Second Grave on the Left (24 page)

I could feel the pain in Mr. Kirsch’s heart, even after all this time. “The report said you talked personally to every single high school student. Did anything stand out? Anything you didn’t think important enough to put in your report?”

His mouth thinned into a solid line. He unfolded his towering frame and stepped to a window overlooking a small pond. “Lots of things stood out,” he admitted. “But try as I might, I just could not put my finger on what any of it meant.”

“According to witnesses,” I said, taking the file folder and opening it on my lap, “Hana may or may not have been at a party that night. She may or may not have left early and alone. And she may or may not have walked to a gas station down the road from her house. There are so many conflicting testimonies, it’s hard to put the pieces together.”

“I know,” he said, turning toward me. “I tried for two years to put them together, but the more time went by, the more vague everyone’s stories became. It was maddening.”

Situations like these always were. I decided to go for the gold. At that point, my gut told me the former sheriff had nothing to do with any cover-up, but I had to know for sure. “In your report you say that you interviewed your son, that he had been at that party, yet he was one of the students who said he never saw her there.”

With a heavy sigh, he sat across from me again. “That’s partly my fault, I think. His mother and I were on vacation that weekend, and we basically threatened his life if he left the house. At first, he said he didn’t go to the party for fear of getting in trouble. But when I had several kids tell me he’d been there, he finally admitted he’d gone. However, that was about all I could get out of him. Just like several of the others, I was getting mixed signals. Odd mannerisms I couldn’t get a handle on.”

Mr. Kirsch was telling the truth. He was no more involved in Hana’s disappearance than I was. “Sometimes kids are covering up other things they think they will get in trouble for that have nothing to do with our case. I’ve run into that several times in my own investigations.”

He nodded. “Me, too. But adults do the same thing,” he said with a grin.

“Yes, they do.” We stood to leave. “Congratulations on your son’s vie for the Senate, by the way.”

Iridescent rays of pride emanated from him. The warmth surrounded me and my heart sank just a little. If I was right, his son was a murderer. He was not going to take the truth well. Who would? “Thank you, Ms. Davidson. He’s speaking in Albuquerque tomorrow.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised. “I had no idea. I don’t always keep up with these things like I should.”

“I do,” Cookie said, raising her chin a notch. I tried not to giggle. “He’s going to be giving a speech on the university campus.”

“That he is,” Mr. Kirsch said. “I can’t go, unfortunately, but he’s speaking in Santa Fe in a couple of days. I hope to make that one.”

I hoped he would make that one, too. It might well be his last chance to see his son shine.

*   *   *

After grabbing a bite in Taos then driving the three hours it took to get back to Albuquerque, Cookie and I went straight to the address Garrett had left us. He was already there, waiting down the street in his black pick-’em-up truck. We pulled in behind him as he stepped out.

“How’d your phone call go?” I asked in reference to the call he suddenly had to make when leaving my office that morning. I was curious whom he’d called and why.

“Wonderful. I now have one less employee.”

“Why?” I asked, a little startled.

He turned a mischievous grin on me. “You made me promise not to follow you. You didn’t say anything about me having you followed.”

I gasped. Aloud. “You slime.”

“Please,” he said, going around my Jeep to help Cookie out. Admittedly, Misery was not the easiest vehicle to maneuver oneself in and out of.

“Thank you,” Cookie said, surprised.

“Not at all.” He led us down the street toward a small white adobe in serious need of a weed whacking. “I’ve been keeping a man on you twenty-four/seven.” He glanced down at me as I walked beside him. “Or at least I thought I was keeping a man on you twenty-four/seven. Apparently, the one from yesterday evening felt he needed to break for a late-night snack without waiting for his relief. Around three in the morning?” he asked. I nodded, my teeth clamped together in anger. “Your life was in danger, in case you didn’t get the message.” He fished out a paper from his back pocket.

“I got the message loud and clear when I was stabbed in the chest.” I glanced to my side. Cookie totally had my back with a determined nod.

He rolled his eyes. It was very unprofessional. “You weren’t stabbed. You were sliced. And I heard back from your Mistress Marigold—speaking of which, really? Mistress Marigold?”

“What did she say?” Cookie asked, enthralled. It was funny.

“Well, I told her I was the grim reaper, like you said—” He hitched his head toward Cookie. “—and she told me that if I was the grim reaper, she was the son of Satan.”

I tripped on a crack in the sidewalk. Garrett caught me as I glanced back at a wide-eyed Cookie.

“I tried to e-mail her back,” he continued, eyeing me warily now, “but she’ll have nothing to do with me.”

“Can you blame her?” I asked, faking nonchalance. Holy cow, who was this woman?

“This woman’s name is Carrie Lee-ah-dell,” he said, struggling with the pronunciation.

“Mistress Marigold?” How the hell did he know that?

He frowned. “No. This chick.” He pointed to the house. “She’s a kindergarten teacher.”

Oh, right. I drew in a deep breath, then glanced at the paper, at the name Carrie Liedell, and giggled. “It’s pronounced Lie-dell.”

“Really? How do you know?”

I stopped my trek up the sidewalk and pointed to the paper. “See this? This
i-e
? When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.”

He furrowed his brows at me. “What the fuck does that mean?”

I started for the door again, casting a humorous glance underneath my lashes at Cook, and at that very moment in time, I realized how ultracool the click of my boots on the concrete sounded. “It means that you never learned to read properly.”

Cookie hid a giggle behind a cough as Garrett met me at the door. He waited while I knocked. Just as the doorknob turned, he asked in a low voice, “Where does that leave freight?”

He had a point.

“Or said.”

A thirtyish woman with a short, dark bob that squared her already square jaw to a harsh extreme cracked open the door.

“Or, I don’t know, blood.”

Now he was just showing off.

“Yes?” she asked, her tone wary. She probably thought we were selling something. Vacuum cleaners. Magazine subscriptions. Religion by the yard.

Before I could say anything, Garrett leaned down to whisper in my ear. “Or should. And yes, Charles, I can do this all day.”

I was fully prepared to beat him to death with serving tongs. “Hi, Ms. Liedell?” I held up my laminated PI license. Mostly ’cause I looked cool doing it. “My name is Charlotte Davidson, and these are my colleagues Cookie Kowalski and Garrett Swopes. We’re investigating a hit-and-run that happened about three years ago.”

Having no idea what actually happened to Dead Trunk Guy, I was taking a huge risk. If she was involved with his death, any number of things could have happened. But since he probably died in the trunk, a hit-and-run made the most sense. I figured she was driving home late one night and just didn’t see him. Fearing she would get in trouble, she coaxed him into her trunk? It was thin, but I had nothing else.

My gamble paid off immediately. I felt a surge of adrenaline rush through her, a sharp spike of fear as guilt descended like a dark cloud, though her face showed only the slightest hint of distress. Her eyes widened ever so slightly. Her mouth pursed the tiniest degree. She’d practiced this moment, which made her a murderer.

I decided to push forward, to deny her system a chance to recover. “Would you care to explain what happened, Ms. Liedell?” I asked, my voice knowing, accusing.

A hand closed the collar of her blouse self-consciously. Or it could have been the sudden chill of having a dead homeless man standing over her, staring down with a spark of recognition coming to light in his green eyes. I’d never had a departed hurt a living human—I didn’t even know if they could—but I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to tackle the guy. He was huge. And since I was the only one who could see him, it would look odd.

“I—I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

Noting the telltale quiver in her voice, I said, “You hit a homeless man, locked him in the trunk of your 2000 white Taurus, then waited for him to die. Does that about sum it up?”

Garrett’s jaw clenched in my periphery, and I honestly couldn’t tell if he was concerned about my line of questioning or if he was angry at what she’d done.

“It was on Coal Avenue,” Dead Trunk Guy said, his deep voice clear and sharp. It startled me at first, but even crazy people had their lucid moments. He turned to me then, pinning me to the spot with his fierce gaze. “In a parking lot, believe it or not.”

“You hit him in a parking lot?” I asked, my pitch high with surprise. Garrett shifted beside me, wondering where I was going with this. I was wondering, too.

This time when her eyes widened, the guilt on her face was undeniable. “I—I never hit anyone.”

“She was wasted,” the guy said, memories lining his face, “falling down drunk, and she told me to sit on the back of her car, that I would be fine.”

“You told him to sit on the back of your car,” I said, dissecting her with an accusing scowl. “You’d been drinking.”

Ms. Liedell looked around, as if making sure she wasn’t on
Candid Camera.

“I must have had a concussion. I couldn’t focus. I was talking to her one minute, then dying in her trunk the next. She hit me again, only with a brick that time.”

“What the hell did you say to her?” I asked him, no longer worried about appearances.

His bitter gaze traveled back to me. “I told her I was a cop and that she was under arrest.”

“Holy fuck,” I said in full freak-out mode. “Are you serious? You were a cop? Like undercover?”

He nodded, but Liedell gasped, covered her mouth with both hands. “No, I didn’t know he was a cop. I thought he was a crazy homeless guy. H-he was filthy. I thought he was lying to get money out of me. You know how they are.” She was panicking. Under more normal circumstances, it would have been funny. “You’re not cops,” she said to us. “You can’t do anything.”

Just then, Uncle Bob pulled his SUV to a screeching halt in front of her house, followed by two patrol cars, lights flashing. His timing, though impeccable, had me stumped.

“No,” I said, unable to wipe the astonishment from my voice, “but he is.” I hitched a thumb over my shoulder toward Ubie, aka Man on Fire. He was walking toward us with a purpose. A mission. Or hemorrhoids. Or both.

“Carrie Liedell?” he asked as he barreled toward us.

She nodded absently, her whole life most likely flashing before her eyes.

“You are under arrest for the murder of Officer Zeke Brandt. Do you have anything in your pockets?” he asked just before he turned her about face and frisked her. A uniform quoted the Miranda as Liedell started bawling.

“I didn’t know he was a cop,” she said between sobs. “I thought he was lying.”

When the uniform took her away, Ubie turned to me, his expression dire. “Officer Brandt has been missing for three years. Nobody knew what happened to him. He was investigating a drug ring that used homeless people to sell for them.”

“But, how did you know?” I asked, still stupefied.

“Swopes told me what you were investigating, the case you’d put him on while he was supposed to be watching you.”

I scowled at Garrett. “Is nothing sacred?”

He shrugged.

“I take it you dealt with that little problem?” Ubie asked him.

“I have one less employee, but I’ll get by,” Garrett said, referring to the employee who was supposed to have been keeping an eye on me when I was attacked.

“Wait a minute,” I said, raising a palm for a time-out. “How did you know Carrie Liedell killed your officer?”

Uncle Bob moved closer, not wanting anyone to hear. “When Swopes told me about your departed homeless guy in the back of Cookie’s white Taurus, I remembered that during the investigation of his disappearance, one of the surveillance tapes we’d acquired from a local video store had footage we thought could have been a hit-and-run. But it was so grainy, and almost all of it occurred slightly off camera, we couldn’t pinpoint what happened. We revisited the tape, figured out it was probably our guy as he’d checked in that night from that very video store, and had the footage enhanced to show this woman’s license plate.

Ubie reached over and took Garrett’s hand in a firm shake. “Good work,” he said before taking Cookie’s. “Nice work. Sorry about your car. We won’t keep it long.”

She gazed at him, still in stunned-speechless mode.

Then he turned to me. “Are we friends again?”

“Not even if you were the last hero cop on Earth struggling with hemorrhoids.”

He chuckled. “I don’t have hemorrhoids.” Then the butthead leaned down and kissed my cheek nonetheless. “This guy meant a lot to me, hon,” he said, whispering into my ear. “Thank you.”

As Uncle Bob hoofed it to his SUV, Cookie stood with mouth agape. “Did that just happen? ’Cause that was really unexpected. I mean, I thought kindergarten teachers were nice.”

“If we stay in this business long enough, Cook, I think we’ll find every profession has its bad apples.” I grinned and elbowed her. “Get it? Teachers? Apples?”

She patted my shoulder without so much as a glance my way then walked to Misery.

“I totally owe you one,” I called after her. I turned to Dead Trunk Guy, or, well, Officer Brandt. “So, you’re not nuts?”

A grin as wicked as sin on Sunday slid across his face, and he was suddenly handsome. I mean, he still had matted hair and crap, but dang those eyes.

“And the showers?” I asked, almost in fear.