After talking to Macy, Ellie had settled down to a cup of tea and thoughts about how to approach Claudia Spalding. Then the sheriff called. Did Ellie understand she was to make no statements to the press after the arrest? That the case would get national attention? That there could be no procedural screwups?
An hour later, Ellie lay wide-awake in bed, puzzling over how to get Claudia Spalding talking. What was it Ramona Pino had said about Kim Dean? She couldn’t remember the exact words, but it boiled down to Dean being easily manipulated by Claudia. Bill Price had noted the same trait in Coe Evans.
Claudia Spalding apparently thrived on domination and control. Prickly and imperious, she was beyond a doubt a formidable woman. Ellie could easily imagine how she used her sexuality, intelligence, and guile on Dean and Evans. Or anybody else she needed to. It was one thing to guess at Claudia’s motives for murder, but quite another to understand the forces that had made her act. For a woman who’d been given so much, who had so much, it surely went far beyond simple greed.
A restless night finally over, Ellie was starting the day with no brilliant inspirations or new insights. She checked her appearance in the mirror and left the house, hoping that during the drive to headquarters she would think of some way to get Claudia to take that first small step toward admitting guilty knowledge.
It was a soft summer morning in Santa Fe, unusually cool with moist tropical air coursing up from the Gulf of Mexico, yet without a cloud in the sky or any haze to dampen the sunlight. Kerney found it unusual for other reasons as well. Although the downtown shops were about to open, traffic was light and the tourists had not yet begun to stream out of their hotels to fill the sidewalks.
By the time he reached the turnoff to Canyon Road the brief moment of serenity had passed. People wandered up the middle of the narrow street snapping pictures of the quaint pueblo-style adobe buildings, drivers backed up traffic waiting for parking spaces to become available, and the open-air sightseeing trolley just in front of Kerney’s unit was filled with visitors listening to a tour guide’s thumbnail sketch of Santa Fe history blaring out from a loudspeaker.
Santa Fe, a city of 65,000 people-not counting the untold numbers of undocumented residents from Mexico and Central America-was the third largest art market in the country. It was awash with art galleries, private art dealers, art consultants, conservators, appraisers, and studio artists. There were foundries, lapidaries, glass-blowing studios, weaving shops, wood-carving shops, and ceramic studios all over town. But the largest concentration of businesses that made Santa Fe an art mecca were to be found around the Plaza and on nearby Canyon Road.
Years ago, old-timers had decried the rapid changes to the street, once a quiet, sheltered neighborhood of adobe homes, a bar or two, and a small grocery store along a dirt lane. Now the transformation was complete: shops, studios, galleries, and restaurants dominated, and the tourist dollar ruled.
Kerney parked illegally in a loading zone and walked over to the art gallery next to the restaurant where Mrs. Kessler had last seen Debbie Calderwood’s college roommate. The gallery was gone, replaced by an upscale boutique that sold fringed leather jackets, handmade western shirts, silk scarves, flowing dresses, gaudy, flowered cowboy boots-everything a gal needed to show that she had Santa Fe style.
Kerney wasn’t surprised; retail shops along the road came and went with such frequency it was almost impossible to keep track of them.
The store owner told Kerney she’d been in the same location for five years, didn’t know who had leased the space before her, and had never met the prior occupants. However, she did provide Kerney with the name of her landlord.
Kerney called the landlord from his unit and learned the building had previously been leased by a woman who now ran a gallery out of her house in the village of Galisteo, southeast of Santa Fe.
“She deals in abstract, modern art,” the man added. “A lot of it by well-known European and East Coast artists.”
“How long did she lease from you?” Kerney asked.
“About ten years.”
“What’s her name?”
“Jennifer Stover. Her number is in the business directory under the Stover-Driscoll Gallery. Driscoll is her ex-husband’s name. She sees clients only by appointment.”
Kerney got the listing from information, dialed the number, listened to a recorded message, and disconnected. He called information back and learned there was no published residential listing for either a Stover or a Driscoll in Galisteo.
When he got to his office, he’d ask the phone company to search for an unlisted number and then try to make contact with Stover again. If that didn’t work, Galisteo was ten minutes away from Kerney’s ranch. He’d swing by the village before going home in the evening and track Stover down.
From a distance, Ellie Lowrey and Lieutenant Macy watched the hushed, somber crowd assembled at the grave site. Men and women dressed in dark blue, black, and charcoal outfits stood quietly, eyes cast downward. The young children present were anchored close to their mothers’ sides to keep them still. Claudia Spalding held a bouquet of flowers and a pure white linen handkerchief in her gloved hands. An ocean breeze ruffled skirt hems, jacket lapels, and ties, and carried away the minister ’s words.
The wind died away, and for a moment the gathering looked like a staged movie scene. The open grave, the casket of polished wood with brass handles, the abundance of carefully arranged funeral wreaths, the green grass blanket of the cemetery dale with the forested hills rising behind, created a surreal impression.
It was a large crowd of two hundred or more people. Behind the hearse, cars parked on the winding gravel lane stretched almost to the cemetery entrance. Outside the arched, open gate, private security personnel held back photographers with telephoto lenses who were pressed against the ornate wrought iron fence taking pictures.
“We may have a long wait before the last of Spalding’s guests clear out after the wake,” Ellie said to Lieutenant Macy.
Macy nodded. “I’m more concerned right now about the paparazzi. We need them contained and kept away from the estate.”
Ellie had been out of touch with Macy for the past three hours, scoping out the situation in Montecito, making arrangements, and putting her team in place.
“Spalding’s rent-a-cops will keep them at the bottom of the hill, and the Santa Barbara PD, at Claudia’s request, will be on hand to assist.”
“Do they know what’s going down?”
“No, I called the estate posing as a newspaper reporter and got the information from an employee. She also told me that invited guests would be screened at the entrance to the estate by private security.”
“How do we make sure Spalding doesn’t slip away in the backseat of a guest’s car?” Macy asked.
“Claudia has hired a valet parking service for the wake. One of our detectives will be an attendant.”
“Valet parking for a wake,” Macy said in mock disbelief. “How did you manage that?”
“Plus catered food for the guests by a celebrity chef,” Ellie said. “I talked to the man who owns the service, flashed my shield, told him I was with dignitary protection for a high-ranking government official, and got him to agree to the substitution. He thinks we’re feds and it’s all very hush-hush.”
“Clever,” Macy said.
“Security at the entrance will use the keypad gate opener to let the guests through. We’ll use it after they leave to make a quick entry.”
“You have the code?”
“I got it from the fire department,” Ellie answered. “A local ordinance requires owners of all gated residences to provide emergency access information to the department.”
Ellie watched Claudia step away from the crowd, place the bouquet on her husband’s coffin, bow her head, and clutch a hand to her throat.