“Yes.”
“This is Elena Loperi.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything to add. How nice to hear from you would be a hard line to say with sincerity.
“I don’t suppose you were expecting to hear from me.”
“Well, uh, no. Are you calling for some, uh, particular reason?”
Elena seemed to bring out the uh in me.
“I’d like to talk to you.”
“We’re talking now,” I said warily.
“No, in person.”
Talking to Elena was not on my schedule of Fun Things to Do. She hadn’t directly threatened me during our earlier conversation, but neither had she been telling me to have a nice day. I wished Fitz were still here. “What did you want to talk about?”
“I think you know.” Her cultured tone was meaningful.
I did know, of course, but I had the odd feeling she was reluctant to say Jerry’s name. Why was that? I hesitated, tap-ping the arm of the sofa nervously. Okay, this was good, I decided. Elena was right up there with Big Daddy Sutherland on my list of suspects. I’d set up a meeting in some public place for after Fitz got back, and he could use some Ed Montrose interrogation skills to get more information out of her.
“How about Friday evening? We can meet over there in Olympia. A restaurant or parking lot, whatever you’d prefer.”
“I’ve been parked at the end of your street for almost an hour waiting for you to get home and then for your friend to leave. I was beginning to think he was going to stay all night.” She sounded a bit snappish. “I’ll be there in two minutes.”
She hung up before I had a chance to protest.
25
I peered out the window. Headlights pulled to the curb in front of the house. I couldn’t identify the model of car, but it didn’t look sleek and expensive, which rather surprised me. Although someone who looked as I expected Elena Loperi to look slid out and headed up my walkway. When she rang the bell, I opened the door, but left the chain on and one-eyed her through the narrow crack.
Letty’s description fit. Long legged and slender, dark hair loose and shiny under the entry light. Her clothing . . . jeans, nondescript dark sweatshirt, and black sneakers . . . was what I might wear on a dark night when I wanted to be as little visible as possible. But where I’d look like a potential bag lady in the outfit, she managed to look svelte and stunning, ready to waltz down a fashion runway heralding this year’s do-your-own-thing look.
But I also noted a worry crease between the perfect line of her eyebrows. “Why couldn’t we talk on the phone?”
“I was afraid it might be bugged or tapped or however it is someone can listen in on your calls.”
“Can that be done with a cell phone?”
“If it can be, I’m sure my husband knows how to do it.” She glanced down the street as if afraid someone might be lurking in the shadows.
“You think he might be following you?”
“He’s down in Portland now.” Small hesitation. “At least that’s where he’s supposed to be.” She jumped when Moose started barking from behind his fence, then turned back to me. “I didn’t kill Jerry, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I wasn’t convinced of her innocence, although her nerves were a point in her favor.
“And I’m not carrying a gun, knife, or any more creative murder device to do you in.” She lifted her arms to show me she wasn’t concealing anything, but what I mostly saw was a to-die- for figure.
I eyed the black leather purse hanging from a shoulder strap. “That purse looks big enough to be lethal.”
“Any woman who carries some itsy-bitsy purse with only a credit card and eye shadow in it isn’t to be trusted.”
I could go along with that. Real women need big purses. We carry everything from pocketknife to the small pharmacy of aspirin, Tylenol, and Tums that is in mine to the screwdriver I saw daughter Sarah pull out of her purse last winter.
“But if you’d like, I can dump the contents on the sidewalk and you can take inventory,” she offered.
It was a facetious statement, and yet I figured she’d do it if I insisted. “That won’t be necessary.”
I unloosened the chain and let her in. I dispensed with a polite offer of refreshments. I flicked the TV off, then motioned her to the sofa and took a chair across the coffee table from her. Since I hit forty, I tend to acquire muddy freckles and blotches under the sun, but Elena’s vacation tan glowed gloriously golden. It didn’t, however, change the way her dark eyes kept darting nervously to the door.
“Okay, you’re here. Somehow I don’t think it’s to call a meeting of the Jerry Norton Fan Club. So what’s this all about?”
“I’m afraid you aren’t going to pay attention to what I said on the phone. Afraid you’re just going to blunder ahead—”
“Blunder!” I repeated indignantly.
“Blunder,” she confirmed. “Which could put you on a collision course with my husband. With consequences that might be . . . dire.”
“Out of the goodness of your heart, you’re here to tell me to back off?”
“My ethics and good judgment on some matters may be up for debate, but I’m not without a conscience. And I don’t want your dead body in there cluttering it up.”
“Goody for you,” I muttered. “One gold star, coming up. You want it on your forehead or your butt?”
Elena looked startled, but then she gave me a wry smile. “I can see why Jerry liked you. He liked . . . sass.”
Warily I said, “You really didn’t know he was dead until I told you?”
“No, I had no idea. As I told you, we’d been away on vacation.”
“It happened right here, in my driveway. Jerry’s body was stuffed in the trunk of my limousine.”
“You’d been out somewhere . . . in a limousine?”
So then I had to go through the whole uncle-and-limouzeen story, which actually brought a hint of smile to the tense line of her lips. Until I got to the part about the body and getting knocked in the head myself.
“You didn’t see who hit you?”
“No.”
“So you don’t know if it was Jerry or the killer.”
I blinked. The thought that Jerry could have hit me had never entered my head. People were always coming up with these points that hadn’t occurred to me, which did not bode well, I suspected, for my success as a sleuth/sidekick. Was there a Sleuthing for Dummies book I should be studying?
Jerry knocking me unconscious seemed implausible. Jerry wouldn’t do that, would he? Yet, on second thought, it wasn’t beyond possibility. If he hadn’t wanted me to catch him in the limousine, maybe he had clobbered me. And then someone had done even worse to him. A deadly food chain.
Elena ran her hand through that long mane of hair. “This is all so . . . incredible.”
“I suppose it is a shock, if you were having an affair with Jerry and didn’t even know he was dead until I announced it to you,” I agreed bluntly. “Didn’t you wonder why you didn’t hear from him after your vacation?”
“I wasn’t having an affair with him!” The denial burst out like an explosion of fireworks, but then she hesitated and seemed to crumple as she added, “It had been over for three months.”
Three months. Interesting timing in regard to my four-months relationship with Jerry. Two-timing both of us there for a while. Jerry’s sleaze quotient rose again.
“What ended it?”
She lifted her head and gave me a ghost of smile. “I’d like to say I came to my senses and dumped him. But that wasn’t what happened. Jerry dumped me.”
Dumped her because he’d started seeing me? Yeah, right. About as likely as his choosing leftover meat loaf when he could have those lobsters in his freezer. There must have been some more compelling reason. I picked one and asked, “Did your husband find out about the affair and threaten him?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible. I . . . I was thinking about leaving Donny for him.�
�
“I wouldn’t take getting dumped by Jerry too personally,” I advised. “According to his brother, Jerry dumped women the way some men toss beer cans out car windows.”
“He was married once,” she said. It sounded like a protest of my harsh view of Jerry, but then she reconsidered and said, “A mistake he probably didn’t intend to make again.”
“He was still married. He and Cara were never divorced.”
“Still married? He lied to me!”
True, although that seemed a moot point to get indignant about, considering that she was also married.
“He broke up with me, too, just before he was killed. He already had the next lucky winner picked out.”
Speculation glimmered in her eyes.
I shook my head. “I didn’t kill him either. Though I’m not sure the police believe that. They seem a little suspicious, since I’d taken after him with a shovel just a couple days earlier.”
“A shovel?” Her eyebrows rose, but then, without asking questions, she muttered, “Good for you.”
“But somebody else got him with a gun, not me. Do you own a gun?”
“No . . .”
“But?”
“But my husband has several.”
“Okay, I think it’s time you told me a little more about this husband. Whose name is—?”
“Donny. Donaldo, actually. Our marriage has been on the rocks for quite a while.” Elena twisted her shimmery-nailed hands together, then tucked them between her knees as if she had to do something to keep them from flying off into space. A wedding ring encircled her finger, plain gold band, no other jewelry except gold hoops in her ears. “That isn’t any excuse for my relationship with Jerry, of course, but maybe it helps explain why it happened.”
“But your marriage is mended now?”
“No. We’re getting a divorce.”
“But you just got back from vacation together!”
“It was one of those last-ditch efforts. You know, fly off to some exotic setting, get to know each other again, recapture the romance. Moonlight and champagne. Yada, yada, yada.”
She made a snorty noise that didn’t go with her elegant looks but made me feel a little warmer toward her.
“We might as well have gone to Motel 6 and Burger King and saved ourselves a bundle.”
“Your husband found out about your relationship with Jerry, so now he wants a divorce?”
“I don’t know if he knows about Jerry or not. I know I just can’t take his moods and his paranoid suspicions and the way he just blows up about every little thing.” Now she was twist-ing the wedding band as if she were trying to light a fire with it. “He got in an argument with some guy right on the dance floor down in Cozumel. The guy looked like he’d come straight out of a Mafia-R-Us photo. I was terrified.”
“So the two of you have decided a divorce is the only answer?”
“The two of us haven’t decided anything. Donny doesn’t know yet that I’m seeing a lawyer next week. He isn’t going to be a happy camper when he finds out.”
“Are you afraid of him?”
“I don’t think he’d hurt me, but . . .” Her voice trailed off. Then in a defensive tone she added, “The problems in our marriage started long before I met Jerry. Before we ever came up here.”
“Came here from where?”
“Southern California. Donny was a cop down there. He was a cop before we married, so it wasn’t as if I didn’t know what I was getting into. But I had no idea about the strange hours or how often I’d be home alone, scared that something terrible had happened to him, or how he’d get all uptight and moody. Though I can’t blame him for that, I suppose. Cops are exposed to . . . awful things.”
“So he quit being a cop because you didn’t like it?”
She shook her head. “No. I couldn’t take that away from him. He loved being a cop even when it upset him. But there was a lot of . . . politics, I’d guess you’d call it, in the department. Donny didn’t get a promotion he was entitled to. A buddy of the police chief got it. And then a witness was killed after the police questioned him. It wasn’t Donny’s fault, but someone had to be blamed, and it wound up being him.”
“So he got fired?”
“No, not that either. I think they figured he’d sue them if he got fired over that. But it made a big black mark on his record, and he was furious about that as well as not getting the promotion. Then he got assigned an old police car instead of one of the new ones the department bought. He saw it all as a big conspiracy. He made a noisy stink, got the police chief in trouble with the city council, and quit.”
“So you moved up here so he could be a cop here?”
“That was the idea, but all he’s been able to find so far is a rent-a-cop job as a night security guard. He hates it. And he figures the reason he can’t get on with a police force here is because the department down in California is sabotaging him. Another conspiracy.”
“But his night hours as a security guard made your relationship with Jerry easier to carry off. A little conspiracy of your own.”
She nodded unhappily.
“And how did you feel about the move up here? Is that part of the problem? I heard you’d been a model down in California.”
“I was fairly successful. Not as big-time as New York, but I kept busy with catalog work and private showings for some stores. I was hoping I could still get some modeling work up here, but I was willing to give it all up if Donny could just make a new start.”
“And you did give it up. You went to work for F&N.”
“We were short on money. I needed a job quick. And I do have a degree in communications, with an emphasis on advertising and public relations. Being in advertising probably has a longer shelf life than being a model anyway.”
I agreed, but switched back to the basics here and put the situation in crisp outline form. “So you went to work at F&N and started an affair with Jerry. Your husband found out about it and killed Jerry with one of those several guns you say he has. Now you’re here warning me about him, that maybe he’s going to kill me too.”
“No!” She sounded rattled, as if she didn’t know which part of my scenario to protest first. “I mean, I don’t know that Donny ever found out about the affair—”
“Oh, c’mon. He was a cop. Don’t you think he was observant enough to know something was going on? And if he got suspicious, had the experience and skills to check up on you without your knowing it?”
Another unhappy nod.
“Is he capable of killing someone?”
“Donny . . . killed a man once. But it was self-defense. A drug dealer who came after him with a knife. So I guess he’s capable of it. But I don’t think he’s a cold-blooded killer who’d just . . . murder someone. ”
“But you’re not sure. Or you just don’t want to think it?”
She made a dismissive move with her shoulders. Shapely shoulders.
“So do you think he really could have killed Jerry or not? The circumstances are suspicious, to say the least.”
The wedding ring went round and round again. “If he found out about the affair, yes, I think he could have done it.”
“But why would he wait until now, if the affair had been over for three months?”
“Sometimes things . . . work on Donny. He might seem not too upset about something at the time. Like when a neigh-bor ran over a nice dog we had down in California. But then he thinks about it, like he did with the neighbor and the dog, and it just grows on him. Until he explodes.”
“What happened with the neighbor?”
“Several months later he sent the guy to the hospital with a broken collarbone.”
Not a guy you wanted teed off at you. “Okay, you may be suspicious of Donny, apparently with good reason. But he has an alibi. You and he were out of the country. You were away on vacation since before Jerry was killed.”
“Not exactly.”
26
We stared at each other acros
s the coffee table.
“But you told me you’d been on vacation for two weeks!”
“Do you believe everything anyone tells you?” she snapped. “You’d just told me Jerry was murdered. I was horrified and scared and imagining all kinds of things.”
“So you real quick thought it would be a good idea to cover your back. Or Donny’s back.”
“I . . . I’m not covering anyone’s back now. Our flight left for Cozumel around eleven Saturday morning. Which, from what you tell me, was after Jerry was killed.”
“But if Donny had been at home with you all night—”
“He wasn’t. He worked the previous night. I thought it was a bad idea, working right up until we were practically ready to take off, but he said we needed the money.”
“Was he working?”
“I don’t know. This particular job was at a warehouse. He could have left for several hours, and if the place wasn’t broken into during that time, no one would know. He could have gone to Jerry’s condo, followed him to your place, killed him, and gone back to the warehouse.”
“You’ve done some thinking about this.”
“Oh, yes.”
I gave all this some thought too, then pointed out a different twist on the murder. “So if Donny was at the warehouse, you were home alone. Which means you could have gone to the condo, followed Jerry to the limo, killed him, and got home in time to meet your husband with a smile and a suitcase full of bikinis and suntan lotion.”
“I didn’t kill him! What reason would I have to kill him?”
“A woman scorned, etc.”
She frowned but repeated her statement, this time with an emphatic shake of head. “I didn’t do it.”
“There’s something else, something you don’t know,” I said. “All Jerry’s computer equipment was stolen out of his condo the same night he was murdered. And the murderer took his cell phone and that flash drive thing he always carried in his pocket. His Rolex watch too. The police have kept it quiet, but the computer theft had to be connected to the killing. But your Donny didn’t have any reason to—” I broke off at the stricken look on Elena’s face. “Or did he?”
Your Chariot Awaits Page 18