Elsa saw me coming and called out from her front door, so I veered toward her.
“It sure took awhile to figure out no one was in the backyard,” she said with a grin.
“Yeah … it did. I have to say, I’m no closer to knowing anything about those girls, other than they are messy housekeepers. Oh, one might be a health food nut while the other binges on pizza and Cokes.”
“I still say—” She stopped, figuring out her insistence wasn’t going to solve anything. “How about some lunch? I can make us a grilled cheese sandwich real quick.”
Well, how could I say no to that? Her sandwiches had got me through a lot of problems much rockier than this. I trailed her into the kitchen.
“What clues do you have so far?” she asked as she sliced Velveeta off a huge block.
“Nothing much,” I admitted. “I followed one girl yesterday while she picked up a friend at one of the UNM dorms. They went shopping, came back here awhile, then went to a party down at the bosque. I stayed long enough to pretty much look over the whole crowd, but the second twin wasn’t there.”
Those sandwiches were smelling wonderful as the buttery surfaces of the bread toasted on the hot griddle.
“Maybe I need to talk to Donna Delaney again, see if I can get a number for the parents.” I was basically thinking out loud, passing time while Elsa scooped the sandwiches onto plates and cut each in half. “Surely, they know where each of their daughters is, and the whole puzzle can be solved.”
“Donna said they didn’t—remember? They told her Zayne has enrolled at State and Clover’s here.”
I felt fairly sure Zayne wasn’t enrolled in school. Spring break had happened a month ago, so I didn’t quite buy her glib answer. However, it didn’t mean she hadn’t moved to Las Cruces. It could be nothing more complicated than her leaving home a few months early and getting a job prior to the fall semester starting in a few months. I kept thinking if I could speak directly with the parents I might get more information. For the moment, though, that sandwich was calling my name.
We finished our lunch and I called Donna. Building upon my skimpy bits of evidence I told her I suspected one or both of the girls had been in Las Cruces recently.
“I’d really like to talk with Rick and Jane if that’s possible,” I said. “Maybe they will have remembered something else since you spoke to them, or maybe I’ll come up with some new questions. Frankly, I’m hitting a lot of dead ends right now.”
“I’m happy to give you the numbers,” she said, “but it may be awhile before you get through. Rick told me their location was changing yesterday and they would be completely out of cell range for the next week. He said something about needing a satellite phone … whatever that is … but I didn’t get the feeling he has one yet.”
I jotted down the information she gave. It would probably not net me anything new, but it wouldn’t hurt to try. She thanked me for sticking with it, expressing worry again over the way the girls’ lives were going. I had the feeling she judged her brother’s parenting on a fairly strict scale, but she didn’t say so.
I was about to dial one of the numbers, not really counting on reaching Jane or Rick, but my phone rang in my hand before I could enter all the digits. Ron.
“Hey, I need you to get over to the Lorrento house and talk to Marcie,” he said. “I’m on my way to the hospital. She whacked Bobby over the head with a skillet and he’s getting treated for a concussion.”
“What?”
“That’s all I know. Marcie called me in a panic. The police apparently went to their house and I don’t have much more than that.”
Great. Just great.
He gave the address in an exclusive area of the North Valley, no more than fifteen minutes away.
“If they arrest her, we’ll have to go bail her out too, I suppose.”
I could not express how very little I wanted to do that.
Chapter 23
I drove north on Rio Grande Boulevard, passed the turnoff where I’d followed Zayne and her friend to the river party, and continued into a pastoral area where the old-time small properties and shacks had been bought up and merged into estates favored by the state’s successful business people. Now, McMansions sat surrounded by ancient cottonwood trees and acres of tended grass. I started watching addresses, fairly certain I knew which was the Lorrento place.
The property had originally been acquired and the ten-thousand-square-foot house built by a real estate developer with a flair for the magnificent and good connections in the media. After he got involved in a condo project in Mexico that went bust, he’d been forced to sell his bucolic retreat and move to the less spacious, but equally prestigious, Tanoan country club neighborhood. There, the houses were big but jammed so close together it was hard to appreciate their grandeur. It would have been hard to give up the quiet and surrounding natural beauty for that, I imagined.
The Lorrentos had come along and bought it for the relatively bargain price of four million, something I knew only because the broker who handled the transaction was a friend of a friend and he couldn’t keep quiet about his brushes with the rich and famous.
I spotted a white rail fence that ran alongside the road for about a half-mile before it curved inward and met with an entrance. High, wrought iron gates blocked the way but a keypad and small speaker mounted on a brick pedestal told me what I had to do. I pressed the intercom button.
“Marcie, it’s Charlie from RJP Investigations. Ron Parker sent me over.”
No words came through the little box but I heard a whirring noise and the gates began to roll back. The paved drive was a good quarter mile long, bordered by thousands of purple and yellow pansies and more of the white rail fencing. Beyond the fence, on my left, stood a trio of thoroughbred horses, their brown coats gleaming in the sunshine. One looked up as my Jeep passed, but the others only continued to nibble at the grass. I briefly wondered if they had any purpose or were merely here to make the rest of the estate look good.
The acres of green and the long driveway served basically as a framework for the house itself, three stories of red brick, white shutters and two-story columns holding up a portico and impressive veranda. Very traditional if you lived in the Midwest—completely dramatic here in the Southwest where everything else was either stucco or adobe.
I spotted Marcie standing at the front door so I followed the circle, which looped to the left, and parked under the portico. Somehow, I was certain my seven-year-old Cherokee was the crummiest vehicle ever to have filled that space.
Marcie waited at the top step until I caught up with her, then she led me into the house. I wondered whether she remembered me from the day she’d come into our office in a tirade. I followed her through the two-story entry hall, a floor expanse covered in black and white marble tile with a round pedestal table in the center that held a bouquet of spring flowers to rival anything found at the White House.
A maid was dusting an elaborately carved console table near the curved staircase. I was trying not to look dazzled by the amount of gold rococo ornamentation and size of the crystal chandelier overhead as Marcie led the way into a sitting room. She strode to a pair of tall windows at the far side of the room, but I held my ground near a white sofa. If she thought her home—impressive to the point of gaudy—or the silent treatment would somehow influence my opinion … well, I couldn’t see the point.
“Ron says Bobby is doing all right,” I said. “If you were wondering.”
When she turned I saw her eyes were red-rimmed and her nose a brilliant pink.
“Oh, god, I can’t believe I did that.” She reached for a tissue box on a gold end table and lowered herself to the edge of a chair.
I followed and sat on the sofa. “What happened?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She dabbed delicately under each eye, but the mascara damage was already done. Her hair most likely had been styled this morning but had gone over to the wild side now. She wore bright purple workout attire a
nd matching Nikes.
“You have no memory of the events?”
“Well, not that. I remember. I got up early and did my workout in the gym on the third floor, then went to the kitchen to make a smoothie. Bobby was in there, staring into the fridge like he’ll do sometimes for, like, an hour. He said something, got that sweet tone in his voice and I almost hugged him. Then I realize he’s on his phone and he says, ‘I’ll see you soon, Darla.’ Darla’s my best friend!” Her voice broke and she trailed off into sobs.
Ouch.
“Yeah.” She sniffed. “I slammed the fridge door on his hand and asked how long he’d been fooling around with her. ‘Awhile,’ he says, and I just got so angry. They say sometimes you see red—well, I did. I grabbed the nearest thing, which was a cast-iron skillet our chef had left on the stovetop, and I swung. Oh, god, I really didn’t mean to hurt him.”
“Really? Because if that was my husband, I would have meant to kill him.”
She gave a little smile and a tiny hiccup escaped.
“Ron said the police came?”
“The maid came running in when Bobby fell, and there was blood and everything. She asked what should she do and I didn’t know, so I guess she called 911. An ambulance took him away. I mean, he was conscious, moaning and cussing and all, but he said he didn’t want to press charges so the police went away.”
I wondered if the football player would change his mind once he was thinking more clearly.
“I don’t know what’s gone so wrong with us, Charlie. Bobby and I used to be the best couple. We’ve known each other since college in Texas. He was so sweet to me. I mean, he was a football star there, too, and all the girls were interested in him. But he just let that roll off. We were an item and stayed together through graduation. He got drafted by his favorite team and we moved, and married life was wonderful. He started bringing in big money and I had so much fun setting up our first house.”
“That was in California?”
“Yeah. He was my first real boyfriend. I’d dated a little in high school but I saved my virginity for the right man. Bobby was the one. We moved a couple of times when he changed teams, then there was the injury and he decided to retire. Actually, we made the decision together and we picked Albuquerque because it’s a nice city and we could get out of the pro-ball limelight. It seemed like a good way for us to start over, live in the country, start a family …”
“But there’s still some bad stuff going on, obviously.”
Marcie nodded and sniffled again.
“His cheating is bad—I’m not minimizing that,” I said. “But why the retaliation? Why sell his prized rings?”
“We seem to be in a vicious circle, Bobby and me.” She slumped back into the chair and stared into the space between us. “He wasn’t the only one. We got into this social whirl. There were parties, lots of flirting, other guys made moves toward me and I dallied a couple times too. I guess they gave me the kind of flattery Bobby was dishing out to his other women. It didn’t seem so wrong. It was a tit-for-tat kind of thing.”
“If he was going to hurt you, you’d hurt him right back.”
“Yeah, I guess. It’s just the other women were strangers to me. It hurt, of course, but not like it did when I heard Darla’s name.”
“You hired our company to find out if he was cheating, but it sounds like you already knew he was.”
A long sigh. “I knew this time was different. He was happier than I’d seen him in a long time. I was worried he’d found someone he would leave me for.”
“You knew it was Darla, even before this morning, didn’t you?” I shifted on the sofa and faced her directly, forcing her to make eye contact. “Isn’t that why you sold his Super Bowl rings? Before—the other affairs—they were little hurts. But this was a big hurt and you wanted to hurt him back in a big way. Retaliation never works to make someone love you.”
She looked toward the fireplace and her eyes welled up. “I know.”
“So? Where will it go from here?”
She turned back toward me. “No, I meant I know who has the ring.”
A wave of frustration washed over me. Couldn’t she have said this from the start? I stood up, nearly upending another big flower arrangement, and paced to the fireplace. When I faced her, it was all I could do to put a gentle look on my face.
“Marcie, what do you want out of this whole deal—save your marriage, get out, stick with Bobby no matter what … move on? You’re sending such mixed signals here, I don’t know what you want from us.”
She slumped deeper into the chair, staring at the expensive carpet with a zombie-like fixation.
“Okay then,” I said, moving toward the door. “You figure it out and when you get your act together, I hope it all works out for you.”
Seeing that I was ready and willing to walk out brought her back to life. “Wait. Um, I’m not really sure how it’s all going to work out … but I need to find the ring for Bobby. It’s the right thing to do.”
Well, that was a refreshing attitude, anyway.
“You said you know who has it. Call him and say you need it back.”
“It’s not quite that simple.” She was twisting the gigantic diamond ring on her finger.
I walked back to the sofa where I’d been and sat down again. “Tell me all about it. And this time it had better be the whole truth.”
Chapter 24
I called Ron when I got outside to my Jeep and he informed me he’d left Bobby Lorrento in the care of the ER staff at the hospital, where Bobby was to stay overnight for observation. We had a short discussion about whether Bobby should go home once he was released. I felt Marcie was remorseful about the skillet incident, but there was no telling what Bobby might do when he saw her again.
“Does he have somewhere else he can go until things cool down?” I asked.
Ron said he would check, but he’d told me he was already back at the office and I got a feeling he didn’t want to go dashing back to the hospital for another talk with the client.
I drove down the Lorrento’s long driveway, waving goodbye to the horses as I passed. By the time I arrived at the RJP offices, the sun was low in the sky and I really only wanted to be home, but this day wasn’t over yet. I heard Ron on the phone when I climbed the stairs. I dropped my purse at my desk and tidied a few things I’d left undone earlier before he came across the hall to me.
“Okay, it’s set that Bobby Lorrento can come home with me tomorrow,” he said.
“Wow. That’s a generous offer.”
“I just talked to Vic and she’s fine with him being there a day or two—no more, she said. We have the boys this week and they’ll be thrilled. She says if we put Bobby on the basement pull-out sofa he won’t be inclined to stay very long.”
“Marcie’s feeling badly about what she did. I don’t think she’d give him any grief about coming home, but who knows what he might do. Those two are a pair, I’ll tell you.”
“So what’s the big story you promised me?”
“I know who has the missing Super Bowl ring.”
His jaw dropped. “And you found this out, how?”
“Marcie told me.”
“You’re right, it is a story.” He moved over to the small sofa near the bay window. “Tell me.”
“His name is Jay Livingston. Marcie met him at a charity fundraiser in Dallas where football was the theme and memorabilia was big among the auction items. Livingston was admiring Bobby’s newly won Super Bowl ring from the previous season, but he was also admiring Marcie. Bobby wasn’t willing to donate the ring to charity. Marcie, it turned out, had her head turned a bit more easily. Livingston went on an all-out campaign to get close to her—well, that’s how it sounded to me. She told me about the charming little gifts he began sending, and apparently he also started showing up at any event where he heard Lorrento would make an appearance. Eventually, drinks at the bar became clandestine little meetings and she confided her marriage wasn’t happy. Wel
l, you know what a guy will do with that information.”
“I didn’t find any matching Livingstons in this area,” he said, apparently oblivious to most of what I’d said.
“Apparently, he travels the country for these events.”
“So, where does he live?”
“Marcie actually doesn’t know. They would meet up and spend an afternoon in a hotel—New York, St. Louis, Miami …”
He gave me a look.
“I got a phone number. It’s how she contacted Livingston to let him know when she’d be traveling. I was just about to look up the area code and find out where it is.” I held up the scrap of paper I’d written it on.
“So, Marcie planned all along to sell the rings and tell Livingston where to go buy them?”
“Essentially, but maybe ‘plan’ isn’t the word. She said it was after one especially bitter fight with Bobby that she took the rings. Later, she was feeling a little guilty about it and when Jay Livingston called she told him what she’d done. He acted like he sympathized but, unbeknownst to her, he went to the shop she’d named and bought the one ring. She wondered why he quizzed her about the store, but didn’t think much about it.”
“I wonder why he didn’t get all three?” Ron said.
I shrugged. “Maybe even a rich guy has his limitations when you’re talking in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“I did a little research, and there are a lot of factors that go into the values of these things—who the player or team member was, his role in the game, etcetera. Every team member, the coaches and the staff get rings, you know.”
I didn’t know that, had never actually cared before now.
“The pawnshop owner told me the one he sold was the most desirable of the three because Bobby threw the winning pass in that game.”
“So, maybe Livingston had a ready buyer for it, himself—someone ready to give him a tidy profit?”
“It’s anyone’s guess. Let me track that phone number and we’ll see what happens next.”
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