The Main Corpse gbcm-6

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “Albert Lipscomb,” echoed De Groot, making a note. “That’s who you thought was attacking you even before you saw his bald head when there was a flash of lightning. Lipscomb had come back to assault you and Tony Royce, only you don’t have a clue where Royce was at the time.”

  “Well, I … no. Officers,” Marla pleaded. “I really want to see my doctor.”

  “What time was this assault?” interjected Hersey.

  Marla was startled, which was probably the effect Hersey desired. “I don’t know. I took my watch off Tony said you shouldn’t keep track of time when you’re camping.”

  Both detectives fastened their eyes on her wrist, where a gold watch twinkled between the cuts and bruises. “This is one I put on when I got home,” she said with a defensive shake of her head. But even to me, it seemed the damage had been done. Was she lying or was she merely confused? Was there something she was concealing? “Anyway, I’d guess it was about two o’clock in the morning. Maybe later. Say four. It was dark, and the storm was unbelievable.”

  Hersey said, “And before the attack, before the camping trip, you’d say Royce was your boyfriend?”

  She exhaled painfully. “Something like that.”

  Hersey persisted. “And how long had you known Royce before this little camping trip you took together?”

  Marla slumped wearily. “I’ve been seeing Tony for about fifteen months. Give or take.”

  De Groot made another note on his pad. “Could you be a little more specific, Ms. Korman?”

  “Well, I’d have to look it up in my calendar.”

  “You keep a calendar?” asked Hersey. “Like a diary?”

  Marla nodded. “More or less. Upcoming events, stuff like that.”

  “Could we see this calendar?”

  No, no, no, I screamed mentally. But Marla had already hauled herself up obediently and shuffled over to the shelf Why was she being so compliant? It had to be the painkiller. I was dying to tell her that one rule applies equally to a criminal investigation and an IRS audit: Never volunteer anything. Marla frowned as she pulled first one thick notebook, then another off the shelf. “Okay, here we go, March, year before last. Let’s see, shopping, shopping, lunch, okay… here it is. Asti Spumanti and dessert at Eileen’s house.” My heart sank as she passed the notebook over to De Groot. “That’s when I met Tony. At Eileen’s house. He spent an hour trying to convince me to buy shares of Intel. I should have, as it turned out.”

  In an offhand tone, De Groot said, “And this year’s? With the date of the camping trip?”

  Marla groped along the shelf She ignored my glare, brought out another fat notebook, and leafed through. “Oh, brother.” Her voice sounded extremely tired. “Okay, here it is. Monday, June fourteen, that’s today, that’s almost exactly fifteen months, isn’t it? What, are you checking my math?”

  De Groot stared at the calendar, then made a note. His mouth twitched. He tapped the calendar. “Hmm. Going to Europe this week? You? Alone?”

  “I’m going with a group, if I can ever get down to the hospital and have these cuts and bruises taken care of.”

  De Groot looked longingly in the direction of the coffeepot, then flashed a glance at me. I didn’t budge. I wasn’t about to indulge him.

  “So, you have no idea where Tony Royce is now?” he asked Marla with surprising mildness.

  “No, I don’t,” Marla replied. “I’ve been hoping he was going to call me, now that we have the phones back.” I ached to warn her again to stop talking. Marla didn’t know as much about interrogation as I did; that was why she wasn’t challenging them. It was also why these two dolts were asking so many questions and getting away with it.

  There was an awkward silence. Hersey broke it. “Ms. Korman, are you aware that Tony Royce is missing?”

  She sighed. “No.”

  “And were you getting along with Tony Royce?”

  “Yes, of course I was getting along with him,” Marla snapped.

  Hersey said, “Did you have a fight with him that night at the tent? Was it Royce who hit you?”

  “I don’t know!” cried Marla, furious. “I don’t know who it was! I thought it was Albert Lipscomb! I told you that, except that it was all incredibly fast and… violent.”

  “Were you and Tony and Albert in on a scam with that mine? What went wrong? You and Tony had a falling out, Tony went off with Albert?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Beneath the bruises, Marla had gone pale.

  “Did you find a weapon to use against your attacker?” Hersey persisted.

  Marla sighed. “No. Although I wanted to get the gun out of the car – “

  “Had Royce brought any other weapons?” interrupted Hersey.

  Marla made a face and closed her eyes. “His fishing knife,” she said softly.

  “Did you use the fishing knife as a weapon? Tony’s fishing knife, that is,” asked De Groot in that same mild voice.

  “No,” said Marla acidly. “Of course not.”

  “Did you stab Royce?” His eyes bored maliciously into Marla’s. “Did you shove him into the creek after you stabbed him?”

  “No, no, no!” cried Marla, indignant and trembling. “Of course not.”

  “Okey-doke.” Hersey shot a look at his partner that I didn’t like. “We were just wondering.”

  De Groot pulled out a sheet from the bowels of his notebook, then smiled unpleasantly. “We were also pondering the fact that we have to answer to our boss, Ms. Korman. We know you want to get going to the doctor, and we need to get going, too. This is just a consent-to-search form, so we can look around your house. If you wouldn’t mind signing it?”

  I could no longer contain myself. “Don’t do it, Marla!”

  But to my dismay, Marla scanned the sheet, took the pen De Groot slipped her, and scrawled her signature. “Don’t worry, Goldy, they’re not going to find Tony. He’s not here.”

  “It’s a fishing expedition,” I raged. “What is going on here? You know damn well that you can’t be ran-sacking her house for anything that just might catch your eye!”

  But De Groot plucked the consent form from Marla’s hand and smirked as they sauntered out of the kitchen. Marla’s defeated expression made my heart sink. “Just let them go, Goldy,” she murmured. “They’re not going to find a thing. They’re certainly not going to find Tony. I swear to you, I honestly don’t know where the hell he could be, and believe me, it’s a question I’ve been asking myself ever since Saturday night.”

  I shook my head. The way Marla was handling these cops’ treatment of her was scary, especially when I suspected they were carrying out some unknown agenda dictated by Captain Shockley. Her carelessness was mind-boggling. “You’re going to need a lawyer, as soon as possible,” I hissed. “You didn’t even think of Tony’s prescription up on your table!”

  “That’s nothing. What I need is a doctor and a stronger painkiller. I’ve heard Vicodin is pretty good… shh, here they come.” ~ De Groot and Hersey slammed back into the kitchen. It wasn’t difficult to see both were extremely unhappy.

  “No skeletons in my closet,” Marla toodIed, and I repressed the urge to smirk at De Groot. He ignored me and pulled on the door of the closet, where he spent a few minutes groping about noisily. Then he opened the upper cabinets while Hersey peered in the bottom ones. Finally De Groot creaked open the door of the bathroom between the kitchen and the dark hall. He flipped on the light and peered inside. With a whoop of triumph, he emerged holding a piece of jewelry.

  “What’s this?” he crowed.

  “It’s Tony’s watch,” Marla said dryly. “He forgets it here all the time.”

  De Groot examined the golden Rolex. “He usually leaves a twenty-thousand-dollar wristwatch in your bathroom cabinet?” he said scathingly.

  Marla shrugged. “I think they’re up to about twenty thousand five hundred, if you want to know the truth. He has his own closet here, too. So what?”

  De Groot was staring at me, mayb
e because in surprise I’d inadvertently opened my mouth. “But your friend Goldy doesn’t really believe Tony Royce would leave his valuable watch in his girlfriend’s bathroom, now does she?”

  Marla gaped at me. Unwisely, I said, “If I knew anything about that watch, Deputy, I wouldn’t tell you. And why aren’t you wearing plastic gloves? Haven’t you ever heard of tainting evidence?”

  De Groot’s face set in that familiar, enraging smirk. “Now that’s what I call cooperating with law enforcement. We heard about this watch from our captain. He asked if we’d found the Rolex at the campsite, because it was Royce’s most prized possession, and he never, ever was without it.”

  “Bull-shit!” Marla screeched. Her swings from passive behavior to rage were making me dizzy.

  De Groot yelled right back at her, “Hey! Why don’t you tell me the truth?”

  “I have told you the truth!”

  “Then you want to tell me what piece of clothing with whose blood all over it is in the trunk of your Mercedes?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Marla Korman,” said De Groot, “you are under arrest for the murder of Anthony Royce.”

  13

  “No, no!” cried Marla. She rushed toward me and I clasped her tight.

  “You are arresting her!” I protested. “Do you have Royce’s body? What grounds can you possibly – “

  Hersey shoved me toward the counter. I gasped and whirled back around. De Groot had seized Marla. Hersey reached a burly hand into the back pocket of his pants and pulled out handcuffs. Marla cried out in protest.

  I leapt toward my friend. The cops were too fast. Hersey pushed my shoulder and I fell to the floor. De Groot pinned both of my friend’s arms behind her; back and clicked the cuffs into place. Marla cried out in pain, then fell silent. “Mrs. Schulz.” Hersey’s little eyes were scornful as he stared down at me. I rubbed my shoulder and gave him a hateful look. “Get out of our way and keep your mouth shut. Otherwise we’ll have to arrest you, too.”

  “But you can’t, you just can’t do this-” “You are hurting me!” Marla yelled. She struggled against the cuffs for a minute, then added fiercely, “Officer, you are going to be so unhappy when my attorney gets through with you, you cannot even imagine –

  “

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said De Groot, “the woman with the violent threats. We’ve heard all about you.”

  “Goldy!” Marla sobbed. “Help me! I need the pills in my purse! I need – “

  Hersey and De Groot pushed her toward the door.

  “I’m following you,” I called out. I scrambled to my feet and grabbed Marla’s purse from the counter. “I’ll be right behind you in my van! We’re going to get this straightened out!”

  “Goldy! Don’t let them do this!” Marla’s voice cried again. “Help me!”

  “I will!” I called back as they tucked her into the sheriff’s department sedan.

  But I wasn’t sure she heard me. My anxiety grew as the sedan pulled away into the fog. How in the world could they charge Marla with murder? Why wouldn’t they tell me whether they’d found Tony Royce’s corpse out there by the Grizzly Creek campsite? What words had Marla uttered that justified the homicide charge? Could they arrest her just because there was bloody clothing in her car trunk? And why hadn’t Tom called to warn me about all this?

  As I gunned the van down I-70 in the direction of the sheriff’s department, I grew increasingly certain of one thing: Shockley was behind all this. Shockley the big investor, Shockley the paranoid cop, Shockley who knew all about Tony’s gold watch and who had wanted to know where Marla had gotten the money for her expensive car. I braked abruptly as the van hit a patch of thick mist. Keeping Tom ignorant of a homicide investigation that implicated his wife’s closest friend would probably give the boss-guy a keen sense of satisfaction. I’d bet anything that was why the captain had sent his two Rottweilers to interrogate Marla.

  The fog thinned slightly as I drew up to the jail’s garage entrance. The new ten-story building towered above the parking lot. There was enough visibility to make out a department car disappearing through the closing automatic door. I cursed silently and drew the van up to the video camera. The lens was trained on drivers wanting to go through the police entrance to the garage.

  Static issued from the speaker under the lens. “State your business,” a no-nonsense male voice demanded. Or at least I think that’s what it said.

  I exhaled in frustration. They’d never let me in now. I said, “Never mind. I’ll just use the public entrance.” I don’t know what I was expecting when I pushed through the entrance door to the jail. Despite my occasional involvement with investigating crime, I had never been to the place. Surprisingly, the reception area was similar to what one would expect in a small hotel, although more austere. Three pairs of plain beige couches were precisely placed on a spotless beige carpet. A free-form counter protruded from one of the beige walls like a concrete water lily. Breaking up the walls were vast expanses of wavy glass bricks held together with inch-thick white mortar. The thick glass was undoubtedly designed to allow sunlight to penetrate the lobby in a way that the eye – and bullets from avenging relatives, I imagined – could not. I hugged Marla’s purse to my chest and pressed forward.

  “I need help,” I said haltingly to the short police-i: woman behind the forbidding counter. The deputy’s dark green uniform stretched across her plump frame, and she wore her streaked blond hair in a French braid woven so tightly it would have given me a headache. “I’m here to see a friend, Marla… Marla Korman.

  She has… just been taken into the jail.” I cleared my throat and willed control. “You see, there’s been some terrible, terrible mistake,” I said firmly, “because she would never – “

  “Hold on,” said the policewoman. She asked me to spell Marla’s name as she typed on a computer keyboard. She puzzled over the screen for a minute, then turned to me, shaking her head. “I don’t know what the charge is, and probably won’t for a while – “

  “Please,” I begged, shameless now, “please. I’m Mrs. Schulz. Mrs. Tom Schulz. Couldn’t you please call the officer on duty at the jail and find out what’s going on with my friend? She’s in poor health, and she’s been badly beaten, and the cops who arrested her were hurting her… .”

  The policewoman leaned forward. “There’s no one to call, Mrs. Schulz. There won’t be anyone until she’s processed. I’m sorry to say this, but unless you’re her attorney you’re not going to be able to see your friend until visiting day Friday – “

  “Friday! She could have a heart attack before Friday! She doesn’t even have her medication!” I yanked Marla’s purse up. “It’s called Inderal. It’s in here and they wouldn’t let – ” The policewoman relieved me of the purse in a smooth motion and stowed it under the desk.

  “What you need to do,” she scolded in a calm, even tone that indicated she had dealt with far more hysterics than she cared to, “is go home. Wait for your friend to call.”

  I was getting nowhere. I had to think of another way to help Marla. I ran back out to the parking lot and considered my options. I knew one thing: I was not going home to wait for Marla to call. Her plaintive cry to me as she was hauled away still echoed in my head. I trotted down the steps to the sheriffs department’s main entrance.

  “Tom Schulz, please,” I told the duty deputy at the counter. His desk was a smaller version of the one in the jail lobby. The young deputy himself was so thin his uniform hung on him; he looked like a scarecrow. He couldn’t have been a day over twenty. “Deputy … ?” I glanced at his nameplate. “Carlson? Would you please tell Tom Schulz his wife’s here?”

  Deputy Carlson picked up a phone and punched buttons, then spoke in low tones. I couldn’t make out what he was saying and couldn’t tell if he was calling Tom, the upstairs duty officer, or, heaven forbid, Captain Shockley. I vigorously shook off this last thought. My paranoia did not extend that far. After a mo
ment the deputy hung up and said Tom would be right down.

  Five minutes later, Tom strolled toward me with all his usual self-confidence. It felt like ages since I’d seen him last, although it had only been the previous night. His green eyes sought mine and he seemed to assess my mood instantly.

  “Let’s go up and get some coffee,” he said pleasantly, as if I’d arrived to go over the grocery list.

  He smiled and waved at the cop at the desk. I’m in control here. Nothing to worry about. Sure.

  “Come on,” he said aloud in the tone that warned, We’re in public; act like nothing’s happened. “Let’s go get some caffeine. There’s an old friend of yours who wants to talk.” When I gasped and brightened, he lowered his voice, but kept the same smile. “It’s Armstrong. He’s been up to the Grizzly Creek scene. He was in the vicinity checking a mountain lion report, and heard about the trucker’s call on the radio.”

  I slipped my arm in his and walked by his side, as if I came down to the sheriffs department all the time to drink bitter vending machine coffee with my husband.

  Three uniformed officers were leaving the break room just as we entered it. They nodded and said, “Schulz,” but sent furtive glances in my direction. No doubt my wild eyes and splotched cheeks didn’t play very well. Poor guy, I could imagine them thinking, she’s got some problem and expects him to solve it.

  “Does everyone know what’s going on?” I murmured once Tom had brought me a steaming coffee with powdered creamer still dissolving on top. I stared into the brew with dismay.

  “Tough to tell.” Hardly had he spoken when Deputy Armstrong pushed into the room. I had known Armstrong, pasty – faced man with thin brown hair – for a couple of years. He gave me a sympathetic look and joined us.

  “They’re putting her into jail pending formal announcement of charges,” he began without cushioning the blow.

  “When can I see her?” I asked. I sounded absurdly calm. “Is there anything I can do?”

  Armstrong frowned. “They have visiting days. And no, there’s nothing you can do to help. She’ll call the lawyer she wants. They arrested her today because they found out she was planning on leaving the country.”