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Though she had located some of the people associated with Didi, she wondered if she was spinning her wheels. There was a chance that Upgarde’s leap to her death had not much more to do with Didi Storm than a wig the impersonator had once worn.
As she raised her arms over her head and bent over, she caught sight of Ted Vance as he walked by carrying several reports and, as ever, wearing a crisp suit, white shirt, and tie, the only person in the department who took the trouble. He looked over the top of his half-glasses and thankfully didn’t say a word, just radiated disapproval with his tight-lipped expression.
So what else was new?
She returned to her desk chair, where after rotating the tightness from the back of her neck, she settled back to work. She’d located several people associated with Didi. Didi’s first husband, Ned Crenshaw, and his wife lived on a ranch just outside of Sacramento, less than two hours away. Her second husband, Leo “Kaspar the Great” Kasparian, divorced from wife number two, had moved to Reno, where he now performed his act in one of the casinos. Reno was around four hours distant. As for Harold Rimes, who had once employed Didi, he now lived near Lake Tahoe, just east of the state line, so still in Nevada, where gambling was legal. Rimes had a club there, even seedier than the one he’d owned in Las Vegas years earlier. None of them were all that far from San Francisco.
Did any of these men know Karen Upgarde? she wondered. So far, she hadn’t found a connection, but the phone records from Upgarde’s cell were on their way, and the lab had cracked into her computer, so links, if there were any links to the people in Didi Storm’s life, were about to be uncovered.
“Good,” she told herself.
She heard someone approach and saw Martinez round her desk. “Take a look,” he said, “I just sent you a picture you need to see.”
“Okay.” She clicked into her e-mail account and saw the new message from her partner. She clicked on the attachment, and a grainy picture came into view.
“Right there, see that?” Martinez said as he stood next to Settler at her desk. Martinez pointed at her computer screen, which showed a somewhat fuzzy image of the window from which Karen Upgarde had stepped out onto the ledge of the Montmort Tower. The window was open, a curtain inside visible, Karen seeming to teeter upon the ledge. “There, behind the curtain.” She saw a dark shadow evident behind the gauzy fabric. Was it just a trick of light, or was a man standing just beyond the focus of the camera’s lens?
“I see it. Kind of. Can’t the lab enhance this any more?” She used her mouse and enlarged the photo, but it only became more blurry and pixilated.
“They’re working on it,” he said, “but there’s only so much you can do. This was just from a bystander’s phone.”
“I can’t tell if there’s anyone in the room or not.” She moved her mouse around, studying the image from different angles before bringing the picture back to its original size. “Damn it.” She glanced up at Martinez. “Any other pics?”
“None any better than this one. At least none that have been sent in. The PD has made pleas to the public through the local news stations, and we’ve received tons of shots, and videos, too. The lab is sorting through them.”
Once more, Settler tried to increase the clarity of the image, but it didn’t work, so she still wasn’t certain what she was seeing.
“We have no footage of anyone in the hallway going in or out of her room or the rooms that connected to hers.”
“But the camera wasn’t functioning properly,” Martinez reminded.
“I know. But what are the chances that someone walked into her room, convinced her to jump, or somehow helped her along somehow, then fled off camera before rescue workers got the hotel staff to let them in?”
“I’m saying it’s possible,” Martinez said, straightening and scratching absently at his goatee.
“Well,
yeah.”
Her cell phone rang, and she glanced at the screen: King County Sheriff’s Department. “Gotta take this,” she said. It was likely her ex-partner, Rosamie Ugali, who was returning the call she’d made earlier in the day. She traded places with Martinez, who took over the mouse and tried to enhance the computer image while Dani walked several feet away.
“I did some checking on your vic, Karen Upgarde,” Rosamie started in after identifying herself. “There’s not a lot I can tell you that hasn’t been sent down via e-mail. Upgarde’s tried to commit suicide a couple of times already. I interviewed the ex-husband, who was here in Seattle when she leaped. Seemed pretty broken up about it. Talked to her mother, too. Her response was ‘I’ve been expecting this for years’ when she heard about Karen, I was told.”
“Okay.”
“Karen was never all that mentally steady, that’s what her ex said. She was always up and down, possibly had some kind of condition that was never diagnosed. The mother, Irene, said she was grateful Karen didn’t take anyone else with her and, when questioned, wouldn’t elaborate, but the upshot was that Karen wasn’t stable. No current boyfriend or roommate, not tight with any girlfriends. Her boss said she was a ‘capable’ waitress. Not friendly but could do the job. Didn’t hang out with other workers, and that’s it. Said she’d been at that restaurant for four years, before that a diner that went out of business.”
“Was she a drinker?”
“No record of it—no evidence of bottles in the home, no drugs, no suicide note. Nothing. Her apartment was a little messy, but I’ve seen a lot worse. I looked for more celebrity paraphernalia and clothes, but there wasn’t anything that I could label as belonging to anyone but her. She wasn’t a conservative dresser. She was kind of edgy—for a woman her age, you might say on the flashy side. She did karaoke down at the local club near her apartment, but we didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. And no wigs. You asked if she had anything with Didi Storm’s name inscribed in it. Nothing. Nada. Not even a picture of the woman, so it doesn’t appear she was obsessed with her.”
“So no connection?”
“Not that we’ve found so far. We also talked to the people at the karaoke bar, and the bartender—his name is Chuck—said she was better than most. Could sing, and really got into it but usually came in alone.”
“No friends?”
“None that he could name. He called her a ‘loner’ and remarked that she seemed to come out of her shell onstage, but that was it. She drank diet soda or sometimes sparkling water, usually a Diet Coke or something like that. No alcohol.”
