Your Chariot Awaits (23 page)

Only one guy sat at the counter, eating.

We picked up soft drinks, and Fitz got us set up at a computer back in the corner. A few clicks, and a search engine was eagerly awaiting input. He typed
Southern Gold Timber
into the blank space.

“You've done this before?”

“I spent a lot of time in here looking up information about identity theft. That's what I had to see the lawyer about.”

Identity theft! At last, an answer for my curiosity. I was also relieved. I know identity theft can be a big problem, but I was thankful it wasn't something such as marriage entanglements Fitz hadn't told me about, or lawsuits filed by jealous husbands. Maybe revelations about Jerry's secrets had given me a jaundiced outlook on males in general.

I kept my unwarranted suspicions to myself. “I've never known anyone personally who had an identity stolen, but I keep hearing about what a mess it can be.”

“A huge mess. Somebody got hold of everything. My Social Security number, date of birth, credit card account number, checking account number, address. Maybe my shoe size, for all I know. They drained bank accounts, opened credit accounts, borrowed money, and bought enough stuff to stock an electronics store. I don't tend to use credit much, but I don't like having a credit rating number that looks like the IQ of a ham sandwich.”

“It's scary to think someone could really do that. You don't know how they acquired the information?”

“No idea at all. I never had my wallet lost or stolen. Never used a credit card on the Internet. Never gave out personal information over the phone. Never, so far as I know, anyway, had mail stolen.”

“How long has it been going on?”

“It started a couple months before I left California. I've straightened out most of it, but I needed legal help with a couple of things. One of the strangest problems was my house down in LA. Somebody actually tried to sell it using my identity. I was telling a woman who writes for the local newspaper about all the problems I've had, and she's using me in an article she's doing on identity theft.”

He made a couple of clicks with the mouse. “Look, here's a bunch of Web sites about Southern Gold Timber.”

Southern Gold had a Web site of its own, but it was mostly hype about what an outstanding company it was. There was no personal information about Ben Sutherland, although there was a photo of him as CEO. It showed him standing beside an acre or so of desks in a dark-paneled office: a beefy-shouldered, big-bellied guy with bushy eyebrows and jutting shocks of white hair that looked like a haystack hit by a tornado. Family photos stood prominently on the desk, but a stuffed boar's head and a bearskin, complete with head and claws, dominated the wall behind him. Horns of some other unidentifiable creature poked into a corner of the photo.

“He might consider spending less money on preserving dead animals and invest in a decent haircut,” I suggested.

“The man definitely doesn't need Rogaine,” Fitz agreed. “I'd say he probably has a collection of guns big enough to arm a small country. And knows how to use them.”

A do-it-yourselfer rather than a hire-a-hit-man guy?

“Hey, here's something interesting,” Fitz said as he opened a new window. “Southern Gold has a recently acquired subsidiary called Shoreline Timber Products right here in Washington, headquarters up in Bremerton. I wonder if the big boss ever comes out here to visit his subsidiary.”

I also wondered if Ryan knew about this company. Ben Sutherland in Georgia had seemed a safe distance away. Ben Sutherland with a company right here in the state felt dangerously close. Had he, in fact, been right out in my driveway, sneaking up on Jerry . . . and hitting me over the head?

Fitz frowned. “But we're back to the same old problem. What was Jerry doing in your limousine that night? I keep thinking if we knew the answer to that, we'd have a better handle on why he was killed and who might have done it.”

“And what could possibly have been on Jerry's computer that would worry Sutherland?”

We spent the better part of an hour on the Internet, but most of the remainder of what we found had to do with law-suits filed against Southern Gold Timber by various environ-mental groups concerned with the company's overlogging and destruction of wetlands. Paying Jerry off to get rid of him would surely have been small change compared to what Sutherland was spending on lawyers. But maybe it was the principle of the thing more than the size of the payoff that mattered.

We were back at the house by nine thirty, had a cup of green tea, and then Fitz was off, saying he'd call me from somewhere on the
Miss Nora
in a day or two.

I yawned and flicked the remote to see what was on TV, but the phone rang. I answered eagerly, thinking it might be a late call from Sarah, but after my hello, a nondaughterly voice said, “Is this Andi McConnell?”

“Yes.”

“This is Elena Loperi.”

“Oh.” I couldn't think of anything to add.
How nice to hear
from you
would be a hard line to say with sincerity.

“I don't suppose you were expecting to hear from me.”

“Well, uh, no. Are you calling for some, uh, particular reason?”

Elena seemed to bring out the
uh
in me.

“I'd like to talk to you.”

“We're talking now,” I said warily.

“No, in person.”

Talking to Elena was not on my schedule of Fun Things to Do. She hadn't directly threatened me during our earlier conversation, but neither had she been telling me to have a nice day. I wished Fitz were still here. “What did you want to talk about?”

“I think you know.” Her cultured tone was meaningful.

I did know, of course, but I had the odd feeling she was reluctant to say Jerry's name. Why was that? I hesitated, tap-ping the arm of the sofa nervously. Okay, this was good, I decided. Elena was right up there with Big Daddy Sutherland on my list of suspects. I'd set up a meeting in some public place for after Fitz got back, and he could use some Ed Montrose interrogation skills to get more information out of her.

“How about Friday evening? We can meet over there in Olympia. A restaurant or parking lot, whatever you'd prefer.”

“I've been parked at the end of your street for almost an hour waiting for you to get home and then for your friend to leave. I was beginning to think he was going to stay all night.” She sounded a bit snappish. “I'll be there in two minutes.”

She hung up before I had a chance to protest.

25

I
peered out the window. Headlights pulled to the curb in front of the house. I couldn't identify the model of car, but it didn't look sleek and expensive, which rather surprised me. Although someone who looked as I expected Elena Loperi to look slid out and headed up my walkway. When she rang the bell, I opened the door, but left the chain on and one-eyed her through the narrow crack.

Letty's description fit. Long legged and slender, dark hair loose and shiny under the entry light. Her clothing . . . jeans, nondescript dark sweatshirt, and black sneakers . . . was what I might wear on a dark night when I wanted to be as little visible as possible. But where I'd look like a potential bag lady in the outfit, she managed to look svelte and stunning, ready to waltz down a fashion runway heralding this year's do-your-own-thing look.

But I also noted a worry crease between the perfect line of her eyebrows. “Why couldn't we talk on the phone?”

“I was afraid it might be bugged or tapped or however it is someone can listen in on your calls.”

“Can that be done with a cell phone?”

“If it can be, I'm sure my husband knows how to do it.” She glanced down the street as if afraid someone might be lurking in the shadows.

“You think he might be following you?”

“He's down in Portland now.” Small hesitation. “At least that's where he's supposed to be.” She jumped when Moose started barking from behind his fence, then turned back to me. “I didn't kill Jerry, if that's what you're thinking.”

I wasn't convinced of her innocence, although her nerves were a point in her favor.

“And I'm not carrying a gun, knife, or any more creative murder device to do you in.” She lifted her arms to show me she wasn't concealing anything, but what I mostly saw was a to-die- for figure.

I eyed the black leather purse hanging from a shoulder strap. “That purse looks big enough to be lethal.”

“Any woman who carries some itsy-bitsy purse with only a credit card and eye shadow in it isn't to be trusted.”

I could go along with that. Real women need big purses. We carry everything from pocketknife to the small pharmacy of aspirin, Tylenol, and Tums that is in mine to the screwdriver I saw daughter Sarah pull out of her purse last winter.

“But if you'd like, I can dump the contents on the sidewalk and you can take inventory,” she offered.

It was a facetious statement, and yet I figured she'd do it if I insisted. “That won't be necessary.”

I unloosened the chain and let her in. I dispensed with a polite offer of refreshments. I flicked the TV off, then motioned her to the sofa and took a chair across the coffee table from her. Since I hit forty, I tend to acquire muddy freckles and blotches under the sun, but Elena's vacation tan glowed gloriously golden. It didn't, however, change the way her dark eyes kept darting nervously to the door.

“Okay, you're here. Somehow I don't think it's to call a meeting of the Jerry Norton Fan Club. So what's this all about?”

“I'm afraid you aren't going to pay attention to what I said on the phone. Afraid you're just going to blunder ahead—”

“Blunder!” I repeated indignantly.

“Blunder,” she confirmed. “Which could put you on a collision course with my husband. With consequences that might be . . . dire.”

“Out of the goodness of your heart, you're here to tell me to back off?”

“My ethics and good judgment on some matters may be up for debate, but I'm not without a conscience. And I don't want your dead body in there cluttering it up.”

“Goody for you,” I muttered. “One gold star, coming up. You want it on your forehead or your butt?”

Elena looked startled, but then she gave me a wry smile. “I can see why Jerry liked you. He liked . . . sass.”

Warily I said, “You really didn't know he was dead until I told you?”

“No, I had no idea. As I told you, we'd been away on vacation.”

“It happened right here, in my driveway. Jerry's body was stuffed in the trunk of my limousine.”

“You'd been out somewhere . . . in a limousine?”

So then I had to go through the whole uncle-and-limouzeen story, which actually brought a hint of smile to the tense line of her lips. Until I got to the part about the body and getting knocked in the head myself.

“You didn't see who hit you?”

“No.”

“So you don't know if it was Jerry or the killer.”

I blinked. The thought that Jerry could have hit me had never entered my head. People were always coming up with these points that hadn't occurred to me, which did not bode well, I suspected, for my success as a sleuth/sidekick. Was there a
Sleuthing for Dummies
book I should be studying?

Jerry knocking me unconscious seemed implausible.
Jerry
wouldn't do that, would he?
Yet, on second thought, it wasn't beyond possibility. If he hadn't wanted me to catch him in the limousine, maybe he had clobbered me. And then someone had done even worse to him. A deadly food chain.

Elena ran her hand through that long mane of hair. “This is all so . . . incredible.”

“I suppose it is a shock, if you were having an affair with Jerry and didn't even know he was dead until I announced it to you,” I agreed bluntly. “Didn't you wonder why you didn't hear from him after your vacation?”

“I wasn't having an affair with him!” The denial burst out like an explosion of fireworks, but then she hesitated and seemed to crumple as she added, “It had been over for three months.”

Three months. Interesting timing in regard to my
four
-months relationship with Jerry. Two-timing both of us there for a while. Jerry's sleaze quotient rose again.

“What ended it?”

She lifted her head and gave me a ghost of smile. “I'd like to say I came to my senses and dumped him. But that wasn't what happened. Jerry dumped me.”

Dumped her because he'd started seeing me? Yeah, right. About as likely as his choosing leftover meat loaf when he could have those lobsters in his freezer. There must have been some more compelling reason. I picked one and asked, “Did your husband find out about the affair and threaten him?”

“I don't know. It's possible. I . . . I was thinking about leaving Donny for him.”

“I wouldn't take getting dumped by Jerry too personally,” I advised. “According to his brother, Jerry dumped women the way some men toss beer cans out car windows.”

“He was married once,” she said. It sounded like a protest of my harsh view of Jerry, but then she reconsidered and said, “A mistake he probably didn't intend to make again.”

“He was still married. He and Cara were never divorced.”

“Still married? He lied to me!”

True, although that seemed a moot point to get indignant about, considering that she was also married.

“He broke up with me, too, just before he was killed. He already had the next lucky winner picked out.”

Speculation glimmered in her eyes.

I shook my head. “I didn't kill him either. Though I'm not sure the police believe that. They seem a little suspicious, since I'd taken after him with a shovel just a couple days earlier.”

“A shovel?” Her eyebrows rose, but then, without asking questions, she muttered, “Good for you.”