Death Trap

by Karin Kaufman

  “Chief?” Turner said.

  “So that’s it,” Gilroy said. “I’m off the case.”

  “That weasel of a mayor!” Julia said. “And to think I voted for him.”

  “Turner, you’ll need to let Underhill know. He has to take over. This can’t interrupt the case.”

  “Yes, Chief. What about other cases that come up?”

  “I can’t be at the station.”

  I couldn’t speak. The expression on Gilroy’s face was heartbreaking. Not because he was doing anything silly like crying or looking lost and betrayed—like he had every right to—but because he looked so calm. Like it was another day at the office.

  That was for Turner’s benefit. And Underhill’s, when the officer returned. He wanted the station to run normally without him. And he wanted them to solve Lesley’s murder.

  “My badge is in the top drawer of my desk,” Gilroy said. “The ME report’s on top of it. Mrs. Hunter’s cause of death was a dagger piercing her heart. The defense wound to her hand was relatively minor.”

  “Why did he want to see you so early?” Turner asked. “Usually he emails the report, doesn’t he?” The chief was still his chief, and he needed guidance and information.

  “He thought we should know a couple things right away,” Gilroy said. “First, Mrs. Hunter was wearing a wig.”

  “I never would have guessed,” I said. It hadn’t looked like a wig.

  “A good one made of natural hair,” Gilroy replied. “She’d lost half her own hair.”

  “Why?” Turner asked.

  “Because, second, the ME thinks she may have had a severe form of lupus that causes scar tissue on the scalp. That or another autoimmune disease. Turner, you and Underhill need an answer from Mr. Hunter on that. Did she have lupus or something else? How ill was she?”

  “Yes, Chief,” Turner said.

  “And Turner,” Gilroy added, “you can’t report back to me. Report to Underhill.”

  CHAPTER 8

  I had always considered Douglas McDermott a fine mayor. Young, but reasonably competent. Now I wanted to shake him by his sorry shoulders and ask what on earth he was thinking. How was Gilroy to get his reputation back? Underhill and Turner were going to solve Lesley’s murder—they had to—but Gilroy would forever be the police chief the mayor had removed from office.

  His removal was temporary, Gilroy told me. The mayor said he’d be welcomed back after the Hunter case was resolved. Temporary, my foot. It would be on his record forever, and McDermott knew that. The whole case was beginning to stink like rotten eggs.

  Anyway, would Gilroy want to return? I wondered. Why would he? The man worked sixty hours a week and more for Juniper Grove, and this was his thanks? To be treated like a criminal? Tossed aside, his reputation sullied, because of some spineless politician? Gilroy wasn’t a politician—he didn’t want to be—and once more he was at a politician’s mercy.

  I was determined to make McDermott sorry he’d caved to the likes of Stuart Hunter. The mayor would apologize to Gilroy. And grovel at his feet, if I had anything to say about it.

  Gilroy had driven home after he left the station, and though I’d wanted to be with him, I knew he needed to be alone. So I’d driven back to my own house along with Julia, and called Holly at the bakery the moment I walked in the door. She’d already heard about what some in town were calling Gilroy’s firing. When I asked if she could join Julia and me for an emergency meeting of the Juniper Grove Mystery Gang, she said she’d leave work early. We’d meet at two o’clock, my house.

  Julia’s protective nature when it came to Gilroy was in high gear, and she was eager to “teach Douglas McDermott a thing or two,” as she kept saying. While I headed upstairs, she made sandwiches and coffee to keep us going.

  Upstairs in my office, I thumbtacked my drawings of the Hunters’ first and second floors to my corkboard and got to work. First things first. I needed to talk to Underhill.

  When I phoned the station, Underhill had just learned about Gilroy and was on a rant.

  As angry as he was, it required no arm twisting on my part to get him to share information. The medieval weapons expert in Loveland had declared Stuart’s misericorde a reproduction, he told me. The expert also believed most of the other weapons in the collections room to be reproductions, but he thought a few looked genuine. Of course, he couldn’t say for sure without a physical examination. The misericorde, which he’d seen firsthand in its clear plastic evidence bag, was the only weapon he could be certain about.

  As for the lapel pin, Underhill said it never left Gilroy’s desk. He’d seen it there a few times over the past two and a half years. And he confirmed what Turner had said: only four people knew about the pin being discovered at the crime scene, and none of us had breathed a word to the mayor or anyone else. Underhill said he’d been about to ask McDermott about the pin when I called. Did the mayor know about it? If he did, who had told him?

  If McDermott refused to divulge his source, Underhill would caution him about withholding evidence. After all, the helpful citizen who had told him about the pin was in fact the prime suspect.

  I had to smile at that. Let McDermott feel the heat. A little pressure where pressure was due. Before Underhill hung up, he promised to let me know what the mayor said.

  “Rachel?” Julia called.

  I walked to the head of the stairs.

  “Can we invite Royce? You know how good he is at sniffing out clues. He loves a mystery.”

  “No Wyatt’s tonight?” I said, leaning on the banister.

  “This takes precedence.”

  “Then absolutely. The more heads we can put together, the better.”

  Royce Putnam loved his mystery novels, and he’d been of invaluable help in digging up clues in February, when I’d come to an investigative standstill on a local woman’s murder. His perspective on our as-of-now pitiful assembly of clues might be of real benefit, as might his male point of view. His wife of many years had died two years ago, and he could set us on the right path when it came to Stuart’s state of mind.

  I trotted down the stairs and into the kitchen. “I have to talk to Stuart,” I said.

  Julia’s head jerked. “You what? You do not. Not alone.”

  Grabbing my jacket from where I’d slung it on a kitchen chair, I strode for the back door before she could stop me with one of her patented withering looks. “Wait for Holly and Royce, Julia. I won’t be long.”

  “Be careful! He could be a murderer! Any man who’d kill his own wife . . .”

  Julia’s words rang in my ears as I headed for my detached garage. Any man who would kill his own wife wouldn’t hesitate to kill an interfering nobody who could send him to prison for the rest of his life. I knew that. So the plan was to play it dumb, focus on Gilroy’s problem with the mayor, and gather as much information as possible. There were things I had to know if I was going to help Gilroy.

  But if Gilroy knew where I was going, he’d kill me, I thought as I drove for the southwest part of town. He’d do Stuart’s job for him. Yet I couldn’t sit still while the man I loved was being framed and the mayor had made it virtually impossible for him to exonerate himself. It sickened me that yet another mayor was out to get him. How else could I look at it?

  Virtually all of what I’d heard about Gilroy’s dismissal as a detective with the Fort Collins Police had come from Julia. Gilroy had pulled Mayor Wick’s wife over for drunk driving, she’d told me, and the mayor, who’d been in the car behind his wife, had asked Gilroy to turn a blind eye. But the mayor’s wife was a serial offender, a danger on the roads, and Gilroy wouldn’t back down. He’d arrested her, and Wick and his buddies had started a whisper campaign against Gilroy. A lousy, incompetent cop, they said. He had lost the confidence of others on the force and had to go. It didn’t matter that the people of Fort Collins came out in a show of support for Gilroy. The powerful politicians wanted him gone. Soon after, Gilroy had accepted the position of police chief in Jun
iper Grove.

  I wasn’t sure I could retrace Gilroy’s drive to Stuart’s house since I hadn’t paid much attention on the drive there and we’d traveled home in the dark, but ten minutes later I pulled into Stuart’s driveway.

  Stuart was surprised to see me, but he greeted me with civility and let me inside.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said.

  Before I could weave a convincing story about why I’d shown up at his house, he said, “You’re here about James Gilroy.”

  He turned and headed for the great room, and I followed, my palms beginning to sweat.

  Stuart sat in an armchair and invited me to do the same.

  “I also hoped you might tell me what your big announcement was going to be,” I said, taking a seat in the opposite chair. “You seemed pleased about it, but you never got the chance to say.”

  “Never mind about that now. Announcements don’t matter. Let’s talk about Gilroy.”

  Fine. “You’ve known James for more than seven years.”

  “And until now I’ve never believed the things that were said about him.”

  “Things?” I knew very well what he meant, but he wasn’t going to get away with a cowardly response. Say it, I thought. Have the guts to say it.

  “Do I have to spell it out? You know his history.”

  “How he was shafted by a corrupt politician protecting his drunk wife? Yes. It appears history is repeating itself. Different details, same agenda.”

  Stuart’s eyes narrowed. “They said he was incompetent.”

  “Criminals and politicians would love him to be incompetent. It’s his competence they can’t stand. Why did you ask Mayor McDermott to remove him from the case?”

  “Shouldn’t he be asking me that?”

  “I’m sure he’d love to, but he’s not allowed. No working the case, no talking to anyone who was at the party. Can you really think of no one else who might have killed Lesley? Maurice, Brynne, Kip?”

  “Why would they?”

  I laughed. “Why would Gilroy?” I scooted to the edge of my seat, my plan to play it dumb flying out the window. “Forgive me, but what’s going on here? You invite six people to a birthday party, five of whom you barely know, four of whom you have contempt for, and you accuse the one person you know and seem to like of murdering your wife.”

  Stuart clawed at the arms of his chair. “And whose name did my wife cry out as she died?”

  For the life of me I couldn’t tell if Stuart believed Gilroy was guilty. I’d assumed he had another agenda in accusing him, but what if he really thought the unthinkable? It was crazy, but people believed crazy things in their grief. “She called for the cop in the house. You know that. Just like you know Gilroy was standing next to me the whole time.”

  “She would have called my name,” he said, giving his chest a thump.

  “Is that why you’re angry with him? Because Lesley called him and not you?”

  Stuart’s eyes became dark coals. “You’re so smart. Who murdered my wife?”

  It was an odd and swift change in tack, but I welcomed it. “How about Maurice Salaway?”

  Stuart snorted. “That pompous fool?”

  “Being pompous doesn’t mean you don’t kill. He easily could have attacked Lesley and then run down the hall, waiting for Gilroy to appear. Or what about Brynne?”

  “Brynne stab my wife?” he said with a derisive chuckle.

  “Then where was she at the time?” I’d been wondering about Brynne since last night, when I’d sketched everyone’s position at the moment Gilroy and I hit the second floor. Everyone else had been on the second floor, and Gilroy and I had been at the foot of the stairs, ready to go up. Hadn’t Stuart wondered where Brynne had been? She had passed through the foyer to the other side of the house. Why? “She ran up the back stairs ahead of you. You must have seen her. Where did she come from? What was she doing on the first floor?”

  “By the time I saw her, she was already on the stairs.”

  “On the other stairs,” I emphasized. “What was she doing on the far side of your house?” Too late, it struck me that Stuart too had crossed through the foyer to the far side of the house. He had to have known where Brynne was. He might even have followed her. Or she him. And all along I’d foolishly thought that he’d been unaware of her presence until he encountered her on the stairs and practically shoved her out of his way. I’d even suspected that Brynne had been stealing from him, pocketing expensive little knickknacks as she wandered through the house, though Gilroy had searched her coat and purse and had found nothing. Now it was becoming clear. “You were with Brynne. You went off alone with her while Lesley was upstairs. Is that why she was invited?”

  When Stuart’s hands turned from claws to fists, I dropped my line of questioning like a hotcake and rose to my feet.

  “I’m sorry for bothering you,” I said, making my way back to the front door. “I shouldn’t have come.” As I heard Stuart’s heavy steps behind me, I felt the muscles in my neck tighten. Rather than wait for him to open his door, I grabbed the knob and flung it open. I stepped safely outside and turned back to him. “Please consider what you’re doing to an old friend.”

  “Leave it alone, Rachel.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I don’t mean James, I mean the rest of it. Brynne, everything.” He stared stonily at me. “Give me the dignity I deserve. The dignity my wife deserves.”

  He slammed the door in my face.

  CHAPTER 9

  “I think Stuart and Brynne were having an affair,” I said before taking a large bite of Julia’s egg salad sandwich.

  “You weren’t foolish enough to ask him?” Julia said.

  I shook my head. Not in so many words, but Stuart knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “That would explain their positions when Lesley was killed,” Holly said, pointing at my sketch on the corkboard. “They’re the only two people who were on the other side of the house.”

  “Poor Lesley,” Julia said. “I wonder if she knew. I bet she did. The wife always does. That Stuart. The two-timing rat.”

  My friend had zero patience for cheating husbands.

  “And Brynne’s a two-timer,” I said. “She said she had a boyfriend.” I wandered over to the corkboard. “It seems so obvious now. During the party, Stuart had something negative to say about Jova, Maurice, and Kip. Everyone except Brynne. Gilroy noticed that too, and when he questioned Stuart in the dining room after the murder, Stuart called Brynne a ‘deeply silly’ woman.”

  “So he was trying to cover his tracks,” Holly said.

  “Like a dog covers a bone in the backyard,” Julia added.

  “But I don’t think it eliminates Brynne or Stuart as a suspect,” I said. “In fact, it gives them both a strong motive.”

  “Unless they were busy at the time of Lesley’s death,” Julia said with a knowing tip of her head.

  “Playing kissy face while Lesley waited in the collections room?” Holly said. She tugged at her dark ponytail and pulled it over one shoulder, a habit of hers that made her look younger than her thirty-seven years. But then, so did her porcelain skin and perfectly oval face. “Some men would get a thrill out of that. Rachel, why are you looking so doubtful?”

  “Because I keep going over the sequence of events,” I said, looking from Holly to Julia. “They had maybe two minutes alone. Stuart was the one who invited everyone to see his new collections room.” I sipped my coffee and thought for a moment. “I remember him whining about not having champagne. I heard him. Maurice had grabbed some—I guess from the sideboard in the great room. He’d already had a glass, but he wanted more. So if Stuart’s sneaking a quick kiss with Brynne, why is he calling for champagne?”

  “Good point,” Holly said. “He’d be hiding with her, not calling attention to himself.”

  Julia shifted on her feet, grabbed a pen from my desk, and for the fifth time in ten minutes checked her watch.

  I grinned. “Tak
e a seat, Julia. He’s not late. He said three o’clock, and he’s too polite to come a minute earlier.”

  “He’s a sweet man,” Holly said. “And kinda cute too.”

  “Oh, stop,” she said, dropping the pen and running a hand through her short and curly gray hair. “Now back to the case. Who is the most likely suspect, Rachel?”

  “There are five of them,” I said, pointing at three-by-five cards with the suspects’ names written on them. “I can’t eliminate any of them right now. The problem is, I don’t know these people. I need more information.” I walked back to my desk and sat on the edge of it, still looking at the corkboard. “There’s something else. I want to know if any of them has a connection to Fort Collins government, past or present. Do they know the former mayor or his wife, did they know Gilroy when he was a detective there, things like that.”

  “Would they come after him seven years later?” Julia asked, astonished at the thought.

  “Where are these suspects from?” Holly asked. “What info do you have on them?”

  I walked back to the corkboard and tapped the card on which I’d written Brynne’s name. “Brynne Ware is thirty-one, single, and a French teach at Juniper Grove High. I don’t know where she’s from, but she lives in Juniper Grove. She lied to Gilroy about stopping in the kitchen for a glass of water when most of us were upstairs.” I tapped the next card. “Kip—real name Kipton—Dempster is thirty-two, single, and he’s in training to be an assistant manager at Wyatt’s Bistro.”

  “At thirty-two?” Holly said.

  “Yeah, he’s an underachiever,” I said. “Something Stuart cruelly pointed out at the party.” I went to the next card. “Jova Dillman is sixty-four, as Stuart made a point of telling me and Gilroy soon after we arrived at the party. I don’t know what she does or where she lives because I didn’t overhear her interview with Gilroy. But I think she’s known Stuart longer than any of his other guests. She called him an ‘old friend,’ and Stuart said”—I paused, trying to recall his exact words—“he said, ‘I might have called her a warrior a few years back.’”