“What do you have?” she asked Bailey on Monday morning.
“A lot, but you won’t like it,” he said. “Just starting, you understand, but still, it doesn’t look great for your client.”
He slouched into a chair as she left her desk to sit on the sofa. Shelley was in the other chair with her notebook out.
“Okeydokey,” Bailey said. “First, all those Wenzel alibis check out so far. Can’t find a crack. The cops looked there first and did a good job.”
Barbara was scowling at him. He shrugged. “Just reporting. The bartender, Mickey Truelove, took Carrie’s glass and tips to the office just as she was coming from the dressing room about ten after twelve. When she left, he took the glass to the kitchen. Mickey said the younger Wenzel boy, Gregory, has a key to one of the rooms, one he keeps, and now and then he takes a girl there, but not that night. Confirmed by the maid. Gregory still lives at home, and he’s still playing the field. Older son Luther is married, stable, starting a family, churchgoer, the whole virtuous works. He’s never been known to have used that room.”
He consulted his notes, then continued. “The couple who saw her walking toward the rear of the parking lot, nothing there. He’s a computer geek out at Symantec. She’s a medical technician at Sacred Heart Hospital. They saw her walking, Wenzel following, got in their car and left. The other couple, married five years, with a two-year-old son. He’s a sound engineer at a radio station, she’s a stay-at-home mom. They saw her at Wenzel’s door, talking to him, then saw her go in and close the door.”
He glanced at Barbara and said, “If your face freezes like that, you’ll be sorry.”
“I don’t worry about eyewitnesses,” she muttered.
“She’s pretty distinctive. Black skirt, white blouse, that long black hair. They seem pretty positive.”
“What about the company? Another blank?”
“Just about. Larry and Joe Wenzel started from scratch down in California, saved, worked hard and made good. Joe took a leave of absence to go to business school in 1972, and in ’75 they moved the business to Eugene, where they’ve done fine. Their motto is ‘We Do It All,’ and they do, from buying the land to finishing whatever. They built this complex you’re in, in fact. Good work, no complaints. It’s a respected company, they’ve always had a lot of work lined up until the downturn in the economy. Strip malls, apartments, office buildings, a church or two, but mostly commercial projects. Featured in national magazines a couple of times for innovative design, and so on.”
He grinned at the expression on her face. “It gets a little more interesting.”
“It better, or you can take a hike for all the good you’re doing.”
“The brothers are as different as bottled water and pond murk. Larry’s stable, married forever to one woman, two sons, pillar of the community type. Joe’s a case,” he said. “Or was, I should say. Three-time loser in the marriage game. No kids. Three exes. He had two passions, gambling and music.”
Barbara sat up straighter. “What about music?”
“Rock. He followed bands around and taped them. One of the biggest tape collections known before the house burned. And he was a real horse nut, Hialeah, Churchill Downs, Pimlico, even England, Epsom Downs.”
“What do you mean? Bet on races?”
“Not just that. Followed them to Miami, Kentucky, New York. Three, four, five times a year he took off for weeks at a time. Horse races or else Vegas, even Monte Carlo. It raises an interesting question.”
“When did he work?”
“That’s the question. The company built the new headquarters back in ’92, and although wife Nora has an office, curiously they forgot to put in an office for brother Joe.”
“Where did he get money?”
“He was on full salary until the day he died.”
Barbara leaned back and drew in a breath. “Now that is interesting,” she said. “How long did that go on?”
“Don’t know yet. Working on it.”
She thought a moment, then said, “The ex-wives. They’ll know something. Do you have their names, addresses?”
“Nope. Give me a day or two. They’ve probably all remarried by now. Want me to go after them?”
She shook her head. “I think that’s a job for Shelley and me. Anything else?”
“The fire roused some suspicion, but it died down. Electrical wire went sour, they say. No one home. It got out of hand before anyone reported it. And Joe’s signature at the safe-deposit box raised some suspicion, but it turns out that he was wearing a wrist brace and that accounts for it. Nothing there. The teller and the safe-deposit attendant made positive IDs.”
“No enemy list, anything like that?”
“Nothing real. He paid his debts when due and was a good tipper. I guess he figured easy come, easy go. He was a drunk, but he didn’t cause trouble with it, except for women, and they just shied away from him for the most part, except those he paid. I think the cops figure the missing thousand bucks was to buy himself a new girlfriend.”
“Keep digging into the family, company, finances, house help, whoever you can get to talk about them.” She told him what little she had learned from Stuart Colbert. “So last we know, Frederick was in Virginia heading for Boston. See if you can dig out anything from the agency and the caseworker. Just a last name for her, Bergstrom, in Terre Haute, twenty-four years ago. She may be dead by now, and the case may be gone from the files.”
“Virginia,” he said. Now he was scowling. “Better than before. Then it was just back east somewhere. Barbara, tell me something. What difference does it make?”
“I wish I knew,” she said. “I don’t like blanks in my cases, and that’s a big one. No hospital record of her birth, just a home delivery by a midwife, who also could be dead by now, or has had three name changes.”
There were a few more details, then Bailey saluted and ambled out.
“What do you want me to do?” Shelley asked after Bailey left.
Barbara’s first thought was: You’ve done quite enough, but she did not voice it. Anyone who had heard her father argue a case would know that Shelley hadn’t had a chance against him once he had decided to place Carrie in Darren’s apartment. “Not much to do yet, not until we get more information,” Barbara said. “I received a new packet from the D.A.’s office this morning. I’ll go over that and see if there’s anything worth following up on. When we get the ex-wives’ addresses, I’d like you to tackle the last two, and I’ll go after wife number one. Meanwhile, if you could go to Martin’s today, that would be helpful.”
“No problem,” Shelley said. “I know it’s early, but it does look bad, doesn’t it? I hate that. I like her.”
“It’s early,” Barbara agreed. She also agreed that it continued to look as bad as her first assessment had been. “Dad always advised that an attorney shouldn’t become attached to a client. One can break your heart.”
On Wednesday they had the names of the ex-wives, one in Seattle, one in Portland and one, Inez Carnero, in El Cajon, California. Barbara had to look it up on a map.
“I’ll take her, if you don’t want to,” Shelley said, regarding the map with Barbara. El Cajon was in the San Diego area and sure to be as hot as Arizona had been.
“Nope. A deal’s a deal. I’ll manage. Are you sure Alex won’t mind if you’re gone a couple of days?”
Shelley looked surprised and a little indignant at the question. “He knows what I do, and that I might be gone from time to time. He’d never interfere with my work. I think it might be easier for me to drive than fly. Labor Day on Monday, you know.”
Barbara was in a foul mood by the time she checked into a motel that Friday evening. She had been searched at the Eugene airport, again in San Francisco, had a bumpy airplane ride, and endured gridlock on the interstate from the San Diego terminal to El Cajon. An all-day trip from hell, she thought irritably. On Saturday she would talk to Inez Carnero, and on Sunday reverse her trip, and no doubt face the same kind of journey. Her room smelled of chemicals, and the air conditioner either blasted icy air or let the room get overheated.
She stripped off her clothes, showered, put on her swimsuit and went out to the pool. It was crowded and so heavily chlorinated that she lasted only a minute or two. Life in the fast lane, she told herself, heading back in for another shower.
Inez Carnero’s house was a neat little stucco hacienda with a wide overhang, two palm trees in the front yard and on the edge of a golf course that was miraculously green. Nothing else visible was green. Even the palm fronds were a dusky olive color.
Inez was a pretty woman not an inch over five feet tall, and to all appearances perfectly round. It was hard to tell because she was wearing a loose cotton print garment, splashed with red poppies, that reached her ankles. Her black hair was streaked with gray, done up in an elaborate coil with combs.
“Ms. Holloway? Come in. Come in,” she said. “You must be so hot, not used to our weather. And so overdressed.”
Barbara was wearing cotton pants and a short-sleeved shirt neatly tucked in. But she felt overdressed.
“I have a cold drink waiting for you,” Inez said, leading the way through a living room to a room at the back of the house. There was no air conditioning, but the room had a wall of windows all wide open, and a faint breeze wafted in bringing desert smells of heat and sand. The room was furnished with wicker chairs and a glider, a glass-topped table and a television. A big ceiling fan whirred and helped stir the air. A pitcher and two glasses were on the table, along with a cigar box.
Inez talked as she poured drinks for them both. “After you called, I got to thinking about Joe and the old days. I haven’t thought of that time in years. Like another life.” She handed Barbara a glass. “Try that, see if it doesn’t help.”
It did. It was pale green and frothy, with fruit juices that she could not identify, and it was delicious. “That’s good,” she said. “Thank you. And thank you for seeing me.”
“I read about his murder. Done by a woman. I always thought that some day a woman would finish him, and now…” She sighed. “What can I tell you?”
“I’m trying to fill in Joe’s past,” Barbara said. “How the brothers got started in business, things like that. You know they became very successful developers?”
“Yes. They were bound to, they were so hardworking, both of them, and smart. We all went to the same high school, sort of grew up together. Larry was older, and when he got out he went right to work, learning to be a carpenter. Then Joe graduated and joined him. We got married when he was twenty, and I was nineteen. Too young. That’s way too young. My girls did the same thing, married too young, but what can you do?”
Barbara sipped her drink and did not interrupt as Inez rambled on. Joe’s mother drowned in a boating accident when he was still in high school and his father took to drink, and a few years later drank himself to death. “I always thought that was what happened to him, being left so young, but I don’t know. Anyway, we had some good times, the four of us, Larry and Nora, Joe and me. We were poor, but it didn’t seem to matter so much then. And they were ambitious.”
They fixed up a house or two and sold them, and they met a man, H. L. Blount, who had a big pickup truck and helped them buy a piece of land to build a gas station and motel. “That was the start of the real business,” she said. “They worked on the truck, put in seats and a canopy, and even side covers that could be let down, against the sand, you know, and they’d go down across the border and bring back workers. Those Mexican men worked like slaves, and they did good work and were glad to get it. And that left Larry and Joe free to go look for other places to build on, and that’s how they began to get the business going. H.L. told them they were crazy to do the work themselves, they should hire it out and work as developers, and they did.
“I used to go down to Mexico with Joe once in a while. We’d park the truck and spend a day shopping and eating and then drive back the next day with the workers. Nora always went with Larry when it was his turn. She was a hustler, more than Larry even, right from the start. Her and H.L. did most of the planning, what to buy next, what to put on it, like that. After I talked with you, just remembering those days, the good times we had after it cooled off at night, drinking a little beer, singing, dancing, it seems like a dream. I found a box of pictures. You want to see them?” She opened the cigar box.
They spent the next hour looking at the pictures, with Inez talking about them. “That’s the first big job they did, the gas station and motel, out on Highway 79.” The buildings looked to be in a vast rocky desert.
“Out in the middle of nowhere?” Barbara asked.
“It was all desert back then,” Inez said, waving her hand to take in everything. “You’d never know from the way it’s built up now, but this, all of this was desert, with little tiny villages where there’s towns now, or maybe just a gas station, or not even that much, just a crossroad. Just desert and more desert, but they knew it would grow. H.L. knew it would all grow.”
She turned over another picture. “That’s the first truck they fixed up to haul workers. See—seats, a canopy. Here’s the four of us by the next truck they fixed up.”
She had been tiny, slender and delicate-looking and very pretty. Nora was a lot taller, with fair hair, also pretty. And the brothers were handsome and very alike, muscular, with dark wavy hair, big smiles. They were both armed. Larry had a rifle and Joe had a gun belt with a handgun.
“Did they always carry weapons?” Barbara asked.
“Always out on the desert and going down to Mexico. Banditos, rattlesnakes, gila monsters. No one ever bothered any of us, but you never knew, it was always a chance. You needed a gun out there. We all could shoot.” Then she said, “I don’t know if Joe would of shot anything, but he could shoot a target real good.”
“What do you mean? He wouldn’t have shot a snake or bandito?”
“He threw rocks at a rattler once and everyone was yelling to shoot it, but he wouldn’t. He drove it off. And he’d never watch movies with a lot of blood, anything like that. He was real gentle in those days. Strong as an ox, and gentle.” She turned over another picture.
There were many pictures of the four of them and their truck. Barbara held one of them. “Would you mind if I take one? Or I could get a copy made and return the original.”
“No. No. Just take it. I got plenty more. Here’s a big apartment they did. Isn’t it nice?”
She talked about some of the other jobs, then said dreamily, “Those early days, they were good. We’d sit around with the crew at night sometimes, and they’d play their guitars and sing, and Joe taped them and played it back. They liked that.”
“Who was managing the business end of it all?” Barbara asked when she paused.
“That was Nora and H.L. They got the permits and all that. He taught her a lot, I guess. He’d get the plans drawn up, and they’d go for the permits, and then he’d be gone for days or even weeks at a time. Scouting other jobs, I guess. Joe and Larry were going back and forth from one job to another to make sure things were going right. And we were going down for workers a lot, then taking them back. Sometimes they’d have three or four jobs going at once.”
When they finished the pictures, Barbara said, “No picture of H. L. Blount?”
Inez laughed. “He said he was camera shy. The camera would steal his soul. Isn’t that silly for an old man?”
“How old was he?”
“Then I thought he was old, now I’d say maybe forty-five. But I was young and he looked old to me.”
“What happened? Why did they give up a business that seemed to be doing so well?”
“I don’t know. One day Joe went to the job to wait for the workers. Larry and Nora went for them that time, and they said H.L. messed up. He always made the deals with the workers. But no one showed up at the pickup place that day, and they came back without anyone to do the work, and then they all got into a big fight. Joe wouldn’t tell me what it was about. Maybe not finishing the job on time, something like that. I just don’t know. The first real fight they ever had. We all quarreled sometimes—people do—but that was different. Then he said he wanted to go to school, to study business, and we went up to Los Angeles. It all happened so fast. One day everything was fine, then they fought, and the next week we were in Los Angeles.”
She gave one of her big sighs. “It didn’t work out. Joe began to drink a lot. We all drank beer before, down here most people do. But he began to drink a lot and he began to go after girls. He never did that before. We started to fight a lot, too, and we never did that before. Everything changed. And he went to rock concerts all over the state, hardly stayed at home, and when he was home he was studying or fooling around with his tapes. He wanted me to talk dirty. In bed, you know? Talk dirty.” She looked embarrassed. “I wasn’t brought up like that. I said what am I here for and came back home. I told him he knew where to find me if he straightened out, but he never came back. So I got a divorce, and met Juan and we got married and it worked out after all. Three beautiful daughters, four grandchildren. You never know what’s going to work out, do you?”
“I don’t think so,” Barbara said. “What about Larry? Did he continue the business down here after Joe went to school?”
She shook her head. “H.L. took off, too, after the big fight, and I guess Larry just finished the things he already started. And a couple of years later, they were all out of here.”
She emptied the pitcher into Barbara’s glass. “Do you want more? It won’t take a minute to mix up some more.”
Barbara glanced at her watch. Four o’clock. She had been with Inez for three hours. “Thanks, but no. I’ve already taken up too much of your time. You’ve been very kind and generous to talk to me. I appreciate it.”
“I liked it,” Inez said with a smile. “I haven’t thought of those years in a long time, and never talked to anyone about Joe. You don’t talk about your first husband with the second husband.”
Barbara had parked in the shade of a palm tree, but the shade had moved and the car was an inferno. She turned the fan on full blast and opened windows, then moved to another patch of shade and considered her next step. The thought of the motel for the evening was disheartening. Instead, she found a convenience store, bought a six-pack of water and headed east, out to the desert. She wanted to see what kind of country Joe and Larry had braved to become developers.
An hour later, she pulled over to the side of the road, contemplating the vista before her. Rocky, rough ground, mountainous, dun-colored, so hot and dry that not even cactus could grow more than a few inches high. It looked like rocks. Nothing moved out there, not a tree was in sight, not a building nor a person. The car had an outdoor thermometer; the needle was off the dial that stopped at 120 degrees. Enough, she told herself, and turned around to start back to the motel.