‘We’ll play along.’ Dance gave a smile. ‘If he comes back.’
Relief flooded Trish’s eyes. ‘Thanks. Like, really.’
‘Sure.’
‘I heard he did the same thing at the Bay View Center.’
O’Neil said, ‘And the hospital, the fire in the elevator.’
‘Why’s he doing it?’
They, of course, demurred on the suspected motive. Dance said, ‘We don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be any clear reason. Now, Trish, I’m sorry to ask but I need to know a little more about your mother’s death. Some of the facts. Are you up for that?’
She was still. She took a deep breath, then nodded. ‘If it’ll help you catch this asshole.’
‘I hope it will.’
‘Okay, sure. I guess.’
Dance said, ‘Go back to that night. At the Solitude Creek Club. After you and your mother got separated.’
A nod.
O’Neil, who’d read the account, said, ‘If I understand, you were being swept toward the kitchen and she was in the crowd going for the exit doors.’
‘That’s right.’
Dance asked, ‘But before you got into the kitchen, you could see your mother, right?’
Eyes hollow, she nodded. ‘Yeah. With the emergency lights. I could see good.’
‘Trish, this is a hard question but I have to know. Did it look to you like somebody hurt your mother intentionally? Pushed her out of the way? On to the floor? To save themselves?’ She was hardly going to suggest to the girl that her father had hired someone to kill Michelle Cooper, his ex-wife.
The girl said, ‘Oh, are you thinking of arresting some of the people in the crowd?’
‘Whenever somebody dies, it’s important to get the exact details.’
‘For the reports,’ O’Neil added.
Trish was shaking her head. ‘I don’t know. The last time I saw her—’ She choked, then continued, ‘The last time I saw her, she was waving at me and then she disappeared behind the pillar, near the last exit door.’
‘Did you see anybody beside her, holding her, pushing her?’
‘No. But the next thing I knew I was in the kitchen and then we were falling out onto the gravel and grass, and everybody was screaming and crying.’
Tears streaked her cheeks. Dance dug into her purse and found a pack of Kleenex. ‘Here you go.’
Trish opened the pack and pulled a few out, wiped and blew.
Dance was disappointed she hadn’t provided anything concrete. But Dance and O’Neil had other facts to uncover – slowly and with finesse.
‘Thanks, Trish, this’s been helpful.’
‘Sure.’ She sniffed.
O’Neil delivered his line, according to their script: ‘I don’t think we have anything else.’
Dance looked around the room. ‘Your father’s moving back. Where does he live now?’
‘Yeah. He lives in a place in Carmel Valley now.’
‘Nice.’
‘Not really. Not his place. It’s a total dive. And with me in school – Carmel High’s a mile away – it made sense for him to move here. Like …’ She glanced around her. ‘Not really too shabby, huh?’
O’Neil asked, ‘Was this your house when your folks were married?’
Finesse …
‘That’s right.’
Dance offered another glance to O’Neil. The cheating husband had lost it in the property settlement. Now he was back in. He couldn’t take title – it would be part of the bequest to Trish from her mother. But when she came of age he would work on her to get it transferred back to him. Motive one for Frederick Martin to be the killer. She suspected there was another too.
‘Was it a tough divorce?’ O’Neil asked. Good delivery, Dance thought. They’d rehearsed the line on the drive here.
‘Oh, yeah, really mean. It was awful. They said really bad things about each other.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Dance offered.
‘It totally sucked, yeah.’
Dance added, ‘Hard about the money too, I imagine. The alimony payments?’
‘Oh, yeah. I think they called it something else.’
‘Maintenance,’ O’Neil chimed in. Of the two of them, Dance and O’Neil, he was the only one with first-hand experience of the dissolution of a marriage.
‘Oh, yeah, that’s it. They don’t know that I know. But I heard them talk. Really big checks. Like fifteen thousand a month.’
Dance assumed that, while child support would go on as long as Trish was under eighteen, maintenance payments would terminate upon the death or remarriage of the ex-spouse. So Martin would save nearly two hundred K a year. For a man living in a small house in the valley, presumably with limited income, that could be a huge windfall.
Motive number two.
And Martin would have known Michelle would be at the club. He would have given instructions to the unsub to make sure the girl was safe.
Or would he?
Dance felt her gut flip. If the girl had died too, was her father the beneficiary of her will? Would he have gotten the entire house and estate back?
Then Trish was saying, ‘It’s, like, too bad Dad’ll lose all that.’
‘Too bad … what?’ Dance asked.
‘I mean, he does okay at his job but he could really use that money. Trying to go back to school and everything.’
Silence for a moment. The girl’s words spun like a top through Dance’s thoughts.
‘Your mother was paying your father alimony?’ she asked.
‘Yeah.’
O’Neil asked, ‘Why did your parents get divorced?’
Trish looked down. ‘My mom kind of cheated on him. And he’s such a nice guy. Really cool. But Mom, she just sort of … you know, she ran around a lot. And not just with one guy but a bunch of them. Dad worked part time to raise me and put Mom through school. He didn’t finish his degree. So when he found out she’d been cheating on him and went for the divorce, the judge made her pay alimony. I mean, maintenance. Man, I don’t know what he’s going to do now for money.’
Frederick Martin’s motive for killing his wife vanished.
Dance would have TJ check out the facts but she’d be very surprised to find any variation. It was obvious the girl was telling the truth.