If only he could talk to her…

But that wasn’t going to happen, so he might just as well stop wishing for it.

He opened the telephone directory again and looked for listings under Ruiz. There wasn’t one for a Manuelo. He hadn’t expected that kind of luck. But maybe the Salvadoran had relatives. Using the motel phone, Griff dialed the first number.

“Hola?”

“Manuelo, por favor.”

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.”

“Some of his organs were friable. That’s the word the ME used. Weak. Eventually he would have died from one of those organs giving out. Probably sooner than later. That also according to the ME.” He paused on purpose. “But what killed him was a severed artery.”

She swallowed. “How long would it have taken?”

“Hmm, not long. But there was blood on his hands, tissue under his fingernails.”

She snapped her head around to look at him.

“That’s right, Mrs. Speakman. Your husband fought for his life.”

Rodarte actually enjoyed telling her that. Finally he got a reaction out of her. Her chest rose and fell on a quick little breath. She pressed the Kleenex against her mouth.

“He lived long enough to struggle with his attacker,” he continued. “Have to admire him for that. Him, paralyzed from the waist down, battling a guy with Burkett’s size and strength. He never had a chance, but he put up a brave fight.” Leaning forward, he placed his hand over hers. “Are you all right?”

She yanked her hand from beneath his. “I’ll be fine.”

“I know this is hard for you.”

“Is there anything else, Detective?”

“You can make arrangements for burial now.”

“Thank you.”

“Just contact the funeral home. They’ll know what to do.”

She nodded.

He stood up and moved to the railing that enclosed the gazebo. Staring out across the well-manicured landscape, he said thoughtfully, “Do you think Burkett attacked your husband suddenly, in a jealous rage? Or do you think they quarreled over the money?”

“Money?”

When he came around, she had removed her sunglasses and was staring up at him inquisitively.

“Didn’t I mention the money to you?”

“What are you talking about, Detective? What money?”

“The cash. In the navy blue box. It was on your husband’s desk in plain sight when the crime scene unit got here. They nearly shit when they-I’m sorry. Pardon the expletive.” He gave her a feeble smile. “See? Just thinking about it rattled me. It’s not every day you see that kind of money all heaped together. Half a million in one-hundred-dollar bills.”

Her lips parted soundlessly. She stared into near space for several moments, then shifted her gaze to a shrub loaded with big blue flowers that looked like pom-poms. He didn’t know what you called the flowers, but he knew how to define Mrs. Speakman’s reaction. She was stunned to hear about the half mil. More specifically, she was stunned to learn he knew about it.

“Half a million dollars in cash,” he said. “Sitting right there. It’s under lock and key in the evidence room now. You’ll get it back. Unless it turns out to be ill-gotten funds of some kind.”

“Ill-gotten?”

“Drug money, something like that.”

She turned back to him and stood up suddenly. “Listen to me, Detective Rodarte. My husband wasn’t involved in anything illegal, and if you were to check his financial portfolio, you’d realize just how ludicrous that allegation is.”

“You said he had a meeting with Griff Burkett here in your home. That’s how you two met.”

“What bearing does that have on this?”

“You said you didn’t know what they talked about.”

“I still don’t see the relevance of-”

“Burkett was found guilty of racketeering, Mrs. Speakman. So I was thinking that-”

“Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong.”

“Then how do you explain the cash?”

She folded her arms across her middle and tilted her head to one side. “Why are you just now mentioning this box of money to me?”

“With everything else, it slipped my mind,” he lied.

Their mutual stare held for several seconds, then she shrugged. “Foster kept large amounts of cash in the safe here at home, and in another at his office.”