Play Dirty

CHAPTER 25

IT’S NICE OUT HERE.”

At the sound of his voice, Laura jumped and turned around suddenly. “Oh, Detective. Hello.”

Rodarte had crept up on her deliberately, wanting to get an honest reaction out of her, not one she had time to rehearse. He climbed the steps and joined her in the gazebo. “You don’t see many of these anymore.” He pretended to admire the lacy woodwork trim on the circular roof.

“Foster’s grandmother had it built even before the house was completed. Foster told me she wanted someplace where she could sit and watch the swans. They always had swans in the pond.”

The gazebo sat on a rise overlooking a pond where a pair of honest-to-God swans were gliding across the mirrored surface of the water. Rich folk, he thought scornfully. If he had their money, he’d spend it on something better than gazebos and swans.

“You mind?” He nodded at one of the vacant wicker chairs. She shook her head, and he sat down. She was wearing sunglasses, so he couldn’t see her eyes to tell if she’d been crying. He guessed she had because she was twisting a damp Kleenex between her fingers. Tears of grief or guilt? he wondered. He really didn’t care. Not unless she’d plotted with Griff Burkett to kill her husband.

Now, that would be a story, wouldn’t it? It would be written up in People magazine; 20/20 would do a segment on it. They’d make a movie of the week out of it. Maybe they’d cast him in a bit part, or he could serve as technical adviser to the producers, get movie credit.

But first he had to prove it.

“More peaceful out here than inside,” he remarked as he settled against the floral-print chair cushion.

Mrs. Speakman’s assistant had been joined by Mr. Speakman’s, a woman named Myrna something, who vacillated between crying like a baby and issuing orders like a drill sergeant. Together with Mrs. Dobbins, the housekeeper, they were manning the telephone, finding places for the floral arrangements and fruit baskets that were delivered by the truckload, cleaning up after all the cops who had been in the house last night, and making lists. They made endless lists.

A homicide generated a lot of busywork for everybody but the corpse.

“I had to get some fresh air,” Laura Speakman said. “And away from the telephone.”

“Who’s called?”

Behind the opaque lenses he figured she was giving him one of her haughty, condescending looks. “People conveying their condolences.”

“Anybody I should know about?”

“Griff Burkett. That’s who you mean.”

He grinned as though to say, You know me too well. “It’s my duty to check. Has he tried to contact you?”

“No. He wouldn’t.”

“You sure about that?”

“He wouldn’t.” She went back to looking at the swans. One had buried its face beneath its wing.

“I got the autopsy report from the ME.” Her only response to that was to roll her lips inward and compress them into a hard line. “Your car accident two years ago? Besides the obvious damage to his spinal column and legs, your husband suffered a lot of internal injury.”

“I mentioned that this morning when we talked about his medication.”

“It was pretty bad.”

“Yes, it was.”

“Some of his organs were friable. That’s the word the ME used. Weak. Eventually he would have died from one of those organs giving out. Probably sooner than later. That also according to the ME.” He paused on purpose. “But what killed him was a severed artery.”

She swallowed. “How long would it have taken?”

“Hmm, not long. But there was blood on his hands, tissue under his fingernails.”

She snapped her head around to look at him.

“That’s right, Mrs. Speakman. Your husband fought for his life.”

Rodarte actually enjoyed telling her that. Finally he got a reaction out of her. Her chest rose and fell on a quick little breath. She pressed the Kleenex against her mouth.

“He lived long enough to struggle with his attacker,” he continued. “Have to admire him for that. Him, paralyzed from the waist down, battling a guy with Burkett’s size and strength. He never had a chance, but he put up a brave fight.” Leaning forward, he placed his hand over hers. “Are you all right?”

She yanked her hand from beneath his. “I’ll be fine.”

“I know this is hard for you.”

“Is there anything else, Detective?”

“You can make arrangements for burial now.”

“Thank you.”

“Just contact the funeral home. They’ll know what to do.”

She nodded.

He stood up and moved to the railing that enclosed the gazebo. Staring out across the well-manicured landscape, he said thoughtfully, “Do you think Burkett attacked your husband suddenly, in a jealous rage? Or do you think they quarreled over the money?”

“Money?”

When he came around, she had removed her sunglasses and was staring up at him inquisitively.

“Didn’t I mention the money to you?”

“What are you talking about, Detective? What money?”

“The cash. In the navy blue box. It was on your husband’s desk in plain sight when the crime scene unit got here. They nearly shit when they-I’m sorry. Pardon the expletive.” He gave her a feeble smile. “See? Just thinking about it rattled me. It’s not every day you see that kind of money all heaped together. Half a million in one-hundred-dollar bills.”

Her lips parted soundlessly. She stared into near space for several moments, then shifted her gaze to a shrub loaded with big blue flowers that looked like pom-poms. He didn’t know what you called the flowers, but he knew how to define Mrs. Speakman’s reaction. She was stunned to hear about the half mil. More specifically, she was stunned to learn he knew about it.

“Half a million dollars in cash,” he said. “Sitting right there. It’s under lock and key in the evidence room now. You’ll get it back. Unless it turns out to be ill-gotten funds of some kind.”

“Ill-gotten?”

“Drug money, something like that.”

She turned back to him and stood up suddenly. “Listen to me, Detective Rodarte. My husband wasn’t involved in anything illegal, and if you were to check his financial portfolio, you’d realize just how ludicrous that allegation is.”

“You said he had a meeting with Griff Burkett here in your home. That’s how you two met.”

“What bearing does that have on this?”

“You said you didn’t know what they talked about.”

“I still don’t see the relevance of-”

“Burkett was found guilty of racketeering, Mrs. Speakman. So I was thinking that-”

“Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong.”

“Then how do you explain the cash?”

She folded her arms across her middle and tilted her head to one side. “Why are you just now mentioning this box of money to me?”

“With everything else, it slipped my mind,” he lied.

Their mutual stare held for several seconds, then she shrugged. “Foster kept large amounts of cash in the safe here at home, and in another at his office.”

“You don’t say. Why?”

“He liked to pass it around.”

“Pass it around?”

“It was a trait of his. An idiosyncrasy. He was a lavish tipper. He enjoyed leaving huge gratuities to waiters, hotel maids, the toll-booth attendant, anyone who did a service for him. Sometimes he would go out to the airport and hand out cash gifts to SunSouth ticket agents, baggage handlers, people who worked for him and were rarely thanked for the jobs they did. He did things like that often. Ask anybody.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “I believe you. It’s just a strange hobby. Never heard of such.”

“Foster didn’t advertise it. He did it for the pleasure he derived from doing it, not for self-aggrandizement.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Rodarte said, faking sincerity. “That could be one explanation for the box of cash. Except…”

“What?”

“Burkett’s prints were on the lid of the box. How do you explain that?”

“I can’t. But it proves that Griff Burkett isn’t a thief.”

He chuckled. “Well, the Department of Justice, gamblers nationwide, and the Cowboys organization would disagree. He took them for plenty every time he shaved points. I guess he didn’t need your husband’s half million.”

She pounced on his remark as though about to contradict it, then closed her mouth quickly and put her sunglasses back on. Whatever she had been about to say, she’d thought better of it. “If that’s all, I’d like to go in now and place that call to the funeral director.”

“Sure,” he said, waving her toward the steps. He walked along beside her as they crossed the expansive lawn. Whenever he got too close, she moved away, which amused him. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. We found two different blood types in Burkett’s Honda. One, of course, was your husband’s. Burkett must’ve had his blood all over him.”

The sunglasses weren’t large enough to conceal her grimace, but she didn’t address the issue of her husband’s blood being on her lover. “The other is probably his,” she said. “If there was tissue beneath Foster’s fingernails, he probably scratched him.”

Rodarte said, “I would think that, too, except we’ve already tested it. Doesn’t match Burkett’s blood type. So what I think is, it’s Manuelo Ruiz’s blood. Because it’s the same blood type as what we got off your library rug.”

“Implying what?”

“That Manuelo Ruiz was bleeding, too.” Rodarte tugged on his earlobe as though thinking it through. “The man’s vanished. I got in touch with Immigration to try to track him down. Guess what? Ruiz didn’t have papers. Your husband hired him illegally.”

“That’s academic now, isn’t it?”

This rich bitch was one cool broad, staring up at him through her dark sunglasses, her body language a dead giveaway to her contempt for him. He’d like to have done something to shake her up, something to crack that smooth mask she wore whenever she was talking to him. Twist her nipple, maybe. Push his hand between her legs. Something that would shock and frighten her.

“I guess it’s beside the point now.” He smiled amiably, even as he was thinking how much pleasure he would derive from humiliating her.

“Then what is the point, Detective?”

“Griff Burkett knocked off the wetback, too.”

Well, at least that elicited an honest reaction. He wasn’t sure if she flinched away from the racial slur or from his allegation that Burkett had committed double murder. It was hard not to look smug, but he kept his stoniest cop expression in place. “I don’t know if he got rid of Manuelo before or after he killed your husband, but it’s almost a certainty that he’s responsible for Ruiz’s unexplained disappearance.”

She wet her lips, pulled the lower one through her teeth, and he understood why Burkett liked fucking her enough to kill for it.

“Maybe Manuelo was frightened away by what he saw,” she said. “He ran.”

“Without taking any clothes or personal belongings? Without a car? Without the half million cash? Unlikely, Mrs. Speakman. But, on the outside chance that he ran from something that scared him out of his wits, I’ve had cops calling on every Ruiz in the Dallas phone book. Fort Worth, too.” He leaned forward and whispered, “Want to know something funny? We weren’t the first to call those folks today, asking did they know Manuelo.”

“No?”

“No. Come to find out, somebody beat us to the punch. A man has been calling the same people, looking for Manuelo Ruiz.”

“Griff Burkett?”

He spread his hands at his sides and smiled.

She removed her sunglasses, carefully folded down the stems, and studied them for several moments before lifting her head and looking up at him. “Well, which is it, Detective Rodarte?”

“Which is what?”

“If Griff Burkett killed Manuelo, as you allege, then why has he been calling people named Ruiz, looking for him?”

She held his gaze for several moments, then turned her back to him and started walking toward the house.

Rodarte stared after her, trying to control the anger pulsing through him. All right, she’d got him on that one, and he had no one to blame but himself for the blunder.

Truth be told, he hadn’t dwelled a lot on the fate of Manuelo Ruiz because he didn’t give a flying fuck what had happened to him. Whether Burkett had killed him or was trying to chase him down because he had witnessed a murder and needed to be silenced, it mattered not in the least to Rodarte.

He would either find the wetback’s body or run him down and get him to testify against Burkett. Whichever, he had Burkett for Foster Speakman’s murder. Burkett’s ass belonged to Stanley Rodarte.

And so does the widow’s.

Chuckling to himself, he thought of the payback he’d extract for her snooty condescension. After the funeral. After the folderol had died down. After Burkett was locked behind bars. Using the prison grapevine, he’d make sure Number Ten heard about his attentions to the lady. Every salacious detail.

Jesus, was that gonna be fun, or what?