4 A Dead Mother

by Anna Celeste Burke

  “Nobody, is the short answer,” Tommy replied.

  “They all have alibis?” I asked. “Can that be true?”

  “It’s too early to say for sure since we haven’t had time to check them all out,” Jerry replied. “If we take the information at face value, yes. I can give you the overview and then we can focus in on specific people if you’d like.”

  “Why not?” I replied.

  Jerry went through each of the ten names I’d placed on the list. It was no small feat to have run them down as quickly as he had done—even with Kim’s help. Kim had not only spoken to Tanya Wilkins, as I already knew, but had also managed to interview Cathy Walker and Ginny Green yesterday, and then followed up with Barbara Stoddard this afternoon before joining us for dinner.

  “That’s amazing you guys. I thought you’d have more trouble trying to track people down and get them to speak to you.”

  “They weren’t all happy to speak to us as you know,” Kim said to me. “Marcia Garrett paid a visit to Jessica’s office to express her displeasure,” Kim added, addressing her comments to the entire group.

  “She didn’t hide that from me. Still, she was cooperative. I gave her your card, Jessica, and she didn’t say anything about hunting you down to register a complaint.”

  “It’s no big deal. In fact, despite barging in on us incensed about our interest in her as a suspect in a murder investigation, she gave us useful information about Cedric Baumgartner. Are you sure about him?” I asked feeling disappointed. Something in me just screamed dirt bag at the mention of the man’s name. My conversation with the accountant earlier in the day had me even more convinced the guy was another well-heeled heel with a veneer as tailor-made to impress as his bespoke clothing.

  “Your favorite—man of the year—Cedric Baumgartner the third, not only has an alibi, but with a couple of phone calls, it was easy to verify.” Tommy had adopted a phony Mid-Atlantic accent when he added ‘the third’ to the man’s name. Appropriately affected like an actor in an old film. Then he added briskly, “He was at that breakfast meeting at Figaro’s all morning. Very vocal. Very visible.”

  “Guys like him never do the dirty work,” Kim said, not quite able to pull off her usual deadpan shrug of indifference. When we made eye contact, I could tell it mattered.

  “I’ve only had one meeting with him, but he definitely has a temper that wasn’t too hard to trigger. He’s good at channeling it into controlled jabs—more like a fencer than a slugger.” I explained what I meant by that given the test I’d put to him this afternoon at Figaro’s. “Still, he came across as such a cool, calculating character I can’t imagine him killing in the vicious, bloodthirsty way someone dispatched my client and friend.” I repressed an urge to growl audibly, not wanting to upset Anastasia who was sleeping like an angel on the ground next to me. Tommy and Brien had worn her out.

  “Kim’s right about the dirty work. Does he have the money to hire a hit man or woman?” Bernadette asked.

  “He’s not rolling in it as he likes to pretend, but he’s far from penniless,” Tommy replied.

  “Up to his eyeballs in debt, however,” Kim added. “I checked him out, too. He’s still married, too, as Marcia Garrett informed us. I’d already figured that out even though his wife, Debra Grayson, doesn’t use the Araby Oasis property as her home address. Uh, not that it’s Cedric Baumgartner’s home as in homeowner either.”

  “That’s all true. We must have been snooping around at the same sites,” Tommy added.

  “How does Mom’s friend, Daisy Guinness fit into the picture?” I took a minute to make sure I’d told everyone about Alexis’ take on Beverly’s choice of a romantic partner. “Did you find anything about the trouble he got into while he was living in the Hamptons?” Kim spoke up.

  “He opened an antique shop that went bankrupt within a year. There were rumors that he’d misled clients about the goods he sold them. More out of ignorance than fraud from stories in the local newspaper—the Villager’s Voice. There aren’t many details because the complaints filed against him were all settled out of court. There’s no public record. That’s not the only business bankruptcy he’s filed over the years, though. Cedric doesn’t appear to have much in the way of business acumen.”

  “His current wife is soon to be the third ex-Mrs. Baumgartner,” Tommy noted in that haughty tone.

  “That explains why she’s not using the Araby Oasis address as her home. Not that it’s his home either as Kim pointed out. Detective Havens mentioned Cedric Baumgartner’s house is owned by a small investment firm, The Alpha Advantage.”

  “Yeah, they just opened an office in Indian Wells with Mr. Baumgartner as one of their associates.”

  “Why am I not surprised? Rikki Havens didn’t tell us that,” I said. “David Madison told me the names of the management and associates affiliated with the firm are published on a website. I thought he meant their office in Palm Beach. I can see why he wanted Beverly to take what he’d found to state authorities. They’re settling in rather than just passing through town. Can you get me that list of names, please? Let’s see if Cedric’s listed in an official capacity with them.”

  “Consider it done!” Tommy said as his fingers flew over the keyboard of a laptop he’d been using as he delivered his report about the investigation. He paused and looked up for a second. “If Mrs. Baumgartner doesn’t live in Araby Oasis, how does Marcia Garrett know her?”

  “She didn’t say, but apparently she and Debra Grayson go way back to an old rivalry in show biz. Marcia Garrett is open about the fact she has an ax to grind over their past, but she seems to believe it would be useful for us to speak to her. Despite the fact they’re still married, maybe the current Mrs. Baumgartner will give us another angle on the man to whom she’s still married while he openly pursues rich women.”

  “Cedric’s alibi was easy to confirm given how many people can place him at the restaurant when Ms. Windsor left her post at Desert Park Preserve. Oops,” Tommy said. We all glanced at Anastasia who hadn’t budged when Tommy used Beverly’s last name.

  “Hey, it’s okay. Apparently, we can use the last name without upsetting her. It’s their first names that seem to bother our baby girl,” I replied, suddenly feeling protective, maternal toward the poodle.

  “Too bad there are two Ms. Windsors,” Brien replied. I was surprised. He’d leaned back in his chaise with his eyes closed. I figured that meant he was snoozing like the pooch.

  “Yep. We’ll have to be clear about which one we’re talking about. Anyway, Cedric Baumgartner had his cell phone with him and he used it at one point, but no one saw him on any of the restaurant phones.”

  “That fits with what I learned yesterday, by asking a few questions at Figaro’s. A server recalled someone asking to use one of Figaro’s phones. Not one out in the open, but upstairs in the manager’s office. It wasn’t Cedric or any other man. It was a woman.”

  “Do you know who?” Laura asked.

  “No. I didn’t get a name since Audrey Atkins, the manager, wasn’t available to speak to me. She gave the woman permission to use the phone, and I passed the information along to Detective Havens.”

  “The manager’s likely to be more willing to divulge the name of the guest to the police than to us. It’s too bad they didn’t have that name already.” Jerry shook his head.

  “The obvious phones that a guest might use are right out in the open. Not far from the banquet rooms where those breakfast meetings were held on Tuesday. No one at the restaurant must have mentioned that phone upstairs to Rikki, or she would have asked about a call made from it.”

  “You want to hear about the allies, now? It won’t take long, and you already have some idea of ‘who likes who’ or is it ‘whom?’”

  “Whom,” came replies from several of us.

  “Whatever. I swear it’s like high school all over again in that HOA. Friends and foes fall out around the lines of the voting that went on around Ms. Windsor’s tria
ls and tribulations with the mean girls.” Tommy quickly set out to describe the coalitions that had emerged from their conversations with the key players among the neighbors and HOA members. The mean girls, as Tommy called them, consisted of Tanya Wilkins, Cathy Walker, and Tamara Parker.

  “I’m surprised Tanya Wilkins has anyone on her team after hearing what went on in the HOA. High school behavior all right, and she deserves to be sent to detention,” Bernadette said in a chiding tone.

  “From what Marcia Garrett told us, maybe it’s the ‘thrown over by Cedric’ connection that’s brought them together. Marcia Garrett mentioned Tanya Wilkins and Cathy Walker were both in that ‘has-been’ club, maybe that’s true for Tamara Parker, too.” Kim added.

  “Hmm. How do you come up with some way to pry into a sore subject like that one?” Laura asked. “Is there a brunette with long red fingernails among them?”

  “Tamara Parker,” Jerry responded quickly. “She’s one of the people with an alibi we’re still trying to corroborate. She said she was at Elysian Day Spa with Cathy Walker and Tanya Wilkins, by the way, on the morning your client was killed. Tommy’s going to call and confirm that tomorrow.”

  “Bonding, no doubt. That spa is on El Paseo, not far from Figaro’s. Surely, Audrey Atkins would have checked to be certain the request to use her phone was being made by someone attending one of the breakfast meetings and not walking in off the street,” I speculated as I pondered the matter. “Still, let’s see what name Rikki Havens’ team comes up with once they catch up with the manager on duty at Figaro’s that morning.”

  “Even if none of them made that phone call they could have something useful to say about our man Cedric. Maybe if you wave your fairy godmother wand and offer to take the Cedric-discards out for lunch or treat them to a spa day they’ll share what they know about him,” Laura suggested.

  “It could be. If we still have doubts about their alibis once Tommy checks them out, and Rikki Havens doesn’t come up with something useful about the caller after speaking to Audrey Atkins, maybe arranging a group session would work.”

  “They could probably all use a little group therapy,” Peter offered. “Betsy might agree to facilitate.”

  “Getting them plastered at a happy hour might do the trick, too,” Tommy offered. “After a glass or two of Chardonnay, I’ll bet they’ll dish the dirt about Cedric Baumgartner the third.”

  “There may be plenty of dirt to dish about Cedric, the ladies’ man who still has a wife even if she has filed for divorce. The other news Kim and I have for you comes from David Madison, my deceased client’s accountant. Baumgartner’s interest in women may be about more than romance. It could get very interesting if we broach the subject of money as part of a tattletale meeting with the women he’s jilted.” I spent the next few minutes talking about the phone call with David Madison.

  “Dios mio, if they gave him money that could be embarrassing,” Bernadette commented.

  “It could also be a reason to dump them and move on to greener pastures,” Laura added.

  “Milk ‘em and moo-oove on, eh?” Tommy cried.

  “That’s nothing to joke about,” Bernadette said in a scolding tone. Tommy blinked a couple of times like he was about to be swatted. Then she sighed loudly. “Sad, but it could be true,” Bernadette added.

  “Yeah, but did he dump them because they said no, or because they said yes?”

  “Good point, Laura! I vote for Tommy’s Happy Hour idea. Looser lips sink bigger ships, you know. This Baumgartner dude sounds like a titanic loser dirt bag, even by Jessica’s standards. Someone needs to sink him.” Brien leaned back and closed his eyes again with his hands behind his head. A long pause followed before a round of laughter took hold.

  “Where do you come up with these things?” Kim asked.

  “Jessica’s got good standards,” Bernadette said in that chiding tone again. “What are you talking about? Have you gone loco?” Bernadette made little swirling motions at her head with a finger as she asked that question. That and the cluck-cluck tone in her voice set off more laughter, especially given the perplexed expression on Brien’s face as he opened his eyes.

  “Sorry. Was that offensive, Kim?” More laughter, even from Kim, who was his surprising choice as a social skills consultant. “Peter?” He asked. Peter shrugged.

  “I don’t think it came out exactly the way you meant it,” Peter replied.

  “No offense taken,” I said. “I get what he means, Bernadette. We have met some titanic dirt bag losers in the past year, haven’t we? Starting with my ex-husband. Maybe I need to change my standards.”

  “Si, I guess he makes some sense. I take it back. You’re not that loco.” Bernadette said. The alarm on Brien’s face vanished, replaced by a big smile.

  “I need food to help me focus,” he hopped to his feet, and Anastasia’s head popped up.

  “It’s okay, Anastasia. It’s just Brien being Brien. You’ll get used to him, I promise.” She looked right at him when I spoke his name and wagged her tail. “Does that cover the discussion about allies?”

  “Yep.”

  “How about surveillance footage or other information about a car spotted on that road outside Desert Park Preserve?”

  “Ooh, let’s talk about spy cameras! That ought to be interesting.”

  “You have no idea,” Peter muttered with a grimace on his face. What did that mean?

  25 Overexposed

  “A surveillance camera at the guard house at Silverwood Country Club caught a glimpse of a newer model, cranberry colored Chevy Impala. No license plate number, though.” Jerry checked his notes as he gave us those details about the car.

  “I’m sure you’ve already checked and none of the people on our list own that make or model sedan, do they?”

  “We have, yes, and no, none of the people on the list own a car like that. And as you also know, it’s not the same car you saw that woman driving on Wednesday when you picked up the young Ms. Windsor for lunch. That car is owned by Susan Turner. Even if she was behind the wheel, apart from the fact you noticed she was a brunette with red fingernails, we haven’t found any obvious connection between Susan Turner and Ms. Windsor or her daughter.”

  “Can you get a picture of the Turner woman? Maybe I can at least tell you if she’s the one I saw even though she was wearing a scarf and dark glasses.”

  “A spy disguise,” Tommy replied. “I can get you her driver’s license photo if nothing else. Um, just so you know, there aren’t any cameras in the parking lot or at the entrance to Desert Preserve Park. Installing surveillance cameras is under discussion, but so far the park operations people are relying on locked gates and security patrols.”

  “Okay, thanks, Tommy. Peter, what about the video collected from the nanny cams? What’s up with that ‘you have no idea’ bit?” Everyone’s eyes widened as Peter straightened up in his chair.

  “My guys copied what was on the SIM cards before turning them over to the police. They’re still reviewing them. Video. No audio. Only what was on the SIM card at the time. My tech guy tells me the settings indicate older recordings were downloaded to the homeowner’s laptop.”

  “Which is still nowhere to be found,” I grumbled. “Convenient if my client had intended to use those video files as evidence against someone. Not our burglar since, as Ms. Windsor’s neighbor pointed out when she returned jewelry she’d borrowed, it would have been stupid to get caught on camera burgling a house to steal video evidence while the cameras were still operating.”

  “She’s right about that. I did a quick run-through of the video recorded on the camera set up in the master suite. You’re on there, Jessica, along with Ms. Windsor’s daughter and the detectives who did the walk-through Wednesday before you all realized those cameras were in there. The Cat City officers made an appearance when they triggered the camera while investigating the break-in on Tuesday. That neighbor, too, who helped herself to the brooch. She actually waved at the camera and
smiled!”

  “A comedian, huh?” I asked, trying to understand the woman.

  “Or maybe just friendly since Barbara insisted she wasn’t doing anything sneaky,” Peter replied. “Still comes across as funny when you see it.”

  “That was after the house had already been searched. Did the cameras spot someone in there before her?”

  “Yeah, a woman in a hurry, wearing baggy clothes, oversized dark glasses with long, red fingernails.”

  “Yes!” I exclaimed with enough excitement that Anastasia looked up at me, quizzically. “It’s okay, sweetie.” That drew a few wags of her tail before she dropped her head down again.

  “Sorry, before you get your hopes up, the woman is a blond.”

  “Oh, shoot!” I replied. “Are you talking about the Delacroix woman?”

  “No, but Dee Delacroix pops up on the camera with a comedic moment of her own. When we ran the video back to a period before the snoop showed up, Dee Delacroix is nosing around in there. After checking out the bathroom and the closet, she sits on the edge of the bed admiring the covers, apparently, since she runs her hand over them like she’s petting a cat. Then she peeks into the drawer of the nightstand, rifles through papers and pulls out a book. Not her choice of reading material I guess because she tosses it back into the drawer.”

  “Gosh, that doesn’t seem like she made much effort to leave things the way she found them. If that’s what’s been going on, no wonder your client was concerned she’d had unwelcome visitors in her house,” Laura huffed.

  “There’s a great closeup, too, where she paws through the jewelry and then admires herself in a mirror—holding up a pair of earrings to see how they look on her.”