To Die For (17 page)

“They described you,” Greco said softly. “We found several items that were purchased from the stores in your residence. So let's do lots of explaining. I'm not, I'm not accusing you of killing June. You understand what I'm saying? I want to know about that card stuff, because if, well, maybe there's somebody out there that needs to be stopped. You understand where I'm coming from?”

“Yeah.”

“OK. And you may be able to help us. In finding this person,” Greco said.

“Well, I mean, I've done some purchases, you know, with the money that's left over from my retirement savings,” Dana said. “You know, stuff. Just, uh, the clothes for Jason and stuff.”

Dana insisted that she didn't use June's card; she used cash.

With each of them holding a list of stores and purchases and the dates she visited each store, Bentley and McElvain started drilling her on the stores she visited and the things she bought. Like a teenager caught using her parents' credit card, Dana admitted buying only a fraction of what she really bought, then insisted that she'd paid cash. At the Nike Factory Outlet, Dana said she only paid cash for shoes on sale which she claimed she bought for Jim. She admitted having gone to Ferrari Bistro and Baily's Wine Country Café, but said she hadn't been to either of them recently. She said she bought underwear and socks for Jason at Mervyn's “within the last month.” She denied getting a massage at Murrieta Hot Springs, but admitted she'd been there earlier that day to fill out a job application. She denied getting Jason's boogie board at Sav-On and claimed she paid cash for it at Kmart. She denied knowing about Famous Brands, the housewares store, and “didn't remember” going there. She admitted buying her favorite perfume “in bulk” at Perfumania. “The only perfume I wear is Opium,” she said.

Interestingly enough, Dana admitted buying earrings at Jewelry Mart, but said she'd purchased them as a birthday gift for herself months ago.

“Do you know where those diamond-and-sapphire earrings are?” James asked, looking straight at Dana.

“Um-hum,” Dana said.

“Where are they?” James asked.

“They are in my ears,” she said. “You want me to take them off?”

“Yeah, I'd like to take a look at them, if you don't mind,” James said.

“These are the ones I got,” she said, taking out the right earring and handing it to James.

“You bought these a year ago?” James asked, looking at the earring, then handing it to Greco.

“Yeah,” she said. Greco had been to the jewelry store and seen exactly what she had purchased. These were the same. He hadn't noticed her wearing the earrings until then. The fact that she actually had them on was compelling. It was neat how things were falling into place.

As he handed the earring back to Dana, Greco opened his mouth to ask a question. Before he could, Bentley started asking about the boots she bought at West Dallas. Inside, Greco was seething. He had finally established a solid line of questioning and Bentley was changing the subject. He wanted to continue asking her about the earrings because that was something solid they could catch her on. Once they started talking about the boots, it would be too awkward to change the subject back again to the earrings. He wished he was talking to Dana alone.

Dana said she never bought boots for either herself or for Jason at West Dallas, but that his mother, Rhonda, had bought boots for Jason.

“Does she look like you?” Bentley asked.

“Well, you know, she does kind of, uh, gosh, she changes her hair color a lot, she just recently cut it,” Dana said. “She has shoulder-length, kind of sandy blonde hair. And a little bit of a shag. But just recently, ummm, she shaved the top like a flat-top.”

“She the same height, the same size?” Bentley asked.

“Yeah, we're close,” Dana said. “She might be about an inch taller than me. And she is a little…”

“What's her name?” Greco asked.

“Rhonda.”

“Where does she live?” Bentley asked.

“She lives up by the hospital,” she said, “in a mobile. And, uh, well it's Wildomar. They have a dirt road and uh…”

There was a pause. Dana was obviously trying to get them to focus on Rhonda, but Greco didn't want to go there.

“Now this salon, though,” he said. “Esthetiques. Somebody who looked like you was, was in there … on the twenty-eighth,” Greco said.

“Of?” Dana asked.

“Of February, two weeks ago,” James said as Dana emphatically shook her head.

“Can you tell me why Jason, um, says that he knows the name of the person at the salon? And he gives the name of that lady. Can you tell me why Jason gives me that, that name? About getting his hair cut there. Is that a mistake or…”

James wanted to give Dana as much of an opportunity to make excuses as possible. Once she locked herself into an explanation, they could use it further down the road. If they ever do confess, criminals rarely admit their crimes in one quick interview. First they deny, then they blame someone else and make up stories about why incriminating evidence really doesn't point directly at them. They try to minimize. Sometimes they'll admit one small part, then maybe another piece. If nothing else, the rationalization and excuses tell how a given criminal thinks.

“He gets his hair cut at, uh, he confuses a lot of salons. I always take him to California Styles,” Dana said. “He makes up a lot of stuff.”

“But, but what I'm saying is he knows the name of, this is not something that's made up. Because we have a real person here,” Greco said.

“Well,” Dana said.

“That was at a real place that cut his hair and he really remembers the name of a lady,” Greco said, “How can he remember the name of the lady?”

“I don't know,” Dana said. “He makes, fabricates stuff, sometimes, you can't tell.”

Bentley cut in. “We're trying to get an explanation, that's what we're trying to do. OK, these people, a lady fits your description comes in with a credit card from your friend. You see the problem that we're looking at?

“Your friend couldn't have done it, 'cause she wasn't here, right?” Bentley said, referring to June's murder.

“Well, I don't know exactly what day that happened,” Dana said.

“OK,” Bentley said. “But the point is, it fits your description. So, if you were in there…”

“Well, like I said, I've gone in there for waxes…” Dana said. “At Esthetiques 'cause it's the only place that you can go, or that I found locally that I can get a bikini wax. Lots of people can do your eyebrows, and I went there, uh, the beginning of February maybe, and, you know, a lot of times I go on the day with Jason and he would, runs around and makes friends with everybody in the salon.”

“So he was in there?” Bentley asked.

“At, I, at the last time I got waxed, he was,” Dana said.

By the same circuitous route, Bentley got Dana to admit that she'd taken Jason with her to Mervyn's “many times,” but said the last time she was there was in January. She specifically denied being at Mervyn's on February 28. Greco, James and Bentley knew what it meant when, three weeks later, she could instantly recall a specific date when she had not been at a department store. But now was not the time to confront her on that. Bentley wanted to continue pinning her down on specifics that they could use to catch her later in the interview. They knew she'd been in the hair salon and that was as far as he could push her there.

Next, he wanted to discuss her whereabouts that afternoon because he knew exactly where she had been that day. That was the typical strategy—get her lying on the known factors and then confront her piece by piece to get her to change her story.

He asked what she was doing that day from noon on.

Dana said she had gone to the unemployment office, then drove out to Temecula to fill out an application for a waitress job, then stopped at Sav-On and Albertson's in Temecula to see about work.

“I was home about, uh, 1 p.m. and then I stayed home, and had lunch and drank, fed the dogs, uh, called back a few people and then, uh, the only other time I went out is when I went to Thrifty's to get my, I forgot to get my birth control pills. I ran out and did that, uh, 4:30 p.m.”

“And, and then you were at home until we came by?” Bentley asked.

“Yes. I was getting ready to make dinner when you guys showed up. We watched
Roseanne
and then we made dinner,” Dana said.

“OK. So, I just wanna back up,” Bentley said. “Noon. From noon on, I want to get it clear, OK? Noon on, what places were you?”

“I was at home,” Dana said. “Like around 12:30 p.m.”

“OK, OK. Even at 1 p.m., you were still at home?”

“Yeah, and I didn't leave,” Dana said.

“You remember that? You remember that for sure?” Bentley asked.

“Yeah. I was tired from running around and I wanted to sit back and watch some TV,” she said.

“From one until two, you were still at home for sure?” Bentley asked.

“Right.”

“Two to three?”

“Yes.”

“Three?”

“Yes. I didn't leave again until 4:30 p.m.”

“4:30. Where'd you go?”

“Thrifty's to get my birth control pills.”

“And then you went back home and then we showed up?”

“Uh-huh,” Dana said.

“You're absolutely sure from what you told me from noon until 4 p.m.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“Let me ask you this—do you know, were you driving today, the only car you drive is a Cadillac, right?” Bentley said. He wanted to eliminate her later saying that she had loaned her car to someone else that afternoon.

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“Did anyone else drive the Cadillac?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Now tell me this, you talk about using cash and it's kind of hard for me to understand this—you sound like you made a lot of purchases. How do you go about carrying cash? What do you do?” Bentley asked.

“I put it in my purse,” Dana said.

“Well, no, that's not what I mean,” Bentley said.

“Well, I don't know what you mean.”

“OK, what I mean is, you go … you have a big bank account with ten grand in it, you grab five hundred bucks…”

“I cashed it when I got, when I got off my job and, uh, Thanksgiving, that weekend, I had a large amount from my savings, then I had an annuity that I cashed. I had a tax shelter annuity for $7,000 from my, uh, Grandpa, and I cashed it. In cash,” Dana said. “I paid off a lot of bills with it, I bought my new screen cleaning equipment with it, and now I'm dwindling down to the last little bit.”

“OK, where do you bank?” Bentley asked.

“Hemet Federal Bank. It's in Canyon Lake. 'Cause, see, I used to live there and I'd stay with my folks and I go and cook for my dad.”

“OK, so then you'd go up to Hemet Federal to get money when you need it, then?”

“Yeah. Or I can use, I have my, my card … that's to my bank.”

“What other banks do you use?”

“Uh, I've used Household,” Dana said.

“Ever used Provident?”

“No.”

“Ever go to Sun City?”

“Sun City, yeah,” Dana said.

“Do you know where Provident Bank is in Sun City?”

“No.”

“You never been there?”

“Uh-uh. I know where the Von's and the Stater's and the health food store, and, uh…”

“But you've never been to the, the Provident in Sun City?” Bentley asked.

“Uh-uh,” Dana said.

“Never.”

“Never ever. I don't even know what it is. I mean, there's lots of banks around there.”

Bentley decided now was the time to break the news.

“Today, OK, from 12 noon on, what was it, 1:30 p.m. on? Sometime today, OK, 1:30 p.m., I think, on. And they saw you go to the Provident Bank. OK, now in my mind, you kind of, with a straight face, told me a lie. If, if—We had somebody saw you, and I can't believe an officer that's following you is lying to us,” Bentley said.

Dana stared at them.

“You were surveilled this afternoon,” James said.

“OK, so why did you go to the Provident Bank and why didn't you tell us about it?”

Dana dropped her head and began sobbing. There was a long pause.

“'Cause I was scared.”

“Of what?” Bentley asked.

“Well, I'd found a purse.”

“Where, where did you find a purse?”

Dana sighed deeply.

“Over by the Albertson's,” she said, sighing again.

“Albertson's where?” Bentley asked.

“In, uh, Elsinore,” she said.

“What was in the purse?”

“A bankbook.”

“From whom?”

“Uh, a lady. I think her name was Betty, Bebe or something.”

Beebe, Beebe. Betty Beebe? Who the hell is she talking about? Greco thought to himself.

“Where did you find it?”

“I found it, uh, this afternoon right before I went home.”

“Where?”

“At the Albertson's.”

“Where at Albertson's?” Greco asked.

“Uh, there's a parking lot and a cleaner's and stuff, and it was just kind of, uh, thrown by the side. There's a dirt driveway by Boston Market.”

Betty Beebe. Greco had heard enough. He was starting to put two and two together. He got up, excused himself and walked out of the room.

“OK, what time did you find the purse?” Bentley asked.

“I found the purse at about, um, right before I got home, so, twelvish,” Dana said.

“And how did you find the purse? I mean, how did that happen? You see it and then you pick it up?” Bentley asked.

“Yeah. I was, I was pulling out, I was pulling out of the Albertson's and I saw it … so I picked it up.”