Blood Relative (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 4)

by Michael Allegretto

  No one said anything.

  Kenneth looked at each of us, seeking acceptance.

  “That’s what happened,” he said. “I swear to God I didn’t kill her.”

  I think I believed him. Westfall raised his eyebrows at me and said, “Back to square one.”

  “Not quite. There’s Wes Hartman.”

  CHAPTER 31

  THEY ALL LOOKED AT ME.

  Westfall said, “Are you saying Wes killed Clare?”

  I pictured Nicole, hallucinating on ice, spattered with her paints, and Wes telling her, Yes, that’s Clare’s blood, and you killed her.

  “Perhaps.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she was trying to blackmail him as well as Kenneth.” I turned to Kenneth. “Wes killed Winks, though, didn’t he? Or had him killed.”

  Kenneth shook his head and tried to look innocent. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “You knew he was murdered.”

  He smiled weakly. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “The police version is suicide.”

  Kenneth’s smile sank.

  “I guess Hartman was the answer to all your problems,” I said. “First Gil Lucero, then Clare—”

  “I didn’t tell him about—”

  “—a couple of shots at me, then Winks.”

  “No,” he said firmly. “No, that’s not how it was.”

  “How was it?”

  Kenneth glanced from me to Westfall to Doreen, looking for an ally. Doreen had moved away from him on the couch. Now she said quietly but evenly, “Yes, Kenneth, tell us how it was.”

  He was surrounded, scared witless. Good.

  “Did you sic Wes on Winks?” I asked.

  “No, no, I…told him about Winks, that’s all.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That Winks was crucial to my father’s defense.”

  “Why did you tell him?”

  “Why?”

  “Yes. Were you hoping he’d make sure Winks wouldn’t testify?”

  “What? Why would I do that? I love my father. The last thing I want is for him to go to prison.”

  “That’s…not quite true.” This from Doreen.

  Kenneth turned to her. “What are you saying?”

  “You told me you hoped he’d be convicted.”

  “No.”

  “You hated him, Kenneth, for the way he—”

  “Shut up, Doreen.”

  “—the way he abused you and your mother and Karen. The way he spoiled Nicole. And besides, with him out of the way you could—”

  “Shut up!”

  “—you could run the company. And that’s all you ever wanted.”

  “I SAID SHUT UP!”

  He was on his feet again, towering over her, his face blotchy red. This time, though, Doreen sat erect and didn’t shrink from him. She didn’t even blink. Maybe because his hands were cuffed behind him. Or maybe she was really seeing him for the first time. Herself, too.

  “Sit down, Kenneth,” she said with scorn. “You look ridiculous.”

  He puffed up his chest as if he were ready to let go with another shout. Slowly, though, he deflated and sat at the end of the couch, defeated.

  No one spoke. I glanced at Westfall. He was staring at Kenneth, unsure how to proceed.

  I asked Kenneth, “When did you tell Wes about Winks?”

  He shook his head, staring dully at the floor. “I don’t remember.” Doreen reached over and tentatively laid her hand on his knee. Now she felt sorry for him, her long-lost third child.

  I said, “Your father told me he mentioned Winks to you when you visited the jail Tuesday.”

  Kenneth nodded, staring at Doreen’s hand as if he wanted to hold it.

  “Did you tell Wes that day?”

  He frowned, still staring at Doreen’s hand on his knee. Then he looked up at me.

  “The next morning,” he said. “Wes asked me about you, about how your investigation was proceeding. I told him you’d found Winks.”

  And that night William Royce and friends had tried to kill me. By that time they’d probably already silenced Winks.

  “When I heard last night that Winks was dead,” Kenneth said, “I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. I knew Wes had something to do with it.”

  “We should take this to the police,” Westfall suggested.

  “Take what?” I faced him. “All we have on Wes Hartman are suspicions and innuendos. We need something concrete.” I was thinking, Why would Wes want Winks dead? Answer: to keep Samuel Butler locked up and away from Butler Manufacturing. But why? I asked Kenneth, “Did Wes know you were stealing money from the company?”

  He pressed his lips together and shook his head tightly, uncomfortable about admitting his crime.

  “Could he be stealing, too?”

  Kenneth frowned. “Do you mean money? No way.”

  “What about merchandise?”

  “Well, we’ve got some minor pilfering. A few ballpoint pens and belt buckles always show up missing from inventory. Nothing major.”

  I recalled Hartman’s actions last night when I’d broken into the building. My view had been partly blocked, but I could see that Wes had taken something from an outgoing shipment, put it in his gym bag, and left with it.

  “What exactly does Hartman do for your company?”

  “Very little.” He winced and rolled his shoulders, flexing his arms behind him. I suppose I could’ve uncuffed him. But things were going so smoothly I hated to break his rhythm. “He services a few established customers and supposedly brings in new accounts, although he’s done very little of that until recently.”

  “How recently?”

  Kenneth pursed his lips. “In the past few months he’s gotten us new customers in Kansas City, Minneapolis, and Omaha.”

  “Large accounts?”

  “Well, no, but…”

  “What?”

  “Now that you mention it, they are unusual. Each of them orders fairly frequently, once a week or two. And always our cheapest merchandise—plastic mugs, and so on, not even with emblems.”

  I thought back to yesterday when I’d questioned the shipping clerk. He’d told the other worker, Molly, that the shipment she was working on, cheap plastic mugs, was going out tomorrow—that is, today—to a company in Minneapolis. And last night I’d seen Wes messing around with the boxes. It took me long enough, but I think I finally had it figured out.

  “Is one of Wes’s accounts Northfield Distributing in Minneapolis?”

  Kenneth frowned. “Yes, but how did—”

  “A shipment went out to them today.”

  “Well, yes. But how did you know?”

  Dumb luck. “Thorough investigation. Have you ever heard Wes mention the names Frank or Carl Dykstra?”

  “Dykstra?” He shook his head. “No. Although…”

  “What?”

  “He’s meeting someone tonight named Frank. I overheard him today on the phone.”

  I felt my palms itch. “Where are they meeting?”

  “I don’t know. When I walked in this morning, he was talking, and when he saw me, he said, ‘Got to go, Frank, see you tonight.’ Then he hung up.”

  “Is Wes still at work?”

  “No. He left before I did.”

  I knew that Wes would eventually go home, if he wasn’t there already, and find Nicole gone. At some point he’d worry and start looking for her, probably calling around first. I didn’t want him to get nervous and cancel his meeting with Frank.

  I took the cuffs off Kenneth. He rubbed his wrists and gave me an apologetic look, I suppose for putting me through the trouble.

  “Then you believe me?” he said. “That I didn’t kill Clare?”

  “Sure.” The only thing I believed was that he wouldn’t hit anybody or run away.

  Doreen said, “Kenneth I—I’m sorry for what I thought I…”

  “It’s all right.” He reached out for her. Love
ly. A pair of thieves consoling each other.

  I said to Kenneth, not ready to let him off the hook, “On the day of Clare’s murder, when you drove to the house, where did you plan to park?”

  He stopped petting and cooing with Doreen and gave me a confused look. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “If the cops hadn’t been there, where would you have left your car?”

  He shrugged. “In the driveway, I suppose?”

  “Not in the garage?”

  “No, how could I?”

  “But if you would’ve left it in the driveway, the neighbors would’ve seen it.”

  He scowled. “Yes, I suppose so. I guess I wasn’t thinking about that.”

  “You have a key to the front door, right?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Who else could’ve let themselves in?”

  “Nicole, for one,” Doreen said bitterly, coming to his rescue. “She lived in that house right up until Clare moved in. Daddy’s little girl would never give up her key.”

  “Karen has one, too,” Kenneth said.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Westfall looked at me. “Surely you don’t think Karen had anything to do with this.”

  I ignored him and said to Kenneth, “Wes may phone or come here today looking for Nicole. I want Doreen to stay out of sight and for you to talk to him.”

  “Me? What am I supposed to say?”

  “Tell him Nicole and Doreen went shopping together and possibly to dinner and that you don’t expect them home until tonight. You’re not worried about their absence. Do you understand? And if Wes asks how Nicole was acting, tell him she seemed fine.”

  “What’s this all about?” Westfall wanted to know.

  “I’m keeping Nicole away from Wes and trying not to make him suspicious.”

  “Where is Nicole?”

  “Someplace safe.” I hoped. I was counting on Karen’s love for her baby sister as insurance against harm. I stood and said to Westfall, “I’ve got things to take care of. As far as I’m concerned, the theft by these two supercrooks is a family matter, unless Samuel decides to press charges. You are going to tell him, aren’t you?”

  “Without question.” He stared hard at Kenneth and Doreen. They hung their heads like penitents. “First I want to see the company’s books so I can give him a full report. He may very well instruct me to inform the police. Or something equally appropriate.”

  I supposed he meant setting them adrift in the sea of unemployment. And I could see that Kenneth and Doreen feared that as much as jail. Ah, life in the middle class.

  CHAPTER 32

  THE FIRST THING I DID was rent a two-year-old blue Ford Tempo.

  As far as I knew, Wes had never seen my borrowed, smoky, wheezy Toyota. But it was no good for tailing—too ugly to be indistinct. I peeled the rental agency’s sticker from the Ford’s front bumper, and the car practically disappeared into the background.

  I swung by the office to pick up my state-of-the-art surveillance instruments—binoculars and a big thermos.

  Before I left, I phoned Karen.

  “Has Wes called?”

  “Yes, just a little while ago. I told him I hadn’t seen Nicole.”

  “How did he sound?”

  “A bit worried, I think.”

  “How’s Nicole?”

  “Still sleeping, thank God. I think that’s what she needs more than anything.”

  “Right.” There was something else I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t think now was the time.

  “What?” she asked at my silence.

  “We can talk about it later.”

  “Talk about what?” Her voice was flat, hard.

  “All right. I’m curious. When Clare stayed with you for a month, back when she first moved to Denver, how did she and Teri get along?”

  A long pause. “They didn’t.”

  “I see.”

  “What’re you getting at?”

  “Nothing.” Much. “Make sure Nicole stays there until you hear from me, Westfall, or the police, even if it’s not until tomorrow. And don’t let her hurt herself. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “She’s my little sister,” she said angrily. “You don’t have to tell me how to take care of her.”

  At a convenience store I bought a bag of granola bars and filled the thermos with coffee. I was going to have to stick with Wes until his meeting with Frank, sometime tonight, which I figured was anytime between six o’clock and midnight. It was three now.

  I drove south on University Boulevard, turned left on Yale, then left again into the alley that ran behind Wes and Nicole’s condo. There was a large open space beside the condo, surrounded by a construction fence. Beyond it was an apartment building. Houses hid behind high privacy fences across the alley.

  I swung the Ford around and parked near a dumpster between the apartment and the construction site. From there I could see the mouth of the driveway that led from the alley to the Hartman’s building.

  I climbed out, walked down the alley to the condo, and peeked through the garage-door window. The parking slots reserved for the residents of 2B were empty. No blood-red Nissan. I had to hope that Wes would come home before his meeting with Frank.

  I sat in my car and waited.

  My mind kept drifting back to Clare’s murder.

  The scene of the crime had been tidy, even peaceful—except, of course, for the body and the blood. No signs of a break-in or a struggle. So Clare knew her killer, trusted him. Samuel Butler had been certain it was her lover. I’d thought he was right when I’d believed her lover was Jeremy Stone. But there was no Jeremy Stone. In any case, whoever the killer was, he probably had access to the house, possibly a key to the front door. And Clare must’ve been accustomed to him going into the garage, because that’s where he’d picked up the murder weapon.

  Unless he’d initially entered the house from the garage.

  The garage.

  I sat up straight, seeing the obvious, realizing what I should’ve known from the beginning. But I had to make sure. And I didn’t think I was patient enough to wait for Wes before I checked it out.

  I started the Ford and hoped that if Wes came home while I was gone, he’d stay awhile.

  It was only a ten-minute drive to Samuel Butler’s house. I parked at the curb, then let myself in with the key Westfall had given me last Monday. It seemed like a month ago.

  The air in the house felt dead, as if all the oxygen had settled to the floor. I pictured it swirling about my ankles and rising in wisps as I moved through the living room and kitchen to the three-car garage.

  Samuel’s white Caddy and Clare’s midnight-blue Porsche had not been moved. I took the garage-door opener from Clare’s car and pressed the button. The overhead motor came to life, and the door behind the Porsche rolled smoothly up. I pushed the button again, and the door rolled down.

  I raised the door behind the Caddy with Samuel’s opener, then walked down the driveway to my car. After I got in, started the engine, and began to drive away, I pressed the button. The garage door rolled smoothly closed.

  I drove to Wes’s condo, parked in the alley, and walked back to check the garage. Still no red Nissan. Either Wes hadn’t come home, or he’d come and gone.

  I waited.

  It was six-thirty when I saw the red Nissan enter the alley from Yale and turn into the driveway behind the condo. I unwrapped my third granola bar and sipped more coffee—not too much, though, or I’d have to go stand behind the dumpster.

  I was beside the car stretching my legs in the chilly night air when Wes drove the Nissan out of the driveway, down the alley, and turned right onto Yale. It was nine-ten.

  I fired up the Ford and went after him.

  He led me north on University Boulevard. Traffic was moderate, so I could stay fairly close to him and still keep two or three cars between us. When he reached I-25, he took the northbound ramp, and I swung around behind him. The mount
ains were indistinct shapes to the west, crouching beyond the reach of the city glow.

  Wes drove fast. I guess it would be hard not to, a car like that. Or maybe he was late for his meeting. In any case, I had to work to keep up with him as he continually changed lanes to move through traffic. I didn’t try to get too close, though, remembering the last time I’d followed him.

  I’d been rusty, careless, driving my shiny aqua-and-white antique. How could he not have spotted me. He’d used his car phone, setting things up. Then he’d driven to My Brother’s Bar and stood on the sidewalk where I could see him, waving to make sure I’d stop—while the truck with the oversized tires sat up the hill a block away, waiting.

  Wes took the Speer Boulevard exit, heading away from the city, just as he’d done when I’d followed him before. Had he spotted me again?

  I let him pull ahead and watched his taillights turn north on Zuni, then east on Twenty-ninth Avenue, heading back toward downtown. He angled off onto Fifteenth Street and went down the hill toward My Brother’s Bar. The skyscrapers hung in the background like gawkers at the scene of a crime.

  I slowed the Ford, staying a few blocks back, waiting for him to stop.

  But he continued past the bar, crossed the river, turned left, and disappeared.

  I cruised down the hill and killed my lights, thinking he’d parked by one of the deserted buildings. But there was a cross street, Grinell Court, and I saw the Nissan’s taillights a few hundred yards away.

  The road was dark and lumpy, a two-lane blacktop that snaked under the Sixteenth Street viaduct and paralleled the Platte River, partially hidden by black foliage along the banks. To my right were warehouses and fence-enclosed storage lots, backed by the sprawling railroad yards. Beyond were the distant lights of civilization.

  Wes’s brake lights went on. The Nissan nearly stopped, then turned right, away from the river, carefully leaving the blacktop and going through an opening in a chain-link fence.

  I pulled the Ford off the road, killed the engine, and climbed out.

  It was dark and damp down here, as if the river were filling the night with its vapors. Hidden to my left, beyond the riverbank’s trees, I-25 hummed quietly, the only sound. To my right were the black shapes of warehouses, blocking out the lights of downtown, a mile away.