I Scarce Can Die (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 5)

by Michael Wallace

  “So somebody thinks Gary’s innocent, eh?”

  “Or might be.”

  “Well, I have my doubts about that, but until the client says he did it — and Gary never has — I suppose there’s always a chance.”

  “I thought he confessed.”

  “You could hardly call it a confession. The sheriff’s detectives grilled him for four hours when he was drunk, sick and confused. They kept hammering him about how bad it looked, and he finally said, ‘I guess I must have done it.’ Hardly your free admission of guilt, but it killed him with the jury.”

  “Didn’t he …”

  “You’re going to ask if he had an attorney, and the answer is no. He didn’t think he killed her and he was trying to help the sheriff’s office at that point. When he realized they were pinning it on him, he was too tired and confused to react properly. If he’d called me right away, I’d have put a stop to the questioning as soon as I got there and not let the police talk to him until I’d heard his story first and he was completely sober. But that’s not how it went down.”

  “So you think the confession’s suspect, but you still think he did it?”

  “I’m afraid there isn’t any other explanation, unless you want to bring up the vagabond psycho passing through, who just happened to decide to kill Connie Baxter that night. The jury would have believed that theory about as much as they believed his recanting his confession.”

  “In other words, not at all.”

  “That’s right.”

  There was a short silence before Gordon spoke again.

  “Can you just tell me briefly how you got called into the case, and how you feel it went.”

  “Sure. I’ve been around here for, oh, about 12 years now. Most of my work is general practice stuff — wills, contracts, rental agreements, evictions, unpaid bills. But I also get appointed to handle criminal cases from time to time. Williams, the other lawyer in town, doesn’t like to do them.” He smiled and continued.

  “My first jury trial was three months after I got here. A routine DUI, where the defendant had a blood-alcohol count of .29 and the arresting officer had followed all the proper procedures. It was a good case to start with, because even if I messed up, it would have been the right verdict.”

  “If he had that high a blood count, why did he go to trial?”

  “Excellent question. That was when the drunk-driving laws were being tightened, and my client had three prior convictions in the past four years. He was looking at a lot of time for this one and I guess he figured he had nothing to lose by taking it to the jury.”

  “So you got called into Gary’s case because you’re kind of the de facto public defender here?”

  “Actually, no. When they told him he could have an attorney, he asked for me. I’d represented him on a DUI he pleaded out on a few years earlier, so he knew me. I’d only done misdemeanors up to that point, but Gary wanted me, and I told the judge I thought I could handle it. And to skip the false modesty, I think I did pretty well with what I had. Which wasn’t much.”

  “How long was the trial?”

  “Three and a half days. Jury selection began at 9:30 on Monday, and by lunchtime we had a jury. Testimony ended at three o’clock Thursday afternoon. Closing arguments and judge’s directions went from 9:30 to 11 Friday morning, and the jury said they had a verdict at 11:45. I guess they wanted to eat lunch at home.”

  “Did you try to plea-bargain it?”

  “I tried for manslaughter, but the DA said no dice because she’d been hit with the hammer multiple times. The case was nice and simple, just the way juries like them. A) Gary was drunk and on the scene when the body was found. B) Gary and his wife had a long history of arguing. Some people in town called them ‘the Battling Baxters.’ C) He confessed, sort of, but to a jury a confession is a confession. And, D) There was no alternative theory as to who else might have done it. Under those circumstances, I can hardly fault the verdict.”

  “And yet, you’re uneasy.”

  Pope stood up and moved to the wall, where two plastic storage containers full of documents were stacked one atop the other. He lifted each onto the table near Gordon.

  “Here are the documents in the case,” Pope said. “Annie has a form for you to sign for them when you leave. You can look at them any way you want, but my suggestion would be to start with the trial transcript.” He paused and stroked his chin. “I guess most criminal cases are like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of odd pieces. I’d be interested to see if you see the same odd pieces I did. They may not amount to anything, but if there were an alternative explanation for the crime, the odd pieces would strengthen my resolve to look into it.”

  “All right,” Gordon said, “I’ll start with the transcript and give you a call in a couple of days, if that’s all right.”

  “That would be fine.”

  “Just one more thing. A month or so before she was killed, Connie acted in a summer theater production of The Philadelphia Story. Do you know anything about it?”

  “I saw it. Twice, actually. She was pretty good. But what does that have to do with her murder?”

  “Maybe nothing. But when somebody gets killed, and they’ve just done something that’s a major departure in their life, I’ve got to ask if there’s a connection.”

  “I doubt it. I think she was just bored and looking for attention.”

  “Would you have a copy of the program, still?”

  “There might be one squirreled away at the house somewhere. But if you want to know what was going on with that play, you should talk to Basil Dill.”

  “The director?”

  “Executive producer and artistic director. He hardly gets paid for doing those shows, so he’s really touchy about his titles.”

  “I’ll remember that. Do you have a phone number for him?”

  “He doesn’t have a phone. He lives in a cabin on Scopazzi Creek Road, about three- quarters of a mile out of town. An aunt left it to him a few years ago, and he mostly holes up there, trying to write The Great American Play.” He wrote the address on a scrap of paper. “Just knock on the front door.”

  “I’ll do that,” Gordon said. “Any other suggestions about Mr. Dill?”

  “He might talk a bit longer if you brought a bottle of whiskey with you.”

  “Scotch or bourbon?”

  Pope hesitated briefly. “I don’t think he’s terribly discriminating.”

  “Noted. Well, thank you for your time. I’ll be in touch.”

  He stood to leave, and Pope rose and shook his hand.

  “Good luck.”

  As Gordon picked up a plastic container and turned to the door, Pope added as an afterthought:

  “Poor Gary. If he’d only hit her once, I think I could have gotten him manslaughter.”

  GORDON STOPPED AT THE STORE and bought a bottle of Jack Daniels for Basil Dill. Peter, of course, spotted it on the back seat as soon as he got in the Cherokee.

  “There’s a meeting tonight, if you want to come with me,” Peter said.

  “That’s all right. I have a transcript to read. I probably won’t get through it all.”

  “It’s your liver. All I’m saying is that nobody but an alcoholic buys whiskey before ten in the morning.”

  “It’s not for me. It’s for Basil Dill, the summer theater director. His house is on the way to our fishing, and attorney Pope suggested Basil might be a bit parched.”

  Peter let it go, and Gordon drove back across the bridge and up the road that followed Dutch Joe Creek to the courthouse. A quarter of a mile past the courthouse, Scopazzi Creek flowed into Dutch Joe, and a dirt road led off to the left, following the tributary. There were several houses — more like summer cabins, really — along the first part of the road, and Gordon pulled up in front of three cabins on the left, or creek side, of the road. It was in enough of a canyon that the houses were entirely in the shade. They seemed to have been built in the 1950s and appeared to be in reasonably good repair.
All had varying amounts of detritus — patio tables, appliances, a rusty vehicle — in front, and the one on the right had smoke coming from a chimney.

  “It’s the center one we want — 574,” Gordon said, pointing to the house with a rusted washing machine and a croquet set (but no lawn) in front. He got out of the car, taking the bottle with him, went up the two steps to the narrow porch and front door and knocked. There was no response, and after a suitable interval, he knocked again, with the same result.

  As he turned to leave, a woman came out of the next cabin, the one with the smoking chimney. Seen at a distance, in the shade of the canyon, she could have been anywhere from mid-fifties to mid-seventies in age, with darkish hair streaked with gray, dressed in a long skirt, a sweater and an apron.

  “Doris Brubaker,” she said. “Are you looking for Mr. Broadway?”

  “I’m looking for Basil Dill.”

  “That’d be him. He’s not here today. He took a day off from writing The Great American Play to go to Green Valley,” she said, mentioning the closest town in the direction of Sacramento that would have a Safeway and CVS drugstore.

  “Too bad. I was hoping to talk to him about the summer theater.”

  “You can leave a note asking him to call.”

  “I thought he didn’t have a phone.”

  “He doesn’t. But he’s not shy about asking to use mine.”

  “You seem to know him pretty well. Do you think he’d be willing to talk to a stranger?”

  She gestured toward the bottle of Jack. “If you show up with that, you won’t be able to stop him from talking.”

  “Good to know,” Gordon said. “I’ll leave a note with my number then.”

  “Is it a local number?”

  “Actually, it’s a cell phone with a San Francisco area code.”

  She sniffed. “Then I’ll charge him a dollar for the call,” and with that, she turned to go back inside.

  “Thanks for your help,” Gordon called after her. He wrote a brief note, wedged it securely between the door and doorjamb, and climbed back into the Cherokee. They drove slowly up the dirt road for about three-quarters of a mile, at which point it separated from the creek, went over a slight rise, and dropped into a small valley about a quarter of a mile wide, with the creek running through a meadow at the heart of it. There were a few cabins, unconnected to phone or electricity, in the valley, and Gordon surmised they must be summer residences. There was no sign of life at any of them.

  Several hundred yards into the valley, there was a decent turnout on the right side of the road, and Gordon pulled into it. It was just past ten in the morning, and shaping up as a fine, sunny day, with a few wispy clouds in the sky. There was no wind, and the only noise was the faint sound of water running in the creek a hundred feet away. They had an unobstructed walk to the stream.

  “What have we here?” Peter asked.

  “This is one of the state’s wild trout streams,” Gordon said. “There are lots of wild Brook Trout, some of them pretty decent sized, and a smaller number of Browns. No monsters here, but we might be able to catch an 18-incher.”

  They got their rods from the Cherokee and walked down a slight slope to the creek. It was 15 to 20 feet wide most places and ran clear as gin over a gravel bed. Overhanging shrubs and banks provided ample cover and security for the trout. It was a beautiful place to fish, and they had it to themselves. They decided that Peter would work his way downstream, while Gordon would go upstream, then come back down following Peter. In this way, they’d be within sight or hearing of each other nearly all the time.

  For an hour and a half, Gordon was lost to the world, so completely was he focused on the stream and the places it might hold fish. Reasoning that the trout, late in the season, would be storing up food for the winter, he cast a Royal Wulff, which mimics a large, generic bug, to likely looking spots. The result was that he caught eight fish in that time, six Brook Trout and two Browns. The largest fish was 13 inches, but all were beautifully colored natives and a pleasure to behold before he released them.

  The valley was flanked on both sides by steeply sloped hills, densely forested, and backing onto the larger mountain range behind. Gordon had begun to double back toward Peter and was now standing directly across from a stand of wild berry bushes near the hills on the other side. He wondered if there would be any berries left this late in the season, then returned his mind to the stream. There was an undercut bank on the other side of the creek that looked like a likely holding spot for fish. He had failed to raise any on the way upstream but wanted to try again now. Kneeling, to keep his profile low, he cast to the current just above the bank and was pleased when the fly landed just where he wanted it to. He began following its drift downstream.

  Then, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a movement in the background.

  He jerked his head up sharply, just as what would have been the biggest fish of the morning, rocketed to the surface to take his fly. He never reacted to the fish because he was staring at the source of the movement.

  A pale, blond-haired woman, dressed in a long white dress, was walking — no, gliding — along the trees at the bottom of the hillside. She got to the stand of berry bushes on the other side and turned to face him.

  It was the same woman who had been in the upper-floor window of the house while he was catching trout for breakfast Saturday morning.

  He turned toward Peter and called his name as loudly as he could. Peter set his rod on the bank and began jogging toward Gordon. As he waited, Gordon turned to look at the berry patch again.

  The woman in white was gone.

  Peter arrived, out of breath, a minute later.

  “Are you all right?” he said. “The way you were shouting, I thought you’d been bitten by a snake or something.”

  “No, no. I’m OK. It’s just that I saw her again.”

  “Saw her again,” Peter repeated. “I think I’m missing part of the story here.”

  Gordon realized he’d never told Peter about the first sighting Saturday morning, so he backed up and did so.

  “It was her, again,” he concluded. “I’m sure of it.”

  Peter took a long look around the valley.

  “How did she get here?” he finally said. “We didn’t see any cars coming up, and nobody’s driven by since we arrived. I’m pretty sure of it.”

  “I don’t know, but I know what I saw. You didn’t see her when I called you?”

  “No, but I was looking at you, not the opposite shore. Do you think she’s dangerous?”

  “That never entered my mind. I was just startled to see her.”

  Peter took a long look at the berry bushes on the other side.

  “It could have been someone who just happened to turn up where you were fishing twice in three days. That’s within the realm of possibility. I can think of another possibility.”

  Gordon didn’t respond, so Peter continued.

  “How long have you and Elizabeth been going together, Gordon?”

  “Nearly a year, why?”

  “It’s getting to be pretty serious, then, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I suppose so, though a lot is still up in the air.”

  “Ah, yes. The unspoken understanding. I guess my question would be whether it’s beginning to get serious in your mind, anyway. Because if it is, and the seed of the next step has been planted in your brain, it’s quite possible that this woman in white is a subconscious manifestation of all the others you’d be forsaking if you took the plunge.”

  It took Gordon a full minute to respond.

  “Bullshit,” he finally said. “Total bullshit. It was a real woman I saw both times. When we get back to town, we’re going to stop at the house where I saw her the first time and see if we can find out who she is.”

  THE HOUSE WHERE GORDON had first seen the woman was robin’s-egg blue, not that he’d been studying the paint job. As they drove back into Dutchtown just before 2 p.m., he realized they must hav
e passed it on their way to the creek. Seen from the street, there was a “For Sale” sign in front, and the house had a distinctly abandoned look to it.

  “You’re sure this is the place?” Peter asked.

  “No doubt about it.”

  He got out of the Cherokee and walked to the side of the blue house. In the creek below, he could see the place he had been fishing Saturday morning, and above it on the other side, the house they were staying in. There was a window by the front door, and he looked in. What seemed to be a living room or family room sat empty and unfurnished inside. He pushed the doorbell and could hear it buzzing, but no other noise.

  He walked back to the car, and when he got to it, turned and looked at the sign.

  “Well?” Peter asked.

  “It looks empty. But it’s listed by Dutchtown Realty. I’m going to drop by and have a word with Carla.”

  “You mean ‘Marlene’?”

  “I think she goes by Carla on business days.”

  He drove the two blocks to the office. As he pulled up in front, his cell phone rang.

  “Gordon? Len Vincent here. What are you doing in the next half hour?”

  “I have to have a word with the real estate agent, and then I’m free.”

  “Can you and your friend join us for coffee or ice cream when you’re done? I’d love to tell you about our visit to the newspaper.”

  “Sure. Where should we meet?”

  “Only one place in town serves coffee and ice cream. Mooney’s on River Street.”

  Gordon looked at his watch. “Two forty-five, then?”

  “Perfect. See you there.”

  Gordon turned to Peter. “I just made us a coffee date with Len, the historian. You can skip it if you’d rather not.”

  “I can use a cup of coffee,” Peter said. “And if it’s OK with you, I’d like to hear what Carla/Marlene has to say about the house.”

  Carla was seated at her desk, and another agent was on the phone at another desk along the back wall. Carla rose as they approached.

  “You must be Gordon’s friend,” she said to Peter. “Carla Thibaud.”