At just that moment they received a possible answer.
Shellee stepped into Tal’s office. Pointedly ignoring the homicide cop, she said, “You’re back. Good. Got a call from the P-I–I team in Greeley. They said a neighbor saw a woman in a small, dark car arrive at the Bensons’ house about an hour before they died. She was wearing sunglasses and a tan or beige baseball cap. The neighbor didn’t recognize her.”
“Car?” LaTour snapped.
It’s hard to ignore an armed, 250-pound, goateed man named Bear but Shellee was just the woman for the job.
Continuing to speak to her boss, she said, “They weren’t sure what time she got there but it was before lunch. She stayed maybe forty minutes then left. That’d be an hour or so before they killed themselves.” A pause. “The car was a small sedan. The witness didn’t remember the color.”
“Did you ask about the—” LaTour began.
“They didn’t see the tag number,” she told Tal. “Now, that’s not all. DMV finally calls back and tells me that Sandra Whitley drives a blue BMW 325.”
“Small wheelbase,” Tal said.
“And, getting better ’n’ better, Boss. Guess who’s leaving town before her parents’ memorial service.”
“Sandra?”
“How the hell d’you find that out?” LaTour asked.
She turned coldly to him. “Detective Simms asked to me organize all the evidence from the Whitley crime scene. Because, like he says, having facts and files out of order is as bad as not having them at all. I found a note in the Whitley evidence file with an airline locator number. It was for a flight from Newark today to San Francisco, continuing on to Hawaii. I called and they told me it was a confirmed ticket for Sandra Whitley. Return is open.”
“Meaning the bitch might not be coming back at all,” LaTour said. “Going on vacation without saying goodbye to the folks? That’s fucking harsh.”
“Good job,” Tal told Shellee.
Eyes down, a faint smile of acknowledgment.
LaTour dropped into one of Tal’s chairs, belched softly and said, “You’re doing such a good job, Sherry, here, look up whatever you can about this shit.” He offered her the notes on Luminux.
“It’s Shellee,” she snapped and glanced at Tal, who mouthed, “Please.”
She snatched them from LaTour’s hand and clattered down the hall on her dangerous heels.
LaTour looked over the handwritten notes she’d given them and growled, “So what about the why? A motive?”
Tal spread the files out of his desk — all the crime scene information, the photos, the notes he’d taken.
What were the common denominators? The deaths of two couples. Extremely wealthy. The husbands ill, yes, but not hopelessly so. Drugs that make you suggestible.
A giddy lunch then suicide, a drink beside a romantic fire then suicide...
Romantic...
“Hmm,” Tal mused, thinking back to the Whitleys’.
“What hmm?”
“Let’s think about the wills again.”
“We tried that,” LaTour said.
“But what if they were about to be changed?”
“Whatta you mean?”
“Try this for an assumption: Say the Whitleys and their daughter had some big fight in the past week. They were going to change their will again — this time to cut her out completely.”
“Yeah, but their lawyer’d know that.”
“Not if she killed them before they talked to him. I remember smelling smoke from the fire when I walked into the Whitley house. I thought they’d built this romantic fire just before they killed themselves. But maybe they hadn’t. Maybe Sandra burned some evidence — something about changing the will, memos to the lawyer, estate planning stuff. Remember, she snatched the mail at the house. One was to the lawyer. Maybe that was why she came back — to make sure there was no evidence left. Hell, wished I’d searched her purse. I just didn’t think about it.”
“Yeah, but offing her own parents?” LaTour asked skeptically.
“Seventeen point two percent of murderers are related to their victims.” Tal added pointedly, “I know that because of my questionnaires, by the way.”
LaTour rolled his eyes. “What about the Bensons?”
“Maybe they met in some cardiac support group, maybe they were in the same country club. Whitley might’ve mentioned something about the will to them. Sandra found out and had to take them out too.”
“Jesus, you say ‘maybe’ a lot.”
“It’s a theorem, I keep saying. Let’s go prove it or disprove it. See if she’s got an alibi. And we’ll have forensics go through the fireplace.”
“If the ash is intact,” LaTour said, “they can image the printing on the sheet. Those techs’re fucking geniuses.”
Tal called Crime Scene again and arranged to have a team return to the Whitleys’ house. Then he said, “Okay, let’s go visit our suspect.”
“Hold on there.”
When Greg LaTour charged up to you, muttering the way he’d just done, you held on there.
Even tough Sandra Whitley.
She’d been about to climb into the BMW sitting outside her luxurious house. Suitcases sat next to her.
“Step away from the car,” LaTour said, flashing his badge.
Tal said, “We’d like to ask you a few questions, ma’am.”
“You again! What the hell’re you talking about?” Her voice was angry but she did as she was told.
“You’re on your way out of town?” LaTour took her purse off her shoulder. “Just keep your hands at your sides.”
“I’ve got a meeting I can’t miss.”
“In Hawaii?”
Sandra was regaining the initiative. “I’m an attorney, like I told you. I will find out how you got that information and for your sake there better’ve been a warrant involved.”
Did they need a warrant? Tal wondered.
“Meeting in Hawaii?” LaTour repeated. “With an open return?”
“What’re you implying?”
“It’s a little odd, don’t you think. Flying off to the South Seas a few days after your parents die? Not going to the funeral?”
“Funerals’re for the survivors. I’ve made peace with my parents and their deaths. They wouldn’t’ve wanted me to blow off an important meeting. Dad was as much a businessman as a father. I’m as much a businesswoman as a daughter.”
Her eyes slipped to Tal and she gave a sour laugh. “Okay, you got me, Simms.” Emphasizing the name was presumably to remind him again that his name would be prominently included in the court documents she filed. She nodded to the purse. “It’s all in there. The evidence about me escaping the country after — what? — stealing my parents’ money? What exactly do you think I’ve done?”
“We’re not accusing you of anything. We just want to—”
“—ask you a few questions.”
“So ask, goddamn it.”
LaTour was reading a lengthy document he’d found in her purse. He frowned and handed it to Tal, then asked her, “Can you tell me where you were the night your parents died?”
“Why?”
“Look, lady, you can cooperate or you can clam up and we’ll—”
“Go downtown. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I’ve heard this before.”
LaTour frowned at Tal and mouthed, “What’s downtown?” Tal shrugged and returned to the document. It was a business plan for a company that was setting up an energy joint venture in Hawaii. Her law firm was representing it. The preliminary meeting seemed to be scheduled for two days from now in Hawaii. There was a memo saying that the meetings could go on for weeks and recommended that the participants get open-return tickets.
Oh.
“Since I have to get to the airport now,” she snapped, “and I don’t have time for any bullshit, okay, I’ll tell you where I was on the night of the quote crime. On an airplane. I flew back on United Airlines from San Francisco, the flight that got in about 11 P.M. My boarding pass is probably in there—” A contemptuous nod at the purse LaTour held. “And if it isn’t, I’m sure there’s a record of the flight at the airline. With security being what it is nowadays, picture IDs and everything, that’s probably a pretty solid alibi, don’t you think?”