Chapter 41 #2
“Jerome’s father is conscious, and he’s good, Vee. Really good. They may even release him tomorrow or the next day if his condition remains stable.”
“That’s wonderful news, Luna. Jerome’s father is awake and doing great,” she said to Bent. He’d hung back when she’d told him it was Luna calling.
“Vee, put me on speaker,” Luna urged. “Bent needs to hear this next part.”
“Let’s go to my office,” Bent suggested. “I’ll get Erwin when we’re done.”
“Hold on,” Vera told her sister. “We’re going to Bent’s office.” Vera couldn’t wait to hear the rest. Had to be related to Jackie’s death, since Luna wanted Bent to hear, too, and she sounded upbeat, excited even. Thank God.
Once they were settled in his office, Vera told her little sister to let loose.
“It was Geneva,” Luna explained. “Jackie called her and told her that she and I had argued and that we fell down the stairs. She just didn’t mention that she was the one who pushed me.
Anyway, we know Geneva went over to my house while I was at the hardware store because, like you said, the phone records showed she did.
After that she went to Jackie and Leonard’s house and told Leonard that Jackie was dead.
She even said that now the two of them could be together. Can you believe that?”
Vera smiled. She could, actually. And Luna was right. “The phone records show that Geneva left your house and drove to Leonard’s house, arriving in that area around 11:20. If she told Leonard that Jackie was dead, how did she know that? I hadn’t even arrived at your house at that point.”
“That’s the thing,” Luna cried, her voice quavering. “She could not have known unless she was the one who killed her!”
“Luna,” Bent said, “did Leonard say anything else about Geneva’s visit to him?”
“He kept saying he couldn’t believe Geneva just left him there after he started having chest pains. She used his phone to call 911 and thrust it at him, then took off like she didn’t want anyone to know she had been there.”
Vera shook her head. What a heartless bitch. “Maybe she thought if he survived, he wouldn’t remember her even being there.”
“Maybe so,” Luna agreed.
“Vee and I will finish this for you, Lu,” Bent promised. “You and Jerome focus on his father.”
As soon as the call ended, Bent invited Erwin into his office and went back to the business of arrest reports with Myra. Like Vera, he understood that Erwin would open up more to Vera without him in the room.
Vera settled behind Bent’s desk so she could face the woman.
“Is it over?” Erwin dropped into a chair. “I’ve been waiting forever to hear something.”
“Mostly,” Vera confirmed. “You were right about the aftershave. It was Brut, but our attacker wasn’t Larry Parson. It was Jose Martinez.” Conover had found a bottle in the bathroom at the house he and Hernandez rented from Carter.
“Are you serious?” Her face scrunched in concentration.
“Maybe I had smelled that aftershave on him before, but I don’t remember.
” She hugged herself as if the memory disturbed her.
“I don’t usually get that close to him. He always scared me.
I guess that’s why I don’t recall it.” She stared at Vera then. “Why would he do that?”
Vera decided that was her cue. “I can tell you everything I know if you tell me what you know.”
Erwin’s gaze narrowed. “That sounds like blackmail.”
“No.” Vera shook her head, reminding herself to be patient. The woman was exasperating. “It’s a negotiation.”
Erwin shrugged. “Okay. What is it you want to know?”
“Based on our encounter with Jamison in your apartment, you’re the one who told Thomas that his first wife was cheating on him. Is that correct?”
Erwin hesitated a moment. “I felt it was my obligation as his friend and his assistant.”
Vera supposed that was a reasonable assertion. “Did you have anything to do with her accident?”
Erwin’s guard went up then. “Of course not. Why would I do anything like that?”
That was the question. “But you said Jose Martinez was supposed to have fixed the problem with the saddle. How did you know that?”
She shrugged. “Because Lena said Jose should take care of it for her. He always did things like that for her.”
Vera had a feeling she knew where the ball had been dropped. “Who told Jose to take care of it?”
Erwin blinked. “What?”
“Did Lena tell him, or were you supposed to tell him?”
A frown furrowed its way across her brow. “I don’t know. I ordered the parts she told me to order.”
Vera’s instincts were right. “But when the parts came in, you didn’t mention this to Jose, did you?”
Erwin pouted. “I don’t remember. Thomas kept me very busy.
I didn’t have time to deal with Lena’s needs.
She should have taken care of it herself.
Besides, it wasn’t my fault she didn’t check or that she was thrown off and injured.
Or,” she ground out, “that she didn’t go to the doctor when she should have because she was too proud to admit to anyone that she’d fallen off her stupid horse. ”
Vera nodded. Maybe not exactly murder. But exactly what a psychopath would do. “There’s something else you’ve been hiding all this time. I want to know what it is.”
“You’re supposed to tell me something,” she tossed back at Vera. “Tit for tat, Ms. Boyett.”
Vera gave her a nod. “Gill Jamison confessed to killing Thomas, Seth Parson, and Sandy Owens.”
Erwin scoffed. “No surprise there.”
“Why did you leave that note? Weren’t you afraid he would come after you?”
She turned her hands up. “It was looking more and more like he was going to get away with it, and I couldn’t prove what I believed. I needed him to make a move you”—she glared at Vera—“would notice.”
“We certainly appreciate your help, but you could have just told me.” It was obvious to Vera that Erwin couldn’t stand knowing what she knew and believing that no one else did.
Erwin shrugged. “I guess I didn’t really think it through.”
“But there’s more, right? More secrets you’ve been keeping that we didn’t figure out.” Vera needed her talking. Bragging. Showing off all that she knew and Vera didn’t. Playing to her ego was the fastest way to make that happen.
Erwin puffed out a breath. “Fine. I guess it doesn’t matter now, anyway.
I was in love with him. Thomas. I thought after Lena died, he would want me.
I did everything for him. He told me over and over that he didn’t know what he would do without me, and then he didn’t want me.
Not for a wife. I think the others—Helen and Renata for sure—knew how I felt.
I figured they would try to use it against me.
When I found that phone, I knew they were trying to frame me. ”
Vera nodded. “You did use that phone to lure Seth Parson up here in hopes of breaking up Thomas and Alicia’s marriage, didn’t you?”
“You can’t prove that,” she countered, her expression cocky.
“Probably not.” Vera cleared her throat. “How about I give you one more thing and then you give me one more?”
Erwin shrugged as if she suddenly found the whole game boring. “Why not?”
“Alicia said Thomas wanted to take you with them to California.”
Something like glee filled her eyes, and she smiled. “I knew he wouldn’t leave me.”
Vera opted not to mention that Alicia had changed his mind. The point was moot now. “Tell me the rest of the story about Nola Childers.”
Confusion lined her face. “I already told you everything.”
“It feels like you’re holding something back, Valeri,” Vera argued.
Erwin held up her hands, surrender-style. “Fine. Fine. Everything happened just like I said, and FYI, she took Xanax that night too. Really stupid, and everyone thought she was so smart.”
Vera rolled her hand in a gesture of keep going.
Big sigh. “I told you I passed out, but I didn’t. When she was in the bath so long, I went to check on her and she was under the water. I started to pull her out, but then I didn’t.”
No matter that she had suspected as much, Vera was still startled by the woman’s coldness. “Was she dead already?”
Erwin made a face. “I don’t know. I just walked out and closed the door.”
“You didn’t try to help her. You didn’t even check?”
“No.” She stared at her hands clasped in her lap. “I dream about her sometimes,” she said softly, as if suddenly feeling bad about what happened. “I see her under that water.”
There was a lot Vera would like to have said to her just then, but none of it would matter or change her way of seeing things.
Instead she decided there was a far more important secret to prod out of her.
Yet another depraved act she couldn’t prove, but her gut said she was right.
“You went into Larry Parson’s motel room, didn’t you? ”
Erwin’s guard was back up again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. Helen Carter said she noticed your car there when she was leaving after planting that baseball bat and other stuff in his motel room.” This was a total lie, but Erwin couldn’t be sure.
Vera’s phone vibrated with an incoming text. She read the news from Conover and smiled. She looked to Erwin once more. “No point lying to me, Valeri.”
“Okay. Yes, I went to his room. I knew he was the one who attacked us, or at least I thought so. But it’s not like I broke in or anything.
” Another of those big huffy exhales. “The truth is, I followed Helen there. I knew she was up to something. I watched her break into his room. She had barely gotten into her car before he was driving back into the lot.” She laughed.
“Old Helen almost got herself caught. Anyway, I was curious about why she’d gone in there, so I knocked on his door.
He invited me in, and I demanded that he tell me the truth about what he’d done.
But he just kept saying he had no idea what I was talking about.
He said he was just here to find out what happened to his brother. I didn’t really believe him, though.”
“He offered you a drink.” Again Vera was following her gut here.
Erwin’s gaze narrowed. “So what. I’m over twenty-one. If a guy offers me a drink, I can take it.”
How cavalier she sounded. She clearly felt absolutely no regret for her actions. Vera had encountered her fair share of psychopaths, but Valeri Erwin was one of the coldest, and yet she gave the appearance of being harmless.
“Sure,” Vera agreed, “but you left him a little something in his glass, didn’t you? Something to go with his whiskey.”
For about two seconds a challenge sparked in Erwin’s eyes. She wanted Vera to know what she had done and gotten away with. But she caught herself just in time.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She folded her arms over her chest. “You should talk to Helen. If something bad was put in his glass, she had to have done it.”
“But you did have a drink with him?” Vera pressed.
“Sure, what of it?”
“Where’s the glass you used?”
That deer-caught-in-the-headlights look kicked aside her smug expression.
“You see, our forensics guy checked, and the other glass—there are two to a room—is missing from Larry Parson’s room. Did you take it with you? Like a souvenir?”
She shrugged again. “Maybe. I don’t remember. What’s the big deal?”
“Why did you steal the glass? If you only had a drink, what did it matter if you left your prints in the room on that glass?”
“I was just being careful,” she argued, feeling cocky again. “Besides, whoever put something in his glass, no one made him drink it.”
“He’s dead, Valeri,” Vera pointed out.
“I didn’t kill him. He killed himself. Like I said, talk to Helen. She was the one who broke into his room.”
“We’ll need your statement regarding your visit to him. Don’t leave anything out, Valeri. Word for word, all that you just told me. I’ll tell Bent if you forget anything.”
Erwin rolled her eyes. “Fine. And what do I get for that?”
Three to fifteen years, Vera suspected. She rounded up a notepad and a pen and placed both in front of Erwin. “We’ll see how thorough your statement is, then I’ll let you know if I still owe you something.”
Anticipation lit Erwin’s face as she picked up the pen and started to write. Vera doubted whatever came out in her statement would prove she’d murdered Larry Parson. But one of them—Erwin or Carter—had poisoned him. All they had to do was find where the fentanyl came from.
A needle in a haystack . . . but if they kept digging, they would find it eventually.
One way or another, Valeri Erwin was going down.