The Heirloom Murders - Kathleen Ernst [94]
“Yeah. Last Thursday night. You took a call. Then you left the tavern.”
“I …” Roxie wet her lips. “I didn’t take any call.”
“Think that through, Roxie. The telephone company keeps records.”
“Well … maybe I took a call, but that doesn’t prove anything!”
Roelke smiled at her. “What do you think I’m trying to prove?”
She shook her head, and started to stand. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“Sit—down.”
Roxie dropped back into her chair.
“Someone ran me off the road last Thursday night,” Roelke said. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “Right after I left this bar. And evidence left at the scene proves that two drivers were involved.” That was pure BS, but it might rattle her. “I think one of those drivers was Edwin Guest. I doubt if Sabatola was the second driver. For one thing, he was plastered. For another, he doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who likes to get his own hands dirty.”
Roxie folded her arms over her chest. “I don’t know about any second driver!” she hissed, staring at the wall.
“The timing is clear, Roxie. Guest and Sabatola left at ten PM. I was here for another forty, forty-five minutes. Guest had plenty of time to get Sabatola home, call you, and explain the plan. All you had to do was have Kiki cover the bar for twenty minutes so you could slip out, follow my truck, and help herd me off the road. Help try to kill me.”
“I—no! It wasn’t like that!”
Roelke forced down a flash of white-hot anger. I knew it, he thought. What he didn’t know was why.
“It was just supposed to be a prank!” Roxie was saying. “I didn’t know anything about running you off the road!”
“Who called you?”
“Edwin.”
“And why did Edwin Guest want to harm me?”
She shook her head violently. “He didn’t. He just said he wanted to rattle you.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t say. I swear to God. I swear on my mother’s grave.”
In Roelke’s experience, swearing on loved ones’ graves was a sure indication that the speaker was lying. “I know that AgriFutures is financially sound,” he said. “I also know that Simon Sabatola doesn’t get along with his brother Alan, and that board members are aligning themselves with one brother or the other. I know that Simon’s not a sure thing to take his father’s place, like he wants people to believe.”
Roxie looked bewildered by the change of topic. “I, um, don’t know anything about that.”
“Oh, I think you do. This is the one place Simon Sabatola feels safe drowning his sorrows. Although,” Roelke added conversationally, “I also know you two haven’t been getting along well lately.”
Roxie looked as if she was trying to figure out whether to agree with or deny that observation. Roelke let her stew. If he could just get this woman to flip, he might learn what he wanted to know.
He would not get anything that would lead to spouse abuse charges. A DA would howl with laughter at the notion that a statement made to an off-duty cop in a bar carried any weight when there was no actual evidence of any wrongdoing, criminal or otherwise.
But I want to know, Roelke thought. For Bonnie’s sake, and for his own. Roxie had just confirmed that Sabatola and Guest weren’t the pretty and well-behaved businessmen they pretended to be. Maybe they were sick SOBs who ran him off the road for the fun of it. Or maybe they were doing something illegal, most likely at AgriFutures, and were so paranoid about it that they felt compelled to strike at a cop just for hovering at the periphery of their lives.
Roelke smiled. If he couldn’t nail Sabatola’s ass for tormenting his wife, he’d be delighted to nail Sabatola’s ass for something else.
“OK, Roxie, here’s the deal,” he said finally. “I need some information. You can give it to me, or you can go to prison for trying to kill a cop. What’s it going to be?”
Chloe was slogging through Ralph Petty’s make-work activity on Thursday when the phone rang. “It’s me,” Roelke said. “I need your help with something.”
“What do you need?” Roelke wasn’t one to make casual work-day calls.
“I’m still trying to get a handle on AgriFutures. A friend of mine told me that the Sabatola brothers