Totes,” Decker said. “I’ve been racking my brain over him. He, more than anyone, had access to the horses. And he had means and experience to dope the animals up. But what would be the motivation? He adores Lilah and has nothing to gain if she died.”
“Maybe someone was paying him to do dirty work.”
“Totes as a hit man?”
“Okay, maybe the idea was to scare Lilah, not kill her, just like you said. Maybe someone was paying him to do … to pull off a little practical joke. Pete, look at the way Totes lives. Could be he wants more out of life than sleeping in a stable.”
Decker said, “Nah, I think he likes living that way. Simple, uncluttered—like his mind.”
“Anyone can be bought.”
“You’re right,” Decker said. “But you have to use the right currency.”
“Maybe they’re buying Totes with a woman, Pete.”
Decker thought about that. “Okay. Name me a woman.”
Marge paused. “Kelley Ness?”
“What hat did you pull her out of?”
“Farfetched,” Marge admitted.
“Stratospheric,” Decker said.
Marge said, “There’s something odd about her, Pete. It’s not that she wasn’t cooperative, just that … it’s her relationship with her brother. I observed them together when they weren’t looking. They meet quite a bit—minutes at a time only, but there’s an intimacy. Whispering to each other, touching each other. Nothing sexual, a hand on a shoulder, a pat on the back, but …”
“Incest?”
“I’ve thought about it. Or maybe she’s just one of those baby sisters who adores her big brother. I don’t trust Mike a bit. He has something up his proverbial sleeve. I could see him putting Kelley up to something.”
Decker said, “I don’t see Totes being lured by Kelley Ness but let’s assume he was. Marge, Totes is knowledgeable about horses. If he were trying to scare Lilah using Apollo, he’d know better than to give the horse PCP. Totes would know it was a tranquilizer.”
“So that’s perfect, Peter,” Marge said. “He was trying to scare Lilah, not kill her.”
“What scare? Most likely, the horse would just keel over and go to sleep. It would be a little strange, but not terrifying.”
“But it would send a message. ‘You saw who stole the jewels. Keep it zipped or the next time the horse won’t wake up.’”
“Okay … okay, you have a point.” Decker doodled in his notebook. “Totes is looking pretty damn good. So someone put Totes up to spooking Lilah. Who?”
“I like Ness. I also like Kingston Merritt,” Marge said. “I just got back the prelim paper on both him and John Reed. Freddy Brecht hasn’t come in yet. Both Reed and Merritt are solvent, but Merritt doesn’t have a lot of room for play. He’s only got about five grand in savings. Not much for an OB-GYN earning three hundred fifty a year.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Marge said, “Well, his bread is going somewhere.”
“You see Merritt working directly with a guy like Carl Totes?”
Marge paused. “Maybe he used an intermediary.”
“I don’t know …” Decker exhaled forcibly. “Call it a gut feeling, but I just don’t see Totes … fuck my gut feeling. Let’s see if we can find any paper on Totes. Any sudden influx of cash.”
Marge said, “I’ll keep digging. God, what a mess. We got Totes, Merritt, Ness—”
“You know Ness dropped by the place today. Said he came by to pick veggies, that he had done it before. He was awfully curious about what happened. He claimed he was at the spa all morning. Now the spa and the ranch are five minutes apart?”
“About.”
“Conceivably, he could have come down and dusted the horse’s fodder and slipped away unnoticed.”
“Totes was around—”
“Suppose Totes was in the corral working out one of the horses. Ness could have been in and out in five minutes. That would give him access and means for the crime.”
Marge said, “And talk about motivation, as in money. Ness is definitely buyable. When I talked to him, he frothed at the mouth at the thought of owning a spa like VALCAN.”
Decker asked, “Maybe Kingston Merritt was paying Ness and not Totes to drug the horse. Could those two be working together?”
Marge said, “You know, when the altercation occurred between Freddy and Kingston, Ness stepped in. He was talking to Kingston like he was a stranger … but in my mind, they looked like they knew each other.”
“Hey, it would fit nicely with my theory that the case was an inside job.”
“And I could see Ness giving a horse Angel Dust. He’d probably even think a stoned horse would be very humorous.”
“A stoned horse sending a message to Lilah?”
“Well, maybe he figured the horse would go crazy—like humans on PCP do. But not too crazy. Except, Pete, who knew that Lilah was going to ride Apollo except Totes?”
Decker grimaced. “True. So we’re back to Totes.”
“Hell, Pete, maybe they’re all in it together—used different people for different jobs. They used Totes for the horse and a bunch of lowlifes for the burglary. One of them got carried away and raped her. It’s happened before. If you figure Ness to be involved, maybe he was involved in the burglary/rape.” She smiled. “Despite Lilah’s imaging, the attackers were masked. It could have been Ness and she wouldn’t have known it.”
Decker said, “I don’t have trouble visualizing Ness as a rapist. He admitted wanting to fuck Lilah. Let’s get some tissue samples from him.”
“Why single out Ness?”
“You’re right. Let’s ask for samples from all of the male employees of the spa. We could also get Jeffers that way.”
“Jeffers the poker,” Marge said. “I see him as a sneak thief, not a rapist.”
“But if he was shielded behind a mask?”
“Yeah, he could do it. Once you’re a scumbag, nothing’s off limits. What about Totes? We should get a tissue sample on him, too.”
“Absolutely,” Decker said.
Marge sat back in her chair. “You know, Peter, Lilah, more than anyone, had access to her horse.”
“Lilah poisoning her own
