Sleuthing Women II

by Lois Winston

I sat down beside her. I could imagine how scared she must be, but there wasn’t much I could offer in way of comfort. “Nora suggested we sit down and talk it out. The decision is yours, however.”

  “I know what she thinks. She wants me to take the plea.”

  “It’s worth considering, but we’d have to find out what the offer entails first.”

  Ariel put her hands to her face and shook her head. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Do you want to talk it over with Nora? Or would you rather just talk to me?”

  Ariel rose from the couch reluctantly. “Let’s go. I might as well get this over with.”

  Nora and Peter were seated at kitchen table drinking wine. Nora jumped up. “Kali, can I get you anything? Maybe a glass of wine?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Ariel, more apple juice?”

  She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

  Nora was treating our impending discussion more like a social event than the serious matter it was. But I reminded myself that she was undoubtedly uneasy and nervous, too.

  Nora reached for Ariel’s hand. “I know this is hard, but we want what’s best for you.” She turned to me. “Kali, why don’t you fill us in so we’re all on the same page?”

  I glanced at Ariel, who nodded.

  “A warrant has been issued for Ariel’s arrest,” I said. “She needs to turn herself in by ten o’clock tomorrow morning. It’s a goodwill gesture to do it that way rather than have her picked up, handcuffed, and thrown into back of police cruiser.”

  “Yippee,” Ariel said sarcastically. “How thoughtful of them.”

  It was the first sign of spunk I’d seen from her recently and I found it refreshing. “I suspect they might also think it will soften you and make it more likely to accept a plea bargain.”

  Nora leaned forward. “Which would mean a lighter sentence, right?”

  “They haven’t made a formal offer yet. But in all likelihood there’ll be some sweetener for Arial in the offer, usually in the form of a reduced charge.”

  “But I didn’t I didn’t kill Warren,” Ariel insisted. She turned to Nora. “He was good to me and I loved him very much.”

  “But a trial is a gamble,” Nora said. She looked at me. “What are the odds, Kali?”

  “We haven’t gone through discovery yet so it’s hard to say. The evidence is all circumstantial, but I have to admit the state can make a good case. Still, if we can sway just one juror, that’s all it will take.”

  Peter had been sipping his wine and listening silently, with furrowed brow. Now he asked, “How many years would she get if she was convicted after a trial? Worst case?”

  I shook my head. “That depends on so many things I can’t even guess.” I turned to Ariel. “The risk is, there’s no guarantee you’ll get out at all. Whatever the sentence, it will be more that a slap on the wrist for sure. A lot more.”

  “Even death?” Peter asked.

  I suspected he was trying to point out the risk of going to trial, but his tone was so solemn, almost funereal, I was afraid it would only add to Ariel’s panic.

  But her eyes had glazed over. I wasn’t sure she was even listening.

  “Probably not,” I said to Peter. “It’s possible, though.”

  I put my hand on Ariel’s arm. “I can poke holes in the state’s case at trial,” I told her. “I can argue that there are other possible suspects the police never looked at. But the outcome is uncertain.”

  “You’re young, Ariel,” Nora said softly. “With a plea deal you might get out while there’s still time to enjoy life. And don’t forget all the media coverage a trial would generate. You’d put yourself through a meat grinder for the off chance a jury might let you go.”

  I wondered if Nora was more worried about how the publicity of a trial would reflect on her than she was about Ariel. “I can explore the offer with the prosecution,” I said. “That way you’ll have —”

  “Stop it!” Ariel yelled, slamming her hands on the table. “I’m not going to admit to something I didn’t do. Can’t you understand that? Any of you?”

  “You’re not thinking this through,” Nora argued. “You heard Kali say the prosecution’s case is strong. The evidence is solid. Plus, they’d point out all you stood to gain by Warren’s death. The jury wouldn’t look at you sympathetically. Isn’t that so, Kali?”

  “Money?” Ariel asked in disgust. “You think that would be enough to make me kill my husband?”

  “The jury might see it that way.” I hated to side with Nora but I wanted to be honest with Ariel. “I imagine you’ll inherit a bit of a fortune.”

  Nora nodded.

  “If that’s what I was after I’d have waited until after the baby was born to kill him.”

  Nora and Peter exchanged a quick, uncomfortable look, and Nora’s expression hardened.

  She leaned into Ariel’s face and raised her voice. “Admit it, damn it. Just admit you killed him.”

  “I said if I was going to—”

  “I know Warren wasn’t the easiest person to be around. But you have to pay for what you did, Ariel. He’s dead. You need to accept responsibility for what you did.”

  Ariel looked stunned. “I didn’t kill him. Why won’t you believe me?”

  “Because I’m on to you, and have been since day one.” She pointed her finger at Ariel’s chest. “You went after Warren for his money. You married him for his money. And you’ve spent it freely, I might add.”

  Peter touched his wife’s arm to calm her.

  Nora brushed Peter away. “You don’t even have any taste. You buy ugly stuff, like those silly satin bed pillows that aren’t Warren’s style at all.”

  “He liked them,” Ariel protested. “I got them last week. On sale I might add, because he wanted to replace the ones we had.”

  Nora stood up, towering over Ariel. “I give up. Have it your way. But you can be damn sure you won’t get my support at trial.” She stomped out of the room.

  Peter shrugged apologetically. “I’m sorry. Nora’s upset.”

  “Nora’s upset? What about me? No one believes me.”

  “I think you should head home,” Peter said soberly.

  “You bet,” Ariel said, pushing back her chair and standing. “I wouldn’t stay if you begged me on bended knees.”

  She grabbed her purse and headed for the door. I did likewise.

  On the way out, I noticed a family message board filled with photos and humorous cartoons. I slowed to look, and was drawn immediately to a photo of Nora and her daughter on the tennis court. With them was another girl and a woman I assumed was the girl’s mother—E.J. Masters.

  So E.J. and Nora were acquainted. Possibly even friends. Had E.J. exploited that friendship to get information?

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Are you okay to drive?” I asked Ariel as we walked to her car. “Maybe I should follow you home.”

  “I’m fine,” she said tersely.

  She didn’t look fine to me but short of grabbing for her car keys, I couldn’t very well stop her. “Let’s talk for a few minutes.”

  “I’m talked out.”

  And fed up, I thought, reading her tone. “I have a couple of questions. I’ll make it quick.”

  She sighed impatiently. “Fine. These may be my last hours of freedom and, no offense, but I’m sick of all this crap.”

  “What did you mean about waiting to kill Warren until after the baby was born?” That was the comment that seemed to set Nora off.

  “I didn’t mean I killed him,” she said indignantly. “Or wanted to. I just meant that if ‘a fortune’ was my motive, I’d have waited.”

  “What difference would the timing have made?” I was thinking maybe it had to do with insurance. Or maybe she wanted to see how Warren felt about the baby once it was here.

  “The family fortune. I won’t get any of it now. Not that I want it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t either,
but I know it’s in a trust. Warren was a beneficiary, and he got an annual allowance, but the money didn’t become his until he had a child. Until then he had no control over where the money would go on his death.”

  “This is a trust his parents set up?”

  “I guess. It might have been his grandparents. Whatever, the family was really big on keeping their wealth in the family. He explained all this to me when we got married but I didn’t pay a lot of attention because I never thought we’d have a family. Even after the baby, there were limits on what Warren could leave me. Our baby would get the rest.”

  “So you get nothing?”

  “Warren had life insurance and some savings. He said I’d be okay if something happened to him. He worried about that because he was so much older than me.”

  “Who does the trust money go to now, since Warren died before the baby was born?”

  “Probably Nora and her kids.”

  I was vaguely familiar with such arrangements from my Wills and Trusts class in law school, but it has all seemed very abstract and arcane to me at the time. A holdover from the great moneyed-class and Robber Baron days.

  “That’s something we can use in your defense,” I pointed out. I wasn’t sure how convincing it would be since Ariel wouldn’t be left destitute. But it was certainly one more arrow in our quiver.

  “Whatever.” Ariel dismissed the point with a toss of her head. “Are you done with all the questions?”

  I nodded. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning. We should probably be on the road by eight-thirty at the latest.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be late for my arrest, now would I?”

  ~*~

  Driving home, I mentally ran through what was ahead for Ariel. She would turn herself in tomorrow morning. She’d be booked and taken to jail. We’d get a bail hearing in a few days. The state would recommend against bail and I’d ask for release on her own recognizance, which the court would deny. If we succeeded in getting bail at all, the amount would be sizeable. If not, she would remain in jail. Eventually, there’d be a probable cause hearing, and then a trial. It was a long, arduous road filled with emotional upheaval and legal pitfalls.

  Back home, I allowed myself to think briefly about my own emotional upheaval. I still hadn’t heard anything from Bryce, and I told myself I wasn’t going to. It was over.

  My future might not look as bleak as Ariel’s but in my gut it certainly felt like it.

  Even Loretta’s enthusiastic greeting did little to lift my spirits.

  I took her for a short walk, filled her food dish and wished that my road to happiness was as simple as hers.

  In no mood to cook, I debated between take-out Chinese and the closer burger place. Burgers won.

  I grabbed my purse and headed for the car, eager to get food and get back home to a glass of wine. As I was backing out of the garage, a thought hit me. Ariel and Warren had a garage. A roomy, two-car garage. She had showed me the door from there into the laundry room when I first toured the house. It was the door they usually used, she’d told me. Not the front door.

  Yet the surveillance video had shown someone entering the house through the front door.

  I reached for my cell phone and called her. There was no answer. I lost all interest in food and went back into the house. I gave her twenty minutes, then called again. Still no answer.

  Dammit, Ariel. Pick up. I told you not to ignore my calls.

  I called once more. And then I remembered what Ariel had said about the decorative bed pillows. She’d only bought them a few days earlier so how could Nora have seen them? It was conceivable that she’d gone by the house in the interim and Warren had dragged her into his bedroom to show her, but that seemed unlikely.

  I grew excited as more pieces fell into place.

  A female figure entering the house through the front door. Did Nora have a key? Quite possibly. Warren might have welcomed the company. She might have joined him in an after-dinner drink, and could easily have slipped drugs into his glass. Maybe even encouraged him to have another. What she wouldn’t have known was that he wasn’t in the habit of putting his glass in the dishwasher. Nor would she have known where he placed the bed pillows at night.

  The pieces all fit. And it was Nora, not Ariel, who benefitted financially from the timing of Warren’s death.

  Just like those pictures that that used to fascinate me as a kid—a drawing that looked like a vase of flowers when you saw it one way, and an old woman if you shifted your focus slightly.

  That quickly the answer to who had killed Warren crystallized in my mind.

  I called Ariel again and left another, more urgent message. “I need to talk to you. Right away. It’s important. Call me.”

  An hour later, I still hadn’t heard from her. I was irritated, but I was also uneasy, even worried. Was she hurt? Had she decided to flee?

  I paced around the house for a few minutes telling myself I was overacting. But I couldn’t let it go. I’d never sleep until I’d checked on her and told her to forget about the plea offer.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Ariel’s house was dark when I approached, but I saw a flicker of light through the front window. I parked and got out of the car. When I neared the door I could make out muffled voices from within.

  As I contemplated my next step, I heard a loud thump coming from inside. A quick staccato of words and hurried footsteps ensued.

  Cautiously, I went to the side window and peered inside. The room was illuminated only by a shaft of light from an open doorway beyond. I was looking into the dining area, I realized. And someone, Ariel I guessed, was sitting in a straight-backed chair off to the side. What was she doing?

  The light grew brighter for a few seconds as the door opened wider and another figure moved into the room. I saw that Ariel wasn’t simply sitting in the chair, she was bound to it. And she was gagged.

  As the new figure came into view I recognized Peter. He held a knife in his hand, and he was approaching Ariel.

  My heart stopped, and then began beating wildly. I crept away from the window and tried to fade into the shadows, where called 911. As I expected, because I was calling from my cell, the call was picked up by CHP dispatch in Vallejo.

  “I’m in Glenwood in Contra Costa County,” I told the woman who answered. I gave her the address. “There’s a man with a knife threatening a woman inside her home. Please notify the local police and tell them to get here right away.”

  “Ma’am, what is your name?”

  As if that mattered. “Kali O’Brien. Please, she’s in imminent danger.”

  “Is this a domestic dispute?”

  “No. It’s either a kidnapping or potential murder. Please send someone now.”

  When the dispatcher continued to press for clarification, I gave up in frustration. “I have to go. Get the police here as fast as possible or a woman may die.”

  I knew help wouldn’t arrive any time soon, no matter what.

  When I returned to my spot by the window, I saw the point of the knife was now pressed into the soft skin at Ariel’s throat.

  I needed to do something. Fast.

  But what?

  My breath was coming so quickly, I thought I might pass out. Should I scream? Run to a neighbor’s? I couldn’t think.

  And then I remembered I’d neglected to return Ariel’s house key to its hiding place in the backyard barbecue. I’d intended to give it to her when we met up at Nora’s, but in the tension of our abrupt departure, I’d forgotten to. Now, I pulled it out, tiptoed to the front door, and as soundlessly as possible, opened it.

  I held my breath and waited, certain the sharp click of the lock hadn’t gone unnoticed. When maybe half a minute had passed with no reaction, I slipped inside and pressed myself against the wall of the darkened hallway, trying to get my bearings and figure out my next move. My heart was beating so quickly and loudly I was afraid it would give me away.

  Then I heard a shuffling sound coming from the
wing of the house where Ariel’s bedroom was located.

  Suddenly, Peter called out. “Are you almost done? Hurry up. We need to go.”

  “Almost there,” Nora called back. “It has to look believable. She wouldn’t leave town without several changes of clothing and some cosmetics. No sign of any cash yet.”

  With the cover of conversation, I snuck further down the hallway so that I had an angled view of Ariel and Peter in the dining room. He was untying the gag.

  “Scream, and you’ll regret it? Understand?”

  I didn’t see her nod but she must have because Peter continued. “We know Warren kept a stash of cash for emergencies. A couple thousand. Where is it?”

  “Gone,” Ariel said. “I spent it.”

  “All of it?” He pressed the point of the knife into her neck. “I’ll draw blood if you don’t tell me.”

  “I am telling you. I swear. I used money for groceries and stuff after Warren died.” She whimpered, and I wondered if Peter had pierced her skin.

  “She says she spent it all,” he called out to Nora. “Just grab some clothes so we can get going.”

  Ariel began crying. “What are you going to do with me?”

  “Good news, kiddo. You’re not turning yourself in tomorrow.” He snickered at his own cleverness, and held the knife to her cheek. “We’ll do it humanely, Ariel. You won’t suffer.”

  “You’re going to kill me?” Her voice was tight with fear and new awareness.

  “You’re going to leave town. Somebody someday might discover your body, but until then people will think you’re on the lam. They’ll be looking for you, but they won’t find you.”

  He cleared his throat and stepped away. “I’m sorry, Ariel. I always liked you. You brightened up dour, old Warren a bit, and that was a blessing.”

  “I don’t understand. What did I ever do wrong?”

  “You got pregnant with Warren’s baby is what you did. Until he married you, we thought we were home free. That Warren was too old to think about having a kid. The family money would all go to Nora.”

  “She’s got her share.”

  “Ah, yes. But life is expensive and I, uh, have had an unusual number of financial setbacks lately.”