A Bidder End

by Ellery Adams

  “No, just the pawn,” Molly said.

  “I do hope that just because you found a cookie jar and a pawn in the house of a man who died, you’re not going to accuse Iris of another crime.”

  “I’m sorry,” Molly said. “I didn’t mean to imply—”

  Olga waved a hand in the air, cutting her off. “I know what it’s like to grasp at straws when you’re trying to understand how something bad could happen to someone you care about. But I’m telling you, Iris had nothing to do with Brett’s death. Because that is where you’re going with this, am I right? You don’t think he killed himself at all.”

  Am I so transparent? Molly thought. “I’m just asking questions,” she said.

  “When I took Iris into my home, my sons were very concerned,” Olga said. “They tried to talk me out of it. But in all the years we lived together, Iris never stole a thing from me, or ever asked any favors. She’s an honest person, and she’s been a good friend, and I won’t let you, or Sabrina, or anyone else besmirch her name. If you do think Brett’s death is suspicious, why don’t you spend more time talking to Helen? Iris told me she’s the one who found Brett. And while you’re at it, talk to Sabrina again, and Holt Garrido. She’s a vindictive minx, and he’s a despicable roach of a man. I assume you know what he did to Iris?”

  “I do. But I—”

  Olga raised her hand to interrupt her again. She was on a roll, and she wasn’t done. “And what about Helen’s ex-husband? Iris told me how he tied her up and she escaped. Surely he should be at the top of your suspect list. Who’s to say he didn’t do it? You need to keep an open mind, young lady.”

  “Believe me, I am,” Molly said.

  “I hope that’s true.” Changing moods suddenly, Olga smiled, and gently set Elle on the floor. “I think we’ve talked long enough,” she said. “You should take your son home. The weatherman is predicting the temperature will reach eighty-nine today.”

  Chapter 18

  It was only nine o’clock when Molly brought Tyler home, and it was already becoming uncomfortably hot outside. Walking in the door, she handed him off to Starling, grabbed her bag and car keys, and headed back out. She would take a drive to Core Sport Gym and see if Holt was there. As she drove away from the house, she thought about her conversation with Olga, and all the other people she’d talked to. It felt like a futile exercise, since she couldn’t be sure who was telling the truth and who was lying.

  Had Iris really stolen forty dollars from Sabrina, or been so naïve to believe Holt was in love with her, when everyone else who worked for the Dolans and knew anything about him knew he was a horrendous womanizer? Was Brett really looking at her in a way that suggested to Olga he liked her as more than a customer?

  And what about Sabrina? Was she trying to get Iris in trouble because she was convinced she’d stolen money from her, or because she’d also seen Brett showing an interest in her, which thereby broke some kind of bond of friendship she’d had with Iris? And what about Julian? Was he a love interest of Sabrina’s, or had she used him to get back at Brett? Maybe she thought if she dated his assistant, she could make Brett jealous. And then what? He’d dump Helen and proclaim his undying love for her?

  Molly hoped the medical examiner’s office would get back to Lombardi soon. She didn’t like working on assumptions and questioning people without any real evidence to back up her belief that Brett was murdered. As Lombardi would say, there could be a simple, innocent reason the stolen McCoy cookie jar was in his kitchen, with a pawn piece, no less.

  Core Sport Gym came into view, and Molly slowed her car. It was in an ugly strip mall built in the seventies that was only half occupied. The gym was surrounded by a Dollar Store, an auto supply shop, and a Chinese restaurant. She saw Atlas’s black Lincoln Navigator parked at the far end of the lot, away from all the other cars. She wondered if Holt did that so no one dinged his doors. On a Thursday morning, the gym wasn’t full. Molly counted two men and three women walking on the treadmills, and one man on an elliptical machine. When she looked into the weight room, there was only one man there. He was on his back on a weight bench lifting hundreds of pounds of weights. She waited for him to finish his reps, and when the bar was safely down on the rack, she walked over.

  “Excuse me, are you Holt Garrido?”

  He sat up on the bench and looked her over, sweat glistening on his brow, his muscular arms stretching the seams of his shirt.

  “I’m Holt. Who are you?”

  “Molly Appleby.”

  “Right, I heard about you.” He stood up, and Molly was surprised to see he was a lot shorter than her. For some reason, she’d thought he would be tall. “Helen told me you came to see her at the hospital with some cop, and now you’re writing a piece on Brett and the auction.” He reached for a towel he’d looped over one of the bars. “If you’ve come to talk to me about it, I’ve got nothing to say. You may as well do us both a favor and take a hike.”

  “I spoke to Atlas yesterday,” she said. “He told me I could find you here and that I had permission to talk to you.” Holt used the towel to wipe the sweat off his face. He had a blocky head, like a Rottweiler, and a neck as thick as a linebacker’s. “I’ve already talked to Whitney, Sabrina, Iris, Dominic, and Bonnie. Everyone else has been cooperative. Why don’t you want to talk to me? Do you have something to hide?”

  “I’ve got nothing to hide,” he snapped. “You want me to say I’m sorry he offed himself? I won’t, because I didn’t like him. Brett was too full of himself.”

  There’s the pot calling the kettle black, Molly thought.

  “I heard about the incident at Laurel Wreath, when you had words with him because of Iris,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you apologize to her?”

  “I got nothing to apologize for,” he said. “Iris was being ridiculous, and I called her out on it. Big deal.” He wrapped the towel around his neck. “You know what I don’t appreciate? People acting like Brett was some kind of knight in shining armor. The only thing he cared about was himself.”

  “Did you see him again, after that day?”

  “No. I did not.”

  “You didn’t attend the auction?”

  “I dropped Atlas and Whitney off, and I picked them back up. I didn’t go inside.” He looked pointedly at Molly. “I know you were his friend, because Helen told me, so I’ll try to be civil. But the truth is, he was no better than me. He was just a better pretender. Now, are we done here? Because I need to shower and get back to work.”

  “If you don’t want to talk about Brett or Iris, how about you tell me about yourself? I’m interested in how you came to work for Atlas.”

  He frowned. “I don’t want to be in your article.”

  “I won’t write about you,” she said. “I’m just curious about how you got the job. It must be interesting working for a famous actor.”

  Holt picked up his water bottle and took a long swig from it. “I used to drive for a limo company in L.A., and sometimes I drove Atlas,” he said. “We hit it off, and next thing I know, he’s offering me a job as his full-time driver and bodyguard. I took it, and here I am. End of story.”

  “Are you originally from California?”

  “San Diego, born and bred.”

  “You didn’t mind leaving all that sunshine to move to Vermont?”

  “I’m looking at this as an adventure,” he said. “I’ll do it for a while, and when I’m ready, I’ll go back.”

  “Sabrina told me you were driving her and her father when Atlas told her about Jasper. He asked both of you to keep quiet about him being Helen’s ex. She says she never told anyone. Did you?”

  “No.”

  “What about Whitney? Do you know if Atlas told her about Jasper?”

  “Why would he?”

  “Husbands share confidences with their wives.”

  A vein throbbed in Holt’s forehead. “Look, lady, I don’t know what Atlas told Whitney. All I know is, I never told anyone about Jasper. Why would I
? If I saw the guy right this second, I’d punch his lights out. Helen was up all night crying. It kept me awake.”

  Molly wanted to see what she could find out about him and Whitney but knew she had to be careful how she did it. “Does Whitney ever confide in you?” she asked.

  “Me?” He looked flattered. “Well, sure, she tells me things,” he said. “Being a limo driver is kind of like being a bartender. People tell me things in confidence.”

  “What does she talk to you about?”

  “I just told you, it’s in confidence.”

  “Well, I already know she’s not happy living here,” she said. “She thinks Vermont is too provincial. And, between you and me, I can’t imagine what it must be like for her to be married to someone forty years her senior. The difference in their ages is enormous. Don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, you’re right about that,” he said.

  “She’s probably mentioned it to you a time or two,” Molly said, sounding confident.

  Holt nodded. “Yeah, it’s true, she’s complained about Atlas being older. She thought life with him was going to be glamorous, but after she had Katie, and he retired from acting, the invites dried up. Then he told her they were moving to Vermont, because he didn’t want to raise Katie in California.”

  “The poor woman,” Molly said, hoping to keep him talking. “Didn’t she have any say in the move?”

  “No, not really,” he said. “Atlas holds the purse strings, and now that they have Katie, she’s afraid he’ll get her if she tries to divorce him. I told her she shouldn’t do anything rash. You know how it is, the longer you’re married, the more you end up with.” Holt suddenly stopped talking. “What the hell am I doing? Why am I even talking to you?” He pointed a beefy finger in her face. “You got no right to tell anyone what I said. If you do, I’ll, I’ll sue you, I will, I swear.”

  Molly held up her hands. “I told you, I’m not going to write about anything you tell me. I value your opinion, that’s all. I’m sorry if you thought I was using you for information.”

  He nodded. “All right, then.”

  Good, she thought. Her apology seemed to have appeased him. She decided to push him a little further. “I’d love to know what you think of your coworkers,” she said.

  “Okay, sure, why not? Iris is clingy and possessive, and I’m well rid of her,” he said. “Helen is a good person, and protective of Atlas and Whitney, so you better be careful when you talk to her about them. She won’t tell you any of the stuff I just told you.”

  “And Bonnie and Dominic?”

  “Huh. Bonnie’s a judgmental bore, and Dominic has a low IQ. I mean, seriously, you talk to him for more than two minutes and you’re fast asleep. Combine those two with Iris and there’s barely a functioning brain between the three of them.”

  Molly wanted to say that people who call other people names are the ones without a brain, but she refrained.

  “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but what did you see in Iris? I mean, you’re so outgoing and confident, and she’s so shy and quiet. Was she some kind of challenge?”

  “Challenge?” He laughed. “She was all over me. I know everyone thinks she’s little Miss Innocent, but everyone is wrong. For fun one day, I cornered her in the hall and snuck a kiss. I thought she’d either slap me or scream. But you know what she did? She kissed me back, hard.” He laughed louder. “You should see your face. You don’t believe me, but I’m not lying. She was all over me. And I was like, hot damn, she’s a tiger in disguise.”

  Molly couldn’t decide if he was telling the truth or lying because he wanted to shock her, or once again, to humiliate Iris. “Do you make it a habit to go around grabbing women without their permission?”

  “No one’s ever complained yet,” he said and grinned. “They like it.”

  Molly felt her fingers curl. It was all she could not to slap that grin off his face. “And what would happen if someone did complain?”

  “Hey, what kind of a guy do you think I am? I’d back off. Seriously. I’d consider it their loss, not mine.”

  He’s a pig, Molly thought. A disgusting, sexist, abusive pig. How could Iris let herself be duped by this guy?

  “How long did your relationship with Iris last?”

  “I don’t know . . . six, eight weeks,” he said. “It was supposed to be for fun, but she wanted more.”

  “Is that why you both kept it a secret, because it was just for fun?”

  “Who says it was a secret?”

  “Did you take her out in public?”

  “Well, no. We stayed at her place.”

  “Why not yours?”

  “I’m not allowed to bring girls to my apartment,” he said. “Whitney doesn’t approve.”

  “Why not?”

  “She doesn’t like it, okay?”

  Molly wondered if Whitney didn’t like it because she was having an affair with Holt and wanted him for herself. She wanted to ask but knew he’d never tell her.

  “When you stayed at Iris’s, did you see her cookie jar collection, or did she ever talk to you about it?”

  Holt stared at her. “Are you nuts? I wasn’t at her place to eat cookies.” He flicked the towel off his thick neck and a spray of sweat hit Molly smack in the face. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to hit the showers.”

  “Wait, one more question,” she said. He stopped and put his hands on his hips. She took her phone out and showed him the photograph of the picnic basket cookie jar. “Do you remember seeing this jar at Iris’s house?”

  He glanced at the photo. “Nope. Never seen it before,” he said.

  “Did you play board games with her?”

  Holt laughed as he walked away. “We played lots of games,” he said over his shoulder. “None of them needed a board.”

  Chapter 19

  Molly wished she could take a bath in Lysol. She didn’t like Holt one bit. He had a stench about him that had nothing to do with his sweaty body. As she walked to her car she took some satisfaction in having gotten information out of him that he’d probably regret sharing later. Even if he and Whitney weren’t having an affair, he had established they were close enough to talk about personal subjects like her marriage.

  Molly took her cell phone out of her bag, intending to call Lombardi, but it rang in her hand. He’d beaten her to it.

  “I was just going to call you,” she said.

  “We’ve found Jasper,” he said.

  Molly unlocked her car. “Hey, that’s good news. Where was he?”

  “He’s dead, Molly.”

  Stunned, she stood with one hand on the open door. “What?”

  “A couple out with their dog found him off one of the Arms Park trails, not far from the high school. Thank God school’s out for the summer, or we’d have a lockdown on our hands.”

  “How did he die?”

  “He was stabbed, the knife still in him. The coroner won’t remove it until they get back to the morgue. I mentioned the Dahlgren Bayonet knife you told me about. I asked if he thought it could be the murder weapon. He said judging from the look of the hilt, it could be a relic from the Civil War.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said.

  “There’s more,” he said. “We found another one of the stolen cookie jars by Jasper’s body. It’s the clown in the barrel, and it’s got a green pawn inside. Looks like you were right. Brett didn’t kill himself. This is where you can say I told you so.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” she said. “I’m just glad that I wasn’t wrong about Brett. I knew he couldn’t have done such a thing. What else have you found out?”

  “Jasper’s rental car was in a remote parking lot,” he said. “No sign of the other cookie jars, however, which means there are four of them still out there. I really hope we’re not at the beginning of some kind of serial kill.”

  Molly shuttered. “I hope not,” she said. “How long has Jasper been dead?”

  “A few days at most,” he said. “Which m
eans he could have been killed right before, or after, Brett was murdered. I’m still at the crime scene, waiting for the body to be removed. Where are you?”

  “Core Sport Gym. I just had a chat with Holt. He really is a bodybuilder.”

  “So he’d be strong enough to stage Brett’s death.”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “He admitted he didn’t like him. He thought he was full of himself, which is ironic, coming from a man who is completely self-absorbed. I showed him the photos of the cookie jar, thinking he might have seen it when he was at Iris’s, but he didn’t recognize it.” She paused as she saw Holt walk out of Core Sport carrying a large gym bag. “Holt didn’t have anything nice to say about Iris, Bonnie, or Dominic, although Helen got a nod of approval. I tried to establish whether he’s having an affair with Whitney, because it seemed like a possibility, but there’s no way to prove it.” Holt had reached the Lincoln Navigator, but instead of getting into the car he looked down at the pavement. Since he was on the other side, out of Molly’s view, she couldn’t see what he was looking at. “Holt just left the gym, and he’s standing by his car staring at something on the ground.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, I can’t see,” she said. He opened the door and threw his gym bag on the front seat. Then he squatted down, completely out of sight. When he stood back up, he looked around the parking lot, and as soon as he locked eyes on Molly, he started toward her. “He’s walking over, and he’s got a cardboard box in his hands,” she said. “He does not look happy.”

  “Stay on the line with me,” he said.

  “I’ll put you on speaker.” Molly stood behind the open car door, the way cops did, using it as a shield.

  Holt marched up to her. “What are you playing at? Is this some kind of joke?” He held up the box. “Did you leave this by my car?”

  Molly held up her phone. “I’m on the phone with Detective Lombardi, and he can hear you.”