A Rendezvous to Die For

by Betty McMahon

  “Doesn’t that involve carrying heavy equipment?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Shaw rose from the chair and paced back and forth in the tight space. The dust from the chair clung to his black sheriff-uniform slacks, outlining his skeletal buttocks. I forced myself not to giggle hysterically. “You must be . . . shall we say . . . a strong lady, to haul all that equipment on a regular basis.”

  I glanced up at him to gauge his intention with such a question. His gaze raked across my body. “I’m strong enough, I guess.”

  “Do you do anything special and deliberate . . . to keep fit?”

  “I lift weights.”

  He scribbled a notation on his clipboard and then, without warning, leaned over the table to stare into my eyes. “How well did you know the deceased?”

  Taken aback by his closeness and abrupt switch in subjects, I shrunk back in my chair. “Eric? I . . . I knew him only on a professional basis.”

  “Is that so. Hmm.” He was silent for several seconds and then slowly lowered himself onto the chair opposite me again, crossing one leg over the other with equally slow deliberation. “Apparently, you knew him well enough to engage in a rather strident argument at the Rendezvous.”

  I bit back a defensive retort. It finally dawned on me that Sheriff Shaw was treating me like a suspect. Should I refuse to answer his questions? Or would that look like I had something to do with the crime? I felt like a character in a gangster movie. Make that a gangster cartoon . . . Simpsons-style. I was in a windowless basement bomb shelter being grilled by a brusque-speaking sheriff’s deputy. Ironically, the scene even included the ubiquitous light bulb dangling from the ceiling.

  “Did you or did you not threaten Mr. Hartfield with bodily harm, Miss Cassidy?” The deputy’s jaw muscles worked overtime in his hairless baby face.

  “I’m sorry. I . . . I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” I squirmed on my chair.

  “Of course you do. Several witnesses heard you say you would harm Mr. Hartfield, if you ever saw him again.”

  I was momentarily speechless, as my shouting match with Eric returned in vivid memory. It was merely the kind of stuff angry people say in a moment of passion. It wasn’t real, but evidently when a murder has been committed only minutes later, chitchat takes on a life of its own.

  Shaw was becoming impatient.

  “Well . . . what would you say, if someone told you to ‘watch your back’?”

  “I ask the questions, Miss Cassidy, and I’m waiting for your reply.”

  I lowered my head and stroked the scar on my neck. Before I could utter another word,

  the door opened. “Excuse me, sir, there’s someone here to see Miss Cassidy.” A uniformed policeman gestured toward my interrogator. “Sheriff, if you please, you may wait out here.”

  Sheriff Shaw stalked out of the room, and a slender man dressed in a dark blue-striped business suit entered to take his place. He shut the door, took in the room at one quick glance, smoothed down his thin mustache that matched a full head of striking white hair, and finally smiled at me. Probably in his late sixties, he didn’t appear frustrated by the surroundings. He extended his hand and presented me with a business card. “Cassandra Cassidy, I presume?” His speech was precise and firm.

  I nodded.

  “I am Lawton Sanders, your attorney,” he said. “Anna sent me.”

  Chapter 5

  Tuesday

  Monday’s interview had left me rattled. I wondered what direction Shaw’s questioning would have taken, if Attorney Lawton Sanders hadn’t shown up. I would be eternally grateful to Anna for sending her brother to me. Sanders had called at the crack of dawn and was in my kitchen with his briefcase open, ready for business. “At this point in the investigation, anyone connected with the crime scene is actually a suspect,” he said, spelling out my predicament and attempting to relieve my fears.

  “But, how could Sheriff Shaw possibly think I am the one who murdered Eric?” I shoved a mug of coffee toward him and sipped at my own. “I’ve never even held a tomahawk, let alone thrown one. I’d never been to a reenactment before either, and I had no idea hatchet-throwers would be competing. He didn’t ask me any of those questions. What about Marty? It was his tomahawk in Eric’s skull. He’s the one Shaw should be questioning, not me.”

  Sanders’ gaze was steady, his voice calming. “I’m sure he’s questioning Marty, too, and he’ll reach the conclusion that you couldn’t possibly be the murderer, when all the facts are in.” He pulled out a legal pad. “Now, if you want me to act as your attorney, start at the beginning and tell me exactly what happened from the time you entered the Rendezvous grounds.”

  Minutes later, he stuffed the legal pad into his briefcase. “I’ll field any media questions, Cassandra. Also, when the deputy contacts you again, refer him to me. Don’t do any talking to anyone, unless I am present.”

  That seemed like an impossible order, but I nodded anyway. As soon as Sanders left, I paced the floor. I don’t handle uncommon stress well. I handle stress with chemicals. The darkroom kind. The digital revolution consigned some photographers’ darkrooms to antique status, but I used mine often . . . whenever I wanted an effect I couldn’t get through my computer software. I decided that concentrating on the development of the black and white photos from Heather’s wedding might help me think more clearly. I headed directly to my darkroom, thankful, once again, that the carriage house had come equipped with such a luxury.

  As I plunged developer paper into the chemical baths, my mind raced through the possibilities. The sheriff would investigate my past combative connection with Eric. Worse, he would take my so-called threatening statement at the Rendezvous seriously . . . especially since I was the one who found Eric dead minutes later. Who else hated Eric as much as I did? Marty? Did he even know Eric? One thing I knew for sure about my landlord . . . as his war experiences attested, he was capable of killing. And, he had attended the Rendezvous, as he had for many years, he was an expert with tomahawks, and it was his so-called “lost” ‘hawk that felled Eric in the sweat lodge.

  As soon as that thought entered my mind, I brushed it aside. It would be stupid for any sane killer to use an easily identifiable weapon to commit a crime. Not only that, it would be equally stupid for someone intent upon murder to be seen by so many people at nearly the same time the crime was occurring. Marty wasn’t stupid.

  A million other thoughts crowded my focus on developing quality prints for Heather. I couldn’t begin to sort it all out all the details, but I intended to make an effort. Passively waiting for someone else to solve my dilemma wasn’t my style. At least it hadn’t been my style since Mrs. A had taken me under her wing.

  * * *

  When I was about the age of four, I was placed in foster care. I wasn’t sure how or why, because people have always been light on the specifics. In fact, almost secretive. I have some hazy moments of memory when pictures of people—maybe my parents—swim into my consciousness, unrecognizable and contorted, like figures swimming underwater. Why was I separated from them? Were they still alive and somewhere without me? Did they ever wonder about where I was and what I was doing? Did they know that I had been shifted from one home to another for ten years?

  I was the Browns’ little girl, until Mrs. Brown became too ill to care for me, and I was snatched away to join the Youngmans. I remember the Youngmans. In order to fit into their household, I had to coexist with Peggy, their precious princess of a daughter. When anything went wrong, it was always my fault. The final straw came when Peggy lifted money from her mother’s purse and shifted the blame to me. Before the week was out, and despite my protestations of innocence, I was on my way to live with another family. It became a pattern— packing up and traipsing to another house of strangers. I’d have to deal with new schools, having no friends, and trying to establish a relationship with faux siblings, recreating myself to fit into each new situation.

  I moved often, until Mrs. Andrews a
ccepted me as her foster daughter. I was thirteen. By then, I had adapted to so many different families and situations I felt like a chameleon . . . with multiple personalities. Over the years, my once sunny disposition had completely eroded. I no longer expected good things to happen. I had withdrawn into a wimpy, scared little rabbit.

  Most people called my new foster mother crazy. She was certainly different from your typical PTA-type mom. I can see her still, stalking J C Penney’s on the trail of the perfect pair of stretch pants. Not just any stretch pants. Following her own fashion drummer, she favored anything with purple and red in it. Flowers, stripes, solids; it didn’t matter, as long as it was purple and red. Even with my stunted fashion sense, I perceived she was a bit over the top in her wardrobe choices. I groaned whenever she put the stretch fabric to its ultimate test, pulling the pants up over her lumpy thighs. As if that weren’t bad enough, she paired the pants with pink or green patterned shirts.

  My foster mom teased her gray hair into a mini-mountain, shellacked it in place with hair spray, and then applied her makeup mask . . . heavy on the mascara, a generous swipe of deep-plum lipstick, and matching blobs of blusher on both cheeks. She thumbed her nose at social conventions of all sorts. I never figured out how she was accepted as a foster parent. But if she hadn’t been—and if I hadn’t been sent to live with her—I’d have ended up on welfare or in prison, as did so many foster home “graduates.” By the time I got to Mrs. A’s, I was the ideal target for anyone who wanted to test his mettle on a pushover. She sent me to school in clothes that attracted the class bullies like a three-legged rabbit did a coyote. When they found out I was a foster child, it gave them even more ammunition.

  One day, however, my personality got a transplant. Whenever I got off the school bus, the kids’ jeers followed me as I shuffled toward home, my chin meeting my chest. “Prairie chicken!” they taunted. “Cluck, cluck, cluck.” And I suppose I did look like one. I was dressed that particular day in an oversized flowered dress with clunky shoes and white socks—Mrs. A’s idea of how an eighth grader dressed. “Cassandra is a reject,” one of them shouted, singsong-style, while hanging out the bus window. “Her parents didn’t want her. Her parents didn’t want her.”

  Mrs. A heard them. She brought me into the house, sat me down, and forced me to tell her what was going on. I tearfully related how I was continuously ridiculed me about my clothes and my family. “My dear,” she said, “it’s my fault about the clothes.” She wiped the tears from my face. “We’ll shop tonight for some updated duds. Then we’ll talk about how you’re going to defend yourself against these playground Nazis.”

  The very next day, I put her first lesson to the test. “Hey, look, it’s old sourpuss,” Tommy the Tormentor taunted, approaching me on the playground with two other boys in tow. “Hey, sourpuss, ain’tcha ever gonna smile!”

  Feeling more confident in my newly purchased Levi’s and Lacrosse shirt, I sucked in a deep breath, lifted my head, and spit out what I’d rehearsed in front of my mirror. “I don’t know what makes you so stupid, Tommy, but it really works!” The little bully opened his mouth to retort, but before he could say anything more, I straightened up and delivered the junior high equivalent of a coup de grace. “You’ve got the personality of a bowling ball!”

  It wasn’t a David Letterman comeback, but I had learned the power of verbal bravado, thanks to Mrs. A. I have never forgotten her words of wisdom. “All you have to do is utter courageous words, Cassandra. The courage itself will follow.”

  My smart mouth put enough starch in my backbone to get me through the rest of my childhood and teenage traumas and, by adulthood, I was as well adjusted as the next person. Feeling the presence of Mrs. A and hearing her guidance was as effective as any session with a $200-an-hour psychiatrist. The only time a crack appeared in my carefully constructed identity was when stress reared its ugly head as the result of a conflict I was powerless to resolve.

  That was the kind of stress I was experiencing right now, in Colton Mills, Minnesota. It wasn’t that I didn’t have confidence in my attorney. I was simply accustomed to taking matters into my own hands. For some reason, I felt deep in my bones that Sheriff Shaw would rather make me the hatchet murderer than spend time searching for another possible suspect. I sensed he’d stay on me like Velcro on wool. Circumstantial evidence is a powerful convincer. I was the only one who knew for certain that I wasn’t the bad guy. Even though it required skills that weren’t on my résumé, I knew I’d have to play amateur detective. The best place to start my investigation was with Marty.

  That was easier said than done. I had paid no attention to Marty’s comings and goings. I hadn’t even seen him, from the time I moved into the carriage house until our paths crossed at the Rendezvous. On a normal day, I spent half my working time keeping appointments and the other half in my office or darkroom. The activities of my landlord never came to mind.

  I examined the quality of the photographs I had been laboring over and dumped them all into the trashcan. Trying to work, while worrying about my future, had been a total waste of time and energy. It was a good thing Heather was still on her honeymoon and wasn’t expecting finished prints anytime soon. As I exited the darkroom, I snapped off the red ceiling light and slammed the door behind me, thinking I should become a reenactor myself and specialize in ‘hawk throwing. The skill might come in handy.

  Chapter 6

  Tuesday Evening

  Since it was still early, I decided to make use of the evening to fulfill another commitment. My next wedding gig was to take place at Patriot Stables, and I needed to check the layout. It would be fun to be around horses again. They liked me and didn’t talk back.

  By the time I reached the stables, it was after seven in the evening. I strolled through the barn, clipboard in hand, as I scouted places to effectively pose the bridal party. I took my time, stopping now and then to inhale the fragrant aroma of hay and listen to the comforting sounds of horses placidly munching their evening meal. The peaceful ambiance took me back to the Evening Star Stables in southwest Minnesota, where I had first started my love for all things “horse” by mucking stalls at the age of seventeen. By the time I was eighteen, I was exercising the horses and, eventually, halter-training the owners’ colts. Those hours in the stable brought a little sanity into my life.

  I made notes on my clipboard and stepped outside the stables, ready to head back home. Suddenly, a familiar crackling sound caught my attention. Fire? I stepped toward the noise and my nose immediately registered “smoke.” Within seconds, I saw flames shooting into the air. I clutched the notes to my chest and dashed back into the barn, falling into a crumpled heap on a bale of hay. Frozen in place and with my eyes tightly closed, I shivered uncontrollably.

  Without warning, I felt someone shaking me. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. Stop screaming! The fire’s out.” A man pulled me to my feet.

  Still trembling, I pushed the hair out of my eyes and composed myself. “I-I’m all right. I’m all right,” I said, sucking in a huge breath of air and expelling it through pursed lips.

  “All it needed was a fire extinguisher,” the stranger said, sitting me down again on the bale of hay. “Some ignorant cuss tossed a half-burned cigarette into a pile of loose hay and didn’t stomp it out. I find out who and the guy’s history. Wait here a sec and I’ll be right back. I want to make sure there aren’t any embers left to do more damage.” He strode over to the barn hydrant for a pail of water to throw on the still smoking mess.

  I stood up again and found my knees were still wobbling. Frustrated, I shook them one at a time. I wanted to leave, before I’d have to explain my reaction to the easily contained fire.

  The cowboy returned, with a swagger and a grin. “Now that you’re better, we can start over,” he said. Slimly built, he was attired in jeans, boots, and a well-worn cowboy hat. His gaze traveled over me briefly, before meeting mine. “I thought I’d met all the pretty gals around here.” He looked me up and down
again. “Yes, ma’am, you sure do those jeans justice.”

  The voice, the lame pickup line, and even the swagger were familiar to me. I tilted my head and studied him. “Jack?” I squinted and shaded my eyes from the glare of the setting sun with a cupped hand. “Well, for . . . you’re Jack Gardner!”

  He pulled off his cowboy hat and bowed. “The one and only. Am I lucky enough to know this lovely lady?” He stroked his cheeks while thinking and closed his eyes. They flew open and his grin widened into a dazzling smile. “Cassandra Cassidy—all grown up, with short, curly hair?”

  Our responses tumbled out in stereo. “I thought you were in New York,” he said, at the same time I said, “I thought you were in Texas.”

  “You go first.” I waggled my fingers at him.

  “I’ve been stable manager and trainer here for six months,” he said. “Wrangling cows was fun for a few years, but I was getting busted up down in Laredo.”

  Laredo. That explained the twang he’d acquired since I knew him, and probably the slight limp, too. I had noticed it, when he walked toward me. “I take it Texas ranch horses aren’t like pampered Minnesota Arabians.”

  “You got that right.” He sighed and lifted his finger to tip his hat off his forehead. “They laid injuries on me too numerous to mention. But I didn’t get too busted up, if you know what I mean.” He winked and rested an arm on one of the barn’s vertical supports right behind me.

  Still an incorrigible flirt, Jack couldn’t help himself. The minor-league pitch he’d perfected years ago was still working for him. At one time, it would have landed in my strike zone, but, now, it wasn’t even in the ballpark. I’d eaten up the cowboy lothario line when I was his fling du jour one forgettable summer in our younger days. But . . . even though the romantic attraction had worn off, I couldn’t help but appreciate the figure he cut in his form-fitting Wranglers. “Exactly what do you do here?” I asked.