A Body To Die For (23 page)

“Okay. But I want to be back here in two hours when Rachel arrives to pick up Tanner.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“Because it’s bothering me a lot, the fact that he doesn’t want to see his mom. I want to know why.”

“That bugs me, too.”

Dirk’s cell phone began to jangle. Irritated, he dug it out of his jacket pocket, flipped it open, and said, “Yeah?” He listened a moment, then said, “Actually, I was on my way somewhere.” He glanced over at Savannah. “Can I send Savannah instead? Okay. Bye.”

“
Send
me? Can you
send
me? Like send me to get the office coffee and doughnuts?
Send
me to get your laundry or buy your mistress a black lace teddy? Who do you think you are?”

He looked totally confused. “What? I don’t have a mistress.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Besides,” he said, “it was that Caitlin chick at the lab. She’s got something she wants us to see.”

“Well, hell’s bells, boy. Why didn’t you say so? Get me home so I can pick up my car and hightail it over there. Shake a leg. Time’s a ’wastin.’”

At the lab, Savannah didn’t have to hunt for Caitlin or finagle a way into the Vehicle Examination Bay. Caitlin was waiting for her outside the garage door when she arrived.

Or at least, she thought Caitlin was waiting for her. But as it turned out, the lab tech had simply sneaked outside to have a smoke.

“I’m going to quit one of these days,” she said, stubbing the cigarette out on the ground as Savannah walked up to her.

“At least you’ve got Southern California weather to smoke by,” Savannah told her. “Folks in Montana and North Dakota must have it rough when they have to go outside to grab a drag on a cold winter’s day.”

“I can imagine. That’d be enough to make you quit.”

Savannah grinned and together they said, “Naw.”

“Whatcha got for me?” Savannah said, following Caitlin back into the garage.

“It may be nothing, but I had a feeling I should point it out to you, just in case.”

As they walked over to the Jaguar, which by now was practically covered with dark fingerprint dust, Savannah said “I heard you found a print inside the car’s manual. On the page that tells how to disable the GPS.”

“Yes, and I did my best to get a clean lift. But there was just the one, and it was really smeared. No way to get any sort of comparison from it.”

She took Savannah over to a brightly lit workbench that was covered with white paper. Quite a lot of items were spread across it: an empty suitcase, numerous changes of men’s clothes and toiletries, a tennis racket bag, some expensive tennis shoes, a towel and a plastic container of balls, and a Yankees baseball cap.

Caitlin handed Savannah a pair of gloves, and donned some herself. Then she picked up the cap. “The rest of this stuff is pretty mundane,” she said, “but this is what I wanted to show you.”

She held it out to Savannah. “I just assumed,” she said, “that it was Bill Jardin’s cap, since it was his car, thrown in there with his athletic gear. But then I happened to look inside it, and…”

Pointing inside the cap, she said, “There were three short red hairs. Two of them were on the outside of the band and one underneath the band.”

Savannah felt her adrenaline rising. “Oh, really?”

“Yes. Do any of your suspects have short, red hair?”

Savannah nodded. “Yes, I’m sorry to say they do.”

“They?”

“Two of them.”

She thought of Rachel’s short, straight crop and Tanner’s curly mop and she felt sick to her stomach. For the kid’s sake, she didn’t want to go down that mental road with either destination.

“I’ve got one of them over here under the microscope. Want to see?”

“Yes, I do.”

Caitlin led her to the other end of the bench, where a microscope was set up with the hair in position.

Savannah looked through the lens and saw what could have been considered neither straight nor curly. Just a short hair with maybe a slight wave to it. It had a root attached to one end and the other end was bluntly cut, not worn to a point.

There was something else about it, too.

“I’m not too up on hair analysis and all that,” Savannah said, “but has this hair been dyed?”

“Yes, I’d say so,” Caitlin agreed. “It appears to have a sort of coating on it and the hair cuticles are lifted, like they are when they’re color processed.”

Savannah felt a tiny bit of relief. She couldn’t imagine Tanner Morris dying his hair. Some teenagers might have colored their hair black, green, pink, or blue. But probably not copper penny red.

Middle-aged women, on the other hand…

She walked back to the bench and picked up the cap again. Looking closely at the inside, she saw a faint, reddish tint on the white inner band. “I dyed my hair red once,” she told Caitlin, “a long, long time ago. And for a few days afterward, the red kept wearing off on everything. I got it on my pillow, on one of my favorite white nightgowns. This sort of a reddish-orange stain. Just like this.” She pointed to the band.

Caitlin looked at it and nodded. “That’s what it looks like to me, too. We can have it analyzed to be sure.”

“If you would, please.”

“It’ll be a few days though, before we get the results. They’re backed up a bit there in the lab.”

“That’s okay,” Savannah said, her face grim as she thought about racing back to the juvenile hall. She was going to be there when Rachel Morris came to pick up her son. No doubt about it now.

“You get the results as soon as you can,” she said. “And maybe by then, we’ll have this case closed.”

A
s Savannah was leaving the lab, she called Dirk and told him about the baseball cap, the hairs, and the dye stain. He found it as interesting as she did and said he’d meet her at the juvenile facility.

Once they had both arrived, they decided to sit in the parking lot and nab Rachel Morris before she even went in. Savannah insisted that they wait in her Mustang, claiming that she had spent as much time in his landfill of a vehicle as she could stand for one week.

“Did you get a chance to talk to Clarissa?” she asked, once they had settled in and were munching on some candy bars and sipping sodas.

“Yeah, I was there when you called and told me about the lab.”

“How’d that go?”

“Once I leaned on her, she pretty much confirmed everything the Morris kid told us. Bill did confess to her that night, told her about the affair, the blackmail, and Rachel’s twenty-four-hour ultimatum. She said he called Rachel in front of her and told her it was over. She also told me that she had just paid him a ‘shitload’ of money right before he told her about him and Rachel. But when she insisted that he give it back, he said it had already been given to the bookies he owed.”

“Did she give you an actual figure?”

“No, I tried to weasel it out of her, but she just kept using the term, ‘shitload.’ However much that is. I think she was embarrassed that she’d actually been naïve enough not to realize that Bill was in on it with Rachel. Until that night, she thought he was just the deliveryman.”

“He was delivering all right. Did she admit that she smacked him and told him she wanted to kill him?”

“I had to lean hard to get that out of her, but yeah, she spilled it all.”

“I gotta tell you, Dirk, this guy with his lifestyle—he was walking a tightrope with nitroglycerin in his hand over a pit of rabid crocodiles. It was just a matter of time until somebody got their fill of him and put him out of their misery.”

“But who? Usually, we can’t find any suspect. Now we’re swimming in them.”

“And speaking of suspects, here comes one now.”

She pointed to the parking lot entrance, where the old maroon Volvo station wagon was driving in, a disgruntled-looking redhead behind the wheel.

“I am not looking forward to another round with this gal,” Dirk said. “And especially right on the heels of her sister.”

“I hear you.”

“But there’s one thing about dealing with females like this,” he said sweetly. “They make me appreciate you.”

“Kiss my heinie all you want. You’re still doing the talking with this one. I’m just along for the ride.”

“Damn.”

Thanks to Rebecca Shipton, Savannah and Dirk had a nice, secure interview room with no windows to jump from, or objects of art that could be used as weapons. Just a simple table with a few chairs was all they needed or wanted for their little chat with Rachel Morris.

She was already furious that they refused to let her see her son until after their conversation. And Savannah couldn’t really blame her. But they had things about the case they had to ask her and, if they could, they wanted to find out why her son was refusing to see her.

“I think this is illegal,” she said, pushing away the chair Dirk offered her and standing with her hands on her hips, feet spread apart in a battle stance. “You have to let me see my kid. I just drove for a long time—”

“We know how far it is,” Dirk told her. “We just drove it ourselves. And if you want to see your kid sometime soon, you’ll sit down and tell us what we need to hear.”

“You don’t have the right to hold me for anything!” she shouted at them, her New York accent even stronger than usual. Savannah noticed it seemed to intensify along with her temper.

“Oh, you’d be surprised what we’ve got on you,” Savannah said smoothly.

“‘Got on me?’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Rachel,” Dirk said, “I’m going to ask you just a couple of questions, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll be perfectly honest with me. If you aren’t, things are going to go very bad for you very quickly. Got it?”

She didn’t reply. But she gave a curt nod.

Savannah thought she could see a bit of fear in those guarded eyes, but she couldn’t be sure. The only thing she was sure of was that Rachel Morris would make a darned good poker player.

“Think carefully before you answer this, Rachel,” she told her. “Have you ever been inside Bill Jardin’s new Jaguar?”

“Oh, he got that? He’d talked about it. I didn’t know he’d actually bought one.”

“So, that’s a ‘no?’” Dirk said.

“That’s a ‘no.’ I was never in Bill’s new Jaguar.”

“Okay.” Dirk gave Savannah a satisfied smirk. Then he turned back to Rachel. “Do you dye your hair red?”

“What kind of question is that to ask a woman?” she snapped back.

Savannah glanced over the short, too-bright red hair with its even tone. She could distinctly see gray roots. “She colors her hair,” she told Dirk. “You can go on to the next question.”

He did. “Ms. Morris, do you sometimes wear a Yankees baseball cap?”

Suddenly, the poker face disappeared and a worried woman appeared in its place. Very worried. In fact, Savannah had seen trapped rats with happier, more contented expressions.

“Why?” was all she would say.

Dirk looked at Savannah, and she knew what he was thinking—whether to go for it or not. She gave him a slight nod.

“Because,” he said, “we found a Yankees baseball cap in Bill Jardin’s trunk. It had short red hair in it. I’m pretty sure that if we run DNA on those hairs, they’re going to be a match to you.”

Rachel’s entire body sagged, and for a moment, Savannah thought she was going to faint. But she reached out and grabbed the back of a chair. Slowly, she lowered herself onto it.

“That’s your cap in Bill’s trunk,” Dirk said. “And you just told me that you’ve never been in his car before. You want to tell me how it got there?”

Still, the stunned Rachel just sat there, silent, looking sick.

“And your son says that he was at Clarissa’s house the night that Bill went missing,” Savannah told her. “He was looking through the window when Clarissa made Bill call you and tell you the affair was over.”

“Tanner…he…he told you that?” Rachel could hardly get the words out.

“Yes,” Dirk said, “so, we know that you had a good motive to kill him, scorned woman and all that.”

Rachel nodded, ever so slowly, staring at the table in front of her. “Yes. Okay. I did it.”

“You killed Bill Jardin,” Dirk said. Savannah could see the gleam of triumph in his eyes, but he kept his voice even.

“Yes. I’ll write you a confession. Whatever you need. Let’s just get it over with.”

Savannah stood, a bit too quickly. “I’ll go get some paper and a pen,” she said. She made herself walk slowly to the door. But once she was through it and had closed it behind her, she ran down the hallway to the first office she could find. “Gimme some paper and a pen,” she told the startled young woman seated behind the desk. “And make it snappy! We got ourselves a hot one!”

After delivering the needed stationery supplies to Dirk, Savannah reluctantly made her way to the room where Rebecca had stashed Tanner Morris.

She wasn’t looking forward to this one bit, telling a teenaged boy that his mother was a murderer. Although, something told her the news wouldn’t be a total shock to him.

When she got to the sleeping room that opened onto the common area day room, she stood at the small window and watched him for a moment. He was sitting on a cot, staring at a tiny television that was mounted to the wall, high in the corner. He was hunched over, his knees drawn up under his chin, his arms around his legs.

Savannah thought he looked terribly unhappy. She felt awful that she was about to make him even more miserable. After their talk, his life would never be the same.

She opened the door and stepped inside. “Tanner,” she said. “Can we talk?”

He nodded, but she couldn’t help but notice the fear in his eyes. “Is my mom here yet?”

“Yes,” she said, sitting on a small chair next to his cot. “But you won’t be seeing her…for a while. She’s with Detective Coulter.”

“Why? Why is she talking to him?” He looked confused and nervous as he fiddled with the strap on his sandal.

“He’s asking her some questions about what happened to Bill Jardin.”

His eyes searched hers frantically. “And?”

“And it seems she…well…she knows what happened to him.”

“She does?”

Savannah nodded. “In fact, she knows more about what happened than we do. She’s filling Detective Coulter in on the details now.”

“But what’s she telling him?”

His big eyes were filled with dread, as though he was anticipating her answer, but that didn’t make it any easier when Savannah said, “She’s confessed, Tanner. She told us she did it.”

He collapsed onto the bed, crying and pounding it at the same time with his fist. “It
was
her!” he shouted between sobs. “It
was
her! I knew it! I knew it was her I heard!”

Savannah let him cry for a moment, to get some of it out of his system, but then she reached over and grabbed him by the shoulders, forcing him to sit up.

“What do you mean, Tanner? What do you mean, ‘It was her.’ How did you know she did it?”

“Because I heard her do it. I was in the trunk!” His eyes were wild with fear and sorrow, his voice ragged as he wept.

“In Bill Jardin’s trunk?”

“Yes. After he and Clarissa had their big fight, after he called my mom and told her good-bye, Clarissa came out of the house and went running up in the hills. After a while, Bill came out, too, with a suitcase in his hand. I followed him to the garage and saw him throw it into his trunk. Then he called some girl on his cell phone and was talking all mushy to her, about how much he loved her and couldn’t wait to see her. Said he had to go somewhere to take care of something. And then he wanted to meet her at their special place, and they’d go to Las Vegas that night.”

“That must have been very hard for you to hear,” Savannah said.

“It was. I hated her, whoever she was. I wanted to see her, to find out what she looked like, why she was so much better than my mom and me.” He shuddered. “Bill had walked away from the car while he was talking to her. He was looking out the garage window, probably to make sure Clarissa didn’t come back and hear him. He hadn’t closed the trunk all the way, so I snuck over there when he wasn’t looking and got inside. Then I closed it.”

“Weren’t you afraid of getting locked inside?”

“No, the new cars have those special locks inside so that you can get out if you’re locked in. You know, emergency releases.”

“Oh, okay. I drive a ’65 Mustang, but…never mind…what happened then?”

“He drove off with me in the trunk. We went for a ways. I don’t know how far, because it’s hard to tell when you’re in a trunk. And then he stopped and turned the engine off. He sat there awhile. I could hear him fiddling with the radio, changing songs and stuff.”

The boy drew his legs up to his chest again and hugged them tightly. Savannah could see he was shivering.

“And then,” he said, “I heard another car drive up. And…”

“It’s okay. Go on.”

“And I heard her get out of her car and start to walk up to Bill’s car. He said, ‘Took you long enough. I’ve got things to do. Here’s your—and then, blam! I heard the shot. I hoped it was a firecracker, but I knew it was too loud for that.”

“You said you heard
her
. How did you know it was your mom?”

“Right after the shot, I heard her say his name, and she was crying. She said his name over and over and then she said, ‘I’m sorry. But you broke my heart. You threw me away. You shouldn’t have done that.”

“And it was your mom’s voice you heard. You’re sure?”

“It was kind of muffled sounding from there in the trunk, but yeah. I was pretty sure it was her.”

“And what happened, after he was shot, after you heard her say that?”

“She walked back to her car and got in. And then she drove off.”

“What did you do?”

“I waited awhile. I was so scared, that I didn’t know what to do. But finally, when I didn’t hear anything else, I got out.”

He covered his face with his hands. “And that’s when I saw him, slumped over, not moving. It was really dark there, so I couldn’t be sure, but I thought he was probably dead.”

Gently, she reached over and took his hands away from his face. “It’s all over, Tanner,” she said. “You endured a terrible thing, but it’s not happening now. It’s done. What did you do after that?”

“I walked back to San Carmelita.”

“That’s a very long ways. That’s how you got those blisters.”

“Yeah, it took me all the rest of the night. It didn’t matter. I didn’t have anyplace to go. I couldn’t go back to the motel, to my mom, after I knew what she’d done. I wouldn’t have been able to look at her. Bill was a jerk, and he did her wrong, but you shouldn’t kill a guy for being a jerk.”

“No, you shouldn’t, Tanner,” she said. “And that’s why your mom is being arrested. She’ll have a trial and probably be sent to prison for a long time. I’m so sorry.”

“I know. I was afraid of that,” he said.

“But you’ll be okay. I’m going to talk to Ms. Shipton about you, and we’ll see about getting you out of here as quick as we can. You’ll be placed with a good family who’ll look after you for awhile, till all this mess gets sorted out.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

She couldn’t resist reaching over and taking him into her arms. She was afraid that a kid his size would resist being hugged by a woman he hardly knew. But he melted against her, sobbing on her shoulder for a long time.

When he finally pulled back, he seemed exhausted.

“Lay back there on the cot, sugar,” she told him. “Rest a spell. You’ve been through a lot. Way too much for a fella your age.”

He did as she told him. She reached for a blanket that lay, folded, across the foot of the bed. Spreading it over him, she said, “You get some sleep. When you wake up, you’ll feel a mite better.”

But as she left the room and walked through the facility, she knew that Tanner Morris wasn’t going to feel better when he woke up. Or the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that.