Larranaga brushed a hand over his new-look, swept-back haircut. “Also, you don’t have a strong motive for Mrs. Spalding to plot and carry out the murder of her husband. In fact, I don’t see that you have one at all. She was literally having her cake and eating it too, and she was bound by the amended prenuptial agreement to keep Dean in the dark about it.”
“What about the arrest and search warrants for Dean?” Pino asked.
“Again, a motive for Dean isn’t clearly articulated,” Larranaga said. “Other than noting he was Mrs. Spalding’s lover, you’ve presented nothing that points to an inducement or reason to kill on his part. Was it jealousy? Money? Did he want Spalding dead so he could marry Claudia? Or was he perfectly happy with the affair as it stood? Why hasn’t he been interviewed?”
“Given how the victim was killed and what went into accomplishing the crime,” Ramona said, “I think probable cause has been established that Dean committed murder, and that the evidence to that effect can be found at his house or business.”
“Even with the lack of a clear motive, I agree that it is probable that Dean, with his expertise as a pharmacist, could have done it. That’s why I’m approving the search and arrest affidavits for Dean only. If he confesses and implicates Mrs. Spalding, then your problem is solved, and the California authorities can pick her up without a warrant.”
Larranaga signed the affidavits and Ramona went to find a judge. During a ten-minute wait outside chambers, she called both Sergeant Lowrey and Chief Kerney to give them the news about the rejected Spalding arrest affidavit. Lowrey promised to take another crack at Claudia after Dean was in custody. Kerney told her to stick with the plan to rattle Dean and break him down if possible.
The judge issued the warrants without any probing questions. Five blocks away from Dean’s place of business, Ramona met up with two uniformed officers and went over how she wanted the bust staged. At the pharmacy, a photojournalist from the newspaper waited in the parking lot. The three officers hustled inside to find only the store clerk, Tilly Gilmore, and a female customer standing at the counter.
Ramona gestured for Tilly to approach her at the front of the store. “Where’s Dean?” Ramona asked when she arrived.
The woman averted her eyes. “He left in a hurry.”
“When?”
“About an hour ago,” Tilly said tentatively, her eyes fixed on the floor. Immobile and hunched, she looked like a tense, frightened animal trying hard to be invisible.
Ramona let out a disgusted sigh. “What happened?”
“He saw you follow me into the deli,” Tilly replied.
“And?”
Tilly looked at Ramona through glasses that magnified her anxious eyes. “I had to tell him,” she said apologetically, like a child hoping to avoid punishment.
Ramona turned to the two officers. “Send the reporter away and put out an all points bulletin on Dean pronto.”
At the drug counter, the middle-aged woman clutched a prescription bottle in her hand and stared at Ramona, unsure of what to do.
“You can leave if you like, ma’am,” Ramona said to her. The woman scurried down an aisle and out the door, her shoes clacking noisily on the tile floor.
Ramona studied Tilly’s drained, beaten-down expression. Had Dean simply bullied the woman into becoming a wet rag over the years, or had she always been easy prey? Ramona guessed the latter, but it didn’t matter. She now had to deal with the consequences of Tilly’s inability to keep her mouth shut.
“Okay,” Ramona said soothingly, as she guided Tilly away from the front of the store. “Let’s talk about what happened.”
At a restaurant on Cerrillos Road close to police headquarters, Andy Baca stirred sugar into his refilled glass of iced tea and listened as Kerney spoke to Ramona Pino on his cell phone.
“Problems?” he asked when Kerney disconnected.
“Our murder suspect seems to have disappeared,” Kerney replied, looking a bit vexed as he hooked the phone on his belt. “Pino has issued an APB and is on her way to search Dean’s house.”
“Do you need to go?” Andy asked.
Kerney shook his head and waved off the waitress as she approached to refill his glass of lemonade.
“Well, then, finish your story,” Andy said.
Kerney continued, recounting the events in Santa Barbara that had prompted his request to have Andy meet him.
When Kerney stopped talking and sipped his lemonade, Andy jumped in with a question to back him up a bit. “What made this Sergeant Lowrey think you’d be stupid enough to kill Spalding and then stick around to report it as an unattended death?”
“She didn’t know I was a cop,” Kerney replied, “until she questioned me. Once she picked up on Claudia Spalding’s connection with Santa Fe, she decided to probe it. I probably would have done the same thing.”
“Still, it was no fun,” Andy said.
Kerney pushed the glass aside. “Not really. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Alice Spalding’s thirty-year search for her dead son, George, has some unusual wrinkles to it. I think Clifford Spalding may have sabotaged his ex-wife’s quest for the truth.”
Andy shot Kerney a quizzical look. “From what you said, it sounds more like the woman has been in total denial of the facts for decades.”
“Has she? If so, why would Clifford Spalding continue to maintain a long-term arrangement with a local cop to stay informed of Alice’s activities? Why would he hire a PI to feed false reports to Alice and then fire the gumshoe after he’d done some real work that might have lead to finding the son’s old girlfriend?”
“If the ex-wife was unstable, maybe Spalding was just indulging her and trying to stay on top of her obsession at the same time,” Andy suggested.
“So he burns all the information she’d gathered over the years just before their divorce,” Kerney replied with a shake of his head, “and openly denigrates her to their mutual friends. I don’t buy it.”
“People do ugly things when they get divorced,” Andy said.
“I also have trouble with the scarcity of information contained in the police file I reviewed. There was no documentation that Alice Spalding’s assertion that a newspaper photograph showed her son to still be alive had ever been proven false. The photograph was missing, as were the statements of people who identified the subject as someone other than George Spalding.”
“So track them down and talk to them,” Andy said. “That should satisfy your curiosity about whether or not Clifford Spalding was hiding something from the ex.”
“Can’t,” Kerney said. “Neither were identified by name, just referenced in passing by the police captain I spoke with, who seemed a little uncomfortable with my questions.”
“Do you think this captain was helping Spalding keep the truth from his ex?” Andy asked.
“I don’t know,” Kerney said. “But another point troubles me. Look at the sequence of events. Thirty-some years ago, George Spalding allegedly dies in Nam.”
“Verified by military authorities,” Andy said.
“Soon after the helicopter crash, George Spalding’s girlfriend goes missing, never to be found, and his father, owner of a mom-and-pop Albuquerque motel, starts building a hotel empire.”
“Which means what, if anything?” Andy asked, throwing his hands up in the air. “Maybe Spalding cashed in his son’s G.I. life insurance policy and parlayed it into his first big step up the corporate food chain.”
“Maybe, but again, I don’t know,” Kerney answered.
“You’re not going to let this drop, are you?”
“Not yet. I’ve started background checks on all the players, but I could use some help from your department.”
“To do what?”
“To chase down information on Clifford Spalding’s early business dealings in New Mexico,” Kerney said. “Can you free up some of Joe Valdez’s time to take a look?”
Agent Joseph Valdez, a certified public accountant with a master ’s in business administration, handled most of the financial crime cases for the state police, which meant he was usually overworked.