Raked Over

by Linda Seals

  * * *

  “Hey, Lily!” answered Isabelle McWilliams the next day. “Glad you called. Wanna hear what I thought about?” She didn’t wait for my answer.

  “I was looking at the board the other night, when you were in the kitchen talking to Betty. Before you came back with the hot info on Andrea, and we got sidetracked, and I forgot. Then yesterday I was looking at the photo you sent of the board, and I remembered what I was looking at. Anyway, I saw the arrow linking Barry to Phil Binder and I started thinking about that, and Barry’s reaction to Phil that last time you saw him, and, well? I thought, what if we were looking at the wrong guy here? What if Binder was the bad guy and Barry just a pawn? What if Binder was responsible for what’s happened?” She paused dramatically. “What if Phillip Binder killed Barry Correda?”

  “You mean, caused the car crash?” I said, a bit confused.

  “Yeah, to get Barry out of the way. Maybe he knew too much. About some deal gone wrong. Yeah, some bad deal that Binder pinned on Shannon to save his own hide, and Barry found out and—”

  “Okay. I can see that, sort of, even though it’s coming in out of left field.”

  She laughed. “I know, more theory and not enough solutions! But still, doesn’t it kind of make sense?”

  “Lay it out for me,” I said as walked down the hall to the studio. “I’ve got the board here in front of me for reference.” I settled down and made myself comfortable in an easy chair facing the blackboard, an ice tea frosting on the table next to me. I saw the “Barry’s accident” and “Phil ID” boxes on the big board, and stood up to go over to it, phone in hand. The lively and impish notes of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue drifted in from the kitchen stereo, and somehow the blaring and tooting horns seemed to match the disarray on the board.

  “Now, bear with me, here,” said Isabelle. “I don’t have it all worked out, of course. Just some ideas.”

  “Go for it,” I said, already doodling on the board.

  “Well, here’s what I think. Phillip Binder gets into some sort of big trouble, or Phillip and Barry together get into trouble, whatever. Phillip decides to frame Shannon for it, and has to get her out of the way.”

  “But why did they pick her?” I asked. I had my theories but was interested in Isabelle’s.

  “I don’t know. Maybe she was vulnerable. She trusted Barry Correda and she was isolated from others, didn’t seem to have many friends or family around. Maybe she was a good target, prey for the predators—”

  “How did they keep her quiet, how did they fake her suicide?”

  “I don’t know! That’s one of the details I haven’t figured out! Anyway, Phillip has to keep his hands clean so he gets Barry to do it—”

  “But Barry had a tight alibi!” I protested as I circled Barry’s name on the board again. Pecos had trotted in to join me, and had taken up his usual spot by the screen door. His ears flicked back and forth at something he saw out in the yard, but he kept quiet.

  “Okay, okay! That’s another detail I haven’t figured out! Somebody killed Shannon, made it look like suicide, faked the note. Phillip and Barry were accomplices, but Phillip realized Barry was a liability. Hey, maybe it was when he saw Barry talking to you!” Isabelle said.

  “But why would a short conversation with me be of concern? Barry didn’t seem alarmed with our chat. In fact, his self-satisfaction and adoration was glowing.”

  “Don’t know. Maybe it was just Phillip realizing that Barry was a dumb ass who was going to spill the beans, or do something stupid, so he had to be gotten out of the way, too.”

  “So Phillip Binder somehow concocts a car crash …” I went to sit down again, tired from the day, but not wanting to get off the phone just yet.

  “Yeah, maybe ran him off the road, or something. Or messed with his car, you know, the brakes or the steering … Hold on, Lily,” she interrupted herself. “My other phone’s ringing.” I could hear her walking into another room, mumbling something to herself. I heard her Corgi, Queenie, bark once, and Isabelle shush her. In a minute she was back. “It’s okay, just somebody from work, wanting my lasagna recipe. I’ll call her later.”

  “I remember you’re a good cook, but I’ve forgotten where you work, Isa. I know it’s in Denver—”

  “Yeah, Flatirons Land Trust Institute in south Denver. We used to be in Boulder, but a year ago moved to the Tech Center. It’s a horrible commute now! But, to still live here in Niwot, I’m doing it. I love my place, and I don’t want to move. I also really love my job; so it’s a dilemma. But the traffic, the accidents … Barry Correda’s accident, that’s what we were talking about. Barry’s accident wasn’t an accident.”

  “Wouldn’t the police have discovered if someone damaged the car prior to the crash?” I asked.

  “Well, maybe, maybe not, I don’t know. Wasn’t the car completely burned? Maybe there wasn’t much left to investigate?”

  We discussed several pseudo technical aspects of cars and police investigation techniques that we knew nothing about. We were just speculating, making up scenarios based on what we’d seen on TV cop shows.

  “Just go with the idea for a minute, Lily. It makes as much sense as anything else we talked about. Just think about it,” said Isabelle.

  I thought about it. “Okay, let’s go with the premise that Phillip killed Barry. Now what?”

  “Hmm, I don’t know. That’s as far as I got.”

  “What? You drag me to this idea, and then leave me high and dry?” I mockingly protested.

  “W-e-e-e-ll? It’s just an idea,” she laughed. “But I’d be interested what the CBI thought.”

  “Think I should talk to Henry Wade, tell him about it?” I asked. Pecos’s ears perked up at Henry’s name. Surely he doesn’t remember him? I wondered.

  “Yeah, who knows? Maybe it’s information he can use, or maybe he could tell you if it fits in the investigation.”

  “I don’t know; it’s just speculation on our part.” I was at the board again, doodling.

  “Did you tell him about the little scene with Barry and Phillip? That last time you saw them?” Isabelle inquired.

  “Yeah, but I was intent on giving facts, as I knew them. I don’t think I gave him my interpretation of Phillip’s or Barry’s facial reactions, but I did tell him I had talked to Barry that second time, and saw him go off with Phillip Binder.”

  “So there you go, this is a motive to go along with what you saw. Binder needed Barry out of the way; Barry was the weak link to Shannon. Maybe the police were asking too many questions about Shannon, who knows? Shoot, you were asking questions! Don’t you think Shannon knew something, and hid it in that list of numbers? Incriminating Phillip and/or Barry? Barry sure seemed intent on getting it, keeping things quiet. Come on! You’ve been thinking about this all along, admit it,” Isa said.

  “Yeah, okay, you’re right.” I wandered into the kitchen to change the music, and rummage around in the refrigerator. Pecos followed me. I was starving, and I should have known better than to call Isabelle McWilliams before I had eaten.

  “I think she found something out at Binder Enterprises and went to Barry, somebody, with the information. Barry was somehow involved, or got involved, and knew she had to be silenced,” Isabelle went on. “So instead of protecting her, he killed her. She trusted the wrong guy.”

  “Seems like it,” I said sadly, poking around in the back of the fridge at containers holding unknown leftovers. I heard Martina McBride singing on the stereo: “Love’s the only house big enough for all the pain in the world.” I paused on that line. Barry Correda had fooled Shannon into thinking he loved her; but she had truly loved him, thinking their relationship was the real thing. If he had loved her, he would have protected her. If he had loved her, that would have trumped anything else—money, power, whatever turned him. I despised him again for his betrayal of Shannon. Why would he do that? I knew I wanted answers I’d probably never get.

  I sighed. “But Isa, I might agree
with you about all of this, but, where does it get us? It’s just another tangent, really, don’t you think?” I found some cut-up pineapple in the back of the refrigerator that didn’t smell too fermented, and stuffed in a couple of bites.

  “Well, maybe to us it’s a tangent, but maybe the CBI could make something of it,” Isabelle continued

  “Like they haven’t already figured this out? If the facts are there to support it?” Even standing in the kitchen I could remember the blackboard filled with loop-de-loops of chalk lines from one idea to another. I couldn’t see how anything supported anything else.

  “Well, if they have, your report on the Barry-Phillip interaction could just maybe give them the link they needed—or something—to, ah, make the connection,” she said unconvincingly.

  I laughed. “I think you’re just wantin’ to get into the crime story here, be the detective. Say, why don’t you come with me the next time I talk with Agent Wade? You two could solve the crime!”

  “Yeah, and he could give me a bony fide Dee-tective badge of mah own-ah,” her flat Colorado voice turning into a badly faked drawl.

  “Hon,” I shot back, “yall jist don’ have the ack-cent yall needs to pull that off-ah.”

  We both laughed. It was time to ring off, and get something else to eat. As leftovers heated up, I put on The Dixie Chicks and then emailed a short version of Isabelle’s hypothesis to Henry Wade, based on the connection she had made from Phillip Binder’s interaction with Barry Correda, very shortly before Barry’s death. I tried to pare it down to a couple of sentences, and left out the side speculations Isabelle and I had indulged in, and sent it off.

  I’d already let him know about the tip on Andrea Brubaker and Cowboy Binder, and my questions on the Facebook photos, which he had politely acknowledged. I hoped that these dribbles and dabs of “information” weren’t undermining my credibility with Henry Wade, but then I realized that I didn’t have control over that anyway, so why worry about it? But I did.