Five O’Clock Shadow (3 page)

“My cut?” No, she hadn't thought of that. Would she be rich? She guessed she would be. In the last two weeks money wasn't very high on her list of concerns. But, it was obviously one more thing she needed to consider. “I haven't looked into insurance, or a will, that sort of thing yet if that's what you mean.”

“Let me help you.” The man in the chair leaned across her to take an envelope from his pal. “Randy's lawyer provided us with a will that was drawn up two days before the wedding, let's see, that would be three weeks ago.”

He seemed to be waiting for her comment. But what was there to say? She had no idea that a will even existed, but that was like Randy to take care of details. She wasn't surprised.

“This leaves everything to you. His share of the business valued at two million, any ‘holdings,' investments, bank accounts which in this case add up to another tidy
one million.
” He was staring at her now, holding eye contact. “Makes the paltry hundred thousand in insurance look like chicken feed.”

She was flabbergasted. Did it show? Her chin had to be on the table. One million above and beyond the business? She never thought of Randy as having big bucks, unlimited discretionary spending money, what she would consider substantial wealth. Wouldn't he have told her? His apartment was spartan. When they had started looking at houses before the wedding, they had looked at reasonably priced, nice neighborhood ones in good school districts, but nothing exorbitant. Yes, she knew that his third of the business had quickly grown, but it was money invested, working capital that he had struggled to pour back into an expanding company. Things had been tight. None of the partners breathed easily unless there was a backlog of contracts. And that had taken awhile. The loss of one large contract, even now, could make things shaky again. So, how had he amassed the other million? His parents hadn't been wealthy.

“I find it hard to believe, the part about the investments, I mean.” There had to be some mistake. One million gathering interest, and he had never mentioned it?

“That's not even the interesting part. Your husband might not have known how rich he was. The bulk of the one million, some eight hundred thousand plus, was dumped into his account, listing you as beneficiary, two days before he died.”

Now she was stunned. She felt both men suck in their collective breath waiting for her answer. Finally, she managed to shrug her shoulders.

“Not good enough.” The silence was broken by the man opposite her standing to lean over the table. She could smell the sharp mint scent of his gum. He scrutinized her features.

“We think you have an idea of where this money might have come from.” This from the man with his hand on her chair. She felt his shirt brush her hair. She pulled back and shaking her head looked from one to the other. How could she know? What did they know that they weren't telling her?

“You have to admit that three million would seem to be a pretty good motive for killing someone.” Back to the detective leaning over the table.

“The pilot was shot, not Randy.” Just an edge of anger crept into her voice.

“Same difference. The one who pulled the trigger must have known the flight plan. Waited in advance, got his equipment together, chose the perfect spot, timed it so that the balloon was directly over the wires, planned it so that there would be no survivors.”

She couldn't control a shudder. She'd tried not to think of it that way…hadn't allowed herself to dwell on the obvious premeditation.

“What does this have to do with me?”

“Is this familiar?” The man across from her sat down and rummaging in the stack of photos pulled an eight by ten from a manila envelope, and tossed it toward her. It looked like an ad for some kind of breakdown assault weapon, showing the gun in pieces at the top of the picture and then together at the bottom.

“It's a gun. Do I get any points?”

“I'll tell you what you don't get points for and that's being a smart ass.” His chair had clattered to the floor in his lunge to lean across the table into her face. “You think long and hard, Missy, before you blow this off. You wouldn't want me to have to get a warrant for your arrest, now would you?”

Pauly stood and faced the two of them, surprised by the hardness in her voice, “I don't have anything to tell you. I don't know where the money came from. I don't know who shot the pilot—”

“And I suppose you don't know how the gun got into the backseat of your car?”

She sat down heavily as her knees turned to mush, only there wasn't a chair. Both men rushed to help her up.

“Are you all right?” She thought she heard real concern in the voice of the man who had stood behind her. Or did she just want to hear it? He held out his hand, strong, warm, steadying. She let him pull her upright.

“Yes.” But she knew her face was blanched and every freckle must look like a crater. “I need to sit down.”

“Sure. Here.” The younger man pulled out a chair, and the other one found a glass of water.

“Look, I don't want to get off on the wrong foot. If it's any consolation, I'm just doing my job. It's been suggested that we check out any connection that there might have been between you and the sniper.” Something in her expression must have said ‘big fucking deal' because he covered with, “Hey, I feel badly about coming here to the hospital. It's just that—”

“It's your job. You said that.” She wasn't going to cut them any slack.

His sigh was audible, and he sat back down in the chair across the table. “Are you going to help us?” He made eye contact but didn't wait for an answer. “Let's say you're telling the truth. You don't know anything about the money, or the murderer. But somebody who knows you does. My suspicion is that the two are connected. You could be in danger. There's no proof that the murderer didn't think you'd be up there in the balloon, too.”

She hadn't thought of that, and she knew the surprise showed on her face. Could she be in danger? She seemed to be moving from bereavement to scared shitless in under sixty seconds.

“What do you suggest that I do?” There was no animosity in her voice and more than a little fright—would he pick up on that?

“Keep in touch. Lie low, but don't run away. Shut down your apartment and move in with someone; don't live by yourself. You have family here in Albuquerque, don't you?”

“Grandmother.”

“Stay with her. No one can put a lock on the money, but if I were you, I'd treat it like a landmine.”

She nodded. She had no intentions of touching a penny of it. She could put school on hold now that there wasn't going to be a pregnancy. Maybe she should just kick back for six months, not worry, not force herself to pick up the pieces too soon. Hope that in the meantime someone would come up with answers.

“Out of my way.”

Pauly saw the door to her room burst open—no mean feat since it was on hydraulic hinges—and a willowy woman with bushels of lightning-white hair cascading down her back swept into the room with a nervous nurse two steps behind.

“Here. Just toss it on the bed.” In one practiced move the woman slipped out of her Black Diamond mink cape and handed it to the nurse.

“Grams.”

Pauly threw her arms around her grandmother and tried not to think that Grams wasn't wearing a bra and her two grapefruit-perfect enhanced breasts strained against a flimsy silk tee.

“Oh, child, look at your hair.”

“This is my grandmother.” Pauly hoped she didn't sound apologetic. She had discussed wearing underwear with her grandmother on numerous occasions but the answer was always the same—“no one wore bras when I was your age, we burned the things.” Of course, when Grams referred to being Pauly's age in the sixties, it put her in her fifties today, making her about the same age as Paul, Pauly's father, Grams' son. It was no use. She was incorrigible.

“I hope you've told her to stay put. You are detectives, aren't you? And you've warned her not to leave town? Because I plan on taking this adorable child home with me. She's been released to my custody. Oops.” Grams looked from one to the other of the two detectives. “Not the best word, right? But she's not being detained, is she?”

Pauly saw both men shake their heads. They seemed mesmerized, staring at her grandmother, their eyes locked not at the too-perfect boobs but at her face.

“Oh, Grams,” Pauly pointed to her mouth, “you missed removing some makeup.”

“What? Oh, drat. Is there a mirror in here?” But she had already pulled a large round compact from her purse. “I'm in entertainment, this is just part of the show. Pauly, honey, hand me a tissue.”

No one seemed to have anything to say as her grandmother worked at removing the red circle around her mouth, enlarged lips bordered in white and lined with black. In addition to operating a bed and breakfast, Grams hired out as a clown, sometimes traveling with one of the half dozen carnivals that she owned. Pauly had considered herself to be the luckiest child in the world. She spent every summer after her parents' divorce on Ferris wheels, pony rides, in haunted houses.

“This is on for life without a little cold cream.”

Still no one found an appropriate comment, but it seemed Grams was telling the truth; five tissues had only made a dent in the brightness of the red.

“Oh well, I was just waiting for the hospital to let me know when I could pick you up. I didn't expect a call so soon, sweetheart. You must be all well now.” Grams was fussing with Pauly's hair, pulling what she called “wisps” forward and trying to smooth other naturally curly strands, pat them in place across the crown. It was a losing battle. Pauly could have told her that, but didn't say anything about her hair or the “all well” part. How could she get well from the death of her husband, murder of her husband, and his deceit? She made eye contact with the detective who had questioned her. Was there a hint of sympathy?

“I'll give you a call in a week or so. Let you know how the investigation's going. You'll be staying with your grandmother?” The younger man made it a question more than a statement, and looked from one to the other.

“Oh dear, here, let me give you one of my cards.” Grams dug to the bottom of her bag and produced a fluorescent pink card shaped like the head of a clown with
Lulu's Live Entertainment
printed across the bottom next to a phone number.

“Home entertainment, the works for little people. Clowns, magicians, live animal acts, no party too big or too small. Oh mercy, I am forgetting my manners. Lucille—I prefer Lulu—Caton.” She held out her hand. The one with the three-carat diamond in platinum. One of her nicer engagement rings, Grams always said. Worth more than the giver, which was why he was no longer around.

Pauly sighed. It was a barely concealed family secret that Grams had performed more acts behind the footlights than those aimed to entertain children. More along the line of shedding clothing to music. Oh well, at least Grams was using her first married name. Pauly's grandfather had been husband number one, or so Grams had led them to believe. If the new boyfriend got her to the altar, that might be number five. Or was it six? Pauly thought six.

“Now, unless there's something else, I must get this poor child home.” Grams looked brightly from one detective to the other. “No? Well, then, I suggest you just shoo on out of here. Our little girl needs to make herself presentable.”

Amazingly, the men followed her directions; one shuffled the pictures together, stuffed them into a manila envelope and picked up the recorder while the nicer, cuter one offered the customary “call us if you need anything—we'll be in touch” before both disappeared into the hall.

“I just bet you will.” Grams muttered under her breath. “Were they hard on you?” She didn't wait for Pauly to answer but continued, “I told the hospital not to allow visitors unless I could be here. And definitely not the police. Not alone. But do you think they listened? No. You'd think in this kind of hospital, they'd know better.”

“Grams, please. I'm doing fine.” A lie, but maybe if she left this place, got out into the sunshine and fresh air, away from the blank walls, she would be.

***

“I took the liberty of moving you out of your apartment.”

Pauly started. She had been staring out the car window at the winter-bleak landscape. No more vestiges of fall after a rain had beaten the last of the foliage from the trees.

“You broke my lease?”

“It was easy, uh, under the circumstances. And I might have thrown in a couple free performances for the owner's grandkids.”

“Thanks.”

“Well, that doesn't sound very convincing. I honestly thought it would be too painful to go back to a place that had memories of what's-his-name.”

“Randy, Grams. Saying his name doesn't hurt.”

Grams had been against her marriage and had wanted to know why Pauly couldn't have found someone ‘already broken in,' whatever that meant. But if she knew Grams, there was a sexual innuendo. So a man waited until he was forty-one to marry, so what? It didn't mean something was wrong with him. Their sex had been adult. A coupling that quickly became comfortable and secure, maybe not as romantic, or not as frequent as she had hoped for, but adequate.

Contrary to what his name implied, Randy never thought with his penis. And hadn't that been one of the welcome changes? One of the things that had attracted her to him? She'd had enough of great sex and no substance. Randy had been successful, wealthy if she could believe the cops, and “together” in every sense of the word. The worst thing she could have said about her boyishly handsome husband was that he had been a nerd. Pauly sighed.

“Oh, baby, I know this is so hard. But you'll feel better with your own things around you.” Grams patted her knee.