Sign Off (Caught Dead in Wyoming, Book 1)

by Patricia McLinn

  “Nah, just that he was some lawyer from Chicago.”

  She knew nothing more, but she’d already sent my radar for secrets into alarm mode.

  The lawyer I knew best in Chicago was Mel Welch, and he was family. As in Catherine Danniher had his direct number and did not hesitate to use it.

  * * * *

  THAT NIGHT I DREAMT OF SPIDERS. Spinning webs that disappeared whenever I tried to make out their pattern.

  Some maddeningly motherly spiders. Some benevolent spiders with Mel’s balding head. Some with big bellies. Some wearing Stetsons, along with cowboy boots on each leg. Some spinning webs like the lace doily on the tray at Gina Redus’ house. Some webs catching golden sawdust that glinted in the sun for an instant before the glinting burst into something red and wet. Too heavy for the gossamer threads, dragging them down with tears of blood.

  I sat up in bed, wide awake but disoriented.

  The mother and Mel spiders were the most familiar.

  I’d known Mel Welch since I was nine and he became my mother’s cousin’s oldest daughter’s boyfriend. It was instant crush on my part. He showed more tolerance than most college boys would, leaving no scars. So when, in due course, he married my mother’s cousin’s oldest daughter—Peg by name—our relationship settled into a comfortable, trusting friendship.

  That friendship had expanded recently into the professional arena as my ex-husband appropriated sole possession of the personal lawyer and the agent we’d once shared, and I had lacked any motivation to search among the usual suspects for my own.

  If Mel was weaving a web that involved KWMT’s owners, the chances were excellent that Catherine Danniher was behind it somewhere.

  I would need to get to the bottom of that.

  But not now.

  Not with the bloody web of murders to deal with.

  I went to the kitchen for a glass of water. It was very early. So early, the sheer curtains that screened the bottom half of the window by the small kitchen table allowed no light through. Sunset was a battle most nights, a clash that splattered the sky in red and orange, then purple and mauve. But this was an evolution, a gray-blue limbo before day pushed on.

  Shivering, I accepted that I wasn’t going to sleep with spider dreams lingering. In fact, I grabbed a can of bug spray and sprayed around the front and back door and around each window frame.

  Still, spider webs remained on my mind as I sat down with a cup of coffee once the coffeemaker had finished its work. Like the web I’d seen in the trees that first day at Burrell’s ranch, with sawdust caught in it. And the web at his office, so thoroughly sprayed with a mist of blood that it tinted the window beyond it.

  Spiders don’t want their webs to be seen, otherwise their prey avoid them. But every action produces a trace of some sort. Sawdust from chain-sawing. Blood from murder. And then the spider web was revealed.

  But what trace would be left if someone had set up Tom Burrell? If I knew that, I might know how to find the pattern that would lead to the spider.

  If there was one.

  I’d just started to wrangle with that thought when sound shattered the stillness.

  Chapter Thirty

  MORE ACCURATELY, a brick shattered the glass in the kitchen door’s window.

  But I wasn’t considering accuracy at that moment. I was hitting the floor.

  Seeing the brick was almost a relief, because my first thought had been that it was a gunshot. Actually, that was my second thought. My first thought was a mental scream: Duck!

  Throwing bricks might not be friendly, but the mortality statistics aren’t real high. Still, it seemed the wisest course to crawl away from the source of the brick sitting amid a glitter of glass shards on the worn linoleum.

  I’d nearly reached the front door, still on hands and knees, when a second brick arrived in my kitchen, this one through the window over the sink. I stood up and quietly went out the front door. The heel of my right hand was bleeding. I dug out a tissue from the pocket of the sweats I’d slept in, and wrapped it around my hand as best I could.

  For some reason, the sight of my blood soaking through the ineffectual bandage made me angry. I could have—I should have—run to a neighbor’s house and pounded on a door telling them to call the police. The fact that the only neighbor I’d talked to for more than a do-you-recognize-this-dog conversation was an elderly woman across the street who would probably die of a heart attack if awakened in such a way was not really the reason I didn’t follow that path.

  Quite simply, I was angry.

  What right did somebody have to come hurling bricks through my windows at this ungodly hour of the morning? This rental house wasn’t much, but it was mine, by God, and I was going to defend it.

  I was not, however, angry enough to be completely stupid, no matter what Paycik said later.

  I skirted around the side of the house, behind the row of budding lilac bushes dividing my house from my next-door neighbor’s, and snagged the shovel from where I’d left it leaning against the back of the garage. I came up behind my house-attacker as he let fly a third brick, right through the window by my kitchen table. The sky was lighting rapidly, and I could plainly see the gaping hole it left and the flutter of the curtain as a draft sucked it out.

  I also could see the thrower’s stocky build beneath a Sherman High School letterman’s jacket.

  Brent Hanley was using a pile of bricks left by a previous tenant for ammunition like a kid’s stack of snowballs. He reached for another rectangular missile. Holding the shovel just above the metal part, I swung the handle like Sister Mary Robert wielding a yardstick. I aimed for his forearms. He must have caught sight of the handle just before it hit because he yanked his left hand back.

  The handle thudded against the padded surface of his right jacket sleeve hard enough to make him drop the brick, but the cracking against his hand was the more sickening sound.

  He bellowed, “My hand! Oh, shit, my hand!”

  “Get back,” I shouted while he careened around, nursing his left hand in his right. “Get away from those bricks.” I used the handle of the shovel like the muzzle of a gun to line him up against the garage wall.

  “You broke my hand! I think you broke it.”

  “That’ll teach you to play with bricks.” I had no sympathy. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Hanley?”

  “You wouldn’t stop asking questions.” He seemed to think that justified heaving bricks through my windows. I didn’t. “I had to show you I was serious. I could’ve done worse than this, you know.”

  “Then you would’ve been in even more trouble than you are now.”

  That didn’t seem to penetrate. But then came a sound—a throaty, rumbling growl—that definitely grabbed his attention. Mine, too.

  The shadow that had been slipping around the yard since I’d arrived had materialized into a matted, thin dog who stood at my hip. His lips were snarled back from an impressive set of teeth.

  The fact that the teeth, snarl and growl were aimed at Brent rather than me was a major relief.

  “Don’t let your dog bite me. Call him off!” Brent pleaded.

  I didn’t let on how new—and tentative—this alliance was. “Answer my questions then.”

  “I did it ’cause you gotta stop nosing around. You gotta stop doing a story on Rog.”

  “It’s not on Rog. I’m reporting on Redus’ death.” If the two overlapped . . .

  “You can’t ask any more questions.” He’d started at threat, slid to bluster, and now he was nearer entreaty.

  “Why, Brent?” I asked softly.

  “They’ll find out.” He slumped against the garage wall.

  I glanced at the dog. The snarl was gone, but he focused intently on Brent.

  “Who’ll find out? Your aunt and uncle?” His only answer was a muffled sound, like sorrow being swallowed whole and nearly choking him. “Brent, I think they know. At least your aunt. I think she’s wondered for a long time, and now I
think she knows Rog thought he might be gay.”

  “Not that. They’ll find out . . . they’ll find out it’s my fault. It’s my fault.” He wailed the repeated words. “I told him . . .” He tried to take a deep breath. It turned into a hiccup that shook him. His face was mottled red and white with sorrow and strain.

  “What did you tell him, Brent?”

  “I told him to keep it quiet. I cut class and went out there the day after he was arrested, and he told me about Redus taking Frank home and how Redus and the Judge was thick as thieves. Redus told Rog it could go easier on him if Uncle Roger donated to some fund Redus had. Redus said he could make the whole thing disappear. Rog said it was blackmail, and his father wouldn’t pay blackmail no matter what. That’s when Redus hit him.

  “Rog said he wouldn’t tell his father. I told Rog he was stupid. He had to pay up or word would get all over about . . . about him. Rog said he didn’t have money and he couldn’t do that to his parents. He kept saying over and over how he couldn’t do it to his parents. I told him to quit sniveling . . .” Brent sucked in a breath on a sob. “I told him he had to do what he had to do. But, oh, God, I didn’t mean for him to hang himself. I swear, I didn’t. I swear . . .”

  The sobs were stronger than his words, and Brent Hanley bent double beneath their weight, the top of his head nearly touching the hands he still held one inside the other. The dog moved, and I shifted the shovel handle, hoping I wouldn’t have to use it to protect Hanley.

  But all the dog did was get his shoulder between me and Brent’s slumped form.

  A flash caught my eye between the lilac bushes and my neighbor’s house. It was a patrol car, slowed nearly to a crawl, searching out an address. Someone must have called after hearing noise—either glass shattering or Brent howling. In another minute, representatives of the Sherman police force would join us. They’d take Brent away and, in the shape he was in now, he’d talk his head off.

  I hadn’t met any of the Sherman police yet, but if they were as closely connected to Claustel as Widcuff and his cohorts, could the boy be in danger?

  To Brent it was a side issue, but to a lot of other people what Rog Johnson had told his cousin about Redus and Judge Claustel would be of paramount interest. Maybe the judge had sent Frank away not only so his son wouldn’t be exposed to talk about him, but so he couldn’t talk himself. Maybe the judge was determined enough to prevent talk to resort to murder.

  “Listen, Brent. The cops are coming.” He jolted, and I hung onto his right arm with both hands, at the same time telling the newly tense dog, “It’s okay. Brent, I’m going to let you go, but I want you to know that you might have to tell the authorities what you just told me.”

  “I can’t,” he wailed, two tears sliding from his right eye.

  “Yes, you can. In the meantime, you tell your Aunt Myrna what you told me. Do you understand? Then the two of you decide if your uncle needs to know. But carrying this around as a secret has got to end. If you don’t tell your aunt, I will. Got it?” He gave a wavering nod. “Okay, now get going.”

  His red-rimmed eyes shifted from me to the light blinking between the houses, then he took off without hesitation. I counted to twenty, then circled the back of the garage, so I would greet the cops with the building between us and Brent’s escape route.

  “Stop! Right there!”

  I stopped.

  “Drop it!”

  With some surprise, I looked at the shovel I still held. I dropped it.

  “And call off your dog.”

  The shadow seemed to have attached itself to my side, and was grumbling deep in its throat at the shouter of these orders.

  By the time I had introduced myself to the police, shown them the damage to my kitchen and lamented my inability to catch the perpetrator, the sun was out in full force and so was the neighborhood. I told everyone the dog wasn’t mine. Hearing how I’d been feeding it, and looking at it still on watch beside me, everyone laughed and said, “He’s your dog now.”

  By the time the police departed, I had met the neighbors on both sides, reassured the nice old lady across the street that this probably wasn’t the work of a serial brick-thrower and declined with thanks three offers of breakfast. All I wanted was to brush my teeth, take a shower and clean up. In that order.

  By the time I got out of the shower, Paycik was on my front doorstep.

  “It’s barely sun-up, Paycik. What are you doing here so early?” I scoped out his hands. No bakery bag. “And without any food or coffee.”

  “Aunt Gee heard a call at your address and called me.” The woman must sleep with a police scanner under her pillow. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  I told him—the real story, not what I’d told the police—while I swept up glass. He had several comments on my intelligence in going after Hanley, which I refuted with dignity and logic. He didn’t see the light.

  “You need a keeper, Danniher. And don’t tell me how some wild dog was your backup. It could just as easily have attacked you. Or it could have been rabid. How could you—”

  “That’s it, Paycik. Out.” I held the broom.

  Perhaps remembering what I’d accomplished with a shovel, he held up his hands. “Okay, okay. I’ll shut up. For now.”

  I reached toward the doorknob, and threatened, “You want to meet this dog?”

  He threw in another bargaining chip. “And I’ll tell you more news my aunt told me this morning. They’ve got the murder weapon.”

  I put down the broom. In tacit truce, we pulled out chairs and sat. “Positive ID?”

  “Hard to get a hundred percent with a shotgun. But preliminary tests show the wadding and the chemical traces on Mona’s skin and on the barrel match. Plus—” He looked a little green. “—blood and, uh, other stuff that matches Mona’s was on the barrel.”

  I don’t know how my face looked, but my stomach felt as if we’d become color-coordinated. Awaking to images of blood-spattered spider webs after too little sleep, then fending off a high school behemoth who wavered from assault to tears was not my idea of a good morning.

  I thought of the gun neatly held in the rack in Tom Burrell’s pickup truck. “So the gun in his truck was the murder wea—”

  “Not the truck. That one hadn’t been fired lately. It was the one in the cabinet in the trailer.”

  “The one in the cabinet? But . . . Something’s wrong about that.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Something.”

  And then I did.

  The dream. “Spiders.”

  Mike stared at me. “What?”

  “Spiders—actually their webs. That gun wasn’t used to kill Mona.”

  “Spiders? Are you going to explain?”

  “There was a spider web from the windowsill to the cabinet door pulls.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly.

  “A big, intact spider web. Don’t you see? There’s no way anyone could have opened the cabinet to get that gun, then put it back without ripping the web. And no spider could have completed a web that big between when Mona was shot and we found her. Impossible. So that couldn’t have been the gun used to kill Mona.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, it was a pretty gruesome and—”

  “That’s why I focused on the spider web, Mike. I am sure. Absolutely sure. That spider web was intact. The gun we saw in Burrell’s office couldn’t have been the murder weapon.”

  “But the gun they found in that rack was the murder weapon.”

  “It was a different gun from the one we saw,” I insisted.

  “That means either the murderer risked coming back after we left or . . .”

  I stared at Mike as I finished his sentence. “. . . or the murderer was there in the trailer with us and made the switch after we left.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “IF SOMEONE WAS THERE, how’d they get away?” I asked that after we both pushed down the willies enough to function.

  He grunted something th
at sounded like “parked round back.”

  “The window was open. We would have seen a truck there.” The way I’d seen the cab of Burrell’s white pickup.

  “Bicycle, horse, on foot,” he muttered. “But you’re not asking the right question—the better question is if that would affect anyone’s alibi. The rest of them had plenty of time. But could Tom have beaten us back to his ranch if he left the trailer after we did? And that answer is yes, by pasture roads through his place instead of paved roads around.”

  My mind snagged on his phrase about not asking the right question. Sometimes you learn as much about the truth from the questions that don’t get asked. That’s what Burrell said in the rain in Sherman Supermarket’s parking lot. Questions that don’t get asked. There was one that had niggled at me.

  “Because there’s no reason to ask the question if you already know the answer.” I snagged the strap of my purse. “C’mon, Paycik, let’s go.”

  “Where?” He was already unfolding his large frame from the couch.

  “To test a theory that the question someone doesn’t ask can be more revealing than the answers to questions that are asked.”

  * * * *

  “GINA, WILL YOU PLEASE show us Foster’s leather case?”

  Without hesitation she went to the closet across from the front door, drew out an old-fashioned accordion-sided leather case that was heavy enough to require both hands to carry and brought it to her chair. She sat with it between her feet.

  “The sheriff’s department doesn’t seem to know anything about that leather case,” I said.

  She still said nothing. She hadn’t said anything when she opened the door for us, either. It was a nice change of pace after Paycik peppering me with questions all the way to O’Hara Hill. I told him I couldn’t answer until I got some answers of my own.

  “But you know about this case, don’t you, Gina?”

  Mike’s head jerked around at my low-voiced question, but it drew no response except a neutral stare from Gina.

  “You made sure to know where it was. Because you still inherit everything Foster had, don’t you? A lawyer knew right away that if a man dies without a will—like Foster did—his wife inherits, even if she has sued for divorce. As long as the papers haven’t gone through. The lawyer knew that right off, without having to look it up. He’s not even a divorce lawyer. So I’ve got to believe the divorce lawyer you saw in Cody would have told you that.”