His Partner's Wife (30 page)

Ruefully eyeing the mess she'd just made, she said, "No
more cookies. I promise."

"You make good ones."

"Thank you." She sounded as stilted as he did. It
would be a cold day in hell before she took him any more.

After a moment, he said, "You okay there alone?"

"Of course I am!" Too much vehemence. "I'm
fine."

"I doubt you'll be bothered. You were right. Why would
anyone break in again?"

Oh, good. She could go back to her old life. No squabbling
kids, no uncomfortable tension between John and his mother, no Hugh and Connor
hanging around with beers in their hands, no … John.

Except, she supposed, as an occasional caller.

"You're not going to find out who killed Ronald Floyd,
are you?" she asked.

His voice became weary. "I don't know, Natalie. I can't
promise you. We need something to go on."

She nodded, and realized he couldn't see her. "Yes. I
see."

"My mother gave me hell for not making an arrest
yet."

"I'm sorry."

"No, she was right." He sounded gruff. "I
wish I could give you that, at least."

She gripped the phone with painfully tight fingers.
"Please don't apologize."

Nothing but him breathing for a moment. Then, "Maddie
got an A on her spelling test."

Natalie had to swallow before she could say in a semblance
of a normal voice, "Tell her I said congratulations."

"Will do." Another of those awkward pauses made
her wonder what he was thinking. "I'd suggest dinner tomorrow night, but I
don't dare. I'm handling that homicide in Bayview."

The headline for tomorrow morning's paper was two inches
high: Prominent Socialite Murdered. The newsroom had been buzzing over the
story. Ronald Floyd's death had been news, primarily because he had been
murdered in her house. But this killing had stunned Port Dare, because of who
the victim was. Rachel Portman's husband was a wealthy businessman and school
board member, while she volunteered for half a dozen causes. Their neighborhood
was one of the ritziest in town, the houses all enormous fake Tudors or Italian
villas or some such, the views of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and shipping
traffic spectacular. If the houses had security systems, it was to protect the
home owners' jewelry and top-of-the-line stereo systems and computers, not the
inhabitants themselves. Murders did not happen in Bayview.

"Are you getting anywhere?"

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'm afraid so."

Which meant the husband, she guessed. She knew him. He had
been in a particularly foul mood last week when they discussed changing the
look of his weekly advertisement.

"Oh, dear," Natalie said.

"You may say so."
A
muffled voice sounded in the background. "Oh, hell.
Evan's calling me. Listen, we'll talk tomorrow?"

"If you have time."

"Night."

With that, he was gone. No
I
miss you.
Not
even a
Can we have a lunchtime tryst?
Just,
We'll
talk tomorrow.

Natalie took the cookie dough from the freezer, dumped it
into the garbage beneath the sink and cleaned the kitchen.

Around a mouthful
of
French fries, Baxter argued, "He's got an alibi."

"The son of a bitch did it," John said flatly.

Monday morning, and they were sitting in the car outside the
Italianate monstrosity in Bayview where Rachel Portman had been murdered as she
emerged from the marble shower in the master bath Saturday morning at
approximately nine o'clock. The front door had been conveniently unlocked, and
some jewelry was missing from the small safe she had apparently opened in
expectation of wearing a piece she kept in it. Strangely, other valuable pieces
were left dumped on the dresser, as if to suggest the intruder had rushed out
with only part of his booty. Her body had been discovered when she failed to
show at a hospital luncheon benefit she was chairing.

This was the first time they'd been alone to discuss the
case, instead of running around interviewing everybody and his mother. Baxter
had been in a hell of a mood the past few days, sullen and snarling. John knew
his own wasn't much better. Natalie's departure had left a hole in his life
that gaped. He didn't like her being alone, either. Whatever reason said, the
intruder-murderer was still at large, his purpose still something of a mystery.
John disliked failure, which the lack of an arrest equated. And he hated
looking at the man beside him in the car and wondering if his tension didn't
have to do with their failure not to find the murderer, but to find the money.

And here was a thought: what if John had been the one to
find the key while the two of them were alone in Natalie's house? If Geoff
Baxter was the one who had killed once, would he have balked at dealing with
his partner?

John swore to himself and watched Baxter unwrap his bacon
cheeseburger. Sauce oozed as he lifted it to his mouth. Seeming not to notice,
Baxter scowled at the windshield. "Could've hired someone."

John thrust a napkin at him and readjusted his own thinking.
"Assassins being readily available on every street corner in Port Dare,
Washington."

Geoff looked down in vague surprise and dabbed at the sauce
festooning his tie. Wadding up the napkin, he continued the argument, "How
hard is it to find some scumbag who'll do anything for a thousand bucks?"

Hell, why not just ask for a cop? John thought sourly.

He took a swallow of coffee. "Tricky, if you're a
prominent businessman." Damn it, he should have gotten something to eat,
too, but the fast-food burgers hadn't appealed. He sighed. "I think he did
it himself." Suddenly energized, he reached for the key in the ignition.
The older crime had of necessity to be put on hold; whatever agenda he or
Baxter had. For now, they might as well do more than the motions. This one they
could solve. "Let's go talk to his faithful secretary again."

She was lying and he knew it. Classic story: handsome,
older, well-to-do boss and the pretty twenty-something secretary who had taken
to frequently traveling together. She was shocked by the murder but so far
steadfast in her story: he'd been out of the office, it was true, but she had
been with him. They were inspecting a building he had recently purchased near
the waterfront.

John had hoped twenty-four hours of thinking it over might
have shaken her. If anything, her resolve had grown more steely. Interestingly
so, he thought—she was starting to get ticked that they were hassling her.

They left her house and decided to interview the husband
again. John thought of himself as a patient man, but today he just wanted to
make a damned arrest and go home. He could get a baby-sitter, or see if his
mother would watch the kids, call Natalie and suggest…

"I wonder," Baxter said thoughtfully, "if
she's really protecting Portman."

John snapped back from a fantasy that involved candlelight
and Natalie's soft hand in his, her hair a dark cloud around her shoulders,
lips parting… "Huh?"

Baxter sounded almost like himself. He had at least become
reluctantly interested in the case. He continued his train of thought,
"Maybe hubby was perfectly happy with his marriage. Maybe his girlfriend
was the one who wasn't happy."

John had briefly considered the possibility Saturday, of
course, and discarded it on the basis of the secretary's youth and apparent
distress and shock.

Genuine, he wondered now, or shock at the very real
brutality of committing a murder?

"Possible," he conceded, cursing himself for being
so preoccupied with seeing his own girlfriend that he was more interested in
resolution than truth.

Ralph Portman was staying at the Inn By The Sea, in a suite
often used for entertaining or honeymoons. Although it was midafternoon, he
answered the door in a bathrobe, his face ravaged. "Have you arrested
someone?" he asked with hope.

"I'm afraid not, Mr. Portman," John said stolidly.
"May we come in?"

The husband's face crumpled, and he backed away to let them
in. Sobs shook him as he sank onto the chintz-covered sofa. The two cops
glanced at each other. Baxter went down the hall to the bathroom and returned
with tissues, which he put in the businessman's hand. John sat, too, and Baxter
stood to one side, arms crossed.

Eventually Portman controlled himself, wiped his eyes, blew
his nose and looked up in intense grief. "What can I do to help?"

"Tell us the truth," John said in a hard voice.
"Mr. Portman, where were you Saturday morning at nine?"

Comprehension penetrated his grief only slowly.
"Yesterday? You don't think…?"

"We think you're lying. That you weren't with Ms. Ryan
at all."

He cried again, noisily, but eventually confessed that no,
he wasn't. She was lying to protect him. He appreciated it, but he shouldn't
have let her. She'd seen immediately that he might be suspected—didn't they
always look at the husband?

The truth was, he and his pretty secretary had arranged for
him to come to her house at a few minutes after nine. They were having an
affair, he confessed.

"But, oh God, I love my wife." He stared not at
them, but at the videotape he wouldn't be able to turn off: the one where he
was on his way to have cheap, extramarital sex while his Rachel was being
struck down. "I would never…"

"And Ms. Ryan. Was she home when you got there?"

The meaning of his question penetrated far more quickly.
"You can't think…" He blundered to his feet and ran down the hall to
the bathroom, where he lost everything he'd eaten that day.

When he returned, it was numbly. "No," he said.
"She wasn't there. I waited quite a while, thinking she'd run out to get
something. Maybe gone to the bakery, or…" He swallowed, spoke in the voice
of an automaton. "We met in the parking garage at the office. She thought
it was the next morning we were to … get together." Remembering, he
quivered. "Yesterday. She was very sorry, she'd done some quick errands on
her way in. The line at the post office was long, she said, which was why she
was late. I didn't think anything of it. She'd agreed to come in on Saturday
since we had a deal in the offing. Of course she had things she'd intended to
do over the weekend."

"Did she seem shaken? Unlike herself?"

He frowned in concentration. "Well, a little. But that
was because of the misunderstanding. She felt bad."

"What about her clothes? We saw her later, of course.
I'm just wondering if you noticed anything unusual."

"Only that…" He stopped. "She had a run up
her panty hose. A really bad one. I wondered, since she was doing errands
anyway, why she hadn't bought new ones."

"Perhaps," John said, rising, "we had better
have another talk with Ms. Ryan."

"She wouldn't have…" But his eyes showed the
horror of the knowledge that she might very well have done just that. He, too,
was imagining his pretty secretary rushing out of his house, stopping the car
somewhere in a quiet cul-de-sac to change clothes. Swearing, perhaps, as she
punctured the nylon of her hose but knowing she was already late and hoping to
be in the office before her boss arrived so that she could raise her eyebrows
and say, "Today? Oh, I'm so sorry! I thought…"

A stop at the post office elicited the information that, in
fact, Saturday morning had been, as usual, slow. No lines. Yes, the clerk knew
Ms. Ryan, she often brought over the mail from Portland, Schultz and McArdy.
No, he was quite sure she hadn't been there yesterday morning.

This time, Ms. Ryan cracked. She seemed stunned that they had
even considered her as a suspect. All her planning, it appeared, had been
designed to point the finger at her lover if the police didn't believe in a
burglary gone bad. She, too, cried.

"He was afraid to leave her," she sobbed.
"We'd never have been able to be together if she didn't…"

"Die?" John suggested softly.

Her face twisted. "Yes! He didn't have the guts."
She buried her face in her hands.