Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  I hit the on button. “So, tell me again what your name is, for the record.” I’d seen this done on TV and knew I needed to get her to say her name first.

  If it was fear that glued her to this spot, her green eyes looked like they would have jumped up and ran. She swallowed, bent toward the recorder and said, “My name is Autumn O’Sullivan. Garth Thorne is my ex-ex-ex-fiancé.” She was doing it again, as if repetition would wipe away the association.

  “Why do you think Garth would hurt you?”

  Behind the heavy mascara, the green eyes sparkled like water in a glade. “Because I know he kilt his li’l ol’ aunty. I wasn’t part of that,” she added quickly. “I’m not even supposed to be here. I followed him. Drove all the way from Oklahoma in a busted old Chevy I got after he kicked me out. I been shadowing him, ever since. I figured he really came out here ‘cause he got hisself another girlfriend. When I saw you coming out of his motor home, I thought…” She dimpled and flashed her pearly whites. “Well, you know, but you’re not his type. So I can trust you, right?”

  I started to say something about Garth and his eclectic tastes in women, but realized she was probably referring to my advanced age. “Fine, fine,” I said, “but you said he killed his aunt. Did you see him do it?”

  She tsked and shook the curls vehemently to indicate I was slowing her down. “He told me he was coming out to see her. Not that I believed him for a minute. I just didn’t know he was going to kill her!”

  I tried again. “Did you actually see him do this, or did he tell you he killed his aunt?”

  Her green eyes went from kitten to catty slits. “He don’t know I’m here yet, but he’s going to find out soon enough.”

  Autumn’s revenge on her former fiancé might not happen if she wasn’t a credible witness. I tried another angle. “Was it for the money?”

  “Money?” She blinked, then tilted her head at me, the green in her eyes going sharp with interest. “He never said nothin’ ‘bout no money.”

  “Never mind,” I said quickly, sorry I had thrown her off her stride. “The police thought perhaps her murder was a botched burglary.”

  “Oh. Well, he did it, not some burglar. I saw him,” she huffed. “It was getting dark, and I’d followed him out to this old farm house, hopin’ I’d catch him with the hussy he’d dumped me for. I parked down the road and crept up to the house, looking in the window to see who he’s fooling around with. I had to dive back into the bushes when I heard the door opening, and I got to tell you, I got the surprise of my life when I seen him carrying this old lady out of the house.”

  Here was confirmation of Autumn’s fingerprints that Caleb found on Patience’s windowsill. “How did you know it was an old lady? Maybe it was groceries. It was dark wasn’t it?”

  “Are you kidding? Sacks of potatoes don’t wear Nikes over their knee-high support hose.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “So he’s carrying this old lady over his shoulder, an’ he opens the door to the motor home and dumps her right in. She had to be out cold. Or dead. Then he just drives off.”

  “Did you follow him?”

  “Not me! I knew he was up to his ass in alligators. I waited a bit and then went to look inside the house. I was curious, you know? I was raised in one just like it as a kid. Nothing I ever intend to live in again, I can tell you.”

  Of course that didn’t explain how Patience ended up in the driver’s seat of my car, six feet under the water. I gulped down the bile threatening to ruin my interview. “Then what did you do?”

  “So he’s already done kilt her, and I seen him carting this ol’ lady off in his RV, right? An’ I’m thinking, now what do I do? What could I do? He was up to no good, I knew that, so what could I do? Anyways, I sat and thought, what could I do?”

  She was overplaying the scene. I would let Caleb deal with her bad acting. “Let’s move on, shall we? Then what?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. I left. I was meaning to call the police from the motel, but I don’t have a cell phone, you know. He took that too when he kicked me out. I had to use that dirty phone in the booth to call you. Where was I? Oh yeah. So I leave, then think better of it and come back to her house. How could I just lay there and sleep, knowin’ he’s a criminal and all?”

  There were big fat holes in her story, but if I wanted to call Caleb anytime soon, I would need to wrap this up. I did little winding motions with my wrist indicating to her that she should get on with it.

  She nodded, making an O of her lips to indicate she got it, and said, “I got there, his motor home was parked in the driveway and the lights were out. I couldn’t figure it. Had he gone back to clean up his fingerprints? What had he done with her body?” She slapped her hand on the table. “I’ll tell you, honey, I was stumped! That’s when I remembered he still had a warrant for back child support. So I called the police—least they would do is pick him up, ask him what happened at his aunt’s house. But nothin’ happened! And now he’s out, and he’s fixin’ to find out who tattled on him.”

  Autumn may not be the brightest bulb in the room, but it was certain her agenda had everything to do with the stolen loot that Garth was keeping from her. Gone and come back, my eye. Caleb’s idea of Garth and Autumn as cold-blooded killers was beginning to make sense. This was a double-cross. With Garth in jail, she could safely grab the loot and trip the light fantastic. “Autumn, do you have a little Black Hills gold-leaf pendant?”

  In a reflexive gesture, her hand fluttered to the pale unadorned breast. “I never took it off, all the time we were together. But he must’ve taken that too.”

  First her prints, and now the pendant. While I was leaning toward revenge and greed as her motives, the tears began to fill her green eyes and the lower lip quivered.

  Hoping to avoid a stampede by the entire male population in the place, I quickly handed her a tissue and made sympathetic clucking sounds. “Autumn, sweetie, don’t cry. You’ve got to tell the police what you know. And then they can arrest him. In the meantime, I can hide you.”

  “Hide?” She sniffed and blew again. “I got a contract to do hair commercials in L.A. I could be a movie star in less than a year, if’n I can just git there. Can’t you do it—tell ‘em what I said and they kin arrest him? Look, I even changed my name to move there. Sandy sounded too much like a kid. But I’m never going to get that contract if this Garth thing holds me up another day.” She waved the pink-tipped nails dismissively at my recorder. “You take that li’l ol’ recording to the cops. You tell ‘em what he did. You said you would help me,” she whined. The tears had miraculously dried up.

  Damn, my accessory to murder was starting to slip through my fingers. She would crack, I was sure of it, if only I could get her to talk to Caleb.

  I reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I promised to help you, Autumn, and I will. But you gotta trust me. If what you say is true, sooner or later the police are going to come looking for you, here or in L.A. You might as well do it now. Show the police what a good citizen you are,” I said, with a wave of my hand. “Come on, Autumn, let me call my sheriff friend. He’ll help you clear your name, so you can get on with your life.”

  She bit around the side of a thumbnail and swung the foot a little faster. “I guess I could do that. Okay, you kin call him.”

  I fished around in my bag for my cell phone, but remembered I’d left it plugged into the cigarette lighter. I didn’t want her out of my sight, so I said, “Come with me out to my truck, I’ll phone from there.”

  “I gotta go to the bathroom. I get the squirts when I get nervous,” she said and bolted for the ladies’ room.

  Figuring she would be safe for at least three minutes, I headed for my car and the phone.

  I punched in Caleb’s private cell number and he answered in one ring. I breathlessly told him I was holding onto a very nervous Autumn O’Sullivan, who just might be an accessory to Patience’s murder. It was with a great deal of self-satisfaction that I
heard the quick intake of breath as he quickly surmised it would be in his best interest to get here. And fast.

  I could hardly wait till he got here and then at last, to hear him say my three favorite words—you were right!

  ~*~

  The waitress pointed out the ladies’ room to me. Pushing open the door, I called her name.

  No answer, no toilets flushing and no white heels lined up under a stall.

  Why did I think I could hold her? I hadn’t been but a minute. Damn, and double damn. There went my credibility. Nothing like a little humility to bring things into perspective.

  I hurried out the back door to where the usual assortment of pickups and SUVs were parked. There was only one sedan in the entire lot, and it wasn’t a busted up old Chevy. It was a Ford Tempo, automatic, the upholstery jam free, and it was all white. The door was unlocked, so I got in and read the plastic ID tag dangling from the key ring in the ignition. Here was the last good car “rented by a redhead” at the rental agency in town. Now I could see it: Autumn in a white wig tailing me from the library to the judge’s house. She said she was an actress, or at least, going to Hollywood to become one, wasn’t she? She also could’ve been the one who tried to run me off the road.

  I punched in Caleb’s number from inside Autumn’s rental, while sticking my other hand into the glove compartment, looking for clues to where she might have disappeared.

  “Caleb? Oh, good, you’re still there. Um, about Autumn?”

  He listened without comment and took the license plate number in case she or someone came back for the car.

  “Um, and maybe,” I said meekly, “have someone start calling the local motels and see if she checked into any of them? I’ll wait out front for you.”

  I stood out by the curb, feeling foolish that once again I’d let my enthusiasm get ahead of my better sense. She told me she didn’t want to stick around, didn’t she? This was not the kind of girl to think much beyond her own selfish interests. She’d stayed long enough to be sure that she smeared Garth’s reputation and then split for Hollywood. Then I saw it. The motel across the street—she’d run across the street to where she was now tossing her things into a suitcase, thinking about the quickest route to Los Angeles. She probably figured I’d give up and leave. Then she’d come back and retrieve her car, hit Hwy 99, cross over to I-5, and punch it for all it was worth.

  Caleb pulled up. I yanked open the passenger door and pointed across the street. “I think she called me from that phone booth and that she’s in the motel behind it.”

  Caleb parked and we jaywalked into the motel office. The day clerk raised his eyebrows at the sheriff’s uniform, but confirmed that the “fancy redhead” hadn’t left yet. Cautioning us not to break anything, he handed Caleb a key.

  We sprinted up the flight of stairs to room 203, where the draperies had been drawn tight.

  Caleb pulled his revolver and held out a protective arm. I whispered, “Let me do it. She knows me, she’ll let me in.”

  He nodded, and I knocked. “Autumn? It’s Lalla, honey. Can we talk? Open the door, please.”

  When there was no answer to several louder knocks, Caleb shook his head and used the key. He opened the door cautiously, and motioning for me to keep up the banter, looked inside. I got around his shoulders and stopped in my tracks. Nothing about the room was out of place—a double bed, sheets turned back on one side, a woman’s lacy red panties and bra left on a chair. But there was the thick smell of sweat overlaid with something heavy coming from the bathroom. I instantly identified one of the smells from a childhood memory of a gashed hand on a barbed wire fence. Blood.

  Caleb holstered his gun and put a hand on my arm. “Don’t go in there, Lalla. Whatever has been done is not going to be pretty.”

  But I had to see and was irresistibly drawn forward. At the edge of the white tile now dotted with splashes of red, two very small hands, the pink-tipped nails so lively an hour ago, lay folded together in an odd gesture of supplication. I moved closer and let out the breath I was holding. The hands were attached to an even paler, and very dead, Autumn O’Sullivan.

  NINETEEN

  Caleb and I retreated to the downstairs parking lot to wait for the team of investigators. It didn’t take long. We followed what appeared to be half of Modesto’s and Turlock’s police departments and the Stanislaus County Coroner, back to the motel room, where it appeared that they had all tried to crowd into the small bathroom. The smell of blood was soon overlaid with more sweat, stale cigarettes and staler cigars.

  I stood close to the door, where I could watch the crime scene investigators. The coroner pulled on his latex gloves and, addressing a young assistant holding a recorder close to his face, noted the date, time and location, and began a cryptic dictation: “Deceased stabbed high in thorax area.” Lifting up a hand and bending a middle finger, he said, “Rigor mortis has not set in, so death was probably within the last half hour, hour tops.”

  He moved over to squat close to Autumn’s head, and lifting her hair away, pulled out a rag that had lain hidden under the tangled red curls. “Rag is saturated with”—he brought the gray rag to within an inch of his nose and grimaced—”chloroform. God, haven’t seen anybody use this in eons.”

  As he stood up, his knees cracked. “Clothing is intact. No immediate signs of sexual molestation. Les, take a shot from this angle. Danny, hand me that jar, will you?” Then he squatted down again and rested the pink-nailed fingers in one hand, examined each. “One nail is broken. Les, look around for a fake nail, then bag her hands.”

  That was all I could take. I couldn’t watch any more. I knew they were going to examine under her nails for evidence that she fought for her life.

  She had been subdued with chloroform and then stabbed. I told the police everything she said; that because they didn’t put him in jail he’d find a way to silence her. Now it was too late. He’d killed her. He’d followed her here and murdered her. Then why didn’t they turn on their heels and run back to their shiny little cars and go arrest him? What were these people waiting for, a sign from God? Hello—I think we just had one.

  Outside, I sat on the concrete stair steps and watched the flow of traffic moving around me in slow motion. CSI folded up shop, leaving the rest to the coroner’s crew, who unfolded their body bag for the collapsible gurney. Caleb was standing next to me, talking to another police officer, giving yet another version to the story. I pulled on his pant leg and he squatted down next to my perch on the steps.

  “What’s going on here?” I asked. “Why aren’t the police, the sheriff’s department, somebody going there to arrest him?”

  “Garth? There’s a twenty-four-hour watch on his motor home. That little yellow Pinto of his aunt’s hasn’t moved from the trailer park.”

  “Oh. But couldn’t he have…?”

  “Nope. Which leaves us with Eddy. Unless you have another suspect?”

  “Oh, no. Not him again, Caleb. Are you sure Garth is there? I mean did the police actually see him in the motor home? Talk to him personally?”

  “They could see him moving around inside. Somebody’s talking to him now.”

  “I thought she was close to breaking, that’s why I pushed so hard to get her to talk to you. If I had called you in the first place, if you had picked her up, she’d be alive right now and maybe confessing her involvement with Garth.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it, sweetheart. She said no police, right? You did what you thought was right. Too bad she’ll never be able to testify.”

  “I still have her recording.”

  “What recording?”

  I patted the little gizmo on my belt. “That was our agreement. No cops, but I could record our conversation at the pancake house. If what she had to say sounded plausible, I’d take it to the police.”

  “Oh yeah? Is it something you can play back in the car?” He was considering the proximity of a certain police detective.

  “It’s digital,” I whi
spered close to his ear. “It’ll play anywhere, but your car will be out of earshot.”

  He turned me away from the dark gray body bag being hoisted onto the gurney, and we hustled down the stairs to his car.

  The cruiser door shut out all the street sounds, and I pulled the small voice recorder off my belt. Over pots and pans banging in the background, the dead girl’s voice came out of the recorder. I shivered and gritted my teeth. We leaned our heads together, listening to her words.

  When it was finished, I sat back. “You said you got a print at Patience’s house, and she admitted that the pendant was hers, though she didn’t know you found it caught in the car door. So, she must have been trying to double-cross Garth, right?”

  “Play that one part back. Yeah, where she talks about hiding in the bushes.”

  I had to dive back into some bushes when I heard the door opening, and I got to tell you, I got the surprise of my life when I seen him carrying this old lady out of the house.

  “Bushes. Lalla, that’s the one place I didn’t look. Let’s get going.”

  “But you aren’t taking me home, are you? Come on, Caleb, not after I gave you the recording?”

  “Okay, okay. You can come with me. I guess you’ve earned it. Besides, I’ll need your help to look in the bushes.”

  “Arm-wrestling thorny bushes. Sounds great,” I said, buckling up for the ride. “Glad to see you’ve finally come to your senses.”

  He grabbed me by the arm and, shaking me for emphasis, said, “My senses have been trained to expect the worst in people. You, on the other hand, jump blindly into dangerous situations with the worst sort of characters. Your body could be lying with Autumn’s back there. Did you think about that?” His voice was rising with each tug of my arm. “You scare me, Lalla. I honestly don’t know what to do with you. Tie you up? Put you under protective custody till this is all over? Tell me, what am I going to have to do to keep you safe?”