Blood Relative (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 4) Read online

  The waitress hobbled over on sore feet and took our orders: corned beef on light rye and a Bud for me, matzo ball soup for Karen.

  “I thought you said you were famished.”

  “It doesn’t take much to fill me up.” She gave me a weak smile, then looked down at the table and fiddled with her silverware. “Do you…think he killed her?” She’d spoken quietly so her voice wouldn’t carry beyond our booth.

  “No.”

  She looked up, surprised. “I mean, really.”

  “Really.”

  “Why?” she asked me flatly. “All the evidence says he did. And I know he’s capable of something like that.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You answer first. Why don’t you think my father killed Clare?”

  “For one thing, the way he behaved in Golden that day, not like a man with murder on his mind. And for another, something he said to me yesterday at the jail: ‘She was mine, and he took her from me.’ He talked about Clare’s killer as if the man were a thief instead of a murderer.”

  “I’m not sure I see the significance.”

  “Maybe there is none. But if your father had killed Clare and were trying to convince me otherwise, I think he would’ve behaved differently. More horrified by her death. Instead, he spoke as if he’d been robbed of a possession.”

  “Possession,” Karen said bitterly. “That fits. He sees people as things. He thinks he can own them—his employees, his children…”

  The waitress showed up with our food. We ate for a time in silence. I spread more red horseradish on my corned beef and asked, “What did you mean when you said your father was capable of killing Clare?”

  She sipped her soup and gave me a small shrug. “His temper. He’d get mad, and he’d hit. He’s hit us all—me, my brother, even my mother. Clare, too, of course.”

  “You left out your sister.”

  “Nicole?” She smiled without mirth. “Oh, no, not her. She’s always been Daddy’s little girl. Kenneth was seven and I was six when she was born. My father spoiled her rotten, gave her anything she wanted.” She set down her spoon, her eyes sad. “Of course, he gave me and Kenneth plenty, too. Material things. Everything except…”

  “What?”

  “Love.” She shook her head. “He was never affectionate with me. And certainly not with Kenneth. And if he ever showed my mother any tenderness, it must’ve been in their bedroom with the door closed, because I never saw it.” She blew air through her aristocratic nose. “I guess he was saving it for baby Nicole. And maybe later for Clare.”

  So much for the big happy family.

  “Kenneth told me that you knew Clare first.”

  She sighed and nudged the bowl away from her. It was still half-filled with broth, and there were only a few small craters in the matzo ball.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “How did you meet her?”

  “Does it really matter?”

  “I don’t know, does it?”

  She turned her head and stared across the room at the entrance, as if she wanted to leave.

  Finally, she said, “I met Clare two years ago in Aspen.”

  Karen explained how she’d taken an extended weekend, skiing with some friends. But on her first run she’d twisted her knee. She’d limped around the lodge on crutches for the entire three days. Clare was there with a male companion from Kansas City. Since she’d never skied in her life, she was effectively stranded in the lodge, too. She and Karen gravitated toward each other, and by the end of the three days they were friends.

  Six months later, Clare had walked into Karen’s shop in need of money, a job, and a place to live.

  “She’d been forced to leave her home in Kansas City,” Karen said. “She had no one to turn to. I was the closest thing she had to a friend.”

  “What do you mean she was ‘forced to leave’?”

  “I never learned all the details. Only that it was something very unpleasant for her and that it had to do with her male friend.”

  “The man she’d been with in Aspen?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t suppose you remember his name.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. His last name, anyway. Rockefeller. Who could forget that?”

  “Is he the one who forced her to leave Kansas City?”

  “I don’t know,” Karen said. “Anyway, she was obviously down on her luck, so I gave her a part-time job. It wasn’t as if Teri and I needed the help. We just wanted to help Clare. She knew how to…get things from people. I let her stay at my house until she found an apartment.” Karen twisted her mouth in a bitter grin. “A month later, she found my father instead.”

  The waitress took away our plates.

  I said, “Kenneth told me that you introduced Clare to your father.”

  She gave me a sour look. “Kenneth likes to believe it was my fault they got together. Yes, I introduced them. My father came into the shop about a month after I’d hired Clare.” Karen snorted. “She was on him like a bee on honey. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized what she really wanted, what she’d wanted from the start—a sugar daddy to take care of her. And she didn’t care who—” Karen looked quickly away, but not before I’d seen the pain in her eyes. “She didn’t care who she used in the process,” she said.

  Now she turned to me with such a look of hatred that I was briefly startled.

  “I’m glad she’s dead,” Karen said in a low, mean voice. “I’m sorry for my father, but I’m glad that fucking bitch is in her grave.” She smiled evilly. “Does that surprise you?”

  “A bit.” Actually, I was more surprised that she’d admitted it. It wasn’t too hard to picture her standing over Clare with a wrench in her hand.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” Karen said. “Kenneth and Nicole are glad she’s dead, too.”

  “Did they tell you that?”

  “They don’t have to. I know how much they love money, my father’s money. Eventually, we’ll inherit it. But he was throwing it away on Clare as if there were no tomorrow—jewelry, clothes, trips abroad. Everything first-class. Nothing too good or expensive for precious little Clare.” She blew air through her nose, then looked at her watch. “I have to get to work.”

  “Wait. You still haven’t told me about Clare’s lover. Or lovers.”

  “I don’t know anything about them.”

  “You know she had lovers. Who were they?”

  “I…don’t know.”

  “You can’t give me one name?” Even I knew one, because Butler had told me—Christopher Pruitt.

  “No.”

  I’m sure she was lying, but I couldn’t exactly twist her arm. She slid out of the booth, then waited impatiently while I paid the bill.

  We roared off in her Miata almost before I got the passenger door closed. I fumbled with my seat belt as she swerved in and out of traffic and finally slid to a stop in the parking lot of The Gym.

  “What was Clare’s maiden name?”

  “Dickerson. Look, I have to go.”

  “When did—”

  “Look, I’m serious.”

  I unfolded myself out of the car and shut the door.

  “I’d like to talk to you some more about—”

  But she roared off, squealing the tires.

  The sound reminded me of what Samuel Butler’s neighbor had told me yesterday. He’d heard the squeal of tires in the driveway about the time Clare had been murdered.

  Of course, a lot of people squeal their tires.

  On the other hand, only one of them had told me she was glad Clare Butler was in her grave.

  CHAPTER 12

  I DROVE TO MY OFFICE.

  It’s on Broadway, not far from downtown. On the ground floor are a liquor store, a pawnshop, a greasy-spoon café, and a Christian Science Reading Room (formerly the Zodiac Bookstore, formerly the Christian Science Reading Room—the battle of good and evil goes on). On the second floor are me, a vacancy, a dentist who
I wouldn’t let polish my shoes, much less my teeth, and Acme, Inc.

  I’ve never seen Mr. Acme, nor do I know what business he’s in. But he’s always on the phone. He was on it now as I passed by his door.

  “…arrived unassembled, Murray, in goddamn pieces. A thousand boxes of loose parts. How do I sell them, Murray, as puzzles, for God’s sake? Never mind, just do me a favor. Call my wife. Tell her I’m having a heart attack because Murray now sends me puzzles…”

  I unlocked my door and went in, picking the mail off the floor. I’d had the post office resume delivery here only a few days ago, and already the junk was flowing. I dumped it all in the wastebasket.

  I tossed my jacket on the leather couch, sat in the swivel chair behind the desk, and began flipping through the Rolodex. When I found the name I was looking for, I dialed long distance.

  “Kansas City Star,” the woman said.

  I asked for the sports desk and then for Ed Nylund.

  Ed had been a reporter for the Denver Post when I’d been in uniform. Occasionally, and always unofficially, we’d let news guys ride in the patrol car during our shift.

  One night, with Ed in the backseat, my partner and I caught a squeal—robbery in progress at a convenience store on Thirteenth Avenue. As we pulled into the parking lot, two suspects were making their getaway. They rammed our patrol car, fired shots through our windshield, then sped away. We pursued, with glass in our laps and the wind in our hair, screaming through intersections, screeching around corners, speeding down alleys. A few blocks later, they ran a red light and got smacked by a taxi. Their car jumped the curb, took out thirty feet of picket fence, and crashed into the side of a house. The suspects rolled out, one on each side, shooting, putting a few more holes in the patrol car. We shot back and put holes in them.

  After that it was a circus. The street was blocked with gawkers, backup units, tow trucks, and ambulances. A network affiliate was setting up bright lights and a camera when my partner asked me, “Where’s Ed?”

  I found him curled in a fetal position in the backseat of the patrol car, sprinkled with glass shards but otherwise unscathed. However, soon after that, he’d turned to sports. Sometime later, he and his family had moved to Kansas City.

  “Ed Nylund,” he said, coming on the line.

  “Ed, Jake Lomax.”

  “Hey, Jake, how’ve you been?”

  We bantered a bit before I said, “This is a long shot, but I figured if anyone could help me, it’s you.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “I’m on a case involving a woman named Clare Butler. She used to be Clare Dickerson from Kansas City, and she hung out with a guy named Rockefeller.”

  “John D. or Nelson A.?”

  “Neither, I’m sure, but I don’t know his first name. About a year and a half ago, Clare left him and K.C. under distressing circumstances. I don’t know the details, but I figured if it’d been newsworthy—”

  “I can check. Was this Kansas City, Missouri, or Kansas?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Hey, pal, those are fighting words.”

  “Just kidding. I don’t know which state.”

  “Okay. I’ll call you back and let you know what I find.”

  “Today?”

  “Hey, I’ve got real work to do.”

  “Yeah, but I saved your life.”

  He chuckled at our old joke. “So you’re the one who told those bastards to shoot high so they wouldn’t hit the scared-shitless reporter in the backseat.”

  “That was me.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I bought the News and the Post and hung around the office for the rest of the afternoon studying the want ads. Plenty of jobs available. Telephone salesperson. Restaurant-manager trainee. Security guard. Sure, that’s it, I’ll put on a uniform and stand around a bank all day nodding hello to the customers.

  I read the sports pages and worked the crossword puzzles.

  Ed Nylund didn’t call back.

  I walked downstairs and outside. The rush-hour flow on Broadway thickened the air with an eye-watering, lung-searing fume. Above, the sky was overcast. If I could smell, it might have smelled like rain. Or snow—it was chilly enough.

  I pushed into the greasy spoon, or as it was officially called on the window’s painted sign: Café. There were some street people huddled in a booth nursing their coffee and a couple of uniformed cops at the counter doing the same. I took a stool and ordered the day’s special—green beans, real mashed potatoes, and chicken-fried steak served with an extra-sharp knife. It wasn’t bad. And the beers were cold.

  Later, in my office, I looked up Wes Hartman’s number. He’d been firm about me phoning before I came to his house. I dialed. It was busy. Well, I tried.

  Wes and Nicole lived within a mile or so of Samuel Butler’s house, in a pricey condo near University and Yale. It was a three-story brownish yellow concrete building with an irregular roofline, jutting buttresses, narrow windows, and a surrounding concrete wall. It looked like a scale model for a prison of the future. Maybe it was.

  According to the glass-encased directory, there were two residences per floor. The Hartmans lived in “B,” second level. I lifted the receiver and smiled up at the security camera.

  “Yes?” A young woman’s voice, wary.

  “Nicole Hartman?”

  “Yes?”

  I told her who I was and for whom I was working. “If you’re not busy, I’d like to ask you and Wes some questions.”

  “About Daddy?”

  “About Clare.”

  “Well…Wes isn’t home yet.”

  “I’ll wait. Out here.” Sigh. “In my car.” Poor Jake.

  She hesitated, then told me to come up.

  Nicole Butler Hartman was in her early twenties, with short black hair and large dark eyes. She somewhat resembled her father and brother; her black eyebrows were knit in the infamous Butler scowl. It looked less threatening on her, though, almost cute. A little girl pouting. She wore black running shoes, black tights, and a billowy man’s shirt, smudged with paint. The sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, forming huge cuffs and revealing thin, sinewy forearms. The pictures I’d seen of her at Butler’s house showed her to be overweight. No more.

  “I was working,” she said, explaining her clothes.

  She led me into the living room.

  It was furnished somewhat like the one in her father’s house—white leather couch and chairs. But here they seemed uninviting. Sterile and cold.

  The walls were bone white. The one behind the couch was hung with a four-foot-square oil painting in a chrome frame. The canvas depicted a nightmare landscape in purple and black. In the background, beneath a sickly greenish sky, tiny blackened figures reached upward. It was difficult to tell whether they were humans or blasted trees.

  “What did you want to know about Clare?” Nicole asked dully. She stood in the center of the room, left arm at her side, right arm across her body, hand holding elbow.

  “I’m trying to find out who—”

  “Daddy didn’t kill her.” She glanced nervously over her shoulder, as if there were someone waiting in another room.

  “No, I don’t think he did, either.”

  “I know he didn’t. He…wouldn’t.” There was a wild, frightened look in her eyes. Wes had told me that Butler’s arrest had devastated Nicole. I believed him.

  “Your father thinks Clare was having an affair,” I said.

  Nicole nodded tightly, shooting looks over her shoulder. Her fingers drummed a beat on her elbow.

  “Was she?”

  “If Daddy says so, then she was.”

  “Do—”

  “Can we talk in my studio? I was in the middle of something.”

  Without waiting for a reply, Nicole walked out. Her actions reminded me of Chuck Colodny, the flower vendor. I followed her down a hallway past a few closed doors to a converted bedroom at the end.

  In the cent
er of the room, highlighted by overhead track lighting, stood a heavy wooden easel, its uprights nearly touching the ceiling. A flat-topped cabinet squatted beside it holding a smeared palette, tubes of paint, and jars of brushes. The hardwood floor was splotched with paint. There were a dozen or so large canvases leaning in stacks against the wall. The ones I could see looked a lot like the one in the living room. So did the painting in progress on the easel—dark, swirling colors, tiny black semihuman shapes. More like things than people.

  Nicole picked up her easel and a brush and began daubing the sky with a lovely shade of black.

  I asked, “Who do you think Clare was seeing behind your father’s back?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Did she have any friends that you know about?”

  “No.” Then she hesitated, her brush hovering above the canvas. “Well, there was a woman…”

  “Yes?”

  “I only saw her once. I’d gone to my father’s house to get some mon—to talk to him about something. He wasn’t there, but when I walked in, I found this woman in the living room, flipping through a magazine. She said she was waiting for Clare. And then Clare came in and told me Daddy had gone to the liquor store and that when he got back I should tell him she’d gone shopping. Then they left.”

  “What was the woman’s name?”

  “Madeline something.” She resumed blackening the sky with nervous little strokes.

  “Madeline what?”

  “Hmm.” Then she smiled for the first time since I’d arrived. She stopped painting and held her brush up to me as if she were showing me a new toy. “Tate,” she said. “Madeline Tate.”

  “Where can I find her?”

  She resumed painting. “How should I know?”

  “Is there anyone else you can think of? Any other friends?”

  “No.”

  “Any enemies.”

  Her brush stopped, an inch from the canvas. She stared at it wickedly, as if it were a bothersome insect she was about to squash. “I can think of a few,” she said, and jabbed the painting.

  “Who?”

  “Everyone in my family.”

  “Do you mean you and—”

  “I mean all of us!” Her voice had risen to a screech. Now she clamped her jaws and squeezed her eyes closed, holding it in. Her hand was a small, hard fist around her brush. I figured a wrench could fit in there quite easily. She blinked her eyes and spoke with measured fury. “We…All…Hated…Her.”