Dark Tort

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “Whoa, Goldy, we’re lucky to have that much. They’ll establish a window for time of death when they do the full autopsy. He said they’re not too stacked up there.”

  I looked out the window at the snow and tried not to think of corpses accumulated in piles.

  “Did they find anything at the crime scene? Like that opal and diamond bracelet I was telling you about?”

  “Nope. No bracelet. No sign of forced entry either. What’s the security like there, anyway?”

  “Old-fashioned,” I replied. “Keys. Everybody had a set.”

  Tom looked around the kitchen. “Well, they want me to go in and help them out. I’m going to have to take the computer.”

  “Tom, please. I don’t want to get Sally Routt into trouble.”

  “Gotta do my job, Miss G. And I don’t think you’d fancy being charged as a material witness.”

  Oh, so that was what I was facing. I put two cups under the spouts of the espresso machine, pressed buttons, and tried to think.

  “Okay, look,” I ventured. “The computer won’t boot. Could you see if you can fix it? If you can, I’ll print out everything that’s in it and look it over. I’ll see if Dusty said anything about a new boyfriend, or enemies, or rich clients, or even folks at the law firm. If I recognize any of the people she’s talking about, I can tell you. Meanwhile, if it won’t boot, you can take it and I’ll tell Sally she needs to trust law enforcement more.”

  Tom raised his eyebrows. “I’ll give it an hour. The team won’t be assembled down at the department until nine.”

  “Get it to work, and I’ll make your sausage-and-potato casserole for dinner tonight.”

  Tom chuckled. “You make that casserole, I’ll get somebody here now to fix that machine.”

  Tom moved into the dining room and began puttering with the old computer. As he grunted and complained under his breath, I assembled boxes to take over to the Ellis place. Julian called and said a Volvo had crashed into a BMW at the bottom of Marla’s driveway, and he couldn’t get out. Apparently, a tow truck was on the way. He also offered an unprintable curse on folks who didn’t know how to drive in snow. He promised to be at the house by eight. I told him it was no problem, I was running ahead of schedule.

  Five minutes later, Tom hollered, “Yeah, baby!” in the excited tone he used to celebrate a Bronco touchdown. I hurried into the dining room; the computer screen was lit with a screen saver that was a picture of little Colin Routt. “One of the wires was loose,” he offered. I told him I’d checked all the connections. Tom shrugged, then double-clicked and brought up a list of documents.

  “Okay, Goldy. I’m going to connect my printer to this thing so you can get all the stuff you want. It’s better than my messing with your printer, then having to hook it back up to the kitchen computer. Okay?”

  “Great. I’ll get everything printed out before you leave, trust me.”

  Tom reached out and pulled me in for a warm hug. “Aren’t you glad you have a husband who can fix things?”

  I kissed his handsome face on both cheeks, then looked into his green eyes the color of the ocean. “I’m glad I have you. I don’t care about the fix-it part.”

  “Yeah, right.” He released me and ambled off to the basement, where he kept his computer, files, and printer.

  It only took about another ten minutes before Tom’s printer was connected and merrily spitting out reams of paper from the Routts’ files. There was a lot of material. Recipes. Addresses. Bills. What looked like drafts of papers and briefs Dusty had written for her first semester of paralegal training courses. There was a file marked “Journal,” but I didn’t take the time to read any of it, as I was in a hurry to finish. The journal itself was forty-odd pages long, single spaced.

  “Done,” I said to Tom as he reentered the living room, freshly showered and looking snazzy in jeans, turtleneck, and a chocolate-brown wool sweater I’d given him. He glanced at the stack of pages: about four hundred. He cocked one of his sandy-colored eyebrows at me. When are you going to have time to read all that? Then he disconnected the computer and heaved it onto the kitchen table. He pulled on his boots, overcoat, and cable-knit brown wool cap, another gift from me. When he was dressed for the outdoors, he pulled me in for a long kiss that reminded me again why I was glad this particular man was my husband, fix-it genius or no.

  “I’ll call you,” he said after he let go of me.

  “Wait a sec. When you’re down at the department, could you ask the detectives if they picked up on anything in the romantic department for Dusty? I mean, if she was having a fling with someone who gave her that bracelet, would the lawyers or staff be duty bound to tell your guys?”

  “Oh, absolutely. I’ll ask.”

  A moment later he was pushing out our back door holding the computer. “You’re going to have your cell?”

  “I’m putting it in my pocket right now.”

  Which was what I did. No sooner had he backed carefully out of our driveway than Julian pulled into it. The Rover engine growled as Julian made short work of the snow. On the way in, he put down his bags to pat Scout and Jake. Then he picked up his loads and stamped across the deck to the back door.

  “Dammit to hell and back that folks from Florida feel they have to make a trek to the farthest grocery store available to get milk when it snows!” were his first words once he’d come into the kitchen.

  “And good morning to you, too, Goldy,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah.” He placed the bags on the counter and gave me his patented furious look, although I knew him well enough by now to tell it was bogus. “From now on,” he announced, his dark hair quivering, “I’m going to start filling a really big thermos with espresso and sugar before I go anywhere. Either that, or have a battery-operated coffee machine put in that car, I swear.”

  “Great idea. Have some caffeine, then let’s finish up the food for this lunch.”

  Julian fixed himself a quadruple espresso, which he doused with his usual numerous heaping teaspoons of sugar. I tried not to look, like on those nature channels where you really don’t want to see the alligator eat the flamingo. But it was too late.

  “As long as you were running ahead of schedule and I wasn’t going to be here on time, I stopped at Aspen Meadow Café to pick up some pastries and run them over to Meg Blatchford,” he said. When Julian smiled, his entire face lit. “The oldest Episcopalian in Aspen Meadow was out in the snow, no less, practicing pitching her softball into that bucket in her yard. But there was something else.”

  “Something else?”

  Julian chugged his espresso and set his cup in the sink. “There wasn’t anything physically wrong with her. You know her, she’s so healthy she should be the cover girl for the AARP magazine. What I mean is that she was agitated. She said she’d like to talk to you. Said it couldn’t wait until tomorrow’s christening.”

  I looked ruefully at the stack of pages I’d printed out from Dusty’s computer. A snowstorm, Julian delayed, and now the ordinarily docile Meg Blatchford needing to see me ASAP. When was I going to get to read what Dusty had put in her computer? What if Sally called demanding to know what progress I’d made?

  Julian, sensing my distress, washed his hands, then began retrieving the vegetables he’d brought and running them under cold water. Over the gush from the faucet, he said, “We could make it to Meg’s, you know. If we left here at nine instead of nine-thirty. I can finish the prep while you pack the van. No, wait. I had a look at your tires the other day, and you don’t want to take the van in this snow. Let’s take the Rover.”

  “Your Rover’s not approved as a food-service vehicle.”

  “Yeah? There isn’t going to be any food service if we get stuck in a ditch.”

  “Look…Julian?”

  “Oh, boy. Here it comes.”

  “I have some stuff I’m desperate to start reading before we go. Any chance you could do all the prep and pack us up?”

  “Absolutely.” He grinne
d widely. “I’ll go really fast.”

  I fixed myself another espresso with cream and carried it into the dining room. One of these days, I told myself, I’ve got to start drinking decaf.

  I figured I’d begin with the journal. Dusty didn’t say at the beginning, “In the event of my death, please destroy,” but I still felt as if I was invading someone’s privacy. I told myself I was doing this for Sally. I also prayed that I’d find something helpful to the sheriff’s department investigation.

  At least she had dated the entries, which I began to skim. She’d been working for the law firm since just before the beginning of the year, which was when she’d started the second semester of her second year of paralegal night classes. Almost right away, Richard had given her all kinds of work to do, including helping the artist Charlie Baker, who’d just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, get his papers in order. But Dusty had enjoyed the work. She hated trying to find anything in Donald Ellis’s office, loved working out with Alonzo Claggett, but never thought she’d be as fit as his wife, Ookie. She also dodged Louise Upton at every opportunity.

  The next few pages were devoted to talking about how she never had enough money to buy the things she wanted. She listed the things she wanted: To learn about the law, everything about it. And after that, she’d like a Porsche SUV, a place of her own, a trip to Mexico…On the sixth page, a despondent note crept in.

  March 22: Charlie Baker died last night. Fell down his stairs, somebody said. It’s weird, especially after what I was called in to do the night before that. Oh, I’m so sad I can hardly write in here. How long had I been working with him, getting his stuff in order? Three months. At least he thanked me by giving me the you-know-what. Now when I look at it, I’ll always think of him. The cops asked me if Charlie was sad. You know, depressed. If you had pancreatic cancer, I asked them, wouldn’t YOU be depressed? They looked at me like I was nuts. I WISH I WAS ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT THE OTHER THING.

  The “you-know-what”? At least he thanked me by giving me…what? A bracelet? A painting? And what was the “other thing”? Was that what she’d been called in to do? Dusty was sure of what she was talking about. But it seemed to me she’d been worried someone else might be reading this. Because if someone did read it, which was, in fact, what I was doing, he or she would have to guess as to the nature of the “you-know-what” and “the other thing.”

  I skimmed about ten pages, in which she talked at length about how much she disliked Miss Upton, whom she did indeed call “Miss Uptight.”

  On March 27, she wrote, “Now that I know Miss Uptight is strapped for cash, I don’t have to be so scared of her anymore. It takes her power away. I wonder if she’ll know I know. Maybe I should act as if she still frightens me.”

  She talked about the oil-and-gas work with Donald Ellis, which had to be “the most boring thing on earth. And here I thought studying the law and learning about it would be fun. Those great big long drawers stuffed with his maps are the most confusing things in that entire wreck of an office. Where is the map of the southern Wyoming gas deposits, he wants to know? Who has ANY IDEA? Not me.” She said she couldn’t find the missing papers and maps in Donald’s office unless she had a year and a staff of six, all professional organizers. Which she didn’t.

  Richard she referred to as “King Richard,” “the Chief,” and “my screaming uncle.” She resented taking time from the “oil and gas mess” to tend to Charlie’s estate, which “just makes me feel sad.”

  April 1: So now it’s my job to go over to Charlie’s and clean out the refrigerator, take the fish out of his aquarium, and dispose of his plants. It’s snowing outside! I can’t put two dozen houseplants that Charlie sprayed and watered and doted on into a trash bag and leave them to freeze out on the curb! Sometimes I think the Chief has no feelings. Correction: I know he has no feelings.

  April 30: I go over there and I pick up the mail every day. I get the bank statements, the bills. Not the most entertaining work in the world. But at least I stop in to see Meg, and that’s fun.

  In June, she began to mention wanting to learn to cook.

  June 15: I am so bummed! I wanted to take cooking lessons at Aspen Meadow Café, but they say their kitchen is too small. I’m in love. But I’m afraid this is another Mr. O. Still, how am I going to make great meals for my new Mr.O. if I don’t know how to cook? Oh God, I’m so in love with him. I’ve never been in love like this before. One day I was normal, you know, just me. Then I was a new person. I’m just going to call him New O.

  New Mr. O.? New O.? Who was that?

  I quickly read the rest of the pages. There was talk of work, talk of seeing “New O.,” talk of being in love. Her last entry read: “Now I can compare them.”

  Compare what?

  “Julian,” I called. “Do you know all the guys Dusty was involved with?”

  “I think so,” his voice echoed from the kitchen. “There was Dick—Dick Shenley, from Elk Park Prep, although I never thought they were that serious, even though they went together until Dusty got involved with Mr. Ogden. Then there was Mr. Ogden, of course, that drama teacher I told you about. You know, I think she loved Mr. Ogden. The mistake she made was that she thought Mr. Ogden would leave his wife, but he didn’t. And of course she made a huge mistake to let him get her pregnant.”

  I stared at the sheet in front of me. “Anyone else with a last name beginning with O? Or a first name beginning with O, like, say…Otto?”

  Julian stopped packing up our boxes for the party and came into the dining room. “Nope. There was only one Otto in our class, and he was gay.” He thought for a minute. “I don’t know any guys our age in town with a first or last name beginning with O.” He pulled out his cell. “Let me phone a friend who went to Elk Park Prep.”

  Meanwhile, I put a call in to Wink Calhoun, who so far, hadn’t seemed to know very much about her best friend. After I identified myself, I asked, “Do you know of a Mr. O. whom Dusty might have been involved with?”

  “Mr. O.? Um…no. Wait. Donald Ellis has a client named Rock Ode, if you can believe it. He’s gorgeous, very flirtatious, but also recently married. Dusty and I called him Rock ’n Roll.”

  “Do you think Rock ’n Roll and Dusty might have had something going besides flirting and working?”

  “Goldy. Rock ’n Roll’s just married a model.”

  As if that answered everything, I thought, smiling. I’d catered for a fashion photographer a while back, and the models had been the least scintillating conversationalists I’d ever met. “Look,” I said, beginning to feel anxious about the upcoming party, “could you just think about it? When will I see you again?”

  “I’m coming to Gus’s christening. If I think of anything, I promise to tell you.”

  I gnawed at the inside of my cheek. “How about if we do it both ways. If I think of anything, I’ll call you, too.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  I thanked her and nipped back into the kitchen to work on the boxes. Julian, still on his cell, wrote me a note saying he’d called two friends who hadn’t gone to Elk Park Prep, but instead had graduated from Aspen Meadow High School. No O. His tone at the moment was compassionate. He scribbled, “Now I’m on with Sally Routt.”

  “Just a couple of quick questions,” he murmured. “No, no, we’re just trying to clarify one thing.” Hearing this, I grabbed his note to me and wrote, “Ask her if she knows whether Charlie Baker gave Dusty something, and if so, what?” He posed the question, furrowed his brow, and waited. Then he thanked her for her help and came back out to the kitchen.

  “There were four guys with first or last names beginning with O in the last three years at Elk Park Prep,” he announced. “One was the Otto I told you about. The other three were O’Meara, O’Laughlin, and Orck. O’Meara died in a car accident last year. O’Laughlin’s in the army serving in Germany. His wife and two-year-old twins are with him. And she didn’t know what happened to Orck, but she thinks he moved to Californ
ia.”

  I closed the flaps on the box with the cake. “Maybe this O-guy is someone she met in paralegal school.”

  “That’s why I called Sally Routt. She’s never heard of anyone with a first or last name beginning with O. It took her a few minutes, but she went to check the photograph of Dusty’s first-year night class at Mile-High Paralegal Institute. No Os in there. Sally says Dusty met Vic at paralegal school. He dropped out because it was too boring, he said. So he’s trying to make it again as a musician. Also, Sally doesn’t know of a single thing that Charlie Baker gave to Dusty.”

  So there’d been no one at Elk Park Prep or Aspen Meadow High School with a first or last name beginning with O. There was no one at Dusty’s paralegal school or at Hanrahan & Jule with last names beginning with O. There was only a flirtatious, wealthy, married H&J client named Rock Ode, which sounded like the title of a compact disc. Great.

  But oh my, Dusty was dying to cook for this person. She was in love. Her life had started over, she was a changed woman! If Dusty had acquired a new boyfriend, especially one who was hungry for gourmet meals, and rich enough to afford an expensive jeweled bracelet, wouldn’t she have told somebody?

  Maybe she was planning on telling me, and then she was killed.

  Which left me with a question: Who in the world was this New O.?

  CHAPTER 12

  I gathered the papers together quickly, as Julian and I needed to hustle if we were going to have time to visit with Meg Blatchford. Since we were going in the Rover, and that was an SUV, another SUV thought flitted across my mind: What if I was wrong to suspect Vic had concocted the story of almost being mowed down by an SUV? After all, there had been that honking horn, and Vic did seem genuinely shaken up, and worried that the computer had been damaged. What if the person who’d killed Dusty had been watching the Routts’ house last night and had seen Vic coming out with the computer? Thinking the machine might contain incriminating information, had this watcher tried to run over Vic and his load so as to destroy any electronically stored data?