He rang my doorbell right on time. “Good news, Cass,” he said by way of greeting. “Looks like you’ll get your horse. Virgil requested that his attorney turn Midnight over to you. He knew you had been riding him on a regular basis.”
“That’s big of him. I’m surprised, aren’t you? Especially since we’re the ones who foiled his plans.” I grinned. “That news is the only good thing to come out of this mess, as far as I’m concerned.” I ushered him into the kitchen where I’d prepared one of my gourmet meals—a frozen pepperoni and sausage pizza heated in a 500-degree oven, accompanied by a cold six-pack of Coors.
“You turned into a pretty good detective,” Jack said, grinning as he popped open a can.
“Better than you know,” I said in a tense voice, between bites of pizza.
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean, Jack Gardner, is that all the while you were supposedly helping me, you were lying through your teeth.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“For starters, you neglected to let me in on the not insubstantial fact that you knew Eric Hartfield.” My gaze bored into his eyes.
“Where’d you get the idea that I knew Eric?” Jack looked sincerely baffled.
“Deputy Shaw told me you got Eric’s sister pregnant years ago, when you were working at the Evening Star Stables, then skipped town. He said Eric was gunning for you when you showed up in Colton Mills.”
“Never happened, Cass.” He shook his head in stupefaction. “Never happened. None of it. Nada. It was a case of mistaken identity. The sheriff took my DNA, saying they were investigating whether or not a child was mine. They didn’t say whose child they were talking about. I found out just last week they were talking about Hartfield’s sister. I’d taken her out a few times, but the results of the tests last week cleared me of being a father of her child. It wasn’t mine. Couldn’t be mine.”
“Are you telling me Shaw used information he didn’t know was even true to— ”
“Happens all the time. You know that.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s not all. Why didn’t you tell me you were at the Rendezvous on the day of the murder?”
“At the Rendezvous?” His mouth dropped open. “I’ve never been at that Rendezvous in my life!”
“Are you telling me that you did not trailer some horses to the Rendezvous for the use of a couple participants?”
“Yeah, I’m saying I wasn’t there. Where’d you hear that fabrication?”
“From Willis—Virgil—whatever his name is. He said you told him you were going to the Rendezvous and he could follow you up there, since he didn’t know the way.”
“Oh, that. I think I know what you’re talking about now.” Jack finished the beer in his can and reached for a second one. “Virgil asked me directions to the reservation casino and I told him I was heading up that way and he could follow me, if he wanted. Obviously, the man had an agenda and part of it was to bamboozle folks like you and me.” He grabbed a napkin and wiped his fingers of pizza sauce. “Cass, if you believed that shit, does that mean you suspected me of being a mass murderer?”
“Well, it made sense, didn’t it? I hear you were at the Rendezvous and you hadn’t mentioned it. You told me to visit Randy at his house and then I find him murdered. You decide to ride out on the stables property to find Jim, protest about heading in the direction I suggest, and then we find him hanging from a tree.”
Jack placed his hand over his heart. “I’m devastated that you would allow such a thing to even enter your mind. Shocked you’d actually believe it!” He reached for my hand across the table, but I was quicker. I might be grateful to him and I might have misjudged his connections to the three murdered men, but I wasn’t about to show him my gratitude by getting any closer to him than I’d been in the past months.
Media outlets outdid themselves covering the story of how three murders were solved in one dramatic bust. Always hungry for heroes, they were lionizing the latest one. And he was in his element. When I turned on the late-night news, there was Jack, decked out in his full cowboy regalia. “Mr. Gardner, where did you develop your amazing roping skills?” asked one of the TV reporters.
He tipped his Stetson off his brow and assumed an “aw shucks” manner and tone of voice. “I wrangled steers and horses in west Texas for a few years,” he drawled, flirtatiously eying the twenty-something interviewer. “It’s a skill you gotta know, if you’re gonna cowboy for a livin’.”
“Mr. Gardner is going to demonstrate his skill with a rope,” continued Ms. Interviewer.
The camera panned over to Jack, who was already astride his horse in one of the stable’s corrals. From the other end of the enclosure, someone opened a gate and about half a dozen calves dashed in, bunched together and heading for nowhere in particular. Jack expertly roped a calf his horse cut from the group. The calf hit the end of the rope and flipped to the ground. Jack jumped off and tied up the calf’s legs, while the horse held the roped calf taut. The camera pulled in for a close-up of the cowboy, who doffed his hat. His wide smile flooded my living room. It had taken him an impressive six seconds. Jack was on his way to a whole new career, and I predicted his newfound celebrity would project him far beyond the confines of Patriot Stables.
The interviewer was wrapping up her story. “Jack Gardner,” she said. “Today’s cowboy, made in the image of hundreds who went before him. With one important twist. His roping skills snagged the only serial killer Colton Mills has ever experienced . . . a killer who took the lives of three innocent citizens and would have added three more notches to his belt.”
I groaned and changed the channel.
The sheriff was basking in the limelight during this broadcast. Even though he hadn’t done a darned thing, three murders had been solved in his jurisdiction in one fell swoop. Tight-lipped about how it all occurred, he explained only Jack’s role in the capture. “Virgil DeWitt has been arrested and charged for the murders of all three men. He is incarcerated and will await his trial
Epilogue
Saturday—Week Four
Colton Mills was breathing a collective sigh of relief. Anna had called me several times and I finally agreed to a celebration dinner at her house. Marty and Nick had also been invited. “Okay, who wants to begin?” she said, plopping into a comfy chair, after pouring the wine.
I sipped from my goblet. “If I had stopped to answer the phone, before dashing over to Marty’s house, things would have turned out differently,” I said, sighing. “But, as usual, I was in a big hurry to talk to Marty about the news article relating to Kathleen DeWitt’s car accident.”
She reached for the cheese and cracker plate on the coffee table and passed it to me. “You’ve probably listened to the voice mail message I left for you, but I’ll tell Nick and Marty about it. The craftsman in Pipestone remembered that Virgil was the one who bought the boots we saw in the Rendezvous parking lot photo. When I think of how close you came to—”
“Even if he’d been successful in killing Shaw, Marty and me, that information you doggedly acquired would have identified him and the police could have conducted a statewide search, Anna.” I blew her a kiss.
“That’s small comfort,” she said, wagging a well-manicured finger at me. “You put yourself in danger.”
“I know you didn’t trust me, Cassandra,” Marty said. “You weren’t sure if I was involved in killing Eric or not. I don’t blame you. Virgil masterfully hid his identity, posing as the Willis I had grown to admire and befriend. For a businessman from Wisconsin, he had skills in hatchet throwing and could talk reenactment with the best of us. I had no clue as to his real identity.” He swirled the wine in his glass. “No one in our Rendezvous Society had reason to suspect him of being a killer. We wholeheartedly accepted him.”
“Now that we all know the murderer was Virgil, I wonder why we couldn’t put two and two together,” I said, washing down the cheese and crackers in my mouth. “The first murder inv
olved a tomahawk, the second, a frontier knife, and the third, a handmade rope.”
Marty shrugged. “Those clues could have applied to anyone who was into Rendezvous reenacting. If I hadn’t been so concerned about my own defense, I should have thought of him. He was big on justice and how it was served up in the old days. Some of the men in our group were uncomfortable with his conversations about on an eye for an eye. Hindsight certainly makes it easier to understand.”
I reached for the wine bottle and refilled all our glasses. “According to the newspaper article, he quit attending the Wisconsin group’s meetings after his daughter was killed. He must have devoted full time to plotting his vengeance on Eric, Randy, Jim, and Marty.”
“He seemed to understand all of us and how we were likely to explain events. It was a masterful plan to kill Eric with my tomahawk.” Marty rose from his chair and paced the floor. “He had easy access to my tomahawk and knew where I kept it, but he’s the last person I’d have suspected stealing it from me. I had no witnesses to confirm my innocence.” He scratched his head and peered directly at me. “One big problem law enforcement had was the lack of evidence at the crime scene. No fingerprints. No footprints. A lot of blood, but no blood of a second person. No bloody clothing. All they had was Frank’s hat, which he swore he had left there the night before. Deputy Shaw couldn’t even figure out how the crime was accomplished.”
I nodded. “As time passed, I was convinced Strothers was responsible.”
“When did you first suspect him?” Marty came to sit beside me on the couch.
“When he scuffled with me in the coffee shop that night and then found out Eric may have been blackmailing him in return for writing favorable review of his proposed building project.”
“Which turned out to be true. How did you find out?”
“Intuition,” I said. I wasn’t going to admit to any law breaking by either Jack or me, not to anyone. Ever.
Marty chuckled. “You thought Strothers trashed your studio, too, didn’t you?”
“Shows how we can leap to easy conclusions, when we’re experiencing stress. Now we know it was Virgil. I had told him about having Rendezvous photos when I saw him at Jack’s cutting class for young riders. He wanted to see if they incriminated him, I suppose.”
“Well, it’s all water under the bridge now.” Marty started to rise from the couch and perched on the edge of a cushion. “Everything came down to that one article you copied at the library. Think of it. And all because you wanted to talk with Kathleen’s father about buying her horse. Amazing. You tracked her down, found the article about her accident, saw that Eric Hartfield had driven the car, and that Randy and Jim and I were involved in the same incident. You’re one smart cookie, Cassandra. Your intuition—or whatever you want to call it—saved a few more lives. Thank you.” He leaned toward me and planted a kiss on my cheek.
I glanced at Anna and Nick. Both were thoroughly involved in the story, both content to simply listen.
Marty arched his eyebrows and shook a finger at them. “The parking-lot photo unhinged Virgil. That’s not to say he wasn’t already unhinged. With Strothers closing in on him, he escalated his scheme, vacated the apartment, set up a meeting with him in Madison, and after doing his damage there, returned to get me. He was set on cleaning up all the loose ends. Anything and anyone connected to Kathleen. He was paying board for her horse and keeping up the rent on her apartment.”
“How did you find out about that?” I asked, and then kicked myself for opening up that topic.
“His landlady called the police when Virgil canceled the lease after someone broke in one night. He asked her to clean it out for him and put the place up for lease. She thought she’d better report it. The police checked it out and put two and two together, after he was incarcerated.”
Anna swept cracker crumbs from the table. “I heard on the news they found an airline ticket in the vehicle Virgil was driving. He was planning to leave for France from the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. No return ticket.”
“Yep,” Marty said, “And they found scratches on his SUV, left in the garage in Wisconsin, that are likely to prove he’s the one who tried to push Cassandra into the ditch that day in the storm. I can’t imagine Virgil was that kind of man. The poor soul lost all perspective after the tragic death of his daughter. His mind was affected. I know what that’s like.”
I noticed Marty’s sadness, as he thought of his own behavior after finding his son and wife missing, and changed the subject. “Shaw said he’d found a hair at the scene of Eric’s murder and insinuated it was mine. I wonder if he really found one, or if it was a ploy to get me to help him solve the mystery.”
Anna spoke through pinched lips. “That man would say and do anything to elevate his importance and career. There was no hair. I don’t believe him.”
“Has anyone heard from Jack?” Marty asked. “I expected him to be here tonight.”
“He’s in Minneapolis for another interview,” I said. “He’s our most famous citizen now.” Two hours later, we had finished a dinner of pork loin and au gratin potatoes. We were all talked out. Marty said his goodbyes and Nick walked me to my Jeep.
“Your place or mine?” he asked, taking my hand.
“Yours,” I said. “Last one there buys breakfast in the morning.”
THE END
A Rendezvous to Die For Page 23
