Deadly Fall (21 page)

Callie had liked the sound of it. Why were her ex-husband and children deciding on the disposal of her ashes with no apparent input from Sam? He was her husband, albeit estranged, which Kenneth had learned from Bev. Would someone as shrewd as he was believe a mistress scorned?

Kenneth's bony face was obscured by shadows. Even in daytime, this room was dark due to its northern exposure, sheer-covered windows and forested front yard.

“Cameron wanted to work them into a sculpture,” Kenneth said. “He feels his mother would appreciate becoming an object of art, especially one made by her son.”

“What . . . what would be the design?”

“Possibly something related to music; whatever it is, I'm sure I'll find it hideous.”

His whole body shudder made her stifle a smile, while tending to agree.

“I'm conventional in this matter,” Kenneth said. “I want her buried in a place I can visit. That left the three of us in deadlock. Do you mind if I smoke?”

While he got the cigarettes, she straightened the staircase of boxes. The colors got brighter on the way to the top. Was he asking her to break the deadlock?

“Shouldn't Sam be involved in this decision?” she said.

Kenneth returned with a lit cigarette and ashtray he placed on the piano, beside box number two, the orange and red. He either hadn't heard her question or ignored it. “My children inherited their mother's artistic sensibility and my stubbornness. Fortunately, last night, I thought of these.”

Both turned to the boxes on the piano.

“Skye insisted it would be bad luck if we didn't use all five in the set.”

“Why?”

“Who knows? This meant we had to include two more people. My kids said Sam should get one. I was, frankly, surprised. I thought Skye despised him.”

“I thought she did, too, and wonder why.” Paula touched the piano keys.

“She didn't like his coolness toward Callie.”

“Sam's father also noticed that.”

“They weren't great at disguising it. I don't know how they pulled it off.” He blew smoke sideways, away from her. “I don't much like him getting a box, but deep down I knew the kids were right. She would want him to have a part.”

“Even though they were estranged, he was still—”

“This left us with an extra box,” Kenneth said. “I suggested you. Cameron and Skye couldn't come up with anyone more suitable.”

“What about Callie's sister or brother?”

“They would find it a nuisance. Tony would probably throw her down the drain.”

That did seem like Tony, especially when there would be no money for him in it. “Dorothy is responsible.”

“She did her sisterly duty but is glad it's over so she can go back to her real life.”

“What about Isabelle?”

“Too immature for the responsibility; Callie's cousins weren't close enough to her to attend the funeral. I can trust you to do the right thing, to counterbalance Sam's inevitable action.”

Piano tones clashed. She had pressed the keys. Kenneth's anger at Sam was understandable, but it was unfair to assume Sam would mistreat the ashes. He had been deemed responsible enough to plan her funeral. Callie had chosen him to execute her will and hadn't changed his status on that.

“This is probably nosey of me,” she said. It was super nosey, but if he was entrusting her with a portion of the ashes . . . “Does he inherit all her money and property?”

“That goes to the kids. He gets nothing. Why should he? He didn't contribute a penny to that house.”

“Do the police know this?”

“They requested the will.”

Sam had no motive for murder. The cops knew it. That was why he wasn't the prime suspect. “I'm sure he'll treat his box of ashes with respect.”

“He can take it to hell with him, for all I care. Shall we sit down?”

Bev's intuition about another murderous “he” must have been wrong. Kenneth was simply a man who despised his rival and, fairly or unfairly, saw the worst in him. She took her place on the sofa, facing the window and a railroad clock she didn't recall from her previous visits. She asked if it was new.

“A family portrait used to hang there,” Kenneth said. “It was easier to buy the clock than plug the hole and repaint.”

She remembered the portrait now: Callie with him and the children in a happy family pose. She bit into an oatmeal cookie. “This is good. Is it homemade?”

“I bought them at a store on 17th Ave.” Kenneth butted out his cigarette and turned his attention to cookies and milk. He had never been good at small talk.

Taking her cue from Bev, Paula cut to the chase. “I ran into a neighbor of yours, a former friend of Callie's, Bev Berwell.”

Kenneth looked confused. “Bev's more Sam's friend.”

Paula waited for him to bad-mouth Sam for cheating on Callie.

Kenneth crossed one long leg over the other. “The detectives were by to see me yesterday. Or was it Tuesday? I lose track of time. Did they talk to you?”

“Not since they located the gun.”

“That changes the whole complexion, don't you think?”

Paula took a sip of milk. “It suggests the killer was someone close.”

“He knew the gun was in the shed.”

“Did you?”

“Not before the police told me.”

“Sam says he blabbed the story to everyone.”

“I don't recall hearing about it.” Kenneth caught her glance and attempted a wan smile. “I can easily say that. There's no proof Sam didn't tell me. As the jilted husband, I'm the obvious suspect.”

“You're not the only one. There's him.” Paula grabbed a cookie.

“You must have been shocked when Callie told you about her and him,” Kenneth's face darkened. The only light in the room came from the reading lamp beside him. “Did you try to discourage her, convince her she's throwing her life away? I'm sure you did and she refused to listen.”

Paula nibbled the cookie. Like everyone, he thought Callie had confided in her.

Kenneth took another cigarette from the pack. “I assumed, from the start, the murder was random. And Sam and I were friends. That's why I went along. Presumably, you felt the same. The gun changes all that.”

She nodded her mouth full of cookie.

“As of yesterday or whenever it was, you hadn't told the police,” he said.

Told them what? About Callie and someone who wasn't Sam, whom Sam would like to protect? Paula washed down her cookie with milk. “I wanted to think through the implications.”

“Me too, we're both rational types. Callie was impulsive.” A faint line of milk coated his upper lip. He twirled the unlit cigarette. “I thought, why drag her reputation through the muck when it's unrelated to the crime. But if it was him, he deserves to fry.”

She took a stab. “Dimitri?”

“Sam assured me it was over between them and he hadn't come near her since spring.”

“That isn't true.” It had been more than a crush. Callie and Dimitri had had an affair. Kenneth knew about it. Sam had persuaded him to keep it quiet, as he had persuaded Isabelle. “Callie's niece told me Dimitri followed Callie around the folk festival this summer. Callie didn't like it.”

“Even as a kid, he wouldn't take no for an answer.”

The grandfather clock in the hall bonged the half hour. The dog barked from the kitchen. The railroad clock chimed Westminster Chimes. Kenneth, as Anne's and Sam's friend, would have seen Dimitri growing up. He might have toddled around this room.

“Callie believed he would eventually go public with their affair,” Kenneth said. “I told her he never would. It was all about image with him.”

“You say the affair ended last spring. When did it start?”

Kenneth stopped twirling the cigarette. He stared at her.

Damn. She had forgotten her role as Callie's confidant. Paula said, “It wasn't clear to me which of them strayed from the marriage first. Sam can't have taken her fooling around with his son lightly.”

The peculiar smile returned to Kenneth's face. “You don't know. Now, I understand. I couldn't see why you would go along with Sam and keep it from the police. It all makes sense.”

“What don't I know?” Paula took another cookie.

“Callie didn't tell you because you have common sense. You would have told her the truth: that she was out of her mind to leave a good marriage for him.”

“Callie planned to leave Sam for Dimitri?”

“He's a pompous, conceited kid.”

“You thought her marriage to Sam was good?”

“I told her when she left me she would live to regret it. I didn't know how much.” The weird smile soured to one more suited to his face. “You still don't get it. There was no marriage.”

“Callie and Sam weren't married?” Her voice croaked. She reached for the milk. “They were living common-law?”

“They never existed,” Kenneth said. “It was her and him from the start. Sam was the cover for their affair. Callie left me for the kid.”

Paula tipped the glass. Milk spilled to the carpet. “Shit.” She grabbed a napkin, squatted, and wiped the stain. After the funeral, Dimitri had gone out of his way to talk to her, not out of politeness, as she had thought, but because she was Callie's friend. On
TV
, he had snapped at a reporter who called Callie his stepmother but not because he didn't accept her—he didn't see her in that role. After Callie's death, Dimitri got drunk. Sam seemed barely grieved. At the hockey game, Sam had talked about the son he had loved since infancy. He would do anything for him.

Paula looked up at Kenneth. “Callie gave me the impression she disliked him. She described Dimitri as self-centered and spoiled. She lied to me.” Callie had purposely kept her from Sam because she might notice their indifference to one another and guess the truth. “What do you mean, there was no marriage? She told me they got married in Hawaii.”

“Callie assumed his surname socially, not wanting mine anymore.” The cigarette lit up his snarled and beaten face. “She and I aren't divorced. It's a legal separation.”

The carpet looked reasonably clean. Paula got up and paced to the fireplace. Sam and Dimitri had the same surname. Who would know that when she called herself “Moss” she had meant the son? “They faked all this to protect Dimitri's political image.”

“His family values party would never have accepted his involvement with a married woman.”

“Sam did it to help his son.”

“I sympathize with Sam,” Kenneth said, “but he'll have to get used to seeing the little fucker in prison.”

The shop doubled as a second-hand bookstore. Mystery novels lined the alcove around their table. Detective Vincelli arranged the four donuts on his plate into a square. He looked as exhausted as Paula felt after her night of restless sleep. Vincelli's olive face was pale, the whites of his eyes reddened. His maroon shirt was so creased Paula doubted he'd washed it since their last meeting.

Vincelli picked up a donut. “So, what information do you have for me?”

After getting home from Kenneth's last night, Paula had called Vincelli. He had suggested the donut shop. Yes, he said, he knew donuts and cops were a cliché, but who cared when the shop made ones exactly like his grandmother's?

Where to begin? With Bev or the lovers, Callie and Dimitri? Paula still couldn't get used to not thinking the lovers were Callie and Sam. “I located a woman who had an affair with Sam, Bev Berwell.”

He paused, mid-donut. “We spoke to her yesterday.”

“After I saw her?”

He finished the donut.

Bev must have been certain Paula would call the police and had contacted them first to pre-empt her, which meant Bev would have told them about Kenneth's cryptic reference to “he” during the dog walk. A homicide team was probably interviewing Kenneth now and discovering what Paula had learned last night. All Paula could offer the police were reports of her conversations with Isabelle and Sam in light of Kenneth's revelation. She felt like Isabelle during their talk Tuesday night, losing her scoop.

“What did you think of Bev?” she said. “My impression was, if she had killed anyone, it would have been Sam, not Callie.”

“I wasn't involved in the interview.” He picked up his teacup. “We could arrest you for impersonating a police officer.” His dark eyes looked grim.

“I was impersonating an adjuster working for the police.” That sounded flippant.

“This is serious.”

“I know it is.”

“Your interference could have screwed up our investigation and prevented us from making our case.”

“I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking straight.”

“Don't ever do it again.” He bit hard into his donut.

Vincelli was right, but Paula didn't appreciate being chewed out by this man twenty years her junior. “You'll probably want my take on things, after someone in your unit has talked to Kenneth.”

Sugar flecked his lips. “Kenneth Unsworth, Callie's former husband?”

“When did Bev call you? Yesterday afternoon or last night? You must have gone out to Kenneth's right away. I'm surprised our paths didn't cross.”

“What are you talking about? Did Bev say something about Kenneth?”

“She must have told your colleagues the same thing, knowing I'd bring it up.”

“Bring up what?” Vincelli's eyes were blank.

“I thought you and Novak were primary on this case.”

“We are. Our colleagues gave a full report at the unit meeting.”

“When was that?”

“About an hour ago.”

“That's odd. They wouldn't keep this from you.”

“Not when we're fucking primary.” He wiped sugar from his chin stubble, but missed the powder on his lips.

Bev had no motive to withhold Kenneth's “he” reference from the cops. There was nothing in it for her, which seemed to be her operating principle. It could only benefit her, publicity-wise, if the media shifted its attention from Sam. She had no reason to think “he” was Sam's son. Knowing Bev, it might have been a whim. Maybe she didn't like the interviewer's face. He might have tried to push her around. Bev would balk at that. Vincelli was waiting for Paula's explanation. A flash through his dark eyes suggested he didn't like her trumping the cops once again. So, he was competitive and she had lingered long enough for a drum roll effect.