“Wow. Sounds like she got a bit greedy.”
“Yeah.” Gabe finally abandoned his post by the counter and came to sit across from her. “But that’s only part of the picture.”
“It is?”
“We hauled the doc in and got a confession out of him. He told us this business model was nothing new. Apparently, he’s been bilking various insurance programs for years. First time he had anybody, meaning Denise, catch him at it, though. First time he had to pay anybody off. But when he said he didn’t kill her, we believed him.” He spun his cup around in his hands.
Frankie, having no doubts about who killed and who didn’t, cocked an eyebrow. “You did? Why?”
“His ironclad alibi for the time Howie was killed, among other things. For another, he seemed genuinely concerned when we showed him the murders stemmed directly from his fraud scheme. Then, after he thought about it a while, he was terrified. He called me back for a meeting.”
Frankie’s eyebrow arched higher. “How endearing of him. Just an old sweetie pie, huh? I imagine this is where Ms. Barwick takes a hand, right?”
“Nice deduction.” Actually, he seemed surprised. “Accurate, too. Turns out his wife had bailed him out of sticky situations with his cast-off mistresses before when one of his many affairs went wrong. He couldn’t give us any details of how she accomplished the bailouts. I don’t think he cared. He just knew the women stopped ‘pestering’ him. His word. Then he discovered a couple of them had received calls from Ms. Barwick. Threatening calls. One, a little more emotional than the others, had a midnight visitor who left her alive, but with scars.”
Frankie shuddered. She knew all about midnight visitors. And scars. “Jeez. Why didn’t she go after him, instead of the women?”
Gabe shrugged. “Don’t know. Apparently, the lack of fidelity in their marriage wasn’t of great concern to her. Reputation, prestige, those were what she cared about, according to Muncie. At least it didn’t matter until Denise got warned off and perforce, broke with the doc.
“The thing is, Denise took copies of the cooked books with her. Not only that, she camped right on the doc’s doorstep, her presence a reminder to him that he’d better pay up. All of which did concern Ms. Barwick. She was afraid Denise would let word leak, maybe to one of her boyfriends. And if the story got out, her husband was done, his reputation ruined, and, along with it, hers. Not to mention all that money, which left them a little short.”
“How sad.”
Gabe finally smiled. “Isn’t it?”
“So how does Darryl enter into all this?”
Gabe flinched at her question. At last, they were getting down and dirty, to the crux of the matter. She was about to hear Gabe’s confession.
“Darryl was one of Ms. Barwick’s pro bono cases several years ago when he was a juvenile in Seattle.”
“Pro bono? Her?” Frankie couldn’t keep from showing her surprise.
“Most attorneys set aside a certain portion of their time for indigent people. Enhances their reputations. Makes them look good among their peers, especially if they intend on running for public office.” He shrugged. “Anyway, she managed to keep him under juvenile court auspices instead of charged as an adult on a couple of bad assault cases. After he served his detention, she hired him to watch her husband.
“When Denise moved to Hawkesford to keep tabs on Dr. Muncie and continue her blackmail scheme, Darryl was Johnny-on-the-spot,” he continued. “He got a job where he could spy on Denise and Dr. Muncie while he waited for orders from Ms. Barwick.”
Frankie shuddered. “Working up their nerve for murder.”
Gabe firmed his mouth. “That’s right.”
They were finally reaching the confession part, Frankie judged. She waited.
“It came to the point where Denise had gotten too greedy, too pushy. Ms. Barwick took a hand, and, by hand, I mean she sent Darryl after Denise with orders to get rid of her by whatever means necessary. And destroy the evidence of her husband’s malfeasance.”
“The Smoke Signals disc.”
He nodded. “Right. And when Darryl couldn’t find the disc, everything escalated. Ms. Barwick became more strident, more desperate. And she sent her hired killer after you when you moved into the duplex right after they kidnapped and killed Denise.”
“And shot Shine and Howie.”
“Yes.”
They fell silent. The refrigerator clicked on with a loud hum. They both jumped when Banner, Shine hard on his heels, bounded in through the flapping doggie door. The dogs lay close to Frankie, panting from a run in the yard. Probably trampling Gabe’s small garden.
Frankie met Gabe’s eyes. “Are we to the confession part yet?”
“Almost there.” But still, he hesitated. “You may have noticed last night that Rudy was nowhere in sight.”
“Now you mention it, yes.” Missing Rudy hadn’t been on her list, but the seeming non-sequitur must have a point.
“We found Darryl’s car abandoned yesterday morning along one of the lakeshore roads. Lot of blood on the seats, but no sign of him. We got Boyd Holliday and Freak out. The hound followed the scent into the lake and lost it.” Gabe grimaced. “To tell the truth, we thought maybe he got in deeper than he meant—there’s a hell of a drop-off there—and couldn’t get out. The dogs didn’t find any sign of egress.”
“But—”
“Yeah. I know. We—I—thought wrong.” He jumped up and refilled their coffee cups, taking his time.
Frankie recognized a delaying tactic when she saw one. What had he done next? Whatever it was, it embarrassed him in retrospect. She could tell by the way his tanned face darkened even more.
“So,” he continued, “I asked for a warrant to search Muncie’s house. While we waited for a judge willing to sign it, we put a watch out for Ms. Barwick’s Mercedes. Picked it up yesterday evening, finally, when she showed up outside Hawkesford. But instead of pulling her over right away, I had Rudy follow her. Sometime, between here and there, she spied the tail. Instead of making a run for it, she stopped and confronted him. You know she can be a little…um…”
“Strident? No. Scary?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
Amazing herself, Frankie laughed and sipped hot coffee. “Don’t forget, I’ve seen her in action. So what happened?”
“She argued with him. Called him out. Made threats.”
“The usual.”
“Yeah, until she suddenly ran for her car and took off again. Her Mercedes left Rudy’s beat-up old cruiser in a cloud of dust. He lost her. And meanwhile...” He fell silent again until Frankie felt like giving him a good shake.
“Meanwhile?” With Banner curled at her feet and Shine asking to sit on her lap, Frankie got the hunch she might need the dogs’ comfort. She lifted Shine and stroked the bichon’s silky ears. The unwounded one, anyway, although the other with its bullet-hole no longer seemed to bother her.
“Meanwhile, it turns out Darryl, whom Ms. Barwick picked up in the doc’s boat after he waded into the lake, slipped out of the car and made his way here. Ms. Barwick joined him once she had Rudy all turned around and discombobulated. Then, while Darryl went after you—killing you, or so she believed—she set the fire to cover up the crime. And maybe take Darryl out at the same time.” Gabe fell silent and stared into the depths of his cup as though reading tea leaves—or coffee grounds. What did he think he’d find in there?
“Don’t tell me she admitted to all this.” Frankie’s eyes widened in surprise.
Gabe spun his coffee cup, swirling a splash of liquid over the side. “Lord, no. Not her, but Darryl is talking plenty. He’s going down, and he knows it. He doesn’t plan on going alone. See, he figured her plan called for him being the next to die.”
“Wow. Makes sense, I suppose.” Somehow, Frankie wasn’t terribly shocked by the revelation.
At last, Gabe set the cup aside, braced his hands on the table edge, and stared at her with a hangdog expression. �
��What you don’t know, Frankie, is that I almost got you killed. Me.”
Her mouth opened. She closed it again. “You did?”
He nodded. “I should’ve been prepared for the two of them working together,” he said slowly. “I shouldn’t’ve believed Darryl was out of the picture just because the dog trailed him into the lake. No body? No drowning. Most of all, I should’ve been keeping watch on you, alone here at the house. ”
Frankie kind of thought so too. She heaved one of those big sighs people always use in times of relieving stress. “Easier to think of that stuff in retrospect, isn’t it? Maybe I should’ve shot him dead in the first place. Used a heavier gun. Taken better aim.” She thought a moment. “I don’t know what I could’ve done about Ms. Barwick. The way it all played out means we have proof enough to put her jail right alongside Darryl, though, right?”
Grimacing, he ran a hand through his hair. “Ever heard of juries?”
Frankie’d had enough. “Hell with it.” She jumped up, wincing at the pain in her feet and almost knocking over her chair. The dogs scrambled to get out of the way. “They’re both in jail, and I don’t want to think about them anymore. I want to live my life, do my job, play with my dogs, and—and—”
Gabe leaped to his feet, steadying the chair before it fell. “And?” he asked when she broke off.
What she wanted to say was “get to know you better” or maybe “get laid” or something along those lines. A possibility, now the artificial way they’d been thrown together was ending. But maybe it was too soon. Or too late.
“And find a place to live,” she ended.
He glanced around the kitchen, at the dogs, at her, shook his head, looking back at her with a question in his eyes. “Lots of room right here.”
Did he mean... He did.
Not too late.
“That was a crappy confession.” Her accusation came out soft and a little breathless.
A smile lit his whole face. “You’re right. Let me try again. And I’ll apologize, this time.”
A Look at Lost Girl Lake by C.K. Crigger
The day Truth Diamond and her dog, Razz, find a woman’s charred hand at one the Golden West Resort’s campsites, is the day her busy life spins out of control. A search for a body turns up nothing. Truth believes her resort on Lost Girl Lake is in the clear, but when the rest of the body comes to light, the situation goes from bad to worse. She receives one of those “offers you can’t refuse” for the resort, her flirty young employee, Becca Keene, vanishes, and a camper is murdered. Why? That’s what Truth wants to know.
Finding whoever is doing the killing should be quick and simple. Plenty of law enforcement is around. There’s Pratt, the quiet and appealing undercover FBI agent; Hunter, the dishy Fish and Wildlife officer; the Sheriff’s department detective and his hardworking deputy. Can’t anyone find Becca before she ends up gone forever? It’s beginning to look like Truth has to do everything herself, unless she becomes the next victim.
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON
Also by C.K. Crigger
Western Novels
The Woman Who Built a Bridge
Letter Of The Law
The Winning Hand
Black Crossing
Liar’s Trial
The Yeggman’s Apprentice
Western Short Stories
Left Behind
Double Deal
Memory of Blood
The Whereabouts of Miss Nellie Thistlewaite
Ask Parrot
Aldy Neal’s Ghost
A Deal’s A Deal
Other Novels
Lost Girl Lake
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C.K. Crigger
About the Author
C.K. Crigger was born and raised in North Idaho on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation, and currently lives with her husband, three feisty little dogs and an uppity Persian cat in Spokane Valley, Washington.
Imbued with an abiding love of western traditions and wide-open spaces, Crigger writes of free-spirited people who break from their standard roles.
Her short story, Aldy Neal’s Ghost, was a 2007 Spur finalist. Black Crossing, won the 2008 EPIC Award in the historical/western category. Letter of the Law was a 2009 Spur finalist in the audio category. The Woman Who Built a Bridge was the 2019 Spur Award winner for best western romance.
Find more great titles by C.K. Crigger and Wolfpack Publishing, here.
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