A Wrongful Death (8 page)

"Let it go, Standifer," Barbara said. "She's in shock, hysterical. Get her out of here and give her a little time." Then she said, "Ms. Carnero, did you fly here from New York today?"

"She said to come and bring the passports and I found her." She swiveled about in her chair, and said in a voice that sounded almost robotic, "Mother said not to let Terry touch her, or get near her. Mother will come. She said she will come." She stood, swayed and clutched the arm of her chair, then sat and be pan to sob again. "Mother will come."

Barbara shook her head at Standifer. "You'd better have someone take her to a motel or something, let her calm down. You know the drill here. The medical examiner, forensics, it's going to take hours and you're not going to get anything from her while all that's going on. Keep at her and she will collapse altogether. Flying all day, probably no food, vomiting, now this. She's ready to keel over."

Reluctantly he pushed his chair back and stood.

In a few minutes a female officer led Leonora away. After a short consultation with Standifer, a plainclothes detective took her bags out. When they were gone, Barbara stood. "It's going to be a while before the medical examiner gets here. I might as well go to Dad's house and wait for you there if you have questions for me. Or else, I have to sit in this chair in everyone's way, and cool my heels while you follow the proper protocol. You know where Dad lives. I'll be there."

For a moment he regarded her with a hostile expression, but he knew she was right; she would simply be in the way here, and there was nowhere else to wait.

"Tell me again how you came to be here," he said brusquely.

She shrugged. "We had an appointment, no one answered the bell and I tried the door. It wasn't locked. I came in and saw her, felt for a pulse and then Carnero and the officers got here. I didn't go into any other room and doubt that I touched anything except her neck, the door, the bell and this chair."

He didn't like it, but she was in the way and would be more so when the forensics crew got there and went about their business. He let her go, and told her to wait at Frank's house as if it had been his own idea.

"Christ on a mountain," Frank said softly. "Shot?"

Barbara nodded. "Twice, in the midsection and again in the face, the side of her face." She shuddered. "I have to go wash my hands. I touched her."

He took her jacket and she went to scrub her hands. He was by the fire in the living room when she returned, coffee cups and a carafe on the table. He poured for her and motioned toward the chair nearest the fire, and she realized that she was still shivering, not just from the penetrating chill of the fog outside, but from deep inside.

"Bailey's on his way," Frank said, sitting opposite her. "You want to wait to tell us together?"

"I'm all right," she said. "Cold." She began to tell him about Elizabeth's phone call, and was still at it when Bailey arrived. She started over after Bailey was seated with a drink in his hand.

"That was at ten after four. I got there about an hour later, ten after five, and she was dead. From what she said, I assumed that no one knew where she was, or even if she was around. She said that someone could be watching the office and she was afraid to go there, and afraid someone would follow me. No one followed, they got there first."

"The window of opportunity wasn't open long," Bailey commented.

"Less than you think ," Barbara said after a moment. "The call to me was at ten after four. She was ready at that time to come to the office, and changed her mind. Then she went in to take a shower. I could smell a shampoo fragrance, and her hair was done up in a towel. One light was on, probably in the bedroom, maybe the bathroom. She put on a robe, but no slippers after the shower. Let's say that took ten minutes at least, more like fifteen. About four-thirty by then, and we don't know when Leonora found her. Check the flights in," she added to Bailey. "Allow time to collect luggage, rent a car, find the apartment. Anyway, from four-thirty until Leonora got there was the window of opportunity. Half an hour? Maybe." She thought a moment, then said, "Leonora wasn't making much sense, but she said that in the bedroom things were on the floor, tossed around. A search? Could be. That's cutting it really close. If she had arrived minutes sooner, she might have become a second body on the floor."

And if Barbara had arrived earlier, she might have been there, too, Frank thought. He got up to give the fire a poke it didn't need.

"I can tell you a little about Leonora Carnero," Bailey said.

Barbara shook her head. "After I talk to the cops. I intend to tell them every single thing I know about all this. Let's not add to it yet. See what you can dig up about the Knowltons and their father."

He nodded. He had already made a note about Brice and Rita Knowlton.

"How old's the Carnero woman?" Frank asked then.

"I don't know" Barbara said. "Thirty, thirty-five."

"Thirty-four," Bailey said.

"Doesn't make much sense," Frank said. "Her first thought was to go call her mother."

"Good trick," Bailey muttered. "Her mother's dead." Barbara stared at him. "She said her mother's coming," she said softly. "She said it several times."

"Even a better trick," Bailey said.

Frank glanced at his watch. "Let's have a bite to eat before the investigators get here. I suspect it's going to be a long night." Barbara had said that Standifer hadn't seemed to know about the attack from two weeks earlier, but whoever came to question her no doubt would. A long night was certainly in store for them.

Bailey looked hopeful and Frank nodded. "You, too. It's mostly leftovers, but of what there is, there's plenty."

He had combined leftover chicken and vegetables — green beans, peas, a little asparagus — added noodles and a cream sauce and put it in the oven after Barbara's call, and as he had said, there was plenty and it was delicious.

It was eight-thirty before the doorbell rang again. Bailey and Barbara waited by the fire for Frank to admit the detective. She groaned when she heard Frank say, "Evening, Milt. I'll hang your jacket. Nasty night."

Milt Hoggarth was in his fifties, overworked and looking it, and that night he was scowling fiercely, first at Barbara, then at Bailey. "I'll talk to you alone "he said. He had fading red hair receding fast and a florid complexion. The cold air that night had made his face redder than usual.

"Don't be silly," Barbara said, waving toward a chair. "Dad's my lawyer, and we'll tell Bailey every word said here, as you know. Do you want coffee?" She was having a glass of wine, but he always turned down wine, beer, or anything more potent than coffee. "What happened to Standifer? Did I scare him off?"

"I'm assigned to the case," he said, eyeing the cats that had gotten up to greet him. He seemed to believe they were closer to mountain lions than domestic pets, and that they might go into attack mode any second.

Grudgingly he sat down, leaned forward and said, "So, give."

"Right." She told him everything she knew without omitting a detail, and he was as disbelieving as everyone else had been. Absently he helped himself to coffee and did not interrupt a single time.

"So there it is," Barbara said. "I never met Elizabeth Kurtz, and the only words I heard from her were on the telephone this afternoon. But since I got home on Monday, there's been a parade of people demanding I produce her, or put them in touch, or something else. Sorry, no can do."

Hoggarth started at the beginning with his questions. Why did she stop at that cabin? Where had she been in California, doing what? Where did she go after leaving the cabin? He was as thorough as Janowsky, the state police lieutenant, had been, and as skeptical of her answers.

"Today, on the phone, tell me again exactly what she said."

Barbara did so. Just doing his job, she reminded herself more than once and kept her temper in check as she went over the same details again.

"So maybe still another person has been looking for her, and that one found her," she added. "Or—" She straightened in her chair and carefully put her wineglass down on the table. "Or someone could have a bug on my phone."

"I'll have it checked out," Hoggarth said, as skeptical as ever.

She glanced at Bailey and he nodded slightly. So would he.

"Was she your client?" Hoggarth asked.

"Listen to me, Hoggarth. I never met her. I never spoke to her until today, and never corresponded in any way with her. What about that is it you don't understand? I don't have a client. I'm thinking of retiring, maybe do some teaching."

He made a rude sound and his scowl deepened. He poured more coffee.

"Was it a bullet wound?" Frank asked.

"Yeah. No gun around."

"Had someone searched the apartment?" Barbara asked.

"What makes you think that?" he demanded.

"Something Leonora Carnero said. That things were on the floor, messed up in the bedroom. It sounded as though the place had been tossed."

He nodded. "Yeah."

"No sign of the child? His belongings, anything?" Barbara asked.

"She didn't have a kid with her. No one saw a kid around."

"If that was Elizabeth Kurtz, there has to be a child around somewhere," Barbara said. "Where is he?"

"What do you mean if?" Hoggarth asked.

"For God's sake! I never met her, remember? People keep telling me that's who she is. At the cabin her face was muddy, bloody, swollen. And you must have seen her face tonight. I couldn't identify her from what I've seen either time. But there was a child at the cabin. Where is he? What happened to him?"

Chapter 9

Hoggarth left at ten-thirty, dissatisfied with Barbara, with her answers to his questions and not at all happy to have had a new homicide investigation dumped on him right before Christmas. At the door on his way out, he stopped and glowered at her. "You'd better plan to stay around for awhile."

"No travel plans in sight," she said. His frown deepened and he stomped out.

"Funny, isn't it?" Barbara commented. "This might be the first time in our cordial relationship that I came absolutely clean the first time around with him, and he didn't believe a word I said. So much for sticking to the truth."

Bailey downed the same drink he had been nursing all evening and set the glass on the table. "You want what I have now, or wait for morning?"

"Now, by all means," Barbara said and Frank nodded.

"Just the high points," Bailey said. "Elizabeth Littleton Kurtz. Thirty-four. Master's degree in zoology from Stanford. Undergrad at Johns Hopkins. National Science Merit Scholarship winner. Married Terry Kurtz in Spain about six years ago, divorced roughly two years later. Their son was six months old. Works as an editor for a publisher of science books, text books. Mother from Spain, father an undersecretary or something at the UN until his death when she was about eleven. Mother back in Spain now, remarried." He paused a second or two, then continued in the same kind of rapid-fire, nearly staccato recitation. "Leonora Carnero, also thirty-four, mother Puerto Rican, dad American. Mother took off when she was twelve, and she moved in with Elizabeth and her mother and grew up in their household. Divorced, lives in same apartment with Elizabeth. Works for an insurance group."

He gave Barbara a knowing look. "Elizabeth knew how to hide. Took off from her job, left the city with son Jason back in October and not a trace of her until she showed up in that cabin. If that was her. No credit card, no cell phone use, nothing, zilch."

"Your guys in New York looked beyond the obvious?" Barbara asked. "Not much time to check cell phone and such."

"There was time, especially when nothing was showing up. No airline reservations, train reservations, bus tickets in her name. Like I said. Nothing."

"She must have driven, used cash everywhere," Barbara said after a moment. "She knew someone was looking for her."

"After withdrawing ten grand in New York, she sold a BMW in Philadelphia, got cash, so she had plenty with her. Probably paid cash for something else somewhere else and headed for the west coast," Bailey said with a shrug.

"What about the company?" Frank asked. "Anything there?"

"Not much. Henry Diedricks started it, and apparently his inventions, innovations, whatever, made him famous in the prosthetics sphere. He's from Portland, the company started there, and the research and development bunch is still there. They opened a production plant in New Jersey seven or eight years ago, and moved corporate headquarters to New York City. Business is booming. Diedricks is out of the picture, old, demented, in a wheelchair, blind. Two kids. Daughter Sarah married Joseph Kurtz, a researcher in charge of R&D. She's a social creature, has nothing to do with the business apparently, and her son Terry is the original best catch bachelor of the year, even if he has been married. Diedricks's son Lawrence runs the sales department, hangs out on the East Coast for the most part. Kurtz was back and forth a lot over the years. He died in November. The whole family is in the state for now. They came for the funeral and are hanging around."

Neither Barbara nor her father had any significant questions. They both knew Bailey's full report would have whatever details his New York contacts had been able to provide.

"Okay," Barbara said, "let's call it a day. Tomorrow, the possible phone tap, and the Knowltons, all of them. The plane arrival time, if she rented a car." She glanced at Frank. "Anything else?"

He nodded. "Check all the phones, her apartment included," he said to Bailey, motioning toward Barbara. "And this one. She'll stay here tonight."

"Dad—"

He leveled his gaze at her. "Someone's putting a lot of resources into whatever is going on. If they tracked that woman to the cabin, they're both resourceful and willing to spend a good deal of money. And you were on the scene at the cabin. Then you both dropped out of sight again for days. They don't know if you and Elizabeth Kurtz planned that or not. If they learned her location from her telephone call to you, it means they were primed and ready to seize the opportunity instantly. Let Bailey check some things out before you go back to your apartment."