by Joseph Badal
Navarro nodded. “That would get your attention. But that ain’t even close. I’ve been in combat, gun fights, knife fights, and plenty of street fights with stone-cold bad guys. In those instances I understood the enemy. They acted the way they looked—mean and hateful. But I could never understand what motivated Victoria Comstock. She looked like an angel, and acted like one at times. And then she would turn on the people who cared for her the most. I can handle physical danger. Victoria was a whole other matter. She was . . . like . . . the personification of evil.” He took a sip of ginger ale. “It was only a matter of time before someone killed her.”
“Personification of evil? That’s a bit strong, wouldn’t you say?”
Navarro shifted in his chair. He seemed suddenly uncomfortable. “Detective Lassiter, you’ll learn a lot about Victoria Comstock during your investigation. Why don’t I tell you one story that will provide insight into her character?”
Barbara gave him an open-handed gesture, as though to tell him to go ahead.
“One of the people you need to interview is a former husband of Victoria’s. Guy named Seth Horton. He’s a doctor. Lives in Albuquerque. Has a practice in Rio Rancho. Horton took up with Victoria while both he and she were already married. The good doctor divorced his wife and married Victoria after she divorced her husband. Got a lot of money out of that divorce, by the way. Anyway, Horton is on call one night and has to go into the hospital. Victoria is at Horton’s home with his two children by his former wife. From what Horton told me, the kids hated Victoria, made her life miserable. While the doc is at the hospital, the house catches fire. Victoria conveniently escapes the blaze, but the kids die.”
“Jeez.”
“Yeah,” Navarro said. “The arson guys couldn’t pin the fire on Victoria. They found a bucket of ashes from a fireplace up against the house. Victoria claimed to have cleaned out the fireplace in the master bedroom and put the ashes outside, up against the back wall of the house. Right outside the kids’ bedrooms. It was windy that night. Live embers could have blown out of the bucket and started the fire.” He shrugged.
“Coulda been an accident,” Barbara said.
“Yeah. Coulda been. Except Horton told the investigators he’d cleaned all the fireplaces the day before.”
CHAPTER 12
Barbara felt energy course through her body. Despite a long, tiring day, she was pumped, excited. Shawn Navarro’s tale had gone on for two hours. He’d peeled back layer after layer of Victoria Comstock’s past and her personality. By the time he finished his tale, Barbara suffered from emotional overload. When they walked out of the strip club, she followed him to his car—a black Lincoln Continental, which looked to be at least thirty years old and well cared-for. The black paint shone lustrously in the night; brilliantly reflected the overhead parking lot’s pole lights. He opened the driver’s door, lifted a brown manila envelope from the dashboard, and handed it to her.
“I made copies of my files. It includes a list of people Victoria Comstock messed with. I suggest you contact those people.” He pointed at the envelope. “You’ll get a kick out of the first guy on the list: Julius Wainwright.” Then he got into his car and shut the door. He turned over the engine, which roared to life and then settled into a deep-throated rumble, rolled down the window, looked at Barbara, and asked, “She’s really dead?”
“As a door nail.”
“There is a God, after all.”
Barbara didn’t open the envelope until she got home. In addition to Navarro’s list of names, there was an inventory and diagram of Victoria Comstock’s relationships and escapades, a cover memo addressed to Marge Stanley, and a detailed report about Victoria Comstock’s history. Barbara sat at her kitchen table for two hours and studied Navarro’s report. It was nearly midnight when she scanned Navarro’s diagram again—for the fourth time. She’d memorized the information on it and found the whole thing unbelievable. Marge Stanley hadn’t exaggerated when she said that Victoria had destroyed people’s lives.
Barbara dropped the diagram back on the table and pushed herself out of the chair. A quick glance at the stove clock made her groan. It was not only late, but she knew she’d be lucky to get any sleep after reading Navarro’s file.
SUNDAY
JUNE 27
CHAPTER 13
Susan was already at her desk when Barbara arrived precisely at 8 a.m. “You look worse today than yesterday,” Susan said.
“That’s what happens when you don’t sleep two nights in a row,” Barbara answered. She tossed Navarro’s envelope on Susan’s desk and pulled her chair over beside Susan’s. She opened the envelope and slid out Navarro’s list.
“What’s that, your family tree?” Susan asked.
“Better than that,” Barbara said. “It’s Victoria Comstock’s tree of life, so to speak.” She unfolded the diagram and allowed Susan to study it for a minute.
“If I were a betting woman,” Barbara said, “I’d wager big bucks Victoria’s killer’s name is on that diagram.”
Susan looked at Barbara. “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning. Like, where the hell did you get this?”
“You remember Marge Stanley mentioned a private investigator, Shawn Navarro?”
“Sure.”
“I met him last night.”
Susan smiled. “You know, if you were a man, with your work ethic, you could run this place some day.”
“Just read the list and forget your fantasies about my career.”
Susan looked down at the paper. “Victoria Comstock was born Victoria Jean Patterson in 1975. Her first run-in with the law was when she was seventeen. Got two years probation in Ohio for shoplifting. Acquitted on an assault charge when she was twenty. Moved from Ohio to New Mexico two years after that. She married Julius Wainwright in 1999. At the ripe old age of twenty-four, she had an affair with Fred Gibson, one of Wainwright’s employees.” Susan stopped and looked up at Barbara. “You gotta be kidding me.”
“Nope,” Barbara said. “Continue. It just gets better and better.”
Susan took a deep breath. “Gibson and Victoria embezzled funds from Wainwright. Gibson went to prison and Victoria got off Scot free after she agreed to testify against Gibson. And poor Julius Wainwright went bankrupt. She divorced Wainwright and moved to Las Vegas in 2001. Eight months later, she returned to Albuquerque. In 2002, she had an affair with Joseph Alban, the husband of her best friend, Marge Alban.” Susan stopped for a long beat. “Says here Marge Alban reverted to her maiden name, Stanley, after she divorced her husband.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Barbara said. “Check the footnote at the bottom of the second page. Alban changed the beneficiary on his million dollar life insurance policy from his wife and child to Victoria just before he put a gun to his head.”
Susan shook her head and continued. “Two years after Alban killed himself, Victoria had an affair with a wealthy Albuquerquean named Robert Jameson. When Jameson’s wife discovered the affair, she took an overdose of pills and committed suicide. A year later Jameson and Victoria married. They weren’t married a year before she took up with another married man, Dr. Seth Horton, who shortly thereafter divorced his wife. Victoria walked away with a huge settlement when she divorced Jameson. In 2007, she married Horton, who had two children from his marriage with his first wife.”
Susan stopped reading aloud. Barbara saw Susan’s lips move but she didn’t interrupt her. After a long moment, Susan looked up at Barbara, her mouth open, her eyes wide.
“You obviously just read about Horton’s ten and eight-year-old kids dying in a fire at their house when Victoria was with them and Dr. Horton was working.”
“And the kids’ mother is institutionalized.”
“Yeah, that too.”
“Did she start the fire?” Susan asked.
“There was no proof she’d done it, but Shawn Navarro believes she did it.”
“Talk about someone with a Teflon skin. Nothing stuck to that woman.”
Susan read on: “Horton divorced Victoria in 2008. She connected with Maxwell Comstock, a wealthy widower, a year later. She and Comstock married in 2010. That means Victoria and Comstock were together for almost four years. How come? She usually stayed with a man for only a year or so.”
“I had the same thought,” Barbara said. “Maybe Comstock has so much money she didn’t need to search for an alternative. Who knows? Maybe she would have dumped him if the right candidate to replace him had come along.”
CHAPTER 14
Barbara found Julius Wainwright’s number and address in the Albuquerque telephone book. Wainwright was the man near the top of Navarro’s diagram. She called and told him she wanted to visit with him. Wainwright seemed excited about the prospect of visitors, even if they were the police. He didn’t even ask Barbara what she wanted.
Wainwright’s place was a one-story, white-stuccoed, Mexican tile-roofed bungalow that suffered badly from neglect. The stucco was cracked and missing in places, the exterior trim and shutters hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint in years, and weeds sprouted where grass should have been.
He answered the door in a worn, plaid, knee-length bathrobe worn above stained tan chinos, black socks, and broken down leather slippers. A dog barked somewhere in the background.
Wainwright was a blustery sixty-something guy, with ruddy skin and snow-white hair. About six feet, four inches tall with large hands with long, knobby fingers that could have easily palmed a medicine ball. He had strong features and looked at Barbara with penetrating but rheumy gray eyes rimmed in red. She decided he could have been a lady-killer in his youth. But the broken veins on his nose and cheeks and the redness in his eyes told her the man was now heavily into the bottle.
Barbara badged the guy, introduced Susan, and asked if they could come in.
“Sure,” Wainwright said. “Always glad to help the po-lice.”
He waved them inside, where piles of newspapers and magazines covered nearly every inch of floor space and spilled off tables, chairs, a sofa, and an old upright piano in one corner. Wainwright lifted a stack of papers off one of the chairs and backhanded another stack on the sofa. That stack toppled over, which triggered a domino-effect on the newspaper stacks, until the one that rested on the far sofa arm teetered and collapsed onto the floor. “Have a seat,” he said as he plopped down into a worn easy chair that faced a television set.
Barbara looked around the place. A clear lane meandered through the stacks of newspapers and magazines, from the front room through what appeared to be a dining room to the kitchen at the back of the house. Another lane drifted to the left toward what Barbara presumed were the bedrooms and bathroom. The musty odor of dust, old newspapers, and ratty furniture combined with the sickeningly-sweet smell of what could have been Chef Boyardee Ravioli made Barbara gag.
“Can I get you a drink?” Wainwright picked up a nearly empty bottle of Four Roses that rested next to his chair.
“No thanks,” Susan said. “We’re on duty.”
Wainwright took a swig from the bottle, set it back on the floor, and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his bathrobe. “So, what can I do for you ladies? I don’t suppose this is a social call.” A phlegmy cough exploded from his chest. Then another. It took him a minute to control his coughing. He hawked something and spit it into a yellowed handkerchief he pulled from his bathrobe pocket. “I suppose that old bag next door has complained about Brutus again.”
“Brutus?” Susan said.
“My pit bull. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
Barbara almost laughed. “No, we’re not here about your dog.”
Wainwright squinted, put down the bottle, and scratched his head with both hands. He rubbed his scalp as though on a vermin search-and-destroy mission.
“We want to ask you some questions about your relationship with Victoria Comstock,” Barbara said.
Wainwright looked confused. He shook his head, but abruptly stopped. His mouth opened as though he was about to say something, then a light came to his eyes. “You mean Vickie Jean! That’s what I used to call her. Victoria seemed too formal for her. And her last name wasn’t Comstock.”
Wainwright seemed to become instantly younger. He settled back in his chair, stared up at the ceiling, and moved his head from side to side, as though reflecting on something miraculous. “Man, was she one hot babe!” He brought his gaze back to Barbara. “Vickie Jean was the best and the worst thing that ever happened to me, all at the same time. By all rights I ought to hate that little gal, but I’ve never been able to do that.”
“Why’s that, Mr. Wainwright?” Susan asked.
“You got time for a story, ladies?”
“We’re all ears, sir,” Susan said.
He reached for the liquor bottle again, took a pull, and returned it to its place on the floor. He rubbed his palms on his slacks. “Victoria Jean Patterson. That was her name when I met her almost twenty years ago. She was twenty-one. I had just turned forty-two. By then, I’d been a widower for about two years. Vickie Jean was maybe a year out of college. Never been married. She walks into my automobile dealership one bright sunny day and says she wants a job selling Cadillacs. The sales manager’s about to blow her off ‘cause she ain’t got any experience. As luck would have it, I had just stepped from my office and walked past the sales manager’s office. I saw this gorgeous gal seated across the desk from him and, like I have no choice, I walked in and introduced myself. She stood up, shook my hand, and gave me a look that finished me from that moment on.”
Wainwright laughed, then broke into another coughing fit. When he settled down, he said, “I was finished there and then. Might as well have signed my unconditional surrender.” He laughed again. “I felt the electricity, but never realized that what I actually felt were Vickie Jean’s hooks sinking into me.
“A year later I asked her why she walked into the dealership that day. I mean, I couldn’t imagine her selling cars. Don’t get me wrong. She could do anything she made up her mind to do. But she belonged in a big city, hobnobbing with the super wealthy, not in a backwater town like Albuquerque.”
He paused, as though he’d lost his train of thought.
Barbara prompted him. “You asked her why she came into your dealership that day.”
“Oh yeah. You know what she told me? She said, ‘Cause that’s where the people with money are. In a Cadillac dealership.’ ”
A confused look came to Wainwright’s face. He seemed disoriented. Then he asked, “Why do you ask these questions?”
“You know, Mr. Wainwright, I could use a glass of water, after all.”
He stood up and asked, “With ice?”
“Sure, that would be great.”
“Me, too,” Susan said.
Wainwright shuffled out of the room, seemingly pleased to be able to get the detectives something.
“I get the impression he still loves her,” Barbara whispered to Susan.
“He sure doesn’t look like someone Victoria would have gone after,” Susan said. “Although he might have been a hunk back then.” She waved her arm to take in their surroundings. “But look at this place.”
“You get the impression he doesn’t know Victoria Comstock is dead?”
Susan nodded.
Wainwright returned and handed glasses of water to Barbara and Susan and went back to his chair.
“Where were we?” he asked.
“What happened between you and Victoria after you met that day?” Barbara asked.
“You want the short story or the god-awful long one?” He coughed again, hawked up phlegm. He sounded as though he might expire at any moment.
When the coughing stopped, Barbara said, “Why don’t you give us the short version. We can always come back for the long version later.”
Wainwright nodded and seemed to brighten at the prospect of a return visit. Doesn’t get too many visitors, Barbara thought.
“Well, Vickie Jean let me sweep her off
her feet. We took trips on my private plane—places she’d never been before. That little gal had grown up poor and she’d never been much of anywhere. I took her to Las Vegas, New York, Miami. Hell, we even went to Paris once. Took four months of wining and dining, a shitload of jewelry, including an emerald brooch, and two diamond rings, before she agreed to marry me.” He chuckled. “She played me, hook, line, and sinker. Built her a house, bought her the best furniture and stuff to put into it. Sent her to San Francisco and New York on shopping trips. The whole shebang. Cost me a fortune, but back then I had more money than I needed.” He smiled. “She was right. A good way to meet people with money is to hang around a Cadillac dealership.” He closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them again, he said, “She sure made me happy. Just being around her made me feel like a kid again . . . most of the time, anyway.”
“Most of the time?” Barbara asked.
“Yeah, most of the time. When she was happy, she brightened my world. But there was a dark side to Vickie Jean. And it didn’t take much for her to cross over to that dark side. One time we were out to dinner with some senior guys from General Motors. I had something caught in my teeth and I asked the waitress for a toothpick. When I picked my teeth at the table, you would have thought I had committed one of the seven deadly sins. Vickie Jean ripped into me in front of the GM guys like I was some little kid pickin’ his nose. Called me names, including an F-ing hick. Must have used the “F” word about three times in one sentence. Those boys from Detroit were shocked mute.”
“How long were you together?” Susan asked.
“’Bout a year-and-a-half.”
“What happened?” Susan said.
“Now that’s another long story,” he said. “But I’ll give you the short version of that, too. I had two sons from my previous marriage. They were grown and on their own by the time I met Vickie Jean. One’s a doctor back east; the other one’s an engineer out at Sandia Labs. After their mother died, I had my lawyers re-do my will; left everything to the boys. Before I married Vickie, I had her sign a pre-nup that protected the dealership and my retirement accounts. Well, hell, after a couple months of marriage, she starts after me to change all that. I put it off, but the longer I did, the angrier she got, until she made my life a living hell. I figured I had to do what she wanted if I wanted any peace.
