Page 57 of Puzzle for Two

Here he was in luck, sort of. The lead detectives at the sheriff’s office were ready and waiting for his call. He was invited to drive up to the station to give his statement, and he assured them he was on his way.

“I’ll call Uncle Bill,” Brooke said when Zach filled her in on the plan.

“I’ve already left a message,” Zach told her. “Anyway, listen. If we’re really planning to run this agency, we have to be able to deal with whatever comes up ourselves. We can’t go running to Bill—”

She opened her mouth, and he said firmly, “Or Flint—every time we get hit with a-a challenge.”

“It’s more than a challenge if you get arrested!”

Zach summoned a laugh and said with a confidence he didn’t feel, “Don’t worry. I’ll be back before you know it. I’m not going to be arrested.”

He was not entirely sure about that, of course, and he was even less sure after he arrived at the sheriff’s office and was ushered into a small interview room where a couple of plainclothes officers were waiting. They didn’t go so far as to lick their chops, but Zach definitely picked up a welcome-to-the-Colosseum vibe.

The detectives introduced themselves as Schneider and Barrera. Barrera was a petite no-nonsense brunette with a very large diamond engagement ring. A set of handcuffs just happened to be lying not so subtly on the clipboard in front of her.

Schneider looked like he’d just been discharged from the Marines five minutes earlier. Blond, blue-eyed, and broad-shouldered. He looked efficient and humorless.

They went quickly through the basics of who Zach was, what he did for a living, and his connection to the case. Then they got down to it.

“Why do you think Alton Beacher chose to go with a small, independent operation like Davies Detective Agency?” Barrera asked. “No offense, but you’re not the most experienced investigator out there. You had to ask yourself.”

“I asked Mr. Beacher that in our first meeting,” Zach answered. “He felt that a small company might be more open to considering some of his eccen—idiosyncratic requests.”

Barrera’s gaze sharpened. “What’s that mean? What were theseidiosyncraticrequests?”

They had to know, of course. They’d spoken to Chico, and however wrong he’d got the level of Zach’s, er, commitment, he knew what the original job was supposed to entail.

“He told me his wife repeatedly threatened to retaliate if he attempted to divorce her. That she not only threatened to ruin him financially, but had warned him that she’d kill herself in such a way that he’d be framed for her murder. He insisted she was vengeful and obsessive. In fact, he suspected her of being behind the threats against his life, which was maybe one reason he didn’t take them as seriously as he should have. But he thought, or claimed to think, that if he could convince her he was gay, it would defuse a lot of her rage. Then it would be about him and not their marriage. She’d be able to save face, that kind of thing.”

Barrera looked pained.

“And he insisted that the best way to convince her he really was gay was to hire someone to pose as his boyfriend.”

Schneider said incredulously, “And you thought that was a good idea?”

“I thought a fake boyfriend was a terrible idea,” Zach said. “I told him I didn’t think it would work. But he was offering us lot of money. Since my father passed away, our agency’s struggled to retain clients. Beacher seemed to be throwing us a lifeline. The threats against him sounded genuine to me, and I believed that was going to be our focus.”

“But it wasn’t.” Barrera wasn’t asking.

“It got a little weird.” Zach remembered Flint’s advice to stick to the facts and not volunteer extra information. “Despite the creepy gifts and threats, Beacher didn’t seem particularly fearful. Chico Martinez, his bodyguard, didn’t behave the way I would have expected him to if—”

“But you don’t have a lot of experience handling these kinds of cases,” Schneider broke in. “So how would you know?”

“No, I don’t.” Zach couldn’t help adding, “But I’m not sure therearea lot of these kinds of cases.”

“Tell us about the weekend you spent with Mr. Beacher at Spanish Bay,” Barrera said. She did not seem like someone who was easily distracted.

“Basically, he paid me to amuse myself for the weekend. It seemed unusual, but I used the time to find out what I could about other potential suspects. I wasn’t convinced Mrs. Kaschak-Beacher was the only person who might want him out of the way. And in fact, we—he—was accosted Sunday morning at the hotel restaurant by Ronald Jordan.”

This was clearly news to them. But then Chico hadn’t been there when Rusty showed up at breakfast. Just as Chico hadn’t been there when Zora showed up—or even when Ben popped out of the bushes. Come to think of it, if Ben were a different kind of personality, Zach might conceivably think that Ben, being jealous and angry, could’ve gone after Alton.

Zach wasn’t going to throw Ben under the bus, though. No way had Ben sneaked onto the Beacher estate and tampered with Alton’s brakes. Assuming anyone had tampered with anything and that it wasn’t an accident. Or that Alton had faked his death.

Until they’d heard about Rusty Jordan, Barrera and Schneider had been zeroing in on what had gone down between Zach and Alton over the weekend, but this new information seemed to give them pause. Zach explained who Rusty was, as well as his relationship to Alton and Zora. He was asked to recall every word spoken between Alton and Rusty on Sunday. Barrera listened and occasionally made a couple of notes.

Schneider also listened, but he seemed unimpressed, kicked back in his chair, arms folded, continuing to direct a cold, unblinking stare Zach’s way.

Barrera jotted down a final note, and without looking up, asked casually, “At what point over the weekend did you become sexually intimate with Mr. Beacher?”

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