Jill had her hands wrapped around her coffee mug as if she needed the warmth. Steam rose from the cup, and she breathed it in.
“A few days earlier, I’d found a memo from a vendor warning SFCO that parts for the lights at Deadman’s Crossing and some of the other crossings were likely defective. They were causing what are known as short signals—lights that begin flashing too late to give a driver enough time to stop. The vendor said they needed to be replaced immediately.” Jill sipped her coffee. “The memo was five years old. So I went digging.”
My own coffee was cold. “You found evidence the parts hadn’t been changed?”
“Oh, the parts had been changed. At least at Deadman’s Crossing. But not until after a teenager named Melissa Webb died there. After Melissa’s death, her family hired a lawyer. The lawyer inspected the signal lights with an expert and made a list of the serial numbers of the parts in the light. We had a copy of that in our files. Everything looked kosher. But then I found a second list. It was also a list of serial numbers for the parts in that light. But the numbers didn’t match. These were the defective parts, the ones the vendor had warned us against. The list was attached to a repair report stating that a railroad employee named Robert Riley had gone out after the accident, yanked the defective parts, and replaced them with good ones.”
“That’s what Hiram wanted,” I said. “If he had the two lists and the memo, he’d have concrete proof of SFCO’s culpability.”
“Exactly. I’d managed to sneak out the first list of serial numbers. But I’d only seen the second copy and the repair report. They were kept in my manager’s office, and I never found a chance to take them. That’s what Raya was going to do that Monday night. Get those reports for Hiram.”
“She was caught?” Mac guessed.
“She called me from SFCO at eight thirty that night and said she had the intel. That’s what she said. The intel. Like she was a spy. She said she was going to change her clothes there at work and leave in ten minutes. Then all of a sudden she whispered that Tate was still there, and she had to get off the phone. She sounded alarmed, but right after that she said everything was cool. That was the last time I ever talked to her. The next thing I know, I’m getting a call from a friend of mine who worked in the sheriff’s office telling me Raya’s dead.”
In the kitchen, a dish shattered. Jill flinched.
Mac asked, “What do you think happened after Tate surprised her?”
Jill reached for more napkins. “I was so innocent. I didn’t really think about her being in danger. If worse came to worse, I figured she’d lose her job. So I thought what happened was a horrible accident. That Raya was in a hurry and tried to beat the train. We did it all the time, you know. Raced the train. I knew she was going to give the paperwork to Hiram that night and I figured she was focused on that. On what he would say. I didn’t suspect until later that she might have been murdered.”
Remembering what Wolanski had told us I said, “You went to the accident.”
She shuddered. “After all these years, I still dream about it. And to this day, I stop at every railroad crossing, whether it’s got a gate or not. I told my kids I’d beat them to within an inch of their lives if I ever caught them racing a train.”
“What did you see when you got there?” Mac said.
“Her car, knocked way out in the field. The train, of course. Tate was there. And Hiram Davenport had arrived.”
“Did it surprise you that Tate and Hiram were there?”
She shook her head. “I knew Tate had called it in. And that Hiram was close by since he was supposed to meet Raya. He would have come to the scene regardless because a hazmat train was involved. He and Tate were off by the side of the road, talking about something. Davenport looked cool as a cucumber, the bastard. Tate was hysterical. I figured they were already discussing the merger. This last accident was the nail in the coffin for Tate.”
The waitress returned with refills and an offer of a container for my sandwich. I shook my head. After she left, I turned back to Jill. “What happened after that?”
“That’s it. My husband came and got me. I was too upset to drive.”
“So.” Mac pushed away her half-eaten pie. “When did you get suspicious that Raya’s death wasn’t an accident? Or suicide.”
“At the funeral. Everyone was there. The whole town. I heard whispers that even though her death had been ruled accidental, some people thought she’d killed herself. That she was depressed because she hadn’t become a big movie star. I was so angry. Then after a while, I noticed that Alfred Tate wasn’t there. And as her boss, he should have been. For the first time, I started to wonder if Raya had only thought everything was cool that night. If Tate had caught her stealing those papers and realized what it would cost him if Hiram got them. What if, I wondered, he’d followed her in his car, killed her, then put her car on the tracks to cover it up?”
Mac and I were both nodding. But my mind was racing forward, trying to figure out how any of this linked to Ben Davenport’s family, and especially his daughter.
“The service hadn’t started,” Jill said, “so I walked off by myself. I just needed to be alone for a minute.” Her gaze turned inward. “It was rainy, like it is today. There’d been a lot of storms, and everything was soggy. I’d worn my good black pumps. I remember how my heels kept punching through the grass. I was standing under a tree, looking up at the leaves, not wanting to see them bring out her coffin. And suddenly he was there.”
“Tate?” Mac asked.
“Hiram. He told me how sorry he was about Raya. Said he’d seen me at the accident, and that he knew Raya a little bit, and how sad it all was.” Jill dropped the wad of napkins on the table and reached for more.
Mac nodded for her to continue.
“He went on like that for a bit, asking me how I knew Raya, if we were close. He was fishing, trying to find out how much I knew. Maybe Raya never mentioned me by name. She could have just told him she had ‘a source.’ But finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I told him Raya was my best friend, and that I was the one who’d stolen most of the information. That we’d done it for him.”
“Was he surprised?”
Jill nodded. “Shocked. Then I said I knew about the affair, that she’d done it out of love, and that it was his fault she was dead.”
Mac said, “That was—”
“Stupid. It was stupid. I was already afraid of what Tate might know about me. Terrified that he really had killed Raya, and that before she died she’d told him I’d helped her. Now I’d just gone and told Hiram I knew things about him I shouldn’t. Not just the things we’d stolen. But the affair.”
“What did Hiram do?” Mac asked.
“He was cool as could be. Stood there for a while like we were just enjoying the day together. I started to move away, and that’s when he told me that we should keep our friends close, but our enemies closer. I can’t tell you how that made me feel. Like he’d just put a knife to my throat.”
The lights flickered then went out, and the music from the kitchen fell silent. The restaurant was plunged into gloom. Beside me, Jill gasped.
Then the lights came back on. Jill took a shaky sip of her coffee and went on.
“He said that he appreciated what I’d done and that I could keep my job when he took over T&W. Then he leaned in close and said, ‘Loose lips sink ships, Mrs. Martin. And when those ships go down, they take everyone with them.’ He stared at me with those pale eyes of his, and it was like looking into the devil’s eyes. He said, ‘And I do mean everyone, Mrs. Martin. Guilty and innocent, alike.’ He said it just like that. Then he asked me if he could trust my discretion. Of course I said yes, and he walked away. I was so scared that my legs gave out and I sat down right there in the wet grass. And I never talked about it to anyone. Not even my husband.”
“What a terrible secret to live with,” Mac said.
Jill’s gaze went back and forth between Mac and me. “I still don�
�t know the truth about what happened that night. But I’m sure Raya was murdered. I just don’t know if it was Hiram or Alfred Tate who killed her.”
“We can protect you until this is over,” Mac said.
But Jill shook her head. “I’m leaving tonight anyway. Heading to Cancún for two weeks to hang out with a girlfriend. Maybe knowing I’ll be out of the country is what gave me the courage to talk.”
She stood as if she were sleepwalking and excused herself to use the restroom.
As soon as she was gone, I turned to Mac.
“Blackmail,” I said. “It’s the merger. This is what Ben Davenport found out.”
“Explain.”
“There are two possible scenarios. The first is exactly what Jill said. That Tate realized what Raya was stealing and killed her for it, and Hiram found out about it. Twenty-eight years later, Hiram threatens Lancing Tate that he’ll go public with that information if Tate doesn’t back off from the fight over the bullet train.”
Mac shook her head. “Going public would make Hiram an accessory to murder after the fact.”
“Maybe it was a risk Hiram was willing to take. There’s no way Lancing would let Hiram go public—he’d be hanging out his own father for murder. Plus, Hiram could just leak the story to a journalist anonymously. No need for him to be involved.” I thought of Tom O’Hara’s business card locked in Ben’s desk.
“Okay.” Mac pushed away her empty coffee cup. “Lancing is enraged by the threat, freaks out, and goes after Hiram’s family. It’s possible. But not likely.”
“Or,” I went on, “it was Hiram who murdered Raya to guarantee her silence about the thefts and his plan to blackmail Tate. Or because of the affair.”
“Or both.”
“Then, years later, someone reenacts the crime with Samantha Davenport and uses it to send a message to Hiram. Maybe it’s personal, an enemy—I’m sure he has plenty of those. Or it’s for the money. Someone wants to blackmail him for that long-ago crime.”
“And this person, he also took Lucy for the money?”
“If the motive is financial. Otherwise, to hold her in order to force Hiram to confess to the world that he’s a killer.”
“Who would that be? Who would have that kind of motivation?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
I looked up and saw Jill making her slow way back to us across the restaurant. Wet strands of hair clung to her forehead and temples, and her cheeks were painfully pink, as if she’d scrubbed them. She stumbled on the edge of the carpet, caught herself.
“We don’t have everything yet,” I said. “But there’s something here. I can feel it. We just can’t see the entire picture. Damn it, Mac, we’re running out of time.”
She threw some bills on the table and stood. “Let’s see if Esta Quinn is still around. Maybe she can shed some light.”
CHAPTER 23
“The past is a leech. Digs its head into you and sucks your blood until it leaves you dry.”
—Nik Lasko. Personal conversation.
Half an hour later, just outside of town and in a world washed fresh by the rain, I pulled in behind a cruiser belonging to Weld County Sheriff’s Deputy Bill Phillips.
Jill had told us that, to the best of her knowledge, Esta Quinn was still alive. But she said Raya’s childhood home was way out east, hidden in a tangle of dirt roads and vast fields, and that trying to find it on our own would be almost impossible. She had to close up her shop and get ready to leave for Cancún, so I called the sheriff and asked for help. Deputy Phillips agreed to lead us to Esta’s.
Mac and I stepped out of the truck.
The deputy was a baby-faced twentysomething, with green eyes and a fresh-scrubbed look. When we shook, he gripped my hand with both of his.
“It’s a pleasure,” he said.
Next to me, Mac gave a soft snort. I tugged my hand free. Phillips flushed.
“I pulled up what we have on Esta Quinn,” he said. “Single white female, aged seventy-one. Address is for a farmhouse forty miles east of here in the middle of what used to be acres of sugar beets before the farm went bust. Hell, I can remember driving those roads when I was a kid. Back of beyond if there ever was one. Esta is listed as the sole owner. A 2003 Jeep Grand Cherokee is registered in her name. And that’s pretty much everything we know about her at the moment. No known family, other than a nephew who attended a month of public school in Weld County some twenty-five years ago. You mind telling me why you want to talk to her?”
“We’re investigating her daughter’s death,” I said.
He cocked his head. “The only daughter on record died twenty-eight years ago.”
“That’s right.”
Deputy Phillips caught his laugh before it fully escaped. “You guys must have a hell of a backlog.”
“It’s the Davenport case,” I told him. “There might be a link between those deaths and the death of Mrs. Quinn’s daughter.”
His eyes lit up. “You’re kidding, right?” He glanced west, toward the next row of thunderstorms. “Let’s get this show on the road, then, before the next round of rains. Some of our low-lying roads have been flooding. We’ve got water running in creeks that have been dry since before my granddad was born.”
As Mac and I were getting in my truck to follow the deputy, Cohen called. I filled him in on our conversations with Wolanski and Jill and offered our tentative theories about how Raya’s death could be tied to those of the Davenports.
“Murderous railroad barons?” Cohen asked. “This just gets richer. We’ll have another go at Hiram and Lancing. You’re kicking ass on this, Parnell. Maybe you should be on the homicide squad.”
“Bandoni would love that. I heard you lost your lead suspect.”
“Word gets around. We’re working to piece together his movements over the last week, trying to see where his path crossed the killer’s. Right now, Bandoni and another detective are running through CCTV from the comic book store where Vander worked. But so far the guy’s a ghost.”
“Mac and I are on our way now to see Raya Quinn’s mother,” I said. “Maybe she can tell us more about her daughter’s relationship with Hiram and Alfred Tate. And about the night she died.”
“Stay in touch,” he said and hung up.
As we followed Phillips onto the road, I dialed Veronica Stern. I wanted to ask her what SFCO’s accident-reporting policy had been during her time there. And see if she could locate any of the documentation from the early eighties that Jill might have been working with.
When she didn’t pick up, I left her a message, asking her to call me back.
Jill Martin had been right. Searching for Esta Quinn’s home without a guide would have been like hunting for a white cat in a snowstorm. GPS was worthless out here. A maze of county roads crisscrossed through fields where sometimes the crops grew higher than the windows of the truck. The land was almost uniformly flat; we would have had to climb a tree to get perspective. If there were any trees.
The sun moved in and out as we drove, a fickle companion that shuttled light and shadow over the windshield. I thought about a young Raya Quinn; she must have been lonely out here with only a crazy mother for company. No wonder she’d longed for Hollywood. Or for a man who could take her away from it all.
Forty-five minutes later, Phillips turned down a single-lane road that, after a mile, narrowed into a rutted, muddy track. The track ran another two hundred yards, then petered out into what might have once been an expanse of green lawn but was now a gloopy mix of dirt and mud. I flashed my headlights at Phillips before he pulled into the circular drive, and he stopped. I pulled in behind him, killed the engine, and the three of us got out. I walked around to the back to let Clyde out. As soon as I opened the hatch, Clyde jumped down and lifted his nose, sampling the air. He wagged his tail and looked at me for permission to go check out whatever he’d found. But I snapped on the lead so he’d know this was strictly business.
“Sorry, pal,” I
told him.
Phillips grinned. “He sure is excited about something. We got a lot of coyotes and rabbits out here. Badgers and ground squirrels, too. Too bad you can’t give him his head.”
I watched Clyde for a few more seconds. But he didn’t alert, and I turned to survey the house.
It was a two-story structure with a wraparound porch, the dark windows hung with lace drapes. The place was old and flagging and badly in need of paint on the south end, where the sun beat the hardest. The tiles on the roof had curled like tiny question marks, and the stairs leading up to the porch sagged from end to end.
The Jeep Cherokee Phillips had mentioned was parked on the south side of the house.
“Place sure doesn’t look lively,” the deputy said.
“Someone’s been here.” I pointed. A set of tire tracks ran along the length of the circular driveway. Someone had pulled in, swung around, and headed back out.
“Could be Quinn’s,” Phillips said.
“Could be,” Mac said. “But it looks like she usually parks on the side.”
As we drew near the house, I heard a faint metal pinging. On the north side of the house, a lazy wind fluttered through faded sheets, and floral-patterned dresses hung on a line to dry. The laundry was wrinkled and wet. The faint stink of mildew rode the wind.
The wind shifted and I smelled something else, a stench I knew all too well from my time in Mortuary Affairs. With the change in the wind, Clyde caught it, too. He dropped his tail.
Phillips wrinkled his nose. “You guys smell that? How long did you say since someone’s seen Esta?”
“Unknown,” Mac said.
The front of the house had three windows on the main floor, and two more upstairs. All were covered by curtains, and none showed any light. The porch, with its immense overhang, lay in shadow. The breeze kicked up again, and I saw something flutter in the darkness near the door before going flat again.
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