Family Jewels (10 page)

23

G
ala insisted on picking up Stone the following morning in her new Aston Martin.

“You figured out how to drive it?”

“I read the manual,” she said, “as a last resort.” She pressed the “sport” button and, using the paddles to shift, tore down the mountain and headed northwest, toward Española. A little later they entered a dramatic landscape. “I can understand why O’Keeffe wanted to paint up here,” he said.

“This address you have is a cabin at Ghost Ranch,” Gala said. “I know the place.” They turned off the main highway past signs warning of private property, and after a dusty drive through the surrounding hills, came to a low adobe house—more like a cabin—with a green Range Rover parked outside. “Here you are,” Gala said, setting the brake and turning up the jazz on the satellite radio. “I’ll wait.”

“Give me a few minutes,” he said. “If she’s receiving visitors, I’ll ask her to invite you in.”

“I’m happy here,” she said.

Stone got out of the low-slung car and walked to the door, which was ajar. He rapped on the ancient wood. “Carrie? It’s Stone Barrington. You here?”

A radio played mariachi music somewhere. “Carrie?” He pushed the door and it swung open to reveal a simple but attractive sitting room. Everything was in perfect order, except that a Toyo 5x7 camera lay on its side, still affixed to its wooden tripod. A dining table held half a dozen pieces of photographic equipment. “Carrie?” he called.

The music seemed to be coming from the next room, probably a bedroom. “Carrie?” he called once again. No response. He looked at his watch: 10:35
AM
, a little late for her to still be sleeping. He knocked on the door to the next room and got no response. He opened the door. “Carrie?”

The radio was on a small writing table across the room from the bed. Windows were open, and there was the noise of flies buzzing. Carrie was in the bed, under a spread, her head turned slightly away from him. “Carrie?” He approached her and put a hand on her shoulder. She was unresponsive; she had that inert feeling of a dead person. He put a hand to her throat and felt for a pulse; she was at about room temperature, and there was no pulse. Her eyes were half open, and he closed them.

Stone left the room, then the house. He went to the car and got in, grateful for the air-conditioning in the idling
vehicle. He turned the radio off. “What county are we in?” he asked.

“Rio Arriba,” Gala replied. “I saw a sign on the road.”

He got out his cell phone and dialed 911, wondering if he would be connected to New York’s emergency services. The phone was picked up on the first ring. “Rio Arriba Sheriff’s Office,” a woman said.

“My name is Stone Barrington,” Stone said. “May I speak to the sheriff, please? I want to report a homicide.”

“Did you say a homicide?”

“Yes.”

“Just a minute, I’ll see if I can get the sheriff on the radio.” He heard her calling and getting an answer. “Hang on, I’ll patch you through to Sheriff Martinez.”

“This is Ray Martinez,” a man said.

“Sheriff, my name is Stone Barrington. I’m at Ghost Ranch, at a small adobe house with the name Casa Juanita.”

“I know the place. You say there’s a homicide?”

“Yes. I’m an attorney. I came here to visit a client of mine. Her name is Carrie Fiske. I found her in her bed, unresponsive. I should think she’s been dead since sometime yesterday.”

“I met her yesterday morning when I was on patrol. She was taking pictures. I’m not far away—I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“You’re going to need a crime scene team and a medical examiner, the works.”

“I’ll call that in,” Martinez said. “Over and out.”

Stone ended the call. Gala was staring at him. “Sounds like we’re late,” she said.

Stone nodded. “I’m afraid this is going to take a few hours. Sorry about that.”

“Not to worry. Is it bad in there?”

“No sign of a disturbance, except an overturned camera on a tripod. Everything else is neat as a pin.”

“You said it’s a homicide—that means not natural causes?”

“That’s right.”

“How did she die?”

“I’m going to let the sheriff discover that,” Stone said. “Policemen everywhere don’t like their crime scenes disturbed.”

—

T
he sheriff was there inside ten minutes, as he had promised, and Stone got out of the car to greet him.

“Mr. Barrington?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m Ray Martinez.” The two men shook hands. “On the phone it sounded like you know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m a retired NYPD detective,” he said.

“Tell me what I’ve got here.”

“I came to see Ms. Fiske. The front door was ajar. I got no response, so I went inside. Everything is in good order, except for a camera on a tripod that may have been knocked over. Ms. Fiske is in her bed, a radio was playing.”

“And why do you think it’s a homicide?”

“I came here to tell her that her life could be in danger.”

“Well, I want to hear all about that,” the sheriff said. “First, take me in the way you went and show me what you found.”

Stone took him inside and showed him.

Martinez lifted a corner of the spread and found Carrie Fiske, deceased. Her clothing had been disturbed; she was naked from the waist down, and her clothes were near her feet, under the spread.

“Strangled, looks like,” Martinez said. “Let’s me and you go have a seat. I want to know everything you know.”

They went back into the living room, and Stone began to tell him the history of the past couple of weeks, while Martinez took notes.

24

S
tone and Sheriff Martinez stood on the front porch of the little house and watched Carrie Fiske’s body being loaded into a county ambulance.

“I’ve requested a statewide APB on this guy, Harvey Biggers,” Martinez said. “I’ve also alerted the Santa Fe and Albuquerque police to cover the airports. The way you describe him, he should be easy to spot.”

“I should think so,” Stone said. “What did the ME have to say about the cause of death?”

“Strangulation, like I thought. She also had some broken ribs and some defensive bruises on her forearms. Apparently, he sat on her while he killed her. It wasn’t pretty.”

“It never is, is it?”

“You got that right. Our murders around here generally fall into two big categories—barroom and domestic. I’ve never
had a rich Anglo woman victim, and I’ve been in office nine years.”

“In New York, we got ’em all—rich, poor, and in between.”

“Why’d you retire young?” Martinez asked.

“The official reason was that I flunked the physical after a gunshot wound to the knee,” Stone replied. “But I think you could say my departure was by popular request.”

Martinez emitted a short laugh. “I know what that’s like. I was a street cop in Albuquerque,” he said, “and I never fitted in too well. My captain called me ‘Smartass,’ like it was my name. I had to punch a couple of guys who tried to make it that.”

The ME walked over to where they stood. “I’ll have a report for you tomorrow. The tox screen will take a lot longer, although that wouldn’t seem to bear on the case. What difference does it make if she was drunk, doped, or sober? She was murdered all the same.” He got into his car and drove away.

“You said you came up here to warn her?” Martinez asked.

“I tried to call her yesterday afternoon, as soon as I heard Biggers was in Santa Fe, but we had a bad cell connection, so I came up here.”

“What time did you talk to her?”

“Three-thirty, four o’clock.”

“So we know she was alive then.”

“If Harvey left Santa Fe before I was looking for him, he could have been here then.”

“That falls within the ME’s guess. He said late afternoon, early evening.”

“The stomach contents will tell you something about that, whether she’d had dinner or not.”

“Why wouldn’t she tell you where she was?”

“She presented me with a dog for a gift, and I think she was afraid I’d want to return it. She needn’t have worried, the dog and I get along just fine.”

“Who else knew where she was, except this Nicky guy?”

“Harvey Biggers,” Stone said. “But I don’t know how he found out or who else knew.”

—

T
hey were driving back. “I was impressed with how calmly you handled that,” she said.

“I had a lot of practice when I was on the force. It gets to be routine, except once in a while when you get riled or really interested. This one was very violent, and that makes me angry. Carrie certainly didn’t deserve it.”

“It could have happened to me, if I’d stuck with the marriage,” Gala said. “I was afraid to file for divorce, but I knew I had to just suck it up and get it done, if I wanted to live a long and healthy life.”

“Do you still feel that you’re in any danger?”

“Not so much. It helps that we’re in different cities. I had everything he could have thought he owned packed up and shipped back to L.A., so he wouldn’t have an excuse to come out here.”

“You sent his belongings to his house?”

“No, I was more considerate than that. I had the shipper store everything, and I wrote and told him. I even paid for the packing and shipping. He was still angry, called me up and started yelling, but I hung up on him.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Oh, five or six weeks, I guess. I’ve occupied myself by shopping for replacement things. It’s a pretty big house, so I had a lot to do. Second time I’ve done it.”

“Did you have any trouble getting a settlement?”

“Not really. The California community property laws help keep it simple. It’s mostly arguing about which half of things you’re going to get. I told my lawyer to settle it with his lawyer, and I guess I was lucky that he had a girlfriend that he wanted to marry, so he didn’t make a lot of trouble.”

“Did he marry her?”

“Nope. I heard she left him right after the divorce was final. She had the advantage of watching how he handled the divorce, and I think she was able to put herself in my boots. She was an actress. I heard she got an offer to do a play in New York and took it in a heartbeat.”

She drove him back to her house. “You got any dinner plans?”

“Nope.”

“Good. I’ll make us an omelet or something, and then we’ll see how it goes.”

“I’ll need to stop by Ed’s house first. I have some bad news to deliver to Nicky and Vanessa Chalmers.”