Evidence of Murder (11 page)

But then the sympathetic one revealed his own area of curiosity. “But wasn’t it weird, like, being married to an escort?”

The first one perked up again. “Yeah, was that cool? Did she do all sorts of—stuff?”

“But didn’t it bug you what she was doing with, you know, other guys?” the second one ventured, cautious but persistent. “I would think that would be kind of—”

Say something
, Theresa urged Evan with her mind.
Tell them to shut up
.

The first one ran with the idea. “Well, yeah, I bet it’d be like being with a porn star, every guy looking at you and wondering what she’d do that he can’t get his chick to do.”

Evan let his gaze wander over the crowd; he didn’t respond to the boys’ questions, but neither did he seem bothered by them. In fact, his earlier grin surfaced again at the corners of his mouth.

Well, it bothered Theresa.
“Boys.”

The second one blushed. The mouthy one seemed pleased to have regained her attention, like a little boy who just belched in front of his mother. Evan simply watched her, as if the conversation had nothing to do with him. Shock? Or indifference? Or just happy to get off the subject of his overdue video game?

“I’m sorry about your wife,” she repeated.

“Thanks.”

“I’m afraid the pathologist hasn’t ruled yet. Her case is still open.” She didn’t know why she said that, perhaps just to keep him talking about Jillian. Perhaps to prompt some solemnity in the two brats standing there.

It didn’t work, or maybe having other boys around to posture for made him reckless. Maybe he truly didn’t know how to express his feelings. Maybe anything, but he said, “I can always go back to Georgie and hire another one.”

The boys tittered.

The crowd cheered as Rachael triumphed over another vampire. Evan watched Theresa, as if there were no one else in the building. She wondered if he could see the rage spreading from her brain through the rest of her body, until her fingers tingled and her toes went numb and her stomach clenched into a fist.

“Good luck with the guardianship,” she said.

He blinked, as if perplexed by the change of topic, but that tiny upturn to his lips remained. Maybe he, not much more mature than these boys, enjoyed baiting her just as they did. “What?”

“You’ll have to go to court to get guardianship of Cara. I just wanted to wish you luck. I’ve heard that can be a long process.”

He began to bounce again, just a slight up-and-down lift to his body. “I already have Cara. She’s my daughter.”

“Not legally.”

“I was married to her mother. That makes me her father since she doesn’t have one.” A furrow appeared between his eyes, his mind forced away from the video-game world. The boys shifted, bored by talk of babies and courts.

“No, see, I spoke to one of my cousins at a birthday party last night—she’s a lawyer. Since you weren’t married to Jillian at the time of Cara’s birth, you’re not her legal father. Of course, you’ll almost certainly be granted guardianship, given the absence of any biological father or other applicants.”

He came to rest. “Exactly. Jillian’s parents have never even come to see the kid.”

She nodded, forcing her face into an expression of empathy she didn’t feel. First he spoke of his dead wife with a stunning lack of emotion, now he didn’t even give his stepdaughter a name. “Nevertheless, they’re her legal next of kin. If anything happened to Cara.”

His body went preternaturally still as, she felt sure, the implications of this filtered through the matrix of his brain, assessing the threats and forming a plan, just as Rachael now did in the center of the sphere.

Then he shrugged. “I’ll get my lawyer on it; he loves easy and billable hours. Jillian’s parents never showed the slightest interest in them.”

Them, not us. “That’s too bad. Though they might change their minds if they thought Jillian’s death wasn’t an accident. Or suicide.”

“So,” the tattooed boy asked, “does Polizei Two take place at the same cas—”

Evan brushed past the kid and came closer to Theresa, so close she could feel the heat from his torso. She had taken a step back before she could stop herself, even with a hundred witnesses surrounding them. The posture felt threatening, but his voice sounded merely curious.

“Do you have any proof?”

She blurted out, without thought, “That’s an odd question. Not
what makes you think that
or
what are you talking about
? Do I have any
proof
?”

“Exactly. Proof.”

She said nothing, and that became answer enough.

He straightened, still close, a large fleshy wall that seemed quite adult now. “I thought so. You don’t want to start a pissing contest, Mrs. MacLean. You’ll need an umbrella. I have some”—he looked her up and down, obviously unimpressed by something, her stature, her gender, or her taste in shoes—“natural advantages.”

“So do I,” she told him, though she could not for the life of her have listed a single one at that moment. Rachael emerged from the gyroscope, and Theresa took her arm and guided her out of the building. While shutting the door behind them, she saw Evan install another participant in the sphere, this time choosing the man in the Harley shirt while proclaiming that the sphere could support much more body weight than the typical undernourished teenager. He did not look in their direction.

Rachael didn’t argue at their exit, still in the throes of an adrenaline rush. “I’d like to try that again. You know what that would be great for? Exercise. You could be, like, snowboarding in the Himalayas, or walking on a beach in Hawaii.”

“Uh-huh.” They headed back along the snowy sidewalk. Theresa probed her memory of the past two minutes. What the hell was Evan Kovacic? A cold-blooded killer? Or a somewhat immature young man more adept with computer software than people?

“They could hook up little fans and things that could blow air on you so it feels like you’re moving, and maybe put some scents in there like pine trees or saltwater—”

“Uh-huh.”

Theresa bypassed the first building, continuing on the snowy sidewalk. “Are we leaving?” Rachael asked.

“Yes.”

“Why? We haven’t gone through all the booths yet—”

“We have to go.” They headed for the red Tempo, Theresa still holding her daughter’s coat sleeve. Jerry Graham’s girlfriend had just pulled out of her space and headed for the street. She drove a dark green Camaro with DELTA DYNAMICS printed on the door.

“But why are we leaving now? I thought you wanted me to think about career development. I wanted to ask that guy about an internship. If he’s just starting up here, it will take him a while to fill all the positions. I could co-op—”

She finally released Rachael’s coat long enough to let her get around the car to the passenger door. She didn’t turn to look up at the second floor of the renovated offices, where Cara Perry slept in her crib, Jillian’s princess, now left without a champion. “I’m sorry, honey, but I don’t want you near Evan Kovacic.”

“Why?”

“Because he may have killed his wife.”

Not even a tattered wisp of crime scene tape remained to mark the spot where Jillian Perry’s body had lain. Tree limbs lined with optimistic buds waved gently in the breeze off the lake, and a light dusting of snow made the wooded area innocuous, peaceful. Theresa studied the oak tree, waiting for inspiration. None came. The tree and its clearing had given up everything they had, the body, the few items with it. But nature couldn’t tell her what it had seen that day as the life faded from Jillian Perry. She would have to figure that out on her own.

She turned to go. After a few steps she could see a man on the path, watching her, the sky and lake one solid mass of light gray behind him. With a start she realized it was Drew Fleming.

He said, “Hi. I thought that was you.”

Somehow it didn’t surprise her to find him haunting the site, but it sure as hell startled her. “Good morning, Mr. Fleming.”

“Have you found out any more about Jillian’s death?”

“No.” She emerged from the trees and stepped onto the concrete path. Drew Fleming slouched in the same jersey jacket, not warm enough for the weather, and wiped his nose with one knit-gloved hand. He looked even worse than he had two days before. Pale as the snow around them, with eyes so reddened the insides of the lids resembled raw steak. Here lived the grief so conspicuously absent from Evan Kovacic. Or could it be guilt? She kept a healthy distance between them, and turned as he moved so that she always faced him straight on.

“Are you out here to collect more clues?”

Exactly why
was
she there on a Sunday afternoon, on her own time, a forty-minute ride from her home in Strongsville when she had laundry to do and groceries to shop for, to look at the scene of what might have been a suicide? Because Evan Kovacic had irritated her? Because someone needed to care about Jillian Perry? Because it beat doing laundry? “Nooo…not exactly. What are you doing here?”

“I’ve stood on this spot about ten times already since they found Jillian. I keep coming back, wondering what happened, asking her to tell me what happened. I don’t know why she won’t talk to me. Jillian always told me everything. I know she’s dead,” he added with a sudden, sharp anger. “Believe me, I know that. But my mother used to say that the dead would communicate with you if you really loved them.”

Theresa could not guess how to respond to that, and tried to tell herself that the wind off the lake had caused the prickling at the back of her neck.

“Besides,” he went on, “I live here.”

She gave that time to sink in and it still didn’t make sense. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I live here. At the marina.” He waved his hand down the slope to the north to a largely empty maze of wooden docks. In the summer months they would house a flotilla of sailboats and cruisers. “I have a houseboat. If I had looked out my window, I might have seen her, and that’s what’s killing me. I keep wondering if she had been coming to me and sat down for a rest. They say people get disoriented before they freeze to death.”

Several things occurred to Theresa at once. Drew, the spurned lover, lived a two-minute walk from the crime scene. Also, he seemed to have gotten on board with the suicide theory…though if he wanted to murder someone, why not drag the body out to the edge of the ice and dump it into the lake? Why leave it on his own doorstep?

Unless he needed the body found. Getting hold of the funds would be difficult if Jillian were only missing and not dead. But how could he expect to get custody of Cara? Perhaps Theresa should be concerned about Evan’s safety. More likely, Drew didn’t care about the money. He cared about losing Jillian, with the finality of a marriage vow, to another man.

But if he killed Jillian, how?

While the wheels in her head smoked, she realized Drew had spoken. “What?”

“Would you like to see it? My houseboat?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. Drew Fleming could, of course, be a murderous psychopath. But he also knew a lot about Jillian Perry, and she now had an invitation to question him further. She couldn’t pass it up. She clutched her coat more tightly around herself to shelter her body from the wind rushing in from the lake, and walked with him down the paved path to the boats.

Constant exposure to the elements had worn the marina’s veneer to a look of mild neglect, and a coating of frozen slush did not neaten it up, though the few boats remaining appeared large and expensive. Nylon straps and pulleys kept them above the frozen water. Theresa’s ex-husband had once kept a boat at the Edgewater marina and she had cringed over the price of the rent. It was simply not possible to keep a waterfront location tidy; of course, this was part of the charm.

Drew lived near the end of one of the long wooden docks, and used a warped, loose two-by-four to board his home. Theresa put one foot in the middle of it and didn’t look down. The Edgewater marina used the Mediterranean system of docking; instead of fingers of walkway extended between the vessels, ropes and pulleys connected to freestanding posts kept the boats in place. The only way to get on and off a boat was from the rear. Theresa remembered that detail from her ex-husband’s boat as well. Returning to shore had been a panicky and bruising nightmare, dashing from stern to bow with a hook in hand, trying to get ropes and spring clips where they needed to be before one hit the dock or, worse, another boat. She loved the lake as much as the next Clevelander, but didn’t miss that part of it. Or the boat payments.

She landed on a teak deck lightly dusted with snow; the finish had darkened, but it felt solid enough. The straps swayed a bit with the vibration. The open area at the rear of the ship held a wooden folding chair and a plastic recycling bin. Anything else would have frozen or blown away.

Drew unlocked the door and slid it to one side. “Come on in.”

If Jillian Perry had been murdered, Drew had the best motive and the best opportunity. And Theresa stood poised to lock herself in with him, without anyone knowing where she had gone, without a soul near enough to hear her if she screamed.

But Drew had existed for Jillian, and if anyone could tell Theresa more about the woman, he could. In a worst-case scenario, Cara’s future could depend on what Theresa could learn about Jillian Perry.

She pulled out her cell phone. “Hang on a sec. I’m just going to call my daughter and tell her where I am.”

He nodded without apparent interest and slid the door shut. Trying to keep the houseboat heated must be a constant struggle against wind and water.

Theresa did, indeed, call Rachael and told her precisely where her mother had gotten to, including the number of the dock and a description of the houseboat. She could only hope her daughter retained some detail over the siren song of satellite TV.

The warmth flowed over her skin as she stepped into Drew’s living area. The inside felt as cluttered as the outside was bare; a worn but fashionable leather couch took up one wall and faced a small entertainment center and a slender wine rack. The tiny kitchen had a teak dining set wedged into one corner and stainless-steel accessories on the counter—blender, food processor, and coffeemaker, now perking with a low grumble. Instead of dead fish, gasoline, or just that musty-unused-boat odor, the smell of hazelnut filled her sinuses.