Michael McGarrity - The Judas judge

She wore a simple black mourning dress with a single strand of pearls. No grief showed on her face, only displeasure.

"I understand Kay Murray spent several childhood summer vacations with you."

"What a perplexing man you are, Chief Kerney. You come up with all these little tidbits and wave them around like important facts. Yes, she did. My sister and her husband had very little money, and it was my idea to have Kay stay with me. I wanted to expose Kay to a better way of life. Was I remiss in not telling you?"

"Vernon would bring Linda over to play with Kay."

"Yes, he would, upon occasion. Looking back on it now, surely, it must have been a capital offense."

"Were you sexually involved with Vernon at the time?"

Penelope smiled with tight lips. "Looking for more little tidbits, Chief Kerney? I was not."

"Have you heard from Eric since he left Linda's house?"

"I have not. Good day, Chief Kerney."

Frustrated by meaningless tidbits, Kerney left, thinking that Gibben's sarcasm might well be right on the mark.

It was lunch hour and the executives had not yet returned from the funeral services when Kerney arrived at the corporate offices of Ranchers' Exploration and Development. The only employee on duty, a young secretary seated at the reception desk, greeted him as though his arrival was a relief from absolute boredom.

Kerney explained that he needed to compile a list of all past and present employees as part of the investigation into the judge's murder.

The young woman nodded gravely, escorted him to the personnel director's office, showed him how to access files on the computer, and returned to the reception area to answer phones. While the printer reeled off names, addresses, and phone numbers, Kerney read through Penelope Gibben's personnel file.

She'd begun her rise up the corporate ladder long before she'd be come Vernon's lover. After that, the promotions came more quickly and the salary increases were more substantial. Presently, Gibben was drawing a hefty six-figure income and held a nice chuck of corporate stock options.

For Roswell, Gibben was doing very well indeed.

Kerney shut down the computer, thanked the secretary on his way out, and went looking for Eleanor Beyer, a retired employee who'd joined Ranchers' about the same time as Gibben.

She lived in an older two-story apartment complex that had been converted into an assisted living center for senior citizens. Four rectangular buildings were sited around a central courtyard. One had been transformed into a community center consisting of a visitor's lobby, recreation area, dining room, infirmary, and offices for the administrator and medical staff.

Kerney got directions to Beyer's living unit and walked down the pathway. Mature shade trees and freshly painted park benches graced the landscaped commons, but the effort to soften the stark facades of the concrete block buildings failed. It looked like a way station for low-income seniors slated to eventually move on to equally depressing nursing homes.

It made the prospect of growing old-an idea Kerney had never found particularly appealing-even less inviting.

Eleanor Beyer opened the door to her first-floor apartment and looked at Kerney's shield.

"Ms. Beyer?" Kerney asked.

Considerably older than Penelope Gibben, she was small in stature and suffered from osteoporosis that bent her almost in half. She looked up at Kerney through thick, heavily scratched glasses that were taped together at the nose piece.

"Why are the police here?" she asked in a frail voice. "Has someone died?"

"Nothing like that. I'd like you to tell me about Penelope Gibben and Vernon Langsford."

"I haven't seen either of them for several years."

"You worked at Ranchers' Exploration and Development."

"I was the senior billing clerk until my eyesight got bad and I had to retire," Eleanor said.

"You do know Judge Langsford was murdered."

"I heard it on the evening news."

"Did you know of Penelope Gibben's relationship with the judge?"

"Everyone in the office knew about it. But if you wanted to keep your job, you never mentioned it."

"When did the affair start?"

"Some years after Penelope joined the company. I can't say exactly when. I never understood why Vernon took up with her."

"Why do you say that?"

"She was so standoffish and cold. But I suppose every man has a type of woman he's attracted to."

"Did you know Vernon's wife?"

"Oh, yes. I saw her quite often until the children were born. She was a local girl, so I knew her even before she married Vernon. He really shocked everybody when he proposed to Marsha."

"Why is that?"

"She wasn't his type at all. Vernon had a reputation as a man who only dated the best-looking women in town. Marsha wasn't particularly popular or exceptionally pretty. She was more the homemaker type. Few people expected the marriage to last. I don't think it was a happy marriage, especially after Linda and Eric were born. The children held them together."

"Did Penelope ever talk about her affair with Vernon?"

"Not that I know of. Certainly not with me. But you can't hide that sort of thing in a small town."

"Marsha never learned about it?"

"I don't think she cared to know."

"Did the judge have any enemies?"

"I really couldn't say."

"Who would know?"

"Talk to Bud and Jean McNew. He had some business dealings with Vernon that went sour, and she was about Marsha's only friend for a time."

Kerney spent an interesting hour with Bud and Jean McNew at their small ranch east of Roswell. The adobe home McNew had built on his two sections of land looked out over a sweep of sand hills that changed color from warm yellow to dull brown as passing clouds cut the sunlight.

Bud McNew, who once owned an oil drilling supply company, had been screwed by Langsford on a couple of equipment contracts back when crude prices made drilling new wells unprofitable. McNew had sued, and Langsford settled with him before the civil case went to trial.

Bud didn't think Langsford had any serious enemies, just a number of jobbers and suppliers who got rubbed the wrong way by his habit of not paying the corporate bills on time. All that changed when Langsford became a judge and corporate management was assumed by a blind trust set up to ensure that he would have no conflict of interest in any legal matters involving his companies. During Langsford's tenure on the bench, the companies had cut back on gas and oil drilling and expanded into land development, which increased his wealth several times over.

Kerney got Bud talking about Langsford and his associates and learned that Vernon had used Danny Hobeck as a contract geologist to assess state trust lands and bid on gas and oil leases for his company.

Jean McNew talked about the early days of Marsha's marriage, and how happy Marsha had seemed at the time. She never knew what soured the relationship, but always suspected it was Vernon's womanizing.

According to Mrs. McNew, Vernon had a string of extramarital affairs before he "settled down" into a relationship with Penelope Gibben.

When Kerney asked her to describe Marsha Langsford's personality, Jean said that she was a submissive person who never asserted herself. She characterized most of Marsha's illness as psychosomatic. Although she couldn't say for sure, Jean felt that Marsha knew about Vernon's philandering and had simply retreated in the face of it. Arthur's tragic death had pushed her over the brink into an almost total self-imposed isolation.

After leaving Bud and Jean McNew, Kerney tried a second visit to Margie Hobeck. His knock at the door was answered by the three cats and a woman Kerney didn't know.

"Margie has gone away with her brother," the woman said. "I'm watching the cats for her." She nodded at the adjacent house. "I live next door."