A Body To Die For (18 page)

She glanced over at Dirk and added, “Yeah, sure. Detective Coulter says he’ll pay for them. It’ll be his pleasure….”

T
he first thing Savannah noticed when they pulled into Rachel Morris’s driveway was how tiny the house was. “Cracker box” was the term she had heard down South, used to describe a home that was barely large enough for one person, let alone a woman and her teenaged son.

The lots on the street were all narrow, too, with the houses jammed together. As Granny Reid would have said, “Them places was so close together, if you’d stuck your dust mop out the window to shake it, it would’ve been in your neighbor’s front room.”

A sagging chain-link fence surrounded the property and a BEWARE OF DOG sign was posted on the gate. A dilapidated doghouse of Great Dane proportions indicated that a very large canine had once called this yard home. And a strip of the lawn next to the fence was worn bare. Apparently, the dog had taken his job seriously and patrolled regularly.

“You think she’s got a dog?” Dirk said, looking at the sign with a sick expression on his face.

He hadn’t been the same since that Doberman had taken a bite out of his rump a few years back. Ever since then, he had sworn off dogs and proclaimed himself a cat lover, whether it was the manly man thing or not.

“I don’t think so,” Savannah said. “There aren’t any food or water dishes by that doghouse, and the big chain tied to the tree is rusty.”

She reached over and slapped him on the back. “Don’t worry, buddy. If it’s a mean, ol’ Dobie, I’ll give him a serious talkin’-to, and you’ll be okay.”

“Shut up.”

They got out of the car and ventured through the gate. The door opened as they walked up the cracked and buckled sidewalk, and the woman standing in the doorway was the one they had seen earlier through Clarissa’s window.

Dressed in a black tunic and black slacks, her red hair cropped short, her figure full, Rachel Morris looked quite different from her sister in all ways, except one. She wore the same angry, defensive expression on her face.

She also looked deeply worried and grief-stricken…maybe even more than the widow herself.

“I’m Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter,” Dirk said as he walked up to her and put out his hand. “And this is Savannah Reid. She’s also investigating this case.”

“And you know who I am,” Rachel replied with a distinctively nasal twang to her voice that identified her as being from one of the five boroughs of New York City. Rachel opened the door wider and waved them inside. “I guess you might as well come in.”

“Thank you,” Dirk said, not sounding particularly thankful for the less-than-warm invitation.

When Savannah entered the miniscule living room, it took a while for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Dark sheets were hung over the windows in lieu of curtains. Cardboard boxes lined two walls, stacked five feet high.

The only furniture was a shabby sofa that looked like an angry kitty had used it for a scratching post for a very long time.

But the other thing she noticed, far more telling than the boxes and lack of furnishings, was the pile of books. One entire wall was lined with cheap shelves made of cement blocks and crude wooden planks. And on those boards were piled books, books, and more books.

“I see you’re quite a reader,” Savannah said as she glanced over the titles that ranged from history texts, science fiction, murder mysteries, and more than a few that she recognized as Pulitzer Prize winners.

“Yes,” Rachel replied dryly. “I’m a New Yorker. We read.”

Savannah couldn’t resist. “I’m a Californian. We read, too.”

Rachel didn’t reply. Didn’t crack even a semi-smile. She just stood there, giving Savannah a deadpan, somewhat condescending look.

Okay, so much for the friendly chitchat
, Savannah thought.

“Do you mind if we sit down?” Dirk asked with a nod toward the sofa.

“I mind that we’re even having this conversation,” Rachel replied, “but on the phone you gave me the impression I didn’t have much choice.”

“You really don’t,” Dirk replied as he walked over to the sofa and plopped himself down on it. “You can choose not talk to us. But this is a homicide investigation. A man’s been murdered, so we’re not just going to go away. And if you’re uncooperative, then when somebody says something accusatory about you, we’re a lot more likely to believe them.”

She bristled. “Who’s accusing me of what? Clarissa? Screw her. She’s the one who’d better be worried about being accused.”

Sitting down next to Dirk, Savannah said, “Why do you say that?”

“Because she’s the one with a dead husband, the one with the motive to kill him.”

“And what motive is that?” Dirk asked.

“She was mad at him. Outraged that he’d leave her, for anybody, let alone me—her fat, loser sister.”

“And Bill was going to leave Clarissa to be with you?” Dirk said.

“Yes, he was. Is that so hard to believe?”

“Not at all,” Savannah replied softly. “People choose to be with other people for all sorts of reasons. I’ve met Clarissa. It isn’t so hard to understand why Bill might want to be with someone else.”

Rachel seemed to soften a bit. She pulled an old folding metal chair closer to the sofa and sat down on it. “It was an enormous blow to Clarissa’s overinflated ego, Bill choosing me over her.”

“And you look all guilt-ridden about it,” Dirk said with a smirk.

Rachel’s temper flared again. “Not one bit. And if you knew how she’s treated me over the years, you wouldn’t blame me.”

“Tell us about it,” Savannah said. “How did the affair between you and Bill begin?”

“I prefer to call it a relationship.”

“Okay, where and under what circumstances did your
relationship
with Bill start?”

A soft, dreamy look passed over Rachel’s face and, for a moment, she looked much sweeter, kinder…even happy.

“He came to New York to see me. Actually, Clarissa sent him to straighten me out. I was trying to negotiate for a larger share of the profits from our business arrangement—”

“You and Clarissa had a business arrangement?” Dirk asked.

“Yes, we did. From the very beginning. She said that if I helped her get her fitness plan going, she would pay me a share of the profits. And she did for awhile. But then, it took off, she got to be well-known, the money started to pour in, and she really started to resent writing me out those big checks.”

“So, you told her you wanted more?” Savannah said.

“I told her I was raising a kid and living in the city, which is very expensive, and if she was getting filthy rich, I didn’t see why I should have to just scrape by, serving pizza in a hole in the wall in the Village.”

“The village?” Dirk asked.

“
Greenwich
Village.” Rachel gave him a scathing look. “Let me guess,” she said. “You
don’t
read much.”

“Actually, I read three newspapers every morning with my coffee,” Dirk said. “But none of them is the
New York Times
.”

“Imagine that.” Rachel crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in her chair.

“You were saying that Bill came to New York at Clarissa’s request, and the two of you became lovers?” Savannah asked.

“Not right away. He was there for the weekend. He came to my apartment first, and we talked. Then we went out for dinner and talked. We had a lot in common.”

“Like…?” Savannah prompted.

“Like hating Clarissa. As it turned out, she was making both of us miserable. Her withholding money from me and her bossing him around, controlling everything he did and said. She held the purse strings for both of us, and let me tell you, she enjoyed having that power. In case you haven’t figured it out, that’s what Clarissa is all about, power and control over everybody around her.”

“But she didn’t control what happened next…between you and Bill, that is,” Savannah said.

Rachel chuckled. “No kidding. She had no idea. She sent him across the country to scare me, to tell me to stay down in that dark hole and hide from the world, for her convenience, and we wind up lovers. It was great.”

Savannah couldn’t help but wonder if a large part of Rachel’s attraction for Bill lay in the fact that he was her hated sister’s husband. And maybe “payback” had something to do with Bill’s feelings for Rachel, too.

In certain circumstances, passive aggression could be a powerful aphrodisiac.

“Let me get this straight,” Dirk said. “You’re claiming that your sister legitimately owed you money. Do you deny blackmailing her?”

“Blackmail? Are you kidding?” Rachel’s eyes filled with fury. “Is that what she’s claiming, that I blackmailed her? I only asked for what she’d agreed to give me, back when she was first starting out and needed my help.”

“When you posed for the ‘before’ shot for her fitness campaign?” Savannah said.

“Yes. I posed for the picture. So what?”

“Well, it’s a bit of a fraud, don’t you think?” Dirk asked.

“I posed. What she did with the picture, that’s her business.” Rachel leaned so far back in her chair that Savannah wondered how much it would hurt when the chair tipped over backward and spilled her onto the floor.

“How about the threatening letters?” Savannah asked her. “Why did you send her those?”

“I didn’t send her any letters, threatening or otherwise. When I wanted to talk to her, which wasn’t very often, I just called her on the phone. We’d scream at each other and hang up.”

It occurred to Savannah that, like her sister, Rachel looked quite pleased with herself, as if she had her answers well-rehearsed and was happy to be delivering them.

“Let me get this straight,” Dirk said. “The letters that threatened to expose this little scheme of hers, the ones postmarked from New York City, they weren’t from you.”

“Nope.”

“You and Bill were in love,” Savannah said, “and you weren’t blackmailing your sister, just asking for what you had coming to you.”

“Yes. And I never threatened to give her what was coming to her.”

Dirk was looking more irritated by the moment, and Savannah didn’t like the way this interview was going. They really hadn’t learned much, except that Rachel was a liar. And they’d suspected that back in San Carmelita, before they had trucked across the desert and wasted most of a day.

“Listen,” Rachel said, “you don’t know what it’s like, having a sister like Clarissa. Do you know how many times I was serving somebody their pizza and they’d say, ‘Hey, you know who you look like? That girl on television, the pretty, skinny one with the big mouth, the pain equals gain gal.’ I’d have to just smile and say, ‘Yeah, I hear that a lot.’”

When neither Savannah nor Dirk answered right away, she continued, “Bill knew what that was like, living in her shadow. Everywhere he went, he was Mr. Clarissa Jardin. We had a lot in common, because of her. But he was going to leave her and be with me. He had my son and me move here from New York, just so that we could be closer to him. That way it would be easier for him to come see us. We were moving to Las Vegas. He’d already rented a house for us there. And the three of us were going to finally be a family and be rid of her.”

“Right.” Dirk looked around the room. “Where
is
your son, by the way?”

An instant change came over Rachel at the mention of her boy. Her eyes filled with tears, and she uncrossed her arms and clasped her hands tightly in her lap.

“He isn’t here right now,” she said, her voice trembling.

“Where is he?” Dirk asked.

“He’s at a friend’s house.”

“We’re going to need to talk to him, too,” Dirk said. “Especially with you claiming that you weren’t the one who sent those letters to Clarissa from New York City.”

“Tanner didn’t do anything wrong. He’s just a kid!”

“Kids do wrong things all over this world every day,” Dirk told her. “Where is he? Really.”

“I told you. At a friend’s.”

“We can’t leave without talking to him,” Dirk said, “so we’ll just wait here until he comes back. Whenever that might be.”

Rachel stared back at him and clutched her hands together so tightly that Savannah could swear her fingers were turning white.

“Rachel, where is Tanner?” she asked gently.

The tears in Rachel’s eyes spilled down onto her cheeks, and she took a deep breath. For a long time she didn’t speak. Then she said, “I don’t know. I don’t. He’s missing. Like Bill was.” She started to sob. “I’m so scared. I’m afraid that maybe he’s been…”

Savannah got up from the sofa, hurried over to Rachel, and dropped onto her knees beside the woman’s chair. She reached for her hands and held them between her own.

“How long has he been missing?” she asked her.

“He disappeared the same night that Bill did.”

“Rachel,” Dirk said. “Tell us what happened that night and maybe we can help you find him.”

“Okay.” She fought back her tears and regained control of herself. “We had gone to San Carmelita to meet Bill. He asked me to come because he wanted to talk to me about our future, about us all moving to Las Vegas. You know, to solidify our plans.”

“Did he sound positive or negative? Was he upbeat or more like…‘we have to talk,’?” Savannah asked.

“He sounded fine, happy. So, we drove there, Tanner and me. We checked into the Blue Moon Motel in San Carmelita and waited for him to call us, tell us where to meet him. We waited and waited, and he didn’t call. Finally, I went to sleep. And when I woke up, there was a note from Tanner saying that he’d gone out for a while. Bill didn’t call and Tanner didn’t come back. And I haven’t seen either one of them since.”

“Do you have any idea where Tanner might have gone?” Savannah said.

“Yes. I do. Every time we went to San Carmelita or anywhere near there, he’d beg me to take him by Clarissa’s house, that old ranch. He was obsessed with seeing it, seeing how she lived. I think he had it in his mind that, once Bill and she were divorced, we’d just slip into Clarissa’s place, live her life. He really wanted to see that ranch.”

“You think he went out there?” Savannah asked.

“I think so.”

“How would he get out there?” Dirk said. “It’s too far to walk, even for a curious teenaged boy.”

“He’s a New York City boy,” Rachel said with more than a hint of pride in her voice. “He knows about taxis. And he took twenty dollars from my purse. He’s never done that before. He’s a good boy.”