"I don't know," I said curtly. No way did I want to get in any kind of a conversation with him. I picked my package up from the counter. "Thanks, Jennifer," I said and got out of there.
"Tell Max I want to talk to him," he called to my retreating form.
What did he want with Max? I wondered, and what on earth was he doing in a store like the Squash Blossom, anyway? Or was I being the worst kind of condescending snob?
For all I knew, he was a millionaire art collector dressed in lousy clothes.
Out on the sidewalk, I hesitated. Maybe I should have stuck around. Found out what he was there for. I guess I'd taken my cue from Max. When we had first encountered the man on the steps of City Hall, I'd sensed instinctively that Max detested him. That didn't automatically make him a cretin. Max also detested Ivar Norquist.
A mud-covered open-sided Jeep was parked in front of the store. In it sat two young bearded men, one in the back, the other in the front passenger seat. It took me a minute to register that they were both wearing coarse robes with the hoods thrown back onto their shoulders. I did a double-take. They smiled and nodded to me. I waved back and went into the small general store next door to see if I could find a cold drink.
Could that be the disgusting mechanic's Jeep? What was the guy's name, I wondered impatiently. Something stupid, and rather demeaning, which could be another reason why I didn't t like him. Pussyfoot, I thought, that's it. A disgusting name for a disgusting man. At least Ivar Norquist had a certain roguish charm, which obviously didn't cut any ice with his daughter, Charlotte, but it certainly made Jennifer perk up and simper. What could Ivar have to do with this Pussyfoot character? Were they friends and/or cohorts? And what was Charlotte's problem with her father? But I didn't want any more questions. I wanted to bounce the ones I already had off Max before I got confused by any more. I bought an icy can of root beer and went back out on the sidewalk.
I grinned at the two men waiting patiently, and gulped thirstily. Their robes weren't the same color as the one worn by the man we'd seen shooting the shotgun, but as far as I was concerned, a robe was a robe.
"Hot, isn't it?" I said, trying out my warm Western welcome. "You here for some sight-seeing?"
"I guess you'd say that," said the one in the front seat. "We're checking out sites for a new abbey." He looked at me appreciatively with spectacular green eyes that weren't very monk-like. He had dark curly hair and an enchanting smile. "Heard there's some interesting country around here."
"There is that. Where are you going?"
"I don't know. We've got a guide who's taking us around." They indicated the store, so I was right. Pussyfoot was driving them around.
I eyed him again when he came out of the store. For no reason other than the robes and that I'd been thinking about it, I wondered if Pussyfoot could have been the man we caught taking potshots out on the Bodie land? Maybe. He seemed close to the right size, anyway.
"Want to join us?" he asked, pretty confident that I'd say no.
"No thanks, but have fun," I said to the... brothers, I supposed they were called. "I hope you find a good site."
Once more Pussyfoot called after me. "Don't forget to tell Max I want to see him."
Well, I wanted to talk to Max, too, I thought, hurrying home. He might already be there; if not, there was sure to be a message. The deputy had just finished getting the locks installed and greeted me on the porch.
"I was wondering where you were, Miss," he said in a mildly reproving tone. "Wasn't sure what to do with the keys, and sure didn't want to leave the house open after all this."
I thanked him profusely, and took the new set of keys.
He left saying, "Phone's been ringing off the hook in there, I just let the machine take it."
"Thanks," I said and dashed inside. There were four messages. Two were from Quentin Stubik, the young reporter, begging for an interview. Fat chance. One was a hang-up, and the last, finally, from Max. The message itself was pretty cryptic. He knew there was a good chance that the deputy might overhear it.
His voice was buoyant. "Success. We were right. Have lots to tell you. On my way home."
I'd forgotten to set the clock when I'd hooked up the answering machine, so I couldn't tell when the call had come in, but there wasn't a huge time frame. I'd left the house around eleven and it was now a little after noon. He needed to show up soon if he was going to make our one o'clock appointment with the sheriff. He could have called from his truck, meaning he'd be here anytime. But he wasn't. I called his cell phone, but got no answer. Five minutes to one, I left the house without him. I really didn't want to face Rusty by myself, but had no choice.
Rhonda's cheery greeting when I walked into the sheriff's office seemed like a good omen.
Rusty stood when Rhonda showed me into his office. "Hi, Thea," he said. "Come in and have a seat." I sat in the chair in front of his desk and he resumed his seat behind it, leaning back in one of those old-fashioned spring-backed desk chairs, his feet braced against a drawer. He seemed relaxed and confident, not overworked and harried as I'd expected.
"Where's Max?"
"He went to Rock Springs this morning, and assured me that he'd be back in time for this meeting. Actually, I expect him to pop in at any moment."
"All right. We'll hope he shows up soon. I'm sorry about what happened to your house yesterday, and even sorrier that I wasn't able to check it out myself, but, as you know, I've been busy. I've read Billy's report and he seems to have done a decent job with it. And you don't need to worry about Rollie's work with the fingerprints. It's excellent. I'm lucky to have him."
His tone was conversational, friendly, his broad, open face revealing not a care in the world. He even had nice crinkle lines at the corners of his eyes that danced good-naturedly when he talked. But I was wary. I knew only too well that a sharp intellect with snapping turtle tendencies operated behind the bland facade. I just didn't know how concerned with accuracy the intelligence was. Or how much it might be influenced by hidden agendas of his own.
He asked me to go over the events of the break-in again, so he could hear what happened in my own words. Only when I began my tale did I realize that without Max here, diamond in hand, we were withholding evidence. Not a good thing to do when one is the chief suspect. Sweat popped out on my palms. Surreptitiously, I wiped them on my jeans. Where in hell was he, anyway?
"Do you have any idea at all who the intruder was?"
"No, I... If it wasn't kids bent on mischief I think it must have been Dan Lorenzo." If I couldn't give the sheriff all my reasons for thinking so until Max got here, at least I'd get Dan's name in the arena.
"Why Lorenzo?"
"Because he was at Hog Heaven during the crucial minutes when Opal was killed. Because he has to be a major contender for suspect number one, and because he's the only one who had an opportunity to search my car. Unless... unless he wasn't alone," I said, thinking of Jennifer. What would the sheriff say if I threw her name into the fray? Had Jennifer been implying some kind of relationship with Rusty with her innuendoes about being able to make him buy a ring? And surely he knew about Jennifer's barroom brawl where Ronnie Mae accused her of—exactly what? I wondered—coming on to Dan, or actually having an affair with him? Was Rusty Dan's rival for Jennifer's attentions?
"When you say, 'unless he wasn't alone,' you're referring to the truck Clyde says he saw leaving the store?"
"Well, uh, yes." It took me a minute to pull my thoughts from where they'd been straying. "Have you found out who that was?" Could Jennifer have been driving the truck?
"No, not yet. Why do you think your car was searched?"
The quick change of subject rattled me. "I don't... Who knows?" I said, desperately searching for words that wouldn't be out and out lies. Hurry, Max, hurry. "Maybe he recognized me as a stranger and wanted to know who I was, but then," I added, refuting my own statement, "he would have just looked at my billfold, not torn the car apart."
"You don'
t think the perpetrator could have been looking for something specific?" he asked.
"Like what? He didn't take any money."
Rusty had maintained the casual, leaning back posture, but now he dropped his feet. The chair snapped forward, making me jump. The motion propelled him toward the desk. He put his arms on the scarred top and stared at me intently. "No, Ms. Barlow, he didn't take anything, and is that why he ransacked your home as well? Why don't you think real hard now and see if you can tell me what it is you have that someone else values so highly?"
I shook my head, struggling to hold his gaze and not drop my eyes.
"It has been suggested that you could have done the job on your car yourself."
"Dan Lorenzo suggested that," I shot back indignantly.
"And now I'm wondering if you might have assaulted your own house."
"I most certainly did not! Why on earth would I do that? Why don't you look to Dan Lorenzo? Where was he yesterday afternoon?"
Abruptly, he changed the subject.
"As I believe you know, we've discovered that Ronnie Mae Lorenzo did not die from the effects of diabetes, except in a roundabout way. She was murdered. Someone tampered with her insulin supply. I find it interesting that you"—if he meant to intimidate me with his emphasis on that word, he succeeded—"were standing next to her when she passed out in City Hall."
He wanted me to explain exactly what had happened. Which I did, meticulously, ratting on everyone I could think of who'd also been there.
Then he wanted to know if that was the first time I'd seen Ronnie Mae. So I told him about our initial encounter at Hog Heaven.
"And you stopped there, at Hog Heaven, even before coming on to Garnet Pass? Why?"
I told him about my research on the Four Mile ranch which he paid no attention to, jumping to his next concern.
"Did you go into any of the houses while you were there? Clyde and Opal's? Or Danny and Ronnie Mae's trailer?"
I assured him I hadn't, and referred him to Clyde, who would surely corroborate my actions that day. Again, I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans.
"And tell me," he asked. "How did you get hooked up to Opal?"
Hooked up to Opal? How did I? I'd never quite figured that out myself. I told him about how she'd dropped her cane, and I helped her down the steps after the debacle of the black powder shot in the City Hall.
"And she decided that quickly that you were a great friend and she wanted you by her side?" With raised eyebrows he made it sound portentous, premeditated on my part. "You'd never met her before? So why exactly did you go out to Hog Heaven—again—the next day?"
By now I was angry. He was playing the bad cop, good cop scenario on me, but there was no good cop involved, and I was getting majorly pissed. And scared. Everything seemed to be piling up against me.
"Look," I snapped, giving in to my temper, "I went to Hog Heaven because Opal invited me. She was very excited that I was going to write an article about the Four Mile ranch. And I wanted to see the ruins. I had no previous connections to Opal, Clyde, Ronnie Mae, or anyone else in this blasted town, except Max. And why should I be implicated in Ronnie Mae's death just because I was standing by her? If someone tampered with her insulin, they would have had to have done that hours earlier, or maybe days. I wasn't even in town yet. I feel like I'm being railroaded, and I'm plenty sick of it!"
He gave me another of those softly congenial, oh so friendly smiles. "And do you know a lot about diabetes?"
"As a matter of fact, I do. My grandfather died from it." I regretted my belligerent words as soon as they left my mouth. They sounded damning even to me.
He stood, dismissing me. The smiles were gone. "That will be all for now, Ms. Barlow. Don't leave the area without letting me know how I can reach you."
Still angry, I flounced out.
Chapter 18
I called Max's cell phone on my way home, ready to chew him out good, but there was no answer. If he'd been in his truck on his way here, he should have answered. Had he stopped somewhere? Why would he do that and not call? Maybe he had. I hurried, sure there would be a message. But there was no blinking light waiting for me. My stomach lurched. What if something had happened to him? I quickly put a clamp on my imagination; that way lay insanity. A hundred different things could have delayed him, many of them harmless, I told myself, like a flat tire, or something else stupid with his truck. Or his cell phone batteries could have run down and he didn't have a charger with him. That had happened to me often enough.
I wandered aimlessly from one room to another, noting all the things that needed to be done, but not wanting to do any of them. I flopped on the couch, then bounced up again. I couldn't just sit and wait, nor did I want to brood about my interview with the sheriff. Maybe this was my best chance to talk to Clyde Bodie, find out if he knew anything at all about diamonds. Still it seemed like such an imposition. Surely Opal's funeral would have to be in the next few days. Well, I would call first and play it by ear.
I rang the store and Clyde answered. He sounded more than pleased to have me come out to Hog Heaven.
"Some of the church ladies are here helping out," he said. "You might as well come, too. Got something I want to talk to you about, anyway."
That sounded interesting, I thought. At least we were two souls looking for the same thing: he wanted to talk to me and I wanted to talk to him. Unfortunately, I wasn't going to have him to myself. Two cars were leaving Hog Heaven as I drove in, and more were parked in front of the store and the mobile homes. Oh, no, I thought. Dan Lorenzo. I'd forgotten he lived here, too. Most of these folks were probably here to pay their respects to Dan as well as to Clyde. I hesitated. Dan Lorenzo topped the list of people I didn't want to see. Was he in the store, or in his trailer?
I felt like an idiot, unable to decide whether to stay or to hightail it out of there. A green pickup parked in front of the store looked familiar, but I couldn't remember who it belonged to. Around here people recognized their friends' vehicles, sometimes even knew their license plates. That wasn't something you trained for in Chicago. If you lived in the city you frequently didn't know if your friends had a car.
Make up your mind, make up your mind. Choosing not to park by the suspect truck, I pulled in alongside the cars nosed into the fence surrounding the Bodies' double-wide.
Feeling jumpy, I eased out of my car, locked it, and walked to the store, wondering if eyes were on me, the main suspect, returning to the scene of the crime. I needed to find Clyde, his greeting would validate my presence, regardless of what others might be thinking. And, I hoped, go a long way toward convincing these people that I had been wrongly accused.
The store's front door was wide open and I could hear a woman talking. I recognized the voice, as I should have recognized her truck. Twila Pettigrew. She was second on my list of people I didn't want to meet.
But her words stopped me. "Why are you letting those monks tour all over your land, Clyde?"
"Danny's with them. They won't do no harm."
I stood beside the door and, to put it bluntly, listened.
Twila came through loud and clear. "It's bad enough Opal selling that land to those Astral Projection people."
"She didn't sell it, they got a five-year lease with option." Clyde's voice was softer, but understandable.
"That's a relief. Maybe you can break that lease, now. We've got to stop this... this monk invasion of our land. Surely you don't want to sell off any more land to foreigners. You know as well as I do that there's nothing mystical about those bare-assed hills out there."
"That's not so, Twila. That feng shui master told me all about it. I've even got charts of the ley lines. I can show it to you. All Opal wanted was money for repairs to the hog ranch ruins."
"Now she's gone, you can get rid of them. I never could see why she thought they were so wonderful. An eyesore if you ask me. You don't need them. We could even do some business together. Get a herd of llamas." Her voice softened, and I
got the feeling that Clyde wouldn't be a single man for long if Twila Pettigrew had anything to do with it. She certainly wasn't letting any grass grow under her feet.
"Opal wanted the ruins to stay in the family, she called them family history."
"Well, there's no family left now. And nobody else cares. You can burn them to the ground if you like."
"I can't do that Twila. Opal... That Barlow girl is going to write an article."
"You don't mean that girl with the knife; do you?"
"She didn't kill Opal."
"You can't know that for sure."
"I know it good enough for me."
"How? She was right there."
"For one, I saw that truck barreling out of here."
All traces of which Twila and her chicken had taken care of. I shifted positions and my foot hit the wooden stair step. With a squawk, Sugar burst from her cool hiding place. I couldn't move fast enough. Trapped by my sandaled feet, the frightened chicken flapped and pecked at my exposed toes. I screeched and bolted up the stairs into the store.
Clyde and Twila appeared from behind the grocery shelving.
"Sugar!" Twila scooped up the bird, which was hot on my heels. She glared at me as if I had purposely done harm to her beloved pet.
"I'm going to check in on the girls at the house." She headed out the door and turned to give a parting shot with a meaningful roll of her eyes toward me. "Mind what I said, Clyde."
"Sorry to interrupt," I said sheepishly. "I really hate that chicken."
"Oh, Sugar's not so bad. She saved her life you know."
"No, I didn't know," I said truculently. It would take a lot more than one act of bravery to make me feel charitable toward that scratching devil.
"Yep, woke her up in the middle of the night when the house was on fire. Have a seat." He motioned me to a cozy corner behind the grocery shelves where mismatched chairs sat around an old ice cream parlor table. There was a plate of cold cuts on the table, their edges beginning to curl in the heat.
Dead in Hog Heaven (A Thea Barlow Mystery, Book Three) Page 15
