“Which one do you like?”
“The argument’s a mixed bag for both of them. Holmes certainly seemed to be taken with Connie, and it’s possible she triggered a mid-life crisis with him. If he bedded her, and she started making noises about how his wife should really be told the truth, he’d stand to lose a marriage and his respectability. Plenty of people have killed for that before.”
“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself.”
“Bottom line: I’m not sure he’d act on the mid-life crisis, and I don’t see him as Connie’s type, from what we’ve heard of her. A bit too old and stodgy. But I could be wrong.”
“He could be one of those guys with snow on the roof and a fire inside.”
“As I hope to be some day. But no evidence against him — at least not now.”
“Which leaves Kevin, the other swain. In the play, he carries Connie onstage when she’s wearing a bathrobe, with supposedly nothing underneath. You think he got into her robe?”
“Could be. I’m guessing he was more her type than Holmes was. You know, from what we know about Gary, Kevin is maybe the kind of guy Gary could have been if he’d married the boss’s daughter and didn’t drink so much.”
“How do you know Kevin doesn’t drink so much? There are plenty of problem drinkers out there, and it isn’t always obvious.”
“You have me there. I don’t know. But because he was married to the boss’s daughter, he had a lot to lose if he cheated on her. He had an incentive to behave.”
“That presupposes that he was doing his thinking with his head. When it comes to women, a lot of men don’t.”
“True. And because he had a lot to lose, he’d have had a really good motive for drastic action if Connie started to squeeze him. Plus, he had to look out for his wife, who was watching him like a hawk.”
“Ah, the wife. And how do you like her?”
“Certainly a possibility. She already detested Connie because Connie got the part she wanted in the play. If Connie got her man, too, I could see her losing it. And this does look like a crime of impulse.”
“But was Kevin doing the nasty with Connie, and if he was, did Amy know about it?”
“The answer to both questions is an emphatic I don’t know. What we have here is a multitude of theories coupled with a paucity of evidence. Dill might have had some evidence, but he can’t tell us now.”
“In other words,” Peter said, “It’s kind of like the board game Clue, where you’re going around randomly throwing out ideas. ‘I say Colonel Mustard did it with the candlestick in the conservatory.’ Elimination by guesswork.”
“I can’t see where we’re eliminating anything, but if I’m not mistaken, here comes our dinner. And I’m starving.”
IT WAS ALMOST NINE O’CLOCK when they left the restaurant after a dinner that was better than they had expected. The temperature had been dropping steadily since sunset and was now in the low 40s. As they stepped outside, a gust of wind whistled through the canyon. It was a cold wind, foreshadowing the coming winter, and it shook the tops of the trees, bringing down a shower of autumn leaves loosened by the rainstorm of the day before. When it stopped, Gordon and Peter found themselves in solitude and silence, the only noise being the rushing sound of the river.
They headed home, seeing no one else and not saying a word to each other, lost in their own thoughts. When they reached the bridge over Dutch Joe Creek, Gordon took the flashlight out of his jacket pocket and shined it at the flowers in the coffee can attached to the bridge. They seemed to be the same flowers as last night. A couple of steps onto the bridge, he stopped.
“I was right about here when I saw her last night,” he said. He aimed the beam of the light at the far side of the bridge. “She was standing about there. I started toward her and stubbed my toe on a raised plank, and the light went off her as I tried to catch my balance. And then she was gone.”
“No shortage of places to hide on the other side,” Peter observed.
“Like looking for a needle in a haystack. It was pretty hopeless.”
He kept the beam pointed at where the woman in white had been. Peter finally spoke.
“Have you told Elizabeth about this?”
“Not yet.”
“Mind if I ask why not?”
“I don’t know what’s going on here, Peter. I’d like to be on more solid footing before I tell her about it.”
“Are you afraid she’ll think you’re crazy?”
Several seconds passed before Gordon answered.
“I don’t think so. But she’d be concerned. I don’t want to worry her.”
“She doesn’t strike me as the type who worries easily. Now this is just something I’m throwing out there, but I’m wondering if you’re afraid of showing her your vulnerability.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Well, Gordon, you are someone who likes to know what’s going on around him. I never saw you play basketball, but everybody who did says you were super-aware of everything that was happening on the court. Now you’re in a situation where you don’t know, and it’s bothering the hell out of you. Sharing it with her just might help.”
“Is that what you’d do?”
“I’d say tell her when you talk to her tomorrow.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Take it from someone who’s been there. The time to keep secrets from a woman is after you’re married to her — not before.”
Friday October 23
GORDON TURNED ON HIS PHONE after breakfast, at 8:45, and there was a message from a local number he didn’t recognize.
“Gordon, Sheriff Ketch. I need to talk to you about what you and Basil Dill were doing. The sooner the better. Call me.”
He took a deep breath and called the number; it must have been a direct line, as Ketch answered on the second ring.
“I was about to send a patrol car out to get you,” he said after a perfunctory hello. “Can you be at the courthouse at 10:30?”
Gordon looked at Peter. “Sure. Do I need to bring an attorney?”
“Probably not, but if you need one, we’ll let you make a call.”
“Should I bring my friend?”
“Not now. We’ll bring him in later if we have to. See you at 10:30.”
Gordon relayed the information to Peter, who decided to take a walk. After he left, Gordon tried to think of what he might do with the short block of time before he had to report to the sheriff. He remembered that on Sunday, Oscar Monroe had given him the names of three jurors in the case, and he decided to give them a call.
Bill Wells, who worked at the hardware store, didn’t answer. Likewise, Carol Conway, the rural mail carrier. That left Mildred Elliott, the housewife, and Gordon took heart when an older-sounding woman answered the phone.
“My name is Quill Gordon,” he said. “I’m a friend of Oscar Monroe’s, calling for Mildred Elliott.”
“Oh, that’s right. Oscar said you might be calling. I’m Mildred.”
“I understand you were on the jury for the Gary Baxter trial, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to talk about it.”
There was a slight pause. “I don’t see why not,” she said. “The trial’s over now, and I don’t suppose it would hurt anything.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that. Could I start out by asking how you ended up on the jury in the first place?”
“Well, I got a summons in the mail. That was unusual.”
“How so?”
“This is a small county. We don’t have many trials. I figured it was a drunk driving case. That’s what it was the only other time I got called. Let’s see, that was back in ’78 or ’79.”
“And how did that case turn out?”
“He pleaded guilty the day the trial was supposed to start. Several of us had made the drive over the pass and weren’t too happy it was for nothing.”
“I don’t blame you. But this time was different.”
“They actually ha
d a trial, you mean. Yes. When I heard it was going to last all week, I remember thinking that at least it was winter and Bob could probably get on at the ranch without me.”
“How did you feel when you ended up on the jury?”
“I sort of figured I would. Don’t ask me how, but when I found out what the trial was for, I just knew. Just like I always ended up on the PTA committees no one else wanted to be on.”
“Can you take me through the trial — how you felt as it went along?”
“I’ll try. How much do you know about it?”
“I’ve read the transcript.”
“All right, then. If you have questions as I’m going on, go ahead and interrupt.”
“Thank you.”
“To begin with, everyone on the jury had read about it in the Canyon Call. A murder is unusual around here. But I didn’t know the people and didn’t pay that much attention to it. That’s pretty much what everyone on the jury said. After the prosecutor’s opening statement and the first couple of witnesses, I was beginning to form an opinion that he’d done it.”
“You’re talking about Gary Baxter?”
“Right. But then the defense attorney started making some good points, and I began to waver a bit.”
“Did anything in particular give you doubt?”
“The blood spatters were the first thing. If her blood went all over the wall, I didn’t see how it couldn’t have gotten all over whoever hit her with the hammer. I might have held out against a conviction based on that if they hadn’t called in the other expert — the man with the funny name.”
“Preston A. Prescott?”
“Yes, that was it. What he said pulled me back into thinking I was right in the first place.”
“Was there anything particular he said that swayed you?”
“It wasn’t so much what he said as how he said it. He was very sure of himself, and the defense didn’t challenge him at all, so I figured he must be right.”
Knowing what he knew about Prescott, Gordon shook his head. Here was a demonstration that dubious forensic evidence, forcefully presented and insufficiently questioned, could sway a reasonable juror who had no way of knowing the weakness of the testimony.
“What else, then?” Gordon said.
“The only other reservation I had was about motive. All the testimony indicated that Gary Baxter was smitten with his wife and that though they argued a lot, he never hurt her before. That, plus the fact the prosecution didn’t present a motive, bothered me. Then I remembered what the prosecutor said in the opening argument: That they wouldn’t offer a motive because he claimed not to remember and she was dead, but that the evidence taken together would show he did it. And that’s what it came to in the end.”
Gordon remembered reading those lines in the transcript and thinking they were standard prosecutor boilerplate. He had underestimated their effect.
“So you thought the whole picture pointed toward Gary?”
“I think we all sort of did. In the jury room, one of the men, after we’d been discussing it for half an hour, said something like, look, he was in the house with the body, he was drunk, they did fight with each other before, and no one has even tried to suggest who else might have killed her. How can we let him go? And at that point, everybody kind of fell in line.” She paused. “Do you think we did the right thing?”
You didn’t have all the evidence, Gordon thought. But what he said was, “Given the testimony in the case, Mrs. Elliott, it’s hard to imagine any other jury reaching a different verdict.”
THE MORNING WAS CLEAR, and a steady wind had scoured the atmosphere to a preternatural level of clarity and purity. It was not a warm summer zephyr, but rather a cold wind with a hint of damp to it — a harbinger of the winds that whistle through the Bellota Canyon in the short days and long nights of winter. Gordon was halfway to the courthouse on foot when he realized he should have put on a jacket, but he picked up his pace, shoved his hands into his jean pockets and arrived unfrozen.
The sheriff’s department was on the second floor of the two-story courthouse, and within minutes of announcing himself, Gordon was led to Sheriff Ketch’s private corner office. The furniture was old and basic, and the walls were covered with photos, mostly black-and-white, of the sheriff and his employees at various ceremonies and functions. One of the windows overlooked the parking lot, with a good view of the gallows.
Ketch was seated behind his large, somewhat worn desk. Another man, obviously law enforcement, in his mid- to late forties, sat in a chair several feet to the sheriff’s right. A chair had been placed facing Ketch in such a way that when Gordon sat there, he wouldn’t be able to see them both at the same time. The man in the chair had a small notebook and a cheap ballpoint pen. Ketch stood up.
“Gordon, this is Detective Norm Stapenhorst, lead investigator in the Dill case.” Gordon recalled that he’d also been the detective in the Baxter case.
Stapenhorst and Gordon shook hands, and both sat down.
“So much for the small talk,” Ketch continued. “Why was Basil Dill coming to meet you at the Rope’s End last night?”
“It was a follow-up. I’d met with him at his house on Tuesday.”
“All right. What was the Tuesday meeting about?”
“You already know I’m looking into the Gary Baxter case, with an eye toward whether someone other than Gary may have killed Connie Baxter.”
“You’re wasting your time,” Stapenhorst said. “Connie Baxter married her killer. That’s what most women who get murdered do.”
“Most women, detective, but not all. If someone’s looking for an alternate theory of the crime, as I was, an obvious question would be how did Connie Baxter come into contact with her killer? What did she do in the time leading up to the crime that was a departure from her past life? From the day I got up here a week ago, one thing stood out. She acted in a play and did it pretty well, from what I hear. That put her in contact with a lot of people she probably hadn’t rubbed elbows with before. If Gary Baxter didn’t kill her, maybe the play was where she met the person who did.”
Gordon looked from Ketch to Stapenhorst. He seemed to have their attention now.
“So my friend and I went to see Basil Dill on Tuesday to see if he remembered anything about the interactions between Connie and other people involved in the play. He couldn’t think of anything at the time, but he called me at 4:15 yesterday to say he’d remembered something and could we meet at the Rope’s End to talk about it.”
“Going for a free drink, probably,” Stapenhorst said.
“You may be right, detective. Anyway, I’d noticed that Reg the bartender was also in the play and I wanted to talk to him about it before the bar got busy, so my friend and I went down early.”
“Very convenient how you planned your alibi,” Stapenhorst said.
Gordon let it go. “Surely, gentlemen, you have to admit now that there may have been more to the Baxter case than it first seemed. The fact that Dill was essentially assassinated on the way to tell me something about Connie and someone else would certainly suggest a connection with the Baxter case. No?”
Gordon looked at the two lawmen, who sat stoically and silently.
“Oh, come on now,” he said. “What else do you think could be going on here?”
Ketch had been leaning back slightly in his high-backed chair, the plushest thing in the office. Now he sat up straight.
“I’ll tell you what else,” he said. “You said yourself that Dill was assassinated. This shooting has the look of a professional job about it, and I think we know what’s behind it all. There’s been a surge in drug use in this county in the last year, and we haven’t been able to figure out who the dealer was. This pretty much answers the question. It’s looking like Dill was running the drug ring and did something his suppliers didn’t like, so they sent out one of their hired guns to get rid of him. Unfortunately, by the time we figured that out, the shooter could have been anywhere between Sacram
ento and Reno.”
Gordon was speechless. Finally, he swallowed and said:
“Have you ever met Basil Dill, sheriff?”
“A couple of times, but not for very long.”
“Well, if you spent even a couple of minutes with him, you’d know he was a man with his head up in the clouds — thinking about himself and his plays and productions. I seriously doubt he could run the cash register at a coffee kiosk, let alone be the brains behind a drug operation.”
“That’s what you think?” Stapenhorst said.
Gordon nodded.
“Remember, the man was an actor. It looks like he fooled you and everybody else in this town.”
“Did you find any drugs in his house?”
“He was probably going outside to pick up his weekly shipment when he got it. That’s why we didn’t find anything.”
“Oh, and Gordon, one other thing,” Ketch said. “The fact that he was all of a sudden going out to see you looks suspicious as hell. That sure set him up for the ambush pretty well. So we’re going to need to look into your background and see what we can find. For starters, I need to make a copy of your driver’s license.”
“This is surreal,” Gordon said, shaking his head. “Go ahead and look all you want. The only thing you’re going to find on my record is a speeding ticket in Plateau County about a year ago. And I’d be happy to give you several references from law enforcement people who’ll tell you I’m on their side and generally an OK guy.”
“Like who?” Ketch asked.
“Sheriff Chris Huntley of Plateau County.”
“Don’t know him.”
“Obviously. Chris is a woman. How about retired Detective Harry Rogers of Lava County?”
“Sorry. You’re not impressing me.”
“All right. Sheriff Mike Baca of Summit County.”
That got Ketch’s attention.
“You know Sheriff Mike? Isn’t he retiring at the end of the year?”
“I haven’t seen him lately, but that’s what I hear.”
“Well, if Sheriff Mike puts in a good word for you, that’ll go a long way.”
I Scarce Can Die (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 5) Page 21
