Prime Suspect Page 14

  “Right.” He glanced over at Percy. “No offense, mutt, but that ain’t happening.”

  When they’d gotten Percy he’d been twelve weeks old. The puppies she saw at the Fairmont Kennel looked close to the same size he’d been then. Actually, Sloan’s puppy wasn’t much bigger than those pups.

  “Do me a favor,” she said to Mason. “Search for Maltipom and Humane Society.”

  His fingers tapped, and he stared at the monitor. “Yep. Quite a few hits, in fact. There are Maltipoms on the websites of shelters in Arlington, Virginia, North Carolina, Vermont.” He shook his head. “There’s even one out in Utah.”

  Darcie left her chair to go stand beside him. “Do they have pictures?”

  “Let’s see.”

  Caleb joined them as he clicked on the first link. The screen opened up to display the picture of a fluffy white face with black button eyes.

  “It could be Percy,” Caleb commented.

  Darcie studied the photo. Something strange was going on. “You know, most Maltipoms aren’t solid white like Percy. It depends on their parents’ coloring. But that’s another of the trademarks of Fairmont Designer Dogs—they’re all white. Let’s look at another one.”

  Of the eight Humane Society websites that listed Maltipoms, only two showed pictures of dogs with brown markings. The rest were solid white, including two in the DC area. And they looked young, just puppies.

  Darcie returned to her chair, her thoughts whirling. How could six Fairmont dogs end up in animal shelters? Of course, they might not be Fairmont dogs. But they certainly did look like Percy and Purdy.

  Caleb also wore a thoughtful expression. “One in Arlington and two in DC where Mr. Fairmont was earlier this week. Makes me wonder if somebody ought to catch a flight up there and check them out.”

  She shook her head. “It probably wouldn’t do any good. Puppies get adopted quickly, especially small breeds.”

  His head cocked sideways. “How do you know that?”

  She couldn’t hold back a grin. “You know people. I know dogs.”

  Mason pulled out his cell phone. “Let’s call these shelters. Who knows? We might learn something.”

  They each made two calls. As Darcie suspected, all of the puppies had been adopted quickly. Every one had been dropped off anonymously, and none of them had collars.

  Caleb cocked his head and stared at Percy. “I want to see another of these expensive pooches.”

  “What for?” Mason asked.

  The big man shrugged. “We’ve got nothing else.”

  “We could go back to my apartment and look at Purdy,” Darcie said, but he shook his head.

  “No, I want to see one we know came from Mrs. Fairmont. And I want to get a look at another collar, too. I’m going to give Mrs. Gates a call.”

  Frustration churned in Darcie’s belly. What good would looking at another Maltipom be? But Caleb was right. The only other thing they had come up with was the possibility of something being hidden in the kennel building, and what could they do with that? Sneak onto Fairmont Estate and search? They’d be arrested for trespassing. Call Samuels? She shuddered. Not only would he be furious that they’d visited Kenneth in prison; he’d say their suspicions were nothing but a hunch. And he’d be right.

  She swallowed her frustration and collected the empty lunch plates from the table while Caleb punched a number into his cell phone. It would be so easy to relax here in the safety of Lauren and Brent’s house. If she tried, she might even be able to forget about death and school and worrying over her plans for the future.

  Then she remembered the pressure of the kidnapper’s hand clamped over her mouth and the terror of being pulled backward toward the dark interior of the van. Had her attackers given up on finding her? Or were they still out there, waiting to catch her unawares?

  SIXTEEN

  Mrs. Gates couldn’t see them until that evening, and Caleb’s call to his building inspector buddy went unanswered. He left a message.

  A jittery feeling had settled on him after Mason left, and he circled the house a dozen times, checking locks and looking out windows. He saw nothing suspicious but couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

  What is it? What am I missing?

  No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t come up with anything.

  Darcie had settled in a chair in the family room with the dog in her lap. The television set was tuned to some shopping show to which she paid no attention. Every time Caleb looked in on her, she was staring off into space, her expression pensive. He considered taking control of the remote and trying to lose himself in a John Wayne movie, but he rejected the idea. In a weird way, watching television with a girl seemed a little too familiar. Best keep to the other room and to his plan to remain emotionally distant from Darcie Wiley. As distant as possible, anyway, while fulfilling his promise to protect her.

  When his cell phone rang, he dashed from the front living room window to the kitchen and snatched it off the table.

  “Hello?”

  Noise filled the line. It took him a moment to identify the loud whine of a power saw and what might be a commercial truck beeping in reverse.

  “Hey, Buchanan, this is John Taylor.” The voice shouted over the noise. “Got your message. What’s up?”

  The building inspector. “Hey, brother. Thanks for calling me back.” He paced to the patio door and stared into the backyard as he talked. “You got a minute? I need to ask you about a job you inspected a few years back.”

  “A few years?” Taylor barked a laugh. “Do you know how many buildings I inspect? I barely remember what I saw a few weeks ago.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean, but I gotta ask. Maybe when you have a minute you could check your files or something. It was construction of a kennel on Richard Fairmont’s property.”

  During the pause that followed. Darcie appeared in the kitchen doorway. She wrapped her arms around her middle and leaned against the doorjamb, watching him.

  “Hold on,” Taylor said. “Let me get someplace where I can talk.”

  What was that in his voice? Hesitancy? Or caution? Caleb waited, and then with a bang the noise went silent.

  “There. I’m sitting in my truck. Now, why in the world are you asking about Fairmont’s kennel?”

  Caleb would prefer not to explain. The fewer people who knew that he was poking around in the Fairmonts’ business, the better. He answered vaguely. “Oh, just something I’m checking out for a friend. No big deal.”

  “Yeah?” Taylor’s voice became suspicious. “Pardon me if I don’t buy that, especially not after a murder happened at the kennel a few days ago, and then Fairmont himself was found dead in his office. This wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with those deaths, does it?”

  He blew out a breath. Dumb not to have foreseen that Taylor would know about all that. Both deaths had been all over the news. “Maybe.”

  Silence. And then, “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, that’s the problem. I’m not sure. Do you remember the job?”

  “Oh yeah. I won’t ever forget that one.”

  Caleb straightened to attention, his gaze locked on Darcie’s. “Why not?”

  Taylor’s voice lowered. “Because that was the first time I was ever offered a bribe to falsify a record.”

  Excitement prickled the hair along the back of Caleb’s scalp. “What record were you asked to falsify?”

  Darcie’s eyes widened, and she took a step closer.

  “Routine inspections,” he replied. “The first time I went out there they’d poured the slab for the kennel building. Everything looked fine. But then they called for the second inspection, I was on my way out there when Doug Norville called. He was one of the senior managers down at the Community Develo
pment Department. He told me he had it covered.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “Oh yeah.” He gave a short laugh. “Once those guys work their way up into management, most of them wouldn’t be caught dead dirtying their hands on a job site. Especially a dog kennel.”

  While he spoke, Caleb flipped open the file folder on the kitchen table and paged through the papers with his free hand until he found copies of the building inspections. Sure enough, Taylor had only signed the first one.

  “It was probably a big deal since the kennel belonged to Mrs. Fairmont,” Caleb said.

  “That’s what I figured—Norville wanted to rub elbows with the rich people. And hey, what did I care? Let him. But when I was heading out to my afternoon job I had to drive right past the Fairmont place, so I stopped in. I admit I was curious to see if the guy was going to do a real inspection or just a cursory walk-through so he could schmooze with the Fairmonts.”

  The scrawled signature on the subsequent inspection reports was nothing more than a squiggly line, completely unreadable. The first letter might have been a D. “Was he there?”

  “Oh yeah. Talking to the job foreman. But I knew as soon as I walked around the pool building that something fishy was going on. They weren’t only building a kennel.”

  Caleb flipped over to the sketch. “I have a copy of the sketch in front of me. Looks like they also added a good-size room on to the existing pool house and connected it to the kennel with a breezeway.”

  “Yeah, that’s what it looked like on the sketch they filed, and that’s what was approved by the department. But that isn’t all they did.”

  Caleb tightened his grip on the cell phone. This was it, something big. He could feel it. “What was going on there?”

  Taylor’s voice dropped to little more than a whisper. “That extra room they added to the pool house? They also dug an underground room right beneath it.”

  “A secret room?”

  Darcie’s mouth fell open.

  “That’s right. And it’s not on any of the building records. You should have seen Norville’s face when he saw me come around the corner of that building. He scooted me out of there so quick I barely got a look at it, but there’s no hiding a twenty-by-twenty hole in the ground.”

  “What did he say about it?”

  “He gave me a long explanation about how Fairmont wanted an underground place for his safe and other valuables, and how rich people install places like that all the time and it doesn’t show up on any building plans because then it would be a matter of public record.”

  “And he offered you a bribe to keep your mouth shut?”

  “First he told me he wanted me to sign the inspection report.” He sounded offended. “I told him there was no way I was going to sign my name to a false inspection, and he insisted that he’d just finished the inspection and everything was up to code. He didn’t come right out and offer me cash, but he hinted at it. Told me Mr. Fairmont was a powerful man who could afford to pay well to make sure his privacy was respected. Well, that ticked me off, so I told him he could sign the report himself but I wasn’t having anything to do with it.”

  Caleb tapped on the illegible signature. “Apparently that’s what he did.”

  “So I understand. When I left that place he advised me—” he drew the word out with a sarcastic drawl “—to forget everything I’d seen and that’s what I did. Never even pulled the file to see what happened. I figured with a name as big as Fairmont’s, it was in my best interest to steer clear and keep my mouth shut.”

  “What is he saying?” Darcie whispered.

  Caleb mouthed, I’ll tell you in a minute. To Taylor he said, “Sounds like a good decision. Especially now.”

  It took a second before his meaning became clear to Taylor. “Do you think that underground room has something to do with the murders? I looked up all the news reports on the internet and not one of them mentioned a secret room, or anything stolen either. They said the kennel manager’s body was found in his office and Fairmont was found in his.”

  “That’s true.” Caleb knew that for a fact, but who knew what else the police had found after he and Darcie left? Certainly Samuels didn’t mention an underground room. The surly detective wasn’t exactly forthcoming with information, though. Still, he should be told, just in case it had any bearing on his investigation.

  “That room probably has nothing to do with the deaths,” he told Taylor, “but maybe you ought to call the police.”

  “Me? No way.”

  “Why not? I can give you the direct phone number of the investigating detective.”

  A frustrated breath blew into Caleb’s ear. “Do you know where Doug Norville is now, Buchanan? He’s the senior director over the whole department. My boss’s boss’s boss.”

  “Apparently doing a favor to a rich guy like Fairmont was good for his career,” Caleb commented drily.

  A bitter laugh answered him. “Yeah, and I’m still a lowly building inspector, but I need this job. If all goes well I’m up for early retirement in three more years, and I’m counting the days. So do me a favor, will you?”

  Caleb knew what he was going to say. “Don’t tell the police anything we just discussed.”

  “Yeah.” He sounded sheepish. “Not unless you find out that the room might be important. And even then, could you not tell them where you heard about it?”

  Caleb hesitated. Darcie watched him closely, her fingers biting into the fleshy part of her arms. Eventually Samuels would discover that secret room, and if he found out Caleb had known about it, he might just carry through on his threat to arrest him for obstruction. On the other hand, if Caleb confessed that he’d made a few calls, Samuels would arrest him for obstruction now rather than later. Then who would get to the bottom of these murders and the attack on Darcie?

  “All right,” he told Taylor. “You have my word.”

  “Thanks.” He sounded relieved.

  They hung up after promising to get together sometime soon for a burger, and then Caleb relayed the details of the conversation to Darcie.

  “What do you think Uncle Richard had in that room?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, piles of money maybe?” He shrugged. “What I’d like to know is whether or not Pryor knew about the room.”

  “Uncle Kenneth?” A moment later understanding dawned on her face. “You think he might have hidden his mysterious insurance down there?”

  “It’s possible.” He flipped through the papers in the folder until he found the first inspection record. “My buddy signed this on April third. Do you remember when Pryor was arrested?”

  Her nose scrunched as she considered. “It was sometime in May, I think. I remember it was the end of the school year. We could probably find out the exact date if you think it’s important. There are bound to be records.”

  Caleb turned that page over and looked at the next one. “The next inspection occurred on May twenty-eighth. Taylor said he saw a twenty-foot hole in the ground that day.”

  “Since Kenneth was employed by Uncle Richard right up until his arrest, he could have known about the secret room.”

  “And hidden something there?” He shook his head. “In order to make sure no one else found it, it would have to be inside the concrete walls. How could he retrieve it?”

  They had no answers to their questions. Only Pryor knew what he was talking about, and after the prison visit Caleb knew asking would be a waste of breath.

  It’s time to forget about Pryor’s insurance, focus on something else. It’s a dead-end trail.

  Was that the Lord’s nudge or his own frustration speaking? The answer was profoundly disturbing. Caleb had no idea. Which meant he could no longer tell the difference. Either he had become so self-deluded that he couldn’t hear the Lord anymore or God had s
topped talking to him.

  * * *

  Storm clouds had filled the sky by the time Darcie followed Caleb down the curved walkway of a beautiful early 1900s home in the affluent Ansley Park neighborhood. From somewhere above them the sun tried to shine through with little effect. The sky was a mass of dark, threatening clouds that threw Mrs. Gates’s lush green lawn into shadows.

  “What did you tell her on the phone?” she asked Caleb as they mounted the steps to a wide-columned porch.

  “I told her we were looking at a Fairmont puppy and were interested in seeing one that’s matured a bit.”

  Darcie arched her brows in a mock reprimand. “You mean you lied?”

  Caleb looked offended. “I did not lie. We were looking at a puppy the other day—several of them, in fact. And we are interested in seeing hers, which are more mature.”

  She tilted her head to bestow a skeptical look and had the satisfaction of seeing his cheeks redden.

  “Okay, so I used a few carefully worded phrases to avoid telling her the real reason. I don’t want to drag a nice lady like Mrs. Gates into what might become a dangerous situation. The less she knows, the better.”

  “Hey, you don’t have to explain anything to me. I understand.” She really did. And yet Darcie found herself the slightest bit disappointed in the big man. Wasn’t a twisted word the same thing as an outright lie? Maybe not exactly, but both were deceitful, something she hadn’t thought Caleb capable of.

  He rang the bell and immediately a familiar sound came from inside the house—the enthusiastic high-pitched bark from not one, but two canine throats. The door edged open a crack, and the barking increased to a frantic speed.

  “Now, Lance, behave yourself.” A deep female voice held a tone of indulgence thinly disguised as a scold. “This is a friend, not a salesman. Look how good Gwen is being. Here. Come to Mother.”

  The door opened to reveal a stout woman with a tolerant smile for the dog she cradled in one arm. “Don’t worry,” she told Caleb. “He sounds ferocious, but he’s really something of a grandstander, all bluster and show.” Her gaze lowered and fixed on Darcie, and she continued in an amused tone, “He’s very much like my late husband in that respect. I learned to let Paul blather as much as he liked. It made him feel important.”