A Match Made for Murder by Iona Whishaw (top 10 best books of all time txt) 📗

which Mrs. Watts had responded to the finding of the dresses, and the possibility that her husband had been responsible for defacing a local business. It seemed in direct contradiction to the calm acceptance she appeared to show earlier when she had said she didn’t love her husband and suspected he didn’t love her. And there was the business of Tina, which he’d also made a mess of.

He thought again about how Darling would have been able to negotiate the problem of an angry witness like Tina, how he dropped his voice, dug in, used a completely neutral courtesy so the witness felt safe and went off the burn. She’d lied about her angry interaction with Watts, who had—or so the working theory suggested—subsequently driven to the garage in the middle of the night and painted it to get back at her. Something his wife hadn’t realized he’d done. It hardly seemed to matter now, though it would conclusively clear up the matter of the damage to the garage door. He threw his hat onto the rack and took off his overcoat.

Terrell appeared at the door with his notebook open. “Sir?”

“You have something? More odd things, perhaps?”

Terrell smiled. “Yes indeed, sir.”

“Pull up a pew,” he said. “I came up empty. Miss Van Eyck wasn’t trying to run away with him; she was at the garage all day, she says, and now she’s in a snit. And the clothes don’t belong to Mrs. Watts, according to her. In fact, she’s adapted quite quickly to being a widow. I did tell her about the splodge of paint in the trunk of the car and explained our suspicion about her husband and the paint on the garage door. She was extremely angry, but I don’t know if it was at me or her faithless husband.” He frowned; a thought about this had bubbled up then and had gone again just as quickly. He sighed. “What have you got?”

Terrell opened his book. “Okay, I talked to the people at the station, including his boss. He does, did, work there as a yardman, which is why that woman coming off the ferry recognized the licence from seeing his car at the station. However, he no longer works as a foreman. He’d been demoted a couple of months back after a conflict arose with the men. When I asked what the conflict was about, he told me he had no idea, but it was clear Watts was no leader, as discipline had become lax and work wasn’t getting done.

“So I went and talked to several of the men. They said the whole thing started between him and one of the men. Something about a girl. Someone called Finch. Hang on.” He flipped a page. “Yes, here we go. Craig Finch wasn’t there today, but I hope to catch him tomorrow. I got his address, though, sir, if we want to go talk to him at home. I got a feeling people knew something, but they weren’t that forthcoming.” Terrell didn’t tell Ames that he’d been told by one of the men to get the police department to send a “real” police officer next time. The courtesy of the foreman made up for it.

Ames frowned. “And what about these trips Watts’s wife said he took?”

“Not for work. In fact, according to them he rarely missed a day of work.”

“So then, he’s spending nights somewhere nearby when he was supposedly away on work trips? And now he is running off with someone for, judging by the contents of the bag, a lost weekend, only he dies of a heart attack and the woman, whoever she is, takes advantage of the situation and robs him and, for good measure, locks him in the car. And goes where? It’s just the strangeness of the whole thing.”

“My questions exactly, sir.”

Sergeant Martinez, frustrated again by finding no trace of his folder, put his cap on and prepared to go to the inn. He picked up his new notebook, sitting in the wooden tray where he always kept them, and made his way between the desks to the door.

“Sergeant,” someone called, and he turned to see young Cooper approaching him with a piece of paper. “I’ve tracked down the rooming house, sir. I got lucky. I called six and the sixth one was it. He’s been there for five days.”

“Thanks, Officer Cooper.” Martinez frowned and called after him. “Did you say five days?”

“Yeah, that’s what the landlady, Mrs. Parvis, said. She didn’t seem to approve of him much.”

“Why, what did she say?”

“She said she ought to show him the door, the way he carries on, but wouldn’t say any more. Said, ‘He pays his bills,’ so I suppose money wins out over whatever it is he does there.”

Martinez got into the patrol car and looked at the address. It was about a mile away on Park. Though he was sure that what Cooper had learned must be a mistake, he thought he’d better stop there on the way. Edward Renwick said he had only just arrived from Wisconsin the day before. He’d flown, he said, to Phoenix and taken a bus to Tucson, and even produced some proof of the trip. What did this mean?

“Sergeant Martinez, ma’am,” he said when he got to the rooming house, and flashed his badge. “You talked with one of our officers earlier about one of your guests? Edward Renwick?”

“Yes, I did. What’s the interest of the police, anyway?” Mrs. Parvis was wearing a handkerchief tied in a turban around her hair, and her plump figure was wrapped in a long apron that ended at the top of her rolled-down stockings and a pair of ancient, stained mules. “Not that I’m surprised,” she added.

“Can you tell me how long he’s been here?”

The woman turned toward a small table that held a heavy register. “There, see. He came on the eighth. What are we now? The twelfth? So, five days.”

Martinez stepped across the threshold and peered