The Devil's Interval Read Online Free Page B

extraordinary cosmetic surgery. There she was in a Rita Hayworth, put-the-blame-on-Mame black dress with a frothy white fishtail hem at the Black & White Ball, dancing cheek to cheek with Mr. Plummer; on a sailboat in the bay, leaning out over the water; barefoot at the beach, laughing directly into the camera with a live crab in each hand; making a runway twirl in tennis whites at the Junior League fashion show; holding an extravagant bouquet of roses at the San Francisco Garden Show. A breathtaking woman with what looked like a carefree, pleasure-filled life. Underneath the clips was a short stack of black and white, way too graphic police photos. Isabella warned me as I picked them up.
    When she warned me, I’d looked at just one. Grace Plummer, the late Mrs. Frederick G. Plummer, lying face down, arms cinched tight , wrists bound with something that looked like a flowered chiffon scarf, on the back seat of a very spacious sedan. A limousine, in fact. Travis Gifford’s limousine. I couldn’t see her face, but I could see what three bullets had done to the back of her head. It was as awful a sight as I ever wanted to see.
    â€œWhat happened?” I asked, turning the photograph facedown, just like the once lovely Mrs. Plummer.
    â€œWe don’t really know. But here’s what the prosecution said happened,” answered Isabella. She took a deep breath, hugged her knees to her chest, and rocked a bit, as if she hurt, deep in her gut. “Travis met Mrs. Plummer because her husband hired him to drive on a regular basis. To and from meetings out of San Francisco, to and from the airport, frequent trips up and down Silicon Valley. When Mr. Plummer didn’t need Travis’s services, Mrs. Plummer often did.”
    â€œThis is Frederick Plummer, venture capitalist to the once and future dot-com stars?” I asked.
    â€œNone other,” said Isabella. “Travis and Mrs. Plummer became friendly. Then they became even friendlier. They became lovers. And they both had…wide-ranging tastes. A little tasteful bondage, a little playful S&M.”
    â€œIs this the prosecution talking?”
    Isabella sighed. “No, up to this point, it’s the defense talking, too. But this is where we part company with the DA. Nobody argues with the fact that Travis and Grace Plummer got a little adventuresome in their love life. But the night she was killed, Travis claims they made love in the limo, parked out at Land’s End, and then he delivered her safe and very much alive to the Plummers’ home, around 10 p.m. He drove the limo home, parked it in his garage, climbed two flights up to his apartment, and went to bed.”
    â€œAnd then?”
    â€œThe next morning, one of Travis’s neighbors was leaving early. He parked next to Travis in the garage, and right away he saw that the limousine had been pulled in so crookedly that he was going to graze the side of it if he didn’t back out really carefully. He wrote a note to leave on the windshield, complaining to Travis. But he noticed the car was unlocked, so he opened the door to leave the note on the front seat, and the smell knocked him over. Then he saw—well, you saw what he saw.”
    â€œTravis shot her?” I asked.
    Isabella shrugged. “Someone shot her. But she may havebeen dead already, from a broken neck. The DA argued that the gunshots were just to mislead the cops, that her neck was broken in some sex play that got out of hand.”
    Isabella handed the file back to me. “It’s all in there. You can read it yourself.”
    â€œThis sounds ridiculous. Who’d be crazy enough to kill someone in their own car and then park in the garage?”
    â€œThat’s what the defense argued. But there was too much evidence. Travis’s semen in Mrs. Plummer. Skin samples under her nails. No one who had seen Travis deliver her home, as he claimed.”
    â€œHow about the husband? Isn’t the