Swift Justice: A Mystery (Thomas Dunne Books)

by Laura Disilverio

  “Strong scents of grapefruit and herbs,” said the male clerk, burying his nose in the glass like a dog sniffing a new crotch. He had thick brown hair and wore a bow tie.

  “And just a hint of apricot, don’t you think, Roger?” the woman added. She was younger than the man and edgier, in black capri leggings, a white and black tunic top, and razor-cut black hair. She tipped the glass and rolled the wine around on her tongue. She closed her eyes. I’d had sex that didn’t make me look that happy. “Mellow on the finish with a touch of licorice.”

  “Bright acids,” put in Roger.

  The three looked at me expectantly, and I took a sip. I liked it, and I surprised myself by actually tasting the grapefruit Roger had mentioned. No parsley or oregano, though, and definitely no Twizzlers. “Yum.”

  A hint of a smile played around the older woman’s lips. “You’re not here for the tasting?”

  “No,” I confessed, smiling back, “but I liked it. I’m looking for Aurora Newcastle.”

  “I’m Aurora. What can I do for you?” She took the glass I handed to her and set it and her own on a tray. Roger whisked them away, and both clerks drifted off to tasks in other parts of the store.

  “My name is Charlotte Swift, and I’m a private investigator.” I gave her my business card, which she studied. “I’m looking for a teenager who recently had a baby, and I believe you might know her.”

  “Really?” She arched penciled-in brows. “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you could help me with that.” Pulling the Delicia blanket out of the bag, I handed it to her.

  Her thin fingers dug into the cashmere, and for a moment I thought she was going to faint. She nursed the blanket to her cheek; its vibrant pink made her skin look milk-pale. She was ill, I realized, finally catching the significance of the turban and the brows that were skillfully penciled on. Makeup did a good job of hiding the circles under her eyes, but it couldn’t hide the weariness and pain lurking in them, or completely cover the almost blue tinge in her skin.

  “Where did you get this?” she whispered, reaching out one hand to clutch my forearm.

  I told her about Melissa finding a baby on her doorstep and the note that accompanied it. “My client just wants to reunite the baby with her mother,” I said. “Delicia Furman said you bought this blanket, and I was hoping you could tell me who you gave it to.”

  Mrs. Newcastle took a deep breath. “Let’s go back to my office. I get tired if I stand too long. Erica,” she called. “Please conduct the wine tasting. I’ll be in my office for a while.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Newcastle,” Erica said, gliding forward to greet a gaggle of business-suited men and women coming through the door, eager to expand their knowledge of wine on their lunch hour . . . or just get snockered.

  I followed Mrs. Newcastle’s slim figure through a gap in a counter spread with cheeses and crackers and into a utility room with a sink and a dishwasher. The top rack was pulled out, loaded with identical wineglasses. Steam curled up from the dishwasher, filling the air with humidity and the smell of detergent.

  “Lemon,” I said, sniffing deeply, “with just a hint of ammonia.”

  Mrs. Newcastle laughed as she pushed open the door to her office, a small room with a desk and two chairs, one behind the desk, one in front of it. The walls were taupe with framed photos of vineyards providing splashes of color. A flat-screen monitor occupied most of the desk space, and wine magazines and books slumped in precarious stacks against all the walls.

  “Please, sit,” Mrs. Newcastle said, lowering herself carefully into the chair behind the desk. Her gaze pinned me. “You find the rituals of wine pretentious?” She still had the blanket, and now she set it atop the polished walnut of the desk.

  I thought about her question. I didn’t want to offend her, and not just because she could point me toward Melissa Lloyd’s daughter. I liked her. She reminded me of Grandy, not so much in looks as in spirit. “Maybe not pretentious. Foreign?”

  “An honest answer.” She nodded her approval. “I think if you learned a little something about wine, you’d find it fascinating, just fascinating. We offer classes and tastings here, if you ever want to take one. I took my first class almost thirty years ago, and wine just grabbed hold of me. It was I who was excited about wine, you know, who wanted to open Purple Feet. Not Eugene. He had the business sense, the financial know-how. But I had the passion. When I go . . . Eugene and I don’t have any children. He’ll end up selling Purple Feet, I think, in the end.”

  She worked her fingers in the blanket, almost like a baker kneading dough. Grief hung in the room, bowing her shoulders with its weight.

  “The blanket?” I asked gently.

  She straightened her shoulders and fixed a businesslike expression on her face. “Right. I gave it to Elizabeth Sprouse, my best friend’s daughter.”

  That fit with the “Beth” signature on the note. My heartbeat picked up, and I leaned forward, surging toward the finish line of this investigation. “What can you tell me about Elizabeth and her family? Where does she live?”

  Aurora Newcastle drifted into reminiscence mode, crepey eyelids half shuttering her eyes. “Her mother, Patricia, and I were friends from childhood. Inseparable. She married Eugene’s college roommate, and the four of us did everything together. Strangely enough, neither Patricia nor I ever conceived, although we both wanted children. Eugene and I decided to accept our lack of children, and I channeled my energy into the wine business. In fact, Patricia’s the one who encouraged me to open Purple Feet when everyone else was pooh-poohing the idea. She’d never been interested in a career herself, and eventually she and Robert decided to adopt. They were in their early forties by then. I still remember how thrilled they were when they came home with Elizabeth. They loved that baby more than life itself. I’d heard people say that before, but never understood it until I saw the way Patricia was with Elizabeth. She was a delightful child, smart and kind and loving. But everything changed when Robert died.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was on the United flight that went down in Pennsylvania on 9/11.”

  The stark announcement chilled the air.

  “How awful.”

  Aurora nodded. “Yes, indeed. It changed Patricia—and poor Elizabeth. She was only eight. She’d lost her father, and her mother just went off the deep end, immersing herself in Bible studies and prayer groups, trying to understand the God that would let 9/11 happen. She met a man, Zachary Sprouse, at some retreat. Within weeks she was married to him and moved to Colorado Springs. He adopted Elizabeth. They live in near-poverty because Sprouse is some kind of religious zealot who runs a church, ‘the Church of Jesus Christ the Righteous on Earth,’ that encourages people to live as Jesus did: no modern conveniences, giving most of their money to the church, carrying out biblical punishments.”

  I had noticed before that the longer a church’s name is, the more far out its theology seems to be. “Sounds like a cult,” I said.

  “Oh, yes. I worried for the longest time that he would do a David Koresh, that Patricia and Elizabeth would die with him. He just seemed like the type who’d embrace martyrdom if it made him famous. I don’t worry about that so much anymore because I don’t think he’s got the charisma to convince people to die with him.” Her tone was scathing.

  I’d never thought of it that way. I could just see the job advertisement for Cult Leader: “Must know Bible by memory. Must dress and smell like Old Testament prophet. Must be able to convince congregation to drink poisoned Kool-Aid.” I bit back an inappropriate grin and said, “Are you still in touch with Patricia?”

  “I’ve only seen Patricia a handful of times since she married him. She’s cut herself off from everyone who cares about her.”

  “Or he has.” Classic abuser tactic.

  “Right. Elizabeth ran away the first time when she was fourteen. She came here. To me.” Aurora’s face brightened. “I told her she could stay, but then S
prouse showed up, accused me of kidnapping her, threatened to bring charges. I appealed to Patricia, but she would only say that the husband is the head of the household and Elizabeth must abide by his wisdom. Wisdom! The man’s a lunatic.”

  She took a deep breath. “I kept in touch with Elizabeth as much as I could. She had an e-mail account she used to access from the library and then from school once she got to high school. Last November she wrote to tell me she had a plan to make ‘big’ money and escape from Sprouse. She wouldn’t take money from me; she was afraid Sprouse would find out about it and take legal action of some kind.”

  “Did he beat her, abuse her sexually?”

  Aurora scratched her scalp through the silk turban. Her eyes were troubled. “I don’t know. She never said he did. But mental and emotional abuse—absolutely.”

  I wondered how much of this I should share with my client. I didn’t think it was the kind of story that would assuage her guilt about giving up her daughter for adoption.

  Aurora’s gaze drifted to the doorway, and I got the feeling she was seeing something much farther away than the hall. “You know, when Elizabeth was little—maybe six or seven—Patricia left her with me sometimes, here at the store. She’d take each customer by the hand as they came in, and lead them to a wine she thought they’d like.” Aurora got teary-eyed at the memory. “Every bottle she picked out had an animal of some kind on the label: a bull, a horse, a cheetah, a loon. I can’t tell you how many customers bought the wine Elizabeth picked out. She was . . . winsome. That’s the word. But after Patricia married Sprouse . . .” She pinched her mouth closed, whether pained by the memory or her cancer, I couldn’t tell.

  I gave her memory a moment of respectful silence before asking, “What was her plan? How does a sixteen-or seventeen-year-old girl make enough money to support herself?” I didn’t like the only answer that occurred to me.

  “She didn’t say, just wrote that she’d be able to ‘get away forever.’ Then she e-mailed to tell me she’d left home, that she had a new place. She told me she was pregnant and sent me a post office box number.”

  “Do you know where she was living?”

  “No.” Aurora shook her head. “I tried to find out, but she wouldn’t tell me. Patricia and Sprouse didn’t know either, because they showed up on my doorstep, demanding that I hand Elizabeth over. Sprouse hung around the house for days, convinced I was hiding her. I would have, too, if she’d come to me! I couldn’t even tell you for sure that she’s still in Colorado, although the post box is in the Springs. That’s where I sent the blanket when she wrote that she was going to have a little girl. I didn’t even know that the baby had been born.” Tears welled in her eyes. “What’s her name?”

  “Olivia.”

  “That’s Patricia’s middle name. I wonder if she even knows she’s a grandmother.”

  “Do you have a photo of Elizabeth?”

  “Not here,” she confessed. “I can e-mail you one from home if that would help?”

  “Great. Thank you.” I passed her a business card with my e-mail address on it. “Can you describe her for me?”

  “She’s beautiful,” Aurora said. “Her hair is dark, although not as dark as yours, and she has brown eyes and just a gorgeous complexion. She never had to worry about acne, lucky girl.”

  “How tall was she?”

  “About my height, and I’m five-six. Oh, and she’s very well endowed.” Aurora looked slightly embarrassed. “She used to talk about getting a reduction when she was older. Her parents wouldn’t hear of it, of course.”

  I asked for the post office box number, Elizabeth’s e-mail, and the Sprouses’ address. She copied them onto the back of a business card and handed it to me. “Please ask her to come to me when you find her. I’ve made provision for her and the baby in my will. Even Sprouse won’t be able to make trouble over that.” Her eyes blazed with triumph.

  I told her I’d pass along her message to Elizabeth when I caught up with her. Silently, she handed the blanket across the desk to me, and I took it. The cashmere was warm where she’d been clutching it.

  “Please forgive me if I don’t show you out. I need a few moments.”

  “Of course. Thank you for your time and information, Mrs. Newcastle.” I rose.

  “Find her soon.”

  Before I die, I read in her eyes. I shook her frail hand.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  I was halfway back to Colorado Springs, planning to stop in and see Melissa Lloyd on the way, when my cell phone rang. The caller ID showed my office number. Oh, no, don’t tell me . . . I answered. “Swift.”

  “Charlie?”

  My worst fears confirmed, I closed my eyes momentarily, then opened them to keep from rear-ending the semi that merged in front of me. “Gigi. What’s up?”

  “A police officer called here looking for you just a while ago.”

  “About you burning down the Buff Burgers?”

  A moment of hurt silence traveled down the line. “It didn’t burn down. There was just a bit of smoke damage. And, of course, the water made a big mess. But—”

  “I was pulling your leg.” Sort of. “What did the police want?”

  “Oh, yes. Detective Montgomery said to have you call him about that missing person you asked about. I told him I didn’t know where you were or when I could reach you, but then I remembered you had that business card holder on your desk, and I got your cell number off of your card.”

  She sounded like she’d accomplished a detecting feat on par with tracking down Jimmy Hoffa. “Great. I’ll call him.” I couldn’t keep from saying, “I didn’t think you’d be in today, not after what happened yesterday.”

  “Oh, I soaked in the tub for an hour last night and took some Motrin. After a little yoga this morning, I feel right as rain, except for a twinge in my shoulder, and I’ve got an appointment to get my nails redone over lunch. No need to worry about me. I’m tougher than I look.”

  Great.

  I hung up and called Montgomery.

  He sounded weary or put out when he picked up the phone. “Charlie, I think I’ve got a line on your missing person. She’s—”

  “Elizabeth Sprouse.”

  He paused. “How do you know that?”

  “I’m a detective, remember? I talked with a family friend today who gave me her name and e-mail address. I’m planning to interview her folks later this afternoon and hope to hook up with her in a couple of days. Did her parents report her missing? Is that how you got her name?”

  “No. When the coroner’s report told me the Jane Doe found last night had given birth within the last couple of weeks, I put it together with the description you gave me.”

  Coroner’s report. I slammed on the brakes and swerved onto the verge, pissing off the man in the pickup behind me, who leaned on the horn as he blew past. I returned the gesture he made. Screw him. Elizabeth Sprouse was dead. I pictured Aurora Newcastle’s face when she heard the news. Wait. Maybe it wasn’t the same girl. Montgomery had called his vic Jane Doe.

  “Hey, Charlie, you still there?” Montgomery sounded impatient.

  “I’m here. How do you know it’s Elizabeth Sprouse?”

  “We don’t. We just have a white female, aged between fifteen and nineteen, with no identifying marks, who had a baby not long ago.”

  “Does she have dark hair? Was she built like— Was she well-endowed?” I used Aurora Newcastle’s term.

  “Yeah and yeah.”

  I struck the steering wheel with the heel of my hand. Damn, damn, damn. “Okay, Montgomery, thanks for letting me know.”

  “You got an address for the Sprouse kid’s parents? I’ll get in touch, see if they can make an ID.”

  “Let me know when you get confirmation.” I gave him the Sprouses’ address and Elizabeth’s mailing address, the PO box. A thought occurred to me as he was about to hang up. “How did she die?” I hoped it wasn’t suicide.

  He didn’t answer.

  �
��C’mon, give me something. Was it an accident?”

  Montgomery’s voice was stern as he said, “This is a homicide investigation now, Charlie, so you keep your cute nose out of it.”

  The word “homicide” slammed into me as Montgomery hung up. My mind conjured lurid scenarios. Had she been mugged? Abducted and raped? Had she been collateral damage in a gang fight in the wrong part of town? Struck by a drunk driver? Or maybe it was personal, not random. Had her father caught up with her and inflicted a biblical punishment—stoning?—for the sin of fornication? Maybe she had a fight with Olivia’s father, whoever he was. Of course, suicide was a subcategory of homicide, so maybe she’d killed herself after all. I shook my head to dislodge the images and carefully pulled back onto the highway. I headed for the office. I’d have to put off my meeting with Melissa Lloyd until I had more concrete information.

  The sight of Gigi’s Hummer hulking outside my office when I arrived in no way improved my mood. Nor did finding Albertine Dauphin, the owner of the bistro at the end of the shopping area, comparing nail jobs with Gigi.

  “Hey, baby girl,” Albertine said when I entered. “Why didn’t you-all tell me you had yourself a new partner?”

  A native of Haiti who had emigrated to Florida in the late seventies, then made her way to Colorado when she got tired of the hurricanes five years ago, Albertine was, as the politically correct put it, a “woman of size.” She was also black, with skin and hair as shiny and sleek as obsidian. She wore her hair in complicated loops and whorls and waves piled several inches above her head and shellacked into place. Her fingernails were at least an inch long and always painted to match her outfits. Today they were orange. Large gold hoops dangled from her earlobes, and a caftan of yellow and orange and metallic gold swathed her formidable bosom and drifted to her ankles. Her wide grin and merry laugh disguised the acute businesswoman beneath the surface. Albertine’s, three doors down, was only one of the three restaurants she currently owned and she was thinking of expanding to Denver. When my PI business was really slow in the early days, I’d once jokingly asked her for a job. She’d turned me down flat.