That contrast jibed with Mary's "boys will be boys" lilt when she said Brett Dean blamed the traffic accident on the other driver. As if he'd fibbed about an in-school detention, not causing what could have been a multifatality collision.
"Blankenship's an overfed brat," Jack said. "Also a freak, but how much initiative does it take to follow me in his car? Steer with one hand, slam Ding Dongs with the other. No sweat.
"But frame me for murder? Hell, Moby Dicker, he'd have gotten more exercise than he's had in years. Plus, it required the stones to kill a woman in cold blood."
Jack thought Harriet's frown disapproved of his vocabulary.
"Well, if this Blankenship fella didn't do it," she said, "who did? Everybody
knows
her husband was in Arkansas when she was murdered."
"It does look that way."
"That man on the news said the police had confirmed he was."
Harriet sat up straighter, as though a lesson were about to be taught. "Time was when divorce was nigh as bad as murder. Then it made no nevermind to anybody if a couple bothered to take vows at all. Now it seems husbands and wives are killing one another right and left, like a divorce is worse than murder."
Dina laid her mother's pharmaceutical dessert course and water to wash it down with in front of Harriet. "I wanted a death certificate stapled to my divorce decree." She laughed. "Best of both worlds."
"What I'm trying to say is," Harriet snipped, "if you listen sharp, you can tell when the newsman is fudging. He'll say Mr. So-and-So was 'allegedly' here. Or 'reportedly' there. Hear either one of 'em, and ol' So-and-So's guilty as homemade sin."
She rolled a gel cap between her fingers. "But confirmed? Especially after a day or two's
allegedly
and
reportedly?
That's a sign to stop looking at poor So-and-So like he's a monster and start baking hams and a carrot cake to take to the house."
Green bean casserole was Jack's mother's comfort food. Canned onion rings, cream of mushroom soup and Italian-cut green beans on the counter harbinged a death outside the family as much as his dad's black suit hanging on the closet door.
Belle. They didn't know she was
gone. The funeral. They'd probably fly up for it. For Jack, and to pay respects to the daughter-in-law they'd loved and still sent birthday and Christmas cards to.
Images strobed in Jack's mind. In one frame, Bill and Norma McPhee exited a jetway, smiling and waving, then blanched, remembering why they'd come and embarrassed they'd forgotten for a moment. The next was of a casket resting on a skirted bier. Belle's leg crooked over the lip of the tub. A wall of gladioli, roses, lilies arranged by height and color spanning the width of a chapel. A cloudy green eye hooded and lifeless; the other a dark empty socket.
"DeHaven shot her." The guttural declaration startled Jack, as well as Harriet and Dina. His breathing was ragged, sour. "I'm"
He stared down at the table, unashamed of the tears rising in his eyes and fighting to stanch them. He couldn't make up for anything he'd failed to give Belle in life. She didn't need his grief now. She needed his help.
A swallow of iced tea melted the jagged burr in his throat. "It had to be deHaven. Nobody else stood to gain from Belle's death." He looked up at Dina, then Harriet and down again, his composure still less than trustworthy.
"Gain motivates domestic homicides." A thumbnail planed a defect in the table's shellac finish. "Money tops the hit paradeno pun intended. An anticipated windfall or to prevent a financial loss. Second is an emotional motive. Jealousy, revenge, to remove an obstacle, a threat and the ever popular 'If I can't have her, nobody can.'"
"Money," Harriet said, as if selecting a game-show category. "Rich people can afford lots of life insurance. Beneficiaries get twice as much if the departed didn't die natural."
Dina nodded at her mother. "
Double Indemnity.
It's one of her favorite movies."
"Mine, too. Except Belle didn't have any life insurance." Back on safe, factually solid ground, Jack added, "That would have been the first thing the police checked. Next was the prenup. A divorce would cost deHaven a half million."
"Dollars?" Dina slumped in her chair. Money in a lump-sum, six-figure denomination was beyond her comprehension.
"Spare change, it isn't, but nowhere near a straight-up division of marital assets. Which also assumes an amicable split, instead of, say, deHaven auditioning the next wife in advance. No apparent money motive and a Tupperware alibi is why his name fell off the suspect list and mine zoomed to the top."
An investigation always focuses on the obvious suspect, because in the majority of cases, the obvious doer is the guilty party. If cleared, the direction shifts to the next most obvious. As Belle's former husband, Jack would have been questioned had he moved to Nova Scotia after their divorce. An airtight alibi for his whereabouts would logically swing attention to deHaven again, albeit indirectly. An impatient or disappointed mistress; a business associate Belle suspected of malfeasance; a competitor choking on deHaven's dust.
"Ballistic proof that my .38 was the murder weapon suggests more than it appears to," Jack said. "The shot that killed her shows proficiency with a handgun. I am. Practice keeps me that way. Anyone with access to a weapon damn well should be, in the event he ever has to use it."
Dina's eyes cut to Harriet. "Or should lose it." Her mother pursed her lips and picked at her sweater. "Go on, McPhee. Some of us are listening."
Another Wexlergram had been transmitted and received. Jack didn't know the code, and neither of them seemed inclined to translate.
"Handgun proficiency," he reminded. "McGuire told me deHaven isn't a registered gun owner. No weapons or ammo of any kind were found in the house. It isn't conclusive evidence he lacked the skill to fire the fatal shot. There just isn't any to the contrary."
Dina asked, "Do you have to be a registered gun owner to go to a target range?"
"You don't need a target range to practice," Jack said.
"Well, if I was planning a murder, I wouldn't want anybody to see me with a cap pistol." Harriet hesitated. "But wouldn't he need to practice with your gun? To get accustomed to it."
"An hour, maybe, if he was generally proficient already. The murder was premeditated. He may have jimmied my car the night of my last trip to the police range. If so, he had a week to practice with it."
"DeHaven knew you kept it in the glove box?" Dina asked.
Jack waggled a hand. "He's my ex-wife's husband. It's doubtful I monopolized their pillow talk, but drop a seed here and a seed there and pretty soon you have an orchard.
"Belle knew I have a concealed-carry permit. Also that I seldom walk around with a gun, like Dirty Harry. It's common senseI'm unlikely to need a weapon at the office, which I'm not in, as much as my car.
"The clincher is, whoever stole my .38 popped the trunk first."
"It is?" Harriet frowned. "Oh. If he'd opened the glove box first, he'd have found the gun."
"Right."
"Which is a silly place to keep one, if you ask me."
Which made Harriet the second female to voice that unsolicited opinion. It went without saying that Dina agreed.
Jack sighed. "Once upon a time, not long ago, a hardworking, conscientious P.I. was surveiling a department store's loading dock. Inventory was shrinking. The manager wanted a line on who was walking it out the door and how.
"It's January, early evening, dark as midnight. Our hero was reviewing the symptoms of frostbite when a crowbar smashes the driver's-side window. There's a scuffle. Hero gets coldcocked and wakes up light a wallet, binoculars, camera equipment, etc."
Absently, Jack massaged a bump below the bridge of his nose. The schnoz he was born with was serviceable, but beatings add character. "The mugger didn't get the .38, though. Since I didn't expect trouble, it was locked in the trunk, where, as Belle often pointed out, it did me a helluva lotta good.
"Except blowing away a crack addict isn't my definition of self-defense and it might've happened from pure reflex. Yeah, he roughed me up, but hey. Nobody died."
Dina rose to let out Phil, sniffing at the patio drapes in a manner usually reserved for trees, tires and fire hydrants. A hand chafing the nape of her neck told Jack that the story's epilogue wasn't lost on her. Ignoring Belle's urging to carry the .38 for protection had saved a mugger's life, and ended hers.
"Her death wasn't your fault," Dina said, walking back to the table. "DeHaven would have taken that gun somehow, no matter where you kept it. Get over it."
"Dina Jeanne! That's an awful thing to say. The poor man"
"Is a professional investigator," Jack finished. He jerked a thumb at the ream of data divided by subject in file folders. "With a shitload of homework to do."
And an able assistant who kicked him in the butt when he needed it most.
17
J
ack buckled the seat belt. The abundant slack suggested its previous user was heftier than him, or the type who passively complied with rules and aggressively defied their purpose. Like a restaurant employee who obeys restroom signage about hand washing, then smugly dries them on a filthy apron.
He tipped his head back against the seat rest. He closed his eyes and blocked out the mechanical and human cacophony swirling around him, but shutting down two of the five senses intensified the remaining three. Smell in particular. The locker-room-meets-perfume-factory odors had him fumbling for a breath mint so he didn't have to taste them, too.
He hated to fly. Cruising altitude was bearable, up to the point where the childish lobe of his brain started whining, "Are we there yet? I'm hungry. I'm thirsty. I don' wanna sit still anymore and you can't make me."
Takeoffs and landingsthat's what he hated. They resigned control to a stranger who resembled either someone itching for another go at the Luftwaffe, or the kid who chamoised Jack's car when he sprang for the deluxe hot-wax package.
Landings were a friggin' cheat. The tires touched down geographically by arrival time. Lumbering to the terminal and getting off the damn plane ate a quarter hour, depending on how many zip codes intervened and how much crap other passengers shoehorned into overhead bins the farthest distance from their assigned window seats.
Timing was everything, this trip. Jack had toyed with delaying until Sunday to better duplicate deHaven's theoretical flights between Park City, Missouri, and Little Rock, Arkansasalbeit in reverse order.
A Thursday schedule was different than a Sunday, especially prenoonish to midafternoon. Weekend business travelers tend to hop later evening flights, rather than leave home early, then twiddle their thumbs in destination hotel rooms.
Except a three-day wait was two too many. What would Jack do in the meantime? Progress on a premise liability investigation and a grandparent's child-custody petition sprang to mind. Then there was a public-defender hire for a client charged with armed robbery. The Supreme Court ruling that poor defendants deserved the same defense preparation as wealthier ones and at government expense hadn't silver-lined many P.I.s' pockets.
Government work paid like government work. Few clients on public defenders' rosters were guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. As usual, Jack's queries into the current case were asserting the prosecutor's contention.
By this Sunday, Jack might be decked out in jailhouse orange, socks and flip-flops. Hell, he could be tomorrow, assuming Captain America and the Car Wash Kid didn't screw up the air-safety statistics.
Yeah, well, statistics were really what had him strapped in a friggin' piccolo with wings and beverage service. Last night, Yancy Nilsson had called in the midst of Jack's and Dina's slog through a mountain of faxes, computer printouts and notes. "Simpson," Yancy said, instead of hello.
"Ashlee or Jessica?" The kid had the major hots for both, perhaps simultaneously in his dreams. When Yancy wasn't slaying online dragons, he surfed Internet fan sites and chat rooms for the latest cell-phone photos and gossip on his beloveds.
He said, "I guess you haven't gone over Sunday's passenger manifests yet."
"Just starting." Jack eyed the sheets in the respective folders. Stating the obvious with a kiss of accusation, he said, "You copied them when I wasn't looking."
"Robert K. Simpson," Yancy recited. "Flight 17, a DC-8, Little Rock to Park City."
Jack's finger followed down the page. "Got it."
"P. David Simpson, flight 219, a 737 from Chicago. Connecting flight, A-23, on a DC-8 from Park City to Little Rock."
The prickle of excitement at Jack's rib cage vaporized. "Nice try spotting the Simpson thing, but that Chicago flight departed there a few minutes behind flight 17 from Little Rock."
