Fatal Demand Read online

  Barnes seemed to think about the question a bit before gesturing to the young guard outside. “Jimmy, well…he probably knows. Takes her the mail a couple times a week. Ask him.”

  Jess glanced out the window toward Jimmy.

  “I’ve got to get on, now.” Barnes pulled a form from the rack on the wall. “Got an incident report to write.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Jess drove out of Highland Village with Candace Supko’s address wedged between the panels of her dashboard. Jimmy Polar had been hesitant to write it down. He’d owned up to taking her the mail because he lived nearby, but that was it. He claimed to know nothing else about the widow, but Jess didn’t believe him.

  She took Interstate 35 to 45 then onto 20, traveling in the right direction. She pulled into a gas station and typed the address into the GPS on her phone. She brought up a map and then an aerial satellite image of Candace Supko’s new neighborhood.

  She knew at once that the collapse of Joshua Supko’s business had been complete. No grieving widow would willingly move her children from Highland Village to this neighborhood if she had any choice.

  The GPS led her another three miles down the road and into an old mobile home park. The singlewides were lined up in precise rows. Some were freshly painted with neatly trimmed lawns. Others wore faded colors baked by the Texas sun and hadn’t felt a brush of any kind in twenty years.

  Two scrawny dogs and several well-fed feral cats roamed between sheds at the back of the lots. People dressed in sweat-stained tank tops and jeans worked in yards or sat on porches. Air-conditioning was probably a luxury many of these folks could not afford.

  She pulled the Ford up to the address Polar had given her, and locked the car. For the second time in as many hours, her rental shouted its awkward pedigree, but this time because it looked too good for the neighborhood instead of too cheap.

  On the drive, Jess had time to choose her approach to Mrs. Supko. She should have been the person most likely to know what was going on with her husband’s business and life. Which made her an essential witness, but also might mean she’d be unwilling to talk about him to a reporter.

  Candace Supko’s new residence was one of the unpainted singlewides. A rusty white metal awning supported by rustier poles covered the concrete patio on the north side. Concrete steps led to the screen door. The lot was mostly dirt secured to the earth by weed patches here and there. Nothing resembling a plant or flower made any effort to improve the place.

  Jess had interviewed too many widows in her career. Each had suffered pain and trouble. More often than not, they had fears, too. Pain and trouble often led a widow to talk freely, but fear always led to stony silence.

  Jess walked carefully around the crevices and along the white-hot pavement the entire twenty feet from the car to the patio. The front screen door rattled in its frame as she knocked on it. After thirty seconds, she knocked again.

  “Go away.” A woman’s voice traveled through the screen from the dark interior.

  “Mrs. Supko? Candace Supko?”

  “Go away.”

  “My name is Jess Kimball.” She put friendly warmth into her tone. “I’d like to talk to you about your husband.”

  “Go away.”

  The heat under the awning at the front door was burned hotter than the bright sun by the car. Jess wiped the film of perspiration from above her lip. She could do nothing about the sweat trickling down inside her blouse. “I was very sorry to hear about his passing.”

  “Then go put flowers on his grave. Better still, give me the money.” Mrs. Supko. Until now, Jess hadn’t been sure.

  “I think his death was…” She’d almost said not a suicide, but she caught herself. “Suspicious.”

  “No kidding.” This time, Jess thought Mrs. Supko’s speech was slurred. Maybe the woman had been drinking. Not that Jess would have blamed her.

  Another trickle of sweat joined the last on its way down her side. Man, it was hot out here. “So, could we talk?”

  “Just go away.” Definitely a slur in there. Not sloppy, but not the way a sober woman speaks, either. “I’ve had enough of you do-gooders. All sweet and cuddly and totally useless.”

  Ah. So she’d been visited by child protective services, maybe a couple of charities, perhaps a few other agencies. Trying to help, for sure. But nothing they had to offer would restore this woman to her former life. “I’m not…I’m a reporter.”

  “Yeah, well. I’ve talked to enough of them, too.”

  “I’m with Taboo Magazine. Jessica Kimball.” No response. “Maybe you’ve read some of my victims’ rights stories? I might be able to help you.”

  Jess listened to movement within. A creaking chair. Footsteps.

  “We’re a national—”

  “I know what you are.” The voice was closer. “How much?”

  Jess sighed. Her curls adhered to the damp around the edges of her face. She blew a stream of air upward and wiped the sweat from her upper lip again. “You want me to pay you to talk?”

  “Unless you have something else in mind?” Candace Supko had stopped short of the screen.

  The interior was too dark to see her clearly. “Two hundred seems the going rate.”

  “For a national magazine?” Mrs. Supko’s voice had regained its clarity. She lifted a glass filled with brown liquid to her mouth and swigged. “Pretty cheap.”

  “Four hundred.” Jess dug into her wallet and showed the bills. “That’s all I’ve got.”

  “One condition. You can write what you want about me, but leave my children out of it.” Mrs. Supko came closer to see the money. “Not a word about my kids. You understand?”

  “No problem.” Jess held the bills out like bait.

  “Promise?”

  But Jess could see her eyes now. Shiny. Narrowed. Focused on the cash. Candace Supko was hooked like an addict needing a fix.

  “I promise,” Jess replied, feeling vaguely like she was the one who was taking instead of giving.

  “Wait.” Mrs. Supko shooed her children into one of the back rooms and then opened the door.

  As soon as her eyes adjusted to the dim light inside, Jess could see why Jimmy was so keen to bring her mail. Candace Supko had high cheekbones and skin that was warmed by the lightest of tans. Long blonde hair tumbled over her shoulders like a shampoo model. Even with her effort to appear disinterested, her rosy lips framed pearly whitened teeth with a near smile.

  But Jimmy probably noticed none of these details. What he’d seen was Mrs. Supko’s long legs extending well beyond the hem of the briefest of tan shorts and a close fitting pink t-shirt. She stood straight, muscles toned and trim by five-times-a-week Pilates, no doubt. Her figure was straight out of the specifications for bombshell.

  She stepped to one side to allow Jess deeper access to her home, and closed the screen door behind her. “Sit down and let’s get this over with.”

  The mobile home’s main living area looked to be a single L-shaped room, two sofas and a tube television at one end, and a hallway that probably led to bedrooms in the back. In the center was a kitchenette. Jess presumed the bathroom nestled between the kitchenette and bedrooms filled out the L-shape into a square.

  Jess sat on a sofa, sinking into its tired cushions with her knees crunched upwards. The walls were bare of all adornment except for a single framed piece in the center of the dark wood paneling that ran from the front to the back of the main room. Jess wouldn’t have called it art, but someone must have liked it well enough to frame and hang.

  Mrs. Supko took the other sofa and somehow managed to remain dignified. “I’d offer you coffee, but I don’t have any.”

  “No problem.”

  Mrs. Supko held her hand out.

  Jess pulled the money from her wallet, and handed over roughly half. “The rest if you can answer a few questions, Mrs. Supko.”

  “Call me Candace.” She counted the money. “Two forty. Not that I don’t trust you, but my children need t
o eat.” She tucked the money into her pocket. “What’s your angle?”

  “On your husband?” Jess parted her lips and breathed through her mouth. The combined odor of hot humans and stale air was revolting.

  “On whatever you’re writing in your article,” Candace Supko said.

  Jess nodded. “The article is coming together. But for this section, I’m interested in your late husband.”

  “Josh was a good guy.” She flashed a flat smile. “No matter what happened, and I don’t pretend to understand it all, he was a good guy.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “Society do. Charity thing.” She laughed. A cute happy laugh. The sort of thing television shows dubbed onto sitcoms. “Buy a thousand-dollar ticket, dress up like the ticket was nothing, and meet a bunch of rich guys with no one to spend their money on.”

  Jess smiled.

  “Don’t kid yourself that you’re better than me, Miss Kimball.” Mrs. Supko’s mirth evaporated.

  Jess shook her head. “Candace, I wasn’t—”

  “We’ve all got to use our gifts to get through life. You’re an intellectual.” She ran her palms over her hips and smiled again. “I’m better in the physical department. No offense intended.”

  “Actually, I was wishing I’d thought of the idea.” Jess dipped her chin and cleared her throat. “So, what happened after you met?”

  “There was fifteen years between us. Most people would see that as terminal in a relationship, but,” Candace Supko shrugged, “turns out we were perfect for each other. He’s into finance. Wants to look good. Impress people. Make people like him.”

  Jess raised her eyebrows and cocked her head. Keep talking.

  Mrs. Supko took another sip. Her tongue flicked out to lick her lips. “Easy to do when almost everyone he wanted to impress was male.”

  Jess nodded slowly. Now that she’d started talking, Candace Supko warmed to her subject and Jess didn’t want to interrupt the flow.

  “I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I was his trophy wife. But he was my trophy, too. My ticket.” Mrs. Supko bobbed her head up, gazing directly at Jess. “See, I grew up near here. Four kids. Place like this. Never a moment’s privacy. I don’t regret it. I love my family. I just didn’t want to live all my life like,” she waved her arm to encompass the entire room, “like this.”

  “So, you married him.” Jess heard the disapproval in her own voice. Candace probably did, too.

  “Of course. I’d made it. All I had to do was keep it going. Which I did.” She arched her perfectly arched eyebrows and pouted a bit. “Don’t think it’s easy. I had a full-time job keeping it all together. Small talk at business dinners. Receptions by the pool. Social circles. The kids. The whole ball of wax.”

  “I see,” Jess said because it seemed Candace expected Jess’s approval every now and then.

  “I worked hard at our relationship. He did, too.” Her voice softened. She pinched the hems of her shorts with her fingers. “Josh was remarkably faithful. I had him followed from time to time, and nothing. He was a financial geek. Stayed in his hotel room working late into the night. No hanging out at the bar, hoping to get lucky.”

  Jess nodded.

  “Whenever we weren’t together, he was hunched over his desk, figuring out how to make us richer. How many women can say that?” Mrs. Supko’s expression was defiant.

  Jess bit her lip. The question wasn’t meant to be answered. “Until two months ago.”

  Candace exhaled slowly. Her face seemed a shade whiter. She nodded.

  Jess waited a few moments before speaking. “Can you tell me about that day? What happened?”

  She took a deep breath, folded her hands, and spoke without inflection, as if she’d told the story many times before, which she surely had. “Kitty…well, a friend was having a birthday party for her son. Big affair. I went over earlier that morning to help set up for the afternoon party. Took my two with me. They had, like, fifty guests.” She drew another long breath, inhaling through her nose. “I didn’t see Josh till we got home. Brought some of the neighbor’s kids back with me. Give Kitty a break, time to straighten her house. You know.”

  She paused, inhaled again. She winced. “And there he was. Lying on the lounger. In the pool. I…” She opened and closed her mouth twice before she pushed the next words out. “…thought he’d had a heart attack. I jumped in the water, and…” She halted and then breathed a few times. She blinked away the glassy tears in her eyes. “You know, you don’t have to be a doctor to know when someone’s dead.”

  Another long pause while she sipped to cover her emotions, but Jess simply waited.

  “I got out. Ran for the button. Big red panic button by the door. To…to call security. Then I put the kids in the front room. Shut the door. They’d seen him, of course.” She shook her head and squeezed her eyes closed a couple of moments. “It wasn’t…I didn’t know… They were asking questions, talking, crying. I didn’t know what to say.” She shook her head again, slower and harder this time. “I couldn’t even speak.”

  Jess leaned forward, her hand out as if for comfort even though she couldn’t reach across the divide. “I’m sorry.”

  Candace Supko looked at the outstretched hand, her lips pressed firmly together, and lifted her head. “Yeah. Well. Not the sort of thing you can just fix, is it?”

  “No.” Jess shook her head slowly and withdrew her hand. So many things in life couldn’t be fixed. Jess knew that as well as anyone. “What about the police?”

  The bleak look in her eyes gave Jess the feeling that Candace Supko walked a thin line between control and total breakdown every minute of every day. The woman had to be completely terrified.

  “Yeah. They turned up.” She squared her shoulders and took another steadying breath. “And security, and the fire people, and an ambulance. It was a madhouse. All those people. Something about the housing association rules.”

  “What did they find?”

  Candace raised her eyebrows.

  Jess said, “The police. At the scene.”

  She shrugged and looked away. “Josh, obviously. There wasn’t much else to find. When you’ve got a dead body in your pool, everything else is pretty much—”

  “Did they know it was cyanide?”

  Candace shook her head and chewed the inside of her cheek. “That was a few days later. Autopsy.”

  “Did they find any signs of cyanide at the house?”

  “You mean, did I do it? Did I have a stash under—”

  “No. Not at all.” Jess held her hand up. “I meant, did they find any around the pool while they were there?”

  Candace stared straight ahead, vacantly, emotionless. “They said he must have taken it all. Several tablets, apparently. From his blood tests.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t think there’s any doubt he died of cyanide poisoning.”

  “I meant, do you believe he committed suicide?” Jess frowned.

  “Miss Kimball, Josh was a lot of things. And yes, he was worried. But he was often worried. One time he gambled our house, hocked it, and for twenty-four hours, it looked like he’d lost it.” She squared her shoulders and filled her lungs. “So, sure. He was worried, but he wasn’t suicidal. Not in the slightest. You live with someone for twelve years, and you get to know these things.”

  Jess leaned in, as if being physically closer to his widow would bring Jess closer to the truth about his death, too. “But the police believe it was suicide.”

  “They didn’t know Josh. All they focused on was that his business collapsed.” Candace sipped the last of her drink and set the glass down on the table next to her chair. “He was tapped out. I didn’t know. No clue. Nada. He’d bet the house again. Mortgaged everything away.”

  Jess thought about the logistics for a moment before she asked, “Did he leave a note?”

  Candace shook her head.

  “A will?”

  “He left me
all the debts. But I’ll get back up again.”

  “What about his business associates?”

  Her eyebrows arched and her lips formed a little O of surprise. “You mean, will they help me?”

  “Sorry. I meant, who was he working with at the time?”

  Candace shrugged. “Bunch of people really. They were the latest big thing. But he had others. Lots of others. I never really kept track of the names.”

  “Did any of them come to the house?”

  “Not that I saw. They used to. After the children were born, he started meeting people in other places.”

  “Do you have his business papers?”

  “The police took everything first and then the bank took it all. Perhaps I should have hung on to things, but it’s hard to tell the bank no when you’re hoping they’ll forgive the debt on your home.”

  Jess considered how much to reveal. “Did he ever mention the name Blazek?”

  “Marek?”

  “No, Blazek.”

  Candace pouched her lips and shook her head.

  “Warga, Zmich, Grantly?”

  She shook her head again. “Maybe Grantly, but it’s a common name. I’m not sure. Why?”

  “I think they might be connected.”

  “To what?”

  “You haven’t heard of Blazek? He’s been on the news.”

  “That guy?” Mrs. Supko snorted. “He’s a con artist. Josh wasn’t a con artist. He was good with finance. Risk mitigation. Futures. He made us money and he made other people money. He was good with investments.”

  “What did he invest in?”

  “What didn’t he invest in? Gold, oil, wool, new road construction, paintings, buildings. Everything was fair game if he could see a way to a profit. He was good at it. Consistent. Even with the art, and believe me, love him as I did, he had no eye for art.”

  Interesting list. “What art?”

  “Paintings. Never anything else. He’d go for new artists. Unknowns. Snap them up and sell them a few months later.” Candace collected her glass and walked to the kitchen. She pulled the whiskey bottle down from a high shelf and tilted it toward Jess.