by Lakota Grace
Nothing was more embarrassing than getting caught at a building site with a lost key and no way to get home. You'd have to set up the crew to free beer for a week. And Wolf didn't look like the kind of guy that would have to do that.
Which brought up the question, what kind of guy was he? He fit into the construction scene with the same ease he fit into my life, easy and unassuming. And yet I sensed there was more to him, and more to this story of a missing revolver than I knew.
And why did he leave in such a panic? The guy was a chameleon, for sure. I was still reassessing who and what he was. Not what he presented on the outside, it appeared. And what did that mean to our relationship? Did we even have a relationship at this point?
When the fenders yielded no magnetic key box, I opened the driver's door and lifted the floor mat. There, within quick access was the extra key. If the patrol car hadn't been behind him, Wolf would have used his own wheels to depart. But then, if they hadn't been there, he wouldn't have needed to leave.
Reckless let up a howl and a bay from the cabin. The roast! In the commotion, I'd forgotten it. I pocketed the key, left Silver standing there, and dashed up the front steps. Smoke poured from the kitchen and Reckless danced nervously between my legs.
I opened the oven door and white clouds billowed into the room. Grabbing potholders, I pulled the pan out. The roast was a black lump, ruined along with the evening I had planned. Cursing, I threw the roast, pan and all, into the sink where it sat in sullen glory.
Silver sauntered in and reached out a finger to touch the cake icing.
“Well, at least dessert survived. Can I have a piece?”
“No!” I exploded and slapped at her hand.
She jumped back as though I'd hit her with a baseball bat, a frozen look on her face. An active startle response. She'd likely been struck—perhaps many times—before. And I contributed to her trauma.
“Sorry,” I said. “I'm just on edge. Let's take the cake up to HT and Isabel along with the truck. Maybe we can cage some food up there. Isabel is a great cook.”
Silver nodded and grabbed her daypack. But her grip was shaky. It dropped to the floor with a clank. What the—?
Then I remembered—Wolf had mentioned a blade in the first brief exchange tonight between the two. I reached out a hand.
“Give me the knife.”
Silver pulled back the pack. “He cheated me.”
“If he did, you probably deserved it. Don't add stealing to your other problems.”
Reluctantly she handed over the K-Bar knife. My fingers touched the handle and turned it over. It was missing a lapis lazuli chip. Wolf had lied to me. He had been up at the House of Apache Fires.
And with Henry Fisher conveniently dead, no one would ever know why. Had Wolf been retrieving an incriminating piece of evidence when he bought the revolver from Silver?
How very, very convenient. Maybe he'd stayed around here because he knew the weapon would turn up. Just who was this criminal that I'd let into my life?
I looked up to see Silver staring at me. I placed the K-Bar into a kitchen drawer.
“And it better stay there,” I warned. “Sooner or later the man will be back to claim his property, and I wouldn't want to be you if that knife is gone.”
I picked up the cake, and we walked out to the pickup. Reckless set up a mournful howl from the cabin.
“How do you put up with that dog?” Silver asked, climbing into the truck. “If it was me, I'd take him to the pound. My uncle ran a Humane Center once. He got hound dogs just like that. Noisy, worthless creatures. Neighbors complained all the time and folks couldn't wait to get rid of them.”
“Are you always this obnoxious?” I asked her.
“Are you always this stupid?” she countered. “That guy is scamming you. He's a drug dealer and worse.”
I wanted to say something brilliant to shut her up, but all I could produce was an awkward schoolyard taunt. “It takes one to know one.”
She sniffed. With that final judgment on the topic, she settled into the truck’s bench seat and pushed the earbuds back into her ears.
I considered her comments on the short drive up the hill to HT’s house. Maybe Wolf was what Silver said he was, a drug dealer, a fence of stolen property, or worse. Somebody that no respectable law enforcement officer would ever want to associate with, much less fall in love with. I shoved that disquieting thought behind me as we pulled in front of HT’s house.
HT and Isabel welcomed us. As we sat at the kitchen table eating the cake, I relaxed for the first time since I’d acquired custody of Silver Delaney. Then hostility erupted when she insulted one of Isabel’s prize geraniums, and I knew that the respite was over.
“We need to go back to the cabin, HT.”
He gave me a knowing look.
“Might be a good idea. Let me drive you back.”
Silver darted out of HT’s car at the cabin even before he turned off the engine. I sat there for a moment. It was getting dark, too late to reserve a motel room for Silver, even if I could afford one. Anyway, my hopes for a quiet night with Wolf had been dashed. She’d have to stay here tonight.
HT must have sensed my low spirits, for he reached over and gave me an awkward hug.
“Hang in there, Peg. Silver’s not such a bad sort. Reminds me of someone else I knew at that age.”
I didn’t agree, but his hug was welcome.
“Thanks!” I said, hugging him back.
Then I squared my shoulders and walked up to the cabin and opened the door. I let Reckless out into the backyard to do his business. Then I pulled sheets and a blanket out of the closet and turned to address my new, very temporary roommate.
“Sorry I don't have a guest bedroom.”
“This'll do,” Silver said. “And tomorrow we can go see my mother, right? You're going to fix it for me.”
I was not surprised when the girl shifted from the problem of a missing revolver to her own issues. But I was tired of playing nursemaid.
“Tomorrow,” I corrected, “I'll drive you to water the plants at that house you're watching. Then we’ll consider talking to your mother.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. They called to say they're coming back early. We won't have to go over there after all.”
“Bad season for hunting baboons, huh?” I commented. “A shame that you'll miss out on all that money.”
I let Reckless in and turned toward my bedroom.
“I should warn you. If you get up in the night, Reckless gets really nervous when people go near my Jetta.” I yawned again and headed off to bed.
In the morning, when I walked out of my bedroom, Silver was still sleeping soundly on the couch, her arm around my dog. He'd sensed a warm body and crawled up next to her in the late evening hours. His tail pounded the cushion as I passed, but he didn't move.
When I opened the kitchen drawer, the K-bar knife had vanished. And when I called HT later that morning, he told me the tan pickup was no longer parked outside his house. Wolf had reclaimed what was his.
Would he return to settle things with me as well? And what would I say to him if he did?
Fight at the Art Gallery
~ 30 ~
Rory
When Rory arrived at the office the next morning, Chas Doon was absent. He was both pleased and frustrated.
Pleased, because it meant he didn't need to mollify the partner who blamed him for failing to apprehend the suspect at Peg's cabin—even though it was Chas’s grandstanding with the flashing lights that scared off the perp.
But frustrated, too, that Chas was letting him take the interview with Manresa Snow on his own. Chas seemed to have stepped back, allowing him the lead on the murder investigation, but that meant Rory was on the hook.
If something good happened in the investigation, Chas took credit, and if it didn't, Rory felt the heat. And his partner seemed preoccupied with personal business. Chas got strange phone calls and disappeared for hours at a time.
Rory tried to be patient. He needed the required time-in-grade, and then he'd request another location and a new partner. Maybe he could return to his hometown of Prescott. The long commute was putting miles on the Hummer, and with Peg busy elsewhere, it seemed even that friendship had become distant.
But first, he had to either solve this murder or admit to Chas that he couldn't. He'd eat marsh snails before he conceded defeat.
Rory pushed his magnet on the whiteboard to the “out” column and walked to the parking lot. Chas could fend for himself, if and when he decided to return to the office. It was time to visit with Manresa Snow, Henry Fisher’s ex-wife.
Mingus, the location of Manresa’s gallery, was two thousand feet higher than the sheriff's station in Camp Verde, and he had to shift to lower gears climbing the mountain. The small town had been built on a hillside with the mine tunnels crisscrossing the ground underneath its foundations. The sidewalks cracked and tilted, and buildings slid down the hill as a result.
Rory took the steep uphill streets and hairpin turns slowly, watching for tourists wandering across as though they owned the streets. In part, because they did. After the mines had closed in the fifties, the town population shrunk to less than a hundred people, and only now was making a comeback that was based largely on tourist dollars.
Rory pulled to a stop in front of Manresa's gallery and cranked the handbrake hard. A backward-wheeling, driverless Hummer on these steep inclines would be a lethal missile.
The bell jingled on the gallery door as he opened it. A woman dressed in a colorful caftan approached him.
“Hello. You must be Detective Stevens. I'm Adaire.” She extended a bejeweled hand.
Rory was nonplused by being recognized before he introduced himself. Did he look like a cop? Must be that short haircut he'd just had. He liked the no-fuss approach that worked better when he was doing underwater recovery.
Or maybe it was his muscular physique. That had to be it. He straightened his shoulders and took her hand in a firm grip.
“Manresa is in our employee lounge. She'll join us in a moment.”
Adaire ushered him to the rear of the store and out onto a terrace that overlooked the entire valley, the hillside dropping steeply below them.
“I thought we could meet on the back patio,” she said. “There's more room out here, and warm when the sun is shining, even this time of year.”
The woman obviously planned to be a part of the interview. “And your relationship to Manresa is?”
She reached out her left hand, showing off a ring with a magnificent emerald stone encircled by diamonds.
“We're engaged. We plan to be married soon.”
That was interesting. If Peg's news was correct, Manresa had been Henry Fisher’s legitimate wife. With Henry out of the way, Manresa was free to marry Adaire legally.
Although Manresa was one of two widows if you counted Robbyn. Who would inherit the ephemeral fortune in the Caymans? It might be one widow’s lucky day, and another’s worst nightmare.
Rory was glad he wouldn’t be present for that unveiling. He lived for the adrenaline charge whether it was chasing the bad guys with sirens blaring or wiggling through a narrow opening in a car underwater with only a few minutes of oxygen left in his tank.
But domestic conflict? A stressed person collapsing into hysterics? He shuddered.
“How long have you been together?” he asked Adaire.
“Almost ten years,” she said in a dreamy voice. “And every day has been a beautiful miracle. We share everything with each other. Everything .”
Rory made a mental note. That engagement could give them both a motive for murdering Henry Fisher, first, to clear the way for marriage to each other and second, enough inheritance money to have an elaborate wedding ceremony.
Manresa Snow opened the door to the patio, awkwardly carrying a serving tray with mugs and silverware. Adaire jumped to her feet.
“Here, let me get that.”
“I'm fine. Leave me be.” The woman’s voice was firm.
“Oh, of course. I didn't mean anything.” Adaire settled in her chair but nervously rose again when Manresa started to hand around mugs of coffee.
“I can do it,” Adaire said. “Let me.”
Her voice was pleading. Manresa shrugged and allowed the woman to give Rory a mug and took one herself.
Unspoken tension filled the air, and Rory’s chest tightened.
Adaire broke the silence. She turned to Manresa, putting her back to Rory.
“That young woman called again, twice. I told her you absolutely refused to talk to her. That was right, wasn't it?”
Manresa frowned. “It would have been nice if you'd let me know. Maybe I might have changed my mind. She was my birth daughter.”
“That’s in the past,” Adaire said. “Talking to her would only bring you pain. We don't want that in the midst of our happy times.”
Manresa turned to Rory. “Pegasus Quincy spoke to me of this adoptive daughter issue,” she explained, “in the scope of the investigation into the suicide of Andy Fisher.”
Father and son, Rory thought. Intertwined in death, balancing their estrangement in life.
“Andy Fisher,” Adaire said. “I'm sorry he's dead, of course. I don't wish him ill. But he absolutely refused to talk to Manresa, even though she tried countless times. After all that she did for him. He was an awful, terrible person.”
Her voice was agitated and brittle.
“Adaire! I forbid you to malign Andy like that. He was the closest thing to a son I'll ever have.”
Adaire took a drink of coffee, holding the cup in shaking fingers, ready to re-engage.
Rory leaned back to get out of the direct line of conflict. His mind ticked off another fact: Grief for the son, but refusal to see the daughter. Did that mean something for his murder investigation? Too soon to tell.
Then he cleared his throat. It was time to introduce the real reason he was here.
“Where were you both the night that Henry Fisher was killed?”
Adaire gave a jolt. “Right here. All night. Both of us.”
“No, that's not true,” Manresa contradicted. “I went out to get another bottle of wine, do you remember? I got to talking to the shopkeeper, and by the time I returned you’d gone to bed. At least I assumed you had. I didn’t check in on you.”
“Do you have a receipt for the wine?” Rory asked.
“I doubt it. I probably threw it away.”
“And I emptied the trash the next morning,” Adaire interjected. “I can't abide a messy kitchen.”
Was she covering for Manresa, or just stating a fact? Either way, it meant neither woman had a good alibi for the evening the old man died.
“How well did you know Henry Fisher?” he asked.
There was an awkward silence as the two women looked at each other. Manresa started speaking, then stopped and gestured for Adaire to begin.
“I only met Henry on one occasion,” Adaire said. “He came by the gallery on the First Saturday art walks with that trophy wife of his. He was rude and obnoxious. He said the most unpleasant things about Manresa's ceramic vases. I didn't like him at all.”
A strong enough dislike to lead to murder? Rory pulled out his notebook and recorded her response.
“And you?” He gestured to Manresa.
“I knew him very well, of course. I was married to him.”
“But that marriage was a long time ago,” Adaire interrupted. “You haven’t talked to him for years and years.”
She rubbed her engagement ring with her thumb, turning it round and round on her finger. She looked to her fiancé for reassurance.
Manresa lifted her hair from a sweaty forehead. When she spoke, her voice was firm.
“Actually, I have seen him recently.”
Adaire sat up abruptly.
“Yes, we stopped living together years ago,” Manresa began.
“Before he met his new wife, Robbyn.” Rory lobb
ed the statement over to her, waiting to see if she would correct him.
“No, Robbyn was his mistress,” Manresa said firmly. “I was always his legal wife.”
“That's not true!” Adaire clenched her mug so tight her fingers whitened.
So there were secrets between the two partners. Rory made another note.
“Henry and I were never divorced, Adaire. I wanted to tell you before, but there never seemed to be a good time.” Manresa's voice was sad.
“You're just saying that, making it up. Why do you want to hurt me so?” Adaire shook her head, her eyes staring blindly at Manresa.
“Henry Fisher and I were never divorced,” Manresa repeated, more firmly. She reached out to Adaire with one hand.
Adaire jerked back.
“So we've been living a lie, all these years! Why did you even ask me to marry you?”
She broke into tears and fled into the store.
Manresa turned to Rory. “I'm sorry you had to witness that. Adaire has a strong streak of denial in her.”
“You said you’d been to see Henry recently. When was that?” Rory asked.
Manresa sighed. “It was the day he died. I took our marriage papers, asking him for a divorce so that I could marry Adaire. He laughed in my face, refusing. I was crushed. I came back here wanting to tell her everything and couldn’t.”
“And now you are free to marry her.”
Manresa gave a short laugh.
“Free, and yet not. This marriage was her idea. I asked her to wait until our gallery went into the black again. With the downturn in the economy, we've taken a hit. We can't afford a big wedding, and that's what Adaire has her heart set on.” She sighed again. “And that young woman who says she is my daughter, Silver Delaney.”
Rory was acutely uncomfortable at the sound of that name. It brought back a night he would just as soon forget.
“I abhor the idea that Adaire would arbitrarily turn her away,” Manresa said. “My lover has turned possessive of anyone who claims my attention.”
“How so?” Rory asked.
“Adaire demanded my Facebook password. I gave it to her with reservations. And she's accused me of talking to other women. And the other day I caught her scrolling through my smartphone to see who I was texting.”
