Now You See It (5 page)

“Did he give you any explanation?” Olsen reached for a bottle of water and took a fast sip.

“No, he didn’t.”

“What was Mr. Carrow’s annual income?”

“I’m not exactly sure. It varied from year to year, as I understand it.”

She sensed Mike’s surprise.

“You’re not sure?”

Olsen’s skepticism stung, and Gemma forgot Mike’s rules and tried to explain. “He kept that information pretty much to himself. It was one of the things we disagreed about. We never were able to work out any kind of compromise.”

Mike broke in. “The income varied, and Ms. Cavanagh was preoccupied with her own business.”

“Yes. Educational consulting, you said.”

“That’s right.”

More questions followed, about her income, their friends, Ned’s lifestyle since the separation. She had no idea about that one.

As if he’d felt her inner tensing Mike said, “My client has already said she wasn’t aware of the details of her husband’s work.”

“Why were you and your husband separating?”

“People change,” she answered. “We grew apart. It happens. Do you know when his body will be released?”

“Not yet. A few days, most likely,” Abernathy said.

“Ms. Cavanagh,” Olsen began, “what’s your relationship to Braden McGrath?”

Gemma flashed on Brady at Mike’s kitchen table. Before she could answer, Mike responded. “Braden McGrath is a cyber-security consultant for my law firm. Ms. Cavanagh’s computer was tampered with Sunday night while she was away from home. I asked him to assess the situation and see what could be done to prevent its happening again.”

Olsen turned to Gemma. “So, you don’t know him?”

“Other than that? No,” she said.

“What were the circumstances that made you file a restraining order against your estranged husband?”

“I thought he’d—someone broke into the house when I wasn’t there. I thought it was him.”

“Any particular reason to think so?”

“I hadn’t changed the alarm codes after he moved out. And they accessed his computer files. He was the only one who knew the password. He changed it every couple of weeks.”

Abernathy frowned. “This is the first we’ve heard of a break-in.”

“It didn’t seem important, in comparison to murder.”

“Yeah, but who did it?”

“That’s what we’d like to know,” Mike said. “The IT security guy said there was no way to tell, since nothing was sent over the Net.”

“McGrath.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think the two incidents are connected?” Abernathy asked.

“I have no idea,” Gemma said, “but I have a hard time coming to grips with someone
coincidentally
breaking into my house in the middle of the night right after my husband was murdered, and accessing his computer files.”

“What files?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a computer expert.”

“And you only met what’s his name—McGrath—that day?”

“I’d never seen him until about an hour before you arrived.”

For a moment, everyone was silent.

“Thank you, Ms. Cavanagh,” Olsen added. “We’ll be in touch.”

* * *

Olsen waited until the Cavanaghs were out of sight before he spoke again. “I want to look at the computer guy,” he said. “Mc—what’s his name again?”

“McGrath. Yeah. Actually, I did a little research on him this morning. Had the Geeks help me. McGrath has a nice solid background, service record, work history—until you really start to dig. It’s good enough for a shallow browse, like a credit check. Then it starts to get murky.”

“Murky?”

“Geekspeak. Got it from the tech guy. A few layers down, he hit a wall. Solid enough to get his hacker’s blood up. Let’s see what he can find, and we’ll go pay McGrath a visit.”

* * *

Gemma turned toward Mike as they drove away. “Was that weird, or is it just me?”

“It’s not just you.” He shook his head.

“Why did they have to come all the way up here, just for those few silly questions? I could have come up with better ones myself.”

“So could anybody who ever watched
Law and Order
. Maybe they came because they already had permission for the trip. They’re tying up detectives from two jurisdictions. I don’t know what that’s about.”

“The guy from Seattle, what’s his name? Anyway, he didn’t ask me a single question. And what was all that about Brady?”

Mike winced. “You noticed, huh?”

“Duh.”

“I’d better clue him in. He probably won’t be too surprised, though, considering how he showed up. Dead husband, wife packing, strange guy upstairs. I mean, it’s natural to look at the estranged wife, even when she has a solid alibi. You could have hired somebody like Brady to knock him off.”

“‘Knock him off’?”

Mike grinned. “My guess is they’ll move on to Wheeler next. The business partner-as-killer is almost as standard as the spouse. And you’re not off the hook yet. You’ve got the motive—more than one. They don’t know that. At least, I don’t think they do. They were surprised about the money. So was I.”

“I didn’t know—”

“Yeah, but you can’t prove you didn’t.” He paused. “You should have told me about Ned’s mother. If not getting along with your in-laws was a common motive for murder, half the world would be burying the other half. But, dammit, why didn’t she want him to marry you?” He sounded insulted, and Gemma could have kissed him.

“It was kind of confusing.” Gemma retrieved her iced green tea latte from the console cup holder. The interview hadn’t lasted long enough for the ice to melt. “Julia—and Ned too, for that matter—have this idea they’re some kind of aristocracy. She flat-out accused me of wanting to marry him to improve my bloodline. Like dogs, or horses, or something.”

“The family rich?”

Gemma took another sip of tea. “Uh uh. I think they may have been, a couple of generations back. Ned had a small trust fund from her parents—so does she. She called it her ‘widow’s portion,’ like something out of a bad novel. There wasn’t much. Enough for Ned to finish law school and escape.”

“Property?”

“No. I don’t think so. She lives in this hideous, moldering rattletrap of a house. I can’t imagine it’s worth all that much. It’s on a corner lot in Sweetwater, Texas. It’s not a historical building, or anything, just a big, ugly pile of red brick with phony Doric columns, three or four stories, oil portraits of stuffy-looking people in ’20s’ and ’30s’ suits and ball gowns. And just her and a maid who’s even older than she is.

“I got the whole lecture when we went back to Sweetwater that first Christmas after we were married,” she said. “Ned spent a couple of weeks ‘preparing’ me so I’d fit in. He might as well have saved his breath. I was halfway surprised she didn’t put us in separate bedrooms.”

Mike snorted into his soft drink.

“My house is probably worth five times as much. I see where you’re going with this, Mike, but even Julia never accused me of wanting money. She just hates me. Maybe it’s a little more intense now. A couple of years ago she sent me a letter saying I had put Ned in the ‘Death Line,’ whatever that means, and demanding I leave him immediately.”

“Too bad you didn’t.”

“Yeah. She also said it was my fault her son was ‘dead to her,’ unquote. But I didn’t start the trouble between them.”

“What did, do you know?”

“He wouldn’t talk about it. When I’d ask, he’d just say she was crazy and change the subject.”

“I’ll bet she gave Olsen an earful.”

“Probably.” She rolled her eyes.

Mike looked back at her like a man who knows he’s doomed to fail. “I don’t think you should go back home today. The story was on TV last night—all the local channels and Northwest Cable News.”

“I need to get back to my office. I have to notify my clients, and I need to bite the proverbial bullet and talk to Julia again. She keeps leaving me messages on my voice mail, asking about a funeral.”

“Work from my house. Can’t your clients send you copies of whatever you need? You have all of their contact information in your phone, right? I know you use Drop Box.”

“Thanks, Mike, but I need to be home. I need to be there for the locksmith, and the alarm company is going to reset the codes. I forgot all that yesterday. Besides, I can think better there. I’ll just see where the day takes me. I’ll be back for dinner.”

“If I can’t talk you out of it, take the dog with you. She’ll be good company. And, um...I’ve asked Brady to stay close the next couple of days.”

Gemma opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off.

“Until they get some leads on Ned’s death, nobody gets near you. Got it? Don’t pout.”

“I’m not pouting.”

“Don’t sulk.”

“You’re the one who sulks. I pout, but I’m not pouting. I understand what you’re saying. I just hate it. You’re thinking about whoever messed with my computer.”

“Yeah. That did cross my mind. Tell you what, your choice—Brady, or I hire someone else. Those are the options right now.”

“I hate that I don’t feel safe there, any more. It’s my home. It’s not the house of my heart, or anything like that, but it’s where I live. My nest. And now it’s not the same, because someone’s been there—” she broke off. “Okay. Okay. Brady. I can live with that, for a little while.”

* * *

Gemma could see the tops of the television vans before she was halfway around the corner from her house.
Rats!
Mike had been right about vultures swarming. Her front yard was overflowing with overdressed people staring earnestly at cameras as they babbled into microphones. A few were leaning desultorily against their cars or the network vans, and a cluster of three was taking advantage of the shade under the flowering cherry.

They all came to their feet or turned toward her as she neared the edges of the crowd, for all the world like a school of predatory fish swiveling in unison toward a single prey. Following Mike’s advice, Gemma pretended she didn’t see them, but drove at a crawl through the crowd. When the first reporter neared the car, Nikki clearly decided she’d suffered all the importunities she was required to tolerate, and began snarling and doing her very best rottweiler imitation. As she was a sled dog, the result was a high, piercing bark that reverberated inside the car and threatened to crack the windshield. Gemma lowered the rear windows. Nikki rose to the challenge, and her barking grew louder, higher, more frantic.

Gemma grinned as reporters and crews ditched their sound equipment and began to back away from the racket. Opening the garage door at the last possible minute, she flipped the crowd a happy little wave as she pulled inside and closed the door.

When she was safely inside, she let out a long, relieved sigh and set her purse down on the countertop.

“Home,” she breathed. Her own kitchen. Nikki headed straight to her dish and began a short, hopeful exploration.

Immediately the doorbell started ringing. Someone—several someones, by the sound of it—knocked and pounded on the door and rapped on the living room windows.

Nikki ran back and forth for a few minutes, barking occasionally, but gave up pretty quickly and dropped with a sigh onto the cool flagstone floor, her duty done.

Gemma stooped for an ear-scratch, and then stood at the sink, looking at nothing in particular. “Okay, Nikk,” she said, grabbing a pitcher of orange juice and a big glass, “let’s get to work.”
And let’s stop thinking about Tall, Dark and Yummy. A cop, eh?

She needed to finish packing up the rest of Ned’s stuff, including all the Sub-Saharan art pieces neither of them had much cared for, but seemed to impress his friends. She supposed that was the point. Now she no longer had to worry about his bouts of rage and his spitefulness. She was free to get rid of them, and she had intended to do just that, as soon as she could. She’d looked forward to the special guilty pleasure of putting his junk into salvaged containers from the liquor store and the Safeway loading dock. Not even boxes printed with classy brand names such as
Stolichnaya
and
Guinness
—just some cartons with the names of toilet paper and the inexpensive wines he always sneered at. Now, though, the memories of her plans for petty revenge made her feel like cringing.

The CDs would be a good place to start. When did he have time to listen to all of them, she wondered as she plunked down on the floor next to the CD shelves and pulled out as many as she could manage at one time. They didn’t seem to be in any particular order, which made her a little crazy.

She kept her own section of the CD bookcase organized by genre and by artist. The classical ones were sorted by composer. Ned’s jumble of easy listening, acid jazz and show tunes—whatever his friends were into at the moment—had always made her itch to organize them, but he swore he knew where everything was.

Well, she would know where they all were now—out of her house. Still, she couldn’t resist stacking them in the box in some sort of order.

She was partway through the third shelf when one of the CDs rattled loudly. “Favorite Classical Hits,” she read, rolling her eyes. She opened the case and found a key on top of the disk. When she had it in her hand, lying across her palm, the short archaic shape reminded her of a safety deposit key, or the kind of bike lock—
oh, right
. The lock went to a trunk Ned had bought for their one and only camping trip. Someone had told him it would keep out bears. The salesman was probably still laughing about that one.

That whole camping thing had been such a disaster. Ned fumbling around, nearly setting the tent on fire—once they had gotten it up, which had taken forever because he seemed to get off on not being able to manage it.
“Why aren’t you helping?”
he had snarled at her as she clipped the tent cover to the frame.
“You’re so fucking knowledgeable about all this. It can’t be that complicated. Look at the kind of people who are out here, for God’s sake. If they can do this, we certainly should be able to.”

She shook her head to clear out the memory.

She’d need the key, at some point, to get at that stuff and sort it. With her stress levels rising, she knew she needed to put it someplace deliberate and pay attention. Focusing was the only way she had ever found to keep things she couldn’t actually wear from disappearing into wherever they went when she
filed
them. It seemed to anchor them, somehow.