“Let’s forget about Mrs. Spalding for a minute. Think about yourself, your future.”
Davitt laughed. “Maybe I’ll write one of those tell-all books and make a pile of money.”
“That’s a great idea,” Macy said approvingly. “But if you don’t tell us the truth, you’ll have to write that book in jail.”
“In jail for what?”
“Making false statements to the police,” Macy said. “Obstructing justice.”
Davitt raised a hand. “May lightning strike me if I’m telling a lie.”
Macy pulled a chair over and sat close to Davitt. “I don’t think you’ve lied, yet. But if you don’t tell us about your relationship with Claudia, you’ll be in a world of trouble. We know you’ve been sleeping with her.”
“Who says?”
Macy glanced at the closed door to the dining room where Cora Sluka waited. “Who changes and washes the bedsheets?” he asked.
Davitt bought into Macy’s trickery and started talking. He copped to having sex with Spalding, and cast himself in the role of a pursued, put-upon employee who only wanted to keep his job.
When Davitt finished, Macy stood. “Did she ever ask you to help her kill her husband?”
“No way,” Davitt said, making good eye contact.
“I believe you,” Macy said, “and I can’t wait to read your book, if you ever get it published.”
Late afternoon turned golden, the clear sky so bright that the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains were washed in a flood of light. On such days, Ramona Pino could still believe in the enchantment of Santa Fe.
Good news from California earlier in the day had put her in an excellent mood. She hummed a song, off-key as always, on the drive to Claudia Spalding’s Santa Fe house, search warrant in hand.
In the two units behind her were Matt Chacon and Chief Kerney, who’d invited himself along without explanation. The chief occasionally went out in the field with the troops, but this was the first time for Ramona. Cheerily, she decided not read anything more into it than that, and turned her thoughts to the work at hand.
The arrest of Claudia Spalding, Dean’s confession, and the statements given by Coe Evans and Glenn Davitt were important milestones, but the investigation was far from over. Without an admission of guilt from Spalding, which Ellie Lowrey said was highly unlikely, nailing down motive remained a crucial issue.
Without it, Ramona could visualize Spalding’s defense attorney in court, convincing a jury that the grieving widow had no reason to murder her husband, that she was a victim of lies and false accusations by Kim Dean and other men of questionable character.
Ramona pulled into the driveway of Claudia’s Santa Fe house. It certainly wasn’t the Montecito mansion Ellie had described to her, but it was no adobe shack either. It was a long, rectangular, two-story double adobe under a high, forest-green pitched roof, with deeply recessed doors and windows. A horse stable, corral, and hay shed stood nearby under a stand of trees. Given its Arroyo Hondo location with sweeping views of the distant Sandia Mountains and the tip of Mount Taylor, it had to be a million-dollar property.
She waited at the front door for Matt and the chief to join her, wondering why a woman who had so much would risk so much. Perhaps they’d find the answer inside.
She smiled as the two men approached. “Ready to go hunting for secrets?” she asked.
“Lead on,” Kerney said.
She searched for a spare house key and found it under a rock at the base of a large bronze and stone garden sculpture of a life-size raven perched on a boulder. Inside, a great room consisting of living, dining, and kitchen areas ran the length of the first floor. It rose to a high vaulted ceiling bracketed on both ends by two second-story lofts accessed by staircases.
Ramona went over the scope of the search warrant with Kerney and Chacon. All written or electronically stored materials pertaining to or mentioning Clifford Spalding, Kim Dean, Mitch Griffin, Coe Evans, and Glenn Davitt, including financial and legal documents, letters, journals, diaries, business correspondence, handwritten notes, lists, address books, calendars, computers, electronic organizers, and recorded telephone messages, were fair game.
She made Matt Chacon the inventory officer, responsible for logging and tagging what was found, where, when, and by whom. Prepared for the role that always fell to junior detectives, Chacon opened his briefcase, took out a clipboard, and started organizing the forms he needed.
“I’d better get started,” Ramona said, glancing at Kerney.
“I came along to help, Sergeant,” Kerney replied. “Put me where you want me.”
“We’ll start on this floor,” Ramona said, wondering if Kerney was testing her on search protocol, “and clear an area for Detective Chacon to use.”
The sun was low on the horizon when they finished searching the ground floor and started on the lofts. One served as the master bedroom, and the other was a combination library and music room with a baby grand piano, writing desk, soft leather reading chairs with matching ottomans, and built-in bookcases.
Kerney had just finished with the contents of the writing desk in the library/music room when Ramona came up the loft stairs.
“Have you found anything interesting, Chief?” Ramona asked.
Kerney fanned the stack of papers in his hand. “Not really. Closing documents on the house, property tax notifications, canceled checks, paid veterinary and feed bills for the horses. The usual stuff. How about you?”
“The same. What about the laptop?”
“It’s password protected,” Kerney answered as he rose with the laptop in hand to turn over to Chacon.
“What about the books?” Ramona asked, looking at the shelves lining the walls. There had to be at least a thousand volumes, and each one had to be checked.
“That’s next on the list,” Kerney said from the ground floor.
Ramona glanced at some of the titles on the spines. Carl Jung’s complete works; books by Boswell, Swift, Yeats, Samuel Johnson, Oscar Wilde, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Jorge Luis Borges; Shakespeare’s sonnets; Joseph Campbell’s works on mythology; a complete shelf devoted to art and architecture.
She passed in front of a cushioned banco below a large window and inspected the next stand of shelves. A book at eye level, Premier Nudes, caught Ramona’s attention. Next to it was a tome on the erotic world of wrestling, followed by a book of erotic drawings. In fact, the entire set of shelves was given over to erotica, with many of the titles in French, German, and Italian.
She flipped through several volumes. Some were nothing more than photography books of nude men and women, not at all provocative, while others had more explicit sexual content with heavy sadomasochistic and homosexual themes.
“Well, well,” Ramona said quietly to herself.
“Find something?” Kerney asked as he returned to the loft.
She turned and handed him a small softcover German book entirely devoted to photographs of a dominatrix with various men.
Kerney opened it to the first photograph, which showed the finely sculpted buttocks of a woman wearing garter belts, stockings, and spike heels. At her feet kneeled a fat, elderly, nude man with downcast eyes.
“Well, well, indeed,” Kerney said.
“There’s a whole wall of this stuff, Chief.”
“Let’s see if Claudia Spalding left any messages inside these tantalizing little volumes,” Kerney said, fanning through the pages.
They carefully searched through every book in the library, discovering an errant bookmark or two, a forgotten postcard, an occasional cash receipt for a book purchased but never read. They emptied one shelf at a time, and soon the floor, the desk, the chairs, and the top of the baby grand piano were covered with wobbly stacks of books.
Ramona finished first, thumping down an enormous old copy of The Oxford Universal Dictionary of Historical Principles on the last empty bit of floor space. She cleared off the piano bench, sat, and watched Kerney as he pulled a book off the lowest shelf and inspected it in the dim light of dusk that filtered through the window.