Hoofprints (Gail McCarthy series) (16 page)

Unexpectedly, Jean Ritter giggled. "She wanted to see us again. She said she needed help. But Earl said she was dead. Dead to us. Now he says she's dead; I don't understand."

"Hush, Jeannie," Earl Ritter said nervously.

Jeannie giggled again. The giggle had a hysterical note. "Once upon a time, Barbara caught Earl. Earl was with his secretary. He was ungodly. Barbara told me and Earl threw her out. He said she was influenced by Satan." The giggles were becoming uncontrollable now, swallowing up the words. "He said ... she was ... dead."

Abruptly she was sobbing and laughing at the same time. Jeri stood up. "I'm sorry," she said simply. "We'll go now." She gave Earl Ritter a cold look. "We'll talk to you tomorrow. Down at the sheriff's office."

The man didn't say a word. He was staring at his wife as if he couldn't believe what she'd said, his self-satisfied dignity gone for the moment, anyway.

Jeri and I walked up the stairs and let ourselves out of the house. When the door was shut behind us, I looked at her. "Poor thing," I said.

"Who? The mother?"

"No." I shook my head. "Cindy. That explains a lot."

FOURTEEN

What do you mean?" Jeri asked as we got back in the car.

"It's a long story." I recounted Bret's revelations as talk I had heard and ended, "I had no idea Ed Whitney sold cocaine or that Cindy used to be a hooker, but I checked with someone else, whom I promised not to mention, and he confirmed it."

Jeri's eyes moved to my face for a second, serious and unsmiling. I could feel the intensity of her mind working.

I went on. "What I meant back there is that I understand, now, what might have driven Cindy to become a whore. Shit, a father like that-a religious fanatic right out of a right-wing Bible show. And the mother-she's let her husband make all the decisions, overriding her own sense of right and wrong, until she's completely lost touch with reality. Poor Cindy. Even being a hooker looked good next to that life."

We were out of Pasatiempo now, Jeri driving slowly through the foggy darkness. She didn't say anything, so I went on talking. "Does the sheriff's department know that Ed Whitney sold cocaine?"

There was a long silence. I stared at Jeri's profile while she drove; it was as tight and emotionless as ever. She glanced at the watch on her wrist and then at me, and instead of answering my question, she asked me another. "Do you mind waiting through another visit?"

Hunger, though still present, seemed to have taken a backseat to curiosity. "Sure. What did you have in mind?"

"Dropping in on Carl Whitney."

Carl Whitney turned out to live in Scotts Valley-the town he'd almost single-handedly transformed into a city-at the top of a largish hill; he appeared to own the entire hill. His house was the only building on it-a sprawling one-story structure with lots of glass and plenty of outdoor floodlights illuminating a wide concrete drive. The house, once we were inside it-ushered in by an actual servant, for God's sake-proved as large and rambling as it appeared, and not as well lit as the driveway. I had a confused impression of brightly colored furniture that seemed oddly tasteless in a house that featured a door-opening servant, and then Jeri and I were invited to wait in a room with big windows overlooking Scotts Valley-the lights floating below us on a sea of darkness as if they'd been laid out there to improve Carl Whitney's view.

The room itself was well proportioned, with typical rich man's touches--cathedral ceiling, hardwood floors, built-in oak cabinets. The furniture, as in the rooms we'd walked past, seemed out of sync. Arranged around a gigantic TV, a mustard yellow Naugahyde couch battled with a couple of aqua-blue-flowered armchairs, a shiny cranberry-colored velour recliner, and a glass and wrought iron coffee table. None of it fit the big dramatic room; the pieces looked as though the Whitneys had moved them straight from a tract home to this mansion, their taste not having caught up with their wealth.

Carl Whitney walked into this incongruous room wearing a bright red flannel shirt tucked into baggy slacks-clothing that seemed more in harmony with the furniture than the house. He appeared to be in his seventies, and one hundred percent there. His eyes, under bushy brows, were bright, and the white hair that sprang off his brow was thick and abundant. He shook first Jeri's hand and then mine firmly, accepted Jeri's introduction of me as Dr. McCarthy, and invited us to have a seat.

Jeri reminded him briefly of an interview that had apparently taken place at the sheriff's department that morning and then went straight for the jugular. "Mr. Whitney, do you know of anything in your nephew's or his wife's past that might be unusual or disturbing?"

Carl Whitney stared at Jeri under and through the camouflaging screen of his brows, his eyes keenly aware. I could feel the snap decision in his mind. He knows that Jeri knows something, I thought, and he's too smart to lie.

The old man spoke without undue hesitation. "I know Cindy was once what you might call a lady of the night."

"You didn't mention this earlier when we asked for any relevant information about her." Jeri's voice was uninflected, not accusing. Would it have been different, I wondered, if the person being questioned was one of the homeless instead of possibly the richest man in the county?

"No, I didn't see that it was relevant-I still don't, for that matter-and it wasn't a thing I cared to spread around."

"How did you happen to know this?"

Again, the instantaneous calculation. The old man was very smooth; it was clear the Whitneys had not acquired their wealth solely through the luck of being in the right place at the right time. There was only a heartbeat pause before he answered. "I hired a private detective to look into her when Ed decided to get married. My brother, Ed's father, was dead, as was his wife, and Ed was always a little wild. I knew he wasn't likely to listen to my advice, so I simply checked on the girl to make sure she wasn't an out-and-out fortune hunter." He smiled without malice. "There is, after all, a considerable fortune to be hunted."

"And what did you learn?"

"That Cindy had been, and I quote, an 'out-call massage girl, advertising in the papers under the name of Diamond.' That her parents are a wealthy fundamentalist doctor and his wife who disowned her and whom she never saw. That was it, more or less. She wasn't a fortune hunter in any sense that concerned me."

"Does anyone else in the family know this?"

The shrewd old eyes watched Jeri unwaveringly. For some reason, this question was more difficult than the others; when he spoke it was slowly. "My niece, Anne, knows. My sons, Pete and Jim, don't, as far as I'm aware."

"No, I didn't," he said heavily. "She found out some other way, but she did let me know that she knew." There was a faint distaste in his tone.

"Did Anne imply that she was hostile to Cindy because of her past?"

The old man's face was set in careful, give-nothing-away lines. "Anne wasn't pleased about Cindy's past, as you would expect. She certainly never threatened her." There was a hint of steel in Carl Whitney's voice. "Anne did not always get along with Ed-none of us did, for that matter-but she would never, under any circumstances have considered threatening him or harming him or his wife."

Do-I-make-myself-clear was implicit in his tone.

Jeri nodded coolly, her eyes fixed on the old man. "What was your nephew's source of income before he turned twenty-five and inherited the income from his trust fund?"

She had done it perfectly, sliding the question in when he didn't expect it, and I saw the brief flash of apprehension in Carl Whitney's eyes before he answered calmly. "I have no idea."

This time he's lying, I thought. If he could hire a detective to find out about Cindy, he could certainly find out what Ed was up to. And he'd never admit it, I realized a split second later. Cindy's past was one thing, but a nephew who was a drug dealer would be something he would not want to come out.

Jeri was watching Carl Whitney as closely as I was. "So you have no idea where your nephew acquired his money prior to six months ago?"

"No, I do not. Presumably he worked for someone. In sales, I believe. As I told you, I did not see Ed often and we were not on friendly terms."

Jeri spoke slowly. "Would it surprise you to hear he sold cocaine?"

A long silence. When Carl Whitney spoke it was in measured phrases-a businessman discussing a controversial contract. "Detective Ward, I expect you to conduct this investigation in thorough detail; I want my nephew's murderer found." Cindy, I noticed, wasn't mentioned. He went on. "I will not, however, allow you to ruin my nephew's reputation with unfounded accusations. I have a right to put a stop to it and I will." I could hear the power, well-used, well-controlled, that this man still wielded, seventy or not.

Jeri's voice was civil but unintimidated. "We do our best to protect the rights of citizens, Mr. Whitney, particularly their right not to be murdered in their homes. That's our first priority here, as I'm sure you understand. I'll ask any questions and follow any lines I think are necessary." Do-I-make-myself-clear? was implicit in Jeri's tone this time.

They stared at each other for a second, facing off in the most civilized possible way. Neither smiled. The message passed unspoken: Stay off my turf. After a minute, Carl Whitney nodded urbanely. "If that's all, then?"

Jeri nodded back. "Yes, for the moment."

The patriarch-that was how I'd started to think of him-escorted us to the door himself, ushered us out politely. Once we were back in the car and down the driveway, I said, "Whew."

"Who knows. Maybe Ed was trying to take over the business; maybe Carl didn't like having a hooker and a drug dealer in the family. All I can say is, there's a man who knows how to get things done; it's written all over him."

"I agree with you, but Carl Whitney doesn't have any obvious motive. Neither do his sons. His wife died two years ago. Anne Whitney is the only one who stands to gain in any way by her brother's death."

"And Anne knew about Cindy being a hooker and didn't like it."

"That was plain enough. Possibly she knew about her brother's business dealings, too. It looks as though we'll be questioning Ms. Anne Whitney some more."

I smiled. "Good luck."

She nodded grimly. "Carl Whitney has already been to see the sheriff and, guess what, Carl was one of the major contributors to his campaign last year."

"Oh."

"I'd need a watertight case against Anne Whitney or Carl even to consider an arrest, and so far there isn't much. Their alibis are the only watertight thing in sight."

"What you need"-I glanced at Jeri speculatively-"is someone with no alibi, no connections, and some evidence linking them to the scene of the crime."

"A casual acquaintance with a husband in the sheriff's department." Jeri didn't say anything. I continued. "I went down to talk to Terry this morning. Mostly I wanted to find out where he was the night I was shot at. The woman-Glenda Thorne-who runs the house he lives at, said he was at home."

Jeri looked stem for a minute. "That's our job, Gail, to find these things out. You don't make it any easier when you get into the middle of it."

I decided not to get offended. "Has Detective Reeder already asked Glenda Thorne about that?"

We were back in Santa Cruz now, going down Ocean Street, and Jeri drove slowly, eyes on the traffic, mind abstracted. "Yes," she said slowly.

"So, either I'm making my story up, or Ed and Cindy's murder is totally unconnected to someone shooting at me that night, or Terry didn't do it."

Jeri turned into the parking lot of the county building and pulled up next to my pickup.

"Do you think Terry White killed Ed and Cindy?" I asked with my hand on the door handle.

Jeri didn't say anything for several seconds. She stared straight ahead through the windshield into the dark parking lot, following some train of thought in her mind. Eventually she gave her head a slight shake, like a dog coming out of a lake.

"Terry White," she said slowly, "has a string of arrests for assaulting people. We looked into these arrests, and the situation was always the same. Suddenly, without being provoked, he'd hit someone. He's never hurt anyone badly enough to hospitalize them, but he has spent quite a lot of time in locked facilities because of this tendency to attack without warning."

"The theory is he found it in the Whitneys' house and threw it off the cliff when he was done." Jeri looked straight at me. "I've got to admit I don't like it much, either."

"So why are you guys pursuing the angle that he did it?'

A long, slow head shake. "John Reeder likes him for it. I don't particularly. I sat in on the questioning session. Terry White seemed very confused about everything. He mumbled a lot, talking to himself. If he was asked to say yes or no, he'd say one, then the other. We never could get him to say what he'd done that night."