The Beholder, a Maddie Richards Mystery (21 page)

“Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Whom had you seen come there before tonight?”

“Nobody really, I’ve never met any of Carmen’s friends. There was a man a few times, the same man. Carmen never mentioned him to me and I didn’t pry. He was good looking. In his later fifties, I think. He wasn’t particularly tall, and had some gray hair.”

The description generally fit Adam Harrison, and another few thousand men in the Phoenix valley. But Adam had known more details about this victim than is generally known this early in an investigation. If it had been Adam, why hadn’t he just said so? If he had nothing to hide, that is.

“I hoped that man was a romantic interest,” the woman continued, bringing Maddie back from her thoughts. “Carmen would never admit it, but I think she was lonely.”

Maddie waited while the woman choked back her latest tears.

“Who else came to see Ms. Diaz?”

“Now and again, some people from her offices.”

“How’d you know they were from her office?”

“Their cars had those little magnetized realty signs and they usually carried some kind of briefcase.”

“About the man you saw a few times?”

“As I said, Carmen never spoke of him. We talked about cooking, sewing, gardening. Carmen was a real homebody, but she was very pretty and when she went out she was dressed to break hearts. I never knew where she was going or if she would meet anyone. We were good neighbors. But we didn’t really socialize. She was always working.”

When Maddie started back to the Diaz crime scene, she saw Gil coming down the street. She leaned against the fender of her Taurus and waited until he got close.

“Tell me you’ve got something with meat on it?”

“I do, Sergeant. Well, sorta. Two nights ago, two people from two different houses saw a stocky man, dressed all in black and wearing a black hat, walking the street. One witness, an older man working in his garage, saw him walk past then cross the street and go back up the other side. Both witnesses described the man as not very tall. The second witness, a woman, saw the man get in a dark car, not too old. She wasn’t suspicious enough to go out to get his license plate number, and she couldn’t describe the car. The only thing she remembered was that when he opened the door the inside dome light didn’t go on. They’re both willing to have you come back tonight to speak with them, if you’d like.”

“From what the witnesses said, did you get the impression the man only walked this block or did he go farther or come from around the corner?”

“Putting their comments together, I’d say he walked to the corner, crossed the street and then back until he got across from his car.”

“Show me where the car was parked,” Maddie asked. Gil pointed. Maddie said, “Two doors from Diaz, on the other side.”

It was their first real break. A car eliminated someone from the neighborhood, not that Maddie had considered that as a serious possibility. The car being dark fit the profile she worked up with Lincoln Rogers. If the walker lived close, he would have walked from home, not used his car. If the walker was legit and lived in a different neighborhood, why bring a car to park and walk one block? He had to have been the Beholder. And he had disconnected his dome light.

***

It was a little after two in the morning when Maddie pulled into her garage. Five minutes later she saw the headlights of Gary’s pickup duck under his rising garage door. His brake lights reddened the night. She watched him get out and move around the back of his vehicle holding a small box of some sort. When he cleared the shadow of the garage door, the box looked like a food container. The kind with a snap-on lid, the size that might carry a meatloaf or a pair of breasts, the shape that could have made the ring on Abigail Knight’s nightstand.

Maddie’s heart pounded. My God, could Jed have been right? No. Damn it. Gary Packard doesn’t fit enough of the profile. Besides, she concluded, I couldn’t have the hots for a serial killer. Could I?

Maddie’s mind moved on to a more likely suspect, Steve Gibbs, Dr. Ripley’s assistant. The neighbors had said the walker had worn all black and she had never seen Gibbs wear anything but black. The physical description was not too tall and stocky. That also fit Gibbs and did not fit Gary Packard. However, Gibbs appeared to lack the authority base requisite to going after power targets. Of course, she and Linc could have been wrong on that point of the profile. She also had a couple of other possible suspects, based mostly on stuff less reliable than a tip from Madam Zelda, palm-reader extraordinaire.

Chapter 30

Maddie’s mother came in through the glass slider from the patio just after Maddie closed the garage door into the laundry room. Rita had been out on the patio waiting up the way mothers did the world over, regardless of the ages of their daughters.

“It’s after two in the morning,” Maddie said. “Is anything wrong? Is Bradley okay?”

Her mother’s hands went up. “Don’t have a cow! Isn’t that what you used to say when you were a teenager?”

“Mother, neither of us has been teenagers for a very long time. What’re you doing up?”

“I heard on the late news that KC’s Beholder has struck again.”

Now he’s KC’s Beholder, Maddie repeated to herself. Why me, Lord?

“But that’s no reason for you to stay up so late.”

“I got a problem, Madeline Jane. Well, one of the ladies in the hood has a problem. I told her you’d have the solution.”

Maddie felt her head and shoulders sag. “Please, Mom. You know what I’m into. I’m exhausted. I have to be back in the saddle in a few hours … I promise when this case is over—”

“It can’t wait. We need you now. Come out on the patio. I’ll pass on your help. That’ll save you having to talk with Dorothy. You remember Dot? Surely you do. The one married to Lenny the plumber. They live three houses down on the other side of the street, bulky Lenny and his petite wife with the well-muscled legs. Lenny the plumber, you remember, he came down and unplugged your sink last Thanksgiving, a holiday, without charging you a nickel. The one you told, ‘I owe you one.’ That Lenny, remember?”

Maddie detoured through the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water before joining her mother out on the patio. “All right, Mother. I remember Lenny and Dorothy. Yes, Mother, I owe them a favor. Go ahead, Mother. I’m listening, but you should know I’ve had the proverbial day from hell—from two hells, so get on with it.”

Rita sat forward on the hard redwood bench beside their picnic table. “Dot won the lottery,” she said, while waving her arms wildly.

“And, the problem is?” Maddie asked sitting on the other side of the table. “Does she need my help spending it?”

“Don’t be a wise cracker, Madeline Jane.” Maddie took a drink while her mother said, “It wasn’t the big magillacutti, just $50,000. But that’s not exactly chopped liver, is it?”

“I just don’t see a problem here,” Maddie said wearily. “Can you fast forward to the punch line?”

“Actually, you were right. She does need help spending it. Well, something like that.”

“Pick up the pace, Mom.” Maddie pleaded while twisting the cap on the bottle back and forth between tight and loose.

“Well, Dot loves leather and her husband, Lenny, loves the way she looks in leather. I think she’s oversexed and not just because of this leather thing, but that’s none of my business. She could never afford much stuff in leather. Now she wants everything that comes in leather.”

Maddie could hear the cooing of the quail that spent nights in the orange tree in the corner of her yard. She stretched her legs out straight along the bench seat, her feet dangling off the end. “I know I’m a detective, Mother, but, please, just what is the problem here?”

“I called a special evening session of my coffee klatch so we could help Dot work up a complete list of leather stuff. We just adjourned at midnight. The girls were exhausted. I need you to tell me what we missed. Like your pa before you, you got the knack for that deductive reasoning.”

“I’ll work on it tomorrow. I promise to finish it by the time I come home.”

“That won’t cut it, Madeline Jane. Dot’s going shopping in the morning, in a few hours, actually. A couple of the other gals who don’t work are going with her. We need your ideas tonight. If you don’t add at least one thing, the girls’ll think you don’t care. Remember when you needed Lenny to fix your sink, dear. You needed him right then. Well, that’s how this is.”

“And your stature as the head of the hood would suffer, right Mom?”

“You know I carry the full load of this family in the hood. But once in a while you need to participate.”

“Mother, right now, if you were a friend, not my Mother, I’d tell you to take a flying—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, come on, Madeline Jane. Give.”

Maddie billowed her cheeks before blowing out the air of defeat. She had no defense against the Mother card. “Let me see the list.”

“No way. You gotta think outside the box.”

“Leather place mats,” Maddie offered.

“You’re good, Madeline Jane. It took us two hours to get to those, but they’re on the list.”

“A leather Teddy, Mom,” she said patiently.

“Shame on you, Madeline Jane.”

“More particularly, one that unsnaps in the crouch,” Maddie raised her eyebrows, forced a wide smile and got up. “Good night, Mother.”

Chapter 31

The next morning, Maddie found her mother sitting in her favorite morning spot, in front of the sun-filled east kitchen window. “Dot didn’t really win the lottery did she?”

“Sure she did, Madeline Jane,” her mother grinned. “Dot won the grand sum of twenty dollars.” Maddie laughed, and her mother slurped her coffee, obviously pleased with the success of her little charade.

Maddie bent down and hugged her mother. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Whatever for, dear?”

“For reminding me that life goes on, even when I’m up to my ass in alligators. Sorry, up to my derriere in alligators.”

Maddie woke Bradley for school and promised him she’d try really hard to get home early enough so they might finish
The Secret of the Old Mill.
They had less than twenty pages to go and Maddie was very sure she had that case figured out. She didn’t like thinking about what it would do to her confidence if she came up wrong on a crime about to be solved by the two teenage Hardy boys.

***

When Maddie arrived at the station, Dink was coming out of the breakroom carrying his standard morning fare, a chocolate coated bismark. Apparently, he operated under the theory of getting your two thousand calories taken care of first thing in the morning. And wash them down with a coffee laced with three sugars. There were no artificial sweeteners in Dink life.

She believed it likely the man’s name had an anatomical basis, but shuddered at the thought of doing the research necessary to prove the hypothesis.

Determined not to start her day off with whatever sexual allusion Dink might decide to make, she did a quick turn down the side hallway and zigzagged through the desks in the main room, pausing to snag Gil Ortega as she went by.

She had never realized how really large Gil was until he joined her inside her pint-size office. The Hulk visits the land of the leprechauns.

“You have any reflections or questions from last night?”

“I wish I’d been more help, Sergeant.”

“Diaz was a tough first murder scene. You did just fine. Listen. Go find Sue Martin and Brackett and have them meet us in the small conference room for a little planning session. But first, we had no opportunity to talk before we were tossed into it last night. Is there anything you wanted to discuss one-on-one?”

“There is one thing.”

“Shoot.”

“I know Detective Smith let you down. We all know that. I’m not Jed Smith. I’ll never abuse our relationship or betray your trust.”

Maddie wasn’t about to discuss her relationship with her old partner with her new partner. She doubted she would ever allow Gil to get that close, at least not this quickly.

“Thank you, Detective Ortega. Now go tell Sue and Brackett we’ll meet in the small conference room. Leave Amun on the hotline.”

“I meant what I said, Sergeant,” Gil repeated while one of his huge hands swallowed the doorknob.

Maddie went to the conference room. The others were already there, Brackett leaning against the wall, sipping his coffee.

“Sue,” Maddie began, “I need you to get Ms. Diaz’s home and work computers checked for friends and business contacts. I also need you to chase down Diaz’s last-day outfit, just like you did with Stowe and Knight. If you can’t find it, then we’ll know for certain that the Beholder is also stealing the clothes these women wore on their final day.”

“Which first?” Sue asked briskly.

“First get the work started on Diaz’s computers. Have someone else do it. See Lieutenant Harrison for the right person. One of the advantages of working a big case is access to resources. Use them, but you quarterback it.”

Brackett looked over when Maddie spoke to him. “I take it nothing useful came from you chasing down the johns serviced by Popcorn’s girls, and from the vice guys working the known sex offenders?”

“Both dead ends,” he said in summary before going on to explain. “Popcorn had learned of Folami’s plans from one of his other girls, but she hadn’t told him yet. The pimp’s secretary, you remember Miss Tiny, she told me that Folami had quit once before. She remembered having to arrange girls to service Folami’s regulars, ‘cept for old man Elders who would never accept anyone else. Popcorn doesn’t look good for any of this. And, as I told you before, there’s no shaking Dr. Knight’s alibi of being in the hotel. He was there when his wife bought it.”

“What’s the status on our stakeouts?”

“I put Amun in charge of setting up surveillance; he fingered a few uniforms for help. Both Bronson and Dr. Knight were following their normal routines on Thursday night while Diaz was killed. You want all that kept up?”

“I guess not. They don’t look good for this. I do want you and Amun to rework the Diaz neighborhood. Gil and I went around the other night, but it was late. Those folks have had time for their memories to settle. Also stir up the friends Sue finds in Diaz’s email address book. I’ll take her coworkers. We probably won’t find the Beholder in that bunch, but maybe Diaz told one of them about a new guy she met or some creep that had been watching her. And find out what Diaz wore that day and pass that information to Sue. What about the hotline, anything happening there?”