Buffalo Bill's Defunct (9781564747112)

by Simonson, Sheila

  Sophocles? Meg suppressed the thought.

  Carol gave herself a small shake. “Vance can charm the birds out of the trees. Has he dropped by?”

  “No.”

  “Earlier this week, he said something about visiting the old place on his way to that lodge he’s building up on the lake.”

  “Maybe he came before I got here Tuesday. I look forward to meeting him.” The doorbell rang. Meg rose and went to answer it.

  It was Rob. Worried, she thought, and who should blame him? His shoulders in the gray windbreaker hunched against the wind. It ruffled his hair and stung color across his cheekbones. “Is Carol Tichnor here?”

  “I was just getting acquainted with her. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  He shuddered. “I OD’d on double-shot espresso. You heard about Brandstetter?”

  “I heard that Tammy shot him.”

  He frowned. “We have no idea who shot him.”

  Meg drew a long breath. “My God, what a relief.”

  “Relief?”

  “Yes, I thought perhaps having the dog in the house drove her over the edge. I felt guilty.”

  “That may be what happened, but I doubt it.”

  “Come in. You’re running up my propane bill.”

  He followed her into the living room and exchanged courtesies with Carol, who addressed him as Lieutenant Neill and apologized with a little too much gracious humility for not returning his telephone calls.

  He, in turn, treated her with steely deference. He asked her for an interview that afternoon. It was plain that interview was a euphemism for interrogation.

  “I have business with the realty office, but I guess I can manage it. Four o’clock? I’m staying at the Red Hat. They do a decent margarita.” She batted her lashes at him.

  “At my office in the courthouse annex.” He gave terse directions. He also suggested that she arrange for her brothers to meet with him.

  “Good heavens, Lieutenant, when? It’s a long drive up here and they’re busy men.”

  “So am I a busy man,” he retorted. “This is a homicide investigation, Ms. Tichnor. I want to see them in person as soon as possible.”

  “But Ethan’s a doctor!”

  “He can tell his patients he’s going to Mazatlán,” Rob snarled. “Tomorrow. It’s Sunday.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Thank you. I have to go. I’m waiting for a search warrant.” He hadn’t sat down, and he made for the door with a curt nod to Meg as he left.

  “So that’s Robert Neill,” Ms. Tichnor purred. “What an attractive man.”

  Meg stared at her. Maybe she was into bondage.

  THE warrant might not have been necessary. It was a murder scene. However, the killing had happened outside the house. Considering the political ramifications of Brandstetter’s death, Rob preferred to play it safe.

  He intended to read every scrap of paper in the frowsty office. He also wanted Forensics to do a thorough examination of the SUV and the garage. Hal was bound to have had a gun collection. Rob wasn’t about to wait for Tammy to sober up long enough to give permission.

  While he waited for Earl to bring the warrant, Rob had deployed the skeletal Crime Scene Team to see what they could get from the footprints on the steps and the deck. He wasn’t hopeful of results because the wind was drying everything rapidly, but Jake Soren-son thought he’d got one footprint that wasn’t Brandstetter’s. It was at that juncture that Rob went in search of Carol Tichnor. He was already having trouble keeping the two cases going at once— and keeping them separate in his mind.

  Shortly after he got back, Linda Ramos showed up. She had delegated the “death-watch” chair at the hospital to Jeff Fong after Earl called Jeff to duty from his son’s soccer game. Jeff would not be happy.

  Rob was happy. He needed Linda. He set her to photographing the exterior of the SUV as soon as she and Jake had finished the steps. When Earl arrived with the warrant, having chased down Judge Meyer at the supermarket, Rob turned examination of the deck and SUV over to him.

  Rob donned protective gear, and Linda and Jake followed him inside for a fast but hopefully thorough take on the office. The rest of the house could wait. After the initial forensic chores were done, he sent Jake back outside and began to organize the real search of Brandstetter’s office. It was not a large room, but Hal had crammed it with books and pamphlets and heaps of paper, mostly printouts. The computer loomed. A large poster of Jesse Ventura in full wrestling costume hung over the desk. The edges of the poster curled.

  Rob and Linda were deciding on a division of labor when Tom Brandstetter called on the cell phone. Rob backed away from his territory, the desk. Fingerprints smeared the flat surfaces. They’d used the iodine gun. He covered the receiver. “I need to take this now, Linda. You might as well get started on the file cabinet.”

  “Right.”

  He stepped into the empty hall, peeling the thin latex glove from his right hand. “Hello, Tom. Did the Portland police explain what happened here?”

  Tom’s voice came across quiet, detached. “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not.”

  Rob could think of nothing to say to that.

  The boy said, “They told me my mother is in the hospital. Was he beating on her again?”

  Rob described what he’d observed of Tammy the night before and suggested, with ponderous delicacy, that she had used vodka to deaden the pain.

  “She does that.” Same detached voice. “I guess I’d better come.”

  In the office, Linda said something in Spanish.

  Rob said, “She needs you, Tommy, and so does Towser.”

  The boy gave a laugh that was half a sob, the first sign of emotion he had displayed. “Poor old guy. I couldn’t take him to Portland with me.”

  “Rob!” Linda called.

  He waved an arm in the direction of the office and wound down his conversation. Tom said he had enough money to take the commuter shuttle home. The bus got into Klalo around five on Saturday. Rob doubted that the Crime Scene Unit would be done with the house by then. He supposed he could put Tom up in his guest room. But not Towser. He didn’t say that. When he and Tom had finished the conversation, he clicked the cell phone off to give the battery a rest.

  “Find something?” He pulled the latex glove back on.

  Linda was all but bouncing in the doorway. “You got to look at this, Rob!” She pulled him into the room and led him to the desk. On a clear patch of surface she had laid a brown leather wallet.

  Rob took a pencil from a tray on the desk and used it to flip the wallet open. An Oregon driver’s license lay exposed, address in Portland. It had been issued to Edward Leon Redfern.

  Rob felt as if someone had socked him in the kidneys. He cleared his throat. “Where did you find it, in the file cabinet?”

  “Stuffed down behind a bunch of folders.”

  He continued to stare down at the hopeful young face. Linda shifted beside him. He spared her a glance. “Good work, Deputy.”

  Her teeth gleamed in a smile. “It’s a link, huh?”

  “It is.” It was more than that. It was damn near an explanation. All kinds of random data clicked into place, like a slot machine running a winner, three cherries in a row. Rob felt a surge of anger at Brandstetter so strong the air took on a red haze.

  But Brandstetter was dead, too. Shit. He took the right glove off again, pulled out his cell phone, switched the power back on, and used the speed dial to reach the sheriff, who was going to shit bricks and hit the fan, probably in reverse order.

  MEG went to dinner with Carol Tichnor. Carol was paying. She hated to dine alone, she had said as she extended the invitation in Meg’s chaotic living room. Meg wasn’t sure why she agreed. She didn’t like Carol.

  “Vulgar curiosity, my dear,” she told herself as she parked the Accord outside the Red Hat’s rustic restaurant.

  It was seven and dark. Carol sat at the bar with an em
pty margarita glass on the high counter in front of her. A stuffed elk head stared balefully down on a scene of subdued chatter. There was no sawdust on the floor. Handsome people dressed for the weekend by Norm Thompson clustered in twos and fours around rustic tables. They were waiting to be called into the restaurant. Meg was glad she’d taken the trouble to put on a cowl-necked cashmere top over velour pants.

  She ordered Scotch-rocks and perched on the high stool next to Carol. She hated high stools. Her feet swung like a six-year-old’s at a soiree. “How’s it going?”

  Carol gave a short laugh. “Great, considering I spent two fucking hours repeating myself.”

  “I take it Lieutenant Neill showed up to question you. He was pretty busy this afternoon.”

  “Not too busy to waste my time.” She brooded. The bartender set a fresh margarita in front of her, removed the empty, and placed Meg’s drink on a small cardboard coaster decorated with a red hunting hat. “And he didn’t tell me a damn thing.”

  Meg took a swallow. Not Laphroaig.

  “He just kept on and on about the keys. I don’t see the point.”

  Meg thought the point was obvious.

  “And he wanted to know about my business.”

  “Your antiques shop?”

  Carol drank and licked salt from her lips. “How do you know… oh, good old Darcy.”

  “She’s a bit intrusive.”

  Carol dismissed Darcy with a wiggle of her fingers. “I specialize in needlework, not Indian junk.”

  The flute player was hardly junk. Meg said, “Quilts?”

  “Some. Mostly white-on-white embroidery and appliqué-work. Old lace.”

  “Must be interesting. Where do you find your stock?”

  That was good for ten minutes on the joys of business travel. Carol traveled a lot, mostly in the South and Northeast, occasionally in Belgium and France. They finished their drinks. Melting ice had rendered the whisky innocuous. Carol ordered another margarita.

  “Tichnor, party of two.” The hostess bearing menus.

  Carol made a face at the bartender, canceling her drink, and they rose. Meg slid off the stool with a thud.

  The dining room faced the river but it was too dark to see much. When they had ordered, baked turbot for Meg, planked salmon for Carol, and Carol had approved the wine, a local shiraz-merlot blend that tasted surprisingly good, Carol said, “Ethan’s in a snit. He’ll miss his Sunday afternoon symphony concert.”

  “You contacted your brothers?”

  “Deputy Dawg did. He got through to Ethan and left a message for Vance. I think Vance and Moira went to Salishan for the weekend.”

  It was plain that Rob’s attractiveness had worn off where Carol was concerned. He cracked the whip one too many times, Meg reflected, amused.

  The waitress brought warm herb bread and a mesclun salad dressed with a subtle vinaigrette.

  At that point, Carol made an effort to play the gracious hostess. She asked Meg why she had moved to Klalo. Carol was enough of a Northwesterner to assume that Meg wanted to leave the Los Angeles Basin, but too much of a city girl to understand the call of the wild.

  Meg was beginning to wonder about it herself. She made an effort to explain why she’d taken the job. Despite her summers in Klalo, Carol didn’t remember who Hazel Guthrie was until Meg reminded her.

  “Oh, the woman in the gingerbread house. Her husband was a pharmacist, I think. They had a little kid.”

  “No, Robert Neill is her grandson.”

  Carol digested that. “So she was a librarian?”

  Meg said yes but didn’t bother with further details.

  They talked, mostly about Carol’s ex-husband, an insurance executive with a taste for trophy blondes. The turbot was delicious. Carol poked at the salmon and drank another glass of wine. The party at the next table sang happy birthday to an elderly lady. Everyone laughed. Carol wrinkled her nose.

  When Meg’s description of the library met with palpable boredom, she diverted the conversation to other matters. She found Carol heavy going. The woman was either preoccupied or self-absorbed. She was also three sheets to the wind by the time they reached the last sip of shiraz.

  Meg declined dessert and asked for decaf. Carol ordered a brandy. The waitress brought both, along with the tab, which was probably extortionate. Meg didn’t offer to split the check. Carol scrawled her room number on it.

  “Hey, it’s my big sister.” A tall, fleshy man with razor-cut blond hair beamed down at them. He wore a khaki jacket with lots of pockets over a ragg pullover and tan pants with zips and tabs. Hunter chic?

  “Vance, honey.” Carol lurched to her feet, sloshing brandy.

  Vance Tichnor kissed his sister’s cheek and she sank back onto her chair. He pulled one out for himself.

  “And who is your lovely guest?”

  Ew, Meg thought. She allowed herself to be introduced.

  There was a moment when Vance Tichnor’s blue, blue eyes looked her over, flicked, and dismissed her as not worthy of effort. She was at the age when women experience that look, so she caught it.

  However, Vance ordered a brandy and turned the charm on. It almost worked. Unlike his sister, he knew of Meg’s job and said appropriate things. He spoke with becoming affection of his dead grandfather, waxed nostalgic about summers in the old house, amused her with tales of the bathrooms’ eccentricities, and described the elaborate lodge he was building on the banks of Beaver Creek.

  Meg sipped cold decaf. “I know people fish at Lake Tyee in summer. What do they do this time of year?”

  Vance’s eyes crinkled in a fetching smile. “Hunt. And later, when the snows come, there’s cross-country skiing. I have five acres to play around with. I may put in a toboggan run.”

  Meg had once fallen off a pair of skis at Lake Tahoe. “A toboggan run. Like sledding?”

  He laughed indulgently.

  Meg wondered whether he had filed an environmental impact statement. “What happened to the still?” Oops, she thought. A Scotch and two glasses of wine and I run amok.

  The laugh segued to a smile that sobered her. “Ah, the famous still. Long gone, I’m afraid. The copper probably went into scrap drives during World War Two.”

  “Very patriotic,” Meg said cordially. She rose and extended her hand. “It was good to meet you, Mr. Tichnor. Your lodge sounds impressive. Thanks, Carol. Nice dinner.”

  Carol turned back to her brother and her brandy.

  Meg drove home with care. A DUI would be a bad idea at the start of one’s career in a small town. A patrol car sat in front of the Brandstetter house, dark, engine running. The yellow tape around the driveway and the front deck flapped in the wind. She reversed directions, using Rob’s driveway because hers was still taped off, and parked in front of her own house. Her headlights caught Rob, Towser on a leash, and a thin young man coming back on the sidewalk across the street.

  They crossed over when she killed the engine and waited while she got out of the car. She locked the door and fumbled for her house key. “Good to see Towser on a leash.”

  The dog gave a bounce and woofed at her. “Down, boy,” the young man said. He was short and thin with a nose stud and dark cropped hair.

  Rob was holding an unlit flashlight and wearing a heavier jacket than the windbreaker he’d worn that afternoon. “Meg, this is Tammy’s son, Tom. He’s staying with me until they release his mother from the hospital.”

  Meg said, “Hello, Tom. I’m sorry about your father.”

  “Hi. Emil used to take me fishing. You bought a great house.” Tom had a light tenor and sad eyes. He resembled neither parent. Perhaps he was a changeling.

  “I think so, too.” She turned to Rob. “I ate dinner with Carol at the Red Hat. She said you couldn’t reach Vance Tichnor this afternoon because he was off some place with his wife.”

  “Salishan. It’s a resort at the coast.”

  “He showed up alone about forty-five minutes ago.”

  Rob frowned.<
br />
  “I got the impression she was expecting him.”

  I suppose that hound is sleeping in your guest room.” Meg poured Rob a stiff Scotch. She was drinking herb tea herself, having gone past her usual limit. Strange, she felt wide awake, though it was after eleven.

  “Back porch.” He looked sheepish as well as tired. He’d seen that her light was still on when he returned from his unscheduled detour to the Red Hat. “Short of sending Towser to a kennel, I couldn’t think what else to do.”

  “What’s wrong with a kennel?”

  Both eyebrows went up. “Consider the size of that animal. Picture him sick and covered with fleas.”

  Meg shuddered. “I get the point.” She didn’t exactly. Fleas or no fleas, Towser wasn’t Rob’s responsibility. Nor was young Tom. “Is the kid sleeping on the porch?”

  He grinned. “I offered Tom, not Towser, the guest room, but he wanted a sleeping bag on the porch with the dog. Fortunately, the back porch is enclosed and not much colder than a meat locker.” His eyes narrowed. “There’s a space heater somewhere…”

  Before he could dash off on another rescue mission, Meg said, “Did you interrogate the Tichnor siblings?”

  He swallowed Scotch, savoring it. “Carol passed out. I talked to Vance.”

  “And?”

  He took another sip of Scotch and set the glass down. “I ought to go home before I fall down.”

  “I think I’m entitled to know who has keys to my garage. That’s what you were asking him about, wasn’t it?”

  He stood up. “I can’t talk about the investigation. You know that, Meg. Goddamn.”

  “So swear me in as a reserve deputy.”

  Dead silence for the space of three breaths. He said something rude.

  She looked at him over the rim of her mug. “Hey.”

  He sank back onto his chair.

  “This is a very small town,” she said.

  “It’s bigger than Two Falls.”

  “Small.” She swallowed tea. “And it’s a small department.”