3 Swift Run (27 page)

“Some people are more comfortable married,” Dan put in. “They need companionship,
someone to do for, or to do for them.”

Eustis slanted him a look that didn’t agree or disagree. “You wanted to know about
his murder,” he said to Charlie. “I found him.” His lips worked at the cigarette.
“Dead. Stone cold. Alone. She poisoned him with brake fluid in his Long Island iced
tea, ransacked the bank accounts, and lit out. The sheriff never found a trace of
her.”

Charlie got the impression Eustis wasn’t going to be voting for Sheriff Huff in the
next election. “You weren’t worried that the murderer had killed or kidnapped her?”

Snorting, Eustis pulled the cigarette from his mouth and began to shred it in his
fingers. Bits of tobacco drifted to the floor. “Nope. She did it. His drink was poisoned,
for chrissake. Who else could have done it?”

“Your wife mentioned that you inherited the Triple E, and rumor had it that your dad
was firing you. You threatened to kill him.”

The words hung between them for a moment as the PA system named the best of breed
for something called a Champagne d’Argent. It sounded like a bottle of bubbly, Charlie
thought, rather than a rabbit.

As Charlie’s words sank in, Eustis leaped to his feet, overturning the metal chair.
Several people turned to look as it clanged to the floor. “I did not kill my dad!
That woman did. Amanda or Heather-Anne or whatever she calls herself.”

Charlie and Dan exchanged a look. “We didn’t mention she was calling herself Heather-Anne,”
Dan said, rising slowly to his feet. “Why don’t you sit down again, Mr. Eustis?”

Charlie remained seated, thinking that Dan’s six-foot-five presence came in handy.
If she had to have a partner, she thought as Eustis righted his chair and sat again,
why couldn’t she have one who intimidated clients and witnesses, instead of Gigi who
wouldn’t intimidate a … a bunny.

She leaned forward, deciding to go with her instincts. “I saw you come out of Heather-Anne’s
room at the Embassy Suites,” she said, startling both Eustis and Dan.

“I wasn’t— You’re making this up! I don’t have to—” Eustis looked around, as if seeking
an escape route. He jerked the Marlboros from his pocket, stuck one in his mouth,
and lit it with a disposable lighter.

“I’m sure the police will be able to spot you on the surveillance videos,” Charlie
said. “It was Wednesday afternoon, late.”

Slumping forward, Eustis drew hard on the cigarette, then expelled a stream of smoke.
A woman at the next table ostentatiously fanned the air and shot him a disapproving
look.

“How did you know she was there?”

Eustis looked up from under his brows. “I got a phone call. Last Tuesday. A man’s
voice said Amanda was in room 115 at the Embassy Suites in Colorado Springs. Before
I could ask anything, he hung up.”

“Why didn’t you tell Sheriff Huff?”

That earned her a “you’ve got to be kidding” look. “I didn’t even tell Tansy. I thought
it was a crackpot, a troublemaker. I decided to check it out for myself before I got
the law all spun up about it. I was headed to Denver the next day anyway, so I dropped
Eric at the hotel here, told him I had business to take care of, and drove on down
to Colorado Springs.”

“What did she say?”

Eustis’s eyes widened. “I never saw her. You’ve got to believe me. I showed up at
the Embassy Suites on Wednesday and knocked on her door. I don’t know what I’d’ve
said if she’d answered. I probably would have left and called the police.”

Riiight,
Charlie thought. She drummed her fingers on the table.

“When no one came to the door, I walked around for a bit. I saw a maintenance man
go in and waited in the hall until he came out. Holding my credit card like it was
a key card, I acted like it was my room and caught the door before it closed. I don’t
know what I expected to find, but there was nothing useful. No photos, nothing about
my dad or anything that tied the room’s occupant to Amanda. I decided that the caller
was playing me for a chump, so I left. I drove back here, and I’ve been here ever
since. End of story.”

“Really?” Charlie let her skepticism show. “You didn’t stake the place out to get
a glimpse of whoever was in the room, didn’t confront her about your father’s death,
didn’t strangle her with her own scarf?”

“No!” Eustis was beginning to look like a hunted rabbit. Charlie searched for another
image, wishing her brain would let go of the rabbit comparisons. She sneezed. He looked
like a man with a secret, she decided. A scared man with a secret.

“So your son will say you’ve been with him the whole time—”

“Leave my son out of this!”

“—and the videotapes won’t show your truck in the Embassy Suites parking lot or you
walking through the lobby. Come on, Mr. Eustis. It’s only natural that you would want
to catch up with the woman who probably killed your father. No one’s going to blame
you for wanting to know if it was her.”

“Sir, you can’t smoke in here.” An officious-looking woman stood at Eustis’s shoulder.

With something like a growl, he threw the butt to the dirt floor and ground it out
savagely with his booted foot. The officious woman looked like she was going to say
something, thought better of it in the face of Eustis’s glare, and walked off.

“All right,” Eustis spat. “I went back. On Saturday. I stewed about it for a couple
of days and decided I couldn’t live with myself if there was any possibility Amanda
was in Colorado Springs and I didn’t find out for sure. She put Dad in his grave,
and it wasn’t right that she was running around free, spending his money on nice hotels
and who knows what else. So I went back. This time, I didn’t even have to go into
the hotel. I saw her in the parking lot. It took me a few minutes to be sure—she’d
lost a lot of weight and dyed her hair—but when I saw her walk I was sure.”

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t talk to her.” Responding to Charlie’s look, he insisted, “I didn’t. She
was with a man. It looked like they were arguing. In a way, I was glad, because I
was afraid of what I might do if I met up with her face-to-face.” His hands balled
into fists. “It scared me—the way I felt. I drove off. I was shaking so bad I pulled
over at the next exit and just sat for about twenty minutes. Then I came back here,
to the motel. I was going to call Sheriff Huff, sic him on her, but then I heard on
the news the next morning that she was dead and I, well, I was afraid to say anything,
afraid that the police would jump to the wrong conclusion if I called and told them
who she really was.” He gave Charlie and Dan a baleful look. “Like you two did.”

Charlie didn’t refute him. “What did the man look like, the one you saw arguing with
Heather-Anne?” She wasn’t sure she believed him, but she readied her notebook anyway.

Eustis shrugged. “Average. I didn’t see him up close. There were cars passing between
us, and he was facing away from me. I was more focused on Amanda.”

“White, black, old, young?”

Squinting as if trying to recall, Eustis said, “White, I think. He wore a black baseball
cap, and I couldn’t see his hair. I suppose he could’ve been bald. Taller than Amanda
by a few inches, so he was maybe six feet or six foot one? Held himself like a young
guy; you know—shoulders back, not all stooped over or anything.”

Charlie looked up from her notebook and said, “You have to tell the police.”

Before Eustis could respond, a lanky boy of maybe fourteen came toward them, a grin
on his thin face, holding a champagne-colored muff in the crook of one arm and a ruffled
blue ribbon aloft in the other hand. “Hermione won, Dad,” he said, coming to a stop
beside their table. He looked curiously from Charlie to Dan.

Charlie sneezed and realized that the “muff” was a rabbit, apparently named Hermione.
Her pink nose twitched, and her thick fur looked as soft as dandelion fluff. Eustis’s
look pleaded with them not to say anything in front of his son. “That’s great, Eric.”

“Can I pet her?” Dan asked. Charlie gave him a surprised look and then suppressed
a smile at his kindness.

“Sure,” the boy agreed, thrusting the rabbit toward him. Unable to resist the soft-looking
pelt, Charlie stroked Hermione’s fur, too, and thought a rabbit would be a good pet
if it
did
anything.

“She’s beautiful,” Dan said. “Congratulations.”

The boy beamed, and Eustis rose to put his arm around his son’s shoulders. “Don’t
want to miss the Simmental judging,” he said, drawing the teen away. “Great seeing
you again,” he called over his shoulder to Dan and Charlie. His movements were jerky
and hurried, betraying his tension.

Charlie didn’t try to call him back as they walked away, much the same height, the
boy chattering excitedly as they turned down a row of hutches that hid them from view.
She sighed and sneezed.

“Let’s get you out of here,” Dan said, taking her elbow and pulling her toward the
entrance.

“Did you believe him?” she asked Dan as they retraced their steps across the parking
lot. The cold air biting at her face felt good after the stuffy interior of the livestock
barn.

Dan thought, a certain tightness around his eyes revealing his concentration. “In
part,” he said. “I believed him about being scared by his reaction to seeing Heather-Anne
and the urge to violence he must have felt.”

“The question is: Did he act on it, or did he drive off like he said?”

“That’s a question for the police,” Dan said, closing the truck door when Charlie
got in. “You’re going to tell them?”

“Absolutely. Eustis might have killed Heather-Anne. Equally, he might have seen the
man who did. Either way, the police need to know. They can question Eustis further,
look at the surveillance tapes.”

“Assuming he was telling the truth, who called him and put him onto Heather-Anne at
the Embassy Suites?”

Charlie puzzled over that question for a moment. “Maybe Les?” she finally suggested.
“He had the newspaper clipping about Eustis Senior’s death. Maybe he wanted to see
how Heather-Anne would react if Eustis Junior confronted her.”

“Possible.” Dan put the car in gear and pointed it toward Colorado Springs.

*   *   *

Inside Swift Investigations after Dan dropped her off, Charlie beelined for the minifridge
and liberated a Pepsi. After a couple of long swallows, she called Gigi and learned
that Les had left nothing of interest during his brief stay. Then, after a moment’s
thought, she dialed the police department and asked for Detective Lorrimore. When
the woman came on the line, Charlie filled her in on everything they’d learned about
Heather-Anne’s past, including the possibility that she was both Lucinda Cheney and
Amanda Eustis. She detailed her conversation with Robert Eustis Junior and gave Lorrimore
both Sheriff Huff’s and Eustis’s contact information. The detective listened well,
asking a question now and then.

When Charlie finished, Lorrimore said, “There’s a lot of guesswork in your theory.
We have no proof that Heather-Anne Pawlusik was Amanda Eustis, much less that she
was Lucinda Cheney.”

“Granted. You could get something from the Eustises or Cheney that might yield fingerprint
matches, though, or DNA.”

“There’s not enough for a warrant.”

“My money says you won’t need one. The Eustis family, at least, is royally ticked.
If they thought that giving you something to get fingerprints off of would help you
catch up with Amanda, they’d cart a hairbrush down to the local police department
without passing Go or collecting two hundred dollars. Cheney probably feels the same.”

“I’ll give it a try,” Lorrimore said, sounding a shade warmer than when she got on
the phone. “Thanks for the tip. Even if we get a match, though, it doesn’t get me
much closer to finding the murderer. In fact,” she continued, a hint of asperity creeping
into her voice, “it widens the field if I have to consider that the men she swindled,
and/or their families and heirs, might have wanted revenge. I’ll call this Sheriff
Huff, and we’ll bring Eustis in for questioning today.”

“Do you have anything more implicating or clearing Dexter Goldman?” Charlie asked.

Lorrimore hesitated, then said, “Nothing new has turned up. He’s still a person of
interest in this investigation.”

“The person you ought to be interested in is Les Goldman.”

“Oh, we are. Given his connection with the deceased and the way he vanished this morning,
we’re very, very interested in Lester Goldman.”

Charlie hung up and drummed her fingers on the desk. She had actual paying cases she
should be working on, but she wanted to clear Dexter’s name and find Les Goldman,
not only because it would make Gigi feel better, but because it was a hell of a lot
more interesting than investigating possible insurance fraud or doing background checks
on potential employees for Danner and Lansky. After a moment’s thought, she decided
to try to get hold of Parnell Parkin or his family. She didn’t have much hope that
talking to them would yield much, but the leads were drying up, and she didn’t want
to leave any stone unturned. After talking to Parkin, she’d drive out to Gigi’s. Maybe
Gigi had missed something; at the very least, they could put their heads together
and brainstorm places to look for Les. First, though, she needed a long soak in the
hot tub and a change of clothes. Locking up the office, she headed down to Albertine’s
to bum a ride home.

34

By midafternoon, Kendall was home and sulky about having to do her algebra homework.
Dexter was still locked in his room refusing to talk to me, and Nolan was insisting
he needed a walk, even though the snow was still a foot deep on most of the sidewalks.
I thought guiltily of the snow shovel in the garage, and city laws that required homeowners
to clear the sidewalks, but I just didn’t have the energy. Maybe a little exercise
would get Dexter out of the mopes. I knocked on his door and said, “Dexter, the sidewalks
need shoveling.”