Tough Customer (9 page)

"How'd he react?"

She smiled sadly. "He turned his attention to me."

"Was there ever a time when you were interested in him?"

"Romantically? Good Lord, no."

He arched one sun-bleached eyebrow.

"Absolutely not!" She chuckled. "When you see him, you'll understand. He's not at all my type."

"What's your type?"

His question checked her amusement, because the first word that sprang to mind was
You
. It startled her, rattled her right down to the soles of her feet. Because were it not for the fact that he was investigating a crime involving her, and seemed to harbor some mistrust of her that extended beyond a peace officer's instinctual mistrust of everybody, she would find the deputy sheriff attractive. His imposing bearing, his sheer physicality, even his damn gray eyes, were appealing.

But he seemed bent on trying to trip her up, to catch her in a lie, which made her dislike him intensely. Pulling herself up straight, she said, "Oren was my colleague. Bright. I'd even go so far as to say gifted. But he became a rejected suitor who stalked me, and who last night vowed to kill me. He said he must."

The deputy studied her for a moment longer, then replaced his notepad and pen in his pocket and stood up. "Maybe Lofland's settled in by now."

When Ski entered the hospital room, no one was happy to see him. Not the nurse, who told him the patient was still very weak and asked that Ski not take too long. Not Mrs. Lofland, who when he introduced himself was polite, but only because she had to be. Not the patient, who seemed the least happy of all that Ski was there.

Ben Lofland, fresh from the surgical recovery room, was attached to various lines and tubes and looked like warmed-over death. Oren Starks's bullet had gone clean through him, creating entry and exit wounds but, miraculously, doing only moderate damage to tissue on its passage. It had missed all his organs and the bowel. The worst of the injury had been the amount of blood lost. Either Lofland was living right or he had the devil's own luck.

Ski was betting on the latter.

His condition was far from critical, but he came across to Ski as a whiner. Once introductions were out of the way and the nurse had left the room, he said, "I really don't feel up to this right now."

"I'll be brief," Ski said.

"Why do you need to talk to Ben? Hasn't she told you what happened?"

Ski turned to Amanda Lofland, who'd placed hard emphasis on the
she,
making the pronoun sound like a word for something that smelled bad. "Ms. Malone gave a detailed statement last night and again this morning. But it might help us catch Starks--"

"You haven't caught him yet?"

Ski disliked the implication of incompetence that had underscored Lofland's question. "Ms. Malone didn't see his vehicle. She was busy trying to keep you from bleeding out on her bedroom floor."

Ski knew it was the mention of Berry Malone's bedroom and not pain that caused the guy to wince. Lofland shot a worried look at his wife, who was hugging herself as though at any moment she might fly apart.

Without further prompting from Ski, Lofland said, "I heard Berry scream. Heard their voices. I ran--"

"Were you asleep?" Ski removed his notepad and pen from his pocket.

"What?"

"Did her scream wake you up?"

"Uh, no. I hadn't gone to sleep yet." He cast another look at his wife, who had moved to the window and was looking through the blinds at the ventilation chutes on the roof.

"You were still awake," Ski stated.

"Right."

"But you hadn't heard Starks come into the house."

"No."

"Car engine? Boat motor?"

"You think he came by boat?"

"It's possible. We're checking it out."

"I didn't hear a boat motor."

"Anything?"

"No."

"Okay."

Lofland paused to see if Ski was going to ask something else, and when he didn't, Lofland continued. "I ran along the gallery to the other side of the house." He gave his wife another glance, as though to ensure she'd heard how far away from each other the two bedrooms were.

"When I got to Berry's room, I rushed over to the bathroom. That's where the voices were coming from. Oren was standing in front of the bathtub, his back to me. He must've heard me. He turned around and shot me."

"Did he say anything first?"

"No." Lofland grimaced with discomfort. "Can I have some water, please?"

Amanda went to the bed. She poured water from a carafe into a plastic cup, then leaned over him and guided the bent straw to his mouth. When he'd drunk, he looked up at her and touched her hand. "Thanks, sweetheart."

She gave him a lukewarm smile, returned the cup to the nightstand, and then resumed her study of the ventilation apparatus outside the window.

"He just spun around, saw you in your undershorts, and pulled the trigger," Ski said.

"Yes. He seemed completely unbalanced."

"Why do you think? Jealousy over the two of you being together in the lake house?"

"I don't know the cause for Oren's precarious mental state, Deputy."

Ski disliked his tone. To keep himself from knocking the sanctimonious jerk out of the bed, he scanned several of the sheets in his notepad. "What happened after Starks shot you?"

"I can't tell you. I blacked out."

"Ms. Malone says you were conscious right up till the paramedics got there."

"I was? If so, I don't remember. I must've gone into shock. I don't even remember feeling any pain until I regained consciousness in the recovery room this morning. I didn't know where I was. I was so disoriented, I freaked out. The nurse told me I'd been shot and had undergone surgery. Things began coming back to me then, but between Oren firing that pistol and my waking up in recovery, everything is blocked."

"How well do you know Starks?"

"Only as a co-worker."

"You hadn't seen him since he got fired?"

"No."

"You two ever hang out? Go for a beer after work?"

Lofland was shaking his head. "I never saw him socially."

"Mrs. Lofland?" When Ski spoke her name, she jumped and came around quickly. "What are your impressions of Oren Starks?"

"I don't have any."

"You never met him?"

"Well, yes. Ben introduced us at a company function."

"You only met him that once?"

"Once or twice. I don't remember."

"Nothing about him stood out to you?"

"They were casual introductions, Deputy. Insignificant. If I had known that one day he would try to kill my husband, I would have paid more attention."

In Ski's opinion, these two people deserved each other. One was as unlikable as the other. He returned his attention to Ben. "Did you and Starks get along okay in the office?"

"He was off-putting to some people, but I never had any issues with him."

"Did Ms. Malone?"

"Wouldn't you call stalking an issue?"

Again, his smart-aleck tone grated on Ski. He wanted to yank hard on the catheter draining Lofland's bladder, see what effect that would have on his sarcasm, but he settled on glaring at him coldly.

Lofland got the message. His smirk dissolved. "Berry told me Oren was stalking her."

"When?"

"When did she tell me? First I heard of it was when she decided to spend the summer here in Merritt. Naturally I was surprised."

"Why?"

"Berry's such a workaholic. Rarely even takes vacation days. First one in the office each morning, last one out in the evening. But Oren had become a real pest, she said. She wanted to disappear for a month or two, hoping he'd lose interest. She's been working from the lake house. She calls it the annex."

"How'd that go?"

"Not as well as when we're both in the office. We've been working as a team, almost exclusively, on a campaign for an important client." He gave his wife a quick look.

"A hundred miles isn't as convenient as next-door offices," Ski observed.

"No. The distance created a few efficiency problems. Here in the boonies the Internet connection isn't one hundred percent reliable, especially out toward the lake. But it's been okay. And if it helped her shake Oren, I was willing to put up with a few inconveniences and delays."

"Hmm." Ski pretended to think about that statement, give it importance. Then he said, "You brought some materials up here to her yesterday."

Amanda Lofland's shoulders raised and lowered on a deep breath.

Lofland sought a more comfortable position on the hospital bed. "How much more, Deputy?"

"Not much. You brought work up here yesterday."

"We had to put some finishing touches on our proposal before presenting it to the client next week. The mock-ups weren't coming through very well on the PDFs. Berry asked if I could run them up here, let her see them exactly as the client would. She had to sign off on a couple of other elements that had been added. So a trip up here seemed called for."

"Who knew you were coming?"

"Well, Amanda."

"Besides her. People at Delray?"

"I had to let people in the office know that I'd be out for the entire day, so yeah, I told a few."

"Three, four?"

With distinct impatience, he said, "The receptionist who answers the phone for our department. My immediate supervisor and his assistant. I can give you their names."

"Besides them, no one else knew?"

"Not unless one of them told somebody."

"Would they have told Oren Starks that you were spending the day with Berry?"

"I doubt that any of them kept in contact with Oren, but if you want to know, you'll have to ask them."

Ski smiled. "I have." Before Lofland could respond to that, Ski asked, "What time did you arrive yesterday morning?"

"Ten-thirtyish. We got right down to it and worked all day."

Ski flipped through several more pages in his notepad, then said idly, "You two get in the pool?"

Lofland shot a quick glance toward his wife where she still stood at the window, her back to the room. "After we knocked off, we each swam some laps to cool off, work out some kinks."

"You'd brought your swimsuit?"

Ski's question caught him off guard. "Uh, no. I had some gym shorts in my car."

"That was convenient." Lofland said nothing. Ski continued, "I guess the shorts are somewhere in the house?"

"I left them hanging on a towel bar in the guest bathroom."

"Okay." Ski let that reverberate for several moments, as though weighing its significance, when actually he'd found the gym shorts in the guest bathroom, exactly as Lofland had described. He just wanted to rattle him in front of his wife, see what shook loose when he did. Unnecessarily, he referred to his notepad again. "You and Ms. Malone grilled steaks for dinner."

"We didn't take a lunch break. We were hungry."

"It got late, you decided to stay over."

"Only after consulting Amanda," Lofland said hastily. "By the time Berry and I had finished dinner and I'd helped with the cleanup, it was well after dark, and it doesn't get dark till nine-thirty or better. That's when I called home."

"It was eleven oh three," Amanda said, keeping her back to them.

Lofland, looking sickly, said to Ski, "I didn't realize it was that late. But since it was, Amanda said she'd rather I not head back to Houston."

Ski nodded. "Probably best."

"Right. It would have been one o'clock or so before I got home."

"And you shouldn't have been driving after drinking."

Amanda turned suddenly and looked at her husband. His eyes moved from her back to Ski, looking both uneasy and resentful. "Berry and I had some red wine with our steaks."

"And beer."

Lofland pulled his lower lip through his teeth. "I had a couple while the steaks were cooking."

"And Ms. Malone?"

"She joined me for one."

"Huh." Ski looked over at Amanda Lofland's rigid back before returning to her husband. "You ate dinner in the living room?"

"No, in the dining area."

Ski shared a long look with the man, letting him know that he'd seen wineglasses on the living room coffee table in front of a very comfortable-looking sofa. He decided to let Lofland explain the significance of that question to his wife.

He closed his notepad and slid it and the pen back into his pocket. "I think that's everything for now."

"Good," Lofland said. "I feel like crap and would like to sleep."

Ski left them with the promise not to disturb his rest unless it was absolutely necessary and to keep the two of them updated on the manhunt for Oren Starks. As he left the room, he met a nurse going in with a phlebotomy kit. Ski held the door for her, then stepped into the corridor, where Berry Malone was still standing sentinel outside the room.

"They'll probably need a minute to draw blood," he said.

She nodded. "How is he?"

"Better than dead, which he could be."

That sparked her anger. "You're doing it again."

"Pardon?"

"You toss out these little editorial comments, most of them snide, when a simple statement would do."

He slid his hands into the seat pockets of his jeans but then realized that the position revealed the handgun holster attached to his belt, so he lowered his arms back to his sides. "Your friend is no doubt uncomfortable, but the surgeon--I talked to him by phone on my way here--said the wound is clean and that he'll be fine. He'll have bragging rights in the locker room."

The nurse emerged. There were several new vials of blood in her tray, so her mission had been accomplished, but still Berry seemed hesitant to go into the room. "What's Ben's state of mind? He must hate me."