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“It wasn’t a big deal,” Ivy said, but Jeremy’s expression changed from rebellion to wariness. Pescoli, despite her worries, noted that her son seemed to finally catch a glimmer of what he’d gotten himself into.
“Are you kidding?” Her father looked aghast.
Ivy expelled a puff of air in disgust. “You people . . . I knew him and he ends up dead and somehow I’m the bad guy?” A dark pout clouded Ivy’s features. “We hardly dated.”
“So, you’re going to help us out by telling us everything you know.” Alvarez’s smile was even, but held little warmth. To Victor she said, “If you want an attorney present during the interviews, now would be the time to call one.”
* * *
“I can not believe we’re here again!” Tanaka said as she and Paterno left the Missoula airport in their rented SUV.
Paterno was driving through the ever-falling snow and she tried to relax, which proved impossible. She’d barely had time to get her notes together on the Latham murders, interview a witness, go home and take a shower and feed Mr. Claus before she’d gotten the word that Boxer and Stillwell had been found, human popsicles this time, rather than the shish kebab that Wynn P. Ellis had become. “The department is going to flip with all of these trips.”
“Be positive, would ya?” Paterno said as he increased the speed of the windshield wipers, the snow falling thick and fast. “Think of all the air-miles you’re amassing.”
“You’re retiring. Hey, here’s an idea. Maybe you could forget Mexico or wherever and retire here in Montana. Maybe ice fish.”
“I don’t think they ice fish here. That’s like Minnesota.”
“Is there a difference?”
He laughed. “Pretty big one, I think. Just don’t confuse the states with the locals.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she said. “These people run around with shotguns and rifles and whole arsenals in their trucks.”
They drove south out of town and, as they had on the plane, discussed the case, going over the particulars and theorizing about Ivy Wilde’s part in the murders. Tanaka didn’t see her as the shooter. It just didn’t make any sense. Most of her story had held water, proven by cameras, witnesses, and evidence. She’d left San Francisco because something had gone terribly wrong at her house. She hadn’t pulled the trigger, and possibly didn’t know that murder was in the cards, but Tanaka would bet five to one that she was a part of what might have been a planned robbery. One of the neighbors, Margaret Rinaldo, had seen one of the A-Bay-C Delivery vans cruising through the neighborhood twice when she was walking her miniature schnauzer.
“They’re hard to miss, you know,” Margaret had said when she’d phoned in. “Practically neon yellow, if you know what I mean. I think I saw the van, once the week before the murders—oh, my, I can’t tell you how upsetting this is. We live in a nice neighborhood, you know. Safe. And this . . . oh, dear.”
“You saw the van a second time?” Tanaka had asked, trying to steer the older woman back on track.
“Oh, yes! It was about two, maybe three days before all the trouble, you know.”
“The murders.”
“So sad. I can still hardly believe it. I remember because I was waiting for a package to be delivered. I do a lot of online shopping. So easy these days, not like when I used to wait for Sears, Roebuck as a little girl, but I suppose you’re too young for that. Anyway, I’d ordered a couple of books on line and they were supposed to be delivered and I heard a van on the street—I was at the piano about to sit down for a practice. I play, you see, have since I was a girl in New York, and I heard the rumble of a truck’s engine and peered through the curtains and the van passed going very slowly.”
“The A-Bay-C Delivery van.”
“Yes! I thought he couldn’t find the address and imagined there was some kind of change of transfer companies as I usually get my packages through UPS, so I stepped out on the porch and Keizer, that’s my dog, he starts barking his fool head off, but the van just drives past my house and the Lathams’ and goes up the street. Oh, wait! And that’s the thing. It turned around and came back by.”
“Did you get a look at the driver’s face?” Tanaka had asked, barely able to breathe.
“Yes. I think so. He had a cap on, of course, and a big yellow coat, the kind they wear.”
“Do you think you could pick him out of a set of pictures?”
“I’m not sure about that.”
But she had. Tanaka had brought two six-packs of head shots of various men, including Boxer to the Rinaldo home and while Keizer had sniffed cautiously at Tanaka’s boots, probably smelling Mr. Claus, who had done circle eights at her feet before she’d left the apartment, Margaret Rinaldo had picked Troy Boxer out of the head shots Tanaka had displayed on the older woman’s antique dining room table. “That’s him all right,” she’d said, tapping a manicured finger on the picture of Boxer. “I think I’ve seen him before, with Brindel’s daughter.” Her lips pursed and she’d twisted a graying curl between
her fingers. In a low voice she’d added, “She’s a bit of trouble, that one.” Then sighing. “But they all are. Those older boys of Paul’s?” She clucked her tongue. “And Ivy? Well, her last name is Wilde and I’d say that’s more than fitting.”
Margaret hadn’t been able to pick Ronny Stillwell’s picture out of the photographs, but fingering Troy was enough.
The way Tanaka figured it, the robbery had gone bad, the Lathams were murdered by Stillwell and Boxer, each one shooting a victim, then something had happened and Ivy had interrupted their plans. Maybe a confrontation when she found out that they’d killed her parents? Maybe that hadn’t been part of the plans? Or had they then decided to kill her to shut her up? For some reason they’d come to Montana as had she. Had she managed to kill the two men, gun them down, then take the time to stuff their bodies into a truck and leave them there in the wilderness? Tanaka hadn’t figured the ending out yet, but it was coming to her. She felt that little tingle inside that suggested she was close, the case was coming together.
Ivy Wilde was the key.
