Shaded Light: The Case of the Tactless Trophy Wife: A Paul Manziuk and Jacquie Ryan Mystery (The Manziuk and Ryan Mysteries Book 1) (48 page)

“Who’s the harridan?”

“Pardon me? Who is this?”

“Don’t you know me?”

“Bart?”

“See, you do know me.”

“Why did you call?”

“Why not?”

“I—you—we—”

“You sound confused, woman. Because of the old battle-ax?”

“That old—er—that’s my mother.”

“Then you’ll welcome a chance to escape. How about ten minutes out front? I rented a car for the occasion.”

“Where did you get the—” Realizing that her mother was listening, she stopped short of questioning his finances. “I can’t.”

“Sure you can. Ten minutes. If you don’t appear, I’ll start honking the horn and keep at it till I get a ticket.”

“I really can’t.”

“Imbecile. Who’s telling you what to do now?”

He hung up, and she carefully replaced the receiver.

“Well, who was it?” her mother demanded.

“Just a friend.”

“You don’t have any men friends in the city, I hope. Or was it one of Jillian’s friends?”

Shauna didn’t answer. Instead, she walked toward the kitchen.

“I asked who it was!”

“It was nobody important.”

“Shauna Jensen, you come right back here and tell me who was on the phone!”

Shauna turned and stared at her mother. She felt strangely aloof, as if she were watching a scene on a stage. Her thoughts surprised her. Her mother must have been pretty when she was young. Likely, she’d looked a lot like Jillian. Or would have if she’d had the money. It wasn’t purely Jillian’s fault she’d grown up the way she had. Grasping. Selfish. Just like Mom. Why had she never seen that before?

The funny thing was that Jillian had gotten away with it. She’d never have let their mother ask about her phone calls. Jillian would have said it was none of her business and their mother would have shut up. If not, Jillian would have told her to shut up. And who was the favorite daughter? The compliant Shauna or the defiant Jillian? Let that be a lesson to you, she thought.

“I’m going out,” she said. “Not sure when I’ll be back.”

“You can’t go out and leave us. Your father will want to have lunch soon. And I thought you could look after your sisters while he and I do some shopping.”

“Sorry.” No, that was wrong. Don’t say you’re sorry. Jillian never had.

But her mother had heard the word. “You’re sorry? You will be sorry!”

Shauna ignored her and glanced into the mirror in the hall. Hopeless. Nevertheless, she picked up her purse and headed for the front door.

“Shauna, I said you’re not to go out! What are you doing? Who was on the phone?”

“Bye,” Shauna said sweetly.

She was standing at the curb when Bart drove up in a shiny new Mazda.

“So you do have some sense,” he said in greeting.

She glared at him. “You shouldn’t waste your money renting cars.”

“You’d rather walk?”

“Walking might be good for you. You could stand to get in better shape.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I’ll have you know I’m in great shape. Not a pound overweight.”

“No, but your muscle tone isn’t very good. And you could do with more stamina.”

“I suppose you’re an expert on physical fitness.”

“No, I’m not. But I do exercise to keep in shape.”

“Can we talk about something else?”

“I need to buy some clothes, get some contact lenses, and have my hair done.”

“You do, do you?”

She adjusted the seat belt and settled comfortably back against the plush cushions. “I decided I’d let you take me,” she said confidently.

Manziuk and Ryan were meeting in the large squad room with the rest of the team on the case.

Benson was there, too. Just to give them all a friendly reminder that there was a lot of outrage felt by the public—whose taxes paid their salaries. The public wanted results. Benson wanted results. So did the police chief and the commissioner. And the mayor.

So when was Benson going to be able to tell the public (in the form of the media) that they were once more safe, that the murderer had been apprehended? Did they know how difficult it was for Benson to have to keep answering questions with, “We’re working on it,” or “We won’t give up until we’ve got him,” and the like? All pat answers. All answers he’d grown to hate. He concluded, “So get to work and get this case solved!”

Manziuk waited until Benson was out of the room before going to the front. “Okay, let me tell you what we’ve got so far.” He then outlined the case from the first finding of Jillian Martin’s body to his and Ryan’s list of probable suspects. When he was finished, he said, “Okay, what else have we got?”

“We found out who gave the story to the newspapers,” said one young policeman. “Crystal Winston phoned it in Sunday evening. She negotiated a fee up front and then more or less dictated the story. The reporter who took it spiced it up a bit, but basically the story was as Crystal read it to them. The payment check will be sent to her mother.”

“All right,” Manziuk said. “What else?”

“I have the statement from Officer Fellowes, sir.” An officer Manziuk recognized as one of the Forensics Team held out an envelope. “And the results of the tests on the three items that were found beside him.”

“Good. Anything we can use?”

“I think so. Fellowes brought the thermos from home. It had coffee in it. He said he hadn’t drunk from it. That appears to be true. It was full of coffee, nothing else. Secondly, we had a tea cup with traces of Earl Gray tea and sugar. According to Fellowes, Ellen Brodie gave him the tea around eleven-thirty. Finally, there was the glass. It was about one-third full of Coke—loaded with Seconal. It’s lucky he was just groggy and not out of it for good.”

“Even though he’d only drunk two-thirds of it?”

“Yes, sir. Someone dissolved about ten tablets in the soft drink.”

“How fast does Seconal act?”

“Anywhere from instantly to, say, half an hour.”

“So it isn’t surprising that Fellowes was asleep before he finished the Coke?”

“No, sir. Particularly since he says he was sipping it slowly rather than just drinking it down. He figured it was going to be a long night and he may as well make it last.”

From her seat near the front, Ryan suddenly asked, “Wouldn’t it have been easier to put in the tea?”

The officer from Ident looked uncertain.

“She asked if it wouldn’t have been easier to put in the tea,” Manziuk said.

“It wasn’t, sir. There was no trace of it.”

Ryan turned to face him. “I know it wasn’t in the tea. But it seems to me it would dissolve more readily into a hot substance. Which one would be more likely? The cold Coke or hot tea?”

The officer looked at Manziuk.

“Well?” he asked impatiently.

“I guess—well, the tea. It would be a lot more work to dissolve tablets into the cold liquid. But that’s what happened.”

“Thank you,” Manziuk said. “Since Detective Constable Ryan is secondary on this case, I hope you will answer her directly from now on.”

“Sir?” An officer in the back raised his hand.

“Yes?”

“How is Sergeant Craig?”

“He’s had a heart attack. But the doctors are optimistic that he’ll pull through. Whether or not we’ll see him back here in the near future, I can’t answer. Now, what else have we got?”

“Nick Donovan left latents on the typewriter,” Ford said.

“He did?”

“Yes. So we know he could have typed the note we found.”

“Any other prints? What about on the note itself?”

“It was a mess. One clear one that was Jillian Martin’s. A couple of Douglass Fischer’s. There are a lot of other smudges. I don’t think we’ll find anything else. It looks like it was handled quite a bit.”

The meeting ended half an hour later. Nothing of great importance had been added. Neither Nick nor Bart had been seen at the Martins’ apartment building. Several waiters and waitresses from nearby bars and restaurants recognized Jillian, but neither of the two men.

However, there were still a lot of places she could have met someone. They needed to keep the circle spreading wider. And Ryan suggested they expand who they were looking for. Maybe she had been having an affair with Douglass after all.

In the early afternoon, Manziuk was working at his desk, piecing together what they had for the fourth or fifth time.

Ryan walked in suddenly. “Inspector? I’ve been going through my notes from the interviews again.”

He looked at her and waited.

“Two things. The first is that Lorry Preston mentioned going into the study on Saturday and finding Nick Donovan there. She said he was not pleased that she had come in. Could he have been typing the letter then?”

“She didn’t say what he was doing?”

She shook her head. “Only that she was surprised because he seemed annoyed that she’d come in.”

“All right. What else?”

“Something Crystal Winston said. It might be meaningless, but when you asked her if she’d been in the kitchen the whole time Sunday afternoon, she said she was. But later she mentioned something about getting glasses from the bar and doing a few other housekeeping things in the day room.”

“So?”

“So she was out of the kitchen. She could have noticed someone going through the games room or past the house toward the Japanese garden.”

“Or coming back.”

“And she might have kept quiet about it and later asked for money.”

“It doesn’t narrow the list of suspects, but it does give us a good idea of what she might have been up to.”

“If she’d told us right away…”

“She’d still be alive.”

“Why would she try to deal with someone she knew was a murderer?”

“Maybe it was someone she thought she could trust. Maybe she didn’t realize the implications.” He stood up and shuffled some papers, presumably in an attempt to tidy the top of his desk. “Okay, we’ve been here long enough. Let’s go talk to a couple of people.”

Ryan had to run to keep up with his long strides.

EIGHTEEN

They found Lorry in the mission office looking through a list of kids who were regulars, memorizing names.

“Sorry to bother you, Miss Preston,” Manziuk said. “Just one or two questions.”

She indicated a couple of mismatched chairs in front of her desk. “Won’t you sit down?”

“We want to clarify a couple of things,” Manziuk said as he perched uncertainly on an old brown wooden kitchen chair. It held. “You mentioned seeing Nick Donovan in George Brodie’s study on Saturday. Was he by any chance typing?”

“Yes, he was.” Her eyes questioned him.

“On the typewriter or on the computer?”

“On the typewriter. It’s in the corner.”

“When was this?”

“In the afternoon. Maybe around four. Nick and I had gone for a walk earlier and then had some lemonade. I went up to my room for a while. We’d planned to play tennis around four, so I went down to look for him. Kendall told me he was in the study; I went in to ask him if he was ready.”

“Did you happen to notice what he was typing? A form, a letter, something else?”

“I didn’t look at it at all. I was just surprised at how fast he was typing.”

“What was his reaction to your going into the room?”

She hesitated, looking down at the desk in front of her.

“Was he pleased to see you?”

Lorry continued to stare at the blank paper in front of her. “No,” she said at last. The words were slow and very quiet. “He seemed annoyed that I’d come in. I left right away.”

“Did he say anything later?’

“He followed me out. He started to say something, but I stopped him. I said I was sorry for bothering him.” She shrugged. “I don’t like to be interrupted when I’m concentrating on something, either.”

“And then you went and played tennis?”