Chapter 29
Savannah and Dirk stood beside the Bronco, near the YAGER’S CHAMPION HUSKIES sign, listening to Sergeant Bodin instruct Corporal Riggs as they prepared to execute the search warrant on Edith Yager. He warned Riggs that, while she was a seemingly gentle woman, she was also a murder suspect and they should exercise caution at all times.
Finally, he turned to Dirk and said, “Since you’re outside your jurisdiction, Detective, you won’t be acting in an official capacity. But all the same, I’m glad you’re along, and I’ll appreciate any help you can offer.” A look of humility crossed his face. “I’m sure you’ve done this sort of thing more often than we have.”
“No problem,” Dirk said. “But if she’s got a grizzly in that trailer, he’s all yours.”
“Deal.” Bodin turned to Savannah. “The same goes for you, Ms. Reid. You and the members of your agency have brought us this far in the investigation. Please feel free to assist any way you can, as long as, well . . . you know . . .”
“As long as I don’t touch any of your evidence with my dirty civilian hands and bungle the chain of custody.”
He grinned good-naturedly. “Something like that.”
With a wide wave of his arm, he said, “Okay, let’s go get ’er done.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, they were all four inside Edith Yager’s trailer. It was an extremely cozy fit.
Edith stood quietly in the corner, her head down, staring at the soiled, fur-matted carpet. Savannah thought she’d never seen a suspect looking so sad.
Not nervous. Not frightened. Not anxious.
Just sad.
Corporal Riggs was sticking close to her side, watching her, a wary look on his face, as though he expected her to fly into a frenzy of violence at any moment.
Bodin, Dirk, and Savannah were trying to search the trailer, but it wasn’t a simple task. Obviously, there had been efforts made to improve the place: the fresh paint, badly applied, on the walls and some new gingham curtains over the windows. There were signs that it had been in bad shape before those renovations.
The carpet bore the stains and smells of dogs who weren’t house-trained. The furniture was almost as thickly covered with the shed fur as the carpet.
The stench was overpowering and made Savannah’s eyes water.
In the course of her law enforcement career, she had seen as bad as this. Maybe even worse. But it had been a long, long time.
She reminded herself that she wasn’t there to judge Edith Yager’s housekeeping skills. Myrtle had said that she was depressed. Sometimes depressed people found it difficult to do even simple tasks in the interest of basic sanitation.
She was here to determine whether or not Edith was a killer who had taken two people’s lives in a horrible way.
The first thing she had noticed when she’d walked through the door was a long bookshelf, suspended over the sofa. From one end to another, it held mystery books. Savannah recognized them all, because she had the same books on her shelf in her living room.
They had all been written by Natasha Van Cleef.
Edith had collected the hardcovers, paperbacks, and large-print editions of each release. French, German, Spanish, and Japanese versions were also scattered among the collection.
“I thought you said you didn’t know Natasha Van Cleef,” Savannah said to her. “You said you’d never heard of her.”
Edith said nothing, but just kept staring at the floor.
At the end of the shelf was a picture frame and inside was one of Natasha’s author headshots. It had been autographed: To Edith, with best wishes, Natasha.
Sergeant Bodin was searching through a tiny desk in the corner. An ancient laptop computer took up most of the desk writing surface. On the floor beneath it sat an antiquated printer.
Bodin opened the desk’s one drawer, and almost immediately he found several things of interest.
The first was a stack of letters, all written to or received from Natasha Van Cleef. The ones sent by the author were still tucked in their envelopes. The letters from Edith to Natasha were printed on computer paper.
To Savannah’s delight, Edith appeared to print and save a copy of any letters she wrote.
Bodin handed Savannah a stack of the papers and she began to skim through them. At first, the correspondence seemed to be typical fan letters from a reader to a beloved author, with Edith extolling Natasha’s talent and thanking her for hours of reading pleasure. Then Natasha had responded with a couple of brief notes, acknowledging the fan mail.
Soon, the women had begun to discuss the prospect of Natasha purchasing a husky puppy from Edith. More letters followed, arranging the payments and making transportation plans. Pictures were sent of the available litter mates, and a deal had been struck.
“You and Natasha had quite a pen pal thing going on here,” Savannah told Edith. “Until you found out she was coming through on a cruise ship. Looks like you invited her to come visit you, but she declined.”
Edith shrugged, looked up for a moment, then lowered her eyes again. “She said she was busy. Had a lot going on. No big deal.”
“But it was a big deal, wasn’t it?” Savannah said. “You told everyone in Saaxwoo that she was coming to visit you. You cleaned, and painted, and sewed new curtains. You must have been pretty mad when she wouldn’t at least drop by and meet you.”
“No. She was busy. I understood.”
Savannah had worked her way through the stack all the way to the bottom. There she saw three letters that were all too familiar to her.
With gloved hands, she pulled them out and walked over to Edith. Holding them up so that her suspect could see, she said, “I’ve seen these before, Edith. Or at least, copies of them. These are the letters you wrote to threaten Ms. Van Cleef. Including the one you wrote on the day you killed her and her husband.”
Edith glanced up, took a look at the letters, then quickly cast her eyes downward again.
Dirk and Bodin were watching the exchange carefully. Bodin said, “If she was your good buddy, why would you threaten her life?”
“I didn’t threaten Ms. Van Cleef.”
“Then what are these?” Savannah said. “They sure aren’t love letters.”
“I don’t know. I never saw those before.”
“Right,” Dirk said. “They’re in your desk with your letters, but you know nothing about them.”
At that moment, Corporal Riggs spoke up. “Hey, look up there on top of the refrigerator. I know what that is.”
They all turned to see where he was pointing. It was an electronic device of some sort, a small, black apparatus with a headset microphone attached.
“What is it?” asked his sergeant.
“That’s a voice changer. You use it to alter the sound of your voice. My brother and I had one just like it. We used it on Halloween to make our voices sound spooky and freak out the trick-or-treaters.”
Savannah turned to Edith. “Why would a woman who raises and boards huskies need something like that?”
When Edith didn’t reply, Dirk said, “Maybe to call a silly blond girl and have her fetch gasoline for you, but make her think you’re a guy?”
“Why did you do that, Edith?” Bodin asked. “You could have bought some gas yourself. No one would have thought anything of it. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just bring your own?”
Savannah stepped closer to Edith. “You had her buy the gas and deliver it for the same reason that you stuck that syringe in her purse. You wanted to frame her for the murders you committed.”
For the first time since they had knocked on her door and served the warrant, Edith looked genuinely frightened as she lifted her head and stared into Savannah’s eyes. But she said nothing, offered no defense.
Savannah continued. “I think I know how you did it, Edith. Somehow you found out about the letter Patricia Chumley wrote to Natasha. When she told you she didn’t have time for you, couldn’t be bothered stopping by your humble home, you got mad and wrote her two more.”
Dirk stepped forward and picked up her train of thought. “Then, once you lured Olive off the ship, you sent Natasha another letter, threatening to hurt Olive if she didn’t come to you.”
“Once she and Colin got here, you somehow injected them with that drug,” Savannah said. “You put their bodies in the car and drove it to the hill. You sent it down the incline in Neutral, crashed it, then shifted it back into Drive.”
“You poured the gas on it,” Bodin said, “to burn the evidence. Then you drove down the road toward town, picked up Olive, and planted the syringe on her.”
“I didn’t hurt Natasha,” Edith said softly, her voice trembling. “She was my friend. I wouldn’t hurt her.”
“Well, I think you did.” Sergeant Bodin took his cuffs from his pocket and said in a voice most official, “Edith Yager, I’m arresting you for the murders of Natasha and Colin Van Cleef. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used . . .”
Once the suspect was Mirandized, she was led outside. Savannah and Dirk watched the troopers stash her in the back of their cruiser. But a moment later, Sergeant Bodin motioned them over. “She wants to talk to Savannah,” he said.
Savannah leaned down at the passenger’s door and looked at the frightened woman inside.
“Yes?” she said, wondering how on earth this woman had committed such a heinous crime, how she could have inflicted such horror upon someone like Natasha, simply because she felt rejected, neglected.
“I have a favor to ask you,” Edith said, her voice and manner so humble that Savannah didn’t give in to the temptation to tell her that she would do no favors for a woman who had murdered her favorite author and client.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Would you please, please call Doc Johnson and ask him to find someone to come out here and take care of the dogs. Not just feed and water them. I talk to them, every one of them, several times a day. They need the human contact. They need—”
Her voice broke and she started to cry. Ugly, wracking sobs.
“I will,” Savannah said. “I’ll do that right now. Don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll make certain they’re cared for.”
As Savannah backed away from the car, Corporal Riggs closed the door and both troopers got into the cruiser.
“Thank you,” Sergeant Bodin called out through his open window as he drove away.
“You’re welcome.” Savannah mouthed the words, but she didn’t feel them.
Usually, when she solved a case, she had a good feeling deep inside. She felt satisfied that justice had been served, the scales had been balanced, and all that good stuff.
Dirk slid his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to his side. “You okay, Van?” he asked.
“Not really.”
“We got the bad guy. Or, in this case, the bad girl.”
“I know. But she just doesn’t seem that bad,” Savannah said.
“A lot of ’em don’t. That’s one reason why our jobs suck.”
“I don’t like that. Bad people should look bad and act bad all the time. Then you could spot them right away in a crowd, and you wouldn’t feel awful when you bust them and make them go off to jail for the rest of their lives and leave their doggies behind.”
“Let’s go find the rest of the gang and celebrate with a nice dinner.”
“Celebrate?”
“Yes. Celebrate. We took a killer off the street, babe. It’s a good thing.”
“Okay. As soon as I call Dr. Johnson.”
“Sure. No problem. Make your call. But don’t dawdle. I’ve got a date with a long-legged Alaskan snow crab beauty.”
She shook her head, and as she dialed the phone she thought how different she and her husband were.
She was worried about things like justice, good and evil, and weighing the evidence thereof.
He was fretting about his crab leg dinner.