Gossip Can Be Murder (23 page)

She didn’t buy it. I would bolt the minute she left, and she knew it.

“Let’s go have a bowl of soup or something light,” she said. “I’m serious about you staying here tonight.”

I wanted to pop out with a reminder that she’s not my mother, a you’re-not-the-boss-of-me comment, but I held it. “Let me call Drake first. He thinks I’m going to be on the road any minute.”

She went into the bathroom while I placed the call. I speed dialed and asked him to give me a little more time. Despite the lateness of the hour I was still determined to break out of this place yet tonight.

Using the room phone I ordered two bowls of soup. Linda was right about that. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten and the lack of energy was dragging me down. I let her do the talking while we ate but something about the conversation with Drake kept nagging at me. I got the idea that there was still something he wasn’t telling me, but didn’t press it. Eventually, and when I wasn’t quite so drained, I’d figure out all of it.

Chapter 31

I awoke to the sensuous feeling of my body against my own sheets, the smell of Drake’s aftershave lingering on the pillowcase next to mine. Unfortunately, he was not beside me.

Noises from the kitchen pointed me in that direction and I belted my cozy terry robe around me as I went.

“Hey there,” he said, backing me against the fridge and kissing me. He tasted like blueberry muffins. Sensing my momentary distraction he pointed toward the kitchen table. My favorite mug, steaming with coffee, and a plate with two bakery muffins sat at my usual place. “Better have that so you can wake up. You were up way past your bedtime last night.”

No kidding. It had been close to two a.m. when I drove in and I’d barely kissed him and fallen into bed before going unconscious.

He topped off his own mug and rearranged the napkins in the holder. Set the salt and pepper shakers straight for the third time.

“What’s the matter?” I asked once I’d downed one of the muffins and realized that he was working his way up to telling me something.

“Manuel Salazar, one of the mechanics who worked on Mike Walters’ ship? He died yesterday. Pretty sure it was suicide.”

“What? How—?”

“I don’t know details. Rick Valdez got the call just as we were leaving the deposition yesterday.”

“Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

He shrugged. “It was late and you had a lot on your mind.”

True, but he certainly could have interrupted me for this. I watched his fingers trace circles on the table for a minute.

“Hon, you’re not somehow blaming yourself for this, are you?”

Another shrug.

“You can’t have caused the guy to be
that
depressed. I mean, surely . . .”

“Maybe not depressed. Maybe he panicked. Maybe he thought we were about to haul him into court and accuse him of causing the accident. He was real nervous when Ron and I talked to him.”

“But—” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

He exhaled loudly and stood up. “I know. I can’t really believe that I caused it but still—it’s bothering me.”

I walked over to where he stood staring out the window into the back yard. I put my arms around him and laid my cheek against the back of his shirt. Stroked his chest with my hands.

“Okay, your turn.” He turned around to face me.

“My turn?”

“To spill the beans. There was a message on the home phone from a Detective Gallegos in Santa Fe,” he said.

“What! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What happened last night with David Ratwill?” he asked. “And why did Gallegos want you to know he’s out on bond. Out, why?”

“Let’s make some breakfast and I’ll fill you in.” I had a feeling bacon and eggs would be a necessity.

I scrambled eggs and made them into sandwiches and carried two plates to the living room. Curled into one corner of the sofa I gave Drake time to reappear, freshly showered and wearing a soft pair of flannels and a T-shirt, before I launched into the full recount of the week’s events. From the threat on the massage table to my bump on the head in the parking lot, I went over it all. He stopped me once in awhile to clarify some minor point, but mainly he let me talk. He actually let out a little snicker when I told him about David wetting his pants as the shot went over his head.

“And David Ratwill, the same attorney who’s been ragging me over the helicopter crash, probably killed his own wife and is now out on bond?” He was pacing the living room by now, unable to relax and just enjoy my little tale.

I nodded and drained the last of my coffee while Rusty cleaned up the scraps of toast and egg from my plate.

“I’m going to have a hard time not punching him out when I see him, you know,” he told me when he finally finished pacing.

“And what good is that going to do?” I set the mug on the coffee table. “I don’t know for a fact that it was David who knocked me out or who locked up Trudie. In fact, I don’t see how it could be, now that I look back at it. Even if he’d raced out of your deposition, he couldn’t have made it back to Santa Fe and up to Casa de Tranquilidad in under an hour. Someone else must have done that little bit of dirty work.”

He stopped with a jolt. “But David left the deposition early. I wasn’t told why, but the other attorney from his firm handled the questioning all afternoon. David could have easily been back in Santa Fe.”

Now I felt myself go still inside. All along, I’d felt that David was the one who pushed Rita, but until he held Linda at gunpoint I never quite fully believed that he’d also come after me and after Trudie. I’d been sure that her fantasies about David were just that. Now I had to rethink that whole idea.

“Did Gallegos want me to call him back?” I asked.

“Didn’t really say. The message is still on the machine if you want to go listen.”

I checked it and wrote down the number he gave, which matched that of the police station, from his business card.

“I’ve got to go out to the airport and re-examine that helicopter wreckage,” Drake said. “Do you want to come along?”

“Unless you think I know something about the engine that you don’t, I better stay here and return Gallegos’s call.”

As it turned out, I decided to get my thoughts together before talking to the Santa Fe cop. Last night’s events were still eating at me. First thing I did was to retrieve the memory card with the documents I’d stolen off Stanworthy’s computer. I couldn’t think of him as Celeus Light once I was away from the insulated atmosphere at Casa de Tranquilidad. The guy was a businessman, no matter what his followers might want to think, and I had to believe the meeting with David Ratwill that I’d accidentally witnessed days ago at McDonalds was going to be key to some kind of connection with Rita.

How could it not be?

Rita works in David’s office for several years before their split-up. She’s institutionalized for awhile—manipulated by David—then shows up a couple of years later working at Light’s place as a yoga instructor. At the same time, Trudie the now-out-of-work nurse just happens to enroll in the Lightness conference? And Trudie has a huge infatuation with David. It was all too much.

I ruminated over all this as the pages of the document printed out. The money transfers offshore were huge—I added up the various amounts shown on Stanworthy’s spreadsheets. Setting that aside for the moment, I took out my little pocket spiral notebook and a large yellow pad. I transferred the few notes from the spiral and filled in the gaps, detailing everything in sequence, from the warning I’d received in the massage room to my own knocked-unconscious episode in the parking lot, to the showdown in the woods. David’s peeping episode into Trudie’s window was curious, to say the least, and I had to wonder at her insistence that it had been David she was meeting when she was lured to the locker room and stuffed into the closet. Later, when I caught up with them in the woods, she hadn’t been afraid of David; she’d actually been hanging all over him as though the two of them planned to run away together.

And Rita. What truly was the story there?

If David had pushed his wife over the wall to her death, why on earth had he come back to Casa de Tranquilidad several more times? Logic would seem to tell me that a killer would stay away. But then, they always say that the murderer returns to the scene of the crime. My head felt fuzzy, trying to sort it all out.

The phone rang just then and I realized it was noon when the caller turned out to be Drake. He asked if I had planned on his coming back for lunch and seemed relieved to have the extra time without having to come home. Said he was finding the evidence he needed and would probably be there a couple more hours.

Drake’s call reminded me that I hadn’t reached Gallegos in Santa Fe yet. But I wasn’t quite ready to talk to him. The fact that he hadn’t been able to hold David Ratwill, even a day, bothered me as surely as all the strange links in the case.

My notes were piling up and I felt like the answer had to be here somewhere. I just couldn’t figure out where.

Rusty began to nudge at my leg and I realized he hadn’t been out in hours.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I said. The magic word was ‘walk’ and he headed for the front door. I grabbed up my jacket and his leash and we walked toward the park two blocks away. The autumn sky was brilliant with its typical deep blue and I wondered why on earth I’d spent the whole morning indoors. We might have another month or so of this fabulous weather before winter set in. I needed to make the most of it.

I willed all thoughts of the case out of my head, clearing space for answers, I hoped. We circled the park and found it deserted. The neighborhood is still mainly older people and they tend to stick pretty close to their own territory. The real outdoor girl of the whole lot is Elsa, with her huge garden every year. I let Rusty off the leash and he sniffed at the ground for awhile.

“Hey old man,” I teased as I clipped the leash back on, “let’s head home.”

He trotted beside me, sprightly enough, and drank about three quarts of water when we got back to the house. I debated making myself a little lunch but the two muffins and egg sandwich had taken their toll on my appetite. I went back into Drake’s office, where I’d left all my papers piled on the desk. The dog eventually came in and flopped down beside me, with all the energy of an old rag.

Lethargy was trying to set in and I dropped into Drake’s desk chair and began to gather my pages. Two unmarked folders lay there and I absently flipped one of them open. There was my answer, staring me right in the face.

Chapter 32

It took me a minute to place the face. The maintenance man who’d been around Casa de Tranquilidad. He’d stepped into the yoga room, looking for Rita, the first day. I’d passed him in the corridor at least once, near Trudie’s room. The unkempt blond hair and four-day beard growth were the same in the photo. It was a mug shot. The attached report showed an arrest four years earlier for trafficking in stolen merchandise.

I dialed Drake’s cell phone and he picked up immediately.

“Leo Malone?” he said, once I’d described how I found the picture. “He’s the mechanic who is probably behind our crash. We think he failed to safety wire that engine nut and then conned Manny Salazar into signing off the maintenance record. That mug shot comes from an arrest for dealing in stolen aircraft parts. He got a year probation and a fine.”

“I think he’s tied in with Rita’s death.”

“He knows David Ratwill. Ron and I saw them meeting.”

A few more pieces fell into place.

I dialed the number for Detective Gallegos in Santa Fe.

“Before you even get started, Ms. Parker, I’ll let you know that we weren’t able to hold David Ratwill. Brought him last night, but the most we could charge him with was aggravated assault. He never took Dr. Casper off the resort grounds, so we can’t really make a case for kidnapping. And Trudie Blanchard refuses to press any charges against him at all. She says they are in love and were just planning to go away together. Your whole story about him tying her up and leaving her in a closet—she won’t confirm it.”

I gritted my teeth, almost wishing I hadn’t rescued her.

“He’s already out on bond today and making threatening noises about pressing charges against you for shooting at him.”

Not surprising.

I didn’t give up. “I think he had an accomplice. Leo Malone. He’s got a record. Malone is implicated in causing a helicopter crash a couple of years ago. It’s also connected with David Ratwill.”

There was a minute of silence, during which I could hear computer keys clicking in the background.

“Yeah, I got something here on Malone. Last known address is Albuquerque. That’s out of our jurisdiction. I don’t think I can do anything about him.”

What about various departments working together? What about actually trying to solve this crime? I wanted to demand answers but felt on shaky ground still about the shooting incident.

He’d closed up by then anyway, and he ended the call by telling me there was nothing more he could do.

Chapter 33

My blood pressure spiked—I could feel it. Why did I let the detective get to me like that? I leaned back in the chair and stared up at the ceiling, letting my head hang back. Tried sitting upright and meditating for a couple of minutes but my mind was racing. Linda probably never would get me to be disciplined enough for this. Shirley had tried to teach us well. Why wasn’t I getting it?

Shirley. A scene popped into my head. Standing in Shirley’s office, a casual mention of Rita’s personal belongings, a tote bag on the floor. She’d told me that the police left Rita’s things with her, at the conference center.

Now that the conference was over, could I catch her in time?

I grabbed for the phone, fumbled it, shuffled through papers until I found the number.

“Shirley?” My voice came out kind of squeaky when the female voice answered. It was Nicki but she put me through.

“Shirley, do you still happen to have Rita Ratwill’s belongings?” I blurted out the question without even introducing myself, but I backtracked and tried for the niceties.