Free First Murder by Fred Limberg Page B

Mrs. Fredrickson?” Tony let Ray take the lead again but sensed that he could jump in this time if he wanted too.
    “We’re all close. Scotty handles some things for Barry. Deanna and I have known each other for, Christ, fifteen years…maybe more. Yeah, we’re close.”
    “Where were you Monday morning? Early…between 7:00 and 9:00?”
    “Is that when it happened? Oh my God! And Scott didn’t get back until this morning.” She squeezed her eyes together tightly, tried to keep them from leaking more tears, and failed. Tony hoped she had a kinder image of her dead friend than what real life, and death, had imprinted in
his
mind.
    She took a long pull of the whiskey and shuddered. “I was taking the kids to school.”
    “That’s kind of early isn’t it?” Ray suggested. Tony had no idea what time school started. He had little contact with children of any age.
    “Cherie’s on the swim team. They practice early. Monday I stayed to watch for a while, the little ones were with me.”
    Ray ran down what had become the standard list of initial questions. Enemies? The possibility of an affair by either of them? Any financial difficulties she knew of? All of them were met with what were becoming standard answers. No. Not remotely possible. Are you kidding? He made brief notes and turned the questioning to the ‘Go Girls’.
    “What do you want to know about our group for?”
    “Was there any friction in the group?” Ray couldn’t tell her that he was still scratching for a motive, even a hint of one, and that the ‘Go Girls’ and their trips intrigued him.
    “Is that a cop word? Friction? Get five or six women together and you’ll get more than that.”
    Ray frowned. “So there were problems?”
    “Not really. Not like you might think. Deanna is…was…the peacemaker of the group. I’d be jealous of something Lakisha bought and she’d get me over it. Erika pissing and moaning that all the good men were taken. She’s the only single one, well, unless you count Ally. Roxie would want to go to a certain bar and Ally would want to go to a restaurant. Problems like that. Certainly not life and death problems.”
    “Tell me about the ‘Go Girls’.
    Tia took another sip of her drink. “Like what? It’s just a bunch of us that have been friends for a long time. We like to do stuff together. We care about each other.”
    “Like your trips?”
    “That was originally Karen’s idea. Her husband is a big outdoors type, hunting and fishing—gone a lot. Hell, Barry’s gone half the year during the season, but she got it in her mind that we should ditch them for long weekends and get a little wild.”
    “Wild?”
    “Not really. Well…maybe a little. Like the time in Vegas when Lakisha entered this Texas Hold ’Em tournament. We were in the audience screaming every time she made a bet. We almost got tossed. We went deep sea fishing in Mexico. All of us, all but Ally, went scuba diving. We were just obnoxious in LA. We wanted to meet Harrison Ford. We got Woody Harrelson. We went to this strip joint. In LA they have strip joints for women. It’s creepy. That kind of wild.”
    Ray stayed with the trip questions, intrigued. “You went to a lot of places that are what, maybe risky is the term. Did you ever get in any trouble?”
    “Like cop trouble? No…never. Like men trouble? Not really. We’d get approached, sure. It was funny. We’d blow ’em off. Maybe tease a little, but that was all. It was girl time and we’re the ‘Go Girls’.”
    “Tell me about the others.”
    “No.” That took Ray back. Tia had been cooperative so far, informative. The ‘no’ had been definitive.
    He must have had a puzzled look on his face because Tia went on to explain, “Look, you’re asking a lot of questions about our group, about Deanna’s circle of friends. It’s not my place to tell you what I think about them. I could tell you Roxie’s a lush and Lakisha can be a real bitch and Karen is frisky all the