Closely Akin to Murder (25 page)

“What was the purpose of your rendezvous?”

“It was not a rendezvous, Sergeant. She, Beatrice Cooper, and I sat in her car and discussed various events that took place more than twenty years ago. There was no hostility. She answered my questions, then went inside the trailer.”

“And after that?”

I opted for a defiant stare. “I'm not answering any more questions until you tell me what's going on. That, or call Lieutenant Peter—”

“Rosen,” he inserted, this time sighing.

“Did you try?”

“He says he'll be in touch tomorrow. Ms. Malloy, all you have to do is—”

“Tomorrow?”
I echoed, outraged. “Peter can't bother to tell you that I'm not on the most wanted list, that I'm trying to help a family member—”

“He said he'd be in touch tomorrow,” Sergeant Prowell repeated, sounding as fatigued as I felt. “How about a compromise? We'll take you to the hotel so you can catch some sleep, but at noon you'll tell us everything you know. We aren't accusing you of a crime, Ms. Malloy. We have a body. We have to determine what's going on.”

“What will you do about Beatrice Cooper and Chico?”

“Trixie's been released. As for the guy, no way. He's our favorite lodger until we verify some ID. He doesn't have anything—no driver's license, Social Security, credit card, anything. We ran his prints by the FBI, but we haven't received a response. Until we do, he stays here and enjoys our hospitality.”

“Trixie's been released?”

“She sold me a house after I got married, the same year she was named Woman of the Year by the Chamber of Commerce. The woman's a saint as far as I'm concerned.”

“Then you, Sergeant Prowell,” I said as I picked up my purse, “are a patsy.”

“What's that mean?”

“My mind is in overdrive at the moment. Let me get a few hours' sleep, then you pick up Trixie and allow me to confront her. She's responsible for four deaths, maybe more.”

“Trixie Cooper?”

“That's right,” I said, heading for the door, “Trixie Cooper, Woman of the Year.”

As soon as I got back to the hotel room, I called Peter's house. The phone rang a dozen times before he finally answered.

“Thanks a lot,” I said. “I could have spent the rest of the night in a cell, you know. I'm sure they're cleaner than the ones in Acapulco, but I have a general aversion to bars.”

“Did Prowell release you?”

“Cells are not equipped with cellular phones. I'm at the hotel.”

“That's good,” he murmured. “Sleep well.”

“Wait a minute! Did you actually tell Sergeant Prowell you'd be in contact with him tomorrow? What if he'd refused to let me go until he heard from you? Would it not bother you in the slightest if I were locked in a six-foot room with—with a drug addict?”

He yawned. “I was confident that you could handle it without my intervention. I was right, wasn't I? I need to get some sleep, Claire. I have to testify in two court cases this morning, and I do better when I'm alert.”

“So do I,” I said, then hung up and did my best to sleep.

At noon a polite young uniformed officer drove me to the police department. I was led to a bench, where I had a view of miscreants in line to be booked at a counter. It reminded me of a fast food restaurant, although the menu was dissimilar (“Do you want handcuffs with that?”). Beatrice was escorted in by another teenaged officer and told to sit beside me. Her eyes were bloodshot and her eyelids were swollen. She was wearing the same clothes she'd worn the day before;
they looked as though she'd slept in them. Neither of us offered a cheery greeting.

Shortly thereafter, Sergeant Prowell and an older man in a light gray suit approached us.

“This is Detective West,” the sergeant said. “He's in charge of the investigation.”

Detective West gazed down at me, his eyebrows arched. “I had a call this morning from a colleague in Farberville. He told me about your propensity for meddling in official investigations. Quite a history, Ms. Malloy. You ought to give up your bookstore and get a private investigator's license. At least you could charge for your services.”

“Thank you for this bit of vocational counseling,” I said, wondering what else Peter had been inspired to share.

“You said you were a reporter,” Beatrice said accusingly.

“I never told
you
that,” I said. “I told that to Manuel Estoban, Chico, and a lawyer named Pedro Benavides. Presumably Manuel told his brother-in-law; he told him everything else. Which of them told you?”

Sergeant Prowell cleared his throat. “Shall we continue this in a more private setting, ladies?”

Detective West took my elbow as we crossed the room, but I did not feel like a bride. In a low voice, he said “Lieutenant Rosen also alluded to your expertise in withholding information whenever you find it expedient. I hope you won't find it expedient today, Ms. Malloy. I've been on the force forty years, the last fifteen in homicide. I tend to become annoyed when witnesses fail to be forthright.”

“That bugs me, too. The underlying problem in this case is that very few so-called witnesses have told me
the truth. I can't remember when I've heard so many phony names.”

Detective West harrumphed as we went down a hallway and into a room with a conference table. Beatrice sat on one side, her head bowed and her hands hanging limply between her legs. Sergeant Prowell was at the end of the table, tinkering with a tape recorder.

“Did you forget to invite Chico?” I asked the detective.

“Is there anybody else we've overlooked?”

“I don't think we have time for extraditions.” I sat across from Beatrice and tried to stir up some pity for her. She'd just lost her partner and best friend, and she had to know she was indirectly responsible. Eventually she would lose the development, just as she'd lost her daughter and her husband more than thirty years ago.

“Now then, Ms. Malloy,” said Detective West as he settled himself near the recorder and gestured at Sergeant Prowell to activate it, “this is an official interview. You're not under oath, but please bear in mind that it's a felony to hinder an investigation or conceal critical evidence. Neither you nor Ms. Cooper has been charged with a crime, so there's no reason for me to Mirandize you. You're welcome to have an attorney present if you'd prefer it.”

I gave Beatrice a moment to respond, then shook my head. “I have nothing to hide,” I said, then stopped to consider whether or not I wanted to allude to my unauthorized entry into the convent. The Reverend Mother hadn't filed charges, but there was no need to tempt her. “Lead us not into temptation,” the Bible admonishes.

“Ms. Malloy?” said Detective West.

“Sorry, I was organizing my thoughts.” I glanced up
as Chico was brought into the room. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit and sandals, and appeared somewhat cleaner and tidier than when I had last seen him.

“You promised to take me to the freight yard,” he said to me, his mustache twitching in disapproval. “I could have been in Salt Lake City by now.”

The guard pushed him into a chair and told him to be quiet. Detective West repeated the suggestion, then looked back at me with a faintly carnivorous glint in his eyes.

I folded my hands and placed them in front of me. “Thirty years ago a famous movie director named Oliver Pickett decided to scout for locations around Acapulco. He took his secretary, a male assistant, and his daughter. Invited to come along were an ambitious scriptwriter, his wife, and their daughter.”

“Once upon a time, that is,” Chico inserted, then bit his lip as the guard jabbed him.

“Ms. Malloy,” said Detective West, “what can this possibly have to do with the body found last night in front of a cemetery?”

“It's the latest addition to an extensive list,” I said. “I haven't stopped to make a careful tally, but the total's at least seven.”

“I thought you said four?” said Sergeant West.

“I was tired.” I gave them a synopsis of what had taken place in Acapulco between the moment the girls had met and the ill-fated New Year's Eve party in the bungalow, concluding with, “The girls confessed and ended up in prison.”

“Poor Frannie,” Beatrice said in a husky voice.

“Indeed,” I said. “All she wanted was for her father to love her. You and Oliver's secretary did everything possible to prevent that, didn't you? Furtive phone
calls, lies, manipulation . . . and it was working.” I looked at Detective West and Sergeant Prowell. “The secretary was using the name Debbie D'Avril back then. After she was charged with possession of cocaine and skipped bail, she decided to call herself Maisie.”

“You have proof?” asked Detective West.

“She admitted it to me last night. You can confirm it by sending her fingerprints to Los Angeles.”

“It's true,” volunteered Beatrice. “Her nickname as a child was Maisie. She made up the last name, Wilk. We got her a forged birth certificate, and before long she had a new identity.”

“How did you get the birth certificate?” I asked curiously. I was content with my identity, but someday Caron might do something so blatantly egregious that I might be forced to spend my waning years in the underground. It would be nice to be able to obtain a library card.

“From Mexico,” she said.

“You can get any document you want there,” Chico said, fluttering his hands. “Of course it'll cost you—”

The guard batted him on the head. “Keep your mouth shut, slime.”

“Did you get it from Jorge Farias?” I asked Beatrice.

“No” she said, “from Pedro Benavides. One of his clients was a counterfeiter. The client resumed business after he was released from prison.”

“Now who are we talking about?” demanded Detective West.

“A lawyer in Acapulco,” I said obligingly. “He was a lowly public defender when he represented Ronnie Landonwood. I wondered where he'd found the money to go into private practice.” I wished I'd brought my notes so I could proceed in an orderly fashion. Never
before had I been involved with so many bodies; there were enough to merit an exclusive section in the Green Acres Cemetery. “To continue, what I related to you is what the police accepted. Since Ronnie and Fran confessed, there was no reason to question possible witnesses.”

Sergeant Prowell snorted. “What witnesses?”

I pointed at Chico. “As loathe as I am to rely on anything he's told me, I've come to believe that a man named Ernesto Santiago, who was the owner of Las Floritas, and a Mexican girl staying in another bungalow both saw someone slip out of Pickett's bungalow approximately fifteen minutes after things quieted down. Santiago suffered a mysterious accident that resulted in a broken kneecap; after that, he wouldn't have told the police his mother's maiden name. The girl, however, was willing to talk, and Ronnie's parents were taking her to the American Embassy in Mexico City when they were killed . . . in a mysterious accident.”

“That makes four,” said Sergeant Prowell, holding up the appropriate number of fingers, “but I fail to see the relevance to Maisie Wilk's murder—or why you think Trixie Cooper has any responsibility. She wasn't there, Ms. Malloy.”

“Yes, she was.”

“The hell I was!” snapped Beatrice.

I shook my head. “Several people mentioned that you arrived almost immediately to take care of Fran. There are lots of flights to Acapulco these days, but I doubt there were all that many before the tourist industry blossomed. It couldn't have been that easy to catch a flight within hours of being informed of the situation, especially during the holiday season. Furthermore, you've admitted that you and Maisie were in constant
communication. She told you about the party Fran had planned. You went to Acapulco, explicitly to be at the bungalow to protect Fran when Oliver Pickett walked in. You wanted to make sure he saw what a rotten father he was, didn't you? You wanted to make sure the already rocky relationship was extinguished once and for all. Did you make reservations so you could take Fran home the next day?”

Beatrice slumped back and looked at me with a vacant expression. Chico opened his mouth, then closed it when Detective West growled at him. Sergeant Prowell's hand was frozen above the recorder, his eyes rounded in anticipation.

No one seemed inclined to respond, so I opted to get on with it. “You arrived too late, didn't you?” I said to Beatrice. “The scheme you and Maisie concocted worked all too well. Seconds after Oliver sent the guests scrambling out of the bungalow, he turned on Fran. He must have told her that she was a slut, that she wouldn't be welcome to visit him in the future, that she was no longer his child. She couldn't take it, could she?”

“He caught her in bed with a boy,” Beatrice said woodenly. “He wouldn't let her get dressed, but instead dragged her into the living room and started slapping her. She was high on alcohol and drugs, confused and frightened. How was she supposed to react?”

“She killed him, didn't she?” I said.

“She was defending herself.” Beatrice covered her face with her hands and began to sob.

“Let's take a break,” said Detective West. He told Sergeant Prowell to turn off the recorder and fetch coffee from the cafeteria.

“You're pretty good,” Chico said to me.

“You're a pathological liar.”

“I wasn't
always
one,” he said, offended. “Living in the gutter teaches you some survival skills that are essential, but perhaps not commendable.”

Beatrice's muffled sobs were making me uncomfortable. I told Detective West that I was going to the ladies room, then left the conference room and wandered down the hall, smiling politely at various officers and civilians. I finally found my desired destination. There was a small lounge area where I supposed distaff officers could powder their noses before going out on the streets to uphold law and order.