Murder Mile High

by Lora Roberts

  So Amy was jealous of Biff. I would have to take her confidences with a grain of salt.

  “We’d better go in,” she said, opening the side door and jumping down, with Barker all around her legs. Then he began growling, and I saw Eva’s cruiser pull up.

  Chapter 22

  “We’ve found a rental van. We think Tony Naylor was in it after his death,” Eva said. She’d waited for Amy to go inside, which Amy reluctantly did. The kitchen curtain was pulled aside, and Amy’s face joined Renee’s in the window.

  “How could you do that?” It sounded like searching for a needle in a haystack to me.

  “It’s a piece of luck for us. This big rental place lost their maintenance guy, the one who usually vacuumed and washed the cars. When we looked at all the places that rent white vans, there it was, on the back of the lot, still not cleaned.” Her voice held great satisfaction. “Found traces of blood and hair in one of the movers’ blankets, and the initial tissue typing makes a match with Naylor pretty certain. He was rolled in a blanket after he was killed, then driven to your place. Whoever dumped him is pretty strong.”

  I thought immediately of Biff, toting that concrete. “Well, guess that lets me out.”

  “You look strong.” She eyed me consideringly. “And you would have had an accomplice, of course. Right now, all I want is for you to come and look at the vehicle, see if you can identify it.”

  I shrugged. “It was dark, and I just got a glimpse of it. But sure, I’ll come with you. Let me tell my sister-in-law I’ll be back.” I raised my eyebrows. “if I will, that is.”

  Eva allowed herself a brief grin. “I’m not arresting you,” she said. “You’ll be back, unless something comes up.”

  Renee sniffed when I said I wouldn’t be there for dinner.

  I was trying to be an unobtrusive guest, but she didn’t seem to appreciate my efforts.

  “Are you taking that damned dog with you?” She pointed to the floor she’d been sweeping when I interrupted her. “He’s leaving his hair everywhere.”

  “I can’t take him, but Amy would probably sweep up for him if you asked her.”

  Renee sniffed again. “You’re out of your mind. Amy never does anything I ask her.”

  I held my tongue, a difficult task, and went on out to Eva’s cruiser. Silently, we drove to the police station. In the back parking lot, a white van was getting a real going-over by technicians armed with weird-looking little vacuum cleaners and other arcane equipment.

  I stood behind the van. “Does it look familiar?” Officer Eva stood beside me, looking at me instead of the van.

  “Sort of.” I tried to remember the brief flash I’d seen when the van turned the corner, its taillights flickering. “The license number actually does look familiar. Those last three digits—I vaguely remember they had some relationship to each other in the glimpse I got.”

  “Seven-two-eight?” She raised her eyebrows.

  “Twenty-eight is a multiple of seven.”

  “Oh, yeah.” She didn’t look convinced. “It’s pretty vague.”

  “Sorry. If I’d been sure about anything, I would have told you at the time.”

  “Right.” She didn’t sound convinced, either.

  One of the technicians shut off the vacuum cleaner and spotted Eva. “Hey, O’Malley was looking for you a little while ago. He’s gone now—tore out in a big hurry.”

  Eva looked speculative. “Did he? Maybe he left a message.”

  I hung back when she headed for the building. Even if O’Malley was gone, I didn’t like gratuitous sitting around in police stations.

  “I can wait in your car.”

  “You come with me.” She didn’t grab my arm, but her gaze commanded me. “I might need you again.”

  Resigned, I trailed after her. No one paid any attention; nobody came at me with handcuffs. I perched on a chair in front of Eva’s desk and watched her go through her messages.

  “Nothing here from O’Malley. I’ll call and see if Phil’s in—maybe he knows what it’s about.”

  I wasn’t paying much attention, but after a cheerful greeting, Eva stiffened, her eyes fixed on me. She lowered her voice, and I couldn’t hear what she said, but I could see something big was happening. After a moment she slammed down the phone.

  “Come on.’’

  “Where are we going?” This time she dragged me out of the chair. I found I didn’t want to leave it.

  “Up in the mountains a little. Want you to see something.”

  We rushed out. I found myself in the front seat of the cruiser again.

  “Is this a time for sightseeing?”

  “We’re not sightseeing.” Officer Eva’s face was grim. She turned on the flashing lights, and we sped through the streets, swerving around slower traffic. At a red light she touched her siren and we blasted through. “Not the kind you mean, anyway.”

  I sighed. “You’re not going to tell me what’s going on, are you?”

  “Nope.” She drove with cool competence, her face intent on the traffic, a swift shark cleaving schools of lesser fish. “But I want you to talk. Tell me everything you did today.”

  My boring day made a monotonous recital, since I left out anything to do with Amy, Molly, or Biff. She didn’t slacken her pace while I talked; I held onto my seat and hoped we didn’t get crosswise with any ambulances.

  Eva turned onto Coal Creek Canyon Road and headed straight west to the mountains. She still hadn’t spoken, and I wouldn’t ask, but I was glad I’d told Renee not to expect me for dinner. Having run out of incidents, I’d been quiet for several minutes.

  “Tell me something else,” Eva said, keeping her eyes on the unfolding highway. “When did your ex-husband show up in California? Your pal Drake says he’s your neighbor, and he hadn’t seen any sign of Naylor. But you told Baldridge you’d touched base with him.”

  I cleared my throat. “It was before Drake and I became neighbors. And I just saw Tony once. Then he left.”

  “Without hurting you?” Her question was casual.

  “What does that matter?” I wondered if Tony beating me up so recently could be used to make me look stronger as a suspect.

  Eva shook her head. “So he did hurt you. And you didn’t report it.”

  “He agreed to leave,” I said feebly. “I wanted him gone, not detained for questioning. And chances are, he would have talked his way out of it and then come back to show me a thing or two. Besides, I knew he wouldn’t bother me again.”

  “Sure,” Eva said, her voice without inflection. She thought I’d been protecting Tony by not calling the cops on him. Really, I’d been protecting myself. But I had learned years ago that people don’t admire you for adapting yourself to circumstances, trying to slide through the tough places as easily as you can. You are admired when you stand up and make a lot of noise, even if that makes you a better target.

  We rode in silence for a while longer. The sun was in my eyes on its journey toward the peaks. The road plunged into valleys and climbed flanks of hills. I reached for the visor, and Eva glanced sharply at me as I pulled it down. All I could think about was that Drake knew, now, that my shameful past as a battered woman was not as far past as he’d thought. Would he, too, feel a kind of disgust for a woman who could let that happen to her again without calling the authorities—one of whom was him?

  When the silence got too heavy—or maybe it was my thoughts—I spoke.

  “So are we going to Boulder?” We were heading somewhat south of Boulder, but there wasn’t nearly enough traffic for a commute destination.

  “No.” She turned her attention back to the highway. Without the flashing lights, our progress was much more sedate, although she drove fast—too fast for that road, I thought.

  “Are we meeting O’Malley somewhere?”

  “Probably.” She slipped the cruiser around a lumbering semi, leaving it in her wake.

  “Are you going to tell me anything about it?”

  “No.” Sh
e thought for a minute. “Why did you think we’re going to Boulder?”

  “Where else does this road go?” I spoke patiently, and she answered with the same exaggerated diction.

  “There are other places.”

  Vague memories stirred in my head, and I pressed my fingertips against my temples, as if that would cause my thoughts to coalesce sooner. “Tony used to visit someone in one of the little towns around here.”

  “Who?” Her voice sharpened.

  “He didn’t tell me, and I was too grateful to have him gone to ask.” I didn’t want to remember it—certainly not to tell Eva about it. But my memory was in a constantly churning state these days, and a lot of unpleasant stuff was boiling up.

  On this particular occasion, a few months before our lives together ended, Tony had not wanted me to enjoy myself while he was off on his weekend of fun. I remembered sipping the glass of wine he had, with unaccustomed gallantry, poured for me. Next thing I knew, I was waking up on the bathroom floor, with a jar of peanut butter and a box of crackers beside me. The door was securely locked, from the outside. I tried to get the window open, but it was nailed shut. I yelled a bit. When no one in the other apartments responded, I threw the jar of peanut butter through the window.

  Some kids playing outside had helped me down from the window. I had been hungover from whatever drug Tony had given me to knock me out. And, of course, the front door of the apartment was locked, too. Luckily, the landlord believed the story that my purse had been stolen, and brought over a spare key. I’d reglazed the window myself, and then on my landlord’s advice, changed the door locks. I really wanted just to leave the apartment, but Tony always kept our checking account low, and the rent was paid through the end of the month. I’d had nowhere to go, thanks to my family’s hostility, and no means when I got there.

  The odd thing was, Tony had appeared to forget how he’d left me when he came back three days later. He showed up at dinnertime that Monday evening, wearing his work clothes, as if he’d left that morning as usual. He’d brought me flowers—his usual make-up offering, augmented by a box of candy for this special occasion. When I asked him where he’d been, he just laughed and sat down at the table, ready for dinner. I wouldn’t have had any clue if I hadn’t found the filling station receipt on the bedroom floor the next time I swept.

  For the past few years, I’d blocked my life in Denver from my conscious mind so successfully that it had come to seem a hazy dream, a formless mental cloud that was never examined. Now I needed to bring it into focus, and sometimes it sprang into my mind with a dreadful, painful clarity. Despite what Eva might think, I was a different woman now, incapable of enduring such treatment. And Tony’s appearance in Palo Alto had proven that. I had known he wouldn’t come back, and he hadn’t. Others could believe what they liked.

  Eva was waiting for my reply. “It’ll come to me, probably. The town had a funny name, the place he bought gas once. He never told me about it or why he went.”

  “Hygiene?”

  For a moment I was offended. “I had a shower—”

  “The town’s name.” Eva appeared to be struggling with a smile. “Hygiene is north of Denver, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I felt sheepish. “No, it was something else—Nederland.” Pleased with my memory for leaping into the breach, I smiled. “You know, I saw something recently that reminded me of that. Let’s see …”

  “Something since you came back?” There was tension in Eva’s voice again.

  “Yes, just in the last day or two.” I frowned, chasing the elusive thought. “In someone’s house.”

  “Your friend Kyle’s, perhaps? He’s got a lot of nice stuff, I noticed.” There was resentful admiration in Eva’s voice. “I wonder if he came by those artifacts legally.”

  “He works with archaeologists. Maybe they give him stuff.” I felt another synaptic connection. “No, it was Maud’s place. She had a watercolor of a quaint-looking little Main Street. I thought it might be Central City, but now I remember the name underneath was all one word. I couldn’t read the word, but I’m pretty sure it started with an N. She must have been up there with him.”

  Officer Eva’s shoulders relaxed a little. “So Maud knew about this place of Tony’s.”

  “It wasn’t Tony’s place, I’m pretty sure.” I shook my head. “Well, I’m not sure, actually. He could have acquired a vacation house or something in the past ten years. But if he had a house, why was he mooching off Kyle and Maud?”

  “Not much work in Nederland, maybe.” Eva made the suggestion. “He couldn’t make a living there, and he could in Denver.”

  “It would surprise me, somehow, if Tony owned anything.” I fell silent, and so did Eva.

  The road went on. The sun dropped behind the mountains, in that abrupt way I’d forgotten, and dusk closed in. We passed a signpost that said Nederland was twelve miles away. The road got steeper, the darkening landscape more forbidding.

  Eva reached for her radio receiver and spoke into it. I couldn’t decipher the squawking that came out, but I saw her glance at her odometer and she said, “Within a couple of miles, then,” More squawking. She glanced at me. “I’m bringing her.”

  The squawking got louder, and I thought I recognized O’Malley’s voice. Eva said, “I thought she might help us out.” She sounded defensive. “Be there soon.”

  I sat forward, knowing now that we were near something that would affect me—probably in a negative way. We drove for another couple of minutes, and then we rounded a curve and I could see the flashing lights in the distance. As we drew closer, Eva slowed. She parked behind another patrol car on the narrow shoulder. Just ahead in the deepening gloom, the road took a sharp bend. The guardrail there had obviously failed in its duty. It was twisted and broken away in one place. A knot of dark forms was gathered there, bathed in the eerie glow of the flashing lights. More lights flickered below the road.

  “Come on,” Eva said, springing out of the cruiser and wrenching the door open on my side. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

  She marched me down the road toward the cluster of other people. Dread grew inside me. I knew I wouldn’t want to see this; whatever it was, it would somehow be laid on my plate, which was already unpleasantly overfull.

  One source of the flashing lights was an ambulance. Each vehicle we passed seemed to have a muttering radio inside it. One car looked like O’Malley’s. My steps hesitated, but Eva dragged me along.

  Three men stood at the break in the guardrail. The wind was cold and dank off the mountains; I shivered in my thin cotton sweater. The men were looking down the mountainside; Eva and I came closer to the edge and looked, too.

  A car was poised amid the scree and boulders that cloaked the sides of the ravine, its nose pointed downward as if eager to finish its journey. After a moment, letting my eyes get used to the shifting patterns of gray shadows, I saw that it was held back from a free fall by a granite outcropping that dwindled away further down. White-jacketed figures toiled up the slope, back to the road. They carried a burden in a sling between them.

  One of the men at the guardrail turned. It was O’Malley. He frowned impartially at Eva and me.

  “I don’t know what you think this will prove,” he grumbled.

  “Neither do I, but she was there when I heard about it, and she’s already shed some light.” Eva didn’t look at me as she spoke; all her attention was focused on those laboring figures. “Says Naylor used to visit someone up here occasionally.”

  “Who?” O’Malley barked at me.

  “I don’t know. Maud Riegert, maybe.” I was watching as the emergency medical technicians rose from the ravine, like Orpheus ascending. “He didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask.”

  O’Malley shook his head, but his attention was also distracted. The EMTs handed up their burden to those waiting at the guardrail, then scrambled the rest of the way on their own. The phalanx of police and technicians gathered around the stretcher.
r />   “Come on,” Eva said, pulling me over. As we breached the circle, one of the EMTs pulled the body bag open.

  Maud Riegert’s face stared up sightlessly. Half of her face, anyway. The other half had been blown off.

  Chapter 23

  Eva stopped the cruiser in front of Andy’s house and looked at me soberly. “You were lucky,” she said.

  I was unlucky, really, in seeing poor Maud Riegert with the left side of her head blown away. Unlucky, not just because of that, but because it wasn’t the first violent death I’d seen. But lucky because O’Malley had come very, very close to arresting me. After we’d gotten back to the station, I had spent a long time alone in an interrogation room while he and Phil and Eva had huddled to discuss what to do.

  In the end, Eva was allowed to bring me back to Andy’s, as long as I knew I was on a short leash. The past twenty-four hours of my life, from last seeing Maud at her condo, to Eva’s picking me up to check out the van, were scrutinized minutely. Evidently they could tell that Maud had probably been killed the previous evening. My message was still on her answering machine, and helped verify my story that I was just asking her questions to establish my own innocence, not to scare her.

  At one point Eva had left, returning about forty minutes later with a statement from Amy verifying that I’d been with her that evening until long after dark. And a check of my odometer showed totals that made it impossible for me to have driven so far since the police had written down my mileage just after Tony’s death. They would be checking the rental places, but people who rented vehicles in the evening and brought them back before morning would be pretty conspicuous, and when that didn’t pan out I felt secure in proving yet another alibi.

  “I know.” I looked at Eva’s sober face and didn’t feel secure anymore. “Things don’t look good, do they?”

  “You’ve got motive,” she said, and added over my protest, “or something that can be made to look just like it. Your ex-husband, the woman he was cheating on you with—both dead. You might have had opportunity. You even had access to weapons—your dad’s gun, your brother’s. We need to see those guns ASAP.”