Faye Kellerman_Decker & Lazarus 16

by The Burnt House

  He was breathing hard.

  “I was so mad I was shaking. I wanted to kill her!”

  He looked at Decker.

  “But I didn’t. I remember Marina telling me to calm down and that she’d handle it. Then she picked up her own purse and left. I sat down on the couch, waiting for Marina to come back. I was trying to get a grip on myself. A few minutes passed, a few more passed. I suddenly realized that my shirt buttons had popped off and there were scratch marks on my chest. Roseanne must have attacked me with her nails and that’s why I pushed her…to get her off of me.”

  Decker nodded. He had taken two confessions in two days. His hand was going to fall off soon from writing so much. “You pushed her to get her off, not to hurt her.”

  “No, not to hurt her.” He glared at Decker. “And I didn’t hurt her. She was fine when she left. I mean she was mad but she wasn’t hurt. I went into the bedroom to change my shirt. I was starting to focus on what happened. Then I realized that about a half hour had passed and neither one of the bitches had come back. After I changed my shirt, I put on my suit jacket and decided to go to work. I looked around the condo’s parking lot before I left. There was no sign of Marina or Roseanne or Roseanne’s car.”

  He shrugged.

  “I went to work. About a half hour later I heard about the crash. I think a coworker told me. I don’t remember too clearly. I went numb when I heard the news! I wasn’t sure where Roseanne was. I didn’t think automatically that she was on the flight, but I wasn’t sure.”

  Decker said, “So what did you do?”

  “I tried calling Roseanne, of course. I must have called her about twenty times in a row until finally I get this incoming call from Marina, who’s calling me to tell me how sorry she was. I asked her what she meant.”

  He swallowed again.

  “At the time, I wasn’t thinking that Roseanne had been on the plane, only that it was a WestAir crash and maybe she needed me for support.”

  “You honestly thought that?”

  “She was still my wife.” He drank more water. “I really don’t know what I was thinking! But then Marina told me that Roseanne was on the plane. I felt faint. I asked her how she knew that. She said that she had talked to Roseanne in the condo parking lot…that they agreed to talk later, woman-to-woman, but that Roseanne couldn’t talk at the moment because she had to catch the flight that crashed…”

  Again, he buried his head. Decker waited for him to resurface.

  “I blacked out. When I came to I was sick, I was confused, I was…it didn’t make any sense to me. If Roseanne was going back to San Jose right away, why would she go home first? But then I thought about the fight and maybe that was why…”

  More tears.

  “I was too stunned to question Marina’s story. On some level, it made sense. I couldn’t get hold of Roseanne and now Marina was telling me she was on that plane.”

  Tears ran down his face.

  “I was in a stupor for a long time afterward. I didn’t go to work, I didn’t go out, I didn’t call anyone, and I didn’t answer any calls. I drank a lot because I was a wreck.” He shook his head. “I was a zombie.”

  “I’m sure you were,” Decker said. “And I feel very bad for you. But we still have the car problem, Ivan. How did Roseanne’s blood get all over the car?”

  “I don’t know!” Dresden protested. “I don’t have any idea.”

  “You say that when you went out to the parking lot that morning, Roseanne’s car was gone.”

  “Yes.”

  “So how’d you get it back?”

  Dresden furrowed his brow, trying to bring back the memory. “I think…I…oh, wait. Okay. This is what happened. A few days later, or maybe it was just a day later—it was after the airport reopened—Marina came back with Roseanne’s car, saying that she picked it up at the airport for me. She said she didn’t want me to have to think about something so trivial, so she did me the favor.”

  “How’d she get the keys to the car, Ivan?”

  “I don’t know how she got the keys unless she took them from Roseanne.”

  Bingo, Decker thought.

  “But why would I think that? I was still thinking that Roseanne died in flight 1324.”

  “So she brought you the car a few days later?”

  “No…No…wait…” He thought a few moments. “Okay, this is what happened. Marina said she had the car. Then she asked if she could borrow it for a while. At first, I told her no, that it would be a very bad idea for her to drive it. You know, that it would look weird for my girlfriend to be driving my wife’s car a few days after she died. That’s when she told me that she had actually picked up the car from the airport after the crash and that it smelled funky…that some old food had been left inside and she wanted to take it to the car wash or have it professionally cleaned or something like that. I think I asked her where the car was now and she told me it was at her apartment. So I told her return it to me as soon as it was clean. I also told her that we shouldn’t see each other right after Roseanne died. Man, did she get pissed! It wasn’t like I was planning to dump her. I just needed some time to myself.”

  “Totally understandable. So what did she say to you when you wanted to cool it for a while?”

  “I don’t remember the exact words, just that she was going on and on about how she was going to tell everyone about the affair and that I wasn’t worth her time and that she was going to ruin me. I finally shut her up by promising her some insurance money once the whole thing was settled.”

  “And calmed her down?”

  “A little. I don’t know. I don’t remember anything too well.” He rubbed his forehead. “I think it took about a month for her to finally bring me back the car. It reeked of mold. I asked her what the hell happened. She told me she was really sorry, but she left it out in the rain with the top down. But then she handed me twenty-five hundred bucks in cash and told me to get the car reupholstered the way I liked. She gave me Jim Franco’s name and told me that he’d do a great job and after all I’d been through didn’t I deserve a little something for me?”

  “You weren’t suspicious?”

  “Man, those days were such a haze. I had taken a leave of absence for a month and I wasn’t doing anything except drinking…smoking, if you get my drift.”

  “Got it.”

  “So Marina gives me twenty-five big ones and tells me to clean up Roseanne’s Beemer, I figured that the bitch actually had a good idea. So that’s what I did. I changed the car inside and out…it was a real mess…and that’s the last I thought about it. Then you guys started sniffing around, telling me that Roseanne didn’t die in the crash. The second the police got involved, I knew Roseanne’s father-in-law must have said something. The man absolutely hates my guts. That’s okay. I don’t like him, either. So I wasn’t concerned because why should I be nervous? I didn’t do anything wrong…I mean, I cheated on my wife, but she cheated on me. I certainly didn’t hurt her. Even after that lady detective found the phone, I still figure so what? It’s only a phone.”

  “Why didn’t you just give it to the police instead of destroying it?”

  “Because, I don’t know…I was shocked to see it. Like I told you, it must have fallen out of Roseanne’s purse when I pushed her. You guys were already on my case. I wasn’t going to admit to a bad fight on the morning she died. You can understand that.”

  “I do.”

  “Anyway, when the search of the condo came up dry for you, I thought, ‘Finally, that’s that!’ Then you started in on my car…I called my lawyer up as soon as you executed the warrant to search my car. He asked me if I had anything to worry about and I told him no, I didn’t. So he told me not to say anything if the police ask me questions, and that I should call him if things got hairy. When you called me up, saying that there were just a few questions you needed to ask, I figured why should I pay that jerk two-fifty an hour just to answer a few questions?”

  A moment of silence.


  “I probably should have called him up.” He paused. “But I didn’t do anything. Why do I need a lawyer? I don’t know what happened to Roseanne!”

  “She was murdered in her car.”

  “I wasn’t there. I didn’t run after her. Marina ran after her. Why don’t you ask her what happened? She may actually have an answer for you!”

  46

  AS IT TURNED out, Patricia Childress a.k.a. Marina Alfonse had absolutely nothing to say. Thirty seconds into the questioning, she sobered up enough to ask for a lawyer—exactly what Dresden should have done. Decker thought that maybe he hadn’t asked for representation because he had actually thought he had done nothing wrong. And since there was no physical evidence that linked him to the murder scene in the car, maybe he was telling the truth when he insisted he wasn’t there. Dresden was eventually charged with tampering with evidence—suspended sentence and two years’ probation. Although the law may have allowed him to slip through the cracks, insurance wasn’t going to play so gently. He’d be tied up for years in court before he’d see a single red cent from his wife’s death.

  Patricia Childress wasn’t going anywhere. The police had her bloody fingerprint at the scene, but most important, the knife that Oliver had pulled out of Childress’s purse had minute amounts of Roseanne Dresden’s blood on it. She had been charged with premeditated murder. Since she faced a possible death sentence, she pleaded guilty to murder two and a minimum sentence of twenty-four years in prison in exchange for her full confession, telling police exactly what happened in Roseanne’s Beemer, and also where she had buried the body.

  At the personal invitation of the Lodestones, Decker flew up to Fresno to attend Roseanne’s funeral. Afterward, Farley, somber and uncomfortable in a black suit, thanked him with a firm handshake and a whisper of a job well done. Shareen squeezed his hand, and with tears running down her face, thanked him profusely for all his hard work. He flew back down to L.A. on the same day and never heard from either one of them again.

  IT WAS STILL an hour away from Shabbos when Rina rushed out of the kitchen to answer the knock on the door. She was having a crowd tonight. Hannah had invited two friends to sleep over, and Jacob, on semester break, had brought home a couple of college buddies. She had also invited her parents, plus another couple who were new in the area. Counting Koby and Cindy and Peter—if he made it home from work on time—she was cooking for thirteen.

  She couldn’t imagine Cindy and Koby coming this early. Maybe it was one of Hannah’s friends. She wiped her hands on her apron, threw open the door, and found herself looking at two strangers in their seventies.

  The man was wearing an ill-fitting suit and tie; the woman was wearing a green dress, black orthopedic shoes, and had her gray hair knotted into a bun. They were dark-skinned Hispanics with wrinkled faces that had endured lots of sun damage. The woman was carrying an old-fashioned, patent-leather structured bag that was looped around her arm. She was also holding a plate of fresh and dried fruit. They looked as if they had just come back from church—fifty years ago.

  “Hi.” Rina smiled. “Can I help you?”

  The woman spoke. “We’re looking for Lieutenant Decker.”

  Rina kept smiling, wondering what she should do. Peter was always telling her to be very careful, that things happened when they were least expected. For all Rina knew, the two of them could be A-list terrorists.

  A terrorist with a fruit plate?

  “I believe he’s still at work,” Rina told them. “Would you like me to give you the address of the police station?”

  “We called,” the man groused out. “They said he’d left for the day.”

  “Oh.” Again, Rina smiled but still didn’t let them inside the door. “So he must be on his way home. Is there something I can help you with?”

  The woman’s eyes watered. “Your husband was very kind to us.”

  “And you are?”

  “Sandra and Peter Devargas.”

  Immediate recognition. Rina said, “Oh, please come in.”

  “We can wait outside,” Peter grumped.

  “You look very busy,” Sandra said.

  “I’m always busy,” Rina said. “Please come in.” She stepped away from the threshold. “I insist!”

  Reluctantly, the couple walked inside the living room. The woman said, “This is for your husband and you. Just a little something.”

  “Thank you so much.” Rina relieved her of the fruit plate. “Please sit. Would you like something to drink? Water? Iced tea?”

  “Something smells good,” Devargas said. “I guess anything would smell good after eating fast food for the last twenty-four hours.” His wife poked him in the ribs. The man said, “What?”

  Rina smiled. “Thank you for the compliment. I happen to be cooking for our Sabbath, which we observe on Friday night. I made plenty of food. Would you like to stay for dinner?”

  Devargas said, “That sound—” Another poke. “What? The woman asked us.”

  “We’re fine, but thank you,” Sandra said.

  Rina chuckled. “Honestly, it’s not a problem.”

  Devargas shrugged, but Sandra was reluctant. Having dealt with older, ethnic women her entire life, Rina felt something click inside her head. “Really, do stay. I’m having a lot of people. I could always use another pair of hands.”

  Sandra’s knuckles were white from clutching her purse. “Well, if you need some help, I’d be delighted to help you.”

  “Great. You can make the salad. Just leave your coat and handbag on the couch. Peter will hang it up.”

  “Where do I hang it?” Devargas asked.

  “Sorry, I meant Lieutenant Decker. He can do it when he gets home, which should be pretty soon. Mr. Devargas, you sit down and relax while you can. There are going to be a lot of people coming in and out in the next half hour. If you wouldn’t mind catching the door, it would help me out.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t mind.” Sandra followed her into the kitchen. As soon as she stepped into the warm, humid space, the old woman relaxed. “Just point me in the right direction.”

  Rina gave her salad vegetables, a big bowl, and a knife. Sandra washed her hands meticulously and began slicing vegetables. They worked a few moments without speaking. Then Sandra said, “I’m so sorry to be barging in on you like this.”

  “Please. My house is a bus station,” Rina said. “People in and out. They follow the food.”

  “Yes, wherever there is family, there’s a meal.” The old woman sliced and diced the tomatoes with practiced skill. “Please understand my husband’s frankness. He isn’t used to fast food. I love to cook and I cook for him. And he is right. Everything does smell very good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What are you making?”

  “Well, this here is called a kugel, which is just a Yiddish word for pudding. Yiddish is the language that the Jews spoke in Europe. I made two kinds of kugel tonight—a sweet noodle pudding and a potato pudding.”

  “Oh, it all looks so wonderful.”

  “And this big pot here is a stew for tomorrow’s lunch. It’s called chulent. Jews aren’t allowed to cook on Saturday, but if we start the dish on Friday, then we can eat it hot on Saturday.”

  “That’s interesting. What’s in it?”

  “Meat, potatoes, beans, barley…but really you can put whatever you want in it.”

  “So your husband doesn’t eat it?”

  “No, Peter eats chulent. He loves chulent.”

  “But how does he eat it if he’s a vegetarian?”

  Uh-oh. Rina smiled. “He isn’t really a vegetarian, Mrs. Devargas. We’re kosher. We can’t eat meat unless it has been ritually slaughtered according to our laws. So he tells people he’s a vegetarian whenever he’s in a bind and doesn’t want to insult anyone.”

  “Oh…oh, I see.” Sandra nodded. “Well, it was nice of him to tell me that, then.”

  “He told me that the food you served him was absolutely f
antastic. Now that you’re here, I’ll ask you for the recipes.”

  “It was just simple cooking.”

  “That’s the best kind.”

  Sandra smiled and blushed. “Slow cooking. We do a lot of slow cooking, too, especially on Feast Day. For the Santa Clara Indians, it’s August twelfth. If you’re ever in Santa Fe at that time, you must come and eat with us so we can return the favor.” She paused. “I’ll make sure that there will be lots of vegetarian dishes that you can eat.”

  “That would be great. What do you cook?”

  “So many dishes you can’t even imagine. The dancing goes on from dawn to dusk. The climax is a beautiful corn dance. My daughters…” Sandra looked the other way. “My daughters are very good dancers.”

  “Do you dance?”

  A hint of a smile. “Sometimes. Do you?”

  “I kick up a storm at weddings.”

  “Best time to dance.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Sandra finished the tomatoes and went on to the cucumbers. “It’s nice of you not to ask why we’re here.”

  Rina said, “I try not to get involved in my husband’s business.”

  “But you know who we are.”

  “Yes. The case made headlines and Peter…Lieutenant Decker was very involved.”

  “He helped us so much…with the situation.”

  “Thank you, I’m sure he’ll appreciate hearing that.”

  “Yes, I don’t think I ever thanked him properly.”

  “That isn’t what I meant at all,” Rina said. “I’m sure you thanked him profusely, but you just don’t remember.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” Sandra put down the knife. “But we didn’t come here to thank him, Mrs. Decker. We came because…” A sigh. “We need his help.” Sandra looked at Rina. “Maybe you can help. I have to say that it’s easier for me to talk to a woman than a man…even your husband. So if you don’t mind, maybe I can talk to you.”