Death on the Diagonal (21 page)

Neither man answered, so Abe shook his head. “Not that I want to know what the situation entails. But you remember what they say about friends keeping secrets from their buddies?”

It was Belle who responded. In the evening light, her face looked wan and worried. “No. What do they say?”

“If you can’t trust your pals, who are you gonna confide in? The police department?” He laughed again, then studied Belle. “Hey, puzzle lady. Lighten up.”

But she’d taken the comment too much to heart to bother producing a smile.

24

“But it’s terrible, Rosco,” Belle was insisting as they drove home from the dog park. Twilight was now gone, and the sky looked like darkest night. “Sara has never hung up on me like that. And I doubt she’s done it to anyone else, either. She’s far too ladylike and self-controlled to slam down the phone. This is a side of her I’ve never seen.”

“Maybe she simply dropped it,” Rosco suggested as he maneuvered the Jeep around a four-legged shadow that darted across the country lane. “Or your cell-phone reception went on the fritz. We know how often that happens.”

“Was that a black cat running across the road?” Belle asked as she spun around in her seat and peered through the rear window.

“It wasn’t a dog,” Rosco answered. “And it especially wasn’t one of those two sacks of snooze lying prone on the backseat.”

“That’s a terrible omen, a black cat,” Belle continued as she stared into the jet-colored trees lining the roadway. Where the Jeep’s headlights sheered past them, the trunks appeared gray and lifeless; left without illumination, they reverted to an even more inhospitable sight. “What do you think it means?”

“That some poor creature isn’t as fortunate as the spoiled pooches who grudgingly allow us to share their home?”

“I’m being serious, Rosco!”

“You’re not attempting to equate a lost or feral feline with Sara’s odd behavior, are you?” was his amused response. “That might be considered a catty remark—”

“Rosco, I’m not making a joke!”

He reached over and rested his hand on her thigh lovingly. “I know you’re not. And I realize that you’re worried about your aborted conversation with Sara, and with her weird defense of the highly questionable Ms. Davis. But I also don’t think you should start imagining dire circumstances, or peering into tea leaves, or having your palm read just because a stray cat skedaddled across the pavement. If it had been a deer, you would have been thrilled to catch sight of it.”

“That’s true,” was the pensive answer. “I guess it’s the Bambi connection.”

“And I would have been thrilled it didn’t end up as a hood ornament.”

Belle shivered at the thought and let out a long and perturbed sigh. And Rosco understood that his wife was far from convinced that the abrupt culmination of her phone call to Sara call might have a logical explanation.

“Why don’t you phone from our landline as soon as we get home? You can use the excuse that your cell reception broke up, and you couldn’t hear everything she said. After all, maybe she’s imagining you hung up on
her
rather than vice versa.”

Belle considered the suggestion, wrapping her arms around herself as if the cold were bothering her instead of her troubled thoughts. “I don’t think that’s the case, Rosco. Sara was really, really cranky. But I’ll give it a try.” She sighed again. “And that was odd how Martha intuited the problem, wasn’t it?”

“She was talking about her father, Belle,” was the gentle answer. “You know Sara’s not in the same boat.”

“I know. But the two cases struck me as being painfully alike—”

“Except that Sara Briephs isn’t losing her marbles.”

“Mr. Sensitive.”

“Okay, she’s not undergoing
memory-loss issues.
Is that better?” Rosco swerved to avoid another darting critter—this one had the bushy tail of a fox—and when it gained the safety of the underbrush bordering the lane it turned red and baleful eyes on the passing car. “No problems with foxes streaking by us, are there? No Celtic myths or Norse legends?”

Belle shook her head, and Rosco continued. “But we have to bear in mind Sara’s age, and that she took a serious tumble. She may not be firing on all cylinders as a result, albeit a temporary condition. She has been given pain medication, remember.”

“Which is all the more reason to worry about Dawn Davis’s potential ploys.”

“The cunning vixen, as it were.” Rosco chuckled briefly.

“You’re not allowed to speak for the rest of the ride home,” Belle told him, although she was smiling as she spoke.

“Not even to remark about
playing possum
if we happen to pass one of them scurrying into the weeds?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Kit and Gab are going to be awfully disappointed,” Rosco laughed.

“They’re exhausted and asleep. And besides, all they hear when we’re yakking is blah . . . blah . . . blah . . . walk . . . blah . . . blah . . . treat.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure. Remember they live in an erudite household.” Then he patted his wife’s leg again. “Don’t worry, Belle. Sara’s a smart lady. No one has ever pulled the wool over her eyes, and no one ever will.”

“You’re getting dangerously close to the forbidden
critter
terrain, buddy.”

“I didn’t say anything about wolves in sheep’s clothing, did I?”

“Just stop right there.” But she couldn’t help smiling.

 

 

Returned to their cozy abode, however, Belle’s concerns about her friend increased when she called White Caps and was informed by Emma that “Mrs. Briephs has already retired for the evening.”

“But it’s only seven, Emma,” Belle asserted while the response was an implacable, or so it seemed, “Madam has been feeling poorly. Possibly you could try again tomorrow?”

Frustrated and unhappy, Belle hung up and turned to Rosco. “Emma’s lying; I’m sure she is. I’ll bet Sara’s right there in the room and refusing to speak to me.”

“You don’t know that—”

“Yes, I do!” Then Belle did something she seldom allowed herself to do; she began to cry.

Concerned but not altogether surprised by his wife’s reaction, Rosco put his arms around her. “Sara’s an old lady,” he said gently. “No matter how much she dislikes admitting the fact. As I said before—and as Martha also suggested—maybe that spill did more than damage Sara’s knee. Maybe it genuinely scared her, gave her a frightening glimpse of her own mortality. It makes sense that she’s emotionally as well as physically shaken. And it also seems logical that she could have a delayed reaction . . . and even that her anger over her own failings could find a scapegoat in you.”

But Belle was not to be consoled. “That awful Dawn Davis!” she railed. “This is all her fault!”

Rosco continued to hold his wife while the sleepy dogs roused themselves from their torpor and ambled close to lend their own furry support. Belle felt their two wet noses nudging her. “Two . . .” she mumbled. “Two . . . two—” Her words abruptly ceased, and she stood straighter until her eyes looked into Rosco’s face. “When I spoke with Sara, she insisted
her
experience of Dawn and the allegations against her were ‘
two
very different things.’ That was the phrase she used.” Belle reached into her pocket to retrieve a tissue, then blew her nose and frowned in concentration. “What if—just
if
—Sara’s Dawn Davis isn’t the same person as Walter Gudgeon’s Dawn Davis? What if they’re two different
people,
rather than two different
things
!”

Rosco started to reply, but Belle stopped him. “Which means we could be dealing with a case of identity theft . . . More than that; personality theft.”

“Whoa . . . whoa . . . That seems pretty far-fetched—”

“But it’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Well, sure, yeah, I guess.
Anything’s
possible. The Bay Area could have a snow-free winter, for instance, or our health insurance premiums could be cut in half; gas prices could tumble to fifty cents per gallon—”

But Belle paid no attention to the facetious tone. “What if another woman met Dawn,
Sara’s
Dawn, that is . . . then befriended her, heard the story about the abusive boyfriend who’d landed her in the emergency room, and the resulting need for surgery, as well as the genuine date of the hospital stay, et cetera. Then this phony Dawn sets her greedy sights on Mr. Gudgeon and invents a far more expensive procedure to con him out of a quarter of a million dollars . . . She doesn’t even have to look like the original woman, because Gudgeon has never met her. All he’s asked to do is hand over the dough and then drive the bogus Ms. Davis to the hospital on the right day.”

“That doesn’t fly; both Gudgeon and Bownes described Dawn the same way. I had no trouble recognizing her.”

“Okay, okay, so our fake does some makeup work. Descriptions are very general, they aren’t conclusive like photographs or face-to-face meetings.”

“Belle, I know how much you love Sara, and that you’re incredibly loyal; but just because she believes this woman is innocent doesn’t make it so.”

“Hear me out, Rosco. I know this sounds crazy. But if it’s true, it’s an amazing con . . . because it means that our phony Ms. Davis had two marks: Walter Gudgeon and the real Dawn, and worked it all out brilliantly.”

“Was Bownes in on the scam?” was the skeptical reply. “I grant that he’s no sweetheart, but a con artist? I’m not sure.”

Belle ignored her husband’s dubious tone, although she considered the idea, and then shook her head. “I doubt it . . . a surgeon who’s part of a prestigious practice. Besides, what would his motive be? Cash? No, these guys make a bundle anyway.” Then her gray eyes opened wide, growing charcoal dark in her excitement. “But our con artist would have to be someone who either worked at the hospital or in the orthopods’ office—”

“Or had a snitch on the inside.”

“Now you’re with me—”

“If Dawn isn’t, in fact,
Dawn.
”

“Right.”

“Let me call Gudgeon. Time for a little Dawn Patrol.”

25

Nine A.M. on a Sunday morning isn’t an hour most folks choose to resupply their home offices, or have important paperwork copied, or order business cards, or hunt for a new desk lamp or ergonomic chair, but Papyrus had a small line waiting for the doors to unlock when Rosco and Belle drove into the parking lot. The vehicle they’d picked for this excursion was Belle’s gray sedan. It looked as bland and unremarkable as the office superstore’s facade, as the new shopping mall across the street, or the interstate highway that separated the two mega “retail parks.” The term was one Belle might have commented upon if she and Rosco weren’t engaged in this mission. “Retail park,” she would have huffed. “There’s a modern-day oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one. Who dreamed up a loopy title like that? Commerce doesn’t occur in grassy knolls and bosky glens.”

As it was, she said nothing; instead, she adjusted the brown wig and scholarly tortoise-shell glasses she’d donned in order to mask her identity. Since a byline photo always appeared in the
Crier
with her puzzles, she didn’t want to take any chances that Dawn might recognize her and connect her to Rosco. In a matter of moments, Papyrus’s door was unlocked by the manager. The couple watched the customers begin filing inside and sat tight, waiting for Walter Gudgeon to appear.

When his navy blue Lincoln Town Car arrived ten minutes later, Rosco and Belle hurried across the macadam to speak with him before he had a chance to exit his car.

“What’s all this?” was Gudgeon’s irascible question. “I thought you and I were going in there on our own, Polycrates. You didn’t mention bringing a woman.”

“My junior assistant, Lexi,” Rosco told him with a slight but firm smile. “She works undercover for the agency. Ms. Davis will recognize me the minute you and I approach her. That’s why I thought it better if Lex here accompanies you.”

Gudgeon fidgeted. “I don’t like this . . .” he admitted in a dull half-whisper. “It seems like harassment. I’d rather just let the kid have the damn dough.” He stared through his windshield at Papyrus’s uninspired shopfront. “She has to work in a place like this, and on a Sunday morning? Maybe it’s better she just holds on to the money. Besides, like I told you, Polycrates, I want this mess kept on the Q.T. My kids would—”

“Lexi’s discreet,” Rosco interrupted as he opened the door for Gudgeon and watched him step out. “I’ll follow you as far as the entrance. In case Dawn recognizes you and things turn ugly, Lex and I have wireless communication. I can be with you in a second.”

Gudgeon flinched and seemed about to retreat to his car, but Belle, a.k.a. Lexi or Lex, soothed him with a warm, encouraging smile. “Mr. Polycrates and I have reason to believe this may not be the same woman who conned you, sir; that we may, in fact, be looking at a case of identity theft, and a seriously criminal confidence game that goes beyond your exposure to it.” Then she added a quiet, “Either way, if this is the Ms. Davis you tried to help, we’re still concerned she may be attempting to work the ruse a second time.”

Gudgeon heaved a reluctant sigh, but allowed himself to follow Belle. Rosco waited until they reached Papyrus’s entrance before trailing behind.

The harried young woman working the Xerox machines matched Gudgeon’s description to a tee. Belle strode toward the copy center desk, pushing her way past a number of clamoring patrons—all of whom needed their jobs done ASAP and all of whom were impatient and shrill. “Miss!” they shouted, “Miss! I just need a . . .” The person who called herself Dawn Davis twirled around like a crooked top, tearing open reams of neon-bright paper, matching a photographic reproduction to the black-and-white original, and unjamming a recalcitrant machine while an irate voice screamed, “That better not be my only copy you left crumpled up in there! That’s an important legal document.”