Your Chariot Awaits (10 page)

“He had a run-in not long ago with one of the other condo owners, something about their cat digging in the flowerpots on his balcony. They had to get rid of the cat. And over in Olympia he got some waiter who spilled coffee on him fired.”

I'd felt he'd overreacted in both instances. And there was also the unpleasant scene he'd made at a car wash when an attendant stumbled and accidentally put a minuscule scratch on the Trans Am. But surely none of those incidents would have driven someone to murder
.
He could be good-hearted too. I once watched him spend a half hour helping a little boy lost in the Wal-Mart parking lot find his folks' car.

“Didn't he have some business outside F&N?”

“His Web site–design business. Some of his clients were a little strange. One woman was indignant about what she said was an unfair prejudice against vampires, and she wanted a Web site to correct that. Jerry told her that image upgrading for vampires wasn't in his line of work, and she'd have to get someone else.”

“Good for him.”

“He did set up a Web site for some rabid group that sold all kinds of anti-everything literature over the Internet. He called them ‘weekend commandos' who were into paintball wars and looking for conspiracies or cover-ups in everything from Barbie dolls to movie-theater popcorn.”

“Nuts can be nutty, but they can be dangerous too.”

“He shut off their Web site when they didn't pay their bill.”

But the uneasy thought occurred to me that even though Jerry had laughed at the group, he'd said there were a couple of guys in it he thought could actually be dangerous. Then a totally unrelated thought jumped into my head.

“Fitz!”

“Fitz killed Jerry?” Joella sounded both startled and bewildered.

“No. I just remembered, I have to get hold of him and tell him I can't pick up their guests at Sea-Tac. Do you have his cell phone number?”

She didn't. We found a listing for MATT'S SAILBOAT CHARTERS in the phone book, but it was an office that handled information and reservations for several local businesses. The woman couldn't or wouldn't give me Fitz's private cell phone number, but she could give Matt a message. I asked her to have him call me.

An irrelevant thought struck me. “Jo, has Fitz ever asked you about your pregnancy?”

She shook her head and smiled. “Fitz is incorrigibly nosy . . . ‘interested,' as he puts it . . . but he's never ungentlemanly.”

“How come you don't have him going to your church?”

“I'm working on it.”

“Same as you work on me?” I teased lightly.

“I try to open the door, but you have to step through your-self. Though God may give you a good shove, like He did me.”

A shove from God. I wondered what that would feel like. Would I know it if I had one, or would I just ignore it?

I went back to my side of the duplex for a shower. I felt dirty from toes to head wound, although it wasn't just a physical feel-ing, and water didn't eradicate it. Murder left an invisible scum of its own.

Joella offered to drive me to the sheriff's station, and I took her up on it. My headache was down to a dull throb, but I felt too jittery for safe driving.

A few neighbors were still watching the activities in my yard as we drove out. Tom, wearing his usual plaid pants and with binoculars glued to his eyes, was gazing from his deck. I sometimes wondered where he got his strange wardrobe. Was there some Plaids-R-Us store I didn't know about?

Joella turned the corner, but about a quarter mile down the road, in an area where there were no houses, she suddenly braked. “Look!”

“Where? What?” My mind was fixed on the coming inter-view. Being singled out to appear at the station, when neighbors would be interviewed in their own homes, felt ominous.

“There. In the parking lot.” She pulled over to the edge of the lot.

It wasn't really a parking lot, just a vacant lot where local carpoolers sometimes left their vehicles. On this Saturday, only a half dozen cars were lined up in the lot.

One of them was Jerry's Trans Am.

“Why would he park way out here if he was coming to your house?”

“I have no idea.”

The thought hit me again that what I knew about Jerry was like the blurb on the back cover of a book: enough to intrigue, not enough to give away the whole story.

10

A
t the station, a woman officer led me down a hallway to a small, windowless room holding one table, two chairs, and a tape recorder. She introduced me to Detective Sergeant Molino. He was small and wiry, with carefully styled dark hair, a narrow mustache, and blue eyes sharp enough to split ice cubes.

We shook hands, his movements quick, his handshake not exactly intimidating but brief and intense, a guy who probably had a black belt in something I'd never heard of. He was also giving me a quick once-over—not in any smarmy way, but I had the feeling he knew all about the ticket I'd gotten for no taillights a couple years ago and that I was late getting my property taxes paid this spring. I also had the uneasy feeling he could outthink me, like I was a kid still struggling with multi-plication tables and he was into calculus.

The woman officer departed, leaving the two of us alone in the dismal room. He politely reiterated that I wasn't under arrest and was free to leave at any time. I didn't hear a
yet
when he said I wasn't under arrest, but I figured it was there.

Before he could start asking questions, I jumped in and told him about spotting Jerry's Trans Am in that vacant lot parking area. I wanted him to know I was eager to cooperate and find Jerry's killer.

“You're certain it's his car?”

“I could see the dent in the door, although I'd have recognized it anyway.”

He consulted some notes in front of him. “The dent you put there.”

“Well . . . uh . . . yes. But it was an accident.” Then I realized that was not necessarily a point I should emphasize. It reminded the detective that I'd really been trying to bash Jerry and got the car by mistake.

“Did Mr. Norton often park there?”

“Never, that I know of. I can't imagine why he'd park out there and then walk all the way to my place. There's plenty of parking space right on the street by my house.”

“We'll check it out.” He made a note on the lined tablet in front of him.

“One more thing—”

He looked up. “Yes?”

“Jerry had a Rolex watch. I . . . I was pretty shaken up when I saw him there in the trunk of the limousine and didn't think about it at the time, but I'm almost certain now that the watch wasn't on his wrist. I'm wondering if it may have been stolen.”

“You mean you think someone killed him for the watch?”

In fact, what I was thinking was that whoever killed Jerry had seen the watch and simply decided to grab it, but maybe he had been killed for the watch. “That's possible, isn't it?”

“Murder has been done for less,” Detective Molino agreed, although he sounded skeptical. “We can check the pawnshops. He usually wore the watch?”

“Always.”

I remembered when he first showed it to me, a month or so after we'd started seeing each other. I was impressed, but also a bit appalled. Sixteen thousand dollars, for a watch? I'd wondered how he could afford it. He made a lot more than I did at F&N, and he had the Web site–design business too. But still, sixteen
thousand
? I'd decided the Web site business must be more lucrative than I realized. Although several times he'd also hinted that his family came from “old money,” so perhaps he had income I didn't know about.

“You're being very helpful, Mrs. McConnell. We appreciate that.” Detective Molino again spoke politely as he made more notes, yet I thought I heard an edge of cynicism behind the politeness.
Trying to kiss up to us, lady? Don't bother. We're
gonna nail you.

But maybe nerves make you hear things that aren't there.

The remainder of the interview repeated questions I'd answered earlier, but went into more detail on everything. Questions about what had awakened me, what I'd done out-side, my injury, my relationship with Jerry, did we go out alone or with others, did we work together at F&N. Eventually I realized Detective Sergeant Molino—who was intimidating enough that I couldn't think of him with anything less than his full title—was approaching the same subjects from a variety of angles, which might indicate he was simply an expert at digging out information. Or was he trying to trap me into a give-away contradiction about something I'd said earlier?

“Have you seen a doctor about this injury to your head?”

“My neighbor cleaned it up and put salve on it, and it seems okay. Though there's still a bump. When one of the deputies was photographing everything, he took a picture of it.” I wondered if they were buying into neighbor Tom's accusation that I'd somehow deliberately whacked myself on the head. “Would you like to see it?”

He looked mildly alarmed, the first time I'd seen him a bit off center. Not a man who liked personal contact, I suspected.

“I'd prefer a medical report, if one is available.”

I watched him write something, but his handwriting rivaled Uncle Ned's hieroglyphics.

“And this breakup you mentioned,” he went on briskly when he'd stopped writing. “Was this at Mr. Norton's instigation or yours?”

“His.” I swallowed, trying to keep it from being an audible gulp. Now it was out. The woman scorned. One of the oldest motives in the world for revenge. “But it was mostly because he'd be moving to San Diego soon. He was offered a transfer rather than being let go, as most of the employees at F&N were.”

We went into more details about the relationship, how long we'd been seeing each other, etc.

Finally he said, “Thank you. I know this must be difficult for you. Do you know if Mr. Norton had other personal relationships?”

I was startled. Another woman? I'd thought all along that our relationship was exclusive, but had I been incredibly naive? Was Jerry in fact working on his Web site business all those evenings he wasn't with me, as he'd said? Maybe there
was
another woman, one who'd just found out Jerry was also see-ing me. One who felt betrayed and angry enough to commit murder?

“I wasn't aware of any other current relationships, but it's possible one . . . or more . . . could have existed that I didn't know about.”

What I did know right now was that from Detective Sergeant Molino's viewpoint, jealousy about another woman was another potential motive to tie me to the murder.

“What about previous relationships?”

“There was his ex-wife, of course, but I don't know that he had any contact with her. And once he got a phone call when we were barbecuing on the balcony at his condo. The call annoyed him, and he said something about ‘ex-girlfriends who won't give up,' but I don't know any details.” I'd heard that Jerry had dated a couple of other women at F&N before we met, but he hadn't volunteered any information, and I hadn't had the nerve to quiz him.

Detective Sergeant Molino moved on to ask about Jerry's family.

“He has a brother, Ryan, I think his name is, but I don't know where he lives. And there's the ex-wife and two children and the rest of his family back east.”

“Back east where?”

“I'm sorry. I don't know.”

More notes. I wondered if he didn't trust the tape recorder, or if he was one of those obsessive-compulsive types who double-do everything. Like save files on the computer but then print it all out too. Or maybe he liked to make comments in the notes that went beyond what would show up on the tape. S
ubject exhibiting excessive nervousness during questioning.
Crossing and uncrossing legs. Twisting fingers. Excessive
blinking.
There was an intensity about him that I found disconcerting.

I gritted my teeth and willed my legs to stop crossing and my fingers to stop twisting, but my eyelids had a blinky life of their own. Then I couldn't help but wonder what other give-away movements I was making that I wasn't even aware of. So I tried to hold myself rigidly motionless, not a muscle twitching.

Detective Molino added something to his notes.
Subject
now exhibiting unusual body rigidity indicative of extreme anxiety,
my nervous imagination supplied.

“You don't seem to know a great deal about Mr. Norton, considering that you'd had a four months' relationship with him,” he observed.

True, as was becoming more obvious all the time. Murdersized gaps in what I knew about Jerry. There didn't seem any right response to this last observation, so I remained silent.

Detective Sergeant Molino gave me a minute, no doubt hoping I'd blurt something incriminating into the silence. When I didn't, he went on to ask about possible enemies. I dutifully mentioned the run-ins I knew about, although I felt squeamish doing so, as if I were maligning Jerry when he had no chance to defend himself.

More as an afterthought, I also mentioned Jerry's Web site business, and I was surprised by an unexpected uptick in the detective's interest. He leaned forward, his ballpoint pen poised over the notepad. If he'd had antennae, they'd have been quivering.

“Did you help him with this business?

“No, I didn't have anything to do with it.”

“Were you familiar with any of his clients?”

“Not by name, no. Though I'm sure there must be a complete record of them on his computer.”

“Did he ever meet with any of the clients personally?”

“I was under the impression all his dealings were done over the Internet. But I don't know that for certain.”

He went on to ask numerous other questions about the business, most of which I couldn't answer—no doubt emphasizing again that I seemed to know suspiciously little about Jerry. Or wasn't telling all I knew.