“Which was?”
Ferry chuckled. “Nothing. Make stuff up. The deal was that he’d call and ask me to follow up on one of Alice’s crazy leads. Then I’d write up a report about my phony investigation into it, wait a week or two, and mail it to him. He paid me five hundred dollars a pop.”
“Easy money,” Kerney said. “How many reports did you concoct for him?”
“About twenty, twenty-five, over the next couple of years.”
“What made the cash cow dry up?”
Ferry laughed. “I blew it. When I started running out of creative ways to lie, I decided to do some actual investigating to freshen up my reports.”
“Tell me about that.”
“Alice had tracked down an old college friend of Debbie Calderwood living in Portland, who said she’d gotten a card from her about a year after Calderwood disappeared. So, I called the friend, who told me Calderwood had written to her from Taos, New Mexico, where she was living on a commune at the time. Remember, that was back in the early seventies when all that flower power and antiwar stuff hadn’t completely faded away yet.”
“What else did the note say?” Kerney asked.
“That she was moving with an unnamed boyfriend to a small town in southern Colorado. But she’d didn’t say exactly where. So, I got out the atlas and phone book and called a bunch of places trying to locate her. When that didn’t work, I phoned some town marshals, sheriffs, and police departments, and still came up empty.”
“Did you tell Spalding that you’d actually done some real work on the case?” Kerney asked.
“Nope. But I put everything I’d learned in my report. That’s when he fired me. End of story.” Ferry coughed hard into his hand again. “It got me to thinking that maybe Spalding was up to maybe something more than trying to appease his unbalanced wife.”
“Like what?”
“Don’t know,” Ferry said breathlessly, waving the question away as if it was an angry hornet buzzing around his head.
“Did you check out Spalding before you spent the retainer he gave you?” Kerney asked, switching gears.
“Smart question.” Ferry smiled slyly and held up a trembling index finger. “Rule number one for a PI, always know who you’re working for. I made some calls, but I can’t remember most of what I learned.”
“What stands out?”
“He’d made a lot of money in the hotel business in a relatively short period of time. He went from owning a mom-and-pop motel in Albuquerque to building a resort hotel outside of Tucson in something under five years. That’s what got him started playing with the big money boys.”
Ferry’s head sank against the pillow and his eyes closed. The fatigue in his face ran deep into the wrinkles of his cheeks and cut into the furrows of his forehead. A vein throbbed in his skinny neck.
“Did you keep copies of your reports?” Kerney asked.
“No copies,” Ferry said in a weak voice. “That was part of the deal.”
“You need to sleep,” Kerney said as he stood.
Ferry’s eyes fluttered open and he winced in pain. “Yeah, maybe I’ll get lucky this time and won’t wake up.”
Kerney left the bedroom quietly. In a dining area off the front room, Ferry’s wife sat at the table talking softly in Spanish on the telephone. She looked at him with cool disinterest when he waved good-bye and left.
Outside under the street lights, some kids were kicking a soccer ball around, and two teenagers sat in an old primer-gray Chevy smoking cigarettes and playing loud rap music on the car stereo.
It wasn’t the Santa Barbara in the travel posters or real estate ads. Not that there was anything mean or menacing about the area. It was just another one of those tucked-away places you could find in any city that the underclass lived in and everyone else avoided.
Kerney drove away thinking about Lou Ferry. He’d spent a lifetime on the job as a cop and a PI. All he had to show for it was ownership of a run-down trailer park and a woman who couldn’t wait for him to die. It wasn’t the happiest of endings.
What Kerney had learned about Clifford Spalding’s efforts to defeat his ex-wife’s search to find her son gnawed at him, as did the New Mexico connection that kept popping up. He decided, if time allowed, to speak to Penelope Parker again and get a little more background on the man.
He glanced at the dashboard clock. But first there was Sergeant Lowrey to deal with. He hoped she was stationed outside his motel room waiting for him to show.
Five blocks from his motel, Kerney’s cell phone rang. He pulled to the curb and answered. It was Ramona Pino.
“What have you got for me, Sergeant?”
“Interesting stuff, Chief. We’ve just finished up with Nina Deacon. It seems like Claudia Spalding and Kim Dean started out as horseback-riding buddies and the relationship segued into a hot love affair about two years ago that’s still going strong. Recently, Claudia has been crying on Deacon’s shoulder about the prenuptial agreement she signed with her dead husband.”
“She wanted out of the marriage?” Kerney asked.
“Affirmative,” Ramona replied. “But she didn’t want to lose the Santa Fe house or her lifestyle. According to Deacon, any divorce caused by infidelity on Claudia’s part cuts her out of Spalding’s will. The way Deacon tells it, the Santa Fe property is in his name as the sole owner, with a legal agreement signed by Claudia to back it up. About all she could walk away with would be her horses, other gifts he’s given her over the years, a half interest in the furnishings they bought together for the house, and whatever is in her personal checking account.”
“What else?” Kerney asked.
“Spalding was out here about two months ago for ten days. He got sick about halfway through the visit. Fatigue, heat intolerance, the sweats. Deacon said Spalding thought he was just having a reaction to the dry climate and the change in altitude.”
“Did he see a doctor?” Kerney asked.
“No, Claudia nursed him, cared for him hand and foot until he left.”
“The loving wife. Where is she now?”
“At the Albuquerque airport waiting for a flight to Burbank. According to Deacon, she keeps a car in Burbank and drives up to Santa Barbara.”
“Did Deacon see her before she left?”
“Yeah. Claudia told Deacon that probably Spalding’s heart had given out.”
“Will Deacon keep her mouth shut about your visit?” Kerney asked.
“She’d better. Both Thorpe and I made it clear that warning Claudia about our inquiries would make her liable to be charged as an accessory.”
“Did that sink in?”
“Big-time, Chief,” Ramona said. “She squirmed in her seat and promised to be a good girl.”
“Put somebody on Kim Dean to keep an eye on him. I don’t want him suddenly disappearing.”
“It’s already done.”
“Have you got Sergeant Lowrey’s cell phone number?”
“I do.”
“Call her now and brief her.”
“You don’t want me to do time-delayed information sharing on this go-round?” Ramona asked with a hint of a smile in her voice.
Kerney laughed. “No, let’s get this over with so I can come home without a black cloud floating over my head.”
“Ten-four to that, Chief. Thorpe is on the horn to Chief Baca with the news right now. Get ready to have him rib you about all of this when you get home.”
“He’s already started,” Kerney said. “Good job, Sergeant. Pass on my appreciation to Officer Thorpe.”
“Thanks, Chief. Will do.”
He disconnected, sat back against the car seat, sighed with relief, and looked at the dashboard clock. He’d give it five minutes before driving to the motel in the hopes that a sheepish Sergeant Lowrey would be waiting for him with an apology in hand.