Cereal killer, p.14
Cereal Killer, page 14
Maybe Regina was just a good actress, but my gut told me she hadn’t expected my question. And if that proved true, if I had a good read on her, it meant she hadn’t called in the anonymous tip about the insurance fraud.
Vicente returned to the table and sat down, shoving his phone in his pocket.
I took a deep breath and focused on my conversation with Regina. “To tell you the truth, I’m starting to suspect you might have been right about the insurance fraud angle that you mentioned at the hospital.”
“Oh?” Again, she sounded surprised.
Vicente crossed his arms and stared at me, but I just smiled back at him mysteriously.
“Can I ask you what led you to suspect that?” I continued. “I can’t tell Vicente this, of course—he absolutely believes in Luz’s innocence—but I want to chase down that lead and see what I can dig up.”
“Um . . .” Her voice softened. “Sure. Sorry, I guess I just assumed you were Team Luz because she hired you to investigate us and because you’re friends with Vicente.”
“It’s like I said earlier, I’m Team Truth,” I replied. “I didn’t have a reason to suspect Luz when we talked before, but as a matter of principle, I follow the evidence wherever it leads me.”
Vicente’s lips formed a thin line, and I rolled my eyes at him.
“Don’t worry,” I mouthed.
“Well,” Regina said, grabbing my attention. “I was talking the whole situation over with a friend—before I found out Bruce was hurt.”
“With Alice, was it?” I asked. “While you were still at the vineyard?”
“Yeah. She thought Luz’s allegations against Bruce and me sounded really weird. Said it almost sounded like Luz was laying the groundwork for us to take the fall for something. Something bad.”
My heart beat faster. “And Alice knew why Bruce had been fired? That’s why she suspected Luz was planning something.”
“Exactly! Oh, it relieves me so much that you think this all sounds reasonable.”
“So,” I said slowly. “That’s why you were suspicious Luz was up to something. What made you think insurance, specifically? Could you be as detailed as possible? That will help with my investigation.”
“Well, I’m not sure I have anything concrete, but I’ll do my best. When I was at Bruce’s bedside, Alice called me, out of breath. First, she asked how Bruce was—she was very relieved he was okay. Then she explained there was a fire at the vineyard and she’d had to run to her car and gun it to get out of there.”
One line stood out to me: First, she asked how Bruce was.
How had Alice known Bruce was hurt? We hadn’t told her—we hadn’t even talked to her before she left the property. Had Fred or Officer Anderson run into her and explained the situation?
“Anyway,” Regina continued. “I asked her to go to our house and load our two horses into the trailer and drive them to Bruce’s mom’s ranch an hour north, so she’s doing that right now. Before she hung up, she muttered something like, I knew Luz was planning something. And I just knew. The only reason I can think of that Luz would have started that fire was for insurance money.” Then she paused. “Oh! I guess maybe she could have done it to cover up her murder of Bruce—I’m sure she thought he was dead when she left him there. That’s really all I know. I’m sorry—as I say it out loud, I realize it’s probably not very helpful from an investigation standpoint. But thank you for taking me seriously. I’m so glad you’re looking into it.”
“Well, thank you anyway.” I drummed my pen on the table. “If you think of anything else, or if Bruce wakes up again, please give me a call.”
I hung up.
Vicente said, “I got in touch with the chair of the Sacramento chapter of Go-Green. Alice McCleary was supposed to be there today to present a plan for a fundraiser. She never showed. Sent one text saying she was running late, and then twenty minutes later, called him and said something had come up and she couldn’t make it. He thought she sounded agitated.”
Tense silence lingered in the air.
“Fred,” I said finally. “After you stayed behind to give your statement to the police officer, did you run into a heavyset blonde by any chance?”
“No, ma’am.” He shook his head thoughtfully. “I didn’t see anyone else before I left. Why?”
I sat in silent concentration for a moment.
“Kate,” interjected Vicente. “What are you thinking? How does it all fit together?”
“Alice McCleary knew why Bruce had been fired, and she put the insurance fraud story in Regina’s head. She was on the property, conveniently taking a walk around the lake by herself, when Bruce was attacked and the fire started. And”—I paused for dramatic effect—“she called to ask Regina how Bruce was doing, even though none of us talked to her and told her Bruce had been hurt.”
Fred whistled. “Well, that’s mighty suspicious.”
One more thing churned in the back of my mind. “Oh! Frannie said that Alice is a literature professor. At the community college.”
Vicente and Fred looked at me expectantly.
I waved wildly at Vicente. “The notes! The literary allusions! It all makes sense!”
He squinted. “Why the obvious errors in the notes?”
“Errors?” Fred asked.
“Spelling,” I replied. “Your versus you’re, apostrophes, that sort of thing.”
“Maybe she was throwing off suspicion?” Fred said. “She couldn’t help but work in the literature references, so she made errors that she wouldn’t ordinarily make.”
I fired off a text to Officer Stent, asking if he’d made contact with anyone fitting Alice’s description. “I have one more person I need to double-check with . . .”
A moment later, the reply arrived.
No, Officer Stent wrote. After I debriefed Fred, I saw the smoke, radioed it in, and went to the scene to monitor it until the fire department reached the scene. Didn’t see anyone else on the property, sorry. You have a lead?
I shot back another text. Working on one. Then I set the phone down and said, “Officer Stent didn’t tell Alice that Bruce had been attacked, either. Which means—”
Vicente snapped his fingers. “She had no way of knowing he was hurt, unless—”
In unison, Fred and I said, “She attacked him.”
“Motive?” Vicente asked. “I want to make sure this is rock-solid.”
The doorbell rang. Vicente stood to head out and answer it, but Gloria shuffled past him.
“I will get it!” she declared, waving us back to the table. “You are making progress. Focus on helping Luz.”
Vicente steepled his fingers, and Fred leaned forward.
“Motive,” I said. “So, after that phone conversation I just had, I don’t think Regina is involved. She wouldn’t have given me all those details if she’d had any inkling that Alice was the culprit.”
“What if she sensed that we were closing in and decided to throw Alice under the bus?” Vicente asked. “Or maybe attacking Bruce was never part of the plan, and she wanted to make Alice pay for hurting her husband?”
“No.” Fred peered intently at my page of notes. “If she conspired with Alice, the evidence is out there. Their only hope of self-preservation would be to back up each other’s stories.”
If Fred wasn’t an undercover cop, like Luz half-suspected, he should be—he had a great eye for detail and a sharp analytical mind.
“Suspects don’t always think clearly,” said Vicente. “Especially when things get out of hand. And this clearly got out of hand.”
I massaged my forehead. “But I think Fred’s right. Regina doesn’t strike me as a carefully controlled person.”
“That’s fair,” Vicente conceded.
I flipped back a couple pages. “She flew off the handle and confronted Luz because she suspected Luz and Bruce were having an affair . . . because Bruce was working late during a period when the winery was in crisis. And Bruce told Luz this wasn’t the first time Regina had done that sort of thing. Plus, when Luz and I were at the hospital, Regina basically told us she was going to libel Luz to the newspapers. That’s not something you say strategically—it gave us a heads-up that we could have used to hire a lawyer or go to the press ourselves and preempt the story.”
“She doesn’t hide her emotions, or think before she speaks,” Vicente said slowly. “With a person like that, more often than not, what you see is what you get.”
“It’s a character trait that makes her volatile.” Fred reached for a cookie. “But actually gives her less ability to master-plan something like this.”
“So.” I stared at the plate in the middle of the table. There was one polvorone de canele left. My mouth watered. It did seem like I’d just cracked the case. I snatched the cookie.
The door to the apartment swung open, but I kept my attention fixed on Fred and Vicente.
“Let’s assume Alice was working alone,” I said. “The motive must have been revenge—she was angry on Bruce’s behalf and set out to teach Luz a lesson.”
Vicente squinted at me. “If this was all about how much she cared about Bruce and Regina, why would she have attacked Bruce?”
“You’re all wrong!” a woman shrieked.
As one, Vicente, Fred, and I swung to face the voice. Shock and fear rippled through my body, and I dropped the polvorone de canele to the floor.
Alice McCleary stood in the doorway, holding a knife to Gloria’s throat.
Chapter 21
“Easy, there, Alice.” I held up my hands, hoping to calm her. “Don’t do anything rash. It’ll only make things worse for you.”
Her eyes bulged, a crazed light dancing in their depths. Gloria stood there, frozen.
Bile scalded my throat, and I swallowed it back. We needed to defuse the situation and get the knife away from Alice before she hurt Gloria . . . and before the stress of the situation sent Gloria into a full-on heart attack.
“Listen,” I said. “Let Gloria go, and tell us where we’re wrong. We’ll help you figure out what to tell the cops and make sure you have a good defense attorney. No one’s died . . . and your cooperation will go a long way toward getting you a good plea deal or making you sympathetic to a jury.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt Bruce,” Alice spat, visibly trembling.
I blanched. Maybe Alice hadn’t meant to hurt Bruce, but she had. Now, she was shaking while holding a knife to an old woman’s throat. Would she hurt Gloria without meaning to?
We couldn’t afford to take that chance.
Then Alice’s gaze hardened. “But, once I did, I didn’t feel too bad about it. Really, he deserved it. But I didn’t realize it was Bruce when I swung the shovel. I thought you”—she stared in unbridled rage at Vicente—“were snooping around and found me.”
“Ah, so you only meant to hurt me, then,” Vicente muttered. “So much better.”
I gave Alice a soft smile, hoping to quell her insane anger. “Why did Bruce deserve it?” I asked. “He must have done something terrible.”
Vicente grumbled under his breath, but I ignored him. I’d charmed Alice once before. I just needed to do it again.
But now the stakes were so much higher.
Alice barked with laughter. “I tried to get Bruce to leave that toxic industry so many times over the years, and he wouldn’t. When Luz fired him, I thought it would finally happen. He’d join the side of the angels—or at least leave the side of the demons.”
“The wine industry?” I asked, keeping a close watch on the knife in her hand. “It’s toxic?”
She bristled. “You don’t know that? It takes so much land and water and fossil fuels—all to produce a poison people can drink to numb themselves from the world’s problems. Booze keeps people in a stupor, pacifies them so they don’t actually do things to save the planet. Do you know what color polish Regina got at that stupid manicure?”
My mind stuttered, trying to make sense of the quick change in topics. “Um . . . green, wasn’t it? Like, neon?”
“Yeah,” she snorted. “As green as toxic waste. And you know what she said to me when I met her here?”
“What?”
Her face scrunched up, and she affected a mocking imitation of Regina’s voice, “Oh, Alice, look—don’t you love my nails? They’re green, like all of your causes!” She shook her head, her voice returning to normal. “Those people are so clueless. I don’t know why I was friends with them for so many years.” Then she laughed. “Not friends with them anymore, I guess. Good riddance.”
Her careless tone sent chills down my spine.
“Help me understand,” I said slowly, keeping my hands up in a nonthreatening manner. “Why target Luz? Why send those notes? Why the cyberattack?”
Alice blinked a few times. “Luz is one of the bad guys. She’s part of that toxic industry. Don’t you understand? You’re pregnant—don’t you want a better future for your baby, like you said in the car this morning?”
I rested a hand on my abdomen and glanced at Gloria. Though she still looked alarmed, she didn’t seem to be in pain—which meant the knife wasn’t digging into her skin. “Of course I do. I just want to know—why Luz specifically? Why Luz, out of all the winery owners in the area? Did she do something to especially deserve it?”
Alice froze for a moment, confusion flickering over her face. “Well, she fired Bruce.”
Tilting my head, I said, “But I thought you decided you hated Bruce.”
“Well.” She managed a shrug. “I didn’t decide that until today. Regina and Bruce talked and talked and talked about how much Luz had betrayed them. Plus, they lived nearby and knew the vineyard so well, and Bruce had always talked about his work. So I knew about a lot of the operation already. I brought over a couple bottles of wine one night and let Bruce vent all his revenge fantasies. It didn’t take much prodding to draw more specifics out of him—where the cameras were, what kind of computer system Luz had.”
“Smart,” I replied. “You did your research on your target.”
She smirked. “Bruce has worked in the wine industry for all these years and bragged about his tolerance for that poison. He was so confused the next day when he couldn’t remember what we’d talked about. Kept asking how he’d managed to get blackout drunk. Never even suspected that I’d laced the wine.”
I ran my hand up and down my baby bump for effect and let tears brim in my eyes. “I understand what you did,” I said softly. “I don’t condone the methods, but the world’s such a terrible place. At least you did something to try to make it better.”
“See!” She pulled the knife from Gloria’s throat and gestured in triumph toward me. “I knew you’d understand.” Though she still had a tight grip on the old woman’s shoulder, she didn’t put the knife back against her neck. “After we talked this morning, I couldn’t get the conversation out of my head. Plus, I knew the stupid detective cousin coming into town meant I had to act fast—he might put a stop to my plan. So I decided to not go to my meeting—that I needed to accelerate my plan instead.”
I took a tentative step forward, one hand still raised, the other cradling my babies. “But the fire, Alice? All that smoke in the atmosphere? The animals that got caught up in it? What if the fire department hadn’t been able to put it out, and the whole area had a wildfire? I almost died saving a squirrel nest!”
A look of guilt crossed her face. “I didn’t mean to kill any animals, or for the fire to get out of control like that. You’ve got to believe me. I left Regina in the wine cave—told her I was taking a walk—and then grabbed the shovel out of my car. I was going to go dig up some of the grapevines.”
“And then Bruce surprised you. That’s why you hit him.”
“I thought it was Luz’s stupid cousin,” she exclaimed.
I took another small step toward her, my heart beating more quickly. I had to knock the knife out of her hands so she couldn’t hurt Gloria. But the idea of lunging at her—of putting my babies in danger again—sent hot fear hurtling through my body.
“Once I hit him,” she continued, “I tried to figure out what to do. Went through his pockets and took his wallet and his lighter to make it look like a robbery. I thought about hitting him again to make sure he was really dead, but I had a hard time making myself do it. Then I heard you on the path, and I dropped the shovel and scurried back into the bushes to hide. You called the cops, and I knew I was screwed. The cops would want to talk to everyone who’d been on the property, and I’m bad at hiding things once people start asking me questions.”
That’s for sure, I thought.
“But I had Bruce’s lighter, so I beat it out to the vineyard and set a few grapevines on fire. Figured that would distract the cops long enough for me to drive off—plus, no one could fault me for running away from a fire. If they remembered to question me later, I’d at least have bought myself time to rehearse my story.” She whistled. “The grapevines lit up like fireworks. Wasn’t expecting them to burn so bright so fast.”
“Of course you weren’t,” I said soothingly, taking another step forward.
“And now I’m caught!” she cackled. “When I decided to take out the winery, I secretly installed an app on Regina and Bruce’s phones that let me listen to their conversations. So I heard your whole little chat with Regina, and it was obvious you’d figured it out. Figured I might as well come here and give you my side of the story—you and I saw eye-to-eye about that stupid car, so I thought you might understand why I had to do it.”
I took a deep breath. It was now or never. I had to get the knife away from Alice. One more step. “Of course—”
A blur of motion and muscle surged past me. In one fluid move, Fred struck Alice’s hand, sending the knife hurtling across the room. Then he grabbed her shoulder, pushing her back away from Gloria.
I jolted forward, put my arm around Gloria and ushered the old woman away. Vicente appeared at our side, taking his abuela by the arm and helping her to a seat at the table.
“Abuela, are you all right?” he asked, his face white.
