Sucking in two deep breaths, he said, “I don’t understand.”
“I’m trying to tell you.” Sheesh, the man went on and on. “Heather-Anne hired us—”
“Who’s ‘us’?” Suspicion glimmered in his gray eyes.
“Me and my partner, Charlie Swift. We own Swift Investigations. Heather-Anne hired us to find my husband, well, my ex-husband, and—”
“What? You’re not making any sense. I’ve got patients to see.” He stood up, looming over me on the exam chair.
I could tell he was going to walk out any moment and I’d never get another crack at him. “When Heather-Anne was killed, the—”
“What?” He turned Casper-pale and sagged like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He slammed a hand onto the counter to keep himself from falling. “Killed? You mean … she’s dead?”
“You didn’t know? I’m so sorry I broke the news to you like that. Here, let me get you some water.” I slid off the awkward chair and got one of those little paper cups dentists give you to rinse with and filled it from the sink in the corner. Dr. Sloan took it with a trembling hand and drank. I refilled it twice before he regained control. “Better?”
He nodded. “Tell me what happened. No, wait.” He crossed to the open door, looked both ways down the hall, and closed it softly. He turned to face me. “Okay.”
As briefly and gently as possible, I told him about Heather-Anne being strangled.
“Oh, my God.” He ran his hand down his face, dragging the flesh down so he momentarily looked like a basset hound.
“Were you and Heather-Anne … friends?” I asked.
He gave a snort of bitter laughter. “I thought so at one time. But then I found out she had more ‘friends’ like me, and I broke it off.”
“More friends like you?”
“I wasn’t the only man she was seeing. I know of at least one other. There may have been dozens, for all I know. Dozens of men of a certain age and income dazzled by that smile, that hair, that body, and the thought that she found them attractive. Well, there’s no fool like an old fool, as my wife tells me,” he said.
“You’re not old.”
He gave me a cynical look. “I’m older now than I was this morning, Ms.… Gold, did you say?”
“Gigi.”
“At first, being with Heather-Anne made me feel younger, vital. Then…” He trailed off.
“So if you’d broken things off, why did you work out with her on Saturday?”
He stiffened. “How did you know—? My wife did hire you! You’ve been spying on me.” He made for the door.
I hurried after him and put a hand on his arm. “No! My partner was meeting Heather-Anne, and she saw you at the YMCA.”
Turning, he looked down at me, and I realized my hand was still on his arm. I quickly drew it away.
“Heather-Anne called me. She said she was back in town. I knew she’d been in Nicaragua or some such place with that crook she ran off with.”
I gulped back an objection at his description of Les. “And?”
“She said she was back in the training business, that she’d missed working with me and hoped we could get together.” He rubbed his eyebrow. “We got together for a training session, nothing more. She said she needed money. I felt sorry for her, so I gave her some. End of story.”
“I’m sorry, but did your wife know you’d given Heather-Anne money again? I heard she accused her of stealing from you.” I winced as I said it, expecting him to explode.
“Leave Myra out of this. In fact,” he continued coldly, “I don’t know why I’m talking to you. I’d like you to leave now.” He pulled the door open. One of his technicians stood there, arm raised to knock. She stepped back and looked from Hollis Sloan to me and back again.
“Uh, the Braisten boy is ready for you, Doctor.”
“Mrs. Gold has decided she doesn’t want orthodontic intervention,” he said, not even looking at me. Without a good-bye, he hurried down the hall toward his waiting patient.
The technician escorted me to the waiting room. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Dr. Sloan is the best orthodontist in the city. He could take care of that overbite in no time.”
“I don’t have an overbite!”
* * *
Back in the Hummer, I examined my smile in the rearview mirror and thought of all the things I should have asked, like who was the other man that Hollis Sloan knew had been sleeping with Heather-Anne, and had she said why she was in town again, and where had he—and his wife—been on Sunday morning when Heather-Anne was getting strangled. Hollis Sloan had seemed genuinely shocked to hear that Heather-Anne was dead, but for all I knew he did community theater productions in his spare time and was an accomplished actor.
I headed back to the office, planning to do some research on Alan Brodnax. After that, I guessed, I’d have no excuse for avoiding a meeting with Patrick Dreiser. The thought made me sigh. I craned my neck and looked up through the windshield. Angry clouds the color of pencil lead made the sky look closer than it had been earlier. I hoped Charlie got to Wyoming and back before the storm hit.
23
The Laramie County sheriff didn’t look at all as Charlie had envisioned him after their phone conversation. She’d been thinking tall cowboy, big gut, late middle age. The reality was shorter, slimmer, and younger. Sheriff Hadley Huff was maybe five-nine, 145 pounds, thirty years old, and looked like a marathoner in a crisply ironed white shirt and olive-brown uniform slacks. He shook Charlie’s hand when she was shown into his office and surveyed her with frank interest.
“Former military?” he asked.
When she nodded, he said, “Me, too. Army. Six years. Artillery. You?”
“Air force. Seven years. Office of Special Investigations.”
They spent a few minutes discussing their respective military careers before Huff opened a file folder. “The Eustis case, huh? I’ve got to tell you, this one eats at me. I’d only been in office a couple months when Robert Eustis’s body was found. As I told you on the phone, the case is still unsolved. Bugs me. After you called to say you were coming up, I made you a copy of the case file. I wasn’t sure if I’d hand it over, but—”
He slid a manila envelope across the desk to Charlie. She flipped through the crime scene photos and autopsy report for a moment, then looked up to find Huff’s gaze on her. The Wyoming state seal on the wall behind him dominated the office.
“You’re being awfully helpful to an out-of-town PI,” she observed.
He smiled thinly. “I’d give assistance to anyone I thought stood a chance of making progress on this case. You seem like a better bet than most.”
She looked a question at him, and he amplified. “You’re not a quitter. I’ve run twenty-two marathons, and I can stand at the starting line and look at the people lined up at the tape and say, ‘quitter, quitter, quitter.’” His finger pointed a different way on each “quitter,” as if he were singling out individuals. “I can see it in the way they hold themselves, their expressions, something in their eyes.” He shrugged. “I think that once you sink your teeth into something, you keep after it. Ever run a marathon?”
“Once.”
“Finish?”
“Three hours and fifty-two minutes.”
He nodded with satisfaction. “Knew it.”
Charlie felt vaguely uncomfortable at being analyzed so astutely by a young man she’d known for only fifteen minutes. “Are you saying you’ve quit on the case?”
He smiled broadly, not one whit offended by her question. “By no means, but I’ve got plenty of other cases in this jurisdiction and limited manpower. I’m viewing you as an extension of my force, if you will, because I know if I share what I have with you, you’ll share what you learn with me.” He made it a statement.
“Absolutely,” Charlie agreed, seeing no reason she wouldn’t be happy to pass along what she found out to Sheriff Huff. She returned the reports to the envelope and set it aside. “I appreciate the docume
nts, but I’m more interested in your impressions of the case, the nuances that probably aren’t on any of those forms. Did you have any suspects?”
“Two.” He held up his index and middle fingers. “Eustis’s son, Robert Junior.” He folded down one finger. “According to everyone we interviewed, he was mighty pissed off about his father remarrying and hated the new wife.”
“Amanda Two.”
“Right. He’d persuaded his father to insist on a prenup and was working hard to ensure that Robert Senior didn’t change his will in her favor. In that scenario, Amanda Two is dead.”
“If he hated the new wife, why wouldn’t Junior just kill her? Why kill his father?”
Sheriff Huff gave her an appreciative look. “Rumor—confirmed by several sources, including the local bank manager—has it that Robert Junior was running the ranch into the ground. Robert Senior was on the verge of taking back financial and day-to-day control of ranch operations. The son blew up at his dad when he told him and threatened to kill him, in a café just down the road.” The sheriff nodded to his left. “Did I mention that was less than a week before the coroner estimates Robert Senior was poisoned? I guess he couldn’t stomach the humiliation, or the downsizing of his lifestyle, or both.”
“Your second suspect?” Charlie already knew what he was going to say. “Amanda Two?”
“Bingo. As near as anyone can tell, there’s about three-quarters of a million missing from old man Eustis’s bank accounts. He’d added Amanda’s name to the accounts right after marrying her, and large withdrawals of cash were made starting shortly thereafter. Could have been cash payments for a new bull or piece of ranch equipment, or mismanagement by Robert Junior, but it looks suspicious. At least, Robert Junior insists it’s suspicious. In that scenario, Amanda killed her husband to keep him from realizing she was siphoning money out of their accounts, or because he’d already found her out, and ran off to start a new life elsewhere.”
“Is this her?” Charlie passed Sheriff Huff the newspaper photo of “Lucinda Cheney’s” wedding, the only picture she’d been able to find of Heather-Anne.
“I wouldn’t know. I never met the woman, and no one could produce a photo of her. I understand she was a platinum blonde, though that’s nothing a box of hair dye wouldn’t fix.”
“Is there anyone around who would know if this was Amanda Two?”
“Robert Junior. I’m sure he’d be more than happy to see you and give you his ‘evil stepmother’ spiel.” From the way Huff said it, Charlie could tell he was no great fan of Robert Junior.
“I’d appreciate it if you could give him a call and ask if he’ll see me.”
Ninety seconds later, Huff gave her a nod as he hung up. “Robert’s out of town, but his wife says she’ll see you. Her name’s Tansy, and she knew Amanda Two. The ranch is east of here, north of Thunder Basin. Let me have my secretary print you some directions.”
Accepting the directions a few minutes later, Charlie let Huff walk her to the door. She turned to face him, the weak sunlight streaming through the glass doors highlighting skin damage on his face from too many hours, Charlie presumed, of marathon training in the harsh sun of a Wyoming summer. “If you had to make a guess, would your money be on Robert Junior or Amanda Two?” In her experience, cops frequently had strong opinions about guilt, even if they didn’t have enough evidence to convince a DA to prosecute.
Huff bit his upper lip and strained air through his teeth. “I’d have to flip a coin.”
* * *
From the parking lot, Charlie phoned Dan to let him know she was done with the sheriff. Dan had opted to drive around Cheyenne rather than horn in on her meeting with Sheriff Huff. “Three’s a crowd,” he’d said when he dropped her off. Hugging her navy peacoat around her after ascertaining that Dan was less than ten minutes away, Charlie stared at the city. At roughly six thousand feet, Cheyenne was the same elevation as Colorado Springs, but postage-stamp flat, as far as Charlie could see. Broad streets stretched flatly into the distance, and the landscape on the drive into the city had consisted of tan plains pocked by fence posts and the occasional bovine. She was pretty sure this part of the state was so flat she could see all the way north up I-25 to Montana. She bent over and touched her toes, trying to stretch her buttocks and hamstrings, stiff after the almost-three-hour drive. Dark hair spilling over her face, she held on to her toes for a count of thirty, ransacking her brain for “flat” synonyms to describe eastern Wyoming. She straightened when she heard a horn honk.
Dan’s truck pulled to a stop beside her. She jumped in and cranked the heater up a notch.
“Did you get anything useful from the local law?” Dan asked, handing her a Wendy’s bag that smelled temptingly of french fries. A similar bag gaped between his spread thighs.
Thank God he’d known better than to get her a wimpy salad. Unwrapping the paper around her burger, Charlie told him what Sheriff Huff had said.
“So we’re making a side trip to Thunder Basin?” Dan cast a look at the sky. “I was listening to the weather report, and the storm’s moving in faster than expected.”
“We can spend the night, then,” Charlie said. “Play it safe.”
Dan shook his head. “I’d rather not. I got a call from a parishioner’s husband. She’s been ill and isn’t expected to live out the night. She’s asking for me.”
“Okay,” Charlie said. “We’ll do a hit-and-run at Eustis’s ranch and get on the road back to Colorado Springs. If we leave Thunder Basin by six or six thirty, we can be home around ten. With any luck, we can outrun the storm. If we have to stop in Fort Collins or Denver, it’s no big deal and you’ll still get back sooner. Even if the hotels are packed with stranded travelers and we have to share a room, I’m safe with a priest, right?” She slanted Dan a grin and handed him the directions to the ranch. A gust of wind rocked the truck, and Dan put it in gear.
Dan’s gaze held Charlie’s for a moment before he turned his eyes to the road. “I guess that depends on your definition of ‘safe.’”
24
After all my worries about getting together with Patrick Dreiser, he refused to meet with me.
“I’m tired of the whole damn thing,” he said, sounding more angry than tired when I phoned him on his cell, using a number I’d gotten from Les’s files. After talking to Hollis Sloan I’d gone home for a snack of leftover lemon cake and to find Dreiser’s number. “I know damned well I can’t get blood from a stone or money out of you, sweetheart, so I’m not going to waste my time talking about that criminal, defrauding, embezzling ex-husband of yours. Why, my blood pressure’s gone up fifty points just talking to you on the phone.” He slammed the receiver down.
Well! I might be a teensy bit afraid of Patrick Dreiser—I’d never much liked him even when Les and I socialized with him and his wife, back in our happier days—but I was determined to talk to him. If he wouldn’t agree to meet, then I’d have to use my summons-delivering techniques to take him by surprise. I’d gotten pretty good at finding summons recipients and handing over the paperwork they didn’t want to receive. I dialed Dreiser’s secretary.
Since Les ran off with Dreiser’s money, he’d been forced to let a lot of his staff go. Apparently, his secretary was one of the casualties. A kid who didn’t sound any older than Kendall answered the phone.
“Dad’s on a maintenance call,” she said. “Can I take a message?”
“Why aren’t you in school?” I asked, hoping that Dexter and Kendall were in class.
“I graduated last year,” the teen said, not sounding surprised or offended by my question. “Now I work with my dad.”
“Oh. Great. Congratulations. Well, do you know where he is?”
“That gas station just off I-25 at Garden of the Gods.”
“Thanks.”
I hung up and headed upstairs to change. The soft blue sweater I had put on this morning didn’t say “force to be reckoned with.” If I was going to take on Patrick Dreiser, I needed a pow
er outfit.
* * *
Wouldn’t you know it, there were several gas stations just off the I-25 exit at Garden of the Gods Road, and, of course, I hadn’t asked Dreiser’s daughter which one he was working at. I cruised through three of them, getting tangled up in traffic crossing under the freeway, before I found Dreiser at a fourth station about a quarter mile west of I-25. The vending machines—a soda machine and a snack machine—were outside, adjacent to a men’s restroom that smelled strongly, even through the closed door, of one of those scented cakes that goes in a toilet bowl to keep it clean. The front of the drink machine was opened wide, and a pair of work-booted feet showed beneath the door. I parked the Hummer in one of the slots in front of the convenience store, next to a hatchback that was vibrating with the force of the rap music thudding through it. The skinny woman smoking a cigarette in the driver’s seat, elbow resting on the rolled-down window and seat reclined like she was waiting for someone, didn’t even look at me as I hustled past. I ducked my head against the wind as I trotted around the side of the building. Luckily, it blocked most of the wind.
“Mr. Dreiser?” Even though Les and I had gone out with Dreiser and his wife as business colleagues a couple of times, I’d never felt comfortable calling him Patrick. He didn’t like Pat. Mostly, I’d called him nothing.
He leaned back to peer around the open door. His iron gray hair stuck out from under a Dreiser Vending baseball cap. It was inches longer than when I’d last seen him, and I cringed to think that maybe he couldn’t afford a barber anymore. He wore a plaid wool shirt under denim overalls and still had the paunch I remembered. At least he wasn’t starving to death. He held a large wrench in one gloved hand. He’d always been proud of being a “self-made man,” which I’d always thought was a silly term.
“You.” He scrunched up his face like he’d taken Robitussin or tasted spoiled milk. “What are you supposed to be? Mrs. Claus?”
I guessed my power outfit of quilted scarlet vest over a cherry-colored turtleneck paired with a shin-length red skirt and cream-colored high-heeled boots—I didn’t have any red ones—wasn’t having the right effect. I felt let down; all the fashion magazines said red was the power color.
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