An Unlawful Order (The Chase Anderson Series) (23 page)

She faced him again. “Then that would make me a suspect …” Her voice trailed off. But what possible motive would she have? Then she remembered Paul Shapiro’s hunch that Melanie and Stone had been lovers. Chase, the jealous, vindictive wife? Then what about Kitty White? The voice in her head reminded her that Kitty would have had a house full of alibis the night Melanie was killed. What Chase was doing that night, she suddenly couldn’t recall, other than she’d been home with her daughter. They’d want to question Molly—

Figueredo squeezed her hand, which she realized now was shaking. “Chase, I have to take you in for questioning.”

“How did you even hear about this today?”

“I was with General Hickman and the provost marshal, Major Sims, when the call came in about HP wanting to talk to you,” he explained. “Sims was heading out to look for you. I told him I’d find you and bring you in.” His face—those dark eyes usually impenetrable behind a wall of secrets—was now soft and warm with concern.

“But why you, Colonel?”

“Because right now,” he said, “you need someone you can trust.”

And for the first time since the news of Stone’s death, Chase Anderson felt fear, true fear.

CHAPTER 14

S
he’d insisted on changing clothes first. “I’m not going to be interrogated in a sports bra,” she said, after Figueredo had given in, driving her to the Public Affairs office first, but imploring her to hurry.

She climbed the staircase to her office in shoes that felt as if they’d been filled with lead. At the top, she was assaulted with what smelled like a Hawaiian roadside restaurant. Her lunch was in a white Styrofoam container in the center of her desk.

“I’m back,” she called toward the direction of voices in the pressroom. She closed the door to her office, stripped, and stepped into her private bathroom for a quick shower. Figueredo and the detective would just have to wait, she thought, relishing the sensation of cool water on her skin. She dried off and dressed. She felt as if she were dressing for battle. From somewhere in the office she heard the muffled ringing of her cell phone and found it in her top desk drawer. The caller I.D. indicated it was an out-of-area call, but she was too late. Guessing the caller would leave a message, she set the phone on top of her desk within easy reach, and finished dressing. Sure enough, by the time she was slipping into her pumps, a ring alerted her to a message.

“This is Paul … I’m in DC … can’t explain right now, but I’ll be back in a few days.”

She punched the redial button. His voice mail answered.

“I hope you’re having fun in DC, Paul, because I’m about to be questioned by HP as a suspect in Melanie’s death. You went back on your word … .oh, forget it. Just leave me alone from now on, okay? In fact, don’t ever call me again.” She snapped the phone shut and tossed it inside her purse.

She was losing it. What had happened to the calm, highly trained public affairs officer she had been, or thought herself to have been, before Major White’s crash a week ago?

She found North and the others in the pressroom lingering over lunch-hour talk. She told them she was leaving for a meeting with Major Sims at MP headquarters, and said, in as optimistic a tone as she could muster, that she’d return in time for the Marine Corps Ball ceremony practice. “I’ll meet you at the hangar,” she said to North on her way out.

Figueredo was waiting in his BMW with his head back against the seat. He looked as if he were napping. The deep stitch between his eyebrows told her otherwise.

“Yes, I took a shower,” she said, sliding in, slamming the door, and reaching over a shoulder for the seat belt. “Let’s get this over with.”

They drove the seven minutes to MP headquarters in silence. She was wishing as he pulled into a parking spot marked for visitors that she’d insisted on driving herself. For what she was about to face … well, this was Shapiro’s fault … still, she’d rather face it alone.

Once inside, she followed slightly behind Figueredo’s soft thuds on the polished corridor and past the clacking of typewriters and murmurs behind the open and partially closed doors, and pretended she wasn’t afraid, as if she had nothing to hide, for wasn’t there nothing? She stared ahead and around Figueredo’s left shoulder that was blocking her peripheral view of that side of the hallway. When he stopped suddenly, she nearly fell against him. He smiled apologetically as he pushed open the door and stepped aside for her to enter.

A young Marine with a distinctive short, brown bob who had been sitting behind her desk, jumped to her feet, causing her hair to swing forward so that her face momentarily disappeared, then reappeared as her body settled into the position of attention. Figueredo addressed her. “I’m here with Captain Anderson.” The end of his statement had a lifting, question-like quality, as if their appearance were nothing more than a social call.

The woman’s eyes darted toward Chase, rested on Chase’s eyes for a second, and widened. “Yes, sir … ma’am … I’ll let Major Sims know you’re here.” She disappeared behind a closed side door.

When the woman emerged, she smiled. “This way, please.” She stepped aside to allow the two to enter. A chivalrous Figueredo motioned for Chase to enter first, but she shook her head, preferring to stand on military custom granted a senior officer. He shrugged, gave a half-smile, and entered ahead of her.

The Provost Marshal’s office was nearly as ornate as General Hickman’s. Chase was surprised when her heels sank into the same plush scarlet carpeting. Bookcases lined the side wall. The opposite wall was mostly glass that offered a view of spectacular Kaneohe Bay. Behind Figueredo, she could only hear a man’s voice in a one-sided conversation. The voice was too thick and deep to belong to a Scotch-Irishman. When Figueredo took a position to the left of the desk, Chase was able to see that the voice came from a Hawaiian. His back was leaning against a wall unit with bookshelves, and though he was talking, he was obviously studying both of them. She positioned herself beside Figueredo.

“I’ll do what I can,” the man was saying in earnest tones. At one point, he slipped and let his eyes sweep over Chase’s body, and then, as if out of embarrassment, glanced over at the wall of windows and the view. He ended the telephone call with, “Roger that.”

He directed the conversation first to Figueredo. “I was beginning to think we’d have to send out a search party for both of you.”

Chase sensed Figueredo’s rebuttal and beat him with, “I was running during lunch and needed to change.”

The detective smiled. “I see.” He leaned over the desk, and pushed out a hand. “Ken Okamoto.” So there was Japanese in his heritage too.

Chase pressed her hand into cushy, warm flesh. “Captain Chase Anderson.”

Okamoto gave a final squeeze before letting go. He shifted toward Figueredo. “Thank you, Colonel. Would you wait in the outer office while I ask the captain a few questions?” Figueredo appeared visibly uncomfortable and seemed about to protest.

Instead, he muttered, “Yes, sir,” and turned to exit the office, pausing a second to smile at Chase. She thought he was about to reach for her arm, but if he had been, he decided otherwise. She heard the door behind her open and close.

Okamoto smiled again, and motioned for her to sit in one of the wingbacks in front of Major Sims’s desk. “Isn’t the provost marshal joining us?” she asked, settling onto the edge of the wingback.

Okamoto shook his head and walked to her side of the desk. He shifted the other wingback chair so that he could face hers. It was a gesture to win her over. Though cautious, she decided to play along. She rose and shifted her chair so that they were face to face. Only a few feet now separated them. She folded her hands in her lap and studied him as he leaned over the desk for a legal pad of paper.

“I suppose,” he started, flipping over page after page of notes until reaching a clean sheet, “that Colonel Figueredo has had time to brief you on why I’m here.”

“You could say that.”

At her tone, he glanced up from the paper. “Look,” he said, “I’ve just had an interesting telephone call from a very good friend of mine … Paul Shapiro.” Her eyes widened. “He told me to tell you he got your voice mail.” Her face was growing hot. Damn, Paul Shapiro. He couldn’t be trusted at all.

She unfolded her hands, and gripped both armrests. “I don’t know what Shapiro told you, but …”

Okamoto interrupted. “He convinced me you shouldn’t be a suspect in Melanie’s death.”

“Oh.” She leaned into the back of the chair and loosened her hold on the armrests.

“I still want to ask a few questions. May I?”

“Sure.” She was still settling with the thought that Paul had, indeed, come to her rescue.

“How did you first meet Melanie Appleton?”

Chase told him about Major White’s crash and of how she and North had been headed to the press conference at the main gate when Melanie appeared. “I thought she was Major White’s wife.”

Okamoto had jotted a word here and there of her statement. He stopped. “Why did you think that?”

“Last year, when my office hosted a media ride aboard an 81 helicopter, Major White had been the pilot. I saw a photograph of Melanie in the windshield of his cockpit. I knew the major was married, so I assumed the photograph was of his wife.”

“Continue …”

She described how Melanie had insisted she take White’s dog tags. “She said something like,
His kids should probably have these
.”

“What did you do with them?”

Here, she hesitated. Before she could answer, Okamoto received a call on his cell phone.

“Sorry,” he said, and answered with, “Okamoto.” He had the bearing of a Marine, and she wondered if he’d ever spent time in the military. “That’s right … a white Jeep, license plate …” and he shuffled back a page of his legal pad, and then rattled off a set of numbers that Chase suddenly realized as her license plate.

Okamoto snapped his phone shut. “I’m afraid your Jeep will be impounded for a few days.”

“Why?”

“I’m having one of our mechanics take a look at the brakes. Shapiro told me about the accident you had last Wednesday after your meeting with him.”

“You mean you think—”

Okamoto put up a hand to stop her. “Just for the record, Captain Anderson, where were you last Tuesday evening?”

Her mind was a series of flashing images of White’s memorial service Tuesday morning and the sight of Paul Shapiro and his sister, talking near the chapel. There was somber Kitty White and her two children as they emerged from the long, black limousine, and made their way up the chapel steps. There were North, Cruise, and Martinez, herding the media that had included Paul Shapiro, toward the chapel.

“It was a tense day,” she said. “Major White’s memorial service … and that night …” and then she remembered, “I was cooking out, with Colonel Figueredo.” Thank goodness, she had an alibi.

“What time did the colonel leave?” She felt her cheeks growing hot under his insinuation.

“He left about 1900.”

“That’s pretty early for ending a date, wouldn’t you say?”

She was indignant. “You obviously don’t know anything about me, Detective. I’m a widow. I don’t date. The colonel had only …” She’d been about to say that he’d inadvertently stumbled across her house while looking for someone else’s when she realized she still didn’t know why Colonel Figueredo had shown up at her house. Had it truly been to extend an offer to run interference between her and the general over Paul Shapiro’s annoying reporter habits? “I was home the rest of the evening with my daughter.”

“You didn’t step out later, maybe after she was asleep, to run an errand?”

“Do you have children, Detective?” she asked, letting the fingers of her right hand play along the studded edges of the wingback chair. She brought her left hand under her chin and leaned onto her left elbow, hoping to appear interested, and not anxious. When he shifted his weight, she knew she was throwing him off guard.

“One.”

“A girl?”

He cleared his throat. “A son.”

“How old?”

“Eight,” he said and shifted his weight once more. He looked down at his legal pad and flipped the pages backward, seeming to regain his composure.

“Would you ever leave your sleeping eight-year-old at home alone?”

“Not without good cause,” he said. “Did you believe Melanie Appleton and Major White were lovers?”

“Yes.” She forced herself to concentrate. She wondered where this line of questioning would take them.

“Do you still?” He was staring at her left hand. She glanced down and saw, in place of her wedding band, a ring of white from a lack of sun exposure where the band should have been. Because her hands swelled so much whenever she ran, she had long ago initiated the habit of removing the ring. In her hurry to shower and dress, and in her anger over Shapiro’s voice mail message, she’d forgotten her ring, which she could now picture on top of the paper clips in a small plastic divider tray that she kept in her top desk drawer.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “what was the question?”

“Do you still believe—”

“Yes,” she interrupted, suddenly remembering the rest. “I do still believe Melanie Appleton and Major White were having an affair.” After all, only Figueredo had told her otherwise, and he’d never backed up his statement with any sort of proof. If Dr. Appleton had allowed herself to have an affair with Stone, as Shapiro contended they had, at least it appeared that way if one were to believe Melanie’s appointment books, then White seemed a logical replacement. Chase folded her hands in her lap.

“Did Kitty White think this?”

“I have no idea. You’ll have to ask her,” she said, and then realized she needed to appear more cooperative. “Because I’m a Marine, I don’t exactly fit into the Officers’ Wives’ Club scene.”

“I find it odd that your husband never told you about his sessions with Dr. Appleton.” Guess she could thank Paul Shapiro for providing Okamoto with that zinger. When she didn’t respond, he continued, “Shapiro told me about your husband’s first crash in the Middle East and about how you’d encouraged him to seek help.”