attack she was no longer able to live on her own. She ended up first in an assisted-living facility and later in a nursing home, where, two years later, she died. The doctors were convinced that the infection that eventually killed her came about as a result of her original injuries, but the D.A. refused to amend the charges against the punk. He was released on his twenty-first birthday.”
The more she told me of the story, the more it jogged my memory.
“And he was killed that night, right?” I asked.
Mel nodded. “On his way home to his own grandmother’s place in Salt Lake. Someone ran him down in a vehicle. It wasn’t an accident, either. They ran over him several times and left him to die in an irrigation ditch.”
“How do you know so much about this?” I asked.
“For one thing, Destry and I roomed together when we were down in Cancun. We sat up late one night on our balcony watching the moon on the water and drinking margaritas. That’s when she told me about it. What happened to her grandmother was what propelled her into SASAC, the same as what happened to Sarah did me. For another, that’s what I was doing upstairs-a LexisNexis search on the case.”
She tapped the file folder, but I didn’t reach for it or ask to see what was inside.
“What about Ross?” I asked. “You said something about what happened before?”
“Naturally Destry was a person of interest in that case. All of her relatives were as well, but on the night it happened, Destry and her husband were actually in Washington, D.C. She had been to a Homeland Security meeting and was at a dinner at the White House when Escobar died.”
“Talk about a gold-plated alibi,” I said.
Mel gave me a faint smile. “That’s what Ross Connors thought. He saw no reason to put her on administrative leave while the investigation ground on. And that’s just as well since the case has yet to be solved. But some investigative reporter from the
She started to rise, but I held her hand and stopped her. “No,” I said. “Not yet. Let’s talk about this.”
“What’s there to discuss?” she asked. “I owe him. When I needed a job that would get me out of D.C., Ross Connors was the only guy who would give my resume a second glance.”
“No, wait a minute,” I said. “You said you thought someone was trying to frame you. Assuming that’s true, there must be a reason. Has someone tried blackmailing you, for example?”
Mel looked me straight in the eye when she answered. “No,” she said vehemently. “Absolutely not.”
“So if they’re not looking for something from you, then maybe whoever’s behind this did it just for the hell of it. Because they could.”
“It doesn’t really matter why they did it,” Mel returned. “The point is, they did. And they’re getting away with it.”
“Just like whoever took out Destry’s grandmother’s killer is getting away with it,” I pointed out. “What do you think the chances are that lightning strikes twice in exactly the same spot in exactly the same way?”
Mel shrugged and didn’t answer.
“Right now,” I continued, “the people responsible for all this think they’re getting away with it. You haven’t been notified that you’re a suspect in the Matthews case, have you?”
Mel shook her head. “Of course not. How could I? I knew nothing at all about it. Until you brought it up this afternoon I didn’t even know Richard Matthews was dead.”
“Exactly,” I said. “The cops in Mexico haven’t made the connection, and as far as the killer is concerned, neither have we. As long as nothing happens to change the status quo-Ross putting you on administrative leave, for example-no one will know we’ve caught on, either. And that gives us our best chance of catching Matthews’s killer.”
Mel said nothing.
“I suggest we tackle this case the same way we would any other. First, let’s go upstairs and put Barbara’s cigarettes where they belong. Then let’s go back home and work the case. I’ll interview you the same way I would any other victim.”
“Or suspect,” Mel interjected.
“Victim,” I repeated firmly. “We’ll make a list of everybody who was on that trip with you and find out as much as we can about each of them. And we’ll also check to see exactly what the cops down in Cancun have going for them on this case.”
“What if the killer used my weapon?” Mel asked.
“You had it with you?”
“My back-up Glock,” she said. “We were flying on Anita’s private jet. There wasn’t an issue with security.”
That gave me pause. If forensics ended up linking Mel’s 9-millimeter to Richard Matthews’s death, it was going to be a hell of a lot harder to make all this go away.
“Did you have the Glock with you all the time?”
“Not when I was swimming-or jogging,” she added. “It’s hard to carry a concealed weapon when you’re wearing a bikini.”
“Amen to that!” I said.
She smiled at me then. “Let’s go inside,” she said. “I’m freezing.”
We went back upstairs only long enough to return the cigarettes and lighter to Barbara Galvin’s top desk drawer.
As we headed back to Seattle, Mel sat on the far side of the car, holding the file folder tightly against her chest. “I tried to do some checking on the Matthews case,” she said. “What little I could find was in the El Paso papers.”
“I saw that, too,” I told her.
“So how are you going to find out what the Cancun cops have without leading them straight to me?”
“You don’t know about my secret weapon,” I said. “Whatever Ralph Ames can’t find out isn’t worth knowng.”
“But Ralph’s
I handed her my phone. “Look under ‘incoming calls,’” I told her. “His number should be one of the last ones that came in. Call him and tell him you’re hiring him and that he should come by the house later this evening and pick up his retainer.”
“But I can’t afford someone like him.”
“This is too serious, Mel,” I said. “You can’t
Mel stared at the phone. “What do I tell him about what’s going on?” she wanted to know.
Mel’s state of mind was still too fragile to tell her that I had already run up the flag to Ralph. By now he probably knew more about the case than Mel and me put together.
“Say we have a situation here and that we’re sure you’ll be needing his services.”
“Isn’t that a little vague?” Mel asked.
“Believe me,” I told her, “Ralph can handle vague better than anyone I know.”
So she made the call. Concerned Ralph might inadvertently blow my cover, I was relieved when he didn’t answer and she left him a voice-mail message.
“Who all was at the retreat in Cancun?” I asked.
She rattled off a list of names. “Anita Bowdin, Professor Clark, Destry Hennessey, Rita Davenport, Abigail Rosemont, Justine Maldonado, and me. Seven of us altogether. Then there was Sarah James, Anita’s cook, and the two pilots. The cook stayed at Anita’s place. The pilots went to a hotel. Anita had her own room. The rest of us shared.”
I remembered meeting the first four women Mel mentioned. The others were names only.
“And was there any kind of disagreement among you?” I asked. “Hard feelings of any kind?”
“No. Not at all. We spent a lot of time brainstorming about the upcoming fund-raiser. That was the whole point of the retreat. We were determined to raise more money than last year, and we did-raise more money, that
