“Of course we’re all right,” Carolyn answered. “I may not like having a bunch of small-town cops pawing through my things, but I have nothing to hide.”
“Neither do I,” Eve said. “Although considering how handsome the chief is, I might not mind if they found something that would justify him interrogating me.”
Carolyn blew out her breath in an exasperated sigh. “Do you really enjoy being a living, breathing stereotype?”
“I enjoy almost everything about my life, dear. It’s my nature. You can look for the joy in life, or you can look for the disappointments. I choose to look for the joy.”
That was about the most profound thing Phyllis had ever heard Eve say, and it took her a little by surprise. Thinking back on the numerous husbands Eve had lost through either death or divorce, it was obvious that she had had her share of disappointments. No wonder she tried to concentrate on the things that gave her pleasure.
Phyllis slipped on over next to Consuela. She held out her hand to the man who stood with the cook and housekeeper. “Hello, I’m Phyllis Newsom. I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“Tom Anselmo,” he introduced himself as he shook hands with Phyllis. “I’m glad to meet you, ma’am. I just wish it was under better circumstances.”
She smiled. “That goes for me, too, Mr. Anselmo.”
“Please, call me Tom. We’ve always been sort of like family around here with Dorothy and Ben.”
Phyllis nodded, feeling an instinctive liking for this man. He didn’t look like someone who had once done time in the penitentiary for selling heroin. That had been almost a quarter of a century earlier, she reminded herself, and people could change dramatically in that time, especially when their criminal behavior had been caused at least in part by the hellish situations in which they found themselves.
While she had a hard time believing that Tom could have poisoned Ed McKenna, she wished she could ask him about his late-night visit to the house a couple of evenings earlier. He might have seen something while he was there, something that had seemed innocent at the moment but might take on new importance now.
That would have to wait for another time, though. Phyllis certainly didn’t want to bring up the fact that Tom had been there right in front of Chief Clifton.
When Phyllis listened closely, she could hear footsteps upstairs and knew they belonged to the officers who were searching through the bedrooms. While they waited, a khaki-uniformed policeman came into the parlor and reported to Clifton, “I’ve been through the office, Chief, and copied the files on the computer.” He held up a little USB drive. “You want me to pull the hard drive itself ?”
“Are you sure you got everything?” Clifton asked.
“If there’s anything else on there, it’s so well hidden and encrypted that whoever put it there ought to be working for the NSA.”
“I don’t think Dorothy’s that much of a computer whiz, and I happen to know that Ben can barely turn the machine on.” Clifton smiled. “No, you can leave it intact, Ted.”
“Gotcha, Chief. I have the victim’s laptop, too, so I can go through the files on it at the station.”
A moment later another officer came from the kitchen. “Nothing out there except plenty of food, canned goods, cooking utensils, pots and pans . . . just what you’d expect.”
“Did you put everything back the way you found it?” Clifton asked.
“Yes, sir, Chief, just like you ordered.”
That made the natural resentment Phyllis felt toward the chief ease slightly. Clifton wasn’t being as hard-nosed about this as he could have been. He could have confiscated Dorothy’s computer or at least the hard drive, and he could have had his men tear the place apart and leave it that way so that someone else would have to clean up the mess. Phyllis was sure the officers were conducting a thorough search, but at least the chief had instructed them not to cause too much havoc.
“Have you already searched in here?” she asked him when the second officer was through talking to him.
He turned toward her and nodded. “Yes, ma’am, we did that first, so there would be a place for everyone to come while the rest of the search is being carried out.”
“Did you find anything?”
“You don’t really expect me to answer that, do you?” Clifton paused. “Or maybe you do. From the sound of the newspaper stories I read about you, Mrs. Newsom, you’re practically an unofficial member of the sheriff’s department up there where you come from.”
“I think you’re exaggerating, Chief.”
“Maybe a little. But reading between the lines, I figure your son provided you with a lot of information in those other cases. If his boss wants to let him get away with that, fine, it’s none of my business. But that’s not the way we operate down here.”
Sam moved up alongside Phyllis’s shoulder. “I don’t reckon the lady was askin’ for any special favors,” he said, and now his voice was tight with anger.
Phyllis appreciated the way he sprang to her defense, in the face of even a mild rebuke from the chief. But she could fight her own battles, and this little confrontation wasn’t even worthy of the name.
“I believe that if you take anything away from here as evidence, you’re supposed to inform the owner of the items in question,” she said. “Aren’t we supposed to sign a form acknowledging that?”
For a second Chief Clifton looked like he wanted to smile, but he managed to keep his expression serious. “That’s true,” he admitted. “And if we impound any evidence, we’ll let you know.”
“Damned right you will,” Leo said, horning into the conversation. “Try any high-handed tricks and I’ll see to it that you lose your badge.”
“No tricks,” Clifton said, and now his eyes glittered with anger. He was getting tired of Leo trying to browbeat him, Phyllis thought.
A short time later she heard the back door open and close, and another officer came into the parlor carrying a large plastic bag with a cylindrical plastic container in it. The container reminded Phyllis of the sort of thing coffee came in. This one had a large black skull-and-crossbones symbol on it, though.
“I found this rat poison in the toolshed out back, Chief,” the officer announced.
“Of course there’s rat poison in there,” Tom Anselmo said. “Sometimes we have rats. I hardly ever use it, though. I’d rather use traps.” He gestured toward the container. “Go ahead and look inside it. You’ll see that barely any of it has been used.”
Working through the clear plastic bag, Clifton opened the plastic lid and looked inside. “You’re right, Tom,” he said. “There’s not much gone.”
He didn’t say anything else as he snapped the lid back down, but the unspoken implication was clear, at least to Phyllis.
It didn’t take much poison to kill a man.
Clifton handed the bag to his officer and said, “Tag it.”
Jessica spoke up for the first time since Phyllis and Sam had gotten back, asking the chief, “Do you have those special lights that make blood glow like on TV?”
Leo turned toward her and snapped, “Why are you asking him a stupid question like that?”
“I’m just curious,” Jessica said. She looked a little like a dog that had just been kicked. “I’m sorry, Leo.”
“That’s quite all right, ma’am,” Clifton told her. “And to answer your question, we don’t have a lot of that fancy equipment, but we can call on the forensics and crime-scene teams from the county sheriff’s department anytime we need to.” He smiled. “Anyway, a lot of that stuff you see on TV is pure science fiction, just as much as
Star Trek
was.”
Leo took hold of Jessica’s arm and led her over to one of the chairs. “Sit down and don’t say anything else,” he ordered. “We’re not gonna talk anymore to this Andy Taylor wannabe until Roger gets here.” He glanced at Clifton. “Then you’ll see some fireworks.”
Clifton didn’t seem worried about the possibility of pyrotechnics. He just waited patiently for his other officers to report in from their parts of the search.
One by one, they did so, but none of them had found anything as possibly incriminating as the rat poison in the shed. However, a couple of the officers called Clifton out into the hall and talked to him in voices quiet enough so that Phyllis couldn’t hear the words. They seemed to be showing things to the chief as well, but Clifton stood so that his body concealed whatever it was from the people gathered in the parlor.
That air of secrecy didn’t bode well, Phyllis thought.
Clifton came back into the parlor. “We’re going to be confiscating a digital camera that was found in your room, Mr. Blaine.”
“What!” Leo’s face started to turn purple. “You can’t do that! You’ve got no right! Anything up there was private—”
“We’ll give you a receipt for the evidence.”
“It’s not evidence, I tell you! You can’t just go into a guy’s room and take his stuff—”
“Mr. Blaine.” Chief Clifton didn’t raise his voice, but his voice was hard enough and sharp enough to cut right through Leo’s bellowing. “If you’d like for me to go into detail about the photographs on that camera right here in front of everyone, so you’ll know why we’re impounding it, I can do that.”
Leo paled, and he said, “No . . . no, you don’t have to do that.”
Jessica was on her feet again. “Leo, what’s he talking about? What photographs?”
“They’re still on the digital camera, ma’am,” Clifton told her. “They haven’t been printed out yet.”
“That’s enough!” Leo said. “Damn it, I’ll sign whatever you want me to sign. Just don’t—”
“Leo,” Jessica said.
Bianca Anselmo put her hands over her face, let out a choked sob, and ran out of the room. “Bianca!” Consuela called after her, clearly startled by her daughter’s sudden flight.
Clifton didn’t make a move to stop her, and neither did anyone else. Phyllis could only look on in shocked surprise. She could think of only one reason why the discussion of photos on Leo Blaine’s digital camera would upset Bianca so much. She already disliked Leo because of his obnoxious bluster, and she had been offended by the way he had told Jessica to sit down and shut up. The potential sordidness of this new revelation involving Bianca just made her despise Leo even more.
Phyllis wasn’t the only one who had come to the same conclusion. Jessica got in front of her husband and demanded, “Leo, what the hell is going on here? What’s that girl got to do with any pictures?”
Tom Anselmo surged forward, pulling away from Consuela’s hand on his arm. “I want to know the same thing, Mr. Blaine,” he said. His hands closed into fists. Leo outweighed him by fifty or sixty pounds, but right now Tom clearly didn’t care about that.
Leo ignored Jessica and Tom and glared at Chief Clifton. “You’re gonna be sorry you pulled this stunt,” he said. “By the time my lawyer gets through with you—”
“Maybe your lawyer will be more worried about the possible implications of what we’ve found here today, Mr. Blaine,” Clifton cut in. “It seems to me that those pictures just might be a motive for murder.”
Leo took a step back like somebody had just punched him in the face . . . which Tom Anselmo still wanted to do, judging by his expression and stance. “Murder!” Leo said. “I didn’t murder anybody! How . . . how could those pictures have anything to do with Ed McKenna getting poisoned?”
“Maybe he found out what you’d been up to,” Clifton suggested. “Maybe he threatened to tell your wife, or Bianca’s parents. You might’ve decided to shut him up before he could do it.”
“That’s crazy! The old man didn’t know . . .”
“Didn’t know what, Leo?” Jessica asked through gritted teeth in the silence that followed Leo’s voice as it trailed off.
“Damn it, it was her idea!” Leo burst out. “She offered to pose for me if I’d pay her, and you’ve seen her. For God’s sake, she’s beautiful! But that’s all I did, I swear. I took pictures of her, but I never touched the little hustler—”
“Tom, no!” Consuela cried, but the plea fell on deaf ears. Tom had already heard all he was going to listen to. He leaped at Leo and swung a hard punch into the middle of the bigger man’s face. Leo grunted in pain and staggered back as blood spurted from his nose.
Phyllis had a feeling that Chief Clifton could have gotten between Tom and Leo and stopped that punch if he really wanted to, but the chief hadn’t budged. He stepped in, though, as Tom swung again, catching hold of his arm and saying, “That’s enough, Tom.”
“You heard him!” Tom said, the rage he felt making him pant a little as he spoke. “You heard the filthy things he was saying about my Bianca.”
“You saw him, Chief!” Leo said, his voice muffled a little by the hand he held to his bleeding nose. “You saw him assault me! I want him arrested, damn it!”
“He’s the one you should arrest,” Tom said. “Taking advantage of an innocent young girl—”
“Innocent, my ass! She offered to do plenty more if I paid her enough!”
This time it was Consuela who came after him, flailing at him as her anger poured out of her in swift, furious Spanish. Clifton couldn’t let go of Tom to stop Consuela without risking that Tom would attack Leo again.
Jessica got into the act as well, joining Consuela in whaling on Leo, who threw his arms over his head to protect himself from the angry women and howled in dismay. Clifton yelled for his officers to come help him.
“Reckon I ought to give the chief a hand?” Sam asked Phyllis.
“I’d stay out of it if I were you,” she advised him. “Anyway, I think Leo’s got it coming.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Sam replied with a shake of his head.
Several officers rushed into the parlor, summoned by Clifton’s shouts, and grabbed Jessica and Consuela to pull them away from the hapless Leo, whose face was smeared with the blood that had leaked from his nose. He wiped some of it away and shouted, “What the hell is wrong with all you people?”
Nobody answered him, but a new voice asked sharply, “What’s going on here? Leo, what sort of mess have you gotten yourself into this time?”