“Died how?”
“That’s the interesting part. Nobody’s really saying.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I don’t know. I’m not the investigator, you are. But her manner of death was murky, and it was kept very hush-hush, which is why you didn’t know about it.”
Carson was right. That was interesting. “Send me what info you have. Dare I ask how you came by it?”
“Better not. If you’re ever put on the witness stand—”
“Understood. What’s the second thing?”
“It’s about the SUV.”
Trapper didn’t want to tell him that its rear end was presently in a ditch. “Sorry to be keeping it so long. Did you tell the guy I’ll pay him a rental fee?”
“That’s not the problem.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The vehicle is sort of, uh…”
“Sort of what?”
“Sort of stolen.”
Just then Trapper’s attention was drawn to the horizon, where he saw one, possibly two, police units braving the icy conditions, running hot, and coming in their direction.
Chapter 15
As he did most nights after his wife, Greta, had gone to bed, liberally dosed with vodka and Xanax, Thomas Wilcox sat on the edge of his late daughter’s bed. He was anchored there by guilt.
Tiffany’s room had been preserved like the tomb of a pharaoh. Everything she had loved and valued remained where she had last placed it. Their housekeeper had been given strict instructions not to touch or move anything, to dust around every item: a snow globe with a carousel; the picture of the high school dance squad, of which Tiffany had been captain; the trophies and ribbons from the riding academy where she had excelled at dressage. Her goal had been to make the U.S. Olympic team.
The room and every tangible thing in it was a heart-wrenching reminder of her, but Thomas noticed that the remnants of her vital spirit diminished a little bit each day like a slow leak from a stoppered bottle of perfume. At first, the room had contained a strong essence of her soul, but its evaporation was inexorable. Soon it would disappear altogether, and she truly would be gone.
Believing himself to be untouchable, Thomas had called another man’s bluff. Tiffany had been the price he’d paid for his misjudgment.
He took a final look around, ending on her pillow where lay the teddy bear she’d slept with every night since infancy. “Night-night, sweetheart,” he whispered. Then he pushed himself to his feet, switched out the lamp, and left the room, gently closing the door behind him.
He glanced down the hallway toward another closed door, that of the bedroom now occupied by his wife.
Initially Greta had used bereavement as her excuse for leaving the master suite to sleep in the guest room. But now, eighteen months after the death of their only child, she was still there, permanently installed.
Neither he nor Greta acknowledged this estrangement. Their interactions these days were reserved and formal. They didn’t love, nor did they fight. Any emotion required too much of them. From Tiffany’s birth until the day she died, she had been the sun around which their lives orbited. When her life blinked out, the two of them had been left in a vacuum, devoid of light, warmth, and energy.
Thomas descended the sweeping staircase to the ground floor and headed for his study. He’d just reached it when the intercom panel buzzed. The blinking dot of red light was labeled “Front Gate.” He depressed the speaker button. “Yes?”
“It’s Jenks.”
Thomas’s melancholia vanished. His body language, tread, and facial expression reflected this automatic shifting of gears from that of grieving parent to that of a man who protected his interests. At all costs.
He crossed to the window and, being mindful to stay behind the adjacent wall, flipped open one panel of the louvered shutters. His sprawling lawn was frosted with sleet. The fountain in the center of the circular driveway had become an ice sculpture. From the distance of thirty yards, twin headlight beams shone through an aura created by the frozen precipitation, making it impossible to identify the vehicle or the driver.
Thomas returned to the control panel. “What are you doing here at this time of night, during an ice storm?”
“I was sent to tell you that we have a problem.”
“I already know. The ten o’clock news covered the press conference from the hospital. The Major is going to make it.”
The deputy snuffled. “Actually, that’s the good news.”
Thomas deliberated then punched the button to open the gate.
Going to his desk, he took a pistol from the lap drawer and checked the cylinder to see that every chamber held a bullet. The revolver was nickel-plated and had a mother-of-pearl-inlaid hand grip. But for all its fanciness, it was essentially a six-shot cannon. He held it at his side against his thigh while waiting at the front door as the deputy alighted from the sheriff’s unit and stamped up the stone steps.
Jenks removed his leather gloves and slapped them against his palm. “Cold as the very dickens.” He tugged off his wet boots and placed them just inside the front door. He also removed his hat, but held on to it.
Thomas tipped his head in the direction of the study. Having been here before, Jenks knew the way. As they entered the room, Jenks looked toward the wet bar. “What I’d give for a whiskey.”
Thomas didn’t offer to pour him one. Jenks would have declined, not because he had a conscience about drinking and driving, but because he wouldn’t leave a fingerprint on a drinking glass, or on anything inside this room, this house.
Thomas sat down behind his desk and placed his hand, still holding the pistol, on the leather desk pad. He was certain the deputy had noticed the revolver the moment he’d entered the house, although he hadn’t remarked on it.
Jenks glanced at the framed portrait of Tiffany that hung above the mantel. She had posed for it dressed in her equestrian habit. Red coat, shiny black boots, small derby atop the platinum blond braid that draped over one shoulder. Her enchanting smile was forever preserved in oil paint.
It was likely that the man looking up at her had had a hand in her murder, and to Thomas that was obscene. He wanted to raise the pistol and blow Jenks’s head off where he stood in his stocking feet. The only reason he didn’t was because he knew that Jenks and the man who’d sent him on this errand would have liked nothing better than for him to attempt it and provide them with a valid reason to kill him.
They hadn’t up till now only because he had something they desperately wanted. As long as it remained in his possession and inaccessible, he was safe from assassination.
However, they had ways of reminding him that he was vulnerable. He’d tested them; two days later his daughter was dead.
Keeping his hatred under control, his expression vacant, he said, “Why risk the long drive here on a night like this? Why not just call and tell me the bad news?”
“He wanted you to hear it in person. Wanted me to gauge your reaction.”
“Well?”