Die Buying (30 page)

I climbed back into the Miata, not sure if I was glad or sorry that the office was essentially closed. On the one hand, I hadn’t gotten to meet any of Jackson’s coworkers and get their take on him. On the other, Kitty was a fount of information and she probably wouldn’t have chatted so freely on an ordinary day. On balance, I thought things had worked out to my advantage.

Back at my house, having fed Fubar, changed out of my uniform, and snacked on carrots and hummus, I plunked myself down in front of the computer to do some research. I’d found Henrik Dawson via Google—maybe I could dig up more about the other suspects. It wasn’t like having law enforcement databases at my fingertips, but there’s a surprising amount online about almost everybody, most of which the Average Joe doesn’t even realize is out there for any old snoop to locate.

I studied the list of suspects I’d drawn up and left on the kitchen table, adding Henrik Dawson’s name. I decided to eliminate Gatchel on the grounds that I thought Weasel’s murder was connected to Porter’s death and Gatchel was six feet under when someone shot Weasel. I also eliminated Robbie since he no longer posed a threat to anyone. Since I had talked to her this afternoon, I started with Monica Goudge, typing in her name and “Vernonville” as key words. A healthy list of hits popped up. Over the course of the next forty-five minutes, I learned that she was part of the altar guild at St. Mary’s Church (her name was in the parish’s online bulletins), that she quilted (from an announcement about an exhibit by local quilters two years back), and that she’d been involved in a nasty car wreck almost five years earlier (from the
Vernonville Times
). I found her address and phone number easily and MapQuested the house, discovering it was only two miles from me in a middle-class suburb where the houses went for more than Monica could afford on Diamanté wages. She must have another source of income—inheritance, alimony, big settlement from the car crash, whatever. I leaned back in my chair, thinking. Nothing came to me.

Typing in Velma’s name, I skimmed through a bazillion dance recital programs that listed her. Several dance studios featured group photos of dancers that included Velma in a variety of sequined or floaty costumes, wearing tap shoes or ballet slippers and a self-conscious smile. In the earliest photos, she was maybe ten or twelve. In the more recent ones, she looked sleek and sophisticated, Broadway bound. A three-year-old engagement announcement popped up, and I saw that she’d been planning to marry a Bryce Underfield. Wondering if the marriage had ever taken place, I read the announcement and learned that the bride-to-be was the daughter of Victor and Monica Maldonado. Keying in Victor’s name, I got a photo of a good-looking Filipino man with skin the color of teak and short black hair. The article said he’d been convicted of practicing medicine without actually being a doctor—yowza!—and was having his resident alien status revoked and being deported to his native Philippines. The article quoted friends and coworkers who said they had no idea his medical degree from a Manila university was forged and offered testimonials from patients who swore he’d cured them of various illnesses. I could see why Monica had resumed her maiden name after—I presumed—a divorce.

I got up to fetch a beer and leaned down to pat Fubar as he pushed in through his cat door. He smelled of cold air. Fubar skittered away from my hand, his truncated tail twitching, and I let him go. Clearly, he was in his “I’m a fierce predator who doesn’t like mollycoddling” mode. Leaning back against the kitchen counter to take the first swallow of my Raging Bitch Belgian Pale Ale, I pondered what I’d learned. Not much. The info about Velma’s dad was interesting, but I didn’t see any connection between the Maldonados and Jackson Porter beyond his relationship with Velma. Unless . . . maybe Victor Maldonado had unsuccessfully treated someone in Porter’s family and a relative was out for revenge? Even if that were true, I didn’t see how it would result in someone wanting to kill Porter. Maldonado, maybe, but not Porter.

I returned to the table with my beer, ready for another round of “Digging Up Dirt on the Web.” Working on the theory that one’s nearest and dearest are most likely to want to kill one, I searched for Elena Porter. I knew she had an alibi that satisfied the police, but I wanted to learn more about the woman. Elena was all over the Web, mostly at society parties and fund-raisers with Jackson Porter. I studied a photo of Elena and Jackson with Catherine Lang and a tall, older man identified as her husband, Wilfred Lang, as they raised their glasses in a toast at a diabetes fund-raiser. The sight brought to mind Kitty’s comments about Lang’s death, and I decided to search for articles about it. If it had been in “all the papers” as Kitty had said, it shouldn’t be hard to find.

I had just typed “Wilfred Lang+Vernonville” into the search bar when the doorbell rang. Startled, I strode to the door and opened it, Fubar on my heels. A sixty-ish man with gray hair stood there wearing a dark suit and peaked cap; a stretch limo idled in the street. I stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Miss Ferris?” he asked in a soft voice. “Are you ready?” He studied my jeans and sweatshirt doubtfully.

“Ready?” Enlightenment dawned. Dinner. My parents. Ack! How had I forgotten? “Almost,” I lied.

“I’ll wait in the car, ma’am.”

 

 

I g ot home
from dinner with my parents well after midnight, stuffed with lobster thermidor, wild rice and shiitake mushrooms, and an elegant passion fruit tart. My dad had filled me in on the details of his latest projects, and Mom and I had enjoyed a good talk about various family members, what she might like to do while living in Alexandria, and my love life. That latter topic had yielded enough material for about eight seconds of conversation where Mom asked, “Is there anyone new in your life?” and I shook my head no. Mom sighed the “I want to be a grandmother before I die” sigh and patted my arm gently, thanking me for the crystal earrings I’d bought her at Diamanté before changing the topic to Clint and his latest travels. I fell into bed, exhausted, and didn’t notice that my laptop was still on.

Tuesday morning, as I was eating my oatmeal with blueberries, regretting the third glass of the extraordinary Stag’s Leap cabernet my dad had decanted—thank goodness for Lyle, the chauffeur—Fubar leaped onto the table and jarred the computer to life. Wilfred Lang smiled at me over a headline that announced “Vernonville Financier Missing.” Letting my oatmeal get cold, I scrolled down to read the article from the
Washington Post
. The gist of it seemed to be that Wilfred Lang, who did something important on Wall Street but lived in Vernonville, had not returned from a hike when expected. His Mercedes was found at a trailhead in Shenandoah National Park and searchers were concentrating their efforts in that area.

I clicked on a link to a follow-up article and learned that Wilfred Lang’s body had been discovered by a young couple hiking in the Shenandoah Mountains for their honeymoon. He was several miles off the trail, in a back-country area not frequented by campers. Autopsy results showed he died of severe hypoglycemia. No backpack was found near his body, and the pathologist posited that he’d taken his usual insulin dose and then been unable to eat because his food supply had been lost or stolen. “We’ve got a lot of black bears in this area,” the sheriff said, giving one possible explanation for how Lang lost his provisions.

The article went on to say that Lang’s wife, Catherine, said her husband was adept at managing his diabetes but that she’d tried to get him to give up his solitary hikes when the disease was diagnosed. She and a friend had spent the weekend at a spa in Pennsylvania, and she hadn’t missed him until he failed to return or call on Monday. The victim’s daughter from an earlier marriage, Aileen Lang-Quincy, called for an in-depth investigation, asserting that her father was the victim of foul play.

Clicking to the next page, I found a lengthy obit of Wilfred Lang. Halfway through a list of his financial accomplishments and awards, I pushed the computer aside and took another bite of congealing oatmeal. “What do you think about that, Fubar?” I asked the cat, who was staring at my cereal bowl in a way that let me know he wouldn’t be averse to finishing off any leftover milk. I put it on the floor for him and stroked his head as he lapped. “I’ll bet you a year’s supply of kitty kibble that the friend who was spa-ing with Catherine Lang when her husband disappeared was Elena Porter.”

Fubar didn’t take me up on the bet.

Minutes before the
mall opened on Tuesday morning, I burst through the door of Merlin’s Cave determined to make up with Kyra and fill her in on what I’d discovered. She emerged from the stockroom at the back, her lips compressing a tad when she saw me.

“Don’t look like that,” I said. “I’m here to apologize. I shouldn’t have said what I did about Dyson.”

“It’s okay,” she said, breaking into a smile. “He’s a jerk.” She gave me a hug, the silk of her red tunic slippery under my hands. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have said . . . you know. It’s not true.”

I hugged her hard in acceptance of her apology before letting her go. “Look what I found.” I pulled out the articles I’d printed from the Internet about Wilfred Lang’s death and asked her the same question I’d asked Fubar.

“Could be,” she responded, sifting through the pages. “Are you saying you think they’re in on some sort of conspiracy?”

“Like a twist on
Throw Momma from the Train
,” I said. My dad had made me think about the possibility of more than one person being in on the murder with his joking about “the mistress and her new lover” killing Porter. The rest of the idea had come to me full-blown after reading about Wilfred’s death. “Catherine kills her husband—”

“Why?”

“How should I know? Maybe he cheated on her or beat her or wanted kinky sex. Maybe she was tired of him. Point is, she kills him and Elena gives her an alibi. Then, Elena kills her husband and Catherine alibis her. See the symmetry?”

“I don’t see how Catherine could’ve killed her husband. It says here that he died of hypoglycemia on a hike. It’s not like she was with him to feed him a poisonous mushroom or tip him off a convenient cliff or something. I just don’t see how this can be murder.” Kyra looked apologetic for raining on my parade.

I chewed on my lower lip. She had a point. But the idea had seemed so
right
when it hit me. It couldn’t be coincidence that Elena and Catherine had been together when each of their husbands died nonnatural deaths.

“It could be coincidence,” Kyra argued, as if reading my thoughts. “They’re best friends. They spend a lot of time together. They’re probably more likely to be with each other than with anyone else other than their hubbies or kids.”

“But doesn’t it strike you as unlikely that two women in their fifties would both lose their husbands under unusual circumstances—to say the least—while in each other’s company?”

Kyra smoothed a ruffle on her black and red tiered skirt. “It’s unlikely that two sisters-in-law would have their husbands assassinated, but it happened to Jackie and Ethel Kennedy.”

“That’s different! The Kennedys are jinxed. The surprise is that only two of them were assassinated.”

“Your chances of being hit by lightning are only one in three thousand or so over the course of your entire life, but there’s one guy, a park ranger, who was hit seven times. I read it in a bathroom reader.”

“We’re not talking about lightning.”

“I’m just saying that statistics don’t prove jack. Besides, you don’t
know
that the Lang woman was with Elena Porter, do you?”

“No,” I admitted, my brain working furiously to come up with a way of finding out. Asking Catherine Lang or Elena Porter didn’t sound like a good bet. Nor did asking Detective Helland to fish around in a closed case file from another jurisdiction. An idea came to me. “But I think I have a way to find out.”

Aileen Lang-Quincy agreed to meet me in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C., that night when I called the number I found for Lang Enterprises. Her secretary had been reluctant to put me through, but when I said it concerned Wilfred Lang’s death, Aileen Lang-Quincy came on the line and allotted me a few minutes before a company banquet. Driving toward D.C., I was glad to be headed into the city at rush hour and not toward the burbs like the poor commuters caught in a six-mile back-up near the Dale City exit. Traffic was moving so smoothly I abandoned my plan of taking the Metro in from the Springfield station and drove straight into Georgetown, lucking into a metered spot only four blocks from the hotel.

I’d taken the time to change into a cream-colored silk blouse and a pair of black wool slacks and topped them with a Burberry coat left over from my premilitary life, so the doorman at the Four Seasons didn’t spare me a glance when I walked in. I settled on one of the fawn-colored settees in front of a marble fireplace where Aileen Lang-Quincy and I had agreed to meet. On the mantle, elegant calla lilies graced white vases. Guests in formal wear—here for the banquet?—made bright splotches against the lobby’s monochromatic palette.