“Sounds good to me,” Twink said. “After all, Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest. As for dinner? I’m ready. I finished up the rest of the leftovers from Simon & Seafort’s yesterday.”
We saddled up and headed back to the Driftwood. Twink seemed to be in a somewhat cheery mood, so I decided to take a risk. “Mind if I ask you something?”
“What’s that?”
“I’m curious. You told me earlier that our relationship had lasted longer than one of your marriages. Is that true or were you just pulling my leg?”
“God’s truth,” Twink replied. “The day after the wedding, I found out the son of a bitch was still married. I messed him up pretty good before I was done with him. Not enough to put him in the hospital, but close enough to make me feel better. After that, I had to hire a lawyer and go to court to get it annulled. Took me six months. Talk about insult to injury.”
“I’ll bet he never tried a stunt like that again.”
“You’d better believe it,” she declared. “He most certainly did not!”
Chapter 26
Back at the hotel, I slipped off my jacket and boots and lay down on the bed to rest both my eyes and my feet. It turns out I’m not accustomed to wearing boots, and I had a suspicion that once I got home to Bellingham, the ones I’d bought in Anchorage would disappear into the far corner of my walk-in closet, never to surface again. By the way, that’s one formula for maintaining marital harmony—separate bathrooms and separate walk-in closets.
I wanted to text Mel and see how she was doing, but I also didn’t want to disturb her if she was still asleep. I had just closed my eyes and was about to doze off when my phone rang. The caller turned out to be Marvin Price.
“Hey, Beau,” he said. “We may be in luck.”
I couldn’t help but notice the excitement in his voice. “How’s that?” I asked.
“I just got off the phone with a guy named Nate Bucknell.”
“Who’s he?”
“The guy who bought a Subaru Forester from Shelley Adams in 2010.”
“He still has it?” I asked.
“Yup, he sure does. I ran the VIN numbers of all vehicles registered to either the Lovedays or the Adamses back in ’06, and this is the only one of those still in existence. So maybe that commercial is actually true—the one that says most of the Subarus manufactured in the last ten years are still on the road.”
It was actually twelve years now, but why quibble?
“According to Mr. Bucknell, Shelley said that she and Jack Loveday bought the Subaru new in 2005, and she was still driving it when she and Roger Adams married. At that point, between driving the older Subaru or one of her new husband’s Range Rovers, it wasn’t a contest. She wanted to unload it and gave Nate a good price even though the vehicle had fairly low mileage at the time. By the way, it’s not much higher now. Ever since Nate bought it, the vehicle has spent most of the time sitting in a friend’s garage here in Homer, hooked up to a trickle charger.”
“Why buy a car if you’re not going to drive it?” I asked.
“Mr. Bucknell lives part-time in Palm Desert and part-time in a place called Halibut Cove. It’s about five miles from here, across Kachemak Bay. People who live there mostly get around either by boat or in ATVs. Bucknell’s place there is right on the water, and he goes back and forth from here in his own boat. Nate pulls up to Red Bolger’s dock here in Homer, ties up his boat, then off he goes on his own set of wheels.”
“So what now?” I asked.
“I told Nate that the car had surfaced as possibly being connected to a homicide investigation, and I asked him if he’d mind if we took a look at it.”
“And?”
“He said sure, no problem. He said something else that I found interesting. He wanted to know if this had anything to do with Jack’s death. ‘I always thought that bitch of a wife of his had something to do with it.’ Quote, unquote.”
I was excited now, too. “If we can look at the vehicle, how soon?”
“Not immediately,” Marvin replied. “Nate tried calling Red. Unfortunately, he’s off ice-fishing this weekend and isn’t due back until sometime this afternoon. Nate gave Red my number and asked that he give me a call once he gets home. As soon as Red calls me, I’ll call you.”
“Good enough,” I said, “but you and I both know odds are that all this will come to nothing.”
“Maybe so,” Marvin agreed, “but what else have we got? Not a damned thing. What you said this morning about our suspect’s being able to load a dead body into the back of an SUV rather than into the trunk of a sedan makes all kinds of sense, and that Subaru is definitely an SUV. I’ll give you a call once I hear from him.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll be here.”
I put down the phone and had no more than closed my eyes when it rang again. This time it was Todd. “I just sent you a whole wad of stuff,” he said. “I think you’re going to want to take a look at it.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“My public-records search has turned up a whole batch of real-estate transactions,” he said. “It appears that Roger Adams has been unloading numerous properties over the course of the last few months, starting in November—fifteen so far. “
I thought about the dazed and confused pajama-clad guy I’d seen the day before. The Roger Adams standing in the doorway had been in no condition to conduct business transactions of any kind.
“Fifteen?” I repeated. “What is it a fire sale.”
“Seems like,” Todd replied. “Three of those sales closed in just the last week, and I checked the comps. All three of them sold at well under market value. Even so, taken together those proceeds alone still add up to a cool million five.”
“Under market value?” I asked. “That sounds like a red flag.”
“I agree,” Todd replied, “but here’s the really cool part. Would you like to know how the closing documents were signed?”
“Tell me.”
“By Shelley Loveday Adams, acting with Roger’s power of attorney!”
I was beyond stunned. “Good work, Todd,” I said. “I’ll get right on these.”
Clambering out of bed, I made straight for my iPad. It was almost out of juice, so I had to sit at the desk to keep it on the charger. During that morning’s interviews, I’d kept both my phone and iPad on silent, so I hadn’t heard the arriving pings of Todd’s barrage of e-mails.