A Match Made for Murder

by Iona Whishaw

  Consuela smiled. “Oh, I know that, ma’am. Everybody was talking about the brave lady in number 26!”

  Back inside, Lane found Ivy sitting at the dressing table, smoking.

  “You know, during the war I lost my brother and a cousin in the Pacific theatre. We were devastated, but I had work, and I just threw myself into it. But now I don’t know where to turn. I feel like there’s no point to anything. I just feel a confusion in my head, like I can’t seem to get a hold of it.” She rubbed a temple with her free hand. “Why was he shot?”

  It almost seemed a rhetorical question. Lane, sitting on the bed, was silent for a moment. “You have your baby,” she suggested gently.

  Ivy Renwick turned and looked at her with such sorrow that Lane reached for her hand. “I hadn’t even told him yet,” she said, tears beginning to pool in her eyes.

  “Ivy, yesterday when you came back you said, ‘I knew he was crazy.’ What did you mean by that? Did you mean Jack, or someone else?”

  Ivy gave no answer, and turned away from Lane, holding the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Did I say that? God, I don’t even know what I was saying. Just seeing him lying there . . .” She dissolved into a paroxysm of sobs.

  Lane went into the bathroom and found a clean washcloth, which she soaked with hot water and folded into a compress. Ivy took it with a slight nod and held it against her eyes. After a moment, she looked at herself in the dressing table mirror. “God, I look a mess.”

  Chapter Six

  In the cold basement morgue of the police station, Mrs. Watts stood rigidly in front of the remains of her husband. She was dressed in a dark wool coat, her black-gloved hands clenched tightly at her waist. Ames stood back respectfully by the door. He had been anxious about this moment as Darling had usually handled this sort of thing, but the hysterics he feared he might have to handle did not materialize.

  “He tried to leave us,” she said, staring at her husband’s face, which had a lurid greenish hue in the light of the morgue. “He was much older than me, you know. He always thought I would leave him. What happens now?”

  To Ames, the woman’s calm seemed almost cold, but for the fact that she had burst into tears when he and Terrell had gone to her cottage to break the news. They had dropped the child at her grandmother’s, and the first thing Mrs. Watts had asked when they were alone was if he had committed suicide.

  “We don’t know how he died. We’ll have to wait for confirmation, but according to the ambulance medic, he might have had something like a heart attack. There will be a post-mortem. He was robbed, and the car keys are missing, so we suspect someone else was either with him or found him like that and took advantage of the situation. We will need to get information from you regarding his health when you feel up to it. It may take some time to understand how he . . . what happened.” Ames thought about the word painted on the Van Eyck garage. Tina had thought it was Watts. He couldn’t bring himself to ask Mrs. Watts about it. It seemed almost unimportant in the face of his death.

  With some hesitation, Ames asked, “You said your husband tried to leave you. When was that?”

  She turned toward the door, her hands still clutched in front of her, her handbag hanging off her wrist, but she did not look at him. “In September, but I persuaded him that he had a daughter to think about. Thank you for telling me everything you know, Sergeant Ames. Would you be kind enough to drive me back to my mother’s? I must think of how I am to tell my daughter that her father is dead.”

  “Let me ask you something,” Ivy Renwick said. The coffee and breakfast had arrived, and Consuela had organized them at a table by the window, where a small pot of geraniums set an incongruously cheerful tone. Ivy had attempted only a nibble of toast. “Who was that woman he was talking to?”

  “Her name is Meg Holden. She and her husband are in the villa right beside us.”

  “I see.” Ivy lit up another cigarette and then stubbed it out almost immediately, pushing the clay ashtray away. “I read recently these might not be good for me. I suppose I have to think of the baby.”

  “Ivy . . .”

  “I know. What did I mean? But it’s ridiculous, impossible. It’s just that his brother, well, Jack didn’t know the extent of it. I know that sounds crazy to say, but Ned confided in me . . . not that I wanted it, at all.” She shuddered theatrically and drew her peignoir close around her.

  “Can you bear to talk about it?” asked Lane. If Ivy had information about her husband’s brother, she was going to have to tell the police. Lane would have to bring her to the idea.

  “I was very sympathetic when Ned got home. He’d been wounded, though I never got the full extent of what happened. Jack wasn’t home yet. Ned used to come around sometimes to where I worked. Of course, they wouldn’t let him in because he behaved so erratically, and that made him angry. I had to ask him to come in the evening instead. It all started going sideways pretty quickly. He . . . he told me he was in love with me and got, well, maudlin, and then quite aggressive. I never had the heart to tell Jack about that part of it. Ned was falling apart on all fronts, drinking and so on, and Jane, that’s his wife, had left him. And then their father left the company in Jack’s charge.”

  “Do you think it’s possible, Ned . . .” Lane didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Killed him?” Ivy’s face crumpled again. She put down her coffee and reached for the napkin Consuela had brought with the eggs. “No, that’s ridiculous. I don’t see how. Anyway,” she hesitated, “he’s in Wisconsin.”

  Lane noted Ivy’s denial of the possibility that her brother- in-law was responsible when he could, for example, have had him killed by someone else. She said, “You’re going to have to tell that detective what you’ve told me.”

  “I know. I will. But what if it’s nothing to do with him? It will only make everything worse.”

  “But if it’s not him, you’ll be happy to know that,” Lane said, “and the police can get on with the job of finding who really killed your husband.”

  “What have you been up to?” Darling asked from his vantage point on the bed, where he had been reading, fully dressed, with his stocking feet crossed.

  “Just making sure poor Ivy is all right. I feel sorry for her. She’s pregnant, poor thing, and she’s desperately unhappy because she hadn’t told Jack yet.”

  “She told you that?” Darling marvelled at the way Lane seemed to manage to get people to confide in her.

  “Well, she told me the other night at dinner.”

  “I bet she did,” Darling said, with a touch of irony. “And, how is she coping?”

  “Not well, and she’s afraid her brother-in-law may have something to do with it, though she denies it. But she did talk about him a bit more. He does sound unbalanced. Angry about his brother taking over the business, professing to be hopelessly in love with her. But before you say anything, I told her she had to tell the detective in charge,” Lane said. “Have you had breakfast?”

  “No. I was waiting for you. And we’ll have to be quick about it. We’ve had a call from Galloway. He’s offered to have Priscilla drive us out to a famous mission church and she’s coming in just under an hour.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Do you think it’s all right for us to go off? Will the police want to ask us anything else?”

  “They need nothing more from you, and the sooner I get you away from here, the less likely you are to learn anything that will require us to be part of the police inquiry. This is in danger of fast becoming a busman’s honeymoon, to quote your favourite author.” Darling hopped off the bed, tucked in his shirt, and opened the door for Lane with exaggerated gallantry.

  At their usual table under the ramada, Lane was delighted to see Consuela come around with the menus. “Darling, this is Miss Ruiz. You remember our cab driver? This is his sister. My husband, Inspector Darling.”

  Consuela bobbe
d slightly. “You can call me Chela. Everyone does.”

  Darling smiled at her. “Very nice to meet you, Chela. I thought your brother said you were on the cleaning staff?”

  “Yes, but one of the girls is off sick so they asked me to step in. I think she was upset about . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she looked in the direction of the previous day’s drama.

  “It was a terrible thing,” Lane said. “But thank you again for this morning.”

  When Chela went off to collect their breakfasts, Darling said, “Galloway isn’t the only person I heard from. Ames put a call through as well. I thought it was too much to hope he was just going to see how we were getting on, though that would have been extremely impertinent. He’s got a peculiar death on his hands. He and the new man, Terrell, are investigating.”

  “This holiday is becoming more busman-y by the minute. What’s it about?”

  “Oh, no you don’t, you’re not getting your hooks into this one. He sends his best, by the way.”

  Sergeant Martinez gazed at the notes he’d taken from the people at the inn, but his mind was elsewhere. Before the shooting, he’d been sitting in the interview room across from James A. Griffin and his lawyer, a man who ate well and was feeling the heat. Griffin was out of prison on a sizeable bail, which he had no trouble producing. Both he and his counsel had been leaning back looking bored and, to Martinez’s surprise, confident.

  “We’ve been following up on your finances, and we have solid evidence that you’ve been taking dirty money from your illicit gambling and funnelling it through your restaurant and other businesses.” Martinez mentally crossed his fingers they still had that evidence somewhere. “What I’m interested in is money you’ve paid out to the Desert Sunrise Nursing Home. Regular payments, every month,” he had said to Griffin.

  “Really, Martinez, you’re grabbing at straws here. My client—”

  But Griffin waved his lawyer off. “My mother is in the nursing home, what do you think?”

  “She’s not, though. I checked. She died four years ago.”

  “They were good to her. I give them a little something. A donation. I’m grateful, big deal. What are you trying to get at, Martinez?”

  “What I’m trying to get at, Mr. Griffin, is that the nursing home tells me they’ve had no money from you since your mother died. So where is it going?”

  Griffin had shrugged. “I give them the money. My money, from the restaurant, which, by the way, is a popular place. It’s not my fault they lose it. You should check with them. Maybe someone on that end is pocketing it. Maybe they don’t want to pay taxes. How the hell should I know? You haven’t got anything on me, or you wouldn’t be fishing around my dead mother’s rest home.”

  The lawyer, sweat pooling around his collar, picked up his hat and hauled himself to his feet. “Fishing is right. If you have nothing else, I got places to be.”

  Martinez sighed. He was fishing. If he couldn’t find the evidence he already had, he’d have to get to the bottom of the money going to the nursing home, a difficult prospect if there were no records and the nursing home was denying it had received any money. He was already in trouble with Galloway, who had a temper, over the missing evidence, evidence he knew for certain had been in the file in his desk drawer, which he locked every night when he went home, and then moved to the station files. His failure to adequately track where the missing “donations” were going meant that Galloway was right. The whole case was unravelling, and it would end up being his fault. This murder at the Santa Cruz Inn was going to take up time that he could ill afford, as he knew he would have to investigate the financial activities at the Desert Sunrise Nursing Home and hope to scrape up enough evidence.

  He rose to indicate their conversation was over. He did not look at Griffin, but he watched the lawyer who stood outside the door fanning his face with his hat. Griffin got up languidly. He would be smirking. What Martinez did not understand was why.

  “I feel awful leaving those two women behind like this,” Lane said. They stood on the front steps of the inn, waiting for Priscilla Galloway.

  “I know you do. It’s one of the reasons I love you. If I ever get into a mess, I feel confident you will hate to leave me behind as well.” Darling was standing with his hands in his pockets, revelling in being able to wear a short-sleeved sport shirt in November. She had, in fact, risked everything to extract him from a very sticky mess in England the previous June.

  A pale-blue Buick with a soft-top pulled up, and Priscilla smiled up at them; she was wearing large sunglasses, and her dark hair was wrapped in an orange scarf. “All ready? I thought of putting the top down, but it’s a longish drive, and we’ll be battered to death. Hop in.” She waved at them with a white-gloved hand.

  Darling opened the front passenger door and pulled the seat forward to climb into the back. “It’s kind of you to do this, Mrs. Galloway.”

  Lane settled luxuriously into the plush passenger seat. The car smelled new and gleamed in the morning sun.

  Priscilla put the car in gear. “Nonsense, it’s a pleasure. Paul doesn’t often let me drive the car, so it’s doubly nice.” She gave a trill of laughter that made Lane turn toward her. It was the kind of unnecessary laughter that nervous people emit, but in Priscilla it struck her as having a brittle quality, as if she wished to fill some void with happy sounds.

  “Tell us about this church,” Lane said.

  Priscilla glanced at her, lips turned in a brief smile. “Well, I mean, really, it’s just a church in a desert, but it is old, as old as things get in America. Seventeen something. I quite like it, and it’s a day out. There’s a very nice Mexican restaurant on the way back we can stop at. Very authentic. I can’t help noticing that neither of you has a camera. I’ll be sure to snap a picture of you two in front of the place so you’ll have a honeymoon picture for your album.”

  “It’s true. I don’t know why neither of us has one. Darling?” Lane looked into the back seat, where Darling was occupying himself looking at the part of town they were passing.

  “Ames always takes the pictures. I don’t think I ever imagined myself in the role of tourist.”

  Priscilla laughed again. “Wedded to his job, just like Paul. No wonder they’re friends. You should be careful, Lane.” She sounded as though she was going to add to that observation, but she stopped and lifted her chin and lowered it again, her lips closing tightly for a moment. “I wouldn’t say it’s the prettiest town, but it’s quite pleasant to live here. I like the climate, though it is dreadfully hot in the summer, and I do miss how green England is. We are just getting started on building a pool. You can’t live here without one! We’ve been using the country club till now. That and plenty of ice for drinks.”

  Lane turned to look at the passing street. Clusters of small houses and dusty streets seemed the dominant theme. In this neighbourhood, at least, no one had pools. The assistant chief’s job must pay well, Lane thought, or Priscilla had brought some money into the union.

  “Paul told me what happened yesterday. Poor you!” Priscilla said. She slowed and stopped for a traffic light.

  “Well, not poor me, really. Poor Mr. Renwick who got shot out of the blue, and poor Mrs. Renwick who is widowed now, and poor woman who was standing talking to him when it happened.”

  “It’s absolutely ghastly. I’m glad to take you away from all that. I suppose, Inspector, you wish you were back there, nosing about for clues.”

  “I do not. I am sure Paul and his sergeant and the no-doubt excellent officers in the Tucson police will get to the bottom of it. I am, as I have reminded my wife several times, on my honeymoon. Indeed, I am sure it is she who is wishing she were nosing about for clues,” said Darling from the back seat.

  In a short time, they left the few intermittent houses on the edge of town behind and turned southwest into open desert.

  After twenty mi
nutes along the dusty, nearly empty road, the unequal towers of the Mission San Xavier del Bac church materialized before them, white and gleaming against the deep blue of the sky. Lane and Darling were transfixed.

  “It’s a bit run-down, honestly,” Priscilla said. “We’re on the local Indian Reservation, and any work done on it was done by them. That hill over there is sacred. Something to do with a stream of water.” She pointed to a small hillock with a cross at the top.

  But for Lane, the peeling whitewash on the adobe and exposed bricks just added to its interest. “It’s fantastic. One hears about Spanish Colonial architecture, but it’s more beautiful in life than what I could have imagined! If we’re to have a honeymoon photo, I think it ought to be in front of these wonderful doors.”

  Mesquite trees cast dappled shadows across the dusty roadway and up along the walls of what Priscilla told them was an enclosed garden.

  “There are some ledges in the garden. After we’ve seen the inside of the church, we could sit a few minutes and just get a feel for it. I find it very peaceful.”

  After standing in the cool, dark interior of the church with his hands clasped behind his back, looking up at the ancient and peeling frescoes, Darling whispered, “I’ve had enough incense. I’m going to take a run up that hill to look at the surrounding view. I think Priscilla might like to just sit with you for a few moments. I’ll be a third wheel.”

  “Where’s he off to?” Priscilla asked.

  “He’s just off to investigate that sacred hill. I’m for a shady ledge and a peaceful surround, myself.”

  Two men were talking quietly as they worked in a small adjacent garden, but otherwise the silence was all encompassing. Priscilla and Lane sat together companionably. Lane looked through the branches of the mesquite, past the dark green of its tiny leaves at the intensity of the blue above them.

  “Does it ever rain here?” she asked.