OUT ON A LIMB (28 page)
Peter was perilously close to spontaneous combustion. “Where did you see Daphne? Here?”
“Caron thought she did, but she’s never met Daphne. After the gunshot, I went down—”
“The gunshot?”
I held up my palms. “Miss Parchester assured me that it was a backfire from a pickup truck, so I may have been mistaken.”
“I should have you arrested right this minute.”
“If you try it,” I said, offended, “I shall swoon. You’ll need four officers to carry me off, and an equal number to restrain Caron, who is giving us a very beady stare as we speak. What’s more, when I recover, I won’t remember anything. After years of psychoanalysis, I may be able to recall a few details. Your move, Sherlock.”
“You have many attributes which I dearly love,” he said. “You are warm, witty, passionate when it suits you, quasi-fluent in French, well-read—”
“Quasi-fluent? Hey, buster,
la plume de ma tante est surle table. Sur le pont d’Avignon. Crepes suzette. Haricot vertr
For some reason, he sighed. “Let’s backtrack to Daphne, the gunshot, and Miss Parchester. Forty-five minutes ago, you said?”
“Roughly. I was searching Anthony’s office when I—”
“You were what?”
“Am I not allowed to finish a sentence?”
“By all means, please continue.”
“I shall,” I said, “but before I do, you need to take out that tiddlywink of a cell phone and call Jorgeson. Chantilly would not have just vanished like this. Adrienne can give you the information about her car.”
I pondered the pansies until he returned. “About Daphne,” I began cautiously. “She seems to have become friendly with Miss Parchester. She was on the platform when I went down there earlier, but she ran off and drove away. It’s very curious that she has access to a vehicle. It’s certainly not Joey’s, since she can’t drive a—”
“Joey’s?” he said.
In that I’d concluded Joey had nothing to do with the current events, I decided to sell him down the river and hope he wouldn’t mention Skyler. “Her boyfriend. He’s out at some dumpy trailer park, shacked up with your worst nightmare. He swore he hasn’t seen her since the day before Anthony was killed.”
Peter was beyond displeased. “So you tracked down
the boyfriend and questioned him? Did it occur to you to share this with us?”
“No, not really.” I yanked up an unsightly weed and tossed it over my shoulder. “It only took me a few hours, and I lack the pervasive resources of the Farberville Police Department. Deductive reasoning, a few questions here and there, and then—voila! It’s merely a matter of ingenuity, Lieutenant Rosen.”
“And interfering with an investigation.”
“When did I interfere?” I said. “Are you accusing me of tackling an officer as he sprinted for the trailer?”
Peter was clearly not appreciating my wit. “Where is Daphne staying?”
“I don’t know. Based on what Sheila said a few minutes ago, I don’t think she’s—”
“A few minutes ago?”
“This habitual interrupting is beginning to annoy me. Why don’t you find Adrienne and allow her to paw all over you? She had a very good reason to wish for her husband’s demise. She’s at least a few million dollars richer than she was a week ago.”
Peter caught my wrist before I could stand up and stalk away like a proper Regency debutante. “How do you know that?”
“I read the will, or at least a summation of it. After a few bequests, she and Daphne split the estate. I don’t really know how much money is at stake, but I should think a lot, considering all the real estate and developments. Daphne won’t inherit if she’s found guilty, of course, so Adrienne may well end up with everything.”
“She has an alibi,” he said. “She and her sister were at the fitness center until ten o’clock, and then annoyed the holy hell out of the employees at some Mexican restaurant until midnight. When they drove up, they both saw Daphne come running out of the house with a gun in her hand—and Daphne admitted as much/'
“Everybody could have been lying,” I said loftily.
“And everybody could grow up to be president,” Peter said in a remarkably unfriendly voice. He took out a notebook and a pen. “Give me the details about Joey.”
I did so, although I omitted any mention of Cannelletti’s garage, the biker bar, or Bocaraton. “I truly have no idea where Daphne’s staying,” I added.
“Does Miss Parchester?”
“I would think so, but I wish you luck trying to convince her to tell you.”
Thunder rumbled as Peter stared at me. “Have you told me everything?”
“I’ve told you quite a lot, haven’t I?” I said with a few flutters of my eyelashes, which has driven him to impetuous lust on occasion. I hadn’t mentioned Finnigan Baybergen’s expectations of a crippling lawsuit if he found the map, or Sheila’s vision of blackmail should she find it first, but I doubted either of them had been in Anthony Armstrong’s office the night of the murder. Well, unless either of them had been there, or a posse of Green Party members, or a disgruntled condo owner such as Jillian Scarpo. Or the ghost of Riccardo Zorelli. Or Daphne. Or Sheila, while Arnie let the meter run outside.
“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” said Peter, feigning contrition. “I suppose I’ll have to see what Miss Parchester is willing to tell us about Daphne, although I don’t suppose she’ll be much help. Would you like me to have an officer drive you and Caron home?”
“No, that’s not necessary,” I said. “I came here in my car.”
“I had it towed half an hour ago. Are you sure you don’t need a ride?”
“You did what?” I said loudly enough to garner some nervous glances from the guests. “You had my car towed? How could you?”
“Just impeding your investigation, ma’am. We do what we can.” He gave me a smile, then stood up and left me fuming on the wall.
If looks could kill, I thought tritely, he might survive—but he’d certainly have scorch marks all over his back and his curly hair would be singed, if not smoldering.
I waited until Caron finished splashing white wine in a glass, then quietly said, “We’re leaving in a few minutes.”
“Suits me,” she said. “I’m getting tired of all these old goats leering at me and asking me how old I am like they’re thinking about taking me to the prom. Their wives, in contrast, only stop talking to each other long enough to demand a drink. I could be covered in scales for all they’d notice.”
Randy gave her a wry smile. “One of the women at the country club called me Roger for two years. Then again, I overheard all kinds of lurid stories about botched plastic surgery, affairs, pending bankruptcies, hot checks, and shoplifting. I could write a helluva expose if I thought anybody cared about these people.”
“You and Adrienne were friends, weren’t you?” I said.
“Yeah, for a while. She felt like she was out of her league when she first married Armstrong. She’s a lot younger than most of them, and she didn’t know how to play golf or bridge. I guess that’s why she started spending so much time at the fitness center.”
“And helped you get a job there?”
“She just told me about the opening.”
I told Caron I’d be back shortly, and went into the house. I opted to use a telephone in the living room, since Jacque might have chanced upon a French-English dictionary and deciphered enough of what I’d said to determine I had not wished him a pleasant afternoon.
“Luanne,” I said when she answered the phone. “I’ve got a problem.”
“That’s one way to put it. I was thinking more along the lines of a catastrophe.”
“He just did it to annoy me, which it did.” I hesitated for a few seconds. “How do you know about this?”
“Because I was here, dammit! I tried to call you, but some bizarre man disavowed any knowledge of you. I’m very close to ripping out my hair, Claire, and it’s already started to fall out of its own accord. Would you please stop making all these cryptic remarks and tell me what to do?”
“About what?” I said, bewildered.
“Skyler, of course. What else would I be talking about? How soon can you get here?”
“Is he okay?”
“What is wrong with you?” Luanne said, her voice shrill enough to shatter the antique crystal pendants in her display case. “Skyler’s been kidnapped! Should I call the police? Is Peter there? I just don’t know what to do!"
I felt as though I’d been slapped. “He was what? Kidnapped by whom?”
“How should I know? Just get here—okay?”
“You’ll have to come pick us up. We’ll be out at the end of the driveway in five minutes. Don’t run into any pickup trucks on the way.”
Despite her sputters, I hung up and made my way back to the bar. Rather than proffer any explanations (because I didn’t have any), I grabbed Caron’s wrist and hauled her through the house and out to the sidewalk. The two uniformed officers stared at us as we headed toward the road.
“What is wrong with you?” Caron demanded as she disengaged my hand and cradled her wrist as if I’d destroyed her hopes at Wimbledon.
I repeated as best I could the conversation I’d had with Luanne, then said, “She’s hysterical, and I’m close to lining up right behind her.”
“But who could have done this?”
We reached the road. The KFAR van was long gone, as was the cab. I sat down on the gravel shoulder. “I don’t know. You did see Daphne earlier, and I tried to talk to her, but she bolted. Her mother crashed the luncheon and left half an hour ago. There’s no way Skyler’s father could have known where …”
“This guy named Joey who’s living in a trailer park?”
I flapped my hand at her while I tried to think. “We went out there in Luanne’s car. He didn’t strike me as a promising candidate for international accolades in biochemistry, but he could have written down the license plate number and come up with her name and address. We never implied we had custody of Skyler, though.”
Caron sat down beside me. “Is there any possibility Daphne got in touch with him? If she went to that biker bar, she could have found out everything you did. She went out there and persuaded him to grab Skyler.”
“Why would he risk it?”
“How should I know?” said Caron, her face puckering. “Because deep inside he’s overwhelmed with guilt for abandoning them. Because Daphne told him she was going to be rich.”
“Not if she’s convicted.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know that. She’ll arrange to meet him, collect Skyler, and promise to send him a check. Not everyone is cognizant of the finer details of inheritance law, Mother.”
I got to my feet. “There’s Luanne. Don’t start yelling at her, please. She’s as upset as we are, if not more so. We’ll find out what happened and then decide what we ought to do.”
Luanne pulled up as if she were driving a getaway car. I got in the front seat and Caron flung herself in back as we squealed away, a la Bonnie and Clyde.
“Slow down,” I said as I battled the recalcitrant seatbelt. It seemed prudent to buckle it.
“I think I should be at the store,” she said, passing a van on a hill. “What if someone just borrowed Skyler and is overcome with remorse—or wants to demand a ransom? We have to be there to answer the phone. Did you tell Peter? Shouldn’t the police be doing something?”
“Either slow -down or pull over and let me drive,” I said.
“Good idea,” chimed in a thin voice from the backseat.
Luanne eased up, although her fingers still gripped the steering wheel so tightly the plastic was in danger of deforming from the pressure. “Don’t you want to know what happened?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “Why don’t you tell us?”
“Skyler and I went out for a stroll after his morning nap. Sally Fromberger was lurking in the parking lot across from the Book Depot, but I saw her before she saw me and I took a detour. We went past the Azalea Inn, over the railroad bridge, and back past the bicycle shop and the new sushi restaurant across from the—”
“This is not the time for a travelogue,” I said.
“I know.” She took several gulps of air. “I guess I’m trying to stall. When we got back, I parked Skyler behind the counter and went into the back room to warm up a bottle of formula. No one could see him from the street. I came out three or four minutes later and he was gone, as was the diaper bag.”
“Someone must have been watching,” I said. “He or she saw you return from your stroll and then loitered in front of the store until you went to the back room. The door was unlocked, wasn’t it?”
She nodded. “I even flipped over the sign in the window so customers would know I was open.”
Caron draped herself over the seat. “Would you have recognized Daphne if she was standing across the street?”
“It’s Saturday afternoon,” said Luanne. “Even with the threat of rain, there are lots of pedestrians out and about. I might have recognized Daphne had I been watching for her, but the only time I’ve seen her was on a very short news clip, less than half a minute. I was thinking more about a fresh diaper and a warm bottle of formula.”
“Let’s go back to your store,” I said.
“Where’s your car?”
Caron poked my shoulder. “I’d like to know, too. Did you give Daphne the key or something screwy like that?”
“No, I did not.” I told her and Luanne everything that had happened since our arrival at the Armstrong villa. “I heard Daphne drive away from Oakland Heights, and my car was parked near the catering vans when I returned. As much as I’d like to discuss various forms of retaliation against Peter, we need to figure out where Skyler is.”
Luanne began to snuffle. “I never should have left him alone, not even for a minute. All I had to do was take him in the back room with me.”
“And I should have stayed with you,” said Caron. “Inez wanted to, too, but she was afraid her parents would get annoyed if she didn’t go to that totally twisted concert.”
“No,” I said, “what we should have done was call social services that first evening. Now let’s think where Skyler might be and do something about it.”
Luanne parked behind Secondhand Rose and we hurried inside, each of us no doubt envisioning Skyler asleep in his stroller behind the counter. He was not. “Okay,” I said, “I find it hard to believe Joey would be involved. He showed little interest in Daphne and none whatsoever in Skyler. Bocaraton did not strike me as a thwarted madonna. He couldn’t have thought Adrienne or Sheila would pay a ransom.”