J. Jance - Name Witheld

"I'll handle it," Lucille Enders said briskly. "I'm off shift now. I was just completing some paperwork. I'll leave for Laguna Beach as soon as I finish."

"I can't ask you to do that, Detective Enders. I'll-"

"Nobody's asking me," Lucille cut in. "I'm telling you, I'll handle it. And I'll call you and let you know when it's been done."

"Why would you do that?" I asked.

"Because I'm a mother, too," Lucille Enders answered. "And because Lizbeth Wolf is Anna Dorn's only child."

"Thank you," I said. "Thank you very much."

Who says there's no place in the world for women detectives? Maybe I would have said so once, but not anymore. I've learned my lesson.

When I finished that call, at least I already knew all the necessary codes. Compared to the first long distance call, the second one was a snap. And even though it was almost five-thirty by then, Harry Moore answered his direct line at Alpha-Cyte.

"Detective Beaumont," he said. "Ever since Detective Enders left, I've been sitting here hoping you'd call. Tell me, what happened?"

"It's all very sketchy, so far. At this time, we're reasonably sure Don Wolf was murdered. If the victim found in his apartment turns out to be his wife, she may or may not have committed suicide."

Harry Moore's sharp intake of breath was almost a sob. "Oh, my God!" he whimpered. "Suicide? I was afraid that's what you were going to say. If she killed herself, it's my fault. All my fault."

"Why would it be your fault?"

"We had a big argument, a couple of days after Christmas. She left in a huff."

"What was the argument about?"

"What else? That worthless husband of hers."

In Harry Moore I had encountered yet another nonfan of the late, great Donald Wolf.

"Wait a minute, Mr. Moore. Let me ask a question. How well do you know Lizbeth Wolf?"

"Very well. She started working here as an intern while she was still in college. I trained her myself. She's done virtually every job here, from the most intricate research procedures to typing annual reports."

"Can you tell me if she was right- or left-handed?"

"Left, of course. Why do you need to know that?"

I closed my eyes, remembering the scene in Don Wolf's bedroom. I could still see a clear image of the dead woman's lifeless left hand, complete with gold wedding band, hanging down on the left-hand side of the bed. Potentially, that made one more piece of the puzzle slip into place. The gun had been found on the other side of the bed. If Lizbeth Wolf actually turned out to be the victim, Audrey Cummings was right in saying she hadn't committed suicide.

"In that case, Mr. Moore, if it's any consolation, I think I can assure you that the dead woman, whoever she is, was murdered."

"Did Don Wolf kill her?" Harry asked.

Good question. We had all been going on the assumption that Don Wolf had died first, thus leaving him out as a suspect in the death of the woman found in his condo. That possibly erroneous conclusion was largely based on the fact that his body had been found first. I made myself a note to check with Audrey Cummings to see if the autopsy had allowed them to pinpoint time of death for either victim.

"By person or persons unknown," I said.

"Just wait," Harry Moore said. "You'll see. I always knew there was something terribly wrong with that guy. Oh, he looked great. He was a snazzy dresser-a real lady's man. But when he waltzed in here last summer and swept Lizbeth off her feet the way he did, I knew right then something wasn't right. Lizbeth had been with me for so long that she seemed more like a member of my family than an employee. Like the daughter I never had. Maybe I was a little overprotective, and I think Lizbeth resented it. But jeez, I could tell from the start that the guy was bad news. It's hard for someone like me to keep my mouth shut. Then last week, when the SOB proved me right, I had to go and open my big yap and tell her ‘I told you so.' After that, all hell broke loose."

"Maybe you should try telling me the whole story," I suggested, "from the beginning."

Harry took a deep breath. "Don Wolf showed up down here midsummer of last year. I forget now where he and Lizbeth met. Once they did, it was whirlwind courtship time. Within weeks, she was wearing a rock for an engagement ring. I tried to tell her that he was rushing things too much and pressuring her into getting married before she knew enough about him. These days, with all the drug dealing and such, when somebody has plenty of money and no visible means of support, no regular job, you can't be too cautious. So anyway, when I tried to talk her into slowing down and taking some time to get to know him before jumping into anything, we had a huge fight. I was afraid she was going to up and quit on me. In the end, she just told me to mind my own business. Two weeks after that-less than a month after they met-they ran off to Vegas and got married. And two months later, he tells her, ‘By the way, I've got this new job up in Seattle. See you around.' Lizbeth tried to pretend that his taking off like that didn't matter, but it did. It had to hurt like hell."

"My understanding was that she was down here waiting for the house to sell," I said.

"In order to sell a house, you have to list it," Harry Moore said. "That business about staying here to sell it is what she told everybody, just to save face. And who can blame her? There she was, a blushing first-time bride almost forty years old. And what happens? The groom takes off and leaves her high and dry."

"So what happened last week?"

"Lizbeth called me from home. She had been off on sick leave for several days the week before Christmas, and Alpha-Cyte shuts down completely between Christmas and New Year's. She called me, crying. She asked me to come over because she needed to talk to someone, and she didn't know where else to turn. When I got to the house, she was in pretty bad shape. She had been in bed for two days with a terrible cold. Not only that, she'd just received a letter from Don saying there had been some kind of mistake. That there had been a glitch in the proceedings somewhere along the line. The upshot was that Wolf's divorce from his first wife hadn't been final at the time he and Lizbeth eloped to Vegas. According to him, it turned out they weren't married after all. That sleezeball was a bigamist."

Among other things, I thought. "What then?" I asked.

"First I said, ‘I told you so,' which, as my wife pointed out later, was exactly the wrong thing to say. Then I offered to put Lizbeth in touch with my personal attorney so she could get some advice on her legal standing-like, did she need an annulment or could she take the bastard to court and sue his socks off? I don't know why I bothered. It was just like pissing into the wind."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because as soon as I finished, she asked if she could have another week off once the Christmas holidays were over. She said she was going to drive up to Seattle and try to straighten things out with Don. And I said, ‘What's to straighten out? Stay the hell away from the slimy bastard.' I probably said some other things, too. I don't remember it all. I'm sure I hurt Lizbeth's feelings. I guess I'm not what you call a sensitive guy when it comes to women. I just wanted to protect her is all. I didn't want her to be hurt."

Harry Moore's voice broke. I could believe that the connection between him and Lizbeth Wolf went beyond the ordinary employer/employee connections, although I couldn't sort out exactly what their relationship might have been.

"When was this conversation, Mr. Moore?"

He cleared his throat. "The twenty-ninth. Maybe even the thirtieth."

"She would have driven?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "Lizbeth loved to drive. She had herself a little four-wheel-drive Subaru wagon. Even with snow, she wouldn't have had any trouble getting over the mountains."