A Motor for Murder (Veronica Margreve Mysteries Book 1) (6 page)

10 

George’s body was released for burial, and the funeral was set for Wednesday afternoon. I didn’t go because I didn't know him at all, so I would not feel comfortable being there as mourner or friend of the family; and it didn't feel appropriate to go there in my “investigative” capacity and ask people questions afterwards. Moreover, I had expected George’s parents to be there, and I didn’t want to intrude on their grief. Instead, I drove to Rita’s house that evening.

Teresa walked out to her silver Lexus, dressed in a dark-blue belted trench coat, a scarf and some architectural boots (that made me think of looking at Nordstrom or Saks for a similar pair), carrying a soft leather bag with some paper folders. After she opened the car door, she turned and waved to Rita standing on the threshold. Rita watched her drive away, and then gestured for me to pull up in my car and come in.

I came to the door and gave her a hug. Up close, she looked tired and white around the eyes.

“How are you holding up?”

She shrugged and rubbed her temples.

“The ceremony was very nice. George would have liked it.”

I nodded.

“How about the rest of your day?”

She shook her head to indicate where Teresa just drove off. “We’ve been discussing the situation so far.” she said. “It has not been a picnic”.

I made what I hoped were encouraging noises.

“Do you want anything?” She asked as we walked into the kitchen.

I requested a cup of decaffeinated tea, and we moved to the living room to talk.

I didn’t realize myself until that conversation that my thinking had shifted from finding the killer to trying to establish that Rita didn’t do it. In any case, I reasoned, if Rita was the murderer, it sounded like the police had that angle pretty well covered. I didn’t like thinking of a friend of mine as a murderer anyway. I made up my mind to look for other possible suspects that may have been ignored up to now. I thought back to the people I met at the party, and the conversations I had with them.

“You don’t have an alibi, correct? When… it occurred…, were there any people around that saw you? Maybe saw you running through the house?”

She shook her head.

“Any cell-phone calls or texts around that time? Emails? Anything with a timestamp on it?”

“No, I was in the master bathroom upstairs.” The master suite was down the hall from George’s office, and had its balcony next to the office's windows. “I came out of the bathroom and heard the noise outside. And I looked out and  saw...” She swallowed hard. I reached over and put my arms around her again.

We sat like that for a moment, then Rita shifted position.

“It’s funny that you mentioned timestamps – Roger was reading some internet car forum, and he told me that he loaded the page about 5 minutes before... George fell.”

That was good to know, if we ever would need to establish Roger’s alibi. I wanted to ask about what Vinay had mentioned, about the remodel being completed very recently.

“Your house renovation – it was fairly complex, right?”

“Yeah. The swimming pool permits in particular were a pain.”

“Were any of the contractors and designers at the party, besides Kevin Moody?”

“No. We invited our architect, but he couldn’t make it. We didn’t have an interior designer, that was just me.”

“What about Kevin?”

She thought, then shuddered. “Imagining your remodeler as a murderer makes it seem so terrifying somehow. I mean, he had complete access to the house for months!”

“Would he have a motive? Did you have any sort of dispute?”

“Well, we had an argument a month or so earlier, about the pool. George even threatened to sue. But we’ve patched it up – no pun intended.”

“I see”. I learned from the local paper, and from Paul, that George was well-acquainted with lawyers, – in fact, his father was one – so I was sure that he could have come up with some legal basis for the lawsuit. That must made for some uncomfortable times for Mr Moody. “What about any payments for the work?”

“We paid 30% upfront, 40% a couple of months ago. The rest was due 2 weeks ago. George withheld 15% over that argument we had. But he should have paid out the rest by now.”

Interesting – Kevin Moody had a motive to be disgruntled with the host. And 15% of the sum of that remodel would be very sizable, I thought.

“Do you know whether that last payment was ever made?”

Rita got out her phone, tapped on it, logged into her online banking app.

“Yes, the payment was made on the 15
th
.”

“Who authorized it, or wrote the check?”

More tapping on the phone. “George did.”

“Where did you live before moving here? While the remodel was going on.”

“We rented three bedroom condo downtown.”

“And Roger also lived with you there?”

“Not long. He moved here only 3 months ago. He left Stanford after the spring quarter. So he stayed with us at our old place for 2 months, and then we moved to the house. Why?”

“I was just wondering about the timing of the death. Why now? What changed? And the house move was a big change in your life. Maybe it had something to do with the murder.” Rita suppressed a sob and looked around her like someone who had woken up from a deep sleep and didn't realize where she was. She looked as if the house itself terrified her at that moment, as if it itself was the killer.

“Did a lot of people came over to visit when you lived in the rental?”

Rita nodded.

“When was the last big party you had?”

“Oh about 2 months ago. Shortly after Roger moved in. Let me check.” She scrolled through her calendar on her phone. “Found it. June 25
th
. After that, the remodel started taking up even more of our energy, and I didn’t feel like hosting anything for a while.”

“Was it the same group of people?”

“Pretty much. We invited the same people this time around, too. You weren’t at that last party, of course. “

“Anyone who was invited and didn't come at that time?”

She thought, then taped on her phone again, looking up guest acceptances.

“Paul wasn’t there. And Stan couldn’t make it either. And Kevin Moody.”

So if the murder was connected with parties – if the murderer was not a close friend or someone who had easy and regular access to the house, – then the motive arose some time in the last 2 months. Or, in the case of Paul and Stan, the motive may well be older – but still, something must have triggered the event.

“When did you actually move into this house?”

More tapping on the phone. “Three weeks ago.”

“And people haven’t visited before last week?”

“No, not really. John came by a couple of times. And of course Kevin has been here.” I mulled that over, but couldn't make a connection to why the murder happened when it did.

I took another sip of my tea and decided to switch tracks.

“What are the other reasons for the police to suspect you? Let's walk thought them.”

“There’s the money: I inherit a lot of it. To me, the police almost seemed to imply that I married George for his money.”

I was too polite to ask “Did you?”, so instead I put an outraged expression on my face.

“Well, I could see their point. We hadn’t been married very long – just under 18 months. Before we got married, I was a poor grad student, trudging through my PhD. And he was already successful then.”

Rita told me how they had met: she was recently single, waitressing at a swanky Seattle restaurant while in graduate school working on her PhD in 16th century Polish literature. He came in one night with a couple of people, and at the end of the night asked for her phone number “because she was beautiful”. She liked that he was polite, he was generous with tips and he seemed smart. They started dating, fell in love; their personalities seemed to match. As the 16th-century Polish poets failed to become a hot job ticket, she had moved in with him, continuing to do her PhD and work in the restaurant. Living with him proved a bit harder: he was self-involved and could be very moody. But he would tell her that she was very easy to get along with, and perfect for him. Less than a year later, they had gotten married. Six months after that, they bought the house and started remodeling it.

She felt like she left behind most of her old friends in the area in her move to the “fancy”, new life, and in leaving her waitressing job. Rita said she hadn’t kept in touch with them, besides some random social media updates. Not many were invited to her wedding. (And since I didn’t use Facebook and the like due to being leery of putting out that much personal and identifiable info on the internet, she and I had no news of each other in the meantime.)

George was generous with things and gifts to Rita, lavished his attention on her, and liked showing her off. He also liked having Roger around and thought his company had promise, so he bankrolled it for the next 12 months, paying for office-space rent and supplies, a car to drive and insurance for Roger. Roger wasn’t getting a salary from the venture, but had all his living expenses paid for, the chance to be the CTO of his own start-up – and a cool car to drive, in the bargain.

Telling me all of that, and remembering how caring George could be made Rita sob. I sat there, staring in front of me, wondering what I could do or say to make it easier for her.

Her sobs became louder gulps, she was crying. We sat like that for a while. I got her some water and after a bit she calmed down. I suggested that she should get some rest, and led her upstairs to her bedroom. She fell asleep on top of the blankets, exhausted. I decided to stay in the house for a little longer to make sure she was OK.

It occurred to me that I could use the opportunity to learn something more about the case. Would there be any evidence still in the house, if Rita was the killer? I hated snooping, and hated myself for taking seriously the thought that my friend could have really killed her husband. I felt inner distaste and like looking through Rita’s things would be violating her trust in me and our friendship. Snooping through her dead husband’s things was better in my mind, somehow. On to go into George’s office and look through his papers, then.

In the hallway, moving on tip-toes almost instinctually, I listened to any other signs of life in the house and heard the TV noise coming from downstairs. The nasal voice of the “Matchmaker to the Rich, Famous and Superficial” was droning on about how some girl had to dress “More feminine” and wear skirts instead of pants. Clearly, I, with my love of jeans, was in no danger of being courted by the Wealthy and the Vapid! I assumed the TV was on in the general vicinity of where Roger was. I headed to the office. It was previously taped off as a crime scene, but I knew from Rita that the tape was now removed and George's possessions that had been taken for investigation were now put back.

I started down the corridor, turning my head to see whether I could spot the camera and decide whether it was on or off. Having located it near the door and noticed that it was off (as I hoped it would be), I went in, closing the door behind me.

There was a big stately desk in the middle of the room, with a large monitor on it and a brown leather Herman Miller chair behind it. Another two chairs in front of the desk were turned as if someone sat in them recently. A red-toned rug covered the floor beneath the desk. A window behind the desk overlooked the pool. A couple of framed posters were on the wall – I came close and saw that they were two images from the 1930s murals of Thomas Hart Benton. I assumed the safe was behind one of those; probably behind the one showing a speeding steam train, a propeller plane taking off, a flying zeppelin and a pumping piston, as it was further from the door. It seemed, true to form, George liked images of powerful machines and mechanical symbols of progress in action. A flat-screen TV was hanging on the other wall. There were two bookcases and what looked like filing cabinets by the window. I checked the desk drawers – they were locked. The room still vaguely smelled of cigars. There were no papers on top of the desk.

I stood and looked around, trying to imagine what actually happened that night.

If George stood by the window, someone could have pushed him off. George was apparently very drunk and unsteady on his feet, so it would not have been that hard to do. The person to push a body of George’s size would need to be moderately strong. I remembered Detective Davis mentioning that there had been cigar ash on the window sill. George was probably standing or sitting near there while he was smoking.

Did this mean it was a pre-meditated crime, or not? Someone probably came into the office wanting to talk to George. They could have had a fight, and the other person could have pushed George, who, being so drunk, tumbled down to the pool below. Or the killer might have been thinking of a way to get rid of George Ellis for one reason or another, and saw the perfect opportunity. If it was pre-meditated, how could the killer be sure that George would die? George was so drunk, I thought that him drowning was extremely likely, but that a small chance remained that he would survive the fall. So I was leaning towards the idea that it was a spur-of-the-moment crime, maybe the result of an escalating argument.