Dead Dry

by Sarah Andrews

  The sheriff opened his hands to indicate that he was at a loss to explain recent events and needed help. “The thing is, we’ve got a corpse down there in the morgue, and the county coroner’s taking a look at it, and we just thought that if you could tell us anything about this situation, it would be so much easier. You’d feel better, and we could take it easy on you, and we’d all stay friends.”

  On our side of the glass, Michele muttered, “Well, that’s the short form, but he’s got the general idea.”

  Upton said, “Zach, as your family’s lawyer, I recommend you say nothing further.”

  Zach furrowed his brows. “Someone else is dead? Who?” He looked more mystified than scared.

  The sheriff said, “We think you know. Come on …” When this didn’t get a response, he said, “I hear your dad’s been trying to sell the ranch. That would be a good thing for you all.”

  Zach said, “No shit. I could shit-can that job I work and live a little.” He lifted one hand and rubbed the back of his neck.

  “So if somebody tried to get in the way of that sale, you’d be mad at them, right?”

  “Yeah …”

  Upton said, “Zach, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  The sheriff smiled and lifted his meaty hands into fists and did a little tight shadowboxing, which was a complicated motion to accomplish while slouching. He meant it to look goofy, and it did. He was saying, Come on, I’m in on the joke. We’re all pals here.

  Zach turned his head to one side and eyed the sheriff like a bull who’s shying from the man carrying the cattle prod. “What you suggesting, Sheriff?”

  “You tried to stop all this nonsense with ol’ Afton, and then she got in the way.”

  “Afton? You think I killed Afton?” Zach was out of his seat with a jolt. “Hey, Sheriff, I don’t know what kind of fool you take me for, man, but shit, I don’t go whacking no neighbors!”

  The sheriff dipped his head to one side and said, “Neighbors plural?”

  Michele muttered, “He’s good. Now go for the jugular.”

  Upton leaned back in his chair and folded his arms.

  The sheriff’s question turned Zach’s outrage into befuddlement. “What’s that mean?”

  “What’s what mean?”

  “What you said.”

  “Plural?”

  “Yeah.”

  The sheriff’s face went slack. When he recovered himself, he said, “More than one.”

  “One what?”

  “Neighbor. You said neighbor-zuh.”

  Now Zach looked hopelessly confused. “What are you talking about? Did someone else get himself killed?”

  “He didn’t do it,” said Michele. “Nobody can be that stupid and pull off that level of deception.”

  I said, “I’m inclined to agree with you. How’s a man live that far into his forties that stupid?”

  Zach was waving his hands around in a mixture of aggression and childlike fear. “What you saying, man? Someone killing folks up our way? I gotta get back up there and look after Pa!”

  I said, “How’d he ever survive working in a quarry?”

  Michele said, “He could never have figured out how to get himself to Salt Lake County and back, let alone kill a man and drop a wall of gravel on his corpse without killing himself in the process. We’re back to square one. I want Attabury’s head on a pike!”

  I said, “But why would Attabury kill Gilda? She was his last hope of getting McWain’s property.”

  As if he’d heard my question, the sheriff said to Zach, “I got one more question for you, and then I suppose we’re done. What you think of that lady Gilda that lived with ol’ McWain?”

  Upton tensed. “Zach …”

  Zach eyed the sheriff suspiciously. “She’s purty …”

  “No, what I’m getting at is do you think she’d help you out, or do you think she’s not such a good neighbor?”

  Zach’s face brightened a little. “Oh, she’s fine, she is. Why, just the other day she paid a call on Pa and—”

  “Zach!” Upton roared.

  Ignoring the lawyer, Zach hurtled onward. “And she told him she’d be glad to pick right up where they left off with their negotiations to put the ranches together. Pa was real happy.” He made a fist to emphasize his words. “Real happy.”

  AFTER ZACH HAD BEEN DISPATCHED BACK TO HIS JOB at Bud’s Bar in Sedalia, Michele and the sheriff compared notes to decide whether they had two separate crimes or one. They agreed that the two murders seemed inextricably connected. They reviewed a preliminary report from the county coroner, which stated that Gilda had been killed by a blow to the head, just like Afton McWain. The sheriff agreed to press further into the alibis given by Hugo Attabury and the other suspects and suggested that they both meet with the FBI agents who were looking into the investment group’s questionable business dealings.

  Michele’s cell phone rang. “Yes? Wait.” She got out her notebook and scribbled. “Okay. Okay, that is terrific!” She clicked off the phone and grinned. “Got him!” she squealed.

  “Got who?” asked the sheriff.

  “Upton,” she said. “When Attabury confessed that he had flown to Salt Lake City the evening in question, that blew Todd Upton’s alibi. So I stepped up my search for evidence against him. Attabury’s not the only one who knows his way to Salt Lake City. I’ve had friends with the Utah Highway Patrol checking filling stations all across Interstate 70. I’ve finally got him in Green River at 7 P.M. He paid cash, but a guy behind the counter liked the car.”

  “That puts him in Salt Lake City by ten-thirty,” I said.

  “Quicker than that, the way this observer said he was driving. And,” she said, now grinning ear to ear, “they dug into his service record for me. You know what he did for the army?”

  “I’ve no idea,” I said, “but does it involve explosives?”

  “Give the lady a cigar,” she said. “Demolition, specializing in setting off landslides.”

  ATTABURY CAVED QUICKLY UNDER MICHELE’S NEXT round of questioning. He sang like a canary. He sang like a macaw. He shrieked like a buzzard.

  The recital started soon after Michele walked into the interrogation room and put a hand gently on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry to have accused you. I was wrong. We know now that it was Todd Upton who killed Dr. McWain. And … I’m hoping you can help us with a few of the details.”

  Comprehension widened Attabury’s eyes. He saw his ticket out of the everlasting stink of suspicion and grabbed for it. His lawyer nodded to him and he began to sing. “Anything,” he gasped.

  “Why did you say that you didn’t take Dr. McWain to Utah?” Michele asked.

  “Because Upton told me to say that! He said I’d do time, guaranteed.”

  “When did he tell you that?”

  “The day we heard about McWain’s being dead.”

  “Before I arrived?”

  “No! I swear I didn’t know McWain was dead before that!”

  “But none of you seemed surprised by the news. Why was that?”

  Attabury bowed his head and grabbed great hanks of his hair. “Because of what we’d just been talking about.”

  “Which was?”

  “We were … we were discussing what to do … how to m-manage him. McWain.” He buried his face in his hands. “We all wanted him to go away,” he wailed, then peeked out from between his fingers and added, “Upton … he said McWain needed to be silenced.” He watched for Michele’s response.

  She patted his shoulder again and settled herself on the edge of the table right next to him, an intimate, reassuring gesture. “Did Gilda feel that way, too?”

  He shook his head. “No. She wanted the money, don’t get me wrong, but she wasn’t … she didn’t know about … what Upton had in mind.” His lip quivered. “She was a nice lady.”

  “But she’d just heard Upton say he wanted to silence McWain. What did she think of that?”

  “She didn’t hear him say that.
Upton said that in the parking lot before we went in. Johnson had Gilda waiting in there to meet with us. Upton set the whole thing up. He had Johnson bring her up from Colorado Springs. We walk into the bar and she’s on the phone. I realize now that was you she was talking to.” He shook his head over the irony. “You were telling her you were coming, but she didn’t tell us we were about to get company. She’s a smart lady, Gilda. Didn’t let on what she thought. Played her cards close. Poor Gilda.” He hung his head.

  “Yes, it’s terrible. What else can you tell us about Upton’s movements during the twenty-four hours before that meeting?”

  “He phoned me that morning early, told me about the meeting at the Grill. I had to report to him about progress. We were trying to pressure McWain about the damned lawsuit.”

  “Giving him a ride to Utah was your way of pressuring him? I don’t understand.”

  “He’d told Upton he was going to shout his story far and wide, and Utah was his first big step. Upton didn’t like it. He said I should give McWain a ride to Utah so he could have someone meet him on the other end, talk some sense into him.”

  “Who was that someone?”

  “He didn’t say. I thought it was one of the investors.” Attabury’s face grew dark. “But it was him. He was there. It had to be him. He knew where I was dropping McWain and he was there waiting for him.” He shuddered.

  “But you dropped McWain at eight. Upton didn’t reach Salt Lake City until ten at the earliest.” Michele’s tone was still soothing, matter-of-fact, as if talking to a child who had woken from a bad dream.

  “Okay, so I lied about that, too. I took him to dinner. I dropped him at ten-fifteen.” He put a hand to his face, probing a headache. “Upton said the investor was late. He called me on my cell phone, said to stall until then. What a patsy I was.”

  “Then you never met with the investor in Salt Lake City.”

  Attabury’s face went hard. “No, I did not.”

  “You made that up about meeting an investor.”

  “Someone sent that car but no, I never saw anybody.” He shook his head in exasperation. “I offered to rent a car, but Upton said no, he had contacts.”

  “Wasn’t flying him to Utah taking a chance?”

  Attabury suddenly smiled. “Not at all, considering that I had nothing to hide!” He threw back his head and laughed ruefully. “To think I bought Upton’s jive about how you’d think I was the prime suspect! He said, ‘I’ll cover for you, Hugo. Just tell them we were playing golf together. I’m taking a risk for you, old pal, so let’s keep our story straight.’ How dumb could I get?”

  Michele smiled at him, rewarding him for his information. “This is very helpful information, Mr. Attabury. I have just a few more questions. Do you know anything about the geologic data that disappeared from Dr. McWain’s log cabin shortly after that meeting at the Sedalia Grill? I’m talking about some maps and other diagrams, reports, papers.”

  Attabury folded his massive arms and nodded his head. “Sure. Upton didn’t manage to hide that part from me. He had all that stuff at his house when I dropped by the day after. He was burning it in his outdoor barbecue. He shoved a bunch of it in quick when he saw I was there, but I knew what it was. He had some big, juicy steaks dripping down into it, really made the flames jump. And,” he said, suddenly breaking down, big tears rolling down his shiny cheeks, “he had something else on that grill, little bits all on a skewer. He served it to me on crackers, with … with salsa.”

  “What was it?” Michele asked, her voice as soft as a child’s blanket.

  “He said it was Afton McWain’s busy little fingers.” He put his face down on the table and bawled. “I thought he was joking!”

  An hour later, Michele had Todd Upton’s fingertips where she wanted them: on an ink pad, giving prints, being booked and charged with the murder of Afton McWain. Upton said not a word under Michele’s questioning. He had no lawyer present. Like many a criminal that had occupied that room before him, he knew his rights, and would cling to them until the last.

  Michele shrugged. “That’s okay, Mr. Upton. We’ve got everything we need without your confession, and it gives me pleasure that you’ll pull a longer sentence because you aren’t cooperating or showing remorse.” She gave him a happy smile and traipsed out of the room.

  Having tidied up the horrid little mess that had been entrusted to her detecting skills, Michele went to her motel, cleaned up, put on a lovely dress, and got into her car to drive up to Denver and meet Trevor Reed, who was waiting there to help her celebrate. “I’ve been meaning to thank you for making that connection to him,” she told me as we met one last time in the parking lot, where Fritz had brought me to pick up my gear. She turned slightly, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. “And for sparking his interest in detection. Apparently you made quite an impression on him, but he said you had other commitments.” She glanced at Fritz.

  I shepherded her over to her car before she could start trouble for me. “So this is the celebration Trevor came to Colorado to attend. How did he know this would be the night?” I inquired as she buckled her seatbelt.

  A new sort of smile played across her lips. “We’ve been in touch,” she said. “Well, this leaves just one little puzzle unsolved. Gilda.”

  I nodded.

  Michele opened her attaché and produced a sheaf of faxes. “Perhaps this will help. These are Gilda’s cell phone calls for the week before her death. They just came in.”

  I quickly scanned the sheets. Michele had annotated the phone numbers so I’d know whom she had called and who had called her. I said, “Here’s a call to Upton on that day we saw them all at the Sedalia Grill. But it’s after that meeting, and after we took her to Denver. She must have phoned him from the tractor-trailer rig as she was barreling across Colorado on her way to Utah.”

  “To tell him that you’d seen what McWain had in his log cabin office?” she suggested. “And, perhaps, to tip him off that you’re a geologist?”

  “I suppose. Would that explain why he was frightened to see me appear at Johnson’s ranch? But that doesn’t make sense. Julia knows much more about those aquifers than I do, and he wasn’t afraid of her.”

  Michele said, “Upton saw Julia as a legal adversary, not a geologist. And you are not just a geologist, you’re a detective. You keep forgetting that. And we can’t presume he was entirely smart, or he would have instructed Gilda not to contact him on her cell phone. The records are too good, and too easily subpoenaed.”

  “Murder is never smart,” I said. “But even someone as cold-blooded as Upton couldn’t control someone as self-serving as Gilda.” I laughed. “Maybe she was even leaving a paper trail on purpose.”

  Michele smiled cheerily. “Maybe, but she’s not my problem.”

  I reached out to hand the pages back to Michele.

  Michele held up a hand to stop me. “But she might be yours. Keep reading.”

  I scanned further down the list of phone numbers. When I reached the last call Gilda ever made, my heart sank like a stone.

  THIRTY-THREE

  THAT LAST CALL ON GILDA’S LOG REQUIRED THAT I gather one last bit of trace evidence before I could leave Douglas County.

  I asked the sheriff if he would accompany me and Fritz to the McWain ranch. “I won’t require a search warrant. Just a quick glance at something will answer my question, but I want cover, and I want to do this straight up.”

  “You’ve got it,” he said. “And we already have a warrant to search those premises.”

  It was a bouncy ride up the rutted road after that rain. When we arrived, the sheriff knocked on the door of the yurt and then the door of the log cabin just to cover himself, then asked what it was I needed to look at.

  “Right over here,” I said, hiking over to the barn. I pushed open the door. Just as I thought, that big, old white truck—the one I’d seen in there the day Michele and I drove Gilda up to get her gear—was there, but it had clearly been driven si
nce my previous visit to the ranch. The concrete floor of the barn was tracked with mud, and there was a big bruise of red paint across the left front panel. Out on the loading dock, we found tracks and traces of mud left when Gilda’s cart was pushed into the back of the truck, even though the rain had beaten hard on that evidence.

  I explained the significance of my discovery to the sheriff, who nodded and agreed to help me with my next move. He got on the phone to call in an evidence team, and we got back into the cruiser and left before I could talk myself out of what I needed to do.

  FRITZ RODE WITH THE SHERIFF THE LAST MILE TO OUR destination so that I could appear to be arriving alone. They parked down the street and waited, both men watching me carefully. Carlos Ortega pulled silently in behind them in an unmarked car, representing his jurisdiction.

  As I walked up to the house, I glanced back twice to make sure both cars were still there. My breathing had gone shallow. My stomach was in a knot. I wanted to be most anywhere else.

  The blinds were drawn on the front of the house, so my approach would go unnoticed unless a dog had been added to the household in the years since my last visit, but I didn’t hear a bark. I stopped for a moment at the foot of the walk and studied the front stoop. It was higher than I had remembered, which meant a longer drop, and there were junipers growing below it, a nasty landing if it came to that but better than concrete.

  A half-grown girl answered the door when I knocked. “Hi, Samantha,” I said. “Is your mommy home?”

  The girl had Afton’s dark hair and broad shoulders and Julia’s long legs. “She’s sleeping,” she said. “You’re Emily, right?”

  “Yes, honey. I’m sorry, but I need to talk to her. Could you wake her, please? And then maybe give us a moment, okay?” I tried to wink at her, but it didn’t work. I didn’t have the heart.

  Samantha shifted in the doorway until I could only see half of her face. “Okay …”