Cynthia Hamilton - Madeline Dawkins 02 - A High Price to Pay

by Cynthia Hamilton

  “Here is her bus pass,” he said, taking it from Isabella’s hands, eliciting a scream larger than something so tiny should be capable of making.

  “Who takes care of Isabella when you’re both working?” Madeline asked.

  “No one. I work night shifts at the newspaper. I go in at eleven and get off at seven. Teresa leaves the house at 7:30 and gets home around 4:40.”

  “That’s a rough schedule,” Mike said, wondering if Enrique was really so disciplined at his age. “When do you sleep?”

  “On the weekends, usually.” The full impact of all his worst fears hit him at once. But instead of bringing him to tears again, the terrifying insights seemed to leave him hollowed out, bereft of any emotion.

  “If you hear from Teresa, please tell her to call me,” Madeline said, taking two more cards out and leaving them on the table in front of the sofa. “Write down a number I can reach you at in case I find Teresa before you do.” Madeline handed him a pen and he wrote down his cell phone number. She looked at the number, then tucked the card in one of the pockets of her handbag.

  “I believe you when you say Teresa isn’t capable of stealing,” Madeline said. “But her disappearance tells me she might know who took Ms. Story’s jewelry. Something has definitely frightened her enough to go into hiding. She needs our help. Please try to convince her of that.” Enrique nodded solemnly and trailed Mike and Madeline as they made their way out.

  Madeline glanced back at him before ducking inside Mike’s car. The expression on his face told her he knew his life had been forever altered.

  THIRTY

  “So…we at least know she had her phone with her last night,” Madeline said. “And it wasn’t among the contents of her handbag when Helen turned it over to Slovitch.”

  “If she had the presence of mind to take her cell phone with her as she bailed out of Helen’s car, why not take the handbag too?”

  Madeline gazed out the window as she visualized Helen’s version of events. “I don’t know. Helen says she fired her on the way out to I.V. Maybe, since she had been threatened with deportation if she ever stepped foot on the estate again, Teresa removed her phone from the handbag, knowing she wouldn’t be able to return it to Vivian herself. Helen brought the purse in with her. There was no phone inside.”

  “Then why isn’t she answering Enrique’s calls?”

  Madeline shook her head, disturbed by the implication. She could understand the girl not answering calls from numbers she didn’t know, but surely she would want the father of her child to know she was safe. “I don’t like what I’m feeling here,” she said. “I’m just wondering if Teresa saw something she shouldn’t have…like one of the other staff pilfering Vivian’s special keepsakes. I think it’s entirely possible that someone else helped herself to those jewels. They were kept in an unlocked china box right on Vivian’s dressing table. And naturally the blame would fall on the illegal alien, who had plenty of opportunity. She certainly didn’t help her situation by lying on her W-4.”

  “Hmm…” Mike said, feeling frustrated by the lack of certainties gained by their constant brainstorming. “But how do we prove that? There are no cameras upstairs,” he sighed. “Right now, my brain feels like it’s running in circles. There’s just too much information floating around, but none of it qualifies as hard facts.”

  “Except for two things—Vivian was killed, and my brake lines were tampered with. And I think it’s safe to add that Teresa never made it home last night.”

  Mike looked over at her, a grave expression on his face. She looked away, unwilling to follow that line of thought any further. As if making its own protest to the events of the last eighteen hours, her stomach growled loud enough to be heard even with the windows down.

  “I’ve got to get some food in me,” she said as the aromas wafting through the air from nearby restaurants made her weak with longing.

  “Pick a place,” Mike said. “Some of the best Mexican food in town is right on this street.”

  Madeline looked at the clock on the dashboard. “It’s only eleven-thirty? I feel like I’m stuck in a never-ending day. Well, since we’re so close, let’s drive by Gusto Mundo. If there’s already a line, we’ll go to Tiny’s. How’s that?”

  “Your wish is my command,” Mike said, steering the handsome land yacht down Milpas Street, his mood already lightening at the thought of savory, soul-nourishing, tummy-filling delights. As his many experiences with all-nighters had taught him, there was almost nothing that satisfying, greasy food and sleeping like the dead couldn’t cure.

  Madeline got a text from Brian as she was swabbing her plate with the last shred of her tortilla.

  “He says he can be at my place in fifteen minutes. Good,” she said as she tapped out a reply. “Maybe we can nail down one more elusive piece of info, on another front.” When Mike looked questioningly at her, she added, “We’ll find out if the camera’s field covers the driveway. If so, we might catch a rat.”

  “I get ya,” Mike said, placing a tip on the tray. “At least he can show you how all that new technology works.”

  “If my brain is up to accepting new knowledge,” Madeline said doubtfully as she slid out of the seat with effort. “Home, James.” As soon as the words left her mouth, visions of her bed almost made her swoon. Home. She wondered if she’d really ever feel safe there again.

  Madeline brewed a pot of strong coffee to get Mike and her through the arduous task of comprehending high-tech wizardry from a young guy so steeped in its mysterious workings, they almost needed a translator to bridge the divide. Though Mike was fairly computer savvy and had no problem operating the assorted spyware they employed in their trade, what Brian had pulled together was the most up-to-the-minute technology available to the public. Which would probably mean that by the time Madeline got comfortable with it, it’d be obsolete.

  “I think you’ll find this pretty simple to operate,” Brian said, earning skeptical glances from both onlookers. He explained to Mike all the upgrades he’d made before launching into how the systems operated.

  It took every drop of caffeine they could get down to stay alert during the training session. But by the time Brian left, Mike was competent enough to break it down in layman’s terms for Madeline. Equipped with his new knowledge and eager to put it to use before he forgot how, Mike ran through all the frames showing movement detected by the camera positioned toward the driveway. Madeline watched over his shoulder, getting excited as the time stamp showed they were getting closer to Usherwood’s window of opportunity.

  But as they suspected from what they’d seen so far, Madeline’s SUV inadvertently created a blackout area on the west side of her property. If someone like Usherwood wanted to sabotage her car, he would only have to remain low to the ground and stay on the far side of the vehicle to remain hidden from the camera’s view.

  “If only I had pulled up closer to the house,” Madeline lamented, “then he would’ve been seen as he stepped onto the property.”

  “Well, if we’re going to stick to our original theory—and so far, it’s the only one we’ve got—then that means Usherwood was here while you and Brian were setting up the new alarm system.” The very thought made Madeline shiver like someone had poured cold water down her back.

  “Oh God,” she groaned, reaching for her sweater and wrapping it tightly around herself.

  “Okay, I think it’s safe to assume this is where Usherwood or someone in his employ attached the GPS tracker. Which also means that he was behind sabotaging the brake lines.”

  “There was never any doubt in my mind about that,” Madeline said, kicking off her shoes as she lay down on her sofa, arranging her sweater over herself like an undersized blanket.

  Mike’s phone rang, startling both of them. “It’s Bob Leonard, the P.I. in Simi Valley,” Mike said before taking the call. He wandered into the kitchen as he lis
tened to what the investigator had to report.

  “Yeah, email me the photos,” Mike said, as he came back into the living room. “Sounds like you got a pretty comprehensive assessment of the guy. No, I don’t think you need to keep tailing him. Yeah, thanks. I really appreciate it.”

  Mike ended the call and looked down at Madeline, who was doing her best to keep at least one eye open.

  “What did he find out?” she asked, her voice thick with fatigue. Mike fiddled with his phone, trying to enlarge the photos enough to see what Bob had found out.

  “I wish I hadn’t left my computer at the office,” he said.

  “Forward it to me and then you can view the photos on my iPad.”

  “Good thinking, especially considering you’re only partially conscious,” Mike said.

  “And not by choice,” Madeline added, closing her eyes in an effort to correct that problem. Once they were closed, she could feel herself recede from reality. Faintly, she heard bits and pieces of what Mike was saying as he looked for her handbag and asked for her logon password. But the garbled words and images coming from her overly-stimulated and sorely neglected subconscious soon drowned out all outside stimuli.

  Madeline’s ringtone chimed, jolting her from a disturbing slumber. Her head throbbed from dehydration and she nearly blacked out from sitting upright too quickly. Her eyes darted around the room as her beleaguered mind tried to determine where the ringing was coming from. She caught sight of her phone on the dining table and inadvertently stepped on a slumbering Mike as she rose up to fetch it.

  “Ouf!” Mike gasped as Madeline teetered off his stomach and smacked her shin on the coffee table.

  “Oww!” Madeline howled as she limped to her cell phone, rubbing her shin with one hand as she answered the call with the other. “Hello?” she croaked. “Hello? Damn,” she said, figuring the call had already gone to voicemail.

  “Madeline?”

  “Hello?”

  “It’s John Slovitch.”

  “John,” Madeline said, forcing her eyes open with exaggerated effort.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Uh, yeah. I, uh, must’ve fallen asleep,” she said, heading for the kitchen to get a glass of water.

  “Sorry. You probably didn’t get much sleep last night,” Detective Slovitch said.

  “Try none. To what do I owe this call?” she asked before taking a long drink of ice cold water from the dispenser.

  “I figured you’d want to know…” Slovitch said, his words acting like smelling salts on Madeline’s numbed senses. “A hiker and his dog discovered the body of a young Hispanic woman on Rattlesnake Trail this morning. There was no ID on her and her fingerprints aren’t in our database. Something tells me we’re not going to turn up any dental records, either.” Madeline had to consciously force herself to breathe. She began trembling as her mind grasped what Slovitch was telling her.

  “I can’t be certain,” Slovitch continued, “but I think she might be the girl we saw leaving with the housekeeper on the surveillance video last night. I was hoping you could come and verify if it’s her or not.”

  After quietly agreeing to meet him at the County Morgue, Madeline ended the call and stood there, stunned, unable to decide if she was dreaming or living a nightmare.

  Detective Slovitch silently escorted Madeline back to the morgue, where he introduced her to Sergeant Rizzo, who oversaw the coroner’s office. Such pleasantries as the situation would allow were exchanged before Slovitch motioned for the coroner, Donald Ferguson, to pull back the sheet.

  There, on the cold metal table lay the body of Teresa Maria Alvarez. The wide gash across her throat caused Madeline to rear back in horror. Though she had suspected the worst after Slovitch’s call, she hadn’t been sufficiently prepared for the sight of such brutality. Clean and even as the wound was, it was impossible not to imagine the act that had ended this sweet young woman’s life.

  “Can you identify her as the girl in the surveillance videos?”

  “Yes. This is the girl known as Teresa Maria Gomez. She was the companion to Vivian Story. She’s the one seen leaving with Helen Bagley last night.”

  Madeline related this information as though she were reading it from a script. At the sight of the lifeless Teresa, her mind had shifted to autopilot, allowing her to detach from her emotions long enough to get through the heartbreaking task. Even so, she had a hard time steadying her trembling legs.

  As Dr. Ferguson replaced the sheet over the young Latina’s face, Madeline brought up her hand to stop him. Ferguson looked to Detective Slovitch, who nodded his consent.

  Madeline bent down for a closer examination. On both sides of Teresa’s neck, above the deadly gash that cut clear through her windpipe, were two faint red marks, almost identical.

  “What do you make of these?” Madeline asked the coroner.

  A subliminal message passed between Slovitch and Ferguson. “Offhand, I’d say they look like marks made by yanking a chain from the victim’s neck,” Ferguson said. “We’ll know more when we start our tests.”

  “Did you see her wearing anything like that last night?” Slovitch asked.

  Madeline thought back. She remembered Lauren and Teresa standing in the foyer as they arrived ahead of the other partygoers. She recalled how pretty and excited Teresa had been, wearing a pale pink dress and matching jacket… She shook her head as the detail of jewelry eluded her memory. “I have seen her wearing a medallion on a thin gold chain, but I can’t be sure she had it on last night. There might be photos of her with Vivian at the party. I assume you have the contact info for the photographer and videographer… I would check with them,” Madeline said.

  She avoided making eye contact with the men because she wasn’t telling all she knew. It surprised her that she would consciously withhold information, but then again, this didn’t seem the time or place to share her visit to Enrique Alvarez with the authorities. She couldn’t help wondering if Enrique and Teresa wore matching medallions in lieu of wedding rings.

  Turning to Ferguson, she asked, “Do you have an approximate time of death?”

  “She’s been dead for more than twelve hours,” the coroner replied, keeping his answer vague. “We’ll know more after the autopsy.” But will you tell me? Madeline wondered doubtfully.

  Slovitch motioned to the coroner and gently drew Madeline away from the dead girl by her elbow. As they exited the morgue, Detective Slovitch brought them to a halt.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I know that couldn’t have been easy, but it will save us a lot of time getting her data.”

  “I doubt you’ll find her in any database,” Madeline said, her voice flat and emotionless. She turned to face Slovitch. “As you know, I was hired by Vivian Story to do a background check on her. I only got a break today when I traced the ownership of the cell number she listed on her application.”

  Slovitch recoiled slightly at this admission. “What else do you know about the dead girl you haven’t told us?” he asked, his officious tone grating against Madeline’s already frayed nerves.

  “Let’s not forget that I just learned of her death,” she countered. “Until twenty minutes ago, I was still trying to track her down.”

  “You knew she was missing?”

  “Yes.” Madeline hesitated before telling Slovitch about her encounter with Enrique Alvarez and their child, who was now motherless. As she recounted their conversation, she became increasingly saddened by the fate that had befallen the little family. It pained her even more to imagine the police breaking the news of Teresa’s death to the already distraught Enrique.

  “What’s the address?” Slovitch asked. Madeline hesitated. Slovitch gave her an exasperated look, trying to shame her into compliance.

  “I did you a favor by coming down here. Let me break the news to her husband.”

  Slovitch
looked at his watch. “I’ll give you a twenty-minute head start,” he said.

  Mike had remained in the waiting room while Madeline made the identification. He nodded circumspectly to Slovitch before ushering his partner out to the car. Sensing her mental state, he walked her around to the passenger’s side and held the door open as she got in. It wasn’t until they pulled out of the parking lot that he broke the silence.

  “Are you okay?”

  There was a lot of information packed into her irritated snort. No, she was not okay. How could she be after all that had happened in less than a day? Two sweet, gentle women had been callously murdered, and she had no idea why.

  “Where to?” he tried again.

  “Back to Enrique’s. Slovitch is letting me break the news to him.” Mike knew better than to weigh in on that idea. He got back on the freeway, cruising at a respectable speed, giving Madeline all the space she needed. It didn’t take long for her to test her most reliable sounding board.

  “I just don’t understand this,” she said, averting her eyes out the window. “Helen takes Teresa out to I.V., where she bolts, and her body ends up on Rattlesnake Trail. That’s got to be at least ten miles away.”

  “Do we know if she was killed at the scene or taken there afterwards?”

  Madeline rubbed her shoulder. They were at a distinct disadvantage in their roles as private investigators. “No. We don’t know. They do, but they aren’t saying much.” Madeline let out a rueful huff and fell quiet for a moment. “I wish I knew if they have CCTV out in Isla Vista,” she thought out loud.

  “We could have a look for ourselves. Or we could ask Slovitch.”

  “We might have to take a drive out there,” Madeline said. She became silent again, but now Mike’s mind was churning with hypotheses.

  “Maybe Helen made that whole story up…” he suggested.

  “Believe me, I’ve been thinking the same thing. I just can’t imagine why.”