Dolled Up to Die (19 page)

Octavia objected to being loaded into the pet carrier, objected to the ride, objected to Mr. Ledbetter peering into the cage when Cate carried it into the house. Objections expressed in yowls and snarls that would do justice to a lion protesting a toenail manicure.

Inside the house, Cate, wary of Octavia’s reaction, didn’t immediately turn her loose. She did a quick house inspection herself.

The house truly was a cat wonderland, but it was also a great house for Cate. She was going to love living here! A spacious master bedroom. A second bedroom as a guest room. And the third bedroom she could set up as an office for Belmont Investigations business. Refrigerator with ice maker. Sleek granite countertops. Double sinks in the master bath. Hmm. She’d never mentioned that to Mr. Ledbetter, and now all he said was a tactful, “I thought they might be useful at some time.”

Finally, when Octavia’s yowls had fallen to a lower decibel level, she unhooked the latch on the pet carrier.

To Cate’s surprise, Octavia stopped yowling and stepped out of the carrier with queenly poise. She sniffed around for a while and then climbed the carpeted pole that connected to the overhead walkway. She prowled the walkway through the openings cut through the walls, jumped to the window seat, and gleefully attacked a rope in her screened-in playroom. She also eyed the steel-brushed refrigerator expectantly. Octavia liked her cat food from a can, not running around on teensy-tiny mouse feet.

Hands tucked behind him, Mr. Ledbetter followed the cat’s progress through the house. This was the first time he’d
actually met Octavia person-to-cat. “Do you think she’d like a TV in her sunroom?”

“Octavia isn’t really into TV.” There was an aquarium show that sometimes interested her, but Cate figured the cat could watch that on one of the other TVs. Mr. Ledbetter had already told her she could buy as many as she needed, along with whatever other furniture she wanted. All furnished by the estate.

Finally, after Octavia curled up on the window seat, he asked, “Do you think she likes the house?”

“I’d say she definitely gives it a cat thumbs-up.”

Surprisingly, now out of the cage, Octavia also seemed to approve of Mr. Ledbetter. She jumped down from the window seat and wound around his legs, rubbed her head on his shoe, and left a few souvenir white hairs on his dark suit. Hands still behind him, he leaned over to take a better look as she batted at his shoestrings.

“She really is deaf?”

“As a stump.” Cate eyed Octavia. “But if she were a person, I think she’d have made an excellent private investigator.” Maybe even a lawyer.

“Perhaps I’ll suggest to Mrs. Ledbetter that we should have a cat,” the lawyer said in a thoughtful tone.

After he left, Cate reloaded cat into carrier, and carrier into backseat of car. “You’re a cat kiss up,” she stated. Octavia, who always knew when she was being talked to even if she couldn’t hear, made a comfortable
mrrow
of agreement. “But I have to admit you’re an excellent ambassador for cat ownership.”

Cate was just slipping into the front seat of the car when a roar stopped her.

Not a kitty roar.

A motorcycle with headlight blazing growled to a stop
behind her car. Panic attack. Rolf had figured out she’d seen him behind the curtain at the Mystic Mirage. He’d tracked her here and now—

Hey, wait, the handlebars on this machine weren’t ape hanger high like those on Rolf’s bike. Nor was this Rolf taking off a rainbow-streaked helmet and shaking out a headful of dark hair.

She got out of the car. “Mitch!”

He stepped back from the bike with gold specks glinting in the depths of deep purple. “What do you think?” He looked at the big machine with pride of ownership.

“I know you said you were thinking about getting one, but I guess I didn’t think you’d actually
do
it.”

“I was at the dealer’s when you called.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you to pick
purple.
” Mitch had never struck her as a purple kind of guy. To find purple depths in him was rather disconcerting.

“It isn’t exactly purple,” Mitch objected. “I think they call it Night Wine.”

“It’s purple.”

The motorcycle had a big windshield, a big trunk, and big saddlebags. The seat was on two levels, so a passenger sat at a slightly higher level behind the driver. Chrome gleamed everywhere.

Beautiful, in a Darth Vader, death-rocket kind of way.

“What’s next?” Cate asked. “A wardrobe of black leather? A tattoo?”

“In the bikers’ world, those are tatts.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“No tatts. And that’s a very—” Mitch broke off and scowled at her. “What’s a word that means something like ageist or racist, except it’s about stereotyping guys with motorcycles?”

“Bike-ist?”

“Okay. Bike-ist. You’re being bike-ist. Very judgmental, to say nothing of snarky, about someone with a motorcycle. Owning and riding a bike is not a character flaw.”

No?

“I don’t think I’m expert enough to offer you a ride yet. This is a way bigger bike than the one I had back in college.”

Cate squelched a snarky comment about how devastated she was not to get a ride this very minute.

“I have to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles now and get a motorcycle endorsement on my driver’s license.”

The snark rose again. “Are you sure they’ll let you do that without tatts and black leather? Maybe a biker babe on the back?”

“Bike-ist.”

Okay, maybe she was, she had to admit. Her personal experience with bikers—the one who’d tried to kill her, plus probable killer Rolf Wildrider, and memory of that biker gang that had taken up residence when she was a kid in Gold Hill—had not left warm, fuzzy impressions. And weren’t there statistics about how many more deaths there were per motorcycle miles than car miles?

“Maybe I’m worried about you, charging around on this . . . Purple Rocket.”

“I worry about
you
, charging around getting into PI trouble.”

Was that a stalemate? The jingle of the cell phone in Cate’s pocket interrupted, and, still eying the motorcycle, she answered it without checking the caller ID.

“Hi. This is Kim Kieferson. I’m returning a call someone made a little earlier? An investigator who had an appointment with my mother?”

Kim sounded more little-girl-lost than sophisticated trophy wife. Cate wasn’t about to go softhearted, however. This was the woman who had stolen Jo-Jo’s husband.

“Yes, I called.” Cate explained the appointment with Celeste without revealing any specifics about when or even if it took place. “Dr. Chandler indicated she was thinking about having someone investigated, and I’d like to talk to you about who it might be. It may have a connection with her death.”

“Are you with the police?”

“No, I’m a private investigator. No police connection.” Cate thought that information might end the conversation right there, but Kim surprised her.

“I don’t want to talk to the police anymore. They make me feel . . . awful. Like I’m guilty of something. Like I’m not being truthful.”

Cate heard an unspoken cry behind the words. A cry that said that even if Kim didn’t want to talk to the police, she wanted to talk to
someone
. Cate was reminded of what Rolf had said about Kim having no family, and what LeAnne had said about her being so dependent on her mother.

“I can come over any time that’s convenient for you,” Cate said. “Right now, in fact. I just have to take my cat home first.”

Cate glanced up at Mitch and put her hand over the phone. “I won’t need backup for this.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay. But call if you need me.” Mitch slapped the rainbow helmet over his head and fastened the chinstrap. “I know you didn’t mean it as a compliment, but I like your Purple Rocket name.” He gave the bike a good-boy pat.

Good, dependable Mitch. He might not approve of her PI activities, but he’d be there, backing her up if she needed him. She supposed the least she could do was try not to be so bike-ist.

“At least the motorcycle doesn’t have ape hangers,” she said.

“Ape hangers?” he repeated, obviously with no idea what she was talking about.

She felt a little smug knowing something about motorcycles that he didn’t. “Look it up.” She blew him a kiss. “Love the helmet.”

“There’s a matching one for you in the trunk.”

 16 

Cate dropped Octavia off at the house and drove out to Riverwalk Loop. There was a number pad at the wrought-iron gate to the Ice Cube, but, as Kim had instructed, she spoke into the black box, and Kim opened the gate from the house. Cate parked behind the flashy Mustang convertible and consoled herself by thinking that her old Honda probably got much better gas mileage.

The double front doors of the house were glass, but a shade was pulled over them, and Cate couldn’t see Kim until she opened the door. She had a Marilyn Monroe aura about her, beautiful and voluptuous, but also vulnerable and a little fragile in a pink sweat suit and old brown socks that looked as if they might have been Ed’s. Her toe stuck out of a hole in the left sock. But it was a nicely manicured toe.

“Were you at the vet with your cat?” Kim clutched the door as if she needed it for support. “You said you had to take it home.”

“I was showing her the new house where we’ll be living before long.”

“That’s nice,” Kim said, as if showing a house to a cat was something everyone did. Her gaze roamed the high ceiling of the room, as if she were wondering how a cat might view it.

Cate’s gaze followed. The ceiling was solid, not glass. No looking up at the undersides of feet overhead. Good thinking. The statistics on the house at the tax assessor’s office had said there was an indoor pool and a temperature-controlled wine room. She’d kind of like to have a tour.

Kim lifted her arms. “I’ve always loved this house. But now, with Ed gone, it’s . . . different.” Her arms wrapped around her midsection. “I’m always cold.” Could eyes shiver? Her blue eyes seemed to.

Kim led the way into a living room so large that it was divided into several sections by furniture arrangements, each with its own color-coordinated scheme. Three TVs, one enormous, two only semi-enormous. Light streamed through the upper third of the glass window-walls, but shades that rolled up from the bottom gave the room a peculiar underwater feeling. Yet, if the shades were down, sitting here where every passerby on the street could see inside would be very fishbowl-ish.

When she was rich, Cate decided, she wouldn’t have a glass house. Although she might go for a Mustang convertible.

Kim motioned Cate to a white leather sofa in the purple-and-white geographical region. She sat down herself, then jumped up as if instructions on being a good hostess had just kicked in. “Would you like something to drink? There’s Pepsi or 7UP or wine. Pinot noir and chardonnay, I think. That’s the kind of grapes the vineyard grows. Or Snapple or V8 juice? But no coffee. I never could figure out that stupid coffee machine!” She slammed a purple pillow into the sofa, as if pillow or coffeemaker were to blame for all her troubles. “Ed always made our coffee. I haven’t had any since he’s been . . . gone.”

Instructions for operating a coffee machine didn’t come with the Trophy Wife Instruction Kit?

Cate gave herself a mental kick. Kim was trying to be nice. She looked as if she’d been crying, although that hadn’t turned her face all red and blotchy, the way it did Cate’s. Only a hint of blue shadows around her eyes darkened her peachy skin.

“Nothing for me, thanks,” Cate said. Although she had some doubts about Celeste Chandler’s character, the woman
was
Kim’s mother, and Cate offered her sympathies. “I’m so sorry about your mother. I know what a difficult time this must be for you. I think losing a mother is one of the worst events of our lives. Especially when she was still so young.”

Kim blinked and nodded. Her voice was scratchy when she said, “Thank you.”

Trying to look professional, Cate got out her notebook and placed it on her lap. She couldn’t think quite how to get started, but, unexpectedly, Kim made the first move.

“You said you had an appointment with my mother?”

“Yes, that’s right. Had your mother mentioned it to you?”

Kim shook her head. “She hadn’t said anything, but I’ve been thinking ever since you called, and I may know what the appointment was about.”

“Oh?”

“I think she was considering having my ex-husband investigated.”

Cate had been expecting Kim to say her mother wanted Rolf Wildrider investigated in relation to Ed’s death, and now she felt as if some new and ominous figure had peered out of the shadows.

“Why would she do that?”

“It’s kind of a long story?” Kim made a question of the statement, as if she were doubtful about taking up Cate’s time.

“I have plenty of time,” Cate assured her.

“Okay. Well, Travis, that was my husband, just walked out on me. Not a word where he was going, and I never heard from him again after he left.”

“Did anyone else have contact with him?”

“I asked a friend once, and he said he didn’t know anything. But most of Travis’s friends would rather lie than tell the truth any day. Travis used to talk about going down to South America. He said he wanted to live where there weren’t so many rules and regulations. So I thought maybe he’d done that. Although sometimes I did think he might be dead. He lived kind of a . . . reckless life.”

Cate had a sudden intuition. “Was he into motorcycles?”

“Oh yeah. He never could hold a job for long, but he was good at buying and selling and trading bikes. I got fired from the only job I ever had because Travis came in and accused the guy I worked for of groping me. Which he never had. But Travis punched him and smashed the windows of his car with a tire iron.”

“Did you try to locate him after he left?”

“No. Marrying Travis was the biggest mistake of my life. Mom practically begged me not to marry him, even if I was pregnant. And she was right, of course. He had a terrible temper. He put a fist through our apartment wall one time and threw a frying pan through a window. He shot up a bunch of beer bottles right in our backyard. The cops came, and they told him to get rid of the gun or else. He did, but he got another one right away, of course.”

Rolf had been right. Travis was a bad dude. A follow-up thought was,
It takes one to know one.
Maybe the question here was, who was the baddest dude?

“Mom said I was lucky I lost the baby too, because that meant I could get on with my life. But I never really felt that way.” Kim touched her abdomen as if regret for the emptiness
still lingered. “Then, after Travis took off, I moved here to live with Mom and met Ed. The lawyer had to do the divorce some special way, since I didn’t even know where Travis was.”

Kim may have had a rough life with Travis, and losing her mother was also hard on her, but Cate wasn’t about to offer instant sympathy. “But Ed was married. You knew that, didn’t you?”

“It bothered me, but Mom knew some people who knew Ed, and she told me they said his wife was naggy and mean and money hungry, and they were about to split up anyway.”

An actual account of what the people had said, or a little tweaking by Celeste? Although, even if Kim believed what Celeste told her, that didn’t make involvement with a married man morally defensible.

“What kind of marriage did you and Ed have?”

“We were fine. Very happy.” Then faint lines cut between Kim’s eyebrows, as if an unexpected streak of honesty made her reconsider that instant response. “Of course he was busy and had a lot on his mind. The restaurant and vineyard and everything. And we, um . . . well, he was a lot older. He didn’t like dancing and I didn’t like golf. I didn’t like watching boxing or football on TV, and he didn’t like figure skating. I love Mexican food, but it bothered his stomach.”

Had Ed Kieferson also discovered there were flaws in trophy wife acquisition?

Kim wiggled the toe sticking out of the brown sock. “Sometimes I even wondered . . .”

“Wondered?”

“If maybe he wished he’d stayed married to Jo-Jo.” The wrinkle across her forehead deepened, but she determinedly straightened her back. “But mostly we were happy. Very happy.”

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

“Were there money problems?” Cate asked.

“He never said I shouldn’t spend so much on the house or yard or clothes or anything.” Kim’s vague wave took in the expensive furnishings and probably that strange sculpture outside. “But from what the lawyers and accountant are telling me now, yes. Big money problems. I think Ed was just too considerate to tell me.”

Or afraid she’d burn rubber taking off in the Mustang if she knew the money supply was fizzling out?

“What will you do now?”

“I don’t know. Mom said we could keep things going after Ed’s death. I always thought the wedding business out at Lodge Hill was interesting. When I was a teenager, I used to dream about a huge, beautiful wedding. I was always cutting out pictures of wedding gowns and articles about what food to serve at the reception, who stood where in a receiving line, all that kind of stuff. I had lots of weddings for my Barbie and Ken.”

Kim leaned her head back and closed her eyes, as if she longed to go back to those days. She didn’t say it, but somehow Cate doubted Kim’s wedding to bad-dude Travis had lived up to those fantasies.

“Did you and Ed get married at Lodge Hill?” she asked.

“No, we flew down to Vegas. I thought maybe, after awhile, he’d let me take over running the wedding business. I gave him a few hints. But I never wanted to be involved with the restaurant or vineyard. No way. And now . . .” She lifted her shoulders as if she had no idea what to do with them.

Cate started to say that Rolf was there to run the vineyard, but, under the circumstances, Rolf might not be running anything for long.

“What about the Mystic Mirage?”

“Mom handpicked everything for the store. She knew all
about tarot cards and incense and astrology stuff. But some of it makes me feel . . .” Kim wiggled on the sofa as if she’d like to squirm out from under the weight of the Mystic Mirage. “Uncomfortable, I guess. Once a woman came in and said we were flirting with demons with the witchcraft books.” Kim gave a nervous tinkle of laughter, as if she were embarrassed to be giving that kind of thinking any credibility.

“Did you ever do that regression thing into past lives with your mother?”

“She wouldn’t do it with me. I never knew why.”

Maybe because Celeste knew it was all a big, fat phony?

Back to the husband before Ed. Kim hadn’t really answered Cate’s question about why Celeste may have been thinking about investigating Travis. Cate repeated the question.

“I think Travis called the store one time. I was there. Mom said the caller was an annoying salesman, but I just had this, I don’t know,
feeling
it was him. I never let her know, but I called a friend back in Tigard to ask if he’d been around there. My friend said yes, and that he’d been asking about me.” As something of an afterthought, she added, “And Mom.”

“So the friend told him where you were?”

“No. She was suspicious even though he said he needed to find me because my name was on the title of some old pickup he owned. But someone else could have told him.”

“Do you think Travis could have killed your mother?” Cate asked bluntly.

She thought the abrupt question might shock Kim, but Kim clasped her hands together and almost primly said, “The thought has occurred to me.”

“Why would he do it?”

Kim’s fingers worried a half inch of purple thread hanging from a seam on the pillow. “Mom and Travis never got along. As I said, she didn’t want me to marry him. And she
was so right. He never actually hit me, but I-I kept thinking he was going to. He broke some guy’s elbow when they got in a fight. I know he made money buying and selling bikes, but sometimes it seemed as if he must be getting more somewhere else.”

“Doing something illegal?”

“Probably.”

“Was he into drugs?”

“I never knew him to use anything, but maybe that was just because I was dumb and naïve. He laughed about some guy he knew who made meth right in his kitchen. I always wondered if Travis helped sell the stuff.”

“Did your mother know about his possible connection with drugs?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

They sat in silence for several moments, Kim’s expression pensive.

“Could you tell me more about your mother?”