A Killer Closet (3 page)

“Oh, yes, and word gets around when you find a dead woman in your closet.”

P.J. didn't respond, and it was too dark to read a reaction on his face. She let the silence linger for a moment before she spoke again. “Was that just braggadocio when you said you know some people who might have a motive to kill that woman?”

“Braggadocio? Now you've hurt my feelings.”

“Well, who do you think has a motive?”

“You mean I don't even get an apology?”

“I wasn't aware one was called for.”

“Wow! You
are
tough. I'll bet you're one hell of a prosecutor.”

She was losing patience. “Will you please stop trying to come on to me and name one person you think might have a motive for killing Loraine Sellers?”

“One person?” he said, turning toward her briefly. “Well, your mother, for one.”

For a moment Irene couldn't speak, and she hardly recognized her own choked voice when finally she said, “You're out of your frigging mind.”

“Many are they who have uttered those words.”

“Look, I have no time for cute remarks. Tell me why you think my mother killed Loraine.”

He turned his head toward her, but once again it was too dark to read the expression on his face. “I didn't say she killed her. I said she may have had a motive.” He didn't sound chastened by her angry words, but he was certainly more somber. “Your mother was, after all, in a rather unpleasant—no, make that nasty—struggle with Mrs. Sellers over that building you've leased for your store.”

“She didn't tell me anything about a struggle. She just called and told me she'd found a building and used the money I wired her to pay the first month's lease. She said she got a good deal on a building that had been vacant for several months. Where's the nasty struggle?”

“Well, you're right about one thing,” P.J. said as he pulled his pickup next to the curb in front of the Seligman home. “That building had been vacant for a long time. Then all of a sudden both women were bidding for the lease.”

“Competitive bidding hardly seems a likely motive for murder.”

P.J. turned toward her, and she could see his bemused expression in the dim light of the street lamp across the street. “I'm sure you know, Madam Prosecutor, that a motive for murder doesn't have to seem likely.”

“You think my mother would kill someone just to get a lease?” She hoped her dismissive tone sounded more confident than she felt. The police had asked her too many seemingly irrelevant questions about the lease on that building.

“Not at all. I'm just trying to think like a cop, and I'm sure they know how prominent Mrs. Sellers was and that she had an interest in leasing the building. I suspect they even know she bid the lease price up well above the going rate before your mother won the battle. Maybe somebody wanted to stop the escalation.”

Above the going rate?
Irene felt a stab of chagrin at those words. Adelle had told her she got an excellent rate because the building had been vacant for so long.

“Well, if that was the motive for killing her,” Irene said, trying to keep her emotions in control, “doesn't it seem odd that she would stash the body in the very same building she was trying to lease?”

“Let's hope the cops are smart enough to consider that.”

Typical attitude for a defense lawyer,
she thought. They always liked to assume the cops were stupid. “And another thing,” she added. “That woman hadn't been dead more than four hours. The blood had pooled, but the body was still rigid. I'd say she died at about five that morning, and Adelle was at home with me at that time. She was still in bed when I left the house at seven-thirty.”

“So she has an alibi.”

“It would seem so.”

Was he thinking that, as a prosecutor, she would recognize that Adelle could have slipped out of the house before five o'clock that morning? She pushed the thought out of her mind. Adelle was hardly the type to get up before five o'clock for any reason, not to mention that neither was she the type to commit murder.

“Thanks for the lift,” she said, and opened the door just as he made a move to open his own door, presumably so he could play the gentleman and help her out.

“I'll be in touch,” he called to her as she made her way up the walk.

“No need,” she called over her shoulder. “I'll hire my own counsel.”

The pickup made a chattering, erratic sound as P.J. drove down the street and away from the house. Nice of him not to roar and wake the neighbors. He really did seem like a nice person. Maybe she'd been too cold to him, turning him down. But one shouldn't hire a lawyer just because he's nice, she reminded herself.

When she opened the door and let herself into the large entry hall, she saw Adelle in the dim light of a lamp in the parlor. She was seated on one of the velvet love seats with a blanket wrapped around her. Her face was stripped of makeup, and she was wearing fuzzy pink slippers.

“You're still awake?” Irene said. It wasn't like her to wait up, not even when her daughter had been in high school. Adelle had been too self-absorbed to be the worried mom.

“I couldn't sleep. I'm just wondering what, exactly, it means to be a ‘person of interest' and what people will make of it. I just know everyone will assume the police think you killed that woman. Otherwise, why would you be of interest to—”

“Don't worry about it,” Irene said, interrupting her. She switched the lamp up two more levels. She should have known. Adelle was still the same old self-centered Adelle. “I'm not a suspect. You won't be disgraced.” She had no idea whether that was true or not, but there was no point in making Adelle worry. She even felt a stab of pity for her. Seeing her now in the bright light without her makeup, Irene thought she looked every day of the seventy years she'd lived. “Everything's going to be all right,” Irene added. “They just wanted to ask some more routine questions.” No point in telling her she could be a suspect herself. But maybe a little warning…“I imagine a lot of other people will be called in for questioning,” she added.

“Other people?” Adelle's voice was unsteady. “What other people?”

“Oh, some of Loraine's acquaintances. People who may have seen her recently. Her husband. I'm certain he's already been contacted, wherever he is in—”

“Acquaintances? I'm an acquaintance, but surely they won't question me. I don't know anything about this. They won't be asking me, will they?” She reached one of her slender hands toward Irene in what struck her as a pleading gesture.

Irene took her hand. It felt small and bony, and she realized how infrequently she'd held her mother's hand, or her mother had held hers. “Don't worry, Adelle. If you're questioned, all you have to do is remain calm and answer truthfully.” How often had she given others that stock advice?

“But if I'm called in for questioning, doesn't that mean they think I—”

“It doesn't mean anything. Nothing for you to worry about.” Irene's patience was beginning to wear. “It just means the police are trying to get to the bottom of this. Now get some sleep.” She turned her toward the stairs.

“How can I possibly sleep when the police think I know something about this dreadful business?” Adelle protested, but she at least allowed Irene to lead her upstairs. At the top of the landing, she stopped suddenly and turned toward Irene. “You said they'd question acquaintances. Do you suppose that means Susana and Harriet?”

“It's possible,” Irene said.

That possibility seemed to comfort Adelle a little. It was as if she wouldn't be quite so disgraced if her friends had to testify, too. She allowed Irene to lead her to her room and help her into bed.

“Good night, Adelle,” Irene said as she closed the door. Once she was alone in the hallway, she breathed a sigh that was half relief and half weariness. Adelle really did need her help, she realized. She was the kind of woman who had always depended on others, and Irene had been perfectly content to leave that duty to any and all of Adelle's various husbands. Now that it was her turn, she could see that it wasn't going to be easy. Adelle must have felt the same way about her at one time. It had been easier simply to leave her care to various babysitters and nannies and boarding schools and finally to Teresa. Now they were stuck with no one but each other.

It took a while for Irene to get to sleep. She kept remembering P. J. Bailey and his offer to help. Remembering how she had repaid it with her own rudeness. She knew that finding a murder victim in her closet could make her a person of interest in a crime, but she couldn't stop wondering just how far the police would take it.

When the alarm sounded the next morning, she could barely drag herself into wakefulness. She'd forgotten how the seven-thousand-foot altitude of Santa Fe could do that to a person. The thin, oxygen-starved atmosphere had a way of leaving one's brain in the doldrums until a little movement, coffee, and a few deep breaths revived it. Adelle was still asleep when she left to open Irene's Closet.

It was still a little early for customers, except for a handful of curious tourists who still hadn't adjusted to the two-hour difference between Santa Fe time and Eastern Daylight Time. That gave her a few minutes to straighten and conceal the disarray left by the police investigation.

She'd sold an Ellen Tracy jacket and a Herve Leger dress as well as a Louis Vuitton handbag she would have liked to have kept for herself when a summer thunderstorm scared all the customers off the street. That's when she saw Chief Andrew Iglesias standing in the doorway, shaking rain off his umbrella.

“Chief Iglesias! What a surprise! I hope this isn't bad news.”

He grinned, and it lit up his face and made it even more handsome. “That's the trouble with being a policeman. People always think I'm bad news.”

“Every job has its drawbacks.”

“I'm not here to arrest you, if that's what you're thinking.”

“And why do you suppose such a thing would enter my mind?”

The chief laughed. “Okay, maybe I deserved that slightly sarcastic remark. That person-of-interest thing…”

“Yeah, that person-of-interest thing.” She knew she sounded acerbic.

“You're no longer a person of interest.”

Irene could have collapsed in relief, but she forced herself to show no emotion.

“At least not in the sense of the Loraine Sellers case,” he added.

She remained silent for a few seconds before she spoke. “Am I to assume you've found another person of interest?”

“I'm not at liberty to say.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Just to check on you.” He looked around. “Your store looks nice.”

Irene ignored his compliment. “Check on me? Is this something like a courtesy call? A small-town thing? You check on everyone in town?”

“I'm afraid I can't get around to all seventy thousand people in the city limits, but I made an exception with you.”

“I don't know whether to be flattered or afraid.”

For the first time the chief looked uncomfortable. “Look, I'm just trying to say I felt bad about having to call you in. I know that was upsetting to you. It would be to most people, and I guess I just wanted to apologize.”

“No need to apologize, Chief Iglesias,” she said. “You were doing your job.”

“Can you call me Andy? Most people do.”

“All right, Andy, and I accept your apology.”

Andy's face lit up with his brilliant smile again. “In that case, I hope you'll allow me to buy you lunch.”

“Another act of contrition? Really, that's not necessary.”

“It's not an act of contrition,” Andy said. “I just want to have lunch with you.”

She felt a rush of pleasure, but she hesitated before she answered. “I would love to, but I have a store to run.”

He glanced out through the large front window. “Look, it's raining. No one's on the streets. You can close up long enough to eat, can't you? Don't you have one of those little placards that says you're gone to lunch and will be back at one, or two, or whatever?”

She laughed. She did have one of those door signs. It had been in a cupboard in the back and had probably belonged to the previous occupant of the building. She had assumed she would never use it, since she preferred to eat in the back so she could watch the front door for any potential customers who entered—a symptom of wanting to make enough money to pay the rent. So far, she was off to a good start, she had to admit. “Okay, let's go to lunch,” she said. She went to the cash register counter and pulled the sign from a shelf underneath and set the clock face on the front to one o'clock.

It was still raining as they left the building, but Andy pulled her next to him and sheltered the two of them with his umbrella for the short walk to the restaurant next door.

The Governor's Café billed itself as the oldest restaurant in Santa Fe—a dubious claim, in Irene's mind, since it was established in 1905. Maybe it was the oldest continuing restaurant, but The Palace Restaurant and Saloon, to name one, had stood in its location near the Palace of the Governors since the notorious Doña Maria Gertrudes Barceló, mistress of Governor Manuel Armijo, ran it when Santa Fe was still a part of Mexico. It was now an elegant, lavishly decorated upscale restaurant.

The Governor's Café was a diner known for its green-chile meatloaf and green-chile hamburgers, as well as desserts to die for. Irene could smell the spicy chiles as soon as they entered the restaurant. The dining area was crowded—full of the usual lunch crowd, along with shoppers and walkers who had come inside to get out of the rain, as well as diners who might otherwise be eating on the shady patio in the back, just across a row of pine trees from the back door of Irene's Closet.

In spite of the crowd, the wait was relatively short, and they were soon seated in one of the red leatherette booths.

“Not the most elegant place in town, but the food's good,” Andy said, studying the menu.

“I know. I used to eat here with my grandmother when I was a kid.”

“I should have known. After all, you are a Seligman.”

“Indeed I am,” Irene said. Her eyes were on the coconut cream pie brazenly exhibiting itself in a glass counter across from where they sat. The taste was, as she recalled, sweet and creamy. She turned her eyes away from the rich, velvety display of calories and looked at Andy. “You're not an original Santa Fean, are you?”

“No,” he said. “I was born in Mexico. My family immigrated to San Antonio a few months after I was born. I grew up there and moved here about seven years ago.”