“She’s very good,” Ellie said, still wondering what it would take to break the woman down.
“Let’s go,” Macy said as people started drifting away toward the waiting cars. The young children, released from their mothers’ sides, eagerly skipped ahead of their slow-moving parents and skirted around the tombstones.
After the last guest had left and the caterers and parking attendants were gone, Ellie went up to the estate alone. She found Claudia on the patio seated in a lawn chair next to the pool.
“I don’t recall your name on the guest list,” Spalding said. “How did you get in here?”
Spalding’s modest black designer dress, with a high scooped neckline, half sleeves, and the hem just below the knees, fit her perfectly. She stood, walked to the pergola, poured whiskey into a tumbler, and held it in both hands.
Everything about her was smooth and polished. She glanced at Ellie intently without a hint of uneasiness.
“I know this probably isn’t the best time to talk,” Ellie said.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Claudia replied.
“Would you rather I come back some other time?”
“Don’t play games with me, Sergeant. Coming to see me now, at this time, goes beyond rudeness and bad manners. Tell me how you got in or leave.”
“A security guard let me in,” Ellie said.
A thin smile stretched across Claudia’s lips. “I rather doubt that.” She put the tumbler down. “Say what you need to and then go.”
Ellie waved her off. “Never mind. It can wait.”
“Another little trick, Sergeant?” Claudia asked. “Are you trying to make me anxious and curious about what brought you here? If so, you’re being much too transparent. Let me show you out.”
Ellie followed Spalding through the sunroom, down the hallway with the walls of paintings, into the enormous living room. There would be no breakthrough moment with Spalding. She showed no tiny pang of conscience or fear of punishment that could be used as a lever. There was no gambit of conversation Ellie could use to open her up, lower her defenses.
She was a poised, elegant, armor-plated, stone cold killer.
At the massive front doors, Ellie cuffed Spalding, told her the charges, read her the Miranda warning, and put her in the backseat of the unmarked cruiser.
“I’d like to call my lawyer,” Spalding said.
“You can do that from jail,” Ellie said, looking in at her through the open car door.
“Were you overweight as a child?” Spalding asked.
“Why do you ask?” Ellie countered, taken aback by the question. In fact, she’d been a little chubby until puberty caught up with her and burned it permanently away.
Spalding smirked. “Never mind.”
“Were you?” Ellie asked, hoping at last Claudia wanted to talk.
Spalding turned away. “Please hurry. These handcuffs are very uncomfortable.”
Chapter 12
W ith Claudia Spalding in custody and on her way to jail, Lieutenant Dante Macy quickly moved the team of detectives onto the estate. The long lane to the house, shaded by rows of overarching trees, cut the afternoon sun into gleaming flecks of light. On either side, thickets of brambles and tall pines created the illusion of a forest. When the Tuscan-style house and the formal tiered gardens came into view, Macy was stunned by the opulence. Ellie Lowrey’s description of the estate hadn’t done it justice. He wondered how many tens of millions, or hundreds of millions, it took to own such a place.
Macy put his people into motion. Two men would round up the staff and take their statements. Detective Price and two officers would conduct the search for evidence. Two more detectives would do a visual sweep of the extensive grounds to determine what else might need to be searched under a new warrant.
The five employees consisted of Clifford Spalding’s personal assistant, an estate overseer who lived on the grounds, two gardeners, and a resident housekeeper. All of them had attended the funeral services and the wake, staying behind after the last guests departed to tidy up and restore order.
Macy wandered through the house and grounds thinking it would take a platoon of officers a day or more to do a truly comprehensive search. Hopefully, that wouldn’t be needed. He watched as the detectives working under Price examined hard drives on the household computers, then stopped by the kitchen where the personal assistant, a nervous woman in her thirties named Sheila, was giving a statement. The rest of the staff were seated silently around the table in the adjacent dining room under the watchful eye of an officer.
Macy found Price exiting the guesthouse by the tennis courts, empty-handed. Price shook his head to signal that he’d found nothing of interest and walked toward the garage and staff quarters. Macy went back to the kitchen and waited for the detective to finish up with Sheila. Then he took her in tow and had her open every locked door on the estate so the officers could do a visual inspection. There was no good reason to waste time trying to do a thorough search of every nook and cranny. At least, not yet.
After the doors had been unlocked, he told Sheila to wait in the dining room, and sat at the far end of the long antique tavern table that filled the center space of the kitchen. The two gardeners, both middle-aged Hispanic men with limited English language skills, were questioned one at a time by a Spanish-speaking officer. They both said they didn’t know Kim Dean or what his relationship to Claudia was. The detective probed a bit, but it was clear both men had very little personal knowledge about their employers.
Next up was the housekeeper, a woman with a broad Nordic face and pale blue eyes named Cora Sluka. Under questioning, she was uncooperative and evasive at first, but opened up a bit when the detectives pointed out that Clifford Spalding was dead, his wife was in jail charged with murder, and Sluka might have a hard time getting another job if they had to arrest her.
She talked about a male who’d appeared unannounced within the past year to visit Mrs. Spalding, and recalled serving them drinks on the patio. She couldn’t describe the man, but when shown Dean’s booking photograph from the Santa Fe County Jail, she identified him as the visitor.
The information pleased Macy. Claudia Spalding had told Sergeant Lowrey that Dean had never been to the Montecito estate. He wondered what else Claudia had lied about.
Macy motioned the detectives to back off and took over the interview. “Were you present at the house the entire time Dean was here?” he asked Sluka.
“No, Mrs. Spalding asked me to take some clothes to the dry cleaners and then gave me the afternoon off.”
“Was that an unusual thing for her to do?”
“Yes, it was. She liked to keep us busy.”
“Were other employees around at the time?”
“No, just me.”
“Did you mention Dean’s visit to Mr. Spalding?”
“No.”
“Could he have learned about it some other way?”
“Mrs. Spalding might have told him.”
“Does Mrs. Spalding treat the staff fairly, without favoritism?”
Sluka lowered her head. “She treats us all pretty much the same, I think.”
Macy read the dodge. “She doesn’t play favorites?”
“We all try to get along and work together,” Sluka hedged.
“No one gets special treatment?” Macy asked.
Sluka’s cheeks turned red. “That’s not for me to say.”
“Okay, Cora, that’s all for now. But I may have to speak to you again.”
Sluka hurried out, and Glenn Davitt, the estate manager, replaced her at the kitchen table. A man in his thirties, he had jet black hair, dark, deep-set eyes, and a lean, angular face. He looked at Macy with feigned boredom, which raised Macy’s curiosity.