The Sleuth Sisters

by Pill, Maggie

  Anyway, I said, “A few times. We met at a thing and hit it off, and he asked me out.”

  Unlike my sisters, I have a social life, and Winston and I had met at a Republican fund-raising dinner. While I’m not political in terms of party, I do support candidates who support the police. My husband, a state cop, was killed in the line of duty, and my efforts to get better body armor state-wide meant I’d met most of the movers and shakers of Michigan legislation at one time or another.

  After chatting for a few minutes, Winston and I had ended up sitting together at dinner. He was good-looking and charming, if a little shallow. He’d told me he was divorced, which is why the news Faye was about to dump on me was a double shock.

  “Mr. Darrow called the office this morning. He’s under arrest for his wife’s murder, and he wants us to prove he’s innocent of the crime.”

  My tone rose a notch. “Winston is married? I mean, he was married?”

  “I’m sorry, Retta. His wife was shot some time Thursday night. Barb told him we’d look into it but we couldn’t guarantee anything.”

  My mind was going in a dozen directions. Winston was married. He was in jail, accused of murdering a woman I hadn’t known existed, at least not in the present tense. I was angry and embarrassed, but over all that, something else reverberated. I couldn’t see Winston killing anything, much less a living, breathing, still-attached wife. “Faye, he’s not the murdering type.”

  Faye kept her voice low, and I guessed she was trying to keep Barbara from hearing. “Retta, I didn’t think it was right to take this case without letting you know, because you’re bound to be dragged into it.”

  Another shocker. “Am I a suspect?”

  “Right now, the police seem to think Darrrow acted alone, but if he killed his wife, it might have been to be free to marry you.”

  I shook my head vigorously, though she couldn’t see it. “That’s ridiculous. In the first place, I’m not even close to thinking about marrying Winston. In the second place, the guy cringes when he steps on a bug. He doesn’t hunt. He doesn’t fish. It’s one of the reasons I liked him—no long, boring stories about what he saw in the woods yesterday.”

  “Well, he did own a gun, or at least his wife did, and it’s missing.”

  “Which proves nothing unless it’s the gun that killed her.”

  I could almost see Faye raising a hand to calm me down. “I’m just saying the police have a case. Barb’s looking into it, and she’ll be honest with him. We don’t take people’s money if we think it’s a waste of time.”

  “I can tell you right now, it’s not a waste. Winston Darrow is no murderer, and I’m counting on you to keep me informed.”

  She hesitated. “He says he was with you the night his wife died.”

  “Well, not all night, if that’s what you’re asking. He left around midnight.”

  “That doesn’t help him, then. She died on the back porch or their home, and apparently the snow makes it hard to tell exactly what time. They think it was after eleven and before two.”

  “So if he left my place at twelve, he had time to get home and kill her.” I heard a little moan and realized it was me. “What a mess!”

  “Just stay off Barb’s case until she makes some inquiries. You know she’ll hate it if you start giving her advice.”

  “I never give advice, especially to Barbara I’m-Always-Fine-on-My-Own Evans.” I had a thought. “You should call Rory Neuencamp and see what he knows. It’ll be out of his jurisdiction, but cops talk to cops. Oh, and you should check divorce records. Winston told me he and his wife split three years ago.”

  Faye’s tone was patient. “We’ll do that.”

  I ended the call and closed my iPad, too distracted to finish my on-line transaction. As Faye’s news sank in, I got up and walked around the room. Winston was in trouble. Apparently he’d remembered me mentioning my sisters’ business and called them for help. I was a little mad at him for lying to me, but I was also sure he hadn’t killed anyone. I started pacing. What could I do to help?

  Chapter Two: Barb

  “So what was her reaction?”

  Faye jumped a mile, and I smiled grimly. She deserved a little scare for the call to Retta, but I’d known from the first it would happen. Faye is a softie, and she can’t remember that Retta drives us both nuts with her meddling. Besides, this time she was probably right. If Retta was going to be in the spotlight as the Other Woman in a murder investigation, she had a right to know.

  “He told her he’s been divorced for years.” Fay’s eyes hardened as her un-soft side emerged, the one that shows when someone she loves is abused. “The guy’s obviously a Number One Jerk.”

  “Being a jerk doesn’t necessarily make him a murderer,” I commented. I’d been on the Net, finding out what I could about Mr. and Mrs. Darrow. So far I hadn’t found much.

  It’s amazing how much can be learned about a person if you know where to look, and the Smart Detective Agency had developed an array of sources over the year of its existence. Checking at my notes—yes, I still take notes with pen and paper—I said, “Winston Darrow, fifty-eight years old, self-described entrepreneur. His wife Stacy is—was a housewife. They’re comfortable financially, own a home on a lake between here and Gaylord, and have three vehicles: a Lexus, a Prius, and a Tundra. He’s a member of the local Kiwanis Club, the Rotary, the Republican Party, and the Friends of the Library but doesn’t often attend meetings. He pays his dues and shows up at functions that might be fun, dinners, parties, stuff like that. Mrs. Darrow stays home a lot, but she’s a member of a dozen on-line groups, mostly connected to reading mysteries and collecting Carnival glass.”

  “Good reading choice,” Faye replied. Cozies are her second favorite, after romances. She looked down at her keyboard. “Do you think Chief Neuencamp could help with this?”

  I guessed Retta had made that suggestion, which was why Faye didn’t meet my gaze. Rory probably could help, but I was reluctant to ask. In the first place, I didn’t want our local police chief to think we expected him to support our agency by doing our job for us. In the second place, I didn’t want him to think I called because I was chasing after him. Our relationship was cordial, and both Faye and Retta thought Rory was interested in taking it a step farther. It seemed to me he was holding back, and I wasn’t completely sure why. It might be a desire to keep professional distance between the Allport police and the city’s only detective agency. What I didn’t want to think about, much less believe, was that Rory thought of me only as a friend.

  “Let’s do a little more digging on our own first,” I told Faye. “When I talk to the chief, I want to have my facts straight.”

  We spent the rest of the morning pulling together every scrap of information we could find on the Darrows. They’d moved to Michigan five years before from Taos, New Mexico. Their marriage license, dated almost five years ago, said her maiden name was Stacy Kern, but none of the Stacy Kerns I got in Taos seemed like a fit for Winston, being either too old or too young. I started with the older ones. From the little I knew, Winston seemed like the kind of guy who might woo and marry an older woman as an alternative to working for a living. None of those names worked out, though. When I checked the younger Stacy Kerns list, there it was. Stacy was fifteen years Winston’s junior, according to the date on her birth certificate. Her parents, Alice (Duggan) and Charles Kern, were both listed as being born in Rutland, Vermont.

  I pictured a plain girl who’d married an older man, maybe a father figure. Looking for pictures, I found nothing for a long time, but finally one turned up on Win’s Facebook timeline. It said, “Win & Stacy Got Married.” They were standing in front of a sprawling red-brick courthouse, and when I set the cursor over it, Taos, New Mexico came up. Unfortunately, whoever snapped the picture hadn’t timed the shot well, and Stacy was digging in her
purse for something. All I saw was a trim figure, a stylish mini-dress, and a lot of dark brown hair.

  Did it make sense that Win wanted to trade his thirty-something wife in for Retta so badly that he’d murdered her? It wasn’t the way things usually went, but one never knows. Retta didn’t look fifty, and she was attractive—at least, until she tried to run your life.

  Chapter Three: Faye

  I was pleased when Barb asked me to do the initial interview with Winston Darrow. It showed she had confidence in me, that I wasn’t just the office manager in the agency. Of course I’d done other interviews and client meetings before, but this was only our second murder investigation. It’s a little scary when the stakes are so high, but it was good that she trusted me to handle it.

  Darrow was being held in the jail one county over from ours, Bonner. It was comprised of a lot of small lakes and patches of forest, which made it one of those you-can’t-get-there-from-here places. The county’s roads meandered through touristy little towns, following shorelines and skirting hills, and it was impossible to go anywhere very fast. It took me an hour to get to the jail in the town of Canton, though it was probably only thirty miles from the Allport city limits as the crow flies.

  I introduced myself, ignored the raised eyebrows at a woman of my age being a detective, and asked to see Darrow, who at this point was being charged only with failure to report a murder. After some back and forth, I was shown into a bland room containing only a table and three chairs, the kind with metal legs and a one-piece, molded plastic seat.

  After I’d been there for about two minutes, a deputy brought Darrow in. If he’d been two decades younger he’d have qualified as eye candy, and he still didn’t look bad. Thick black hair with just a touch of gray at the temples; a trim build, not athletic but hardly gone to seed; and large green eyes set into a fine-boned face. The jarring note was his manner which, though it probably pleased some women, raised my hackles immediately. Stepping in close in a move designed to make me feel small and feminine, he tilted his head down and to one side and gave me a look that was meant to be sincere. “Mrs. Burner, it’s good of you to come so quickly.”

  Stepping out of his personal space and recapturing my own, I put out a hand. “Mr. Darrow.”

  “Please, call me Win.”

  We shook, and he held on that extra half-second men like him use to let a woman know she’s interesting. I was trying to maintain objectivity, but he hadn’t gained any points so far. It was obvious that Winston “Call me Win” Darrow lived on charm, and I’ve never been able to abide men like that. A bunch of words came to mind: greasy, sleazy, egotistical, lothario, scuzz-bucket—I could go on.

  “Mr. Darrow, I’m sorry for your loss. Please tell me what you know about your wife’s murder.”

  He sat down opposite me, glancing around the room. “Are the police listening?”

  I shrugged. “I guess they could be. This isn’t a privileged conversation.” I met his gaze. “Were you intending to tell me something you didn’t tell them?”

  “No, no,” he said, waving his hands. “I’m told them the truth, just like I’m going to tell you.”

  As he talked, I noted fraying around the edges of Win’s smooth persona. His un-shaven look was a tad too long, not Duck Dynasty but not Hugh Jackman, either. He looked rumpled, and his eyes were glassy, as if he was operating in a semi-conscious state. When I asked him to tell me what he knew, however, he pulled himself together and gave me a pretty good accounting.

  “I was with your sister, Mrs. Stilson, Thursday night until about twelve. We had dinner at that new Mediterranean restaurant then she invited me back to her place. She’d made a pie, and she said she’d never eat it all by herself.” He tried to look innocent. I tried to look like I could care less what he and my sister had done after eating pie.

  “When I left Retta’s house, there was a lot more snow than there’d been earlier. It was drifting pretty badly on the east-west roads. It took longer to get home than usual, and it was white-knuckles all the way.”

  “What time did you get home?” I almost added “to your wife” but he was the client. I had to attempt objectivity, even if he was a louse.

  “I think about one-thirty. When I tried to pull into the driveway I couldn’t see the posts, and I missed it. Everything was white, and I ended up stuck. I tried to get out for a while, but I couldn’t. The car was off the road far enough that it wasn’t a hazard, so I left it there, figuring I’d borrow my neighbor’s tractor in the morning. I went into the house. It was dark, and my hands and feet were freezing from trying to push the car out of the snow bank. I didn’t look to see if Stacy was in bed. I just went to my own room.”

  “You had separate rooms?”

  He glanced up at me then back down at his hands. “Stacy likes—liked her own space, and god knows we had plenty of room.”

  “You didn’t look in on her?”

  Darrow met my gaze. “My marriage wasn’t very good, Mrs. Burner. Stacy had become completely uninterested in–pretty much anything that had to do with me.”

  “Was that because you went around telling other women you were divorced?”

  He wanted to be angry, but in the end he just lowered his head. “We might as well have been.”

  “You stayed because the money was hers?” It was a guess, but why else would a schmoozer like Darrow stay with a woman who ignored him?

  He shrugged, and for a few seconds I thought he was going to cry. He didn’t, but his voice was choked as he said, “Yes. But I’d have been a better husband if Stacy had been a better wife.”

  How many times had I heard that rationalization? Every bar in the world has a guy moaning “My wife doesn’t understand me!”

  Okay, to be fair, there are women doing the same thing.

  “Do you think she had someone else?”

  “I don’t see how, unless it was one of those on-line things. She never went anywhere.”

  I leaned forward, putting my hands on the table. “How did you two meet?”

  He gathered his thoughts briefly. “In New Mexico, in one of those artsy places in Taos. I was having lunch at an outdoor café. It was getting crowded when Stacy came in, and she asked if we could share a table. We got to talking, like people do in those situations. She said she was from Delaware, but her husband had died so she decided to start a new life somewhere else.”

  “Delaware,” I repeated, writing it down. “How did her husband die?”

  “Car accident. Anyway, we hit it off, and I ended up asking her out to dinner. From there on things went really well, and it wasn’t long before we got married.”

  “How long, exactly?”

  “Three weeks.” He looked embarrassed, and I thought I knew why.

  “By then you’d realized she had money.”

  This time his anger was more genuine. “Look, just because a guy knows something like that doesn’t mean--”

  “He’s a gigolo?” I finished.

  “I really liked Stacy. She was fun, she was gorgeous--”

  “She was fifteen years younger than you. How’d you pull that one off, Win?”

  He shook his head like a kid that doesn’t want to take his medicine. “She said we made a great couple. It was only later that she--” He looked at his hands again. “She lost interest.”

  “Did she make you sign a pre-nup?”

  “Um, no.” He looked uncomfortable. “She kind of thought I had money too.”

  “Wonder where she got that idea!” It was time to back off a little. “Where do you come from?”

  His eyes turned sneaky. Win was going to tell me something that wasn’t the truth he’d promised earlier.

  “My family comes from California,” he said. “There’s no one left out there now, but we lived in the San Joaquin Valley when I w
as a kid. My parents were pretty well off, but the dot com bubble wiped out everything. Dad had a heart attack and died, and my mom went within a few months.

  “No siblings?”

  He smiled. “Mom was a true California girl, into Zero Population Growth.”

  “When they died you went to New Mexico?”

  “Yes. Dad had an old friend there, and he let me stay in his guest house for a few months.”

  I was winnowing out the lies as best I could, trying to find kernels of truth. Win might or might have had well-to-do parents. I guessed he preferred not to work for a living. “Entrepreneur” in his case meant I’ll see who I can get to support me.

  He’d been lucky with Stacy, who apparently hadn’t minded when it became obvious he wasn’t wealthy. Or had she? “Your wife changed after the marriage?”

  “Yeah. She wanted to leave New Mexico right away, said she’d found a place in Michigan that was really nice. I was a little hesitant, because I’ve never been much for winter, but she said we’d look for a second home somewhere warmer once we got the one up here settled.”

  “So you moved to Bonner County.”

  He gave a dry chuckle. “We don’t even have a real town in the whole county.”

  “She liked it here?”

  “I guess. There wasn’t any more talk of getting a second place, that’s for sure. Stacy settled into that house like it was the last place on earth.”

  “She didn’t go out?”

  “Sure she did.” His tone was sarcastic. “She went to the barn to see her horse; she went to the woods to ski; she went to the pond to sit and think. Everything else came to her. I bought the groceries. I got the car serviced. Except for the banking, which she did herself, I did everything that meant going where there were people.”

  That didn’t sound good for Win. His wife hadn’t trusted him with money.