Shot Through Velvet (38 page)

“Possible. Her alibi is just her kids asleep in bed. Husband works nights and wasn’t home that night. But I don’t really see it,” Armstrong said. “If Blythe killed him, she woulda been more direct. Like those scissors she threw. She would have stabbed him and said to hell with it. Woulda called it self-defense.”

“Blythe wouldn’t have polluted the dye tub with Gibbs either,” Lacey said, putting a fork to her steaming cheese omelet. “And then there’s the velvet.”

Armstrong looked puzzled. “The velvet?”

“She loved it. She wouldn’t have ruined it,” Lacey said. “She was all about the fabric. It was her art.”

“You might have a point,” he conceded. “Hadn’t thought about that.”

“Why is he focusing on the women?” Lacey asked.

“Caine doesn’t see a guy throwing Rod in the dye vat. Simple as that. Says that’s the kind of wacky thing a woman might do.”

Lacey slapped her forehead. Vic chuckled into his eggs Benedict. “And men don’t do wacky things? Give me a break! What about your wacky Dirk Sykes and his Ghost Taxi? And that little scene he put on at the funeral?”

“You got me there, ma’am. In fact, I think Sykes has got much more of a motive for the killing,” Armstrong said. “He lost his wife and his boat to Gibbs. Men kill for that kind of thing all the time.” Lacey stared at him. He caught her look. “I know what y’all’re thinking. Yeah, I’d like to beat Rod to a pulp for what he did to Honey. Many’s the time. But she always held me back. She always said blood begets blood.” Armstrong focused on his brunch and bit into a sausage. “I’m not sorry he’s dead, though I am a little pissed he’s causing us all so damn much trouble. Just like Rod Gibbs to leave a big old mess in his wake. No pun intended.”

“The forensics guys find anything?” Vic sipped his coffee. “Like blood evidence?”

Armstrong lifted his head and laughed. “Velvet factory lit up like a Christmas tree with blood evidence! You shoulda seen it. Looked like a bloodbath. It drove the forensic techs crazy. Turns out lots of folks have shed blood in that factory.”

“Like Dirk Sykes.” Lacey remembered the scar on his face, the one he said the ladies liked.

“Yeah, poor old Sykes was one of many. I don’t know how many different blood traces they found. All over the damn building. You got twenty years of semi-cleaned-up industrial accidents to account for, bloody accidents. Plus lots of bleach and rust and chemicals of every description. Some of the dyes they used there for the velvet are organic, and you know there’s dye splattered all over the place. False positives up the wazoo. Drove the crime scene guys nuts.”

“And Rod Gibbs?” Vic asked. “Was his blood confined to the dye house?”

“Looks like,” Armstrong said. “He bled some around the vat, a bit of spray on the wall, and he bled out in the tub. There may have been some blood spray on the killer’s clothes and hands, but that’s probably all gone now. It’s not like on the TV shows. Forensics don’t always figure it all out for you.”

“What about the ribbon in the coffin?” Lacey said.

Armstrong shook his head. “That just gave us more questions. No answers. They didn’t find a damn thing on the ribbon. Not like the perp spit on it or signed his name on it or anything helpful like that. And the coffin has every fingerprint in the whole damn county. No help there.”

“You happen to focus on Kira Evans?” Vic said.

“Kira?” Armstrong’s eyes narrowed. “That scared little rabbit? What do you think she knows?”

“Maybe she’s got a reason to be scared,” Lacey said. “She filed that sexual harassment complaint against Gibbs.”

“Her and about two dozen other women, including Inez Garcia. Kira was just the latest. You think she got even with him?” Armstrong looked skeptical. “I interviewed her that day y’all found the body, and she had an alibi. Home with her daughter. Caine looked at her, sure, but she’s not on the top of anybody’s list.”

Vic turned to Turtledove. “Any luck finding her, Forrest?”

“No, she’s not home. It’s a little unusual. Her normal pattern on Sundays, I’m told, is to go to the Methodist church in the morning and stay home in the afternoon with her kid. Unless there’s some school-related thing going on. But the neighbors say she went away last night, told them she’d be gone for a few days. They’re feeding her dog. Hercules.”

Thank goodness for the dog,
Lacey thought. At least they knew for sure Kira was gone.

“Do they know where she went?” Vic pulled out his iPhone and tapped something into it.

“Family,” Turtledove said. “She’s got a brother up in Arlington. I’m working on an address.”

“What about her daughter?” Lacey asked.

“The kid went with her. Seems she likes to go to Tyson’s Corner and shop.” Turtledove smiled. “She’s a teenager.”

“If y’all really want to talk to Kira, let me ask Honey about Kira’s brother,” Armstrong said. “She might know.”

“I didn’t get the feeling they were friends,” Lacey said.

“They weren’t enemies. Honey knew what Rod was like. She supported Kira after she heard about the harassment complaint. That’s when Honey moved out.”

“Honey knew about that?”

“Small town.” Armstrong grimaced. “You don’t really think Kira had something to do with Rod’s death? Now, Inez, she’s a much more likely suspect. Kira’d faint at her own shadow.”

“We just want to talk to her,” Lacey said. “And her shadow.”

Chapter 35

“Kira gave this to me yesterday.” Nicholson met them at the velvet factory. “It doesn’t really help anything, now that he’s dead, except to give me some peace of mind. I was right.”

On his desk was a file detailing Rod Gibbs’s illicit activities that Kira Evans had tracked for him. But Nicholson didn’t know where she was today. He didn’t know where Kira’s brother lived. Vic told Nicholson they’d be in touch.

Blythe Harrington was busy at home, doing her laundry. She claimed she didn’t know anything about the others’ whereabouts. She added that she minded her own business. But she admitted Agent Caine had spoken to her on at least three occasions.

“I don’t know what he thinks I know, but I put up with him,” Blythe said, “because it’s my civic duty. Nosiest man I ever saw.” Blythe hadn’t seen Kira, but said she hoped the woman was getting some rest, because she looked really beat down these days.

Honey Gibbs was at home, paintbrush in hand, touching up the front hall of her big house. “I don’t know what the heck Rod was doing in this house. Playing football or something. Look at this: black streaks! That man!” Honey shook her head and covered up one streak with a swipe of the brush.

She told Lacey that at first she didn’t care who killed Rod—she was just happy her nightmare was over. But now Honey would like it all to be cleared up so she could get Agent Caine off her case and “off Gavin’s ass.” She was sorry, but she didn’t know who actually killed Rod or who dropped a ribbon in his casket. She didn’t know where Kira’s brother lived. She asked Lacey and Vic what they thought about a pale peach color for her dining room. She was busily painting over every last trace of Rod Gibbs when they left.

Vic and Lacey found Sykes at Inez’s place, watching basketball on TV. They seemed happy together and without a care in the world. Inez said she was going to think about being unemployed “tomorrow, like Scarlett O’Hara.” Sykes didn’t know anything about Kira’s family or her whereabouts, but he said Hank Richards was out at Lake Anna, visiting the
Gypsy Princess
.

 

“Don’t say I never take you to nice places,” Vic cracked as they threaded their way down a narrow muddy trail between piles of greasy auto parts in the junkyard just down the road from Black Martin.

“It’s homey. I like it,” Lacey said as she stepped carefully to avoid slush-filled ruts, clusters of rusted fenders, and towering mounds of engines and transmissions. “At this rate, Vic, you are going to owe me a serious night on the town. I’m talking glitz, glamour, dressing up, and dancing. No dive bars and definitely no junkyards.”

“Ah, if only women would tell us what they
really
want.”

They found Wade Dinwiddy in the front room of the old mobile home that served as the junkyard’s office, sound asleep and with his mouth open, on a tattered red plush backseat ripped out of an ancient Cadillac. His snores were making an awful
chuck-chuck
sound. Lacey thought he might be choking to death. Vic tapped the man’s foot with his boot. Wade woke with a start, tried to clamber to his feet, slipped, and fell back on the makeshift sofa.

“What the hell?” The barely awake Wade shook his head and rubbed his face. He peered up at Lacey and Vic through squinted eyes. “Aw, hell. Now what do you want?”

“Why, just to say hello,” Vic said.

“Nice place you got here.” Lacey gazed at a mountain of grimy hubcaps piled behind the office’s plywood counter. The counter itself was glazed with grease. It held a greasy phone and computer monitor, a take-out container with a half-eaten submarine sandwich, and a couple of open Coke cans. Large metal shelves behind it were stuffed with auto parts: batteries, starters, alternators, old car stereos and speakers. Lacey wrinkled her nose at the aromas of oil, dirt, and gasoline.

Wade looked around and nodded. “Yeah, it’s one of the best. Biggest junkyard in the county,” he said with something like pride. “But I take it this ain’t no social call.”

“We just want to talk,” Vic said. “We’re not the cops.”

“But we hear the state cops are looking at you for Rod’s murder,” Lacey said.

“Dumb-asses. Wasting their time, and so are you. All I know is I got my head cracked open that night.”

“Did you see a doctor?” Lacey asked. “For your head?”

He scratched at a dirty bandage on the back of his head. “Yeah, workers’ comp. Thanks for the tip on that, by the way. Got five stitches and the doc gave me some good pain pills for the headache.”

“Did you remember anything? About that night, or anything else?” Vic asked.

“Nope.” Now Wade scratched his nose. “I musta been out cold pretty much the whole time. I don’t know why they’re hasslin’ me over Rod. I didn’t kill him. I ain’t saying we was blood brothers or nothing like that, but he never done nothing to me. I’d share a bottle with him anytime. I liked him okay, I guess.”

He’d like anyone who bought him a drink,
Lacey assumed. As if he could read her thoughts, he staggered up from the Caddy’s backseat and grabbed one of the open cans of Coke. He took a long swallow and belched.

“The way I sees it,” Wade went on, “whoever killed Rod wasn’t someone dirty and low-class, like me. That’s what the cops think. I know it. They think just ’cause I’m a dirty drunk I could maybe be a killer too. But they got it all wrong. It was someone who hated Rod and thought
he
was dirt. Someone high and mighty, like Rod always thought he was.”

“Who might that high-and-mighty killer be?” Vic asked.

Wade scrunched up his face, thinking. He took another slug of the Coke. “Don’t rightly know. But I think it was someone real afraid of him. Like this dog—we had a dog here oncet. Little yellow thing. Cute. Not a real good junkyard dog, she was afraid of most everything. But you push that little yellow dog too far? Why, she’d go crazy on you, biting and snarling. Go after a big dog twice her size. Wouldn’t let go. Scare a body to death, she would. Person who killed Rod was like that little dog. Just got pushed too far.”

Wade turned his attention to the half-eaten submarine sandwich on the counter. He picked it up with grease-stained hands and took a big bite. Lacey watched the black sludge caked under every single one of his fingernails and permanently lost her appetite for submarine sandwiches. The phone on the counter rang, as black with grease as Wade’s fingers, and he commenced telling the caller all about which starter motor fit which Ford pickup. Vic and Lacey exchanged a look and left the office.

“What do you think of the Little Yellow Dog Theory?” Lacey asked Vic as they picked their way back to the Jeep through the mud, snow, grease, and precarious piles of chromed bumpers.

“I think it’s old Wade’s crowning intellectual achievement. But you really think he’s talking about Kira Evans? She’s more like a frightened chipmunk. Could a chipmunk fit the Little Yellow Dog Theory?”

“Maybe. Maybe Wade’s not quite as dumb as he looks.”

 

An hour north of Richmond they detoured west off I-95 to Lake Anna, to find the place where Gibbs had kept the
Blue Devil
, née
Gypsy Princess
. It was a vast lake, with hundreds of hidden coves and inlets, and scores of marinas and private boat docks. Lacey was amazed at its size. She had imagined a tidy little round lake, but Lake Anna wandered through the Virginia woods for miles in every direction. One wrong turn sent them straight into Lake Anna State Park. They parked the Jeep at the closed visitors’ center and stretched their legs on the boardwalk along the little sandy beach, partly hidden under snow, while Vic tried to make Sykes’s directions match the GPS map on his iPhone.

They weren’t far off course. It was a little off the beaten path, and Sykes had left out a few turns that were probably obvious to the locals. They finally found the small private dock, near the Lake Anna Marina on Sturgeon Creek, south of the state park. The gate was open and there was a pickup truck parked at the end of the gravel road. Lacey stepped out of the Jeep. She breathed in the cool pine-scented air on the breeze coming off the lake. It would be some time before the other trees leafed out, but at the moment it was a serene winter landscape, snow still on the ground, right down to the water. The sun was sinking toward the low hills west of the lake, lighting the smoke-colored clouds with brilliant oranges and pinks.

No wonder the factory guys in Black Martin wanted to own a piece of this place
.

Vic caught sight of the boat first. The
Blue Devil
was sitting on her trailer beneath an open-sided shelter down by the water, where she was stored for the winter. A couple of other boats sat nearby. The big blue tarp was half off. Behind the wheel with a beer in his hand sat Hank Richards. With his shaggy blond hair and beard, he looked like a New Age hippie Viking in a puffy down parka.