Fred Limberg - First Murder

He thought he could smell liquor and wondered if she might have fortified her coffee.

“I told you where I was and what I did. I didn’t see anyone until I got to the gym. Gold’s, over on County Road E.”

“All right. We’ll let that go for now. Tell me, do you think Mr. or Mrs. Fredrickson could have been having an affair? Either of them?”

Ray hoped to slide past her request for a lawyer by ignoring it. They were still groping for a motive. When she answered he knew he’d pulled it off.

“No way in hell. Dee doesn’t fool around and neither does Scott. I’d know.”

“Can I ask how? How would you know?” Ray sat back, waiting for another chapter of Snow White .

“Because Scott knows he has an open invitation any time he wants some, for one thing.” Ray took a look at Roxie Kennebrew again. Beneath the tired eyes, streaked makeup and shapeless housecoat she was another very attractive member of the ‘Go Girls’. He could imagine Scott Fredrickson being tempted, at least, by her looks and the figure she was hiding behind the terrycloth.

“But he never, ah…took you up on the offer?”

“Never. Not that it’s any of your goddamn business.”

Ah, but it is, Ray said to himself, keeping his face neutral.

“And Dee…I’d just know. We didn’t have any secrets.” Ray hesitated with the comeback he wanted to use. It would just piss her off.

She surprised him when she confronted it head on. “She even knew I wanted to screw her husband. We laughed about it. That’s how I know, detective.”

“That’s pretty telling.” Ray wondered if it was the truth.

“It’s the new millennium. We’re all adults. And we’re really good friends. Why keep secrets?”

Why indeed, Ray thought. But someone’s got a secret and it’s important enough to kill for. And it’s someone you probably know, he wanted to tell her.

“Okay, no secrets. Tell me what it was really like on the trips you all took. What happened in Vegas? What happened in Mexico and LA?” Roxie shook her head. She still had the same sad serious look on her face when she answered him.

“You’re not one of my friends. You’re not one of us. Not one of the girls.” She gave a short bark of a laugh. “Not one of the husbands, either. You, we can keep secrets from. I can anyway.”

“Why would you want to?”

“That’s obvious isn’t it?”

“Not really. One member of your little clique is dead. Murdered. I would think you’d want to share anything that might help us find out who killed Deanna Fredrickson. She knew the killer. She let the killer into the house. She knew her killer.”

Ray hadn’t raised his voice at all. He’d spoken in precise measured tones, stating facts, facts that he normally wouldn’t share with a potential suspect.

Roxie froze when he said that. She looked directly into his eyes, not moving. It had hit a nerve-paralyzed her. Ray could barely make out that she was breathing she was so still. He thought he could see her thinking, could see images passing behind her red eyes, questioning, wondering who Deanna knew that could have killed her. He saw fear there. Roxie was wondering if she knew the killer too, he was certain of it. The only sound that intruded was a clock ticking somewhere in the house.

“Nothing.” Roxie sighed heavily, a deep cleansing breath. “We never fought. There could be a little…cattiness, I guess you’d call it, but it was always in fun. It was never serious.”

“It might not have been on the surface.”

Roxie went into another trance, looking deeper, thinking harder whether any of her friends could even be capable of such hatred, because, she reasoned, only hatred could make you kill someone you cared for, someone you loved.

“We never fought,” she said again, still sifting through memories, through conversations and teasing, through taunts and jokes and a thousand things they’d said to each other. Ray remembered Erika’s story about the strip club in LA.

“You fought in LA, at the strip joint.”

Roxie’s brow furrowed. “Who told you about that?” Her tone wasn’t accusatory. She seemed merely curious to Ray.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m just wondering if there could be any hard feelings.”

“From who? I got smashed and Karen and I were acting like jerks. We teased Erika. We probably pushed it too far. I can’t remember all of it.”

She paused to collect her thoughts, dig into the memory of it. “Dee hustled us all out of there. I remember that. Karen was kind of wired that night. It was a bad idea to go there. We all agreed on that later, at the bar. We laughed about it.”

“You went to another bar?”

“Near the hotel. It was nicer than the hotel bar. It was pretty late. We didn’t fight though.”

Ray’s tone softened some. “Sounds innocent enough.”

“If anyone was mad it would have been Erika, and Dee was the one who broke it all up.” Ray had to agree with her on that point. He was trying to fit it together when Carol spoke up for the first time.

“So you all went to a bar, had a few drinks and patched things up. No harm, no foul?”

“Lakisha and Erica left after one drink, I think. I stayed for a while, but I probably shouldn’t have. Sometimes I drink too much. Someone has probably told you that already, too.”

Ray kept his face impassive, stayed silent. Carol was doing okay.

“So they took you back to the hotel?”

“I got back there on my own. Dee and Karen stayed for a while. I think Dee was keeping an eye on her, on Karen. She was pretty wound up after the club.”

“Drunk?” Ray probed.

“More like horny. No…not horny.” Roxie searched for another word. “Frisky. When she’s not around Gary she’s a huge flirt.”

“And Deanna was flirting too?”

“No. Dee was running interference. She and Karen go way, way back. She was just staying close so Karen wouldn’t do something stupid.”

“Was this normal?” Ray probed deeper.

“Yeah, but not like you think. Dee watched out for all of us. She called me cabs or drove me home. She ran interference for Erica too. She would talk to Lakisha about her spending and antagonizing Mr. Marland.”

Ray interrupted her. “Why does everyone refer to him as Mr. Marland? Off the subject. Sorry.”

Roxie laughed softly, the first time she’d done so throughout the whole conversation. “She never uses his first name. Never. He’s been Mr. Marland for ten years, maybe longer. I have to think what it is. Funny, huh?”

Ray allowed himself a brief smile. Carol frowned at him for breaking the rhythm they had built up.

“Why would Deanna have needed to run interference at the bar? Was Karen that frisky?” Carol asked, trying to get back on track.

“I don’t remember. I think Karen was eye fucking some guy at the bar. I’m not sure. I do remember that it was our last night in LA and it was a very quiet flight home.”

“You all stayed at the same hotel?”

“Sure. I had a room with Ally. Karen and Dee shared a room, so did Lakisha and Erika. It saves money.”

“And everyone made it back in their rooms that night?”

“Yeah. I mean we all met in the lobby for the shuttle.”

Roxie kept looking over at the cabinet over the range. Ray guessed that’s where the liquor was. He weighed the idea of telling her to go ahead and have a drink and decided against it. They were about through there. The LA trip and the strip club incident didn’t seem to be going much further, if it had ever had any legs at all.

Back in the car, Carol was thoughtfully smoking another Marlboro while Ray flipped through his notebook.

“What are you thinking?” Carol asked.