Dolled Up to Die (20 page)

“She had a psychology practice where she saw clients at an office in Portland three times a week. She wrote her book, and it turned out to be really successful. Then she closed her office in Portland, moved down here, and opened the Mystic Mirage.”

“Why did she close her office?”

“She said she got tired of driving into Portland all the time.” Kim paused to think for a moment. “Once she said something about some clients being really unpleasant.”

“Did she have a medical degree?”

“No. But she’d earned a doctorate degree from a special metaphysical college in the Midwest.” A little defensively she added, “She had a right to put ‘Doctor’ in front of her name.”

“Why didn’t she open the Mystic Mirage in Tigard?”

“She said Eugene was bigger and more sophisticated. That
there were more intellectual-type people here because of the university. She wanted me to leave Travis and come here with her right then, but Travis warned me no way was he letting me go. He always acted as if he . . . owned me.” She swallowed. “Sometimes I had the feeling he’d rather see me dead than free from him.”

Kim wasn’t dead, but Ed and Celeste were. Now that those obstacles were out of the way, did Travis have in mind reclaiming Kim? Or was she targeted as a third victim on his hit list?

“But he walked out on you anyway, even after he said he’d never let you go.”

Kim smiled in a way that added a grim maturity to her face. “Travis never let logic clutter up his thinking.”

Kim twisted the purple thread around her finger, tightening it like a noose until it cut into the skin. In some peculiar way, that reminded Cate of the hand tightening around her throat. She swallowed.

“Sometimes I wondered if Mom gave him money to leave me,” Kim added.

“Would she do that?”

“She might have figured paying him off was the best way to get rid of him. And she had money from her book.”

“So why would he have gotten in touch with her now?”

“I don’t know that he did get in touch with her,” Kim said, with another hint of defensiveness. “I mean, I thought it was him on the phone that time. But my feelings about people . . .” She shrugged and made a
phfft
sound about the accuracy of her own feelings. “Mom had real insights into people. Like how right she was about Travis, and how she could see into people’s past lives too.”

Kim apparently didn’t doubt that there were past lives, or that her mother had the ability to delve into them.

“Even if he contacted your mother, why would he kill her?”

“Maybe he blamed her for breaking up our marriage. Maybe the money ran out, and she wouldn’t give him any more. Maybe he turned even badder while he was gone.”

Travis was a gun-packing kind of guy. Ed had been killed with a gun. A gun that, so far as Cate knew, had never been found. Which brought up a possibility, of course.

“Could Travis have killed your husband too?”

Kim made a choking sound as if her breath had caught in her throat. Cate realized this was a shocking but not totally new thought to Kim when she said, “Maybe.”

“Why?” Although it wasn’t a question Cate really needed to ask. The ex-husband viewed Kim as a possession. He had a violent temper. If he figured Ed Kieferson had taken something that belonged to him, he might well have gone into murder mode. “Have you told the police about him?”

“I didn’t when Ed was killed. It never even occurred to me then. But, since I thought he called Mom that time, I did tell them about him after . . . what happened to her.”

“What did the authorities say?”

She yanked the purple thread, ripping the whole seam on the pillow. “Oh, you know the police. They don’t tell you anything. They just ask questions.”

“Do you have any other thoughts about who might have killed your husband? Business enemies, maybe?”

“I’ve wondered, since I found out about all the money problems Ed was having, if maybe he’d borrowed money from, I don’t know, who is it that lends money and then kills you if you don’t pay it back? The Mafia?”

Cate had never heard of a Eugene branch of the Mafia, but, who knew? That opened up a whole new arsenal of faceless suspects.

“Is it possible Ed was involved with drugs in some way?”

Cate expected instant denial, but what she got was Kim
shifting uncomfortably on the sofa. “After he was killed, and I found out about all the money difficulties, I’ve wondered about . . . some things.”

“Such as?”

“If maybe they were growing something other than grapes out there at the vineyard. Maybe using those old buildings, barns or sheds or whatever they are. Pot growers sometimes grow stuff indoors, you know, using lights. Travis knew some people who grew marijuana in their basement that way.”

“Ed wouldn’t have been out there planting and watering pot plants himself. He’d have had to have someone in on it. Who?”

Kim gave a minuscule shrug, and Cate offered a name herself. “Rolf?”

“Rolf got in trouble on some pot-growing thing before Ed hired him.”

“Rolf told you this? Or Ed?”

“I knew Rolf a long time ago, back when I was a kid. So we’ve talked a few times.” She jumped up. “But if you’re thinking there was something going on between Rolf and me, you’re wrong! And I don’t really think Ed was into any drug thing either.” She slumped back to the sofa, her moment of fiery denial fizzling. “I mean, if he were, he wouldn’t have had all those money troubles, would he?”

Probably true. Or maybe there were some guys who could lose money even growing or dealing drugs.

“Rolf also told me he was on probation, and I don’t think he’d do anything to risk getting sent back. He said when he was locked up he felt as if he couldn’t even breathe. As if the jail cell didn’t have enough air to go around. But Ed was really mad at him about something. I think he was about to fire Rolf.”

“But you don’t know what the problem was?”

“They were pretty close when Ed first hired Rolf. Ed spent a lot of time out at the vineyard. He said they were planning to redo the whole vineyard and plant a different kind of grape. So I guess Ed just didn’t like how Rolf was running the vineyard.”

Rolf wasn’t eliminated from Cate’s suspicions, but he’d dropped down on her list. And she had one more question, maybe the most important question of all. “What does Travis look like?”

“Oh, tall. About six-two. Dark brown hair, brown eyes. He used to weigh about 210, but I don’t know what he might be now.”

The words could describe a lot of men, but one vision in particular jumped into Cate’s mind.

A big, dark-haired, biker guy stalking into the Mystic Mirage as Cate barreled out.

“Does he have tattoos?”

“Oh yeah.” Kim unexpectedly shuddered. “A big one of a dragon on his back that he got before we were married. And vines twined around hearts and skulls on his arms. I hated them all.”

Another vision. A tattooed arm reaching for Cate’s throat. Were there hearts and skulls on it? There was
something
in those swirls she’d seen. If she could just see the arm clearly . . . “Do Travis and Rolf Wildrider look a lot alike?”

“Travis and Rolf?” Kim sounded surprised at the connection. She reflectively glanced up at the blue sky above the shades. “I guess, in a way they do. They’re both big and dark-haired. But Rolf is, you know, kind of lean and lanky. Travis went in for a lot of body-building stuff, so he’s really muscular. He’s good-looking in a boyish kind of way, but Rolf has those smoldery good looks. They aren’t guys you’d mistake for each other.”

Except Cate was almost certain she had.

 17 

“Would you excuse me a minute?” Kim said. “I need to put on something warmer. I’m so cold.”

Cate had never removed her jacket and now she realized why. It
was
cold in here. Was Kim more aware of expenses these days? Or simply forgetting about such mundane matters as turning up the thermostat? She disappeared around a solid wall at the far end of the room and returned wearing an oversized plaid jacket that looked as if it also may have been Ed’s.

“Can you think of anyone other than Travis whom your mother might have planned to discuss with me?” Cate asked after Kim sat down and tucked her feet under her.

“Maybe Ed’s ex-wife. Mom said she was greedy enough to do almost anything. She thought all along that the woman had killed Ed.” Small, thoughtful pause as if Kim had accepted that assessment earlier but was reconsidering it now that Travis had resurfaced.

“I’ve met the former wife,” Cate said carefully. “From what I saw, the breakup with Ed really devastated her for a while. She’s a nice person, actually. Very creative at making those life-sized dolls, like the one she made of you. She certainly didn’t strike me as dangerous.”

Kim wiggled her toe through the hole in the sock. “Mom could put her own spin on things,” she admitted. “But she always had my best interests at heart,” she added almost fiercely.

“Have arrangements been made for her services yet?”

“No. I just haven’t been able to decide what to do. Her body will go to a funeral home after the autopsy.” She broke off as if the word conjured images she couldn’t cope with. “Maybe it’s already there. I don’t know whether she should be buried here, or up in Portland where her parents are, or what.”

Kim lifted the pillow and stared at it, as if she might find answers in the purple velvet. “I don’t know why she didn’t leave instructions.” For the first time she sounded on the verge of resentment toward her mother.

“I’m sure you’ll make the right decisions.”

Kim gave a small, bleak smile. “If I do, it’ll be the first time.”

It was such a downbeat attitude, but no doubt understandable, given Kim’s recent losses of both her husband and the mother on whom she’d been so dependent. Yet Cate suspected neither of them had ever done anything to help her develop the self-esteem or self-confidence she so badly needed now that she was alone. Cate wasn’t sure she wanted to do this, wasn’t sure she
should
do this, but she took a deep breath and said, “If there’s anything I can do to help—”

Kim suddenly sat up straighter on the sofa. “You know, there is something we could do! Mom didn’t keep a real day planner, but she wrote appointments and notes on a calendar in her apartment. Maybe she wrote something about an appointment with you and what it was about.”

“Have the police been in her apartment?”

“Not that I know of. They’re taking the Mystic Mirage apart like they’re looking for lost atoms, but they’ve never
said anything about the apartment. If you’d like, we could go over and look at her calendar. I haven’t been there since Mom’s . . . passing.” She stumbled over the euphemism, as if she couldn’t say “death” or “murder.”

“Good idea,” Cate said. “Afterward, we can stop and get something to eat. You haven’t been eating, have you?”

Kim looked around vaguely, as if eating were an unfamiliar concept. “I guess not.”

“We can go in my car. I’ll drive.”

Cate thought Kim might want to change clothes or comb her hair, but she just pulled the plaid jacket tighter around her and headed for the door.

“Maybe you should put on some shoes.”

Kim looked down at her feet. She seemed more surprised than embarrassed to see the toe-hole socks. She disappeared again, and this time came back wearing dressy slides that, along with the pink sweatpants and plaid jacket, made a rather odd fashion statement. The fashion police were apparently not on her list of worries now, and Cate liked her rather more for that.

Outside, at the car, Kim stopped suddenly. “Do I need to, um, hire you or something to do this?”

That brought Cate up short too. She already had a client, Jo-Jo. She couldn’t take on another client whose interests might conflict with Jo-Jo’s. But this case might be connected with Eddie the Ex’s murder, which definitely involved Jo-Jo.

“That won’t be necessary.”

The apartment building where Celeste had lived wasn’t disreputable or ratty looking, but neither was it the upscale complex Cate had expected. It was simply a single oblong building, gray-green in color, each unit with a tiny balcony. The landscaping was minimal, and the asphalt parking lot had odd bulges and bumps. Apparently Celeste’s book was no
longer bringing in big money, nor was the Mystic Mirage any producer of wealth. Had Celeste been looking for something better for her daughter when she targeted Ed Kieferson and his Ice Cube house? Maybe thinking some financial benefit would flow through to her?

Kim pointed to a corner unit on the second floor. “That’s Mom’s.”

Celeste’s apartment stood out from the others with colorful pots of flowers and a climbing vine that formed a graceful green frame around the balcony. A copper plaque of a sun with fat rays, like those in the window of the Mystic Mirage, hung in the center.

There was an elevator, but they took the stairs. No crime-scene tape barred the door at 17B. Kim stuck a key in the lock and opened the door.

Inside . . .

What Octavia had done to the brown-haired wig, someone had done to the apartment. Kim’s mouth dropped open as she stared at the chaos, but nothing came out. Cate stepped around her.

Ripped sofa cushions, overturned floor lamp. A dining room chair flung against a wall, TV screen broken, a vase smashed, wilted chrysanthemums on the carpet. Beyond, in the kitchen, broken dishes and contents of fallen drawers strewed the floor, and the microwave door hung askew. In Celeste’s office, papers scattered the desk and floor, and pieces of a broken computer monitor glittered in the carpet. The medicine cabinet in the bathroom had been swept bare, pills scattered everywhere. In the bedroom, the mattress had been pulled from the bed and overturned, clothes yanked from the closet, drawers dumped.

Kim turned slowly in the ravaged bedroom, like a limp doll caught in forces beyond her control.

Cate had heard that the police weren’t into tidying things
up after they searched a place, but this surely went far beyond police untidiness; this was destruction.

“We need to call the police,” Cate said.

Kim didn’t say anything. Cate had the impression her mind had simply stalled, as her own had there at the scene of Celeste’s murder.

“I wonder how he got in?” Cate said. “The door was locked.”

Kim blinked as if Cate’s statement made no sense. “He, who?”

“Travis?” Cate suggested.

The name jerked Kim out of that lost space and lifted her into anger. “Travis,” she repeated. “He could get in. He knew about picking locks! Some friend showed him. Just for fun, they said.”

Had Travis been having “fun” here?

“But why would he do something like this?” Kim wilted back into mental bewilderment and made that slow rotation with her arms outstretched again. “Why would he break in here just to destroy everything?”

Cate made a surveying turn of her own. “I think he was looking for something.” With destruction as a bonus. Or fury at not finding what he was looking for?

“Looking for what?” Kim asked.

Cate felt a twinge of impatience. Kim was the one who knew the guy, the one who’d been married to him. If anyone would know what Travis may have been looking for, it should be her.

“Who was the friend in Tigard you called to ask about Travis, the one who said he was looking for you?” Cate asked.

“Melissa Bair. She owns a house now, but she lived in an apartment next to us, and we got to be pretty good friends.”

“I don’t suppose you can tell if anything’s missing here?” Cate asked.

A useless question given the state of the apartment.

“I don’t know what Travis, or anyone else, could steal here. Mom never kept much cash around. She dropped the Mystic Mirage’s receipts off at the bank almost every day. She had some diamond earrings and lots of bracelets, but they were mostly those colorful bangle kind.”

“A burglar wouldn’t necessarily know that was all she had here,” Cate pointed out. Celeste was the kind of woman who looked as if she owned expensive jewelry, even if she didn’t.

“The only piece of jewelry she really cared about was that big crystal on a silver chain. I don’t know that it was worth a lot, but she said it had ‘special properties.’ But it wouldn’t be here, because she always wore it. The . . .” Kim swallowed convulsively. “The police gave it back to me.”

A big crystal on a silver chain. Cate hadn’t remembered seeing it that night at the Mystic Mirage. Her mind, too frozen by the shock of the murder and being attacked herself, had simply turned off details. But this detail had apparently been buried in her subconscious, because now it leaped into her conscious mind like a photo in 3-D. Celeste’s slender throat. A delicate silver chain. A big crystal glittering there on Celeste’s blood-stained ivory tunic. Right above the sword in her chest.

“Do you know where she kept her jewelry?”

“In a jewelry box here in the bedroom, I think.”

Kim didn’t help look for the box. She simply dropped to the edge of the bed and watched Cate probe around in the chaos. Cate came up with an empty, smashed box covered in blue velvet, and Kim nodded to identify it as the jewelry box. Poking further in the jumble on the floor, Cate found a few bracelet bangles, nothing that looked valuable. The burglar had apparently gotten the diamond earrings.

Which meant—what? Just a run-of-the-mill burglar
enjoying a destructive fling in the process, especially if the loot hadn’t lived up to his expectations?

Cate’s PI intuition told her no, and this time she felt confident in the instinct. This was someone with a grudge against Celeste, someone who grabbed the diamond earrings while he was looking for something else. Travis.

Cate called 911. The woman first said, because it wasn’t an emergency situation, that it might be a while before an officer could respond. When Cate pointed out that the vandalized apartment belonged to a recent murder victim, the woman said they’d get someone there as soon as possible.

Cate wandered back to the combination living/dining room while they waited. Sliding glass doors opened out onto the little balcony, and Cate could see now that neither the flowers nor climbing vine were real. Kim followed and plopped down on the sofa.

“When did you last talk to your mother?” Cate asked.

“I haven’t been in the store since Ed was killed. So . . . I don’t know. I guess that morning, probably. She called and wanted to know if I’d heard anything from the attorney about Ed’s insurance.”

“Had you?”

Kim shook her head. “She said she’d check on it with him for me. We found out after Ed was killed that his ex-wife gets the money from a big insurance policy, but we were hoping Ed had gotten another policy to protect me. But now that I’m learning about all his money problems, I doubt if he did that. I don’t know how I’m going to manage without Mom.”

No mention of Kim having problems getting along without Ed, Cate noted.

“I can’t do it!” Kim hadn’t cried before, but tears tumbled down her cheeks now. She brushed at them with a cuff of the plaid jacket in a harsh gesture that somehow seemed more
angry and frustrated than grief-stricken. “I can’t get along without Mom.”

Cate wanted to stomp over to the sofa and shake Kim for such a negative attitude, but again she reminded herself of all Kim had lost. She started shoving kitchen drawers back into cabinets and putting utensils in them.

“Maybe you shouldn’t do that,” Kim said. “Maybe the police need to see everything the way we found it.”

Good point. Cate moved just enough debris so she could sit on the other end of the sofa. Then she jumped up, realizing they hadn’t even done what they’d come here for.

“Where’s the calendar you said your mother kept her appointments and notes on?”

“In her office.”

Surprisingly, the calendar still hung on the wall. The current month had a picture of a quaint-looking seaside village dozing under a Mediterranean sun. Cate flicked the pages. Various of the squares for the days of both past and future months indeed listed appointments and notes. None of them stood out as suspicious. Bridge club. Hair appointment. A book club reading. A couple of women’s names and phone numbers that Kim thought had been appointments for past-lives regressions. Cate jotted the names and numbers in her notebook. The square for the day Celeste had met her death was empty.