Death by Marriage (22 page)

“Goodnight.” I left.

Which didn’t mean I slept. I tossed and turned while Martin, Vanessa, Sherry, Jeb, Scott, the Bairds, Basil Janecek, Letty, and the Johnsons, father and son, kaledioscoped through my head, with Boone Talbot and Chad Yarnell randomly popping up among the swirling faces like scary Jack-in-the-Boxes. In the morning I dragged myself to work, bleary-eyed and discouraged. I was way out of my league. If it weren’t for the threat hanging over Scott, I’d shut myself up in DreamWear, live solely through my fantasies, and let the rest of the world go by.

As I’d been doing for the last five years.

You cracked the shell, kid. Ain’t no going back.

I sat slumped on my wicker stool and glowered at my beloved costume shop. At all the costumes I’d labored so long to create, at the accessories and specialty items I purchased wholesale. At the
masquerade masks, the
crowns, tiaras, bangles and beads that added the soul-satisfying touch of bling. At Crystal’s Cave, the shelf of disembodied animal heads . . . even the light fixtures set behind grates in the ceiling. At the whole of my shop—mine, mine, mine—that usually brought me joy. And found all the colors fading to gray. My lovely little . . . illusion? . . . was crumbling under the intrusive reality of a world I thought I’d put behind me forever. Murder in Golden Beach? It wasn’t supposed to happen. Not here. Not in Gwyn Halliday’s particular corner of paradise.

When my cellphone rang, I was hard put to infuse cheer into my customary, “Good morning. DreamWear.”

“Good morning, DreamWear,” drawled a baritone hot enough to melt chocolate.

Thump
! I wasn’t sure which part of my anatomy reacted, my stomach or my heart, but my hormones quivered in response to Boone Talbot’s baritone. His I’m-not-going-to-eat-you baritone.

“Any chance you could meet me by the tennis courts at Edge Park, say, about five?” Boone asked.

Edge Park was a sports complex, including woods with hiking trails, directly behind the police station and only a few short blocks from DreamWear. A convenient meeting spot, particularly if you had something to hide.

“I’m afraid I packed away my tennis racket sometime a
round
age
fifteen. I was a total klutz. Another dire moment of teen angst.”

“And I’ve never figured out what all those ‘loves’ are about, so we’re even. There’re a couple of picnic tables by the courts. Pick one, and I’ll find you.”

Ah, ha! The Chief was up to something. Information? I could only hope.

When I closed my phone and looked up, the shop had come to life. The sun shone like a spotlight through the front window, illuminating everything, including me. A rosy glow replaced the gloom. Was I really so shallow that the mere sound of a man’s voice could brighten my day? Or was it the feeling that some of my questions were going to be answered?

Or maybe the knowledge that I’d crossed the Rubicon, made my decision. I not only couldn’t ignore the dramatic events outside my own safety zone, I genuinely didn’t want to. I needed to know.

Gwyn Halliday, sleuth.

Boone Talbot, here I come.

Chapter 17

At four-forty-five I left Crystal to handle the shop alone and arrived at Edge Park eight minutes early. At nearly five on a January afternoon, the playing fields, tennis courts, and picnic tables were deserted. I couldn’t vouch for the hiking trails in the woods to the north, but I suspected they too had been left to the racoons, possums, armadillos, snakes, and other wildlife common to our area. I chose the picnic table farthest from the road, buttoned my heavy cardigan all the way to the top, crossed my arms over my chest, and hoped Boone wasn’t late. An hour before dark, there was a decided nip in the air.

But Boone, too, was early. I saw him turn in, but rather than park his car next to mine in a lot visible to a busy road, he followed the interior park road that ran along the woods and walked across the grass, approaching me from behind. I
had
kept an eye on his headlights and was facing him when he materialized out of the gloom.

“I take it you’re not here,” I said as he slid onto the bench across from me.

“Neither are you.”

“Okay.” My blood surged. Super Clam was actually going to open his mouth.

“Sorry about the cold,” he said. “I didn’t realize it would be so chilly. Haven’t got Florida weather straight yet—most of the time it’s hot as Hades.”

“No problem.” I flashed a grin that included an encouraging eyebrow wiggles. “But you’d better make it worth my suffering frostbite.”

Since the temperature was hovering somewhere around the mid-fifties, Boone returned my exaggeration with a wry waggle of his own. Today he was wearing a nicely tailored tweed jacket over a royal blue shirt, augmented by a tie with a design that looked remarkably like a waving field of wheat. Wheat several shades more golden than his cornsilk hair. In a nutshell, there was nothing country hick about Boone Talbot, plus he looked good enough to eat.

“Okay,” he said briskly, “I must be acclimating because even to me it’s too cold for chitchat, so I’ll get to it before we freeze to the bench. “I don’t believe I thanked you for the photo.” Boone paused, glancing past me toward the woods. He drummed his fingers on the picnic table, obviously uncomfortable, before carefully, deliberately, focusing on my face. “I know I keep scolding you about butting into the investigation, Gwyn, but the truth is, that photo led us to a real can of worms and you deserve to know about it.”

“Really? It wasn’t much of a photo.”

“Good enough. Let’s just say we’re ninety percent certain she’s a woman who’s pulled scams like this a dozen or more times in as many different states. She really gets around. And we think she’s plugged into the scammer underground because she seems to have no trouble finding lonely old men who have far more money socked away than anyone ever guessed. Turns out, Janecek was loaded. Accounts in three different banks, and she got it all, to the tune of nearly four hundred thousand.”

I gasped, I couldn’t help it. That little old man in a mostly blue collar neighborhood?

“Right.” Boone offered a genuine Nebraska who’d-a-thunk-it grin. “That little old man had every last cent he ever earned. Or else he was selling porn on the side. And, no, there’s no evidence of that,” he added hastily. “Your classic penny-pincher, that was Basil Janecek.”

“I pity his wife. No wonder she died first.”

Boone gave me the weirdo look men tend to assume when females make feminist remarks, before continuing, “We haven’t come up with a name yet. She used a different alias every time. Sometimes she married them, sometimes she didn’t. But every last time she got Power of Attorney and every last cent of cash. We think she may be so tough to identify because she was born into a family of ‘travelers’, people who live off the grid, like Gypsies.” I winced. “No birth records, no Social Security, no formal schooling.”

“I read about ‘travelers,’” I told him. “In a book on scams I got at the library.”

Boone nodded. “Whole families exist off the grid, making their living from a variety of cons. ‘Pave the driveway, lady?’ ‘Fix your roof?’ Or maybe they’re involved in the rash of burglaries I told you about—where one or two distract the homeowner while a couple more go inside the house and take what they want.”

“You think we actually have ‘travelers’ here in Golden Beach?” Not in our town. Sex and murder maybe, but not a whole family of super-smooth crooks.

“It’s looking more and more likely. Penny-ante stuff so far, but I’m told it’s way more than Golden Beach has ever had before.”

While we talked, I’d forgotten about the cold. Suddenly, it came back like a gust of arctic wind. I shivered. “What about Marshall and Eric Johnson? Did you check them out like I asked you to? I bet facial recognition would bring out a rap sheet a mile long.”

“Gwyn . . .” Boone took a deep breath. Not hard to recognize that his magnanimous moment was coming to an end. “A cursory check revealed nothing more than we already know. “The names are so common we’d have to have a really good reason to try to track them any further, including using facial recognition.”

“They’re crooks, I know they are.”

“Maybe so, but as far as the Golden Beach Police Department is concerned, they are two well-dressed, church-going gentlemen who arrived in town about five months ago and have spotless records.”

“No visible means of support,” I asserted stubbornly.

“It’s not against the law not to work nine to five.”

I glowered at a pine cone resting on top of the picnic table. “Okay,” I grumbled, “what did you find out about the Bairds?”

“Your turn. Why don’t you tell me what you learned from Sherry Lambert?”

Sometimes, even after all these years, I still forget how small a town Golden Beach is when you discount the northern retirees, the snowbirds, and the tourists. And Boone was right. I owed him, but telling him what Sherry said without mentioning Scott would be like a circus juggler keeping balls and blocks and triangles in the air at the same time. And I was no juggler.

But . . . maybe . . . getting the truth in now might ease the tension later.

My inner voice remained silent. I was on my own.

So while Boone’s cop stare dissolved into the open-jawed gape of a Nebraska boy not that long off the farm, I told him what I learned about Sherry and Vanessa sticking it to Martin, whose own lifestyle was allegedly just as swinging.

“You’re sure?” Boone asked when I wound down.

“Sherry might lie to me,” I conceded, “but Scott was telling the truth. I’d swear to it.” I’d made a point of emphasizing Scott’s shock when told that some people thought he hoped to marry Vanessa for her money.

To my surprise, Boone ignored my revelation about Scott, asking instead, “Kellerman was cheating on a wife like Vanessa?”

“That’s what both Sherry and Scott told me. And that may have been what broke up his first marriage. Hard to tell. From what Evie Baird said, I thought maybe abuse, but it could have been Martin’s chasing ways. Have you learned anything more about the Bairds, by the way?” I snuck that one in while Boone was still on stun from the tale of Golden Beach’s swinging foursome.

“Never stop, do you?” Boone said, scowling.

“But I want to
know
.”

“Actually—and this is the truth—I don’t know much more than you’ve already heard. Yes, Baird was supposed to get Martin’s half of the company. And, yes, Martin willed it to his wife, along with all the rest of his worldly goods. He’d evidently made a generous settlement on his first wife and set up a trust fund for his two kids. Vanessa can’t touch those, but she got everything else. Baird, citing the agreement made when he and Martin founded the company, is suing. But even though I suspect he has a strong case, it could take forever. He’s not happy.”

“But he
thought
he’d gain the company when Martin died, so that’s motive, right?”

“And the kids can’t touch the principal until they’re thirty, or until Martin’s death.”

Oops. I stared. “You checked them out?” I couldn’t believe he’d actually told me that.

“The son lives pretty well for a kid his age, but no serious debt, no apparent vices, and the girl’s still in college. Couldn’t get excited over either one of them.”

“I’d thought maybe Evie Baird if she’d been abused,” I said carefully, “but now that it looks like Martin was a chaser, I have doubts. I don’t think she cared enough to want vengeance.”

“There’s always the company,” Boone said. “Scorned ex glad to give her new hubby a hand up to full ownership and stick it to Kellerman at the same time. And she’s bound to have known about his allergy.”

“You know,” I said, leaning across the picnic table, “you’re so good you ought to be a cop.” We exchanged smiles. My toes tingled, and not from frost.

Then Boone’s smile faded and the cop kicked back in. Guilty cop.

“It’s nearly dark,” he announced abruptly. “We’ve both said more than we probably should, but I appreciate the information.”

He walked me back to my car and watched me slide behind the wheel. Before closing the door, he leaned down and said, “Better tell your brother to get a lawyer. He and Brannigan both.”

The door slammed and Boone was gone, loping off toward his Taurus, which was out of sight behind a stand of trees. I sat behind the wheel, not moving. My hands shook, my stomach heaved.
My God, what had I done
?

Boone’s headlights pierced the gloom. He pulled to a stop at the entrance to the tennis parking area, giving me a long, questioning look.

The Chief of Police was waiting.

I started my Malibu, turned on the headlights, backed up, and drove out of the parking lot. Boone followed me the two blocks back to East Golden Beach Boulevard, then the long mile back to the Bypass, where he tossed me a wave as he turned left toward his condo. My light turned green, and I continued on over the Center Bridge toward the “Island” and home. And a highly awkward and unhappy scene with Mom and Scott.

For two whole days my world went quiet. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought my life was back to normal. On the morning after my talk with Boone, Mom herded Scott to a criminal attorney, and he was now keeping a low profile, confining himself to computer games and pool between rescues at sea. Vanessa had been elusive—busy, busy, busy . . . or so she said when I tried to pin her down for an interview. No word from Chad, nothing more from Boone. No drop-in from Alyce or Terry with rumors piled on rumors.