Dolled Up to Die (25 page)

Cate showered and wrapped up in a flannel robe. With Uncle Joe and Rebecca out to a potluck dinner with friends, she had leftover fajitas for dinner, propped pillows on the bed, and settled down to read. Octavia snuggled up beside her. Her cell phone sitting on the nightstand rang without any pre-notice from the cat. She saw from the ID that it was Kim’s number. She was tempted to ignore it, but an inevitable sense of concern made her sigh and pick up the phone.

“Hi, Kim.”

“Cate, I know I probably shouldn’t call you. I know you’re unhappy with me. I know I’m probably being paranoid or something. But I just have this awful feeling. Like a big rock or something is about to crash down on me.”

Not a good feeling in a glass house. “Has something happened since I saw you this morning?”

“No. I’ve just been sitting around, thinking I should be here if Travis called.”

“Um.”

“You must think I’m the most helpless person in the world.”

“I think you have strengths and capabilities, but you’ve let your mother and Travis and even Ed convince you you’re nothing but a dumb blonde who can’t do anything on your own.”

Unexpectedly, Kim managed a laugh. “Come on, Cate. Don’t be shy. Just tell me straight out what you think.”

“Maybe that was a little blunt. But—”

“It’s okay. Thanks for being honest. I think I’ll, uh, go fix myself some tea now. Probably I’m just all nervous for nothing.”

Maybe. Maybe not.

“I’ll get dressed and come over.”

The house was all lit up when Cate arrived. Apparently Kim’s apprehension had overridden worries about paying a big electric bill. Although the house was cold inside, and Kim had been huddled in front of a small heater by the sofa rather than turning up the thermostat on the main heat. She was wearing the old plaid jacket again, plus two pairs of socks now.

“Did you and Rolf go over and get Travis’s bike?” Cate asked.

“No. I couldn’t get hold of him.”

Cate started to ask if she’d left a message for Rolf, but the cell phone in the pocket of Kim’s baggy jacket played an incongruously upbeat guitar riff. Kim looked at the ID but apparently didn’t recognize whatever was there.

She answered the call with a tentative hello. Then, after a moment, she said, “I was wondering if you’d call.”

That didn’t necessarily identify the caller as Travis, but Kim looked at her and gave a little nod that said it was him. Cate was surprised that they were allowing him to call from the jail so late on a Saturday night. It was past 9:00 already. Kim didn’t move away, but Cate, even though she was curious, felt awkward overhearing the private call. She started to move over to the black-and-white seating area. Kim made a downward movement with a hand to stop her, touched a button on the phone, and a moment later Travis’s voice came out of the speaker.

“. . . big mistake, but I don’t know how long it will take these idiots to get it straightened out.” He sounded odd, his voice hoarse or whispery.

“How did they make this big ‘mistake’?” Kim asked. Cate heard the quotation marks around mistake. She wondered if Travis did.

“Remember my buddy Jesse? He got caught trying to sell some stolen stuff on Craigslist. When they nabbed him, he told them I’d been in on the burglary.”

“Why would he do that if you weren’t involved?”

“Oh, you know. Sometimes they give you a deal if you rat on someone else. He was already mad because I hadn’t brought a ton of pot back from Guatemala. But it’s like I already told you, I’m through with that life.”

“Jesse always was getting in trouble.”

Cate could hear Kim softening toward Travis and his I’m-a-changed-man combined with my-friend-done-me-wrong story.

“I tried to get in to see you, but they wouldn’t let me in,” Kim said. “Do you know yet when they’ll move you up to Tigard?”

“No idea. Look, can you do something for me? I need to get my bike away from the motel. No telling what might happen to it there in the parking lot. And I need my stuff out of the motel too.”

“I’ll get an employee from the vineyard to move the bike. I grabbed the key. I’ll see if I can get your things out of the motel too.”

“Great! I knew I could count on you, babe. You’re the best! There is one other thing.” Travis didn’t wait to see if Kim was agreeable to something more. “I don’t know when they’ll set bail. Probably not until—”

“Could you talk a little louder? We—
I
can barely hear you.”

“I can’t talk any louder,” he said, though the whisper did go up a notch in volume. “I’m on a cell phone, hiding out under a blanket on my bunk. Cell phones are illegal in here, but this guy got one smuggled in. I’m paying him a hundred bucks to use it for fifteen minutes. He wouldn’t have trusted me for the money except he was impressed
when I told him who you were. He’s heard of Mr. K’s expensive restaurant.”

What Cate heard was that the cellmate was counting on Kim for that hundred bucks, though Kim didn’t seem to pick up on that.

“Won’t you be in trouble if they catch you with the phone?”

“Big trouble. But I had to talk to you, Kim. I just had to. Everything was going so good for us, and then this. I used up the one phone call they allow by calling Jesse to try to get him to tell the truth about the burglary.”

Cate felt a sudden shift in Kim’s view of Travis. They already knew the one-phone-call limit wasn’t true.

“Anyway, what I need is money to pay the bail so I can get out of here,” Travis said.

“How much will bail be?” Kim asked.

“I don’t know. It’s only a burglary charge, so probably not more than $25,000.”

“Travis, I can’t come up with—”

“You don’t have to come up with the whole amount. I think they only require 10 percent, something like that.”

“It doesn’t matter how much it is. I can’t come up with
anything
.”

“What do you mean, you can’t come up with anything? That old guy you married was loaded. I checked. Million-dollar house. Expensive restaurant, big vineyard, high-class lodge of some kind. Probably a boatload of stocks and bonds and cash too. Get some of it for me, babe. I need it.
Now
.”

“I know it looks from the outside like we were rich, but I have maybe fifty dollars in my checking account.”

“Oh, come on,” Travis scoffed. Then, as if he’d had a sudden suspicion, he said, “Is that redhead there with you? She’s filling you full of a bunch of baloney about me, isn’t she? Don’t trust her, babe. She—”

Travis broke off abruptly, and Cate’s PI intuition kicked in with the realization that he was only at that moment finally putting details together. That she was the one who had found Celeste’s body that night at the Mystic Mirage. That she was the one he’d tried to choke through the beaded curtain.

“Cate has nothing to do with this,” Kim said. “And I’m telling you the truth. I don’t have any money.”

“Borrow some.”

“I can’t! I’m already up to my ears in debt!”

“Then hock something. Sell something. I don’t care what you do. I can’t talk much longer or they’re going to bust in and catch me. Just get the money and get me out of here, or—”

Travis stopped, but the word hung there like a bomb about to explode.
Or
.

“Get you out of there, or what, Travis?” Kim said, her voice going unexpectedly calm. “You’ll kill me like you did my husband and my mother?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with either of their deaths. I told you that!”

“I think you did.”

“So now you’re threatening me? You’re going to sic the cops on me for murder? Do that, and I’ll just have to tell them a few things about your precious mother.” His voice had risen out of the whispery range, even if that put him in jeopardy.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, your dear mother was using a drug on her so-called patients. A very illegal drug.”

“I don’t believe you,” Kim said, but her voice faltered.

“No? Well, I know it for a fact, babe. If she couldn’t get her ‘patient’ hypnotized right away, she slipped ’em some Rohypnol. Or maybe you’ve heard it by its more common name, the date-rape drug? It put her patients out quite nicely, and they couldn’t remember a thing about what went on during
that time. Then afterwards Celeste fed them any kind of wild story about their past lives that she wanted to.”

“I-I don’t believe you. You can’t know that.”

“Kim, babe, I was the one getting the Rohypnol for her, so I definitely
do
know. And why do you think she dropped her Portland business like a hot potato? She had a couple of those so-called patients threatening to sue over what she’d given them.”

Kim’s mouth dropped open, but forming words seemed beyond her.

“Anyway, you get me the bail money and a few thousand extra, or all this comes out. Your mother may be dead, but this will make an interesting addition to her obituary, don’t you think? ‘Well-known local meta-psychologist’ or whatever it was she called herself. Or maybe it will be, ‘Well-known hypnotist Dr. Celeste Chandler revealed as illegal drug pusher.’”

Cate could hear an ominous ring of truth in Travis’s threat. He’d do it, even if the revelation backfired and got him in more trouble. She knew Kim could hear it too.

“Did my mother give you money to get you out of our lives?” Kim demanded.

“She gave me money, all right. A nice bundle. When I told her that if she didn’t come up with it, the police would get all the facts about the magic secret to her big success with that so-called past-lives regression rubbish.”

“You blackmailed her!”

“It got me out of being married to you, and I had a nice nest egg to finance an escape too.”

“Why did you come back?”

If Travis’s disdainful attitude about their marriage hurt Kim, she wasn’t letting it show.

“Money, of course. I ran out and I need more. Those idiots down in Guatemala couldn’t grow pot any better than I could
send a rocket to the moon. But Celeste got hard-nosed about it. Said she didn’t have anything to give me.”

So he killed her when she wouldn’t pay off again. And trashed her apartment for whatever he could find. What about Ed Kieferson’s murder?

“But then you looked like a pretty good bet, rich widow and all,” Travis added.

“So now you’re trying to blackmail me,” Kim said.

“I’m just telling you the facts, babe. About what’s going to happen if you don’t get me that bail money, and more, or if you try to pin some murder on me. But you get the money, and everything will be fine. We can start a great new life together, right there in your big glass house.” His voice softened persuasively. “We were pretty good together, babe. Things just kind of went wrong. But we can make it really good this time.”

Travis could go from telling her how glad he was to get out of their old marriage to how great a new one would be. As Kim had once said about her ex, Travis never let logic clutter up his thinking.

“Maybe I don’t care what you tell the world about my mother!”

“You care.”

Kim’s moment of silence said he was right, but her voice was a little sad when she said, “Then maybe you should have checked on the real level of my wealth before you killed her.”

Kim hit the button that ended the call. The cell phone rang again a minute later. Kim didn’t answer it, and, without listening to whatever message Travis may have left, she erased it.

 22 

Cate and Kim sat there in silence, the only sound the faint hum of the small refrigerator in the bar area in a corner of the room.

“Do you believe what Travis said about your mother and giving the drug to her clients?”

“Yeah, I guess I do.” Kim still sounded sad. “But it’s a good thing Ed never knew, or he’d have been mad enough to kill her himself. Someone gave his daughter that date-rape drug once. What happened while she was knocked out with it left her so disturbed and depressed that she killed herself a couple years later. It was all before I knew him, of course, but he was still really bitter about it. He said anyone who gave a woman that drug ought to be—” Kim shook her head. “Well, Ed could get pretty graphic about that.”

Jo-Jo had mentioned the daughter’s suicide but not this detail.

“Are you going to get the money for him?” Cate asked.

“I suppose I could hock something. I have some jewelry Ed gave me. And there’s lots of stuff around here that’s probably hockable.” Kim gazed around the room as if sizing up the dollar value of lamps and furniture and knickknacks. “I hocked things now and then back when Travis and I were married.”

“Do you think helping him get out is a good idea?”

Kim turned to look at her. “What do you think?”

Cate resisted the urge to jump up and wave her arms and shout “No, no, no, don’t help him get out!” Instead she said, “You have to decide this, Kim. It’s one of a lot of decisions you’re going to have to make for yourself now.”

Kim hesitated for a long moment. “No, it isn’t a good idea, is it?” Another long moment of thought as she weighed the decision. “And I’m not going to do it.”

Cate again resisted an urge, this one to stick two fingers in her mouth and blow a raucous whistle of approval. Instead, she merely nodded and said, “I think that’s a good decision.”

“But I think hocking or selling something is definitely a great idea. I need money to pay the bills. Maybe I could even sell enough to get the house out of foreclosure!” Kim jumped up. She grabbed a free-form sculpture from the coffee table, small and squiggly looking but undoubtedly expensive. “I don’t need all this stuff!” She sounded unexpectedly amazed about that discovery.

If Travis’s threatening call had made Kim see that she
didn’t
need all the stuff that surrounded her, then it had accomplished something worthwhile after all. Kim set the sculpture back on the coffee table, then picked up an elaborate vase filled with drooping flowers, gave it an appraising inspection, and decisively set it beside the sculpture.

Cate was about to suggest Kim could add that strange sculpture out in the yard to a list of disposable items, but Kim suddenly dropped back to the sofa. She clasped her arms around her body as if she’d gone cold again.

“But he’ll manage to get the bail money somehow, even if I don’t give it to him. Travis can be . . . resourceful.”

Oh yes. He’d blackmailed his way to a trip to Guatemala. Gotten hold of a cell phone in jail. Definitely resourceful.

Kim’s throat moved in a convulsive swallow. “He’ll get out.”

That realization obviously scared Kim. It scared Cate too. Because what the words told Cate was that this was no time to feel complacent or safe simply because Travis was behind bars. He would get out on bail, so she had a very limited window of time to get evidence against him about murder before he came after one or both of them.

“But I’m not going to worry about that now,” Kim declared with determination in her voice. “He surely can’t get out on bail for a few days yet. Probably not until they take him up to Tigard. There are small weddings scheduled for both Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at Lodge Hill. LeAnne says she’ll handle the Tuesday one, and I’ll be there with her to learn all I can so I can do the Wednesday one alone. I don’t even know exactly what she does or how the food for receptions is coordinated with the restaurant. Or a lot of other things.”

“Thursday is the rehearsal dinner for my friend Robyn’s wedding. I don’t know anything about weddings, but I’ll be there and help any way I can. And then Friday is Robyn’s wedding.”

“That’s a big wedding, isn’t it?” Kim’s brief burst of confidence sounded on the edge of crumbling.

Yes, that herd of bridesmaids, a wedding gown from San Francisco, and a color-coordinated hair scheme probably qualified as big and complicated. “You can do this, Kim. Remember all those weddings you had for your dolls? All those wedding articles you read? And you wanted Ed to let you manage Lodge Hill, didn’t you? Now you can do it.”

“But even if I manage that, there are so many other problems! This house and the vineyard and the restaurant. The Mystic Mirage too.”

“Take them one at a time. You’re not dumb. Or helpless.”

“You think so?” The sideways glance Kim gave Cate looked hopeful, but her voice sounded skeptical.

“God gave us all talents or abilities of some kind. Running a wedding business may be one of yours. I’ll pray for you.”

“Pray?” Kim looked surprised. Her gaze darted around as if she suddenly feared God might be spying on her through a glass wall. “What good will that do?”

“You might be surprised.”

Cate offered to stay the night with Kim, but Kim shook her head and smiled wryly.

“With Travis behind bars, I’ll be fine.”

Cate called Kim’s cell phone number right after church the next morning, and Kim was indeed fine. She surprised Cate by saying she was at that moment at the Mystic Mirage, putting bargain-basement prices on everything for a going-out-of-business sale. She’d gotten hold of Rolf. He and a friend were coming by the Mystic Mirage that afternoon to pick up the key to the motorcycle, and then he’d ride the bike out to the vineyard for storage.

“I decided I don’t want it at the house,” Kim said. “I also called the motel and asked them to store Travis’s things until he could pick them up. They weren’t happy about it, but I don’t want his stuff at my place either. Monday evening I’m meeting LeAnne out at Lodge Hill, and we’re going over information about how things work there.”

“You sound as if you have everything under control,” Cate said. “I’m impressed.”

“Maybe it was that pep talk you gave me. Or the prayer.”

Cate and Mitch went for another ride on the motorcycle that afternoon. Cate still wasn’t putting bike riding at the top of her list of favorite activities, but it had edged off of
her Things I Never Want to Do list. Even though the day was sunny and unseasonably warm, she prudently took along her garbage bag.

They rode east from Springfield on the highway that followed the McKenzie River and wound back into the mountains. Fall colors blazed on the forested hillsides, and they took side hikes, once to see a covered bridge, another time to stand close to a waterfall. Mitch swung her hand as they walked. They had a late lunch and turned around at a little place called McKenzie Bridge.

“Well?” Mitch said when they coasted to the curb back at the house just before dark.

Cate flexed her hands. She’d kept a lifeline grip on the handholds most of the time. “I had fun. I enjoyed the ride. There’s a nice sense of freedom on a bike.”

“Good.”

“But I’m still not rushing out to buy a motorcycle of my own,” she warned.

He leaned over and kissed her. “You’ll always have a place on mine.”

Midmorning on Monday she drove back to the motel to see what she could find out about Travis. Yesterday’s warm fall day had given way to blustery clouds, and rain spattered the windshield as she parked by the office door.

The motel looked the same as it had when Cate and Kim were there on Saturday. Baby stroller by a door and nondescript cars in the parking lot, although today a cleaning cart stood by an open door to a room. She was surprised to see Travis’s motorcycle still angled at the curb. Rolf obviously hadn’t come for it yet.

Then a red Camaro pulled in right behind her and parked
beside the bike. Rolf got out on the passenger’s side. He was wearing jeans and a heavy denim jacket and carried a plain black helmet in one hand. A curvy blonde got out of the driver’s side of the car. She looked as if she’d just stepped out of an ad that said “Don’t you wish your jeans fit you like this?”

Cate didn’t want to explain her presence here to Rolf. She scrunched down in the seat. She’d just sneak away before he saw her, and return later.

Fat chance.

Rolf, apparently equipped with invisible antenna that detected redhead vibes from across a parking lot, turned and instantly spotted her. He waved, dropped the helmet on the seat of the motorcycle, and headed toward her as if they were old friends. Reluctantly, reminding herself she should be nice to him because he was helping Kim, she opened the window. She probably owed him nice anyway, since she’d had unwarranted suspicions of him. The blonde shot eye icicles across the parking lot.

Rolf braced his arms on the window frame and leaned down to peer inside. “Hey, I didn’t expect to see you here.” He gave her a raised eyebrow and smirky grin. “Meeting someone?” He glanced around the parking lot as if looking for likely prospects. “You should tell him you deserve better than this rat hole.”

Cate ignored his insinuation that she was here for some midday tryst. “Kim said she’d asked you to pick up the bike and take it out to the vineyard. I’d thought you were doing it yesterday.”