Sign Off

by Patricia McLinn

  That case had last been seen the same time as Redus . . . and the same time Gina started buying Grey Poupon mustard, designer bread and Victoria’s Secret frou-frous.

  I folded the legal pad sheets I’d torn off and slipped them into my purse. Maybe I’m a cynic, but I was betting on a connection linking my list, Redus’ leather case and Gina’s buying habits.

  The opening door squeaked, but before I could get my creaky neck around to see who had come in, all the lights went out. Probably with one sweep of the hand on the switch by the door.

  “Hey! Turn the lights back on.”

  No answer. Only the sound of someone breathing.

  “Who’s there?” I didn’t expect an answer, but there are some questions you just have to ask.

  The breathing advanced. I slung the shoulder strap of my purse crosswise over my body, then groped across the library table. The empty soda can clanked.

  The noise seemed to make the breather bolder. It—the quality of breathing had no gender—came faster. I got up as quietly as I could, leaving the chair in the aisle and headed for the back of the room, arms extended to trail my fingertips along the front of the cabinets as a guide. It was the long way around to the door, but the lump in my stomach suspected the door was locked anyway.

  I crept, holding my breath so I could hear the breathing and gauge its position. Almost there. Almost . . . Clang! Crash!

  The crack of shin against chair, then the metallic rattle of chair against cabinet was a jolt of electricity to my heart. I sprinted for the door, shouting as I went. My hand slipped on the handle, then closed around it and jerked. It was locked. I pounded on the door and hollered as loud as I could, but not for long.

  I couldn’t count on there being anyone to hear. And if I remained in one spot, the breather would surely come to me.

  In the renewed quiet, the breathing, now with an added wheeze, coming closer, retraced its steps from where it had encountered the chair.

  I groped for the light switch, couldn’t find it. Jammed my fingers painfully against the side of a cabinet.

  The breathing was almost here. No time for another swipe at the wall.

  I guessed the distance to the far aisle. A sharp graze against my left arm told me I’d found the corner of the first filing cabinet. I kept my hands on it to guide me to the next one. With as little noise as possible, I slid my hands down the cool metallic surface, curled my fingers around the handle and drew out the drawer at shin level. I backed up several paces and drew out another. Then one from the opposite side.

  Just then, the breather let out a wail of shin-cracking agony.

  From the sound, the breather ricocheted into the filing cabinets on the outside wall and into the open drawer on that side, sending the entire cabinet thudding against the wall like a huge door knocker.

  Maybe I became careless as I moved on. Because, as I opened yet another drawer on the outside wall, about chest level, I was nearly wrenched off my feet when a hand wrapped in my hair and tugged.

  Swinging wide as I fought for footing, my fist connected with something solid enough to earn a grunt from my foe. I jerked my head back, prepared to sacrifice a hunk of hair for my freedom. But my hair didn’t give.

  They identified the killer from skin found under the victim’s fingernails.

  I’d reported it often enough. I reached to scratch my attacker. If I didn’t get away, I wanted justice.

  The move left me off balance. The hold on my hair dragged my head around like Michael Jordan palming a basketball. I knew what was going to happen. With each fraction of an inch like a stop-action photograph in my mind, the cool, rounded metal of a drawer handle connected with my temple. Then the depthless dark that exists behind our eyelids rose up and swallowed the lightless room, the breather and me.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Do you have any idea who could have wanted to scare you?”

  The one time in my life I’d fainted I remember coming to in the middle of Maple Avenue during the Fourth of July parade surrounding by the avidly curious faces of my fellow Brownies, and feeling as if a trick had been played on me. How the heck had I gotten there?

  That was how I felt finding myself blinking into the faces of co-workers hovering around the couch in Haeburn’s office where I was stretched out. Except my Brownie-sized head hadn’t sported an ostrich-egg bump as my adult head did.

  And my concerned cohorts hadn’t included a serious-eyed deputy whose tone implied I could clear all this up if I tried. I used to like Richard Alvaro.

  “Scare her?” Jenny shrilled. “Somebody was trying to kill her. Just look at her head.”

  My hand started toward the throbbing.

  Jenny forestalled me by placing a cold, wet towel on my forehead. A drop plopped into my eye and I jolted.

  “See!” Jenny said. “I think she should go to the emergency room.”

  “No.” I started to push myself up. Stopping abruptly, I groaned.

  “Oh, God! What is it, Elizabeth?”

  “It’s a stiff neck. I must have slept funny.” I succeeded in sitting up, but left my legs on the couch. “I’m okay.” I looked around. “What happened?”

  “That’s what we’d like to know,” said Audrey Adams, an assignment editor who doubles as weekend producer/director.

  “We were editing a package on the Yellowstone Street Sidewalk Sale,” said Jenks, “when we heard a ruckus from the library. Sounded like somebody trying to break through the wall.” That must have been the file cabinet my attacker had set rocking. The library and the editing rooms back into each other, sharing a wall, but they open to opposite sides of the building. “When we got around, the library door was open, and the lights were out. It was lights out for you, too.” He chuckled.

  “You didn’t see anyone?” Deputy Alvaro asked. “Anybody else in the building?”

  My fellow employees exchanged looks, then shrugs. “People come and go, nobody pays much attention,” Audrey said.

  “Okay. If you think of anything, give me a call.”

  After everyone heeded that dismissal, Alvaro pulled a chair up beside the couch. “You feel up to answering questions?”

  I started to nod. Mistake. Both my neck and head lodged complaints. I told him my tale, saying I had been doing research, but not what research.

  “Was anything taken?” Alvaro asked.

  “I . . . I don’t know. My purse, my other stuff?”

  He handed over the purse. “You had this with you. There’s an empty can, two pens and newspaper files scattered around the table.”

  No legal pad.

  I unzipped my purse. My fingers found the folded sheets of notes immediately. Aiming for nonchalance, I drew out my wallet. A quick check there and some pawing around amid keys, phone, mini-brush, makeup kit, notebook, a half-dozen pens, a corkscrew and two mini-Snickers bars, and I could assure him nothing of value was missing.

  “So you didn’t see this guy—this person,” he corrected himself. “Can you tell me anything about the person?”

  “Only that he or she breathes and has a real strong grip.”

  He stood, walked to the window, turned the wand that adjusts the blind slats to block the glare. Until he did that I hadn’t realized I was squinting. He came back, but didn’t sit. “Do you have any idea who could have wanted to scare you? Or harm you?”

  I looked up into the serious, earnest face of Deputy Alvaro and decided against telling him the truth. Whoever killed Foster Redus.

  There were too many candidates.

  If I was right about Redus’ omnipresent leather case, Gina could have killed him for the money. Mona could have had the same motive. Marty Beck, too, in this strange love quadrangle. Especially if one found out or suspected Foster was going away alone or with one of the others.

  Even without the money motive, I could see Mona killing Redus if he intended to leave her. Gina’s version of Mona’s history with Tom certainly indicated a woman prepared to take extreme measures.


  Widcuff could have killed Redus to eliminate a threat to his ambition, Judge Claustel to shield his son and the Johnsons as revenge. And that last group included Brent Hanley, who had displayed the physique and temperament for a physical attack on the media in the person of E.M. Danniher.

  And then there was Burrell, who definitely wanted me off this story.

  Of course, there was also Thurston Fine, who wanted me not only off this story, but out of what he surely considered his state. If only I could imagine Thurston being that strong—or magically bulking up his body in the space of a few hours—I’d have served him up to Deputy Alvaro with pleasure.

  I couldn’t very well demand a lineup of Sherman County citizens and check their shins for bruises. Besides, the only thing missing was my legal pad.

  But I sure would like to know whom Fine talked to after he left me.

  I met Richard Alvaro’s dark eyes. “Not a clue.”

  * * * *

  Mike’s four-wheel drive was parked in my driveway, and Mike’s buns were parked on my front step when I pulled in nearly two hours later. You’d think the delay was because no one wanted me to move too soon. Nope. Paperwork. For Alvaro. And for the station. Audrey had called Haeburn, who insisted I sign releases to cover the station’s ass, as well as his.

  The bill of Mike’s baseball cap with the Chicago Bears logo on it shadowed his face, masking his expression.

  He picked up a combination phone and answering machine from beside him on the concrete and stood as I approached, adding the step’s height to his advantage so he towered over me.

  “Where have you been?” he demanded.

  I stretched my five-feet-nine and glared up, hands on hips. My headache had downgraded, but it didn’t improve my mood any. The sun seemed unnecessarily bright, even behind sunglasses and the straw hat Jenny donated to mask the burgeoning bruise. “Let’s break that habit right now, Paycik.”

  “What habit?’

  “Showing up on my doorstep and demanding where I’ve—”

  “Habit? It’s no habit. I—”

  “The first night we went to Mona Burrell’s house you grilled me about my afternoon. I’m a free agent. You should understand that term.”

  His open, handsome face shifted and shuttered. “Understood. I just meant that I’d been waiting for you and—”

  “Well, don’t. You go about your business, and I’ll go about mine, and we’ll forget this working together crap.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly. Even before he swung it, I could feel a punch line coming. “I guess that means you don’t want to come with me to meet Mona.”

  I held my breath for a balancing second, then let it out in a whoosh. I had overreacted, taking out on Paycik a bad headache and a flashback to a bad marriage. “Damn. You win.” I went for all-out contrite. “Yes, please, may I come with you to meet Mona.”

  I let him have his grin, even let myself enjoy—just a little—the picture of good-looking Mike Paycik grinning at me that way, then got down to business.

  “Mona asked to meet us?”

  He extracted another ounce of humble pie. “Me, actually. The phone was ringing when I walked in, and the machine picked up, so it recorded everything, you want to hear?”

  “You bet.”

  He followed me into the house and through to the kitchen. He put the recorder on the counter and plugged it in while I poured us each a soft drink and made myself a sandwich.

  He rewound. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  He hit the play button.

  “Mike? Mike Paycik?” It was clearly Mona’s voice, but had a distracted quality to it.

  “Yes. Hello? Who’s this?”

  “Mona Burrell. I want to talk to you. You’re still doing this reporting stuff on Foster being murdered, aren’t you?”

  “Elizabeth Danniher and I are looking into the story, yes.”

  “Yeah, you and her. Well, I might have something to tell you before I go. There’s something—well, I didn’t get it right off. Not ’til they found Foster, but then it made sense. I thought I could . . . but Foster thought that, too. Maybe this is better. I can still get something. It doesn’t mean I can’t. But this’ll be my cushion. Like some insurance, you know?”

  “What are you talking about, Mona? If you want to tell me something—”

  “I’ll tell you.” Significance dripped from her syllables. It was the voice of someone with the power of a secret. “I’ll tell you, but not on the phone. Not now. Meet me at Tom’s office. I gotta get something. It’s the trailer, you know? You know where it is?”

  “Sure. I know it.”

  “Okay. Meet me there. One hour.”

  “Okay. But, Mona, tell me what—”

  The click of Mona hanging up and Mike’s curse were the final sounds.

  “That was forty-eight minutes ago,” Mike said.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Mike opened the trailer’s unlocked door.

  “Mona?” There was no answer. He called again as he took a step inside, with me on his heels. “That’s her car out front. She’s got to be here.”

  “Maybe she’s in the bathroom,” I suggested. The door in the southwest corner labeled restroom was closed. The desk Burrell had sat on during my first visit was now as neat as the large desk in back.

  “Mona,” he called louder. No answer.

  “Maybe she left,” I offered.

  “Without her car and leaving the safe open?”

  He was right. The safe along the back wall had its door hanging wide open. Papers spilled from its bottom shelf to the floor. Two small, navy blue folders with gold lettering rested atop the white papers.

  After a glance that way, I started after Mike, who was skirting around the desk closest to the door, which blocked a direct path to the safe.

  I sniffed. “What’s that smell? Like something’s burning.”

  “More like a—” Mike stopped so abruptly, my nose connected with his back.

  “What—?”

  But, beyond the corner of the second desk, I saw what.

  Blood. Glinting wet where it puddled on the floor and just starting to dry stiffly in the pale hair like some grisly hairspray. Blood that meant Mona Burrell had gone from “who” to “what.”

  “She’s dead.” Mike’s voice sounded like someone had a grip on his throat. His body blocked part of the scene from my view, but from where he stood there would be no screen. He would see much more than a sweep of blue, a pale patch of flesh.

  My future’s ahead of me.

  Now she had no future.

  I stepped a quarter turn away. A spider had been busy, building a web from the door pulls of the deep gun cabinet to the windowsill. Droplets of red clung to it, outlining the intricacies that man so idly pushed aside without thought when they got in his way. A fine spray of blood traced the web, brought it to light like dyes that doctors use to trace veins.

  My head throbbed, the pain so piercing it brought tears to my left eye. My vision all seemed tinged red, even the slanted glass of the open back window was stained with the color. Smells clashed and clawed at each other, the mustiness of the carpet, the slight sweetness of blood, the sourness of the emptied body, and mingled in with all of them, the strong, oily scent of Mona’s perfume. My stomach dipped, rose toward my throat, then plunged.

  “Let’s get out of here, Mike.”

  He hadn’t moved. “Should we . . . should we check the body?”

  “You said she’s dead,” I said sharply. If there was a chance, and we’d just been standing here . . .

  “I meant for clues.”

  “No.” But I found myself looking around, taking in details. Identifying the navy folders as passports, the papers as business contracts. The stretch of blue as the sleeve of the sleek jumpsuit Mona Burrell wore. The patch of flesh as the back of her clenched fist. Had Mona gotten close enough to her killer to grab hair, scrape skin? “We don’t want to interfere with the crime scene. Th
is isn’t like Three-Day Pass Road six months later. The experts will get a second chance at this murderer. Let’s get out of here. We’ll call it in from the car.”

  Out in air that seemed so pure and sharp after the cloying, acrid mix of death, my mind started working again. Experts could tell a lot more from the body and crime scene than we could, but if there was one area I prided myself on it was reading people.

  “You call, I’ll drive,” I ordered, and Mike, ashen and with a faint tremble in his hands, silently handed over the keys to his four-wheel drive. He called 911 on his cellular phone and told the dispatcher what we’d found and where. After a second of listening, he looked at me while he repeated, “Who am I?”

  I shook my head. We’d tell the sheriff’s department we’d found the body, but I wanted some time first.

  “I’m—” Mike scraped the ring he wore across the mouthpiece. “What? Can you hear me? I think the line—”

  He pressed the “end” button. Not bad.

  If my head would shrink to normal size so my neck didn’t have so much to hold up and if my stomach would stay in place instead of threatening to take permanent residence in my throat, we might pull this off.

  Closing the phone, he looked around. “This is the way to the Circle B.”

  “Yup. Now, make another call. Get Diana up here.”

  His eyebrows rose, but in short order he was telling Diana to meet us without letting anybody know where she was going.

  Mike listened, then said to me, “Diana’s just about to leave some event in O’Hara Hill, and she’s assigned to hit a political fund-raiser barbecue for Thurston at six, she wants to know if she’ll make it.”

  “No.”

  He repeated that. More listening, then Mike said, “She wants to know if she’ll be in trouble for more than stiffing Thurston.”

  “Yes.”

  He listened about a sentence’s worth, said, “Okay, ’bye,” and hung up.

  “She said she has one short chore to do then she’s on her way. She’ll meet us at Burrell’s.” His voice dropped. “I hope to hell you know what you’re doing.”