Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  I jerked away from him to hug the door. “You’re overreacting, Caleb. If this is the way you’re going to behave, I’m going home.” I unbuckled my belt, but I was bluffing. I wanted justice for Autumn as much as he wanted to nail Garth.

  His jaw momentarily ground against the futility of this argument, but then I got a bigger surprise when he unbuckled his seat belt and reached over to pull me against his chest.

  “Okay, it’s okay,” he said, rubbing my back and kissing my ear. He’d seen beyond the bluff and bluster, because in the moment it took for him to envelop me in his warm embrace, I was shaking and sobbing. I let out a shuddering breath and put my head in the hollow of his warm neck and let the tears I had been holding inside run all over his nice clean uniform.

  He murmured against my ear, “I was so scared, so scared. I couldn’t bear to lose you, Lalla. Not when I’ve just found you again.”

  I pulled back, sniffing, and, finding a tissue, honked a couple of times. Then I peered into the depths of his eyes. “What do you mean, just found me again? I haven’t gone anywhere.”

  Still holding onto me, he ran a thumbnail lightly over my chin. “The first time I realized what you meant to me, you were gone to New York. Then, when you came back, I thought we could take our time, get to know each other again. But before I could say ‘hello, Lalla,’ you married Ricky.”

  “You were already married to Marcy,” I added, hiccupping.

  His gaze slid over my face and stopped on my slightly open mouth. “Yeah, well, if I had to do it all over again…”

  I closed my mouth, then opened it again and said, “I’m not going anyplace, Caleb. And if you want, we can spend the time to explore more with each other than just being friends. But you have to promise me something first.”

  “I’ll consider anything about now.”

  “Don’t shut me out of this investigation. Wait a minute,” I said, tightening my hold on him as he started to let go. “You said so yourself, I could be in danger. I promise to tell you everything I find out if you’ll keep me in the loop.”

  He eased out of my grasp and looked down his nose at me. “Why?”

  Now, Lalla, tell him now you’re worried sick that all of this is going to snake back around to your father. Tell him! But I didn’t—I couldn’t, not yet. Not until I, or someone, found Patience’s murderer and cleared my family.

  “Perhaps because my reputation is already ruined? Or because neither Patience nor Autumn deserved to die?”

  “Not because you want to see Garth Thorne proven innocent?”

  “Hell no!” I said, planting a smacking kiss on his mouth. “Are we square now? Can we go?”

  He smiled and touched my cheek. Then he said, “What’s black and white and red all over?”

  “Caleb Stone, this is no time for riddles!”

  He laughed and started the car. “I’m sorry. It just popped into my head, Lalla. And when you played that recording, I remembered. If it’s still there.”

  “What—where are we going?” I said, buckling up before he thought to remind me.

  “To Patience’s house,” he said, as we swept north onto the freeway.

  I knew better than to ask any more questions, but I was pleased when he sneaked a glance at me every once in a while and the corner of his mouth tilted up with what could only be described as secret happy thoughts.

  We would need to work out the parameters, make sure we didn’t completely destroy our friendship, in case this romance thing didn’t pan out. Was he the ying to my yang, and I’d just never let myself go that far to consider it? That he was jealous of Garth was evident. For that matter, could I also describe the queasy feeling I got when I saw Darlene lusting after Caleb? Oh yeah, I am well-experienced with that virus and should have been able to diagnose it sooner, except that I’d been too dumb to see it for what it was—jealousy.

  He pulled into Patience’s driveway and explained. “We were searching the yard for footprints, and the paper guy drove by and tossed the damn thing at us. It landed at my feet and I picked it up, thinking she wasn’t going to need it anymore.”

  “So, why is Sunday’s newspaper important?”

  “Not Sunday’s, Friday’s, and if we can find it, I’ll tell you why it’s important.”

  The bushes in question were a spiny, densely packed growth of dusty green leaves in a riot of colorful red and pink flowers. Requiring little water in the summer valley heat, their blossoms attracted aphids and dust. In the stifling heat, I stumbled through the dense growth, kicking up dust that mixed with the sweat and pasted my face a muddy brown. I could barely move without raking my face with another aphid-infested branch, so using my hands to push through the bushes, I toed at the dirt around the roots with my shoe. I felt like one of my resident quail, raising more dust than reward—and to think, an hour ago anything besides watching a body of a young woman being loaded onto a gurney sounded like a good idea. Then something solid shifted under my shoe. It was a dusty, faded, still tightly wrapped and rubber-banded newspaper.

  I held up the folded paper and edged out of the thorny bushes. “Now tell me what it means,” I said, handing it to him.

  He shook the paper and rolled off the rubber band. The chewed end of a stubby cigar fell at his feet. He leaned over and picked it up. Holding it by two fingers, he said, “We picked up all the papers from last week until someone finally called the paper and told them not to deliver any more. Know anyone who smokes cigars?”

  I knew a couple of old fishing buddies who did, but decided to leave that for some other time. “Garth smokes cigarettes, or at least he did the first time I met him. I haven’t seen him smoke since then. One of the detectives? The coroner? They all smelled like either cigarette or cigar smoke.” I wasn’t about to add that my father was likely to smoke the occasional cigar.

  “No one on the case would be so careless around a crime scene.”

  “It could have been the paper guy. It’s in the country, so who’s to care if he throws his butts out the window with the paper. So, what’s so special about this paper delivery?”

  “This newspaper is what wasn’t here last Saturday, because Garth ran over it with his motor home. His tire tracks are on the paper. See? He picked it up and threw it into the bushes either going in or out of his aunt’s house—Friday, not Sunday morning like he told us.”

  “So the timing is right to put him here on Friday, and with Autumn’s testimony, you’re going to arrest him?”

  He put his arm around me and led me back to the car. Opening the door, he said, “Sit inside and I’ll turn on the AC.”

  I did as I was told and waited till he turned the AC up to max. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a folded hanky. “You’ve got dust on your face.” He tilted up my chin, licked a corner of the hanky and gently wiped at the grime. “We were talking about it, Detective Rodney and I, when you interrupted, and since you had that recording of Autumn, we might be able to use it in court. The problem is, Garth has an alibi. I think we got him for killing his aunt, and it’s likely Autumn was in on it, but the only one left with cause to get Autumn is Eddy McBride.”

  “Not Eddy again! Didn’t we already agree Eddy was innocent?

  “We agreed he’s innocent of killing his wife.”

  “Right. So what would be his motive for killing Autumn?”

  “Eddy was following the money, remember? It led to Autumn, didn’t it?”

  “But Autumn was jilting Garth. She was going to take it all and run.” I groaned. “How could Eddy possibly know about all that? Not Eddy. He couldn’t have done it.”

  He shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out when we pick him up.”

  Defeated, I said, “Do you really think he’ll show up at the funeral?”

  “If he does, we’ll find him.”

  “If you’re sure that he’ll be there, you’d better look for him in hat and heels.” Then I told him everything I knew about Eddy and his cross-dressing tendencies. He nodded, tha
nked me politely and then silently drove me back to my truck at the pancake house and dropped me off.

  Before I got out, I said, “I told you I’d tell you everything, and then when I do, you give me the silent treatment? If that’s your way of saying thank you, Caleb Stone, you can just forget about anything else between us.” Then I exited his car and flounced back to mine.

  Across the road, yellow crime scene tape fluttered at the second-story balcony—mute testimony that someone was a liar.

  TWENTY

  Back at the ranch, I told my dad I was home and that another woman had been killed. He shook his head sadly and offered to hire me a lawyer.

  “I’m not a suspect this time, Noah, and I’m too tired to eat, so I think I’ll just go on up to bed.”

  But I didn’t sleep much. And when I did, my dreams were weirder than Eddie showing up in women’s clothes. I woke up at the sound of my alarm. It was three a.m. I stumbled into clothes, gulped down a cup of coffee and shoved myself out the door for the long day of work.

  ~*~

  When a hint of sun traces the eastern Sierras, the pilots take off. Unable to see over the nose of tail-dragging Ag-Cats, pilots gauge the distance by aiming the aircraft down the middle until, with that innate sense of timing pilots and gunslingers share, they adjust throttle, stick and rudder. The wheels let go of the earth beneath them, and they’re up in the air.

  Over the roar of the last plane, I went back into the office with a vague sense of depression. Was it because I wasn’t part of them anymore? My license was current and my leg was better than I let on. So why wasn’t I “back in the saddle,” as my dad liked to call it? Probably because I still carried around the sense of looming helplessness as I plowed through twenty acres of tomatoes. No, I didn’t think I was ready yet. Besides, there hadn’t been any time, what with people dropping dead every few days.

  ~*~

  When I returned to the house and my late breakfast, Noah was already at the table, fork poised over his plate, the morning newspaper in his other hand. He tapped the photo on the front page. “You’re in the funny papers again, missy. So what do you know about this young woman killed yesterday? She from around here?”

  I looked over his shoulder at what was obviously a driver’s photo from her license, the long curls, wide-set and innocent round eyes. “I’m sorry to say, yesterday was our one and only meeting.”

  “Huh. Alexandra Graham, also known as Autumn O’Sullivan. She puts me in mind of someone. Seems to me I ought to know her,” he said, laying down the paper again to pick up his fork. “Caleb said it could’ve been you as well as this poor girl in the photo. Why can’t you leave it to the police, Lalla?”

  “Believe it or not, I was minding my own business when she called asking for help. She had some evidence that Garth killed his aunt, and I thought if I could ensure her safety, she would let me call Caleb.”

  But Noah wasn’t interested in murder suspects. “Well, if I’m not going to see grandchildren in my lifetime, I think the least you could do is outlive me.”

  “Is that why you’re selling off my inheritance in bits and pieces, because there are no grandchildren?” His look said I’d struck pay dirt. “And here I thought you were selling off your land because you didn’t want to deal with the paperwork. How can I run a crop-dusting business if we’re getting pushed out by developers?”

  “You don’t get it, do you, Lalla? I don’t need someone to run the office, I can do that myself if I have to. But I couldn’t pass the physical if I wanted to, and if you won’t, can’t, or don’t, this year’s profits may not be enough to keep us afloat for next year.”

  “You mean we’ll go under unless I’m flying again? Fine, fine. I’ll get the cast off Monday and put myself back into rotation. Will that be enough to keep you from selling off the rest of the farm?”

  He shook out the newspaper and turned to the sports page. “I’m thinking about taking a cruise this fall, and I don’t intend to have to worry about either the farm or a crop-dusting business.”

  I stood up and looked at the wall of newsprint separating us. “Was this something you thought up all by yourself? Or was this Caleb’s idea?”

  The paper rustled angrily as he turned a page. “I don’t need Caleb or anybody telling me when I need a vacation,” he said. “I can do that all by myself, thank you. Besides, Caleb’s idea of a vacation would be you tied to a bedpost.”

  I was thinking of yesterday’s fiasco, not really paying attention. “I know.”

  He mumbled something else I didn’t quite hear.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘If Caleb had his way, the bedpost would be his.’”

  “His bedpost—why, Noah Bains!” I gasped.

  “What?” he grunted, putting down the paper. “You didn’t know that boy has designs on you? I thought by now he’d have told you his intentions.”

  “Well, yes, but not exactly in those terms, at least not yet.” We hadn’t had the time to have that exact sort of conversation before. Oh, hell. What was I really thinking? We hadn’t had the time to pull off each other’s clothes yet. Of course, after yesterday’s confession, maybe he didn’t want me anymore.

  He snorted. “He better hurry up, before you run off and marry some other fool.”

  I grinned. “I think I can manage to stay single until then. You like him, don’t you?”

  He moved the paper up between us. “You could do worse, and have. He’s here all the time anyway.” He put the paper down and scratched at the back of his neck. “Okay, that’s not fair, and it’s not what I really meant to say. I like him; he’s a good man, Lalla, and I think he’d be good for you, though I don’t know what you’d do for him, other than drive him crazy.”

  I smiled at the off-center recommendation on Caleb’s behalf. Then I noticed the front page photo of Autumn staring at me, telling me to find her killer.

  “I have some stuff to do.”

  “What stuff?” he asked, his face now behind the paper.

  “Work stuff.” I wasn’t about to tell him I was determined to see if I could either prove or disprove Garth Thorne murdered his girlfriend. Eddy was innocent; he had to be. Or I might yet have to hire a lawyer for this family.

  Cathy Thorne-Levorwosky was Garth’s excuse for his trip to California. It took three tries before I located her phone number. When she cautiously acknowledged that I’d reached the right person, I asked to see her. “I’m part of the investigating team,” I said, and still holding the phone to my ear, I fished around into my purse to make sure I still had my fake police badge.

  “Make it snappy,” she said. “I start work at noon, and I still gotta get my kid to summer school.”

  ~*~

  Stepping into Cathy Thorne-Levorwosky’s neighborhood felt like crossing the Prozac county line. I could almost hear the faint sound of quiet desperation as anxious mothers dealt with kids who must be schlepped everywhere and dads who commuted three hours round-trip to work. Her one-story ranch had newly installed landscaping. Outside a three-car garage was a Chevy truck with a Louie’s Electric decal on the side. A Mercedes 450SL coupe with a ragtop held together with duct tape sat next to it.

  I walked up the brick steps past a well-manicured yard with bright green plants and flowers strategically placed amongst newly spread redwood chips, and a real estate sign leaning against the side of the garage.

  A barefoot and sturdy tyke in a scruffy jam-dyed T-shirt and shorts answered the door.

  I looked down at the towheaded boy and said, “Hello. Your mom is expecting me.”

  “Mom!” he bellowed in a husky voice. “Someone’s at the door for you!”

  I had every confidence he had a great future in the pros and could effectively insult any batter to distraction. A minute passed while we stood eyeing each other like two stray alley cats, until the slap of sandals on the entry tile signaled the approach of an adult. The kid eyed me one last time, then eased back toward the cacophony of mornin
g cartoons.

  The sandals held narrow feet with long red toenails, like the talons of a predatory bird. I wasn’t surprised to see that the rest of her was as predatory looking as her feet. Caleb’s description of her was right on, as she looked like she could eat small, feathered birds for breakfast.

  She even held her head to one side like a quizzical bird. “What? Jehovah’s Witness? Soccer pool? Hurry up, I’m busy,” she said, irritation showing on her narrow, pinched face.

  “I called this morning? About the investigation?” I said, holding up my fake badge.

  She looked me up and down, at the neatly pressed slacks and conservative white shirt, and through lips thin as knives, said, “Oh. Yeah. Okay, come in.”

  She opened the door wide enough for me to slip inside without letting too much of the interior cold out. “The living room’s that way,” she said, pointing a long, red-lacquered fingernail at a distant beacon of light. “I’m going to get my husband, Dan.”

  Before she turned away, I noticed the telltale lines around her mouth saying she was a smoker and had been for some time, but not in this house. This house smelled like fresh paint.

  “Leave your shoes by the front door,” she said, and left.

  I did as she instructed and inched along the dark hall till I stumbled into a room flooded with morning light. The room reeked of new paint, and I was standing on a traffic lane of plastic. From a mirrored wall, a tall blond woman in pants and white shirt gawked back at me. I could hear my dad say, “A closed mouth gathers no feet,” and snapped my mouth shut. I chose a fat leather sofa, the newness of it squeaking under me as I sat down.

  She was back in a minute, towing Godzilla.

  “This is my husband, Dan,” she said, meaning the oversized man filling the doorway. “Our last name is Levorwosky, in case you need to write it down,” she said, eyeballing the purse sitting next to me in case I wanted to start acting like an investigator and take some notes. “You said your name’s Lila?”

  She twitched her head at Mr. Dan and he immediately sat. She took the other chair facing me and waited.