Dead Red Cadillac, A (17 page)

Chapter Eighteen:

I awoke to a mouth full of fuzz and a sun smudged with gray. It went with my jittery dreams. All night long, Eddy McBride stood in the foyer of our home dressed as a man, then as a woman, the outfits growing progressively more bizarre as I was introduced to yet another new Eddy McBride. When Brad appeared wearing designer outfits from the sixties, I figured it was time to wake up. Brad—what was it about Brad I couldn't put my finger on?

I got up, scrubbed the sleep out of my eyes, stepped into my jeans, added a T-shirt and sighed at the emotional letdown. Why couldn't I just happily stick Garth with the murder and be done with it? Caleb could. But then, I was getting the idea that Caleb would happily use any old excuse to stick Garth in the eye with a sharp stick.

I passed through our kitchen, grabbing a cup of coffee, and was relieved to see that there were no blinking lights on the answering machine, but then my father could have either answered or deleted them before listening. Knowing my dad, it was the latter. I went to watch him tunelessly whistling as he kneeled by the jagged narrow broken sidelight with a putty knife, chipping out the last of the broken glass. Was it only two nights ago that Eddy broke into our house? My dad seemed to be enjoying himself, so I patted his bony shoulder and said nothing about Eddy McBride.

He looked up and said, "Judge Griffin says hello."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yup. Said to tell you, 'Leave the investigating to the police. That's what they get paid for.'" He looked up at me, the bushy eyebrows getting a workout. "I told him I'd pass it on," he said meaningfully.

I cleared my throat and made agreeable noises, then let the screen door slam behind me and headed for the office. I needed the routine of work chores to sort out my plan. I would spend the next few hours moving paper around, clearing out old order tags, and billing while I worked up my nerve. Then I intended to do something that would tip the scales of mounting evidence away from Eddy and my dad.

The phone rang once, I picked it up and said, "Hello?" Nothing. "Hello?" Wrong number. Only when I hung up, it started ringing again. This time, I tried a louder, "Hello?" Maybe the connection was bad.

A whispering voice asked, "Is this Lalla Bains?" Was this the whispering Eddy from the other day at Patience's house?

"Eddy?" I whispered back. When there was no answer, I wondered if he'd hung up on me.

The receiver coughed at me a couple of times, and then a clear soprano said, "This is Autumn O'Sullivan."

The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. "Garth's girlfriend?" Caleb would want to talk to this young lady, and I had a few questions of my own.

I heard the hissing intake of breath and then she spit out, "Garth's ex-ex-ex-girlfriend, you mean!"

"What can I do for you, Miss O'Sullivan?"

"You kin call me Autumn, ever'body else does," she said. But then her hold on phone etiquette dissolved into tears. "You gotta help me—if he finds out I'm here, he's gonna kill me!"

The prints at the windowsill, the high heel marks next to it and the gold pendant. The police would love to talk to Autumn, but then I had some questions of my own. "Of course I'll help you. I'll pick you up and we can go to the police together."

She bleated some sheep noises at my ear. "It won't do no good. I tried to get the police to pa-a-aay attention to him, but he wiggled his way outta that. He finds out I was the one who turned him in, he's gonna get me fer sure!"

Garth had been right about one thing—she'd been the one who called the cops. "Look, I have a friend in the sheriff's department, he'll listen to you." Not that I could see Caleb allowing me along for the interview, but if this girl was involved, it could clear my family.

"No! No cops, not yet."

"Then let me come to you, and we'll come up with something to do for you, okay?"

"I'm in a phone booth in Turlock. I gotta get me a lawyer, find some way to put that cheatin' bastard away before he fi—finds me."

I would talk Autumn into turning herself in to the police, and get that thanks Caleb owed me. "I can help you, Autumn. Just tell me where you are." I patted the little digital recorder I kept clipped on my jeans. "I'll record your story, take it to the police. I'll even get you a lawyer."

She sniffled and giggled at the same time. The girl was close to hysteria. If I could only get to her before she bolted.

She gave me the name of a pancake house in Turlock and I hung up, grabbed the truck keys, and raced the clock down the freeway. Even if every other word was a lie, she knew something that could help me break the stalemate on this case. It also meant that I, and not that bonehead Detective Rodney, had the scoop on Patience's killer.

I parked the car and went in the front door.

She sat alone in a booth, hunched over a steaming mug of coffee, doing her best to look inconspicuous. Didn't do her any good, as there wasn't a man in the place with a drop of testosterone in his veins who wasn't leering in her direction.

Autumn O'Sullivan was a looker, all right. A curvy little pigeon, with artfully tangled red hair falling in a curtain around bare shoulders, the décolleté on her sleeveless blue dress deep enough for most of the crowd to watch as her bosom jiggled in time to a nervously swinging foot. She was wearing very white, very high heels, the kind
Playboy
models wear in centerfolds when they don't wear anything else.

"Hi, Autumn," I said gently. She jumped, but then smiled nervously when I held out my hand. "I'm Lalla Bains."

"Oh, thank God," she said, patting pink nails over the deep curve of her breast and somewhere close to her heart. The heart-shaped face, I noticed, was remarkably devoid of tears. I was beginning to wonder if she had one—heart, that is.

Leaning across the table, she said, "I forgot to describe myself. I was afraid you wouldn't know what I look like."

I had to work at keeping a straight face at the idea that I wouldn't have been able to find her in all this testosterone. I said, "Garth gave me a brief description."

She gave a little shudder at the mention of his name.

I sat down across from her and pulled out the small recorder. "Do you want to do this here or in my car?" I said kindly, but not giving her the option to back out.

She looked around at the twenty or so drooling men and decided to chance the seating arrangement here. The tip of a pink tongue flicked out to lick the corner of her red lips. A sexy little gesture entirely wasted on me, but I doubted if she was giving it much thought. "This will do, I guess."

I hit the on button. "So, tell me again what your name is, for the record." I'd seen this done on TV and knew I needed to get her to say her name first.

If it was fear that glued her to this spot, her green eyes looked like they would have jumped up and ran. She swallowed, bent toward the recorder and said, "My name is Autumn O'Sullivan. Garth Thorne is my ex-ex-ex-fiancé." She was doing it again, as if repetition would wipe away the association.

"Why do you think Garth would hurt you?"

Behind the heavy mascara, the green eyes sparkled like water in a glade. "Because I know he kilt his li'l ol' aunty. I wasn't part of that," she added quickly. "I'm not even supposed to be here. I followed him. Drove all the way from Oklahoma in a busted old Chevy I got after he kicked me out. I been shadowing him, ever since. I figured he really came out here 'cause he got hisself another girlfriend. When I saw you coming out of his motor home, I thought…" She dimpled and flashed her pearly whites. "Well, you know, but you're not his type. So I can trust you, right?"

I started to say something about Garth and his eclectic tastes in women, but realized she was probably referring to my advanced age. "Fine, fine," I said, "but you said he killed his aunt. Did you see him do it?"

She tsked and shook the curls vehemently to indicate I was slowing her down. "He told me he was coming out to see her. Not that I believed him for a minute. I just didn't know he was going to kill her!"

I tried again. "Did you actually see him do this, or did he tell you he killed his aunt?"

Her green eyes went from kitten to catty slits. "He don't know I'm here yet, but he's going to find out soon enough."

Autumn's revenge on her former fiancé might not happen if she wasn't a credible witness. I tried another angle. "Was it for the money?"

"Money?" She blinked, then tilted her head at me, the green in her eyes going sharp with interest. "He never said nothin' 'bout no money."

"Never mind," I said quickly, sorry I had thrown her off her stride. "The police thought perhaps her murder was a botched burglary."

"Oh. Well, he did it, not some burglar. I saw him," she huffed. "It was getting dark, and I'd followed him out to this old farm house, hopin' I'd catch him with the hussy he'd dumped me for. I parked down the road and crept up to the house, looking in the window to see who he's fooling around with. I had to dive back into the bushes when I heard the door opening, and I got to tell you, I got the surprise of my life when I seen him carrying this old lady out of the house."

Here was confirmation of Autumn's fingerprints that Caleb found on Patience's windowsill. "How did you know it was an old lady? Maybe it was groceries. It was dark wasn't it?"

"Are you kidding? Sacks of potatoes don't wear Nikes over their knee-high support hose."

"Oh, okay."

"So he's carrying this old lady over his shoulder, an' he opens the door to the motor home and dumps her right in. She had to be out cold. Or dead. Then he just drives off."

"Did you follow him?"

"Not me! I knew he was up to his ass in alligators. I waited a bit and then went to look inside the house. I was curious, you know? I was raised in one just like it as a kid. Nothing I ever intend to live in again, I can tell you."

Of course that didn't explain how Patience ended up in the driver's seat of my car, six feet under the water. I gulped down the bile threatening to ruin my interview. "Then what did you do?"

"So he's already done kilt her, and I seen him carting this ol' lady off in his RV, right? An' I'm thinking, now what do I do? What could I do? He was up to no good, I knew that, so what could I do? Anyways, I sat and thought, what could I do?"

She was overplaying the scene. I would let Caleb deal with her bad acting. "Let's move on, shall we? Then what?"

"Yeah, that's right. I left. I was meaning to call the police from the motel, but I don't have a cell phone, you know. He took that too when he kicked me out. I had to use that dirty phone in the booth to call you. Where was I? Oh yeah. So I leave, then think better of it and come back to her house. How could I just lay there and sleep, knowin' he's a criminal and all?"

There were big fat holes in her story, but if I wanted to call Caleb anytime soon, I would need to wrap this up. I did little winding motions with my wrist indicating to her that she should get on with it.

She nodded, making an O of her lips to indicate she got it, and said, "I got there, his motor home was parked in the driveway and the lights were out. I couldn't figure it. Had he gone back to clean up his fingerprints? What had he done with her body?" She slapped her hand on the table. "I'll tell you, honey, I was stumped! That's when I remembered he still had a warrant for back child support. So I called the police—least they would do is pick him up, ask him what happened at his aunt's house. But nothin' happened! And now he's out, and he's fixin' to find out who tattled on him."

Autumn may not be the brightest bulb in the room, but it was certain her agenda had everything to do with the stolen loot that Garth was keeping from her. Gone and come back, my eye. Caleb's idea of Garth and Autumn as cold-blooded killers was beginning to make sense. This was a double-cross. With Garth in jail, she could safely grab the loot and trip the light fantastic. "Autumn, do you have a little Black Hills gold-leaf pendant?"

In a reflexive gesture, her hand fluttered to the pale unadorned breast. "I never took it off, all the time we were together. But he must've taken that too."

First her prints, and now the pendant. While I was leaning toward revenge and greed as her motives, the tears began to fill her green eyes and the lower lip quivered.

Hoping to avoid a stampede by the entire male population in the place, I quickly handed her a tissue and made sympathetic clucking sounds. "Autumn, sweetie, don't cry. You've got to tell the police what you know. And then they can arrest him. In the meantime, I can hide you."

"Hide?" She sniffed and blew again. "I got a contract to do hair commercials in L.A. I could be a movie star in less than a year, if'n I can just git there. Can't you do it—tell 'em what I said and they kin arrest him? Look, I even changed my name to move there. Sandy sounded too much like a kid. But I'm never going to get that contract if this Garth thing holds me up another day." She waved the pink-tipped nails dismissively at my recorder. "You take that li'l ol' recording to the cops. You tell 'em what he did. You said you would help me," she whined. The tears had miraculously dried up.

Damn, my accessory to murder was starting to slip through my fingers. She would crack, I was sure of it, if only I could get her to talk to Caleb.