Swift Justice (31 page)

“Can I help— Ms. Swift, what are you doing here?”

Jacqueline Falstow, clutching a long-haired white cat in her arms, stared at me, her eyes as green and unblinking as the cat’s. They mirrored astonishment and maybe a little trepidation. Good.

I was in no mood for beating around the bush. “Looking for you. I talked to someone who overheard Lizzy’s phone call to you after Olivia was born. She wasn’t making arrangements to turn the baby over; she called to tell you she’d decided to keep her.”

Jacqueline turned away to stow the cat in his condo, but not before I caught the leap of fear in her eyes. When she straightened from securing the cage door, her cheeks were flushed. “Is that the same ‘someone’ who thought Stefan and I hired Lizzy as a surrogate?”

Score one for her. I ignored the question. “Another witness has identified you as visiting Lizzy at her apartment on at least two separate occasions. You brought clothes and peanut butter cookies,” I added to forestall the lie I saw coming. “Why did you lie to me and tell me you didn’t know where she lived?”

“It was none of your business,” she said heatedly. White fur clung to her camel-colored T-shirt and jeans beneath a canvas apron. She brushed at it with gloved hands. “It still isn’t.”

“Not if you don’t know anything about who the baby’s father is, or how Lizzy died,” I agreed, “but your lies make me suspect you do.”

“I don’t!”

The agitation in her voice stirred up the cats, some of which shifted uneasily in their kennels. One lashed his tail as if egging her on.

“I think she called you that Sunday after Olivia was born and said you couldn’t have her, that she was keeping her. You and your husband argued with her. Then, when you couldn’t change her mind, you jumped in your car and drove to her apartment, maybe to try to convince her to give you the baby, maybe to take her by force. What went wrong? Did you push her, slap her? I’ve heard she could be irritating, and it must have pissed you off royally that she would lead you on about the baby and then decide to keep her. Did she fall and hit her head? I’m sure it was an accident, that you didn’t mean to hurt her.”

“She wasn’t there,” Jacqueline said wearily, moving a spray bottle of Windex off a step stool and sinking onto it. “Stefan and I—after she called—we argued about it. He didn’t want to go see her; he preferred to take the legal route. He called Ziegler to get his advice about our ‘options.’ But taking her to court would take too long. I couldn’t wait. I’d already been waiting for so long. So I snuck out while he was watching golf and went to Lizzy’s apartment. You’re right . . . I’d been there before, just a few times. She didn’t really like it when I came,
but I couldn’t help myself. I needed to know that she was still there, that the baby was doing well.”

“She sent you e-mails.”

“Yes, but that wasn’t the same as feeling the baby kick against my hand.” Her eyes glowed with remembered excitement, and she put a hand against her abdomen.

“How long after the call until you showed up at Lizzy’s place?”

“About two and a half hours,” Jacqueline said, her face tortured. “If only I’d gotten there sooner, maybe I could have saved her.”

And gotten the baby
, I thought, doubting she cared one iota about Elizabeth’s fate. I still wasn’t convinced she hadn’t seen Elizabeth. “Was there anything different about her apartment? Did you see signs of a disturbance?”

“I couldn’t see anything,” she said, echoes of her frustration straining her voice. “I knocked and knocked and tried to peer in the window, but the blinds were down. I even knocked on her neighbor’s door, thinking she might have seen Lizzy leave or something, but she wasn’t home either. Finally, I just gave up and went home. Stefan never even knew I’d been gone.”

The white cat meowed, a raspy, demanding sound, and she stuck a finger through the two-inch-square mesh to stroke his head. After submitting to the caress for a moment, he laid his ears against his skull and slashed at her finger with bared claws. She jerked her hand back.

“Not nice, Mo,” she admonished him. “That’s why we wear gloves,” she said, turning to me and waggling her fingers. “Not all the kitties appreciate the care we give them.”

“My witness says you were there again on Tuesday,” I lied, hoping to squeeze a few more drops of honesty out of her.

She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. They held nothing but deep weariness when she reopened them. “I went back every day, sometimes twice a day, until I read that Lizzy was dead. Then I gave up.”

No, then she went to the funeral and tried to pry information out of Patricia Sprouse. This was one very determined and resourceful woman. As I thought about what else to ask her, the door opened, and a woman stood on the threshold, holding a young boy by the hand and cradling an infant swaddled in several yards of white blanket in her other arm.

“Come pick out the kitty you want, Robbie,” she said to the boy. He dashed forward and pressed his face against the glass behind which the kittens tumbled. I smiled at his eagerness as he left little handprints on the glass I was pretty sure Jacqueline had just shined. I turned to her, expecting to see rueful amusement in her face, only to see her gaze clamped to the baby, the hunger in them approximating the look a vampire might give a pint of A-Pos.

Never underestimate the power of obsession. I slipped out of the room without saying good-bye, and she didn’t even notice my departure.

Getting back on 1-25, I made a quick call to Falstow Construction and learned that Stefan Falstow was on a job site, a high-rise office building going up on the south end of Castle Rock, a town midway between Colorado Springs and Denver.

“Do you mostly do commercial building?” I asked the helpful receptionist.

“About half commercial and half residential,” she said. “We’ve got a lovely new community of single-family homes and townhomes, Prairie View, going up east of Black Forest. I’d be happy to send you a brochure if you’re in the market for a new home. The models are just stunning and are open from nine to five thirty weekdays and Saturdays and noon to five on Sundays.” She reeled off the hours in a singsong voice brimming with good cheer. She probably moonlighted at Christmas as one of the elves coaxing nervous kiddies onto Santa’s lap at the mall.

I gave her the agency address and sped up 1-25, hoping the state troopers were busy elsewhere. Apparently they were, because I reached my exit without getting a ticket. I could see the high-rise from the interstate and wound my way to it. A large maroon, navy, and white sign announcing
FALSTOW CONSTRUCTION
told me I’d arrived. Construction sites have always reminded me of anthills, and this one was no exception. Workers in overalls and hard hats scurried around the base of the building and swarmed over its steel superstructure. If I narrowed my eyes and peered through my lashes, all I could see was yellow hard hats bobbing like the bits of food or grit ants carried. Shouts, clangs of metal on metal, and the chugging engines of large machinery made the site a lot noisier than an anthill. Locating the office in a trailer, I climbed the two portable steps.

A wave of damp-smelling air-conditioning from a window unit washed over me as I entered. Rubbing my suddenly goose-pimpled arms, I asked the man sitting at a desk where I could
find Stefan Falstow. He pointed, and I turned to see the tall man with his neatly trimmed beard and a hard hat emerge from an office. The hard hat read
STEF
in precisely applied electrical tape. He wore a white button-down shirt tucked into gray slacks, but no tie or jacket. His face was tanned and lined by the sun; drooping lower lids below brown eyes gave him the aspect of a bassett hound.

His voice was brusque as he looked at me and said, “You were at the Sprouse woman’s house. Make it quick. I’m due to take a look at some plumbing.”

“I’ll walk with you,” I said, eager to extend our talk beyond the five seconds he was going to allocate if we stayed in the office.

He grunted something I took for assent and pointed to a row of hard hats slung on pegs beside the door. Interpreting the gesture as a command to put one on, I seized one and slapped it on my head as I followed him out the door. He was a couple of inches over six feet and moved rapidly over the rutted ground of the site. I trotted to keep up, trying to fasten the helmet as I moved.

“I’m Charlotte Swift,” I said, not bothering to try to shake hands since he was half a step ahead of me. “I’ve talked to your wife a couple of times about the baby you were hoping to adopt.”

“You’re the PI that’s trying to find her father,” he said, shooting a look over his shoulder. “Any luck? If you find him, I’ll pay him a healthy sum to allow us to continue with the adoption. Enough to send him to college. He’s probably just some teenager who wouldn’t know what the hell to do with a baby, anyway.”

“Maybe.” I didn’t contradict him, although I thought it was unlikely. “Mrs. Falstow told me you’re the one who handled all the legal details, the insurance and so on. Can you tell me how you got together with Elizabeth—Lizzy—in the first place?”

He lifted a hand in response to a “Hey, Stef” greeting from a man trundling a wheelbarrow into the building before answering me. “What did Jacqueline tell you?”

“She didn’t seem sure where you met,” I hedged, alerted by his too casual tone.

“I—we—met her through my lawyer,” Falstow said.

“Ziegler.”

“Right.” He ducked through a framed doorway, and I followed. Inside the building it was darker, colder, despite the lack of walls and the August sunshine turning the I-beams to shadow stripes on the ground. “Watch your step.”

He was always a step or two in front of me, keeping me from reading his face. Yet I got the sense he was evading my questions. “So, refresh my memory, did you suggest Lizzy to Ziegler, or is he the one that knew her first?”

“I don’t know many teenagers.” He ducked the question again. “Hey, Austadt, what the hell do you think you’re doing there?” He marched toward a worker doing something with metal pipes.

I cycled his evasions through my brain, virtually certain his reluctance to outright deny having known Elizabeth meant he’d run into her somewhere. I wondered again where he might know her from. I knew now it wasn’t from the high school, since Falstow was childless. Where did people meet? School, church, work, social events . . . I couldn’t see Jacqueline or Falstow fitting in with the believers at the Church of
Jesus Christ the Righteous on Earth. Work—Lizzy wasn’t a welder or mason on a construction site; she sewed pillows and slipcovers and curtains for model homes. Bingo! The tumblers in my mind clicked into place. I’d’ve bet my last dollar that Designer Touches had the contract to decorate the Prairie View model homes.

Falstow tromped toward me, his face fixed in a scowl. I didn’t know if he was angry with me or the plumber he’d just chewed out. “Look, Ms. Smith—”

“Swift.”

“Sure. Sorry. I’ve got some things to deal with here today, and I don’t have time—”

“I understand. Just tell me: Are you happy with the work Lizzy did on your Prairie View model homes? I’ve heard they’re lovely.”

He was silent for a moment, one hand plucking at his beard.

“It wouldn’t take me two seconds to confirm that Designer Touches decorated those models and find out when they completed the job,” I prompted him.

A nailgun thudded above us as if counting the seconds. Ka-chunk . . . ka-chunk . . . ka-chunk . . .

Finally, Falstow gave in. “Okay, okay, I knew the girl and suggested her to Ziegler when he brought up the idea of a private adoption. I didn’t want Jacqueline to know because she’s insanely jealous and would’ve jumped to all sorts of hurtful conclusions.”

Probably the same ones running through my mind. “Was Lizzy pregnant when you met her?”

“Hell, yes! See, that’s what I mean!” He gave a disgusted shake of his head. “I was on the site one day last January
when she came running out of the model we’d almost finished and puked in the yard—the toilets weren’t working yet. I thought she had food poisoning or something and wanted to call a doc. She said no, she was pregnant.”

“What made you think to ask her if she wanted to put her baby up for adoption?” I asked, skeptical that his encounter with Elizabeth had been as simple and brief as he portrayed it.

“Hell, she wasn’t much more than a baby herself. Despite the”—he cupped his hands in front of his chest to approximate breasts—“she couldn’t have been more than sixteen or so. I thought it was worth talking to her when Zieg explained how private adoptions work. She was
happy
to let us have the baby, seemed relieved to have someone to cover the medical expenses. I didn’t get the feeling she could rely on her folks.”