Sign Off

by Patricia McLinn

  “Jealous,” she said. “He couldn’t stand the idea of me being made happy—fulfilled, if you know what I mean—by another man.”

  She lavished a look on Paycik that indicated the position was open, and she’d consider his application with favor.

  Mike smiled blandly at her right shoulder.

  “So you mentioned that to the law enforcement officers when they investigated Foster Redus’ disappearance?” I asked.

  “Law enforcement?” She gave a snort my mother would condemn as unladylike, but that succinctly conveyed Mona’s opinion. “Sheriff Widcuff is too stupid to enforce anything. Why, Foster was practically running the department.”

  “See, that’s the sort of insight I thought you could give us, Mona,” Mike said. “Especially Elizabeth, who doesn’t know the people involved. How about if we come by tomorrow?”

  “No. Tomorrow’s not good.” Mona Burrell’s face and voice said the whole idea wasn’t good.

  “Monday, then.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Seven thirty Monday night,” said another voice.

  It was Tamantha Burrell. I hadn’t even realized she’d joined the group. Or had she been there all along?

  She wore a baseball cap drawn as low as her ears would allow. Those ears stuck out through the parted sheet of straight hair. Too-short jeans and an oversized pair of athletic shoes combined to make her exposed ankles appear impossibly fragile.

  God, how hard was it going to be for a girl like Tamantha to be the daughter of a woman like Mona, especially when she slid into the orgy of self-doubt and looks-obsession that came in a package deal with adolescent hormones?

  Right now, she showed no sign of either disapproval or envy of her mother’s flashy looks. She showed signs only of wanting to pin down a time that I could come and interrogate her mother. Which she accomplished while her eyes zapped me with nonverbal messages to get cracking at carrying out her orders.

  On second thought, maybe I should have been wondering how hard it was for a woman like Mona to be the mother of a child like Tamantha.

  With Tamantha and Mike tag-teaming, the time was firm before Mona or I could demur. After that, farewells were initiated, with Mike getting an invitation to join Mona and the friend she hadn’t bothered to introduce for drinks at the Kicking Cowboy.

  “Oh, you too, Elizabeth,” Mona added half-heartedly.

  “Maybe another time. It’s getting late. I have to get Elizabeth home,” Mike said, making me sound like a doddering old woman.

  Before I could do more than grimace, he drew me away.

  “You were asking questions,” he crowed as soon as we were out of earshot.

  “It’s reflex.” I drew in the first deep breath I’d taken since encountering Mona Burrell’s perfume. “I found myself interviewing the clerk in the wallpaper store this afternoon. It doesn’t mean he’s guilty of taking kickbacks.”

  I was aware of Mike’s considering stare, but didn’t return it because I was looking in the direction the other parties to our recent conversation had taken. “Now that’s an interesting group.”

  Mike followed my nod to across the parking area. Mona Burrell and her daughter had just walked up to where Ames Hunt and Thurston Fine stood talking beside a brace of shiny red sedans. Mona hung at the edge of the conversation, and Tamantha waited impatiently three feet beyond. Mona’s friend had moved on. Hunt and Fine were so scrupulously careful about not glancing in our direction that I was certain they were talking about us.

  “Interesting,” Mike said, “but not surprising. Mona and Ames went to school together. And Thurston’s a big Ames Hunt backer politically. He even went out and bought a red Buick just like Hunt owns. Thurston thinks Hunt can go far, and that doing the coverage on Hunt’s career will take him far, too.”

  “It can’t be far enough,” I mumbled.

  Almost as if in response to my comment, Thurston Fine’s voice reached us across suddenly still air. “I’ve got a joke for you to take to the Kicking Cowboy, Mona. What’s the difference between a pit bull and a woman reporter?”

  “I don’t know, Thurston,” Mona replied with a giggle. “What’s the difference?”

  “The pit bull has a better hairstylist.”

  Laughter floated across to us. Mike slanted me a look.

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’ve been called worse.”

  On the other hand, I’ve been called worse by better than Thurston Fine.

  Who knows how much of one thing and how much of another shapes our decisions. Was it Thurston taking out his insecurities on me by spreading lies linking me with drugs? Was it Mike Paycik’s flattering belief that I could show him something special in the way of investigative reporting? Was it Tamantha Burrell’s stern expectation that I would fix her problem as I had gotten Fells’ Mart to fix Mrs. Atcheson’s toaster? Was it the need to get away from black and purple cabbage roses on a vile green background?

  Aiming for a nonchalant, companionable air, I slipped my hand around Mike’s arm.

  “What did you say your aunt’s name is?”

  Chapter Four

  Paycik had to wait nearly twenty minutes for me Sunday.

  I didn’t make him wait purposely, I just run slow in the mornings.

  Still, it served him right. If he’d just told me his aunt’s name, I could have left for O’Hara Hill in my own good time instead of on his crack-of-dawn schedule. But he’d made me promise we’d go together. And even then he wouldn’t tell me his aunt’s name. Who would have expected such distrust from a football player?

  So he deserved to wait.

  Sometimes I wonder if it’s out of such evening-ups that we derive true satisfaction in life. Forget accolades or Emmys. It’s watching the guy who cut us off a mile back get pulled over for speeding, it’s seeing the teenage bitch queen who’d never had pimples develop premature wrinkles, it’s making somebody who’d hooked you with your own curiosity wait for nearly twenty minutes in the gray and brown living room of a rental house.

  It’s not noble, but it’s human. And it’s a kind of justice.

  Paycik didn’t complain, and he’d brought coffee.

  He was hard to hate.

  The caffeine hit my bloodstream, the mists parted, and I realized that having gone some distance west we had turned right off Highway 27 and were now driving north, beside fenced range land dotted with the occasional cow, and parallel to a string of the Rockies called the Absaroka Range. Paycik was talking, which is how I knew the name of the mountains.

  “Not to be confused with the range in Montana, of course. Although—”

  “Why are you so interested?” I interrupted.

  He glanced over from the driver’s seat. “The mountains are in Cottonwood County, so they’re part of the area we cover. Besides, they’ve been part of my life since—”

  “Not the mountains—Foster Redus. Why’re you so interested in his disappearance?”

  “I’m not. Not when you put it that way.”

  “Then why?”

  “I’m not interested in Foster Redus’ disappearance. I am interested in Tom Burrell being blamed for it.”

  “He was blamed because they’d been fighting?” I said. When he nodded, I added, “Why were they fighting?”

  “Redus was fooling around with Mona.”

  “They’re divorced, so why’d Burrell care?” Remembering Tamantha’s comments, I added, “It’s not like it’s recent.”

  “No. They’ve been divorced for years. But Redus was still married—Gina didn’t start divorce proceedings until just before he disappeared. So there was talk. A lot of talk, especially with Redus not limiting himself to Mona. Mona was nowhere near discreet, and I don’t think Tom liked Tamantha being exposed to that or to the talk.”

  Which meant Burrell had a motive to match the evidence of the bloodstains in his house.

  “But the charges were dropped.”

  “Yeah,” Mike’s eyes narrowed as a cloud hurried on
and sunlight shafted across the road. “But not the rumors. And you know one result of that from Tamantha—Tom could lose his share of custody. Tom Burrell’s family has ranched here for generations. He’s lived in this county all his life. He’s been respected, liked. Now when he walks in places, half the people walk away. It’s got to be hell.”

  “With no body, people will forget. Besides—”

  “Not in this county.”

  “—if there’d been a body, chances are they’d have found it by now.” Mike was shaking his head. “Why not?”

  “That’s why.” He jerked his head to the left, where jagged mountains rose abruptly from the floor of the arid basin we drove along. Behind the first irregular row, a second rank was visible, and a third, and fourth, into misty distance. “There are places up there you could hide a body where it wouldn’t ever be found.”

  He turned left off the highway onto a lesser road that seemed destined to crash headlong into the mountains. In silence, we drew nearer and nearer. At what seemed the last possible moment, the road broke to the right in the first curve of a huge, spiraling S.

  At the end of it, we seemed to hesitate an instant. The narrow valley before us was bounded on the east by a trio of buttes that almost appeared flat in comparison to the peaks that crowded in at the west. Yet the buttes were high enough to cut off the town from the open basin to the east. Buildings huddled along the valley as if aware of their insignificance.

  The instant passed, and we started a gradual descent. We approached the town of O’Hara Hill from the south, on what appeared to be the only paved road. It shot straight through the relatively green valley and exited at the north end, slipping through a gap. Four abbreviated streets ran north-south within the valley, two to the east of the main road, one to the west. Short cross-roads connected the four north-south arteries, neatly gridding the town.

  The sheriff department’s sub-office, the fire station, the town hall and a local office of the regional electrical co-op all shared a green-roofed cement-block building about the size of three double-car garages. A rough parking lot surrounded it on three sides. The fourth side backed up to what appeared to be a wall of granite, with scrub pines defiantly growing out of its fissures at peculiar angles.

  As we walked toward the entrance, a dark, trim young man in a deputy’s uniform left a marked car and reached the door ahead of us. He politely held the door open.

  “Mike Paycik, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, and you’re . . . Alvaro, right?” Mike flashed a grin. “Janet’s younger brother. How is she?”

  “Great. She’s married, got three kids, living in Denver.”

  “Three kids? Geez . . .” Mike shook his head in amazement. “This is E.M. Danniher, a fellow reporter at KWMT. Elizabeth, this is . . . Robert?”

  “Richard.” The young deputy smiled as he shook my hand. “Robert’s my next older brother. Welcome to Wyoming, Ms. Danniher.”

  “Thanks, but please call me Elizabeth.”

  “So what brings you two to O’Hara Hill?”

  Before either of us could answer, a man in his mid-fifties came bustling out of an interior door and into the tiny reception area where we’d stopped.

  “Well, well, the press is here. What’re you finding to sensationalize here in sleepy O’Hara Hill on a Sunday, eh?”

  The man was shaped like a long water balloon squeezed at either end, so the middle stuck out. And he had Jimmy Johnson hair. You know, that guy who coached the Dallas Cowboys to a couple Super Bowl championships in the early ’90s whose hair never moved, not even when a tub of Gatorade was upended over his head. They showed instant replays. It never budged.

  “Sheriff Widcuff,” Mike said in such a neutral tone it could stand as an identification, an introduction or a greeting.

  “So, Paycik, you came back home after you were all washed up playing ball, huh?” The sheriff returned the nodded greeting of Richard Alvaro, who disappeared behind the door the sheriff had emerged from, then gave Mike a wide grin that showed tightly spaced teeth. It was hard to tell if he was deliberately being obnoxious or if it was accidental. “And now you’ve latched on as part of the . . . what is it . . .”

  “Fourth estate,” I said.

  He looked at me blankly. “Media. But you’re just a rookie at this game, so you brought the varsity.” He aimed that grin in my direction. “You come to see what you can dig up that you can throw a little paint on and present to the public as a masterpiece, huh?”

  “We’re here to see Mike’s aunt.”

  “Sure you are,” he agreed heartily. “You’re not here to poke into the Burrell case at all, are you? So whatever I tell you will be a bonus. Out of the goodness of my heart and to show I’m not one of those elected officials who’s always blaming the press for their woes. Get along mighty well with you folks, as a matter of fact. So I’ll just tell you, Burrell might be free now, but we’re not done with this case by a long shot. No sir, not by a long shot.”

  “That’s interesting—” Almost as interesting as the fact that he’d already heard the same rumor Hunt had. “—but I was wondering, since Redus worked for you—”

  “Now, there’re things I can’t tell you because it could hurt our case against Burrell in court, and I won’t jeopardize that no matter how hard you try to worm it out of me.”

  “I understand, but I was interested in any cases that Foster Redus—”

  “No, Tom Burrell’s not in the clear by a long shot. Not by a long shot. This department won’t show favoritism, no matter what some people might think.”

  Frustrated, I went for the blunt instrument. “Sheriff, what about Foster Redus? Could you tell us anything about Foster Redus?”

  “Well, sure. Sure I could. He was one of my deputies. Like family, we are. We take care of our own. You have to, this line of work. But . . .” The grin grew bland. “. . . I thought you said you weren’t doing a story. You were just here to see Mike’s aunt.”

  “We are here to see her, but, you know, I think you might have convinced me there is a story. Now, if I decide to do a background piece on Redus, could I come to you for an interview?”

  “Sure, sure.” He shoved his right hand in his pants pocket and noisily jiggled his change. “But I don’t want to keep you from seeing our Gee. Scares the devil out of me, that woman does.” He winked. “She’d have my hide if she knew I was keeping you this long out here. So you have a nice visit now.”

  “About an interview—”

  “Just give my office a call.”

  He headed out with an airy wave and without looking back.

  Mike bent a significant look on me as he opened a door into an interior hallway. I refused to meet his gaze.

  Halfway down the hallway, double doors on the right led to a large room with desks gathered on one side and a squared off horseshoe of electronic equipment at the other. Richard Alvaro smiled at us from one of the desks. On one side of the horseshoe, a man with weathered skin and a complacent paunch nodded to Mike as he continued to speak into a headset mouthpiece.

  The remaining person in the room turned slowly on the high-backed, wheeled chair that commanded the center of the electronic horseshoe. She was a large woman, bulky, rather than flabby. She moved with absolute assurance. She had dark auburn hair smoothly turned under and creamily pale skin set off by a turquoise tunic over matching slacks.

  As I acknowledged Mike’s introduction to his Aunt Gee, a phrase ran through my head: A woman of substance.

  “Elizabeth wants to know about the Burrell case.”

  As I turned to glare at Mike at that indiscretion, my gaze caught on the young deputy’s head coming up fast. He saw me looking and made his expression blank, but I’d seen the surprise, and something else. Relief? Expectation?

  Mike might have seen the reaction, too—or my glare—because he added, “Not anything from your official capacity, of course. She wants the unofficial background from the person who knows this county better than any other liv
ing soul.”

  Not only was it only so-so as a recovery, but his tone held an undercurrent I couldn’t identify.

  “Of course she does,” Mike’s Aunt Gee said, rising deliberately. “But we can’t have a proper talk in all this hurly-burly. Donald, I’m taking my break. You know where to reach me if you need me.” She hoisted a handbag so large its leather could have upholstered my car, and proceeded regally to the door, with Mike and me in her train. “You and Richard behave.”

  Having reduced her assistant and the deputy to the status of boys awarded the honor of being left alone, however briefly, she led us out. Alvaro moved ahead of us, apparently seeking the water cooler, but as I passed, he said quietly, “Ask about Rog Johnson and Foster Redus.”

  I looked at him, but he was bent over, filling a paper cup, and I couldn’t see his face.

  We followed Aunt Gee’s sedan—the QE II on wheels—two blocks south and one and a half blocks east to an excruciatingly neat wooden rectangle painted dull brown. No plants softened the cement block foundation, which looked as if it had been recently scrubbed. Possibly with a toothbrush.

  She’d already disappeared inside when Mike escorted me around the geometrically precise walk to the back door and into the kitchen. Stainless steel and spotless white bounced enough sunlight around the room to tempt me to ask when the next surgery started.

  “Sit. Lunch will be ready soon.” Without any evidence of hurry, Gee moved surprisingly quickly, as much in command of this space as of the dispatcher’s office.

  “Thank you, but I’m not really hungry . . .”

  Mike’s slashing hand motion came too late. Gee spared me a basilisk glare. “You’ll sit. You’ll eat. You’ll listen.” Apparently satisfied that she had me cowed—which she had—she resumed slicing a potato into a skillet, and started talking.

  As she served up a huge lunch of potatoes, fried chicken, string beans, applesauce and raw carrots, I did exactly what she’d said—I sat, I ate and I listened. I also took notes. She was precise, detailed and orderly.

  Foster Redus had been hired as a deputy two and a half years ago. At the start he was tolerated, though not well liked by his co-workers. His arrogance and self-satisfaction had eroded the tolerance, especially when he took up with the wife of another deputy, who resigned and left the area, wife in tow.