Dolled Up to Die (26 page)

“Got busy,” he said. “You and Kim BFFs now?”

Best Friends Forever. Cate was surprised Rolf knew the term. She jumped the conversation in a different direction. “A friend is getting married at Lodge Hill Friday night. She
was concerned the place might be closing down, but Kim is planning to keep it going.” Which wasn’t an answer to anything he’d asked, and didn’t explain why she was here, but she hoped the small avalanche of irrelevant information would muddle his attention.

“I’ve been wondering about the vineyard and whether I ought to start job hunting.”

“I don’t know about that. Did you know Travis was here in town before Kim called you about his bike?”

“This is Travis’s bike?” Rolf turned and gave the motorcycle a reappraisal. The blonde looked ready to storm across the parking lot and grab him by the ear, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Kim didn’t mention that. She just said a friend’s bike was here, and asked if I could take it out to the vineyard and store it for a while.”

Me and my big mouth.

“So, isn’t that interesting,” Rolf mused, his gaze still on the bike. The blonde crossed her arms and started tapping a toe. “Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Ol’ Travis shows up, and pretty soon both Kim’s husband and mother are dead. I guess I’m not surprised Kim decided she needed to hire a private investigator.”

“It’s not Kim I’m working for.” Too late Cate thought she should have phrased that differently, because her words made it all too obvious she was working for someone else, but Rolf just laughed.

“For a while there, when you dropped the Belmont Investigations card that day I gave you the tour of the vineyard, I wondered if you were investigating me.”

“Guilty conscience?” Cate smiled to suggest it wasn’t a serious question.

“I’ll bet you know all about my little brush with the law at the vineyard where I worked before, don’t you? Six months
incarceration, two years probation. Enough to scare a good ol’ farm boy like me straight for life.”

He didn’t sound worried about what she might know, and Cate didn’t let on whether or not she knew anything about his marijuana growing. “So, you want to tell me all the details about that?” she asked as if it were a playful challenge.

“Sure. Over drinks and dinner? Anytime,” he shot back. He grinned, and she couldn’t tell if he actually thought she might accept the invitation or if he was just making flirty small talk. “But now I’m wondering, where is Travis, that he’s not around to take care of his own bike?”

Cate hesitated, but she didn’t see any reason not to tell him what had happened. “Travis had a little brush with the law of his own. They arrested him here at the motel a couple days ago.”

“Hey, couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy, could it? What for?”

“I think it was a burglary charge up in Tigard.”

“Is Kim all shook up about it? Or is she thinking Travis maybe did something a lot worse than burglary right here in Eugene?” He gave her a meaningful lift of eyebrows. He, too, had quickly jumped to a suspicion of murder.

“I’m just a private investigator, not a mind reader.”

“Too bad. Mind reading could be really helpful for a private investigator, couldn’t it? Maybe that’s what Kim’s mother should have been. She liked digging around in people’s minds and lives.”

“I only met her once, so I didn’t really know her.”

He slapped the window frame as if putting a punctuation mark on the conversation. “Well, you tell Kim that if there’s anything else I can do to help, just let me know. She’s had a rough time. You might tell her Rolf says to watch out for ol’ Travis too. He came down here for a reason, and I doubt it
was because the lattes are better here. Travis is always looking out for Travis.”

Cate wouldn’t argue with that. “I’ll tell her.”

“I’ll be happy to help you out too, you know. Any way I can. Any time.” His grin gave the offer a sly double meaning made even plainer when he winked and added, “And I don’t do cheap motels. First class, all the way.”

Cate wanted to be angry with him. First he suggested she was meeting someone here at a motel room. Now he was offering . . . something. With a girlfriend standing only fifty feet away. He was an egotistical jerk. But maybe he couldn’t help it. Once a lady-killer, always a lady-killer. It came out of him as naturally as hot air escaping a balloon.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You know, there is something.” His tone unexpectedly went serious. “If you are investigating Travis in connection with the deaths . . .” He lifted a questioning eyebrow.

Cate didn’t acknowledge any connection with an investigation of Travis, but curiosity made her say cautiously, “And if I were?”

“You might want to make a run up to Tigard and ask some questions.”

“Ask questions of whom?”

“Go to a bike shop called Ric’s Rough Riders. Travis and his friends always hung out there. Let ’em know you’re not expecting anything for free, that you’re willing to pay for information. Travis likes to brag about his exploits, and his friends are the kind who’ll sell each other out for a dollar-ninety-eight. You might pick up some interesting information.”

“I doubt Travis was going around bragging even to his friends about murder.”

“But he might have said something about how rich his ex-wife was now. About how he figured on getting her back,
and he wasn’t going to let her crazy mother or her overage husband stand in his way.” He nodded meaningfully. “You don’t know just what you might find out.”

There was also, Cate remembered, that friend of Travis’s named Jesse whom Travis said had connected him with a burglary he hadn’t been involved in. Jesse might have some interesting information, if Cate could get it out of him.

“You heard something about Travis up in Tigard?” she asked.

“Me? Nah.” Rolf slapped the frame again and backed away from the window. “I haven’t been in Tigard for a while now. I’m just a grape grower, minding my own business, workin’ hard, staying on the right side of the law.”

Cate resisted a glance toward the blonde. Workin’ hard. Yeah, right. “Okay. Well, thanks.”

He swept the few moments of seriousness away with a jaunty grin. “Don’t forget my offer.”

Cate pulled out of the motel parking lot. She drove several blocks, parked in the parking lot of a boarded-up restaurant, and waited for fifteen minutes before cautiously returning. Both bike and Camaro were gone. She went into the office and handed the older man at the counter her Belmont Investigations card. He stared at it as if he thought it might catch fire any moment.

“We run a family business here,” he stated. “Nothing that needs investigating.”

Cate wasn’t sure that was true, but she gave him her most winning smile. “It’s not you or the motel we’re interested in. It’s a guest who stayed here for a while. Travis Beauchamp? The man who was recently arrested.”

“His wife sent you for his stuff? She wanted us to store it,
but we’re not in the storage business. People forget something in a room, we hold it three days, then out it goes.” He made a
pfft
sound and twitched a bony thumb toward the door.

Cate was surprised. Weren’t there laws or regulations about what a place like this was required to do with left-behind belongings? Maybe not. Or, if there were, this guy just twitched his thumb at them. She also noted that Kim had identified herself as Travis’s wife, apparently trying to give herself some authority over his belongings. Cate started to say no, she didn’t want Travis’s belongings, but on second thought she cut off the words. Maybe this was an unexpected opportunity.

“Did he have a gun? Or drugs?”

“A gun or drugs?” The man sounded outraged that she’d think anyone in his establishment might possess such items. “If there was anything like that, I’d of been calling the cops the minute we found it. All he left is some clothes, the usual stuff. Jeans and shirts and underwear. Shaving gear, a few papers in an envelope. Some fancy skin lotion and hair gel stuff. Smells like rotten roses. Can you imagine that? Biker guy like him using skin lotion and hair gel.”

Cate would have doubted the guy ever smiled, but the skin lotion and rotten-roses hair gel brought a snicker. He yelled back into the living quarters at someone named Elsie, then motioned Cate to follow him outside. He unlocked a room holding various cleaning and yard supplies and pointed to a couple of boxes on a bottom shelf. The tops of the boxes were folded over, so Cate couldn’t see what was inside.

“How long did Mr. Beauchamp stay here?” Cate asked.

“I dunno. I’d have to look it up.” His surly tone suggested he’d do that about the same time he offered free lodging for the homeless. “Week or ten days maybe.”

Which meant Travis had been here long enough to murder Celeste and search/trash her apartment, but not long enough
to kill Ed. Although he could have been in Eugene much longer at some other motel, of course. So what would he have done with the gun that killed Ed? Toss it, probably. But just maybe he’d stuck it in the saddlebags or trunk of the bike.

Although there was still the possibility Celeste herself had killed Ed before Travis arrived in town, and his murdering her had been unrelated to Ed’s death. There seemed to be more than enough hostility for two murderers here.

“Did he have any visitors while he was here?”

The man drew his skinny frame up indignantly. “We don’t spy on our guests.” But, after a brief pause, he added, “I figured him for having women friends. Good-lookin’ guy, you know? But I never seen any.”

“Did he pay with cash or a credit card?”

The money question apparently reached the motel owner’s limit on information sharing. “You got any business asking all these questions?” he demanded. He eyed the boxes as if he might be about to change his mind about them.

“I’m just trying to help the family,” Cate said. She hastily scooped a box off the shelf. “And I do thank you very much for the help.”

She headed for her car with the box in her arms. “I’ll be right back to get the other box,” she called over her shoulder.

She wanted to look for the envelope right away, but a quick glance showed her that someone, probably the person named Elsie, was watching from a window. She hurriedly got the second box and slammed the trunk lid shut on both boxes. She went only as far as the parking area of the closed restaurant before stopping again to open the trunk.

Travis Beauchamp apparently wore his clothes until he ran out before he did laundry. Cate gingerly held two plastic bags of dirty clothes at arm’s length and examined them from the outside only. His personal gear consisted of throwaway plastic
razors, a spray can of shaving foam, a scruffy-looking toothbrush, a flattened tube of Aquafresh toothpaste, a bottle of mouthwash, and the previously snickered-at skin lotion and hair gel. The motel man had a talent for descriptive scents, however. Rotten roses it was. She fingered through the few items of clean clothing, and finally, right at the bottom of the box was the manila envelope.

Sealed.

She hefted it in her palm. Not heavy or thick. But maybe rich with incriminating secrets? Could she get it open without leaving traces of her snooping?

A moment later she realized she should have just ripped the envelope open instantly. Because now, quicker than a freeze-up on her computer, her conscience had kicked in. Killer though Travis might be, could she rightfully rummage around in his private papers? Regretfully, she dropped the envelope back in the box. As an ex-wife from whom Travis was trying to extort money, maybe Kim was entitled to open it.

What Cate wanted to do right now was rush up to Tigard and start asking questions, but it was time, not conscience, that held her back. Investigating Travis wasn’t a paying proposition for Belmont Investigations, and husband-following was. Which is what she and Uncle Joe were scheduled to do for the next two days. But right after that—no, she couldn’t go then, either, she realized in further frustration. She’d have to wait until after the wedding.

But she did have time, she decided after a glance at her watch, to stop by the Mystic Mirage and see what Kim thought about opening the envelope.

Kim’s red Mustang stood at the curb in front of the Mystic Mirage, and Cate parked behind it. The street wasn’t busy on this blustery Monday morning, and the other parking spaces in the block were empty. A sign reading “closed” slanted
across the inside of the door. Kim must be inside working on the going-out-of-business sale.

Cate headed for the door, but it resisted her push. Locked. She rattled the handle, tapped, and then pounded on the door. No response.

Odd. Even if Kim was working in the back room, surely she could hear Cate’s hammering. Cate felt a shimmer of uneasiness.

She moved over to the window, cupped her hands between her face and the glass, and peered inside. Kim had been rearranging merchandise, and Cate could see where she’d put tags on items with a red line drawn through the original price and a new price below. The Oriental swords had been removed from the back wall.

Maybe she should go around to the alleyway and pound on that back door. The one through which the killer had escaped that other time.