Fox River (33 page)

“I want to feel like I belong.”

Julia was surprised. She didn’t know what to say.

Fidelity, of course, had no such problem. “Belong?” Fidelity tickled his nose with the grass again. “How could you belong any more than you already do? You’re Mr. Claymore Park, son. You’re Mr. Ridge’s Race. There’s not a girl in this town who wouldn’t pull down her pretty little ruffled panties for you if you just asked. You’re gorgeous, smart enough to converse intelligently with Einstein—”

“Who is quite dead,” Julia pointed out.

“Heck, Robby’s smart enough to figure out how to bring him back,” Fidelity said. “And under that aloof exterior beats a passionate heart, right?”

Robby grabbed her hand, removed the blade of rye grass and tossed it. “Is everything funny to you?”

“You’re not funny. I think you’re the absolute best.”

Unaccountably, Julia felt tears sting her eyes. Fidelity could be selfish and vain, but she loved Robby, just the way she loved Julia and Christian. Fidelity might hold out her arms to the world, demanding everything in it, but at the same time she was ready to smother it with genuine, exuberant affection.

“Well, that means something, I guess,” Robby said at last.

“We all think you’re the best,” Julia said. “You belong with us. You always will. That’s never going to change, Robby. I just know we’ll always be together.”

Acme Storage was an impeccably kept facility. Still, Samantha’s locker smelled musty, as if whatever was left of Joachim’s life was rotting inside boxes and crates. The light was too bright and seemed to bounce off the glistening strapping tape. The temperature was cold enough to make Christian glad he’d brought his heavy jacket.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Samantha said. “It’s not going to be a simple task.”

“The boxes seem pretty well marked. We can forget the ones that say glassware and books.”

Christian looked around. There was a lot to sort through, but the packing company had done an excellent job of listing contents on the boxes. He began to move things around, piling the most likely boxes at one end of the locker. “What do you think? Shall we start with these?”

“I think we should pile them in my truck and take them back to my house. We can sort at our leisure. I have a nice Bordeaux Peter gave me after one of my colts finished first at the Foxfield Spring Race Meet.”

It was an extra step, but it made good sense. He realized they would tire of the cold and the smell very quickly. “Let’s get going.”

An hour later the boxes were in Samantha’s tiny living room, the baby-sitter had been escorted home, and a sleepy Tiffany—dark-haired like her father, but freckled and extroverted like her mother—had been tucked back into bed.

“Do we have a system?” Samantha asked, reaching for the first box. They were sitting shoulder to shoulder.

“You open and look through each one. If there’s something you don’t want me to see, that’s fine. Otherwise I’ll browse. If there’s nothing interesting I’ll set it aside—”

“And I’ll repack it,” Samantha said. “That sounds like a system. Where does the wine come in?”

“After we’ve done some work. As a reward.”

She muttered a protest, but she left and returned with a knife, scissors and a roll of packing tape. “You have to take all the boxes back and pile them in the locker. Promise?”

“You won’t have to do another thing. And I really do appreciate this.”

They started to work. Samantha’s house was warm and softly lit, and it smelled like peach potpourri. He had been surprised at how fiercely feminine it was. Pastel walls, floral slipcovers, lace curtains at the window. He supposed this was the flip side of the woman who worked so hard in the Claymore Park stables. He found it enticing. She was enticing.

Professional packers did not sort. They went through rooms putting items carefully into boxes, then taping them shut. Samantha laughed at the contents of the fifth box. “Here’s the wastebasket, trash intact.”

“Not kitchen garbage, I hope.”

“No, his office. Nothing here worth sorting through.”

“I’d better have a look just the same.”

He did, and she was right. “Joachim Hernandez, fan of Moon Pies and connoisseur of Post-it notes.”

“He used them for everything. I’d find them all over our apartment. ‘Call John. Wash car. Fold laundry.’”

“He helped with the laundry?”

“No, those notes were for me.”

They hit pay dirt on box number ten. “Bingo. Bank statements,” Samantha said. “Now I can find out if he was making enough to stay current on his child support.”

“Didn’t he?”

“Joachim was master of the grand gesture. We wouldn’t see him for months, then, just as I was ready to go to court, he’d drop around with a check and plans to spend the next two weeks with Tiffany.”

“I hope there was insurance.”

“A little. That’s how I bought this house. I wanted Tiffany to have a place she could really call home.”

“It’s cute. I like it.”

“I’m ready for that wine, how about you?” Samantha went off to open the bottle as Christian began to sort the bank statements by date. Joachim hadn’t been organized; he had been a pack rat. The statements went back three years from his death, which suited Christian perfectly.

He had piles in place by the time Samantha returned with wine and a platter of cheese and crackers. She set the tray on a wicker coffee table and sat cross-legged on the floor beside him, leaning against the sofa with her knee brushing his. “What shall I do?”

“I’m going to start with the oldest statements. Maybe you should start with the most recent?”

“What are we looking for?”

Christian didn’t know. Unusual deposits or withdrawals, perhaps. He really didn’t think luck would strike and he would find a check made out to one Karl Zandoff, but he supposed stranger things had happened. He told her to look for patterns or deviations from patterns, and they went to work.

Half a glass of wine later, he looked up. “Did Joachim have a regular job, Sam? Or I should say, was he paid regularly by a sponsor?”

“Do you know how polo players are paid?”

“It’s not my game.”

“In a nutshell, it’s a rich man’s game, and rich amateurs pay professionals a lot of money to play on their teams. When Joachim was at his best, he could make as much as ten or twenty thousand during a tournament. The best players made more.”

Christian whistled softly.

“But Joachim also had extravagant expenses. Six ponies, all the expense of keeping and transporting them. Professional fees. And, of course, the costs of schmoozing with the idle rich.”

Christian knew “pony” was the traditional term but not accurate. Players used Thoroughbreds, and he knew the cost of their upkeep. He could see why Samantha had worked so hard.

“From what you’ve said, it’s unlikely Joachim would have made a regular paycheck.”

“A regular paycheck would have been a blessing.”

“There’s a deposit twice a month, every month, of six hundred dollars.”

“Let me see.”

Christian handed her the statement. “It’s been on the last three statements.”

“It’s an automatic deposit.” She looked puzzled. “It’s not a fortune, but it’s regular. Odd.”

“Check and see if it’s on the later ones, too.”

They sorted through the records. In the end, the automatic deposits were the most interesting figures they found. They had started in the winter before Fidelity’s death and continued for a year. Then they had concluded.

“How do we find out who made the deposits?” Samantha said.

“You could contact the bank, but they’ll probably refuse to tell you. Your name wasn’t on the account.”

“I knew better than to merge my earnings with his.”

“None of the checks look particularly interesting?” Christian said.

“No, they’re all pretty straightforward.”

“Maybe we’ll find credit card statements.” Christian reached for the next box.

Halfway through his second glass of wine, he did. He’d gone to prison before developing a taste for wine or social drinking of any kind. Now the pleasures of a good Bordeaux sang in his veins. The beautiful woman at his elbow was a bonus. “Credit card statements. Years worth. Did he ever throw anything away?”

“He was phobic about getting rid of things. When we divorced, he insisted on taking all the canned goods, sort of a hedge against starvation, I think.”

“I’ll keep opening boxes. You let me know if you want me to go through some of those with you,” Samantha said.

Christian found nothing of interest as he paged through statements. After ten or so pages, his eyes began to blur and words stopped making sense.

“I have to take a break.”

“Eye strain?”

He closed his eyes and let the wine do its work. “Brain strain.”

“It’s a lot to go through.”

“Reading’s never easy for me,” he admitted.

“You graduated from college in prison, didn’t you?”

“Unless I’m really tired I read well enough now to do anything. But I am dyslexic.”

“You see words backward?”

“No, my problem was poor word recognition skills. Most people see a word and automatically recognize it after a few times. Some of us have to sound out the same word over and over again until it finally computes, and in the meantime the meaning gets lost. With Robby Claymore’s help I got better as I got older, until I was reading at grade level by the time I got to high school. But when I’m tired, even familiar words look new.”

“You know, Callie has the same problem. Bright as the dickens, but reading is agonizing. She and Julia go over lists of words every night.”

That surprised him, although learning disabilities were far more common than people assumed. He supposed it was just as well Callie was Julia’s daughter. At least she’d known a little about dyslexia before finding out her daughter had it.

He remembered something Callie had told him when he’d stopped by to see her. “She said her grandmother bought her a picture book to help her train Clover. I thought it was just because she’s only seven.”

“Eight.” Samantha’s attention was diverted. She flipped open the last box. “Pay dirt.”

“What?”

“Appointment books.” She dug through. “The year Fidelity was murdered.” She held up a slim leather volume. “Pre-Palm Pilot. Joachim kept notes about everything.”

She handed over the book, but he shook his head. “Read it to me, will you? Start a couple of months before Fidelity died and see what you find.”

She settled beside him, turning the lamp so it shone directly on the appointment book. “March?”

“Start there. We can page back if we need to.”

“Polo game. Drinks with friends. Meeting with M. I.”

“Any idea who that is?”

“They met at a bar in…Leesburg.” She held the book up to the light. “A ways to go for a drink, and the wrong direction for the polo crowd.”

“
I.
Not that common an initial. Iverson? Irving?”

“Ice? Ink? Let’s see if it shows up again.” She read through a couple of days where Joachim had done nothing more important than take a horse to the vet and play practice matches.

“Here’s something in the margin.” Samantha turned the book and squinted. “No luck on sale. Report to M. I.” She lowered the book to her lap. “Sale of what? Drugs? A horse? That’s another way polo players make their living. They raise and train ponies for amateurs.”

“M. I. Initials of a stable? Middleburg…” Christian shrugged.

“I doubt it. If he was meeting someone in a bar, he’d have their name down, not where they worked.” She continued reading, paging through until she came to another similar notation. “Tried sale again. F. threat.”

“F? For Fidelity?” Christian sat straighter. “Try the back of the book. Most appointment books have blank pages at the end. See what he wrote.”

Samantha kept her finger in the margin and paged forward to the end. “Birthdays. He got mine right, the loser, but never remembered to get me a present on time.”

She turned the page. “Here’s a list of phone numbers.” She was silent a moment. “Fidelity’s,” she confirmed.

“Anyone with the initials M. I.?”

“Miles Inchman.”

“Someone’s mother had a sense of humor.”

“I guess she thought if he was stuck with Inchman, she could balance it with Miles.”

“I suppose it’s too much to hope there’s a number for Karl Zandoff?”

“Nothing.”

They went back to the appointment pages. There were appointments with Inchman scattered through the months.

She paged through. “Here’s something. Oh, Christian, listen to this note in the margin. ‘F. says she’ll turn me in. Ha. Ha. M. I. will laugh.’”

“I have a friend in the sheriff’s office. I’m going to call and see if he knows anything about a Miles Inchman.” Christian started to look for the telephone, but Samantha pulled him back down.