Murder on Sagebrush Lane (27 page)

76

Harrie refused to let people pamper her. Ginger had given up trying years ago, but DJ still had much to learn, and he demonstrated that now.

“I don’t understand why you insist on working the rest of the day. You had a traumatic experience this morning. Let me take you back to Mom’s house.”

Harrie and DJ stood in Harrie’s office, where she had driven shortly after the incident. Lt. Swanson, and numerous members of the Albuquerque Police Department had descended on the crime scene within minutes of Sgt. Paiz’s arrival, and the subsequent arrest of Harrie’s assailant. Harrie had finally agreed to leave the scene but refused to go home. Instead she headed back to her office and had found DJ waiting for her. Ever since then, he’d been making his case for her to go straight home and rest.

Harrie pulled out of his embrace and shook her head. “I know you don’t understand why I have to do this. But you have to trust me about it, and let me get back to work.” She put her fingers up to his lips to prevent further comment. He grinned and kissed her fingers.

“Why are you so hardheaded?”

Her eyes widened in mock surprise. “
Moi
? I don’t know how you can say that.”

He hugged her close one more time before she wiggled free. “Don’t you have criminals to interview and statements to take?”

He sighed. “Yes, unfortunately, I do. So I suppose if I can’t convince you to take the rest of the day off, I might as well get with the program. I’ll call you later.” He turned to leave.

Lt. Swanson tapped on the doorjamb just then. “Harrie I hate to bother you, but I really do need to get your statement.”

“Of course, Swannie. Come on in.”

DJ put his hand on Swannie’s shoulder. “Can you call me when you get back to the station? I have a few things to tell you.”

“Sure,” Swannie said. “And I have some interesting things to tell you.”

DJ left, and Swannie closed the office door behind him. “Can we sit at your conference table?”

Harrie nodded, and Swannie sat down. “I told you everything when you arrived at the scene, Swannie. I can’t imagine what else you need from me.”

“Well, unless you want to go downtown to make an official statement, I need to tape you telling me your story from the beginning.” He produced a small recorder from his pocket and set it on the conference table.

She pulled out a chair and sat. “Okay, then I guess we do it here.”

Swannie asked questions, and Harrie answered for the next half hour. When he finished, he turned off the machine and returned it to his pocket. “That should do it for now.”

“All right, now it’s my turn.” Harrie leaned back and crossed her arms.

Swannie’s eyebrows arched. “Pardon?”

“I think I’ve been really patient. I need you to answer questions for me. I answered yours.”

He shook his head. “I suppose you have a point. What do you need to know?”

“Let’s start with what happened to Winnie Devlin. I couldn’t get answers from anybody at the scene.”

Swannie looked down at his hands for a moment, then sat back in his chair. “Winnie Devlin is dead.”

A small sound escaped Harrie’s lips. “I was afraid of that. I guess I took too long.”

“No, there was nothing you could have done. She probably died before you got off the phone with her. We found the receiver beside her body. The preliminary word from the ME is that she was strangled.”

“Did that man—the one I gouged—did he—I mean is he the one?”

Swannie nodded. “We believe so. I’ll know much more in the next few hours. He’s downtown at the station right now, being questioned. In addition to that, we’ve found a treasure trove of information at the Devlin home.”

Harrie frowned. “I don’t get it. What sort of information could Winnie Devlin have had? Oh, wait. I guess you mean evidence related to her murder.”

“No,” Swannie said, “her murder seems pretty straightforward. The crime scene guys are having a field day over there. The murderer was apparently looking for something and didn’t have time to wipe the place down after he finished. They tell me there should be plenty of forensic evidence to prove he did it.”

Harrie studied her fingers. She suddenly felt chilled and a bit deflated. A person she’d recently met had been murdered. A woman who’d called her for help. She remembered how she’d even thought Winnie might be pretending to be in trouble, just to get attention. Now the foolish woman was dead, and Harrie felt awful about it.

She looked up at Swannie and realized her eyes were tearing up.

He came around to her chair and knelt beside her. “Harrie, don’t do this to yourself. I’m telling you, there was nothing you could have done. Winnie Devlin . . . well, there was more to her than you knew.”

She wiped away the moisture from her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I mean we did a preliminary search of her house and found evidence that she had quite a little enterprise going on. She had reams of information—files containing photographs, notes, documents, all sorts of things. We’ve taken her computer to the computer forensic people. They think they’ll be able to retrieve more information from her hard drive.”

“Do you think that’s what got her killed?”

“I believe so. It certainly makes sense.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Lt. Swanson said, “the woman had been blackmailing people for years. She even kept records of payments and favors she received. I think she finally ran into a victim who refused to play her game.”

77

“I’m ready if you are,” Harrie said.

Caroline and Ginger looked at each other. Ginger nodded. “Sure. Why not?”

It was 4:00 in the afternoon of what seemed like a pretty long day. Harrie, Ginger, and Caroline had decided this terrible week needed a wonderful note on which to end it. They would have a dinner party for their entire group of detectives—both professional and amateur.

“You know, we could actually get together at my house,” Caroline said. “It wouldn’t be that big a deal.”

Harrie shook her head. “I think not, lady. You’ve fed all of us this entire week. Not to mention having DJ, Katie, Tuptim, and me staying with you all that time. And you ended up taking care of Katie for me, too. You deserve a relaxing evening out, being waited on.”

“When are we planning this event? Shouldn’t we wait a day or two?” Caroline looked at the calendar. “How about we see if everyone can get together late Sunday afternoon?”

“Good idea,” Harrie said. “That way, we have plenty of time to plan and make sure everyone’s free. And, perhaps DJ and I can resettle in our own house, get laundry done, and begin to put this week behind us.”

Caroline said, “Do you think we could find a place with a private room? We have so much to talk about, it could be awkward if it’s noisy, with lots of people around.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Harrie said. “Hmmm.”

Ginger said, “Okay, where do we find a quiet place, serving great food, on a late Sunday afternoon, and with room for a large group of people.”

Harrie snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it! Prairie Star has great food. They have a couple of private rooms they rent out for special parties. If we call soon, maybe there’s still time to reserve one for Sunday.”

Caroline said, “Is that the place northwest of Bernalillo?”

“That’s the one.” Harrie grinned, delighted at the idea. “It sits right on the golf course at Santa Ana Pueblo. The view of the Sandias is breathtaking, especially at sunset. I’ll ask if we can have Dennis assigned to us. He’s our favorite waiter.”

Ginger said, “I’ll call them. How many should we say are coming?”

“Well, for now, I’d say tell them ten. I’d like to invite Sgt. Paiz. She’s been such a big help this week, and she’s taken really good care of me.”

“Sure,” said Ginger. “We can tell her to invite a date.”

Harrie grinned. “Oh, she has a permanent date. She’s married to one of those handsome firefighters who came to answer the 9-1-1 call. I’ll see if they can both come.”

Ginger squinted at Harrie. “How do you know anything about Cabrini Paiz’s private life?”

“Because, silly,” Harrie said, “as you so often say, I’m nosey, and I ask questions. I knew the information might come in handy one day.”

“But there you were,” Ginger said, “practically hysterical, after having stabbed a man, and you still found the time to question her about her marital status?”

Harrie inspected her nails, blew on them, and buffed them against her chest. “What can I tell you? I multitask well.”

Caroline grinned. “Harrie, why don’t you call DJ and tell him what we’re up to. Then see if he can invite Swannie to join us.”

Harrie winked at Ginger. “Oh we definitely need Swannie there, don’t we? It wouldn’t be a party without him.”

Ginger shook her head. “Looks like things are heating up with him, Caroline.”

Caroline turned a soft shade of pink. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. He’s just a really nice man, don’t you think?”

“Oh he’s definitely that.” Ginger turned to Harrie. “And speaking of Swannie, you said he told you Winnie had been murdered. But you didn’t tell us why.”

Harrie shrugged. “Apparently she’d been blackmailing people for years. Swannie seemed to think she found out about this creep who killed Vince Weber and blackmailed him.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Caroline said. “Even Winnie Devlin wouldn’t be that dumb, would she?”

Ginger said, “I’d have to agree with Caroline. It seemed to me Winnie had several annoying qualities, like being a snoop and a gossip. But to me, she also showed a lot of ingenuity. Think about how she engineered that DNA thing. She got a kit and managed to get you to take it. She couldn’t have known you wouldn’t return it to her, but she at least made the plan and carried it out. That took smarts.”

“That’s true,” Harrie said. “And look at the scheme she put together to sell her daughter’s baby to a wealthy couple. She made enough money on that deal to buy her house.” Harrie warmed to her subject. “I have no doubt she found ways to use the information she collected about people. But I think she had enough cleverness to be careful about how she did it.”

“But then why do we think that creepy guy who attacked you might have killed Winnie?”

“Well,” Harrie said, “for one thing, I’ll bet she noticed the car.”

Caroline frowned. “The car?”

Harrie turned to Ginger. “Remember when we went to Winnie’s yesterday, and we saw that light blue car sitting in front of Rinaldi’s house?”

“Yeah,” Ginger said. “You mentioned that the detectives must still be at the crime scene, and you wondered why they hadn’t released it yet. What about it?”

“Well, that’s the same car I saw parked down the street this morning—the reason I thought they were still working there. And we now know that must have been this creepy guy’s car.”

Caroline frowned. “Too bad we don’t know his name. It’s annoying to keep calling him ‘that creepy guy. We’ve already had a couple other ‘creepy guys’ this week.”

Harrie nodded. “I agree, but we should know soon enough. So,” she stood up and dusted her hands together, as though wiping away any further speculation about creepy guy. “I’ll phone DJ and see if he can get me Sgt. Paiz’s number. I’ll also ask him to invite Swannie. Ginger, you need to call Prairie Star. Tell them to prepare for a party of ten. We might think of someone else we want to invite.”

Ginger raised an eyebrow. “Look who’s the Bossy Boots now.”

Harrie burst into giggles, and Ginger couldn’t keep a straight face.

Caroline grinned and shook her head. “You girls are a laugh a minute, you know that? Don’t forget somebody needs to tell Steve about this party we’re planning. We don’t want him to miss out.”

Harrie’s spirits had lifted, and she grinned. “That’s true, and besides, I may still need a lawyer before this is over. After all, I did attack a poor, defenseless, confessed murderer.”

78

Harrie checked the pot roast one last time. Perfect—at least it would be if DJ got home in the next twenty minutes. She took it out of the oven to rest.

She lit the candles on the dining room table and straightened the silverware. Everything screamed “Special Occasion,” and she suddenly wondered if it was too much. She wanted to relax this evening with her husband, not intimidate him. Then she heard the sound of the garage door opening, and blew out a breath. It was too late to change things now. Time to pour the wine.

DJ stood in the doorway to the dining room. “Are we having company tonight?”

“Nope,” Harrie said and went over to hug him. “Just a quiet dinner for two, a chilled bottle of wine, some soft music, and the entire evening to relax.”

He tugged at his tie. “Sounds heavenly. Give me a couple of minutes to change out of the suit and tie. I’ll be back by the time you get everything on the table.”

When he returned in his favorite slacks and a polo shirt, Harrie grinned at him and handed him a glass of wine.

“I love your mother, you know I do. And I’m so grateful we could stay with her this week while this mess was going on.” She lifted her glass of wine in a toast.

DJ touched his glass to hers. “Couldn’t have said it better.”

“So here’s to us being back in our own house, with the chance to simply eat a quiet dinner together, just the two of us.”

He grinned at her. “I’ll drink to that.” He took a sip of wine. Then his face took on a serious look.

“Uh oh,” Harrie said. “I know that look. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

He shook his head. “I need to tell you about what I did this afternoon.”

“Okay,” Harrie said. “Sounds ominous.”

“No, I didn’t mean it that way. I just thought you’d want to know the identity of the man who attacked you this afternoon.”

Harrie swallowed hard. Once again she saw the face of the man pinning her down, preparing to smother the life out of her. She shuddered, then lifted her chin.

“By all means, I want to bury this guy once and for all.”

“Let’s sit down first.”

Harrie sat, took a sip of wine, set her glass down, and said, “All right, I’m ready. Tell me what you did. Then we can get back to our evening and the delicious dinner I’ve prepared.”

DJ said, “Sounds good to me.” He leaned forward and took Harrie’s hands in his. He kissed her fingers and smiled at her. “It’s a good story, really. Swannie called me after he left your office. He asked me to sit in on the questioning of our suspect. So I headed down there. When I walked into the interrogation room, my jaw dropped.”

“Why?”

DJ shook his head. “Because the guy sitting there, being questioned by Swannie and Sgt. Paiz was none other than Michael Rinaldi’s boss at the Labs—Al Murray.”