by Blake Pierce
They walked straight for it. As Jessie got the attention of the bartender, Ryan held back a little and stood slightly apart when he eventually came over. The bartender was in his thirties and looked like he probably drank more than most of his customers. He had greasy black hair, three days of stubble, and a crooked grin that Jessie suspected he busted out often on well-lubricated ladies.
“Hey there,” she said, going into coquettish mode.
“Hey there yourself,” he quipped, his voice gravelly.
“You look familiar. Were you working last night?” Jessie asked coyly.
“I was,” he answered, assuming she was flirting with him, just as she hoped he would. “But I know you weren’t here. I’d have remembered you.”
“Are you sure about that?” she asked, batting her eyes. “Were you here around 9:30?”
“Sure was,” he said proudly. “I worked ‘til closing. Don’t tell me I somehow missed you. If I did, let me make it up to you with a free drink.”
“I might take you up on that later,” she said, stretching out languorously as she leaned over the bar and beckoned for him to get closer. He bent forward to meet her.
“What’s your name?” she whispered in his ear.
“Tim,” he told her. “You?”
“I’m Jen,” she cooed. “I need to ask you a personal question, Tim. But I don’t want to do it with all these people around. Can someone take over for you for a minute?”
“Sweetheart, I promise you it’ll take longer than a minute.”
“Tim,” she replied, feigning bashfulness at his comment as she fought off the urge to vomit, “Why don’t we start with the question and see where it goes from there?”
“You got it,” he said, waving at a server across the room. “Take over for a spell. I need to assist this lady briefly.”
“Is there somewhere a little more secluded?” Jessie asked.
He nodded, came out from behind the bar, and led her down the hall past the restrooms to a swinging door marked “employees only.” He held it open for her and she glanced back at him as she entered. She saw that his eyes were focused on her backside so he didn’t notice that Ryan was only a few paces behind him.
He had led her into the small employee break room just off to the side of the kitchen. Cooks and servers darted back and forth just out of sight. Being so close to the kitchen and still wearing her jacket and beanie to disguise her identity, Jessie felt like she was in a self-contained steam room. Ryan lingered just outside the swinging door, though Jessie could see him through the small, round, porthole window.
“So what’s up, darlin’?” he asked, leaning against the entryway.
“I wanted to show you a photo on my phone and see what you make of it.”
“Oh wow, Jen,” he said, clearly intrigued. “You really don’t waste time, do you? Let’s see it.”
Jessie clicked on one of the photos of Sarah Ripley that her husband had given them and held it up for Tim.
“Do you recognize this woman?” she asked.
Tim looked at it and then back at her. He was clearly surprised. This wasn’t the kind of photo he’d been expecting.
“Why?” he asked, still titillated but slightly more on guard. “Is she a friend of yours? Did she have nice things to say about me?”
“Is there any reason she’d have a strong opinion about you?” Jessie asked, trying to keep her voice playful but finding it increasingly difficult. “Did you spend some quality time together last night?”
Tim’s half-smile disappeared.
“What is this?” he said warily. “You made me think you wanted to have a little fun but now you’re asking all these questions. If your friend said I did something wrong, she’s lying. I sold her some drinks and I flirted with her and her friends. She left. The rest of them stayed and none of them seemed to think I was out of line. So what’s the problem, Jen?”
The way he said her fake name had an air of hostility to it. Any chance that she could tease answers out of him was gone now, not that she minded.
“What time did she leave, Tim?” she asked, dropping all pretense of playfulness.
“I’ve had enough of this,” he said. “Worst break ever. Why don’t you head on back out there? Or better yet, try another bar. The service here is about to get real slow for you.”
He turned around to find Ryan, who had quietly slipped through the swinging door during their conversation, standing in his way.
“I think you should answer the lady’s question,” he said, holding up the badge and ID that said his name was Detective Randy Hosea.
He stood with his shoulders squared and his jaw set. His open jacket revealed his holster and the gun inside. Anyone who didn’t know about his injury would find him an intimidating presence.
Jessie was overcome with pride. Just last summer, Ryan was comatose in a hospital. As recently as a few weeks ago, he was still using a cane for everyday support. But in this moment, he looked almost like his old self.
Tim turned back to Jessie, who held up her own fake ID saying she was Jennifer Barnes.
“Still waiting,” she said quietly.
He looked like he wanted to object, but seemed to sense that combativeness wouldn’t serve him well and sighed.
“Okay, let me think. I remember her saying she had to bail because she was meeting someone around ten. One of the other girls told her she had time because it was only 9:30. But she said it would take a while to get home because she wanted to walk. She paid her tab and left a little after that.”
“Do you have a receipt that can confirm the time?” Ryan asked.
“I can check but I think she paid cash,” he said, then added. “Is she okay?”
“That’s what we’re looking into,” Jessie said, not lying but not wanting to reveal any more than necessary.
“Why don’t you check those receipts just to be sure,” Ryan suggested.
As he spoke, Jessie noticed one of the female servers in the kitchen whispering to a cook as they both looked in her direction. Though she couldn’t be sure, she thought the server’s expression was more than just generally curious. She seemed to be trying to remember something, almost like she was attempting to place a face, like she thought she recognized someone.
“We should go, Randy,” Jessie said suddenly as she touched her head to make sure the beanie hadn’t fallen off. “We have somewhere to be. Just give Tim your number and he can text you once he’s checked the receipts.”
Ryan followed her gaze and immediately picked up on what had her worried.
“Sure thing, Jen,” he said. “I’ll meet you out at the car.”
Jessie nodded and quickly brushed past Tim.
“Thanks for your help,” she said quietly. “And keep this to yourself. We don’t want to worry folks unnecessarily. If we start hearing rumors about this woman, we’ll know where they got started, understand?”
Tim grunted that he did. Jessie didn’t stick around, pushing through the swinging door and hurrying out of the bar and into the cold, near-dark night as fast as she could. She had to hope that the server hadn’t recognized her. If she did, she might tell others and eventually—inevitably—that would get back to L.A. and potentially the Night Hunter. The thought gave her more of a chill than the weather.
It was only exacerbated when she remembered where they were going next: to talk to the widower of a woman who was murdered right outside his front door less than seventy-two hours ago.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jessie steeled herself for what she knew was coming.
Unlike tricking a bartender into answering a few questions, the interview they were about to conduct had to be more straightforward. It would also likely be much more painful.
Just after 5 p.m., as the last embers of the sun dipped behind the westernmost mountain, Ryan pulled up outside the gingerbread-style house where Clarice Kimble had died.
Neither he nor Jessie had commented on their shared concern that the serv
er at Wild Things might have identified her. There was no point in worrying about something they couldn’t control. Any attempt to remedy the situation would only make it worse. Instead they focused on the task at hand: questioning Martin Kimble.
“How do you want to play it?” Jessie asked.
“Sympathetic, at least at first,” Ryan said. “His wife just died and he may be beating himself up, wondering if he had come out of the house earlier, would she be alive?”
Jessie couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn’t projecting a little. She knew that’s how he felt about Alan Trembley’s death—that the detective might still be here if Ryan had been able to walk up those Santa Monica hostel stairs with him. She didn’t dare comment on that specifically but she felt it wise to give him a reminder.
“I think that’s a good starting point,” she said. “But let’s not forget that this guy is a potential suspect too. He could have been waiting for his wife to get home, then killed her and gone back inside. The GPS won’t help us much since it can’t distinguish whether his phone was inside or out at the time she died. That’s awfully convenient for him.”
“If he did it, it is,” Ryan acknowledged. “But if he didn’t, it’s pretty inconvenient. He won’t have a convincing alibi to fall back on when he might have just been watching TV on his couch.”
Jessie shrugged. “I guess it’s time to find out.”
They got out of the car. Jessie noted that just like at the bar, Ryan didn’t take the cane with him. But unlike then, there was no need to project an air of toughness for this interview. She hoped he’d left it in the car this time simply because he was feeling more confident moving without it. Even so, she stayed close in case he lost his balance or slipped on the ice.
Ryan knocked on the door. They heard someone moving inside and after about half a minute, a lock clicked and the door opened. They were met by a chunky, balding man in his late thirties. He was blandly pleasant-looking but it was clear he hadn’t slept much recently. He was bleary-eyed and his face was blotchy. He was also wearing a red and green Christmas-themed sweater with Rudolph on the front. It struck Jessie as wildly inappropriate considering his situation. Then again, maybe he was too out of it to notice.
“Mr. Kimble,” Ryan began, “I’m Randy Hosea and this is Jennifer Barnes. We’re with the Los Angeles Police Department. Undersheriff McClane asked us for assistance in your wife’s death. Do you mind if we come in?”
“Rich told me you might be coming by sometime soon,” he said, opening the door wide so they could enter. His voice sounded as tired as he looked. “Please forgive the state of the place. I haven’t had the energy to do much cleaning up since…it happened.”
“Not a problem,” Jessie said, stepping inside. The house didn’t look all that messy, though it was packed with knick-knacks. Every shelf and counter in sight was covered with baubles and trinkets, most of which looked like they’d been collected from garage sales. There were a lot of gnomes.
Kimble guided them to the couch in the living room and he sat across from them in an easy chair. He seemed oblivious to the fact that the TV was on and the volume was loud. An infomercial about a wrinkle-defying cream blasted at them.
“Do you mind muting that?” she asked politely.
“Oh, sorry, I barely noticed it,” he said, reaching for the remote and accidentally knocking it to the ground.
While he fumbled with it, Jessie glanced at the photo of him and Clarice on the table beside him. They were sitting on a log in front of a creek, likely somewhere not far from here. The picture looked to be a couple of years old. Martin was slightly less pudgy. Clarice looked much the same as in the photos Deputy Garret Hicks had provided them.
Like Sarah Ripley, she was attractive. She had blonde hair and porcelain skin. But she didn’t look anywhere near as friendly as Sarah. With her tight smile and no-nonsense hazel eyes, the photo looked more like a DMV photo than a couples’ portrait.
Once Kimble managed to mute the television, Ryan launched in.
“We know you’ve already had to answer a lot of questions and we read the reports so we won’t go over every detail, but we did want to address a few things.”
“Of course,” Kimble said. “I’m ready to do anything I can to help find out who did this.”
“So just to be clear,” Ryan began, “you were home and decided to leave when Clarice didn’t return on time?”
“It wasn’t that she wasn’t on time,” Kimble said. “She’s often late and she told me she was running behind on Sunday night too. What concerned me was that she wasn’t returning my texts or calls. So I figured that I’d just go check on her. Everything around here is so close that it’s not a big deal, you know?”
Sure,” Ryan said, “and that’s when you found her—around 9:15?”
Kimble nodded, seemingly unable to speak.
“You never heard anything unusual prior to that?” Jessie asked, trying not to sound accusatory.
He shook his head. “We hear things all the time. Raccoons and squirrels get into trash. Deer walk through yards. A bear once broke into my storage shed. But nothing that night made me perk up more than usual.”
Jessie glanced over at Ryan, who seemed content to let her take the lead, so she continued.
“Why was Clarice late that night?” she asked. She watched him closely to see if the question upset him but he didn’t react.
“She was working,” he said non-responsively.
“On something for the store?” she pressed.
“No. She said it was for her business group.”
“The WBA?” she prompted.
“Right, so you’ve heard of it?”
“We were looking at the website this afternoon,” Jessie told him.
“Okay, then you’re familiar. Well, Clarice runs it—ran it. She hadn’t updated some new members to the group so she wanted to get them in fresh for the new week.”
“Yes, we saw the list of members,” Jessie said. “But we couldn’t access the chat area.”
“That’s a forum for members only,” Kimble said. “You need a login to get in.”
“We’d appreciate getting Clarice’s administrator login, Mr. Kimble,” she said. “Having full access to the membership data and chats might be very helpful to us.”
Kimble looked aghast.
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” he said as if she’d asked for her medical records. “That information is private. Clarice always assured her members that they could speak honestly and confidentially in that forum. I couldn’t betray their trust.”
Jessie wasn’t amused. The confidentiality of a small town business chat forum didn’t take precedence over a murder investigation. Ryan must have sensed her annoyance because he spoke up.
“We can respect that, Mr. Kimble, but it’s just that, in a situation like this, it could be quite helpful—.”
“Is there something untoward in the chats, Mr. Kimble?” Jessie demanded, interrupting. She was tired of Ryan’s diffidence. “Something illegal perhaps?”
“Of course not! Why would you even suggest such a thing?”
“If there’s nothing to hide, then why hide it?” she answered his question with one of her own. “Don’t you want to help us solve your wife’s murder? This list could be a great resource. It could reveal financial misdeeds or infidelities, perhaps even—and forgive me for saying this—on the part of your wife.”
“I doubt the latter,” Kimble said, coming as close to cracking a smile as she’d seen since they arrived.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because there isn’t much cause for cheating around here, Ms. Barnes,” he said. “We don’t talk about it publicly, but Clarice and I were part of a swingers’ group.”
“I’m sorry?” Ryan said, unable to help himself.
“I know it must shock you fancy Los Angeles types to learn that we provincial mountain folk like to have a good time, but it’s true. We were swingers.”
“Is tha
t why you don’t want to share the login info?” Jessie asked, refusing to be baited by the city “types” jab. “Is it a list of swingers or something?”
“Heavens no,” he said as if the idea was absurd. “It’s just a chat forum for business owners. But I don’t know if someone made a passing mention of a liaison in the chat. Since I’m a naturalist and don’t own a business, I wasn’t a member. But I’m not going to allow you to go rooting around in the website on some fishing expedition.”
“Even if accessing it might reveal a threat against Clarice?” Jessie pressed.
“I can answer that for you now. My wife told me everything and she never mentioned any threats. Sure, she’d get nasty comments from people. Sometimes, she’d even read them out loud to me. Clarice was a strong-willed woman and that rubbed some people the wrong way. But it was never anything serious. You have to remember, most people around here have known each other for decades. Yes, there’s a lot of baggage, but there’s a lot of love too. No one would hurt her.”
Jessie was dumbfounded by the statement.
“Bu the thing is, Mr. Kimble,” she pointed out, “someone did hurt her.”
The comment didn’t have the desired effect. His back stiffened and he sat upright in his chair.
“Nonetheless, I won’t act in opposition to her wishes. You may not access the WBA website chat forum without a warrant.” The way he said it suggested that the conversation was over.
Even before looking over at Ryan, whose eyes were pleading with her to pull back, she had decided not to push any farther. She wasn’t sure what he was hiding, if anything at all. But there was no point in arguing. There was also no point in alienating a pillar of the local community any more than she already had. That would only make things more challenging for them when they reached out to other residents.