Prime Cut

by Diane Mott Davidson

  One of the uniformed officers approached me. Andy Fuller turned to watch.

  “Mrs. Schulz? I’m Sergeant Chambers.” The officer was very young, with orange hair, a pie-shaped face, and a complexion like dough. His pale, nail-bitten fingers clutched a notebook and department-issue ballpoint. “I need to question you—” His voice cracked. Questioning the wife of the county’s champion investigator was apparently somewhat daunting. Chambers cleared his throat, clicked his pen, and eyed my bloody hand, still wrapped in Tom’s handkerchief. “Briefly. If you’re up to it.”

  “May I run some cold water over my hand, while we talk?”

  “This won’t take long.” Chambers’ tone was apologetic. “We can’t go into the house because it’s a crime scene. Just tell me why you’re here, when you arrived, and what you saw.” He clicked his pen again.

  I told him the purpose of my visit and politely added that he could look at the basket of food on the kitchenette counter if he didn’t believe me. I told him Burr was asleep in his clothes when I arrived at two o’clock.

  “How did he act?”

  “Exhausted. As if I’d just awakened him from a very deep sleep. When he went to take a shower, I offered to fix him coffee. He said his percolator was out in his unfinished sun room.” I pointed with my unwrapped hand. “When I got there, Gerald Eliot’s body was … hanging between the studs. But I didn’t see it there right away. If I didn’t see Gerald Eliot’s body, how could a hiker have seen him?”

  Andy Fuller sidled up beside Chambers. “Just answer the questions, Mrs. Schulz. All right?” His expression was arrogant, defensive.

  I said, “If Cameron had murdered Gerald Eliot, he would hardly have sent me straight out to where he’d hung up the body, would he? What kind of sense does that make?”

  Fuller raised an eyebrow at Chambers, as in Don’t let this pushy woman take over the interview. Then, without responding to my questions, he turned on his heel and headed back to the patrol car in which Cameron now sat, cuffed and accused of murder.

  Chambers held up a soft, plump hand. “Please, Mrs. Schulz. Did Burr mention anything about Eliot when you got here today?” I shook my head. “What do you know about their relationship?”

  I exhaled in exasperation. “Gerald Eliot had promised to finish the Burrs’ sun room four months ago. He pulled out the wall between the addition and the house, did a subfloor and some framing, and put in three windows. Then he took off for parts unknown.” Chambers glanced over at Andy Fuller, whose expression as he stood next to the first cruiser was stone-faced. I hurried along: “At night, it’s cold up here at eighty-five hundred feet. Even in the summer. Barbara Burr got pneumonia from the chilly air in the house. She’s on a ventilator down at Lutheran.” Impatience crawled under my skin. “This is common knowledge, Sergeant.”

  Chambers nodded in a way that told me if it was common knowledge, it wasn’t common to him. “Just tell me what else you saw, Mrs. Schultz.”

  This I did, up to the time of the arrival of law enforcement. Meanwhile, Sheila O’Connor talked on to Tom. Finally he turned his handsome face and nodded at me. I felt a wash of relief followed by the deep urge to leave, to get my hand cleaned and bandaged, to find a way to help Cameron. Get me out of here, I pleaded silently to my husband. Unfortunately, not only did my telepathic message not connect, but Andy Fuller chose that moment to sashay up to the van.

  He pointedly eyed my wrapped hand. “Did you do anything to try to help Burr? I mean, in his smear campaign against Gerald Eliot, general contractor? Just curious.”

  Tom lumbered up to Fuller’s side. He said, “Leave her alone. She’s a witness. She needs a victim advocate.”

  Andy Fuller whirled to face him. “Oh, really? Why can’t you follow my orders, you slob? What’s going on here, Schulz?”

  Tom’s face froze in a bitten, narrow-eyed look that made my heart sink. Fuller shifted his weight, took an angry breath, then leaned in close to Tom.

  “Schulz! What did you think I was going to do that I was going to regret? You don’t think I can hear you when your radio’s on? Are you trying to threaten me?”

  “What?” Fuller’s fury seemed to baffle Tom.

  “How dare you threaten me in front of fellow officers!” stormed Fuller.

  “I’m not sure I did,” replied Tom evenly. “Goldy, get in the car.” My skin iced; I couldn’t move., Tom didn’t seem to notice. His deep voice rumbled softly, “What are you saying, Fuller?”

  “I’m saying you compromised this case!” Fuller shrieked.

  “What?” snarled Tom.

  Fuller took one look at Tom’s face, then stepped back. I glanced around helplessly: The uniforms were in the first car; Dr. O’Connor was walking back to the sun room, presumably to Eliot’s corpse.

  “My wife’s been hurt,” Tom pressed Fuller. “I don’t have time for your stupid theatrics.”

  Andy Fuller took a step in Tom’s direction. Tom slammed the van door shut. At that moment, even though he was two feet from Tom, Fuller staggered.

  “You’re incompetent, Schulz,” Fuller crowed once he’d recovered. “How many times have we gone over this?”

  “Are you saying I can’t do my job?” Tom replied, undeterred.

  Fuller hunched his shoulders, as if he were gathering himself into a cannonball. “I’m saying what I’ve said lots of times before, that I’m your boss. You just don’t seem to be able to accept it. Maybe it’s time you did.” Tom glared at him.

  “Stop, please stop,” I cried. I looked frantically down at the first car. The windows were up. The motor was running. There was no way the other cops would hear me if I called for them to come intervene. “There’s no reason to—”

  “Shut up!” Fuller barked at me.

  I’d heard about their arguments before: Tom had told me how vicious and unreasonable Fuller could be. But I’d never witnessed one of their conflicts. And this one was getting out of control. God forbid that Fuller would lay a finger on Tom. If Fuller were that foolish, my husband would manhandle him so quickly that Fuller would wish he’d bypassed law enforcement altogether.

  “Fuller,” said Tom, “get into your car. Get the hell away from this crime scene.”

  “You are intent on ruining this case for me!” Fuller’s indignant voice howled. His hands were clenched into tight fists.

  “No,” I whispered. “Don’t—”

  “Aren’t you?” Fuller cried, lunging toward Tom.

  Without thinking, I jumped between them.

  “No!”

  But Tom’s warning came too late. I lost my balance. Andy Fuller and I slammed against my van, then hit the ground. Beneath me, Andy Fuller struggled weakly. “Help,” he gasped. “I’ve been assaulted!”

  “Goldy, Goldy, oh, Goldy,” Tom murmured as he gently lifted me off the assistant district attorney. “What have you done?”

  I don’t remember much from our trip home. Just leave, Fuller had told us, red-faced and indignant. Watching from their car, the other cops had seen Fuller come at Tom first, had seen me stupidly try to intervene. Still, Tom was very angry. With me.

  “Don’t you think I can take care of myself, Goldy? Don’t you think I’ve spent enough time in police work to sidestep some five-foot-tall creep? What on earth were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t thinking anything,” I answered honestly. “Tom, I’m really sorry. I just—”

  “Why didn’t you get in the van, the way I told you?”

  I pressed the handkerchief into my oozing palm and didn’t respond. After all, what could I say?

  When we arrived at our house, bedraggled, tense, and silent, we found Arch on the phone with his friend Todd Druckman. The two fourteen-year-olds were avidly discussing telephone encryption: whether they needed it, how much it would cost, whether girls would be able to decode their conversations. Still short for his age, Arch was dressed in an oversized burgundy T-shirt and sweatpants. He shook the straight brown hair off his forehead. “It would b
e worth it if you thought a girl was tapping your phone,” he observed. “You know how those girls in our class can be”

  I washed my hand and bandaged it, then asked Arch to hang up. He pushed his smeared tortoiseshell glasses up his freckled nose and sighed. To Todd, he said, “Later.”

  Ordinarily, our family has heart-to-heart conversations in our kitchen. But in the rosy light of early evening, the plastic-draped hole where the window had once been gave the space the discomfiting feel of an abandoned stage set. The kitchen was no longer the heart of our home, thanks to the late Gerald Eliot. Since we weren’t able to retrieve the leftovers from Cameron Burr’s guest house—the cops were going through it—Tom and I set the living room coffee table with bowls of cheese, cold chicken, sliced hard rolls, romaine leaves, chutney, and mayonnaise.

  “Julian called,” Arch announced morosely. “He didn’t sound very good. I guess he’s not coming.” My son threw himself down on the couch and surveyed the spread. “He really wants to talk to you, Mom. Anyway, he said he was going to call Marla.”

  “Was he in New York?” Tom asked. Arch shook his head and mumbled something about Julian’s being on the road.

  “I’m sorry, Arch,” I said, then asked, “Did André call? Is he doing all right?”

  “He left a message,” Arch said uncertainly. “He’s okay, I guess. Says he’s not going to make enough on the shoot to pay the cost of caring for his wife if some guy wrecks all the food. What’s the matter with his wife?”

  “She has macular degeneration, which is a problem with the eyes. She’s virtually blind, and needs a full-time nurse. It’s expensive—”

  “Who wrecked the food?”

  “Just some guy on our job today. Is André’s message still on the tape?”

  “Sorry. I erased it because Todd and I were doing some experimenting with dialing. You’re just supposed to call him back. What’s the matter, Mom? You said your hand was just scratched.”

  “Remember the guy who made the mess in our kitchen?”

  Arch smeared mayonnaise on half a roll. “Gerald Eliot? The builder scratched your hand?”

  “No, hon. He’s dead.”

  Tom added, “They found his body out at Cameron Burr’s place.”

  “No kidding?” asked Arch, incredulous. He put down his roll. “What happened to him?”

  “We don’t know yet,” I replied, then hesitated. “Anyway, while we were all out there, I … had a somewhat … physical argument with the assistant district attorney. I … sort of lost it when they arrested Cameron,” I added.

  Arch bombarded us with questions. How did Eliot die? Mr. Burr didn’t kill Gerald, did he? I said I couldn’t imagine that he would have. Was Mr. Burr okay? Probably, I replied. Did Mrs. Burr know Mr. Burr had been arrested? It was possible Barbara was too sick to be informed of this news, I told him; it might just make her worse. Arch loved the Burrs. He couldn’t process what this would mean for them. Instead, he decided to focus on my altercation with the assistant district attorney.

  Arch’s father, Dr. John Richard Korman—dubbed The Jerk by Marla and me—was currently in jail for assault. Would he now have two parents in jail? Arch asked. Jail time for me was unlikely, I assured my anxious son, after I’d made us steaming cups of hot chocolate and brought them out to the living room. The other deputies had seen Andy Fuller come at Tom first.

  “So who’s in trouble?” Arch asked pragmatically. It was hard to tell, Tom and I told him.

  The phone rang: Tom held it up so we both could hear.

  “Hey!” came a hearty voice. “You should have knocked Fuller out with one of your frying pans!”

  “Boyd,” Tom announced, and I smiled and nodded. Despite my increasing worries, it was good to hear our old friend, barrel-shaped and straight-shooting Sergeant Bill Boyd. Despite his perfectly serviceable first name, to us and everyone he was always “Boyd,” since there were too many sheriff’s department deputies with the first name Bill. Boyd had told us he’d gotten tired of getting the wrong call and worse, the wrong pizza. Now, he was glad to hear we were all right. He promised to stay in touch and hung up.

  Ten minutes later, Tom’s new captain—a fair-minded, all-business administrator—called. Their conversation was tense and brief. Eliot was being autopsied in the morning; Cameron Burr was being held without bail; his wife was indeed too ill to be notified of the arrest. Moreover, things did not look good vis-à-vis Fuller. We’d know more the next day.

  My sleep was predictably fitful. At seven A.M., the phone bleated. Tom, who’d been up and dressed since six, snatched it. He listened and scribbled in his spiral notebook while I hugged a heap of pillows and pretended to be asleep. My hand throbbed. So did my head. I wondered how Cameron was doing. I wondered how I’d gotten so mixed up in this mess, when all I’d done was try to take food over to a friend.

  When Tom hung up, he stood, paced, then slumped down on our mussed bed. His face, ordinarily ruddy, was pale. “Problem?” I asked gently.

  “Fuller’s demanded a full investigation.” He shook his head.

  “Of what?”

  Tom took a deep breath. “I’ve been charged with insubordination. And with compromising a homicide investigation.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it. My buddies protested, of course. Some even threatened to quit.”

  “Good.”

  “Don’t say that, Miss G. The department has a ton of work to do, even if Fuller is screwing things up. Now listen. You’re not in trouble. The deputies all say they saw Fuller swing at me before you got in the way. Still, because this is the bad end of a lot of problems with him, I’m the one being investigated. The process will take four to six weeks.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud!”

  He held me with his gaze. “During that time,” he continued, “I’ll be suspended without pay.”

  Chapter 5

  Tom hugged me and told me not to worry. I held his handsome face in my hands and kissed him. Of course I would worry. And feel guilty. If I hadn’t interfered, he wouldn’t be in this mess. Tom kissed me, then said he’d fix me an espresso if I’d stop trying to take the blame for the world’s wrongs. I followed him to our topsy-turvy kitchen.

  “What happens to Cameron?” I asked. “Can you tell me? Or am I considered a witness?”

  “I can tell you. It’s Cameron Burr who shouldn’t get in touch with you.” Tom filled the espresso machine with water, pawed through the pile of china on the counter, and finally placed two Norwegian china demitasse cups under the doser. “I’m waiting for a fax from Boyd. He’s sending me a map of Blue Spruce showing the Burrs’ place in relation to Open Space.” He pressed the button and a moment later handed me a small, crema-topped drink. “The scenario Fuller is going with is this.” He sipped his coffee. “The window frame incident at the Grizzly Saloon occurred just before eleven the night before last. Fuller thinks Cameron Burr followed Gerald Eliot from the Grizzly to his nighttime security guard job at the Homestead Museum. By the way, it was a job Burr got for Eliot. That doesn’t look too good, Burr knowing exactly where to go.”

  The dark, luscious espresso ignited the perimeter of my brain. “Lots of people knew Eliot worked there,” I observed. “Marla told me the museum board wasn’t happy with Eliot’s performance. If she knew where he worked, so did the whole town.”

  “Fuller thinks Burr broke into the museum, strangled Eliot, faked a robbery, threw Eliot’s body into the back of his pickup, and drove out to the unfinished sun room. There, Fuller claims, Burr stabbed his building contractor with molding, broke a piece of drywall over his head, and hung him up by his Samson-style gold locks. Supposedly, Burr then shot his contractor through the head with a nail gun. For good measure.”

  I flinched and set down my cup. I thought back to my entry into the sun room, my confusion in trying to find the coffeepot, seeing Gerald’s body … “What about that hiker who supposedly saw Gerald? Do you know his name? I don’t believe you c
ould see the body unless you were ten feet away from it.”

  Tom shook his head. “The hiker called from the Open Space parking lot by the trailhead. He didn’t give his name. It could be a setup, Goldy. We always have to consider it. Although, with Fuller bucking for higher office, he might not consider it.”

  “Has Sheila O’Connor come up with anything yet?”

  “Sheila said Eliot’s neck and face were badly bruised when he was strangled. Glass in his scalp is consistent with one of the two breaks in the glass-fronted display cases at the museum. Time of death probably not too long after one A.M. The evidence that Cameron’s pickup was used to transport the body is pretty convincing, too.” He drank more coffee. “Looks like Eliot’s T-shirt snagged on a protruding piece of metal in the truck. A fragment of the T-shirt fabric is still in the back of the pickup. Plus there’s grease on Eliot’s face and clothing, very similar to the grease in the vehicle.” He sighed. “We have no way of knowing if somebody borrowed Cam’s truck. He always leaves the keys in it. And it’s been so dry, there aren’t tire tracks we could analyze. Sheila’ll know more after the autopsy, you know how that goes.”

  I nodded and got up to fix us both more coffee.

  The fax rang. Tom removed the wall of dishes surrounding the fax machine, pulled out the slick sheet, and perused it. He looked up. “Here’s the layout from the fence separating Burr’s property and the trail to Smythe Peak.” He slapped the smudged map of Blue Spruce next to the cluttered sink; I peered down at it. Most prominent was the Smythe Peak Open Space area, the two thousand acres that surrounded the mountain. All of the land had been sold to the county by the Smythe family. Cameron Burr’s property was marked with a rough rectangle. According to thick hand-drawn lines and numbers, the framed sun room was only fifty feet from Cameron’s fence.

  Tom said, “Cam’s lawyer is going to want to know why a killer would strangle a guy, take the time and trouble to rob a museum, and drive the dead or near-dead guy out to his own house. Then the killer tortures Eliot or defiles his corpse with building materials, and shoots him with a nail gun? I don’t think so. You can be really drunk or really angry. To do all that, you couldn’t be both.” He shook his head.