Hoofprints (Gail McCarthy series) (15 page)

"Okay. Thanks, Gail."

"You bet. See you tomorrow."

Gina waved a friendly good-bye and went back to loping her mare. As I drove down her driveway I thought, not for the first or last time, that the number of genuinely good, strong women who were undone by their longing for a relationship-any relationship-with a man-was probably legion. Gina was merely one of many. And I hoped, I quite desperately hoped, that no matter what trials old age or solitude might visit upon me, I would never be among that number.

THIRTEEN

The rest of the day was business as usual; I ran around in a constant hurry, looking at horses. I checked on the pony and was relieved to find he was better. Telling the woman to call me if he took a bad turn, I dashed off to see an expensive jumping horse whose cough had suddenly escalated into the flu. The whole afternoon was like that. Frantic. In fact, it rapidly turned out to be "one of those days."

Before it was over I had to put down an endurance horse who'd gotten caught in a fence and virtually tom his leg off, tell a woman I really liked that her team roping horse had ringbone, an incurable lameness that tends to get progressively worse, and stitch together a foal whose hindquarters had been severely lacerated by the family dog. My last call was to a smiling, ignorant middle-aged man who had allowed his backyard horse to go untreated so long that a sole abscess, normally a minor complaint, had virtually rotted the horse's foot away. I tried unsuccessfully to convince the man that the only thing that would help his horse at this point was thorough and relatively expensive treatment, but I ran up against a blank wall.

"I imagine it'll get better" and "I can't spend that kind of money," were his only responses. I looked with frustration at the swimming pool in the backyard and then at the horse, holding his painful foot so that it didn't touch the ground, and drove away filled with anger and a feeling of helplessness.

Nothing I could do, sometimes. No way to force that man to treat his horse properly. Oh, I could call the humane society. But time and experience had taught me that that course of action often did more harm than good. The humane society, in their bumbling bureaucratic way, seemed incapable of making individual judgments and would often abide by some rule that indicated they must impound or euthanize an animal, even when said animal could only be usefully helped in some other way.

No, I wouldn't call the humane society in this case. It was possible that the horse would recover on his own. I'd seen it happen often enough. But the man's indifference to his horse's suffering-that was a cancer of the spirit that nothing could cure.

I banged my hand on the steering wheel and yelled "damn" out loud. Blue looked up at me curiously, making me feel stupid.

"I don't know what to do, buddy," I told him. "Sometimes I hate this job."

Glancing at the dashboard clock, I noted that it was 5:30. The county building was on my way home, more or less. Maybe, just maybe, I could catch Jeri Ward before she went home and end my day by doing something useful.

My stomach growled a protest, but I took the Ocean Street off-ramp and drove down to the sheriff's department. A young crew-cut deputy informed me, after a moment's hesitation, that Detective Ward was not available.

I pondered the idea of talking to Detective Reeder, always assuming he was available, and rejected it. I simply wasn't in the mood to be grilled by the man.

"Tell Detective Ward Gail McCarthy was by to see her," I said, and turned to go.

Jeri Ward's "Gail" stopped me with my hand on the door. "I saw you here at the desk," she said briefly. "I'm on my way out. Can I help you?"

"Well, it's a long story. Several long stories, really."

She glanced at a slim gold watch on her wrist. "I really do have to go." A second's hesitation. "Would you want to ride along with me? It should take about an hour."

My turn to hesitate. I was starving. But then, I'd come here to talk to her. "Sure," I said.

I didn't ask her where we were going as we walked out to the sheriff's car, and she didn't volunteer any information. Once we were moving down the road, I launched off into the story of Gina Gianelli and Tony Ramiro and Cindy's phone call to Gina, as it struck me as the most innocuous and least difficult of the subjects I wanted to bring up.

Jeri Ward's mouth twitched ever so slightly; I had the impression she had little sympathy for women who allowed their men to give them hell. I'd have been willing to bet my life savings that she herself was single and uninvolved. There was something in her cool self-containment that seemed to say, touch-me-not, a sense of almost asexual aloofness, though she wasn't an unattractive woman.

Of course I could be wrong, I reminded myself. She could be very different when she was off-duty. But I was still willing to bet there was no man in her life, though it wasn't a question I was liable to get an answer to anytime soon.

We were pulling off the freeway onto the Pasatiempo exit ramp, and my mind swung off Jeri's private life and back to the problem at hand.

"Where are we going?" I asked her.

"Thirty-six Pasatiempo Drive."

It was a classy address. Pasatiempo is a country club community. A lot of older homes, all of them big, laid out around a golf course that rivals Pebble Beach. In Santa Cruz County, a Pasatiempo address meant money.

She nodded. "It's kind of a funny story. We never did find any paperwork to identify her. But today, after an article that included their pictures was run in the newspaper, a man called in and said he was her father. He was real cagey about the whole thing, didn't want to talk to us or come down to the office or anything. I more or less forced him into this interview."

"Oh." I took that in, wondering how it connected to everything else I'd heard. "How are you doing with Ed's relatives?" I added, curious as to how much information she'd feel comfortable giving me.

Jeri grimaced. "You mean Ms. Anne Whitney?"

"Sure. Wouldn't she be your number-one suspect? Two million plus seems like a motive to me."

"It's a motive all right," she answered. "The trouble is, she's also got an alibi. Medical evidence says that Ed and Cindy Whitney were murdered between six P.M. and midnight, at the latest. Anne Whitney was at a company party during the whole of that time. Dozens of people saw her.

They also saw her uncle and two cousins. Prominently on display. The whole Whitney family has an alibi."

"How convenient."

"Oh, that isn't lost on us, believe me. She has the money to hire someone to do her killing for her-no two ways about it. That's part of the problem. Her lawyer says her finances are in excellent shape; she might enjoy another couple of million, but she didn't have any pressing need for it. Two million isn't as much of a motive for her as it might appear to be."

Jeri peered out through the car window as she spoke. The evening fog was coming in and gray plumes twined between the dark Monterey pines and oaks that lined the narrow curves of Pasatiempo Drive, making visibility difficult. Big substantial houses, most of them set well back from the road, hid behind walls and hedges, giving an impression of prosperous secrecy. We were about at the fourth tee when I spotted the number 36 on a side hill, half-concealed by a clump of wild lilac. Jeri turned up a short, steep driveway that ended in front of a house you couldn't see from the road.

You couldn't see much of the house when you were parked right in front of it. A high hedge of barnboo reached to the eaves, and a brick front porch with a light on over the door was the only obvious feature.

Jeri and I looked at each other. The long summer day was drawing to an end, and the fog was steadily turning a darker shade of gray.

"Do you want to come in?" she asked.

"Yes, I would, if you don't mind." I couldn't tell by her face if she minded or not, but I didn't really feel like waiting alone in the car. Also, I was curious to see Cindy's parents, especially in light of what Bret had told me. I got out of the sheriff's car and walked with Jeri to the door, grateful that the khaki-colored blouse I was wearing didn't show the dirt that was undoubtedly on it. My jeans and boots were a little grubby, but, oh well.

Jeri knocked and we waited. After a minute, the door was opened by a man in late middle age. He had a rounded, pugnacious face with an upturned nose, like an angry pig, and tightly curled brown hair heavily flecked with gray. He was running to fat, and his polyester shirt and leisure slacks were too tight.

The man listened, his small eyes wary and unfriendly. For a moment I thought he was going to shut the door in our faces, but he held it open, as if on second thought. "You' d better come in, I guess."

We walked through a front hall and down some stairs into a sunken living room. There was a grand piano in the corner, an enormous brick fireplace, and lots of ankle-deep dark brown carpet. I sat down on a gold-colored velvet couch and thought I detected signs of money. Not too difficult, Sherlock.

Jeri started to speak, but Earl Ritter held up his hand with a kind of pompous authority. "Just a minute. I have something I want to say." He paused and cleared his throat. "Cindy Whitney was not my daughter."

"You called in and said ..." Jeri began, but the man held up his hand again. "The woman whose body is in the morgue is my daughter by birth, yes, but we disowned her from this household when she was eighteen. It was the Lord's will," he added piously.

I could feel Jeri's eyes rolling mentally, but her face stayed neutral. "Could you tell me the whole story, please?"

The man looked resentful. "There's nothing to tell. This is a godly household. My daughter, whose God-given name was Barbara Jean Ritter, defied the Lord and her parents and came under Satan's influence. I was forced to cast her out. That would be twelve years ago."

I was trying not to stare at the man in disbelief. He looked smug and justified, to all appearances completely unmoved by his daughter's death.

"I claimed the body," he went on, "because I felt there might be legal complications if I didn't."

"Am I to understand," Jeri spoke slowly, "that you haven't seen or spoken to your daughter in twelve years?"

"That's right." Earl Ritter's eyes shifted slightly when he said that. He's lying, I thought.

Jeri watched him closely. "Your wife, does she live here?"

There was a definite hesitation now. "Yes, she does. But I don't want her bothered. Her health is very poor. I've told her Barbara's dead, but I'm not sure she's really grasped it. I can't have you questioning her."

"I'm sorry, I'll have to speak to her."

Earl Ritter started to bluster, but Jeri cut him off. "This is a murder investigation. I will be talking to anyone and everyone who might have some bearing on the case."

The man clamped his mouth with a snap and seemed to consider whether Jeri had enough clout to enforce her words. After a minute, he got up without saying anything and left the room.

Jeri and I glanced at each other briefly and then waited quietly in our respective places. When Earl Ritter came back, he had a woman with him.

She was middle-aged and overweight, with faded brown hair and vague-looking eyes. After murmuring a conventional greeting at us, she sat down in an armchair next to her husband, like an obedient child.

The woman kept on talking as if she hadn't heard. "She was dead, but she came back. I couldn't understand it. Ask Earl. She didn't look like Barbara."

Earl shifted in his seat uncomfortably and said, "Hush, Jeannie, you don't know what you're talking about." To us, he added, "She's confused, as I said."

Jeri spoke to the woman again. "You say she came back?"

She nodded with a vague sort of enthusiasm. "She didn't look like Barbara. But she said she wanted to make peace. Earl said she was dead."

Jeri looked at Earl Ritter, whose face was turning red. "It sounds as though your daughter did come back here."

"Now you listen here." Ritter's face was suffused with color. "I told you what you need to know. My poor wife is not healthy, as I said. Why don't you just get out of here and leave us alone."

There was an edge in Jeri's voice. "Cut the crap, Dr. Ritter. If your daughter came back here, I can find out about it. Why don't you make this simple and tell the truth. You don't want to be run in as a material witness, do you?"

The threat seemed to take all the air out of Earl Ritter. He blew his breath out through pursed lips. "I didn't want to speak of this," he said heavily. Amazingly, he managed to continue to convey his air of smug righteousness, despite the fact he'd been caught out in a lie. "Barbara came to this door a week ago. I told her she was not welcome here, that as far as I was concerned, she was dead. She then left. The whole thing took about five minutes. This is a godly household," he repeated. "Barbara was under the influence of Satan."