* * *
Sharon slept badly that night, and the next morning she decided not to go to Ray’s office as she usually did. He was scheduled to be in court all day, and the inaction of sitting behind a desk, reading reports and taking and making phone calls, was getting to her. Going over the same material day after day was not only frustrating and boring, but it was turning her mind to mush.
It was the first week in July, and she needed to get out in the warm sunshine and fresh air to release some of her pent-up energy. She also needed to take an active part in tracking down Floyd Vancleave’s killer instead of just following up on leads someone else had provided.
With this in mind she decided to drive over to the neighborhood where the Vancleaves lived. She’d been in their home a couple of times when they’d hosted barbecues in their big backyard for the people Floyd worked with. It wouldn’t hurt to scout around, maybe talk to some of the neighbors and try to find out how they felt about Floyd and Helen.
It was midmorning when Sharon parked her car at the curb a block away from the Vancleaves’ house. She’d brought Anna’s golden retriever, Viking, along for the exercise, and they got out and started walking. She had him on a leash, and he bounded happily ahead of her.
It was a beautiful day, pleasantly warm, but with a promise of uncomfortable heat later. She was wearing shorts and a sleeveless blouse, and walked on the sunny side of the street in the hope of improving her tan. The air was redolent with the scent of flowers and newly cut grass, and a slight breeze fanned her bare arms and legs and gently tousled her hair.
The homes and lawns were all well kept, and from the people she observed coming and going it was evident that the neighborhood included a mixture of young families and senior citizens. Bringing the dog was a stroke of genius. He served as a conversation piece, and people stopped her to comment on him. An elderly gentleman in one yard abandoned his lawn mower to pet the dog, and farther along she stopped to chat with a mother whose two little girls wanted to play with him.
She learned from them that the Vancleaves seldom socialized with their neighbors except to wave or nod in passing.
As she neared the Vancleaves’ place she noticed an older woman crouched on the grass, weeding her flower bed right next door. Great. Sharon was especially eager to query the close neighbors, and it would be far better if it could be a casual meeting rather than having to knock on the door and ask if the occupant would answer questions.
She crossed the street, then sauntered along as if she had nothing on her mind but giving her dog an outing. When they drew near, the woman looked up and smiled.
“My, what a beautiful dog,” she said. “Frisky, too.”
Sharon chuckled. “Oh yes, he’s frisky all right. Nearly yanks my arm out of the socket when he sees a squirrel.”
Sharon surreptitiously lengthened her hold on the leash so Viking could romp farther afield, and he headed for the woman, his tail wagging furiously with excitement. She reached out and petted him, while Sharon restrained him far enough away so he couldn’t jump on her and knock her over.
“My late husband used to have a retriever just like this one,” she said as she got to her feet. “He was a great hunting dog, but frisky, like yours. The man next door—” she nodded toward the Vancleave home “—put up such a fuss about his barking that we finally had to sell him to keep the peace.” Her expression hardened. “Floyd Vancleave was an offensive man,” she muttered, more to herself than to Sharon. “I’m not surprised that someone killed him.”
Sharon’s heart raced. So he wasn’t liked by the neighbors closest to him. That information could open up a whole new line of inquiry, but she’d have to be careful not to seem too nosy.
“Oh, are you talking about the man who was murdered recently in that hotel downtown?” she asked, striving for just the right tone of casual interest.
“Yes.” The woman rolled her eyes. “My, that really stirred things up around here. This is usually a very quiet neighborhood, but for a few days there it was overrun with reporters and police. It’s calmed down again now, though.”
That figured, Sharon thought. The police were so sure she was guilty that they didn’t bother looking for any other suspects.
“His poor wife must be grief-stricken by the loss of her husband,” Sharon said sympathetically, hoping it would encourage the woman to open up and gossip.
“I doubt it.” The neighbor’s tone was cryptic. “He slapped her around a lot.”
Sharon’s eyes widened with surprise and excitement. This could be a real breakthrough. “No! Really? Did she report it to the police?”
The other woman shook her head. “No, but I did a couple of times. I was afraid he’d kill her. I could hear him clear over here, yelling and throwing things. He was a real bully.”
Sharon could hardly contain herself. “Was he arrested?” She’d worked with Floyd for several years, and although he was a jerk, she’d never had any indication that he was a wife beater.
Again the neighbor shook her head, this time with a great deal of agitation. “That silly woman wouldn’t press charges. She always said she’d fallen or run into something. I gave up after the second time. He told me to mind my own business, and truth to tell, I was afraid of him.”
As soon as she could without arousing suspicion, Sharon excused herself and hurried back to her car. She was eager to tell Ray what she’d learned. She’d call Fergus, too. At the least this information put a new slant on the mystery.
Although she hadn’t known Helen Vancleave well she had noticed that Floyd’s wife was unusually withdrawn and quiet, not at all outgoing. On the other hand, Floyd was brash, loud and always hogging the spotlight. She remembered thinking that Helen and Floyd were such different personalities that she wondered what they could possibly have in common.
As soon as Sharon got home she gave Viking a couple of the special doggie biscuits Anna kept on hand to reward him when he’d done something especially clever. He’d certainly earned it today. Then she called Ray’s office, but he was still in court. Since it was almost time to adjourn for lunch, she left a message with his secretary, asking him to meet her as soon as possible at a popular restaurant near the courthouse that had both good food and fast service.
As she put the phone back in its cradle she noticed that her hands were shaking with elation. She didn’t know how this new information could be used, but she was sure it was important. Maybe even crucial!
Chapter Twelve
Sharon had only been seated in the restaurant a few minutes, when Ray arrived. A big grin lit his face when he spotted her. “Hey, it’s not every day a beautiful woman invites me to lunch,” he said cheerfully as he slid into the booth across the table from her. “Is it my boyish charm or my rugged good looks that makes me irresistible?”
Sharon laughed. “Both, but today it’s your super P.I. skills that seduce me.”
“You’ve come up with something important?” he said eagerly.
“Stumbled onto something is more accurate,” she said, then told him about her talk with the Vancleaves’ neighbor.
They were interrupted once when the waitress took their order, but by the time she brought their food Sharon had just finished recounting her undercover interview. “I have a feeling that this is really important, Ray,” she said, as the waitress placed the seafood salad in front of her and the hot-roast-beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy before him.
He picked up his knife and fork and dug in. “I’m sure it is, but I don’t think we have a chance in hell of getting Mrs. Vancleave to admit that her husband abused her. If she wouldn’t do it to protect herself when he was alive, she’s not likely to do it now that he’s dead. I have contacts in the police department, though. I’ll see what I can find out, but it’ll have to wait till tomorrow. This trial probably won’t go to the jury until late this afternoon, and I can’t get away until it does.”
Some of Sharon’s elation dimmed. She’d expected him to be more
excited. Surely the fact that Floyd was a wife beater as well as a womanizer made him a target of the wrath of numerous individuals.
“Maybe I could find out something if I had a talk with Helen,” she ventured.
“No, Sharon,” Ray said firmly. “Don’t do that. In the first place she probably wouldn’t talk to you, and in the second place, if there is something important here you could blow the whole thing. As soon as we finish eating I’ll call one of my buddies down at headquarters and ask him to dig into some of the files, but if no charges were ever filed against Vancleave it’s doubtful there would be a record.”
Sharon reluctantly agreed, but resolved to tell Fergus about it that evening when he called.
* * *
The call came at nine o’clock and Fergus sounded tired. “Everything’s pretty much on schedule here, but I resent every minute of the time I’m away from you. I feel I should be there, doing something....”
“I wish you were here, too,” she admitted. “I need your advice.”
“Advice about what?” he asked anxiously. “Has something happened? Are you being harassed?”
“No, nothing like that, but I did find out something today that I think is important.” She told him about her conversation with the Vancleaves’ next-door neighbor. “I didn’t even get the woman’s name,” she concluded. “I was too afraid she’d become suspicious and stop talking.”
“Her name’s not important,” he said offhandedly. “We can always get it later. You said Ray’s checked with the police?”
Her disappointment at his casual attitude was as painful as a blow. “Not personally—he’s been tied up in court all day—but he said he’d call a friend in the department and ask him to go through the files. Darn it, Fergus.” She couldn’t keep from voicing her frustration. “You don’t sound any more enthusiastic than Ray did. I thought you’d be happy—”
“I am happy, sweetheart,” he interrupted. “This gives us a whole new area to explore, but it doesn’t prove anything except that Vancleave was a real bastard, and we already knew that.”
“But what about his wife?” Sharon’s voice was strident with exasperation. “Doesn’t that give her a strong motive for killing him? She might not have known he was bedding every woman who’d have him, but she sure knew he was beating her up.”
“Sure it gave her a strong motive,” Fergus agreed, “and it gives us a more persuasive case for reasonable doubt that you did it, but don’t count on the prosecution or the jury to consider her a serious suspect. If she’d put up with the physical abuse without seeking protection and retribution, it’s not likely she’d kill him, either. Besides, she wasn’t at his office. You walked in without being announced, and she wasn’t there with him, was she?”
“No, he was alone,” Sharon admitted. “But that doesn’t mean she couldn’t have come in the back door after I walked out, the same as anyone else.”
“That’s true, and we’ll look into it, but you didn’t see her anywhere near the hotel when you left, did you?”
“No, but—”
“You’d almost certainly have run into her, since you were going to the hotel parking building and she would have been coming from it. There’s no place else to park around there. Besides, unless she went there specifically to kill him, there was no reason for her to go in the back, when she could walk into his office through the reception area anytime she wanted to. Receptionists don’t keep their boss’s wives waiting.”
“What makes you so sure she didn’t go there to kill him?”
“I’m not sure,” Fergus explained, “but it seems unlikely. If she left home with the intention of killing him it would mean that she’d planned to do it, but she didn’t bring a weapon. He was stabbed with the letter opener from his desk.
“Also, it’s unlikely that she’d go to his office, a very public place, to do the deed, when it could so easily have been accomplished at home or in a more private area.”
He hesitated a moment. “As I remember it she had a good alibi,” he continued. “When the police went to her house that day to notify her of her husband’s death they found her sick in bed. I mean violently ill, not just the sniffles or a headache. They called her doctor and he examined her. He said it was a type of intestinal flu that was going around, and gave her a prescription for medication.”
Sharon was reluctantly forced to admit that Fergus and Ray were right, Helen Vancleave had nothing to do with her husband’s murder. But if it wasn’t her, then who?
Fergus must have sensed her disappointment, because his voice coming over the phone was soft and compassionate. “I’m sorry, my darling. I hate to have to deflate your balloon, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up too high, only to have them come crashing down again. I’d much prefer to be there with you, but there’s a lot I can do on the phone. I’ll keep in close touch with Ray, and I want you to call me anytime you have a question or feel the need to talk. Okay?”
Sharon sighed. “Okay. I guess it was unreasonable of me to think that all we’d have to do was ask a few questions and the guilty person would be revealed. I remember when you and I were married you’d sometimes get exasperated and tell me to grow up and start thinking like an adult. Obviously I still haven’t gotten the knack of it.”
She heard him groan at the other end of the line.
“Sharon, sweetheart, that’s not at all what I’m saying. I can’t imagine why I ever thought I wanted to change you. I loved you then and I love you now, and I can’t bear the thought of you being hurt any more than is necessary by this messy business.”
They talked for a few more minutes, but when they hung up she still couldn’t shake the feeling that this new turn of events was vitally important. Granted, she was a rank amateur, whereas Fergus and Ray were trained to sort out important facts, but she had a gut feeling that she was on the right track, and she wasn’t going to give up.
Early the next morning, which was Friday, Ray phoned. “Just wanted to let you know that my contact at the police department couldn’t find any record of Floyd Vancleave’s being questioned on suspicion of spousal abuse, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t. The jury’s out on my trial now, so I’m going over there and see what I can turn up.”
Sharon’s excitement started to build again. “That’s great, Ray. I want to go with you.”
Ray hesitated. “Oh, I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said thoughtfully. “Fergus wouldn’t want you poking around the station.”
She wasn’t going to be put off so easily. “Would it compromise my case?”
“Well, no,” he admitted, “but it’s a pretty rough place, and you know how protective Fergus is—”
“Fergus Lachlan is my lawyer, not my husband,” she interrupted impatiently. “He has no business being protective of me. Now, are you going to stop by and pick me up, or do I have to drive down on my own?”
Ray chuckled. “Okay, babe, if you’re not scared of him, neither am I. If you’re determined to go along I’ll pick you up. Half an hour all right?”
Sharon agreed that it was, and was dressed in jeans, a pullover shirt and sneakers when he arrived.
At the station Ray was greeted by good-natured slaps on the back and banter. He introduced Sharon and explained what they were after, but none of the officers could remember being called out to a disturbance at the Vancleaves’ address.
“That’s a pretty high-toned neighborhood,” one of them explained. “Those people seldom call the police with a complaint about spousal abuse. They call their psychiatrist, instead, and we never hear about it.”
“But these complaints were turned in by a neighbor,” Ray explained. “She said she was afraid the husband was going to kill his wife in one of his rages.”
“The call would have been handled by this precinct,” another officer commented, “but police officers do get shifted around some. Why don’t you go to headquarters and find out which of our officers have retired or been reassigned in the past five years
or so? It could be that one of them will remember.”
Ray and Sharon thanked them all for their help and headed for central. It took some persuasion, but they finally got the names they wanted. There were only four, three men and a woman. Two of them had retired, and the other two had been reassigned. They took the names, addresses and phone numbers and, after picking up sandwiches at a deli for lunch, went to Ray’s office to make their calls.
The first two they contacted were unable to help, but on the third try they connected. Officer Kathryn Underwood remembered the Vancleaves because it had frustrated her so when the woman had refused to press charges.
“Usually in marital disputes the two parties are furious with each other,” she said. “They both yell and swear and each blames the other, so that you can’t tell which one started it. In those cases we’re relieved when they don’t press charges, but the Vancleave complaint was nothing like that.”
Her voice turned hard. “That arrogant son of a bitch had given his wife a black eye, a split lip and God only knows how much more damage that didn’t show unless she could be examined without her clothes on. She winced every time she was touched, and you could see she was afraid of him, but she wouldn’t admit it. Instead, she stuck to her story that she’d fallen down the stairs. I really hated to leave her there with him, but there was nothing we could do when she wouldn’t cooperate.”
Officer Underwood agreed to testify if she was needed, and Sharon was jubilant. Grabbing Ray, she gave him a big hug, and he laughed and swung her around, but when they calmed down he warned her again that this evidence alone didn’t prove anything, since Mrs. Vancleave had refused to admit that she’d been abused.
“I agree,” Sharon said, “but I’m going over to the Vancleaves’ home first thing in the morning and speak to her—”
“No, Sharon, don’t do that!” Ray warned. “At least not until you talk it over with Fergus. There are legal ramifications that you can’t possibly be aware of.”
Truly Married Page 18
