Murder on Sagebrush Lane (21 page)

59

“I’m not saying anything. You lied to me.” Randy Lynch scowled at Sgt. Paiz.

She shook her head. “I think we have a bad case of miscommunication here. What made you think anybody would turn over a child to you?”

“That McKinsey woman told me she would.” Lynch tried to point to Harrie, but his arms were cuffed behind him.

“Never mind her,” Swannie said. “Tell us why you wanted Katie Rinaldi.”

The unfortunate man had been moved to the conference room. He sat on one side of the table and Swannie and Sgt. Cabrini Paiz were on the other side. DJ, Harrie, and Ginger, along with two detectives, currently dressed as telephone repairmen, stood against the wall.

Lynch looked thoroughly miserable. He’d complained about pain in his arm from his ill-advised struggle with Sgt. Paiz. No one gave him any sympathy.

“I’m not saying anything else without a lawyer.”

Swannie shrugged. “That’s your right, of course. You don’t have to speak to us. But the way it stands now, you’re the one who’ll be charged with extortion, intimidation, intent to kidnap, stalking, and assault on a police officer. If that’s okay with you, by all means, don’t talk to us.”

Lynch’s eyes were wide, fear etched on his face. “I didn’t do any of those things,” he said.

“You certainly tried to kidnap, and you definitely did the other things. We have evidence of your phone calls to Mrs. Scott, and you were seen outside her home. But if another person put you up to all this, that would be the one we need to talk to.”

For the first time, a look of hope crossed Randy Lynch’s face. “You’d let me go if I tell you who asked me to do this?”

Swannie’s face was expressionless. “You did assault a police officer. You’d have to answer for that, but if you help us find the person who planned this, I think the district attorney would be willing to give you a break. I can’t promise anything, of course, but I can put in a good word for you.”

Lynch’s forehead crinkled as he apparently weighed his options. Harrie thought she could almost see the wheels turning in his little brain. Then she saw his shoulders relax, and his breathing even out. He’d made a decision.

“I want a lawyer. If it’s okay with him, I’ll tell you everything you want to know. But I want a deal.”

Swannie’s jaw tightened. “Very well.” He stood and turned to the two detectives. “Call headquarters. This young man needs an escort downtown. And make sure he gets a phone call to his lawyer, okay?”

The taller of the two detectives nodded and moved out of the room to make the arrangements. Swannie motioned the others to follow him. Before he left, he addressed Sgt. Paiz. “Stay with this guy until patrol comes for him. And how about you go with him to headquarters, and start questioning him after his lawyer arrives.”

“Sure thing, Lieutenant.” Sgt. Paiz grinned and took her position by the door, crossed her arms, and leaned back.

Lynch called out, “Wait! Don’t leave me with this broad. She’s nuts. She’ll kill me.”

The lieutenant turned back. “Suck it up, Buttercup.”

Then he, DJ, Harrie, and Ginger headed to the vault. Swannie paced the room as the others took their seats. “I’d hoped he would cooperate, and we could wrap this up.”

Harrie frowned. “But he said he would talk to you after he consulted his lawyer.”

DJ smiled. “If his lawyer is any good, he won’t let him talk to us about anything, not without a really good deal on the table, or the promise of one.”

“Swannie already offered him a deal,” Ginger said. “What more would a lawyer want?”

Swannie sighed. “I can’t speak for the DA’s office. I’ll have to brief them, and they’ll want to look into the case. By the time they get finished, Monica Chambers or whatever name she’s using now, will be long gone.”

Harrie said, “Do you think Monica Chambers would just leave him to take responsibility?”

“I don’t know,” Swannie said. “If she really wanted the child because she has maternal feelings for her, perhaps she’ll step up and admit her part in this. If not . . . .”

Harrie shook her head. “According to Alexis Kane, Bonnie—and that’s how she always referred to her—was only interested in the money she thought Katie would inherit. If that’s true, and she thinks the chance of getting her is gone, she might actually take off and leave Lynch on his own.”

Swannie beamed and turned to DJ. “Do you think Alexis Kane would know how to reach Bonnie?”

“Don’t know,” DJ said. “She left me her cell number. I’m supposed to let her know when we’re ready to turn over Katie. I can call and ask if she knows how to contact Bonnie.”

Swannie said, “Okay, go ahead. It’s the only lead we have.”

DJ went to make the call.

Ginger said, “Didn’t Bonnie give you her address and phone number when you questioned her downtown?”

Swannie smiled. “Oh sure. But what she gave us was bogus. I tried calling it the next day, and it’s a disconnected number.”

“That’s odd,” said Harrie. “If she really thought we’d hand over Katie to her, why leave you a phony number?”

“I don’t believe she ever thought you’d do that. I think she was casing your house, trying to see what the situation was, and whether she could just walk away with Katie. When that didn’t work, she got her boyfriend to make those phone calls and scare you into giving her up.”

“That was a pretty risky trick, don’t you think? She must have realized she had zero chance of making it work.”

DJ returned and said, “Alexis says she hasn’t seen Bonnie in two years. The last time was right after Katie’s birth.”

“So she can’t help us,” Harrie said. “Terrific.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“What are you holding back?” Harrie’s eyes sparkled.

“Oh not much,” he said. “It seems Bonnie has a best friend, who lives right here in Albuquerque. They’ve been buddies since college, and Bonnie visits her a couple of times a year. Alexis said she always stays with her when she’s in town, and gave me the name and address. Swannie and I will go check it out.”

“Wait,” Harrie raised her voice to the departing DJ’s back. “Will you say anything to Bonnie about the murder victim not being her brother-in-law?”

DJ turned. “Nope, we don’t want to tell her now, and you two shouldn’t say anything to anybody either.” He included Ginger in this warning.

Harrie put her hands on her hips, her stance defiant. “Why not? You can’t keep a secret like that.”

“We won’t, I promise.” He turned to Swannie for help, who shrugged as if to say, ‘She’s your problem, not mine.’

“Look,” DJ said to Harrie, “we have to wait a little while longer, that’s all. We don’t want to publicize the fact it wasn’t Michael Rinaldi found in the house. National security is still a factor until we know what happened to Michael and why he had that flash drive hidden in Katie’s bear. The person who murdered Vince Weber is still out there and could also be responsible for the theft of classified information.”

Harrie’s toned softened. “All right, I understand. I’ll keep quiet as long as I can.”

DJ groaned. “I was hoping for longer than that,” he said, “but I’ll take what I can get.”

60

“I never meant things to turn out like this.” Bonnie Bellows, aka Monica Chambers, sat in the interview room at APD headquarters. She didn’t look as confident and in charge as she had the first time DJ and Swannie interviewed her.

“How about telling us why you’re using two different names,” Swannie said. He was making notes on a yellow pad. DJ sat off to the side as an observer.

Her shoulders slumped. “I tried to be an actress. I didn’t want to use my real name, you know, in case it didn’t work out.” She dabbed at her eyes with a wadded up tissue. “Then I gave birth to Katie.”

Swannie said, “So your stage name is Monica Chambers?”

She nodded, sniffed, and dabbed her eyes again, but she didn’t say anything. Bonnie Bellows had been full of remorse when Swannie and DJ caught up with her at her friend’s house around noon. Once she knew they had Randy Lynch in custody, and he had talked to a lawyer, all her bravado evaporated.

“Tell me how you convinced Randy Lynch to terrorize Mrs. Scott into giving you Katie Rinaldi.”

Bonnie’s head snapped up. “Hey, that wasn’t my idea. He’s the one who thought it up. I told him it would never work.”

“But you were perfectly willing to go along with it.”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t come up with a better idea.”

“Were you with him when he made the original phone call?”

“No, but he told me about it later.”

Swannie jotted down a note, then looked up. “What made you decide you wanted Katie Rinaldi?”

Bonnie leaned back in her chair. “It’s kind of personal.”

Swannie put down his pen and clasped his hands on the table. “Ms. Bellows, you are involved in a serious crime. Anything related to that crime is part of this investigation. So personal or not, I need an answer.”

She gave him a withering look. “Okay, you asked for it.” She sat up straight, lifted her chin, and avoided Swannie’s eyes.

“At first, when Laura and Michael asked me to be a surrogate for them, I thought they were crazy. I had been out college for several years and had a pretty good job. But then they told me they would pay me a lot of money if I would agree to the arrangement.”

“What arrangement?” Swannie was making notes again.

“They had a bunch of rules. I had to agree to all of them. If I failed to live up to any one of the rules, they would not pay me the full amount.”

“So how much money did they offer to pay you?”

Bonnie looked down at her hands. “If I did everything exactly like they said, I’d get $100,000.”

Swannie gave a low whistle. “So I assume you agreed to all these rules.”

“It took me a few weeks to make up my mind. I don’t like being told what to do, and they were definitely telling me how I had to live. I couldn’t drink alcohol, and I couldn’t take any drugs or supplements—other than what their doctor would give me. They wanted me to quit my job. I had to basically become a nesting hen for nine months, with them calling all the shots. And at the end of it all, after I gave birth, I had to sign away any claims for more money, or for custody of the baby.”

“And you did these things?” Swannie asked.

“Yeah, sure, I mean it was too much money to pass up. I always wanted to become an actress, but I needed a way to live until I could get a break. I figured $100,000 would take care of me pretty good for maybe a year or two while I went to auditions and stuff. And, in addition to the $100,000, they also agreed to pay all my expenses during the time I was carrying the baby. All I had to do was sign the agreement.”

“So you did all that,” Swannie said.

She leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “Yes, and everything went just fine. The pregnancy went smoothly, and I had no problems. The labor wasn’t fun, but it didn’t last too long, so I was up and out of there pretty quick.”

Swannie said, “What happened then?”

“Nothing,” she said. Her shoulders drooped, and she drew circles on the table with her index finger. “I never even saw the baby after the birth. Everybody was there, fawning over the kid and over Laura. But it was like I didn’t even exist. I’d fulfilled my agreement, they gave me a check, I signed the final papers, and everybody moved on.”

“But that wasn’t enough for you?” Swannie looked her in the eye.

“It was at first. I felt pretty proud of myself. I’d earned that money—all of it. I exercised and got my figure back right away. I went blonde. I started going out on auditions. I even got a few callbacks. I was gonna be the next Meryl Streep.”

“What changed?”

Bonnie looked at the soggy tissue in her hand. She shrugged. “Did you ever want a thing real bad, I mean, really, really want it? That’s the way I felt about acting. I just knew if I got a chance, I’d be good.” She leaned back in the chair. “I wasn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked at him as though he must be exceptionally dense. “I mean I didn’t have any talent. None. I had the body, the looks, but I didn’t have the acting chops.”

Swannie nodded. “Did they tell you that?”

Bonnie snorted. “Well, duh! They didn’t come right out and say it, but you could tell. I never even got through one speech during an audition. They’d cut me off right in the middle. Or worse, they’d invite me back for a second audition, but often as not it wasn’t the play they were wanting to audition me for—
if
you get my drift.”

“Go on,” Swannie said, returning to his notes.

“So I decided on a different career path. I decided I’d go in to fashion design.”

He looked up. “How did that work out for you?”

“Well,” she chewed on her lower lip, “I went through the rest of the $100,000 pretty quick. I had to buy a sewing machine, fabric, stuff like that. I enrolled in a fashion design school—that cost me mucho dinero. In the end, that didn’t work out either. Turns out, you have to have artistic ability. Who knew?”

“So that left you with the plan to take Katie?”

“Not at first,” she said. “I heard about Laura being sick, and I felt bad for her. I came down here to see if I could help.”

“Had you stayed in contact with the Rinaldis after Katie’s birth?”

She shook her head. “Oh, no. That was part of the deal. I wasn’t supposed to see Katie after I signed her over. I was supposed to stay away from the entire family.”

“But you couldn’t do that?”

She sat up straight and frowned. “I thought this was different. I thought they’d want my help.”

“How’d you find out about Laura’s illness?”

Bonnie leaned forward. “My friend Lolita, you know, the one I’m staying with? She called me and told me.”

Swannie raised his eyebrows and waited.

“Okay,” she said, “here’s the deal. Lolita and I went to college back east. I used to come here with her for the holidays. She got married a few years ago, and they bought a house up in the Northeast Heights. She took sewing lessons at a store nearby and got to be really good friends with a woman who knew Laura. This friend is a fountain of information, and she told Lolita that Laura had cancer. Lolita knew about my connection to the Rinaldis so she told me.”

Swannie’s eyes narrowed. “And who is your friend’s friend, this ‘fountain of information’ you mentioned?”

Bonnie took in a long breath and blew it out. “Her name’s Winnie. Winnie Devlin.”