Big Sick Heart: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (14 page)

“Actually, n-n-no. I just b-b-booked a room at the
R-R-Red Lion this morning on Or-Or-Orbitz. Th-Th-Thank you for making the
t-t-time to speak with me.” He turned to Ryan. “Very n-n-nice meeting you,
Detective M-M-Miner.”

“Ryan, would you mind showing Mr. Sanders out?”

“Of course,” Ryan said, escorting Timothy Sanders
out of the detectives’ bullpen.

*  *  *

I started making notes on a
yellow pad about all the things Sanders had said that I wanted to go over with
Ryan. I was still writing when Ryan came back.

“Pretty cool, huh?” he said, with a big smile.

“What’s that?”

“I try to contact Sanders for the better part of
an hour this morning, and he’s nowhere to be found. So I send out my magic
brain waves to make him appear, and he shows up downstairs in Reception.”

“Oh, that’s how that happened. Magic brain waves.
Give me a second,” I said, looking down at my pad. “I need to cross off one of
my questions.”

“By the way,” he said, wearing a sincere
expression, “I want to compliment you on the way you handled his stutter. What
did you say? ‘I hadn’t no-no-no-noticed’?”

“Shut the fu-fu-fu—”

“Hey, come on. Two F-bombs in one day?” he said,
laughing. “I still get to tease you a little, don’t I?

“I didn’t realize I used up my quota. I gotta put
in for a bigger allotment.” I was shaking my head, looking down at the pad.
“All right, let’s try to untangle the web Mr. Sanders is trying to weave.
What’s the biggest thing he said sounds like bullshit to you?”

“It’s not anything he said. It’s something he did:
showing up here.”

“Yeah, what’s with that? Any way he knew you
called him this morning?”

“Well,” Ryan said, “if he was at home and he had
Caller ID, he would know I called him. And maybe he found out from Soul Savers
in Colorado Springs, but I don’t think so. The way the woman there responded
when I asked her, sounds like she didn’t know or care where the Board members
were. Like that was the Archbishop’s problem. Besides, I doubt if he could’ve
made it here by now if he just found out this morning.”

“If he wanted us to know he came in because he
knew we were looking for him,” I said, “he’d have told us, right, to show he’s
being real cooperative? What would you have done if you were him, assuming you
didn’t kill Hagerty?”

“As soon as I found out, I’d go wherever Margaret
is to console her.”

“So you wouldn’t stop by police headquarters?” I
said.

“No, I wouldn’t be thinking of that. Maybe I’d
notify the police where I am in case they want to talk to me. But I wouldn’t
just present myself like he did. If I wasn’t in town when the murder occurred,
and I didn’t do it, I’d assume I wasn’t a suspect.”

“Exactly,” I said. “He stopped by to send us a
message. We just gotta figure out what it is.”

“Okay,” Ryan said. “There could be several
messages. One could be that he’s a religious man. You know: all that stuff
about how Arlen’s in a better place. Personally, I’m not sure Arlen’s in a
better place or a worse place.”

I laughed. “Well, I think most of him’s in the big
fridge downstairs—but let’s not get into that. One thing we can probably agree
on: Hagerty didn’t like the way he got from the late-night monologue to
wherever he is now.”

“Sanders did lay it on pretty thick,” Ryan said,
“like that line about how Arlen and Margaret were inseparable, and the wonder
of finding love later in life.”

“Yeah,” I said, “like Margaret is Yoko breaking up
John and Paul.”

“Not following you there,” Ryan said.

“Never mind, kid,” I said. “Okay, so the religious
stuff is a signal.”

“A signal that he’s such a pious guy he couldn’t
possibly be a suspect.”

“Or he’s saying we’re such hicks,” I said, “all he
has to do is pretend to be religious and we’ll cross him off our list.”

“Or he’s taunting us. We’re smart enough to read
it as a bluff, but he’s so much smarter than we are, even if we like him for
the murder, there’s no way we can prove it.”

“I like that one, Ryan.”

“That’s the way I read it. He has to figure we’ll
be in touch with Soul Savers. Someone—”

“Like an Archbishop, for instance?”

“Right,” Ryan said. “The Archbishop will fill us
in about the two guys fighting it out for the future of Soul Savers. We’ll find
out Hagerty won, then he started doing the debates and turning it into a
political organization.”

“Yeah, and then there’s the main message he wanted
to send: we should be looking at Dolores Weston. Do you know what he was
talking about, that pharmaceutical company he mentioned?”

“No idea.”

“Okay, I know a political science teacher who
knows all about that kind of stuff: Carol Freeman.”

“She’s the one on the political show on PBS?”

“Yeah, and she’s on CBS on election nights. She’ll
be able to point us in the right direction.”

“You know,” Ryan said, “there’s one other thing
Sanders said that I think we should follow up on.”

“What’s that?”

“You notice the two or three times he mentioned
coming in this morning from Waco. And that he booked his room on Orbitz this
morning?”

“What are you saying?”

“Well, it seems to me a little odd he didn’t start
traveling until this morning. The murder was on the national news yesterday
morning by ten o’clock. Where was he all yesterday that he didn’t see a TV or
go on the web? I don’t see this guy out hunting and fishing.”

“You seeing that as him taunting us?”

“I’m getting more that he’s covering something up,
that he rehearsed it and wants to be sure we hear he’s so concerned about the
tragedy that he jumped right on a plane.”

“Well, there’s a couple ways we can try to track
that down.”

“We could try Orbitz.”

“Yeah, but they would only know about what
reservations he’s made, not about his actual travel. The place that would know
is TSA.”

Ryan said, “They’d have the passenger manifests,
right?”

“I don’t know if they’d have them in real time,
but eventually they’d know who flew from where to where in which seat.”

“Do you know how to tap into TSA?”

“No, but I know who does.”

“The FBI guy? What’s his name?”

“Allen Pfeiffer. Let me try him.” I opened my
online address book, then dialed Pfeiffer’s number. “Shit,” I said to Ryan as I
heard his phone ringing. “He’s not in.” Then, into the phone, “Allen, this is
Karen Seagate. I need your help on a case. Could you give me a call when you
get a chance? I’ll try you back later this afternoon.”

“You want to try Carol Freeman now?”

“Yeah, might as well.” I checked my address book
again, dialed, and hit Speaker. “Hello, Carol? Karen Seagate.”

“Hi, Karen. How are you?”

“Good, good. Things calming down after the
election?”

“Pretty much. But just when I got that out of the
way, the semester’s winding down, which means advising for next semester,
thesis defenses, writing reference letters, and students going into panic mode
about this and that. You know: same old, same old.”

“Carol, we need to visit with you, maybe ten
minutes, fifteen, tops, about Dolores Weston. Can we run over now?”

“Sure, but who’s the ‘we’?”

“‘We’ is me and my new partner, Ryan Miner.”

“Oh, really? Tell me about him. What should I
know?”

“You should know he’s listening to us on the
Speaker now.”

“Shit,” Carol said. “Sorry, Karen. Good afternoon,
Detective!”

“Hello, Dr. Freeman,” Ryan said, smiling.

“Karen, I’ve got a student coming by at 2:00; we
should be done by 2:15. Would that work?”

“Terrific, we’ll be there.”

“Look forward to it,” Carol said, hanging up.

I said to Ryan, “Carol’s a good person. She’s
always trying to fix me up. She doesn’t realize you don’t want to be in a
relationship with someone else on the job. She’s married to another professor
in the university.”

“He in the same department with her?”

“No, he’s on the other side of campus, in a
different college. They don’t have anything to do with each other
professionally.”

“So she doesn’t see how two cops in the same
building wouldn’t work.”

“That’s right.” I wanted to get the conversation
back on track. “But she’s absolutely solid. If there’s something we ought to
know about Dolores Weston and Soul Savers, she’ll know it. And if there’s
anything to know about Weston icing her husband, she’ll know about that, too.”

“But will she tell us?”

“Yup. She used to be a reporter on a city paper,
somewhere back East. Philadelphia, I think. She understands confidentiality.
She likes dealing with me. Makes her feel like she’s still in the game.”

“Good, let’s go,” Ryan said, and we started to
leave.

My phone rang. “Let me see who it is,” I said,
running back to my desk. Caller ID said “Pfeiffer, Allen.” I dropped my coat on
my desk, waved Ryan back, and picked up the phone. “Hello, Allen?” I hit
Speaker.

“Hi, Karen. This about the Hagerty murder?”

“Yeah, here’s the situation. There’s this guy
named Timothy Sanders. He founded Soul Savers about fifteen years ago, but then
got squeezed out by my vic, Arlen Hagerty, who wanted to make the organization
more high-profile, more political. So Sanders is still on the Board of
Directors. We wanted to talk to him; he lives in Waco. Can’t get through to
him. Suddenly, this afternoon, he just pops into headquarters and starts giving
us this song and dance about how religious he is, blah-blah-blah, and he just
flew in from Waco as soon as heard this morning.”

“He said he just heard this morning? That’s about
a day late.”

“That’s what we’re thinking. So here’s my
question. Can I get TSA records to verify if he flew in from Waco today?”

“No, you can’t, but I can. TSA is a federal
agency. They require a request from another federal agency.”

“I’d really like to lean on this guy while he’s
still in town. How long would you need?”

“About thirty seconds. So it’s Timothy
Sanders—normal spelling?—going from Waco to Billings today, right?”

“Yeah.”

“All right, give me a second.”

While we were waiting, I said to Ryan, “This is
what they call interagency cooperation.”

“I like it,” Ryan said.

“Karen,” Allen said. “Sanders said he traveled
from Waco to Billings today?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Well, that’s sort of what he did, except he
stopped off for three hours in Milwaukee. Funny thing is, it doesn’t look like
a layover.”

“How do you know?”

“They’re different airlines: it took him two
flights to get to Milwaukee on Southwest. Then he took Frontier to Billings. I
don’t think those two airlines are related. I think they’re competitors.”

“Hmm. That’s odd. Well, okay, thanks a lot, Allen.
Hope I don’t have to bug you anymore on this case.”

“Not a problem, Karen. Take care.”

“You, too,” I said, hanging up.

“You think the side trip to Milwaukee is
something?” Ryan said.

“Maybe. I don’t know. It could have been weather
or something that forced them to divert to Milwaukee, and he needed to switch
airlines to get here quickly.”

“I don’t like it. There hasn’t been any weather
here or in the whole state,” Ryan said.

“Let’s make a note to see if there’s a Soul Savers
office in Milwaukee after we talk with Carol. Maybe he stopped by there for
some reason.”

“Okay.” He jotted it down in his notebook. We
grabbed our coats and headed out for the parking lot. “Before we go,” he said,
waving me in toward him so he could speak quieter, “You think we ought to tell
the chief that Sanders mentioned something about Dolores Weston? Seeing as
she’s going to be all over the media this evening?”

I thought for a second. “Why don’t we talk to
Carol first, see if she knows anything. Dolores Weston hitting her husband and
the Hagerty case are probably a coincidence. Besides, you want the chief
messing around in our investigation?”

“Let’s go talk to Carol,” Ryan said.

Chapter 6

“She’s right down here, I
think.” We walked down the long hallway on the second floor of the Social
Science building on the Central Montana campus. Students sat at the tables and
mix-and-match old chairs in the hallway, typing or playing games on their
laptops, trying to quiet their squirming babies, eating takeout. The hallway
smelled like a lunchroom. Carol Freeman’s door was open. I peeked in and saw
Carol talking to a female student.

The student came out of Carol Freeman’s office
shaking her head as if things had gone badly. She was wearing a tight blouse,
low cut, showing way too much boob. Her jeans were tight, the heels high, the
makeup Barnum and Bailey. I decided to give Carol a moment to collect herself
before going up to the door. Carol popped her head out. “Karen,” she said
cheerfully. “Come on in.”

We walked into the small cinder-blocked office.
Every inch of wall space was covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Papers,
newspapers, and books were stacked in foot-high piles. Her desktop seemed to
sag beneath the piles of stuff. “Glad I had a chance to clean up yesterday,”
she said. There was only one visitor’s chair. “Grab a chair from the hall,
Detective,” she said to Ryan. When Ryan left the office, Carol said to me,
“Very nice, kid. I like those shoulders. Good stamina in the sack, no?”

I laughed. “That’s my new partner. He’s extremely
young, and extremely married.”

“Great,” Carol said. “Then he knows how to operate
all the equipment, right?”

“I see you still live in Fantasyland.”

“Like it’d be more fun living here in Rawlings?”

Ryan returned with a cheap plastic chair.

I said, “Carol, this is my partner, Detective Ryan
Miner. Ryan, Dr. Carol Freeman.”

“Glad to meet you, Dr. Freeman,” Ryan said.

“God, do I look that old?” she said. “Call me
Carol, okay? Sit down, both of you. Ryan, close that door, would you?” She was
about sixty, her face comfortably creased and lined. Her brown eyes were ringed
with liver spots. Her grey hair was cut Beatles 1964. Her reading glasses
balanced on the tip of her nose, tethered by a neon green cord around her neck.
She wore a black and red checked men’s work shirt, blue jeans, thick pink
woolen socks, and Birkenstocks. She slapped her palms down on her knees and
leaned in to me. “Okay, kiddo, what do you need? It’s about Dolores Weston,
right?”

“Well, her name is on our radar for a couple of
things. Let’s start with her link to Hagerty, okay? Hagerty’s organization was
established by a guy named Timothy Sanders, who popped in on us after lunch. He
lost out on a power struggle at Soul Savers some years ago—”

“Yeah, I think I remember reading that.”

“So Sanders says he came here to Rawlings to talk
to Dolores Weston about the pharmaceutical company. We don’t have any idea what
the hell he’s talking about, but I told Ryan I knew who would,” I said,
pointing to Carol.

“Oh, this is good,” Carol said, her brown eyes
lighting up. “You looking at this guy Timothy Sanders for the murder?”

I shook my head. “Come on, Carol. You know I can’t
tell you anything about our investigation.”

“Can’t blame me for trying, am I right, Ryan?”

“No,” he said with a smile, “sure can’t.”

“Okay,” Carol said to me, “what do you want to
know about Dolores and the pharmaceutical?”

“Everything I need to know.”

“Dolores Weston is blue blood, one-hundred
percent. She’s from Bryn Mawr, right in the heart of the Main Line.”

“Where’s that?” I said.

“That’s the ritzy suburbs west of Philadelphia.
Named after the main train line linking Philly and Chicago in the nineteenth
century. Bryn Mawr College is one of the tony Seven Sisters. She’s a debutante,
some sort of beauty queen. Second or third marriage is to this guy named
Weston, who started a wireless company that went big. He was smart enough to
cash his chips before everyone else got into the business. That’s how he’s
worth a couple billion and buys the place in Maui, along with a half-dozen
other places. Back East she was a Rockefeller Republican: fiscal conservative,
free trader, philanthropist. So they move out to Rawlings, where they have one
of their homes. They call it a lodge. Around eight-thousand square feet. My
place would fit in the kitchen.”

I said, “So how’d she get into politics?”

“She hadn’t done anything in politics before, but
she got into the Junior League, started hosting fundraisers, people saw she was
smart and knew how to throw a party. So the R’s tap her for a state senate
race. Her kids are off at college, she needs something to do, she says yes.”

“So how does she turn into the big-sky
conservative?”

Carol laughed. “That was all show biz. She saw
that the conservatives out here were not the pro-business types from
Philadelphia but socially conservative, borderline libertarian.”

“And she just turns into that?”

“Sure, why not? You remember those commercials
with her sitting on that boulder, she’s wearing jeans, a shotgun leaning on the
rock, the dead quail on the ground? She told me those things were foreign to
her. I said, ‘You mean the bird and the rifle?’ She said, ‘I was referring to
the jeans.’ She’s really a hoot.”

“You were there when they shot that commercial?”
Ryan said.

“Honey, I wrote that commercial. Brought the
props. Got the dead bird from an otherwise useless student of mine.”

I said, “So you were working for her? I thought
you were a Democrat.”

“I am, but since I’m also a realist, I try to help
those Republicans who don’t scare the crap out of me. And she’s one of them.
And keep that info about me helping the Republicans under your hat,” Carol said
with a burst of laughter. “I’m officially non-partisan. You know, above the
fray, and all that nonsense.”

“Okay,” I said, “what’s this pharmaceutical
company?”

“It’s Henley Pharmaceuticals. They’re based in New
Jersey, along the Jersey Turnpike up near the city. They want to build a
facility somewhere out here in God’s country.”

“Why’s that?”

“They’ve getting squeezed by the high real estate
near New York, so they’re salivating over our land prices. We can be a fifth
the price. They can buy the whole damn prairie in case they want to build a
bigger place later. In addition, we’re non-union, and the state’s got all kinds
of tax incentives for high-tech companies with more than a hundred workers. The
company’s looking at a number of cities out here with universities. They want
to take advantage of the semi-skilled labor, as well as the science faculty.”

“Sounds like a match made in heaven. How come the
talks aren’t in the paper?”

“There’s one problem, and it’s a big one. Henley
Pharma is working on some procedures for stem-cell research.”

“What’s Dolores Weston have to do with that?”

“Since she’s smart enough to tie her own shoes,
she’s all for the research, but some of her colleagues are dumb as dirt, and
she has to play nice with them. It isn’t public yet, but some of them are
trying to block the tax incentives to companies that do anything they don’t
like, such as working on embryos or anything to do with birth control. In fact,
these troglodytes had some draft language forbidding any activities that
involve killing. Dolores was telling me she asked her caucus if they’d block a
company that makes chemicals used in lethal injections, and the head yahoo says
no, why would we block that? We got a good laugh out of that one.”

“Where do things stand now?”

“I’m not sure. I haven’t talked with Dolores since
election night, but I assume she’s still trying to figure out some way to
convince her colleagues to stop frothing at the mouth about Henley, because the
company would bring a lot of good jobs to the area.”

Ryan said, “What do you know about any financial
relationship between Dolores and the pharma?”

“I know Dolores says she doesn’t take any money
from any companies out of state. She doesn’t want to put anyone’s nose out of
joint, especially since there’s a two-thousand dollar limit on contributions.
It simply wouldn’t be worth the bad publicity.”

“How about private financial dealings? Does she
own any stock?”

“No idea,” Carol said. “The reporting laws don’t
make you reveal that.”

“About the science faculty,” I said. “Henley
interested in working with anyone in particular on this campus?”

“Not sure. But I think I remember reading about
this new hot shit in Biology. Lakshmi Something.” Ryan took out his notebook
and started writing. “About fifteen letters, a real jaw breaker. Everyone was
talking about her because the department not only hired her, they hired her
husband, too, as some kind of post-doc. That can annoy people.”

“That means she’s good?” I said.

“No, that means she’s great.”

“One more thing,” I said. “What do you know about
Dolores’ relationship with her late husband?” I wasn’t going to tell her about
the arrest of the kid for killing James Weston, but it was safe to ask a
softball question.

“What do you mean, like were they in love?” Carol
was wearing a confused look.

“Well, sure, anything like that. What kind of
couple were they?”

“Don’t really know. I met him a couple times at
parties. He seemed very—what’s the word?—solicitous of her. But he was such a
cool dude, I wouldn’t expect anything less of him. No talk of any girlfriends,
if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“I’m not getting at anything in particular,” I
said. I didn’t like being evasive with her, but I had to. “Just wanted to get a
sense of their relationship.” I paused. “Do you know if James Weston was closely
tied to his wife’s political career?”

“He showed up at her fundraisers, donated up to
the limit, things like that. But I think he saw it more as her hobby. He was on
about a dozen boards here and overseas. Playing in a bigger league, the way I
see it,” Carol said.

I said, “Anything else you wanna ask, Ryan?”

“No, I’m good,” he said.

“Carol, this was terrific. I don’t know how to
thank you.”

“My pleasure, Karen. Always good to talk with you.
And nice meeting you, Good Looking.”

Ryan blushed. “You, too.”

Carol touched my arm. “Try not to hurt Dolores,
would you? She’s one of the good guys. And this is a tough time for her.”

“I hear you, Carol. I’ll be careful.”

“Thanks, honey.”

*  *  *

Outside Carol Freeman’s
office, Ryan said, “You think there’s any link between the James Weston murder
and the Hagerty murder?”

“At this point, I don’t think so, but it’s kind of
a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“Sure I do,” Ryan said, “but all there is at this
point is a drugged-out loser saying Dolores paid him to take out her
husband—and he doesn’t know why. And there’s rope fibers on the guy’s knife.
Unless they can definitively match those fibers to the parasail rope, the
Weston case isn’t even a murder yet.”

“Yeah, I know, the cash in the guy’s pocket was
more likely from a drug deal than a payoff from Dolores Weston, but let’s keep
our eyes open. The chief must’ve met with the Maui detectives. If they showed
him any evidence pointing to a connection between Dolores and the doper here in
Rawlings, he’ll be sitting in his office right now figuring out how he can be
the hero by nailing her. We’ll find out soon enough. In the meantime,” I said,
“wanna go over to Biology and see if we can get some information on Lakshmi
Something?”

“Might not have to. Let me see if she’s online.
Give me a minute.” We walked over to a table and he pulled out his laptop. “I
wouldn’t be surprised if I can get her CV right here. Probably all kinds of
info on Henley, too.” He booted the machine, Googled the university site, and
navigated to the Biology Department. “Here she is: Lakshmi Kumaraswamy. Let me
see if she’s got her CV online.” He scrolled for a moment. “Here it is.”

“Excellent,” I said. “Now we don’t have to tip off
her department that we’re looking at her.”

“Yeah, these faculty sites are great. It’s like
Facebook for Ph.D.s. How about we go back to headquarters and let me paw around
for a little bit? I bet we can figure some stuff out. And you can see if
there’s anything we can learn about the James Weston thing.”

“Sounds good,” I said, as Ryan packed up his
computer and we headed to headquarters.

Back at our desks, I told Ryan to check out
Lakshmi Kumaraswamy. I decided to hang back a little on the James Weston case.
I figured if I asked the chief if he got anything from the Maui detectives, all
I’d accomplish was tip him off that I was thinking the two murders might be
related, which would make him work harder on sending me off to investigate a
dead end.

I picked up the phone and dialed Larry Klein, the
prosector. “Hey, Larry, Karen Seagate. I need five minutes,” I said.

“Sure,” he said, “go ahead.”

“Could we talk out at the fountain near your
building?”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” he said. “In a half hour?”

“A half hour,” I said.

I got there early. I didn’t want to keep him
waiting. “Thanks a lot, Larry,” I said to him. “Sorry to pull you out of your
office.”

Lawrence Klein was a small, busy man about my age.
The deep wrinkles on his forehead rode like waves on his owlish black plastic
eyeglasses, the thick lenses magnifying his dark brown eyes. I’d known him
eight years, since he’d come to Rawlings as a self-proclaimed Philadelphia Jew
lawyer just out of Penn. Maybe he saw me as another outsider trying to fit in.
We shared a disdain for the chief, who he called Boss Hogg.

“What’s going on, Karen?”

“I wanted to find out what we know about the James
Weston case, see if it’s got anything to do with the Hagerty case.”

“You don’t want to go through Boss Hogg?”