It Takes Two to Strangle (10 page)

“Exactly.”

“So what was Jordan’s reason for visiting Lirim in the middle of the night?”

“He wanted to talk about the money from Tabby’s estate without Clara knowing about it.”

Gerry described Jordan’s account. “He said the light was still on in Lirim’s trailer when he knocked. Margaret asked him what Lirim was wearing. Jordan had to think about that one. He said Lirim had on a t-shirt and sweat shorts. That was our first signal that Jordan’s story was bogus. Lirim only had on boxers when we found him and when he yelled at the kids at the bonfire, he wasn’t wearing sweat shorts, either. So for Jordan’s story to make sense, Lirim would have put on shorts after he came out of his trailer and Jordan would have stripped off Lirim’s shorts after killing him.”

“Did you ask Jordan if he pulled them off?”

“No. We didn’t want to break up the flow of his story. We can always ask later.”

Gerry paused for a sip of coffee, looking around to make sure no one had mounted the steps to the second floor. “Jordan said he came right out and confronted Lirim about Clara’s money. He thought Lirim already had it and was either spending it or hoarding it. Jordan told Lirim that he and Clara were going to get married and needed the sum for a down payment on a house. According to Jordan, Lirim became violent and started screaming at him. That seemed suspicious. No one in the neighboring trailers heard the altercation and those trailers are packed pretty close to each other.”

“So they’re in Lirim’s trailer and Jordan’s getting yelled at,” Damon recapped.

“Right. And then Jordan claims Lirim stepped really close and put his face right in Jordan’s. Jordan put his hands up defensively and backed away. Lirim picked up a knife from a block on the kitchen counter and started swinging it belligerently. Jordan claims he was cowering and shouting ‘calm down, calm down.’ And then Lirim lunged straight at his throat with the knife. Jordan dodged it, grabbed the hand wielding the blade and managed to wrench it free and onto the floor.”

“Pretty dramatic.”

“It gets better. Then Lirim reached for his throat and Jordan did the same in return.”

“With his hands?”

“You got it. According to the good doctor, they were locked in some sort of epic struggle, each gripping the other’s neck. And then Lirim just collapsed. Right there on the floor in the kitchen area. So that’s not even consistent with where we found the body.”

“Jordan hadn’t heard that Lirim was strangled with a clothes line?”

“Apparently not. We know word went around the Hollydale gossip circles and the carnival crew when we found the ligature, but that doesn’t mean Jordan heard. He’s an outsider who was staying in a hotel and we made sure it didn’t reach the television cameras.”

“So basically Jordan Hall says he choked Lirim with his bare hands in the kitchen, while Lirim was wearing sweat shorts,” Damon said.

“It’s about as inaccurate as possible.” Gerry squinted. The fluorescent lights shone down brightly and Gerry’s weary eyes were fighting their power. “Margaret and I figure that Jordan Hall is either really stupid or really smart.”

“How do you mean?”

“He may have no idea what happened to Lirim and provided a false confession. But that’s helpful, because it means he’s covering for someone.”

“Clara,” Damon said.

“That’s our best guess. If Jordan knows Clara did the deed, he could be so in love with her that he decided to fall on his sword, so to speak.”

“Seems a little over the top, but he appeared to be completely devoted to her, though I sensed the feeling wasn’t mutual.”

“So maybe he makes the ultimate sacrifice to win that devotion.”

“Maybe. You said he’s either really stupid or really smart. I assume that was the really stupid reason, because it points the police right to Clara. What’s the smart theory?”

Gerry toyed with the gold cross dangling from his neck. “That he is the killer and he created a false story intentionally to lead us away from him.”

Damon considered that for a moment. “He comes into the police station voluntarily, deliberately provides information that he knows doesn’t line up with the actual murder, and the county doesn’t charge him because nothing in the false confession aligns with the physical evidence.”

“That’s our line of thinking. I spoke with one of the prosecutors this morning. She said that unless we get Jordan to change his story or implicate Clara, we’re out of luck without something more concrete.”

“What about a charge for wasting police time?”

“We can use it if we need to bring him back in later, but the county doesn’t have the resources to prosecute a charge like that.”

Damon finished his coffee walked down the steps for replenishments. This new wrinkle looked bad for Clara. Damon didn’t think Jordan would turn himself in if he was the murderer—why draw that kind of attention. The police would now focus their efforts on Jordan and Clara. Jordan’s infatuation with Clara was understandable, but otherwise, he seemed quite sensible. Could there be someone else he was shielding? When he returned, Damon asked Gerry if the police were looking into Jordan’s background.

“We have been,” he responded. “And we’re looking even more closely now. Margaret has a theory that he has a medical malpractice claim hanging over his head and it’s related. She’s just not sure how.”

“Did you bring Clara in for more questioning?”

“We picked her up at eight this morning, but she requested a lawyer.”

“Doesn’t that make her look guilty?”

“I think she’s just being smart. She didn’t ask for a lawyer during her first interview, but her boyfriend just came in with a confession that she may or may not know is full of holes. It makes sense for her to get protection.”

“I assume Jordan is still locked up,” Damon said.

“For now. We’re able to hold him for a couple of days while we look into his background and interview Clara. She has a friend in Richmond who’s an attorney, but he’s out of town for the weekend so we put off the interview until Monday morning.”

Chapter 9

Damon was sitting down to a Thai delivery dinner when his door bell rang. Clara was standing on his front porch, dressed simply in a lavender peasant blouse and jeans. Her thick dark hair was pulled back into a white butterfly clip, but a few loose strands managed to escape and fall from above her ears down the lines of her cheeks. Bare of make-up, her face’s bold features were muted. Both hands were thrust into her front pockets in a pose that projected vulnerability.

Damon didn’t question her presence on his doorstep and quietly invited her inside. She thanked him and followed in silence. He led her to the kitchen table.

“I just ordered Thai food,” Damon said. “Are you hungry?”

“I am, thank you,” she replied. The aggressive, confident manner he witnessed on their prior encounters had been replaced by a more modest one.

He opened a bottle of Shiraz and spooned out vegetable pad Thai and Rama chicken. Damon asked her how she was feeling.

“To be honest, I’m confused. But can we talk about something else for a while? I want to give my mind a break,” Clara said.

So they did. Damon told her about his baseball career in Japan and the chewing gum campaign. Clara was a patient listener. In turn, she spoke about her past, primarily about her mother.

“My father was on the road most of the year, so Mom and I were close,” she said. “It wasn’t atypical where I grew up—a lot of the girls in town had fathers who drove semi trucks. I was an only child and Mom didn’t work so we spent countless hours together after school. We’d take long walks down by Cheat Lake, which is really a reservoir.”

In her loose fitting tunic and with a translucent quality to her eyes, Clara took on a mystical presence.

 
“Mom and Toma grew up in Romania, under the reign of Ceausescu,” she said. “He was the first of the cold war Warsaw Pact leaders to open the door to western nations. But when Ceausescu’s regime turned more brutal, my grandparents fled to the United States with Mom and Toma, who were in their late teens. They settled in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, which isn’t far from Morgantown. It was in Uniontown where Mom met my father a few years later.”

Damon listened quietly, transfixed by Clara’s soft monotone voice and content to allow her to tell the story without interruption. She spoke of her grandfather, who had become a successful automobile salesman, earning enough money to buy two dealerships of his own. Before he passed away, he set up a trust fund for Clara’s mother, but he never trusted Lirim, so he made the principal untouchable. The interest each year went directly to his daughter Tabby. The corpus of the trust would only become liquid when Tabby died. It wasn’t a tremendous amount, but Tabby had set up a will so that Clara, Lirim and Toma split it three ways after she passed away.

“Your grandfather didn’t set up a trust for your uncle Toma as well?” Damon asked.

“Mom said my grandfather was a bit of chauvinist,” Clara said. “He expected Toma, unlike Mom, to support himself financially.”

When Clara was thirteen, she said, her father started taking her on the carnival tour for two weeks each summer. “In those days Mom never came along,” Clara explained. “Just me and my father. It was only later, maybe seven or eight years ago, that she started to join him. That was after I refused to go any more. I moved to Richmond, put myself through college and nursing school and here I am. But without Mom, of course.”

Damon didn’t dare to inquire into the source of the coolness between Lirim and Clara. It may have been over her inheritance, but Damon felt there was something more deep-seated that undergirded the tension.

He cleared the dishes from the table and refilled their wine glasses. Damon asked if she’d like coffee as well, but Clara declined and asked if they could move onto the leather sectional in the family room. “Damon, I want to talk to you about something serious,” she said. “About me and Jordan.”

“Sure,” he responded. He sat down first, toward the middle of one side of the “L,” giving her the opportunity to sit close to him or at a distance. She chose a space immediately next to him, and reached across his body to place her wine glass on the coffee table.

He felt the warmth and softness of her body as she brushed his thigh with the bottom of her forearm while curling back into the seat beside him. The sensual creature he first met at the Fish Barrel had returned. Clara gently placed her right hand on his knee and caressed it gently through his worn jeans.

Neither of them commented on her hand. Clara spoke softly, facing straight forward at the dormant fireplace. “You’re close with Detective Sloman, aren’t you Damon? That’s what I gathered from everyone at the carnival.”

“Gerry Sloman and I are pretty good friends.”

“That’s good, Damon. I don’t want to wait for my lawyer on Monday to discuss what happened on the night my father was killed, but to be honest, I also don’t want to talk to the police in a stale, yellow interview room. At least not the first time I tell someone what I have to say.” She closed her eyes for a moment but didn’t remove her hand from his knee. “I suppose I want to clear Jordan, but what I really want to clear is the air. With Jordan, with the police, with everyone, so I can move on with my life.”

“Sure Clara. But wouldn’t it be better if I called Gerry and maybe we could all talk about it here?”

“No Damon, please. I’d rather just tell you first. You can tell Detective Sloman everything, and I know I’ll end up in that interview room, but I’d rather just get it off of my chest now. I don’t really need a lawyer. I was just stalling for time because I wasn’t ready to talk.”

Damon nodded and placed his wine glass on the table next to Clara’s.

She stopped stroking his knee, and moved her fingers up his thigh to the line of his belt. She slid her hand halfway under the upper rim of his jeans, tucking her fingertips beneath the waistband of his boxer shorts. She didn’t extend her hand any further down, content to allow her fingers to rest on his flesh two inches below and to the right of his navel. Damon faced Clara, who turned from the fireplace to look at him. She smiled a silent acknowledgement of the position of her hand.

“Jordan is covering for me,” she said without emotion.

“Covering for you?”

“It’s not necessary, but he doesn’t know that.”

“He’s really in love with you, isn’t he?”

“Yes. And at one time, I thought I was in love with him. But I realized a couple of months ago that I’m not. He’s a wonderful man and I’m probably crazy for not feeling the same way about him as he does about me.”

“You can’t control how you feel, Clara,” Damon said.

“That’s just it. My brain tells me he’s the man I should be with, that I should marry him, settle down and have a nice life. He’s good looking, makes plenty of money and is very respected in Richmond. But for some reason that’s just not enough for me. Or maybe the problem is it’s too much for me.”

“Meaning you don’t think you deserve someone like him?”

“I don’t know. I’ve batted that around in my head a thousand times. I’m not sure whether I’m screwed up psychologically or if I just have wanderlust when it comes to men.”

She bent her head down to the front of his neck, just above the collarbone between his Adam’s apple and shoulder and touched her mouth lightly against his unshaven skin. Clara’s moist lips lingered, then parted to make an avenue for her tongue. Damon closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. The tip of her tongue made little circles as it moved delicately up and then down his throat. The palm of Clara’s left hand had found its way to the right side of Damon’s chest and she squeezed his pectoral lightly. With the fingernails of her other hand, still tucked beneath the waistband of his undershorts, she lightly scratched the skin just below his abdomen. Damon let out a small groan and lifted her chin so that Clara’s mouth was level with his. He shifted his weight toward her and pulled her mouth to his own. He allowed their tongues to play freely with one another.