The Perfect Suspect (21 page)

Catherine followed her inside a spacious office, almost a duplicate of the reception area except that the oil paintings on the walls were larger and even more abstract. The painting next to the windows on the far wall looked like a sheet of red framed in dark wood. Abstract sculptures that resembled flying steel had been set out on the cherry credenzas and small tables scattered about. A large desk occupied the space in front of the windows, patterns of light playing on the cleared surface. People were different in different situations, she was thinking. Here, Betsy Kane was in charge. But out on the sidewalk, watching a murderer leave the murder scene? How much control would she have felt?

Still it was hard to connect the small, timid voice on the phone with the woman nodding Catherine into an upholstered chair. “What is it you want?” Betsy Kane settled herself into the leather chair behind the desk, leaned forward and clasped her hands together.

“Mathews and your father were partners,” Catherine said. She took her notebook out of her bag and unclipped the pen. “You must have known Mathews fairly well.” How well? she was thinking. How might this brittle, attractive woman and David Mathews been thrown together over the years? Social events, summer deck parties, July Fourth parties in Evergreen?

“No statement.” The woman's husband crossed the office, perched on a corner of the desk and gave Catherine a dismissive wave. “We don't wish to be involved,” he said.

“Let me handle this, Mark.” The woman didn't take her eyes from Catherine. “I'm happy to give you a statement. You can print this: My father and David Mathews had a successful partnership developing and managing commercial real estate. They created dozens of jobs.” She hurried on, not missing a beat, as if she were reading from a teleprompter, and Catherine could sense the hollowness and lack of sincerity, the mouthing of expected sentiments that had no basis. “Kane and Mathews Properties made a positive contribution to the Colorado economy. The misunderstanding that arose in the firm was settled amicably, and my father and Mathews remained close friends. There, does that satisfy you?”

Catherine finished making notes and looked up. This was bullshit. She could have gotten it off the company's prospectus. It had nothing to do with David Mathews or Betsy Kane. “What is your reaction to Mathews's murder?” she asked.

Betsy Kane gave a shout of laughter. “I was shocked, of course. What do you think?”

“That's enough, Betsy.” Mark jumped to his feet and faced his wife.

The woman shrugged and sank back in her chair. “Let's go off the record, shall we?” she said, her full attention on Catherine.

“I don't think that's a good idea, Betsy,” her husband said.

“Then I'm afraid you have your statement.” Betsy Kane started to get to her feet.

“Off the record, if you like,” Catherine said. “What can you tell me that might help me to understand why someone wanted him dead?”

“I was shocked,” Betsy repeated. “Shocked someone hadn't shot the bastard years ago.”

“Don't do this,” Mark said, still facing his wife.

Betsy bit at her lower lip a moment and focused on the shiny surface of the desk. “Perhaps you should leave us, Mark. I want to handle this my own way. Someone should know the truth.”

Catherine watched the redness move up the back of the man's neck, and when he turned around, his cheeks were flushed, his jaw set. He stomped across the room and slammed out of the office. It could be possible after all, Catherine was thinking. Betsy Kane and David Mathews could have been involved, Mark could have known, and here was a reporter who might entice his wife into spilling the truth. “You didn't like Mathews much,” she said.

“Like him? I detested him. He killed my father. Oh, not literally, not in any way that he could have been held responsible.”

“Your father's still alive, if I'm not mistaken.”

“My father is a vegetable with feeding tubes in his stomach and other tubes stuck in both ends of him. He has twenty-four-hour care just to keep him breathing. The business he spent his life building was gutted and destroyed by a conniving son of a bitch my father had taken into his confidence and trusted. David Mathews was nothing when he came to Denver. He had failed at half a dozen business ventures in Chicago, but he succeeded in marrying the daughter of one of his bosses, and they had escaped to Denver, where Mathews didn't yet have a reputation. With his wife's money, he bought a position in the firm and was so charming—oh, my God, the man could charm a snake—that my father was completely taken in. About two years ago he began to suspect that funds were missing, but he refused to believe David could have anything to do with it. The stress became unbearable. Ten million dollars unaccounted for. It was my father who had to answer to clients. He repaid many of them out of his own funds, desperate to save the reputation of the firm. Oh, David was clever. It took three accountants to uncover the trail of funds he moved from account to account. He took money out of successful properties and put it into his own development projects, all of which were poorly conceived and doomed from the beginning. He shifted money around, budget to budget, different names, different sources. My father finally went to the police and the district attorney. It broke his heart, but he concluded he had no choice but to lodge a complaint and see that David was charged.”

“Why did he withdraw the complaint?”

“My father made the mistake of allowing David to have his own accountants audit the books. David was clever. Naturally, his accountants came to completely different conclusions. The money couldn't be missing; it had never been there. The mistakes had been in logging incorrect sums. The police detective who was involved in the case advised my father there wasn't enough proof to bring criminal charges. David's accountants would counter anything the other accountants claimed. At that point, David offered to buy out my father. Five million dollars. You can do the math. David Mathews made off with the other five million.”

“You might have brought a civil lawsuit. Other accountants might have confirmed what your father's accountants found.”

“You don't understand,” Betsy said. “Two weeks after he sold out to that bastard, my father had a stroke. I couldn't put him through anything else; he'd been through enough. So there you have it, all the dirty little background details about the real man our next governor would have been.”

“What about the rumors of David's infidelities.”

“I wouldn't know.”

“A black BMW was seen at night on his block. You drive a black BMW, don't you?”

Betsy Kane brought a fist down onto the desk and got to her feet. “What the hell does that mean? Are you accusing me . . .”

“I'm not accusing you of anything,” Catherine said. “It's possible someone other than the killer was at David's house at the time he was shot. Maybe it's the driver of the BMW, I don't know. But I do know that whoever was there could be in real danger.”

Hugging herself, the woman walked across the office and stared at the red painting, as if she wanted to make some sense out of the smooth, flat red canvas. There was reluctance in the way she turned back, arms still folded, shoulders slumped. “I told you David was a charming man, the kind you could love and hate at the same time. You covered his campaign. Don't tell me he didn't turn his charms on you.”

“He wasn't my type,” Catherine said. She was close; she could feel the truth at her fingertips, and yet something was wrong. The scared voice on the phone, the confident woman in front of the red painting made no sense together.

Betsy Kane was quiet a moment, eyes steady, considering her options. “You're saying there's some kind of witness? I find it highly entertaining that a journalist is looking for a witness, but the police aren't.”

“How do you know they're not?”

“Two detectives were here an hour ago, asking a lot of inane questions. I gave them the statement. My father and David were always the best of friends.”

“Who was here?”

“Excuse me? The detectives, the investigators. Whatever they call themselves. Martinez and Beckman. It was Beckman who took Father's complaint, fell all over herself for David, and convinced my father that filing charges would do no good.”

“Had you met either her or her partner before?”

“What's this all about?”

“I'm curious whether you had talked to them when your father made his complaint.”

“He handled the matter himself. He was very much his own man. He had no confidence in the police.” She gave a little laugh. “Turned out he was right. I don't hold out any hopes they'll solve David's murder. We're still off the record, of course.” She walked back to the desk, picked up the phone and said, “Print out my itinerary for the L.A. trip.”

She slammed the phone down. “My secretary will have something for you on your way out,” she said.

20

Catherine started the engine and rolled down the windows. A cool breeze drifted across the convertible. She spread the itinerary against the steering wheel and read the dates and times. Betsy Kane and her husband, Mark Talban, flew on United to L.A. the morning before David Mathews was shot and returned the following day at 4:31 p.m. “Financial services convention at the Omni Hotel,” the woman's secretary had said as she'd handed Catherine the sheet of paper. “Ms. Kane was the keynote speaker that evening. Check the convention blogs. You'll see she gave a wonderful speech, as usual.”

Which would have been a few hours before David's murder, hardly enough time to fly back to Denver and be at David's house at midnight. If a BMW was in the neighborhood that night, it didn't belong to Betsy Kane.

Catherine folded the sheet and stuffed it into her bag. The numerals on the dashboard clock read a faint 3:47 p.m. in the bright sunshine. She put on her sunglasses and pulled out of the lot. She had less than two hours to get back to the newsroom, make a few phone calls, and write up what Marjorie called “all the background information you can find” for tomorrow's edition. She drove around the winding tech center roads out onto the main thoroughfare, writing the article in her head.

She would open with the devastation of Mathews's campaign staff, the empty desks and unswept papers littering the floor as if a tornado had blown through. First the murder of the candidate, and last night, the murder of a staffer. She said the name out loud, Jeremy Whitman. A sense of regret lodged inside her, like a cold, hard object. She could see Jeremy across the table at the Tattered Cover, scared at what he knew and a little drunk. No doubt that was why he had agreed to go to the police with her today, because he was drunk. She should have insisted they get up from the table, march to her car and drive right over to police headquarters. And what would that have accomplished? A drunk trying to remember who he saw last June in Aspen? But he would be alive. It would have accomplished that.

Jason had written about Jeremy's death in today's edition. How the police believed the mugging on a LoDo street had nothing to do with Mathews's murder. She would refer to the article, leaving out the part about the police, and work in a quote from Cannon: “Everyone loved David. I've sent people home to mourn in private.”

She had to get a statement from the Colorado Republican Party, although she knew what the spokesperson would say: the party had not yet made a decision on Mathews's replacement. Consulting with the national committee. Making certain the best candidate reaches the governor's office, everyone thinking only of the good of the state, and other boilerplate nobody believed. She would also write the truth: since no other Republican had challenged Mathews for the candidacy, the party would either have to run the candidate for lieutenant governor or select a dark horse. Either way, some poor party member was about to be dumped into the governor's race weeks before the election.

She would have to get the reaction of the Democrats. No doubt, they were ecstatic. Their candidate, running so far behind that she'd had to make an effort to mention him in her articles, had probably leapt ahead in the polls. She would see if any of the pollsters had an update on the numbers.

She would wind up with a brief recapitulation of Mathews's career, including a mention of the theft charges brought and dropped by his former partner, just to remind readers that the popular David Mathews was not the virtuous paragon everyone wanted to believe. She would have to add Betsy Kane's statement on how the whole matter had been settled, how her father and Mathews had remained friends. A few readers might read between the lines and see beneath the surface of Mathews's polished image, but chances were that Edith, his housekeeper, would see only the polished image.

The cell had started ringing as she drove onto I-25. Ignoring it, she worked her way into the fast lane. It rang again. One hand on the steering wheel, she managed to drag the cell out of her bag and flip it open. “Catherine McLeod,” she said.

“I have to talk to you,” Nick said. His voice was tight against the hum of the traffic.

“I'm on deadline,” she said. “We can meet later.”

“Now, Catherine.”

She took a moment, trying to absorb this unfamiliar tone. “I'm on my way back to the Journal,” she said.

“I'll see you there.” She was left with a dead line, and a blank feeling inside.