working on her book right after that-a book about something called cyberstalking. I don’t know much about it, but she claims that’s what Richard has been doing. And what he did to her personally really hurt her,” Camilla added. “She sort of went off the deep end for a while, but I thought she was finally pulling out of it. You know, that she was starting to recover. At least that’s what I was hoping. But you still haven’t told me what this is all about, Mr. . ”
“Morris,” he supplied. “Detective Gilbert Morris.” He removed a business card from his wallet, placed it in her hand, and closed her fingers around it. “That has all my contact information on it.”
“But why are you here?”
He didn’t want to lower this boom on Camilla Gastellum. She was truly an innocent bystander. Still, he had no choice.
“I need to speak to your daughter,” he said. “I need to speak to Brenda.”
“Why?”
“A man was murdered in Grass Valley sometime over the weekend, possibly on Friday afternoon. When I left to come here, we still hadn’t established a positive ID, but indications are that our victim is Richard Lowensdale. Someone put a plastic bag over his head and taped it shut. He died of asphyxiation.”
“Oh,” she said. And then a moment later she added, “No, that’s not possible. My daughter could never do something like that. Ever.”
“Even so,” Gil began, “you can see why we’re interested in speaking to your daughter. She may know something.”
Camilla Gastellum stood up abruptly. “You aren’t here to talk to Brenda. You’re here to arrest her. You think she did it.”
“Mrs. Gastellum, please-”
“You need to go now,” she insisted. “You’re no longer welcome in this house. And the next time you come back, it had better be with a search warrant.”
Camilla escorted him back to the front door. He heard the security chain lock into place as the door closed behind him. Gil headed back to Grass Valley feeling like he was making real progress. He had a suspect. True, Brenda Riley might be among the missing. He didn’t for even a moment consider that Camilla Gastellum knew her daughter’s whereabouts, but someone did, and Gil was determined to find that person.
In his experience, most people didn’t disappear without a trace. Somewhere in Brenda’s mother’s house on P Street he would find a clue-an e-mail to a friend, a plane or hotel reservation-that would tell him what he needed to know. But in order to find that information and have it admissible in court, he would have to come back with a properly drawn search warrant. To get a warrant, Gil would need to have enough pieces of the puzzle in place to convince a judge that he had probable cause. Probable cause took work, sometimes a whole lot of work.
33
Grass Valley, California
On his way back to Grass Valley Gil called Fred Millhouse. “How are you doing on next of kin?” Gil asked.
“I’m getting nowhere fast,” Fred said. “As far as I can tell, Lowensdale is an only child. Both of his parents are deceased, which leaves me at a bit of a loss about what to do about getting a positive ID.”
“Maybe one of the neighbors will give us a hand.” Stopped briefly at a stoplight, Gil shuffled through his stack of three-by-five cards. “Try getting ahold of Harry Fulbright. He’s one of Lowensdale’s neighbors. He’s a grizzled old Vietnam War vet who clued us in on the presence of that second UPS delivery person. I’m about half an hour out,” Gil added. “I’ll meet you at the morgue.”
Harry Fulbright and Fred Millhouse were waiting in Fred’s office when Gil arrived. Once the formality of the positive ID was out of the way, Gil returned to his office and tackled the unpleasant duty of notifying both of Richard Lowensdale’s fiancees that the man they knew by another last name had been murdered. Passing along that kind of news to grieving friends and relations was always difficult. In this case it was even more complicated since, in the process, he would also be revealing the fact that their supposed loved one was also a cheat.
Gil dialed the East Coast number first. It was already the middle of the night in New York, but it had to be done. He tried to be kind, but ultimately there was no way to soften the blow.
Janet Silvie listened to what he said with utter mystification. “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” she said. “Is Richard dead or isn’t he?”
“That’s what I’m trying to explain,” Gil said patiently. “Officers went to the address you gave the nine-one- one operator, the house on Jan Road, to do a welfare check. Once they, they discovered the body of a man who has since been positively identified as Richard Lowensdale. We can find no record of anyone named Lydecker living there. Our assumption is that Richard Lowensdale and Richard Lydecker are one and the same.”
“You’re wrong,” Janet declared. “That’s just not possible.”
“If you happened to have a photo of Mr. Lydecker,” Gil suggested, “perhaps you could fax it to me.”
“I don’t have any photos of him,” Janet replied. “None at all. He’s so self-conscious about the scar.”
“What scar?” Gil asked.
“Richard was in a terrible car wreck when he was sixteen, just after he got his license. He was driving. His best friend was killed in the accident, and Richard was left with a terrible scar on his right cheek. He’s spent his whole adult life looking at his face in the mirror every morning, seeing the scar, and remembering what he did to his friend.”
“Then most likely the dead man isn’t Mr. Lydecker,” Gil said. “I was there at the morgue for the positive identification. There was definitely no scar visible.”
“Thank God,” Janet Silvie said. “I’m incredibly relieved, but if Richard-my Richard-isn’t dead, where is he? If you thought you’d found him and you were wrong, does that mean no one is looking for him?”
The truth was, Gil had been looking for Richard Lydecker with all the tools at his disposal, and he had come up empty.
“You should probably call in an official missing persons report.”
“But I already did that.”
“No,” Gil corrected. “The call you placed to the com center turned into a welfare check. I don’t think it was ever passed along as a missing persons report.”
“Can’t you do that much at least?” Janet demanded. She sounded angry.
“Ms. Silvie,” Gil explained patiently. “I’m a homicide investigator. That’s what I’m doing-investigating a homicide that may or may not be related to your Mr. Lydecker. Since I know nothing about him, however, I can’t do the missing persons report. I suggest you call this number tomorrow-”
“Like hell,” Janet responded coldly. “Richard is my fiance. You expect me to just sit here and do nothing? That is so not going to happen. I already called my boss and told him I’m taking a few days of personal leave. I’ll be in California as soon as I can possibly make it. I’ll be on the first plane out of Buffalo tomorrow morning. I’ll call you back after I make the reservation and let you know what time I’ll be there.”
The idea that Janet Silvie was coming to Grass Valley complicated Gil’s life, but it would make it far easier to interview her.
“Good,” he said. “Will you want to be picked up at the airport?”
“No. I’ll rent a car. If no one else is going to lift a hand looking for Richard, I need to have my own wheels so I can do it myself. My guess is that once you find that crazy woman, that Brenda, the one who was always making up terrible stories about Richard and threatening him, you’ll find Richard too. They were engaged once. When Richard broke it off, she went crazy.”
Gil didn’t let on that Brenda Riley was among the missing, and he wasn’t at all sure who was crazy and who wasn’t, but he didn’t argue the point. “Let me give you my phone numbers,” he said. “That way you can get in touch as soon as you get to town.”
After putting down the phone, he sat and stared at it for a while. He’d never had a next-of-kin notification go quite so haywire. He personally was convinced that, scar or no scar, Richard Lowensdale and Richard Lydecker were one and the same. Gil was convinced; Janet Silvie wasn’t.
Shaking his head, he picked up the receiver and dialed the number for Dawn Carras in Eugene, Oregon. Once
