Without answering, Charlie asked, “What do you remember about your father’s death?”
Eustis put the cigarette in his mouth and let it hang there. Like a pacifier, Charlie thought. “Dad met her here.” Eustis flung a hand wide to encompass the entire stock show. “They were married within two months. Indecent. My mother was barely cold in her grave.”
“Some people are more comfortable married,” Dan put in. “They need companionship, someone to do for, or to do for them.”
Eustis slanted him a look that didn’t agree or disagree. “You wanted to know about his murder,” he said to Charlie. “I found him.” His lips worked at the cigarette. “Dead. Stone cold. Alone. She poisoned him with brake fluid in his Long Island iced tea, ransacked the bank accounts, and lit out. The sheriff never found a trace of her.”
Charlie got the impression Eustis wasn’t going to be voting for Sheriff Huff in the next election. “You weren’t worried that the murderer had killed or kidnapped her?”
Snorting, Eustis pulled the cigarette from his mouth and began to shred it in his fingers. Bits of tobacco drifted to the floor. “Nope. She did it. His drink was poisoned, for chrissake. Who else could have done it?”
“Your wife mentioned that you inherited the Triple E, and rumor had it that your dad was firing you. You threatened to kill him.”
The words hung between them for a moment as the PA system named the best of breed for something called a Champagne d’Argent. It sounded like a bottle of bubbly, Charlie thought, rather than a rabbit.
As Charlie’s words sank in, Eustis leaped to his feet, overturning the metal chair. Several people turned to look as it clanged to the floor. “I did not kill my dad! That woman did. Amanda or Heather-Anne or whatever she calls herself.”
Charlie and Dan exchanged a look. “We didn’t mention she was calling herself Heather-Anne,” Dan said, rising slowly to his feet. “Why don’t you sit down again, Mr. Eustis?”
Charlie remained seated, thinking that Dan’s six-foot-five presence came in handy. If she had to have a partner, she thought as Eustis righted his chair and sat again, why couldn’t she have one who intimidated clients and witnesses, instead of Gigi who wouldn’t intimidate a … a bunny.
She leaned forward, deciding to go with her instincts. “I saw you come out of Heather-Anne’s room at the Embassy Suites,” she said, startling both Eustis and Dan.
“I wasn’t— You’re making this up! I don’t have to—” Eustis looked around, as if seeking an escape route. He jerked the Marlboros from his pocket, stuck one in his mouth, and lit it with a disposable lighter.
“I’m sure the police will be able to spot you on the surveillance videos,” Charlie said. “It was Wednesday afternoon, late.”
Slumping forward, Eustis drew hard on the cigarette, then expelled a stream of smoke. A woman at the next table ostentatiously fanned the air and shot him a disapproving look.
“How did you know she was there?”
Eustis looked up from under his brows. “I got a phone call. Last Tuesday. A man’s voice said Amanda was in room 115 at the Embassy Suites in Colorado Springs. Before I could ask anything, he hung up.”
“Why didn’t you tell Sheriff Huff?”
That earned her a “you’ve got to be kidding” look. “I didn’t even tell Tansy. I thought it was a crackpot, a troublemaker. I decided to check it out for myself before I got the law all spun up about it. I was headed to Denver the next day anyway, so I dropped Eric at the hotel here, told him I had business to take care of, and drove on down to Colorado Springs.”
“What did she say?”
Eustis’s eyes widened. “I never saw her. You’ve got to believe me. I showed up at the Embassy Suites on Wednesday and knocked on her door. I don’t know what I’d’ve said if she’d answered. I probably would have left and called the police.”
Riiight, Charlie thought. She drummed her fingers on the table.
“When no one came to the door, I walked around for a bit. I saw a maintenance man go in and waited in the hall until he came out. Holding my credit card like it was a key card, I acted like it was my room and caught the door before it closed. I don’t know what I expected to find, but there was nothing useful. No photos, nothing about my dad or anything that tied the room’s occupant to Amanda. I decided that the caller was playing me for a chump, so I left. I drove back here, and I’ve been here ever since. End of story.”
“Really?” Charlie let her skepticism show. “You didn’t stake the place out to get a glimpse of whoever was in the room, didn’t confront her about your father’s death, didn’t strangle her with her own scarf?”
“No!” Eustis was beginning to look like a hunted rabbit. Charlie searched for another image, wishing her brain would let go of the rabbit comparisons. She sneezed. He looked like a man with a secret, she decided. A scared man with a secret.
“So your son will say you’ve been with him the whole time—”
“Leave my son out of this!”
“—and the videotapes won’t show your truck in the Embassy Suites parking lot or you walking through the lobby. Come on, Mr. Eustis. It’s only natural that you would want to catch up with the woman who probably killed your father. No one’s going to blame you for wanting to know if it was her.”
“Sir, you can’t smoke in here.” An officious-looking woman stood at Eustis’s shoulder.
With something like a growl, he threw the butt to the dirt floor and ground it out savagely with his booted foot. The officious woman looked like she was going to say something, thought better of it in the face of Eustis’s glare, and walked off.
“All right,” Eustis spat. “I went back. On Saturday. I stewed about it for a couple of days and decided I couldn’t live with myself if there was any possibility Amanda was in Colorado Springs and I didn’t find out for sure. She put Dad in his grave, and it wasn’t right that she was running around free, spending his money on nice hotels and who knows what else. So I went back. This time, I didn’t even have to go into the hotel. I saw her in the parking lot. It took me a few minutes to be sure—she’d lost a lot of weight and dyed her hair—but when I saw her walk I was sure.”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t talk to her.” Responding to Charlie’s look, he insisted, “I didn’t. She was with a man. It looked like they were arguing. In a way, I was glad, because I was afraid of what I might do if I met up with her face-to-face.” His hands balled into fists. “It scared me—the way I felt. I drove off. I was shaking so bad I pulled over at the next exit and just sat for about twenty minutes. Then I came back here, to the motel. I was going to call Sheriff Huff, sic him on her, but then I heard on the news the next morning that she was dead and I, well, I was afraid to say anything, afraid that the police would jump to the wrong conclusion if I called and told them who she really was.” He gave Charlie and Dan a baleful look. “Like you two did.”
Charlie didn’t refute him. “What did the man look like, the one you saw arguing with Heather-Anne?” She wasn’t sure she believed him, but she readied her notebook anyway.
Eustis shrugged. “Average. I didn’t see him up close. There were cars passing between us, and he was facing away from me. I was more focused on Amanda.”
“White, black, old, young?”
Squinting as if trying to recall, Eustis said, “White, I think. He wore a black baseball cap, and I couldn’t see his hair. I suppose he could’ve been bald. Taller than Amanda by a few inches, so he was maybe six feet or six foot one? Held himself like a young guy; you know—shoulders back, not all stooped over or anything.”
Charlie looked up from her notebook and said, “You have to tell the police.”
Before Eustis could respond, a lanky boy of maybe fourteen came toward them, a grin on his thin face, holding a champagne-colored muff in the crook of one arm and a ruffled blue ribbon aloft in the other hand. “Hermione won, Dad,” he said, coming to a stop beside their table. He looked curiously from Char
lie to Dan.
Charlie sneezed and realized that the “muff” was a rabbit, apparently named Hermione. Her pink nose twitched, and her thick fur looked as soft as dandelion fluff. Eustis’s look pleaded with them not to say anything in front of his son. “That’s great, Eric.”
“Can I pet her?” Dan asked. Charlie gave him a surprised look and then suppressed a smile at his kindness.
“Sure,” the boy agreed, thrusting the rabbit toward him. Unable to resist the soft-looking pelt, Charlie stroked Hermione’s fur, too, and thought a rabbit would be a good pet if it did anything.
“She’s beautiful,” Dan said. “Congratulations.”
The boy beamed, and Eustis rose to put his arm around his son’s shoulders. “Don’t want to miss the Simmental judging,” he said, drawing the teen away. “Great seeing you again,” he called over his shoulder to Dan and Charlie. His movements were jerky and hurried, betraying his tension.
Charlie didn’t try to call him back as they walked away, much the same height, the boy chattering excitedly as they turned down a row of hutches that hid them from view. She sighed and sneezed.
“Let’s get you out of here,” Dan said, taking her elbow and pulling her toward the entrance.
“Did you believe him?” she asked Dan as they retraced their steps across the parking lot. The cold air biting at her face felt good after the stuffy interior of the livestock barn.
Dan thought, a certain tightness around his eyes revealing his concentration. “In part,” he said. “I believed him about being scared by his reaction to seeing Heather-Anne and the urge to violence he must have felt.”
“The question is: Did he act on it, or did he drive off like he said?”
“That’s a question for the police,” Dan said, closing the truck door when Charlie got in. “You’re going to tell them?”
“Absolutely. Eustis might have killed Heather-Anne. Equally, he might have seen the man who did. Either way, the police need to know. They can question Eustis further, look at the surveillance tapes.”
“Assuming he was telling the truth, who called him and put him onto Heather-Anne at the Embassy Suites?”
Charlie puzzled over that question for a moment. “Maybe Les?” she finally suggested. “He had the newspaper clipping about Eustis Senior’s death. Maybe he wanted to see how Heather-Anne would react if Eustis Junior confronted her.”
“Possible.” Dan put the car in gear and pointed it toward Colorado Springs.
* * *
Inside Swift Investigations after Dan dropped her off, Charlie beelined for the minifridge and liberated a Pepsi. After a couple of long swallows, she called Gigi and learned that Les had left nothing of interest during his brief stay. Then, after a moment’s thought, she dialed the police department and asked for Detective Lorrimore. When the woman came on the line, Charlie filled her in on everything they’d learned about Heather-Anne’s past, including the possibility that she was both Lucinda Cheney and Amanda Eustis. She detailed her conversation with Robert Eustis Junior and gave Lorrimore both Sheriff Huff’s and Eustis’s contact information. The detective listened well, asking a question now and then.
When Charlie finished, Lorrimore said, “There’s a lot of guesswork in your theory. We have no proof that Heather-Anne Pawlusik was Amanda Eustis, much less that she was Lucinda Cheney.”
“Granted. You could get something from the Eustises or Cheney that might yield fingerprint matches, though, or DNA.”
“There’s not enough for a warrant.”
“My money says you won’t need one. The Eustis family, at least, is royally ticked. If they thought that giving you something to get fingerprints off of would help you catch up with Amanda, they’d cart a hairbrush down to the local police department without passing Go or collecting two hundred dollars. Cheney probably feels the same.”
“I’ll give it a try,” Lorrimore said, sounding a shade warmer than when she got on the phone. “Thanks for the tip. Even if we get a match, though, it doesn’t get me much closer to finding the murderer. In fact,” she continued, a hint of asperity creeping into her voice, “it widens the field if I have to consider that the men she swindled, and/or their families and heirs, might have wanted revenge. I’ll call this Sheriff Huff, and we’ll bring Eustis in for questioning today.”
“Do you have anything more implicating or clearing Dexter Goldman?” Charlie asked.
Lorrimore hesitated, then said, “Nothing new has turned up. He’s still a person of interest in this investigation.”
“The person you ought to be interested in is Les Goldman.”
“Oh, we are. Given his connection with the deceased and the way he vanished this morning, we’re very, very interested in Lester Goldman.”
Charlie hung up and drummed her fingers on the desk. She had actual paying cases she should be working on, but she wanted to clear Dexter’s name and find Les Goldman, not only because it would make Gigi feel better, but because it was a hell of a lot more interesting than investigating possible insurance fraud or doing background checks on potential employees for Danner and Lansky. After a moment’s thought, she decided to try to get hold of Parnell Parkin or his family. She didn’t have much hope that talking to them would yield much, but the leads were drying up, and she didn’t want to leave any stone unturned. After talking to Parkin, she’d drive out to Gigi’s. Maybe Gigi had missed something; at the very least, they could put their heads together and brainstorm places to look for Les. First, though, she needed a long soak in the hot tub and a change of clothes. Locking up the office, she headed down to Albertine’s to bum a ride home.
34
By midafternoon, Kendall was home and sulky about having to do her algebra homework. Dexter was still locked in his room refusing to talk to me, and Nolan was insisting he needed a walk, even though the snow was still a foot deep on most of the sidewalks. I thought guiltily of the snow shovel in the garage, and city laws that required homeowners to clear the sidewalks, but I just didn’t have the energy. Maybe a little exercise would get Dexter out of the mopes. I knocked on his door and said, “Dexter, the sidewalks need shoveling.”
To my surprise, he unlocked the door and headed downstairs without a word to me. Shrugging into a fleece jacket, he disappeared into the garage. Moments later the overhead door rumbled up. I went downstairs myself and, looking out the narrow windows beside the front door, saw Dexter trudging through the snow, shovel in hand. He dug the shovel down, roughly where the sidewalk would be, and flung the snow toward the lawn. I opened the door a crack and called, “Gloves, honey. It’s cold.”
He ignored me and kept shoveling. Nolan did his little potty dance at my ankles, and I opened the door wider. There were leash laws in Colorado Springs, but who was going to be out to complain on a day like this? I watched Nolan do his duty and then make his way toward Dexter, almost disappearing into the snowdrifts that came over his shaggy black-and-white head. Stooping, Dexter made a snowball and tossed it into the air for Nolan. I smiled. My son could be very sweet. Nolan leaped for the ball and then looked around, confused, when it splatted onto a bare patch of sidewalk and disintegrated. He barked, and Dexter made another snowball, tossing it toward the lawn.
A funny bump caught my attention. It seemed to have come from the basement. If Kendall had snuck down there to play Wii instead of finishing her homework … I hurried to the basement door. “Kendall?” I called down. The lights were off, but daylight coming through the garden-level windows made it light enough to see pretty well. I didn’t hear the Wii. Then Kendall said, “What, Mom?” Her voice came from upstairs.
I stared down into the basement. If Kendall was upstairs and Dexter and Nolan were out front, what made the noise in the basement? The answer came to me in a flash. Les! Les had come back. He’d seen the police leave, waited a while, and snuck back into the basement. I stomped down the stairs, furious. He had messed up our lives one too many times. I wasn’t putting up with it any longer.
“Les, if
you think I’m going to let you spend the night here again, you’ve got another think coming. I don’t care if it’s ten degrees below zero out there. You’re not—”
I came around the corner and stopped. Wind swished in through the now wide-open window, and I shivered. It wasn’t the cold making me shiver, though. It was Patrick Dreiser standing near the big-screen TV, a long and nasty-looking knife in his hand.
Snow was melting off his boots onto the shag carpet, and I said, “Why can’t anyone wipe their boots before coming into this house? Is that too much to ask?”
He looked taken aback but then raised the knife menacingly. “I knew you knew where Goldman was. The more I thought about that whole scene at the gas station, the more I knew you two were trying to scam me again. Well, that’s not going to happen. Where is he?” Dreiser jumped forward and looked behind the couch. He looked disappointed not to find Les crouched there.
“I don’t know!” I said. “He’s not here.”
“Right. That’s why you came down the stairs talking to him.” Dreiser swiped the hand with the knife across his mouth, wiping away spittle. “Come out, Goldman,” he yelled, “or it’s not going to be pretty for your pretty wife!”
He thought I was pretty? That lit a tiny bulb inside me that went out when he lunged forward with the knife. I backed up and found myself against the Ping-Pong table again. I reached for a paddle but had barely gotten hold of it before Dreiser knocked it out of my hand. “Down the hall,” he ordered.
Maybe if I showed him Les wasn’t here, he’d leave. “Fine,” I said. I marched down the hall and shoved the bathroom door open. “No one here,” I said, turning on the light. Pushing aside the shower curtain, I stood aside so he could see the empty tub. “No Les.”
Wearing an unconvinced sneer, he backed away from the door so I could return to the hall. I strode past him, trying to ignore the knife, and flicked on the lights in the bedroom. I slid open the closet door—that’s where my red Vera Wang dress got to!—and floofed the bedskirt onto the mattress. Nothing but dust bunnies. It probably hadn’t been vacuumed since I had to let the maid service go. “No one,” I sneezed.
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