Your Chariot Awaits (17 page)

“He did?” Ryan sounded surprised. I had the feeling he didn't know Jerry'd had that kind of money. “No, they didn't return a watch to me.”

“What did the police take from the condo?”

“Various papers they thought might provide information. Bank records that hadn't been in the filing cabinet. Some unidentified white pills.”

I had to smile at that. I could identify them. Jerry had decided he should be taking calcium, and I'd given him some of my supply. That was when I'd thrown out the economy-size plastic container and put both his and my pills in small, unmarked jars. The Great Calcium Conspiracy.

“And they took all that cash he had hidden in a plastic bag in the toilet tank,” Ryan added. “They said it would be returned if it hadn't come from criminal activity.”

Once I'd have scoffed and said no way to Jerry being involved in any criminal activity. Now I wasn't so certain. “How much cash?”

“Over ten thousand dollars.”

That was definitely enough to startle me. Jerry liked to flash an impressive roll of cash, true, but ten thousand dollars' worth? Why would he be dealing in that amount of cash? Where had he gotten it? Some unknown criminal activity now sounded like an even more likely possibility. Could he have been doing something illegal with his Web site business and gotten paid in cash?

“So, I guess we might as well start looking around.” Ryan sounded uncertain, and I again felt his reluctance to poke around in his brother's belongings.

“If he kept a copy of the will here, it was probably in the filing cabinet and was taken along with everything else,” I said. I was reluctant too. The eeriness of the place was starting to get to me. Being here with Jerry dead felt . . . spooky.

“Maybe his lawyer would have a copy of a will,” Ryan said. “Do you know if he had a regular lawyer? Or a safe deposit box?”

I shook my head.

“Actually, I doubt if Jerry ever made a will,” Ryan said, his tone gloomy. “He pretty much thought he was invincible.”

True. “Well, we can hope we find something.” But I had to doubt now that I was going to find anything helpful regarding his murder. It looked as if, between the burglars and the police, anything useful had been removed. Or was I, too, just trying to find reasons to avoid an unpleasant task?

“Maybe I should see if I could get that cleaning lady to come in first, before we go poking around.” Ryan swiped a fin-ger across a film of fingerprint powder.

Much as I wanted to jump at that escape, I doubted I'd ever get back in the condo if we walked away now.

“Well, we're here,” I said, trying to sound more upbeat than I felt. “Might as well see what we can find.”

16

R
yan decided to tackle the bedroom. Remembering Fitz's admonition about phony cans, I headed for the kitchen. I wanted to help Ryan find a will or important papers, but I was also looking for something else, although I had no idea what. Anything that might give a clue to Jerry's murder.

I checked cans in the cupboard. Not many of them, since Jerry mostly disdained canned food. The few that were there all appeared authentic. And more exotic than anything in my cupboards. Canned truffled goose foie gras. Had he been saving that for some special occasion for us? Or was foie gras reserved for tousle-haired Elena?

Then I mentally kicked myself. The man was dead, and my goal was to find out who killed him. This was no time for snide or petty thoughts.

I looked below the sink and prowled through containers of air freshener, dishwasher detergent, floor polish, and various cleaners, all of which appeared bona fide and were no doubt used by Consuela rather than Jerry himself. I poked through the freezer compartment of the fridge and again found the contents more upscale than my own: filet mignon, chicken cordon bleu, Canadian bacon, two lobster tails, and a frozen cheesecake.

In the bathroom, I got an in-depth view of various aspects of Jerry with which I was not familiar. He apparently had stomach problems I hadn't known about, given the bottles and cartons of antacids and other stomach remedies. And at some time he'd had a definite athlete's foot problem.

By that time I was beginning to feel uncomfortably like a voyeur. I doubted the identity of the murderer was going to be found among his four different brands of whitening toothpaste or his dandruff shampoo, so I went to the bedroom to see how Ryan was doing. He was down on his knees, looking through the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers.

“Find anything?”

“A box of old income tax and insurance papers on the top shelf of the closet. I'm not sure they'll be any help, but maybe.”

Remembering what Fitz had said about pockets, I started going through clothing in the closet. Deep in the pocket of a pair of tan Dockers I found a scrap of paper with a phone number. I dutifully passed it along to Ryan, but not before surreptitiously copying the number for myself. Fitz would be proud of me!

Then I remembered something else I wanted to ask about. “What about Jerry's sailboat? Have you been to see it yet?”

“I didn't know he had a sailboat.” Ryan leaned back on his heels, his tone dismayed, as if this was one more unpleasant surprise he had to cope with.

I wrote down the name and address of the friend, Griff Northcutt, who owned the private dock where Jerry kept the boat. I also made a mental note to add this name to the “per-sons of interest” list. He and Jerry'd once had an unpleasant disagreement about the rental fee, I remembered.

We gave up after about three hours. By then it was almost two o'clock. We were both smudged with fingerprint powder.

Ryan offered to buy lunch, but I said I just wanted to go home and clean up.

“Me too,” he agreed. Unhappily he added, “But I can't leave for another day or two. I made arrangements yesterday to have the body shipped back to Lancaster for burial. Tomorrow I'll try to find a lawyer here and see what to do about the estate, since I can't come up with a will. I'm sorry, but there won't be any funeral or memorial service here.”

“That's okay. I'll send flowers. That's Lancaster—what? Georgia? Virginia?”

“Lancaster, Colorado. It's about fifty miles outside Denver. The small town where we grew up. Dad's a retired teacher, and it's an inexpensive place to live.”

I was surprised. “I thought Jerry's family lived back east or down south somewhere.” And had Rolex-level money.

“No, that would be his wife's family. They live in Augusta, Georgia. Where she and the kids now live also, of course.”

He spoke as if I surely knew that, but I didn't. Then some-thing ominous struck me about the way he'd said “his wife
.
”

“You mean his ex-wife.” Otherwise known as Cara the Crazy, in Jerry's unkind words.

“Well, no. They weren't divorced.”

“They
weren't
?”

“He told you they were divorced?”

“He certainly did!” I suddenly felt crawly with more than fingerprint powder. All the time I'd been seeing him, Jerry had been married. If I'd known that, I'd have taken after him with a shovel long ago. “He said he'd been single for almost two years!”

“No. It was a . . . big, ugly mess.”

“She wouldn't give him a divorce?”

“The other way around, actually. Cara's family is quite wealthy, and he's been holding out, using the kids as a bargaining chip.”

“He was trying to get custody of the kids?” In spite of all I now knew about Jerry, I was reluctant to give up the mental picture of Cara as a shrieking schemer with the temperament of a witch on a broomstick, with Jerry the long-suffering ex-husband. But painting Jerry as some wronged saint, I was beginning to see, was a losing proposition.

“No way. His deal was, they put up enough money and he'd cooperate on the divorce and give up all parental rights. Otherwise, he'd drag it out until you-know-where freezes over.”

Family money, he'd hinted to me. But it was his wife's family money, not his. And I'd thought what he'd tried to do to me was sleazy.

“I wonder why the police didn't notify her instead of you, since she's still Jerry's wife.”

“They did, but she referred them to me. We talk every once in a while. I've tried to keep in touch with the kids, and Cara's always been cooperative. She's a very nice, level-headed woman.”

“How did she take the news about Jerry?”

“She was shocked, I'm sure, but I didn't hear any open weeping.”

Hardly surprising, considering. I hadn't been weeping either. I'd had some moments of guilt about that, all wrapped up in my own problems with Jerry's death rather than mourn-ing that he was dead. But I was feeling even less tearful now that I realized how he'd lied to me.

“I don't like to think it,” Ryan began, his tone reluctant, “because I've always liked Cara, but . . .”

“But what?”

“I'm sure Cara herself wouldn't do anything. She's much too sweet and gentle a person. But her father, he's a rich old tycoon in a Southern timber business, the kind of guy who'd really like to be dictator of some small country, and he's been furious with Jerry's manipulations.”

“And?”

“And I'm not so sure he wouldn't . . . do something.”

“Her father might come out here and shoot Jerry to get him out of the way?” I gasped.

“No, no, not personally.” Ryan waved a dismissive hand. “But I'm not so sure but what he might . . . get someone to do it for him.”

“You mean hire a hit man to get Jerry out of the way?”

Ryan scowled. “Sounds pretty preposterous, doesn't it? I mean, that's the stuff of Mafia movies, not people we know. No, surely not,” he added emphatically.

An emphasis that somehow did the opposite and made Cara's father's involvement ominously possible. None of which explained, of course, a basic problem with the murder. Why had it happened at my place? Had the murderer stealthily fol-lowed Jerry there? But what had Jerry been doing around my limo that night?

Ryan said he'd talk to me again before he left, and I made my way out to the car, feeling dazed.

Jerry . . . married.

I'd always wondered how any woman could be so dumb as to get mixed up with a married man. Now I knew.

17

B
ack home, I showered and was out weeding the daisy beds when Joella got home from work. She was carrying a big plas-tic bag from the bakery. Neil always kept her supplied with day-old goodies. The birds got what we couldn't eat.

She waved the bag at me as she got out of the car. “Hey, come on over later. I have some of Neil's new blueberry strudels. They're luscious.” She sounded cheerful, but she looked as if she could barely drag one foot in front of the other. She was a little over seven months along now and, as she put it, “expanding like your average hot air balloon.”

“You look beat. How about if I bring over some leftover chicken casserole from the freezer, and you can just put your feet up and relax? I'll tell you all about A Day in the Life of a Lady Sleuth. And then we'll have blueberry strudel for dessert.”

Joella smiled. She reached down to rub a swollen ankle. “My guardian angel. Thank you.”

By the time I went over an hour or so later, she'd showered and perked up a little. While I nuked the casserole, I told her about our search in Jerry's condo, the ugly details I'd learned about his personal life, and that I had this phone number.

“Who do you think it might be?”

“Who knows? Maybe a girlfriend. Maybe somebody he's dealt with on the Web site business. Maybe some bookie he placed bets with. Maybe the murderer, saying, ‘We are unable to come to the phone right now, but please leave a message and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Your call is important to Murder-by-Phone, Inc.'”

Joella wrinkled her nose. “Ugh. But what if it really is the murderer? And he or she has caller ID, and it shows that per-son your number?”

That jolted me. “But if I don't bring up the subject and ask, ‘Did you murder Jerry?' they won't know why I'm calling, will they?”

“If it's an unlisted number, they might be curious about how you got it.”

The possibility of caller ID was enough to give me second thoughts. Okay, this called for a change in tactics. Do cell phone numbers show up on caller ID? Could someone knowledgeable trace that number back to a name and address?

I didn't know, but it wasn't something I wanted to risk.

Joella had news of her own. Detective Sergeant Molino had come to the coffee shop that afternoon to question her.

“One of the questions he asked was whether I'd ever been in the limo, and when I said yes, he asked me to come in so they could take my fingerprints. So I'm going to do that tomorrow.”

“Oh, Jo, I'm sorry. I hate having you dragged into this.”

“I don't mind. Actually, he seemed very nice. He had a straw-berry smoothie and said it was really good. He was on his way to pick up his cat at the vet's. It has some kind of skin problem.”

The man had a cat? If I'd speculated about a pet for Detective Sergeant Molino, it would be something slithery or scaly.

“What kind of questions did he ask?”

“You were the main topic, of course. But he also asked a few questions about Tom Bolton. And about me, too. I think he'd have liked to know about my pregnancy sans husband, but he was too polite to ask.”

Polite? Okay, I had to admit Detective Sergeant Molino hadn't been truly rude to me. But I figured it was a pit bull kind of politeness, with big teeth behind it.

When I went to set the table for dinner, Joella's mail was sitting on one of the place mats. I started to push it aside, then looked more closely.

“Hey, this is a birthday card! You're having a birthday and you never even told me?”