by Lisa Turner
“Thank you for meeting me here,” he said.
“Glad to. Is the guy on the porch your backup in case I try to take advantage of you?”
“Good guess.” He took the carrier from her.
She peered around him into the kitchen. “Any sign of Leo?”
“Just an empty food bowl and a full litter box from the smell, so he’s around.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You check the guest rooms for him. I’ll take the master.”
She strode down the hall and into Caroline’s bedroom like a perp who knew exactly where to find the loot. Whatever she’d been looking for in the library she now thought was in Caroline’s bedroom. He waited one minute then went down the hall and found her in the large walk-in closet poking through a drawer full of costume jewelry.
“Shopping?” he asked.
She straightened. “You scared me. I can’t stand sneaky people.”
“Me either.”
She slammed the drawer. “I’m looking for a ring. A big sapphire.”
“Diamonds set on either side of the stone?”
She came over to stand in front of him. “Where is it?”
He’d noticed Zelda hadn’t mentioned Caroline, not a single sign of grief, not a question about the investigation.
“In Caroline’s handbag,” he said.
She frowned. “The one she had with her the night she died?”
He nodded.
“That’s my mother’s ring. When will I get it back?”
“I can’t say. But if it’s so important, why did you give it to Caroline?”
“I didn’t give it to her. She borrowed it for the wedding as her ‘something borrowed, something blue’ item. Then she refused to return it, so I assumed she’d lost it. We argued about it.”
“Is that what the fight was about on Monday?”
She scratched her nose. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say that earlier?”
“I was upset. You were acting like I’d killed her.”
“Did you kill her?”
She narrowed her eyes outlined with black kohl. Stage makeup. He reminded himself that this woman was a performer.
“You think I shot Caroline over a ring?” she asked.
“Just answer the question.”
“I didn’t kill her. I told you how I feel about guns.” She blinked rapidly and bit her lower lip. “I don’t want to discuss this.”
The nose scratching, the blinking, the lip biting—they were all signs of lying. He decided to let her stew for awhile. “There’s a closet full of expensive suits with tags still attached. What can you tell me about that?”
She rolled her eyes. “That was Raj. He disapproved of Caroline’s wardrobe. She has these great retro finds and custom leather jackets from LA. She’d tone it down when she went to court, but otherwise she loved dressing in edgy clothes. I’d kill for a wardrobe like that.” She winced. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Go on.”
“Raj had those stuffy suits delivered without even asking her. He wanted her to dress conservatively like the wife of an important doctor. She refused. He wouldn’t take them back so she left them in the closet. The bastard tried to bully her into giving in.”
Billy glanced around. “I don’t see her wedding dress. You think she sold it?”
“No way. It was custom-made with heirloom lace. She probably stored it in one of the guest rooms. I’ll check.”
She started past him. He put his hand on her arm. “Caroline was wearing the dress the night she died. She was on her way to be married.”
Zelda shrugged off his hand. “To whom?”
“We don’t know.”
She sucked in a breath and pushed past him. He found her seated at the foot of the bed, staring at the portrait of Caroline and Saunders. Tears streamed down her face. He found a box of tissues in the bathroom and brought it back.
“You think it was Raj?” she asked.
“Do you?”
“It doesn’t make sense. She’d cut ties with him.” She stopped, reasoning it through. “A wedding. That’s why she wanted to keep the ring.” She covered her face with her hands then dropped them. “This hasn’t seemed real until now, but thinking of her dying in that dress … I have to confess—I lied about Caroline and me being close. We weren’t even friends. It’s been that way since we were kids. I admired her and I was envious. Sometimes I hated her. Now I feel really rotten about it.”
She swallowed. “Uncle Saunders indulged her. He called her Sparrow like she was a helpless little bird, but she wasn’t. The girls at school got her into coke. She craved the stuff. It kicked off the first of her manic episodes. She started shoplifting, sneaking out of the house to party. Then a cop stopped her for a broken taillight and busted her for a gram of coke. Aunt Rosalyn intervened with the DA. They wanted to ‘protect her future.’” Zelda made quote marks with her fingers. “The charges were dropped.”
She looked out the window and wiped her cheeks. “My freshman year at Rhodes I drank too much PGA punch at a frat party and got so drunk I plowed my car into the back of a dump truck. Aunt Rosalyn told my mother that a few days in jail would be a maturing experience. They left me there for two days. They weren’t so worried about my future.”
“What about the time you and your buddies waylaid the president of the NRA?” he asked.
She sighed. “I’d forgotten about that. We wanted to make a point about guns. You can’t open a closet in my family’s houses without seeing a shotgun. My dad owned shotguns. He—you don’t understand how much I hate guns.” She turned watery eyes on him. “I shouldn’t have told you about Caroline doing drugs.”
“Why?”
“It makes her look bad. And I can tell you still have feelings for her. First love and all.”
“No harm done. But I’m curious. Did Caroline talk about me?”
“Yeah. She said you’re a really good kisser.”
He studied her. “You’re lying again.”
She gave him a half smile. “I was guessing. I always thought you guys had something going with the way you looked at her.”
That pissed him off. “This isn’t a game. She called you on Monday evening. You’re one of the last people she spoke with. Tell me again where you were that night.”
She stopped smiling. “I didn’t kill Caroline so quit asking me.”
A muffled meow came from under the bed. A large black cat—scrappy-looking with a bony skull and an ear half chewed off—jumped on the bed. He padded across Zelda’s lap to sit on a folded blanket beside her.
“Hi, Leo,” she said.
The cat blinked at her then blinked at Billy.
“He likes you. Caroline said he prefers men.”
A gray scar zigzagged across the top of his head and swooped down to his left eye. “What happened to his head?” he asked.
“A Rottweiler got him down behind the air conditioning unit in the firm’s parking lot. But Leo got his licks in.”
The cat switched his tail.
“Tough guy, huh,” Billy said.
“Caroline had a vet patch him up and she took him home. Raj said she had to get rid of him before the wedding. I think that was the final straw.”
Zelda sneezed and scooted away from the cat. “What’s going to happen to him?”
“You brought the cat carrier. You’re taking him home.”
“No way. I signed up to feed him and empty the litter box.” She sneezed again. “I’m allergic.”
Leo yowled from the back seat all the way to the barge. Billy wondered how he’d ended up with the cat even temporarily although he admired the way the cat had landed a cushy home with Caroline. He didn’t mind helping out as long as Zelda did as she’d promised and found a home for him in a few days.
At the barge he set up the litter box in the bathroom and gave Leo a can of salmon fillet. The cat knocked back the whole can and looked for more, which Billy gave him.
“You ready to
chill?” he asked.
The cat groomed his whiskers and ignored the question. Billy had never owned a cat, but knew they were good at working their own agenda. Not too often a human gets something over on a cat. As a cop, he couldn’t fault that behavior.
Leo slept on a towel in the bathroom while he made coffee with chicory, heated a can of Stagg Chili, cut a big wedge of cheddar, and grabbed a handful of saltines. A breeze was blowing off the water, so he pulled on a jacket and took his food out on the deck. Sunlight sparkled on the eddies behind the bridge pylons. A flock of Canada geese flew downriver in squadron formation while he ate. He saved his coffee for last and made notes on his conversation with Zelda.
No alibi, he wrote. Angry about the ring, clueless about the dress. Hard to know if she’s telling the truth or doing a good job of acting. Honest about her DUI, dishonest about her relationship with Caroline. Dishonest/honest. Interesting woman. Beautiful woman. He couldn’t help but wonder what was going on under that hood. He scratched out the part about her being beautiful. Not the place for that observation.
Had she exaggerated Caroline’s drug use and behavioral issues? Difficult to verify. She’d admitted being envious and even hating her cousin. Zelda didn’t fit the profile of a murderer, except that she was part of Caroline’s long-term inner circle, which meant she didn’t need to develop a reason to kill her.
He took his dishes inside and heard the cat meowing in the bathroom, so he opened the door. Leo jumped on the bed, stretched out, and began to purr.
“Good idea, bud,” he said. “Wish I could join you.”
Chapter 24
Sitting at her desk, sipping her third coffee, Frankie flipped through a summary of Caroline’s banking and credit card statements. Multiple cash withdrawls popped up reminding her of the hundred dollar bills in the money clip and the cash Caroline had squirreled away around the house. Caroline appeared to be as obsessive about having cash available as she had been about her housekeeping.
Billy was on his way to meet Zelda Taylor at Caroline’s, a smart move. The woman would be difficult to handle in the interview room. Frankie found her quirkiness—not to mention the obvious childhood crush she had on Billy—irritating. He would work that relationship to his advantage with his sincere tone and slow smile. She’d seen tough offenders give up the damnedest information to him, because he’d slipped under their guard.
She put away Caroline’s records and moved to her search on Highsmith. Nothing remarkable there, not even a speeding ticket. Robert Highsmith had grown up in Lincoln Park and attended University of Chicago Law School, graduating third in his class. He then joined the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. With those credentials and visibility as an assistant state’s attorney, he must have been planning a political career. If that was the case, the move to Memphis was a veer off course.
She signed onto Friend Feed and Search Systems but found little information. No Facebook or Twitter account, but then on an initial pass Highsmith hadn’t seemed like the social media type. An article in the Chicago Tribune’s archives pictured him and two colleagues participating in a Toys for Tots drive. All three wore Santa hats and business suits. Highsmith—barrel-chested with a high forehead—gripped a three-foot-tall Big Bird in front of him like he’d taken the bird hostage. Not a handsome man, more the dependable type.
The most telling piece was an article published in the Tribune seven weeks before Highsmith had left Chicago. A city councilman was in court being arraigned on bribery charges. Highsmith was the prosecutor. Immediately after the councilman and his attorney were given a trial date, the councilman stood up and began to curse at the Cook County State’s Attorney, who happened to be in the rear of the courtroom. The reporter implied that the councilman had seemed astonished when prosecution of the case moved forward. The article also noted that the councilman had twice before been arrested on felony charges. In both cases, the State’s Attorney had, without explanation, dismissed the charges. Soon after that Highsmith was out of a job.
It smelled rotten. Frankie imagined the Cook County State’s Attorney had instructed Highsmith to tell the judge they had decided to drop the charges. Highsmith may have objected. As a result the state’s attorney fired him. On the other hand, Highsmith could have quit in protest or disgust.
That had been seven months ago. Highsmith moved to Memphis and had been with the Lee Law Firm for around five months. She copied the article, submitted requests for more documents from the Cook County Clerk’s office, and moved to Caroline’s phone logs from her office and mobile.
Starting with the day Caroline died, Frankie cross-referenced her office calls with her list of clients. All incoming and outgoing calls had been work-related. During the afternoon and evening hours, she’d made five notable calls on her mobile. The first was to Blue Hopkins, presumably about the wedding arrangements. The second was to Robert Highsmith. According to his file, he had repeatedly urged her to allow him to file the protective order. Since she was planning to leave town, it was possible she’d called to put that on hold. The third was to Zelda Taylor, the fourth to Gracie Ella Adams, her aunt. The fifth was to Judd Phillips. That one put up a red flag. Judd said he and Caroline had been out of touch.
Frankie tapped in Judd’s number. “Mr. Phillips, this is Detective Malone. I need to speak with you … Oh, really.” She listened. “That is a coincidence. I can come there. Sure. I have the address.”
Someone had done a masterful job updating Judd’s 1930s cozy craftsman bungalow by enlarging the paned windows and adding peaked roofs and stone pillars to the porch. The yard had been extensively landscaped. And there was the red BMW Z4, Frankie’s all-time favorite car, sitting in the driveway.
Judd was waiting for her on the porch, seated in a wicker chair with a coffee cup and reading a newspaper. He folded his paper and stood as she came up the walk, carrying her satchel. She could tell he was attempting to read her face the same way she’d seen him do with other players around a poker table.
“Cool day to be reading outside,” she called.
“I needed some air.”
She took the steps up to the porch.
“Let me take that,” he said, relieving her of the heavy satchel on her shoulder. She picked up on his bloodshot eyes and the smell of the rum he’d poured in his coffee.
She’d grown up with her father’s alcoholism and the smell of Flor de Caña rum as he drank himself into a stupor every night. Alcohol had been his way to blunt his anger toward a wife who’d left him with a daughter he had not wanted in the first place.
She wondered what pain Judd was trying to bury. She understood. She’d done the same for a brief time with pills. The struggle to get past it had given her a new kind of courage, something she hadn’t expected.
Judd held the front door for her. The oak floors and the sun flooding through the windows and skylights made the space warm and inviting. They passed through a rustic, tasteful living room with a fireplace and a sofa deep enough to curl up in. This was a real home, not what she’d expected from the drunken man she’d met two nights ago at the CJC.
A Georges Braque painting, Vase, Palette and Mandolin done in charcoal and oil, hung over the mantel. The logic of the geometric shapes in his work had always fascinated her.
“You’re a student of art?” She stepped closer to study the painting.
“More a student of poker.”
“I’ve seen a photo of Braque. You look a lot like him.”
Judd laughed, pleased.
She followed him through an arched doorway into the dining room where the rustic elegance stopped. This was a war room—chairs pushed against the walls, their seats loaded with boxes and binders, a computer and desk chair positioned at the end of a ten-foot farmer’s table, lists written on whiteboards, and news articles tacked up.
Aerial photos of rice fields took up most of one wall. On an adjacent wall hung a geological survey that mapped the flood inundation of a river basin. Yellow and blu
e sticky notes with directional arrows festooned the edges.
“I’ve read the case files,” she said, indicating the satchel he’d laid on the table.
Judd dipped his head. “I was sure you’d find them interesting. Finn was a great guy. He deserved more than to vanish without a clue.”
A two-foot by four-foot photo of shoes and folded clothes lying near the water’s edge dominated the room. She’d seen the shot in the file. Enlarged it was even more unsettling. She walked over to look at several snapshots Judd had pinned around it. In one of them, Finn was sitting in the Camaro, leaning out the driver’s side window and waving. Caroline and Judd were standing next to the front fender, both of them grinning.
“Finn bought that car with his own money,” Judd said. “He was a wizard in the stock market.”
“Looks like the three of you were close.”
“Best friends.”
“How did Caroline end up with the Camaro?”
“Seeing it in the driveway every day made Finn’s mother heartsick. She let Caroline take it as long as she promised to give it up when Finn came home.”
He pointed out a photo of Finn and Caroline, the Gothic architecture of the Rhodes College campus in the background. A man stood between them, one arm around Finn’s shoulders and the other around Caroline’s waist. In his thirties, he was fit and tan with angular features and thick dark hair cut short on the sides. Frankie thought of the Argentine polo players who used to fly into Key West to compete in the local field polo tournaments. At night they would take over the bars on Duval Street with women practically throwing panties at their feet. This guy had the same cocky smile.
“That’s Clive Atwood,” Judd said. “Finn came down with mono the fall of his junior year and had to sit out seven weeks. Aunt Gracie Ella hired Atwood as a tutor to get him through the semester. He claimed to have graduated from Princeton and earned a Masters in journalism at Stanford. Finn came out of the semester with a 4.0 average. We were impressed. After that Atwood hung around as a mentor.”