I pulled out another photo, a close-up of the right side of her face. Her cheek had a dark spot under the eye. “What about this mark? It’s not a bruise?”
“Certainly looks like it, but I’m sure she was only struck on the one side. What’s the ME’s report say?”
“He doesn’t say it was a contusion, but he doesn’t mention its presence at all.”
Rudy snorted. “Big surprise.” He examined the picture again. He was trying hard to keep his hand from shaking, but there was still a slight tremor as he held the 4 x 6 print. He set the photo down, closed his eyes and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees with bowed head. He remained in that position, breathing slowly, and I was about to ask if he was all right when he sat upright so quickly I heard something pop.
“I’ve got it. It was some kind of dirt. It smeared right off. There were some spots on her neck as well, and when we picked him up his hands were dirty. He was kinda dirty all over. He wouldn’t say why.”
“The spots on her neck—were they isolated spots or more like lines or bands?”
“Just a couple of small spots, and before you say anything else I know where you’re going. If his hands were dirty and he strangled her, why were there only a few small spots, spots high on the neck near the jaw I might add. Not where I’d strangle someone. The theory was that he strangled his wife, killed her, but he thought he’d only choked her out. He leaves her, comes back after he’s done something to get his hands dirty, and checks her pulse, maybe even tries to revive her. That’s when he leaves the spots. Or he does think he killed her, goes out and digs a hole to put her in, then checks her pulse to make sure she’s gone before burying her. ‘Course we never found the hole. Neither one’s a great explanation, I’ll admit, but probably good enough for a jury.”
At this point Richard began asking Rudy questions, but my mind was elsewhere and I had problems following the conversation. There was this nagging itching feeling at the back of my brain, and not just a “did I remember to send my mortgage payment” kind of itching. This was something big. The more I concentrated, the more it itched, so I finally gave up and tried to listen to what the men were saying instead.
“What about priors? A history of violence with his wife?” Richard asked. “I don’t remember seeing anything, but it’s possible we had a report and Sammy mislaid it before I could get my hands on it.”
“Nope. Nothing. I know I was surprised by that. You expect a domestic murder to be an escalation of violence that’s already there. The neighbor—what was her name?”
“Claire Johnson?” I volunteered.
“Yeah, I think that’s it. The baby-sitter.” Rudy’s grin would have seemed lecherous on a less attractive man. “She was a saucy young thing. She didn’t think there was any violence to speak of either, but she did mention something. I don’t know, maybe about a bar, but I never heard anything else about it.”
I’d been swinging my pen back and forth between my thumb and index finger, and I suddenly lost my grip. On my pen, that is. It flew across the room and cracked against a glass-fronted liquor cabinet. Rudy and Richard looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. On the contrary, I’d just found it. I could feel Isaac’s touch and see his crooked smile in my mind’s eye.
“Rudy, you said there was a fire that night, the night Isaac killed Vanda.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Pretty big fire, if I recall…” His voice trailed off and his eyes lost focus.
“Where was that fire?”
It took him a moment to see me, but he eventually managed to marshal his thoughts. “It was a bar, not very far down the road. A place called Jimmy’s.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Pieces were starting to come together, but there were still gaps to be filled. As we’d expected, it was now late enough for dinner, so we called Mike and asked him to meet us at Rosalia’s. There was much to discuss, but Rudy had invited us to eat there with him, or invited himself to eat with us. I wasn’t sure which. Either way, we couldn’t get rid of him after he’d been so helpful. Besides, I had a feeling he knew something else important. I just didn’t know the right question to ask.
Rosalia’s was close, and Richard was unusually quiet on the drive. Rudy’s car was in front of us, and when I saw the sign for the restaurant and Rudy’s blinking turn signal I spoke.
“As soon as we get rid of Rudy, we’ve got to put our heads together,” I said.
“As soon as we get rid of Rudy, we’ve got to get you checked out of that motel and checked into someplace safe.”
I’d been so involved in our discussion of Isaac’s case, I’d forgotten about my stinky visitor. Obviously Richard hadn’t forgotten. My stomach did a few flip-flops, and I wished he’d reminded me after dinner. Deep breath. Let it out. Okay. I refused to let some perv with body odor ruin my decadent carb-loading. In fact, I might even have dessert.
We’d beaten Mike to the restaurant, so the three of us got a table and ordered a bottle of wine while we waited. I sat next to Richard with an empty chair for Mike directly across from me. Although wearing a long skirt, I was taking no chances putting my knees within Rudy’s reach. Mike made good time and arrived just as the bottle of wine did. He and Rudy had met once or twice before, but they’d never worked the same case. By the time Mike had joined the PD’s office, Rudy was spending most of his time behind a desk. I tried to get a few whispered words in with Mike while Rudy and Richard flirted with the waitress. Rudy was a bad influence.
“Productive day?” I asked.
“Definitely. We need to talk. And you?”
“The same.”
Rudy’s voice cutting in was like a bellow after our soft words. “Turn your back for two minutes to order food and the next thing you know the young people are whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears.”
I gave Rudy an icy smile, and Mike blushed.
The food was excellent, as I had expected. We started with surprisingly good salads, more than just the dreaded iceberg lettuce and grated carrots, and a basket of crusty pungent garlic bread. We were on our second bottle of wine as we finished our salads, and halfway through our entrée Rudy ordered a third. Not surprising since he put away most of the second single-handedly. My entrée was a luscious mushroom ravioli in a creamy sauce, and Mike and I split an order of tiramisu for dessert. Rudy restrained himself, making no comment but raising his eyebrows significantly. He’d actually been on his best behavior all evening, regaling us with stories from his years in New York law enforcement. There was less danger of offense that way, since we were technically on different sides and may have our own dramatically different versions of any of his Florida stories.
Once Mike and I finished our dessert, we ordered coffee all around. The waitress told us it would be a few minutes, that they were making it fresh. Richard took advantage of the opportunity, saying he had something in his car he wanted to give Mike before he forgot, if we didn’t mind.
“I think we can bear your absence,” I said. I thought I knew what he was going to talk to Mike about and I was a little annoyed.
“Subtle,” Rudy remarked when they’d left.
“Always,” I replied. “Speaking of subtlety, you seem to have lost your southern heritage over dinner.” His accent and mannerisms had gradually neutralized during the evening, then reverted to a slight hint of his northern antecedents.
“You caught me,” he said. “It must be the wine.” With that, he finished the last swallow in his glass with a flourish.
“You’ve slipped a little as well. And you didn’t have as much wine,” he noted. “That’s what being a good, I mean a really good, investigator is all about. Persona. You have to figure out what kind of person the person you’re interviewing will talk to, whether it’s a witness or an attorney or another investigator. I can tell you’ve got a knack for it. Not everyone does. Especially women. Women’s lib or feminism or whatever you want to call it has ruined some fine female investigators. As an investigator, you h
ave to use every tool in your box, and there are some roles now that women won’t assume. Because they’re not supposed to. Because it’s demeaning or chauvinistic or—oh hell, I don’t know. It seems damn silly to me to throw away half the tools in your box just because they happen to be the ones that work.”
I secretly agreed with him, but I wouldn’t admit it to Rudy. Fortunately Mike and Richard returned and saved me from having to say anything. By the set of Mike’s jaw, a slightly quivering straight line, I could tell my suspicions had been right. Damn Richard for not being able to wait five minutes until we finished our coffee to tell Mike about my smelly friend. At least he had waited until the end of dinner. Well, I refused to participate in the gloom and doom.
“Rudy, there was one other thing I meant to ask you. During the Thomas case, do you remember if Chet Hawkins had his own investigator?”
“No, no I don’t think he did. He probably would have used one of us for his leg work, but as I recall there wasn’t much to be done. I know I didn’t do it… give me a minute.”
He closed his eyes and assumed what I was beginning to recognize as his thinking pose, fingers massaging the bridge of his nose. Mike looked at me questioningly, but I nodded my head to let him know that Rudy hadn’t passed out from the wine, that if we were patient he’d get there. Sure enough, he lifted his head a minute later.
“I can’t remember his name, but he used a young guy, somebody who hadn’t been with us long, and I don’t think he stayed long after. I thought he was an obnoxious little shit, but I always thought that about the young guys. I’ll let it roll around in my head for a while, and if I think of his name I’ll let you know.”
Once we’d paid the bill (Rudy chivalrously insisted on paying for my meal but said the men were on their own), we said goodbye to Rudy and met in the parking lot by Richard’s car.
“All right guys, what’s the plan?” I tried to keep the tone light, but Richard’s mood was like a black hole. Mike made an effort of his own.
“Well, we could always have you stay with Rudy.” Mike had raised his eyebrows at me when Rudy kissed my hand good night, but being my second hand-kiss in a day, and having some wine in my veins, I’d kept my own composure. Fingers, actually, I realized this time. He kissed my fingers between the middle knuckle and the hand.
“Have you no respect for my virtue, whatever remains of it?”
Richard didn’t bite and continued to suck up all happiness and light. “The first thing we need to do is get Sydney checked out of the motel. I’ll go on ahead. You two ride together. Give me a five minute head start and then follow. And keep your eyes open.”
We did as he asked. In Richard’s current mood I wasn’t about to contradict him, and Mike apparently felt no reason to.
“Don’t you think he’s being a little too Spy vs. Spy?” I asked when we left the parking lot.
“I don’t know, Sydney. I hope so. Better—“
“I know, I know, better safe than sorry.”
“I was going to say better annoyed than dead, but close enough.”
With that, Mike checked the rearview mirror yet again.
“I’ve recruited a bunch of paranoid lunatics,” I mumbled as I stared out the window. I’m sure Mike heard, but he didn’t contradict me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Richard was waiting for us at the motel, as expected. It only took me a few minutes to gather my belongings and check out. It helped that a teenager with no inclination for conversation more stimulating than “credit or debit” was behind the desk instead of Mrs. Waters. I set my bag on the ground between Mike’s and Richard’s vehicles until we decided where I was going to spend the night.
They both offered their homes, which I vetoed immediately. If there was some danger to me, I certainly didn’t want to bring it home to Richard’s family. Then I said that after 3 bottles of wine, I might try to take advantage of Mike. That wasn’t exactly true, but I did think it would be too weird to stay with a single male friend I’d known for less than two weeks. Besides, I didn’t know how long I’d be staying here, and we needed a solution for more than one night.
We settled on a place in Hainey in a block of active businesses that tended to get a lot of traffic. Room access was interior by key cards only. That decided, Richard said we needed to get rid of my car. A light blue Cabrio is cute, but conspicuous.
“For now, I don’t think we need a rental. I think we should just trade out your car with one of us. Mike, if you don’t mind, yours isn’t any less conspicuous but it is less likely to be known.”
“No problem.” Mike turned to me. “My piece of crap is your piece of crap. Just so you know, the gas gauge doesn’t work, but it gets decent gas mileage. Unless you’re driving to California and back, you should be okay on a tank of gas a week.”
“Cecil shouldn’t give you any problems either.”
“Cecil?”
“Yes, my car’s name is Cecil, and he speaks with a cockney accent. Don’t worry, he’s not that chatty with strangers.”
Mike’s little yellow Jeep may not have had some of its more cosmetic parts intact and wasn’t the smoothest ride, but it was an automatic and cute in a rugged sort of way. We weren’t thinking and took the time to switch our belongings and our bodies even though everyone was going to the same place. I followed Mike, and while we were playing musical duffel bags Richard slipped into the motel. He was concluding a discussion with the desk clerk when Mike and I arrived, having already arranged for my room on the third floor.
I could tell immediately that we had moved up a class or two in accommodations. The night desk clerk wasn’t the typical bottom rung motel teenager or skeazy fifty-something wearing an undershirt and a permanent 10:00 shadow, but instead a clean-cut fairly attractive twenty-something. I didn’t know what Richard had told him, but the clerk watched me intently while trying to avoid looking at me. The lobby mirrors helped.
The guys followed me upstairs and I dumped my bag on one of the room’s double beds. The bathroom layout was such that the toilet and shower were in an interior room, with the double sink vanity area in a buffer zone leading to the bedroom. A coffee maker sat on the counter. I picked up the carafe and walked back to where the guys were sitting, Richard at the desk and Mike on the bed with my bag. I held the carafe aloft.
“Caff or decaf?” I asked.
We all looked at each other, looked at the clock (11:43 p.m.) and simultaneously said, “Decaf.” Richard smiled for the first time since he’d picked me up that afternoon.
I was anxious to hear what Mike had to say. Since I’d had an opportunity to share the discovery experience with Richard while Mike had kept his news bottled up for hours, I suggested Mike go first. He’d gone in early and spent the morning doing the work he was actually being paid for at the PD’s office, then took a sandwich to the police station so he could review reports on his lunch break. Time got away from him, and he hadn’t made it back to the PD’s office until about 4 pm. Mike had checked under Isaac and Vanda’s names, and under Vanda’s maiden name, but hadn’t found anything not related to the murder investigation.
“I remembered what you said about the bar incident, so I asked one of the old timers what the likely spots would’ve been around that time, and he said the same—Jimmy’s. Eventually I found a report.” Mike started digging through the papers in what looked like a computer bag.
“Isaac did hit her, but she never pressed charges, and neither of them spoke to the cops. It sounds like Isaac came in looking for Vanda, and she was messing around with some other guy and really rubbed his face in it. The witnesses didn’t say much, except that they were surprised he didn’t deck her earlier. I didn’t have a chance to check it out yet, but I think I’ve got good addresses for two of the witnesses.”
“Good. We’ll add them to the list.” Richard looked at me and smiled. “Too bad we left the wipe board in Tallahassee.”
I raised an eyebrow in acknowledgement. He’d ridiculed the monstro
sity when I first pulled it out at my house, but now it looked like I had a convert.
“Now for the really interesting stuff.” Mike’s pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose. His face was so eager he looked too young to buy beer.
“While I was looking through the reports on Jimmy’s, I came across something else.”
“The fire?” I asked.
His jaw dropped. “Dammit, Syd, how did you know that?”
His face had gone from a ten-year-old five minutes before opening Christmas presents to the same ten-year-old five minutes after getting several pairs of socks and underwear, and I couldn’t hold back my laughter. Thankfully I regained control quickly. As exhausted as I was, I would have laughed until I cried.
“I’m sorry, Mike. I’ll explain later. I don’t know any of the details, just that there was a fire. Please go on.”
He seemed mollified and even managed a grin. “There was a fire the night Vanda was killed. I don’t know her time of death, but it had to be close to the time of the fire. It was suspicious, but it was eventually ruled accidental because arson couldn’t be proven. They were really lucky. It was almost a major tragedy. Apparently the building wasn’t up to code, didn’t have any windows and only one or two exits, no sprinkler system. Jimmy’s was packed, and if the fire had burned a little more quickly or someone had panicked, dozens of people could have died.”
Mike handed each of us 10 or so photocopied pages, our copies of the reports. “I know there doesn’t seem to be a ready connection, but there’s something there. I can’t believe it’s just a coincidence.”
Richard was silent, so I chimed in. “I agree, and I can give you a little piece of the connection.”
I summarized what Rudy had told us, finishing up with the spots of smeared dirt on Vanda’s body. “I think the dirt on her face and her neck was soot, soot from the fire at Jimmy’s.”
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