Detour

by Lorena McCourtney

  “Are you accusing Genevieve or—” I broke off because I’d almost slipped and said or her husband of something. I backtracked and limited the question. “Are you accusing Genevieve of something?”

  He tossed the question back to me. “What would I be accusing her of?”

  Good question. This all seemed murky as mud soup. “Has anyone ever tried to collect on a life insurance policy for John Anderson?”

  “So far as I know, Mr. Anderson had no insurance. With his wife already deceased and his finances limited, he probably didn’t feel any need for insurance. We don’t, of course, at this point know whether he’s dead or alive.”

  Megalthorpe wasn’t accusing Genevieve of trying to pull some insurance scam, then, on John Anderson’s life. Then he added another comment.

  “But there was considerable insurance on Andrew Higman’s life. Which was paid to his widow, of course.”

  So Genevieve had collected insurance on both her mother and her husband. A tidy little do-it-yourself retirement plan? Perhaps sufficient to provide a new husband with a Porsche?

  “I’m willing to make a trip to wherever Mrs. Higman is now,” he added. “She’s apparently using something other than the Genevieve Higman name, because even with considerable effort I haven’t been able to find any information under that name.”

  I had no doubts now about Roger Megalthorpe’s legitimacy as a private investigator, but I still wasn’t about to jump into complete cooperation. “Suppose I tell Genevieve about talking with you and let her call you.”

  “It would be best, under the circumstances, if you didn’t take Mrs. Higman into your confidence about anything we’ve discussed.” He sounded alarmed. “And I would remind you, there is remuneration involved for information.”

  “Kind of like a bounty.”

  “If you want to put it that way.”

  “I’ll have to think about all this and get back to you.”

  I tapped the cell phone to disconnect the call before he could say anything more. I figured I’d gotten more information from Private Investigator Megalthorpe than I’d given him, which was my intent in calling him. But this information I’d acquired from him took off on a totally new tangent unrelated to my suspicions.

  Or did it?

  Chapter 15

  MAC

  Ivy was still sitting on the sofa holding the phone when I returned to the living room. Her nice eyebrows were scrunched in thought.

  “Did the private investigator have any helpful information?”

  “I’m not sure. At the moment I don’t know quite what to think.”

  She filled me in on what the private investigator had said, and I could see why she was puzzled. PI Megalthorpe was certainly suggesting some peculiarities back in Missouri.

  “We could just ask Kathy if she knows anything about a John Anderson,” I suggested.

  “Mr. Megalthorpe was quite specific about not wanting anything shared with Kathy. Whom he still knows only as Genevieve, of course. I didn’t tell him what name she was using here.”

  “We aren’t obligated to go along with what Megalthorpe wants,” I pointed out.

  Ivy nodded. “Right. But I think he’s concerned that if she knows he’s looking for her, she’ll take off for parts unknown.”

  Would Brian and Kathy actually do that? Kathy had certainly been jittery about Ivy and Magnolia showing up from her past. “We know about Husband Number One, Andy,” I mused. “We know about Husband Number Two, Brian. But now we seem to have an extra man in the picture. Was he another husband?”

  “I knew a woman years ago who signed up for a class in taxidermy hoping to meet a man,” Ivy said. “Stuffing dead animals to find a husband seemed a little desperate to me. But kidnapping a husband out of a care facility? That’s definitely over the top.”

  “Did the private investigator say when this happened? Was it before or after Husband Number One died?”

  “We didn’t get into that. By the way, what was your call?” Ivy asked.

  “I’d left my name and number at the library, and the librarian gave it to that old guy she’d said used to live out in this area. He had a lot to tell me about stagecoach robberies and buried treasure and ghost goats.”

  I started adding this new information to the notes on my laptop and had just gotten to the tale about a treasure hunter being butted off the cliff on the back side of the hill by what he claimed was a ghost goat, when we had another visit from the law.

  “Mr. and Mrs. MacPherson,” Deputy Hardishan said when I opened the door. He sounded unexpectedly hearty. “I have some good news for you.”

  “You’ve found Renée’s killer?” Ivy asked.

  “No, but I think you’ll still find it good news.”

  “Good news is always welcome,” I said.

  I invited him inside, but he said he had only a few minutes to spare. “I just wanted to let you know that the owner of the gun we found in the swamp turned up. He had a photo of himself and the gun that showed the initials scratched on the handle.”

  “Which you’d thought could be initials for Mac MacPherson. You thought I’d lost the gun after killing Renée with it, and then when I went back to look for it I fell in the swamp.”

  He didn’t admit I was right, but he did murmur, “Very astute, Mr. MacPherson. But the initials turned out to be MM for Mason Myers, and it was not the murder weapon. He and a couple of friends had been target practicing out by the swamp a couple months ago, and he lost the gun then.”

  “So now you know we were telling the truth about not owning the gun.” I resisted an I-told-you-so crow. “That should take us off the list of suspects.”

  “Until the killer is in custody, no one is eliminated as a suspect.”

  “Is Renée Echol’s ex-husband among the suspects?” I asked.

  With law-enforcement expertise, he answered my question with another question. “You have information about the ex-husband of the victim?”

  He sounded interested, but the question didn’t give us a clue about whether an ex-husband was news to him or if they were almost ready to slap handcuffs on him.

  “No, not really,” I said. “We understand he rides a classic old Harley. I believe a motorcycle was heard going out to Kate’s Kabins around the time Renée Echol was killed.”

  “There are a few of those old bikes around.” Pleasant. Uninformative.

  Characters in mystery novels always seem to have a friend in law enforcement who helpfully supplies them with inside information. What did we have? An officer who’d make an artichoke look like a loudmouth.

  “What we’ve never been able to understand,” Ivy said, “is why we are suspects. We didn’t have any motive to kill Renée.”

  “A motive isn’t actually necessary to establish guilt. Killers have been convicted with motive still unknown. But you asked questions about the Kate’s Kabins property at a couple of real estate agencies. Renée already had it tied up. She had what you wanted.”

  That sounded to me like a wild-eyed guess at a motive, and sometimes wild-eyed guesses are right. Although this one wasn’t.

  “You think we could have murdered her over Kate’s Kabins?” Ivy sounded aghast.

  Deputy Hardishan pointed out a hard truth. “People have been killed for less. Unpleasant things happen in the heat of an argument. Perhaps Ms. Echol antagonized you concerning her coming ownership of the property and you reacted impulsively. But you’re not top-of-the-list suspects,” he added in a kindly tone, as if that should be a comfort.

  “Who is top of the list?” Ivy shot right back.

  He shook a reprimanding finger at her as he also shook his head.

  “What about Brian?” I asked.

  “Mr. Morrison wasn’t held after his recent questioning.”

  “But you must have had an interesting tip to make you question him again,” Ivy persisted.

  “We’d like to further question the man who calle
d in the tip,” Deputy Hardishan admitted.

  “He told you about a relationship between Brian Morrison and Renée?” I asked.

  I was fishing, of course, but Deputy Hardishan wasn’t biting. He smoothly produced that ever-popular, conversation-ending line. “You know I’m not at liberty to discuss details of the case at this time.”

  Right. We were as apt to get details from a ghost goat in an email as we were to get details from Deputy Hardishan.

  The deputy left, and I went back to my notes for the magazine article. Ivy settled down to read a mystery on her e-book reader with Koop on her lap. But then we had another visitor. This time it was a thin young woman with dark shadows around her eyes and a toddler in her battered old car. She was apologetic about bothering us but said she was looking for Sheila because she had some baby clothes to sell and knew Sheila bought items for her secondhand store. Since Sheila wasn’t around, soft-hearted Ivy helped her out by buying them.

  I raised my eyebrows after the woman was gone and we were the owners of two bulging sacks of baby things.

  “Something you aren’t telling me?” I inquired.

  “The Lord gave Abraham and Sarah a surprise bundle rather late in life,” she said. “The Lord is in the miracle business, you know.”

  I tried not to feel a bubble of panic. Babies are wonders, sweet and precious, every one a true miracle of life. But—sleepless nights, spit-ups, diaper changes! Lord, I thank you for all your blessings and miracles. I thank you for bringing Ivy and me together. But I, uh, hope this isn’t a miracle you have in mind for us.

  Ivy recognized my panic. “No miracle in the offing. So you can stop with the sweaty palms and twitchy eyelid.” She sounded a little huffy. “I’ll take the baby things to town and donate them to the Salvation Army or Goodwill.”

  I was relieved, and yet I have to admit to a certain regret that Ivy and I didn’t get together early enough in life to have a surprise bundle of our own. Did Ivy ever have that same regret? But she was off on a different subject now.

  “You know, Deputy Hardishan did unintentionally give us one interesting bit of information beyond telling us about the gun,” she said thoughtfully.

  “Which was?” I couldn’t think of any interesting information, but perhaps I was still distracted by miracles and baby things.

  “I thought it was probably Sheila who gave them a tip about Brian and Renée’s affair, but the deputy let slip that the tip came from a man. So who do you suppose that could have been?”

  “Mr. Ex-husband?”

  “That’d be my guess. I doubt Ron Sweeney would be volunteering any more information,” Ivy agreed. “Y’know, I’ve been thinking.”

  “Uh-oh.” She rewarded me with an eye roll for that snarky comment on the dangers of her thinking, and I hastily amended it. “Thinking about Renée’s ex?”

  Ivy made one of her not-unusual, across-the-universe jumps in thinking. “The private investigator seemed to think that fingerprints of Genevieve’s new husband, if she had one, might be interesting.”

  “Wouldn’t the sheriff’s department have taken Brian’s fingerprints and checked them out already?”

  “Brian hasn’t actually been arrested, just questioned. As we were. They haven’t fingerprinted us, so he probably hasn’t been fingerprinted either,” she pointed out. “They no doubt tried to get fingerprints at the old cabin where we found Renée, but apparently they didn’t get any prints good enough to need our prints for comparison. But if we could get Brian’s fingerprints to Megalthorpe, he could have them checked out.”

  “Checked out for what?”

  “Criminal record. Wanted fugitive. Identity. Whatever. Maybe Brian Morrison isn’t his real name. Maybe Kathy doesn’t really know who she’s married to. Maybe there’s another Mrs. Morrison somewhere.”

  “We’d have to be pretty sneaky to get them,” I said. “Brian was touchy about just having his photo taken. He’d probably go into orbit if we tried to get his fingerprints.”

  “So what sneaky way could we get his fingerprints on something?”

  We tossed suggestions back and forth, but we apparently weren’t sneaky-minded enough to come up with anything workable. Then Ivy had an idea about fingerprints that already existed. The shovel! I’d been wearing gloves when I carried it when we searched the hillside, but Brian’s hands had been bare when he held it before handing it over to me. His prints might still be on the handle. Was the shovel still out there on the hillside where I’d dropped it?

  Although I saw a small complication. “Can you mail a shovel?” With a really long handle?

  “We’ll worry about that later,” Ivy answered in her best put-it-off-until-tomorrow fashion of Gone with the Wind Scarlett. However, because Ivy is a practical woman, she also added, “First we have to get the shovel.”

  We worked out a simple plan. We’d drive over to the dinosaur park, retrieve the shovel, and ship it to the private investigator at the address on his website. Then we’d buy another matching shovel for the Morrisons.

  ***

  Over at the dinosaur park, our timing was good. Brian’s Porsche wasn’t in the carport, and Kathy’s old Honda was also absent. I hadn’t locked the park gate when we came out behind Brian, so we should be able to get back inside. We parked by Tricky the Triceratops and hurried to the gate. I was wearing gloves, and I’d brought a long strip of plastic to wrap around the shovel handle to protect fingerprints on it.

  Problem #1: Brian had at some time come back and locked the gate. Maybe he’d even climbed up and retrieved the shovel.

  That was a worrisome thought, but, after a brief consideration, I doubted he’d climbed the hill again. The rundown park was evidence he wasn’t a man to exert himself if he could avoid it.

  But the locked gate ended nicely simple Plan A. We stood there trying to think of a workable Plan B.

  “You could boost me over the fence,” Ivy suggested.

  I might, but no way was I going to have Ivy struggling alone through trees and brush and encountering anything from a ghost goat to a cougar. I tweaked her idea. Plan B. I’d climb over the fence. Ivy would park the pickup down the old road toward Kate’s Kabins where it would be out of sight if Brian and Kathy returned. She’d wait for me there. I figured I could climb the hill, retrieve the shovel, and get to the pickup in no more than half an hour.

  Ivy didn’t like this plan; she saw various possible pitfalls.

  Maybe I should have listened to Ivy.

  IVY

  The first problem with this latest plan was that the fence wasn’t climber friendly. The chain links were too close together for a foothold, and a nasty twist of barbed wire that wasn’t visible at casual glance curled around the top.

  We moved on to Plan B-1.

  Mac parked the pickup under some overhanging branches close to the fence. He climbed on top the cab and, using a board from the back of the pickup, eased over the barbed wire and onto a branch. After he retrieved the shovel, he’d climb the tree inside the fence, get out on the branch, and drop to the ground outside the fence. Then he’d join me where I was waiting with the pickup. The plan wasn’t exactly at a James Bond level of cool, but it sounded workable.

  Mac got across the fence. But then came a complication. The board slipped, and a protruding nail snagged the seat of his khaki pants. The rip wasn’t deep enough to reach his skin, but it was big enough to expose a generous expanse of Hawaiian-print boxer shorts. That was one of my first surprises about Mac after we married; I would have assumed . . . if I’d thought about the subject at all, that is . . . that he was a plain shorts kind of guy. Not so. His shorts wardrobe consisted of everything from this Hawaiian print to red plaid to a surprising dance of pink dolphins on black.

  It looked to me as if the rip must be letting in a fair amount of cool air, but Mac didn’t seem to notice. He turned and waved just before he disappeared in the tangle of vines and brush, and the last I saw of him was a red f
lash of the hibiscus on his shorts. I started to call out to tell him, but then I decided it didn’t matter. Only a few goats, ghost or otherwise, would see him and his hibiscus there on the hillside.

  I got in the pickup and cautiously edged it across the parking lot. Sheila’s car was parked at Duke’s trailer again, so I circled the gift shop, hoping to avoid notice by them. Which I thought I could, unless they happened to be looking out the window. I eased out to the road to Kate’s Kabins and followed it to a dip and curve where I could park and not be seen by anyone in the trailer. The chain-link fence ended a few feet from my parking spot, where the hillside turned into a cliff. Then I waited.

  I kept checking my watch. Eleven minutes. Fourteen. Twenty-two. Toenails grow faster than time moved as I waited. My imagination, however, raced at warp speed. I envisioned Mac trapped in the hole Duke had dug. I saw him sinking in a heretofore unknown patch of quicksand in the creek. And maybe ghost goats did exist. In homicidal herds. Gleefully using Mac’s Hawaiian-print shorts for target practice.

  At twenty-six minutes I got out of the pickup. At twenty-nine minutes I paced a few steps up the road. At ten minutes past the half hour I worriedly headed back to the dinosaur park on foot. I edged around the corner of the fence and crept along it toward the spot where Mac had entered the park, again hoping to avoid attention from Sheila and Duke in the trailer. Then I stopped short.

  Someone was at Brian and Kathy’s door. Someone doing something with the lock and glancing around with the stealthy movements of a burglar. Sheila? Yes, Sheila. What was she doing there? It was obvious, with the cars still gone, that Kathy and Brian weren’t home. Was she trying to get inside to look for something that would incriminate Brian in the murder?

  Finally, after a rattle of the doorknob with gloved hands, she apparently gave up and ran across the parking lot and back to Duke’s trailer. I waited until she disappeared inside before continuing my own stealthy journey along the fence. I was still curious, but there was a bigger problem at the moment.