She hung up.
Tess had a feeling she wouldn’t call back. The woman had made a quick buck off an old mountain lion, and that was that.
Tess looked at her watch—she had time.
She called Barry Zudowsky, and he agreed to meet her there.
He sounded like he wanted to get it over with. Professional courtesy, that was all.
Tess had something specific she wanted from him. He might do it, he might not, he might argue about it. She’s learned always to ask, even if it made her uncomfortable. That was part of the job description, getting into peoples’ faces and asking them to do something they didn’t feel comfortable doing, something that didn’t fit with their agenda. She did it every day, but today she felt foolish about it. So she said it right away—another favor.
“I’m going to send a photo to you of a man I suspect could be involved in Peter Farley’s death. Frieda Nussman might recognize him. Could you make up a photo lineup with this photo in it?”
He agreed that he could. The he asked, “You think he killed Farley?”
“Yes.”
“How? Farley was killed by an animal. That’s indisputable.”
“I know that.”
Just saying it emboldened him. “He was killed by a mountain lion. The jaw size, the tooth marks. This was a death by misadventure, just as we pegged it.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“You think someone faked it?” He was incredulous. “How could they do that?”
“I’m not sure if they could.”
He said nothing. She knew he was thinking: Wild goose chase.
He was thinking: Wasted day.
Tess said, “I’ll see you there. You’ll bring the photo lineup?”
“Will do.”
She put her bag in the car and drove back out to Desert Winds Animal Sanctuary, this time pulling off the road outside the gate to the property and waiting for Detective Zudowksy.
He pulled up behind her.
As she got out she saw that he was still sitting in his car. It looked like he was writing something down. Defending himself, maybe, for spending the day with a madwoman? She saw him shift in the car and unlatch his shoulder harness. She couldn’t see much past the windshield except for his shape. Finally, he levered his tall beanpole of a body out of the car. Reluctance in every line. A waste of time.
He approached. He said hello and then after that he said nothing. She knew he was trying to figure out what her game was. She hadn’t been completely forthcoming about her theory because it sounded outlandish and she wanted to keep him on her side.
He hadn’t pushed.
But now she could see he was getting fed up.
A waste of a day. Nothing in it for him.
“I brought the photos.”
“Good.”
She followed him to his car and went around and opened up the passenger’s side. He gave her the lineup. He’d used driver’s licenses to match the photo of Michael DeKoven’s DL.
“Good job,” she said.
He didn’t reply. Just looked straight ahead.
Tess just had to deal with it. She needed Zudowsky. Having him there in his official capacity might make Frieda Nussman more cooperative.
They bumped up the road and got out.
Nussman wore a flannel shirt and jeans. Her hair was long, down to the small of her back. She had an angular face, and was thin, almost skeletal. Tess wondered if she might have an eating disorder.
Nussman was prepared. She had the bill of sale in her hand. She described the man, who’d paid her one thousand dollars in cash for the mountain lion and a large cage she’d had rusting around the place. Tess shivered when the woman described it—she’d purchased it at a swap meet, the cage had been used in a circus that had gone out of business. “Paid a pretty penny for it, too,” she said. “I thought it would draw people, but…” She glanced around the yard.
The name on the bill of sale was a Dom Derring.
“He paid you in cash.”
“I told you that.”
“Just great.”
“He called me from out of town,” Nussman said. “He wanted to put a hold on the cat until he could get here, so I charged him a hundred dollars on his credit card.”
“You have the credit card number?”
“I’m pretty sure I still have it in my records. I’m not one to throw anything away.”
“Please look for it.”
She went inside and was gone a long time. Tess could picturing her rummaging around. She didn’t think the chances were too good of seeing that credit card number—but she was wrong. The woman came back out with the name and the credit card number.
Zudowsky walked away and called it in. They waited. Tess continued to talk to Nussman, trying to get on her good side, if she had one. Asking about the animals. The woman answered her questions but wasn’t forthcoming. She seemed to have her mind on something else. Zudowsky ended the call and came their way.
“Excuse me,” Tess said to Nussman. She walked out to meet Barry Zudowsky.
“There was a Dom Derring listed,” Barry Zudowsky said, his voice low. “But the credit card was canceled almost two years ago. You think it’s your guy? DeKoven?”
“Sounds like a made-up name. He applied for it and used it for that one purpose,” Tess said.
“Unless there were others.”
Tess nodded. Time to show Nussman the photo lineup.
She had a good feeling.
Dom Derring—a made-up name.
Michael DeKoven acting cute.
Obvious.
Zudowsky produced the photos.
“Do you recognize any of these men? Could one of them be the man who bought the mountain lion?”
The woman stared at the pictures for a long time. “No, the guy who came here was blond.”
“Just look at their faces. Hair can be dyed. Do you recognize any of them?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Sorry.”
Driving back, Detective Zudowsky said, “I guess that’s that. He’s not your man.”
“Maybe, maybe not. He could have paid someone to buy the mountain lion.”
“You really think that happened?”
“I do.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“He wanted a mountain lion kill.”
“Why?”
Tess said, “He wanted it to look like Farley was killed by an animal. He had his reasons—it was a game.”
“A game.” He looked straight ahead.
She knew what he was thinking.
She’d tell him what she suspected. Might as well. He’d have something to yuk it up with, with his buddies. And so she ran it down for him, that DeKoven had likely killed an ex-cop named George Hanley, Peter Farley, and his own father, Quentin DeKoven. She told him about Hanley’s investigation.
“So this, uh, Hanley, wrote all this down? He called it an investigation? You said he was retired.”
“He was a homicide cop for twenty years.”
“He was how old?”
“Sixty-eight.”
“Uh-huh.” He did not look at her. “So you’re saying this was a game he played, finding people who survived accidents, then killing them?”
“That’s the theory we’re working under. He got the jump on Mr. Farley, maybe knocked him out in some way, and put him in with the lion.”
Zudowsky kept his eyes on the road. “The lion probably wouldn’t attack him even then, from what I’ve heard.”
“He would if he’d been starved.”
Silence. It hung there like the dust over the graded dirt road.
Finally Zudowsky said, “I just don’t see how your theory hangs together. I can’t see someone doing something like this. It’s much more likely that Farley was attacked by a mountain lion. It could happen, if Farley was bent over his bike. That’s what happened north of here. We’ve had two attacks of mountain bikers, and they’re both fairly recent.”
Tess said, “Did anyone do a tox on Peter Farley?”
“I don’t remember seeing anything about one. His cause of death was pretty obvious.”
“Also, I wonder if there were any marks on the body from the cage.”
“DNA wasn’t at front of mind when you’re dealing with an obvious mountain lion attack. Plus, there wasn’t enough of Farley to identify him except for his wallet, bike, and his vehicle parked at the entrance.”
Tess said, “I would like to find that cage.”
He said nothing.
Tess realized that his respect for her had run out, along with professional courtesy.
Just before they split up she said to Barry Zudowsky, “I’m going to ask you to do me one favor.”
To his credit, he didn’t roll his eyes. But he said nothing.
“I’d like to pair Ms. Nussman with a sketch artist. The person who bought the lion is key.”
Zudowsky said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
When he got back in his car and drove away, she thought she’d never hear from him again.
CHAPTER 31
It wasn’t until Jaimie was up drinking tomato juice (she swore by it for a hangover if there wasn’t any menudo around) and squinting at the car coming down the hill—Marisue Jennrette’s Armada—that she realized she hadn’t canceled lessons for today.
Shit.
Felt like a crushed box in the road. But she went out anyway, squinting against the harsh sunlight, and met Marisue and her daughter as they were getting out.
Shielding her eyes against the glare, her brain throbbing in her skull, Jaimie said, “I can’t teach today. I’m sorry.”
“What?” said Marisue. Like she’d been told the sky was falling. She always was a bitch.
“I’m sorry, but my brother died. I’m just getting ready to go to his funeral,” she lied.
“Michael?”
“No, Chad.”
“Chad? Why didn’t you call me? It’s fifteen miles to get here, and I’ve got a lot to do today. I’m working on the flower committee at the Chamber of Commerce!”
God, her head! Jaimie pressed a thumb into her left temple. “I’m sorry. But it’s just this once. My brother, you know? My brother is dead.”
“Fine.”
The woman said it the way Jaimie always said it, the way women said it to men. If that’s the way it’s going to be, fine. Just fine. And by the way, fuck you.
Well fuck you, too, she thought.
After Marisue and her chunky untalented daughter drove off the property, Jaimie walked back toward the house.
Her dogs followed her up onto the steps. They milled around while she opened the door. They stood there, chastened, while she told them to stay outside.
She went to bed. She slept. When she woke up, it was early afternoon. She heard rocks pop off car tires—someone else coming. She hoped it wasn’t Michael. Or Brayden. She wasn’t up to that today. She just wanted everything about what happened in Laguna Beach to just fricking go away.
She got up, not bothering about her wrinkled clothes, her tank top and jeans. It was a truck like any other around here, a white Ford. But she didn’t know this particular one.
She opened the door and the dogs milled around.
The two little terriers, the black lab. The two mutts, one of them spotted. The coon hound.
The truck bumped along the road toward her.
Six dogs, not seven. Jaimie was missing the familiar blue-gray, white, and black—her prize.
Her consolation prize.
Adele was missing.
The guy was just a guy, looking at various pieces of land around here. He asked her if she knew of any. “Just a couple of acres, kind of like a homestead,” he said. He had an open, friendly face. Straw cowboy hat. Jeans, denim shirt. Your average middle-aged guy who maybe grew up rural and now wanted a small place of his own in God’s country. She’d met a million like him. He was way too old for her. But she wasn’t thinking about sex right now. Just get rid of him. Adele was missing. She had to be around here somewhere. But she could be hurt. Not like her not to come when she was called.
Jaimie scanned the yard as he talked, bending her ear with useless babble. On and on and on, as if he enjoyed boring her to death. When all she wanted to do was find Adele. She tuned him out, her eyes searching the grassland, hoping to see some light blue and black and white. Looking for Adele. Maybe she was in the barn. Maybe…
She wished the guy would just get in his fucking truck and go.
He didn’t seem to get the hint. She told him about a place up the road where she’d seen a FOR SALE sign. Just go, already.
Finally he did. In the truck, he honked the horn once and gave her a salute.
Jaimie barely noticed. She was too busy looking for her dog.
Tess was now certain that the lion was purchased to kill Farley. The name on the credit card was made up, but DeKoven had been too cute about it. She looked up the word “Dom” in an online dictionary. “Dominus” meant “lord.” And Derring. She knew that “derring” was part of the term “derring-do.” Her mother had used that term all the time. It meant, basically, doing something that was daring. So it could be that Michael was saying he was superior to others—a lord—and he was, at least in terms of wealth and privilege. Michael was the scion of a wealthy and important family. And he would certainly think of himself as having plenty of “derring-do.”
Old-fashioned term for a young guy.
Derring-do—maybe it was an expression he learned from his mother or father. It took a whole hell of a lot of derring-do to go around the country killing people because you thought you could get away with it.
She wondered where the animal was now. If he had been in the cage with Farley, if he had been driven out of hunger to eat Farley, then there could be evidence somewhere.
The cage was the most likely piece of evidence left.
But how to find it? Michael DeKoven had money and means to do pretty much whatever he wanted to do.
He could have killed the mountain lion and buried him. He could have destroyed the lion cage. Break it up for kindling. Burn it. Melt down the bars. Leave it in a landfill, or push it down a mountain. Plenty of places to do that. There were infinite ways he could dispose of the evidence.
Trying to find the cage, trying to find the mountain lion—that would be like looking for the needle in the haystack. There was so much open county. Forest land. Canyons and washes out in the boonies. Junkyards. Trash heaps.
The lion was gone. The cage was gone. Tess knew it.
She was convinced now that DeKoven was killing people who had previously escaped death. People who should have died, but lived instead.
If it was a game, it was a rich kid’s game. Michael was in his midthirties, but Tess thought of him as a kid. Look at his toys. Look at that car, the Fisker Karma. Look at those expensive paintings. She thought of Jaimie as a kid, too. The two of them in it together?
That left the second-youngest, the girl. Brayden.
And Chad in Laguna.
Could all four of them be involved?
What were the odds of that?
Four siblings, in it together? She grouped them by age. Michael and Jaimie were closest, at thirty-five and thirty-four. Then came Chad at thirty-two—two years’ difference between Jaimie and Chad, and three years’ difference between Michael and Chad. From Chad to Brayden, the youngest, it was three years. Which made Brayden five years younger than Jaimie and six years younger than Michael.
Six years’ difference in age might make a difference. Michael might not have included Brayden in this.
Tess hadn’t met Brayden. She hadn’t met Chad, either.
She wondered which one of the family had tagged Alec Sheppard on top of the Hilton Atlanta.
CHAPTER 32
Tess collected her bag at the Tucson International Airport carousel and walked out to her car. She saw she had a message from Alec Sheppard. She punched in his number as she w
alked.
“Mr. Sheppard? I thought when people sat across from each other at a picnic table and listened to a band called the Blasphemers, we could at least call each other by our first names.”
“I’m ever the professional.”
“No doubt in my mind. I haven’t heard from anybody and wanted to know if there was a—what do you call it in cop lingo? Break in the case? Anything on Steve Barkman?”
“Nothing yet.” She wasn’t about to tell him about the micro disc. “I plan to talk to Detective Tedesco later today. Are you still in town?”
“As a matter of fact I am. I’m looking at houses.”
“Houses?”
“I’m thinking of relocating.”
“Relocating?”
“You know, as in moving here. To Tucson.”
“Why?”
“I like it here, and I don’t need to live in Houston…you have a problem with that? Me being in your jurisdiction?”
“Technically, you’d be in Cheryl Tedesco’s jurisdiction. So what kind of place are you looking for?”
“When I was a college student, I thought it would be pretty cool to live in one of those neighborhoods with the old houses, like the ones in Encanto. So I’m standing in front of this pink adobe pueblo-style monstrosity and I was wondering if you’d give me advice, since you’re a local. Wait, let me send you a picture of it.”
Tess’s heart sped up. She cleared her throat. “That’s not necessary. I’m here in Tucson. I could meet you there.”
Tess drove north on Palo Verde and ended up twenty minutes later outside a very pink house surrounded by desert on a street in a neighborhood called Colonia Solana.
Alec Sheppard was waiting by his rental car.
He looked good.
He was a good-looking man.
She liked Alec Sheppard. In fact, she liked him a lot.
They toured that house and two others. One was in the foothills. The sun was starting to get low. “We could have dinner,” Alec said.
Tess opened her mouth to say she had to get back. Instead, she excused herself and went outside to call Bonny’s extension. It was late and he was already gone. She left a long message detailing what had transpired in California. She sent photos from her phone of the area where Peter Farley had been buried by the mountain pool. She sent photos of the animal sanctuary.
The Survivors Club Page 15
