Enemies Closer (23 page)

If the homicide detectives were surprised they didn’t show it, but on the other side of the one-way glass Kincaid said, “First Susan is sleeping with anybody she can get her hands on and now he’s going to blame his wife for driving Maddy away? This guy is a total shit.”

“Listen,” hissed Carlisle, watching attentively through the window.

Iverson asked, “Was there an issue between your wife and Maddy Gardner?”

“I don’t know. What I’m saying is that Michelle is hard to deal with. Maybe Maddy was beginning to realize what she’d gotten herself into when she partnered with her and decided to get out of Dodge for a week.”

“Without calling her family? Her friends? Her sister? Without using her credit cards or making a single ATM withdrawal?”

Eddie remained silent. “Is there something you’re not telling us? Do you know where she is?” asked Tanaka with a hint of menace.

Their suspect’s eyes widened with apprehension. “No! I have no idea. I just wouldn’t be surprised. That’s all.”

“Was there a specific problem between Michelle and Maddy?” asked Iverson again.

“Maybe. I don’t know,” said Eddie finally. “The past month Michelle just seemed a little tense when I asked her about the restaurant. And lately when I asked her how Maddy was doing, she said she wouldn’t know because they never saw each other. Which was strange because they see each other every day, but she sounded irritated. I figured she either meant that they never had a chance to just hang out, or that she was annoyed with Maddy and they were avoiding one another. Either way, I wasn’t going to ask.”

“You didn’t ask your wife if something was wrong?”

Eddie looked at Iverson. “When Michelle is irritated, I wait for
her
to tell
me
why.”

Carlisle looked at her partner. “I guess Michelle’s the boss in that household.”

Kincaid nodded. “I was under the impression that it was the other way around. If it’s true, then that’s definitely something to chew on.”

Iverson said skeptically, “So you’re speculating that Maddy and Michelle got into it and Maddy took off for a week of R and R.”

Eddie was regaining some color in his face now that the subject of discussion was Michelle and Maddy. He nodded his head vigorously. “Yeah.”

“And you have no idea where she might have gone?” He shook his head. “Even though she was last seen getting into a car matching the description of your BMW?”

“What?” Eddie looked horrified.

Now Tanaka leaned forward. “And explain
this
to us, Eddie, why did you give Maddy almost forty grand over the past couple of weeks?”

“What?” Now he began to look panicked.

Iverson answered calmly, “Mr. Perkins, you made three transfers from your personal bank account to Madeline Gardner’s personal bank account in the last few weeks, totaling,” he rifled through a small notebook as if checking the amounts, “thirty-seven thousand dollars.”

“I did not,” said Eddie. “I absolutely did not.”

Iverson went on, reading from his notes as if Eddie hadn’t said anything. He listed the dates and amounts of each transaction. Since the warrant had come through on Maddy’s bank accounts, they knew that the money had been moved electronically and that she had authorized the transfers. They also knew that she had not withdrawn or spent any of the thirty-seven thousand, but they still had no idea what the purpose of the money had been.

Unrelenting, Tanaka demanded, “Why would you transfer that kind of money into the private account of the co-owner in your restaurant? Why would you give that much money to your wife’s best friend? Why would you give any money at all to your wife’s best friend? Where is Maddy Gardner, Mr. Perkins?”

“I don’t know!”

Before Eddie could catch his breath, Tanaka went on, “Why did you approach Gemma Stein about selling Dovetail to her management company?”

“What?” Eddie Perkins was beginning to look sick again.

Iverson put a hand up toward his partner. “Take a drink of water, Eddie,” said Iverson in the same calm, authoritative voice he had maintained since the beginning of the interview. Eddie obliged and Iverson waited patiently until he had set down the cup. “We’ve spoken to your wife about this and she knows nothing of your plans to sell your restaurant.”

“You talked to Michelle about this?” There was fear in Eddie’s eyes. “How could you do that? I never, ever approached Gemma about selling the restaurant or anything else. I only know her through Michelle and Maddy and besides, I have almost nothing to do with the actual running of Dovetail. Why would
I
go to Gemma?”

“Perhaps you’re not very hands-on,” said Iverson with a shrug, “but, as an investor, you certainly have the power to make decisions, at least in accordance with the sum of your investment.”

“Exactly! And I only own thirty percent. I can’t make any decisions on my own. Certainly not a decision to sell. Michelle and Maddy each own thirty-five percent. They would be in more of a position to make that kind of decision.”

This was something none of the detectives had known. The division of ownership in Dovetail could prove to be important and Iverson was certainly going to use it now. “As a thirty-percent owner, surely you have access to Dovetail’s financials.”

He shrugged. “Yes.”

“How is the restaurant doing?”

“How’s it doing? It’s packed every night. Last time I checked, they were doing well. Making a profit anyway, which is better than most young restaurants.”

“When was the last time you checked, Mr. Perkins?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘Last time I checked, they were doing well,’ when was that?”

Eddie looked embarrassed. “It’s been a while since I actually looked at the books. I mean, we’ll all file the business taxes together in a month so I figured…” He shrugged again. “I have a lot to tend to with my own business, and like I said, apart from my initial investment, I’m not really involved in the business, so I let Michelle handle it. She’s great with money.”

Carlisle and Kincaid had not told the two homicide detectives about Eddie’s financial problems of late because they had gotten the information from Clara and Ben, who had presumably gotten it illegally. Kincaid said, “Too busy with his own failing business? He could be telling the truth.”

“How much of the truth is the real question,” said Carlisle and they went back to watching the interview.

“Mr. Perkins, did you know that Madeline Gardner was voicing concerns about the profitability of Dovetail?”

Eddie looked confused, and Iverson went on, “Specifically, she wondered how a restaurant that should be profiting, was not.”

“Maddy was worried about Dovetail?”

“Yes. My question to you is why Dovetail is not profiting when by all measures, it should be? Where is the money going?” Iverson wanted to put Eddie on edge.

“Let me lay it out for you, Mr. Perkins. You approach a successful restaurant entrepreneur about purchasing Dovetail. Your wife and co-owner of Dovetail has made it plain that she does not want to sell the restaurant. Around the same time, Maddy is known to have shown concern that Dovetail’s profits were disappearing into the wind. Your thirty percent ownership does not give you the power to make that decision on your own so you need at least one of them to agree. Then, coincidently, several large deposits were made from your personal accounts into Madeline Gardner’s personal accounts. Then Maddy disappears without a trace into a car that fits the description of your silver BMW. And, though you claim to have no idea where she went, you are absolutely certain that you know why she went: she just needed a break from the strain of working day in and day out with your wife.” Iverson paused to let it all sink in.

“Don’t forget that his girlfriend is brutally murdered,” added Tanaka provocatively.

“Yes, let’s not forget that your lover and employee at Dovetail is found brutally murdered and your fingerprints are found all over the murder weapon.” He turned to his partner. “How do you make sense of this mess?”

“Who, me?” said Tanaka modestly. Then he turned to glare at Eddie. “The conclusion I come to is that this sad fucker was embezzling money from Dovetail. When Maddy finds out, he tries to silence her by returning some of the money he’d stolen from Dovetail’s profits, but when Maddy
still
wants to tell his wife, he makes her disappear.” Eddie’s fists were clenched in anger but his face had gone grey with fear. “With the restaurant going to hell in Maddy’s absence, he figures he can talk Michelle into giving up and selling to the highest bidder. Meanwhile, his illicit lover finds out what he’s doing and threatens him. She confronts him at her apartment and, in a fit of rage, he bludgeons her to death with the first heavy object he can find.” Tanaka smiled like the cat who ate the canary. “But that’s just my opinion.”

Eddie Perkins was shaking. He fumbled with the tab on the can of soda and took a long drink. Then he said, “I want a lawyer.”

Behind the glass, Carlisle said, “Shit!” just as she felt her cell phone vibrate in her pocket.

“What?” she demanded, taking the call without looking at the caller ID.

“Detective Carlisle, it’s me, Clara Gardner.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

A
s though her bones had just turned to liquid, Clara crumpled to her knees on the forest floor and began to weep. Without a word, Ben picked her up and carried her back to the house.

The sun had set and the sky would soon be completely dark; a decent search of the forest would require each of them to have a flashlight and it was time to go back anyway. He set her down in the great room and went to get a glass of water from the kitchen tap.

When he returned, Clara was still crying softly, standing in a corner of the room and staring out the window. “I thought that she was down there. That it was over. That Maddy was dead.” She took a gulp of water and a deep, quivering breath. “Ben, how are we ever going to find her?”

He didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. He just wrapped his arms around her and held her wet cheek against his own. He kissed her salty eyelids, her nose; he wiped a thick lock of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. He kissed the arch of her cheekbone; the curve of her jawline; her lips, wet from tears. She tipped her head and hungrily returned the kiss. And all at once, they were upon each other, burning with desire, needing to feel comfort, to feel love, to feel hope.

Leaning back against the wall, Clara tugged at his shirt, baring his stomach and chest. He pulled off her blazer and lifted her sweater, pressing her soft skin against his own, groping for the hook on her bra and freeing her small breasts. He touched her hardened nipples, making her gasp, and when she raised her arms to remove her sweater he took one breast in his mouth.

Fumbling with the zipper, she slid her hand between his legs and held him with warm fingers. His skin was hot and his penis hard as a rock as she stroked him.

Ben slid to his knees and pulled at Clara’s boots until they came off, followed by her jeans and panties. He touched her calves, the insides of her thighs and finally slid a finger into her wet, silky body, watching her eyes drift closed in pleasure, and leaned closer to kiss her flat belly, moving slowly down until she groaned.

When her knees nearly buckled, he stood and pressed her waist to his. She pushed his jeans down his thighs, wrapping her long legs around his hips.

Then he entered her, deep and hard.

He held her flat against the wall for a moment without moving. She tried to move her hips but he stopped her, whispering gruffly, “Just stay still. I just want to feel you.”

They waited until the ache of desire overtook them and Clara began rolling her hips in circles against him, Ben lifting her up and down until they both groaned and cried out in climax.

Still gasping for breath, they slid to the floor, knocking a painting from the wall, nearly toppling a floor lamp. Clara caught sight of Ben’s jeans still tangled around his shoes and giggled.

With a dazed grin, he leaned back, stretching out on the rug, and said, “You were in such a hurry.”

“
You’re
the one who couldn’t stop to take his pants off,” she said and gently tweaked his nipple. Picking up her underwear and bra, she turned to find the bathroom when the painting they had knocked down caught her eye. “How are we going to explain this?” she asked, pointing to the wooden frame on the floor.

Ben pulled his jeans back up to his waist and sat up to inspect the damage.

When Clara came back she found him sitting on the edge of one of the sofas, staring at the broken frame he held in his hands. She picked up her sweater and slipped it over her head before sitting down next to him. Now she saw that it was not a painting, but a hand-drawn antique map, about twelve by sixteen inches, and it depicted this property. The house represented in the drawing was significantly smaller than the one in which she now stood, but it was definitely the same property.

“Clara, will you bring me my phone?” She watched as he plugged the latitude and longitude from the map into the map application on his phone. He looked at her. “This must be the original house.”

She looked more closely. “What’s that?”

“Maybe an old shed, or a root cellar?” He looked again at the map “And it’s due north of this house.”

“We have to check it out,” said Clara, clumsily stepping into her blue jeans and boots. On their way out, they rifled through the coat closet looking for another flashlight until they lucked upon a battery-powered lantern, and then Ben followed Clara at a fast jog to the north side of the house.

Once they reached the trees they had to slow down to keep from tripping over brush and tree roots. Following the compass line on Ben’s phone, they headed due north.

Maddy Gardner had managed to pry open one link in the chain that bound her almost enough to slip the next link through. It was frustratingly slow work, but she was making progress. The steel lid to the toolbox was bent and mangled from her attempts, but she still had a few straight edges left to work with.

Once again she tried to force the chain open. She was so close.

Over the last days and nights – she wasn’t sure how many there had been – Maddy had tried to distract herself with thoughts of menu planning, the next new dessert she would try at the restaurant, memories of last Christmas when Clara and their parents had flown out to surprise her because she hadn’t had time to come home for the holidays, the day trip she and Jack Duvall had taken to kayak with Orca whales. Sometimes she would imagine someone pulling open the door to the cellar, sunlight flooding in around her, and she would be saved. But she didn’t often permit herself to daydream like that. She had to focus on the things she had control over and right now those things were limited to working on her bonds and choosing between overly-sweet snack cakes and overly-sweet granola bars.

It was dark again in the cellar, which simply meant it was sometime after noon, though it had been dark for long enough that she guessed it was evening. Maddy longed for bright daylight. And a crisp green apple. And a piece of aged cheddar cheese. And a gossip magazine; she was so bored. Her mind often drifted to Jack. Last time she’d seen him he had given her a rubber ball from a quarter machine in the supermarket. But she hadn’t had time for Jack then, or anyone else, but especially Jack. It wasn’t that he demanded too much of her time, it was that she had wanted to spend too much time with him. More than she had. It seemed silly now, in this dank prison, to have given up his companionship because she had enjoyed it too much. Now she longed for company, for her sister’s smile and her mom’s double kiss on the cheek and her dad’s belly laugh. And Bea, her kitty who gave her so much comfort when she came home late from the restaurant.

A tear trickled down her cheek and she realized she had gone too far, let herself become too emotional.

This was no time for tears. She had work to do.

“There!” said Clara, pointing straight ahead and holding the lantern higher. “Is that something?” A few yards in front of them was a break in the trees where the ground rose a couple of feet. It was hard to tell what it was in the dark, but the terrain seemed different.

“Could be,” said Ben as he approached the mound. It was completely overgrown with moss and ferns. They were both silent as Ben shone the flashlight at the ground. “Careful not to walk on it. If it is a cellar and the roof is rotted, you could fall straight through.”

Something caught Maddy’s eye and she whipped her head around to face the tiny window. Nothing. She was imagining it. Again she twisted the steel lid against the chain. Her fingers were cut and bleeding and she wiped them on the sleeping bag. Once more and she felt the chain give a little – just a fraction of an inch, but it was enough.

She was free.

“Clara,” called Ben. “I think I found the door.” His flashlight caught a glint of steel and he pushed dead leaves away to reveal two brand-new, heavy-duty metal handles, chained and padlocked shut.

Clara leaned down and began sweeping away moss and dirt with her hands. “Someone put this here to camouflage the opening.”

“We have to get something to break this,” said Ben, taking a measure of the weight and thickness of the chain. He stood, but before he could take a single step back toward the house, Clara started shouting her sister’s name.

“Maddy!”

Ben squeezed her arm and said he’d be right back, though he wasn’t sure she’d heard him. Jogging carefully back to the house, avoiding stumps and pits in the forest floor, in five minutes he was inside the garage searching for something to cut through the chain.

Maddy stood. She was still attached to about three feet of heavy chain and she didn’t know how she was going to get out of the cellar, but the effect of breaking her bonds was profound. She felt joy and terror and rage washing over her in waves.

“Maddy!”

And she heard the sweet sound of her sister’s voice, muffled by the dirt walls, but clear enough. She ran to the window, realizing only now that it was nearly two feet above her head. She would never reach it, but in a fit of desperation she swung the remnant of chain still attached to her wrist at the pane of glass. It broke in large splinters and a breath of fresh air wafted down to her. Agony bloomed across her hand and forearm as she tried to protect herself from the chain as it fell back toward her, and the glass as it rained down upon her. Maddy Gardner took one deep breath and began to scream.

When she heard breaking glass, Clara’s body moved before her mind could process the sound. And then the screaming started. She circled the mound of dirt to the other side where the broken window was set in a low stone wall, half hidden by weeds and brush. Pushing the foliage away, she held the lantern to the window and saw her sister squinting up at her.

“Maddy.”

“Clara.”

Clara reached down and touched her sister’s hand. Then both women began to cry.