4 A Dead Mother

by Anna Celeste Burke

  “It didn’t come up in our initial interview. We kept that one brief. She was still distraught as we went over several of the questions Officer Millstone had asked her when she arrived at the site where her mother was found. When we did the walk-through with her, as you know, she was much more composed, but we hadn’t spoken with the Stoddard woman yet, as you also know. Bottom line: I haven’t asked Ruth St. Armand or Leslie Windsor explicitly about shouting matches between Beverly Windsor and another woman.”

  “Don’t jump on me—either of you, please. I know you like Leslie Windsor, Jessica, but could it have been a mother-daughter quarrel?” Frank asked. “I’m sure you asked, Rikki, but where does Leslie say she was when someone called Beverly, picked her up, and killed her?”

  I sucked in a gulp of air and this time I choked on the beer I was sipping. I put my drink down, trying to recover as I pondered that possibility. Leslie wasn’t even on my list of suspects. Had she told me where she was when Beverly’s coworkers had called her about her mother’s disappearance?

  “Are you okay?” Rikki asked.

  “Yes,” I replied, finally able to speak. “It’s hard to wrap my mind around the idea that Leslie’s capable of murder, much less matricide. I’m familiar with the stats that say someone you know is much more likely to kill you than a stranger and family members are always suspects, but Beverly and Leslie always struck me as close. Not just mother and daughter, but friends.”

  “Bias is a problem when you investigate people with whom you already have established relationships, whether as friends or clients. Beverly Windsor didn’t tell you about a love affair with Cedric Baumgartner, so maybe she kept trouble she was having with Leslie to herself, too.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, Frank. I’m not going to jump on you. It’s reasonable to consider Leslie as a suspect.”

  “She stands to inherit a chunk of change, too, don’t forget. Leslie Windsor was straightforward with us about that, but she’s not hurting for money. I won’t jump on you either, Frank, but you’d fire me if I hadn’t gotten an alibi from the victim’s next of kin, right?” Rikki asked. She didn’t wait for Frank to answer. “Of course, we asked Leslie Windsor for an alibi. She was here in the desert, obviously, since she arrived at the scene soon after her mother’s coworkers called. She was with a friend at the time who says she’d spent the night at his house and took off running without much explanation when a call came in on her cell phone. He didn’t learn until later that the call had come from Desert Park Preserve, or that Leslie Windsor’s mother was dead.”

  “By ‘he’ do you mean the dog whisperer?” I asked. Both detectives gave me one of those “huh” looks. “Matthew Whitaker?” I asked.

  “No. Donald Herndon.”

  “Are you sure?” I was glad I’d put that beer down since that news had provoked another gasp.

  “You know him, I take it?” Rikki asked.

  “Yes. He’s the Chief Operating Officer at the company where Leslie Windsor is the CEO. Beverly didn’t like him. She told me his politics bothered her. Herndon’s a staunch opponent of global warming and other environmental issues that Beverly was passionate enough about to include in her estate plans. I heard Leslie was involved with Matthew Whitaker, although she’s never discussed either man with me.”

  “Ah, the secrets friends and family keep from us and each other. It’s always such a shock, isn’t it?”

  “Yes!” Frank and I both responded.

  “Do you remember the context in which Donald Herndon’s name came up?” Rikki asked.

  “I think Beverly and I ran into Leslie and Donald at a gala somewhere. It never occurred to me that the two of them being there together had to do with anything other than business.”

  “His relationship with Leslie Windsor doesn’t much matter, does it? Apart from the fact that he can corroborate her whereabouts at the time someone killed her mother.” Frank shrugged.

  “No. Neither does the fact that he didn’t see eye-t0-eye with Beverly Windsor about politics. It could be a reason Leslie kept her personal relationship with him from her mother, though. Who’s this dog whisperer?” Rikki asked.

  I explained what Laura had heard about Leslie Windsor and Anastasia’s dog trainer, including the oddity of her interest in the man given Leslie’s supposed fear of dogs.

  “The woman in those nanny cam videos showed no fear whatsoever of Anastasia.”

  “Yes. Peter told me. She’s got those red fingernails, but she’s a blond.”

  “No, she’s not,” Rikki said. “I saw ‘blond’ the first time I viewed the video clips, too. When I reran them, there’s a point where the woman brushes at her forehead and shoves the hoodie back. What looks like blond hair is a headband like you wear when you’re out jogging. That’s not surprising since she’s dressed in a warmup outfit. Anyway, for a split second, her hair’s exposed, and it’s dark.”

  “Good catch,” Frank said.

  “What about the moment she pricks her finger on something in the kitchen? Is there any chance you can get her DNA from whatever it was that drew blood?”

  “Speaking of good catches. When does that happen?”

  “Hang on,” I said, pulling up the text messages on my smartphone. “Here’s the location on the film. Peter March went back to the video and sent me the timecode data. It’s too bad you don’t have DNA from that nail, dang it! How about the earring?”

  “Same story—too little to recover DNA using routine extraction methods. The FBI has some other more extensive and expensive tests in their bag of tricks. There’s no way to know those would work even if we had license to try.”

  “Can’t you do enough with those strands of hair to at least rule out Leslie or some of the other suspects on the list that just keeps getting longer?” Rikki Havens shrugged.

  “The team at the lab will do what they can. I’ll ask Leslie Windsor to let me back in her mother’s house to search for the pointy object that stuck the intruder’s finger. If that Chevy Impala was the car in which Beverly Windsor was murdered, it ought to have plenty of the killer’s DNA in it. Of course, we’ve got to find the car first, don’t we?”

  “Yes,” I said wearily as I emptied my glass. My stomach soured, making me wish I hadn’t had a second beer. It could have been the pizza and birthday cake I’d eaten earlier in the day. More likely, it was the stress of being awash in information and overloaded by the tangle of people, hunches, and bits of evidence leading in no clear direction for now. Worse, to find out that what had appeared to be a good lead—that fingernail left by the killer—now might be of little use.

  “Now it’s my turn to ask. Please, don’t jump on me. I don’t want to be condescending, but if the issue with doing further DNA testing is about money, send me the bill. If my firm balks, I’ll pick up the tab.” Rikki scanned my face and then looked at Frank.

  “She means it. If Leslie were a defendant in this case, you’d be entitled to run your own tests—if there was enough of a sample to do that. Since she’s not even a suspect at this point, I’m not sure what we can do. Let me ask, okay?”

  “Sure,” I replied unhappily. The rhythms of this murder investigation are disturbing including a strange game of lost and found. An odd-lot of clues found and then, like David Madison, seemingly lost again. Where was he?

  28 Secrets, Fears, and Feelings

  “Kim, I’m sorry to call you so late, but I need your help.” I was restless when I returned to my hotel room at the Mission Inn. Worried, too, about the whereabouts of David Madison. The police would do what they could, but that might be too little, too late. There had to be something we could do to find him.

  “No problem. I just got home from another pleasant dinner with Ruth St. Armand,” she replied. “What sort of help do you need?”

  “David Madison has disappeared. He’s not at his condo in Palm Springs and was last seen at his home in San Bernardino loading his car as if he was leaving for vacation. He was in a hurry, too.”r />
  “Uh-oh, he’s on the run, isn’t he? Do you want me to track his credit cards and ATM transactions to see if he’s left the country?”

  “Sure. The police are doing that, too. I’m wondering if you can check into his past, too, though. Find out if there’s any place he might go that’s secluded, but not too far from here. Maybe he owns an RV that’s parked somewhere, a cabin in the woods, or some other hideaway. Does he have friends or family who live in a small town where he could hunker down and get by without needing to use credit cards? He’s got cash. The kind of cash that might last for weeks, maybe, but not months. That’s why I can’t believe he’s going very far.”

  “Mexico or Canada are possible given the circumstances you’ve described. If you have information about the car he’s using, and we can get a VIN number, Peter might be able to track him with the GPS. Even if the police decide to do that, it’ll take them hours or even days to get a warrant. How much trouble is he in?”

  My gut response was to say, “more than enough to get him killed” but that seemed rash given it was my gut talking. “I don’t know. He must be scared since he ditched work and took off like that. Let me ask Peter about the GPS issue while you see if you can find any connection to a place off the beaten path where a desperate man might get lost. Someplace not too far away where it could help to have a heavy coat to wear,” I added and then explained.

  “I’m on it,” she replied.

  “Before I let you go, did Ruth have anything new to say about Beverly’s life in the past few months?”

  “New? Like what?”

  “Has she ever said anything about Beverly having the kind of disagreement with someone that ended up in a screaming match?” I shared what Barbara Stoddard had reported to Rikki Havens.

  “Not that I can recall. I can ask her that question directly, though.”

  “Will you, please. How about problems between Beverly and her daughter or anything about Leslie’s fear of Anastasia?”

  “I did ask her about that since Laura brought it up. Ruth says Beverly thought her daughter was ‘a little nuts’ to be dating a guy who works with dogs given how much she dislikes them. Ruth asked me what was going to happen to Anastasia. I told her you’d make sure Anastasia ended up in a good home.”

  “Well, that confirms what Laura heard about Leslie and Matthew Whitaker. I guess lots of moms must wonder about the men their daughters are seeing. As it turns out, Alexis held a similar opinion about my choice to get involved with Jim Harper years ago. Leslie told me she and her mother didn’t talk much about the men in their lives and wouldn’t have brought it up unless they’d settled on someone who was important to them.”

  “From what you’ve said, Leslie considered her mother ‘a little nuts’ to be dating Cedric Baumgartner once you told her that’s what was going on.”

  “True,” I responded. “Leslie says her dislike for Cedric started the instant they met. Mothers and daughters don’t have to agree when it comes to men or the reasoning behind getting involved with them, do they?”

  “That sort of disagreement’s not usually a motive for murder, either, if that’s what you’re worrying about. In case you were wondering, I checked into Leslie’s finances, updating the information we already had on file for her at the firm, and she seems to be set. I suppose you can never have too much money, but it doesn’t appear she’s in need of a quick inheritance to dig herself out from under a load of debt.”

  “Thanks for the information. Will you call me if you come up with some idea about where David Madison might have gone?”

  “Will do.”

  I took a few minutes to go over my conversation with Frank and Rikki, making notes that I could review later. It helped me clear my head, although I felt miserable about the fact that Leslie’s name appeared so often in those notes. I wasn’t sure if my misery was due more to the fact that I’d failed to consider her a suspect sooner, or that I had conceded she might be one, now.

  When I tumbled into bed a short time later, I tossed and turned, wondering what I’d missed in my interactions with Beverly and Leslie, or even David Madison, that might have signaled there was deeper trouble hidden beneath the conflicts that had surfaced. I dreamed that I’d lost something of value. Frank appeared, too, in my restless semi-consciousness. With his back turned, he’d refused to speak to me. I still felt uneasy about that when I awoke and stewed about it during most of the ninety-minute drive home to Rancho Mirage.

  Was Frank keeping something from me that had him worried or was I the one who was holding out on him? Maybe I was feeling a little guilty about those kisses outside the Copper Penny. I’d sort of hemmed and hawed about my “friendship” with Paul Worthington. Should I have been clearer about the fact that Paul and I were seeing each other—dating for want of a better word—in the same way that Frank and I were doing? I searched my conscience once more as I stepped into the kitchen from the garage. Anastasia cavorted trying to get my attention.

  “What’s up now?” Bernadette asked as I dropped my overnight bag and stood there aimlessly.

  “What makes you think anything’s up?”

  “Besides the pout on your face? Anastasia is dancin’ and prancin’ with happiness that you’ve come home and you didn’t even greet her. Not me either!”

  “I’m sorry, Bernadette. I’m so out of it.” I leaned over and gave her a peck on the cheek. “I’m not a very good doggy-mommy, am I, Anastasia?” I added greeting the pooch who ran, retrieved her leash from the pantry, and brought it to me.

  “Do you want to take coffee with you, Doggie-mommy?” She held a mug of fresh-made coffee that was irresistible.

  “Bless you, St. Bernadette. I love you,” I added taking the cup of coffee from her. “I should say foster doggie-mommy, shouldn’t I? What’s going to happen to Anastasia?” I asked as I checked her food bowl intending to fix her breakfast. That was silly, of course, since Bernadette had already beaten me to it. There were only a few crumbs of kibble left.

  “Kim says Ruth St. Armand confirmed that what Laura told us is true. The Ms. Windsor who is still alive is afraid of the princess here. Can you imagine that?” I took a few sips of coffee while Anastasia patiently waited for the signal that we were taking a walk.

  “People have all sorts of secret fears and feelings, don’t they?”

  “Yes.” I said, savoring a couple more sips of that wonderful coffee. “This is great coffee. Thank you so much.” I gave Bernadette another kiss on her soft cheek.

  “Some people are embarrassed by their feelings, too. Maybe that’s why it hasn’t come up,” Bernadette suggested.

  “It could be. What if that means Anastasia’s not welcome to go and live with her? How sad that she won’t be able to go home with someone who already knows and loves her!” I bent down and picked up the leash Anastasia had dropped at my feet. Then I attached it to the sparkly collar Beverly had bought for the poodle she adored.

  “Well, if she doesn’t want her, Anastasia will just have to stay with us now, won’t she?”

  “Do you mean that?” I asked, sounding like a twelve-year-old again, more thrilled than I had ever imagined at the prospect. “What about Mom, though? This is still her house?”

  “She knew Anastasia might never leave this house, even though she warned you about getting too attached too soon.” Bernadette’s kind, dark eyes searched my face as she reached out and brushed my cheek. “Anastasia might not leave, but your mom will, Jessica. Alexis has a place where she’s welcome to go with someone who already knows and loves her. You realize that, don’t you?” My heart sank as she spoke those words. I had come so close to losing Mom, I’d avoided facing the fact that, even if she recovered, Mom was only back in the desert temporarily.

  “Yes. I heard the promises she and Giovanni made to each other. I’m glad she has someone in her life she cares enough about that she’s willing to do the work to get well. Maybe they’ll move back in here once Giovanni retires.”

  “Nah, n
ot him. He wouldn’t be any happier in this house your dad built for Alexis than you would have been living in that house you bought with Jim.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. This is all too much to consider before I’ve finished my coffee and unpacked.”

  “Or walked the dog. Alexis wants to get better for you too. She understands you deserved more from her as a mother. I told her she can’t change the past, but it’s never too late to do better in the future. That doesn’t mean she’s going to do it by living here with you under the same roof, though. You’re both grown women now with lives of your own.”

  “I understand. What would we do without you?” I asked. A wave of gratitude for Bernadette’s constant guidance swept over me. I drained my cup of coffee and placed the empty mug on the kitchen counter. Then I gave her an enormous hug. A cloud of worry engulfed me as I remembered how concerned Frank had been about Bernadette getting mixed up with the Marty Hargreaves investigation and that story about the bad cop. When she pulled away, I held onto her a bit longer. She peered up at me when I finally let go.

  “Is there something else?”

  “Please don’t ask me why, because I don’t want to lie to you and I can’t tell you more right now. Just trust me please and promise there won’t be any more questions about Marty Hargreaves, or what went on at Jim’s place, okay? No more discussion about what the nanny knows, or any follow up with the nanny’s friends or anyone else about it for now.” The tiny woman smiled sweetly even though I could tell she was bubbling over with curiosity.

  “No more questions until you give me the all clear.”

  I felt a huge wave of relief as I slid open the enormous glass doors that lead out to the patio and the golf course. A gust of cool morning air blended with the homey aroma of fresh-brewed coffee. I inhaled deeply, grateful for the small comforts I’d found when I retreated to the safety of my childhood home. My retreat to the desert was meant to be a temporary one and almost a year later, here I was. Where was I going to go?