Killing Custer

by Margaret Coel

  They nodded in unison and sat down, holding hands across the space between the chairs, Annie’s brown hand lost in the white, pawlike hand of the attorney Vicky and Adam had hired to handle the little cases. Cases like those of Angela Running Bear and Colin Morningside and Mike Longshot.

  “Friend in the Lander PD called after he got to the house and saw the murder victim was Indian.” Roger sat tall in the chair, long legs folded in front of him. He used his free hand to push at the brown hair that kept falling onto his forehead. A mixture of worry and sadness dulled his eyes as he threw a sideways glance at Annie. “Figured the victim was from the rez and Annie might know her.”

  Vicky didn’t say anything. She was thinking that the moccasin telegraph worked on both sides of the border. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “She didn’t deserve to die.” Annie’s voice swelled and cracked with tears. “She was trying to find her own way. You could have helped her.”

  Vicky flinched at the stab of pain, as if Annie had shot her with an invisible arrow. “No, I couldn’t.”

  Annie’s black eyes were locked in a stare of incomprehension, and Vicky realized she hadn’t yet told either Annie or Roger about Madden investigating a possible connection between murder and abduction. “There could be a conflict of interest.” The words hollow and meaningless in her own ears. Then she told them about the investigation. “I told Angela she would have to find another attorney, someone not connected to this firm.” She paused. “Or to me.”

  Annie looked away, which sent another pang of regret shooting through Vicky. “Do you know Colin Morningside?” she managed.

  “Crazy Horse?” Annie turned back and shrugged. “Nickname. Everybody knows it. No surprise Detective Madden thinks he wanted to kill that man playing Custer. But the cops can’t think . . .” The glance she gave Roger was filled with the panic of sudden realization. “Colin could never have killed Angela. He was crazy for her.”

  “You never know what cops are thinking,” Roger said.

  “You ask me, they should be looking at what happened to her boss. Angela might’ve known something . . .”

  “Could she have taken a flash drive from the office? Could that be possible?”

  Annie hesitated. Then she said, “She was really happy with her job and”—she shot a glance at Roger—“she was in love with her boss. She wouldn’t have done anything to ruin things.”

  She had been so certain, Vicky was thinking. She had needed to find a connection, some reason for the man in the black mask to come after Angela. She’d been grasping at thin air. Angela wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize her job or her relationship with Skip.

  “Angela did have some trouble . . .” Annie had pulled her hand free from Roger’s and was shifting about in the chair. “The school district she worked for . . .” She took a couple of seconds. “Well, she told me she’d hit some wrong keys on the computer and erased a lot of important documents, so they let her go. Told her she was incompetent.”

  “They weren’t able to get the documents back?”

  “Oh yeah. They called in the IT people and found the lost documents, but they still said she was incompetent.”

  “Are you saying she might have started making her own backups?”

  Annie was quiet a moment. “You think that’s what the killer was looking for?”

  “Yes.” Vicky could feel the certitude settling over her.

  Annie nodded, then got to her feet. Roger stood up beside her, and they started toward the beveled doors. “I almost forgot,” Annie said, looking back. “Wyoming Central Bank called. They have the records you subpoenaed.”

  Vicky nodded. Another reminder of the white world, the white client. “Will you get Madden on the phone for me?” she said as Annie let herself out the door.

  She turned back to the computer, a part of her wanting to know more about Crazy Horse going after his woman, but she’d had enough. When Madden learned about the episode—and he would learn; some enterprising young intern in the police department would Google the Indian chief that Colin had portrayed in the parade—it would add to his case that Colin Morningside had patterned his life after the man he idolized.

  The phone rang, and Vicky stared at it, trying to recollect why she had wanted to speak to Madden. Then she remembered. She lifted the receiver. “Detective Madden?”

  “What’s up?”

  “Did you find the flash drive at Angela’s house?” she asked again.

  “No flash drive. What’s this all about?”

  “I have reason to believe that Angela Running Bear had in her possession a flash drive with documents from Skip Burrows’s office.”

  “That’s your theory?”

  “I’m trying to help your investigation. The man who abducted Burrows went back to the office looking for something. He didn’t find it. So he went looking at Angela’s. You didn’t find the flash drive because he took it.”

  “You have evidence? Angela tell you something?”

  “It’s what she didn’t tell me.”

  25

  A STERILE QUALITY to banks. Waxed, shiny floors, teller’s compartments in geometric shapes, glass-enclosed cubicles on the opposite wall. Vicky stopped at the front desk and waited for a blond-haired woman with quick, blue eyes to finish a phone conversation. She wore a white shirt with a long, pointed collar, like the shirts worn by the tellers and the bank employees moving about the cubicles—the bank uniform. Neat black letters on the plastic tag below the collar spelled Monica Pugh.

  Vicky pushed a business card across the desk the instant the phone call ended. “I’m here to see Mr. Mason.”

  “Oh yes.” Recognition sounded in Monica Pugh’s voice. “Please come with me.” She swung around and started along the cubicles. Vicky stayed close behind. Hushed conversations floated through the openings, a series of heads nodded over papers spread across desks. Computer screens were black, but that was because they were meant to be seen only by the bankers in front of them.

  “Ah, Ms. Holden.” The thin man with a concave chest inside a point-collared white shirt rose from the desk in the last cubicle and came toward her, extending a white-freckled hand. His palm felt moist and warm. She stepped inside the cubicle as Monica Pugh disappeared on the other side of the glass wall.

  “Curtis Mason.” He might have been in his forties, brown hair receding above a wide forehead and sun creases at the corners of his blue eyes. He swept a hand in the direction of two chairs and dropped back into a swivel chair. Extracting a thin file of papers from a brown envelope that materialized from a desk drawer, he said, “Sorry about Mr. Garrett. I was standing a block away with my wife and kids. Couldn’t believe what happened. I did hear the shot, though. Thought it was a truck backfiring.”

  “Belinda Clark, Garrett’s wife, is entitled to know what became of his assets. She was surprised to learn he had withdrawn the money from his account here.”

  “I helped him with that withdrawal four months ago.” Mason shook his head, as if everything about Garrett was a matter of deep regret. “He came into the bank to close the account. Wrote a check for every last penny. Five hundred thousand dollars. I explained he might want to leave enough in the account for unexpected expenses. He refused. You understand, it was his money. He could do whatever he wanted with it.”

  “It also belonged to his wife.”

  “Edward Garrett was the only name on the account. It is our policy to talk to a client intent on withdrawing large sums. We don’t assume he is dissatisfied with our bank and simply wishes to move to another, which is his choice. But we try to ascertain if that is the case. Naturally we would want to know why a client is dissatisfied and try to rectify the matter. There is always the possibility the client has been targeted in some get-rich-quick scheme which may or may not be legal.”

  He was nodding over the papers, and Vicky asked if
he believed Garrett had been targeted in such a scheme.

  “I regret to say that my interview with him left me with a very uneasy feeling. He insisted he knew what he was doing. Oh, I can still hear him saying, ‘May I remind you, Mr. Mason, I am an adult male in full control of my capacities. I am no man’s fool.’ He had a funny way of speaking, like somebody from another time. When he told me he portrayed General Custer, it made sense. Later, after he was killed, I did some research on Custer. Garrett even looked like him! I read that Custer was stubborn, always sure of himself. Well, that was Garrett, seated right where you’re seated now, basically telling me to mind my own business because he knew what was best.”

  “What became of the money?”

  Mason thumbed through the records. “He told me he had the chance of a lifetime to make a good investment. Expected a thirty percent return in a few months. I tried to press him. Thirty percent? It raised my hackles. I cautioned him to be wary. Legitimate investments don’t pay out like that in a matter of months.” He lifted his shoulders and spread both hands over the papers. “There are always exceptions. Garrett believed he had come upon one.”

  He began laying the records in front of Vicky, one at a time. “You can see the major deposit he made six months ago. Five hundred thousand. He told me he had just closed on his ranch near Laramie. Before that, as you can see . . .”—he slipped another record to the top—“he kept a few thousand dollars in the account, wrote occasional checks, and made new deposits when the balance began to slip. He had banked here for a year. He said his daughter had moved to Lander, and he hoped to spend more time here. He had been coming to the area for a number of years on the way to rodeos and parades.”

  “Did he say where he intended to invest the money?”

  Mason had pulled out a stack of checks. He peeled off one and handed it across the desk. Vicky studied the loopy, sprawling handwriting: “Granite Group. Five Hundred Thousand.” The signature line was almost indistinct: a large E followed by a wavy line, then a G and another wavy line. She turned the check over. A stamped endorsement said Granite Group, with the faint outline of a mountain peak in the background.

  “Where was this deposited?”

  “Bank of the West.” He glanced over one shoulder. “Down the street. We have the routing number.”

  “Any idea who the principals are in the Granite Group?”

  “No. But I believe it is a legitimate company. We’ve had other clients write checks to them.”

  “For large sums?”

  “I would say as large or larger than Mr. Garrett’s.”

  She thanked him and got to her feet. She was going around in circles. Edward Garrett had the right to write a check for any amount on the account, and he had exercised his right. He had just forgotten to mention it to his wife. The money could still be invested, in which case Belinda would have a right to claim half of the assets. The other half would belong to Garrett’s daughter.

  First, Vicky had to get in touch with the Granite Group, whatever it was.

  * * *

  SHE RETRACED HER steps through the bank and down the sidewalk to the Ford parked at the curb. She started the engine, lowered the windows, and pulled her cell from her bag. In a moment, Annie’s voice was on the phone: “Holden Law Offices.”

  “I want you to contact the secretary of state’s office,” Vicky said. “I need to know the officers and registered agent for an investment company called the Granite Group. That’s right. Granite Group. They bank at the Bank of the West on Main Street.”

  * * *

  BELINDA CLARK OPENED the front door of the trailer at the first knock, which took Vicky by surprise. Before she made a U-turn and started for the RV lot, she had tried calling her client and gotten a flat, routine message: “Leave your name and number. I’ll get back to you.” She drove up to the hard-packed, scrub-studded mesa and slowed down the dirt road between rows of RVs. Wind squealed between the metal vehicles like trapped animals. Vicky parked in front of the white RV at the end of the row and waited, but no one came out. Finally she took the three metal steps at the door and knocked.

  “I saw you called,” Belinda said. She looked older, as if she had aged in the last few days. Brown hair damp with perspiration. Sunbonnet tossed on the table that nearly bisected the vehicle. She wore the same old-fashioned dress, wilted and tired-looking, the same white lace-up boots. She seemed hesitant, lost in thought. Then she stepped backward and beckoned Vicky inside. “You haven’t found the money.”

  “What makes you think that?” The vehicle was stuffy, filled with odors of grease, old coffee, and food cooked hours ago.

  “I know my husband.” Belinda plopped down on a red-plastic bench behind the table and motioned Vicky to a chair. “He never asked advice. Didn’t want it. Didn’t need it. He always knew what was best.”

  “Did you talk about your investments?”

  “Investments? After we were married, he put a paper in front of me and said, ‘Sign it.’ My permission for him to make investments on our behalf.” She shrugged. “I had no choice. He never discussed investments with me. All the sure-to-succeed schemes to make him as rich as he deserved to be.” She laughed deep inside her throat. “He did deserve to be rich. He deserved to have his genius recognized. Money could have done that. Money would have made him president.”

  Vicky stared at the woman a moment. She was Libbie Custer, waiting at Fort Lincoln for the return of her husband from an illustrious victory over the renegade Sioux and Cheyenne. Hardening herself for the bad news she had always known was coming.

  “We’re talking about your husband, Edward Garrett.”

  Belinda brushed the tabletop with her hands. “I know. I know. But it was the same. Always taking chances, betting on the long shot. He deserved to be recognized for the genius he was. No one could channel the great general like Edward.”

  “Are you familiar with the Granite Group?”

  “Can’t say I ever heard of it.”

  “Edward wrote a check for five hundred thousand to the Granite Group. He told the banker he expected a thirty percent return in a few months.”

  “Did he get it?” A look of hope flared in the woman’s eyes.

  “I have to locate the company and subpoena a copy of your husband’s account.”

  “How ironic. Just when he would have had the money to provide the life and recognition he deserved, those Indians killed him. It’s all part of her plot.”

  “Whose plot?”

  “His daughter. He tried to forget she existed, but she kept at him. Calling all the time. Going through a rough divorce. Crying on her daddy’s shoulder. She paid the Indians to kill him. You want to know who’s behind the Granite Group? Ask her. She’s probably already gotten the money.”

  26

  A HAMMER POUNDED in the quiet. Vicky left the Ford in the dirt driveway that connected the road to a two-story log house with a wide front porch. She followed the noise around the corner. Halfway up a ladder perched against the house was a stout woman with thick, muscular legs, blue sneakers, and blond hair hanging below the brim of a straw hat.

  “Dorothy Winslow?”

  “Who wants to know?” The woman glanced down along one leg of the ladder, hammer inert in her hand.

  “Vicky Holden. I represent your stepmother, Belinda Clark.”

  The woman’s expression changed from annoyance to curiosity. She started down the ladder, one sneaker reaching for the lower step, then the other, hammer in hand. She wore khaki shorts that bunched around her thighs and a white tee shirt with Indian Country stamped on the back. She reached the ground, balanced the hammer on the lowest step, and squared herself toward Vicky. “You a funeral director?”

  “An attorney.”

  Amusement moved into her expression. Her eyes were blue, flecked with light. “Well, that’s ironic.”

  “I don’t understa
nd.”

  “You don’t understand that my stepmother hates all Indians because they killed her beloved Autie? You don’t see the irony in her hiring an Indian lawyer?” She waved Vicky after her. “You came all the way out here to talk, we’d better talk.”

  Dorothy Winslow took the two steps to the porch and dropped into a wooden chair that rocked and creaked beneath her. She waited until Vicky took the other chair. “My stepmother is a nutcase. You’ve probably got that much figured out.”

  “You mean the fact that she impersonates Libbie Custer?”

  “Impersonates.” The woman let out a snort of laughter. “One way to put it. How about, lives like her, talks like her, dresses like her, mourns for a man she never met, except in her dreams. I call that nuts.”

  “She worked with your father.”

  Dorothy Winslow looked as if a door had slammed in her face. She took a moment before she said, “So that makes them both nuts. My dad, the good old boy. Happened to like the past better than he liked the present and anybody in it. Custer and Libbie never had kids, and most the time, Dad forgot he had a daughter. You talk to the Indians . . .” She twisted around and stared at Vicky. “What am I saying? Naturally you talk to Indians. You know what the Cheyennes say? Custer had a daughter with a Cheyenne woman he took from the Washita. After he killed Chief Black Kettle. Nice guy my dad was enamored with.”

  She stopped talking and looked straight ahead. Sandstone outcroppings bunching against the golden brown hills, houses here and there, brown ribbons of roads and dry landscapes, the roofs of Lander in the distance. “Used to say there were real heroes back then. Not like today where the only heroes are in video games. Looked just like Custer. Maybe that dictated the historical character he should impersonate. He was sure to find somebody, rooting around in the past like he did. Looked even more like Custer when he dyed his hair blond.” Her nails drummed out a fast rhythm on the wood armrest. “Wouldn’t have been my choice of a hero, but Dad shouldn’t have died for it. Go ahead. Lay it on me.”