The Beholder, a Maddie Richards Mystery (22 page)

“We’re keeping a log,” Sue answered. “The calls are mostly nervous ladies, with a few peepers mixed in, but nothing that points to the Beholder. Some wife called about an hour ago to say she thought her husband was the Beholder. After Amun pressed her, she admitted she was just pissed because he beats her up every few weeks. She’s coming down today. We’ll handle it for what it is, a domestic beef. That’s all.”

“Has anyone spotted anything about one of our vics that’s not true for the other two?” Maddie asked, picking up a black marker and moving near the white wallboard.

“Abigail Knight was rich,” Brackett said, “Diaz very comfortable, Stowe poor, all different.”

“One black, one white, and one Hispanic,” Gil offered, “so that’s all different, too.”

“Knight was married. Stowe single, and last night’s vic., Diaz, was divorced,” Sue contributed. “Again they’re all different.”

“Good,” Maddie said, scribbling away. This was the part of investigations that she liked the best. “Keep it coming, and mix in stuff that was the same?” She moved to her right and labeled a new column as alike.

“None of them had children,” Sue answered. “That’s the same. And they were all pretty. That’s two matches.”

“Folami was in her early twenties, Abigail Knight more than thirty, Diaz the oldest at forty-four, that’s all different,” Brackett said.

“But, Diaz looked ten years younger,” Lieutenant Harrison said from his position near the door. Harrison’s face was ashen gray. Maddie wondered if he was ill.

“Let’s change the question,” she said. “Who would women like these have opened their doors to let in?”

“A trick,” Brackett said, right off. “That’d work for Stowe; she was a hooker, maybe even Abigail Knight. Her legs were spread so often she probably felt uncomfortable standing upright. As for Diaz, we don’t know that much yet.”

“A priest,” Sue Martin said, “maybe a doctor?”

“Cabbie, utility repairman or the cable guy,” Gil said, added to the growing list under the third column, titled possibles.

Lieutenant Harrison, who normally observed much more than participated, spoke again. “There are also postal workers or a delivery person from the likes of Fed Ex, UPS, Sears or any of a zillion stores with delivery or repair people.”

Maddie stopped writing. “We’ve found no connection between the women so we can likely rule out common friends and coworkers, but stay open to that possibility. What about a cop?” Maddie asked her squad.

“You don’t really think this prick’s a cop, do you?” Gil asked. “I mean, not really?”

“Cops are people, too,” Maddie said, “all kinds. We’re just brainstorming here, not accusing, who else?”

“Home service personnel,” Sue said. “Maids, gardeners, pool men.”

“Abigail Knight would have used those tradesmen,” Gil reasoned, expanding on Sue’s comment. “That could have also been true for Carmen Diaz, but not Folami Stowe.”

“A hell of a lot of people who are largely strangers enter our homes every day,” Maddie said in summary. “Gil, I want you and Sue to coordinate a check of the three victims for common links.” Brackett started to protest. Maddie held up her hand. “I know we’ve done it once. Do it again, fresh eyes this time. We’ve got three victims so a connection may show up that didn’t when we only had two. Do it from scratch. Ignore the results of the first effort. Go back through their calendars, computers and hard copy address and phone books, even scratch pads by their phones, day planners, checkbooks, and phone bills and credit card statements. Did these three women visit the same health club? Use the same attorney, accountant, shop at the same market, gas station, or pizza shop? Date the same guy? Frequent the same bar or restaurant? Use the same TV repairman or hairdresser? Attend the same church?” She stopped, breathless, hoping she had made her point. “The stuff of life. Don’t just limit yourselves to my suggestions; add whatever else you think of once you get rolling.”

Maddie turned to Lieutenant Harrison, “Sir, how ‘bout a couple more detectives to help?”

He nodded, before saying, “I’ve shut down the hunt for buyers of ladies makeup brushes. It’s a dead end, looks like he bought them over the counter one at a time for cash.”

The lieutenant’s body language showed he was struggling with something. “Lieutenant,” Maddie said, “do you have something else?”

He put his coffee cup on the table next to the door and crossed his arms. “I had been seeing Carmen Diaz once or twice a week for more than two years. The most recent time, we had dinner together two nights before she was killed.”

Maddie wasn’t surprised, although hearing it took her breath away. Who would have imagined that out of a city the size of Phoenix, one of the victims of a serial murder would turn out to be a woman dated by her lieutenant? Harrison had to admit it because, sooner or later, he knew they would have found out. He would also know that this made him a suspect on some level. But for right now, Maddie’s focus was on learning as much as she could about the victim.

“I’m sorry for her death, Lieutenant.” Maddie said with as much feeling as she could convey, then went back to doing her job. “I don’t mean to sound indelicate, but you know what comes next. Will you take yourself out of it emotionally and give us a rundown of the things cops need to know about victims?”

“I understand, Sergeant,” he said. “One thing I can tell you, from now on I’ll be a lot more sensitive to what friends and relatives go through when we routinely ask them these kinds of questions.

“Carmen Diaz was a lovely woman and not only physically. She worked too hard, but intended to hang it up in another two years. I’m confident she had been seeing no one else for about the past year and a half. She did not drink excessively and did not use drugs. She was a passionate woman, but nothing kinky. She had few friends. No real girlfriends. Except for when we saw each other, she pretty much worked. She called it her coming-into-the-home-stretch period. I guess that’s about it. If I remember anything else, I’ll tell you later, but I think that’s it.”

Harrison picked up his coffee and drained the foam cup, dropping it into the waste can. Then he added, “A good woman’s life wrapped up in sixty seconds.”

“Thank you, sir. I know that was not easy. Anybody? Anything else?”

Maddie heard no one and looked into a group blank stare. “Okay, shoo,” she said. “Get busy. Don’t throw out anything that gives you cause to pause without our talking about it.”

Maddie then headed for where she hoped to find some answers. Lord knows she could use a few.

Chapter 32

“Miss Diaz had no girlfriends she was tight with,” said the receptionist at Diaz Realty. “I answered her personal line, gave her messages, and did her computer input, so I guess, she talked to me more than anyone. There was one man who called a lot; I got to know his voice. He never left a name. He’d just say, ‘Tell Ms. Diaz I called. She’ll know.’ He was her main man and, from what I could tell, her only man.”

Maddie spent the rest of the morning interviewing the staff and agents who worked in the main office of Diaz Realty and learned nothing further. No one other than the receptionist knew about the man in Carmen Diaz’s life. She would have Gil talk with the managers of the other Diaz offices; likely also dead ends. Still, it would be good experience for him. Lieutenant Harrison had it right. He had been the man in Carmen’s life.

Maddie stopped to tell the receptionist she would be looking around inside Ms. Diaz’s office. The receptionist said, “I guess I should tell you, although she told me not to repeat it to a living soul, she planned to sell out and retire pretty soon.”

Maddie closed the door to Carmen’s office and started looking through her desk. But not before thinking about how what the receptionist had said dovetailed with what Adam Harrison had said to her at last year’s New Year’s Eve party: he planned to retire when he got in his thirty which, as she remembered, would be about another year and a half. She also wondered why Lieutenant Harrison had not brought Carmen Diaz to the department’s holiday party.

It looked like Lieutenant Harrison and Carmen Diaz were planning to retire together. Maybe their relationship soured in one of the ways most relationships do. “No,” Maddie said out loud, “I’m not going to go there. There is no way that Adam Harrison could kill anyone outside the line of duty.”

The search of Carmen’s office and her desk disclosed nothing of interest other than a picture of Lieutenant Adam Harrison, turned face down, slid into the lower drawer. What she didn’t know was whether Adam’s picture was secreted due to Carmen’s need for privacy or because she was angry with him, maybe because she had broken off their relationship.

Had they argued? Were they split up? Carmen hadn’t thrown Adam’s picture away. Maddie carried the framed photo out to the receptionist who answered her question, “No, Sergeant Richards, I have never seen that picture in Carmen’s office and I would have had it been there.” So, Carmen had never put out Adam’s picture, just as he had no picture of Carmen in his office, at least not in sight. That’s odd. Most lovers kept pictures of each other in their homes and on their desks at work. Apparently, they had not fought or broken up. Apparently they had mutually agreed to keep their relationship private. After leaving Diaz Realty, Maddie drove to Carmen Diaz’s home. She slowed at the end of the street to watch three kids on bicycles stopped in front of the house. One of the children, a girl with training wheels still on her bike, pointed and the other two nodded. Then all three rode away fast, glancing back as if they were being chased by the boogeyman. Carmen Diaz’s home had just been branded a spooky place.

A half hour later, after her ritual quiet walk, she left aware of the weighty presence of evil but, unfortunately, having gleaned nothing further.

At eleven-forty Maddie turned off Jefferson into the lot of the medical examiner’s office; she had stopped to pick up the final autopsy report on Abigail Knight. Dr. Ripley was out but his assistant Steve came through the double doors snapping off a pair of latex gloves.

“I got the message that you’d be coming by for the final on Knight,” he said, stepping behind the counter. “Here it is, in this envelope. Sergeant, may I introduce my aunt.”

An older heavyset woman, her face heavily caked in makeup, rose from a chair and extended both hands.

“Hello. I’m Stevie’s Aunt, Cornelia Gibbs;” she pronounced it
Ont
. “We were about to go to lunch,” she said briskly. “Stevie has spoken to me about wanting to ask you out for lunch, but he never seems to get it done, so let me extent the invitation.” She slipped her hand under Maddie’s arm and began steering her toward the door. “Surely you have to eat, my dear, and it is lunch time. Come along Stevie,” she said without looking at her nephew, “we’ll go to that nice bistro I took you to last time. It’s only two blocks.”

Cornelia Gibbs talked incessantly all the way to the restaurant and throughout lunch. Maddie mostly listened, interjecting a few questions. She also tried to bring Steve into the conversation, but mostly he sat quietly, dipping and redipping his beef sandwich.

The more Steve’s aunt talked, the more Maddie saw Steve Gibbs fitting the Beholder profile. Steve and his mother had moved in with Ms. Gibbs when Steve started college. The following year, Steve’s mother had disappeared. They had both expected his mother to return, but she never had and Steve never moved out.

Ms. Gibbs described her sister as the pretty one in the family, very voluptuous. “She had been married and divorced twice,” Ms. Gibbs said, “but Steve, her only child, had been born out of wedlock. That’s why Stevie’s last name is the same as mine. I guess that’s no longer something shameful,” the aunt opined before adding, “I had the honor of being my sister’s bridesmaid at both her weddings.”

Steve’s aunt had the annoying habit of referring to him as though he wasn’t there. By the time she finished, she had characterized his insistence about wearing black as a stubborn child’s misbehavior, and her insistence about adding lavender oil in the wash water as a parent’s good judgment.

Maddie recalled having smelled lavender, at least what she thought had been lavender in Abigail Knight’s home.

“The lavender is to get rid of that smell of death that comes home on his clothes. But I don’t mind,” she declared. “I’ve dedicated my life to caring for this boy.”

My God woman, Maddie thought, get off it. This “boy” is in his early forties.

Cornelia Gibbs rambled on for a while about her sister’s penchant for mercilessly smothering her son.

Maddie wanted to say, and, of course, you don’t smother him. And, of course, you’re not still jealous of your sister. But she kept the thoughts to herself.

“Were you ever married?” Maddie asked.

“Noooo. Stevie has been a full time job, believe me. Never had time.”

And no offers either, Maddie said to herself before feeling only slightly ashamed for the unkind thought.

“He’s a wonderful boy and very loyal. Dr. Ripley has told me several times he could not do his job without the help of my Stevie. That poor Dr. Knight, you know the one whose wife was killed? Well, he helped Stevie get his job with Dr. Ripley.”

“That was supposed to be a secret,” Steve said, speaking for the first time since they walked into the restaurant.

“Oh, fiddlesticks, Stevie. I doubt the doctors meant that to include Maddie here. She’s … one of us, an insider.”

Steve hunched his pudgy shoulders and returned his attention to his plate, while his aunt prattled about her love of old musicals, saying that she and Steve watched one together every Thursday night. She then asked Maddie to come over next Thursday to watch with them. Maddie declined using the demands of her job for the reason.

“Do you like the musicals?” Maddie asked Steve, in her latest attempt to bring him into the conversation.

“Of course he does,” his aunt said, answering for Steve who was occupied pushing his last bit of potato salad around his plate with a fork, much like a hockey puck is escorted down the ice.

Right then, Maddie thought of a perfect use for the witch’s broomstick that still hung in her office: a Christmas gift for Aunt Cornelia Gibbs.