Into The Heat (Sandy Reid Mystery Series Book 6) (15 page)

He listened, took in more information and frowned. “Okay, I’m on my way to the scene.”

After he hung up, he looked over at Sandy, whose eyes had already swelled up. She was standing with her cheeks pinched between her hands, staring with a horrified look.

He shook his head, “Shot... dead.” They stood facing each other for an instant before he wrapped his arms around her.

“Mel, I can’t believe that young woman has been murdered.”

“Shot... in front of Lester Bardner’s house.”

“What the hell was Charlene doing at Lester’s house? Damn!”

“I’m sorry. My presence isn’t necessary at most homicides, but when they mentioned her name—. Of course, we know about her affair with Bardner. At first blush, could be a love triangle.”

She pushed away from him, looked at him sharply and cried out, “Can you stop investigating for a second. What everyone was doing doesn’t mean shit! Nothing means shit! Nothing means anything!” She instantly had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach and felt nauseous. She covered her mouth with her hand and rushed into the kitchen.

He stood frozen, wanting to comfort her, but understood he should let her have her moment. After a few minutes, he ventured as far as the kitchen door. She was standing with her arms out at the side of the sink, her head lowered.

“I’m sorry, Sandy. That was insensitive of me to jump abruptly into talking about the investigation. I’ve become too jaded with my job and responsibilities. Too many calls informing me of a dead body somewhere in my jurisdiction. I know it’s not just a dead body... it’s someone’s loved one... in this case, someone you knew and tried to protect.”

She turned to him, her eyes glistening. She dabbed at her mouth with a paper towel. “More than that, I liked her.” She went back into the living room, reached down and picked up her drink. “It’s crazy and it’s all wrong.” She finished off her drink. “If she had been a stranger I’d have merely blinked hard and carried on. As it is, I’m already on edge, expecting Leo to come crashing through my front door at any time with a cigarette in his mouth and a gun in each hand.”

“You think Leo is behind this? You kept telling us interrogating Charlene Faulk was unimportant because she had nothing to do with the Coleman murder.”

“I still believe that. Even so, Leo doesn’t know whether she has any connection. He might have just been watching Lester’s house when she drove up. He just said he’d start shooting. If you had met him, you’d believe him. What happened anyway? Who was there?”

“I don’t know anything else, but I’ll soon find out. “ He went to her and put his arms back around her. “You okay? I really have to go.”

“I’m okay now. But I have so many questions and I need to know everything. Can you keep me informed? Go do what good state attorneys do.”

“You will have a police car in front of your house night and day until this threat is over.”

She called Martin as soon as Mel had left and informed him that the unbelievable had happened.

His first response was, “That didn’t have to happen... no reason at all for that to happen. Why on earth was she there?”

Neither spoke for a minute. Using the silence to console each other.

Then he said, “What the devil is going on?”

“All Mel said was, shot in front of Bardner’s house. Leo’s the one who has been making the threats. Then again, maybe someone else shot from the street or a passing vehicle. Maybe from inside the house. I don’t even know if anyone was home at the time. I told Lester to hide in a hotel until all this was over. In any case, no damn reason for Charlene to be within a hundred miles of his place.”

“At least none that we know of,” Martin said.

“What do you mean by that? Hey, I’m usually the cynical, suspicious one. We should have done more. We told her not to snoop around, but maybe we should have warned her specifically about Leo. She might have gone there thinking she was helping somehow even though we warned her not to get involved. I still believe it was Leo. Yet why would he even know about Charlene?”

He said, “What about Julia... now we’re really getting wild. Any reason for Julia wanting her dead? Charlene did discover Keller and her making out in the front seat of his car. Or could Julia have maneuvered boyfriend Keller into killing the girlfriend? No, that doesn’t seem likely, he’s too prominent a figure.”

“Are you going to tell Nigel?”

“I’m afraid I must.”

Her phone rang. “Gotta go, Martin. I’ll call later.”

She answered, and Mel Shapiro said, “You okay? Still chaotic here, but I thought you should know. A neighbor heard the shooting, came out and saw Lester Bardner in the front yard looking down at the body covered in blood.”

“He was supposed to be hiding in a hotel! Any weapon found?”

“Not as yet. Lester claims he heard the shot, looked out and saw her lying next to her open car door. He was home alone. Didn’t know why she was over there. We know he was having an affair with her, maybe he was going to divorce Julia.”

“The affair was over. And he’d never get a divorce—it would leave him out of money.” Then it occurred to her that Lester wouldn’t be broke if he had Leo’s money.

Mel said, “Then perhaps he killed Charlene to keep her from revealing their affair.”

“Leo is the one making the threats, Mel. Let’s assume Leo shot from his car. Anyway, Charlene had no interest in telling Julia. She didn’t want anyone to know she’d been tricked into dating a married man. She got herself out of his life.” Sandy hesitated to tell him more, but he seemed to be about ready to re-arrest Lester. “Anyway, Julia didn’t give a damn, if he had a lover. She already knew, I’d bet on it. She has one herself and would be happy to be rid of Lester.” She bit her lip as soon as she said it.

“Julia has a lover? You weren’t going to give me that? Who is it?”

“I wasn’t certain it had anything to do with the Coleman case. You don’t need to know his name.”

“Lester’s lover was just murdered. Of course, I demand to know Julia’s lover’s name.”

“Grant Keller.”

“My god! Grant? Are you serious? This town will turn inside out. It couldn’t be worse if it were the governor. Who else knows Grant is involved?”

She ignored his question. “What does Julia say about all this?”

“She isn’t here. Lester says he hasn’t seen her for a couple of days. I thought you might know.”

“Not a clue. Anyway, my client is now in the clear. None of this has anything to do with Lester shooting Coleman.”

“No, he isn’t in the clear. Lester murdered once, remember? I’m standing here looking down at a bloody body in his yard. If I’m left with a bunch of unanswered questions, I might arrest him again. This time for killing his mistress.”

“Mel, I demand that you cease questioning my client at once. I’m coming over there.”

“You’re his attorney for the Coleman case. Are you suddenly his attorney for the Charlene Faulk murder as well? Okay, we’ll stop questioning him until you get over here. Then we have a lot to ask him, and we need your permission to question him immediately. Take the black and white.”

“What?”

“The officer now parked in front of your house… get over here fast. Lights and siren, say that I authorized it.”

“Oh, I say that to people all the time anyway.”

W
ith both hands gripping her umbrella, Sandy leaned against the rainstorm. She stood watching the crime scene investigation from the front porch of the Bardner home as close to the rain soaked body of Charlene Faulk as the police would allow. Outside the yellow tape, stood a rank of umbrella-tented neighbors shuffling under the rain like motorists trying to get a better look at a roadside disaster. The cops inside the tape had already seen too much.

It was one thing to learn that someone she liked had died—quite another for her to watch the humbled body being zipped up in a black body bag by the police in their yellow foul-weather gear. Sandy was angry, but she knew it wasn’t about her; it was about a precious life and a useless death. She remembered reading that all deaths come too soon, but that touch of philosophy added no comfort.

She wondered what Charlene could possibly have known of life in her few short years. Barely enough time to begin thinking about living, before being zipped out of sight, cold, wet and dead. What had she experienced in life before the few weeks of a fantasy fling with Lester? An exciting yet loveless fling, which she’d scored as both good and bad. Of her total lifetime, her involvement with Lester was a mere split second—a brief encounter now proven fatal; the collateral damage of someone else’s wrongdoing. Much of her talk in the office had been about being lonely; had she ever experienced romance in her short life? Whatever the opposite of loneliness is, Charlene might never have known it. She could not have looked lonelier lying there on the rain soaked lawn.

At last, the scene was quiet. The police vehicles with their blazing red-blue rack lights had left the scene, along with the Medical Examiner’s van bearing the body of Charlene Faulk. Her car was also hauled away. When the jumbo, satellite TV van closed up and sauntered away, the show was over, and the last of the neighbors drifted back into their homes. Two police officers in their vehicles remained stationed silently at the curb. One would stand watch over the yellow-taped crime scene until CSI returned in the morning to continue in the light of day; the other was assigned to safeguard Sandy.

She closed her eyes tightly for a minute to block it all out, then shook the umbrella and went inside the Bardner house. She would weep later.

For the next hour and a half, Lester Bardner, with Sandy at his side, sat in his spacious Florida room facing questions from Detective Jaworski and Mel Shapiro. When the officials had left, Lester made himself a drink from the sidebar and sat on the couch across from Sandy. He continued to be distressed, not with the death, but from their questioning.

“I thought you were supposed to protect me from such questioning. They burst in here and started ordering me around. Turn off the TV. Don’t mix a drink. Sit down. Do this. Do that. It’s appalling to question me at a time like this when they should know how upset I am. Sparkle meant a lot to me and now somehow I must go on without her.”

She wasn’t going to yell. She’d try to ignore his attitude. “You told the detective you had no idea why Charlene came here tonight. Now let’s hear the truth.”

“You think I’m lying.”

“Why did she come over here anyway? Did you call her? Did you ask her to come over?”

He shook his head. “Don’t I have certain rights in my own home? Can they order me to turn off my own TV like that?”

“When did you last speak with Charlene?” She didn’t like the look on his face. With eyes narrowed, she said, “You called her didn’t you?”

He gave her a shrug, casually picked up a small remote from a side table, clicked it and music instantly filled the room. “
Bolero
, you like it? That beat and rhythm is almost hypnotic. Sparkle’s favorite—a real turn on.”

“Turn it off.”

“She liked to listen while—.”

In a flash, her hand shot out—slapping his hand and sending the remote flying against the far wall. “You bastard!” He cringed back on the couch. “You asked her to come over, didn’t you? You had the drinks out and the music ready. She was through with you, wasn’t taking your calls. She had moved on. What did you say to her that made her drive through a storm to be here?”

“Just the truth… only the truth. That I was in bad shape and really needed her. Stuff like that. We were together a long time. Didn’t she owe me something? ”

Her hands involuntarily clenched into fists, and she fought back a strong impulse to take a swing at him. For an instant, she saw an image of him writhing on the floor trying to protect his face as she kicked at him mercilessly.

“She yelled at me, told me to drop dead… hung up on me. I called back, but she wouldn’t answer. That’s all I did. Honestly. That’s all I did.”

“Apparently it was enough,” Sandy said, trying to compose herself. She didn’t want to speak to him; didn’t want to even look at him. “Charlene might be alive if you hadn’t called her.” After a minute, her breathing had calmed. She needed to leave before she lost it again.

She wished she could blame him for Charlene’s death. Then she could slug him, or at least shout at him and tell him where he could stick his legal problems. Then her eyes could dry up, she could run and never see him again. Of course, if Lester and Charlene had never met, she’d still be alive. If he hadn’t phoned her, she might still be alive. Any of that might have contributed to her death, but the person who fired the shot was the one responsible.

Lester had mostly recovered from her tirade. “I was incredibly lonely and besides Julia wasn’t going to be around.”

Again too much, she shouted, “Give it up, Lester. This isn’t about you, you pompous ass!” When she yelled, his cocktail glass slipped from his hand and broke on the hardwood floor. She had no intention of apologizing.

“You see how you are! I don’t deserve to be attacked like that.” He kicked the pieces aside with his foot. “Anyway, they were ruthless with me. They asked all about our affair. Some lawyer you are letting them pry into my private life like that.”

She took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly, “For starters, you were kneeling next to her, when the police arrived. You had her blood on your hands—literally. The GSR test they performed on your hands was negative, but a technician claimed the test was inconclusive because gunshot residue could have been destroyed by the rain. I insisted they put in their report the GSR was negative. They wanted to take you in for questioning. I objected and demanded they do the interrogation right here, right now. I was certain you were innocent, so I told them to go ahead and interrogate to their heart’s content, as long as they stuck with Charlene and kept off the subject of Coleman’s death. True, they came at you pretty hard. But I succeeded. As a result, you’re not under arrest for a second murder. You’re free to stroll around your comfortable home, drink as much as you wish, watch TV or however you decide to spend the rest of this bothersome night and will sleep in your own bed tonight.” He didn’t respond, no slight smile, no softening of the eyes, so she added, “Don’t bother to thank me. I can’t stand all that gratitude stuff.”

“What?” He was deep in his own thoughts. “As I told them, I was watching TV when I heard the shot and at first thought it was a clap of thunder. I looked outside. The motion detector yard light was on and I could see her car. When she didn’t ring the bell right away, I got an umbrella and went out. But all that didn’t satisfy them. They were asking me about everything under the sun, and you never stopped them. Aren’t you supposed to jump in and tell me not to answer a question or something?”

“The questions were about your actions today and your relationship with Charlene. You’ve nothing to hide in that regard. I did object twice when I thought the interrogation was getting too close to the Coleman case.” She walked to the outsized front window, parted the drapes with her hands and looked out into the night. Then back at him. “Why are you even here? My staff is hiding and riding in police cars, and you were sitting here watching TV. When we last spoke, I told you Leo might be following you and to go into hiding at some hotel. He could have followed you here. Probably did follow you here. You could have been the one in the body bag.” She sighed heavily. If she could go back she’d trade his life for Charlene’s in a flash.

“I’ve got the latest satellite TV here. I didn’t know if I could watch the Dolphins game in a hotel. Important game, I didn’t get to see the end of it. Anyway, I assumed you were being overly dramatic and exaggerating.”

“Well, you can assume you’re safe here for the rest of tonight, there’s a cop outside watching over the crime scene. Even so, you should leave here before that yellow tape comes down and CSI leaves tomorrow.”

Charlene was worth getting upset over—not this jerk. She would try to get back to being a professional. She wouldn’t yell at him again.

He fixed himself another drink. “What do you think happened? Hard to believe Julia shot her just because she was my lover. What will they do to her?”

“You’ve got it wrong. The police suspect
you
shot Charlene to keep her from telling your wife about the affair. You’ve always been afraid Julia would divorce you if she found out. Your entire lifestyle was at risk. That was the first thing out of your mouth when we first met.”

“I wouldn’t kill Charlene to keep her quiet. I need her around. I know for a fact Julia already knew about Charlene—because I told her. That night, after I had met with you in your office, I came home late. Julia was waiting up for me, sitting in the kitchen with her gun in front of her on the table while we were talking. She accused me of seeing someone. I denied it of course, and we went back and forth. I was no match for her. I finally confessed. After she calmed down, she asked me what I intended to do.”

“Meaning what?”

“That’s exactly what I asked. She said I have to choose between her and my girlfriend. You could have knocked me over, I couldn’t believe it. Although she was upset, it sounded as though she was willing to forgive me, and we could go on with our marriage. I told her I wanted her, that I couldn’t live without her. I had strayed only because the sex was so exciting with a young woman like that. I didn’t even need a pill.”

“You didn’t say that—I mean about the sex?”

He nodded.

“Not smart to say that to an angry wife with a gun.”

“What are you talking about? She’d never shoot me.”

“Believe me, she was thinking about it… go on.”

“She became agitated again and screamed that she also had a lover who she had been seeing.”

That made no sense to Sandy. Why would Julia admit to her affair with Grant Keller? Perhaps in the heat of the moment she said it just to get back at him. Even if she didn’t intend to reveal the name, it still wasn’t wise to bring it out in the open.

“I tell you, I’ve never been so surprised in my entire life. My Julia screwing someone else? How could she do that to me? I’d trusted her, and she cheated on me. She said her lover had two things I lacked, money and virility. And he didn’t need a booster pill with her. What a terrible thing to say to me. She added that about the pill just to hurt me further.”

“How thoughtless of her.”

“I wanted his name, of course. At first, she wouldn’t tell me and asked for my girlfriend’s name. I said tell me his name first. We argued, she won, and I admitted it was Charlene. Then I said, okay, so who’s the man? She said she’d decided not to tell me after all. Said she was lying about any reconciliation and was going to divorce me and marry him. I kept begging her for his name. She was afraid I’d scare him away if I knew his name.”

Sandy couldn’t visualize Lester scaring away the neighbor’s cat. Grant Keller would eat him alive. “Did she tell you to scare him off… take care of him… get rid of him? What words did she use? What words exactly?”

“I don’t remember what she told me exactly, but I know what I heard. She was saying that if she told me his name, I’d probably go find the guy and threaten him to scare him off. I lied and told her I wouldn’t do anything. And finally, she gave me his name.”

Sandy stared at him in disbelieve. “She told you his name!”

“Yes, and I’m not telling you his name, so don’t even ask.”

“I already know his name,” she said.

“Oh, then I might as well tell you the rest. I meant to only frighten him off, so he’d stay away from Julia. So I found his room number at the Holiday Inn in her appointment book. I was going to knock and confront him in the doorway, but when I got on his floor, he was just coming out of his room and walking away from me. I wondered if he was on his way to meet Julia. I followed him from there to Frankie’s and then downtown—.”

Holiday Inn? Frankie’s? He wasn’t talking about Grant Keller. He was talking about Coleman. He finally gets the name of her lover out of her, and she tells him it’s Ben Coleman from Miami Beach. Didn’t make sense. She slumped back in her chair to think about that one. Something was amiss. Her affair was with Grant Keller, at least that’s who Sandy thought they were talking about all along. Everyone in her office thought Keller was Julia’s lover—the pair were caught making out in his car. But Lester apparently didn’t know about Keller. Why did his wife say, Coleman? Why did she want him to go after Coleman? “When she told you her lover was Coleman and to go after him, had you ever heard his name before?”

He shook his head. “And she didn’t tell me to
go after
him. She said she was
afraid
I would go after him.”