The Wild Inside

by Christine Carbo

  I whistled. Like Monty, I couldn’t help it.

  “Yeah, crazy little shit he was. He was pretty much blackmailing me on a few levels.”

  “Do you realize what kind of a motive this gives you for wanting Victor out of the way?”

  Lou nodded. “I do, and it’s why I’ve been so nervous about talking to you. But I swear on my life”—Lou turned to face me, placed a fist against his chest, his knuckles white and wet from the drizzle—“I had nothing to do with Victor’s death.”

  • • •

  I wasn’t sure what to make of my conversation with Lou. In a way, it had been like talking to a criminal or someone very adept at manipulation. Still, in spite of all the games Lou had played, I had a sense that he was telling me the truth, at least about being innocent of Victor Lance’s murder.

  On my way to see Elena, I called Monty and filled him in. He’d been surprised and bummed about Lou’s fling with Elena and was having a hard time imagining it. “They’ve always seemed so great together, so content,” he had said. I thought of Joe and his fatherly eyes. The thought of his own wife hurting him rankled me deep down.

  After telling Monty to meet me later in the afternoon to visit Lewis, I mentioned that I wanted a better sense of Victor’s relatives, specifically, his uncle Mark and his cousins, including Lou’s kids, who might be in line for the Shelton cabin when Lou was gone. I told him he was perfect for the job since he knew so much about the inholdings. I told Monty to let them do the talking; that he’d be surprised what people offer up when you listen quietly and don’t bombard them with questions.

  I found Elena at the catering business in Evergreen called Tasty Peaks Catering. Her business wasn’t far from Penny Lance’s neighborhood, and when I entered the store that was part of a larger strip mall on LaSalle Road, the smell of baking cake, chocolate, and something lemony hit me. I stood at the counter, where one of those silver bells stood for me to ring, but I didn’t hit it because I hate those annoying things. I waited a moment longer for someone to come out, and just as I hovered my hand over the bell, Elena stepped out from a door near the back carrying a large box, which, judging by its elongated shape and serrated edging on the flap, was a warehouse supply of cling wrap. She smiled when she saw me, placed the box down, and came over.

  “Hello, Ted.” She lifted her chin. “What brings you here? Did you forget something at the house last night?” She was as poised and elegant as the night before, even in a thick-cloth navy apron plastered with baking flour tied around her slight waist.

  “No, no,” I said. “I wanted to thank you for the great dinner though.” I rubbed my belly. “I haven’t eaten that well in a while.”

  “It was our pleasure. But”—she cocked her head to the side—“something tells me you didn’t come all the way to tell me that.”

  “I confess. I did want to chat with you about Leslie, you know, since she was involved with Victor Lance. Dang.” I lifted my nose to the air. “It smells good in here. What are you making?”

  “A wedding cake for tonight.” She glanced at her watch. “That’s the trouble with my business. I have to work on weekends. I can chat for a few minutes, but then I need to get cranking on the canapés. Come on back to my office.”

  I followed her to a small room cluttered with stacks of papers and envelopes. A laptop lay on a small black desk, which she sat before. She motioned for me to sit in the chair next to the desk. “What can I help you with?”

  “I’m guessing you’re aware that Leslie and Victor had a relationship. If not, forgive me for intruding.”

  “No, I know. Joe filled me in.”

  “Is that the first time you knew about it?”

  Elena looked down at her lap and tucked a loose strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear. “No.” She looked back at me, heavy-lidded through long lashes. I could see a sexy quality in her that I had not noticed at dinner the night before. “No, I knew about the relationship, but I never told Joe. You have to understand, there’s been a lot of, shall we say” —she bit her lower lip— “dysfunction in our household when it comes to our second daughter. She’s pretty much put us through hell over the years.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “In order not to enable her,” she continued, “we try to keep the contact to a minimum, and let’s just say that my husband’s better at doing that than I am.”

  “She’s your daughter,” I said. “That’s understandable.”

  “She is that all right.” She looked down again, this time to her side, to the imitation-wood laminate flooring. I sensed a great sadness.

  “And is there anything you can tell me about your daughter’s relationship with Victor Lance that might be useful? Anything at all that struck you as strange?”

  “There were a lot of things strange about Victor Lance from what I understand. Or maybe not strange, just despicable and predictable. Leslie wouldn’t admit it, but I think she gave him money. Money,” Elena said sharply, “that should have been used on Lewis for new shoes, clothes, food, anything but on him.” She said him with disdain. “Heather and I are always buying things for Lewis to keep him in clothes that fit. See”—she stood up and leaned against the door jamb—“that’s what I mean—enabling.”

  “Well.” I had to shift in my seat to face her. “He is your grandson.”

  “That’s right. And I’m not going to watch the poor boy walk around in clothes two years too young for him because his mother was giving money to a boyfriend who just squandered it away on drugs.”

  “How did you know that was the case?”

  “Leslie’s been on and off drugs since she was thirteen. She’s been trying to stay clean for the past year or so.”

  “Was she using with Victor?”

  “I’m not positive, but I think she was clean when she met him. She’d been through some treatment, but”—she sighed loudly and walked around me and sat back down at her desk—“it’s hard to say. It’s probably impossible to stay clean if you’re an addict and you’re hanging out with an addict. Both Heather and I tried to talk her into dumping him after we found out about him.”

  “And how did you find out about him using?”

  “Heather knew somehow, through the grapevine and by just observing their relationship. It was obvious—his erratic behavior, things that Lewis would mention to Heather, like parties at Leslie’s home and the people there, bruises on Leslie’s face . . . plus word gets around in a small community like this.”

  I thought about the possibility of her and Lou having long, confiding conversations about Leslie, about Victor. “Do you know why anyone would want to hurt Victor? Did Leslie ever say anything to you about something that might be bothering her or him?”

  “No, we didn’t discuss him. Most of what I knew about Victor was from Heather. Leslie confided in her sister more than me. Even though I still have contact with Leslie now and again, it’s slim because things are so strained between her father and her. Like I said, I just end up enabling her despite my best efforts. It just causes a fight between Joe and me. Heather, on the other hand, well, you know sisters.”

  I nodded. “Is Heather married?”

  “No, not anymore. She used to be—in her twenties. She was with him for about nine years and got divorced in her midthirties.” Elena shrugged, and I felt slightly embarrassed for asking something that didn’t really pertain to my line of questioning. “She dates here and there,” she added with a slight smile.

  “Did you know Victor’s uncle?”

  Elena looked slightly confused, and I saw a twitch—a quick fluttering of her lashes, at the mention of his name. “Yes.” She pursed her lips. “From around. I catered a function that he was organizing a few years ago—for Ducks Unlimited or something like that.”

  “Did you know that Lou was his uncle?”

  “Yeah, I think I knew t
hat somehow. It’s a small community.”

  I’ll bet, I thought. Really small. “Did you ever speak to him about Leslie and Victor?”

  She paused, then shook her head. “No, not that I can recall. Why would I?” She stood up again and began pacing around the small room, and I could see the energy or nervousness I’d noticed in her in her kitchen begin to flare. Leslie obviously inherited some of her mother’s high energy, then, unfortunately, got in the habit of ramping it up even further with meth. “I don’t think Victor and Leslie were even involved when I did that event.” She fiddled with the tie on her apron that was wrapped around her back, brought to the front, and tied at her slender waist. “Agent Systead,” she said, and I noted that she had reverted back to my title instead of using my first name as she’d done when I came in, “are you thinking Louis Shelton had something to do with this horrible crime?”

  “I’m thinking I need to check all avenues.”

  “But you wouldn’t be checking on him unless something was pointing in his direction.”

  “We’ve got a lot of directions that we’re going in right now. I’m just trying to narrow things down. Like I said, if you have anything at all that could be helpful, please let me know.” I slid my card across her desk. “And if you have any leftovers from that cake”—I held my nose up to the air and smiled slightly—“you can also let me know that.”

  She smiled back, but it was a weak one. Her large, suddenly busy eyes revealed that thoughts raced across her mind. “I can’t imagine that Mr. Shelton would have anything to do with that horrible business,” she added.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s hard to imagine anyone having anything to do with it even knowing the victim was not very well liked. Did Leslie ever mention an Andrew Stimpson to you?”

  “No, why? Was he a friend of hers?”

  “He was a friend of Victor’s.” I stood.

  “A dealer?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “No.” Elena peeked out her office door toward the front of the shop. I assumed she was signaling that she needed to get cranking on her work. “She never mentioned names of anyone to me. She’d be too afraid I’d tell her father, and with him in law enforcement in the park, she knew better than to talk to me, especially about dealers.”

  18

  WHILE I WAITED for Monty to return from talking to some of the Shelton family members, I sat in our office and had a cup of coffee and spread the Saturday local news out. I was immediately surprised to see an article on the front page with the headline “Waiting for Caged Grizzly to Provide Evidence.”

  I felt something instantly wither inside of me. “Shit.” It came out as a whisper. I read on, hoping there was no mention of the damn bullet. I’d not made it past the first two paragraphs when Eugene Ford stormed in my office with the paper in hand. Apparently we were on the same page, in more ways than one.

  “Did you give them this information?” he asked.

  “I was just going to ask you the same thing.”

  “How the hell do they know we’re holding this bear? I’ve allowed no such information to go out.” He looked at me with disdain. He really thought that I had filled the media in.

  “Do you think I’m that stupid? You think I want to ruin my chances of getting the guy because he reads this and gets rid of the weapon?”

  Ford shook his head. “This is all I need. People breathing down my neck for why we have this grizzly in our possession instead of out where it belongs.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying”—I cleared my throat—“I think you’re reading too much into the public’s sympathies for this animal. Bears are put down all the time around here, and it’s always in the news.”

  “This is different.” Ford set his jaw and glared at me. “The public knows this bear did nothing wrong. The last time we put a bear down without doing anything wrong other than teaching her cubs risky behavior, the public was outraged.”

  “The Lake Ellen Wilson bear?”

  Ford nodded, then looked me in the eye. “Look, Systead, I know my park. I’ve been here for a long time.”

  “And I know investigations. Might as well have a headline that says ‘Get Rid of Your Gun Now If You Haven’t Already.’”

  Ford continued to glare at me, his eyes in narrow slits like he was in some Clint Eastwood movie. I almost felt like laughing and might have honored the urge if I wasn’t so upset over the mention of evidence. I looked down at the paper. “I haven’t read more than a few paragraphs. Does it mention a slug?”

  “No, but it’s quite obvious for anyone with half a brain. Although you never know with the public. It’s possible they believe we’re waiting for him to crap out a wallet or a keychain or something. Who knows.” He threw the paper on the table where Monty and I had all sorts of files, charts, field reports, and diagrams of the site spread out.

  I scanned the rest of the article with Ford still standing before me—read that the grizzly was in a compound under surveillance for unknown reasons, most probably to observe its behavior, to get DNA samples, and to check for any other possible clues in the bear’s scat.

  Suddenly I laughed. Something about it sounded utterly ridiculous. I couldn’t help it.

  “You think this is funny?”

  “Not the situation,” I said. “Just the way, I don’t know, the way it sounds.”

  “Well, I don’t really care if he’s falling short of some journalism award or not. I just want this to stay under our hats. You were the one saying we didn’t give enough information in the first place.” He scowled. “Well, you got your wish. Plenty of information is out there now.”

  “You know that’s not what I meant.” I stared straight into his eyes. “It’s a fine line. I just didn’t want the reporter poking around where he didn’t belong, which it looks like he’s still doing. It’s possible he just walked around the place and saw the bear on his own.”

  Ford shook his head as if he had decided that was unlikely. He stood silent for a moment, then picked the paper back up, rolled it into a cylinder, and pointed it at me. “I’ll find out who’s talked and get back to you.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” I said in as even a voice as I could because at this point, my urge to laugh was gone and my blood boiling.

  • • •

  Monty showed up at two thirty as I had asked him to. I had to admit that I felt relieved that he was his usual punctual self because it gave me something I could count on—some certainty. Monty filled me in on who he’d seen so far: Mark and Angela and their kids. “They have four, all grown now, so it took me a while to track them all down.”

  “Anything interesting pop up?”

  “Not really, Mark is kind of arrogant, maybe a little pissed off that daddy left the cabin to Lou and not him, but according to his wife, Angela, he got the house Roger and Eloise lived in C’ Falls, which he’s sold already and made some money off of. Mark wasn’t all that chatty, but Angela was, so most of what I got was from her.”

  “What about the kids?

  “I only spoke to the oldest daughter, Sara, a cousin of Victor’s. You probably saw her at the funeral. She lives in Whitefish now and works at a hair salon. She and her husband have three young children.”

  “She say anything of interest?”

  “Nothing in particular. But she did mention that she was never superclose to Victor or Megan. That they were kind of weird. She said”—Monty raked his fingers through his hair and crinkled his face—“that she always wondered if the two of them had been abused when they were younger.”

  “Physically, sexually?” I asked.

  “She didn’t say, but I got the feeling she meant sexually. Said that Penny dated a few interesting men that kind of gave her the creeps when she was a teenager. Victor and Megan were younger than she was.”

  “So not by the father?”

  Monty
shrugged. “She only mentioned the boyfriends.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t surprise me. It would explain Victor’s drug use and abusive tendencies.” I looked at my watch. “Good work,” I said and meant it. Monty must have done something right for a family member to give that much personal information to a cop. “Think you can be as smooth with Lewis?”

  “I’ll try,” Monty said.

  • • •

  When we got to the mobile home, no one was there. We poked around, then sat in the car in the driveway, out of the chill and the light drizzle. I kept wondering about the collapse in Monty’s home life, so I asked him how it was going with his wife. He said all was cool for the time being. That it was amazing how much pressure was relieved the minute you got two people not getting along out from under the same roof. I thought of Shelly and how we couldn’t speak for months after the split, but eventually became cordial.

  “Suddenly, some manners come back—you know, some decency. It’s amazing how that all seems to go out the window and be taken for granted when you’re together in the thick of it.”

  I listened, rolling my quarter, watching its shiny surface cascade over each knuckle, then I broached the subject. “The separation, your idea or hers?”

  “Hers. Definitely hers.”

  “Why?”

  Monty made a long sigh. “Oh man, it’s complicated, right?”

  “Always is, but there’s always that last straw, that one thing that makes someone take action.”

  “You sound like you’ve been there?”

  “I was married before. When I lived here.”

  “Oh.” Monty leaned farther back in his seat. The vinyl squeaked as he shifted. “When you were on the force?”

  I nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “She had a miscarriage, and I guess we . . .” I stopped my quarter, moved it to my palm and squeezed. I surprised myself that I gave that information up so freely because I’ve told no one about the miscarriage besides Ma and my sisters. “We,” I added. “Or maybe not we, maybe I should say I, I wasn’t much help in how we dealt with it.”