Fatal Error ar-6

by J. A. Jance

  While returning all the separate inventoried items to the evidence box, Gil had picked up the tampon holder. On a whim, he pulled it open. Yes, there were two paper-wrapped tampons inside the plastic container, but there was also something else. A key of some kind, a key that could have been to a locker, perhaps, or maybe even a desk.

  Gil had planned on taking the key to the crime lab later in the day to see if Mona and her crime techs could track down where it came from or what it opened. That, of course, was before Chief Jackman had sent Gil home, so chasing after the key was something that would have to wait for another day.

  When it came time to tackle the dresser, Gil opened the box, fished out the directions, and determined what tools he would need-a Phillips screwdriver and an Allen wrench. With those in mind, Gil headed for the garage.

  Had Linda made off with her husband’s bright red rolling tool chest or if she had emptied it, there would have been all-out war. With two cars in the garage there had been barely enough room for both vehicles to park side by side. That had left the tool chest virtually inaccessible and had rendered the workbench under the window completely useless. Rather than a haven, the garage had become a passageway, good only for coming and going.

  With Linda and the kids gone, Gil could have worked in the garage, but he hadn’t. What had once been Linda’s parking place was still stacked with a collection of stuff-items both loose and in boxes-that she had intended to take to Goodwill right up until she ran out of time. Other than that sad stack of discards, however, the garage was discouragingly neat-exhibiting the kind of cleanliness born of omission rather than effort, disuse rather than use.

  As Gil opened the top drawer to retrieve his Phillips screwdriver, he had a sudden realization. Unlike Richard Lowensdale’s house, the victim’s garage had been clean-absolutely clean, utterly clean, with no trash on the floor and nothing out of place. For someone as messy as Richard, that could only mean that other than parking his car there, he never used it.

  There had been no tools lying loose on his workbench, as in none at all-not a single one. Yes, there had been the smell of oil, but it was old oil, ancient oil. Still, Gil remembered clearly that there had been what appeared to be a whole case of motor oil-yellow plastic bottles of motor oil-on a shelf over that workbench. Why?

  It seemed inconceivable that someone who left trash lying three inches deep on his living room floor and who dumped garbage down the stairs into his basement rather than hauling it out to the street would turn out to be a shade tree mechanic who did his own periodic automotive maintenance on the side. If Richard Lowensdale couldn’t be bothered with scrubbing out his filthy toilet, he sure as hell wasn’t going to change his own oil.

  With his heart beating hard in his chest, Gil left the Phillips screwdriver untouched in the drawer. On the surface this seemed like only the vaguest of hunches. It was hardly likely that Richard Lowensdale would have left anything of real value hiding in plain sight in his unlocked garage, but maybe he had. Gil was certain that the killer had searched for something all over the house without ever once venturing into that garage.

  Chief Jackman’s dressing down still echoed in Gil’s consciousness. There was no way he was going to call in one of the uniformed officers to go check out his lead. If he was wrong and it came to nothing, then no one would be the wiser. If that happened, Gil would come straight home and finish assembling his dresser.

  If he was right, though, and if there was something to be found in Richard Lowensdale’s garage, Gil would see where that clue led him.

  On the clock or off it, Detective Gilbert Morris was going back to work.

  41

  Salton City, California

  On Sunday Mina sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, thinking about her life and listening to Mark’s booze-fueled snores, which echoed from the bedroom and filled the whole cabin. She had no idea what time he had come home. She had awakened only when he finally came into the bedroom and crawled into bed beside her. That’s when she had gotten up, gone outside, lit the fire in his precious barbecue grill, and burned up everything she had brought home from Grass Valley-the surgical booties, the blood-spattered clothing, and the Time Capsule. It was gone. By now the ashes should be almost cool enough to dump them out and bury in the beach’s fine loose sand.

  She sat at the remains of their once-grand dining room table. In the past the table had graced the immense dining room in their home in La Jolla. Polished to a high gloss and with all its leaves extended, the table with its inlaid mother-of-pearl trim had easily accommodated a dozen guests under a magnificent chandelier. Now, without the leaves, it was hardly larger than a card table. It sat in this grim excuse for a kitchen with its once-fine finish marred by scars left behind by the occasional cup of hot coffee or even a cigarette burn or two.

  Mina had always hated the cabin. When she and Mark had lived in La Jolla, she’d never wanted to join him on his monthly outings to this desolate place. It was too rustic, too remote, too much like the childhood home she remembered from long ago. She had always been happy to let Mark go off on his weekends of “roughing it,” because Mina knew too much about real roughing it. She didn’t need to pretend. Besides, between having some time alone in the luxury of her water-view La Jolla home or making do in the gritty rusticity of the Salton City cabin, there had been no contest, not for her now and certainly not back then when there had been a choice in the matter.

  At the moment, however, the choice part had been removed from the equation. In the face of forced bankruptcy, the cabin was all they had left-at least on paper, at least as far as Mark knew, as far as their creditors knew. The bank had taken the house back and most of the furnishings had been sold on consignment. They had been allowed to bring along a few pieces of decent furniture to replace the cabin’s oddball collection of outdoor plastic.

  Along with the humbled and shrunken table, they had brought with them a brown leather couch and matching easy chair that hadn’t seemed all that large in their old living room but now seemed huge and occupied far too much of their diminished floor space. There was room enough for only two side tables, one at one end of the couch and one next to the chair. That one held Mina’s precious laptop. The other served as Mark’s drinks table as well as the spot for his collection of remote controls. He had installed a flat-screen TV on the living room wall. They had planned on keeping their king-sized bed, but it wouldn’t fit inside the cabin’s tiny bedroom. They’d had to settle for a queen-sized bed from one of their old guest rooms.

  Mark was stuck in the past, grieving for everything they had lost. Mina was moving forward.

  His snoring stopped abruptly, and she heard him stumble out of bed. Soon he appeared in the doorway of the bedroom, with his hair standing on end and his clothing rumpled. He had come to bed without bothering to undress.

  He went over to the fridge, pulled out a beer, and opened it, spraying foam on the wall and floor, which he didn’t feel obliged to clean up.

  “Hair of the dog,” he said unnecessarily.

  “Where were you?” she asked.

  “Busy,” he said with a shrug. “You know how it is. Reprogramming the UAVs took longer than I expected.”

  “Right,” she said. “I’ll just bet it did.”

  Mark was hopeless when it came to lying. As he hurried over to the couch and reached for the television remote, Mina saw the deep flush that spread up his neck. She knew that she had nailed him, but she left him alone long enough for him to go surfing through the channels until he happened upon a golf tournament.

  “Does that mean the UAVs are all reprogrammed?” she asked.

  “Yes. All of them.”

  She was gratified that Mark didn’t bother trying to explain what he’d been doing since then. Mina was convinced she already knew. He had been screwing his brains out with some bimbo or another. Besides, she had already seen the packaged UAVs with her own eyes, even though she’d had to move them herself. She hadn’t dared leave them in t
he cage with Brenda there as well. Mina didn’t believe Brenda would manage to get loose and damage them, but she didn’t want to run the risk either.

  “Good,” she said. “About the UAVs, I mean. I figured you would have called me if there was a problem. And I already talked to Enrique. I told him we’d have them ready for pickup on Tuesday evening.”

  Mark nodded. “Good,” he said. “It’ll be good to finally have them out of our hair.” Then, in a limp effort to keep Mina from questioning his absence, he tried changing the subject. “How did it go with Richard?” he asked.

  Mina shrugged. “It could have gone better,” she said.

  “Why?” Mark asked, sounding worried. “What happened?”

  “Richard Lowensdale is dead.”

  Mark sucked in his breath. “Dead? How can that be? Who killed him?”

  “Who do you think killed him,” Mina replied, “the Tooth Fairy? I asked him to give back the money we’d paid him. I asked him very nicely, but he wouldn’t do it, so I killed him. I put a bag over his head, taped it shut, and waited until he stopped breathing.”

  Mina knew better than to tell Mark about the kitchen shears and the fingers. She hadn’t a doubt in the world that hearing those ugly details would make the man puke.

  As it was, Mark looked as though he was ready to cry. “Why did you do that? Are you crazy?”

  “Hardly,” Mina said. “You said yourself that you were worried we couldn’t trust him, and I decided you were right. We couldn’t. I also decided that once he was dead, he wouldn’t have any use for our money. I looked all over his house, trying to find where he might have hidden it, but I couldn’t find it.” Mina shrugged. “No biggie, though. It’s only fifty thou.”

  Mark was almost hyperventilating. His breath came in short, sharp gasps. She hoped he wouldn’t have a heart attack and die. That would spoil Mina’s fun.

  “But what if the cops make the connection and come looking for us?” Mark objected. “What if Richard tried to double-cross us? What if he kept backups of the work he did for us that will lead investigators straight here? What then?”

  “Do you think I’m stupid? Of course Richard kept backups,” Mina replied. “He was that kind of guy, but I reformatted his hard drive. I also stole his Time Capsule. Had a big bonfire right here on the beach early this morning while you were sleeping the sleep of the dead. I burned up the capsule and I burned up the clothing I was wearing when I killed him. The ashes should be cool by now. I want you to go outside and bury them.”

  “Where?”

  “Where do you think? Over on the beach. No one will pay any attention. People bury bonfire ashes there all the time.”

  Mark studied his wife. He seemed confused, as though he wasn’t sure if she was telling him the truth.

  “I don’t believe any of this,” he said at last. “You’re kidding, right? Running me up the flagpole because I stayed out late?”

  “I’m not kidding,” she said. “Not kidding at all. But don’t worry. They won’t come after us. I’ve got the perfect fall guy for us-a fall woman, for that matter.”

  “Who?”

  “Brenda Riley, Richard’s old girlfriend.”

  “The one who came to the office looking for him a year or so after we let him go?”

  “One and the same.”

  “You think you can pin this on her?”

  “I don’t just think we can pin it on her,” Mina said. “I know we can. In fact, we already have.”

  She was careful to underscore the word “we.” She wanted to let that one sink in. She wanted Mark to get the message. She wasn’t going to let him get off easy simply by burying the ashes from her bonfire. She wanted to force Mark to accept the fact that he was an active player in all this, that he too was culpable.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “How do we frame her?”

  “By providing blood evidence, which I’ve already done. There’s only one tiny problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Right this minute, Brenda Riley is still alive. At least she’s probably still alive. Somebody needs to kill her and ditch the body in some spot out here in the middle of the desert where no one will think to go looking.”

  “Who would do such a thing?” Mark asked. He sounded horrified.

  Mina laughed outright. “Kill her and bury her? Oh, you poor baby,” she said. “Who do you think? Do you think I’m going to do all the dirty work for you? I killed Richard Lowensdale. Now it’s your turn. You kill Brenda Riley and get rid of her body, then we’re even, fifty-fifty. And Tuesday night, once Enrique gives us our new IDs, we’re gone. Out of here. Both of us together. Otherwise, somebody might be left holding the bag.”

  “I can’t do that,” Mark croaked. “I’ve never killed anyone in my life.”

  “It’s not that difficult,” Mina said. “I’m sure you can figure it out.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In San Diego in the assembly room. I locked her inside the parts cage. She hasn’t had food or water since Friday, so she’s probably pretty thirsty right about now. And cold. I doubt she’ll be in any condition to put up much of a fight.”

  Mark stared at Mina in apparent disbelief. “You can’t be serious,” Mark said. “You can’t possibly mean this.”

  “Oh, but I do,” Mina told him. “I mean every word.”

  He stared at her for the better part of a minute, then he raced for the bathroom. Mina listened while he puked his guts out. It did her heart good to hear it.

  Richard Lowensdale hadn’t had a clue about the dangers of messing around with Mina Blaylock. Neither did Mark. Sadly, Richard had already learned his very important lesson on that score, and Mark was about to do the same. Even if Richard had given up the money, Mina would have killed him anyway. The same thing was true for Mark as well, but he had yet to figure it out.

  He had been a dead man walking long before he decided to screw around on her Friday night, but now there was more to it. Of course she would kill him, but before that happened she intended to toy with him a little.

  He came back out of the bathroom still looking green-green and haunted. Mina knew he was a beaten man. So did he.

  “Where are you going?” she asked as he headed for the outside door.

  “To get my wheelbarrow,” he said. “The wheelbarrow and a shovel.”

  42

  Borrego Springs, California

  Just after six on Monday morning, Mina closed the shutters on the Salton City cabin for the last time. She had every expectation that no one would go looking inside the place for a very long time. She left the house wearing a track suit and taking nothing but her purse and a single briefcase. Not that there was anything of value in the briefcase-only Lola Cunningham’s cookbook. Mina had long since smuggled the contents of her safe out of the house. Everything that could be converted to cash had been, and all the cash, in turn, had been sent along to her numbered account.

  She took Highway 78 west toward Julian and Escondido. Along the way, she looked for likely places to dump a body. Mina’s original plan had been to fake Brenda’s suicide by dumping the unconscious woman into the Scotts Flat Reservoir beyond Grass Valley on Friday evening. She had managed to unload both Brenda’s purse and her shoes and was about to wrestle Brenda herself out of the trunk when everything had gone to hell. Some people-kids most likely-had turned up at a most inopportune time, leaving Mina no choice but to slam the trunk shut and drive off.

  Mina prided herself on coping under pressure. With no other dumping places scoped out in advance, she’d felt she had no choice but to bring Brenda with her on the long drive back to San Diego. On the way Mina rationalized that things would probably work out for the best after all. It seemed likely that the abandoned shoes and purse would lead the local hick authorities to conclude that Brenda Riley, Richard Lowensdale’s presumed murderer, had committed suicide. That assumption would hold regardless of whether her body ever surfaced.

  Mina had gotten a kick
out of tormenting Mark with the idea that she expected him to do the dirty work for her, but that had never been in the cards. She had known all along that he didn’t have the stomach for it. She did.

  It was a shame that Mina hadn’t hooked up with someone like Enrique Gallegos to begin with. Compared to Mark, Enrique was a far more suitable partner, someone who did what he said he would do when he said he would do it. Mina had enjoyed doing business with him.

  In exchange for the UAVs, Enrique had given her money. As a side deal, he had agreed to supply her with a specific set of illicit drugs without making any inquiries as to how she intended to use them. Finally, and for a steep price, he had delivered a set of impressively well-forged documents.

  Mina’s new passport, dog-eared and thoroughly worn, contained Mina’s photograph, but the bearer of same was identified as one Sophia Stanhope, the divorced former wife of a British diplomat. Sophia herself hailed from Bosnia, with a home address in Sarajevo. Mina had no idea how Enrique had managed all those little details, and she didn’t want to know, but according to the official-looking immigration stamps in the passport, Sophia had arrived in the United States via Cabo San Lucas two weeks earlier and was scheduled to depart for home on board an Air France transatlantic flight on Tuesday evening.

  This evening she would have her final meeting with Enrique. He would give her receipts for the last transfers of money while she, in turn, would hand over a key to the warehouse and the alarm code. Tomorrow evening, about the time Mina was boarding her flight for Paris, Enrique would send a crew to Engineer Road to pick up the UAVs.

  And sometime much later tonight, long after her meeting with Enrique ended, Mina would go to the warehouse, drag Brenda out of it dead or alive, and dump her somewhere in the Anza-Borrego wilderness where no one was likely to find the body.

  Tomorrow, with all of Mina’s hard work finished, Sophia Stanhope would go shopping and field-test her brand-new credit cards and ID. Mina had left the cabin in Salton City with nothing. Had she carried loads of luggage out of the house and into the car, she might have raised suspicion. On Tuesday she would do some serious shopping, probably at South Coast Plaza, where she would know no one. It pleased her to realize that she needed everything and she could afford everything: new underwear, new lingerie, new shoes, new makeup, new perfume, new clothes. And she’d also need some new luggage to transport all her purchases.