Dolled Up to Die (15 page)

“Bare hands? Gloves?”

“I—” She squeezed her eyes shut. She should know the answer. But she didn’t. She finally shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“How about a wristwatch?”

“I don’t think so . . . but I’m not sure. Just tattoos.” Tattoos that she couldn’t remember.

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Before he ran out, he must have grabbed the briefcase I dropped, because it’s gone.”

“Could you describe the briefcase for us, please.”

This was pre-murder, and there was no fuzziness in this memory. “Tan leather, fold-over top, with a brass buckle. Hard leather handles.”

“Initials or any other identifying marks?”

“No.”

“What was in it?”

This time she couldn’t get by with a general “PI stuff” answer. Neither could she offer a professional-sounding list of important documents and casework. She listed the actual items, even as a flush of embarrassment rose to ambush the Plum Fatale blush on her face. Notebook and pen. Two Snickers bars. Several of Rebecca’s old
Good Housekeeping
magazines. A bag of kitty snacks. And finally, the item she’d most dreaded naming.

“And a, um, old flannel nightgown.”

Whatever the officer may have thought about the unlikely contents of the briefcase, he simply listed the items in his notebook without comment and briskly continued the questions. “No identification, money, or credit cards?”

“No.” Hastily she rushed on to another subject. “I did see that the guy was wearing heavy black motorcycle boots.”

The connection she’d been too stunned to make before jumped into her head now. A guy with a motorcycle. Big. Muscular. Like the biker guy she’d seen coming into the Mystic Mirage that day she’d so ignominiously rushed out. Like the God’s-gift-to-women manager of the Lodge Hill vineyard. Two guys she’d already melded into one.

Rolf Wildrider.

And he’d seen her. Eye to eye.

 13 

The police detained them at the Mystic Mirage for another hour, then asked them to come to the police station to sign formal statements the following day.

Cate had debated with herself for a considerable time about giving them Rolf Wildrider’s name, her conscience stumbling over a roadblock that could compete with the Great Wall of China. Yes, she was almost certain the hand around her throat had been attached to Rolf’s muscular arm and lean body. But she wasn’t cross-my-heart positive. Maybe Rolf and the killer just shared some general physical characteristics. What would it do to his future if he really was, after mistakes in his past, now trying to be a good-citizen grape grower, and she entangled him in an unfair accusation of murder?

She didn’t even know if he had a tattooed arm. He’d been wearing long-sleeved denim that day she saw him at Lodge Hill, and she had no memory at all of arms on that guy coming into the Mystic Mirage that day.

But neither did she want a killer running around loose, endangering other people because she’d made some unwise judgment about fairness. How fair would it be if he killed someone else?

Including the fact that someone might be her.

Okay, she’d give them Rolf’s name. Just as soon as she knew for certain he had a tattooed arm.

Cate’s car was parked at Mitch’s condo, and they went back there. Mitch didn’t have much to say, and Cate knew he was upset by all this. Upset by murder. Upset that the guy got away. Upset that she was involved.

Even though the SUV was warm, Cate’s teeth gave a skeletal chatter every few seconds. She kept seeing the bronze gleam of that sword and Celeste’s open eyes. The killer’s one eye venomously targeted on her. Rolf’s eye?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Now she’d never know who Celeste was considering investigating. Whoever it was, Celeste had obviously been right about meeting with Cate on a “matter of life and death.”

Inside the condo, Cate slung her leg over a tall stool at the counter between kitchen and dining area, stiff fingers clutching her jacket tight around her. Vaguely she realized she’d lost the belt somewhere. Mitch made instant coffee, apparently figuring she needed caffeine
now
to jolt her out of this daze, and set two cups on the counter.

“You okay?” he asked.

Oh, sure, she was fine. She’d stumbled across a dead body, the killer had tried to choke her, and he’d seen her up close enough to count her freckles. Just another day in the life of your average assistant PI. But she didn’t want to get into that because Mitch would no doubt use it to tell her she should find another line of work.

He also didn’t know she thought the guy behind the curtain was Rolf Wildrider. There’d been no time or privacy to discuss that at the Mystic Mirage.

With some hesitation, Cate told him her suspicions now. “Maybe I should have given them Rolf’s name.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I keep thinking, since you said Rolf was still on probation, that it would be unfair to make trouble for him just because of similarities in size and muscles. And motorcycle. But I still think it was him.”

“Maybe you have a subconscious suspicion about any guy with a motorcycle,” Mitch suggested.

Cate started to indignantly deny that, but maybe it was true. One had tried to kill her not all that long ago in her other murder case. There’d been trouble with a motorcycle gang when she was a kid back in southern Oregon. Tonight’s killer had escaped on a motorcycle. Incidents, she had to admit, that probably tended to warp her viewpoint.

Unexpectedly, after a thoughtful tilt of head, Mitch added, “Actually, I’m thinking about getting a motorcycle myself. It wouldn’t use nearly as much gas as the SUV. Will you ride on it with me?”

“I don’t think I’m a biker-babe type. Do you even know how to ride a motorcycle?”

“I had a little Honda 250 back in college. It was cheap to run around on.”

Cate had no idea what the 250 referred to. Number of parts the bike would break into when crashed? Number of girls it was guaranteed to attract? She waved away the motorcycle discussion.

Mitch went along with turning the conversation away from motorcycles. “I noticed Celeste had only one shoe on. I wonder if that means she lost the other shoe trying to escape from him?” he asked.

This was something else Cate hadn’t noticed. Or maybe she had, but it was trapped back there in her subconscious, like details of the tattoo on the arm.

“I was almost certain Celeste killed Eddie the Ex, but I was wrong, wasn’t I? Because now the killer got her too.” Cate felt a lump in her pocket and realized she’d somehow come away with a wooden bead. She pulled it out and worried her thumb across the glossy surface.

“What would motivate someone to kill both of them?” Mitch asked.

“I don’t know. But doesn’t it seem logical that there’s a connection?” Something clicked in her head. The dolls! “I don’t know about a motive, but Eddie the Ex’s killer shot the dolls at Jo-Jo’s house. Celeste’s killer knocked the doll in the store to the floor. Doesn’t doll hostility suggest a connection?”

“Eddie may have shot the dolls at Jo-Jo’s himself,” Mitch pointed out. “And at the Mystic Mirage, the killer may have accidentally bumped into the doll when he went for a sword on the wall. He didn’t take time to chop off its head or smash it.”

“I think the doll thing shows they’re connected,” Cate repeated.

“Are you going to suggest this connection to the police when we go in tomorrow?” Mitch asked.

“Yes, I believe I will.”

Mitch slid onto a stool beside her at the counter. “Maybe Celeste did kill Kieferson. Maybe someone objected and decided she deserved the same fate.
Two
killers.”

Great. Now they were multiplying like fleas.

“There are other possibilities,” Mitch added. “Maybe Celeste’s killer was someone just passing by. He decides to go in and grab the goodies, and he winds up killing Celeste just because she’s there. Wouldn’t a guy planning murder have brought his own weapon?”

“His bike was around back. It looks to me as if he had something planned,” Cate pointed out.

Mitch nodded. He shifted on the stool and toyed with his
coffee cup. “Look, this is off the subject, and maybe none of my business. But kitty nibbles and a nightgown in your PI briefcase . . . I can’t help it. I’m curious.”

That had to come up, didn’t it?

“It wasn’t really a PI briefcase,” Cate admitted. “It was left over from a job I had when I actually did have business papers to carry around. I stuck a lot of stuff in it tonight, just anything I could grab, so Celeste would see a bulging briefcase and think I was a busy private investigator with lots of important cases.” She rubbed the large bead hard enough to make her thumb sting. “Okay, I know. Dumb. Foolish pride. Say what you’re thinking. Pride goeth before a fall. Whatever.”

“Did the nightgown have a name tag in it?”

“Of course not!”

“No problem, then.”

“No? I have a problem with it. I feel all . . . creepy and crawly knowing this guy has my
nightgown
.” Even if it was an old one she hadn’t worn in a long time and had been intending to throw away. “What I should have done was load the briefcase with bricks. Then maybe I could have taken him out right there.”

Mitch made an odd little choking noise. Cate looked at him suspiciously. He clamped his mouth shut, but another guffaw burst through.

“I know it’s no time to be laughing,” he admitted. “This is serious. But, can you picture this guy when he opens the briefcase? He’s thinking bundles of cash or antique jewelry. And what does he find? Kitty nibbles and a flannel nightgown.”

Cate didn’t want to, but she started laughing too. Until finally she realized she was laughing because otherwise she might start sobbing with tension and shock and fear. Maybe a few tears even leaked out, because Mitch put an arm around her slumped shoulders and brushed a finger across her cheek.

“Sorry. Misplaced sense of humor.”

Cate blinked back the tears. “I keep thinking how he was looking right at me. Looking at the color of my eyes. The shape of my nose. The number of my freckles.”

“I can’t even see your freckles.”

The unexpected comment jerked Cate upright on the stool. Hey, that was right! She’d slathered on enough foundation and blush in her makeup mania to frost a double-layer cake. And if Mitch couldn’t see her freckles, neither could Rolf Wildrider or whoever was behind that curtain! With different hair, even Uncle Joe and Rebecca had hardly recognized her, and the makeup added another layer of camouflage.

“Whoever was behind the curtain saw me, but he didn’t really
see
me,” Cate said. A weight of dread fell away. She yanked off the wig, not caring that it left her hair twisted into a flattened tomato atop her head.

“What do you mean?”

Cate held the brown wig out at arm’s length. It hung there like some strange creature not yet identified in scientific channels. A hairy new species. She grabbed Mitch’s hand and kissed the back of it, her lips leaving a fiery red brand.

He momentarily looked at her as if she, too, were some strange new creature. Then he nodded. “Oh, I get it. Right. You looked too different tonight for the killer to recognize or identify you.”

“Exactly.”

Now she could find out if Rolf’s arms were tattooed without worrying he’d recognize her. She spun the wig around her finger and sailed it toward the sofa. Bull’s-eye!

“I don’t think I like that gleam in your eye,” Mitch muttered.

Cate went home carrying the wig in a plastic bag. When she opened the front door, Uncle Joe was stretched out in his recliner, leg resting on a pillow, and Rebecca was sitting in her chair, reading a
Good Housekeeping
, with Octavia squeezed in beside her.

Cate didn’t really want to tell Uncle Joe that she was now involved in yet another murder, but she couldn’t avoid it, of course. In fact, Rebecca looked at her and instantly asked, “What happened?”

Cate set the bagged wig on the floor under the end table and dropped onto the sofa.

She was at the part about the killer rushing out the back door of the Mystic Mirage when she noticed Octavia jump out of the rocking chair. Cate was concentrating on telling Joe about that tattoo she couldn’t quite picture and wasn’t really paying any attention to where the cat went.