Murder with a Twist (21 page)

“I
never would have guessed she was coming here,” I said as we sat outside the gates of an elite country club. “How can she afford a membership?”

“Maybe her husband works in the place.” Duncan pulled up to the gate and flashed his badge at the guard, who looked duly unimpressed. “I'm looking for a Mr. Alvarez,” Duncan said.

“Are you a member here, sir?”

“No.”

“Then I'll be happy to let Mr. Alvarez know you were asking for him. Your name?”

I could tell Duncan was fuming. “Mr. Alvarez is a person of interest in a case I'm investigating involving both a murder and a kidnapping. I need to speak with him.”

“As I said, I'll let Mr. Alvarez know. Would you like to leave a contact phone number?”

“Listen, you jack donkey,” Duncan said irritably, jumping out of the car and getting in the guard's face. “A little boy is missing and his mother has been murdered. If anything happens to that little boy because you are jerking me around and pretending you have some kind of authority, I'll personally see to it that you are brought up on obstruction charges.” He glanced down at the guard's name badge and then added, “So think very carefully about this, Roger.”

Roger did. I could see the indecision stamped on his face. “If I let you in here, I could lose my job,” he said.

“If you don't let me in, I'll see to it that you lose your job.”

Roger was stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place and he began to sweat despite the chill in the air. I understood his dilemma. No one wants to lose their job, but this was the maddest I'd ever seen Duncan and it was a scary sight. Finally, Roger made his decision.

“Fine,” he said. “Go on in.”

“Where can I find Mr. Alvarez?”

“He works in the fitness building. You'll probably find him there.”

After getting some brief directions from Roger, Duncan got back in the car. Once Roger opened the gates, we drove onto the compound and followed the signs to the fitness building. We knew we were in the right area when we saw Mrs. Alvarez's car in the parking lot. I expected the guard to call and warn the Alvarezes that we were coming, but either he hadn't or he wasn't able to get through in time.

We found Mr. Alvarez and his wife, along with the little girl we had seen at the house, standing off to one side in a large open fitness area that was furnished with all the latest in workout machinery. Two men and four women were on the treadmills nearby, the women all dressed in trendy, expensive workout wear. There were also a few men working a circuit of the other equipment in the room.

Fortunately, Mrs. Alvarez had her back to us. Had she seen us coming, I suspect she might have tried to make a run for it. As it was, we were able to catch her completely unaware and when she turned around and saw us, her eyes shot daggers at us. “What are you doing here?” she shrieked. “You can't come in here.”

A tall, blond Adonis-type wearing tight-fitting white shorts and a green T-shirt that was a size or two too small for him—presumably to show off his assets—quickly approached.

“Is there a problem here, Alberto?”

Juanita Alvarez didn't give her husband a chance to answer, something I suspect happened a lot at home. “These people don't belong here,” she said to the Adonis. “They are harassing us.”

Adonis gave us a calm but questioning look and Duncan flashed his badge at the man.

“I'm here on official police business,” Duncan said, and Adonis shifted his inquiring gaze back to the Alvarezes.

“We have nothing to say to you,” Juanita said, her voice laced with venom. She pointed her finger at us in a jabbing motion as she spoke.

“Juanita, please,” Alberto said. “Do not make a scene.”

While I was focused on the action going on before me, I also noticed something else that piqued my attention: a very loud squeaking sound identical to the one I had heard in the backseat of Belinda Cooper's car.

“How can I help you, Officer?” Alberto asked.

“I am looking into the death of Belinda Cooper and the kidnapping of her two-year-old son, Davey.”

Alberto squinted in thought and then said, “Are you talking about that missing child on the television this weekend?”

“Alberto, don't talk to them,” Juanita harangued. Then she whirled on Duncan. “We have nothing to say to you.”

I looked around and saw that we had attracted the attention of the other people in the room. Adonis—who seemed far more interested in having this little tête-á-tête take place somewhere out of eye and earshot of the members in the room than he did in the fate of the little boy—said, “Might I suggest that you discuss this matter elsewhere, somewhere private?”

“I don't see how we can help you, Officer,” Alberto said. “Why would we know anything about this death or the little boy?”

Duncan shifted his attention to Juanita. “Does your husband know about all the late nights you spent with Jamie Cooper?”

Juanita paled. Alberto looked over at his wife with a confused expression. “What is he talking about?” The little girl, who had been hiding behind her mother's legs, started to cry.

“Nothing, Alberto. I told you, don't talk to the cops. They always make innocent people like us look guilty.”

“You have been working during those nights you were gone, right?” Alberto said. “You said the hospital needed some help on the night shifts.”

“Of course,” Juanita snapped. “How else would I be able to make the extra money?”

Adonis, who was shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other, said, “You really need to take this discussion somewhere else.”

I looked at Alberto and asked, “What is your daughter's name?”

“Sofia,” he said.

At the same time, Juanita said, “None of your business.” Apparently, she had forgotten that she had said the name earlier when we were at her house. At least now we knew the name she had used then wasn't a made-up one.

I ignored Juanita and once again addressed her husband. “Alberto, tell me your daughter's name is something else. I want you to lie to me.”

He gave me a puzzled look. “You want me to lie? Why?”

“Please, I know it sounds like an odd request, but please indulge me.”

“Damn it, Alberto,” Juanita said. “Stop talking to these people. You are going to get us into some kind of trouble.”

Alberto eyed his wife with the first hint of suspicion. He shifted his gaze to me and said, “My daughter's name is Lolita.” With this statement his voice, which up until now had tasted like peppery cinnamon, switched to a bland pasty taste, as if I'd just eaten a teaspoonful of wet flour. “What is this all about?” he asked, looking worried. He was back to peppery cinnamon. “Why are you focusing on my family for this?”

I leaned over and whispered into Duncan's ear. “I don't think he knows.”

Duncan nodded and stood there for several seconds, thinking. Adonis was even more agitated now, eager to make all of us go away. Most of the people who were exercising had given up the pretense of not listening. They had stopped what they were doing and their attention was now completely focused on us. Then Duncan's phone buzzed. He took it out, looked at the caller ID, and said, “Excuse me a second. I need to take this.”

He answered the call, said, “Albright,” and then listened. I could hear the buzz of a voice in the background and I had a slight metallic taste in my mouth, which I knew from past experience was a synesthetic response to the faint metallic tones I could hear coming over the line. I heard enough to tell that it was a man on the other end, but I couldn't make out any words. Duncan said nothing, but his expression changed suddenly. He squeezed his eyes closed, grimaced, and sighed. Then he said, “Thanks,” and disconnected the call.

Juanita had turned to Alberto and rattled off something in Spanish while Duncan was taking the call. I wasn't able to understand most of it, but I could tell she was pleading with him and I heard the word
abogado.
This sounded enough like the Italian word
avvocato
—which I knew from hanging with the Signoriello brothers meant lawyer or attorney—that I guessed what the gist of Juanita's plea was.

Alberto seemed to sense that maybe it was time to be less forthcoming because he then said, “I wish to speak with an attorney before answering any more questions.”

Juanita was obviously pleased by this and she shot us a look of victory.

Duncan sighed, clearly disappointed. “Then I suggest you obtain an attorney at your earliest convenience because we will be talking to you again. And do not try to leave town. We will be watching you.”

We turned to go, leaving a shell-shocked-looking Alberto and a frightened-looking Juanita behind.

“Aren't you going to take her to the station or something?” I asked when we were out of earshot. “You can't just let her go.”

“I don't have much choice. I don't have anything to hold her on and I'm betting she won't come down to the station willingly. Even if she did, I'm sure she'll lawyer up and clam up.”

“What about showing her picture to Jamie Cooper? Wouldn't that give you something to use against her if he identifies her as Valeria Barnes?”

“That's not going to work.”

I started to object some more but a sign I saw stopped me in my tracks as a realization hit me. “Hold on,” I said, grabbing Duncan's arm. “I want to check on something.” I steered him down a hallway to a door with a window in the top of it. I peered through the window and saw a large indoor swimming pool on the other side. I opened the door and went inside, Duncan following.

“This is the smell,” I said, breathing in the warm, humid, chlorine-scented air. There were three people in the pool swimming laps and they either didn't know we were there or didn't care. “The squeaky finger sound is very loud in here.”

“You mean the chlorine smell?”

I nodded.

“If Alberto tends to or uses the pool, it would make sense that he would smell of chlorine, but what about Juanita?”

“Who's to say she doesn't use it?” I said. “Or, I suppose the smell could carry from him to her, especially if he spends a lot of time handling pool chemicals. That might be why the smell was fainter on her.”

“They're tied up in this thing somehow, at least she is,” Duncan said. “My gut knows.”

“I agree. That's why I can't believe you're just letting them go. Can't you at least set up someone to watch them?”

“With all the overtime we have in on this case already, I doubt they'll approve a surveillance team just because you said the woman smells like bleach and bears a resemblance to our sketch, especially since we haven't seen any sign of Davey.”

“But what about Jamie Cooper? If he identifies Juanita as Valeria, won't that be enough?”

Before he could answer, Adonis came in. “Is there anything else I can help you folks with?” he asked with curt politeness. “I don't want to disturb our guests any more than we already have.”

“There is one thing,” Duncan said. “Who's responsible for maintaining this pool? You know . . . the chemicals and all that stuff?”

“That would be Mr. Alvarez,” Adonis said. “Anything else?” Clearly he wanted us gone.

“No, thank you,” Duncan said. “We'll be going now.” He took hold of my hand and steered me out of the pool room and toward the exit. Once we were outside and safely out of earshot of Adonis, I said, “You didn't answer me on the Jamie thing.”

“That's not going to work out like we hoped,” he said. “Jamie Cooper is dead.”

A
s Duncan drove us back to town, I sat in the car in stunned silence and listened as he told me what had happened.

“When someone went to show Jamie Cooper the picture of Juanita Alvarez, they found him dead in his jail cell, a victim of aspiration. The working theory—at least until an investigation and autopsy can be done—is that he vomited again and then had a seizure, or perhaps he vomited while he was having a seizure. The seizure was most likely a by-product of his withdrawal from alcohol and he choked on his own vomit.” Duncan's tone was a mixture of frustration, sadness, and anger.

We rode the rest of the way in silence, each of us lost in our own morbid thoughts. When we got back to the bar, Duncan dropped me off out front, saying that he might stop in later, but for now he wanted to focus on the case and dig up what he could about Alberto and Juanita Alvarez.

The bar was busy and I saw that the Capone Club table had expanded to twice its usual size. There were a lot of new faces along with several of my regulars, and I was delighted to see food and drinks in front of all of them.

Debra was still working because, she informed me, Missy had called in sick. She also told me how the Signoriello brothers' riddle for the day had been a big hit with everyone and had been told several times so that new arrivals could take a crack at solving it. The brothers had stayed in the bar all day long and they were still there, enjoying their starring role in the day's puzzle.

After meeting and greeting the folks at the Capone table, I caught Cora's eye and nodded toward my office. She gathered up her laptop and joined me there a few minutes later. I filled her in on what we had discovered and she beamed with pride when she realized that her sleuthing abilities may have helped us get a leg up on the case.

“There was something Juanita said to her husband when he asked her if she really had been working at night,” I told Cora. “She said, of course she had been, otherwise how would she have been able to make the extra money. I don't suppose you have any way to look into their finances.”

“Give me a little time,” she said. “I'll pull a credit report on them, see what accounts they have in their names, and take it from there. But if the money was kept as cash, I might not be able to find anything.”

After telling her the sad news about Jamie Cooper, I left Cora to do her thing and headed back out to the bar. A group of off-duty cops had come in and they were seated at the Capone table, working on the Signoriello riddle. I offered breaks to the employees who were on duty, and told Debra she could go home if she wanted and I would fill her place. Debra thanked me, but then opted to stay, stating that her teenaged boys were eating her out of house and home and she could use the money to augment her five-hundred-dollar-a-week grocery bill.

At a little after seven, Kevin Baldwin came in and his arrival was greeted with a chorus of welcomes from the Capone Club table. He'd been gone for a couple of weeks because his mother had passed away and after he was done fielding all the greetings and condolences from everyone at the table, I offered him a drink and asked him if he would step into my office for a couple of minutes.

“I don't know, Mack,” he said, looking wary. “The last time you invited me into your office, it didn't go so well for me.” Kevin, like me and several of the patrons of my bar, had been a suspect in Ginny's murder. As such, he had undergone an intense interrogation in my office when Duncan was investigating the case.

“I know, and I'm sorry,” I said to him. “But this is nothing like that. I promise.”

Once I had him in the office and Cora had done her share of the greeting-and-condolences thing, I told him about the Cooper case and our suspicions about the Alvarez family. “I was thinking that it might be helpful to get a look at their trash,” I said to him. “To see if there is anything in it that suggests that little boy has been or might still be with them.”

“Where do they live?”

I gave him the address.

“That should be easy,” he said. “The trash gets picked up in that neighborhood tomorrow. I'll call the guys who have that route and ask them to keep the Alvarez trash separate from the rest.”

“Thanks, Kevin. I owe you one.”

With that, Kevin went back out to join the others and I returned to my overseeing duties. Though the next few hours were pleasantly spent waiting on and conversing with my customers, the Cooper case was never far from my thoughts. I kept asking the cops who were in the place if they had heard anything new, but when I sensed they were getting tired of my constant questioning, I backed off. Twice I poked my head into my office to check on Cora, who was so into whatever she was doing she didn't hear me enter. I made sure she had food and plenty of Chardonnay to keep her going.

It was just before eleven when Duncan finally showed up, and I took him into my office where Cora was still at it on her laptop. As soon as the door was closed, I hit him up for any news.

“I don't have much to tell you,” he said. “The public records for both Alberto and Juanita are squeaky clean. They are legal immigrants with no outstanding warrants, no crime histories, not even a parking ticket. And I can't get any bank information until the morning.”

“I can,” Cora said. “But I don't think it's going to be of any help. The Alvarezes' shared checking account shows the biweekly deposits from both of their paychecks and no unusual expenditures that I can see.”

“How did you—?” Duncan started to ask; then he shook his head and said, “Never mind.”

“The only other thing I turned up was a cosigner on Juanita's car loan four years ago, a woman named Margaret Heine. Apparently she was a practicing attorney at one time here in town, but she has since either retired, or quit, or moved on. At first I thought she might have died, but I wasn't able to find any evidence of that. She simply disappeared about three years ago. Then I got to thinking about how women change their names when they get married, and I went searching through the county records looking for the name Heine and hit pay dirt. It seems Margaret Heine used to have another name until she got married four years ago, not long before she cosigned on that loan for Juanita. So I did a little more digging and came up with the name she'd had before the marriage. It's one you'll recognize,” she said to Duncan. “It was Peggy Smith, and Peggy is often used as a nickname by women named Margaret.”

“Oh!” I said, excited, looking over at Duncan. “Peggy Smith is the name of the lawyer who you said posted bail for Jamie Cooper when he had his first DUI. It can't be a coincidence that this woman is connected to both Jamie Cooper and Juanita Alvarez.”

“Probably not,” Cora said, “but good luck figuring it out. Peggy Smith managed to pull a disappearing act, too. I can't find any work, death, or finance records with the name Peggy Smith and the corresponding date of birth, for the past three years either, so Margaret Heine didn't revert back to the older name. It's as if the woman just appeared out of nowhere and then vanished.”

“Mack's right,” Duncan said, looking deep in thought. “The key has to be with the Alvarez family. I need to take another run at Juanita.”

“How does someone just vanish?” I asked. “Especially in this day and age when it seems Big Brother is watching every move we make. I mean, if this Peggy Smith/Margaret Heine woman was practicing law just a few years ago, there should be some record of her somewhere, shouldn't there?”

“I have Margaret Heine's last known address,” Cora said, typing away. “But the tax records show someone else living there for a little over three years now.” After a few seconds, she said, “Here you go.” She spun her laptop around and showed us what she had found.

Duncan scribbled down the address in his little notebook and then tucked it away in his pocket. “I'll check it out first thing in the morning. Want to come along?” he said, looking at me.

“Sure.”

Duncan made a phone call to someone, asking them to look into the name Margaret Heine to see what they could find. When he was done, he looked at me and said, “I'm going to try to get a few hours of sleep tonight. I need to be sharp tomorrow. And I don't know about you, but I could use a nightcap to help me sleep.”

We headed back out to the main bar area and joined the remaining group at the Capone table, which had shrunk in size. The threatened snow had finally started and it was coming down steady outside. Carter told us the Signoriello brothers had finally gone home, to “rest on the laurels of their clever riddle,” and most of the newcomers had called it a night, typical for a weekday. Tiny, Alicia, and Tad Amundsen were still hanging out, although Alicia looked tired and ready to leave. I suspected the only reason she was still there was because Billy was tending bar. Two police officers who had finished their shifts were still there, too, and Dr. T had come in for a late-night toddy after finishing her stint in the ER.

The rest of the place was relatively empty with only a handful of tables still occupied, and Billy was taking a break and had joined the group at the Capone table with a sandwich.

With the snow still falling outside, I knew we weren't likely to get much more business into the bar that night, and after about an hour of conversation that centered around the Cooper case, with Duncan providing some limited updates, everyone was ready to go home.

“Let's close early,” I suggested, worried about my employees getting home in the snow. Everyone agreed and, by one o'clock, the place was shut down for the night. Only Duncan remained.

We were standing in the kitchen where I had just finished washing the last of the dishes from the night's cleanup. He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me back against his body. His voice was a chocolate-flavored whisper in my ear.

“Mind if I spend the night here?”

“I thought you said you wanted to sleep.”

“I'm thinking that certain activities might help me in that regard.”

I leaned back against him, enjoying the fireworks his touch triggered in my body, fireworks that lasted until after three a.m.

 

 

Duncan's cell phone rang at a little after seven the next morning. Both of us groaned in unison as he rolled over to answer it. “Albright,” he said, his voice hoarse. He listened for a few seconds and then got up, grabbed his pants, and took his notebook out of his pocket. He then grabbed a pen on the bedside stand and started writing something down. Then he said, “Thanks, Jimmy, I'll get right on it.”

After disconnecting the call, he reached over and gave me a playful slap on the butt. “Time to get out of bed, wench,” he said, arching one eyebrow. “I think we've just blown the Cooper case wide open.”