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Five months after Lyle’s untimely death, I had returned from a Hawaiian vacation with my new boyfriend. When I checked my messages, there was one from Sgt. Alvarez.
“I wonder if we could stop by tomorrow to see you, Mrs. Harding. Please call.” He left his number, and I called the next morning. We agreed on 6:00 that night. I had a date for the theater at 8:00 p.m., a new play by David Mamet I wanted to see. My date was my boyfriend, a neat guy I met at yoga class. His name is Arturo, and he’s a finance professor at USF, an amateur winemaker, a backpacker, and a great dancer. We hit it off on our first date and always have a great time. Soon we are going to Carmel for a weekend of wine tasting, the spa, and tennis. I can’t wait!
I had a new outfit to wear that evening, a lavender pantsuit with a matching floral scarf I had bought in Maui. I was picking out my jewelry, deciding among a triple strand of pearls, a diamond brooch, and a new necklace with an opal setting, when the doorbell rang. I postponed my jewelry decision until I had gotten rid of Alvarez and Prendergast. I left the jewelry spread on my dresser and went to the door.
Three suits. Alvarez, Prendergast, and a woman wearing a tan pantsuit from Mervyn’s. She stood between the two men but back a step. Diminutive, with blonde hair cut short, attractive in a TV trial lawyer sort of way. She had a stone-serious look, as if she were trying to drill through me with her intense gray eyes. Her stare made me a tad uncomfortable.
“Good evening, Mrs. Harding,” Alvarez said. “Thanks for letting us stop by tonight. We have a new detective assisting on your husband’s case. This is Lt. Wilson. She was on medical leave when we interviewed you before.”
“Hello, Lt. Wilson,” I said, noticing a slight quiver in my voice. She nodded and her thin lips flashed a half smile that was gone in an instant.
“Good evening, Mrs. Harding,” Wilson said, her voice stiff as rebar.
Alvarez said, “We have a few routine questions about a follow-up arson investigation. Could we come in for a few minutes?”
Arson investigation? I thought that was all behind me.
“Of course.” I led them through my house to a studio I had created out of Lyle’s home office. I had gotten rid of Lyle’s computer, fax, copier, and telephones and replaced them with palettes, a drafting board, and paintings I had done since he died. I had repainted the room and put in recessed lighting. It had become my sanctuary, with spectacular morning light.
I showed the three of them to a settee overlooking San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. “Would you like tea or coffee?” I offered, hoping they wouldn’t accept.
They shook their heads. I was relieved. I wanted them out of the house before Arturo showed up for our play date. I certainly didn’t want to explain why they were here when he arrived.
Alvarez started the questioning. “Ms. Harding, the arson investigation has uncovered that the tragic accident that killed your husband was not from a gas main. It apparently was caused by the barbecue propane tank found a few yards from the patio, where it was thrown in the explosion.”
“How could that be?”
Prendergast jumped in. “Someone rigged a connection between the propane tank and the house. We don’t know how, but the investigators are still going through evidence they found.”
“Who would do that? And why? Someone murdered my husband and . . . ‘her’? It was a terrible accident from negligence, not foul play. Just ask my lawyer.”
The detectives looked at each other with blank expressions on their faces. What were they thinking? I couldn’t tell; it made me nervous.
Prendergast broke the awkwardness. “That’s what we’re trying to determine. After Lt. Wilson joined us, she encouraged us to expand our investigation. She said it might be possible to drive from Burbank to Marin and return in twelve hours. Lt. Wilson had taken a similar route from Berkeley to Los Angeles many times when she was a student at USC.”
Without saying a word, Wilson took out a binder from her briefcase and opened it on the coffee table. She flipped through pages until she came to one with writing and figures in columns.
Prendergast continued. “Sergeant Alvarez and I wanted to check out her theory, so the three of us flew to Burbank and rented a car at the airport like you did. We waited until 7:00 p.m. and drove on I-5 to San Francisco, turning off on I-580, crossing the San Rafael Bridge, and driving to Marin where your husband was killed. We spent an hour, turned around, and drove back to Burbank. It was a brutal drive, and we were exhausted. But we made it in thirteen hours.”
I was annoyed and more than a little nervous. I faked a smile and tried not to give off any signs of nervousness. “But I told you many times, I was in Burbank, at the movie, the shopping center, and my hotel.” I bit the inside of my lip. I didn’t like where this was going.
Prendergast picked up Wilson’s notebook and put a finger on the top column of figures. “We verified with the car rental company that your car had a fourteen-gallon tank and averages twenty-seven miles per gallon. That computes to three hundred and seventy-eight miles per tank of gas.”
Prendergast looked at Alvarez and Wilson, and they both nodded. His finger moved to the next column, which I couldn’t read.
“It’s slightly less than four hundred miles from Marin to Burbank: three hundred and eighty-four miles, to be exact.”
My heart started pounding, and I felt my palms getting damp. God, where was he going with this?
“That means a person would have to stop for gas twice on a round trip, first after arriving in San Francisco and again before returning to Burbank. As you know, you have to turn in a car with a full gas tank. Your rental car had thirty-four miles on the odometer, which clears you on that point.”
I let out the breath I had been holding while he was going through the calculations. What a relief!
The room was deathly still. Why were they going through this with me? Prendergast looked down at the notebook and moved his finger to the next column of figures. “That’s when Lt. Wilson showed us something important.”
“What was that?” I asked, probably a little too eagerly.
“As Lt. Wilson knew from numerous trips, returning to L.A. on I-5 forces a driver to watch the gas gauge the last hundred miles. After leaving the Bakersfield area, there are only a few gas stations over the next one hundred miles. If a driver is low on gas after Bakersfield, they could be in trouble.”
Where was Prendergast going with this?
Prendergast’s finger moved down the middle of the page with rows of figures. “Here’s what we found, Mrs. Harding. After Bakersfield, there is a stretch of sixty-three miles heading south, where there are only a dozen stations between Arvin and Castaic. If a person is low on gas in this stretch, they have to stop at TravelCenters in Arvin; Mobil, 76, or Shell in Grapevine; Flying J, Chevron, 76, or Mobil in Lebec; or 76, Mobil or Shell in Castaic.”
I was puzzled. What did gas gauges and mileage have to do with me? I had used another rental car, not the one from the airport. All this information was fruitless.
Prendergast leaned back in the sofa. “After the three of us got back to Burbank, we checked into a hotel and slept a few hours. Then Lt. Wilson recommended we return to the gas stations between Arvin and Castaic. We had a photo of you and your husband that you had given us, and we stopped at the gas stations. We asked if they could identify you. No one could. But gas stations on I-5 have security cameras to prevent theft or identify drivers who drive off without paying.”
Wilson reached into her briefcase and pulled out a manila envelope. She took out black and white photos and handed them to Prendergast.
My face flushed. I started breathing heavily and felt beads of sweat forming high on my forehead. I didn’t dare wipe them away.
“We have one photo we want to ask you about, Mrs. Harding.” He handed it across to me.
I froze. It was my profile, wearing my baseball hat over my brown wig. It was dark, but the lights over the gas pumps were bright. I was walkin
g in to pay for gas in cash.
“The woman in the photo has dark hair and is wearing a baseball cap. But the profile resembles yours.”
I was enraged. “This is ridiculous. I have blonde hair. That’s not me!”
He pointed behind my profile. “If you look over the woman’s shoulder in the background, you can see a car and a front license plate.” He handed me an enlargement of the front of my rental car.
“From this photo, we got a license plate. It came up as a rental from a private outfit in Burbank. We took your photo to the dealer, who identified you as having rented the car the day you arrived. You paid in cash and left a deposit. You returned the car Thursday and received your deposit back. Here’s a copy of the receipt.”
He handed me a photocopy with my faked signature, Brenda Cosmos, a former sorority sister I hated.
“We checked the mileage from the time you rented the car on Tuesday until you returned it Thursday. It had seven hundred and eighty miles on it. A lot of driving in thirty-eight hours. Enough to get to Marin and back.”
It was so quiet you could hear planes landing at the San Francisco Airport.
Bing Bong!
“It’s Arturo -- he’s at the door!” I blurted out.
The detectives stood, and Lt. Wilson said, “Mrs. Harding, we are arresting you for the murder of your husband and Louise Wilson. If you’ll come with us, we’re going to the station to take a statement.”
She read me Miranda, but I was so stunned the words were mumbles to me. I stood up, shaking so much I thought I was going to fall over. Lt. Wilson pulled out handcuffs and motioned for me to extend my hands.
I looked into her eyes and felt like I had been struck by lightning. “Lt. Wilson?” I said weakly. “Are you . . .?”
“Yes. Louise was my twin sister.”
Bing Bong!
T H E E N D
Thank you for reading Perfect Crime. I hope you enjoyed it and will consider writing a review on this site.
I am currently writing a thriller series based in Milan featuring the anti-terrorist police, DIGOS, at Milan’s Questura (police headquarters). The first book in the series is Thirteen Days in Milan.
The sequel, No One Sleeps, is about an attempt by a clandestine cell of Muslim terrorists who have received a shipment of toxic chemicals to make deadly sarin gas from Pakistan. The leader of the cell has access to Milan’s centers of finance, technology, commerce and entertainment -- all high profile targets with the potential of hundreds of casualties in a terrorist attack.
You can preorder the No One Sleeps ebook at a discount on this site and receive it in December 2016. The paperback will be published in July 2017.
The third book in the series, Cadorna Station, will be published as an ebook in March 2017.
The World of DIGOS:
General Investigations and Special Operations Division
(Divisione Investigazioni Generali e Operazioni Speciali)
Police forces all over the world -- and especially in Europe -- are being challenged by terrorist groups recruited in the Middle East by radical forces intent on destroying Western governments and cultures. The tragic bombings and heavily armed assaults on innocent civilians in France and Belgium are the latest and most deadly attacks since 9/11.
Italy is at the center of the attempt to neutralize this threat with sophisticated police techniques and coordination among European governments. No One Sleeps is the fictionalization of an attempt by a cell of radical Muslims intent on attacking an important Italian cultural institution in Milan and killing hundreds of innocent Italians. When DIGOS, the Italian anti-terrorism police, learns about the clandestine terrorist cell, they send a team of top agents to discover who they are and stop them before they act.
Here is the opening chapter of No One Sleeps when a low level inspector at the port of La Spezia confesses to his brother-in-law, a police detective, that he was bribed to allow shipments of suspicious cargo from Karachi, Pakistan, bound for Milan to pass through the port without being inspected.
This is how the story begins . . .