De Groot thought for a moment, as if he wanted to be in charge of the conversation, and resented having Marla wrest control from him. “Can you describe your attacker?”
Marla said tentatively, “Well, there was so little time … but it seemed to me … that it was a man, very strong. Medium height, build. I saw the back of his bald scalp in a flash of lightning, as I was going down….”
“Going down where?”
“At the side of the creek, after he hit me several times, I fell, and I guess I passed out. I came to in the morning, and got a ride back to town.”
De Groot went on: “When you got back to town, did you report this assault?”
“No, I didn’t. Officer, because our phones were dead. Is there something illegal about that?”
De Groot didn’t answer her question. “You don’t have a cellular phone?”
She sighed. “It’s in the Mercedes.”
“Where was Royce when this stranger was clobbering you?”
Marla clutched the paper towel and carefully eased herself back into the chair. “I don’t know. I thought he was there at the campsite, but it was so dark, and I was just trying to fend off this person….”
“How did the fight end?”
Marla faltered. “I told you, it happened so fast, bam, bam, bam, and then I passed out by the creek. That’s how it ended. When I came to, I stumbled out of there and down a path to the paved road. I flagged down a passing car.”
“Your Mercedes was there. Why didn’t you just drive home?”
“Because I couldn’t find my car keys, that’s why! The key ring must have gotten lost during the fight. Anyway, when I woke up, Sunday morning I guess it was, I was dazed and terribly disoriented, and I couldn’t find my keys. When I finally made it out to the road, this nice young family drove me home.”
De Groot said, “Did you happen to get the nice young family’s name?”
Marla huffed. “What was I going to do, write them a thank-you note? No, I didn’t get their name. I wouldn’t have remembered it anyway, the state I was in.”
“Well … how old were they?”
“I don’t know. Young.”
“What did they look like?”
Marla searched her memory, but the painkillers were preventing access. She shook her head. “I truly can’t remember.”
“Do you remember what kind of car this nice young family drove?”
“I was in pain,” Marla said through clamped teeth. “I don’t know what kind of damn car it was. They drove me home, they were going to church.”
“Did they offer to call us?”
Marla sighed. “Oh, yes. But I said I would do it.” She shivered and wiped her face with the paper towel. “Then I got into my house, where the phone did not work.” She looked angrily at De Groot. “I was dizzy. Officer! In pain. Bleeding. I wiped off the blood, showered, and took an indeterminate number of painkillers. When the phone came back on this morning, I tried to call Tony twice. You can check his machine if you want. I wouldn’t even be going to the doctor if Goldy hadn’t shown up this morning.” She grimaced.
Neither policeman said anything for a moment. Then De Groot spoke.
“Before the car ride. Let’s go back to that, shall we? You and Tony,” he prompted, “Saturday night, had been doing … what?”
Marla replied, “We pitched the tent on a mound in case it started to rain, which it did. So we used a camp stove to heat up some food Goldy had made for us. Now that I do remember,” she said with a smile for me. “It was chicken soup and it was terrific. After we ate, we put our trash in the trunk of my car, you know, because of the threat of bears and other wildlife—”
Hersey interrupted with, “What else was in the trunk of your car?”
“What else?” Marla repeated blankly. “Well, let’s see. Tony had a gun—”
“What kind?” De Groot demanded.
Marla’s nose wrinkled. “Oh, I don’t remember. I think it was a pistol. Anyway, it wasn’t loaded, but he said you had to bring it because of wildlife. Mountain lions or whatever. What else … Tony and I put our backpacks in there, clothes and whatnot—”
“Two backpacks?”
“I think so, two or three. It was raining hard, and we brought the lantern inside the tent. We closed the flaps and zipped them up. Then we shared some wine, and eventually we decided to … go to sleep.” She gave a small, embarrassed chuckle. “Anyway, we’d been asleep for a while, or at least I had, when something attacked us.” A confused expression shadowed her face. “At least, I think whoever it was attacked both of us.”
De Groot leaned forward intently. “And where was Royce? During this attack?” He still sounded skeptical that any attack had taken place.
“That’s what I can’t tell you. I couldn’t see anything. I kept calling out for him, but he never said a word. And then I thought, it’s Albert, he’s come back and … he wants something … or … he’s angry with me, because we had that argument at the party, and now all the investors are suspicious….”
“Albert Lipscomb,” echoed De Groot, making a note. “That’s who you thought was attacking you even before you saw his bald head when there was a flash of lightning. Lipscomb had come back to assault you and Tony Royce, only you don’t have a clue where Royce was at the time.”
“Well, I … no. Officers,” Marla pleaded. “I really want to see my doctor.”
“What time was this assault?” interjected Hersey.
Marla was startled, which was probably the effect Hersey desired. “I don’t know. I took my watch off Tony said you shouldn’t keep track of time when you’re camping.”
Both detectives fastened their eyes on her wrist, where a gold watch twinkled between the cuts and bruises. “This is one I put on when I got home,” she said with a defensive shake of her head. But even to me, it seemed the damage had been done. Was she lying or was she merely confused? Was there something she was concealing? “Anyway, I’d guess it was about two o’clock in the morning. Maybe later. Say four. It was dark, and the storm was unbelievable.”
Hersey said, “And before the attack, before the camping trip, you’d say Royce was your boyfriend?”
She exhaled painfully. “Something like that.”
Hersey persisted. “And how long had you known Royce before this little camping trip you took together?”
Marla slumped wearily. “I’ve been seeing Tony for about fifteen months. Give or take.”
De Groot made another note on his pad. “Could you be a little more specific, Ms. Korman?”
“Well, I’d have to look it up in my calendar.”
“You keep a calendar?” asked Hersey. “Like a diary?”
Marla nodded. “More or less. Upcoming events, stuff like that.”
“Could we see this calendar?”
No, no, no, I screamed mentally. But Marla had already hauled herself up obediently and shuffled over to the shelf Why was she being so compliant? It had to be the painkiller. I was dying to tell her that one rule applies equally to a criminal investigation and an IRS audit: Never volunteer anything. Marla frowned as she pulled first one thick notebook, then another off the shelf “Okay, here we go, March, year before last. Let’s see, shopping, shopping, lunch, okay … here it is. Asti Spumanti and dessert at Eileen’s house.” My heart sank as she passed the notebook over to De Groot. “That’s when I met Tony. At Eileen’s house. He spent an hour trying to convince me to buy shares of Intel. I should have, as it turned out.”
In an offhand tone, De Groot said, “And this year’s? With the date of the camping trip?”
Marla groped along the shelf She ignored my glare, brought out another fat notebook, and leafed through. “Oh, brother.” Her voice sounded extremely tired. “Okay, here it is. Monday, June fourteen, that’s today, that’s almost exactly fifteen months, isn’t it? What, are you checking my math?”
De Groot stared at the calendar, then made a note. His mouth twitched. He tapped the calendar. “Hmm. G
oing to Europe this week? You? Alone?”
“I’m going with a group, if I can ever get down to the hospital and have these cuts and bruises taken care of.”
De Groot looked longingly in the direction of the coffeepot, then flashed a glance at me. I didn’t budge. I wasn’t about to indulge him.
“So, you have no idea where Tony Royce is now?” he asked Marla with surprising mildness.
“No, I don’t,” Marla replied. “I’ve been hoping he was going to call me, now that we have the phones back.” I ached to warn her again to stop talking. Marla didn’t know as much about interrogation as I did; that was why she wasn’t challenging them. It was also why these two dolts were asking so many questions and getting away with it.
There was an awkward silence. Hersey broke it. “Ms. Korman, are you aware that Tony Royce is missing?”
She sighed. “No.”
“And were you getting along with Tony Royce?”
“Yes, of course I was getting along with him,” Marla snapped.
Hersey said, “Did you have a fight with him that night at the tent? Was it Royce who hit you?”
“I don’t know!” cried Marla, furious. “I don’t know who it was! I thought it was Albert Lipscomb! I told you that, except that it was all incredibly fast and … violent.”
“Were you and Tony and Albert in on a scam with that mine? What went wrong? You and Tony had a falling out, Tony went off with Albert?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Beneath the bruises, Marla had gone pale.
“Did you find a weapon to use against your attacker?” Hersey persisted.
Marla sighed. “No. Although I wanted to get the gun out of the car—”
“Had Royce brought any other weapons?” interrupted Hersey.
Marla made a face and closed her eyes, “His fishing knife,” she said softly.
“Did you use the fishing knife as a weapon? Tony’s fishing knife, that is,” asked De Groot in that same mild voice.
“No,” said Marla acidly, “Of course not,”
“Did you stab Royce?” His eyes bored maliciously into Marla’s, “Did you shove him into the creek after you stabbed him?”
“No, no, no!” cried Marla, indignant and trembling. “Of course not.”
“Okey-doke.” Hersey shot a look at his partner that I didn’t like. “We were just wondering.”
De Groot pulled out a sheet from the bowels of his notebook, then smiled unpleasantly. “We were also pondering the fact that we have to answer to our boss, Ms. Korman. We know you want to get going to the doctor, and we need to get going, too. This is just a consent-to-search form, so we can look around your house. If you wouldn’t mind signing it?”
I could no longer contain myself. “Don’t do it, Marla!”
But to my dismay, Marla scanned the sheet, took the pen De Groot slipped her, and scrawled her signature. “Don’t worry, Goldy, they’re not going to find Tony. He’s not here.”
“It’s a fishing expedition,” I raged. “What is going on here? You know damn well that you can’t be ransacking her house for anything that just might catch your eye!”
But De Groot plucked the consent form from Marla’s hand and smirked as they sauntered out of the kitchen. Marla’s defeated expression made my heart sink. “Just let them go, Goldy,” she murmured. “They’re not going to find a thing. They’re certainly not going to find Tony. I swear to you, I honestly don’t know where the hell he could be, and believe me, it’s a question I’ve been asking myself ever since Saturday night.”
I shook my head. The way Marla was handling these cops’ treatment of her was scary, especially when I suspected they were carrying out some unknown agenda dictated by Captain Shockley. Her carelessness was mind-boggling. “You’re going to need a lawyer, as soon as possible,” I hissed. “You didn’t even think of Tony’s prescription up on your table!”
“That’s nothing. What I need is a doctor and a stronger painkiller. I’ve heard Vicodin is pretty good … shh, here, they come.”
De Groot and Hersey slammed back into the kitchen. It wasn’t difficult to see both were extremely unhappy.
“No skeletons in my closet,” Marla toodled, and I repressed the urge to smirk at De Groot. He ignored me and pulled on the door of the closet, where he spent a few minutes groping about noisily. Then he opened the upper cabinets while Hersey peered in the bottom ones. Finally De Groot creaked open the door of the bathroom between the kitchen and the dark hall. He flipped on the light and peered inside. With a whoop of triumph, he emerged holding a piece of jewelry.
“What’s this?” he crowed.
“It’s Tony’s watch,” Marla said dryly. “He forgets it here all the time.”
De Groot examined the golden Rolex. “He usually leaves a twenty-thousand-dollar wristwatch in your bathroom cabinet?” he said scathingly.
Marla shrugged. “I think they’re up to about twenty thousand five hundred, if you want to know the truth. He has his own closet here, too. So what?”
De Groot was staring at me, maybe because in surprise I’d inadvertently opened my mouth. “But your friend Goldy doesn’t really believe Tony Royce would leave his valuable watch in his girlfriend’s bathroom, now does she?”
Marla gaped at me.
Unwisely, I said, “If I knew anything about that watch. Deputy, I wouldn’t tell you. And why aren’t you wearing plastic gloves? Haven’t you ever heard of tainting evidence?”
De Groot’s face set in that familiar, enraging smirk. “Now that’s what I call cooperating with law enforcement. We heard about this watch from our captain. He asked if we’d found the Rolex at the campsite, because it was Royce’s most prized possession, and he never, ever was without it.”
“Bull-shit!” Marla screeched. Her swings from passive behavior to rage were making me dizzy.
De Groot yelled right back at her, “Hey! Why don’t you tell me the truth?”
“I have told you the truth!”
“Then you want to tell me what piece of clothing with whose blood all over it is in the trunk of your Mercedes?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Marla Korman,” said De Groot, “you are under arrest for the murder of Anthony Royce.”
Chapter 13
“No, no!” cried Marla. She rushed toward me and I clasped her tight.
“You are arresting her!” I protested. “Do you have Royce’s body? What grounds can you possibly—”
Hersey shoved me toward the counter. I gasped and whirled back around. De Groot had seized Marla. Hersey reached a burly hand into the back pocket of his pants and pulled out handcuffs. Marla cried out in protest.
I leapt toward my friend. The cops were too fast. Hersey pushed my shoulder and I fell to the floor. De Groot pinned both of my friend’s arms behind her back and clicked the cuffs into place. Marla cried out in pain, then fell silent.
“Mrs. Schulz.” Hersey’s little eyes were scornful as he stared down at me. I rubbed my shoulder and gave him a hateful look. “Get out of our way and keep your mouth shut. Otherwise we’ll have to arrest you, too.”
“But you can’t, you just can’t do this—”
“You are hurting me!” Marla yelled. She struggled against the cuffs for a minute, then added fiercely, “Officer, you are going to be so unhappy when my attorney gets through with you, you cannot even imagine—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said De Groot, “the woman with the violent threats. We’ve heard all about you.”
“Goldy!” Marla sobbed. “Help me! I need the pills in my purse! I need—” Hersey and De Groot pushed her toward the door.
“I’m following you,” I called out. I scrambled to my feet and grabbed Marla’s purse from the counter. “I’ll be right behind you in my van! We’re going to get this straightened out!”
“Goldy! Don’t let them do this!” Marla’s voice cried again. “Help me!”
“I will!” I called back as they tucked her into the
sheriff’s department sedan.
But I wasn’t sure she heard me. My anxiety grew as the sedan pulled away into the fog. How in the world could they charge Marla with murder? Why wouldn’t they tell me whether they’d found Tony Royce’s corpse out there by the Grizzly Creek campsite? What words had Marla uttered that justified the homicide charge? Could they arrest her just because there was bloody clothing in her car trunk? And why hadn’t Tom called to warn me about all this?
As I gunned the van down I-70 in the direction of the sheriff’s department, I grew increasingly certain of one thing: Shockley was behind all this. Shockley the big investor, Shockley the paranoid cop, Shockley who knew all about Tony’s gold watch and who had wanted to know where Marla had gotten the money for her expensive car. I braked abruptly as the van hit a patch of thick mist. Keeping Tom ignorant of a homicide investigation that implicated his wife’s closest friend would probably give the boss-guy a keen sense of satisfaction. I’d bet anything that was why the captain had sent his two Rottweilers to interrogate Marla.
The fog thinned slightly as I drew up to the jail’s garage entrance. The new ten-story building towered above the parking lot. There was enough visibility to make out a department car disappearing through the closing automatic door. I cursed silently and drew the van up to the video camera. The lens was trained on drivers wanting to go through the police entrance to the garage.
Static issued from the speaker under the lens. “State your business,” a no-nonsense male voice demanded. Or at least I think that’s what it said.
I exhaled in frustration. They’d never let me in now. I said, “Never mind. I’ll just use the public entrance.”
I don’t know what I was expecting when I pushed through the entrance door to the jail. Despite my occasional involvement with investigating crime, I had never been to the place. Surprisingly, the reception area was similar to what one would expect in a small hotel, although more austere. Three pairs of plain beige couches were precisely placed on a spotless beige carpet. A free-form counter protruded from one of the beige walls like a concrete water lily. Breaking up the walls were vast expanses of wavy glass bricks held together with inch-thick white mortar. The thick glass was undoubtedly designed to allow sunlight to penetrate the lobby in a way that the eye—and bullets from avenging relatives, I imagined—could not. I hugged Marla’s purse to my chest and pressed forward.
The Main Corpse Page 18