Authors: J.A. Jance
“We’ll never catch him,” Dave protested. “Or else we’ll be killed.”
“We’ll catch him, all right,” Ali said determinedly. “And with all this traffic, he’ll never know it’s us.”
She managed to stick with the speeding Jag for the next hair-raising ten minutes or so until Maxwell finally swerved back into the far right-hand lane and onto the Fallbrook Avenue exit. Dodging through traffic, Ali followed suit, making it onto the ramp with bare inches to spare. Once there, she slowed and dropped back far enough to allow another car to merge in ahead of them at the light.
Back on surface streets it was easier to keep the Jag in sight while maintaining a safe distance. A mile and a half later, Jake Maxwell turned into a well-lit commercial parking lot.
“Geez!” Dave grumbled. “This guy has spent the last half hour driving like a bat out of hell and endangering life and limb. And for what? To go to Wal-Mart? What’s he going to do, buy a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk?”
But instead of turning up the aisle of parked vehicles that would have led toward the store’s main entrance, the Jag turned left and headed off across the outermost boundary of the parking lot, stopping at last in a far corner of the property where several hulking motor homes and campers had pulled up and parked for the night. The fluorescent glow of the parking lot lights revealed that one of the assembled RVs sported a more-than-life-sized portrait of a smiling Tracy McLaughlin wearing his distinctive Sumo Sudoku kilt. Hooked onto a tow bar behind it was a spanking-new Honda Element with the paper temporary plate still in its back window.
Dave stifled his series of complaints and sat bolt upright. “I’ll be damned!” he exclaimed with undisguised admiration. “I don’t believe it. You were right all along. Maxwell led us straight to Tracy.”
“Yes, he did,” Ali agreed. “Now what?”
“Pull over, park, and kill your lights and engine,” Dave directed. “We’re going to hide and watch.”
S
o what’s Jake Maxwell’s deal?” Dave asked as they waited in the parking lot. “When you’re doing a homicide investigation, you always go after the first person who lies. So how come Jake told us he had no idea how to get hold of Tracy when he obviously did?”
“And why didn’t he just call him?” Ali asked.
“That’s easy,” Dave replied. “I’m guessing he’s worried about leaving a phone record trail.”
“He lied about Roseanne, too,” Ali said.
“That’s his wife?” Dave asked.
Ali nodded. “She may be shopping in New York, but I doubt it. Several important pieces of artwork—valuable pieces—are missing from Jake’s walls and shelves. That tells me something’s up between him and Roseanne that has nothing to do with next year’s wardrobe and a whole lot to do with his pal Amber.”
Learning that Roseanne Maxwell had most likely joined the ranks of Hollywood’s cast-off and obsolete wives should have elicited more sympathy from Ali, but she couldn’t summon it. The condescending comments Roseanne had e-mailed to Ali months earlier still rankled too much.
“Can you reach Roseanne?” Dave asked.
“Maybe,” Ali replied. “I used to have her phone numbers and her e-mail address in my database, and they may still be in my computer back at the hotel. The problem is, that was months ago. If everything else has changed, her numbers may have changed as well.”
“When you have a chance, try getting in touch with her,” Dave said. “She may be able to help us.”
The door to Tracy’s RV opened. Jake emerged and slammed the door shut behind him. He stood for a few seconds as if undecided about something, then hurried back to his Jag. He peeled out of the parking place so fast that the car wobbled dangerously and almost careened into one of the parked RVs before he got the vehicle back under control.
“How much do you think he had to drink?” Dave asked.
“I don’t know,” Ali returned. “I doubt the scotch we saw him drink was the first he’d had this evening.”
“I doubt that, too,” Dave agreed. “And he’s obviously of the opinion that speed limits are posted for advisory purposes only. Let’s make his life a little more interesting, shall we?”
With that Dave picked up his phone. “Yes,” he said when someone answered. “I’m at the Wal-Mart here on Fallbrook Avenue. A guy just took off out of the parking lot in a silver Jaguar XJ,” Dave said. “He’s heading back toward Highway 101 and driving like a maniac. Almost smashed into a parked RV on his way out of the lot. The way he’s driving, he may be drunk.”
After repeating the Jag’s plate information and leaving his cell phone number, Dave closed his phone with a grin. “Let’s hear it for the California Highway Patrol,” he said. “Considering the mood Jake’s in at the moment, any interaction with cops should prove interesting to all concerned. In the meantime, let’s go have a chat with Tracy McLaughlin.”
“What about?” Ali asked.
“Let’s start with your mother,” Dave suggested. “Again, the one thing we need to establish is if he’s lying to us or telling the truth. That means we ask him questions where we already know the answers.”
“Like whether or not he spoke to my mother?”
“For starters,” Dave said. “And you take the lead. Tracy’s an ex-con, which means he probably thinks of himself as a cool macho dude. He’s likely to underestimate you and say more than he should. Try to be conversational with him and get him to talk.”
“You mean sort of like what I did for years when I was conducting television interviews?” Ali asked.
Dave looked chagrined. “I suppose so,” he returned. “Something like that. Sorry.”
They approached the RV with Dave staying in the background. As Ali mounted the steps and knocked, she noticed a hint of cigarette smoke lingering in the outside air. It reminded her of the smoke she had smelled in the hotel hallway the night before.
“Who is it?” an invisible voice demanded.
“Ali Reynolds,” she replied. “I’m Paul Grayson’s wife…his widow actually,” she corrected. “We met yesterday morning before the Sumo Sudoku shoot. I was having coffee with April Gaddis out on the terrace at the house on Robert Lane.”
After a few minutes, the door opened, allowing more secondhand smoke to spill outside. Tracy McLaughlin’s hulking figure stood backlit in the doorway. He held the burning stub of a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other.
“That’s right,” Tracy said. “I remember you now. What do you want?”
“I’m looking for my mother,” Ali said at once.
“Your mother,” he repeated belligerently. “Who the hell’s your mother?”
It had not been Jake Maxwell’s first scotch, and this was not Tracy McLaughlin’s first beer.
“Let me give you a hint,” Ali said. “Her name’s Edie Larson. She’s in her early sixties. Gray hair. Wears glasses and a hearing aid. She’s gone missing.”
“Name doesn’t ring a bell,” Tracy muttered. “There are lots of women like that. I’m afraid I don’t know your mother from a hole in the ground.”
“That’s funny,” Ali said. “I could have sworn I saw a hotel security surveillance tape where you were talking with her earlier this afternoon—arguing with her, in fact. She seemed to be quite upset about something. The digital readout on the video shows that the confrontation happened—shortly before she disappeared.”
Dave emerged from the shadows.
“Who are you?” Tracy demanded when Dave came into view.
“A friend of Edie’s,” Dave replied. “And we have reason to believe Edie had pegged you as possibly being the father of April Gaddis’s baby.”
“Well, she’s wrong about that,” Tracy McLaughlin declared. “Besides, it wasn’t any of her business to begin with. I tried to tell that crazy old woman that she had it all wrong and to get off my case, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“So you’re claiming you’re not the father of April’s baby after all?” Ali asked.
“I’m saying you’re talking to the wrong person. You should be asking April about this, not me.”
“But you’re saying the baby might not be Paul’s?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s not complicated at all,” Ali said firmly. “Either the baby is Paul’s or she’s not. And if she isn’t, she won’t be eligible to receive monies from his estate.”
“So what does any of this have to do with me?”
“What it has to do with is fraud,” Ali replied. “And with whether or not you’re a co-conspirator.”
“I don’t know anything,” Tracy insisted. “I haven’t done anything.”
“What about this afternoon?” Ali asked.
“What about it?”
“What happened after you saw my mother?”
“I left the hotel.”
“Where did you go?”
“A couple of places,” he said.
Dave moved closer. “Ms. Reynolds isn’t a police officer,” he said. “But I am. At this point you’re not being charged with anything, Mr. McLaughlin, so it might be smart for you to cooperate. If you have an alibi for this afternoon—a verifiable alibi—you might want to give it to us before things get any more complicated.”
“What do you want from me?”
“We want you to tell us about what you did this afternoon. All of it.”
“Do I need an attorney?” Tracy asked.
“Not right now,” Dave said. “That’s what I told you a minute ago. At the moment, finding Ali’s mother is our highest priority. Compared to that, everything else takes a backseat.”
Tracy had tossed one cigarette butt aside. Now he paused long enough to light another smoke. “I knew April was going to be doing that Court TV interview,” he said at last. “I wanted to see how it worked out. You see, that same woman has been in touch with me—”
“Sheila Rosenburg?” Ali asked.
Tracy nodded. “She’s been talking to all of April’s friends. And that’s what April and I are—friends.”
What kind of friends?
Ali wondered, although she thought she knew.
“Anyway,” Tracy continued, “I wanted to see what the interview would be like—if the reporter would be on April’s case and accusing her of something or other—before I agreed to do one myself. So I came into the lobby and was watching everything that was going on when that woman—your mother—showed up and started giving me a hard time and causing a scene. I left before anyone had a chance to call security.”
“Why was that?” Ali asked.
“It just seemed like a good idea to get the hell out of there before there was any trouble. Besides, I didn’t want to disrupt what April was doing.”
“You still haven’t told us where you went,” Dave said. “We need names and addresses. We also need the names of any people who might have seen you there.”
Tracy’s reluctance to discuss the matter was obvious in the sullen way he sucked on his cigarette and said nothing.
“We’ve been told that you had a bad enough gambling habit that you had to sell your Sumo Sudoku idea to the highest bidder,” Dave said. “Men can change, but they seldom do. So what’s the story here, Tracy? Are you back in the game again? Did you spend the afternoon at a casino someplace? Or was it somewhere less obvious—like an illegal card room, maybe? And how deep are they into you again? In some circles, gambling on credit can be a very dangerous undertaking.”
The look of surprise that flashed over Tracy’s face made it clear Dave had nailed him. “Where’s the card room?” Dave asked.
“Upstairs over a strip club on Santa Monica called the Pink Swan,” Tracy answered. “I was there all afternoon. I got there about two, and then came directly here.”
Ali remembered the name from newspaper accounts about Paul’s death. She also remembered Helga’s account of the health club called The Body Shop. She wondered if the Pink Swan was a step up or a step down.
“The Pink Swan,” she mused. “Isn’t that where Paul’s bachelor party was held?”
Tracy nodded. “I believe so.”
“You weren’t at the bachelor party?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I wasn’t invited,” Tracy answered. “I mean, Paul and I had a business relationship but we weren’t really buddies or anything.”
“Especially since it sounds to me as if you used to screw around with his bride-to-be,” Ali put in.
Tracy looked at her, but he didn’t bother denying it.
“This Pink Swan place,” Dave persisted. “Would they have you on this afternoon’s surveillance tapes? Would we be able to see what time you arrived there and when you left?”
“That’s the whole point of a place like the Pink Swan,” Tracy said. “There are no surveillance tapes.”
A piece of the puzzle fell into place. If the Pink Swan was a surveillance-free zone, Ali realized, that might explain why no one had any record of Paul’s exit from there. And who had been in charge of choosing the venue for the bachelor party? Presumably Jake Maxwell.
A pair of matching RVs nosed into the aisle and parked side by side directly across from Tracy McLaughlin’s. Once the newly arrived vehicles were in place, several people exited. Laughing and talking, they set off across the parking lot toward the store entrance.
Tracy glanced at his watch. “Look,” he said impatiently, “I’m tired. I had a big match today, and I have another one early tomorrow morning. Could we do this some other time?”
“My mother’s missing now,” Ali insisted. “What did Jake Maxwell want when he came here a little while ago?”
“It was just a scheduling glitch,” he said. “One of the other guys canceled a match. Jake was hoping I could step in for him.”
“So when Jake has a problem, he comes to you with it?” Dave asked.
Tracy nodded.
“Why didn’t he call? You do have a cell, don’t you?”
Tracy shrugged. “Maybe he wanted to get out of the house for a while.”
“And maybe he didn’t want there to be a record of his calling you,” Dave suggested.
“Look,” Tracy said, “I’m here, minding my own business, not bothering anyone—”
“Is that what you were doing when you spent last night in April’s room?” Ali asked. “Minding your own business?”
Clearly her pointed question surprised Tracy McLaughlin. He didn’t deny that, either.
“I already told you we were friends,” he said. “That’s what she needed last night—a friend.” He tossed his dying cigarette out into the parking lot. Ali scurried down the stairs. She retrieved the smoldering butt, ground it out, and put it in her pocket.
“What are you doing?” Tracy demanded.
“You said you weren’t the baby’s father,” she said. “It may take a few weeks to get a real answer, but your DNA should prove it one way or the other.”
“I didn’t give you permission to take that,” Tracy began. He started down the stairs after her, but Dave stepped up and blocked his way.
“I’m not a police officer,” she said. “You tossed your trash out into a public parking lot. If I want to clean up your litter, that’s my call, not yours. And if I’m willing to pay for a paternity test, that’s my call, too.”
Ali stepped around to the back of the Honda and studied the temporary plate. “While we’re at it,” she added, “tell us about this vehicle. I see you just bought it—on Friday. But I was under the impression you were having a tough time financially. So where’d the money come from for a new car?”