“Nice breeze,” said Claudia.
“It’s an advantage of being six floors up. Besides, I didn’t think you’d mind enduring an inquisition here as much as you would in my cramped office. Want a refill on your drink?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. I’m bushed.”
Rohr smiled and retrieved both their glasses from the table. “We’ll be finished pretty soon. Back in a minute.”
Claudia looked over the railing again. Stars twinkled faintly, a reminder that they’d all missed the town’s fireworks while they got Kensington processed and transported to a holding cell. No way would a judge let her out on bond, but Rohr wanted as many details nailed down as she could. Her questions were efficient but endless and they always came back to the same thing: How does a thirty-three-year-old woman masquerade as a woman more than twice her age with no one noticing?
Because her target victim had Alzheimer’s and no one heeded much of what he had to say. Because the Beckers were newcomers to the community, presenting only the history she chose to present. Because she counted on a small town to favor her with sympathy, not scrutiny. Because she had professional training as an actress. Because she was willing to set the stage and play out every act. Because she did have the advantage of an uncanny resemblance to Barbara Becker. Because a lot of money was at stake. Mostly, because no one was looking.
But Wanda Farr looked one day. She saw Henry Becker pitched into the No-Name. Kensington sent her errand boy after her, an errand boy smitten enough to do her bidding and stupid enough to imagine she would ever let him share the reward. Claudia bet that if Kensington hadn’t believed Rivens was dead, she would’ve figured out a way to excise him before he ever left the hospital. What she would not do was walk away from a fortune, not when she believed she had already convinced the police to look elsewhere.
“It was an incredible scheme, wasn’t it.”
Claudia whirled around.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” Rohr handed her a glass. “Pinot Grigio. I’m out of Chardonnay.”
“Thanks.” She took a sip. “I can’t decide if I’m drinking too late or drinking too early.”
“Doesn’t matter. You can crash in the guest bedroom.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“Yeah, it is.”
They settled into the chairs. Claudia leaned back and stretched her legs as far as possible. The chair cut into her spine, but she ignored it.
“You know, Detective, you left me a lot of legwork on some things.”
Claudia translated silently: You made mistakes. She nodded, thinking about the things she should’ve done but didn’t, errors that would not have prevented Farr’s murder but that combined would make Rohr’s job more tedious now. She waited too long to request a fuller analysis of the prints on the glass. Later, she didn’t ask for comparison prints on Barbara Becker when the crime scene techs dusted for Kensington’s prints in the bedroom. If she had, she would’ve known there weren’t any. Barbara Becker never made it as far as Indian Run. If her assumptions were right, she never even made it out of Chicago. Kensington stepped into Indian Run already in costume. She wore it as sparingly as possible, but enough to establish a presence as the concerned wife of Henry Becker.
“Kensington led me by the nose for a long time,” Claudia said. “She set everything up so beautifully, so persuasively, right from the beginning.”
“She manipulated everyone, not just you. Right away she made sure to establish a record of Becker’s wandering. When he showed up in the No Name, no one gave it a thought. Deflect, deflect, deflect. Look, this chick constructed a scheme around her own persona—police record and all—so that you’d have an obvious suspect.”
“Who we’d never catch, of course.”
“You have to admit it was a work of art, or almost—and ballsy, too, even to the end. I mean, come on. How many people would report a car stolen and keep it hidden in their own garage?”
“I could’ve lived without that reminder,” Claudia said glumly, thinking of the Jag they’d recovered in the Becker garage, pristine beneath a tarp all the while. “Everything was right under my nose.”
Rohr shook her head admiringly. “My guess? After a respectable period of time, the ‘grieving widow’ would quietly move, then vanish—and probably in the damned Jag. You’d still be looking for the phantom caregiver. Kensington would’ve settled somewhere on a beach with an expensive umbrella drink, and she’d be laughing her ass off.”
“I should’ve caught on sooner, though. She was always covered up to the neck. She kept her hands in her lap as much as possible. Barbara Becker and Babs Kensington were never seen together. She did most of her business outside of Indian Run, and almost entirely in cash. She kept her old friends at arm’s distance and didn’t establish any new ones here. I assumed her remote behavior was because she felt overwhelmed by her husband’s condition—”
“—which is what she counted on you thinking—”
“—until Aaron Rivens left a track at Farr’s trailer.”
“Farr was an annoying problem for her. Becker’s autopsy was an unexpected challenge. But Rivens, he was a disaster. He left his prints on the glass and his pocket in a dog’s mouth. He—”
“We don’t have a match on the pocket yet.”
Rohr waved a hand. “We will.” She took a sip of her wine. “He made Kensington start to punt on a lot of things and then it only got worse. The way I see it, he got impatient for things to happen, so he reverted to form and sold hot cars for ready cash. I doubt Kensington knew about any of them except for the BMW. And then the jackass tried to shoot you! Mistakes were happening everywhere and they were getting a lot harder to deflect. Kensington had to—”
The phone rang from inside. “No rest for the weary,” Rohr said, sprinting from her chair. “Don’t fall asleep on me while I’m gone.”
Claudia took a swallow of her wine, then set it down distastefully. She didn’t want anymore. She closed her eyes and began to doze, her head inching toward her chest. It couldn’t have been more than a minute when she felt Rohr shaking her shoulder.
“Hey! Dream on your own time.”
Claudia struggled to a more upright position. “Sorry.” She squinted, bringing her vision back into focus. “News?”
“Score one for the good guys. Chicago just dug her out.”
She pictured the Chicago police, their high-intensity lamps flooding the garden while their shovels churned up lilacs and roses behind the Beckers’ northern home. She saw them hoping to connect with something solid, hoping that they wouldn’t.
“Kensington didn’t let anything get in her way,” Rohr said somberly. She downed the rest of her wine, then looked at Claudia’s glass. “You’re not keeping up with me.”
“Can’t.” She tried to stifle a yawn. “I’m so past tired I’m not even sure I’m alive.”
“You are, but it’s marginal. Look, just one more question. I’m curious. How’d you finally figure Kensington for the imposter she was?”
“You don’t want to hear this. It’s boring.”
“I can go with boring.”
Claudia picked up her glass, then set it back down. “It was the cane. I was at the estate having an initial interview with Barbara Becker—Kensington, I mean—and the cane was leaning against the kitchen table. I accidentally knocked it off and she swiveled to catch it before it ever hit the floor. It was an instinctive catch, and at the time it blew right by me that it was way out of whack for an old woman with an arthritic hip. In fact, my brain didn’t catch up to me until yesterday, when Emory Carella bumped something off my own kitchen counter and he made the same kind of grab. It was like watching the remake of a movie. I started to see everything about her in a different way.”
“In other words you had an epiphany? One of those ‘ah-hah!’ moments?”
“That’s a stretch. This was more like a brain bump.”
“Well, you’re right about one thing.” Rohr smiled
. “It makes for a pretty dull story, Detective.”
Claudia took her glasses off and scrubbed her eyes, not even trying to hide the yawn this time. “It is what it is. Now give me a pillow or I’m out of here.”
Chapter 30
Being tall had advantages. Claudia could see over the jostling crowd when the passengers finally started streaming out of the gate. She tracked Robin from the moment she emerged and waved her over, shedding fatigue with each step that brought her daughter closer. When she was finally within reach Claudia swooped, pulling her into an embrace that pinned Robin’s carry-on bag between them.
“You’re crushing me,” Robin protested, her words muffled against Claudia’s jacket.
“I know. I don’t care. I missed you.”
Robin let her cling for few more seconds, then struggled free. “Jeez. It’s not like I was gone a thousand years.”
Sure. Now she’d be brave.
Robin shifted her carry-on to her other hand. “How’s the kitten?”
“Fine. How are you, baby?”
“The fireworks were great. The food on the plane sucked. You didn’t name him, did you?”
Claudia laughed. “No. Here . . . let me take your bag.” She caught Robin examining her as they walked toward the terminal. “We can grab something to eat on the way home, if you’d like.”
“How come your eyes are all bloodshot?” she demanded. “You worked all the time, didn’t you?”
“Not all the time, but it did get a little busy.”
Robin shook her head. “Boy, I bet Dennis gave you some grief over that. Is he coming over tonight? I picked up some charcoal pencils for him. They have ‘Washington, D.C.’ printed on them. I got you a souvenir, too. Plus I got something for the kitten.”
Claudia guided them around a tour group of tourists. No, honey, Dennis won’t be coming over tonight, or any night. Your mother is lousy with men. But later. She would explain it all later. Sort of.
“Actually, kiddo, I’m kind of in a selfish mood,” she said evenly. “I figured it would be just you and me tonight. Well, us and the kitten, of course. You really do need to come up with a name.”
Robin groaned and began reeling off prospective names, discarding each the moment she presented it, moving on to another. Claudia half-listened. What was it Rohr had said? Deflect, deflect, deflect. Yeah. It wasn’t that hard.
By the time they’d paid the extortion fee to get out of airport parking, Robin had temporarily exhausted her interest in names for the kitten. On the drive home she chattered about Washington instead, telling Claudia about where Brian had taken her, what they’d done, who he’d introduced her to. Then she asked whether she knew that Brian had a girlfriend.
Claudia said she didn’t.
“Well, I don’t know if she’s a girlfriend, exactly, or just trying to be a girlfriend. But she’s about a hundred years younger than he is and . . . giggly. I don’t know what Dad sees in her.”
Oh, Brian . . . .
“You know what he told me, though?”
“What?”
“He told me the one woman who matters most to him is you.”
“Me? He said—”
“Well, you know, because if not for you, he wouldn’t have me.”
“Oh.” Claudia concentrated on traffic while Robin fussed with the radio. She finally found something she thought tolerable and they finished the drive home as if neither of their lives had changed.
* * *
There were two messages on the answer machine. Claudia set her purse on the coffee table. She looked toward Robin and smiled. Two seconds in the door and she was already on her hands and knees, urging the kitten to come out from under the couch, trying to renew their acquaintance. She hit the machine’s play button. One call was a hang-up. The other was from Booey.
Lieutenant? Sorry I missed you. You had to pick up your daughter, right? I hope I can meet her sometime. She’s probably as, well, as . . . amazing as you are.
Robin stopped cooing at the kitten and turned around. “Who’s that? Someone have a crush on you?”
“Shhh.”
“. . . two-week internship is just about up. Uncle Mac says I did a good job for a rookie, but that the only promotion I could look for is a letter of recommendation from you, if you think I deserve one. This isn’t any kind of pressure, though, okay? I mean, if you think I deserve one, fine. If you don’t, well, the dog-by-the-tree thing . . . I would understand.”
“What’s he talking about?” Robin said.
“Shhh.”
Filmmaking. That’s how I’m going to go. I think. I have a terrific idea for a documentary about police work. Maybe you would star in it?
Robin scurried over, the kitten momentarily abandoned. “Hollywood! Is this guy legit?”
Claudia held up a finger.
. . . know you’ll want details, so I already have an outline. Uncle Mac says you’re taking the rest of the week off. Could I fax this over? Or I could maybe stop by some time?
“Like we have a fax machine,” Robin muttered. “I told you we’re way out of the loop with technology, Mom.” The kitten darted at her shoelace, then retreated behind a coffee table leg, warming to her now.
I’ll call later. Or tomorrow. Or you could call me back, if you aren’t too busy. You’re probably worn out, of course. You have my number, right? Oh. By the way, this is Booey. Sorry. Uh, bye-bye.
“His name is Booey? He can’t be from Hollywood.” Robin sighed and crouched by the kitten. “Boy, Mom, you know how to pick them.”
Claudia smiled. She didn’t pick him, but so what? It worked out. “Here’s an idea,” she said. “If you shorten ‘Booey’ to ‘Boo’, you’ve got a pretty good name for a kitten.”
“Boo?” Robin flipped to her back, teasing the kitten with a finger.
“Oh, come on. Think about it. He scared me when I found him—a kitty ‘boo’ if I ever saw one.” She thought about tripping over him, scaring the crap out of both of them, but that wasn’t a story she planned to share. “Anyway, it fits his personality.”
“Boo.” Robin pursed her lips. “Boo, Boo, Boo . . . not bad. A little lame, but not bad bad. I’ll have to think about it.”
“Don’t give yourself a headache.”
“Funny. Har har har.”
Robin was home. Life was good.
– THE END –
For my sisters,
Linda Liska Belgrave and
Leslie V. Curtis, constant
champions in my life,
and for Marlene Passell,
stalwart friend and adventurer
in living on the edge—our way.
Chapter 1
The water in the fish tank looked cloudy. That couldn’t be good, although most of the fish didn’t seem to mind. They glided tirelessly through the murk, occasionally darting left or right, or up or down for no apparent reason. Maybe they were scavenging for particles of food invisible to the human eye. That’s what the guy who owned the tank said. He said they had radar sharp as a bat foraging in the night for insects. Of course, that might not be true, because when the guy talked at all he leaped feverishly from subject to subject with no thought to connecting the dots for his audience. In a bar, it would merely be irksome, and you’d sidle away. But this was the guy’s family room and it was impossible to sidle anywhere, not with a gun trained at your head.
The tank wasn’t huge—just twenty gallons. Claudia had learned that much, plus some of the names of the species in the tank. Platys. Neon tetras. Swordtails. Some kind of guppy with a colorful, fan-like tail. What she didn’t know yet was the man’s name or why he was holding four people hostage in his family room—five, if you counted her, and Claudia supposed she’d better. She wasn’t bound and didn’t have duct tape across her mouth like the others, but she’d been the only one hit on the head with the butt-end of his gun, a mean-looking 9mm semiautomatic. If he wanted, it would take no effort to kill them all in less than ten seconds. The metallic taste
of fear flooded her mouth.
“So Detective Hershey,” said the man, “what do you think of my house? Like it?”
“I haven’t seen enough to form an opinion,” Claudia answered.
The man threw back his head and laughed, as though they were at a party and she’d just said something hilarious. That his laughter was out of context didn’t scare her. But the sound did—a high-pitched bray that sputtered into a hiss like the phssht of a one-liter Coke bottle being opened. It betrayed him, revealing an anxiety that would probably take little to ignite into something far more dangerous.
“Maybe I should give you a tour. Would you like that?”
“I think more to the point is what you’d like,” Claudia said carefully. She adjusted her eyeglasses and exhaled. “Seems to me you’re running the show here.”
“True enough.” The man shot to his feet and smiled down at her, then looked behind her toward the others. The smile faded. He scratched the side of his face with the muzzle of his gun. “You’re all here because there’s been a misunderstanding.” He looked back at Claudia. “Actually, you’re not here because of a misunderstanding. You had nothing to do with that. You’re here because I needed someone with authority to help resolve the misunderstanding, which these people have demonstrated a distinct lack of interest in doing. Go ahead. You can get up and turn around, take a look at them.”
When she’d first entered the family room, she’d had only the briefest of moments to see the captives and assess the situation. In the second that followed, when she simultaneously seized at her .38 and began to pivot back toward the man, he’d hit her with his gun. The blow landed clumsily on the bottom of her head and glanced off her right shoulder. It wasn’t hard enough to make her go down or draw blood. But it was enough to make her stumble, forfeiting any advantage she might have had. He’d put the gun just under her chin then, taken her weapon and handbag, and guided her to the floor, her back to the others. He murmured something that might have been an apology. Claudia couldn’t recall. Her head screamed from the knock, which quickly had morphed into a headache.
The Claudia Hershey Mysteries - Box Set: Three Claudia Hershey Mysteries Page 50
