Chapter Fourteen
During the drive back to the station Big Jim and Chris agreed on the next steps in the case. Big Jim went to give Burwell an update while Chris began sifting through Merilee Truman’s family, friends, neighbors and co-workers for any men she might have enlisted to help her kill her husband. As Chris was reaching for his mouse his chair shuddered and he turned to see Larry Swanson shuffling toward the Mr. Coffee.
“Sorry,” Swanson said absently.
Chris watched Swanson grab the pot and pour himself half a cup with a slightly shaky hand. Swanson took a swallow and noticed Chris watching him.
“What?”
Chris turned away without speaking. Now in his middle forties, Swanson had spent almost his entire career in MCU working with Charlie Graham. Big Jim told Chris that when Graham and Swanson had first partnered up Graham was like one of those old movie cowboys who everyone figured would die with his boots on, that they were going to have to pry his shield from his cold dead hands. Then last year Graham met a woman.
It started out as a nothing interview with the neighbor of the victim. The deceased was Elliott Wardkemper, a real estate developer with more money than a first-round NBA draft choice. Around ten that morning the housekeeper had found him taking a nap on the bottom of his pool. He was sixty-seven. His wife was twenty-nine. Bells rang. Suspicion later hit a fever pitch when they discovered that the deceased had a pre-nup that gave the wife only a quarter of a million for each year of the marriage while her inheritance under the will was much more generous.
If Wardkemper died while he and the little woman were still living together and no petition for divorce had been filed her share of the estate was stipulated to be the greater of five million dollars or a million a year for each year they had been married. Since they had been blissfully wedded for only eleven months at the time he was found taking his wet nap, foul play was considered a definite possibility.
Graham, acerbic at the best of times, interviewed the widow and discounted her dry-eyed claim of heartbreak and loss.
“Jesus,” Charlie told his partner, “you’d think she could at least work up a few fake tears. Did you get anything from the housekeeper?”
“She claims he was as happy as a clam.”
“Well, now he’s a dead clam. See if you can track down his lawyer. I want a copy of the will and the pre-nup.”
“I’m on it. What are you going to do?”
“I want to talk to the neighbors, find out if anyone’s heard the vic and the missus fighting.”
Swanson glanced at the patio where the widow was sipping something pale and orange in a tall, iced glass. “I could think of something better to do with her than fight,” Swanson said.
Graham scowled at how easily a sexy woman could lower a man’s IQ. Am I the only guy who doesn’t think with his penis? he wondered.
“If she was stepping out on him,” Charlie said, “she looks like she might have been stupid enough to have brought the other guy here once or twice. I want to find out if any of the neighbors noticed any strange vehicles or some service guy spending more time here than necessary. You know how these people are, Mr. Hunky Lawn-Guy or Mr. Muscles Pool-Guy shows up and pretty soon her wedding vows are out the window.”
Over the years Swanson had learned to show no emotion at the stupidity that came out of his partner’s mouth. He had long ago concluded that Charlie Graham got at most of his ideas about how the other half lived from comic books — rich people were mean and selfish; beautiful women were cunning and faithless; the children of rich people were lazy and grasping; manual laborers were dullards and brutes, and cops such as himself, were the last bastions of sanity and order in a decadent world.
