hadn’t accepted his invitation, and the reason, I felt sure, was because of Drake. That rankled a bit. Why should I feel any sense of commitment to Drake, who was the lack-of-commitment poster boy? I decided that if Kyle made any more overtures, I would be more responsive in the future.
Barker came to attention when I turned onto Andy’s street. I parked in front of the house, but I told the dog to stay. He slumped with disappointment.
“Amy will come out if she’s here,” I promised. “But better not let Renee see you.”
Amy was there. She bounced out of the house before I got to the door.
“Aunt Liz! I’ve been worried about you all day. What’s happened? Mom says Grampa called up in a terrible rage this morning. Was Barker a good boy today?” She opened the passenger door and he sprang down. There was a storm of licking and mutual hugging, and then they looked at me, both of them evidently much refreshed.
I saw Renee’s sour face in the kitchen window. “Let’s talk out here for a minute, Amy.” Opening the side door, I reached into the refrigerator and got out a bottle of mineral water for her and one for me.
Amy’s eyes grew round. “Aunt Liz! You bought bottled water? I can’t believe it.”
“I don’t want to impose. I had dinner already, so let your mother know when you go back in, okay?”
“Aren’t you coming in?” Her face clouded. “Don’t you need the bathroom or anything?”
As a matter of fact I did; Amy saw my hesitation. “You can hang out with me in my room,” she urged. “You could sleep there, too; I’ve got twin beds.”
“I might take you up on the bathroom part.”
“I wanted to show you something anyway.” Amy bounced on the backseat of the bus. “I did an InfoTrac search at school today and turned up some information about the brokerage firm your hus—your ex-husband worked for.”
“What’s InfoTrac?”
“It’s an on-line database search thing you do.” Amy waved that away impatiently. “Anyway, a little over a year ago there was a big investigation of local brokerage houses, and Baker Mulshine Hollenbeck was really shaken up by it. Several senior guys left, and there was talk around that that was just the tip of the iceberg.” She looked thoughtful. “But I didn’t find any later information. Does that help you?”
It was nothing I hadn’t heard already, but she looked so eager. “It’s great to know. Actually, someone who works there and knew Tony turned up today, so we found out about that stuff.”
“We?”
“Officer Eva and me.” I grinned a little at Amy. “She’s evidently letting me check into things if I don’t get in her way.’’
“Excellent.” Amy took a swig of her mineral water. “Did you find out anything vital?”
“Not really. Just bits and pieces.” I pulled the tape recorder out of my bag. “Thanks for letting me use this. I’ll get you a new tape tomorrow—I filled this one up.”
“Can I listen?” She fished in the pocket of her baggy overalls and pulled out a pair of headphones.
I shook my head. “I’m just going to file it away in case I need it. Officer Eva already has a copy of it.”
Renee opened the front door and thundered down the path. “What are you doing here?” Her eyes went suspiciously from me to Amy, lingering on the bottle of water. “What’s that?”
“Calistoga.” Amy showed her mother the label, with a roll of the eyes in my direction.
“Isn’t that the little tape recorder you got for Christmas, to help you with schoolwork? What’s it doing out here?”
“I wanted Aunt Liz to hear a tape from English class,” Amy said hurriedly, pushing the headphones toward me. “I’ll finish my homework, and then we can do that Internet crawl we were talking about, Aunt Liz.”
She slid out of the bus and into the house, taking Barker with her. Renee didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy tearing into me.
“You should leave her alone,” she snarled. “Do you want to ruin her life, too?”
“Not really. That’s your job.” I pulled my typewriter case out of the narrow cupboard next to the sliding door. “By the way, Renee, I had dinner already. Don’t worry that you have to feed me—I can take care of myself.”
Patchy color washed her cheeks. “I suppose this is a slam at me for taking advantage of your hospitality last summer?” Her intonation made “hospitality” a dirty word. “Well, suit yourself, Ms. High and Mighty Sullivan. If you want to act like a poor-relation martyr, go right ahead! Just don’t think you can go over to Mom and Dad Sullivan’s for your comforts. They don’t want you there.” She tossed her head triumphantly. “I thought Dad was going to have a stroke when he called this morning. Said the police as good as told him you’d killed your ex, even if Amy says you couldn’t have pulled the trigger.” She drew back from the sliding door and delivered her final admonition. “Just keep Amy out of it from now on, or you’ll really be sorry!”
She stormed back into the house. I rolled a piece of paper into my old Royal, plugged the headphones into the tape recorder, and started typing up a transcript. It reminded me of a summer job I’d had right after high school, working for Reliance Insurance to transcribe adjusters’ field tapes.
But summer was over, and now I wasn’t even getting paid.
Chapter 14
I worked for nearly an hour, laboriously stopping and starting the tape recorder to get every word, no matter how muffled or obscure, and hoping that the batteries wouldn’t conk out until I was done. While I worked Andy drove up in his big Ford pickup. After one glance my way he stomped on into the house, ignoring my wave. Shortly thereafter the kitchen curtain lifted so they could peek out at me.
Other than that, they left me alone. The sky lost color, paling to translucence and then, as the light failed, to gray. I was typing more by touch than by sight—the batteries in my halogen head-flashlight were also growing weak, and I didn’t want to kill it before I could get new ones. The vagabond life was much more demanding of batteries than the last time I lived it.
The tape didn’t run out until most of the way through our encounter with Kyle, right up to his dinner invitation to me. Including, of course, Maud’s remark that Tony had some dirt on someone in the police hierarchy, and Kyle’s comment about Tony having police as enemies, all of which would doubtless make Officer Eva unhappy. In fact, when O’Malley and his buddy listened to the tape, I might be in real trouble. I hadn’t managed to figure out yet whether O’Malley belonged with the police-for-hire group or not, though Eva appeared to be on the straight and narrow. With law enforcement people you couldn’t always tell. They have so many opportunities to be on the take, in ways that can seem pretty innocent.
I finished the transcript and took the headphones out of my ears. A goodish pile of paper sat next to the Royal. I stretched my hands, then stepped out of the bus to unkink my back. In the backyard, Amy called to Barker. Picking up the transcript, tape recorder, and earphones, I headed for the sound.
“No, no, you silly dog.” Amy was grabbing for the rag-bone, which dangled from Barker’s smiling jaws. Each tune she grabbed, he whisked the bone away. “How can I throw it if you won’t let me have it?”
“He’s still not too strong on the fetch aspect.” I handed Amy the tape recorder and earphones. “Thanks for lending this. I’ll get you some new batteries tomorrow—think I must have worn them down.”
“Thank you, Aunt Liz.” She grinned at me. “Mom
and Dad hate for me to ask for batteries, and I’m stony this week.”
“Broke?” I looked at Andy’s house. “You made money this summer.”
“Yeah, but I put it all in the market.” She snatched the bone away from Barker and tossed it to the other end of the long, narrow yard. Barker tore after it. “We have this investment group which is really getting, like, max return. But I don’t want to pull my money out, and Dad’s, like, sitting on my allowance because I blew my curfew last weekend.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter that much—my allowance is such a tiny, minuscule thing that I hardly miss it.”
I held up the tape and the transcript. “I want to mail these. Do you have a couple of envelopes I can use? I’ll pay you back for those as well.”
“Aunt Liz, chill.” Amy stuffed the tape recorder into the front of her overalls and hung the earphones around her neck. “You don’t have to, like, pay me back for every last little thing. I mean, I’ll cut you some slack. You’re my favorite aunt, for God’s sake.”
“You’re my favorite niece, too.”
Amy hooted. “I’m your only niece, fool!”
We smiled at each other. Then I remembered the reason why I’d come to Denver in the first place.
“Would you call your grandma for me? I guess I’m in the doghouse there again, but I want to know how she’s doing.”
“Sure.” Amy snapped her fingers for Barker. “You missed a good dinner, Aunt Liz. Maybe Mom has some leftovers—should we check?”
“I’m not really hungry.” The fast food in my stomach was making a leaden statement about heartburn.
The darkness was nearly complete. Amy’s white T-shirt glimmered, and Barker was a collection of light and dark blobs. I shivered; though not as cold as the night before, it was too brisk for the sweatshirt I wore.
“Time to go in,” Amy told Barker. He picked up the rag-bone and flourished it one more time, but she refused to be drawn. “Come on.”