It was all the encouragement Flynn needed. Six deep, shoulder to shoulder, he joined the group and followed them into a small parking lot in front of a Navajo art museum. Retreating to the east corner, he eased behind a black van so he could watch the street through the passenger window.
The man in the denim shirt elbowed his way through the crowds toward the parking lot. There was a strong set to his jaw as he stared wildly around before entering the art museum. Flynn didn’t hesitate. He bolted west along Cliff Side and took the first left into Puerco Drive. There was a truck parked at the end of the street, an F-250 with a gray camper shell. It was the words Rovers Insurance written on the side that made him run for it.
The driver’s window was open and there was Jesky hugging the local paper against a rumpled jacket.
“Hey,” Flynn said, staring at two closely set eyes, where the right eye had a tendency to wander. It made it difficult to focus.
“You OK, son?”
“Yeah.”
“Look like crap.”
“Yeah.”
“Hop in then.”
The cab was warm with the thick stench of old cigarettes. The idea of going back to Albuquerque was ludicrous, but in a strange way it gave him a sense of relief. Jesky was an honest sort; strong, tanned face and dark blue eyes. He had a way of talking in a deadpan voice, patiently explaining things that sounded like utter nonsense.
“There’s a lot about you in the paper, son. They even dug up an essay you wrote at school. Something about turning up the knob on Irene Baker’s sunbed. You said she had a butt like peaches in cling film.”
Flynn did vaguely remember the incident. “Haven’t we got more important things to focus on?”
“All I can say is Columbo would have solved it by now.”
Him and his Columbo, the lieutenant who looked like a disheveled bum off the street. The man didn’t even exist and yet here was Jesky talking about him as if he was his next door neighbor.
“And you know how he would have solved it?” Jesky almost chomped on the remains of his cigarette. “By sifting through contradictions, is what it’s called. How could you have done it if you was in a burning house?”
Those were Flynn’s sentiments exactly.
“That detective anything like Columbo?”
“I don’t recall him fumbling through his pockets for a pencil,” Flynn said, “or being distracted by something in the room.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’d say he’s sharp.”
“Not sharp enough to know who’s guilty and who’s clean.”
“Are you done?”
Jesky went silent, probably never seen anything like this before, never thought his stepson would ever be accused of murder. His eyes were suddenly narrowed as if focusing on a bead of water on the windshield, or a tiny thread that might connect all the dots in his tired old brain.
Flynn felt a knot in his stomach as the truck pulled away from the curb. In all the years he’d known Jesky, he’d never told him how much he appreciated him. How Jesky would let him drive around life, making a balls-up of everything while Jesky sat and looked on from the sidecar. He was Flynn’s cheerleader in football, baseball, chemistry, physics, whenever he got an A. Although he did recall a surprised smirk the time he got an A in geocaching. It was the high-tech navigation he liked. Well, it was high-tech then.
He took one last look through the wing mirror. There was no sign of the man in the denim shirt and he wasn’t going to tell Jesky he was being followed. There was one question that echoed like thunder in his head. Who the heck was he?
“Throw it in the back,” Jesky said, pointing at the backpack squeezed between Flynn’s ankles.
Flynn did as he was told, pulled the seat belt across his chest and heaved a loud sigh. He must have looked nervous because Jesky perked him up with the offer of food. Some restaurant on I-40.
“So, the cops been to see you, Jesk?”
“The lady detective’s called a few times. The black one’s been round twice.”
“Don’t say black, Jesk. Just say his name, OK?”
“Temeke, then. Sounds like a hot sauce don’t it? Well, he asked your mom if you was a good boy. She looked so pretty when she said yes. Showed him a picture you’d drawn in Sunday school.”
“Jesk, don’t show them any more pictures, OK?”
“Last week when I was out bird-watching I saw Cliff in his backyard. I reckon he’s got someone tied up in his cellar. He’s got a little white dog. Poodle or something. Anyway, while it was hunched over his lawn I nipped in through the back door. Nice place. Got pictures of Tarian all over. I took one. It’s in the glove box.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nah, its right there. But see, its what’s behind her that bothers me.”
Flynn opened the glove box and took out the photo. He studied the back of a woman, the light in her hair, the curve of her back, the way her arms looped around a man’s neck in a way only Flynn should have known. They were standing in front of a storefront; Macy’s he thought it was. At least, that’s how he remembered it. Over his right shoulder was a reflection in the store window. A tall man, hair curving over the left side of his face, eyes blocked by the cell phone in his hand. Flynn couldn’t mistake him even if he tried. “Cliff.”
“Yeah. You and Tarian didn’t even notice. He must have been following you.”
The photograph wasn’t recent. Probably taken over a year ago but the thought of Cliff following them made him uneasy.
Jesky took his focus off the road briefly to look at Flynn. “I don’t know how many times I’ve driven up here in the last few months. Usually pick up all sorts. Bums, aging hippies with too much to say. But you... you’re family. We’ll get along fine.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Malin opened the blinds to her second floor apartment letting the sunlight flood into a sitting room, a spacious room, the largest of three. She was feeling listless, almost numb where her mind crept from the haze of a psychedelic dream where it had been stuck for the last seven hours. Seven forty-five? When was the last time she slept so well?
The apartment was quiet, even downstairs where she often heard loud music before nine. Her neighbor, Old Man Topper, often left his gas on and she’d knock on his door, ask him how he was. He was grateful for the intrusion.
A piece of Malin’s dream came to her as she buttered a piece of toast. The part where she saw a dark haired man and an older woman kissing outside a burning house. The incongruity of such a vision filled her mind and put all her other thoughts into a tailspin. Until it was cut short by an incoming text from Wingman.
Wingman: The eye is not a perfect sphere, Malin. It’s a fused two-piece unit composed of anteria and posteria segment. But when we think of an eye we think of the cornea, iris and lens. Such a marvelous creation, don’t you think?
Malin shook her head. It was too early in the morning for allegories and she hadn’t had a cup of coffee to work them out. Her fingers tapped out a few words in response.
Malin: What’s with eyes?
Wingman: It’s all about perception. The source of inspiration. Isn’t that your favorite stuff?
How would he know that was her favorite stuff? She didn’t even know it was her favorite stuff. There were other things she would rather be doing. Like taking a hike in the Pecos, shopping at Macy’s with a friend and switching off her cell phone. She sighed loudly, turned her neck from left to right and heard it click a few times. She read the next bubble of text.
Wingman: I don’t have all the answers, Malin. And there’s no sense giving your best K-9 a chew toy before he’s found the suspect. Warmer days are around the corner.
Malin looked toward the window. It was still cold in the mornings swinging towards extreme warmth in the afternoons. There was no way of deciphering his tone from a text. Wingman could be an ass when he wanted to be. Her thumbs hovered over the keys but he beat her to it.
Wingman: Walley-B
ennett. He resigned as Secretary of Health to run for the US House of Representatives in the 2008 elections. Lost in the Democratic primary to Viv Azario. Guess who his financial assistant was?
Temeke had already told her. She tapped out the name and pressed SEND.
Malin: Cliff Jaynes?
Wingman: You got it. Then a few years back there was an investigation into Walley-Bennett’s company, WB Title. The paper published a defamatory paragraph saying Richard Walley-Bennett had been caught in the midst of a real estate scandal. They said he used sales tactics to pressure people into borrowing large sums of money to buy property. High risk strategies that could never be proved. It wasn’t him so it seems. But he did fire his financial assistant. Cliff latterly went on to work in a computer company. Know what they say? Where there’s fraud, there’s genius.
Cliff Jaynes, con man and declining drug addict. She wondered how hard a screw up that was to live down.
Malin: Are you saying Cliff and Tarian were doing business together? That they staged a house fire so they could claim on the insurance?
Malin glared at her phone for several minutes before she realized Wingman had left the building. Never answered her question. Left a blank space that made her feel stupid.
All of a sudden she didn’t feel like coffee. Didn’t feel like eating either. Harry Hammond hadn’t called for nearly twenty-four hours with an update on McCann and it was making her jumpy. But she did feel like taking a trip to Tanoan East and making an unannounced visit to Mr. Walley-Bennett. They had waited long enough.
As she drove along Academy listening to the dispatcher on the radio, her thoughts were peppered with images, imagining a house in mourning with windows like soulless eyes looking out at the Sandia Mountains. And a once handsome man, red-eyed and distracted with hardly a word to say.
Today she pushed aside all prejudice as she showed her badge to the gateman and drove toward a private cul-de-sac surrounded by trees. Dark layered clouds hovered low over the roof reminding her of the sunshine and the clear spring weather she had left behind on the west side.
As she got out of the car, nothing could have prepared her for the large house that stood deserted and ghostlike in its stark white paint. A cool wind whipped through the trees, carrying a drift of leaves and dust along the street and for a moment it made her shiver.
Wingman’s words crashed through her mind, words that sometimes made no sense, words that moaned as loud as the wind.
Where there’s fraud, there’s genius.
What would he know? This was a beautiful house, front door paneled and made of distressed wood and plantation shutters that gave it an almost French appeal. Clipped box hedges and ornamental shrubs, all that green looked so out of place in the desert and distinguished the northeast heights from the west side of town.
Malin took out her phone and tapped out a message to Temeke. At Walley-Bennett’s house in the heights. See you at noon.
She rang the doorbell and surveyed the street. If it wasn’t for the vivid baize of the golf course snaking between the houses, those dark elongated clouds would have kept the street in a perpetual dusk. Her nostrils twitched at the faint smell of burning cedar and she sensed someone behind her.
“May I help you?”
Malin hadn’t realized he had been watching her. But somewhere between the sighing of the wind and those well-oiled hinges the door had been open for almost a minute.
It was the smile that caught her off guard.
THIRTY-NINE
Malin closed her gaping mouth and tried to draw air through her nose. The smooth ivy league manner did nothing to dispel the nervous stammer she had.
“I’m Rich,” he said, leading her into the living room.
Malin was inclined to agree as she scanned high ceilings and a gallery that ran along the east side of the room. Flames snapped in a large stone fireplace and the smell of cedar was stronger now.
“My wife’s in Colorado. Needed time to herself. You understand?”
Malin nodded and said that she did. “I’d like to express my condolences―”
“You’re here to talk about Tarian,” he said, offering her a seat facing the window.
She glanced at broad shoulders and a body that belied his seventy-four years. Was seventy-four the new fifty?
“I expect you’d like to hear about her marriage? Whether there was any violence, neglect, name-calling?” he asked.
The way he said it sent a sliver of dread through her belly and she wondered if he was going to raise his voice. “Was there?”
“All marriages have their ups and downs. I like Flynn. I enjoy his honesty. My daughter is... was OCD.”
“Do you find that irritating?”
“Sometimes.” A faint smile almost nudged his lips. “It’s like driving behind someone who’s doing the speed limit.”
She had the oddest feeling he wanted to examine every twitch she made and she began to teeter in that awful place between relax and can't relax. If it wasn’t for his matinee-idol looks she would have handled it better.
“He was perfect for her,” he said.
“But not perfect enough since he was the adverse party in a restraining order,” Malin reminded. “The report said Tarian was thrown to the floor, kicked and verbally insulted. There were cuts to her arms and bruises on her shins. Photos too.”
“Perhaps we went too far.”
“Meaning what?”
He went silent then, eyes staring off at the paintings on the far wall, the studded leather couches and the elegant fabrics as if he was somehow assessing his surroundings for the first time. “After her sister died we didn’t want to lose the only daughter we had left, so we put her in a gilded cage and locked the door. It wasn’t the right thing to do. We should have let her make her own decisions. Beaten? I don’t believe Tarian was beaten.”
“Then how do you explain the cuts?”
“I can’t explain them.”
All relationships were in and out, thought Malin, but this marriage seemed to be wired all wrong. McCann could have been making up stories about his abuse. Maybe he had been beating on Tarian all along, chipping away at her confidence until there was nothing left. Malin tried to blink away the thought but she couldn’t get it out of her head.
“It also mentions that Mr. McCann was intoxicated at the time,” she said. “Something Mr. McCann disputed.”
“Flynn wasn’t drunk. He hardly drank. He was a workaholic not an alcoholic.”
“It goes on to say that he was unhappy and saw fit to lash out on a defenseless woman.”
“It said Tarian was defenseless?” Rich asked.
“No, I said that.” One look at the thick gray hair and tanned skin and Malin’s gut tightened. “I’d be happy to bring you a copy.”
“It’s public record. And none of it’s true.”
“The bruises or the fact that he hit her?”
“The fact that he hit her,” Rich said.
“Was she stressed? Unhappy?” Malin asked.
“Always. She was ill.”
“Tell me about her.”
“When she was up she was brilliant, sporty and funny. When she was down... moody and scratchy. No one you’d want to be around.”
It was Malin’s turn not to answer. She was beginning to hate the awkward silences and the distant aimless gazes.
“There was never anything wrong with Flynn,” he said. “Tarian? Now that was depression. She was on Prozac for a time but it made her dizzy. Flynn thought she was crying a lot and asked her to get help. It’s hard for a counselor to find counseling.” His gaze kept ping-ponging from Malin to the floor. “He said she’d changed. I blame myself.”
“Why?”
“I should never have employed Cliff Jaynes. Almost screwed me over. Man, that guy was good. Smooth, you know the type? Hand fumbling up my little girl’s skirt at the dinner table and I never even noticed. They were tennis partners. Lovers. Addicts. Even his tie was pressed. He carried it all so
well. Kept sneaking looks at Tarian’s photo, my Scotch, my rare watercolors. It took eight months before I caught him syphoning funds out of my bank account. He got probation for misrepresenting the businesses’ likely profits. Should have got three years. I was delighted when Tarian found someone else, married and put old ghosts to rest. Or so I thought. About two years after her and Flynn were settled on the Westside I found a letter she’d written to Cliff, begging him to call her. I knew he wouldn’t stay away.”
“Where did you find the letter?”
“In her purse. She left it on the hall chair when she was showing Flynn around the grounds. I knew what she was doing. Cupped whispers in the parking lot and the double-takes. She played hooky from work so she could run over to Cliff’s house any chance she got. Fill her lungs with crystal just so she’d forget what an ass she was.”
“You didn’t say anything to Flynn?”
“You think he would have believed me? Still stings a bit, the resentment and the lies. Who knows what it did to Flynn. And he’s no wife-killer, by the way. Whatever happened to Rosie? She still around?”
The change in the cadence of his voice surprised Malin and his eyes were more alert. “Ms. Ellis?”
“I met her here at Christmas, two years ago I think it was. Tarian invited her. Beautiful girl.”
Malin’s chin jerked up and she felt the blood drain from her face. Rosie had been inside this house? Put another way, Rosie had been invited by Tarian.
“Were Tarian and Rosie friends?”
“They had a lot in common. Flynn for one.”
It wasn’t funny, not the way he meant it, Malin thought. “So, no jealousy?”
“Flynn dumped Rosie for my daughter. I see every reason to be jealous.”
Dumped was a harsh word. It always made Malin feel like someone had been abandoned like a filthy rag beside the road and left to rot. It was time for bolder questions.
“Why did Tarian invite Rosie?”
“To bury the hatchet,” he said. “It was a smart move on Tarian’s part and it did the trick. They were more cordial afterwards.”
Dead Cold Page 21
