“So, one down and one to go,” Beau said.
“That’s right—Bram Fenton’s death. Did Kevin also have something to do with that?”
“Not as far as I can tell. But when I ran the name past Carlos, he sure clammed up.”
“What? He didn’t hire Fenton after all?”
“I’m still pretty sure he did. Jean Calendar said something weird. She claimed that a man—whom she described very well as Fenton—had been following her for days. She thought Carlos had something do to with it because it started just a couple days after she’d contacted him and told him she was in town.”
“Wait a second. Now I’m really confused,” Sam said. “Did he hire the investigator to follow Elena or to follow Jean?”
“Well, that’s part of what I’m calling you about. You still have Fenton’s notebook. Can you go through and re- read, now that we know more about all the players in this case? See if you can find information in Fenton’s own notes?”
With a new mission for the day, Sam got out the notebook and set to work on it as soon as they’d ended the phone call. The dates, described with decimal points, were easy to spot now and she quickly located the timeframe for the past few months. As she perused the sets of letters, it all began to fall into place. An hour later she thought she had the answers.
A quick shower, fresh clothes, and she was on her way to Beau’s office. She found him with his head on his desk, catching a quick snooze. He raised bloodshot eyes when he heard her approach.
“Sorry. I should have called first,” she said.
“I’m glad you’re here. I have to stay until the next shift starts and it’s gonna take a lot to keep me awake that long.”
“Maybe this will help.” She set the notebook down on his desk. “See this? JC is Jean Calendar. Look: ‘9.15flwdjc’ and ‘[email protected]’. On September 15, Fenton followed Jean. On the 30th he meant to pick up surveillance at her home and follow to intimidate her. I found instances of these same codes used throughout the book—srvl for surveil, flw meaning to follow someone.
“This proves that Carlos hired Fenton to follow Jean and if possible to frighten her away from Taos and from him. Carlos couldn’t afford for her to be revealing his old secrets before the election. I guess he thought that if Jean left town, Kevin would too. Naive thinking, yes. But people do stupid things under pressure.
“Here . . .” she flipped a page, “are Fenton’s notes when he began the surveillance, about Jean’s appearance. He describes her in terms that could easily describe Elena, too. Think about it, Beau. Both women have blond hair cut in similar styles, and were very close in height and build . . . I think the night Fenton died, he’d accidentally followed the wrong woman.”
“Oh, god, that fits.” Beau rummaged through his interview notes. “Last night, Jean told me that Elena once came to her house, sometime in September, to confront her and say that there would be no split with Carlos during the campaign. That he couldn’t afford the scandal of a second family at that time, that Jean should just leave town. Elena suggested that Jean stay low-key for a year or so and then there could be a quiet, civilized divorce.”
“So . . . Fenton was watching the house. Maybe he didn’t see Elena arrive but he did see her leave. Thought it was Jean, followed, intentionally putting her into a panic. But then Elena had a knife in her purse . . . He wasn’t ready for that.”
“But Elena told you that she’d been to see her lover that night.”
“Maybe she had. She might have come from seeing him, decided to take care of Carlos’s little indiscretion herself by reasoning with Jean . . .”
“Like a scandal about her own affair wouldn’t cause just as much havoc as Carlos’s old affair?”
Sam sighed. “Who knows what she was thinking. She admitted to me that she’d tried to break it off but just couldn’t help herself. She
“What’s up?” The male voice intruded sharply. Sam looked up to see that Orlando Padilla had entered the squad room from a side door.
Beau gestured toward his stacks of notes. “Just putting a few loose ends together on the Tafoya case. Trying to piece together what happened with that private investigator case, Bram Fenton.”
The sheriff gave him a sharp look. “The suicide off the bridge?”
Beau’s eyes narrowed warily. “It wasn’t a suicide, remember? The MI found a slashed artery. Guy bled out all over his trench coat.”
Sam watched closely. Padilla’s outwardly smooth manner couched a vibrating bundle of nerves. The man fairly jangled with tension. The pieces fell neatly into place.
“
Words of denial automatically surfaced. He shuffled a little.
“No,” Sam said. “It’s true. Everything fits with what Elena told me herself.”
His face went white. “She didn’t tell you anything.”
“She did. She was practically addicted to you, willing to risk everything just to be with you.” Even as she uttered the words, Sam had a hard time accepting the fact. This pudgy, lazy man . . . the comparison with the sleek demeanor of Carlos Tafoya didn’t even bear mentioning. But things were usually deeper than they seemed, and in matters of the heart who knew what went on.
“And now I know what happened to Bram Fenton, too. Elena must have panicked. She slashed out at a man who’d been following her, just thinking she could make him back off. But when she actually hit him, got the carotid artery and he began to bleed and then to die right there on the street, she needed help, fast. She called the one person she thought she could count on. You. I’ll bet the records show that you were on duty that night, so you came to her location, bundled up the body, and carried him to the bridge.”
Padilla began looking around for an exit, but Beau quietly disarmed him and stood ready to get physical if need be.
“You couldn’t take the risk of dumping the body with the trench coat on it because it would be very evident that blood all around the neck area wasn’t consistent with a fall from the bridge. You even added a few more cuts, thinking the medical investigator would probably mistake them for injuries from the rocks below.” Sam paused to let the images catch up with her.
“Sam, what about the coat?” Beau asked. “How did it get out to Cheryl Adams’s house?”
“I saw him, Beau. Remember the vision I had that day? I told you I’d seen a man in dark clothing putting something into the closet? Check the dates. I’ll bet the sheriff was supposed to deliver the eviction notice to Cheryl Adams, and it probably happened within a day or so after Fenton’s death. Cheryl’s house was left unlocked—I found it that way myself. I’m betting that when Sheriff Padilla got there Cheryl had already moved out, but the house was unlocked. He saw the perfect chance to get rid of the coat in all that clutter. Just hang it in a closet and someone would eventually come along to clean out the place and the coat could never be tied to him.”
She turned to the sheriff. “You would have been better off to burn it.”
Padilla looked chagrined.
Beau piped up. “You would have been
Padilla’s eyes were searching the room, looking for a way out of his troubles. His gaze landed on the pistol which Beau had taken from him minutes earlier.
“Don’t even think about it,” Beau warned.
Padilla spun and dashed for the back door, flinging papers off of desks and tipping chairs over as he ran. But Beau was quicker. With one leap he tackled the sheriff and brought him to the floor. From the dispatch area a secretary and another deputy came running.
By the time they reached the tangle of arms and legs, Beau had latched his cuffs onto Padilla’s wrists.
Chapter 27
Chocolate buttercream frosting plopped onto the top of the quarter-sheet that Sam had promised for the chocoholics book group this afternoon. She smoothed it with a spatula, creating a flat backdrop for the molded chocolate decorations she and Becky had created yesterday. They’d made a miniature vignette of the bookshop itself, with rows of books—all done in dark, milk and white chocolate—the sales counter with a small chocolate Ivan
