A Motor for Murder (Veronica Margreve Mysteries Book 1) (9 page)

15

Rita was sobbing, leaning against the gleaming white kitchen counter.

She had called me earlier, just as I was about to leave work on Monday, and asked me in a choked voice to come by. I had tried to ask whether everything was OK, to which she said “Please, just get here as fast as you can”. And now I was at the house, having driven straight there from work. The rain had stopped an hour ago, and the wind had dissipated the clouds. Suddenly, blue sky was above and it was sunny. The sunshine should have filled me with optimism, but instead I was tense with anxiety over why Rita wanted to see me.

“I realized that Roger didn’t come in last night. I tried to call him this morning but didn’t get him, just left him a voice mail. His car is gone – it’s not here and it’s not at his office, I looked. I went to his room and I found this note.”

She passed it to me. I read, on a piece of lined notebook paper, in angular writing in black ink:

“Hey Ri” (“That’s what he called me since when he was little” she said) “I can’t stand all this stuff anymore. I need to clear my head for a while. I don't know who or what to believe. Rog”

“I’m sorry.” I twisted the note in my fingers and looked at it. It didn’t make much sense to me. To start somewhere, I tried looking for explanations for its form.

“Why a note, do you think? On paper, written out by hand? Why not use a text or e-mail or I don’t know, Twitter? Instagram? ”

“So that I would find it at some time after he left, and I couldn’t know when he left or where he was. And so that he didn’t have to connect back to me after he decided to leave.” Rita explained. She had obviously thought about it.

“And that is his handwriting?” She nodded.

“What if you try to call his cell?”

“I get the automated message saying that he is either unavailable or out of range.” There were places within a couple hours’ drive from Seattle, that didn't have any cell reception. Some of them were even in the same county as Seattle. Roger could be in some damp moss-covered forest cabin, listening to the rain and drinking a beer. Or he could be across the mountains, in the near-desert of Eastern Washington. Or in a small motel room by the driftwood-covered beach, looking at the grey ocean waves. Or he could be in California by now. Or Canada.

Or Thailand, if he jumped on a plane from Seattle or Vancouver.

“How much money did he have?”

“I thought about it. I don’t really know. His car probably had a full tank of gas. Besides that, he could have found a couple hundred in cash around the house, that we keep for emergencies. I didn’t look for the cash yet. And he could use his credit card.”

“Was the card in his own name, or was he an authorized user on yours or George’s?”

“His own. He had a job for two years at Stanford, and got his own credit card.”

“And you don’t know his online banking password, by any chance?”

Rita shook her head, no.

That meant that we couldn’t use the credit card accounts to trace his purchases or his location, not without involving the police. (Not unless I wanted to try hacking into Roger’s credit-card issuer’s system.) And the credit limit on the card could easily be high enough for a plane ticket to Asia and accommodations there to lay low for a bit.

“Do you have the keys to his office?”

“No, I don’t. George probably did, they might be in the house somewhere.”

“What does his car look like?”

“It’s a white BMW 5-series, a couple of years old. It was a trade-in from Mayfair Motors.”

I thought some more, but nothing else came to mind about the form. Time to look into the content of the note, and its meaning.

“Why did he say he didn’t know who or what to believe anymore?” I tapped the note with my finger.

Rita was looking down. “I think he found out about Caitlin.”

“Why? What do you mean? What about Caitlin?”

“She and George have been having an affair.”

Wow. That admission has knocked me back with almost a physical force.

“Oh Rita! I don’t know what to say. I… I am so sorry.”

I listened, dumb-founded, as Rita started to cry again. Then something in my brain started to click. The conversation between Caitlin and George at the party – that wasn’t about a raise at work after all, but about her demanding more time / attention / gifts / money from him! That made sense – and her anger made sense as well. It made Caitlin a serious suspect. She was angry at George for not keeping her in fancier style. Did she also want him to leave his wife, perhaps – and got uncontrollably angry when hat didn't happen? And did she have expectations on his will?

I hugged Rita as she cried. The affair must have been crushing news when she learned about it.

And then – her husband’s murder, then being the unofficial suspect, and now having to tell people about his affair! This could not have been easy for her.

I wondered how long she knew about it. What if she found out about it before he died? That might make a motive for murder for some people. As I stood in the kitchen, I realized that this made Rita herself a serious suspect, for a new reason!

Yes, she was distraught at George being gone – but what if part of that was guilt at causing his death? What if she was angry about the affair, and pushed George into the pool in a fit of rage? I didn't think she would kill George for his money – but someone else might think so. His death could be viewed by the police as Rita killing her husband before he leaves her for another woman.

But for love, or for hurt pride?.. And then, why do it at the party? Out of some sense of revenge?

I hated suspecting Rita – having to suspect Rita, who besides being the widow, had also been my friend. This investigation business had made me doubt, double-check and re-confirm everything, not take anything for granted, not believe a statement unless confirmed by two independent witnesses...

When Rita quieted down, she dried her eyes, blew her nose and seemed relieved to be able to talk about the situation.

“I was pretty much at the end of my rope with him. I still loved him, but couldn’t stand his behavior since I found out about his affair. He bought me things as an attempt to win me back. I think buying this house was also some sort of attempt on his part to make it up to me. But he still was carrying on with Caitlin behind my back. I think he needed to feel his success with some new woman... ”

Yes, Vinay had said that George was driven and liked to move on to the next thing. Maybe that is what he did here?

“How did you find out?”

“By chance.” Her voice was steadier now, as if going over a topic she knew well. “He was working late in the home office one night, in late July, and asked me to bring him a drink. He could be very self-centered, you know... That's what we argued about before, his drinking... As I came in, his cell phone beeped as an SMS came in. The phone sound was the particular one he assigned Caitlin, I knew from before – he assigned all his frequent contacts different sounds. He reached for his phone, unlocked it and saw the message, and then started reaching for the drink. The message was still on the screen, I could see it. It was a photo of Caitlin topless. I was so angry, I threw that drink in his face and started yelling.”

“Would you have divorced him, if...?” I hesitated in alluding to George's death.

“We had several big scenes, and talked about divorce. I had even gone as far as calling a divorce lawyer once – but he convinced me to try and ‘work’ on the marriage.”

“Do the police know that?”

“They asked me a lot about our marriage. I told them we had our disagreements, and that I suspected an affair. They didn't ask about any moves towards divorce – but I’m sure they’d check around and find it out.” Rita rubbed the bridge of her nose.

“Which lawyer did you call?”

“Oh, someone in Seattle. I never actually went in to see her.”

“When was that?”

“About a month ago.”

So, according to this, the knowledge was pretty recent – so the emotions would have still been pretty raw. But has enough time passed to obsess over and formulate a plan? This definitely made a stronger case against Rita: The affair made any divorce between the Ellises more likely, and sooner rather than later. Her calling a lawyer and then changing her mind could be made to look like she’s come up with a more profitable plan: George was rich, so why lose half of the money in the divorce if by bumping him off she could have all of it – and her revenge? I could see how this gave ammunition to Detective Davis’s point of view.

“What did you do to work on your marriage? Go to therapy?”

She nodded.

“Yes. Once a week. With the move” she looked around at the house “we've only managed to attend, oh, about 2 appointments so far.”

I felt weird about asking what came out in therapy, so instead I asked a hopefully less-invasive question. “Did you think it was working?”

She shrugged. “He kept saying he loved me; said that he would break off the relationship with Caitlin. Turns out that was a lie; he was still involved with her.” She looked away. “And she was demanding things, right in our house, can you believe?..”

“Do you think she could have killed him?”

Rita replied immediately, as if she thought about it before: “Could have. But I don’t think she did it. She’s materialistic, wants a clear benefit to herself, ideally without getting her hands dirty. I don’t think physical violence is her style.”

“Did… many people around you know about the affair?”

She shook her head. “No. Roger didn’t, until very recently – he’s been so engrossed in those experiments of his in any case. He worked late at his office and didn’t hear most of our arguments. I don’t think people at the dealership knew.”

I had my doubts about that. It would be hard for people not to notice two of their co-workers sleeping together (and one being the owner and being married, to boot!). I thought there must have been plenty of gossip going around. And felt sorry for Rita again.

Aloud I asked:

“Do you know how he found out?”

“No, no idea”.

“Does anyone else know about Roger being gone?”

Rita shook her head. “No”.

I remembered my earlier conversation with John.

“By the way, how did Ba-Ele get started?”

“Roger was at Stanford. He was doing so great, getting straight As! Double-major: electric engineering and chemical engineering. He was actually our dependent, not my parents’, from the tax point of view – we paid his tuition and living expenses. George really liked him, they would talk about cars together for hours. In the spring, Roger called up and said that he had this great idea. George convinced him to stay at university though the end of the spring quarter, and Roger flew up here the day after his last exam. George and he talked for several hours with John and then announced that they were starting a company. George was actually very excited, like a kid with a new toy.” Her voice trailed off and she looked away. It was obvious that she missed them both, her husband and her brother.

I put my hand on her arm. “I think you should seriously consider getting a private investigator if you think something might happen to Roger or he might … do something foolish. Even that one that Ellisses hired. If you are concerned about him... I don’t know, I don’t think I am the best person to try to find him. But a professional can. I don’t have the knowledge or the resources for it, they do.”

“Oh damn... I don’t know what to do.” She gulped again. “I’ll think about it. I am afraid that if I tell people that Roger left, it will drag out the whole story of the affair and make it public. And they might suspect he had something to do with… everything.”

This disappearance did make Roger a possible suspect. Roger now had a potential motive to be mad at George, if we assume that he found out about the affair at the party. Perhaps he overheard the same scene on the patio that I had, and that made him snap?

On the other hand, maybe what caused Roger to run off was the thought that his sister killed her unfaithful husband? This was a tangled ball of possibilities and interpretations. It was making my head hurt, and I didn't know what the right answer was. I felt like my life was becoming populated by distorted shadows, moving noiselessly about in the recesses of my mind, never in the place where I thought they should be, even silently laughing at me.

16 

I marched straight up to the desk. Caitlin was clicking something with her mouse – for all I knew, playing Solitaire, or reading about the the paparazzi’d antics of some wannabe reality TV stars in LA. She looked up from the computer monitor as I approached. I smiled at her and tried to look non-threatening.

“Hi there.”

She wrinkled her nose as if she had just smelled something unpleasant. Apparently, talking to me was not on her list of enjoyable things to do today – or maybe this decade.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“This won’t take long. I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions about the night of George Ellis’s death.”

I had decided to talk to Caitlin again, because it was her and George’s affair that apparently caused Roger to run off somewhere. I was concerned about Roger, and I could ask Caitlin why she lied to me the last time I was here. Maybe if I pulled at the mystery from this end, something would unravel.

She kept her eyes on the monitor, and kept clicking with her mouse.

“Not without an appointment.” She said, still not moving her eyes off the computer screen. I imagined she’d been reading all about how the wanna-be star was secretly engaged to be married to a music producer, and expecting his baby. That made me mad for some reason.

“Look, you don’t have to be bitchy to me. I’m just trying to figure out what happened with George.” I said, letting my annoyance seep into my voice.

She kept clicking on her laptop and looking at the screen, not an assisted-blonde hair out of place in her ponytail.

“I’ve talked to you already.” She obviously wasn’t thrilled at having to do it ever again.

“I know, and I’ve been very grateful for your time. I just have some more questions.”

“You are not the police. I don’t have to talk to you.”

“I know. But while the killer is not found, a lot of people at that party are under suspicion.”

She shrugged.

“Caitlin, please. This is just a quick question.” I pressed on.

She kept clicking with her mouse on something on her screen.

I thought the time has come to reveal my hidden ace.

“Caitlin, I know about your affair with George.” I paused.

“So? That wasn't a secret. And I didn’t kill him.” She looked at me.

“What do you mean, it wasn’t a secret?” She had said she didn’t kill him, the last time we talked. But I hadn’t expected to hear that the affair was apparently common knowledge.

“Well, it just wasn’t. Several people here knew.” She picked up a stapled pile of documents  from the top of her desk and started to underline sentences in red. “And Roger knew, too – came in here on Friday all upset.”  Ah, that likely explained the timeline of Roger’s disappearance: perhaps he saw something at the funeral that made him suspect that Caitlin was George’s mistress, came in on Friday and got the confirmation of it from Caitlin, probably in the same matter-of-fact tone as she was using with me now. Then thought about it on Saturday, maybe lined up a place to stay and such, and left early Sunday?

As I was thinking through all that, Caitlin said: “They were just jealous of the money George was spending on me.”

I looked over my shoulder at the smiley fresh receptionist in the outer office trying to ingratiate herself with a guy looking at a British sports car, and as I turned back to Caitlin I lowered my face to hers. I was angry – at her conducting an affair with a married man, at her materialism, at her (right or wrong) perception of people around as being equally materialistic.

“Well, if they were jealous – don't you think they might have told the police some not-so-flattering things about you? Things that might cause the police to think you could be involved in the murder?”

“I didn’t kill George. I am not a suspect in his death.”

“What about the fact that you’ve been angry with George, yelling at his shortly before he died? And that you lied to me about it when I asked you straight-on? That sure looks like several motives for murder to me! The police might still find you a very interesting person to talk to, perhaps even for an extended time period, on their turf.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Me? No, I have nothing to threaten you with. The police will do whatever they decide to do.” I paused, took a deep breath and then continued. “I overhead you yelling at George the night of his death. You were screaming about wanting him to give you more money.” I waited for a reaction – embarrassment perhaps?, but was disappointed. She continued to be blasé .

“Yeah, I did. So what? I thought he could part with some of his cash for my sake.” She took out a make-up case from her purse (I couldn't help but notice the Celine label on it), got out a small mirror and was adjusting her blond hair, to indicate her complete disregard for my continuous presence in her office.

“Did he spend a lot of money on you? Give you gifts?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that why you were with him?”

She shrugged. “He could afford the gifts.”

“How long were you involved?”

She ignored me, eyes glued to whatever she saw in the compact mirror.

I watched her and waited for her answer; and as the silence stretched and she continued to study her face in the mirror, my eyes moved around and on to the photos on the walls. I saw a group of pictures: of her in Vegas, head to toe in Fendi (the Italian designer clothing was easy to identify, as it was covered in logos); of her in Paris, with the Eiffel tower as the backdrop, a new designer bag (Valentino?) over her shoulder; of her in London, in front of the Buckingham palace, a crowd of tourists on her right. She did seriously love putting up the photos of herself, didn't she?! The weather in the last 2 shots was similar, and from the style of dress on her and others – coats, scarves; – as well as the fact that trees looked like the leaves had just started to come out, I would put the time of that trip around March. My guess was that George paid for that trip, and her new fashion purchases, and went with her. Was that perhaps the trip were he got the Lamborghini? That meant they probably got involved at least a month before, in February.

“Well, my sources say you've been involved since pretty early in the year, about 7 or 8 months, at least.” I bluffed.

“That’s none of your business!” she snapped. I thought that meant my guess was close to the truth.

“Did you think he’d leave his wife for you?”

She clicked close the small mirror. The question might have struck a nerve.

“Why are you nosing around, wasting mine and everyone’s time? What is it to you?”

“I feet involved because of Rita. I can not believe that someone I knew, and liked, for several years could murder her husband. The police suspect her, and I want to help her clear her name. I don’t want her living with a dark cloud of her husband’s unsolved murder over her head.” That was all true. But there was more to it. To myself, I had to admit: on some level I was enjoying this detective stuff. I loved reading mysteries, and being part of a real-life one felt exciting. This is why I got into this probably deeper than I should have. And the victim was a relative stranger to me, someone whom I met only once – making it easier to feel detached, and look at the investigation as a problem to be solved. As an engineer, I liked logical puzzles, and was trying to treat this entire situation as one. And, to be honest, I wanted to see whether I could do it, whether I could find the solution and the killer.

“Well, your Rita is no saint herself. She’s after his money. And her brother and his start-up are also after George’s money big-time. Money and all the benefits they can get. He ‘borrowed’ a car without permission from here and crashed it 2 months ago.”

Hmm... more dirt from Caitlin. Not sure whether to believe it, under the circumstances – she might have been blowing a minor incident out of proportion. But I was intrigued.

“Really? What car?”

“A Maserati. Totaled.” She said with evident satisfaction. I gave a low whistle. That certainly was not a trifling loss.

“How was the relationship between them since?”

She shrugged.

“Not great, as you’d expect. George even cut off the funding for his start-up. Look” – she reached into a drawer, ruffled through some papers and pushed a folder towards me. I opened it and saw accounting print-outs. I looked up at Caitlin. “This is the last set of funds he allocated to Ba-Ele Tech Inc. Roger thought that he could just play around with cars that were not his, and call it ‘testing’. But George was having none of that.”

Clearly, she was of the opinion that the kid was wasting his time on his brother-in-law’s dime.

“Thank you, I did not know that.” I leafed through the folder again. The stuff in it looked real enough. Might as well ask her, as she seemed to have plenty of background info: “Who do you think did it?”

She shrugged. “Hell, maybe it was the two of them who pushed George out of that window.” Then she reached for the folder and put it back into the drawers. “OK, enough. You are wasting my time. You’re not here to buy a car, I don't want to talk to you any more.”

“Perhaps I’m just looking at cars right now? Browsing, maybe even planning to test-drive?”

“I’ll call security if you don’t leave”. She was seething with cold anger at my continued presence in her office.

“Oh that’s going to look nice – security escorting out a potential customer! Especially one with a personal invitation for a Maserati or a Lamborghini test drive! Your new boss, Rita, is going to be so thrilled!” I pulled the Mayfair Motors brochure out of my purse with a flourish, knocking over a bottle of water that was standing on the desk and spilling it down my pants.

Caitlin begrudgingly took the paper, as I grabbed a tissue off her desk and was frantically trying to dabble out the wetness on the front of my thighs.

“Oh, these went out to all the party guests the day of the party.” Caitlin said dismissively. “This was one of the ways George wanted to keep expanding his business.”

“OK, whatever. So what about my test drive? I’m still entitled to one.” I was a natural klutz, in wet pants at that particular moment, and driving an extravagantly-expensive and powerful new car was making me nervous – but I didn’t intend to get blown off like that.

“Would your insurance be able to cover the liability on a Lamborghini?” Caitlin asked, while her eyes told me “Oh please. You wouldn’t be able to afford the front bumper on one of those cars. And a slob like you knows nothing about nice performance cars anyway”.

“Oh yes, my insurance can cover it, thanks. For your information, I drive that.” – and I nodded through the window towards where my bright-red sports car was parked. Yes, I drove a fast, fun, red sports car – had driven it for 9 years, in fact (it was one of my earliest splurges, before I realized that I was such a klutz that I couldn't actually have nice things). The car model’s appearance hasn’t changed since I bought it, and you couldn’t tell what model year it was from a casual glance. I was hoping that, at this distance, and the car being clean and shiny, Caitlin wouldn’t immediately realize its age.

She paused and mentally appraised my vehicle. Having decided that I could in fact afford the front bumper on one of the four-wheeled creations in the showroom, she reluctantly walked me over to a smiling freckled assistant in his very early twenties. He enthusiastically told me the cars available for a test drive at that time, and when I, surprising myself, picked the Lotus, said “Excellent choice!” and led me to ooh and aah over the car while he did the paperwork.

And the test drive? Oh yeah, it was fun! The car was British racing green, low to the ground. So low, in fact, that I pretty much fell in when getting in – and fell in again when trying to exit. I swore for the millionth time to go work out at Knotty Yoga more, and develop the core muscles that would enable me to deal with transitioning into and out of British sports cars gracefully. The rain had stopped for a while and it was a sunny, bright autumn day – perfect for a fast drive with the wind in my hair! I did 3 laps around the block, and with getting on the highway – it was fun to speed up and pass everyone else on the curved on-ramp.

After the exhilarating whirl-wind of the test-drive, I returned the car, got back into my own, put it in gear and started riving while trying to re-arrange my thoughts on the case. I felt like I owed it to Rita – and to George, whose dealership had provided me this test drive – to sort out this case.

I did now know for sure that Caitlin was status-focused and more than a little obsessed with money. She was someone who would have definitely stuck with George as long as he had cash to spend. The way she treated me showed that she could be a bitch – but I already knew that. Was she cold enough to have been the killer? Over the possibility that George left her something in the will?

The one time I actually got a reaction from her was when I asked whether she thought George would leave his wife. So likely she had not only wanted it, but expected it to happen – expected more than just some fancy shiny bags and a couple of trips to Europe out of it. She had been serious. Killing George would not bring her closer to that goal, but instead take her further away from it.