The McHenry Inheritance (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 1)

by Michael Wallace

  The sun had long since burned the frost off the grass, but even though it was mid-day, a cool breeze out of the north kept it from being hot. The meadow was full of grasshoppers that jumped to all sides as the two men walked through it, leading Sam to remark that it might not be a bad idea to fish an imitation hopper close to a grassy bank. Gordon agreed. They went halfway up the meadow, prospecting for likely fish lies. Then, as they came to a previously obscured bend, Gordon saw a flash of red.

  He stopped and tensed as he focused on it and realized what he was seeing. Where the creek made a horseshoe bend, it had carved out a deep pool, at the foot of which a large shrub, growing from the side of the bank, overhung the water and actually dipped several branches into it. The current had carried the body of a man — the body of Dan McHenry, to be precise — into the bush where it had become grotesquely entangled. The left shoulder, covered by the red chamois shirt, was propped out of the water, while his head, eyes fixed with a vacant stare, lay in the water being rocked slowly back and forth by the gentle, eddying current. At a cursory glance, it might have looked as if he had drowned, but through the thin latticework of branches that held McHenry in place, the back of his shirt could be seen clearly enough to show that there was a sizable hole below that left shoulder, almost directly behind the heart. It was the sort of hole that a high-caliber bullet might have made as it entered or left the body. Gordon pulled up short with a shiver of revulsion. Sam, who had been talking, pulled up short, then looked where Gordon was pointing. When he saw the body, his eyes widened and his mouth opened, but nothing came out. Reflexively, he took a step backward, but since he was at the edge of the creek, his foot touched nothing but air and he fell backwards into two feet of cold water with a loud splash.

  That had the effect of prying Gordon’s eyes and mind off the body for a moment. Sam had landed in a riffle and been washed ten feet downstream before he was able to right himself. He was utterly soaked as Gordon moved toward him.

  “Are you all right.”

  “A damn sight better than he is,” Sam said, pointing in the direction of Dan McHenry. He climbed back on to the meadow, dripping wet. “This is horrible. What do we do now?”

  “We get back and call the sheriff. Now. Double time. They began to jog across the meadow, as fast as their fishing gear would allow. As they moved, Gordon couldn’t help thinking that, although it had happened in a nasty and bloody fashion, the dispute over the McHenry inheritance had been resolved once and for all. He tried to put the thought out of his mind, but it wouldn’t budge.

  They arrived breathlessly at the ranch house, just as Ellen pulled up in her pickup. She stepped out and greeted them cordially.

  “Did you boys switch places with Dan?” she asked. “His truck’s here, but I didn’t see him in the meadow on the way in.”

  Gordon hesitated for a second, then decided to give her the news straight.

  “We need to call the sheriff, Ellen. Your brother’s dead.”

  Her right hand shot up to her mouth. “Oh, God, no!”

  He took her by the left arm. “Let’s go,” he said softly.

  She shook his hand away. “How did it happen?”

  He tried to be soothing. “I think you should get inside and we should call the sheriff.”

  “Don’t protect me, Gordon. He’s my brother and I want to know what happened.”

  He hesitated a moment, then said, “It looks as if he was shot.”

  Ellen stiffened and a flash of steel came into her eyes. “Those bastards,” she said. “Those fascist bastards.”

  • • •

  The next few hours went by at a gallop. Sheriff Baca presided over the situation with calmness and professionalism, but so much was happening and so many people were coming and going — seeking orders or bearing information — that it would have made anyone’s head spin. Baca had activated every deputy and reserve and called in the fire department and Highway Patrol. Dan McHenry was beyond help, but Baca was relentless in his efforts to ensure that his killer would not escape for want of manpower.

  He commandeered a vacant cabin (next to Gordon and Sam’s) for conducting interviews, and beginning at 2:30 spoke at length with, first, Ellen McHenry, then Sam Akers. For two hours, Gordon sat in the picnic area that had hosted the festive gathering less than 24 hours earlier. From it, he had a good view of the main house, Baca’s cabin, and the meadow, now swarming with people who were combing the grass, earth and water for any scrap of evidence. Gordon drank several bottles of soft drinks and looked on with a sense of numbness and incomprehension. He felt he could really use a beer and could have taken one from his ice chest, but he was determined to wait until after his interview with the sheriff.

  It was four-thirty when he was finally called. The interior of the cabin was ten feet by fifteen. It was sparsely furnished with two twin beds, two chairs, and a sink that drew its water from the creek via a pump handle. There were two windows along one of the long walls, and along the other a row of wooden pegs (for hanging clothing and saddle paraphernalia), with a one-foot shelf protruding above. The two beds had been pushed against the far wall and the two chairs turned to face them. In one chair sat Baca and in the other a young deputy named Joe, who, as the interview went along, took notes on a laptop computer.

  Baca led Gordon through his story carefully, paying particular attention to the gunshot and the car driving by. He returned to those points after Gordon’s had gone over the morning in detail.

  “So you’d just caught this really nice trout, which was how big?”

  “Nineteen inches.”

  “Nineteen inches. I thought you said eighteen inches the first time.”

  “He did, sir.” Joe didn’t look up from the computer as he said this.

  “I didn’t have time to measure him,” Gordon snapped. “What difference does it make?”

  “In the solution of this crime, probably none. But it’s a very interesting side point to those of us who live here. Anyway, you were getting ready to unhook him when you heard the shot. Right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How loud was it and what did you think it was?”

  “It was loud enough, and there was a bit of an echo, I remember that. But it obviously wasn’t really close by. I just assumed it was a deer hunter.”

  “Could you tell what direction it was coming from?”

  “It seemed like generally towards the house and meadow.”

  “How sure are you?”

  “Fairly sure, but I can’t be certain. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.”

  “Do you have any idea what time this happened?”

  “I can pin that pretty close. I looked at my watch right after the car went by above us, and it was ten o’clock then. The shot must have been fired five minutes earlier, give or take a minute or two.”

  “Okay, about this car driving by, did you see any part of it at all?”

  “I’ve been racking my brains, and I really can’t think of anything. You have to remember I was concentrating on fishing. I just remember seeing the slightest bit of dust coming over the edge of the road.”

  “Think harder. Anything you can give us — even the slightest detail — could be absolutely critical.”

  “I’ve tried., Mike. I can’t remember anything. If I do, you’ll be the first to know.”

  Baca was holding a cheap ballpoint pen in his right hand. He tapped it on the arm of his chair a few times in impatience or irritation.

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll back off on that for now. But I need the best answer you can give to the next question, too. Did you hear or see any other car go by while you were fishing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You didn’t see or hear Ellen McHenry’s truck go by before the shot?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “Look, when we first started fishing, just below the house, the creek was curving away from the roa
d, and it was moving fast and making a fair amount of noise. It’s not very likely either Sam or I would have heard or seen anything. It was only when we got down by where I caught the big fish that we were getting even with the road again. Anybody could have come or gone that first hour and a half we were out there.”

  “Maybe,” said Baca. He tapped his arm rest with the pen again, then turned to the deputy. “We’re done with this witness for now. Why don’t you go over to the house and see if they can rustle up a pot of coffee for us? If the answer’s yes, bring back three cups.”

  The deputy folded up his computer, put it in a case, and trudged off toward the main house. Neither man spoke until he had been gone for two minutes, then Gordon broke the silence.

  “So what do you think?”

  “None of your business what I think. You ought to know that. Still, I want a word with you off the record.”

  “You suspect Ellen, don’t you?”

  “I haven’t reached a conclusion and evidence is far from in. What we have is a man who was killed in a wide open space in broad daylight, and the fact is that almost anyone in this county could have done it. There are five churches in town, and they all start their Sunday services at 10:30 or 11 in the morning. If the shot you heard was the one that killed Dan McHenry, the killer could have been in church singing hymns an hour later, with no one the wiser.”

  “Is that really what you think?”

  “It’s a possibility I have to consider.” Baca looked at his watch, then out the window toward the house. “Look, I have no right to be talking to you about this, but I’m going to anyway because I don’t want you getting in my way or causing trouble. And if anybody asks, this conversation never happened.”

  “What conversation?”

  “Thank you. Now listen. To someone else, you could be a potential suspect, but right now I’m writing you off for three reasons. First, you have a witness who can give you an alibi; second, I know for a fact that you don’t like guns or have any experience using them; and third because your motive is pretty marginal.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “Save the sarcasm and listen, but don’t breathe a word of this to anybody. From what we can tell right now, Dan McHenry was shot from a distance of 150 yards with a high-caliber rifle. The bullet didn’t go through the body, which is nothing less than an absolute miracle, and the medical examiner said she’s pretty sure it’s from a 30.06.”

  “Where was the shot fired from?”

  “Whoever did it got an angle above and behind him. And there’s one way you could do that. Just past the cattle guard when you get to the ranch, there’s a rough dirt road that goes off to the right and runs through the trees on the opposite edge of the meadow from the creek, going to a cattle pen at the top of the meadow. Based on where we found his fishing rod, it looks like somebody drove up there, took dead aim on him and fired one shot that hit him in the back and came out through the bottom of his heart. I’m guessing he died immediately or bled out in a couple of minutes. We’ll know when the coroner checks his lungs for water.”

  “So really anybody could have gone up that road and fired the shot.”

  “Anybody who knew about it, which probably reduces the list of suspects to about half the county.”

  “How about the gun itself? Is there any chance of tracing it?”

  “If we find a likely rifle, we can compare it against the bullet easily enough, but you have to realize that a 30.06 is one of the most commonly used deer rifles in the state of California. Probably half the people in the county own one.”

  “Wouldn’t there be tire tracks or some evidence along that road?”

  “We’re looking, of course, but I’m not hopeful. It’s a hard road with as much rock as dirt on the surface. And it’s only in cheap novels that killers drop monogrammed handkerchiefs at the scene of the crime.”

  “So it could have been anyone?”

  “It could have been anyone, but it had to be someone. And when we try to find that someone, we go back to the basics. That means looking for motive, means, and opportunity.”

  Gordon felt his stomach tighten.

  “When you look at it that way,” Baca said, “there’s one person who comes quickly to mind.”

  “Ellen.”

  “I’m afraid so. It looked as if she was going to lose the ranch to her brother. That’s motive. She has a house full of guns and knows how to use them. Last year, she won a gold medal in marksmanship at the County Fair. That’s means. And she can’t prove she wasn’t here at around the time the crime occurred. That’s opportunity.”

  “That’s also pure speculation.”

  “It isn’t enough evidence to make an arrest, but there are several other interesting points to be considered. First of all, there’s the matter of the missing gun.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a gun missing from a locked gun case in the main house. Ellen McHenry has no idea how long it might have been gone and claims it’s the one her brother used to use for deer hunting. It happens to be a 30.06.”

  Gordon exhaled loudly.

  “Then there’s the matter of an alibi. She says she left the house some time between 9:30 and 9:45 and went into town. According to her, she stopped at Kitty Stevens’ house to talk, but — guess what? — nobody was home. By the time she got to the grocery store, where somebody could vouch for her presence, it was ten thirty. She could have left the ranch at ten and done that, and even had time for a small stop to dispose of something.”

  Gordon listened in sullen silence. After pausing briefly to let the last point sink in, Baca continued.

  “On top of all that, there’s something a bit strange about the situation that led up to the crime. Considering what she and her brother are going through, why did she let him come up here and fish in the first place? Everybody who heard about that thought it was strange. And then there’s what she said to you last night.”

  “Said to me?”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. Just as I was leaving, she said, ‘I’d kill to have this whole thing go away. I love this place too much, and I can’t stand to think of losing it. Especially to that bunch.’ Pretty strong language.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Gordon, his anger rising. “That was just talk and you know it.”

  “I don’t know anything,” said Baca. “I’m just a dumb sheriff, so I try to collect all the facts and information I can and hope it leads me somewhere. And right now it’s pretty clear where this is leading.”

  “She didn’t do it.”

  “Gordon, come on.”

  “She didn’t do it. I just know.”

  “Listen. It’s obvious to me and to anybody else who had eyes and used them last night that you two kids are attracted to each other. That’s not surprising. You’re both nice people, and from her point of view you’d be a better catch than the slim pickings around here. But you don’t really know her, and you have no business getting involved in this investigation, emotionally or otherwise. So stay out of it, and as a friend I’m asking you to leave her alone, at least for now. Trust me. It’s the best way to do it.”

  Gordon sat silently, noticing that the bunkhouse had gotten noticeably darker since he first came in. Finally, he said, “I’ll take your advice on the investigation, at least. That’s your business. But do you really think she has the character to commit a crime like this?”

  Now it was Baca’s turn to pause before answering. “I’d like to think not, I really would. And maybe some evidence will come up that will turn me in a different direction. You know, Ellen’s a nice lady, but there’s one thing I feel in my gut. This murder was committed by someone the world has been regarding as a decent person.”

  • • •

  Gordon was in a sullen mood as he and Sam waited for their steaks to be served at the Sportsman. It was eight o’clock and he’d had nothing to eat since breakfast twelve hours earlier, but he was too tense to be really hungry. He was c
onsumed with what Baca had said, and kept turning it over in his mind in the hopes that, viewed from a different angle, the facts would suggest something other than what they did.

  The waitress brought their steaks (Gordon’s cooked medium-well and Sam’s medium-rare), and their pungent aroma finally caused Gordon’s appetite to return. This was cattle country, and the chef at the Sportsman knew how to do beef justice, so the two men were soon enjoying their meal and temporarily setting aside the murder of Dan McHenry. When they were about three quarters done, the waitress brought them two more bottles of beer.

  “We didn’t order these,” said Sam.

  “I know,” said the waitress. “They were sent by a gentleman in the bar.”

  Gordon turned to look at the door to the bar behind him. Hart Lee Bowen was standing by it, and acknowledged the attention by smiling and touching the brim of his hat.”

  “What’s this all about?” asked Sam.

  “I think we’ve been summoned for an audience with the great man.”

  “You mean …”

  “Rex Radio himself. Come on; let’s finish up. I want to hear what he has to say.”

  They ate the rest of the meal quickly and took their half-finished bottles of beer into the bar. It was half empty, and Radio, Bowen, and George Horton were occupying the same corner table they’d been at two nights ago. As Gordon walked up to the table, he looked closely at Horton. In a way, he was closer to Dan McHenry than anyone else had been over the past few years, and his face betrayed a look of shock. Gordon wondered how he had taken the news.

  “This is my friend Sam Akers,” he said, “and we’re both grateful for the beers. But the next round’s on me. I insist.”

  Radio waved his hand. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Nobody’s keeping count. I just wanted to say hello and thought this would be a good way to get the conversation going.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “I hear you caught a 22-inch trout in the creek below the McHenry house this morning.”

  “You must have gotten the news at some remove. Eighteen inches is more like it.”