No Good Deed Left Undone, page 3
“Gotta go,” the girl said, standing up as if responding to a bell. “See ya.” She waved and walked away. She did not look back.
Grant felt an empty ache in his belly, as if his innards had been removed. He hadn’t expected that the girl would simply snub him. Maybe he was losing his touch. He was getting old. He was sixty. Maybe that was it; maybe he wasn’t sexy anymore. He called Emma on his cell phone. “Let’s go for a drive,” he said when she answered. “I have an urge to stroke your thigh.”
Emma laughed and said she would meet him at the car. He felt restored. Life was as it should be. Grant was king of his world until the next morning when all hell broke loose in his barn.
8:30 a.m.
Lagarde walked from the barn over to Emma Wodehouse, introduced himself and asked if he could talk with her back at the house. He took a quick look at the new widow as they trudged up the long slope toward the house. She was dressed in beige corduroy pants, with a white cable cardigan sweater over a t-shirt, rubber barn boots and was wearing small gold hoop earrings. Her salt and pepper hair was cut short yet still looked feminine, and accentuated her warm brown eyes. She took long strides as she walked back to the house. Limber and fit, she wasn’t fifty yet. Grant Wodehouse’s trophy wife? She probably didn’t even need a boot up from a block to mount a horse. Sergeant Black was right, he’d have to be careful that her attractiveness didn’t keep him from seeing her clearly. It couldn’t hurt to look, he mused, smiling to himself.
A year past sixty, the law man had the look of a gentleman farmer rather than a detective. His faded blue eyes had seen too much, but they could still make a woman give him a second look when he wanted. Hoping to coast toward retirement, he’d discovered that he wanted only a few things in his life: to do his job well with the least difficulty, to ride his horse and to love someone; that last desire proving more of a mystery as the years passed than any murder he investigated. As Black knew well, love was Lagarde’s weak spot. The running joke between them was that every woman they met was a potential danger to Lagarde’s sanity. He shook himself a little to clear his head of everything but the case at hand.
“I’m sorry to have to ask you questions at this time, Mrs. Wodehouse, but it will speed up our investigation if you can talk with me now,” he explained as they walked.
Emma nodded. “It’s okay. I understand.”
“Can you tell me exactly what happened this morning, including whether there were any early phone calls or anyone who came to the door, anything out of the ordinary that happened before Mr. Wodehouse went out to the barn?”
Emma walked up the four steps to the back porch, opened the back door of the house, slid her boots off inside the door and walked into the kitchen in her socks. She touched the glass pot in the coffee maker on the counter with her finger, pulled a gray ceramic mug out of the glass front cabinet above the counter and poured herself a cup of steaming coffee.
She didn’t ask Lagarde if he wanted one; didn’t ask him to sit down, either. She turned around to face him, leaning back against the kitchen counter with her arms crossed over her chest, her mug of hot coffee in one hand—a weapon pointed at him. She looked at Lagarde for an excessive amount of time before she spoke. Lagarde thought she might be using his own trick of being silent against him. Being quiet, he had found in years of interviewing, often forced his subjects to tell him things they never should have revealed if they wanted to retain their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Emma was so calm that he had to keep reminding himself that she had just found her husband impaled and covered in blood.
“We were happy here.” Her statement wasn’t a prologue to her history, she just seemed to be uttering her internal observation out loud, making a comparison between what was true for her the moment before the murder and now after it.
Then she was silent again.
While he waited for her to speak, Lagarde looked around the room. She had obviously remodeled the kitchen in the old stone house. The counters were glossy black granite, the appliances high-end stainless steel. Handmade oak cupboards and shelving painted cream white provided ample space for dishes and food. There was also a butler’s pantry with additional storage space between the kitchen and the large dining room. The double refrigerator in the kitchen had glass doors and a built in wine cooler. A large oblong oak table with six oak chairs sat under a wide bay window looking out toward a garden, patio, and the woods beyond. Two wingback chairs upholstered in a cheery plaid flanked what appeared to be a working woodstove. There were no photographs of grandchildren in the pool that could be seen from the window near the table, no snapshots of any member of the family on the refrigerator. The kitchen was functional and impersonal. It could have been the centerpiece of a well-provisioned model home. They were comfortable here. Perhaps that’s what Emma meant by ‘happy.’
“Nothing unusual happened this morning,” she said finally. “I mean, before. We woke up at our normal time, around six o’clock. I got up shortly before Grant did, brushed my teeth, threw some clothes on, came downstairs and started the coffee. Grant came down, put on his boots and went out to the barn to let the horses out. It was a perfectly normal morning. Well, except that …” she paused and corrected herself. “No, actually, it was perfectly normal, within expected parameters.” She glared at him as if to dare him to question her idea of normalcy, as if saying it was normal would instantly restore sanity to the madness of murder.
She put her coffee mug down on the counter, walked over to the sink and looked out the kitchen window facing the barn. She continued with her back to him, “When Grant had been gone about forty minutes, I called down there—we have an intercom system set up between the house and the barn—to see what was keeping him. I was distracted and burned his eggs. His phone rang, but I didn’t answer it. I guess I felt impatient that he hadn’t finished up with the horses yet. Normally it doesn’t take him more than twenty minutes to get the horses out. He lets them out one at a time, you know.”
Lagarde nodded to indicate he was familiar with the process for letting horses out of their stalls. You never wanted to put yourself in the way of a small stampede of energetic horses, even when you were an old hand at managing them. He also understood that in the face of death it was nearly impossible to put one thought next to another one, much less in a logical timeline. Thoughts were like horses in that way, they could trample you underfoot if you didn’t control them. Emma was doing remarkably well for a sudden widow. She turned back to face him.
“What distracted you?” Lagarde asked.
She shook her hand, palm toward him, as if to stop the words coming toward her. She would proceed in her own direction, at her own pace. “Sometimes Grant stops to joke with the kids we hired to muck out the stalls and help put the horses out, but half an hour is the most this chore ever takes. He’s not a lingerer. When he didn’t pick up on the intercom, I knew something was wrong. I walked down to the barn and called his name. I could see all the horses were out already. It was very quiet in there. I looked in all the stalls and the tack room. I thought he might have had a heart attack and was lying in a stall. He’s the age where a heart attack might happen out of the blue. I turned around to leave the barn, to look for him outside, when I saw him, there, on the wall by the door.”
She gasped, covered her eyes with her hand, as if to prevent seeing him pinned to the wall again. It was too late for that. She would never forget that image. The photograph her mind took of her husband with the pitchfork sticking out of his chest, blood splatter everywhere, his eyes and mouth open as if to scream, his face gray, would come back to her again and again when she didn’t expect it. Her entire body shook.
“Why don’t you sit down, Mrs. Wodehouse,” Lagarde said, who had already decided she was either a very good actress or she had not committed the murder.
She shook her head no, then gave him that palm out hand gesture again. He could see her consciously trying to steady herself. “I’m better off standing. There’s a lot to do. I need to start calling people, plan the funeral, tasks I would rather not have to do. I can’t crumble.” She put a shaking hand over her mouth and looked away from him. She quaked from the effort of pulling herself together.
“I have a few more questions, but I can come back later today or tomorrow if that would be better for you.” He opened the small notebook he kept in his jacket pocket and started making notes, something he did while his mind was taking in his subject’s tone, gesture, posture and facial expressions, none of which made it into words on paper but filled out the picture in his mind of what had happened and who his suspect might be.
“No. Let’s just get it over with.” She gathered her wits.
“When you discovered the body, did you notice anything else out of the usual in the barn?”
“No, I could only see his body. I was in a tunnel, surrounded in darkness, with all the light on him. I don’t know what else was there. I had to turn on the lights, it seemed so dark.”
“Did you touch him in any way, or touch the weapon?” Lagarde hated asking this question because it forced her to look into her memory again, but he needed to know.
“No, no I didn’t touch him.” Emma drew her hands up to her chest, one over the other, as if the idea of touching his dead body was repugnant. “God help me. I was afraid to touch him.” She put her hands over her face for a minute, recovered and said, “I couldn’t move or talk. For a while I couldn’t even make a sound, and then I could only scream.”
“Okay. We’re done with the hard questions. How old was your husband?”
“Sixty, he just turned sixty,” Emma sighed and turned her head to look out the window over the sink. “We had his birthday celebration this past Saturday. Everyone came.”
“Was he still working?”
“Oh, yes, of course. I don’t think he ever planned to stop working. He’s a real estate lawyer. It’s not hard work. Lots of closings, consultations and representation for developers, estate trusts, stuff like that. He had many clients, made good money.”
“How old are you?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” she snapped at him. She calmed herself and said, “I’m fifty-five.”
“When were you married?” Lagarde asked, thinking she looked very good for fifty-five-years-old.
“God, you guys, you worm your way into everything. Okay, I’m his third wife. Are you satisfied now? We’ve been married for ten years, ten happy years. Marrying Grant was the best decision I ever made.”
Lagarde noted that she was not talking about love and devotion, but had focused on happiness, an experience that could mean different things to different people, and decision making, a function of reason rather than feelings. Perhaps she didn’t love her husband in the traditional way that women are expected to love their partners. Although, maybe she knew something about marriage that Lagarde didn’t know; that love wasn’t enough if you wanted to be happy. Marriage required grit and patience. That much he knew even if he could never achieve it. But Emma seemed to be saying she hadn’t married for love and was happy. He’d have to muddle that out at another time.
“Are his previous wives out of the way?” He was never comfortable asking this question either, but the fact of her being wife number three meant there were two wives out there who had possible motives to murder the man, if necessary by proxy.
She laughed, a harsh sound, a bark. “You mean are they getting enough alimony to leave us alone? The first one is dead, cancer. The second one is remarried, so no alimony, but she does call from time to time when she’s drunk and feeling nostalgic. He hangs up on her.”
“So you don’t think wife number two has any motive to want Mr. Wodehouse dead?”
“Rhonda want him dead? No. She wants him to fuck her again.” She looked straight at Lagarde. “You’re surprised by my language? I’m not a shrinking violet.”
Lagarde didn’t blink. Violent images brought out violent language in people who were usually restrained. “Does Mr. Wodehouse have any children from the first two marriages?”
“Yes, two children. His daughter, Rebecca, from the first marriage, is in her mid-thirties. She lives in Phoenix. She has a husband and children. Seems happy. We see her on some holidays and vacations. His son, from the second marriage, Kyle, is in boarding school in Mercersville, Pennsylvania. Not a brilliant student, a little wild, but okay. He’s seventeen and a senior. We see him when he wants to see us. He’s an adolescent so he despises us, but he’s not homicidal, I don’t think. We’re very generous with both of Grant’s children. If you’re looking for motive, it’s better for them if Grant is alive. I’m the only beneficiary of Grant’s estate in the will.”
“Do you and Mr. Wodehouse have any children?”
“No. We married too late. We didn’t want to adopt.”
Lagarde detected a slight quiver of her lips when she spoke. Thinking there might be more to that story, he went on. “What do you do for a living, Mrs. Wodehouse?”
“I’m a lawyer. I specialize in divorces.” Her eyes flashed. “I can give you my card …”
Lagarde thought he saw a twinkle, or maybe that was a warning in her eye. Interesting woman to be making a joke at this moment … or maybe that wasn’t a joke. Maybe she was always trolling for new clients. “Are you successful?”
If she was capable of this level of calm functioning immediately after her husband was killed, Lagarde was thankful he had never encountered her across the table at any of his four divorces. His last marriage, a quick rebound relationship with the pleasant but flighty office receptionist Joyce, after his failed bid to win Beverly’s heart, lasted only six months and still cost him a bundle. Lagarde had realized that he was a man who needed to be with a woman. He had now learned that he should never, ever marry someone he met at work because when the marriage was over, he would still have to see her every day. There was another mystery he couldn’t solve: even when the woman ends the relationship, she still holds a grudge against you forever for failing to keep her. Lagarde turned his attention back to Emma.
“I’m known as the dragon lady. I take care of my clients, leave no stone unturned, if you know what I mean.”
Lagarde raised his eyebrows and was relieved none of the previous Mrs. Lagardes had found Emma in the telephone directory. “Were you married before you met Mr. Wodehouse?”
“Jesus.” She nodded her head, yes. “Divorced.”
Lagarde nodded. “Did you have any children from that marriage?”
“I have a son, William. He’s thirty. He’s been at Harvard for the last seven years getting his doctorate in something obscure related to Buddhism that no one will ever care about. He says he’s done with that now, but it remains to be seen what will happen.”
Lagarde noted her frustration with her son and moved on. “Do you think either your son or your ex-husband have a grievance against Mr. Wodehouse?”
“No,” she said curtly, then looked down at the floor. “Grant has been very generous with my son, and Harry doesn’t give a damn what I do. He married his hair stylist.”
Lagarde noted that she managed to disparage the woman who replaced her without saying anything bad about her. Perhaps it was her ex-husband she was disparaging by commenting on his new partner’s profession. It was possible that Emma was a snob. “What was your previous married name?”
“Emma Thornton, Mrs. Harry Thornton, of Shepherdstown.” She grimaced.
No love lost there. “What were you going to do after breakfast?”
“We were going for a ride. I love riding in the morning, something about the clean air and a strong animal between my legs. We each ride one horse every day, so they all get exercised several times a week. We turn the horses out into the pasture after our ride and pitch some hay into the feeders and fill up the water trough. The neighbor kids help us with that.”
Emma turned her back to him again and looked out the window. “Then we would have come inside, stripped off our clothes, had sex, showered, dressed and gone into the office. Is that enough detail for you? We have an office in Charles Town. We didn’t have any early appointments. We have, had a good life.” She put her hand over her mouth, as if she had said too much and wanted to stop any more words from escaping. She was shaking again.
Lagarde thought she might be overdoing the happy wife bit. “Can you think of anyone who wanted your husband dead?”
Mrs. Wodehouse looked out of the kitchen window for a long time. Lagarde waited. He didn’t know if she was wracking her brain for a potential suspect or counting them.
“Ask his partner, Eugene Waters. They were arguing over the split of the executor proceeds from a large estate. But really, no, I can’t think of anyone who would benefit from his death. Certainly not me.”
“We’ll need access to Mr. Wodehouse’s office in town. Is there someone there who can let us in?”
“Yes, of course. Ann Roberts, our office administrator, can let you in. She’ll be in by nine. She’s very competent. I should probably call her …” Emma’s voice trailed off, following her train of thought out of the window to the barn she was staring at again.
“Thanks. Did Mr. Wodehouse have an office here in the house? We’ll want to have a look in it, and his files. And if he used a cell phone, we’ll want to take a look at that. It might help us to find his killer.”
“Yes, fine. His office is right off the living room.” She looked around the kitchen and waved in the general direction of Grant’s office. “His cell phone is on the table near the back door.” She pointed to the cell phone but didn’t move towards it.
Lagarde picked up the phone with a glove and put it in an evidence bag. “We’ll return it to you when we’re done.”
