“What about the cabin?” Kerney asked.
“Locked up tight, with shutters over the windows. No fresh footprints. Looks like it’s been a couple of months since anyone has been around.”
“Thanks, Sheriff,” Kerney said.
“No need for that, Chief,” Lucky replied. “Just doing my job. I’ll get back to you if anything turns up.”
Kerney hung up and went looking for Ramona Pino, who was in her cubbyhole of an office, fingers clacking away at a computer keyboard.
“I just got off the phone with the Harding County sheriff,” he said, as he sat in a straight-back chair. “Dean wasn’t at his cabin. Do you have any news?”
“Nothing yet, Chief,” Ramona replied. “We’ve got the Denver PD staking out Dean’s ex-wife’s house, and I just finished calling all the airlines. He hasn’t flown out of either the Santa Fe or Albuquerque airports.”
“Did you talk to the ex-wife?” Kerney asked.
“Yeah, and she’s not a big fan of her ex-hubby. She’s about to file against him for failure to pay child support. He’s in arrears for almost fifty thousand dollars.”
“What’s up with the evidence?” Kerney asked.
“The knives are on the way to California,” Ramona said. “Hopefully the lab out there will be able to match one of them to the tool marks on the pill. The stuff I pulled out of the trash bin at Dean’s house had traces of thyroid medication on it, and we lifted Dean’s prints off both packets the drug wholesaler shipped to him. The packet we found in the workshop contained a mixture of all the ingredients Dean used to make the pills. I guess Dean decided to keep his concoction for another attempt on Spalding’s life in case the first batch of pills didn’t kill him.”
“So, where the hell is he?” Kerney asked.
Ramona shook her head. “I wish I knew. Ellie Lowrey has the Montecito estate under observation in case he shows.”
“Okay,” Kerney said.
“I’d like to rework the arrest affidavit on Claudia Spalding and have it ready to resubmit, Chief.”
“What can you add to it?” Kerney asked.
“The only way Dean could possibly have known the specifics about Spalding’s medication and heart condition is through knowledge he gained from Claudia Spalding. Where else could he have gotten it?”
“I agree that it’s a good supposition,” Kerney said. “But a defense lawyer would argue that the information was innocently passed on to Dean by Claudia Spalding. We need something that irrefutably ties the two of them together as coconspirators.”
“We’ve also got the last phone call Claudia Spalding made to Dean at the pharmacy just before he took off.”
“Again, unless we can prove that Claudia actually warned Dean of the arrest warrant, it’s circumstantial. What’s Sergeant Lowrey up to?”
“She’s on her way to Clifford Spalding’s corporate offices in LA. He stopped there before driving to Paso Robles. She’s hoping to find the prescription bottle from the Santa Fe pharmacy. She thinks Spalding may have transferred the contents into his pill case, knowing he’d have a refill waiting for him when he got home.”
“As a pharmacist, Dean had to be fingerprinted, right?”
“And photographed,” Ramona said. “I’ve sent both his prints and picture to Lowrey by computer.”
“Hold up for now on reworking the Spalding arrest affidavit until you hear back from Lowrey. Go for another search warrant on Dean’s business instead. Focus on his finances. It’s possible that we may have multiple motives for murder. Not only does Claudia Spalding inherit a considerable estate, she frees herself to have an open relationship with Dean and bail him out of his financial woes. Use the statement you took from Nina Deacon about Claudia wanting out of the marriage to back it up.”
“But what about the amendment to the prenuptial agreement that validated her right to extramarital affairs?” Ramona asked.
“Her lies to Nina Deacon went way beyond what was necessary to adhere to that agreement,” Kerney said. “She told Deacon that she wasn’t happy in the marriage but didn’t want to get off her husband’s gravy train.”
“Should I go after Claudia Spalding’s financial records also?” Ramona asked.
Kerney stood up. “Not yet. Let’s see what kind of backdoor information we can get from Dean’s records. Has he increased his borrowing lately? Does he have large or overdue accounts payable? Are there frequent cash transactions? Has he been bouncing checks? If Dean is hurting for money, he has a ready supply of drugs he can peddle illegally. Make sure the warrant covers his pharmacy inventory and prescription records.”
“Anything else?” Ramona asked.
Kerney smiled. “Find Dean.”
“He’s either still traveling or has already gone to ground.”
Kerney nodded. “Probably some place that’s familiar enough where he can stay low and feel safe. Get people started talking to everyone who knows him. Contact the ex-wife again and get a list of the names and addresses of family members and old friends. Where does he like to vacation? Where does he go on business trips? Is there someone-a sibling, a parent, a college chum-he visits regularly?”
“Dean and Spalding may have scouted out a hiding place for him on their trips together, in case things went sour,” Ramona said. “I’ll check his credit card charges. That may give us a lead.”
“Keep me informed,” Kerney said as he stepped into the hallway.
Century City, an incorporated municipality of 176 acres, had once been the backlot of a major motion picture studio. Now its office towers, high-rise condos, and luxury hotels filled the West Los Angeles skyline. It boasted a major outdoor shopping center with trendy, high-end stores and retail businesses that drew people from all over Southern California and beyond.
In the stop-and-go traffic of the freeway, Ellie Lowrey had a view of Century City through her windshield for a good twenty minutes before she could ease onto an exit ramp and park in an underground garage. Until today, she’d been here only once, a long time ago, on a weekend shopping spree with her kid sister. She’d left suffering from sticker shock and sensory overload, wondering why all the beautiful clothing, expensive jewelry, fine art, and custom home furnishings had left her feeling so dejected. Did people really need all that stuff to be happy?
She took an elevator to street level and made her way to one of the twin office towers that rose behind a large water fountain. Inside, a security guard directed her to the floor where Spalding’s offices were located.
On the top floor, Ellie explained to a receptionist the reason for her visit and was asked to wait. While the woman whispered into a telephone, Ellie gazed out the plate glass windows at the barely visible Santa Monica Mountains, veiled by brown smog. Far below, she could see traffic flowing on the streets. Except for a package delivery man rolling a dolly into a store there was nobody else on the sidewalks.
She turned back to the receptionist, who gave Ellie a nervous smile as she quickly dialed another extension. On the wall behind the woman’s desk were three rows of framed, enlarged color photographs, eighteen in all, displaying Spalding’s hotel properties. One of them showed the high-rise hotel Ellie had just been looking at out the window.
After a few minutes, a man in a suit came down a hallway, introduced himself as the corporate counsel, and took Ellie to his office, where he questioned her closely about the investigation.
She told him what she was looking for and why. Satisfied that her visit was tied to a murder investigation and had nothing to do with corporate matters, he accompanied her to Spalding’s corner office, and watched while she searched.
Light flooded the big room through two window walls. It was sparsely furnished with two angular leather couches separated by a low coffee table, and a large, highly polished writing table with steel legs and a matching desk chair.
Ellie looked through the drawers of a built-in cabinet behind the desk and glanced at the framed photographs on the shelves above. There were several of Claudia Spalding, but most were of Clifford Spalding posing with movie stars and politicians.