Jack stared at the idents, then the photo. He didn't remember touching anything, apart from the side fence he'd climbed over and the burglar he'd tackled. And the gate latch, but that was with the heel of his hand.
Except fingerprints don't lie. Thank God, they weren't time-and-date stamped.
As though reading his mind, McGuire said, "The deHavens entertained frequently on the terrace. Barbecues, swim parties, cocktails, after-dinner drinks. Funny thing, though. Mr. deHaven was definite about you never making the guest list."
True, but an allegation wasn't a question. As things stood, it was Carleton deHaven's word against Jack's. The presumption that he and Belle were having an affair was obvious. Also a motive, if she supposedly reneged on leaving Carleton for an encore with Jack, and he'd shot her in a jealous rage.
It fit a wronged husband even neater. Jack said, "I'm surprised my ears haven't burned, much as you and deHaven have tossed around my name."
He looked up at the videocamera recording the interview. "Enough to make you wonder if ol' Carleton's setting me up." His eyes lowered to McGuire. "Where was he when Belle was shot?"
"I'm asking the questions."
"I loved Belle. A part of me always will. If her second husband is all but accusing me of murder, I have a right to know where the hell he was when she was killed."
McGuire gathered the idents and photo and returned them to the file. Another folder slid from the stack and was placed on top. "You don't have a right to jack shit, Jack. But instead of reading it in tomorrow's newspaper, I'll give you a break. DeHaven was in Little Rock, Arkansas. The P.D. there has sworn statements to that effect from a dozen or more people."
They both knew an airtight alibi was as suspicious, if not more so, than no alibi at all. "I guess there hasn't been time to review deHaven's financial records for any unusual cash withdrawals."
"Forget deHaven. Where were you yesterday?"
"I slept in. Alone, unfortunately. The call to Belle was one of many related to the job I mentioned earlier. I gave my dog a bath. Went to the mall awhile, met a friend there for a late lunch and chitchatted."
The receipt from the mall food vendor was in Jack's wallet. He didn't volunteer it. Too pat, for one thing. He also wanted photocopies of the original, lest it escape police custody.
"I went back to my apartmentalone. Went out later for a bite, ran into my dog's groomer, followed her to her house. She made coffee, we talked, then her mother fell ill. The mother's a heart patient and an ambulance was called. I stuck around about a half hour after the paramedics left, then drove home."
"I need the names and numbers of everyone you spoke with, by phone or in person."
"Am I being charged?"
"Remains to be seen."
"Then with all due respect, that's confidential." Jack held up a hand. "Why, is also confidential. If you have probable cause to obtain my phone records, fine. Otherwise, you're fishin'."
"Does obstructing justice mean anything to you? Withholding evidence relevant to a homicide investigation?"
A citizen might swallow his tonsils. A former cop turned private investigator knew the difference between an interview and an interrogation. McGuire had nearly nothing on Jack. Fingerprints outside the deHaven house and no date to go with them. The fatal gunshot was apparently fired from the same caliber weapon as Jack's, along with millions of other .38s, registered and not. Was his phone call to Belle the last she'd answered, much less made? Maybe. Maybe not. Even if it were, it meant zilch.
Yes, his alibi was sketchy. So what? It was Sunday. Normal people don't log their every move. P.I.s don't unless it's billable time.
Jack glanced at the folder moved to the top of the stack. He steeled himself for the big finale. McGuire mentioned it back at the office, after the bombshell he'd dropped to gauge Jack's reaction. A second shock treatment, if it came, he was ready for.
Or so he thought, until enlarged crime-scene prints were dealt out, like a game of gin rummy. Jack willed himself not to look away. To study them clinically. Commit the details to memory.
In the harsh glare of portable stand-lights, the deHavens' master bath resembled a rectangular igloo. The veined marble floors, wainscoting, shower surround and double-vanity counter were in stark contrast to the mahogany cabinetry and trim work.
To the right of the glass-enclosed shower, Belle lay crumpled in a nearly full Jacuzzi. Tendrils of her hair floated beneath her chin, having fallen from a messy upsweep anchored with a clip. Her right leg was crooked over the tub's outer rim, her heel and underside of her calf as bluish-purple as a deep bruise.
The water crested above her breasts, midway to her collarbone, her shoulders slanting downward, molded to the tub's inner curvature. Her head was slightly back, slightly turned, one eyelid hooded. A bullet had obliterated the other.
"Hard for me to look at," McGuire said, "and I wasn't married to her."
The slogan of a long-canceled game show was "It's not what you say, it's what you don't say." Corned Beef McGuire's law-enforcement experience had inured him to horror.
Jack's secret ambition to lead a homicide unit had withered at street-patrol level. He blinked to clear his vision. "No woman deserves to be seen like this. By anyone."
"Then how come you can't take your eyes off 'em?"
Because it's the only chance I'll have, Jack thought. And all I can do for her now is find out who did this.
He raised his head. "The tub. You shut off the jets?"
McGuire didn't respond. It was as good as a no.
"I didn't kill her, Andy." Jack stood. "And this interview's over."
"For now." McGuire moved to the door. "Next time I bring you down here, it'll be in the backseat of the car."
11
After he walked out on McGuire, Jack rode the elevator down a floor to use the washroom. He bent over the lavatory, teeth gritted, splashing water on his face. Both spigots ran liquid ice, as they had when he was a rookie and would have welcomed lukewarm and celebrated hot. Some things never changing wasn't always bad.
Two uniforms strolled in during the frigid baptism. They hardly glanced in Jack's direction, but curtailed their conversation. A civilian, they presumed. One cop checked his clip-on tie in a mirror; neither of them washed their hands before they left.
The washroom's paper-towel dispenser had been replaced with a blower and a roller-towel gizmo. Some joker had inked Caution: Biohazard on the grimy cloth. Yards of wadded toilet paper in the overflowing trash bin said Jack wasn't the first to improvise.
The Visine he squirted in each eye stung like a son of a bitch. A flashback to Belle's fatal wound was resected and shoved in Jack's mental vault.
His gratitude at the elevator car disgorging its occupants on arrival was as fleet as the descent to the second floor. While incoming passengers fanned into the remaining corners, Jack fixed his gaze on the broken indicator panel above the door. The last person to enter the car, an older gent, was left spatially adrift.
At the lobby level, Jack was poised to forgo the antiquated ladies-first drill. As the doors rolled open, his shoe stubbed the uneven brass threshold at the same instant Dina Wexler hoved into view.
Her face went sheet-white; somehow her whisper sounded like a shriek. "I didn't do it, McPhee. I swear to God, I didn't!"
"That's wonderful," he said, and tossed off a rictus smile at the elevator's other passengers. Spinning Dina around, he took her arm and escorted her toward the building's front entrance. Hustling her away from the police was quickly becoming a habit.
"Didn't do what?" he inquired under his breath.
"Kill your ex-wife," she murmured back.
"Good." Jack pushed open the vestibule's wide, bulletproof glass door. "That makes two of us."
His tone must have betrayed him. Dina flinched, then said, "I'm sorry, IYou still cared a lot about her, didn't you?"
"Yeah." Squinting against the sunlight, he steered her to the concrete retaining wall that abutted the st
eps down to sidewalk level. "So, what are you doing here?"
"I was about to ask you the same thing."
"I beat you to it. Start talking."
She took mild exception to Jack's tone. It wasn't as brusque as Andy McGuire's had been with him, but he was fresh out of friendly repartee.
"Well," she said, "I'm trying to keep from hurting more people than I already have."
"Excuse me?"
"The kennels don't deserve to be punished for what I did, but they will be if the newspaper finds out the Calendar Burglar's been arrested. Everybody in town will know how I chose which houses to break into."
Dina squared her shoulders. "Crime Stoppers tips aren't publicized. I've seen trials on TV where confidential informants hide behind screens and their voices are altered so nobody knows who they are. If I turn myself in and agree to plead guilty, there's no reason the police can't keep the details to themselves."
Jack surveyed her denim skirt, pinstriped blouse, linen blazer and pumps. She was right. Size did matter. In her Monday-go-to-confession clothes, she could be mistaken for the kid on Take Your Child to Work Day.
He couldn't think of anything Dina could wear to allay that living-doll image. Or deflect the verbal head-patting that undoubtedly went with it. Whether she realized it or not, the pet-door M.O. might be a rebellious "Up yours" to the literal larger world.
He scratched an imaginary itch at his earlobe. "That's a nice quid pro quo theory you have there. Allow me to point out a few problems with it."
"Go ahead, but you won't change my mind."
Don't bet on it, kid. "Cops make arrests. That's why you hear, 'The police arrested Donald Duck today on suspicion of indecent exposure.' The county prosecutor files the charges."
"Fine." She shrugged. "In fact, that's even better. It'll stay just between me, him and a judge, then."
"No, it won't. Richard 'V for Victory' Vinyard has to beat a strong same-party contender in next month's primary and a former P.A.'s grandson in the general election. Vinyard's win-loss record in court has snowballed in the wrong direction. He'll call a friggin' press conference. Balloons, hot dogs, ice cream for the kiddiesthe works."
Dina's mouth tucked at a corner. Taking it as encouragement, Jack continued, "Once the police are aware of the kennel connection, there's the little matter of Mrs. Carleton deHaven boarding her dog Phil at Merry Hills yesterday."
The color that had returned to Dina's face drained away again. "But I didn't know the woman who brought him in wasn't Mrs. deHaven. Nobody even knows I broke into that house, except you."
"Yep. And you're the only one who can put me there last night." Saying it did unpleasant things to Jack's nervous system. "I asked Cherise Taylor to impersonate Belle, but I didn't tell her why."
Dina stared past him. The tip of her tongue probed a canine tooth. "Okay. Promise not to tell the police about me, and I promise not to tell them about you."
"I already did." At her gasp, Jack added, "Indirectly."
A brief explanation of the interview with McGuire and his highly selective alibi ensued. "As heartless as this may sound, it's a good thing Belle's body was discovered after today's Herald's news cycle. Otherwise somebody at Merry Hills might have recognized her name and already been on the horn to Lieutenant McGuire."
Dina's hand flew up and gripped her forehead. "Channel 8 did a special bulletin this morning. In front of the deHaven house. The reporter identified her as the victim."
"Shit," Jack said, having mentally bleeped the first profanities that came to mind. "I knew I should've picked up that stupid mutt, returned him to the shelter, then gone to the office."
On second thought, posing as Carleton deHaven at Merry Hills wouldn't have been exceptionally shrewd, either.
"The kennel is pretty busy on Mondays," Dina said. "All of them are. If boarding customers don't come by six on Sunday, they have to wait until after two on Monday to pick up their dogs."
Which, Jack recalled, was why he hadn't fetched Phil. As if McGuire wouldn't have waited at the office for him, regardless. He checked his watch. "Maybe Cherise can take offNo, forget that. Accidentally implicating her before the fact is bad enough."
The heat and carbon-monoxide-flavored mugginess closed in and down on him. His heel eviscerated a cigarette butt flicked at a gravel-filled receptacle, then another, girdled with pink lipstick. "For all I know, somebody has already tipped McGuire and Merry Hills is under surveillance."
Dina asked in a low voice, "Could you tell if it was? I mean, would the police watch the kennel from the outside? Or put somebody inside, like he was a new employee?"
Jack chuckled in spite of himself. "I don't think Harriet's the only detective-show junkie at your house." Sobering, he said, "Good God, I should've asked way before now. Your mom is all right, isn't she? No aftereffects from last night?"
"Grouchy. A little woozy halfway through her laps in the hallway, but on her ten scale, I'd say she's about a seven." An upheld finger silenced him. "Cancel the guilt trip, McPhee. Mom had to be told where the money was coming from, eventually. She wouldn't have taken it as well from me.
"You saw how we are. Like a damn button-pushing competition. She's had more practice, but I'm younger and healthier." Dina made a face. "There's something to be proud of. Getting my licks in on a heart patient who needs help in the bathroom."
"Cancel your guilt trip, Wexler. It took about ten minutes to figure out that you two are a book-matched pair."
He moved aside for an approaching smoker to douse a cigarillo. Stress had him jonesing to bum a smoke. It always did and probably always would. If Dina hadn't been there, he might have given in.
Settling for a whiff of secondhand smoke, he said, "Which brings up another hitch in your confession theory. Where does Harriet fit into it?"
"I didn't intend to say anything today. I can cover the bills till the end of the month. Long enough for Randy to come home or to make, uh, other arrangements."
Dina glanced down at her outfit. "I'm pretending to be an intersession student. My thesis subject is a hypothetical, law-abiding citizen forced to steal to buy medicine for a chronically ill parent."
Those sad, dark eyes glittered with contempt. "It doesn't make it right, but I'm not the only one who ever has who is doing it, or will, when working, begging and borrowing doesn't stop the merry-go-round. It just goes faster."
No, Jack thought, the situation wasn't unique to her and her mother. Those who take an actual bullet to save someone they love are heroes. Everyone believes they'd make that ultimate sacrifice, too. Jack would for his parents, his sisters, nieces, nephews and yeah, for Belle, if the bastard who'd shot her had given him the chance.
But take a metaphorical bullet? And keep taking it for the exact same life-or-death reason, and you're a menace to society.
"You'll never pull off the Jane College bit," he said. "Not without a bag over your head. Try it, and any cop with half a brain will read you like Guns & Ammo."
Dina jutted her jaw and plastered on a starlet smile. She hesitated a moment, then slumped. "I look guilty, huh?"
"Worse. You look honest and trying too hard not to look guilty."
"Then I'll practice for a day or two." An eyebrow crimped. "Unless you have a better idea for keeping the kennels out of this."
"Aw, for crissake. That's the least"
"Since I have an idea for sneaking Phil out of Merry Hills without anybody knowing it."
Visions of a Great Escape remake with Dina playing Steve McQueen's role made Jack's head hurt. Then again, her legs were excellent, but too short to reach a motorcycle's pegs. "Let's have it," he said with no enthusiasm whatsoever.
"You give me cash to pay the boarding fee. I'll drop by to see if Phil's dermatitis has improved, then say he needs to be taken outside awhile. That isn't an old wives' tale. Some skin conditions do respond to brief exposure to natural light."
"What if Phil's already outside?"
"Doesn't matter." Her tone su
ggested the interruption was not appreciated. "I'll let him out the side gate, where you'll be waiting in your car. Back inside, I'll sneak the money into the cash drawer, mark the fee paid and take off."
Jack rested his hands on his hips. "Where do you come up with this stuff?" A better question was, how in the hell did she get away with burglary for so long? "If you go outside with Phil, or are outside with Phil, don't you think somebody'll wonder when you go back in without Phil?"
"Oh. Hmm. Well, I can wait around in the exercise yard, until the coast is clear. Then I'll I'll move the dogs around in the pens. Yeah! That'll keep Phil from being missed for a while, and when the fee's marked paid, everyone will think his owner must have picked him up."
Let Sleeping Dogs Lie Page 13
