She found the box marked “Oberlin, Gail” and carried it to one of the tables. When she lifted the lid, she thought the box was empty. Then she saw the ragged two-inch piece of plastic wrap curled in one corner. Although Mac’s notes had mentioned only this one item, she’d somehow expected to find more in the box. With recent advances in forensic detection, it was hard to believe that nothing else had been discovered.
She picked up the thin scrap of plastic. It wasn’t as soft and flexible as the kind of wrap sold by the role in grocery stores and used in homes all over the country to store leftovers. It seemed thicker, less flexible, like the outer wrapping on a manufactured product. Rory was sure that she’d handled something similar to it in the past, but she couldn’t remember what it might have been. There were so many products covered in so many forms of plastic wrap these days, that without more information it would be impossible to find a match.
She turned it over in her hand, looking for the fine black line described in the report. She found it on the very edge of the plastic. It had probably been part of a label or a UPC code, but there wasn’t any way to know for sure. Either Gail had fallen as the ME concluded, or her killer had executed the perfect murder. Even though it was unlikely that the CSI team had missed anything of importance, Rory felt that she had to get back into the house and take a closer look. And she had to do it when she wasn’t being watched or escorted. Since she’d already crossed breaking and entering off her list, she’d have to come up with another plan.
She put the piece of plastic wrap back in the box and returned the box to its final resting place on the shelf. Then she went to the front desk to sign out. The officer on duty swallowed the last of his coffee and crushed the cup before tossing it into the wastebasket beside him. He told Rory to have a good day
Once she was back in her car, she drove out of the complex to the nearest Starbucks. If she didn’t have a decent cup of coffee herself, she was never going to make it through her workday and perhaps more important, the appointment she’d made to see David Oberlin that evening.
Chapter 10
A
t six fifty-seven Rory turned onto Oak Tree Lane. The road was narrow, winding and entirely too close to the edge of the heavily treed cliff for her liking. From time to time the wind would stir the branches of the massive old oaks for which the street was named, affording her a glimpse of the Long Island Sound glinting like a puddle of liquid pewter far below. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the road for more than a second for fear that she’d be viewing the Sound up close and personal through the windshield of her plummeting car. How on earth had the Oberlins ever managed to leave their house in the winter? Not even a snowplow and sanding truck on twenty-four-hour retainer would be able to make that road safe enough to travel during the blizzards and ice storms that were standards of a Long Island winter. Of course, for all she knew, they had an elaborate sled and a dozen Alaskan huskies just straining in their traces for some Iditarod action. In any case, Rory was grateful that it was summer.
She’d also been surprisingly lucky as far as David Oberlin was concerned. When she’d called him to request a meeting, she’d expected it to be a hard sell. She couldn’t identify herself as a police officer, and being a private eye didn’t actually entitle you to harass people, in spite of what passed for realism in the world of television. Given that Oberlin had already dealt with the police and with Mac, she knew she was pressing her luck by contacting him.
“My wife’s death is a closed case, Ms. McCain,” Oberlin had said stiffly after Rory identified herself, “and I’d prefer not to keep reliving it.”
“I understand completely,” Rory replied in the lilting, slightly addled tone she usually reserved for babies and puppies. “You have every right to refuse to see me, Mr. Oberlin, but I was hoping maybe you’d be willing to help me out.” As much as she hated to play the damsel in distress, in this situation she needed to sound as nonthreatening as possible. If she’d thought she could pull off a southern belle drawl, she would gladly have used it.
“And how on earth can I be of help?” Oberlin asked, sounding perplexed but less wary.
“Well, you see, my uncle died recently and I’ve been trying to close down his private detective agency and send all of his files back to the people who hired him. Unfortunately my uncle had the absolute worst handwriting, so I’ve been typing up the notes in each file. I can’t begin to tell you how hard that’s been.” She produced a small, self-conscious hiccup of a laugh.
“I’m afraid I still don’t understand how I can help,” Oberlin repeated impatiently, but at least he hadn’t hung up on her.
“If I could just stop by and ask you a couple of questions—it might be enough to help me decipher the notes. It’s been a huge help with some of his other case files,” she added to assure him that he wasn’t being singled out. “I promise I won’t take up much of your time.”
“I assume these notes you’re typing are for Jeremy?”
“Well, yes, is that a problem?” she asked, throwing a little naiveté into the mix.
There was a long pause before Oberlin answered, and for a moment Rory thought she’d lost him after all. “No, I suppose not. You can come by Tuesday evening.”
“Oh, that’s so gracious of you. Thank you so much. Are you still at the Forest Hills address?”
“No, I’m at five Oak Tree Lane in Cold Spring Harbor.”
Apparently the grieving widower had already moved back into the house that Gail had thrown him out of when she’d discovered that he was cheating on her. Rory was careful to keep any surprise out of her voice. “Would seven be okay?”
Now here she was, four minutes past the appointed hour, wondering how much farther the Oberlin home could possibly be. She rounded yet another curve and finally saw a brick driveway parting the trees on her left, the number five written in black script on a huge boulder that stood to one side. She turned into the driveway and followed it around to a large, white clapboard house, which, from her prospective, seemed to be hugging the edge of the cliff.
Carrying her pocketbook and the leather folio she’d bought for the occasion, she locked the car and walked up to the front door. She rang the bell—show time.
The door was opened by a man in his forties, whose cheeks had begun the downward slide into jowls, even as his creeping paunch threatened to overlap his belt.
“Mr. Oberlin,” she said holding out her hand, “I’m Rory McCain.”
Oberlin gave her hand a perfunctory shake and stepped back so that she could enter. “We’ll talk in the living room, if that’s all right.”
Although his words formed a question, there was no room for debate in his tone. She followed him through an oversized doorway to the left of the entry hall. The living room was large and softly lit by the lowering sun and a wash of pink light from a Tiffany lamp. A highly polished white baby grand piano occupied the far corner of the room. The walls, rugs and fabrics were all in shades of white and cream, the neutral tones providing the perfect backdrop for the stunning collection of artwork and antiques that Gail and her almost ex had amassed.
“Have a seat,” David Oberlin said, gesturing to the two white silk sofas that faced each other in the center of the room. Rory chose the one that faced away from the windows so that the sun wouldn’t be in her eyes. She wanted to be able to read his expressions. She set her purse on the floor beside her and dug into the leather folio for her notes and a pen. In keeping with the story she’d told him, she’d rewritten Mac’s somewhat legible notes into a form that no one else could possibly read. Since it was doubtful that Oberlin had paid attention to Mac’s handwriting during their only meeting, she didn’t anticipate any problems.
“Okay, Ms. McCain, I’m listening,” Oberlin said. He’d taken a seat across from her and seemed completely at ease, not at all like a man with something to hide. Of course, the odds were that he actually
had
nothing to hide. The only reason Rory was even bothering to interview him herself was that Mac had taught her if you wanted to find a needle in a haystack, you had to sift through every last straw of hay. At the time of Mac’s death, most of this particular haystack was still very much intact.
“Hmm,” Rory murmured, frowning at her phony notes for a minute. “Oh yes.” She looked up with an apologetic smile. “My uncle’s notes seem to indicate that you and your wife were estranged.”
“Yes, for several months.”
“And she’d started divorce proceedings?”
“Not yet, but we’d both agreed that was the next logical step.”
“Right,” Rory said, taking pains to make her new notes larger and easier to read, so that even from his seat Oberlin would see the difference. “Okay,” she said, biting her lower lip to underscore the difficulty of deciphering Mac’s writing.
“Please bear with me; I can’t make out much of this next paragraph.” She let another few moments pass as she pretended to study the words before her. “I think this says something about changing your wills or beneficiaries?”
“Actually there wasn’t time to do any of that before Gail died,” he acknowledged.
According to the police report he had been the number one “person of interest” until the coroner deemed Gail’s death an accident. At that point the investigation into David Oberlin had been shut down, along with the rest of the case. When Rory first read the report, she’d been struck by the size of the fortune he’d stood to lose once the divorce was final. Over a hundred million dollars made for a dandy motive.
“
That
was lucky,” she said, hoping the artless comment would catch him off guard.
Oberlin’s eyes narrowed; his jaw tightened.
For a moment Rory thought she’d pushed him too far. If he had killed his wife, he would certainly have no compunction about killing her. And if he made a move against her, she wouldn’t even have time to retrieve the .380 Walther that she’d tucked into the folio. What’s more, no one knew where she was, because she hadn’t wanted anyone to know, and the closest neighbors were acres away through dense, sound-baffling stands of oaks. She’d have to play out this scene that she’d set in motion and hope that he was guilty of nothing more than good luck.
“Oh my goodness,” she said sheepishly, hand to her mouth in feigned embarrassment. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“Sure you did,” Oberlin said. But then his face relaxed into an unexpected smile. “Truth is you’re right. I didn’t think I’d see any of that money. I guess sometimes there’s justice in this crazy world.”
Rory smiled and bobbed her head in agreement. One thing was clear, if he
was
guilty, being acquitted by the coroner’s report had made him feel untouchable.
“I promise I won’t waste much more of your time,” she said, squinting at Mac’s notes again. “There seems to be something here about a Cathy?”
“Casey. Casey Landis,” he said soberly. He leaned forward and looked straight into Rory’s eyes. “Listen, Ms. McCain, my wife was married to her career. It was all she cared about. I was pretty much superfluous.” He shook his head with a sigh of disgust. “I think she was actually relieved when I met Casey and gave up trying to make our marriage work.”
Rory was struck by the honesty in his face and in his voice. Either he was telling the truth, or he was doing a better job of acting than she was.
“Okay. I guess what this says is that you were with Casey Landis the night your wife died.”
Before Oberlin could answer, an attractive blonde in her forties strode into the room. She moved with the poise of a woman who knew herself well and was confident in her abilities.
“Yes, he was with me,” she said defiantly, taking a seat beside Oberlin. “I’m Casey Landis.” She planted a hand possessively on Oberlin’s thigh. Rory noted the long tapered fingernails and the emerald-cut diamond on her left hand that had to weigh in at four carats minimum.
From where Rory was seated, she had a view of the entry hall and she hadn’t seen anyone come through the front door, so Casey had either come down the stairs or from a room at the rear of the house, possibly the kitchen.
“Nice to meet you.” She nodded in Casey’s direction, since she was no longer in hand-shaking range. At least Oberlin hadn’t gone for a girl half his age. That raised him a notch or two in Rory’s esteem. But she’d been planning to call on Casey at another time and preferably when she was alone. Interviewing a suspect with another suspect present was almost always a bad idea.
David Oberlin seemed as disgruntled as she was, although no doubt for a very different reason. It didn’t take a supersleuth to deduce that he had stationed his paramour close enough to hear their conversation without letting on that she was there. That way if Rory wanted to speak to her at a later date, their stories would be sure to mesh. Even if they weren’t guilty, conflicting stories might well raise some red flags and possibly tempt the police into reopening the case. And that was a situation even the most innocent of people wanted to avoid, trial by media pundits being a proven method of ruining one’s life.
Casey seemed oblivious to the effect her entrance had wrought in Oberlin. She was clearly not a woman who responded well to taking orders or to staying in the background.
“Ms. McCain,” she said, her blue eyes flashing with indignation, “the only reason David even agreed to this meeting is because he’s too nice a guy to turn anyone down.”
“I do realize that,” Rory said, “and I appreciate his help. I’m really just trying to put my uncle’s affairs in order.” Which was at least partially true.
Casey refused to be placated. “It’s no secret that Gail had plenty of enemies. Hell, I hardly knew her and I was glad to hear that she was dead. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was an accident. If you need someone to blame, then you’re going to have to round up Fate and put
her
on trial.”