Illusion of Luck 10

At 9:15 on Saturday morning Larry Luzor, soon to be a best-selling author, walked into his Plano, Texas home. The message machine was flashing the number ’12.’ Probably just calls from Erin’s sleazy friends, he thought. Or, maybe an agent?”

The phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Is this Lawrence Igby Luzor?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Luzor, this is Lt. Gotcha of the Sherman Police Department.”

Gotcha? Larry felt a chill begin to run up his spine. Surely that’s not his name, he thought. “I’m sorry—what did you say your name was?”

“Gretcha. Lt. Bill Gretcha. Sir, the reason I’m calling is that we have a silver BMW convertible that was reported aban­doned in a parking lot. And the car is registered in your name.”

The detective told Larry the license number and where the car had been found. He had been trying to reach Larry since the store owner had called it in late Friday afternoon.

“Yes, that’s my wife’s car.”

“Well, when was the last time you saw or talked to your wife?”

“Uh…I guess that would have been Thursday night—at a cabin on Lake Texoma.”

“I see. Well, Mr. Luzor, would mind coming in to the station so we can talk about this?”

“Can’t we just do it over the phone?”

The detective waited four seconds before he responded. “Sir, you don’t seem to be all that concerned about what happened to your wife.”

“Should I be concerned? You think some­thing happened to her?”

“I’ve said all I can say over the phone.”

“Look, Detective, my wife probably parked the car and went off with some guy. And I couldn’t care less. Our marriage is over. I planned to file for divorce next week.”

“So, when can I expect to see you here at the station?”

“I’m feeling ill right now. Some kind of virus, I guess. I’ll take some medicine and rest a while and then hopefully I can make the trip up there—probably late afternoon.”

“Okay. I’ll be expecting you this afternoon. Thank you. Goodbye.”

Larry hung up the phone.

He had no intention of going back to Sherman. And by the time the police became suspicious, he would be long gone.

**********

“I appreciate you coming in on a Saturday morning. I know it’s an inconvenience,” said the detective.

“No problem at all,” said Rebecca. “I want to help in any way I can.”

“When I took your statement yesterday at the motel, you said Melanie was not a hooker.”

“Of course not. She was a divorce lawyer—and a good one.”

“So, what made you think to look for her in that fleabag motel?”

“There was a scrap of paper on her desk with the name of the motel on it. She was late coming in to the office and we couldn’t reach her by phone, so I checked her desk for clues.”

“I’m going to need that scrap of paper.”

“Sure. I’ll see if I can find it.”

The detective glared at her. “You think she went there in her capacity as a divorce lawyer?”

“Sure. We go wherever we need to for our clients.”

“The manager said you came into the office asking about her.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“And you mentioned to him that Melanie sometimes goes by the name ‘Candy.’”

“Uh, yes.”

“Why would a lawyer have a nickname like Candy?”

“I don’t know exactly. It was from elementary school. She never told me why the kids started calling her that. But it’s a cute nickname for an 8 year-old.”

“Yeah, but at 28, it sounds an awful lot like a hooker—espe­cially when you dress like one.”

“My partner was no hooker, lieutenant. She was a hard-working lawyer who really cared about her clients.”

“And when you found her, did you touch or move anything in the room?”

“No, of course not. I’m a lawyer—I know better.” Rebecca knew she had gone way over the line this time. There was no scrap of paper with the motel name on it. And she had gone through Melanie’s purse, taken the bottom off and swapped out the video camera’s memory card.

She might end up in prison, or at the very least, be dis­barred. But she knew who the killer was, and she would dis­pose of him. No need to waste a prison cell on the stinking degene­rate.

**********

The jerk in the dark green Jaguar nearly sideswiped Rebecca as she was entering the subdivision. She looked to see if the driver was smirking at her, but the windows were too dark. Just because they’re rich, they think they own the road, she thought.

It had taken until 1:30 PM to drive to Plano after being interrogated in Sherman.

She stuffed a handful of greasy fries into her mouth and sucked down the rest of her warm strawberry shake.

The yard sloped dramatically upward to the house, making her feel like a peasant looking up at a castle. She drove up into the semi-circle driveway, set her parking brake, and killed the engine.

She hoped he would pull a gun on her. She could whip hers out as fast as any gunslinger in an old Western. As a kid, she had worked at perfecting her skills with a toy pistol and holster. And when she was a little older, she and her dad spent a lot of time at the shooting range. At fifty feet, she could shoot a man’s dan­gler off before he could even go for his gun.

She rang the doorbell and got no answer.

She knocked and waited, and knocked again.

Then it struck her. What about the guy in the dark green Jaguar that nearly hit her car? What if that was Larry Luzor? Too late to chase him.

She opened the wooden gate at the side of the house and went through. The bedroom door near the hot tub was locked. So was the utility room door and the sliding glass door to the den.

Rebecca peeked in the small door window of the detached garage and saw no cars. She would break a window if neces­sary to get into the house and look for evidence.

But first, she would search for open win­dows. She found one. It was a high and small, in the utility room, opened just a crack.

She put on her latex gloves, reached up to the screen, and pulled it off. Then she raised the window, grabbed onto the brick ledge, and pulled herself up. Her arms scraped across the sharp edges of the bricks as she stuck her head through the window. She hoped a neighbor wasn’t seeing her bottom half flailing around in the air.

Her head was nearly touching the washing machine when her legs and feet cleared the window. She fell hard on the washer and dryer and rolled off to the tile floor. Her head was spinning as she looked up at the dryer. She felt as if she had just spent a few minutes tum­bling in it.

One lonely tennis shoe lay upside down on the grass out­side.

She got up and began to search the house. There was a por­trait of the formerly happy couple on the mantle. Yeah, it was the creep from the video, she thought. “You are so dead,” she said to the picture. Then she removed it from its frame and slipped it into her pocket.

In the study, she saw his six murder mystery books dis­played prominently on the bookshelf behind his high-backed leather chair. In one corner were several boxes of those same books.

There wasn’t much on the desk, other than the computer and a 7 oz. bag of Black Night pipe tobacco.

She turned on the computer. The keyboard and mouse had been pushed to the side. She put them in place and began to search his files. But after a few minutes she realized something. None of the files had been recently created or updated. The computer had apparently not been used for weeks. But how could that be? The guy was an author. Surely he used his com­puter to write his books.

You dummy, she thought. He had moved the keyboard and mouse out of the way to make room for his laptop.

She checked each of the desk drawers, but found nothing helpful. So, she pulled the trash can out from under his desk and began to search it. There were various scribblings and what appeared to be notes about possible characters for a book.

Or, maybe some of the names are real people, she thought.

She typed one of the names into the Google search box. Then she tried another. After several failures, she got an inter­esting hit on ‘Barry Undermine.’ It was the name of an author on a website called DirectFromTheAuthor.com. Mr. Undermine was posting each chapter of his mystery novel as he wrote it. She decided to read a few excerpts.

But when the hooker tried to escape, he yanked the belt as hard as he could. She collapsed to the floor, dead. Her neck was broken.

And he would, once again, get away with it.

Rebecca screamed at the monitor. “No, he won’t!”