A Draw of Death (Helen Binney Mysteries Book 3) (19 page)

"Doesn't really matter what the item was worth. It's more about how unsafe the victims feel. It's worse when it's a residential break-in, but some of the shop owners take it pretty personally too, especially when someone walks out with five or six handbags each retailing for close to two grand. And it never ends," Detective Almeida said, despairingly. "That part of it gets old, fast. We hardly ever close a case for the smaller crimes. Just take the report, go through the motions of looking for the stolen items before moving on to the next report. It's good that no one's physically hurt, but after a while, it feels like we're just wasting our time, since hardly anyone ever gets caught or punished. At least with major crimes, we can usually make someone pay for what they did."

"Just so long as it's the right person. Peterson seems to think it only matters that someone's arrested, regardless of whether it's the actual killer."

"He's probably just a bit jaded from being on the job so long, and I'm still starry-eyed and naive about making a difference. I never expected to work on a homicide case this soon." Almeida grimaced. "Not that I'm really doing much on this one. I'm just supposed to be watching and learning from my superiors."

"They may be your elders with more experience," Helen said, "but don't ever think of Peterson, or anyone else, as your superior. It'll do Peterson and the whole department some good to have someone questioning everything they do and say. There's too much hive-mind going on right now."

"From what I've heard, you've been doing your best to shake them up a bit. My doing it too would be redundant."

"Except they might actually listen to you, and I wouldn't keep getting in over my head."

"Let's hope so." Almeida pointed toward Helen's car. "For now, though, I need to send you someplace safe and away from the investigation."

"I really am here on a legitimate errand." Helen walked toward her car. "Vic's cat is missing, and I'm the only one who has a chance to catch it."

Almeida glanced down the driveway where Peterson had disappeared, presumably to return to their patrol car outside the gates. He was probably giving the reporters still camped out there an impromptu press briefing.

"I can't overrule Peterson, so you'll have to leave," Almeida said. "At least for a while. As far as I'm concerned, you can do anything you want here, as long as you stay out of Peterson's sight and away from the poker room."

"Art didn't tell me Peterson was here, or I would have waited until later."

"No one knew we'd be here," Almeida said. "We were just assigned to come see if the suspect, Ms. Bancroft, was here since she isn't at home." Almeida glanced down the driveway where Peterson was no longer visible. "We're stuck here until she's in custody. If she hasn't gone on the run, we should have her down at the station for questioning within the hour, and there won't be anyone here to interfere with your search for the cat."

"You could just ask Stevie's attorney where she is. He'll want to be there with her, and she's well enough trained to know not to say anything until he gets there."

"Other officers were sent to find him," Almeida said. "We're not quite as incompetent as we may sometimes appear."

"I'm sorry. Peterson just gets on my nerves, and he's the only member of the department I've had much experience with."

"Just don't tar me with the same brush." Almeida smiled, adding, "But if you ever do want to exchange manicures, my favorite color for the winter is a rich, warm brown."

Helen waited at her car while Detective Almeida went to find Jay and Zee so they could all leave. She tried calling Tate to make sure he knew the police were looking for Stevie, but she got his voicemail. She left a message, just in case he wasn't already with his niece, preparing her for the interrogation.

Nora came stomping out of the mansion, dragging a small roll-aboard bag behind her. The scarf that had been in Art's pocket was tied around the handle. She didn't seem to notice Helen until she neared the parking area.

Nora stopped in the middle of the driveway. "Oh, great. Like my day couldn't get any worse. What are you doing here this time?"

"Looking for the cat."

"Better you than me." Nora resumed walking over to her car. "I like animals—I really do, but that one is a demon. And a thief. Art just returned my scarf. He'd warned me about the cat's thievery, and I could swear I had everything packed away in my bag, but it still got my scarf. I'll give the cat credit for having good taste and for not actually damaging the silk, but I've had enough. I can't stay here any longer. I'm moving into a hotel until I'm allowed to leave town, which had better be soon. If I can't go home by this weekend, I'm getting my lawyer involved."

"I'd have gotten a cat for the governor's mansion if I'd known it was that easy to scare you off."

"It's not just the cat." Nora opened the trunk of her car and tossed her suitcase inside. "Contrary to what you think, I don't like to be where I'm not wanted. Art doesn't really want me here. He's being nice about it, of course, but having a houseguest makes more work for him. He had a tough enough time dealing with a boss like Vic. He deserves a break now."

"How bad was it, working for Vic?"

"Who knows for sure?" Nora said. "Everyone wears a mask."

"Well, what about right after the library event? You were in the limo with Vic and Art, and in the mansion afterwards. How was Vic then?"

Nora slammed the trunk shut. She turned around to lean against the back end of the car. "You know, I never could get a solid read on Vic. Probably what made him such a good poker player. Still, it's odd that I couldn't figure him out, not even a little. A good part of my job is based on understanding people, using their body language to know how much impact I'm having with my arguments and adjusting my strategy accordingly. I was never sure if I was getting through to Vic."

"Did he yell at Art or have any kind of argument on the way home?"

"Vic didn't argue unless he was on a set and the cameras were rolling. The rest of the time, he was just sort of blank. Like his mind was somewhere else. Probably calculating the pros and cons of whatever move he was going to make next, whether it was in a game of cards or the game of life."

"One of his fans told me pretty much the same thing," Helen said, "but Art thinks everyone in Hollywood hated Vic and was lining up to kill him."

Nora unlocked the driver's side door. "He's probably right. He saw Vic all the time, and I barely knew him. Art's job was to smooth over all the problems before they hit the press, like I'd have done if Vic were a full-time client for me instead of just a one-time gig. If it weren't against the rules of my profession, I could tell you stories that would make your hair stand on end about celebrities who have a reputation for being sweet, lovable, and generous souls."

"I just can't imagine a celebrity coming to Wharton to kill Vic without anyone noticing. Even Geoff Loring, our not-so-intrepid local journalist, would have been on that story. At least until he realized the newcomer was here with revenge on his mind."

"Not my circus, not my monkeys." Nora climbed into her car, keeping the door open. "I'll leave it to you and the police to figure out who killed Vic. I just wish you'd hurry up and arrest someone so I can leave town."

"I'm doing my best," Helen said. "Actually, there's one thing you might know about that would help me understand what happened. It's about the alarm system. Vic didn't turn it on Saturday night. Was he waiting until you got back before he set it?"

"Vic didn't say anything to me about an alarm." Nora stuck her keys in the ignition. "Probably forgot it existed. His memory really was slipping. I'm probably lucky he did forget to turn it on, or I'd have set it off when I came back here."

"It might have saved Vic's life, though," Helen said. "The rumor is that Vic was drugged around midnight, so the killer was already here when you got back."

"Seriously?" Nora shuddered. "It was bad enough thinking the killer was creeping around the house while I was asleep, but it's worse knowing he was here when I was awake, and I didn't even suspect a thing."

"He must have known to stay out of sight until you were settled in your own room. Probably heard your car coming up the driveway," Helen said, although that raised another question. "How did you get through the locked gates if Vic didn't let you in?"

"I had an electronic key. Art gave it to me before he left for the evening." Nora started the engine. "And now if you're done interrogating me, I'm outta here."

Helen waved her off. She was done with Nora for good now, she hoped. The woman's alibi was even stronger than before if the electronic records could confirm that she'd used her pass to open the gates sometime after 2:00. Marty would know if Nora was telling the truth. With all the trouble he'd been having with those gates, he probably knew every detail from the system's logs for the last several days and wouldn't even have to look up the records.

Normally Helen would have ignored Peterson and gone to get the information she wanted from Marty right now. If she did that today, though, it would reflect badly on Almeida, and the woman had enough to deal with already if she was supposed to learn about detective work from Hank Peterson.

Marty would be easy enough to find later. He should still be here when the detectives were gone and Helen returned to find the cat and possibly a clue or two about the identity of Vic's killer.

*   *   *

"Where to, Ms. Bee?" Jay asked from the driver's seat.

His sister looked up from whatever she was doing on her smartphone and told him, "It's Thursday. She's going to the nursing home, of course. That's where she goes every Thursday."

"She's right." Helen had almost forgotten about Charity Caps Day. It didn't start for another hour or two, but visiting with Betty and Josie was as good a way as any to pass the time until the coast was clear for Helen to return to snooping around Vic's property.

"She's always right," Jay grumbled, but he put the car in gear and headed down the driveway.

At the gate Zee jumped out and activated the gate's mechanism, which reminded Helen that she and Jay had worked on the wiring there. Maybe she didn't need to question Marty, after all. She needed to be careful not to say anything that might get Jack's niece and nephew into trouble. They were bound to be high on Peterson's list of suspects if he ever accepted that Stevie wasn't guilty, and he wouldn't be pleased if he found out they'd told Helen anything about the night of the murder. She couldn't even warn them to be careful about what they said to Peterson, since they didn't seem to realize that they were under any suspicion, and she didn't want to worry them.

Helen waited until Zee had returned to the Forester and they were heading toward the nursing home. "I was wondering how complicated the security is on the gate. It seems like a waste of effort. It doesn't really protect the property, since anyone who's determined to get inside can either climb the wall or simply go over to Freddie Wade's yard and walk through the woods between the two properties."

"Vic thought it was funny," Zee said. "Like bluffing in a card game. Project a confident image, and people will buy just about anything."

Jay said, "Sorta' like those signs claiming that a house is monitored by a security company, when they're not really." 

"A way bigger bluff than that," Zee insisted. "Rezendes had us put in a real system, for thousands of dollars, even though it was as worthless as those fake signs. Marty thought it was crazy, but it was great for us, because we got more experience and more money in our paychecks. We've almost got enough in savings to pay for one-way plane tickets to California."

"How complicated a system was it?" Helen asked. "Did it record who came in and out of the gates?"

Jay deferred to his sister, who said, "The area around the gates was pretty well-covered by the new system. I mean, a professional burglar or someone with electronics expertise could have bypassed it, but not a normal person. There was a motion-activated camera and an electronic record of each time the gate was opened or shut."

"What about the pass keys? Were they coded so you'd know who used which one?"

Jay said, "We might have, if they'd been used properly and the system hadn't crashed and wiped out the entire week's records. Each of the keys had a different code, and it would be recorded along with the time it was used. Vic and Art each had one, and there were about a dozen more keys for visitors. You couldn't be sure who'd used it just from the code, but if the camera was working you could match the time to the video and identify the person that way."

But, of course, nothing about the system had been working properly, so Nora's alibi wasn't as solid as it appeared.

"Marty didn't want to make that many spares," Zee added. "Makes it too easy to lose one and too hard to notice if one's missing. A security system is only as good as its user, and most users aren't very good at following protocol."

Helen tried to think of the last time she'd activated her own security system, and couldn't. Surely it hadn't been that long; it was just that she couldn't remember anything for more than a few minutes. At least she definitely knew the code to deactivate it, since she'd used her birthdate, despite Marty's recommendation to use a more random number.

"The human element is the bane of Marty's existence," Jay said. "If he could design a completely self-contained system, he'd be ecstatic."

That level of security might well have saved Vic's life. Getting past the gates was easy, but if the house alarm had been able to set itself every night, the killer would have had a far more difficult time getting inside the house undetected. Instead, Vic's failing memory had gotten him killed.

No, not his failing memory, Helen corrected herself. It was more his being in denial that left him vulnerable. If he'd admitted he needed help, he could have worked around the memory lapses. Marty might not have been able to create a system that knew when to activate itself, but she was confident Marty could have programmed some sort of remote access, so Art could activate and deactivate the system using a smartphone app. Given how dedicated Art was to his work, he would have been happy to take care of the security system. In fact, he probably already was turning it on and off, considering how consistent the system's use had been. He might not have been able to set it when he left the mansion on Saturday if he knew Nora was likely to go out. Still, there were ways that Art could have helped, if only by giving Nora a temporary password to use the system. All Vic would have had to do was ask.

That was the rub, Helen knew. Admitting to weakness and asking for help wasn't easy.

*   *   *

Betty and Josie were having a little lunchtime nap in their chairs by the fireplace. Jay and Zee wouldn't be back to pick her up for an hour, and Helen didn't have anything else she needed to do in the meantime. She might as well indulge in a little crochet therapy. Now that she'd conquered at least the basics of crochet, she did find it relaxing.

Helen quietly settled into a chair across from her friends, as far away from the too-hot fire as she could get, and pulled out her current project. She'd completed a few rows and was growing sleepy herself before Betty's eyes blinked open.

Betty tapped Josie on the arm. "Look who's here."

Josie stretched and then held out one hand, wiggling her fingers in a demand for a closer look at Helen's current project.

Helen handed it over and held her breath, waiting for the judgment.

Josie nodded. "You're really getting the hang of it. We'll have to look for a more advanced pattern for you soon."

It was all Helen could do to remember this simple pattern these days. "Maybe in a few months. I'm appreciating something simple in my life for the moment."

"It won't take you that long to solve Vic's murder." Josie handed back Helen's cap and took out her own hot pink one. "I'm surprised you haven't figured it out already. It had to have been Donald Glennon. He's the only one who hated Vic enough to want him dead. At least locally. There must be other suspects in Hollywood."

Helen picked up where she'd left off with the cap. "You know, I'm having trouble understanding Vic's reputation. Did the other people in the reality shows really hate him, or was that just a role they all played?"

"It looked real," Betty said, "but that's the whole idea of 'reality' TV, isn't it?"

"It just doesn't fit with what I've observed," Helen said. "He left most of his estate to charity, and his fans thought he was a decent person, not the character he played for the cameras."

"Some of his fans are bigger jerks than he was," Josie said. "I tried to join the
Betting with the Pros
fan club after we watched the episodes that Vic was in. They had an admission test with ten questions about celebrity poker players. I only knew the answers to the four questions about Vic, and I got them right, but I had no idea about the rest, so they wouldn't let me join."