by Mike Markel
“No, but I know who does.”
“The FBI guy? What’s his name?”
“Allen Pfeiffer. Let me try him.” I opened my online address book, then dialed Pfeiffer’s number. “Shit,” I said to Ryan as I heard his phone ringing. “He’s not in.” Then, into the phone, “Allen, this is Karen Seagate. I need your help on a case. Could you give me a call when you get a chance? I’ll try you back later this afternoon.”
“You want to try Carol Freeman now?”
“Yeah, might as well.” I checked my address book again, dialed, and hit Speaker. “Hello, Carol? Karen Seagate.”
“Hi, Karen. How are you?”
“Good, good. Things calming down after the election?”
“Pretty much. But just when I got that out of the way, the semester’s winding down, which means advising for next semester, thesis defenses, writing reference letters, and students going into panic mode about this and that. You know: same old, same old.”
“Carol, we need to visit with you, maybe ten minutes, fifteen, tops, about Dolores Weston. Can we run over now?”
“Sure, but who’s the ‘we’?”
“‘We’ is me and my new partner, Ryan Miner.”
“Oh, really? Tell me about him. What should I know?”
“You should know he’s listening to us on the Speaker now.”
“Shit,” Carol said. “Sorry, Karen. Good afternoon, Detective!”
“Hello, Dr. Freeman,” Ryan said, smiling.
“Karen, I’ve got a student coming by at 2:00; we should be done by 2:15. Would that work?”
“Terrific, we’ll be there.”
“Look forward to it,” Carol said, hanging up.
I said to Ryan, “Carol’s a good person. She’s always trying to fix me up. She doesn’t realize you don’t want to be in a relationship with someone else on the job. She’s married to another professor in the university.”
“He in the same department with her?”
“No, he’s on the other side of campus, in a different college. They don’t have anything to do with each other professionally.”
“So she doesn’t see how two cops in the same building wouldn’t work.”
“That’s right.” I wanted to get the conversation back on track. “But she’s absolutely solid. If there’s something we ought to know about Dolores Weston and Soul Savers, she’ll know it. And if there’s anything to know about Weston icing her husband, she’ll know about that, too.”
“But will she tell us?”
“Yup. She used to be a reporter on a city paper, somewhere back East. Philadelphia, I think. She understands confidentiality. She likes dealing with me. Makes her feel like she’s still in the game.”
“Good, let’s go,” Ryan said, and we started to leave.
My phone rang. “Let me see who it is,” I said, running back to my desk. Caller ID said “Pfeiffer, Allen.” I dropped my coat on my desk, waved Ryan back, and picked up the phone. “Hello, Allen?” I hit Speaker.
“Hi, Karen. This about the Hagerty murder?”
“Yeah, here’s the situation. There’s this guy named Timothy Sanders. He founded Soul Savers about fifteen years ago, but then got squeezed out by my vic, Arlen Hagerty, who wanted to make the organization more high-profile, more political. So Sanders is still on the Board of Directors. We wanted to talk to him; he lives in Waco. Can’t get through to him. Suddenly, this afternoon, he just pops into headquarters and starts giving us this song and dance about how religious he is, blah-blah-blah, and he just flew in from Waco as soon as heard this morning.”
“He said he just heard this morning? That’s about a day late.”
“That’s what we’re thinking. So here’s my question. Can I get TSA records to verify if he flew in from Waco today?”
“No, you can’t, but I can. TSA is a federal agency. They require a request from another federal agency.”
“I’d really like to lean on this guy while he’s still in town. How long would you need?”
“About thirty seconds. So it’s Timothy Sanders—normal spelling?—going from Waco to Billings today, right?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, give me a second.”
While we were waiting, I said to Ryan, “This is what they call interagency cooperation.”
“I like it,” Ryan said.
“Karen,” Allen said. “Sanders said he traveled from Waco to Billings today?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Well, that’s sort of what he did, except he stopped off for three hours in Milwaukee. Funny thing is, it doesn’t look like a layover.”
“How do you know?”
“They’re different airlines: it took him two flights to get to Milwaukee on Southwest. Then he took Frontier to Billings. I don’t think those two airlines are related. I think they’re competitors.”
“Hmm. That’s odd. Well, okay, thanks a lot, Allen. Hope I don’t have to bug you anymore on this case.”
“Not a problem, Karen. Take care.”
“You, too,” I said, hanging up.
“You think the side trip to Milwaukee is something?” Ryan said.
“Maybe. I don’t know. It could have been weather or something that forced them to divert to Milwaukee, and he needed to switch airlines to get here quickly.”
“I don’t like it. There hasn’t been any weather here or in the whole state,” Ryan said.
“Let’s make a note to see if there’s a Soul Savers office in Milwaukee after we talk with Carol. Maybe he stopped by there for some reason.”
“Okay.” He jotted it down in his notebook. We grabbed our coats and headed out for the parking lot. “Before we go,” he said, waving me in toward him so he could speak quieter, “You think we ought to tell the chief that Sanders mentioned something about Dolores Weston? Seeing as she’s going to be all over the media this evening?”
I thought for a second. “Why don’t we talk to Carol first, see if she knows anything. Dolores Weston hitting her husband and the Hagerty case are probably a coincidence. Besides, you want the chief messing around in our investigation?”
“Let’s go talk to Carol,” Ryan said.
Chapter 6
“She’s right down here, I think.” We walked down the long hallway on the second floor of the Social Science building on the Central Montana campus. Students sat at the tables and mix-and-match old chairs in the hallway, typing or playing games on their laptops, trying to quiet their squirming babies, eating takeout. The hallway smelled like a lunchroom. Carol Freeman’s door was open. I peeked in and saw Carol talking to a female student.
The student came out of Carol Freeman’s office shaking her head as if things had gone badly. She was wearing a tight blouse, low cut, showing way too much boob. Her jeans were tight, the heels high, the makeup Barnum and Bailey. I decided to give Carol a moment to collect herself before going up to the door. Carol popped her head out. “Karen,” she said cheerfully. “Come on in.”
We walked into the small cinder-blocked office. Every inch of wall space was covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Papers, newspapers, and books were stacked in foot-high piles. Her desktop seemed to sag beneath the piles of stuff. “Glad I had a chance to clean up yesterday,” she said. There was only one visitor’s chair. “Grab a chair from the hall, Detective,” she said to Ryan. When Ryan left the office, Carol said to me, “Very nice, kid. I like those shoulders. Good stamina in the sack, no?”
I laughed. “That’s my new partner. He’s extremely young, and extremely married.”
“Great,” Carol said. “Then he knows how to operate all the equipment, right?”
“I see you still live in Fantasyland.”
“Like it’d be more fun living here in Rawlings?”
Ryan returned with a cheap plastic chair.
I said, “Carol, this is my partner, Detective Ryan Miner. Ryan, Dr. Carol Freeman.”
“Glad to meet you, Dr. Freeman,” Ryan said.
&
nbsp; “God, do I look that old?” she said. “Call me Carol, okay? Sit down, both of you. Ryan, close that door, would you?” She was about sixty, her face comfortably creased and lined. Her brown eyes were ringed with liver spots. Her grey hair was cut Beatles 1964. Her reading glasses balanced on the tip of her nose, tethered by a neon green cord around her neck. She wore a black and red checked men’s work shirt, blue jeans, thick pink woolen socks, and Birkenstocks. She slapped her palms down on her knees and leaned in to me. “Okay, kiddo, what do you need? It’s about Dolores Weston, right?”
“Well, her name is on our radar for a couple of things. Let’s start with her link to Hagerty, okay? Hagerty’s organization was established by a guy named Timothy Sanders, who popped in on us after lunch. He lost out on a power struggle at Soul Savers some years ago—”
“Yeah, I think I remember reading that.”
“So Sanders says he came here to Rawlings to talk to Dolores Weston about the pharmaceutical company. We don’t have any idea what the hell he’s talking about, but I told Ryan I knew who would,” I said, pointing to Carol.
“Oh, this is good,” Carol said, her brown eyes lighting up. “You looking at this guy Timothy Sanders for the murder?”
I shook my head. “Come on, Carol. You know I can’t tell you anything about our investigation.”
“Can’t blame me for trying, am I right, Ryan?”
“No,” he said with a smile, “sure can’t.”
“Okay,” Carol said to me, “what do you want to know about Dolores and the pharmaceutical?”
“Everything I need to know.”
“Dolores Weston is blue blood, one-hundred percent. She’s from Bryn Mawr, right in the heart of the Main Line.”
“Where’s that?” I said.
“That’s the ritzy suburbs west of Philadelphia. Named after the main train line linking Philly and Chicago in the nineteenth century. Bryn Mawr College is one of the tony Seven Sisters. She’s a debutante, some sort of beauty queen. Second or third marriage is to this guy named Weston, who started a wireless company that went big. He was smart enough to cash his chips before everyone else got into the business. That’s how he’s worth a couple billion and buys the place in Maui, along with a half-dozen other places. Back East she was a Rockefeller Republican: fiscal conservative, free trader, philanthropist. So they move out to Rawlings, where they have one of their homes. They call it a lodge. Around eight-thousand square feet. My place would fit in the kitchen.”
I said, “So how’d she get into politics?”
“She hadn’t done anything in politics before, but she got into the Junior League, started hosting fundraisers, people saw she was smart and knew how to throw a party. So the R’s tap her for a state senate race. Her kids are off at college, she needs something to do, she says yes.”
“So how does she turn into the big-sky conservative?”
Carol laughed. “That was all show biz. She saw that the conservatives out here were not the pro-business types from Philadelphia but socially conservative, borderline libertarian.”
“And she just turns into that?”
“Sure, why not? You remember those commercials with her sitting on that boulder, she’s wearing jeans, a shotgun leaning on the rock, the dead quail on the ground? She told me those things were foreign to her. I said, ‘You mean the bird and the rifle?’ She said, ‘I was referring to the jeans.’ She’s really a hoot.”
“You were there when they shot that commercial?” Ryan said.
“Honey, I wrote that commercial. Brought the props. Got the dead bird from an otherwise useless student of mine.”
I said, “So you were working for her? I thought you were a Democrat.”
“I am, but since I’m also a realist, I try to help those Republicans who don’t scare the crap out of me. And she’s one of them. And keep that info about me helping the Republicans under your hat,” Carol said with a burst of laughter. “I’m officially non-partisan. You know, above the fray, and all that nonsense.”
“Okay,” I said, “what’s this pharmaceutical company?”
“It’s Henley Pharmaceuticals. They’re based in New Jersey, along the Jersey Turnpike up near the city. They want to build a facility somewhere out here in God’s country.”
“Why’s that?”
“They’ve getting squeezed by the high real estate near New York, so they’re salivating over our land prices. We can be a fifth the price. They can buy the whole damn prairie in case they want to build a bigger place later. In addition, we’re non-union, and the state’s got all kinds of tax incentives for high-tech companies with more than a hundred workers. The company’s looking at a number of cities out here with universities. They want to take advantage of the semi-skilled labor, as well as the science faculty.”
“Sounds like a match made in heaven. How come the talks aren’t in the paper?”
“There’s one problem, and it’s a big one. Henley Pharma is working on some procedures for stem-cell research.”
“What’s Dolores Weston have to do with that?”
“Since she’s smart enough to tie her own shoes, she’s all for the research, but some of her colleagues are dumb as dirt, and she has to play nice with them. It isn’t public yet, but some of them are trying to block the tax incentives to companies that do anything they don’t like, such as working on embryos or anything to do with birth control. In fact, these troglodytes had some draft language forbidding any activities that involve killing. Dolores was telling me she asked her caucus if they’d block a company that makes chemicals used in lethal injections, and the head yahoo says no, why would we block that? We got a good laugh out of that one.”
“Where do things stand now?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t talked with Dolores since election night, but I assume she’s still trying to figure out some way to convince her colleagues to stop frothing at the mouth about Henley, because the company would bring a lot of good jobs to the area.”
Ryan said, “What do you know about any financial relationship between Dolores and the pharma?”
“I know Dolores says she doesn’t take any money from any companies out of state. She doesn’t want to put anyone’s nose out of joint, especially since there’s a two-thousand dollar limit on contributions. It simply wouldn’t be worth the bad publicity.”
“How about private financial dealings? Does she own any stock?”
“No idea,” Carol said. “The reporting laws don’t make you reveal that.”
“About the science faculty,” I said. “Henley interested in working with anyone in particular on this campus?”
“Not sure. But I think I remember reading about this new hot shit in Biology. Lakshmi Something.” Ryan took out his notebook and started writing. “About fifteen letters, a real jaw breaker. Everyone was talking about her because the department not only hired her, they hired her husband, too, as some kind of post-doc. That can annoy people.”
“That means she’s good?” I said.
“No, that means she’s great.”
“One more thing,” I said. “What do you know about Dolores’ relationship with her late husband?” I wasn’t going to tell her about the arrest of the kid for killing James Weston, but it was safe to ask a softball question.
“What do you mean, like were they in love?” Carol was wearing a confused look.
“Well, sure, anything like that. What kind of couple were they?”
“Don’t really know. I met him a couple times at parties. He seemed very—what’s the word?—solicitous of her. But he was such a cool dude, I wouldn’t expect anything less of him. No talk of any girlfriends, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“I’m not getting at anything in particular,” I said. I didn’t like being evasive with her, but I had to. “Just wanted to get a sense of their relationship.” I paused. “Do you know if James Weston was closely tied to his wife’s political career?”
“He showed up at her fundraisers, dona
ted up to the limit, things like that. But I think he saw it more as her hobby. He was on about a dozen boards here and overseas. Playing in a bigger league, the way I see it,” Carol said.
I said, “Anything else you wanna ask, Ryan?”
“No, I’m good,” he said.
“Carol, this was terrific. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“My pleasure, Karen. Always good to talk with you. And nice meeting you, Good Looking.”
Ryan blushed. “You, too.”
Carol touched my arm. “Try not to hurt Dolores, would you? She’s one of the good guys. And this is a tough time for her.”
“I hear you, Carol. I’ll be careful.”
“Thanks, honey.”
* * *
Outside Carol Freeman’s office, Ryan said, “You think there’s any link between the James Weston murder and the Hagerty murder?”
“At this point, I don’t think so, but it’s kind of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Sure I do,” Ryan said, “but all there is at this point is a drugged-out loser saying Dolores paid him to take out her husband—and he doesn’t know why. And there’s rope fibers on the guy’s knife. Unless they can definitively match those fibers to the parasail rope, the Weston case isn’t even a murder yet.”
“Yeah, I know, the cash in the guy’s pocket was more likely from a drug deal than a payoff from Dolores Weston, but let’s keep our eyes open. The chief must’ve met with the Maui detectives. If they showed him any evidence pointing to a connection between Dolores and the doper here in Rawlings, he’ll be sitting in his office right now figuring out how he can be the hero by nailing her. We’ll find out soon enough. In the meantime,” I said, “wanna go over to Biology and see if we can get some information on Lakshmi Something?”
“Might not have to. Let me see if she’s online. Give me a minute.” We walked over to a table and he pulled out his laptop. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I can get her CV right here. Probably all kinds of info on Henley, too.” He booted the machine, Googled the university site, and navigated to the Biology Department. “Here she is: Lakshmi Kumaraswamy. Let me see if she’s got her CV online.” He scrolled for a moment. “Here it is.”
