Detour

by Lorena McCourtney

  Magnolia’s voice immediately boomed out of the phone. “Ivy, what is going on? We had this call from some deputy up there. He asked all kinds of questions about both of you, and what we did while we were there.”

  I explained about finding Renée Echol’s body and that we seemed to be suspects in the murder.

  “Suspects?” Magnolia gave an unladylike snort of indignation. “How did they come up with that preposterous idea? We’re in Arizona, Bullhead City, but we’ll come back there right away. We can tell them you were with us all the time and you’ve never done anything illegal or been involved with the law—” She broke off as if remembering that wasn’t entirely accurate. There are those troublesome dead bodies I’ve had the misfortune to encounter on various occasions, and the law was involved.

  “Well, you know what I mean,” she muttered. “You haven’t broken the law.”

  Much as I appreciated the loyalty and the offer and thanked her for it, I doubted Magnolia’s and Geoff’s character reference or even a claim of their being with us every minute would take us off the list of suspects. “We’d love to have you here again, but there’s no need for you to drive all the way back up here. There are other suspects. Including us is probably just some standard procedure. We’ll be out of here and down there with you in no time.”

  “You’re not going to do anything about finding out who did it, are you?” Magnolia’s question sounded both concerned and suspicious. The woman does know me too well.

  “Finding the killer is law enforcement’s responsibility,” I assured her primly.

  I assured myself of that too. Non-involvement. Stick that overactive mutant curiosity gene in a mental closet. Lock a mental door on it. No searching for clues. No digging into suspects. We’d just sit around and take it easy until law enforcement rounded up the killer. Or killers. Because Brian and Kathy could be in it together. I was more suspicious of Brian than Kathy, but I could definitely see her helping him.

  Then I repeated the important word here. Non-involvement. Which included Non-speculation about possible killers.

  With rain pouring down, we just hung around the motorhome for the rest of the day. The editor of Fun on the Road called and suggested the old tale of buried treasure and dead bodies in the dinosaur park, which Mac had mentioned in his article, might make a good lighthearted piece for the magazine. Mac held the cell phone to his chest and told me about the editor’s suggestion.

  “It would give us something to do while we’re stuck here,” he said.

  Right. Unspoken were other words Mac was undoubtedly thinking. It would give us something to do other than get involved in Renée’s murder and the killer or killers who had committed the crime. I nodded, and Mac told the editor he’d look into the buried treasure thing. He didn’t mention the real-life murder we’d encountered here.

  Mac spent time on the computer trying to dig up old references to the treasure story. I read a freebie mystery on my e-book reader. Non-involvement, I kept reminding myself. No matter how energetically that mutant curiosity gene kept trying to crawl out of its closet, Non-involvement was the plan. I determinedly tried to wash the curiosity away with a hot shower. I did get rid of the still-lingering wet dog scent, but the stubborn gene still raised antennas quivering with curiosity.

  And that evening Mac went to the little convenience store at the gas station out on the highway to get half-and-half for our breakfast cereal and came back with a local newspaper.

  Chapter 11

  IVY

  Mac spread the newspaper on the dinette table. The article and photos about Renée’s murder covered much of the front page. Most of the article repeated what we already knew, including that we’d found the body. A sidebar went into some history about both Kate and her Kabins. She’d been a well-liked character in the area, usually showing up in Trinidad or Eureka in a battered old Ford pickup with her shaggy mutt in the seat beside her. The only information new to us about the murder was that an employee at the Hideaway had seen Renée at lunch there with a heavyset, bearded man on Wednesday, apparently the last time she’d been seen.

  Authorities were asking for information to help identify the man with her at the restaurant and also asking anyone who may have seen her since that time to contact them.

  “Sound like anyone we know?” Mac said.

  Heavyset and bearded? Oh, yes.

  A photo of Renée showed the same perky face that was on her business cards. Other photos showed the entire layout of Kate’s Kabins taken from the air both before and after the fire. Seen from above, the reed-covered swamp that Mac had fallen into was quite obvious and took up a big area. All the pictures, except the one of Renée’s vehicle being hauled away for processing, had a file-photo look, nothing recent.

  The newspaper article didn’t name us, or anyone else, as murder suspects, but, in addition to being finders of the body, we were also identified as the persons who’d told the authorities where to find the SUV.

  “They point a finger at us without saying a word,” I grumbled. “As if we know too much to be merely innocent bystanders. How come they didn’t identify by name the person at the Hideaway who saw Renée and this man, the same as they identified us?”

  Mac’s momentary silence suggested he agreed with me, but all he said was, “They’re surely suspicious of this bearded man who was with her at the restaurant.”

  “He makes a better suspect than we do,” I declared.

  Mac finally put our personal suspicion into words. “So, you think the description sounds like Brian?”

  “Of course. But we can’t rush in and positively identify him just from that bit of description. There are probably any number of bearded, heavyset guys around.”

  I had an idea. I gave Mac a cautious sideways look. This idea sprinted around Non-involvement. Or maybe collided with it head-on. “Perhaps we could have lunch at the Hideaway again. We could talk to the employee and get a more detailed description of the man with Renée.” A description that would stick to Brian like mud in the swamp clung to Mac.

  I expected Mac to counter with Non-involvement, and I was prepared to fortify my suggestion with noble reminders about personal responsibility, civic duty, good citizenship, etc. Instead he said, “Or I could print out that photo I got of Brian when I was taking dinosaur photos for the article. We could take it along and see if the employee recognizes him as the man who had lunch there with Renée.” He paused and added reluctantly, “As suspects, we seem to be involved in this murder even if we don’t want to be.”

  Monday morning would have been a pleasant day, blue sky and no rain, but a strong wind rattled the air-conditioning unit attached to the top of the motorhome and swirled leaves from the maples in Sheila’s yard into miniature tornados. At the door, when I opened it to let BoBandy out, I spotted Sheila headed out for a run, apparently undeterred by wind. Today she wore ordinary gray sweats and a baseball cap with her red hair swinging from a hole on the back side. A very wholesome look. I waved, but she must not have seen me. Or didn’t want to see me? Maybe she was regretting allowing us to park the motorhome here.

  Mac printed the lone photo he’d managed to get of Brian. In it, Brian was leaning over, hands in his pockets, studying something alongside the trail in the park, obviously unaware of Mac taking the photo. The photo definitely showed that he was heavy-set and bearded, but he didn’t look murderous. It’s hard to look murderous when you have the tail of a dinosaur growing out of your left ear.

  We decided we’d drive over to Duke’s trailer and talk to him about the old buried-treasure story before driving in to town for lunch at the Hideaway. I thought we might see Sheila on the way. Duke had said she often took the road to the cove on her longer runs. “Probably to keep an eye on me,” he’d grumbled. But apparently she was running some other route this morning. Duke’s pickup was in its usual spot by the trailer. Kathy’s Honda stood outside the apartment, but the carport was empty.

  Duk
e was inside on this windy day, but his wispy white hair still looked as if he’d combed it with a leaf blower. “Meet my new roommate!” he said. “This is Bovary. She showed up sitting on my tree chair a couple days ago.”

  Bovary. From the famous literary character, Madame Bovary, no doubt. Bovary was a somewhat nondescript looking, mottled-gray kitty now curled up at one end of the small sofa, Scarlett at the other end. Bovary looked up with surprisingly gorgeous golden eyes, and Duke introduced us.

  “Bovary, these are my friends, Mac and Ivy.”

  We both acknowledged the introduction. Bovary yawned. “Are the two of them getting along okay?”

  “Scarlett was a bit standoffish at first, but she’s coming around.” Then he instantly jumped to the subject of murder. “But I can’t believe it. A woman murdered, right out there at Kate’s Kabins. Killer must have gone right by here.” He peered out the window facing the road. “I might have seen his car or pickup go by.”

  “Or motorcycle,” Mac murmured.

  Duke snapped around with surprising vigor. “That’s right. I did hear a motorcycle. But I understand it was you folks who found her body. That so?”

  “We just happened to be wandering around out there,” I said. “You knew the woman who was murdered?”

  “Just as a business acquaintance from some time back.” Duke dismissed the association with a bony shrug, not forthcoming about the hostilities stirred up when Renée had tried to pressure him into selling the dinosaur park property.

  I turned and took a quick peek at the nail by the door. No holster. No gun.

  Observant Duke saw the peek. “Got me kind of nervous, somebody getting killed so close to home. I got the Glock down to clean and make sure it was loaded.”

  Not an old-fashioned, six-shooter type weapon as I’d assumed. Glocks are high-powered, modern weapons, the kind professionals use. Professionals on both sides of the law. It occurred to me that cleaning a gun would probably remove from the barrel any indication that it had recently been fired. Where was the gun now?

  Then I gave myself a mental thunk. Duke as a killer? He’d managed to drive somewhere alone in the pickup, but he needed both hands on his walker just to get around on foot. And besides, this was Duke, rescuer of stray cats and cheerful keeper of champagne for some yet-to-be-determined celebration.

  Mac told Duke about the editor’s interest in that old tale of buried treasure. We all sat down and Duke offered a couple of different versions of the story, one about pirates, the other about a long-ago stagecoach robbery in the area. The stagecoach version had the victims of the robbery simply buried beside the treasure, but the darker pirate tale had bodies buried with it as some sort of macabre ghost-guardians. The wind made an appropriately eerie howl around the trailer.

  “Could you show me where you found the circle of stones that prompted you to start digging?” Mac asked.

  The wrinkles on Duke’s old face gathered into a frown. “You planning to write about how I was dumb enough to fall into the hole I’d dug myself?”

  “I can skip that detail.”

  I didn’t mention it, but the thought occurred to me that this was a little like Mac’s preference not to explain to the deputy about his awkward blunder into the swamp. Men and their egos.

  “I’d like to help you, but I don’t think these old knees could get me up there. Some of the hole filled in when it collapsed on me, but unless Brian filled it all in, it’s probably still there. It was a humongous hole to begin with. I couldn’t dig one like that now. Brian can show you.”

  I was doubtful about Brian’s willingness to show us anything, but Mac nodded. “We’ll talk to him about it.”

  It was getting close to lunch time when we finally stood up to leave. Then Duke opened a magazine to show us something.

  “It’s called a champagne saber.” He pointed his finger at the photo of a silver sword with an elegantly curved blade and handle grip. “What you do, see, is slide the side of the blade up the bottle with enough force that it hits the lip and breaks it off. It’s called sabrage, and you catch the champagne that gushes out in fancy flutes. They do it at elegant hotels.”

  “Are you going to buy one?” I asked.

  “Not right now.”

  “Expensive?” Mac guessed.

  “In the twenty-five-thousand-dollar range.” Duke grinned. “But, who knows? Maybe I’ll be celebrating a million-dollar surprise, and twenty-five thousand will be peanuts to me.”

  Twenty-five thousand sounded considerably overpriced to me, even if the saber was silver and came in a satin-lined box. I figured, at that price, at least a few nights at one of those elegant hotels should be included. But if Duke could believe in the coming of a champagne-worthy event, he may as well believe in a twenty-five-thousand-dollar silver saber too. Good for him, I decided. Somewhere I remember reading that optimistic people live longer.

  When we left, he insisted we take a couple of fig-filled cookies from a batch Kathy had brought over.

  ***

  At the Hideaway we sat in the same booth as before, and the waitress recognized us. “Hey, the happy newlyweds! Good to see you again.”

  Being recognized and remembered is nice, but it also makes me uneasy. I’ve gotten to where I rather like my invisibility. I mean, who knows? Maybe sometime I’ll have an irresistible urge to hop on a table and do a whirling flamenco, and it would probably be better if I were invisible at that point. Of course, I’d first have to learn to do the flamenco. And then manage to get this aging body up on a tabletop. Okay, cancel that little fantasy. But I still like my invisibility. Now I noticed from the tag on our waitress’s peasant-style red blouse like all the women employees wore that her name was NancyLou.

  We ordered a shrimp salad to share, and when NancyLou brought it, Mac had the newspaper spread on the table. He didn’t have to bring up the subject of the murder. She jumped on it as soon as she saw the newspaper.

  “Isn’t that the most horrifying thing? I knew old Kate. She was a real character. Always telling jokes, usually a little on the risqué side. Then there was the fire. It just about broke poor old Kate’s heart. And now this. Murder, right there in one of her old cabins.”

  “Was it you who saw Renée and the heavy-set guy having lunch in here together?” Mac asked.

  “No, that was one of the waiters. Ron.” NancyLou sounded regretful that she hadn’t been the one to see them. “But I knew Renée too. She came in every now and then. She also handled the deal when I sold my house a couple years ago. A deputy talked to me for quite a while.” She sounded gratified by that.

  “Did Renée always come in with that same guy?” I asked.

  “I don’t remember her ever coming in with a guy who looked like the one Ron described. Sometimes she was with clients. Or if she was alone, she was usually busy on the phone.”

  “Business calls?”

  “Well, I didn’t listen in, but she was, you know, probably the sharpest real estate agent in town. My daughter said I’d never sell that old place of mine, but Renée had it off the market in a month. And at almost full price. Though I remember once her taking a call on her cell phone and afterward she laughed and said, ‘Ex-husbands! Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.’ So I guess it was her ex on the phone that time.” NancyLou rolled her eyes. “Although I can definitely live without my ex.”

  Mac and I exchanged a quick glance. The ex-husband again.

  “How long ago was that?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe a month or two.”

  “I wonder if he called from somewhere else or if he was right here in town,” I said.

  “That’s a good question.” NancyLou’s expression brightened. “Maybe I should contact the deputy and mention the ex-husband to him. I didn’t think about him when I talked to the deputy before.”

  “Do you suppose we could talk to this Ron who saw them?” Mac asked.

  “You could, except he
isn’t working here anymore.”

  “Fired?”

  “No, he quit. He was a good waiter, and he’d been here six months or so, but he just came in and quit a couple days ago.”

  “Right after he talked to a deputy about Renée and the bearded man being in here?” I suggested.

  “Well, I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I guess that’s so.” Her brow wrinkled as if that possibility troubled her.

  “How did someone from the sheriff’s office happen to talk to him?” Mac asked.

  “He must have contacted them when he heard Renée was dead. They didn’t come in looking for him. Actually, I didn’t know anything about him talking to them until I saw it in the newspaper.” She sounded somewhat aggrieved about that. “Then I called them too, of course. Because, like I said, I knew her.”

  “Could you describe him?” Mac asked.

  “Ron? Just a kid, really. Early twenties. Five-nine or so. Slim build. Dark hair. Good looking in that kind of bad boy way girls always go for.” She smiled in a reminiscent way, as if she understood the appeal, then hastily added, “Although he really is a great guy. He has a tattoo of a mermaid on his arm. I don’t think he has a car. He always came to work on a motorcycle.”

  Mac and I exchanged another glance. A motorcycle-ish guy.

  “Did he know Renée outside of working here?” Mac asked.

  “I don’t know—” Then NancyLou broke off with a startled look, as if a different meaning to Mac’s question had just gotten through to her. “You mean know her in a romantic way? Renée and Ron? Oh, I don’t think so. I mean, he’s so young.”

  I didn’t know Renée except by reputation, but somehow I doubted a few years’ difference in age would be an obstacle for her. It might even be an attraction. So, was Ron our Unknown Man? Although he didn’t sound like the kind of guy who’d be a big investor in some high-priced real estate scheme. Somehow the ex-husband worked better in that role for me. He could have come out of prison and retrieved some big stash of illicit money he’d tucked away somewhere. And which he now needed to launder through a legitimate real estate deal.