Weddings Can Be Murder (12 page)

The notebook of passwords I set with the
laptop. The old address book would bear further examination and I
didn’t want to do it standing in the bathroom. I opened the door
and checked out the upstairs hallway, as empty as usual but now
there were oblongs of daylight coming through the doors to Ron’s
and my offices. Looked like the coast was clear enough for me to
work at my desk so I piled everything back into the knapsack and
carried it there. And as long as I was officially working I wanted
coffee. A noise in the kitchen caught my attention when I reached
the top of the stairs. I paused, senses immediately on alert once
again.

I eased the swinging door open and spotted
Sally, our part-time receptionist. She was measuring coffee into
the filter basket. A scatter of grounds flew over the countertop
when she caught sight of me in the doorway.

“Sheesh, Charlie! I can’t believe you snuck
up on me.” She wiped the grounds and slipped the basket in place,
hitting the button to start the brew. “I saw your Jeep out there.
How’s Ron today?”

“I’m not sure. He was asleep when I left the
house. Yesterday was rough.”

“I can imagine. Sorry Ross and I skipped out
without seeing you guys. The kids were fussy enough as it was.”

“No problem. Saturday went by in kind of
blur for all of us.”

She reached into a reusable shopping bag and
pulled out a package—whole grain bran muffins—along with some
bananas and oranges.

I’m more of a cholesterol and fat sort of
breakfaster, but I can go for the healthy stuff when truly
hungry—like now. My tummy rumbling at the sight of a bran muffin
meant it had been a lot of hours since my last meal.

“I suppose you’ve seen the news coverage?” I
asked, digging my nails into orange peel.

“It’s ridiculous, of course. I’m so sorry
for what they’re saying about Ron.”

“The news conference didn’t go well. And of
course they have to keep playing it over and over, highly edited
toward the worst.”

“Hasn’t there been anything useful from the
hotline?” Sally pulled two mugs from the cupboard as the coffee
maker did its final round of hissing.

“Not that I’ve heard. Kent Taylor isn’t
saying much. I don’t know if he’s being secretive because Ron’s a
possible suspect or just because they really don’t know much yet.”
I doctored my coffee sufficiently to make up for the lack of
artificial ingredients in the muffin and took breakfast and mug up
to my office.

My little haul of stolen goodies waited for
me and I began to organize them. I hadn’t thought to look for a
power cord for Victoria’s laptop—wasn’t sure how long I might have
with it—but felt sure I could come up with a spare cord somewhere
around here. I opened the top and pressed the power button. It
began to boot up.

Meanwhile, the two file folders containing
supplier data and paid bills appeared to consist entirely of
ordinary stuff. It didn’t take long to figure out her favorite
sources for fabrics and furniture for her clients. She dealt almost
exclusively with two tile and carpet suppliers. The few odd
invoices were apparently for custom-order items where the client
wanted something specifically British or Irish or Indian. Nothing
made me think the orders or suppliers could pose a danger to
Victoria in any way. Taking these had been a long shot, I had to
admit, but most any lead was worth checking.

When the computer asked for a password I
paged through the little spiral notebook. She was organized, I had
to admit. There was a section for online shopping sites, one for
financial institutions, one for business sites such as the
suppliers whose invoices I’d already found in paper form. Although
I went through the whole list several times I didn’t find the one
thing I needed first—how to get onto the computer. Maybe Ron would
know.

Speaking of my brother, I wondered how many
hours a person could sleep before his family should become
concerned. He’d been out cold for almost twelve hours when I left
the house, and that was close to four hours ago. I told myself to
lighten up—he’d been through hell and was entitled to all the sleep
he could get.

I turned to the address book with the
flowery cover. It didn’t seem Victoria’s style and because of its
apparent age I wondered if it was something she’d hung onto since
childhood. I opened it to the tab marked A. The entries were
few—the letter A only had two names on the page—and were not done
in a child’s hand. The handwriting style reminded me of my
mother’s, a genteel woman raised in the ’50s, schooled in an era
when precise cursive handwriting was considered a virtue. Had the
book belonged to Victoria’s mother? I paged further into it.

Many of the entries had no addresses, only
phone numbers, telling me the listing was someone the book’s owner
knew well. Of those with street addresses, many gave no city—again,
probably because it was something the owner already knew—or the
city was abbreviated. The zip codes might give a clue, once I had
time to look them up. A lot of the phone numbers were written as
seven digits, which had to mean they were located in whatever town
the owner lived—they weren’t local numbers for Albuquerque, I knew.
It had been a lot of years since it was common not to list the area
code for nearly every number in your contacts list. These days,
many large cities have more than one. Of the numbers that did give
an area code, I certainly didn’t recognize them. Aside from the
fact that Ron said Victoria grew up here, giving further credence
to the likelihood that the book belonged to someone else, all I
could say is that the book was interesting, although I couldn’t
figure out what it might prove. I set it down and reached for my
coffee, which had gone cold already.

Back in the kitchen I’d just topped off my
mug, staring out the window as I sipped, mulling over the items on
my desk, when Ron’s car pulled into his usual parking spot. He
looked marginally better this morning, I noted, having showered and
put on unrumpled jeans and plaid shirt under his sheepskin jacket.
He’d even thought to bring Freckles along. Poor baby had been
feeling pretty much left out the past few days. She’s used to
spending her days with me at the office or trailing along on
whatever I’m doing at the time. She raced to the door and waited
for Ron to catch up.

“Hey,” he said when he walked in. “Thanks
for the extra shut-eye this morning. I guess I needed it.”

I handed him a full mug after he’d draped
his jacket over the back of one of the kitchen chairs.

“I don’t suppose there’s been any news from
Kent Taylor?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’m avoiding the radio
and television.”

I didn’t blame him a bit.

“Look, I’ve been thinking that we really
need to work on this ourselves,” I told him. “The police are going
to gear all their efforts toward arresting the criminal.”

His jaw tightened
.
“Which they
believe is me.”

“But it’s not you, so we need to figure out
who it really is. Toward that end, I’ve been doing a little
footwork. But before I show you what I’ve got, I think we need to
adopt a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy here. Or as Elsa would probably
say, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

He sent me a puzzled look. I waved him
upstairs to my office. Freckles bounded ahead and found her
favorite stuffed toy near the bay window, where she settled onto
her bed. Of course, Ron recognized the laptop right away and his
expression went all judgmental on me.

I put up one hand. “Stop. Don’t ask. Just
take this information as something we can hopefully use. With luck,
we can come up with an angle the police aren’t working on, and
we’ll offer them our leads when the time is right.”

“Charlie, you’ve broken—”

“Uh! Remember, don’t ask.”

“If you’re caught with this—”

“It’ll be locked away in our safe here when
we aren’t actually using it. If we come across something the police
really need to see, I can always say that Victoria had asked me to
keep these things here for safety while you guys were away.” The
police evidently didn’t know about her basement floor safe because
there was no sign they’d even tried to open it, but my knowing that
was something which fell under our “don’t tell” policy.

“What I need now is the password to get into
the computer,” I said. “It seems to be the one subject not covered
in her handy book of passwords.”

“I don’t know it.”

“Well, help me think. It’s got to be
something pretty straightforward.”

“Do you think I’m limited on the number of
tries I can give?” he asked, sitting in my chair and pulling the
machine toward him.

“Mine doesn’t have a limit,” I said, “but it
would depend on how she set it up. Some only let you try three
times then you’re locked out.”

“Great.” He stared at the little box with
the cursor blinking in it, his fingers wiggling nervously above the
keyboard.

“Think about it awhile. There’s no need to
rush and do the wrong thing. You can take it into your office.”

He stood up and reached for the laptop when
I remembered the address book. I showed it to him and he shook his
head. “I don’t recognize it.”

It was at the very bottom of the safe, with
other stuff piled on top—again, I better not tell him this little
fact. “While you’re thinking about the computer, I’m going to try
calling some of the numbers in this book.”

He gave me a knock-yourself-out shrug and
carried Victoria’s computer across the hall. A moment later his
face appeared at my doorway again.

“Let me take that notebook of passwords,” he
said. “Maybe there’ll be a pattern.”

Good idea. I handed it over and turned to
the address book. Might as well start with the numbers which
provided me with area codes. I got two recorded “This number is no
longer in service” messages before a real human answered.

“I’m with RJP Investigations in Albuquerque,
trying to locate someone at this number who knows a woman named
Victoria Morgan,” I began.

“Victoria Morgan?” The voice was gentle,
probably an older woman, the accent faintly southern. “I don’t
believe I’ve ever heard of such a person.”

“Take a minute to think about it,” I
suggested. “It’s really important.”

“I’m sorry dear, I just don’t know her.”

I couldn’t very well bully the old lady if
she didn’t remember, so I gave her our office number in case she
thought of something later, thanked her for her time, and let her
go.

The same thing happened, with minor
variations, for the next dozen calls. Either the number was an old
one or the person had never heard of Victoria. The area codes, it
turned out, were mainly in Texas or Florida, which told me nothing.
Clearly, the address book had not been hers. Which begged the
question: why would someone have an address book belonging to
someone else and why would it be kept in the most secure place in
the house?

I’d reached the letter N, past any Morgans
who might be related, and was mulling the whole situation when two
things happened at once.

Ron appeared in my doorway with a triumphant
look on his face. “Found the password—we’re in.”

And Sally called out from downstairs.
“Charlie, Ron, you better come see this.”

Her tone grabbed our attention and we both
clattered down the stairs. In the conference room she had the TV
set on, the one we normally only use for viewing evidence videos.
This time it was turned to one of the local stations, where a
Special Report banner ran across the bottom of the screen in
attention-getting red. White letters spelled out Victoria Morgan
Missing Person Hotline and the number.

A man in a suit, with a detective badge
clearly visible on his belt, was talking.

“… a number of leads phoned in.
Unfortunately, none of them have led us to Ms. Morgan. Sheriff Beau
Cardwell from Taos County has even come down to go through leads
with us, as several of the more viable sounding calls came from his
jurisdiction.”

In the background stood a tall man in a
brown and tan uniform with a felt Stetson. Something in the back of
my brain told me he was connected with Samantha Sweet, the baker
I’d met, the one who had made Ron and Victoria’s wedding cake.
Which, I made a mental note, really should be put into the freezer
soon if we hoped to save it. While I was sidetracked on that
thought, the camera switched away from the law enforcement men.

The reporter on scene was talking. “And
that’s all we know, officially at least. But seem to be things the
police are keeping very close-mouthed about, Jill, and we plan to
ask the difficult questions.”

Cameras in the newsroom took over, where
popular anchor Jill Maldonado was seated at the news desk in a
low-cut dress that bordered on unprofessional, her hair and makeup
so perfect it made me think of a Barbie doll. Behind her, a huge
screen flashed pictures of Ron talking with Ben Ortiz in what
appeared to be a very hush-hush conversation, alternating to a shot
of Ron in his tuxedo looking completely disheveled after the long
day of interrogation.

“Yes, Scott, there are difficult questions.
Questions such as, where was bridegroom Ron Parker during those
hours when something horrific obviously happened at Victoria
Morgan’s house? Why, if he’s innocent, did Parker hire noted
defense attorney Ben Ortiz practically before the investigation
team had left the crime scene? And why is the man some are calling
the Killer Bridegroom not behind bars today?”

Jill Maldonado presented a serious facial
expression to the camera right before she flicked it over to a
smile and informed us that she would be right back with the
station’s legal consultant to give his take on the case. In a
flash, a loud-mouthed car dealer came on, with flickering lights
and fireworks to announce his holiday specials.