Slow Kill - Michael Mcgarrity [89]
She was a poised, elegant, armor-plated, stone cold killer.
At the massive front doors, Ellie cuffed Spalding, told her the charges, read her the Miranda warning, and put her in the backseat of the unmarked cruiser.
“I’d like to call my lawyer,” Spalding said.
“You can do that from jail,” Ellie said, looking in at her through the open car door.
“Were you overweight as a child?” Spalding asked.
“Why do you ask?” Ellie countered, taken aback by the question. In fact, she’d been a little chubby until puberty caught up with her and burned it permanently away.
Spalding smirked. “Never mind.”
“Were you?” Ellie asked, hoping at last Claudia wanted to talk.
Spalding turned away. “Please hurry. These handcuffs are very uncomfortable.”
Chapter 12
With Claudia Spalding in custody and on her way to jail, Lieutenant Dante Macy quickly moved the team of detectives onto the estate. The long lane to the house, shaded by rows of overarching trees, cut the afternoon sun into gleaming flecks of light. On either side, thickets of brambles and tall pines created the illusion of a forest. When the Tuscan-style house and the formal tiered gardens came into view, Macy was stunned by the opulence. Ellie Lowrey’s description of the estate hadn’t done it justice. He wondered how many tens of millions, or hundreds of millions, it took to own such a place.
Macy put his people into motion. Two men would round up the staff and take their statements. Detective Price and two officers would conduct the search for evidence. Two more detectives would do a visual sweep of the extensive grounds to determine what else might need to be searched under a new warrant.
The five employees consisted of Clifford Spalding’s personal assistant, an estate overseer who lived on the grounds, two gardeners, and a resident housekeeper. All of them had attended the funeral services and the wake, staying behind after the last guests departed to tidy up and restore order.
Macy wandered through the house and grounds thinking it would take a platoon of officers a day or more to do a truly comprehensive search. Hopefully, that wouldn’t be needed. He watched as the detectives working under Price examined hard drives on the household computers, then stopped by the kitchen where the personal assistant, a nervous woman in her thirties named Sheila, was giving a statement. The rest of the staff were seated silently around the table in the adjacent dining room under the watchful eye of an officer.
Macy found Price exiting the guesthouse by the tennis courts, empty-handed. Price shook his head to signal that he’d found nothing of interest and walked toward the garage and staff quarters. Macy went back to the kitchen and waited for the detective to finish up with Sheila. Then he took her in tow and had her open every locked door on the estate so the officers could do a visual inspection. There was no good reason to waste time trying to do a thorough search of every nook and cranny. At least, not yet.
After the doors had been unlocked, he told Sheila to wait in the dining room, and sat at the far end of the long antique tavern table that filled the center space of the kitchen. The two gardeners, both middle-aged Hispanic men with limited English language skills, were questioned one at a time by a Spanish-speaking officer. They both said they didn’t know Kim Dean or what his relationship to Claudia was. The detective probed a bit, but it was clear both men had very little personal knowledge about their employers.
Next up was the housekeeper, a woman with a broad Nordic face and pale blue eyes named Cora Sluka. Under questioning, she was uncooperative and evasive at first, but opened up a bit when the detectives pointed out that Clifford Spalding was dead, his wife was in jail charged with murder, and Sluka might have a hard time getting