Wedding Bell Blues

by Charlotte Douglas

  “Rock and a hard place,” I commiserated.

  “Exactly.”

  He was warming to his subject now, so I let him rant.

  “Turned out, Cooper’s idea of saving my marriage was boinking my wife. When I caught them, he had the nerve to claim it would loosen her inhibitions, help her better relate to the marriage bed.”

  I made a sound of outrage mixed with sympathy.

  “I kicked the cheating slut out of our marriage bed. That was bad enough. But the creep had charged me five thousand dollars to screw my wife. That really hurt.”

  At least he had his priorities straight. “Insult to injury.”

  “Damned right. That’s when I demanded my money back.”

  “But you didn’t get it.”

  Shively shook his head.

  “You lost the suit?”

  “I didn’t sue. Jayne begged me not to. She didn’t want the humiliation of a public trial that would reveal her indiscretions. I promised that if she didn’t clean me out in the divorce settlement, I wouldn’t sue. But I did charge the bastard with assault.”

  “If you kept his philandering quiet, why did Ashton…er, Cooper close River Spirit House?”

  “Turns out my wife wasn’t the only woman Cooper had diddled. When a range of charges was filed by several others, Cooper, vermin that he was, closed operations here and disappeared into the woodwork.”

  “And you’ve never seen him since?”

  Shively raised his chin and looked me in the eye with an unwavering glance. “Never. And you never said why you’re asking questions about him.”

  “He’s dead.”

  Shock registered on Shively’s weather-beaten face, and he sat abruptly on the old washer he’d been torching. “No shit?”

  The man was either world class at faking or he was genuinely surprised.

  “What was it?” Shively regained his composure enough to ask. “His heart?”

  “In a manner of speaking. It stopped when somebody murdered him.”

  “Murder? You don’t think I—”

  “Tell me where you were Wednesday and Thursday of last week.”

  Wariness replaced the shock on his face. “I was here, working.”

  “You never left your house?”

  “Sure, for groceries and to visit junkyards, looking for materials.” He jerked his thumb toward his truck. “Found ’em, too. You can see for yourself.”

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  “I got nothing to hide.” His body language was contradicting him.

  I walked to the truck bed and flipped up the tarp. The license was a specialty tag, Save the Manatee.

  I was adding two and two and coming up with three. The truck and tag fit Garth’s description of the vehicle he’d seen at Grove Spirit House, but no way could the kid have confused Shively with a short, bald Hispanic with a scar on his face.

  “You ever loan your truck to someone else?”

  He shook his head. “It’s my only means of transportation. Out here in the boonies, I never know when I might need it.”

  He could have been telling the truth. Or not. Hell, I was good, but I wasn’t infallible.

  “A man was spotted at Ashton’s,” I said, “the night before the murder.”

  “They think he did it?” Shively asked.

  “He’s a person of interest. The police would like to talk to him.” I was making things up as I went along. Keating had no desire to investigate further. He was satisfied Alicia was his killer.

  “What’s their person of interest got to do with me?”

  “Depends. You know a Hispanic male, short, bald, scar on his cheek?”

  Shively paused a moment, then shook his head. “The area is crawling with Mexicans. They mow lawns, work for contractors. They even sneak through the properties along the river to fish. But I don’t pay that much attention to what they look like.”

  My gut said Shively knew more than he was telling, but I had no leverage to make him talk.

  “That’s it, then. Thanks for your time.” I turned to leave.

  “Wait.”

  I looked back, hoping he’d had a change of heart and was ready to tell all.

  “As long as you’re here, you want to buy a sculpture?”

  I glanced around the shed to pick out the ugliest of his works, a hard choice considering the competition, and contemplated buying the monstrosity for Mother, the art connoisseur, as payback for the grief she was giving me over my wedding.

  I pointed to a pile of tire rims, a muffler, a battery, broken headlights and other detritus bound together by welds, baling wire and old battery cables, hands down the tackiest of his creations. It was too big to transport in my Volvo, but maybe, with his pickup, he delivered.

  “Ah,” he said, “good choice. I call it Eternity.”

  Death on the Highway was a better description, but what did I know?

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Eight thousand.”

  I shook my head. “Guess I’m not ready for Eternity yet.”

  Before he could pitch me a cheaper piece, I hurried to my car.

  CHAPTER 15

  Ten minutes after leaving Shively, I stopped at a convenience store in Fort White to use the pay phone to call Alicia’s attorney. Terry Pender answered her cell on the first ring.

  “Do you have access to a sketch artist?” I asked.

  “Yeah, a guy retired from NYPD who’s done some work for me in the past. What do you need?”

  “A sketch of the Hispanic male Swinburn saw at Grove Spirit House the night before Ashton died. You think your man could draw that up for me today?”

  “I’ll get Garth and the artist together and have them work on it. Any luck so far?”

  “Nothing specific. Just bad vibes. I’m driving to South Carolina to meet Bill, swap notes and interview another one of Ashton’s former clients.”

  “How can I reach you?”

  “Bill has a cell phone.” I gave her the number.

  “I’ll fax you the sketch as soon as I have it.”

  “How’s Alicia holding up?” I asked.

  “Not good. The shock is wearing off and she’s going to pieces.”

  “I need to talk to her as soon as I get back.”

  “I’ll arrange it,” Terry said. “Good luck.”

  It was almost 10:00 p.m. when I met Bill at a motel at the intersection of I-85 and U.S. 441, north of Commerce, Georgia. He had already turned in the rental car he’d driven from Nashville and booked a room with a refrigerator and microwave. He’d also picked up dinner before the restaurants had closed.

  While I related my interview with Shively, he heated entrées in the microwave and removed salads from the fridge.

  I sat at the table opposite Bill and dug into my salad. I’d had nothing to eat since McDonald’s. If I’d been on my own, I’d have been consuming crackers and a Diet Coke from the vending machine, but Bill always made certain I was well-fed, another of the multitude of things I loved about him.

  “Shively’s truck fits Swinburn’s description.” I ate another mouthful. “And Shively had motive, but where does this Hispanic guy come in?”

  I pointed to the sketch of the scar-faced male Terry had faxed to the motel office.

  “Hired hit man?” Bill suggested.

  “It’s possible. If Shively’s actually selling his junk for the kind of prices he quoted me, he could afford a hired killer.”

  “But hit men usually kill with a bullet to the head,” Bill said. “Poison’s generally a woman’s weapon.”

  I nodded. “My money’s on Celeste, but we have nothing concrete. Maybe this Hispanic, if we find him, can help us nail down her motive.”

  “We’ll stop in Fort White again on our way home,” Bill said. “Show this sketch around and see if anyone can ID him. Meanwhile, I have my own theory on Baldie’s identity.”

  “Something you turned up in Tennessee on Ashton’s past as Ryan Wayne?”

  Bill
nodded. “Wayne was far from a model prisoner. He was always fighting with other inmates. In one brawl he cut open a guy’s face with a shiv.”

  “A Hispanic?”

  “Jorges Garcia.”

  “Bald?”

  “Not twenty years ago, according to the warden’s records.”

  I stared at the ragged scar across the cheek of the man in the sketch. “This guy might not be bald, either. A lot of tough guys shave their heads these days.”

  “But if he’s so tough,” Bill said, “how come he slipped poison into Ashton’s food? Not much machismo in that.”

  “If Shively hired him—” too damned many ifs “—Shively could have wanted maximum damage to Ashton. Kill him, his wife and his clients. And cover his tracks by laying the blame on the kitchen help.”

  “Makes sense,” Bill said with a nod. “Only one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Where the hell is Garcia?”

  I thought for a moment. “We can call Adler. Ask him to run the name through DMV. If Garcia has a Florida driver’s license, it will give us an address.”

  Bill grinned. “The way your brain works, you should be a detective.”

  “Bite your tongue,” I said, “and pass the manicotti.”

  The next morning, Bill and I arrived in Walhalla, a charming little town in northwest South Carolina, around 9:30 a.m. I appreciated the cool crispness of the mountain air, a welcome change from Florida’s suffocating humidity. We stopped for coffee at a small café and asked directions to the address of Cynthia Woods, the she-said half of the sexual-assault charge against Ashton, known then as James Bessemer.

  We left the coffee shop and soon found the address that had been listed in the police report, a handsome three-story brick house on a one-acre landscaped lot with a gated entry and sweeping front drive. But Cynthia Woods no longer lived there. The maid who answered the door must have had similar inquiries because she immediately responded with an address and directions.

  We finally located Cynthia in a run-down trailer park on the edge of town. Her place was an aging double-wide with half the skirting missing and a six-year-old Mercedes looking out of place beneath the attached makeshift carport.

  A woman with red-rimmed eyes, tangled hair, and dressed in jeans and a faded sweatshirt answered my knock on the door. Because Cynthia had charged Wayne/Cooper/Bessemer/Ashton with rape, Bill had decided to wait in the car. He figured Cynthia would open up more freely to another woman.

  “Yeah?” The half-empty beer bottle in her hand explained the slur in her voice, one giant step beyond Southern drawl.

  “Cynthia Woods?” I asked.

  “That’s me.”

  She must have seen my glance at the beer in her hand. She shrugged. “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

  I showed her my ID and introduced myself. “My partner’s in the car. We’re here to ask some questions about James Bessemer.”

  “What’s the creep done now?” She didn’t ask me in, but stepped onto the landing of the rickety steps and pulled the door closed behind her.

  “Tell me about your experiences at Mountain Spirit House.”

  “Experiences?” she said with a harsh laugh. “That’s too nice a word for it. I was raped.”

  I nodded. “I read the police report. You said Bessemer drugged you.”

  “Had to. I wouldn’t submit to him like the others. He claimed I couldn’t achieve oneness with the Universal Spirit without the outward physical manifestations. In other words, sex with him.”

  “What brought you to the retreat in the first place?”

  She rotated the bottle, sloshing beer against the sides. “I was bored. You can’t tell from looking at me now, but I was the pretty, pampered wife of the owner of a successful car dealership. My children were at college, I could only have my hair and nails done so many times a month, and I was going out of my mind. When Bessemer and his wife opened Mountain Spirit House, their retreat seemed like the answer to a prayer.” Tears formed in her bleary eyes. “Turned out to be a curse.”

  “His wife? Bessemer was married then?”

  Cynthia nodded. “Celeste was his business manager. And she took care of the male clients.”

  “Took care of?”

  “The whole damned business was about nothing but sex. Universal oneness was a euphemism for one huge orgy. And Bessemer strutted around the place like a randy rooster.”

  “Celeste was okay with that?” I was having trouble picturing the woman I’d met with the one Cynthia had described.

  Cynthia shook her head. “Didn’t matter whether Celeste was okay with it or not. I could tell she was terrified of her husband. And after I filed charges and saw his temper explode, I understood why.”

  “Did others—”

  “Margaret,” Bill called from the car. He opened the door and approached with his cell phone. “Call for you. It’s Caroline.”

  My heart jammed in my throat. Caroline had Bill’s cell number in case of emergencies, and Bill wouldn’t have interrupted my interrogation if the call hadn’t been important.

  I met him halfway and took the phone. “It’s me, Maggie.”

  “I’ve just brought Mother to the emergency room,” Caroline said. “She’s asking for you. You’d better come home.”

  “Another stroke?” Worry and guilt made me sick to my stomach.

  “It’s her heart. How soon can you get here?”

  I was more than six hundred miles away. “I’ll check the airlines. Tell her we’re on our way.”

  The nearest airports were Greenville, Asheville and Atlanta, all hours away. By the time we could have reached any of them and I made connecting flights to Tampa, Bill figured he could drive me home as quickly. We left Walhalla shortly after noon.

  Guilt gnawed at me. “I shouldn’t have given her such a hard time about the wedding. She’s only been out of the hospital two months.”

  “You didn’t cause your mother’s illness,” Bill assured me.

  I wished I felt as certain. She’d made her unhappiness clear in her last phone call. I’d refused to meet her for lunch. If she died…

  “Concentrate on the Ashton case,” Bill appealed to the workaholic side of my nature to suppress the neurotic daughter. “Tell me everything we know. What fits, what doesn’t. We have to get a handle on this for Alicia’s sake.”

  “How can I think about work, when my mother—”

  “May be perfectly fine by the time we get there.” Bill wasn’t hard-hearted. He was trying to distract me.

  I took a deep breath, said a silent prayer for Mother’s recovery, and did as he asked. “Assuming Alicia is innocent, our main suspects are Garth—”

  “Motive?”

  “Jealousy and/or revenge. Ashton stole the affections of his fiancée. And their honeymoon account. Garth had the means and opportunity, since, by his own admission, he was in the grove the night before Ashton died.”

  “Probability that he’s our man?” Bill kept his eyes on the road, but I could almost hear the wheels turning in his brain. He’d thought through the details of the case, but having someone else’s perspective sometimes jogged his mind to take a different tack.

  “Hard to tell. Garth seems like a nice kid, but learning about Alicia and Ashton and the missing money might have pushed him over the edge.”

  We had crossed into Georgia on I-85 and the lush greenness of the open countryside was broken only by the occasional billboard. Although Bill was driving slightly over the speed limit, the car seemed to crawl, making me wonder if we’d ever reach Florida.

  “Next suspect?” Bill asked.

  “Celeste. She also had means and opportunity. And Cynthia Woods said Celeste was afraid of Ashton. And she couldn’t have been happy with his infidelity.”

  “Maybe their marriage wasn’t a real union but merely part of their scam,” Bill said, “especially if their retreats were supposed to be couples’ seminars.”

  “A pretend marriage mig
ht rule out jealousy as a motive, but not her fear of Ashton.”

  “Why not just run away?” he said. “Celeste was the bookkeeper and had access to the money. She could have simply taken what she needed and disappeared.”

  “We need to know more about her. I’ll check with Keating to see if he’ll give me her true identity.”

  We turned south onto U.S. 441 and took the bypass around Athens. Heavy rain from a sudden thunderstorm almost obscured the road ahead, and the wipers of my Volvo flicked at high speed across the windshield.

  “So who’s your best pick for Ashton’s murderer?” Bill asked.

  “Jorges Garcia. It’s too much of a coincidence this enemy from Ashton’s past shows up the night before he dies.”

  “Motive?”

  I thought for a moment. “Maybe the beef he had with Ryan Wayne in prison has festered all these years. Garcia would be reminded of it every time he saw his scarred cheek in the mirror. With Wayne on the move and changing aliases, it might have taken Garcia this long to catch up with him.”

  Bill nodded but didn’t take his eyes from the road. “Time enough for his hatred to have cooled from hot passion to cold-blooded revenge.”

  “Hence the poisoning rather than a machismo face-to-face killing.”

  “What about Shively as a suspect?”

  “Garcia could have met Shively when he was tracking Ryan Wayne. Or not. We don’t know for sure that Garcia borrowed Shively’s truck. He could have used his own vehicle. Old pickups with specialty tags aren’t that uncommon.”

  We’d driven out of the thunderstorm, and Bill switched off the wipers and headlights. Steam rose from the highway where cold rain had met hot asphalt. A recently cleared field on the side of the road revealed red clay, looking like an open wound on the landscape.

  “Maybe Shively and Garcia are co-conspirators,” Bill suggested. “What if Shively drove Garcia to Pelican Bay and waited in the truck as lookout while Garcia planted the poison.”

  “Possible,” I agreed. “But my gut tells me we’re missing something.”

  “We have to do more digging. Meantime, why don’t you try to get some sleep.”