After years of this work, he was relatively unaffected by such displays, but something about these Maitland women got to a man. Every one he’d met so far was a real beauty, including the mother, who had to be sixty if she was a day. But then these rich types could afford whatever mysterious beauty treatments kept them looking so young and lovely. Not, he had to admit to himself, that beauty treatments of any sort could make a woman’s legs as long and slender as Beth Maitland’s, or nip her waist in so narrowly that he could span it with his two hands. He dismissed such thoughts, turning to his partner and the matter at hand.
“So what do you think?”
Paul leaned back, balancing his chair on two legs, locking his hands together behind his head and propping his crossed ankles on the table. “I don’t know. Seems like a pretty airtight case on the surface.”
“No kidding.” Ty ticked off the incriminating evidence. “She has the motive and the means. The timing is perfect. The body was found in her office. And the dead woman just happens to be the new wife of her recent and former fiancé. Add to that the statement of said former fiancé—now the widower—that she set up the appointment via telephone, and what you have—”
Ty looked at Paul, and Paul looked at Ty. Together they said, “Too easy.”
Bowing his head, Ty clapped a hand to the back of his neck. “I’m always spooked when they’re too easy.”
“The old hound is smelling a fix,” Paul said blithely. It was a break-room joke that Ty Redstone could smell a frame a mile away despite a steady wind—and for good reason.
“Suppose you break it down for me,” he said, ignoring Paul’s attempt at humor.
Paul rocked forward and pulled his legs down from the table. He extracted a small notebook from his coat pocket, unclipped a pen from it and flipped it open, preparing to demolish their airtight case. “Okay. First of all, strangling is a man’s MO. Even with a garrote, it takes strength over time to get the job done, and an unbound victim of the same approximate size can put up a pretty fierce struggle.”
Ty nodded. “Women usually conk their victims over the head, shoot ’em full of holes or slowly poison them to death. They don’t strangle them with a thin, flexible weapon. What do you think it was, by the way?”
Paul shrugged. “Some sort of cord would be my guess. Too thin for a belt or rope.”
“Right,” Ty said, “so a woman doesn’t usually strangle her victims.” He lifted a cautioning finger. “But we both know that means nothing. Under the right circumstances, anything goes.”
“Granted,” Paul said, “but if she really does check out at six-fifteen every night and we can prove it, then it’s an established pattern that anyone who knows her could use to frame her.”
“We need the logbooks for at least a year,” Ty said, beginning to pace the room as Paul took notes. “We’d better pull the phone records for Maitland Maternity Clinic and the residence.” He snapped his fingers. “Check to see if Beth Maitland has a cell phone, too. If she’s been harassing the happy couple, we’ll find some sign of it.”
Paul scribbled it all down. “Got it.”
Ty paced the narrow confines of the interrogation room. “What do you think happened to the murder weapon?”
Paul shrugged. “Nearest trash bin, probably.”
“We searched with a fine-tooth comb,” Ty reminded him.
“She must have taken it with her. I kept expecting you to ask about it.”
Ty shook his head. “If she hasn’t gotten rid of it, I don’t want her to rethink and do it now.”
“You figure she still has it?”
“Maybe. Anyway, we won’t have a decent idea what Brianne Dumont was strangled with until forensics has done their bit. No sense trying to look for it until we do. Make a note to ask forensics for an early determination,” Ty instructed. Paul dutifully made the note. “Okay, back to the breakdown.”
“One big consideration,” Paul said, “is that we only have Dumont’s word for it that the Maitland dame set up the appointment with the victim.”
“Or that she harassed her,” Ty said, picking up the thread of the argument. “And since Dumont was seeing Ms. Maitland until fairly recently, we can assume that he’s spent a good deal of time around the maternity clinic and the day-care center.”
“Which means he could probably get himself in and out without being seen,” Paul concluded. “There’s a working theory. He baits the trap by telling his wife that Beth’s asked to see her.”
Ty stopped pacing and brought both hands to his hips. “I have to wonder why she would go for that, meeting the other woman on her own turf, especially if the other woman was displaying threatening behavior.”
Paul shrugged. “Maybe she wanted to apologize—Maitland, I mean.”
“Or maybe there was no harassment,” Ty said, theorizing, “so the Dumont woman had no reason not to make the meeting.”
“Makes sense,” Paul concluded before returning to his theory. “On the other hand, he could’ve killed her, dumped the body in the office and fabricated the meeting to allay suspicion.”
Ty shook his head. “Too tricky, even without a blood trail.” He came to a halt and brought his hands to his waist. “We have to do some reconnoitering.”
“Until we discover a hole in the dike,” Paul agreed. “Then we pull the plug and let the truth flood away the lies.”
“You sound as if you’re convinced we’ll find that hole,” Ty said.
“Yeah, maybe. There’s something that’s been bothering me from the get go on this one.”
“Oh?”
Paul nodded. “It’s like this. The woman is rich and beautiful.”
And she has a freewheeling sexuality that fairly sings to a man, Ty thought but didn’t say. He knew that Paul, being happily married, wouldn’t say it, either, which was not to infer that he hadn’t noticed. Ty showed his agreement with Paul’s assessment by nodding.
“A woman like that’s got to be beating ’em off with a stick,” Paul went on prosaically. “What’s she want with a cold fish like Dumont? Any guy who would break up with Beth Maitland and marry another woman within forty-eight hours, well, he’s not the love of anybody’s life, if you ask me.”
“Definitely not the sort you’d kill over,” Ty agreed. “Now, all we’ve got to do is prove it.” And hope we don’t make the case against Beth Maitland in the process, he told himself, surprised at the sentiment.
Paul nodded thoughtfully and scratched his ear with the tip of his pen, leaving a bright blue mark. Ty smiled. Paul Jester was a good detective, a fine father and husband, an excellent friend, but he was always doing goofy stuff like marking himself up with those damned ballpoint pens he carried. Ty cleared his throat against a chuckle and added a query to the list.
“We’d better do some digging into Dumont’s
