Expecting to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“How well did your wife know him?”

“What does the Bell kid have to do with anything?”

“Just checking.”

“I said they were friends.” And then he caught her meaning and his jaw tightened. “What’re you suggesting, Detective? That Madge and he, that they were intimate?”

“Just asking how close they were.”

“Well, you’re way off base. Way off. She knew him, but that was it. Okay? There was nothing . . . you know, nothing going on between them or anyone else for that matter. She . . . she was an angel.” He closed his eyes, dropped his face into his hands, and tried to gather himself. It took a few minutes, but he was done, couldn’t give her the names of any other ex-lovers or anyone who would want to harm his sweet, precious Marjory.

But, as he left, Alvarez thought he’d offered up three potential suspects. His whole family, his ex-wife and their sons, were definitely persons of interest in this case and potential suspects. Plus, she hadn’t written off Richtor himself. After all, through his own admission, they’d had a fight before she’d taken off. How bad had it been? How far had it escalated? She wondered about his temper, if he could actually kill his wife and unborn child. Or had Marjory and Destiny Rose Montclaire been killed by the same person with the same brute force?

Then there were Bianca Pescoli and Lara Haas, both of whom believed they had been attacked by a huge hairy creature, an apparently homicidal Sasquatch. She didn’t believe for a second that a Big Foot had chased them, but why would a killer go to all the trouble of dressing up like the mythical beast?

And what about Lindsay Cronin? How did her accident figure in? Or was that just a coincidence?

“No way.”

None of it made any sense.

She had to start somewhere, so she decided to begin with locating anyone Marjory Tufts had seen or contacted on the day of the fight with her husband. Alvarez had already called for phone records, and a crime scene team had combed the forest where the body had been found. Her car was missing, but it shouldn’t be hard to find: a 1957 T-Bird, pink—or more precisely, “Dusky Rose”—that had once graced the showroom floor of Richtor’s Ford dealership. He’d admitted to giving the car to Marjory on their wedding day. “Yeah, we actually drove it into Vegas for our honeymoon,” he’d said with a sigh. “God, it looked fabulous on the strip.” Then: “You have to locate it. That T-bird’s in mint condition, worth a small fortune.” Alvarez had thought the statement odd, considering that he’d just found out his wife was dead and most likely the victim of homicide. There was just something about the man she didn’t trust.

For God’s sake, she was starting to think like Pescoli, going on hunches and feelings rather than cold hard facts. Mentally berating herself, she found Blackwater’s office door ajar and, with a rap on the panels, walked inside.

It still felt strange to find him sitting in Dan Grayson’s chair, his elbows on Grayson’s desk, his head cocked to the side as he talked into his cell phone.

“. . . yeah, I just heard about it,” he was saying. “We’re already interviewing the husband.... I know. I know.... Absolutely.” He glanced up at Alvarez and waved her into one of the side chairs. Feeling as if she was wasting time, she dropped into the chair next to the window and tried not to remember how many times she’d sat in this very spot waiting for Grayson to end a conversation. His lab, Sturgis, would be curled on a bed near the desk, his Stetson hung on a peg by the door, which now held a baseball cap. Her heart twisted a little, but the feeling was more nostalgia than grief, and she thought that she might finally be letting him go.

“We’re on it,” Blackwater said, hanging up. He swung his gaze to Alvarez. “That was the mayor. She wants the Montclaire investigation wrapped up, a killer brought to justice.”

“Even if it’s her kid?”

“She says her son is innocent.” At her expression, he leaned back in his chair to the point that it squeaked in protest. Then he tented his hands and stared at her. Hard. “You obviously disagree.”

“He’s lying about something, and he’s still the last one we know to have seen her alive.”

“Hmmm. And now another dead woman. Pregnant. Apparently strangled. Who knew the first victim.”

“And there’s a third victim, if Lindsay Cronin met with foul play.”

“You think that’s the case?”

“My badge and a year’s salary.”

One of his eyebrows cocked. “Tell me you can prove it.”

“Not yet. But soon. Here’s what we’ve got.” She brought him up to speed on the investigations, then said, “So what I need from you is clout and manpower. I want to talk to the Tufts brothers, the Bell brothers, bring ’em all in. Interview them until someone cracks.”

“If they will.”

“Someone will. Especially if they think someone else is ratting them out.”

“Maybe.”

“And I want a rush on Marjory Tufts’s autopsy, identify the cause of death, compare her bruising to Destiny Montclaire’s. And I want DNA on the fetus. I’d like it yesterday.”

One side of his mouth twitched upward. “Let me wave my magic wand.”