Combustion

by Martin J. Smith

  “Afraid it can’t, Shel. Thirty minutes? That’s all I need.”

  She swung open the door, and Starke stepped into a subtly elegant entryway, one with none of the ostentation of the faux-Mediterranean mansions that Paul Dwyer built for LA’s upscale refugees. It reflected what he immediately recognized as Shelby’s exquisite taste, the kind that also reeks of self-assurance and money.

  A blonde girl was standing beside Shelby, but she stepped confidently forward to shake his hand. Her mother clearly had the dominant genes in the family. The girl looked exactly like Shelby had looked during their summer together nearly twenty years before.

  “You must be Chloe,” he said. “I’m Ron Starke, with the police department. Your mom’s told me a lot about you.”

  “Likewise,” she said.

  He looked at Shelby, then back at Chloe. “I’m sorry about your dad.”

  “The funeral’s tomorrow,” she said.

  “I’m thirty-nine years old,” Shelby said. “I’m not supposed to be burying my spouse.”

  “I know how you’re feeling, Shel.”

  She softened. “I suppose you do. I’m sorry.”

  Starke shifted his eyes to other parts of the house. “Thanks for letting me in. Can we sit somewhere and talk? I just want to go back over a few things we covered when we spoke a week or so ago, before… all this. When Paul was still missing.”

  Chloe padded down one of the hallways leading away from the foyer, her slippers scuffing along the floor. Shelby led him through the kitchen, and he caught himself watching the sway of her still-slim hips. She had a personal trainer, he guessed. There was probably an exercise room full of Nautilus equipment somewhere in the house.

  They walked across a massive patio to a table overlooking the pool. Two towering palms rose from one deep corner of the lot, their fronds rustling high overhead in the hot breeze. The lawn surrounding the pool was immaculately trimmed, and the gardens had been planned by a precise and discerning eye. Starke had been in spa resorts that weren’t this well barbered. An ancient golden retriever dozed in a shaded patch of grass, looking up briefly as they approached. Its face was a mask of white, and it managed only a single wag of its well-groomed tail.

  Shelby offered nothing to drink, just took a chair at a glass-topped patio table beneath a wide, dun-colored umbrella. He sat across and slid a small manila envelope to her. She pinched it open and her husband’s gold wedding band tumbled into her palm.

  “Recovered with the body,” he said. “Is it Paul’s?”

  She dabbed her eyes with the tissue in her hand. She nodded and put the ring back in the envelope. It lay between them like grenade.

  Starke took the notebook from his jacket pocket. He flipped back to its first pages, to his notes of their conversation a week before, when he’d first heard her story of the night her husband disappeared. She had first told it to a responding officer three weeks ago when she reported Paul missing. She told the same story to him last week when it became a murder investigation and he took over the case. He wanted to hear it again. He still couldn’t get past the most nagging question of all: How had she known Paul was shot that day when he’d spoken to her by phone?

  “Shel, one more time,” he said. “Walk me through that first night when Paul didn’t come home.”

  “Again?”

  “Again. Sorry. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

  Shelby took a deep breath and squeegeed a single tear from the corner of one eye with a manicured and polished fingernail.

  “I was home alone,” she began. “That was typical. Chloe was out, overnighting at her friend Ashlyn’s house. Paul was always out at some function or another. Mostly business. Not always, but usually.”

  Starke spotted the opening. This was new territory. She’d confided her marital problems to him on the phone, but now he was looking her in the eye with a notebook in his hand. Somewhere along the line, Shelby Dwyer had made a calculation. This was the first crack in the façade.

  “What about when it wasn’t business?” he asked.

  Shelby’s voice was rock steady. “There were other women. I knew that. There had always been other women. I just learned not to ask. So it was just me, home alone and walking on eggshells like I always did, hoping he’d come home and go to bed and I’d have an uneventful night.”

  Starke looked up from his notes. “You realize this account is a bit more detailed than the one you gave me last time.”

  “You asked me to be completely straight with you, so I’m being straight. I’m sure you’ll be careful about how you use this information. It’s irrelevant, but honest.”

  “Thank you. Shel, I hope you understand why I need to ask this next question: has there been anyone else in your life, romantically?”

  Her smile was sad. “Not really.”

  “Clarify that for me.”

  “I’ve never understood how people our age have time for affairs. I’m Mrs. Paul Dwyer, Ron. Between the foundation work and everything else that goes along with that, and raising my daughter, it’s a full-time job.”

  “So, nothing?”

  She shook her head. “You know I’m a flirt. But no, nothing.”

  Starke penned her answer into his notebook as she watched his hand move across the page. “Do you think your husband ever suspected you of having an affair?”

  “Constantly. He wasn’t a particularly secure man, wicked jealous sometimes. But I never gave him any reason to suspect.”

  Starke let his silence work on her, but she offered nothing more.

  “OK, Shel,” he said finally, “when was the last time you saw Paul?”

  “That morning when he left for work. I know he had a busy day planned, because he was complaining about it. I heard from him about four o’clock when he phoned to say he wouldn’t be home. He was meeting someone for dinner, no idea who. I didn’t ask. So with Chloe at school and then at Ashlyn’s, it was just me the rest of the day. I worked in my office for a couple of hours after that, then turned in a little after midnight. I—”

  “Can I ask what you were doing in your office for those couple of hours?”

  Shelby shifted in her chair. “Mostly e-mails. Foundation stuff, mostly.”

  “And that involves what?”

  She smiled, but it was sad more than anything else. “Finding ways to give away Paul’s money. You’d be surprised how much work it is.”

  Starke jotted a note. Again, he caught her watching his hand move across the page.

  “Anything else?”

  She shook her head. “Can’t think of anything.”

  Starke read from the notes of his previous interview. “And you said you woke up around 4:30?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And your husband wasn’t home?”

  Another sad smile. “Like I said, I’d learned not to ask. Frankly, those were the good nights around here.”

  “So he didn’t come home at all?”

  Shelby shook her head. “I called his office after breakfast. He wasn’t there, either. Hadn’t even checked in. Now that wasn’t like him.”

  “But you didn’t call it in until late that night?”

  “You have to understand, my husband didn’t feel like he had to answer to me. I didn’t demand it, and he didn’t feel the need to explain where he was, or who he was with, or when he’d be back.”

  “Did you call anyone to ask about him?”

  “I gave you those names before.”

  Starke checked his notes. “I see it now. Sorry. His attorney, right? And his partner in the Villa Cordera project. And who’s Skip Bronson again?”

  “Paul’s CFO.”

  “He’s running the construction company now, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Loyal,” she said. “With Paul from the start.”

  Starke jotted another note. “Any reason to think—”

  “No. Just, no. You’d have to know Skip
to understand, but there’s no chance.”

  Starke would check him out anyway, but put him way down on the priority list. With Dwyer dead, Bronson had slid effortlessly into the boss’s chair to command an enterprise that generated millions of dollars each month and included the kind of perks accorded Roman emporers. Pumping Shelby for more information seemed like a waste of time. “So nobody had seen Paul or heard from him since?”

  She nodded. “It took me all afternoon and evening to track them all down. I didn’t get worried until late that night. Two nights in a row would have been unusual, unless he was traveling, and he would have told me if he was out of town. So that’s when I called the police. I didn’t want to alarm anybody, but I thought maybe I should, just in case.”

  Starke laid his notebook on the table and set his pen beside it. “And there was no indication after that that your husband was still alive? No phone calls to anyone? No credit card expenditures?”

  “Nothing. Until Saturday, when I was notified of his death.”

  Time to confront it, Starke thought. “Shelby, the other day when we talked by phone, after you’d been notified, I asked you how you knew Paul had been shot.”

  Did she tense a bit? He waited, but she just glared across the table at him.

  “You didn’t answer,” he said.

  “That woman, the police chief, must have told me.”

  Starke leaned forward. “That’s the thing, Shel. She didn’t know, not at that point. The reason I didn’t handle the notification was because I was at the morgue that morning. I saw the head wound, but me and the two guys from the coroner’s office were the only people who knew about it at the time you were notified. I didn’t fill in the chief until later, long after she spoke to you.”

  Shelby Dwyer stood. “You need to leave.” The look she gave him could have melted the elastic in his boxers.

  Starke kept his seat. “You never answered the question.”

  “This conversation is over,” she said. “Please go.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  Shelby put her hands flat on the tabletop and leaned down. Her eyes were wet, and he noticed a slight tremble in her lower lip. She said: “I’m not having this conversation without an attorney.”

  22

  Starke briefly considered stopping as he passed Emerald Hills Cemetery, which was just off Spadero Road on his way back from Shelby Dwyer’s. Rosaleen was never far from his mind, and thoughts of her crowded out everything else as he steered back toward downtown Los Colmas. He’d marked her grave with a simple stone carved with her name: Rosaleen Tierney Starke. No birth or death dates. No epitaph—what was there to say? But he didn’t stop. He hadn’t been back since he’d buried her. It was just too hard.

  Suicides were always a mystery, but some were more mysterious than others. He’d concluded in the two years since he found her on their bedroom floor that the most painful deaths were the ones that were flat-out impossible to explain. Why couldn’t she have had a history of depression? Why couldn’t there have been logical clues, dots to connect, that helped those who loved her understand the sad end of her life? Why no parting note that spoke of her private pain? Afterward, during the worst of it, he’d even wished she’d died in a car accident, or been the victim of a street crime. At least then he’d understand what had happened. He’d have some focus for his rage.

  Instead, he wondered.

  This was his hell.

  A screaming fire truck snapped Starke back to the moment. It closed in dangerously fast, nearly sideswiping him as he hugged the inside corner of a tight curve. Its siren surged and faded, and he watched it disappear from his rearview mirror just as quickly as it appeared, headed for the San Gorgonio foothills just outside of town. His heart was still pounding minutes later as he parked in front of the Silicon Recycler. It was nearly six, and he hoped it was still open.

  Jason Samani was at his post, reading a magazine behind the counter. The owner looked up and smiled as he entered. “Laptop! You come back, Detective, like you said! Good, good. Thank you.”

  Starke was starting to feel guilty about not buying something. The guy was as sincere as he was eager. “Not today, I’m afraid.”

  Samani’s face fell. “Too bad. Good deals today.”

  “I do want to ask you about something, though,” Starke said. “An old piece of equipment, a computer monitor. Vanguard. Ever heard of that brand?”

  The store owner laughed. “Jurassic era,” he said. “So you’re a collector?”

  “Just curious.”

  “But why?”

  Starke went stone-faced. He’d withheld from the Los Colmas PD news release any description of the anchor used to weigh down Paul Dwyer’s body. It was a detail only the killer would know.

  “Just trying to find out more about this particular brand of monitor,” Starke said. “You mentioned collectors. Anybody in town who might own something like that?”

  Samani waved his hand like a man swatting flies. “The company died, many, many years ago. I’m surprised any still exist. Maybe one turns up at a swap meet or something?”

  “So they’re rare then? Does that mean they’re valuable?”

  Samani laughed again. “Only for target practice maybe. They were shit, even brand new.”

  Starke tried another tack. “Are there collectors in town who might know a little more about them?”

  Samani shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Know any names?”

  “Sure you don’t need a laptop? I give you special police department deal.”

  “As soon as I’m ready to buy. Promise. So, any collectors around here?”

  Samani sighed. “There’s a club. Eric might know.” He opened a drawer under the display counter and rummaged around. He came up with a business card and pushed it across the counter. Starke read it: “Los Colmas Computer Collective.” There was a street address, an e-mail address, a Twitter handle, and a name.

  “Eric Barbaric?” Starke said.

  “Geek god,” Samani said. “Stays on top of things around here. Maybe he knows something?”

  Starke copied the contact information into his notebook. “That’s a real name?”

  “Good customer, Eric. Buys and sells with me all the time, not like some people who just talk, talk, talk.”

  “Point taken.” Starke closed the notebook and thanked Samani for his time.

  “Eric’s an Apple,” Samani said.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Before, when you asked about lady who sold the Apple? Eric’s my Apple guy. He buys. He sells. Maybe he still has it, or knows something?”

  “I’ll sure ask him,” Starke said, and stuck out his hand. “Thank you. I hope we can do business someday.”

  Samani shook, but there was no passion in it. He turned his back and returned to his magazine even before Starke left the store. No more time for talk, talk, talk.

  23

  Donna Kerrigan stuck her head into Starke’s tiny, doorless office. He looked up from his dinner—a half-eaten, hours-old meat bomb from the El Burrito Rodeo truck.

  “Taking off?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer. “The funeral’s tomorrow. One of us should go, to show the flag. I think the community should see us there.”

  “I’m told it’s a private burial,” he said.

  “Graveside service is. The Mass and the country-club reception afterward is an open house. What’s your schedule?”

  Starke had spent the evening making calls. He’d booked the next day solid, with follow-ups on the interviews he’d already done, and fresh interviews with practically every remaining name in his notebook, from Deacon Beale, the head of the Dwyer Foundation, to Skip Bronson, the Dwyer Development CFO and a long-time whoring partner, to Eric Barbaric, the geek god.

  “Tomorrow’s nuts for me,” he said. “I just don’t see—”

  “Then I’ll go,” she said. “St. Lawrence Martyr. Hope you’re OK with that.”

  Starke thought for a mom
ent. He wasn’t OK with it. Clearly, though, she’d made up her mind. “Just give Shelby Dwyer a wide berth,” he said. “I talked to her a few hours ago. She’s not cooperating any more without an attorney.”

  “Interesting.” Kerrigan stepped fully into the tiny space. It was crowded with one person. With two it was oppressive, even if it was someone you didn’t loathe. “Was that your suggestion?”

  Starke folded the burrito remains into its paper wrapper and dropped it into his trash can. When he stood up, the office shrank to half its size. “By which you mean?”

  His boss backed up a step. “Please tell me how the conversation evolved,” she said, “and how it ended with her shutting down.”

  “I was pressing her on something, and she reacted.”

  “Pressing her on what?”

  Starke forced himself to wait before answering. They’d covered this ground before, and covering it again was only going to aggravate the situation. But what choice did he have?

  “Somehow, between the time you arrived at her house for the next-of-kin notification and when I talked to her a couple of hours later, she concluded that her husband had been shot before the body dump. The first time I asked her how she knew that, she didn’t answer. So I asked her again.”

  “You wondered before, rather rudely, if maybe I told her,” Kerrigan said. “Let me be very clear on this, detective: I did not tell her. How could I? You were still at the morgue finding the bullet hole at the time.”

  “I realize that. But somebody told her.”

  “Or maybe she found out some other way. What if she knows more about this than she’s saying?”

  “I’m looking into that.”

  “Thank you.”

  He could see her mind shifting into management mode. How to defuse a tense situation with an employee?

  “There’s a fire,” she said. “You’ve been busy, I know, so I wasn’t sure if you’d heard.”

  “I knew something was up.”

  “Lightning strike in one of the Gorgonio canyons. County fire’s working it pretty hard. Forty percent contained as of an hour ago, but a wind shift could complicate things. Things can change fast this time of year. Hope for the best.”