Your Chariot Awaits (24 page)

“But somebody else got him with a gun, not me. Do you own a gun?”

“No . . .”

“But?”

“But my husband has several.”

“Okay, I think it's time you told me a little more about this husband. Whose name is—?”

“Donny. Donaldo, actually. Our marriage has been on the rocks for quite a while.” Elena twisted her shimmery-nailed hands together, then tucked them between her knees as if she had to do something to keep them from flying off into space. A wedding ring encircled her finger, plain gold band, no other jewelry except gold hoops in her ears. “That isn't any excuse for my relationship with Jerry, of course, but maybe it helps explain why it happened.”

“But your marriage is mended now?”

“No. We're getting a divorce.”

“But you just got back from vacation together!”

“It was one of those last-ditch efforts. You know, fly off to some exotic setting, get to know each other again, recapture the romance. Moonlight and champagne. Yada, yada, yada.”

She made a snorty noise that didn't go with her elegant looks but made me feel a little warmer toward her.

“We might as well have gone to Motel 6 and Burger King and saved ourselves a bundle.”

“Your husband found out about your relationship with Jerry, so now he wants a divorce?”

“I don't know if he knows about Jerry or not. I know I just can't take his moods and his paranoid suspicions and the way he just blows up about every little thing.” Now she was twist-ing the wedding band as if she were trying to light a fire with it. “He got in an argument with some guy right on the dance floor down in Cozumel. The guy looked like he'd come straight out of a Mafia-R-Us photo. I was terrified.”

“So the two of you have decided a divorce is the only answer?”

“The two of us haven't decided anything. Donny doesn't know yet that I'm seeing a lawyer next week. He isn't going to be a happy camper when he finds out.”

“Are you afraid of him?”

“I don't think he'd hurt me, but . . .” Her voice trailed off. Then in a defensive tone she added, “The problems in our marriage started long before I met Jerry. Before we ever came up here.”

“Came here from where?”

“Southern California. Donny was a cop down there. He was a cop before we married, so it wasn't as if I didn't know what I was getting into. But I had no idea about the strange hours or how often I'd be home alone, scared that something terrible had happened to him, or how he'd get all uptight and moody. Though I can't blame him for that, I suppose. Cops are exposed to . . . awful things.”

“So he quit being a cop because you didn't like it?”

She shook her head. “No. I couldn't take that away from him. He loved being a cop even when it upset him. But there was a lot of . . . politics, I'd guess you'd call it, in the department. Donny didn't get a promotion he was entitled to. A buddy of the police chief got it. And then a witness was killed after the police questioned him. It wasn't Donny's fault, but someone had to be blamed, and it wound up being him.”

“So he got fired?”

“No, not that either. I think they figured he'd sue them if he got fired over that. But it made a big black mark on his record, and he was furious about that as well as not getting the promotion. Then he got assigned an old police car instead of one of the new ones the department bought. He saw it all as a big conspiracy. He made a noisy stink, got the police chief in trouble with the city council, and quit.”

“So you moved up here so he could be a cop here?”

“That was the idea, but all he's been able to find so far is a rent-a-cop job as a night security guard. He hates it. And he figures the reason he can't get on with a police force here is because the department down in California is sabotaging him. Another conspiracy.”

“But his night hours as a security guard made your relationship with Jerry easier to carry off. A little conspiracy of your own.”

She nodded unhappily.

“And how did you feel about the move up here? Is that part of the problem? I heard you'd been a model down in California.”

“I was fairly successful. Not as big-time as New York, but I kept busy with catalog work and private showings for some stores. I was hoping I could still get some modeling work up here, but I was willing to give it all up if Donny could just make a new start.”

“And you did give it up. You went to work for F&N.”

“We were short on money. I needed a job quick. And I do have a degree in communications, with an emphasis on advertising and public relations. Being in advertising probably has a longer shelf life than being a model anyway.”

I agreed, but switched back to the basics here and put the situation in crisp outline form. “So you went to work at F&N and started an affair with Jerry. Your husband found out about it and killed Jerry with one of those several guns you say he has. Now you're here warning me about him, that maybe he's going to kill me too.”

“No!” She sounded rattled, as if she didn't know which part of my scenario to protest first. “I mean, I don't know that Donny ever found out about the affair—”

“Oh, c'mon. He was a cop. Don't you think he was observant enough to know something was going on? And if he got suspicious, had the experience and skills to check up on you without your knowing it?”

Another unhappy nod.

“Is he capable of killing someone?”

“Donny . . . killed a man once. But it was self-defense. A drug dealer who came after him with a knife. So I guess he's capable of it. But I don't think he's a cold-blooded killer who'd just . . . murder someone
.
”

“But you're not sure. Or you just don't want to think it?”

She made a dismissive move with her shoulders. Shapely shoulders.

“So do you think he really could have killed Jerry or not? The circumstances are suspicious, to say the least.”

The wedding ring went round and round again. “If he found out about the affair, yes, I think he could have done it.”

“But why would he wait until now, if the affair had been over for three months?”

“Sometimes things . . . work on Donny. He might seem not too upset about something at the time. Like when a neigh-bor ran over a nice dog we had down in California. But then he thinks about it, like he did with the neighbor and the dog, and it just grows on him. Until he explodes.”

“What happened with the neighbor?”

“Several months later he sent the guy to the hospital with a broken collarbone.”

Not a guy you wanted teed off at you. “Okay, you may be suspicious of Donny, apparently with good reason. But he has an alibi. You and he were out of the country. You were away on vacation since before Jerry was killed.”

“Not exactly.”

26

W
e stared at each other across the coffee table.

“But you told me you'd been on vacation for two weeks!”

“Do you believe everything anyone tells you?” she snapped. “You'd just told me Jerry was murdered. I was horrified and scared and imagining all kinds of things.”

“So you real quick thought it would be a good idea to cover your back. Or Donny's back.”

“I . . . I'm not covering anyone's back now. Our flight left for Cozumel around eleven Saturday morning. Which, from what you tell me, was after Jerry was killed.”

“But if Donny had been at home with you all night—”

“He wasn't. He worked the previous night. I thought it was a bad idea, working right up until we were practically ready to take off, but he said we needed the money.”

“
Was
he working?”

“I don't know. This particular job was at a warehouse. He could have left for several hours, and if the place wasn't broken into during that time, no one would know. He could have gone to Jerry's condo, followed him to your place, killed him, and gone back to the warehouse.”

“You've done some thinking about this.”

“Oh, yes.”

I gave all this some thought too, then pointed out a different twist on the murder. “So if Donny was at the warehouse, you were home alone. Which means you could have gone to the condo, followed Jerry to the limo, killed him, and got home in time to meet your husband with a smile and a suitcase full of bikinis and suntan lotion.”

“I didn't kill him! What reason would I have to kill him?”

“A woman scorned, etc.”

She frowned but repeated her statement, this time with an emphatic shake of head. “I didn't do it.”

“There's something else, something you don't know,” I said. “All Jerry's computer equipment was stolen out of his condo the same night he was murdered. And the murderer took his cell phone and that flash drive thing he always carried in his pocket. His Rolex watch too. The police have kept it quiet, but the computer theft had to be connected to the killing. But your Donny didn't have any reason to—” I broke off at the stricken look on Elena's face. “Or did he?”

She got up and paced back and forth between the sofa and the window, swinging hair and swift turns graceful as a prowl-ing cat.

“I didn't tell you how Jerry and I met.”

“You were both working at F&N.”

“Donny changed after what happened with his job down in California. He thought everybody was out to get him.”

This sounded like an off-subject tangent, but I knew there must be a connection.

“We had an income tax problem. He saw that as a government conspiracy. The rich can get away with anything, and the IRS was after
him.
Our car got totaled in an accident, which is why I'm driving the clunker out there. But to Donny, it was another conspiracy between the other driver and the insurance company.”

“A little paranoid, as you said.”

“A
lot
paranoid. He started spending time on the Internet while I was at work. Through that he got tangled up with some strange, quasi-military group called the Twenty-first Minute-men and even started going to their meetings. He brought some of their literature home. It was all this awful hate stuff. How the government was on the verge of collapse and was conspiring against innocent citizens. How it was every man for himself, and we all needed to be armed and ready. And beware of anyone not like
us.
It scared me. I looked up the Web site. And down at the bottom I saw this little notice: Site Design and Maintenance by Jerry Norton Web Design.”

Jerry had told me about that particular Web site, although I hadn't known the name before. He said most of the guys were “weekend commando” types playing war games and seeing conspiracies everywhere, but a couple of them might really be dangerous. Was Donny Loperi one of the dangerous ones?

“I knew there was a Jerry Norton at F&N. I didn't think it could be him doing the Web site, but one time I made kind of a joke out of it and asked him.”

“And it was.”

“Right. So we talked . . . and laughed. He was older and mature, like you, but still so much fun.”

I almost choked at that, but I doubted she even realized how it sounded to me. At least she wasn't making malicious cracks about my being too old for Jerry. So all I said was, “Yeah, Jerry could be fun.”

“Donny took the group seriously, but Jerry thought they were just a bunch of kooks and crackpots and laughed at them. He was that proverbial breath of fresh air after all Donny's anger and paranoia.”

“And the talking and laughing escalated into an affair.”

Another nod.

“You must have been very discreet. I don't think anyone at F&N knew about it. At least it never got onto the gossip express.”

“We were careful. Looking back, I think Jerry enjoyed the cloak-and-dagger part of our relationship. Made it more exciting.”

Until Elena started making waves about a different kind of relationship, something wifey and permanent, and then he ducked out.

“Did Jerry and Donny ever meet?”

“Jerry went to a few of the group's meetings. He met Donny then, although that was before Jerry and I . . . got together.”

“I remember Jerry telling me that he closed the Web site down because they didn't pay their bill.”

“Donny mentioned that.” She smiled without humor. “To him that meant Jerry was part of some vicious conspiracy to destroy the group and keep them from getting the truth out.”

“Would Donny feel strongly enough about that to kill Jerry?”

She paused and tapped her fingertips together nervously. “Maybe, if he got paranoid enough. But I'd think it more likely that if Donny killed Jerry, it was about me.”

“But what could possibly have been on Jerry's computer that would make Donny steal everything to keep it hidden, especially if the Web site had already been shut down?”

“I don't know.” Elena returned to the sofa, her slim body graceful in spite of the dispirited slump as she dropped to the cushion and clutched a pillow to her chest. “Jerry liked to dig into stuff, you know. He thought hacking into places he wasn't supposed to be was fun. He said once he'd gotten into the computers of some rival insurance company and could have sabotaged every one of their accounts if he'd wanted to.”

“I didn't know that.” Although I remembered he'd laughed once about how he'd hacked into a dating site and teamed up several of the most incompatible couples he could find.

“So maybe he had some kind of confidential information about Donny. Or maybe it was just more of Donny's paranoia, thinking Jerry
might
have something on the computer that would tie him to the murder if the police saw it.”

Donny Loperi was more and more looking like a major suspect. Although one of my hot theories had to be wrong. Elena's husband and Big Daddy Sutherland couldn't both have killed Jerry.

“Why is Donny down in Portland now?”