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His grasp of Spanish was limited to what he’d learned in two years of high school, but he gathered by what the woman said that he had the wrong number.
He went down the list, calling every Ruiz. No Manuelos. And even if he had run down the one he sought, Manuelo wouldn’t have stuck around waiting for Griff to show up. He would’ve run like hell.
The man was no fool.
Without a car, there was nothing more Griff could do until dark. He had no choice but to wait out the long hours of the afternoon.
CHAPTER
25
IT’S NICE OUT HERE.”
At the sound of his voice, Laura jumped and turned around suddenly. “Oh, Detective. Hello.”
Rodarte had crept up on her deliberately, wanting to get an honest reaction out of her, not one she had time to rehearse. He climbed the steps and joined her in the gazebo. “You don’t see many of these anymore.” He pretended to admire the lacy woodwork trim on the circular roof.
“Foster’s grandmother had it built even before the house was completed. Foster told me she wanted someplace where she could sit and watch the swans. They always had swans in the pond.”
The gazebo sat on a rise overlooking a pond where a pair of honest-to-God swans were gliding across the mirrored surface of the water. Rich folk, he thought scornfully. If he had their money, he’d spend it on something better than gazebos and swans.
“You mind?” He nodded at one of the vacant wicker chairs. She shook her head, and he sat down. She was wearing sunglasses, so he couldn’t see her eyes to tell if she’d been crying. He guessed she had because she was twisting a damp Kleenex between her fingers. Tears of grief or guilt? he wondered. He really didn’t care. Not unless she’d plotted with Griff Burkett to kill her husband.
Now, that would be a story, wouldn’t it? It would be written up in People magazine; 20/20 would do a segment on it. They’d make a movie of the week out of it. Maybe they’d cast him in a bit part, or he could serve as technical adviser to the producers, get movie credit.
But first he had to prove it.
“More peaceful out here than inside,” he remarked as he settled against the floral-print chair cushion.
Mrs. Speakman’s assistant had been joined by Mr. Speakman’s, a woman named Myrna something, who vacillated between crying like a baby and issuing orders like a drill sergeant. Together with Mrs. Dobbins, the housekeeper, they were manning the telephone, finding places for the floral arrangements and fruit baskets that were delivered by the truckload, cleaning up after all the cops who had been in the house last night, and making lists. They made endless lists.
A homicide generated a lot of busywork for everybody but the corpse.
“I had to get some fresh air,” Laura Speakman said. “And away from the telephone.”
“Who’s called?”
Behind the opaque lenses he figured she was giving him one of her haughty, condescending looks. “People conveying their condolences.”
“Anybody I should know about?”
“Griff Burkett. That’s who you mean.”
He grinned as though to say, You know me too well. “It’s my duty to check. Has he tried to contact you?”
“No. He wouldn’t.”
“You sure about that?”
“He wouldn’t.” She went back to looking at the swans. One had buried its face beneath its wing.
“I got the autopsy report from the ME.” Her only response to that was to roll her lips inward and compress them into a hard line. “Your car accident two years ago? Besides the obvious damage to his spinal column and legs, your husband suffered a lot of internal injury.”
“I mentioned that this morning when we talked about his medication.”
“It was pretty bad.”
“Yes, it was.”
