The Perfect Suspect (25 page)

It was a short drive to Aspen, but it took nearly an hour with the SUVs and campers and sport cars with tops down that clogged Highway 82. They passed Snowmass, ski slopes looming above, and crawled into downtown through neighborhoods of Victorian houses with wide front porches and gingerbread trim dripping from the roofs, huddled among century-old pine trees. Nick stopped in a public parking lot and they walked down the sidewalks, hand in hand, lovers on a little vacation, a getaway, Catherine thought. She shivered at the memory thrusting itself upon her again: Ryan Beckman trying to kill her last night. The Hotel Jerome was in the next block: a redbrick building with green trim and beds of red geraniums and petunias in front.

Catherine removed her sunglasses and blinked into the dim light inside. The lobby was filled with overstuffed chairs and sofas arranged around a marble fireplace. Lamps shone on the carved wooden tables and glowed against the deep pink wallpaper. The reception desk was off to the side near a wide corridor that led into the first floor of the hotel. She felt the pressure of Nick's hand on her back, guiding her past the desk and into the J-Bar. Most of the tables were taken, but they found a vacant table next to windows half filled with a view of the geraniums along the sidewalk. When the waiter appeared, Catherine ordered iced tea, and Nick said he would have the same.

“I'd like to talk to you a moment,” Nick said when the waiter had set down the glasses of tea. He opened his wallet and held up the badge.

The waiter was tall and spindly with long, rubbery arms and bony knees that protruded through his black slacks. “Sure,” he said, eyes locked on the badge.

“How long have you worked here?”

“Five years now,” the waiter said. “No complaints. None whatsoever. There some kind of investigation going on?”

“I'm trying to locate someone,” Nick said, snapping down the three photos. “Any of these photos look familiar?”

For an instant, Catherine saw the flash of recognition in the man's eyes. His Adam's apple rose and fell like a golf ball in the thin neck. “No,” he said. “Never seen any of them.”

“You have a pretty good memory, do you?” Nick said.

“Yeah. I got a great memory. Never forget a face. If I'd seen one of them in here, I'd remember.”

“You remember seeing David Mathews here?”

“Mathews? He was going to be governor, then his wife shot him?” The waiter swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Yeah, maybe I seen him here once or twice. I mean, I didn't know who he was 'til I saw his picture in the paper and found out he was running for governor. I don't follow politics much. Figure they're all crooks. But, yeah, he come in for a beer, couple times this summer.”

“Anyone with him?”

“He was always alone.” The words shot out of the waiter's mouth. “Never seen him with anybody. A loner kind of guy.” The waiter shrugged and started backing away. “Gotta get to work,” he said.

Catherine leaned across the table. “He's lying,” she whispered, and Nick nodded. “What's next?”

“In a normal investigation? Pay a visit to the Aspen police, explain what we're looking for, get their help in obtaining a search warrant and check the hotel's registration for the names David Mathews and Ryan Beckman.”

“We don't know they actually stayed here,” Catherine said.

“And this isn't a normal investigation. As far as the DPD is concerned, the investigation is closed. Sydney Mathews will be charged with first-degree homicide.” He sipped at the tea a moment, then went on: “I'm on the Whitman shooting that looks like a gang-related mugging. Nothing to do with Aspen or David Mathews's extramarital curricula.”

A man with gray, bushy hair sitting alone at a nearby table scooted his chair back and leaned sideways into the corner of their table. “Excuse me.” He could have been in his fifties or seventies, Catherine thought, with the sunburned, roughened look of a skier accustomed to the snow and sun, and startling blue eyes framed in deep squint lines. His bushy gray eyebrows spread like tentacles toward his hairline. “Heard you mention David Mathews.” He shot a glance over one shoulder toward the spindly waiter delivering a tray of beers to a nearby table. “Better we talk outside,” he said.

Catherine got up first and crossed the bar and the lobby into the bright sunshine outdoors. Nick's footsteps clacked behind her. They walked to the corner, away from the windows in the bar and waited. It was a couple of minutes before the hotel door opened and the bushyhaired man strolled out. He walked over, turned the corner, and nodded for them to follow. He disappeared around the next corner, but they found him lounging in front of an art gallery, one boot propped against the brick wall. “Lucky Jameson,” he said sticking out a large, freckled hand. “One of Aspen's characters, you might say. Arrived fifty years ago to ski, and never got around to leaving. Still a ski bum, you might say. Let me give you a piece of advice. We got celebrities up the wazoo here. You name 'em, movie stars, politicians, Arab potentates, they all come through Aspen and a lot of' em own megamansions up there.” He pointed with his head in the direction of the Victorian mansions on the West End. “We protect 'em, and they know it. Nobody in the Jerome or any place else is gonna talk to outsiders like you. Don't matter if you're cops.”

Catherine started to say she was a journalist, then bit back the words. If people in Aspen wouldn't talk to the cops, they certainly wouldn't talk to a journalist. “Why are you willing to talk to us?” she asked.

“Had a drink with Mathews at the J-Bar end of June, I guess it was. I stop in for a beer in the afternoons like I been doing since the sixties. Silver-haired guy was there all by himself, had city boy written all over him. You know the type. Most of the time suited up with a starched shirt and tie, looking like he was about to jump out of his khakis and Top-Siders. So I said, ‘Okay, if I sit down?' and he didn't say no, so I sat. ‘Where you from?' I asked, and he says, ‘Denver.' Well, guess I could've guessed that, straight out of one of them glass buildings on Seventeenth Street. I wanted to ask him what brought him to town, but it's not what we do around here. Where you from? That's okay. We don't go beyond that. He shakes my hand, says he's David Mathews, like he expected me to know who he was, and I'm thinking, Man, we got the likes of Tom Hanks and Jack Nicholson around here, and I never heard of you. Then he starts talking, like he's so damn lonely, he don't know what he's doing. Plus, you ask me, he'd had a few beers. Says he's running for governor and he hopes I'll vote for him. Goes off, like he's memorized his campaign speech and can't stop himself from delivering it. About that time, I began making excuses to get away.”

“What made you stay,” Catherine said, because he had stayed. Otherwise he wouldn't be talking to them.

“The fact he was running for governor. The more he talked, the more I realized he had on a big mask, painted to look just like he wanted it to look. Every once in a while, he let the mask slip, and I got a glimpse of somebody else. Started me thinking, who the hell is this guy that wants to run the state? Maybe I don't want him running the state. Something not straight about him, you know what I mean? You get a real sense of people when you're up there on the slopes trying to get 'em skiing. They wear all kind of masks on the lifts, but when they get out on the slopes and look down, that's when they show themselves—the bullies and crybabies and folks so timid they're scared of their own shadows. You get a sense for what's real in folks, and what isn't. Then I seen in the newspaper that his wife shot him, and it made me think she must' ve known the real guy.”

Nick had taken out the photos. He handed them to Lucky Jameson. “Anyone look familiar?” he said.

Jameson tapped the photo on top. “That's his wife,” he said. “Saw a picture of her in the paper this morning. Good lookin' babe.” He moved the photo to the bottom, stared for a moment at the next photo. He shook his head. “Never seen her around here.” He glanced up. “I never forget a face,” he said. “It's my business to remember people. I got people come back year after year for skiing lessons.”

“What about the last photo?” Nick said.

The man was already looking at it. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “That's her.”

Catherine felt her heart take a little jump. “How do you know her?”

“She walked into the bar, about the time I was trying to get away. Mathews practically turned the table over trying to get to her. He led her to a booth in back. Gave me a little nod on the way, said something like it was nice talking to me, and they scrunched themselves together in the booth. I finished my beer and left.” He took a moment, looking up and down the street at the traffic inching past. “That wasn't the last time I saw him. Next day, he walks into the bar alone, sits at my table and says, ‘Hey, man,' like we're old buddies. ‘I was wondering if you could just forget about the lady yesterday.'

“ ‘Your girlfriend?' I said. By then, I knew he wasn't the man he pretended to be. Wedding ring on his finger, hot babe in the booth. He was definitely glad to see her. I expect they didn't waste a lot of time before they moved on to a room somewhere. So he says, ‘Let's just say it would be inconvenient for the press to know about the lady.' Then he pushes some folded bills across the table. He'd make it worth my while, he says. I told him to take his money and stuff it.”

“Did you happen to see her on TV?” Catherine said.

“Nah. ” The man shook his head. “Never owned one. I read the papers, read my books. That's how I get informed.”

“Why are you willing to talk to us,” Nick said.

“Frankly, that jerk offended me. Real low class, you ask me. Anybody with real class knows nobody in Aspen is gonna blow their privacy. No need to bribe people. I sure as hell didn't want that guy in the governor's office. You ask me, he probably got what was coming to him.”

24

The sun was low in a copper-plated sky when they drove alongside the Blue River into Breckenridge. Traffic jammed the main street, crowds spilling out of restaurants and shops. People strolled down the sidewalks licking ice cream cones and bouncing to the sounds in their earphones. Groups of diners sat at the outdoor tables and lifted shimmering glasses of wine. There were flowers everywhere, nasturtiums and pansies in baskets that hung from light posts, bright orange clusters of petunias banked in rock gardens that abutted the buildings. On the drive over Vail Pass from Aspen, they had discussed David Mathews. Too smart for his own good, Catherine had said. She'd covered types like Mathews—God, she'd been married to one—certain they had everything under control. Masters of their own spinning universe. Mathews would never have registered at the same hotel as Ryan Beckman. He had stayed at the Hotel Colorado in Glenwood Springs, but she would have stayed somewhere else. When he returned to his room after a banquet of rubber chicken and several thousand dollars pledged to his campaign, she would be waiting.

“Then there was Aspen,” Nick had chimed in, tapping his fingers against the wheel. Jameson had agreed to go with them to a notary where he had sworn out a statement that he had seen David Mathews with Ryan Beckman in the J-Bar in late June. It could be enough to reopen the investigation. A slim hope, but it was all they had. “Mathews didn't count on anyone spotting him,” Nick said. “No campaign records that he ever stayed in Aspen. Nobody would have known if Lucky Jameson hadn't spotted him and one of his own staffers hadn't blundered into the bar at the wrong time.”

“Even then, Mathews thought he was in control.” Oh, he was clever, Catherine was thinking. For a man who wanted to be governor, he played a risky game with high stakes. “He must have breathed a sigh of relief that Jeremy Whitman was the one who caught him with Beckman. Whitman idolized him, and Mathews counted on Whitman swallowing his explanation.”

“Only he didn't,” Nick said.

Catherine had watched the mountainsides flying past, the flashes of gold in the clusters of aspen trees, the deep gorges filled with wildflowers and mountain streams. The image of Jeremy Whitman had unreeled like a movie in her mind. Sitting across the table from her, waving away her offer of a cup of coffee. He had said he was into serious drinking that night. “Whitman was shaken by Mathews's duplicity and hypocrisy,” she said. “He had believed in him. He was looking forward to working at the state capitol. It wasn't easy for him to agree to go to the police, but I think, in the end, he wanted Mathews's killer charged. Maybe he thought it was the last thing he could do for the man.”

Nick had been quiet for a long period, eyes narrowed on the highway, forehead creased in thought. Finally he had said, “I don't think Lucky Jameson gave him any worry, even after he'd turned down Mathews's hush money. If we hadn't shown up asking questions, Jameson wouldn't have come forward. It's not part of the Aspen culture.”

“Funny,” Catherine said. “Jameson is the only one to have seen through David Mathews.”

“Except for you.” Nick had given her another quick look. “Come on, Catherine. I read your stuff on the campaign. No matter what Mathews said, you found a way to bring in a counterargument. He said he'd lower taxes, and you pointed out how the last two governors had promised the same thing. Never happened.”

Catherine had sunk back in the seat and looked out the window. Maybe her journalistic instincts, or some instincts, had kicked in and she had done something right. She hadn't let David Mathews off the hook, and it had bothered him. How many phone calls late at night—three? four?—after an article had run that he didn't like. She had missed the whole point of his speech, he had thundered at her. She should check her notes, write a retraction. He'd been drinking, she was pretty sure.