by Leigh Hearon
She probably just wants to make sure the dogs don’t bed down with her, Annie thought to herself, then felt ashamed at her suspicions toward her half sister’s first true act of kindness while in her home.
Annie’s mood was somewhat marred at the bank, where she presented Marcus’s check and was regretfully told that there would be a ten-day hold on the check until it cleared from its point of origin in California. Yet the mere act of depositing the check made her feel that she was doing something in the effort to find Marcus. If the check cleared, she thought, then presumably Marcus was alive. Or maybe not.
The arrival of the puppies brought much-needed laughter into Annie’s home. The entire Clare clan was enchanted with the little pups, and Annie took deep satisfaction at watching the children happily play with them. She joined in the excited discussion of what to name them, and good-naturedly withdrew her suggestion of “Mutt” and “Jeff” when a loud chorus of “Noooos” followed her contribution. Only when it was clear that downtime was necessary for both pups and kids if the world was going to continue to revolve on its axis did she remember that Marcus was still missing. She helped usher the children out the door, promised they could come back tomorrow, promised that she would not name them without their knowledge—before turning her thoughts inward again. Lavender escaped to her room for a nap.
Annie went outside to the stables to think. As always, mucking stalls was a catalyst in the process.
She finished the stables in near record time and was heading over to Trooper’s quarters when the phone rang. Annie dropped the mucking fork and ran back to the tack room. She noticed that her hands were shaking as she picked up the phone.
“Annie? We have some news. Sea-Tac police found Marcus’s car in the long-term parking lot this afternoon. Car’s locked; no one’s inside. Doesn’t look like anything else is inside, either, although the windows are tinted so damn dark that it’s hard to tell.
“Annie?” Dan sounded concerned.
She realized she hadn’t said anything back. She wanted to hear everything he had to say, first.
“Sorry, Dan. That sounds like good news.”
“I hope so. So far, we haven’t found any evidence that Marcus boarded a plane, domestic or international. But we won’t know for sure for a day or two. He could have boarded under another name. We’ve asked Homeland Security to look through all the videos, starting from 1400 hours yesterday, and that’s going to take some time.”
“What are you going to do with the car?”
“We’re having it hauled as we speak to the Seattle PD impound lot to look it over. We’ll secure it as evidence, then head back later tonight. I’d like to stop by when I hit God’s green earth again, Annie. As of now, you were the last person to talk to Marcus. I need to get your statement.”
“Fine. I’ll be here.” Annie would have done almost anything to keep in the loop of the investigation. If giving her statement gave her more information, she was happy to do it. “But you’ll probably have to meet Lavender.”
“Your pink-haired sister? Can’t wait.”
“Half sister,” Annie corrected him, but Dan had already hung up the phone.
* * *
Annie got one more phone call that afternoon, and it was not a pleasant one.
“Is Anne Marie Carson home?” It was a male voice, one she didn’t recognize.
“Speaking.”
“Ms. Carson, I understand that you have a real valuable piece of horseflesh on your property.” The vernacular placed the speaker as a born-and-bred local. Annie’s heart thudded, but she was silent. The voice went on.
“So, the way I heard it, the horse’s owner is dead and the man who killed her is a fugitive from justice. Am I getting it right, Ms. Carson?”
“Who is this?”
“Oh, just a friend of a friend.”
“What, too scared to tell me your name?” Annie’s body was on high alert, but unlike her equines, who would have been ready to flee, Annie was poised to stand and fight.
“Not important. But my friend wants you to know something. He said to tell you maybe you can handle the horse you got now, but Marcus Colbert is one stallion you don’t want to mess with.”
“Who are you?”
“As I said, it’s not important. Just pay attention to what my friend says. He’d hate for you to get into trouble.”
Annie banged down the phone, her heart pounding.
* * *
The puppies were fast asleep in their new bed, and the house was filled with the all-encompassing warmth of a good woodstove fire when Dan arrived later that evening. Annie had told Lavender that the sheriff would be making a house call, and apparently her previous warning that she could be arrested for not appearing in a Florida court had been taken seriously. Lavender had fled to her bedroom immediately after dinner and shut the door. Musky incense began to waft through the house, intermingling not unpleasantly with the cedar fire.
Dan sniffed the air suspiciously as he removed his gloves, tipped his sheriff’s hat, then tossed it onto one of Annie’s chairs.
“You aren’t going all woo-woo on me, are you, Annie?” His tone was dubious.
“Hell, no. The aroma is gratis of my new boarder. You know perfectly well I prefer the smell of horse manure and fresh hay.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Dan peered through the open kitchen door. “Where is she, anyway?”
“Hiding in her room. I told her you were mean and ugly.”
“Aw, Annie. You always were the flatterer.”
Reverting to her usual banter with Dan raised Annie’s spirits. If she could joke, she could get up tomorrow. She could cope with life again.
“You got any of that single malt on the shelf?”
Annie arched one eyebrow but dutifully pulled down the Glenlivet and poured hefty slugs into two shot glasses. She was more than happy to empty the bottle if it got Dan to talk about what he’d learned.
The sheriff eased his body into one of Annie’s small kitchen chairs and flung one meaty arm over the back. He took the proffered glass from Annie and drained it in a single gulp. Annie stared at him, momentarily stunned. Then she refilled his glass and demurely sat down next to him and waited for Dan to speak.
He cleared his throat gruffly, looked at his nails critically, then sighed.
“Well, Annie, I hate to say this, but it looks like you were right.”
Annie stopped herself just in time from making a predictable sarcastic reply.
“In what way?”
“There’s no sign that Marcus ever boarded a plane, under his name or any other. We’ll know definitely later tonight. My money still would be on his being a fugitive from justice except for the car.”
“What about the car?” Annie’s throat tightened.
Dan sighed and shifted his weight from one leg to another.
“It’s clean. Too clean. Everything’s been wiped down. Can’t find a single usable print on the entire vehicle.”
Annie privately thought that if Marcus were to abscond, he might very well have thought of doing that precise thing, but she said nothing to Dan. She sipped her scotch thoughtfully and waited for the next tidbit of information.
“Of course, Marcus might have thought of doing that, too,” Dan said, deflating Annie’s thought of herself as budding detective. “But we found one piece of evidence that shouldn’t have been there. Marcus’s briefcase, full of business papers from the ranch. It was wedged way back into the trunk. Almost missed it when we cleaned it out. That has Marcus’s prints all over it. Now why would he leave that behind? Seems like it’d be the first and only thing he’d take—other than his money, of course—if he’d really fled the country.”
Annie’s heart sank. “But surely there are video cameras in the airport, aren’t there, Dan? If Marcus wasn’t in the car, couldn’t the cameras tell us who was?”
“You’d think so. There should have been. But the airport security cameras are run by humans, not computers.�
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“I don’t understand.”
“Every floor of the airport is monitored at a dozen different angles. Problem is, those monitors are manned by airport security, so when you get tired of watching one area, you can flick to a new vantage point. It’s your call. In this case, we’ve got Marcus’s car arriving at the airport at 22:43 hours, but with the tinted windows, you can’t tell who’s driving. We next see the car go all the way up to the twelfth floor— that’s the open-air deck—but no one on shift at the time bothers to do any surveillance up there. So there’s no visual record of anyone getting out of Marcus’s car. “
“How about the exits?”
“No video in the elevators. Apparently our great state of Washington believes it’s an invasion of privacy.”
Annie thought about that for a moment. Then she leaned forward and topped off Dan’s glass, almost empty.
“I got an anonymous call today.” She said it reluctantly. Earlier, she’d decided she wasn’t going to tell Dan, but considering that Marcus was now halfway off the suspect list, she figured she could risk it.
“What kind of call?”
“Oh, just some local yokel who said he was ‘a friend of a friend,’ who wanted me to know that he knew I had Hilda’s horse.”
“Why would that be news?”
“Well, he also warned me off Marcus. Said he was someone I shouldn’t mess with.” Annie had no intention of telling Dan the man had described Marcus as a stallion.
“Well, a day ago, I would have agreed with your anonymous caller. Now, I’m not so sure.”
“So what do you think, Dan? Are you convinced now that something happened to Marcus? “
“I think it’s looking mighty suspicious. All of Marcus’s accounts are intact, although of course, every single one of them will be frozen as of this Friday if he doesn’t appear.”
“Damn it, Dan! I just deposited Marcus’s check and it’ll take ten days to clear!”
“Sorry about that, Annie. It had to be done. There is one bright spot, though. I talked with Hilda’s man, Todos, on the way back to the Peninsula. He assured me that he was more than willing to stay on and take care of the horses, with or without money. Quite the guy, that Todos. They don’t make much more dedicated employees than that, these days.”
Annie was so livid that the only thing she could do was pour herself another belt of scotch.
“You call me immediately if this anonymous caller ever contacts you again,” Dan added.
She didn’t hear a word he said.
* * *
The next morning dragged on, much as the one before, broken up only by the welcome onslaught of Clare children coming to visit the puppies. They were even more exuberant than usual, and it took five minutes for Annie to figure out that their parents had discussed the situation and decided that they could, indeed, take one puppy home. Not today, unfortunately, nor tomorrow, but when Annie decreed that the time was right.
“But don’t you think we should take both of them?” Hannah looked anxiously at Annie. “I mean, they’re brother and sister. They might miss each other.”
Annie was on the living room floor, trying to extract one of the pups from underneath the sofa, where for some reason it felt safer. Annie was sympathetic with the dog, but she also didn’t want to find pee saturating her furniture before she had a chance to shove some newspaper underneath him.
“Well, Hannah,” she said, turning toward the youngster, “did you miss your brothers when you went off to horse camp last summer?”
Hannah thought about it.
“Not exactly.”
“Besides, you’ve already got two cats to keep the pup company. And you know you can bring him—”
“Or her. We might take her.”
“—or her over here anytime you want for a play date. In fact, we could train the dogs to go with us on trail rides.”
Hannah brightened at this and, problem resolved, turned back to the puppies, both of whom were now scrambling over each other and licking any scrap of human skin in sight.
* * *
Annie was waiting in line at the local Cenex store when she overheard two locals talking behind her back about the case.
“Good thing elections are coming up this fall,” a fat man in overalls muttered to his companion, a thin, spindly farmer who was missing most of his lower teeth.
“True enough.” The farmer carefully spit into a nearby wastebasket, put there precisely for customers such as him.
“Two murders and one escaped convict, all within two weeks! Jesus God, what the hell is Dan Stetson doing about it? Nothing, absolutely nothing.”
Annie’s anger started to rise, but she kept still, wanting to hear more.
“When someone hits a deer out on the highway, he’s Johnny on the spot. Someone’s bike gets stolen, he’s right there taking down a report like it’s a matter of life and death. But when something real happens, he’s plain over his head.”
“Yeah, and that’s one big head to get over.”
The two men chortled at their fine sense of humor.
“Did you hear the widder of the truck driver’s in town? She’s mad as hell and making a big stink. Here her husband dies, and nobody cares about him. It’s all about Miss Fancy Pants in her rarefied horse farm. Like that was a death to be mourned.”
“My boy tells me the widder’s talking to the local newspaper. She says if she can’t get the attention of those TV cameras, she’ll talk to whomsoever will listen.”
Annie was glad, for once, that the men at the counter were taking their sweet time filling orders. Usually, she waited impatiently as a customer discussed the merits of placing donkeys versus mules in the herd as the best deterrent against cougar attacks against their livestock. The conversation could last ten minutes, all for the price of a bag of chicken feed. The cashiers never seemed to mind.
If I spent half my day talking about matters that didn’t concern me, I’d never get anything done, was Annie’s usual unspoken thought. But today, she was glad that the line was moving even more slowly than usual. She picked up a book—Birds of the Pacific Northwest—in a kiosk next to her and idly thumbed through it while she continued to listen. The pages were well-worn. Apparently, other bored people in line had preceded her.
“So who’s thinking of running against him? Deadline for applying is coming up pretty quick, I reckon.”
“Next, please.”
Annie reluctantly put back the book and approached the cashier stand and gave her order. The men in back of her hushed up. Apparently, they didn’t want to give any secrets away so close to the counter.
While watching the well-muscled crew load horse feed and a mega bag of puppy chow in her F250, Annie came to a decision. She might not have been happy with the way Dan had handled Marcus’s arrest, but it wasn’t fair that he get slaughtered by the local populace simply because he was overloaded and stretched thin. So, instead of heading back to the farm, she eased her truck onto the highway and headed into town. If Dan wasn’t around, then surely Tony or Kim Williams would be within calling distance. Someone needed to tell them that a little PR was required to ensure Dan would continue to run unopposed, as he had for the past twelve years. Besides, she had to hand over her mitts for fingerprinting.
* * *
“Like you’re telling us something we don’t already know?” was Tony‘s unusually sarcastic reply. Annie, perched on a hard metallic chair in Tony’s cramped and very messy office, had just poured out the conversation she’d overheard in the feed store, and now was staring incredulously back at the deputy.
“We’re getting a dozen calls every day from concerned citizens,” he said, in a more reasonable tone. “We’ve been told the entire force should be fired, the FBI should be brought in, and Dan Stetson should resign immediately. And those are the nice callers.”
Annie unconsciously ran her hands, still inky from being fingerprinted earlier, down the front of her jeans. “So what can be done? You can’
t let people think that Dan and everyone else on the force are incompetent.”
“Annie, the best—and only—thing we can do is our job, which is to find out who killed Wayne Johnston, who killed Hilda Colbert, and what the hell happened to her husband. That’s more than a full-time job, as you well know.”
“Yes, but—”
“Besides, we’re getting heat from all sides from folks that really matter. Dan was in a closed session with the county commissioners last night until eight o’clock. The P.C. mayor is sending us e-mails daily, asking for updates, as if he has a right to know what’s going on.”
Tony snorted. His reference to “the P.C. mayor” didn’t, Annie knew, refer to hizzoner’s political correctness. It was simply local verbal shorthand for the mayor of Port Chester, the only hamlet in Suwana County with the funds for this part-time position.
“And, just between you, me, and these four walls, we’re dangerously close to the FBI’s descending on us, whether we want their help or not. One of our less-than-bright commissioners is trying to convince us that Johnston’s murder falls under a Federal code for violent crimes against interstate travelers. Last night, she threatened to call the Seattle FBI office unless we solve the case within the next forty-eight hours. And you know where that could lead. Before long, Dan and I would be relegated to fetching coffee for a bunch of suits who don’t have a clue as to where to look.”
Any hope that Annie had of being reassured by Tony that what she’d heard was just an aberration had just been extinguished. Things were even worse than she thought. She made a decision and reached into her old saddlebag, which served as her purse, and brought out two envelopes. She handed the first to Tony.
“This is my statement. Dan asked me to write it last night, but I thought it might be better to do it with a clear head this morning.”
“Glenlivet time, I take it?”
“I wasn’t the one who asked to have it poured. I merely served as the bartender.”
Tony grinned, reached over, and retrieved the envelope. He quickly scanned what Annie had written out about her last conversation with Marcus, folded the paper carefully, and put it back into the envelope.
