Lost Lake Page 10

  “And was there? Something worth returning to?”

  He shrugged, still looking at his hands. “There might have been, at one point. Seems I waited too long to come back and find out. It took five minutes with my mama to remind me why I left. I’m sorry she is dead, I truly am. I can’t think of anything sadder than a violent death. How very, very terrible to have fear and pain be the last things you experience on this good earth. But I won’t miss her.”

  “Was she abusive?”

  At this, Kent looked up and scoffed. “You’ve got to be present before you can be abusive. No, Mama was the north star. Distant. Cold. Out of reach. But always there. All seeing, all knowing. Prophetic. Cassandra of the mountains.”

  “That’s poetic.”

  “Me, a poet? Imagine that.” This got another gravelly laugh from the man. “Detective, I’m a man of the land, so I suppose in some ways that’s the same thing. Look, I like to watch a ball game and garden. Drink a cold beer and read a mystery. I’m trying to do more good in my next twenty years than I’ve done in the last fifty. I volunteer with seniors and read to kids. I pick up trash when I see it in the road. I’m thinking of getting a mutt from the shelter. I always wanted a dog. I think a dumb old golden retriever named Blue sounds like heaven on earth.”

  “Those are all noble things,” I said, and finished my espresso. The man before me, a man who had spent years in prison, a man who by all accounts had been trouble through and through … he was surprising me with his every word.

  I decided to peel back the scab.

  “You’ve lived an often violent life. I have to ask, where were you this weekend, specifically late Saturday night and early Sunday morning?”

  Starbuck leaned forward and smiled, and for the first time since sitting down, I felt a tremor of fear run down my spine. For it wasn’t a smile, not really, but an ugly grimace. His face darkened; his tone grew harsh. “And so we come to it, the true reason for your visit. You cops are all the same. You want an alibi? I don’t have one. That must make me a murderer, so go ahead and arrest me. I was at the motel, in my room. Asleep probably, or damn close to it.”

  “Were you alone?”

  Starbuck smiled the awful smile again. He stood up and put a ten-dollar bill on the table. “That takes care of my drink and yours, with something extra for the waitress. I don’t have anything else to say about my mother or my nocturnal habits. My company that night, as it is every night, was the television and a six-pack of Coors. There might have been a candy bar or two, but I can’t remember.”

  He excused himself, and I watched him leave. At the door, he waited while two elderly women slowly exited. One of them used a walker, and when she caught it on the doormat, Starbuck helped her free it. The woman leaned over and patted him on the cheek, thanking him.

  At the counter, the sad bagels and plastic-wrapped pastries had been joined by a few apples and a lone banana. I bought the banana and ate it on the way to my car, deep in thought. I couldn’t get over the differences between Patrick Crabbe and Kent Starbuck: two brothers, born to the same mother, as different as night and day.

  Patrick Crabbe, apologetic. A businessman mired in meekness.

  Kent Starbuck, unapologetic. A troubled man seeking redemption.

  There was one thing I knew to be true, and that was this: nothing—I mean nothing—was ever as it appeared to be on the surface. What else lurked in Patrick Crabbe, in Kent Starbuck? Who was ultimately more authentic: the man who lived in meekness and possibly hid a darker side, or the man who walked in darkness and struggled to find the light within?

  Tossing the banana peel in a sidewalk trash can, I decided that in the end, the answer only mattered if one of them turned out be a killer.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I grabbed a quick lunch of a burger and shake from a drive-through and headed back to the police station. The last person I expected to see there was my grandfather, Bull Weston. He stood at the front desk, his back to me, and I took a moment to observe him. His hair was thick and white, his clothes casual. Though his shoulders retained the straight posture of his military days, there was a heaviness to them that was painful to see. A weight was there and, though it was invisible, I knew from where it stemmed—my grandmother Julia’s dementia.

  I hugged him from behind, feeling his back tense, his body stiffen. “Are you here to visit me? It’s awfully early.”

  When he turned around, I was aghast to see the dark bruising around his right eye.

  “Oh, Bull, what happened?” I asked. He winced as I gingerly touched the swollen blue-purple area. “Who did this to you?”

  “It’s nothing,” he said, waving off my hand in irritation. “I stumbled in the dark and fell against the bathroom doorjamb. It’ll heal in a few days.”

  I knew a punch when I saw one.

  What I didn’t know was why Bull was lying to me.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I asked, and looked from Bull to Hank Willows, the officer behind the front desk, then back to Bull. Willows was flushed, embarrassed to be privy to this particular family drama.

  “Willows?”

  “Oh, leave him alone. He doesn’t know anything about this,” Bull said with a sigh. “I hoped to avoid getting you involved, Gemma. It’s Julia.”

  Noticing the sudden panic on my face, he added, “Your grandmother’s fine. Well, not fine, but safe. She wandered off from the house this morning. I woke up about five, and she was just … gone.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I didn’t call you because I found her. Unfortunately, it wasn’t before this guy found her,” Bull said, and jerked a thumb to Willows. “He picked her up just as I got to her. Three streets from our house.”

  “I thought we had more time, Bull,” I said. My grandmother’s dementia seemed to be worsening by the week. “We need to look at other options.”

  “What, put your grandmother in a facility? An old folks’ home? Over my dead body. Between the home healthcare nurses and me, we can take care of her. We will take care of her,” Bull said. He turned to Willows. “Just give me the paperwork, Officer.”

  “You still haven’t told me who punched you.”

  “I never could pull the wool over your eyes, Gemma.” Bull turned around and gave me a small smile. “And I never like to admit when someone’s gotten the best of me. Julia was upset yesterday. She didn’t like the scrambled eggs I’d cooked, and boy did she let me know, with a hook to the face. Maybe that’s why she ran away this morning, she’s done with my cooking.”

  “This isn’t funny.”

  The smile dropped from Bull’s face. “No one’s laughing.”

  Something occurred to me. “Why are you here?”

  “What do you mean?” Bull asked nonchalantly. I wagged a finger at him and turned to Willows. “How many times have you picked up my grandmother?”

  “Gemma,” Bull warned.

  “No! You don’t get to lie to me, not about Julia. How many times?” I said. My voice was raised, and down the hall, one of my colleagues poked his head out of the central squad room. He watched a moment, then decided everything was under control and ducked back into the room.

  Willows remained silent.

  “How many times?” I whispered. Willows turned bright red and stared down at his desk and whispered in return, “Four.”

  “Four? Four times you’ve found my grandmother wandering the street? My god.” I turned from Willows back to Bull. “And you. How could you keep this from me? You have no right!”

  “She’s my wife. We have every right to keep our medical issues private, even from you. Now listen, Gemma. No, listen to me a moment. We both adore your grandmother. And I know you think the best place for her is in some nursing home. But I don’t agree. She belongs at home, with me. I can take care of her better than anyone else can,” Bull replied. He wiped a weary hand over his face, drawing the skin down. “She’s happy at home.”

  “I’ve seen the way she lashes
out at servers at restaurants, at the post office. It’s only a matter of time before she hurts someone else, physically, the way she’s hurt you.”

  At the desk, the phone rang. Willows, thrilled for a reason to excuse himself, turned away to answer it.

  Bull had paled at my words. “You don’t honestly believe that. Your grandmother wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “You’re right, my grandmother wouldn’t. But Julia isn’t the same woman anymore. Don’t let her get so far gone that she does something that you and I will regret for the rest of our lives. We’ll be the ones living with the consequences of anything she does, not her.”

  “I taught you a lot of things, including being clever enough to know which battles are worth fighting,” Bull said with tears in his eyes. “I’m warning you, stop fighting me on this. As her husband, it’s my call to make. I expect you to respect that.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I said. I stormed off to my desk. I was shaking by the time I sat down. Bull had every right to his opinion, but he was wrong about this. It was bad enough that Julia was wandering the streets and getting out of the house under his watch; now she was violent, too. The bruise on his face had been a terrible shock for me.

  By the time my phone rang a few minutes later, I’d calmed down. Slouched in my chair, I affected a carefree attitude, trying in vain to take the advice I’d read once in a fitness magazine to visualize my stress floating up over my head and out an open window. It helped that Finn had stepped away from his desk, gone to who knew where.

  I picked up the phone. “Monroe.”

  “Detective Monroe? This is Ally. Ally Chang? Sari’s best friend?”

  Sitting up, I leaned forward. “Yes, hi, Ally. What’s going on? Is Sari home?”

  “No. No, she’s not. I … I don’t know if I should have called,” Ally responded. There was a quiver in her voice, her pitch unnaturally high. “But … there’s something you should know. At least, I think you should know it. Maybe it’s not important. I’m not sure of anything these days.”

  It was obvious that Ally was in a tenuous state: Push her too hard, and she might hang up. Show too little interest, same result.

  Calmly, slowly, I said, “Please, let me be the judge of what’s important, Ally. Has something happened?”

  “No … not exactly. It’s just … well, I remembered something. From six or seven months ago. Sari and I were on a run and she tripped—her shoe was untied or something stupid like that. She fell and scraped her knee very badly. You know when you fall on asphalt and sort of slide?”

  “Like road rash?”

  “Exactly. Such a perfect name for what happens.” A little laugh from Ally, then a long silence. Finally, “Anyway, she started sobbing. And it was so strange because I’ve seen Sari be injured much worse. Two years ago she broke her arm in a bicycle accident and didn’t even cry.”

  “She sounds tough,” I said. I didn’t know where Ally was going with all of this, but I held my breath and bit my tongue.

  “She is. Toughest broad I know. But that day, she wasn’t so tough. When she stopped crying, she was really embarrassed. We went back to my apartment and got her knee washed and bandaged and had a few beers. After a while, she told me why she was so upset. It wasn’t about the knee, that was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

  Silence again.

  “Ally? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here. She … she was worried, Detective. She has a gambling problem. Had a problem. Maybe she still has it. I don’t know, she said she was going to get help. Anyway, she was worried and scared. She said she was in a lot of debt and wasn’t sure how she would pay it all off.”

  Could she have gone to Betty Starbuck for money?

  “Ally, did anyone else know about Sari’s addiction?”

  “God, no. It took everything for her to confide in me. Mac and her mom don’t know, I’m sure of it. And as I said, it’s something I just remembered, just now. After that day, we never spoke of it again. With Sari, there were some doors you didn’t open. Do you think this is important to the case?”

  “It could be. If Sari got into debt with the wrong sort of people … Do you remember anything else from the conversation? Did Sari gamble online? At the casinos? Or locally, in private homes? Was her debt on credit cards? Or did she actually owe cash to someone?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t recall her saying. In fact, she changed the subject right away. That’s when she started telling me about the cop.”

  “What cop?”

  Another long silence from Ally, then, “Sari dated a cop for a few weeks, while she and Mac were on a break. She said this cop got obsessed with her and she had to end things. She called him Blue Bird.”

  “Was he a Cedar Valley police officer?”

  “I think so. But … Sari told lies sometimes, for attention. Maybe she made the whole thing up to distract me from her gambling.” Ally sighed in the phone. “She could be crazy like that.”

  “Ally, thank you for sharing all this with me. It might be very helpful to the investigation. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “No, but I’ll call you if I think of anything. I heard what happened to her boss. It’s so scary to think that there’s a killer out there. In a way, it makes me feel better that Sari disappeared at Lost Lake. Do you know what I mean? Like, she’s probably safe somewhere, probably hiding from some prick she played poker with. If she’d been at the gala, she might have been killed, too!”

  I hadn’t thought of it like that, but Ally had a point.

  The cop thing bothered me. We were a small police department with a handful of single men, all of them good, decent guys on the surface. I couldn’t imagine any of them becoming obsessive.

  A dark thought entered my mind: Maybe the cop wasn’t single.

  We ended the call, and I spent the next few hours on the phone with each of the casinos in Colorado and Wyoming. My routine was simple and straightforward: talk to the highest-ranking security officer onsite. Explain that a young woman was missing. Ask for information.

  Sari Chesney was known in half a dozen of the casinos.

  They were large, flashy places, all within a day’s drive of Cedar Valley. They attracted busloads of people each day, their appeal being cheap hotel rooms and prime rib buffets for under thirty bucks. Over the last few years, Sari Chesney had spent a weekend at each one. When I plotted out the dates of her visits, I saw they occurred roughly every three to four months.

  Beyond that, the records got hazy.

  I got lucky in one respect: security officers at casinos know a lot about how the house operates, and they’re happy to talk about it. The casinos were willing to extend lines of credit to their customers, but unpaid markers were equivalent to bad checks—in other words, prosecutable. If Chesney had outstanding debts, the casinos would seek to get their money back using the letter of the law—say, the local district attorney—and not by use of muscle men.

  “The houses don’t work that way, Detective,” one of the security directors said to me. He snorted, and I heard him unwrap a sandwich or a burger. I had missed lunch, snacking on only the banana and espresso, and I was starving. When the director spoke again, it was through a mouthful of food. “You’ve seen too many movies. We don’t send hired mercenaries out with scare tactics. You should see how much some of these people drop on their visits here. We love our guests.”

  After the calls, I sat back and made a list of all the local moneylenders and loan sharks that I was aware of. I came up with four names, then turned around and looked across the aisle to Moriarty. Testimony in the park rapist case had finished, and he and Armstrong were back on active duty.

  “Lou, what do you know about the bookies in town?”

  “Bookmaking is illegal in the great state of Colorado,” Lou responded without batting an eye. “You want to make a bet, go to the racetrack.”

  “Louis, come on. We bring them in, they make bail, or pay their fine, or what
ever it is that’s needed in the moment, and then they’re back on the streets or back in their dens, taking money, same as they did the day before. I know there’s a whole network of these rats. Just give me their damn names.”

  I read to him the list I had, and he thought a moment, sniffed a few times, then added three more names and a warning. “These are good guys, Gemma. Don’t bust their balls. They’re not hurting anyone.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not my plan, Lou. I have a missing woman who may have owed some or all of them money. You know I’ve got to follow up with each of them.”

  “Missing woman? You mean that young lady from the museum?”

  I nodded. “Sari Chesney.”

  “You’re going down the wrong path. None of these guys are violent,” Moriarty said. “They are serious dorks. I’m talking accountants, number crunchers, computer science kids. Hey, you got any candy, something sweet? Maybe some chocolate? I got a migraine that won’t quit.”

  I found a candy bar in my purse. “You want any aspirin?”

  “Nah, that stuff tears up my stomach. But I knew I could count on you, Gemma. Always with the food.” He stood up and walked to my desk. “Look, these guys, these bookies … they’re trying to make a living, same as you or me. They’re in it for the money, not to hurt people.”

  He ate the candy bar in two bites, and I was immediately pissed that I’d given it to him. The chocolate would have tided me over for an hour or two at least.

  “That’s an interesting attitude, coming from you, Mr. Law Enforcement.”

  Moriarty shrugged. “You see the same depressing junk I see every day—drugs, child abuse, death. I figure the gamblers are the least of our problems. Anyway, I’m not above throwing down a few bucks myself on a game every now and then. Strictly aboveboard, of course. But … I get the appeal. It’s a rush, you know?”