“This is a surprise,” Rita Haley said when she opened her door to Marla and Rex.
“A good one, we hope,” Marla answered. “May we come in?”
“Uh, sure, but I need to leave for my exercise class in fifteen minutes. Have a seat. Why are you here?” she asked as soon as they were each sitting.
Though the same floor plan as Kitty’s, Haley’s condo was like an instantaneous trip to the Far East. The living room boasted rich red and black brocade furniture resting on a plush gold carpet. A large black teak cabinet with gold pulls and hinges occupied a place of honor along an interior wall. Along another wall, a low-boy cabinet, its gold sides painted with scenes from a wood, was topped with three brass tapers. Everything screamed recent makeover costing thousands.
Marla took her time deciding where to sit. She was afraid she might break something. “I think I mentioned at book club the other day that I was spending time in Minnesota with my sister while I looked for a new project. At the time, I didn’t anticipate finding something so soon, but this recent murder of one of the residents has given me an idea. I want to turn the investigation into some sort of television project.”
Haley settled in a chair facing them and waited expectantly. “I got the impression from your remarks at book club that you were quite done with the private eye genre. Anything to do with crime.”
Marla nodded. “You remember correctly. But then this murder happened and I got to talking to Rex, who I learned was a former cop, and the next thing I knew, I was deep in an unofficial investigation. More like research.”
“And I’m part of your research?”
The woman didn’t pull any punches.
“Here’s what we’ve learned so far. Ever since Drake Elliot moved into this building,” Marla said, “he began wining and dining various single women who live here, insisting they meet him in private so no one else knew how many different women he was seeing. That part would’ve only made him a Lothario. But he also got some of these women to invest in various financial opportunities, and he wound up scamming them for over a hundred thousand dollars.”
“And you’re asking me what I know about all this?”
“That and more to the point, were you a victim of one of his scams?” Rex asked.
Rita’s eyes revealed no surprise. “Why do you think he hit on me?”
“Months ago, you rode on the elevator with him and another resident. You were apparently wearing a diamond bracelet in which he showed interest to this other person. He then asked if you were married.”
“That’s it?”
“No,” Marla said. “We’ve found evidence in his own handwriting that he got you for fifty thousand dollars.”
They did their silent act again, waiting for Rita’s reaction to that revelation.
Rita chewed a lip. And then, like the sudden burst of the rain shower earlier that week, she broke down. Tears poured down her face, even though she tried to stem them with her hands.
“Rita? Are you okay?” Marla asked, fishing a tissue out of her pocket.
“Do I look okay?” Rita returned through gulps, her face distorted by tears.
“No, of course not,” Rex said. “If what happened to you is what we think happened, you have every right to break down.”
Rita dabbed at her eyes with the tissue, but the flow continued.
Rex rose and went to the kitchen. He returned a minute later with a glass of water for her.
Rita sipped in between outbursts.
Now Marla rose and went in search of a box of tissues, since hers was long past its usefulness.
They waited some more.
After several more minutes, tissues, gulps and sips of water, Rita was finally ready to talk. “Everyone in the building thinks I’m richer than King Midas after my divorce settlement. That’s mostly true. But I’m also paying for my granddaughter’s education, since my daughter can’t afford to. I don’t consider myself susceptible to get-rich-quick schemes, but as I saw my funds draining away this past year, and she was only a freshman, I didn’t dismiss Drake’s suggestion I invest in his project out of hand. I didn’t jump immediately, either.
“I should never have mentioned my concern that I couldn’t pay for all four years of her college career, because he pounced on that motive and wouldn’t let go. Then he added that I could double my investment. At that point, I couldn’t resist.”
Neither Marla nor Rex spoke right away.
“How did you learn he’d taken advantage of you?” Marla asked finally.
“My bank called, asking about the expenditure. By then, it had already gone through into whatever account he’d set up. They attempted to trace it with no success.”
“Did you report him to the police?” Rex asked.
She hung her head. “I didn’t tell anyone besides the people at my bank, even though they urged me to report him. I was so embarrassed at my foolishness. No, not embarrassed. Humiliated. I should’ve told people here and maybe prevented anyone else from being scammed, but I just couldn’t bring myself to admit I’d let him take advantage of me. Everyone here thinks I’m so on top of things to have gotten so much money in my divorce settlement. I didn’t want to burst that bubble. As it is, I’ll soon need to tell my daughter I can no longer pay for all of my granddaughter’s tuition. That breaks my heart.”
There was little they could say to comfort her, but now they had to move to the even more difficult subject.
“Did you confront Elliot when you learned you’d been cheated?” Marla asked as a preliminary to the big question.
Rita blew out a huff. “You bet I did! He didn’t open the door the first two times. But I was persistent and kept calling his name until he finally did let me enter. When I told him what my bank had told me, he claimed it would just take a little more time for the payment to process. Then he went on to say that even after it processed, I probably wouldn’t see immediate results since this was a start-up operation. He never mentioned that aspect when he was singing the benefits of the opportunity and urging me to get on board as soon as I could.”
“According to info we found in his condo, you invested in May. Did you take no action against him in the months since?”
“I started to. I called the bank to learn who I could contact to complain, but when they started to ask for the details, I hung up. They made me feel like I was a child who’d gotten into trouble. And I didn’t want the information getting back to my ex-husband. He couldn’t take back the money, but he could try to turn my daughter against me.”
Though Marla felt for her, she couldn’t believe the woman could lose fifty thousand dollars without making more noise. But that seemed to be Elliot’s MO. He must’ve developed a sixth sense when it came to selecting his victims and only hit upon those who wouldn’t fight back. Maybe that’s why nothing had ever developed between him and Kitty.
“All these months, you’ve probably been carrying a lot of fury around inside you,” Marla said.
Rita narrowed her eyes like she suspected a trick question was coming. “Yes?”
“The more you thought about how you’d been duped, the more anger you felt. It continued to build until finally it snapped. You had to do something. You had to get back at him.”
Rita’s hand shot up. “Hold it! I didn’t kill him, if that’s where you’re going.”
Rex took a stab at getting her to crack. “But it would’ve been so easy. All you had to do was lure him down to the pond in the middle of the night. You’d already picked out the spot and how you’d do it. You could’ve …”
“Stop! I hated him for what he’d done. But I wouldn’t have gotten my revenge that way. I’d be in prison the rest of my life if I’d been found out. It’s been bad enough losing the fifty thousand and my daughter and granddaughter’s respect. I wouldn’t want to give up my freedom the rest of my life just for a momentary release.”
She sounded credible, but Marla suspected real murderers could sound sincere to the very end. On the show, they broke so easily once Letitia fingered them. She’d always thought they’d caved too easily due to the producers’ desire to wrap the show quickly.
“What more do I have to do to convince you I didn’t do it?” she asked, a distinctly plaintive note to her voice.
“It’s just hard for us to believe you kept your anger and humiliation to yourself all this time,” Marla said.
“What else could I have done, besides go to the police?”
“You could’ve talked to someone like a counselor,” Rex said.
“A counselor would’ve told me to go to the police. I should know. I used to be one.”
“Rita, that attitude is like representing yourself in court,” Marla told her. “No matter how good you might be at the job, you still can’t see the situation from anywhere but your own perspective.”
Rita blew her nose before speaking again. “You’re right. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell another person what I’d done, no matter how trained they were for such situations.”
“Which is what you just did with us,” Rex said.
“Yes, I guess I did, but you didn’t give me much choice.”
Rex continued along that line. “So maybe that broke the ice enough for you to talk to someone now?”
She considered. “Maybe.”
“Let’s say we believe you,” Marla said. “We need your help finding whoever did kill Elliot.”
Her crying jag on hold, Rita narrowed her eyes. “Why did you say you’re doing this? You’re not a trained investigator, and Rex, you’re no longer an active policeman.”
“Like I said earlier, I’ve been looking for a new project since leaving Carruthers on the Case. I’ve been playing around with the idea of a limited series to executive produce. Or maybe I’d narrate a podcast featuring how an ordinary citizen helps the police solve a murder.”
Haley rose. “Want some coffee? I feel the sudden need for caffeine.”
They turned her down, then waited for her to return to the living room with her own mug.
“I was on the treadmill in the fitness room last month. I’m usually there late morning when no one else is around. But this one particular day I was joined by a woman I didn’t recognize. She started up a conversation. I would have preferred to have been left alone, but I answered her questions as I could. She was new to the building and wanted to know about the people who lived here. Seemed innocuous enough, so I shared a little information about some.”
“And Drake Elliot was one of those people?” Marla guessed.
“Yes. She didn’t get around to him right away. She dropped his name into the mix after we’d talked about three or four others first.”
“What did she want to know about him?” Rex asked.
“The usual things. Was he married? Was he seeing someone? What did he do for a living? Then finally, how long had he lived here? For some reason, that last one seemed out of kilter. It was a perfectly natural question, but it just didn’t seem to fit with what she’d been asking about other residents. So I called her on it. She explained that he looked familiar and she wondered if she’d met him before coming here. It could have been that she was just curious, but it struck me as odd. Nevertheless, I put it in the back of my mind until you just asked.”
“What made you remember it now?” Marla asked.
“The fact that she’d asked about Elliot.”
“Who is this woman?” Rex asked.
“Her name is Donna Walker. She lives on the first floor.”
“Have you seen her since that day in the fitness room?” Rex asked.
“No. Her lease shouldn’t be up for several months yet, but she seems to have disappeared from sight. I don’t know if she ever connected with him or not, but she came to mind when you asked for my help.”
There didn’t seem to be much more they could learn from Haley, so they thanked her for her information.
“Don’t forget to find yourself a counselor,” Rex added as they left, touching her briefly on the shoulder.
“I’ll think about it. Thank you for caring,” she replied.
“Donna Walker. That last name was one of the blanks on Elliot’s list,” Marla said as they walked away from Rita Haley’s condo. “Someone else to check out. But first, how ’bout lunch at Kitty’s?”