Heather-Anne Pawlusik lay on the floor, her head by the door, a spangly scarf pulled so tightly around her throat that her face was blotchy and swollen. Her eyes, her tongue … The gruesome details hit me like someone was driving nails into my eyes and I screamed.
An answering scream sounded from just behind me, and I whirled, screaming again when I came face-to-face with a round-cheeked maid holding a pile of towels. She shrieked again and crossed herself awkwardly around the towels. We took turns screaming for another couple of seconds before the maid looked past me and screamed louder. “Está muerta. Asesina!”
I didn’t speak Spanish—well, not more than it took to ask for the baño—but her expression made me think she’d just called me an assassin. Which was plain silly because—
“You keeled her!” she clarified, stabbing a finger toward Heather-Anne. “Dead!”
“Yes, she’s— No! I didn’t—” The maid turned and fled, dropping the towels, before I could tell her I hadn’t killed Heather-Anne.
* * *
“Why did you tell Ms. Herrera that you killed Ms. Pawlusik if you didn’t?” the detective asked. She was tall, skinny, and skeptical in a blue-gray suit that flattered her pale complexion and reddish hair. We were in an unoccupied suite at the hotel, four doors away from Heather-Anne’s room, and herds of police and hotel officials were coming and going. They’d made me sit in this room by myself for more than an hour with a cop watching me from one of the dinette chairs. I was tired and scared and had already cried so many times I knew I must have a mascara trail down to my chin. Poor Heather-Anne!
“I didn’t tell her that,” I insisted, rubbing my feet together. I wished I could take off the painful boots, but I couldn’t imagine being interrogated by the police in my stocking feet. “I just agreed with her that Heather-Anne was dead.”
Detective Lorrimore cocked an eyebrow and I got the feeling she didn’t believe me. “‘Heather-Anne?’ So you had a relationship with the victim?”
“I knew her, if that’s what you mean,” I said. “She was a client.”
“A client?”
“I’m a private investigator.”
“Really?” Disbelief sent her eyebrows soaring.
I couldn’t much blame her for that reaction; I’m sure most PIs don’t dissolve into puddles of tears when they find a dead body. “Yes. She hired us to find her—” How did I describe her relationship to Les? “Her boyfriend,” I said.
At the mention of a possibly estranged boyfriend, the detective perked up and readied her pen over her notepad. “His name?”
“Lester Goldman.”
Detective Lorrimore started to write, then stopped, staring at me from under her brows. “Didn’t you say your name was Goldman?”
Her eyes narrowed in suspicion, and I knew where she was going. I felt like I was sinking in quicksand. “Do you know Detective Connor Montgomery?” I asked in desperation. He was a homicide detective who was a friend of Charlie’s, and I’d met him several times.
“Montgomery? Wait a minute … Do you work for Charlie Swift?”
“We’re partners.”
“You’re the one that set fire to the Buff Burgers last year, right? And blew up the meth lab?”
“I didn’t—” Before I could explain what really happened in both those cases, she was gesturing to a uniformed cop and whispering something to him. They both laughed. Keeping her eyes on me, Lorrimore dialed a number on her cell. “Montgomery. Get your ass down to the Embassy Suites. Your girlfriend’s partner turned up in a hotel room with a homicide victim.” She flipped her phone closed, leaned her shoulders against the wall, and folded her arms across her chest. “Oh, this is going to be good.”
Her smile made me uneasy. I couldn’t decide whether to worry about ending up in jail for the second time in two days or what Charlie would say if she heard someone refer to her as Montgomery’s girlfriend.
12
“‘Girlfriend’ is a revolting term,” Charlie said some hours later, pointing the business end of her grout trowel at Detective Connor Montgomery to emphasize her point. “It’s Barbie and Ken. Middle school.” She slapped more grout onto the tile and smoothed it with rapid, angry strokes.
“Would you rather I referred to you as my lover?” He was behind her, but she could hear the lazy smile in his voice.
“But I’m not.”
“Yet.”
His certainty sent tingly warmth from her midsection to her extremities, and she had to re-grip the trowel after a moment’s pause. “Don’t count your chickens,” she recommended.
He laughed. Glad that the hair falling around her face hid her expression, Charlie pretended to concentrate on her tiling, deliberately not looking up to see how his lean face lit up when he laughed, how his brown eyes warmed. With his dark hair and tall, athletic body, he reminded her of the actor Clive Owen, only with a better sense of humor.
When he spoke again, his voice was serious. “It’s not looking good for Gigi.”
Charlie swiveled her head to stare at him. “You can’t seriously believe that Gigi would—could—plan and carry off a murder.”
Montgomery helped himself to a beer from the fridge; surprisingly, Charlie didn’t resent his familiarity. Her lack of resentment worried her.
“Plan? Probably not. Strangle her in the heat of the moment … The woman stole Gigi’s husband, Charlie. That sounds like a pretty good motive to me. Gigi’s a large woman, strong; she could have overpowered Pawlusik physically.”
“I don’t think it’s Pawlusik,” Charlie said, standing, rubbing her ass absently, and crossing to the sink to wash grout off her hands. When Montgomery arched his eyebrows, she explained how she’d tried to check out Heather-Anne’s background and come up with a blank. “When I called her on it—”
“Why am I not surprised?” The hiss of air escaping the bottle as he twisted the cap accompanied his comment.
“—she said her name was really Lucinda Cheney and she was on the run from an abusive husband. She wouldn’t give me his name or tell me where she’d been living, although she mentioned traveling through the South. My guess? Cheney isn’t her real name, either.”
“Lorrimore will track down her real identity through fingerprints,” he said. At Charlie’s questioning look, he said, “It’s not my case. Conflict of interest. Everyone knows you and I are—” Charlie’s baleful look made him reconsider his word choice—“whatever we are. Gigi works for you—with you—so I’m out of the loop.”
“You must still know—”
“Uh-uh. It’s strictly by the book on this one, Charlie. I can’t give you anything. No lab results, no autopsy findings, no hints about what Lorrimore’s thinking. She’s a good cop. She’ll get to the truth without your help.”
He gave the final word an ironic twist, and Charlie stuck out her tongue. His hand flashed out, snagged her around the waist, and pulled her hard against the length of him. Before she could even think about breaking free, he’d pressed a hard kiss on her lips. When he would have pulled back, she stopped him with her hands on his face, and the kiss deepened. It was several minutes before they broke apart, both breathing heavily. Montgomery’s gaze fell to Charlie’s swollen lips, and his eyes glittered. “We could—”
“Uh-uh.” She turned away, trying to regain her composure as she tucked her T-shirt back into her painter’s overalls. “There’s work to do.”
“You don’t even have a case anymore,” Montgomery said, coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her. “Your client’s dead.”
“That may be,” Charlie said, disentangling herself reluctantly, “but she paid us in advance to find Les, and if Lorrimore suspects Gigi had a hand in Heather-Anne’s death, Les may be the only one who can prove otherwise.”
“How?” Montgomery accepted defeat, let his arms drop, and returned to his beer.
“He can testify that Heather-Anne had a deranged husband after her. Reasonable doubt. He can explain why he decamped from Costa
Rica and ended up in Aspen. You know”—she paused, furrowing her brow—“we don’t even know for sure that Heather-Anne was the intended victim.”
“What, someone mistook her for someone else? Come on, Charlie.”
“No. She said one of the men Les cheated threatened to hurt his kids. Maybe Heather-Anne’s murder is a message to Les.”
“Thin.”
Charlie rounded on him. “My partner’s a murder suspect. I’m going to do what it takes to clear her.” Her own vehemence and concern for Gigi startled her. She hadn’t wanted Gigi as a partner, but the woman was growing on her. Damn it. “Because it reflects badly on Swift Investigations, of course, to have one of the partners on trial,” she added loftily. “It’s bad for business.”
“Of course.”
The amused understanding in Montgomery’s voice made her want to hit him. Or kiss him. Or … She shooed him out the door, beer bottle in hand, so she could get to work.
13
I wasn’t under arrest. That happy thought bounced through my brain as I drove home from the Embassy Suites Sunday afternoon. That didn’t mean the police wouldn’t change their minds and nab me any minute. Detective Lorrimore had talked to me for what seemed like hours, going over the same questions again and again, like I was going to change my story the eighteenth time I told it. I knew she wanted to put me in jail and throw away the key. I’d been relieved when Charlie’s friend, Detective Montgomery, had stopped by and dragged Lorrimore into the hall for a few minutes. I’d tiptoed to the door, hoping to overhear something, and been embarrassed when a uniformed cop came through the door while I had my ear pressed against it. The officer almost knocked me on my fanny, and the door bruised my forehead. Looking in the rearview mirror, I tried to arrange my hair to cover the bruise. A horn blared beside me, and I jerked the Hummer’s wheel so I ended up back in my own lane, giving the scowling woman an apologetic smile.
Passing the exit for Fillmore, I suddenly realized I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to talk to Charlie. Whipping the Hummer toward the exit, I waved guiltily at the two lanes’ worth of people honking at me. A quick left on Fillmore and another left into the merge lane had me headed north on I-25 again within minutes. I got off at Woodmen and worked my way back toward Charlie’s house. A couple of police cars and a few news vans sat outside the Embassy Suites, and I ducked down in the seat as I passed it.
“Glad to see you’re not getting fitted for an orange jumpsuit,” Charlie greeted me when I ding-donged.
“Orange is so not my color,” I said. “I cannot go to prison. What would the kids do?” Kendall would probably move in with her friend Angel, and they’d become groupies, following that band they were obsessed with around the country. She’d never finish high school and would end up shacked up with some loser in Schenectady or Amarillo when the drummer tossed her aside like a used Kleenex, penniless and alone in a strange town. Dexter might well end up in the jail cell next to mine for doing something dangerous and stupid with his dangerous and stupid friends. I sighed.
Charlie beckoned me in, and I followed her through to the kitchen. She grabbed two Pepsis from the fridge, tossed one to me, and led me back to the living room. I flopped into her oversized armchair, thinking that the earth-toned decor was nice but a little dull. Maybe I’d get her a yellow wall clock or a colorful mobile for her birthday. I’d seen one in shades of bright purple and lime at the Fine Arts Center gift shop last week. Thinking about it made me realize I didn’t know when Charlie’s birthday was. “Charlie, when’s—”
She interrupted me. “What did the police say?”
I ran through it, taking great gulps of the Pepsi and wishing it were hot cocoa with plenty of whipped cream on top. “So they finally let me go, but I know that Detective Lorrimore suspects me,” I finished. “What did Detective Montgomery say?”
“That he can’t tell me anything.” Charlie looked annoyed. Her dark bangs flopped in her eyes, and she flipped them out of the way impatiently. “He doesn’t think you murdered Heather-Anne, though.”
“He said that?” The thought pleased me.
“No, but he’s sharp enough to realize that you couldn’t pull off … that is, that you would never kill anyone.”
“You were going to say I’m not capable of planning a murder, weren’t you?” I don’t know why the thought riled me, but it did. I could kill someone!
“Not being a murderer is a good thing, Gigi,” Charlie said. “Have you talked to a lawyer?”
“You think I need one?”
Her silence answered my question.
“The only lawyer I know is my divorce lawyer,” I said morosely. “Considering how that turned out, I think I’d rather throw a dart at the Yellow Pages than call him.”
Charlie laughed, and the sound surprised a smile out of me. She has a great laugh. “It won’t matter,” she said, “because we’re going to track down Les and get to the root of this so that you won’t need a lawyer. First, I’m going to talk to the people who knew Heather-Anne, or whatever her name was, when she lived here: her roommate, her co-workers. I need to get more of a feel for the woman. You need to get on the computer and find out what you can about Lucinda Cheney, which is what she said her real name was. I don’t know where she lived, but she talked about the South, so start there.”
I made notes, happy to have a plan of attack. “I’ll think about where else Les might be, too,” I said, “since he might know something about who would want to kill Heather-Anne.” The look on Charlie’s face startled me. It took me a moment, but then my eyes widened. “No. Oh, no, Charlie. He wouldn’t.”
She arched her brows skeptically. “He took up with a tramp, stole money from tons of people, dumped you, and abandoned his kids.”
“That doesn’t make him a murderer!”
She just said, “Who else would want Heather-Anne dead?”
The first thing that came to me—wives of the men she’d lured away—wasn’t a good answer given that I was one of those wives. “Serial killer?”
Charlie gave me a look.
“The ex-husband that was after her!” I offered triumphantly. The more I thought about it, the better I liked that idea, mostly because it didn’t involve me or Les.
“We don’t even know that there really was a husband, ex or not. I wouldn’t exactly bet my paycheck on Heather-Anne’s truthfulness.”
She didn’t push it, but I could see that Les was her prime suspect. I was too tired to argue with her about it, and, truth to tell, I’d be happy to have the police looking at anybody besides me.
14
Charlie arrived at the downtown YMCA before eight o’clock on Monday morning. Her butt cheek was feeling much better; it didn’t even twinge as her guide led her past elliptical machines being used by exercisers whose grim faces suggested they were working to repel a Communist invasion rather than a few fat cells. She scanned the room but didn’t see Hollis, Heather-Anne’s client from Saturday.
Her guide, a middle-aged woman with graying hair pulled back in a ponytail, knocked on an office door with a sign that read SANDRA SECHREST, DIRECTOR. She pushed it open to reveal a desk, two metal chairs with padded seats, and a doctor’s-office-type scale. “Sandy, this is Charlotte Smith—”
“Swift.”
“She’s a detective, and she needs to talk to you about Heather-Anne Pawlusik.” Curiosity vibrated in her voice.
“Thank you, Maureen,” the woman said, rising. Charlie edged past Maureen, still blocking the doorway, to shake hands with the taller woman. In her early forties maybe, a few years older than Charlie, she had a distinct air of command; Charlie wouldn’t have been surprised to learn the woman had been in the military before becoming the Y’s director. She wore a blue YMCA golf shirt over close-fitting black slacks. Maureen hadn’t budged, clearly interested in hearing what Charlie had to say about Heather-Anne, and Sandy dislodged her with a “Close the door on your way out, Maureen.”
As soon as the door clicked shut, she t
urned her narrowed gaze on Charlie. “Heather-Anne Pawlusik has not been employed by the YMCA for going on eight months now,” she said, “so if there’s a complaint—”
When the woman didn’t finish her thought, Charlie prompted, “What kind of complaint would you expect?”
Sandy covered her discomfort by sitting behind her desk and motioning for Charlie to sit. As she did, she scanned the desk for clues to Sandy’s interests, but the two framed photos faced inward, and the inspirational prints on the office were standard YMCA fare and had probably been there well before Sandy moved in. “Well. I just figured there must have been a complaint of some kind if the police were showing up to question a former employer.”
Interesting, Charlie thought, that she would immediately assume a criminal complaint had been lodged against Heather-Anne. “I’m not with the police,” she said, handing over her business card. Colorado didn’t license PIs, so the best she could do for identification purposes was the card. “I’m a private investigator.”
The YMCA director arched well-defined brows. “You’re not a cop?”
Charlie shook her head. She wasn’t above letting interviewees think she was a cop on occasion, but Sandy Sechrest struck her as the type to demand a badge before saying anything. Sandy rose again. “Then I’m afraid I can’t talk to you.” Her posture and expression made it clear she was inviting Charlie to leave.
Charlie relaxed into her chair—hard to do with its inhospitable metal back digging into her neck—to make it plain she wasn’t leaving yet. “If I were a cop, what would you have told me?”
“Why is a private detective looking for Heather-Anne?” Sandy countered, admitting temporary defeat by sitting again. A small diamond on her left hand caught the light as she smoothed back her maple-syrup-colored hair.
No wonder she was slim, Charlie thought, with all that up and down. “I’m not looking for Heather-Anne. She’s dead.”
3 Swift Run Page 8
