“So you thought you would go out and confront Parker Stanton on your own?” he said.
“How did you––?”
“Know?”
I nodded.
“Your boy wants to press charges. Says you assaulted him in his home and broke three of his fingers.”
I tried my hardest not to crack a smile.
“Well?” he said.
“What?”
“Did you break his fingers?”
“Not all of them.”
He shook his head.
“Ah hell, Sloane,” he said.
“Did he tell you he had me pinned up against the wall? My guess is that he left that part out. That complete waste of human life abuses women. I caught him in the act the other night, and it would come as no surprise to find out he’s the reason I’m in this place.”
He rubbed his forehead which he did whenever he needed to decide what to do with me, like something could be done.
“Well,” I said, “do you want to work with me on this or not?”
“You got a name?” he said.
I promised Daniela anonymity and I wanted to keep that promise unless it was the only trump card I had left. I shook my head.
“Come see me when you feel better,” he said.
He got up and walked toward the door.
“And Sloane,” he said, “don’t do anything stupid.”
CHAPTER 27
I woke to the sound of food sizzling in the kitchen. From the smell I deduced it was of the swine variety. Lord Berkeley relaxed in his favorite position next to me––sprawled out on his backside with his paws in the air like a dog’s version of sun salutations.
“You’re awake,” Nick said. “How’s the head?”
“I’ll survive.”
He handed me a plate with enough food on it to feed a small country.
“Wow,” I said.
“I figured you might be hungry.”
“What time is it?” I said.
“Half past one.”
“In the afternoon?”
He nodded.
“Tuesday?” I said.
“Wednesday.”
“Wednesday! I can’t believe I slept that long. The chief is going to––”
“Be just fine,” Nick said. “He already called to check in and said not to rush you. He will see you when you feel up to it.”
I set the plate down and attempted to stand, but my legs had something else in mind. Damn drugs.
“I’m fine; I need to talk to him today,” I said.
“Whoa, hang on.”
Nick took hold of me and helped me back to bed.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“Oh, come on, I just need a minute and I’ll be fine,” I said.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “Now eat your food.”
“You can be so stubborn sometimes.”
He laughed and pointed his fork at me and said, “I’m not half as stubborn as you.”
I could tell by the impassioned stare down he gave me that unless he left, my day would be spent in solitary. I clutched my plate and at the same time Lord Berkeley conducted a taste test on my side of bacon.
“Boo, no!” I said.
He ducked his head under the covers.
“I have information the chief should hear,” I said.
“You need rest and Sheppard understands that.”
“Parker is dangerous. I’m worried about the other women. There’s no telling what he might do.”
“If he has any sense at all, he’ll lay low awhile.”
“You don’t know that. What if he hits someone else? What if he goes after Audrey? What if he disappears and we can’t find him? What if––”
“Okay, okay.”
He let out an exasperated sigh and I could tell he might relent. I waited for it.
“Tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “I’ll call the chief and see if he can come over.”
“Here?”
“Take it or leave it. You’re in no condition to go out. I don’t care how tenacious you think you are, today you’re confined to this bed.”
Nick didn’t bother to wait for my answer before he left the room and called the chief. Lord Berkeley remained halfway beneath the covers with his bottom up in the air and his tail wagging.
“It’s okay Boo,” I said. “I’m not mad, you can come out.”
He poked his head out but averted eye contact with me. I patted him on the head and he nuzzled up against my leg. He made his peace and returned to business as usual. If only life was that simple for everyone.
My cell phone rang. It was Vicki.
“I heard what happened,” she said. “Sloane, are you alright?”
I didn’t realize we were on a first name basis.
“I’m fine.”
“I guess one of your friends found you,” she said. “Talk about good timing. Is what Audrey said true––someone murdered Charlotte? It’s hard to believe, I can’t comprehend who would do such a thing.”
“It looks that way.”
“Do you suspect Parker?” she said. “Because Audrey is certain he did it.”
“It’s hard to say for sure.”
There was an awkward pause that was just long enough for her to gear up for another round of questions. I couldn’t allow that to happen.
“Thanks for calling, but I need to go.”
“Oh, right,” she said. “I bet you’re still recuperating. Listen, I don’t want to keep you. The reason I called is Audrey mentioned you still wanted to track down Charlotte’s assistant, Bridget.”
“No one can find her.”
“She showed up here today,” she said. “I thought she left town, but then I walked into the office and––”
“She’s back at work?”
“Well no, not exactly. She just came in to get some personal items she left behind.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“I wasn’t able to before she hurried out of here. One of the other gals in the office said she got a job somewhere else.”
“How do I contact her?”
“You don’t. I tried to get her new number or her address and she wouldn’t give it to me. When Jack found out she stopped by he told his secretary to send her into his office, but she up and left before he got the chance.”
Nick walked in and raised his eyebrow when he saw the phone glued to my ear. I signaled to him with one finger in the air. He patted his leg a few times with his hand and Lord Berkeley hopped off the bed and scampered along after him.
“You sound disappointed,” I said to Vicki.
“I thought she would at least say hi while she was here. Bridget may not have been my assistant, but Charlotte let me borrow her now and then. I thought we were friends.”
The way she said the word borrow made her regard for Bridget seem like she was more of a menial worker than a valued friend. I wondered how to track Bridget down given my current house arrest. I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was running from something or someone and I needed to find out why.
CHAPTER 28
Nick and the chief were in the living room talking loud enough that they could be heard all the way down the street.
“How’s the patient?”
“Feisty as ever,” Nick said.
“Looks like the blow to the head didn’t change much then.”
They both laughed.
“You better get in there before she tumbles out,” Nick said.
I sat up and tried to get my thoughts together. My hands quivered and the pain in my head felt like a bunch of villagers had taken rocks and attempted to stone me to death.
“Well you look better,” the chief said. “Back to your old self?”
“I feel good,” I said.
I lied of course, but he didn’t need to know that.
“It’s fine by me if you want to wait and do this another day, there’s no rush.”
“Now works,” I said.
&
nbsp; “My men are seeing what they can dig up.”
“How do they know what to look for?” I said.
“Coop went to Wildwood this morning and Calhoun here is headed to the real estate office where Miss Halliwell worked. And before you pipe up, I already know you went to both places, we’re just doing some follow up.”
The thought of Coop meddling in my business turned my stomach.
“Now don’t get up on that high horse of yours, Sloane. I can tell by the look on your face that you disapprove. You and Coop need to bury the hatchet on this one and work together. I mean it. Whatever you may or may not think of him, he’s good at what he does.”
“He’s the one with the problem,” I said. “Not me.”
“I remember when Coop was considered the life of the party if you can believe that. He had a daughter right around your age, and even though he disapproved about her decision to become a cop, she was a fine officer.”
“What do you mean was?” I said.
“She died in the line of duty several years back in some gang-related shooting on the West side.”
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“I bet you remind him a little of her the way you stick your neck out and take risks like you do. She was like that. Heaven knows how proud he was of her, but after she died well, you can understand.”
It never occurred to me that Coop acted like he did because of events that stemmed from his past, and though we had our differences, there was one thing we shared––the permanent scar that came from losing a loved one.
The chief sat on a chair in the corner of my room.
“Let’s talk about this Parker fellow,” he said.
“I want to make sure we’re on the same page first.”
“Meaning?” he said.
“If I tell you what I know, I want to be kept in the loop.”
“I’ll do what I can to include you in what we find, but you need to understand my position. I’m already sticking my neck out here,” he said.
“So you’ll keep me updated on any breaks in the case?”
“We both know Calhoun does that already,” he said. “And there’s no need to cover for him with some bullshit story about how the two of you keep work and personal stuff separate. I know better.”
“I also want to be involved in the interrogations.”
“You know I can’t put you in the room,” he said.
“I don’t expect that, but I want access to the recordings.”
“Done, can we get on with it?” he said.
I gave him a brief overview of Parker’s womanizing ways and detailed my visit with him on the day I was attacked.
“So he likes the ladies. That doesn’t make him a killer,” he said, when I finished.
“It gives him motive. Maybe he abused Charlotte and she threatened to go public. He wouldn’t want to tarnish his family’s superlative image. Maybe he couldn’t handle the break up, or maybe she found out about the other women and…”
The other women! I had forgotten about the files I found at Charlotte’s house the night of my attack.
He cleared his throat.
“You were saying?”
“I don’t believe it was a coincidence that on the same day I confronted Parker I was attacked. There’s a good chance Parker was responsible.”
“Maybe, I don’t know,” he said.
“Bring him in. See what he has to say for himself. Ask him where he was last night and where he was on the day of Charlotte’s murder. If you need a reason to pick him up, I’ll press charges of my own.”
“I’ll consider it,” he said.
All I could think about was the files.
“I appreciate you coming over to see me, but I need to take a break. Can we finish this later?”
He stood up.
“Well kiddo,” he said, “get some rest; I think you’ve experienced enough excitement for one day.”
Actually, my day was just getting started.
CHAPTER 29
My laptop sat on a chair next to my grandfather’s old T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings desk. Sometimes I imagined him sitting there as he put the finishing touches on a piece of jewelry he made out of variegated rocks he found on one of his treks through the desert. The paramour of my collection included a necklace he made out of tiger eye, but it wasn’t the bold yellowish-brown hue or even the look of the necklace that attracted me, I liked the way it sounded, tiger eye. It was powerful, and I felt powerful when I wore it. As a child I had no idea how much the pieces would mean to me one day when he was no longer there to make them.
I dug into my sheets with both hands and inched my way toward the edge of the bed. Five heave-ho’s later and I was there. I dangled my feet off the edge and moved my laptop over my legs and then performed a search of private investigators in the state of Utah by the name of Marc Benjamin. My efforts yielded one match. I dialed the number.
“This is Marc.”
“My name is Sloane. I wondered if you could help me,” I said.
“What can I do you for?”
“I’d rather discuss it in person if you don’t mind. Can we meet?”
“How about tomorrow afternoon?”
“I need to speak with you today if that’s possible,” I said.
There was a short pause.
“I could see you an hour from now if that works for you.”
“I’ll take it. See you then,” I said.
I wrestled with my clothes and managed to pull a hoodie over my head and slip on a pair of yoga pants. I gazed into the mirror. In the appearance department, it wasn’t my finest hour. My hair looked like I got into a fight with a porcupine. I did the best I could with a brush and a rubber band and dabbed some makeup on. A horn sounded off in the distance. Time to go.
A cabbie dressed in black from head to toe hopped out and opened my door. He had a clean-shaven oversized head and a moustache that trailed down on both sides into a goatee. He gave my bandage a good long look, but he didn’t say a word about it.
“Where to lady?”
“University Avenue, across from the Riverdale Shopping Plaza.”
He nodded and started to drive.
The cabbie took the back way through Provo Canyon. In the fall the amber and burnt orange shades of the leaves lit up the mountainside with an incandescent array of color. We wound on down past the double cataract waterfalls at Bridal Veil Falls. Most of the year they offered a magnificent display of cascading water that showered down into the Provo River. But it was winter, and the water had turned to spiky tentacles of ice.
The office of Marc Benjamin, PI looked a lot more like a renovated old house. It was small but functional. The walls were white and without a stitch of adornment.
“Like it?”
A man approached me from behind.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“I painted yesterday, it’s called Navajo White.”
He said Navajo like nav-ee-hoe. It looked like plain, ordinary white to me.
“Are you Sloane?”
I nodded.
He wiped his soiled hand on his oil-stained jeans and then offered it to me. I wasn’t inclined to take it, but for the sake of his gesture, I shook it in a loose manner.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I just loaded some hay into my truck.”
“You are Marc Benjamin, right?” I said.
He tipped his hat toward me and said, “At your service, ma’am.”
We walked toward the back of the room toward a solitary desk that had two metal folding chairs, one on each side. He took his cowboy hat off and set it on the side of the desk.
“What can I do you for?”
“Have you been in the business long?” I said.
“Not really, this is just something I do on the side.”
I suspected as much. His eyes fixed on the main attraction around my head.
“What happened, if you don’t mind me askin?”
“Bull fight,” I said. “The b
ull won.”
He laughed.
“I wondered if you could give me some information about one of your clients,” I said.
“That’s preeve-il-eged information. I can’t give stuff like that out.”
“I would like to ask you a few questions about Charlotte Halliwell,” I said.
His crooked smile dematerialized.
“Why are you asking about her?”
“You do know she’s dead?” I said.
The revelation startled him.
“No ma’am, can’t say as I did. When did it happen?”
“A little over a week ago.”
“Charlotte sold my dad some horse property over in Heber Valley last year. That’s how we met. After that we sort of became friends. She planned to buy one of our mares this year. A few months back she came out to the ranch. She said she rode as a kid and she wanted to get back to the simple things in life.”
“I hate to tell you this,” I said, “but I believe she was murdered.”
He sighed.
“How did it happen?”
I told him.
“Who in their right mind would do that to such a nice person?”
“That’s what I hoped you could tell me. I need to know why she hired you.”
He scratched the back of his head.
“I’m a PI myself so I understand your loyalty. In our business it helps when we can pool information together. And in this case, we all want the same thing, right?”
It wasn’t the best pep talk I ever gave, but it wasn’t the worst either. He pondered it for a moment.
“Truth be told the kind of research I usually do is of the genealogical kind. I only took this on as a favor to Charlotte.”
He stood up from his chair and walked over to a plastic bin in the corner of the room and dug through some files.
“Charlotte came to me about three months ago. She thought her fiancé had another lady friend in his life.”
“And did he?” I said.
He pulled out the same photos that I came across at Charlotte’s house.
“There were others alright. That man bamboozled every woman in town from the looks of it.”
“How did she react when you told her?” I said.
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