by Ben Rehder
I had never met Regina, but I made a mental note to send her a dozen roses and a bottle of champagne.
I was writing a reply when Mia sent another note.
Still don’t know the cause.
She’d answered my question, so I wrote a different note.
So glad it wasn’t worse. Call me when you get a chance.
I spent the next few hours stewing, getting angrier, and feeling more guilty. Last year, when I’d asked Mia to be my partner, I’d warned her of the risks. Sometimes a subject doesn’t like being put under surveillance, for obvious reasons. Sometimes they make threats, or they actually take action. If I had to lay money on it, I’d say this was one of those cases.
Now I was wondering if I’d stressed the dangers as much as I should have. For instance, I should have insisted that Mia have surveillance cameras inside and outside her house. Might not have stopped an arsonist wearing a mask or operating under cover of darkness, but we’d never know.
I should have encouraged her to take a self-defense class, as she was now planning to do of her own accord. Maybe I should have even suggested that she put dummy plates on her vehicle when tailing a subject. Illegal as hell, but who gives a damn?
I sat for another hour and tried not to think about Mia and her damaged house. At one point, a white-tailed doe with a swollen, pregnant belly emerged from the cedars, walked to the feeder, nosed around in the dirt for a minute, then continued on her way.
Maybe I was just restless because of Mia’s situation, but this stake-out was starting to feel like a goose chase. What were the odds that Boz Gentry was hiding in the ranch house? This was a total waste of time, wasn’t it? I should be with Mia, helping her deal with her burned house. Surely I could help somehow. I had nearly convinced myself to climb down when she called.
“Okay,” she said, “the firemen just left, but there’s still a couple of investigators here.”
“And?”
“They took samples of the burned wood and some of the remaining siding from the sunroom, and they even took some soil samples. They’re going to run some tests to see if there was an accelerant, but one of the guys already told me, off the record, that it was arson. He said he could tell from the origin and the burn pattern—that it looked like an amateur job, that whoever did it didn’t know what they were doing. Apparently they threw a small amount of gas onto the wall of the sunroom and lit it. You can smell it.”
“The gas?”
“Yeah.”
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
There had been a nice breeze through the windows of the deer blind all afternoon, but now I was starting to feel hot.
“Shane Moyer or one of those assholes,” I said.
“We don’t know that.”
“Had to be,” I said.
“We can’t assume that, Roy.”
I wanted to argue, but she was right. I needed to refrain from jumping to conclusions.
I said, “Did any of your neighbors see anybody coming or going?”
“Lucian—the guy across the street—said he saw a jogger a few minutes beforehand,” Mia said. “Nobody else saw anything.”
“Broad daylight on a weekend. That’s pretty ballsy.”
“Yeah.”
“Was there damage inside the house?” I asked.
“You saw the door from the sunroom into the house?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“There’s a guy who helped me with some repairs last year, and he’s going to help me install a new door, when I’m ready. Other than that, there’s a little bit of wet carpet, but that’s not a huge deal. Regina had the fire out before the fire department even got here. I love that woman. Oh, I should mention that the place stinks like you wouldn’t believe from the smoke. They let me in for a minute and I just about gagged. I have a call in to a company that’s supposed to help get rid of the smell. Insurance will cover it, and the repairs.”
“After your deductible,” I said.
“Yeah, but it’s only five hundred bucks,” Mia said, “which isn’t too bad. So I’ll see what that guy says, but I can’t do anything until they let me back in there. Right now, it’s a crime scene.”
“For how long?” I asked. I knew from previous cases involving insurance fraud that her answer wasn’t going to be good news.
Mia let out a sigh. “Until the lab tests come back, which will be several days, at a minimum. Could be a week or two.”
“Will they let you grab some things? Some clothes?”
“Not yet. Don’t know if they will. Pretty sure they aren’t supposed to, but we’ll see.”
“What are the investigators’ names?”
She told me, but I didn’t recognize them. Nobody I had dealt with before.
“I’m sorry this is such a hassle,” I said.
“Thanks. Could’ve been a lot worse. I guess I’ll grab a room at a hotel tonight.”
“Don’t do that,” I said. “Stay at my apartment. I won’t be there, but you have a key.”
“You sure?”
“Of course. Use my spare bedroom. If you want to.”
“There won’t be, like, any wayward women hanging around?”
“Just the one,” I said.
“Meaning me.” She laughed, and that was nice to hear.
“Right.”
“I might take you up on it,” she said.
“Please do. Believe it or not, the place is reasonably clean, and there’s plenty of food in—”
And I stopped talking, because I suddenly saw something totally unexpected. Movement. A person was walking along the caliche driveway. Coming from the direction of the gated entrance. A woman. I’d been expecting a vehicle, if anything, not a person on foot.
“Roy?” Mia said.
“Hang on.” I said it quietly, even though the woman was at least eighty yards away. I’d have to shout to draw her attention.
“What’s going on?” Mia asked.
I was trying to grab the binoculars while keeping the phone to my ear. “I see a woman,” I said.
“Where?”
I told her.
“Sure it’s a woman?”
“I guess it could be a man who likes wearing skirts.”
I lifted the binoculars to my eyes, but everything was blurry.
“Do you recognize her?” Mia asked.
“Hold on a sec. I need to set the phone down.”
I did, and now I could bring the field of view into focus, with crystal-clear ten-power magnification.
I zeroed in on the woman—and, yes, I did recognize her. It took me a moment to place who she was, because she was so out of context in this environment—but then I had it, and I felt a rush. I watched her for a full half-minute, just to be sure I wasn’t mistaken. She was moving from left to right, and I had plenty of time to make a positive ID. Then I grabbed my Canon superzoom camera and quickly snapped a dozen shots. A moment later, the woman disappeared from view behind some trees.
I set the camera down and picked up the phone again.
“Well, that just blew my mind,” I said.
“Who was it?”
“Her name is Candice Klein. She’s Tyler Lutz’s receptionist.”
17
At ten the next morning, I was seated, by coincidence, at the same table in Trudy’s Four Star that Mia and I had occupied three days earlier. Of course, Tyler Lutz turned far fewer heads walking through the open dining area than Mia had.
“Morning,” he said, shaking my hand, which was aching more now than it had been yesterday. My bike ride had aggravated it. “Good to see you again.” He was wearing crisp khaki pants, a dark-blue polo shirt, and black loafers.
By comparison, I was feeling like a slob, since I hadn’t had a chance to shave or shower. I’d called Lutz an hour earlier, after riding the bicycle back to Blanco, hoping he’d be available sometime today. He’d suggested brunch, and I’d taken him up on it. Fortunately, I keep some moist towelettes, deodorant, and a spare set of
clothes in the van, so I wasn’t totally objectionable.
“Thanks for meeting me on short notice,” I said.
“Oh, sure, no problem. Ready to talk about disability insurance? Just kidding. I’m glad you called. Any excuse to skip church.”
“I hear that. I’ve been skipping every Sunday for about thirty-seven years now.”
He smiled. “Let me guess. You’re thirty-seven years old?”
“You got it,” I said.
“Well, I usually feel like I should go, but it doesn’t always work out that way, and then I feel guilty.”
“About what?”
It appeared that he needed to ponder that for a few seconds. “I guess I feel like I need to maintain my relationship with God. It kind of keeps me centered, you know? Makes me a better person. I mean, for instance, if you don’t go to church, where do you get your morals?”
“I buy mine online. I usually get free shipping.”
His grin widened. “Maybe I should try that instead. What’re you having?” He had picked up a menu and was now scanning it.
“Think I’m going with the chilaquiles,” I said.
“Oh, nice. That sounds good.” He set the menu down. “So what’s up?”
The young waitress who’d brought my tea five minutes earlier appeared and took our orders. After she left, I said, “You mind a few more questions about Boz Gentry?”
“Not at all. I assume you haven’t tracked him down yet, because that would be all over the news.”
“Nope, no luck so far.”
“Okay, well, fire away.”
I wasn’t sure how to play this, but as always, I was going to reveal as little as possible. On the other hand, I did need to figure out the connection between Lutz’s receptionist and Boz Gentry—or perhaps her connection to Alex Albeck, since I’d seen her on his ranch—and I knew I might have to lay all my cards on the table to figure out that connection.
Fifty minutes after Candice had walked past the deer blind yesterday afternoon, she’d walked past again in the opposite direction. That told me she’d gone to the house, spent about ten minutes looking around, then given up and left. She hadn’t found anything. Neither had I, when, after sundown, I’d climbed down from the deer blind and done some exploring. I took my night-vision goggles along, but I didn’t really need them. There was plenty of moonlight. When I arrived at the ranch house, there was no sign of life whatsoever. No light from any windows. The place was locked down tight. I even checked the electric meter and it was not showing any usage at all.
I returned to the deer blind and hung around the rest of the night, but I didn’t learn anything new. I was able to log on to the account Mia and I shared for the GPS tracking units, but neither Albeck nor Erin Gentry went anywhere on Saturday afternoon or evening.
I did discover that you never want to spend the night in a deer blind. Try sleeping in a space that is four foot square. You can’t stretch out. And mosquitoes drive you nuts that time of year. Mostly I dozed in the chair, and when I was awake, nobody else showed up. Didn’t matter. Seeing Candice had made the stakeout well worth it. Maybe. Now I just needed to figure out what it meant.
“Can we talk confidentially again?” I asked Lutz.
“Absolutely.”
I contemplated the best way to approach the topic so that I might not tip my hand. “I’m kind of at a dead end right now,” I said. “When that happens, I generally just keep asking questions—shooting in the dark—to see if I can learn anything new. One thing that occurred to me... I know you and Boz weren’t exactly friends, but did you ever get the feeling that he might be stepping out on his wife?”
“Cheating on Erin?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Is that what he was doing?”
“No, I’m not saying he was, and I don’t want to start any rumors. I’m just asking if he seemed like the type.”
The waitress dropped off our plates of food, refilled our iced tea, then left us alone again.
Tyler Lutz picked up his fork, but he held it for a moment, staring into space, thinking. Finally he said, “Well, if he was, I wouldn’t know anything about it. We just didn’t have that kind of friendship. Sorry.”
“What if you had to guess?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t be comfortable doing that. Have you talked to the people on that list I gave you? His friends? They’d know better than I would.”
“I’ve talked to a lot of people,” I said, skirting the question, “but I’m not sure they’ve been totally honest with me. People are usually reluctant to make their friends look bad, which is understandable.”
Of course, I’d been tempted to speak to all of Boz Gentry’s friends, but if one of them was hiding Gentry, I might scare him away from the area for good. It was possible that I’d talk to them all eventually, when I’d run out of better options, but I hadn’t yet decided that was worth the risk. Plus there was the distinct probability that Ruelas had already spoken to them, and while I didn’t think much of him personally, he was a good enough investigator to ferret out any involvement on Gentry’s friends’ part.
“I don’t really like to gossip...” Lutz said, but I got the sense that he wouldn’t mind doing exactly that if he thought other people were doing it too. Maybe he thought that was why I was asking about any potential affairs on Gentry’s part—that I’d already heard it from others.
I said, “I can understand that. It’s one of the things I like least about my job.” I said it as if it were all very distasteful, the way I had to dig into people’s personal lives. “But it’s something I have to do sometimes to help my clients either approve or reject a claim. Like you said, it isn’t really fair to leave Erin hanging. If Boz is dead, she deserves the money coming her way.”
Lutz said, “What have Boz’s friends said about him?”
I pretended to be reluctant. “Well, to be blunt, it sounds like he was sort of a player, but I could be wrong. What’s your take on that?”
Lutz said, “I’d have to say that’s probably accurate.”
“Yeah?”
He picked at his food, but didn’t eat. “Have you ever been around a guy who is constantly checking out every woman in the room? It’s like he thinks that’s what he’s expected to do, because he’s a man. Showing how macho he is, maybe making comments.”
“What kind of comments?” I asked.
Lutz shrugged. “It’s one thing to tell a woman she looks pretty today, or maybe even do some flirting, but I’m talking about when a woman passes by, and a guy says something crass to his friends, like, ‘Did you see the rack on her?’ That kind of thing.”
“Not speaking to her, but about her.”
“Right.”
“I hate that kind of crap,” I said.
“I know, right? And maybe it’s not fair for me to jump to conclusions, but I figure a married man who behaves like that would probably follow through if he had a chance.” Lutz shook his head. “If we all still thought he was dead, I probably wouldn’t be saying any of this. Doesn’t seem right to be bad-mouthing a dead man, especially a client.”
“But he’s probably not dead,” I pointed out.
“Right.”
“And it appears he’s attempting to commit fraud.”
“Yeah.”
“So we can totally trash him,” I said, grinning, because I wanted Lutz to keep talking.
He laughed and dug into his food without saying anything more. It was obvious he wasn’t completely comfortable with the topic. It had occurred to me that if Candice and Boz had something going, and Lutz knew about it, he might be reluctant to spill the beans. That sort of thing would make his agency look bad.
I ate a few bites, then said, “When you’d hear Boz make comments like that, where would you be?” I asked.
“Where?”
“Yeah. Home Depot? The grocery store? Church?”
“No, more like if I’d see him out somewhere having a beer, and especially if he was there with a c
ouple of his buddies. You know how men act when they’re in a group.”
“A testosterone festival.”
“Exactly. Then you add alcohol and they become jerks.”
I dropped the next question as casually as possible. “What about in a more professional environment? Like, would he ever say anything about your receptionist?”
That seemed to catch Lutz by surprise. “What, Candice?”
“Yeah.”
“Why would you ask about her?”
I was watching him closely. He seemed genuinely puzzled.
I said, “It was just a random example. I figured if Boz was the type to make comments about women, maybe he said something to you about her. Or would he only make remarks like that to his close friends?”
“I don’t remember him ever saying anything about Candice. You’re right, I guess it’s a little different when you’re in an office instead of a bar. Plus he probably figured I wouldn’t respond well to any of his comments, which I wouldn’t have.”
A disappointing answer. I’d been hoping Lutz would say something like, “Oh, I could always tell Boz had a thing for Candice.” But he obviously had nothing more to share. I wondered if I should tell him where I’d seen Candice the previous afternoon. I decided against it.
18
Four hours later—after a shower and a two-hour nap at my apartment, followed by a couple of phone calls that got me nothing but voicemail—I walked up the cobblestone sidewalk toward one of the most meticulously maintained homes I’d ever seen.
The place was postcard-perfect in every detail, from the lush green lawn and the immaculate flowerbeds to the green shuttered windows and the gabled front porch. The house appeared to be as old as Mia’s, and not much larger, but it had obviously received loving care throughout its history. That, or someone had sunk a lot of money into a total restoration.
I rang the bell and a dog immediately began to bark. Okay, “bark” might not have been the right word. “Yap” was probably more accurate.
I waited. The dog continued to yap.
I rang again, and after about thirty seconds, the dog went quiet, then the door swung open to reveal a slender blond man in his forties, wearing a T-shirt and some sort of silk lounging pants or pajamas. He appeared every bit as well groomed and maintained as the house, and so did the fluffy white dog that was now in the man’s arms.