Paid in Full (21 page)

“Why is it every agent I deal with has an IQ smaller than his shoe size?” Ari smiled at the sentiment. She’d had her own share of agents who entered the profession only because it was a quick way to get into a career. Three weeks and a person could have the same legal power as an attorney—the ability to write contracts.

Ari shrugged and handed her friend the tea. Jane noticed the stacks of files and papers on Ari’s dining room table. “What, are you quitting?” she joked.

“Doubtful,” Ari replied. “My career seems to be the highlight of my life.” She sat in front of the Watson file and willed the previous thought back into her mind. She’d been so close to retrieving it. “Why would you move a body?” she asked out loud.

“To cover something up,” Jane answered from the couch.

“Possibly. But Thorndike was just lying in the middle of the floor. There was nothing there,” Ari said.

“Well, then,” Jane countered, “if you’re not covering something up, you’re uncovering it.” Ari nodded at the simple logic.

“Or the killer just needed his body out of the way to write the name,” Jane added as an afterthought.

He needed him out of the way
. The niggle finally broke the surface. Ari sifted through her notes, looking for the ones she took when she and Bob had discussed the floor. She found the sheets and scanned her scribbles, the fragmented words and symbols that no one else would understand. Grabbing the phone, she punched in Bob’s number.

“What are you doing?” Jane asked, stretched out on the couch and reading a fashion magazine.

“Solving a mystery,” Ari answered. When Bob’s voice mail picked up, she disconnected and punched in the number of the Tempe store while she checked her watch. It was still early, but maybe Kristen would know where Bob was, if she’d answer the phone.

“Hello?” Kristen sounded far away and Ari could barely hear her.

“Kristen, it’s Ari Adams, Bob’s friend. I wanted to know if you’d heard from him.”

“No. He hasn’t called,” she said, a little too quickly.

“Kristen, look, I know about your affair, and I want to help Bob too. I just need to talk to him. If he calls you, please have him call me as soon as possible. I’ve got some questions about his parents’ house.” When Kristen, didn’t answer, Ari thought she’d hung up. “Kristen?”

“Yeah, I’m still here. He’s supposed to call pretty soon.”

“Well, when he does, tell him to call me on my cell phone. I’m going to check something out, but I’ll have it with me. Okay?”

Ari heard a long pause before Kristen said, “I’ll tell him,” and then she disconnected abruptly.

Ari grabbed her bag and Bob’s file and headed for the door.

“Ari, what’s going on in your head?” Jane called, but Ari had already left.

Chapter Twenty-two

Saturday, June 23

2:35 p.m.

Ari didn’t even bother to park the SUV properly as she pulled up to the house. All the possible scenarios played through her head. Perhaps Lily and Michael Thorndike were still seeing each other and Bob found out. Would his love for Kristen be enough to forgive Lily a second affair? She wondered if Bob had lied to her about his friendly conversation with Michael Thorndike.

As she worked the lockbox and inserted the front door key, she hesitated. After what happened last time, knowing she was anywhere near this house alone would give Molly cause to freak out, but then again, the detective probably wouldn’t care now. She regretted not telling Jane where she was going. She looked up and down the street. It was just another weekend, eerily similar to the past Sunday when everything began. She took a deep breath and stepped across the threshold.

She quickly opened the blinds, sunlight pouring into the living room. She walked behind the bar,
Robert
still splayed on the wall in dried blood. The wall wasn’t really the focus of interest, although someone had wanted it to be.

She stared at the small space between the bar and the wall. During her initial tour with Bob, he’d made many side comments about the house, and one of them had to do with the floor—and the safe. She’d absently written down the word in her notes and had forgotten about it when Bob said it wasn’t functional and he intended to cover it permanently. Ari knew it couldn’t be included in the listing. Since he’d handled the entire floor installation, she’d had no reason to think of it again.

She squatted down, thoroughly uncomfortable with the bloody wall two inches away, not to mention the fact that she had been in this position when she was attacked before. At first glance, there didn’t seem to be anything unusual about the planks. She tried to wiggle them but they didn’t move. She shone the flashlight up and down the seams caked with Michael Thorndike’s blood.

Nothing unusual. Perhaps her hunch was wrong.

She checked along the baseboard, back and forth. During the second pass, she glimpsed a small notch in the center. She inserted the blade of her pocketknife and was amazed when the entire baseboard popped off with a simple tug.

She closed the pocketknife and stuffed it into her shorts. Her attention was riveted to the planks. With a firm grip, she pulled the plank forward. An entire section came forward with great difficulty. She paused, took another breath and using both hands and all her strength, she tugged mightily. It gave suddenly, sending Ari backward a few feet.

She crawled back to the exposed space and stared at the dial of a safe. She pulled at the handle and the door swung open freely, its lock inoperable. Ari stared at the small caliber gun and was sure she had found the murder weapon in a place only her best friend knew existed.

Bob, the one who had insisted on personally supervising the floor installation, shutting Ari out of the loop, probably forgetting the offhanded remark he’d made about his dad’s secret place to stash his valuables. Suddenly she felt very foolish for ever having believed him.

A shadow crossed in front of her and Ari turned around.

Molly pulled off her jacket and faced Lily Watson. The woman had said nothing for the first hour, not a single word. It had taken that long to pull her attorney out of the Diamondbacks game and get him to the station. All the while Lily had stared at Molly, contempt pouring out of her. When Arthur Primrose had finally arrived, clad in a D-backs jersey and cap, he requested another hour to conference with his client. Now, two hours later, Molly was hot, impatient and very angry herself. She matched Lily’s seething gaze with her own.

“My client is willing to answer any questions you have, Detective Nelson,” Primrose announced cheerily. His mood was in sharp comparison to that of his client’s, who gave him a cold stare.

“I said I would answer any
new
questions, Arthur. Detective Nelson is the master of the broken record, asking the same things over and over. So you have anything new, Detective?” Lily asked, her voice dripping in sarcasm.

“Did you know Michael Thorndike wasn’t going to leave his wife?” Molly shot the question at Lily hoping to catch her off guard.

It seemed to have the opposite effect, since she cocked her head to one side and grinned. “Yes, I knew that.” Molly paused, stunned by Lily’s demeanor and certain she was missing something. The hinges on the interrogation room’s door squeaked as Andre appeared, drawing the attention of all three of them.

He looked green. “Molly, I need to see you. Now.” He disappeared and Molly followed him out, grateful for the break and an opportunity to regroup her thoughts. Andre was slumped in a chair, chewing on a nail. “I think I screwed up,” he stated simply.

“What do you mean?”

“I finally interviewed Kristen Duke’s other roommate this morning. You know, the one who can verify her alibi?”

Molly nodded, her gut already starting to turn. “Yeah.”

“She wasn’t there. That whole story about her and Kristen watching a movie was bogus. She never saw Kristen. It seems she went on a spur-of-the-moment camping trip with her boyfriend that afternoon. She says she left a note with directions, but Kristen never mentioned it to me. I couldn’t find her for three days, and I went along thinking Kristen had an alibi.”

“Which may have been exactly what she wanted.” Molly sighed deeply. “Where is Kristen now?”

“That’s the other part. She’s supposed to be at work, but she never showed up. I’m gonna get right on it,” he added.

“Great,” Molly said. She stared at the interrogation room door, knowing she would once again have to face Lily Watson. “You’re right, Andre,” she agreed. “You really screwed up.”

“You haven’t figured much out, have you?” Kristen asked. Ari quickly noticed the thirty-eight she held in her hand. “Why don’t you stand up?”

Ari closed the door to the safe and slowly rose against the wall. Kristen’s eyes drifted to the bulge in her pocket. She casually walked over and took the gun from Ari’s jacket, throwing it so hard it skidded down the hallway.

“How did you get here? I thought you were at the Tempe store.”

With her free hand, Kristen pulled out her cell phone from the depths of her jacket pocket. “Call forwarding. Isn’t technology wonderful?”

“Terrific,” Ari responded.

“You thought it was Bob, right?” she said, her tone smug.

“Or Lily,” Ari admitted. “I didn’t think anyone else knew about the safe.”

“Who do you think ordered the floor? His trusted assistant.”

“Who also happened to be his lover,” Ari added.

“Believe me, our relationship was all in his head,” she stated bluntly.

“So you weren’t lovers?”

She sighed, and Ari noticed she tended to look away when she spoke. “We fucked. Bob had this romantic notion that we were in love, but it was all him. I already had a man.”

The truth slapped Ari in the face. “Michael Thorndike.”

Kristen grinned. “Now you’re catching on. Do you want to know the sordid details?” Ari nodded. “We met when Russ Swanson sent me over to Michael’s office with some documents. I didn’t even know who Michael Thorndike was, but he put the moves on me during the first five minutes. It was the beginning of something special.”

Kristen’s eyes drifted away, and Ari used the opportunity to remove the knife from her pocket. “I’m lost,” she announced. “How did you wind up with Bob?”

“It was Michael’s idea. Brilliant, really. When I mentioned that I thought Bob had a crush on me, he decided to use it to his advantage. This was right around the time Russ and Bob were negotiating for the downtown store.” Lost in her own story, she didn’t notice Ari’s hand slide behind her back.

“So you were Michael’s spy?” Ari was dumbfounded. She hadn’t given Kristen enough credit.

“A regular Mata Hari,” Kristen said proudly. “I was the one who suggested to Michael that he could take a bribe from Russ Swanson. Russ has no spine.” Kristen leaned against the bar. She was holding the gun like a cocktail drink, not even aware that it wasn’t pointed anywhere near Ari.

“That makes you a conspirator and a spy, correct?”

“Don’t forget murderess.”

“How did you do it?”

Kristen smiled. “When I told you a fax came in that night at the store, that wasn’t a lie. There was a fax, but it was for me from Michael. I’d asked him to meet me, because I wanted to discuss our situation.”

Ari watched Kristen fidget with the gun. She was becoming more agitated and impatient. “And what was your situation?”

“He’d dumped me two days before. It was that bitch, his wife. He was going to leave her, but then she threatened to take half of everything. Once the asshole broke out the calculator and realized how much he was going to lose, he told me he couldn’t
afford
to get a divorce.” Kristen’s voice trembled along with her body. “I loved him, that bastard. I’d given up everything for him.”

“And you couldn’t let him get away with that.”

“Of course not! He said we could keep having fun together, but that’s not what I wanted.”

“You wanted it all.”

Tears welled in Kristen’s eyes and she nodded. Ari could sense she wasn’t on guard and Ari knew she would need to act quickly. She took a step closer to Kristen and gripped the knife tightly.

“Why did you come here?”

“It was vacant. I figured it would be a few days before anyone suspected. So, I got here first. I pried open the back door and met him when he rang the bell. He tried to reason with me, make excuses, lie. But there was nothing he could say at that point.”

“Where’d the gun come from?”

“I always keep a gun in my purse,” she answered. “Anybody who works nights should always have a gun.”

Ari was running out of questions and options. She needed to distract Kristen. “So where did
that
gun come from?” she asked, motioning to the one Kristen held in her hand.

“This one? The one I’m going to kill you with?” Ari nodded. “This is a recent purchase, and of course, you already discovered the murder weapon.” They both looked at the safe beneath Ari.

“What I don’t understand,” Ari said slowly, “is why you hid the gun in the safe. Why not throw it out?”

Kristen shook her head. “My father owned that gun. It’s sentimental to me. I needed it to disappear for awhile, but I figured that once Bob was arrested and time had passed, I’d break into the house again and take it back. Who would know? Besides it’s not like there’s a bunch of lakes and rivers in Phoenix that you can toss a gun into,” she added sarcastically.

Kristen took a few steps away from the bar and said, “It’s strange how we keep meeting this way. You interrupted me the other night when I came back.” She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Stupid me. I forgot to wipe the handle.” She stared at Ari. “I was certainly surprised to see you. I could have killed you, you know. But I didn’t want to. I liked you.”

“Is that going to stop you from killing me now?” Ari asked. Kristen frowned. “It’s really your own fault. If you’d just stayed out of it.”

“So why did you write Bob’s name on the wall?”

Kristen came closer. Ari knew she would only have one opportunity. “Now, I know you’ve figured that out. Why don’t you tell me?”