Sidney Sheldon's the Silent Widow

by Sidney Sheldon

  ‘Well, it ain’t exactly detached,’ Johnson replied, deadpan. ‘She wasn’t shot in the head. She was tortured, terrorized, made to suffer. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t see any of that as Willie’s style. What was the wife like?’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Goodman. ‘Smarter than I thought. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I got the feeling she was almost playing with me at times. As if there were a double meaning to everything she said.’

  He filled Johnson in on his interview with Valentina Baden, how she’d confirmed almost to the letter the story he’d been given by the odious Nathan Grolsch.

  ‘She’s convinced Brandon’s dead. No doubt in her mind.’

  ‘I think so too,’ said Johnson.

  Goodman thought for a moment. Did he agree? He remembered the forcefulness of Valentina Baden’s parting words to him. ‘Take my word for it, Detective. Brandon Grolsch is not coming back.’ He’d had overdoses before. All told it did seem the most likely scenario.

  ‘OK. So let’s assume he’s dead. Where does that leave us?’

  The two men sat and sipped their drinks in quiet contemplation. Johnson broke the silence:

  ‘How about this. Our perp kills Brandon first. Figures he’s a junkie, he’s a nobody, nobody’s going to miss him. He, or she, holds on to the corpse. Then, when they kill Lisa, and later when they think they’ve killed Trey and leave him for dead, they plant Brandon’s DNA on the victims, to cover their tracks.’

  ‘You don’t buy the overdose story, then?’ Goodman asked.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Johnson. ‘Maybe Brandon’s already dead, and our perp gets hold of his corpse somehow. That would explain us having no record of it at the morgue.’

  ‘Like how?’ Goodman frowned. ‘How would someone get hold of Brandon Grolsch’s corpse?’

  ‘Maybe this “Rachel” sold it,’ said Johnson, matter-of-factly.

  ‘That’s sick,’ said Goodman.

  ‘It’s a sick world we live in,’ observed Johnson. ‘We need to find her, you know.’

  Goodman nodded.

  Both men relapsed into silence as they finished their beers.

  Later that night, Willie Baden stared out of the window as his private plane took off. He’d managed to secure a slot to fly out of LA early, the one really good thing that had happened all week. Not that he enjoyed leaving Los Angeles, or his beloved team behind him. But needs must. He had to return to Mexico. His associates there had made that point brutally clear, and for now they held the upper hand in Willie’s latest business arrangement. Not for long, though. Once the focus of operations shifted back to Los Angeles, he would have the home field advantage. If he played his cards right, that stood to make him an obscene amount of money.

  If …

  Below him the lights of the city spread out like a blanket of fireflies, glinting in the darkness. At least it had been a successful trip. The chubby detective had got nothing useful out of him. With Glen by his side, Willie had stuck doggedly to the script, and they’d let him go.

  ‘Something to drink, sir?’ the flight attendant asked. She was new, this one, and not at all attractive. Valentina had replaced the old model, the luscious Conchita, in a fit of pique after his affair with Lisa hit the headlines.

  ‘Vodka tonic,’ Willie grunted. Perhaps it would help him relax.

  He’d wanted Valentina to fly back with him, but to his surprise and irritation, she’d insisted on staying on a few more days.

  ‘I want to get my hair done,’ she told him. ‘And I have people to see.’

  ‘What people?’ Willie demanded.

  She turned on him angrily. ‘I don’t have to account for my movements to you, Willie,’ she spat. ‘You forced me to come all the way here and talk to the police. I may as well make use of the time. God knows when we’ll next be back, after all.’

  The thought of his angry, vengeful wife staying on in LA alone was not a reassuring one. But he was hardly in a position to prevent it, and on the grand scale of Willie Baden’s worries right now, it was nowhere close to the top. Still, it baffled him. Twenty-four hours ago, Valentina had ranted and raved about not wanting to leave Cabo, yet now she refused to return.

  Whatever. Willie had long ago given up trying to fathom the workings of the female mind. Hopefully, his wife’s beloved charity would continue to distract her while he focused on how to make his ‘arrangement’ with his new Latino business partner work to his advantage. Ironically it was Valentina who’d introduced them, although Willie suspected his wife knew little of what a dangerous man he really was. It’s like being in bed with a cobra, thought Willie. The rewards could be huge. But the risks were appalling and constant.

  I’m too old for this, he reflected, as his drink arrived and he downed it in one long, tremulous gulp. Closing his eyes, he tried to sleep.

  From the balcony of her suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Valentina Baden watched the tail lights of a plane move through the night sky.

  Willie would be in the air by now. Soon, she would have to follow him. But not yet. Not tonight. The thought of a few days alone, a few precious hours of total freedom, was exhilarating beyond anything Valentina had felt in years. It was almost like being young again. Young and beautiful and desired …

  The detective she’d spoken to earlier had been handsome and charming and as biddable as a puppy. So easy! The LAPD didn’t make them like they used to. Talking to him, and outsmarting him, had felt exciting. Even more so when he’d brought up the subject of Brandon Grolsch.

  Ah. Brandon.

  If she closed her eyes, Valentina could practically feel his strong, young body pressing down on hers. The firmness of his skin, the confidence of his touch. Such a beautiful boy he’d been back then. What a waste!

  Walking back into her suite, Valentina Baden stripped off and stepped into the shower, allowing her own hands to play the part of Brandon’s, losing herself in the fantasy.

  She had a lot to do, tonight and in the days to come. But it could wait.

  It could all wait.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘So where is he, then? This kid in the red car, who supposedly witnessed everything?’

  A small muscle was jumping beneath the sagging skin on Detective Mick Johnson’s neck. Leaning across the desk in the interview room, the same room Nikki had been in the last time she spoke to the police, he thrust his face belligerently towards her, like an angry toad about to spew venom.

  ‘I don’t know where he is,’ Nikki explained again wearily. ‘I gave you the number he gave me.’

  ‘Which doesn’t work.’

  ‘Look, he didn’t “supposedly” witness anything, OK?’ Nikki was angry. ‘He was there. He saw this guy try to mow me down like a damn bowling pin. He saved my life.’

  Anger suits her, Lou Goodman thought admiringly, watching Nikki Roberts cross her slender legs and narrow her intelligent almond eyes to slits as she glared back at his partner. Like a beautiful, exotic cobra, ready to strike. And God knew Johnson deserved to get bitten. Despite his promise to keep an open mind, he’d behaved like a total asshole ever since Nikki walked into the room. She’d come to give a more detailed statement about the attack she’d reported the previous day, an attempt on her life, right outside her home. But Mick had been nothing but hostile. This despite the fact that forensics had been up to the Roberts residence yesterday, so he knew full well that skid marks on the road, as well as a large hole in the neighbors’ hedge, bore out Nikki’s version of events. There had definitely been two cars, both definitely traveling at speed, and neither of them had been Nikki’s Mercedes X-Class. Flecks of red paintwork had been retrieved from the shrubbery, bearing out her claims about the color of the witness’s car. Mick’s ‘disbelief’ was nothing but pure pig-headedness and a determination to cast Nikki as a perpetrator, not a victim.

  He yawned rudely at her now. ‘So you took down the wrong number. But you never thought to get this guy’s name? Or his license plate?’

&
nbsp; ‘I was in shock,’ Nikki said, through gritted teeth. ‘Someone had just tried to crush me to death, Detective, and they damn nearly succeeded.’ She rubbed her eyes like a tired child. ‘My patient is dead. My assistant is dead. I have other patients in fear for their safety, for their lives. You’re the one who insisted that I’m the link between these murders. And it looks like you were right, because now it appears some maniac is trying to kill me too. So you’ll have to forgive me if I wasn’t at my most clear-headed.’

  Johnson gave her a withering look. ‘I’ll tell you what I think, Doctor. I think you made this whole thing up. The SUV, the witness, the race-car driver. It’s all an invention.’

  ‘What?’ Nikki looked at him, incredulous.

  ‘Your husband’s gone,’ Johnson went on. ‘You’re all alone. No one’s paying you any attention. So you dream up someone else, some knight in shining armor to come and rescue you. You invent some spurious attack, and then you sit here and tell us all about this handsome stranger, who can validate your story except … oh no!… you happened to take down his number wrong.’

  Nikki turned to Goodman. ‘Your partner appears to have lost his mind.’

  Goodman, who wholeheartedly agreed, glared at Johnson.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dr Roberts,’ he began, but Johnson cut him off.

  ‘Don’t apologize to her!’ he shouted, banging his fist on the table. ‘If anybody’s crazy here, it sure as hell ain’t me. I mean, come on. A mysterious truck. Blacked-out windows. No plates. No injuries. No witnesses. It’s like something out of a bad late-night movie, Dr Roberts. One that casts you very firmly as the victim. Surprise, surprise.’

  Nikki stood up. Smoothing down her pencil skirt in a dignified manner, she turned away from Mick Johnson and addressed herself only to Goodman.

  ‘Please let me know if you make any progress, Detective. In the meantime, I’m going home. I’m afraid I don’t have time for your friend’s bullshit armchair psychology, or for his puerile insults. Good day.’

  She really is magnificent when she’s pissed, Goodman thought, watching Nikki strut out of the room, her stiletto heels clacking briskly on the linoleum floor as she walked.

  ‘“Puerile”!’ He smirked patronizingly at Johnson. ‘You’ll have to look that one up, Mick, eh?’

  ‘She’s a bitch,’ Johnson grunted, unamused. ‘A bitch and a liar, wasting our time.’

  Goodman stood up, exasperated. ‘What is going on with you and this woman? What happened to “open minds”?’

  ‘She happened,’ Johnson snapped. ‘I’m only calling it like I see it. I don’t believe anyone tried to kill her. I think she’s a fantasist.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Mick. We have evidence, actual, forensic evidence.’

  ‘A couple of tire skids? Give me a break. They don’t prove shit and you know it.’

  ‘Why would she make up something like this?’ Goodman threw his arms wide in frustration. ‘Why?’

  Johnson shrugged. ‘For attention.’

  ‘Whose attention? Yours? No offense, Mick, but I don’t think she’s that interested.’

  ‘I don’t know, Lou. Maybe yours,’ Johnson shot back, irritated. ‘Maybe she sees your tongue hanging out and your pants bulging every time she walks into a room and she wants a closer look.’

  Goodman shook his head. What was this, third grade?

  ‘I don’t know what her motives are and I don’t really care,’ Johnson went on. ‘All I know is that I don’t trust her. I think she’s messed up in the head.’

  Exhausted, Goodman let it go. There was no reasoning with Johnson in this sort of mood.

  Interpreting his partner’s silence as a sign the conversation was over, Johnson changed the subject. ‘Any more leads on Brandon Grolsch?’

  ‘None we can use.’ A troubled look came over Goodman’s face. ‘I traced the girl who wrote to Valentina Baden about his overdose. Rachel Kelsey, her name was.’

  ‘“Was”?’

  ‘Uh huh,’ Goodman confirmed with a sigh. ‘OD’d eight weeks ago. Her family buried her down near San Diego. Twenty-two years old.’

  Johnson scowled. ‘What the hell is happening with these kids?’

  ‘I know,’ Goodman muttered. ‘It’s tragic.’

  ‘I’m sure Nikki Roberts is involved in these murders somehow,’ said Johnson, animated again suddenly. ‘I don’t know how. But I’m sure of it. I feel like we’re this close to seeing the connection. But then poof, it’s gone.’

  Goodman didn’t feel ‘this close’ to anything. He just wished that Johnson would quit harassing Dr Roberts and shutting the door on potential new leads she gave them, like the witness in the red car. Because the depressing truth was, if Brandon Grolsch was dead, the driver of the SUV with blacked-out windows might be the only suspect they had.

  ‘So I’ve got a question for you.’ Haddon Defoe smiled warmly across the lunch table at Nikki. He hadn’t seen her since the night he’d broken the news about Trey Raymond’s death. Thankfully all the awkwardness and pain of that encounter was absent from today’s meeting. It almost felt like old times.

  ‘Fire away,’ said Nikki.

  Haddon fixed her with a gimlet stare and asked seriously: ‘What exactly is a Meyer lemon?’

  Nikki laughed. They were in Venice, at one of the newest and most self-consciously trendy bistros on Abbot Kinney, where the menu definitely scored an ‘A’ for pretention.

  ‘And while we’re at it, what’s an heirloom tomato, a Dungeness crab, and a Jidori chicken?’ asked Haddon. ‘It’s like invasion of the killer adjectives on these menus. Whatever happened to good ol’ fried chicken?’

  ‘Oh, they still have that,’ said Nikki, slicing into the last, juicy stem of her steamed asparagus. ‘About six blocks away at El Pollo Loco, for a tenth of the price. But we both know that’s not your style, Haddon.’

  Haddon was glad to see her looking happier, even teasing him as she used to before Doug’s accident. Ever since Doug’s death, Nikki had changed, a dark cloud descending over her that was part grief, part anger and, Haddon suspected, part utter bewilderment at the things she’d learned about her husband after his death, sides to him she’d never known before.

  ‘Did you want dessert?’ Haddon asked, finishing up his crayfish (with Meyer lemon crème fraiche). ‘Or shall we get going?’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Nikki. ‘I don’t think I’m in the mood for deconstructed, gluten-free chocolate ganache.’

  They were headed to the new Venice clinic, an off-shoot of the downtown facility that he and Doug had run together for the last eight years. Doug had been heavily involved in the planning for Venice, an LA neighborhood that, despite its rising real estate values, remained home to a growing number of homeless and mentally ill, many of them long-term addicts. Doug had helped pick the site for the new clinic, negotiating bargain-basement rates on everything and getting a variety of local artisans and contractors to revamp the building, most of them giving up their time for free. Now, of course, it would be Haddon who would run the place, alone. They’d only opened a couple of months ago but already the clinic was full to capacity every single day, with lines of would-be patients forming around the block from before 7 a.m.

  Haddon had made the offer of lunch and a tour before Trey’s murder, and was both pleased and surprised that Nikki had kept the date. For Nikki, it wasn’t even a question. Haddon Defoe was a kind man, and a precious link to Doug and happier days, days that seemed so long ago now. She’d come to today’s lunch straight from the police station and her bruising interview with Detective Johnson. She decided not to share that with Haddon, or to tell him about Tuesday night’s attack at the house. Once she told him, he would likely insist on getting involved and trying to help, keeping an eye on her. Nikki knew better than anyone that Haddon didn’t have time for that, not with running the downtown drop-in center and Venice, and having his own medical practice to manage at Cedars. Besides, what could he do really, other than worry? He could hard
ly guard her around the clock, and Nikki wouldn’t have wanted that, even if he could.

  As they walked from the restaurant to the clinic, it struck Nikki what a difference six blocks could make. Within minutes, overpriced clothes and antiques stores had given way to run-down 1920s cottages and shabby corner drugstores. A few minutes more and it was all vacant lots, chain-link fences and weeds. Up-ended shopping carts lay littered around amid the familiar detritus of despair that Nikki recognized from the downtown neighborhoods Doug use to work in: old shoes, cans, bicycle parts and trash of all kinds, including discarded needles, foil and other drug paraphernalia. Here and there amid this sea of filth, a few buildings popped up, many old but some new and clean and hopeful, stores and apartment blocks and offices, even an art gallery, trying its luck. Like the palm trees swaying tall and proud, these seemed to offer the promise of something better. After a few more minutes, Haddon strode up the steps of one of them proudly, a whitewashed wooden building on a corner lot that had once been a large home with a wraparound porch and gardens that would have stretched for blocks on all directions. A simple sign out front read Roberts-Defoe Venice Clinic – All Welcome.

  ‘Here she is.’ Haddon turned expectantly to Nikki. ‘What do you think? He’d have liked it, wouldn’t he?’

  It took Nikki a second to compose her emotions. ‘He’d have loved it, Haddon. Show me inside.’

  As soon as they walked through the doors, the clean, hopeful, white-picket-fence vibe of the exterior was gone, vanished like a popped bubble. Men and women – but mostly men – lay sprawled out on floors in the corridors, or bent double in misery on hard plastic chairs that had been nailed to the floor. In the two waiting rooms, wretches in various stages of addiction stared or rocked or moaned or yelled out angrily, demanding help, lashing out either at the real nursing staff who patiently attempted to keep order, or at the imagined adversaries created by their addled, psychotic minds.

  Two boys in particular caught Nikki’s attention as she followed Haddon through the bedlam to his office. Both were young, late teens, and white, although that word no longer accurately described their skin color. Leaning helplessly against the wall, side by side, these kids literally looked green. Flakes of skin were peeling off their forearms, necks and faces, like old paint coming off a wall.