Body Brace (Caught Dead in Wyoming, Book 10)

by Patricia McLinn

  He gave me the cool, level stare I’d encountered when we first met. “Why wouldn’t it matter anymore?”

  “Because he’s dead. Russell Teague.”

  He tipped his head forward. He must have forgotten he’d taken his hat off when he walked in, because without the brim it didn’t completely mask his reaction. Or else he thought his saying we weren’t going to explore whatever it was between us had wiped away the past fifteen months of my getting to know how to read him.

  Then he showed he knew me better after the past fifteen months, because he conceded. “How’d you know?”

  “Why? After all his animosity toward the museum…”

  He shrugged. Abruptly his efforts at being unreadable shifted to concern. “What are you doing here? Problem you need James’ help with?”

  “No. What about you?”

  “Routine. But—”

  Before he could finish, the conference room door cracked open.

  “Looks like your appointment’s about to begin.” I think I did reach spritely that time. “See you later.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Jennifer was back.

  After her parents picked her up at the Billings airport, the family had lunch at the Haber House Hotel.

  Now she’d joined Diana and me at my house, waiting for Mike to arrive cyberly.

  “I’m exhausted from talking.” She’d declined a share of a brownie, leaving one each for Diana and me. “There’s still so much to tell them — I promised to be home for dinner, too. Did you know we went to the theater? It’s like … it’s not even the same thing as at the high school. I mean, they’re both plays, but… Wow.

  “And did you know the whole city of Chicago burned down? Not because of a cow — and they had to start all over and lots of people died.”

  “A large part burned, not all. A fire in Wisconsin the same day killed many more—”

  “We saw an amazing painting at the Art Institute that’s really big and it’s tiny dots of color—”

  “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat.”

  She frowned. “The name was about a park.”

  “La Grande Jatte is an island and it has a park. The painting shows people by water with—”

  “That’s it. But the cool thing was all the dots — all over this really big painting. Up close, they looked random, but when you backed up, they came together to make people and dogs and sailboats and sky and grass and trees. Just like pixels. Only that guy did it by hand with paint. Hundreds of years ago.”

  The word pixel sparked tales of her technical adventures at the museum, library, and workshop, mostly in a foreign language.

  “I’ve got to go tell the guys I’m back. There was hardly time to get online while I was there.” She zoomed out the back door.

  Diana patted my arm. “That’s okay, Elizabeth, I’m interested in hearing about the fire in Wisconsin…?”

  “The Peshtigo Fire. It killed as many as twenty-five hundred — the largest recorded fire casualty in the country. But few heard about it at the time because telegraph wires burned. There’d been a drought that summer and there were also lots of fires in Michigan in early October.”

  “My.” She regarded me with a twinkle. “Better now?”

  “Unless you want to hear competing theories on the fires, including a meteor or chunks of a comet to account for all the fires? Except scientists are skeptical.”

  “No. I’m good.”

  “Are you humoring me?” Notice I didn’t ask until I’d partially unloaded.

  “Yes.”

  Jennifer returned. “Thanks for the name of that guy, Elizabeth. I sent links to everybody, though I don’t know if it will be as cool online.”

  Diana and I exchanged a look. Online coming in second with Jennifer? Talk about wow.

  “Before Mike calls,” I said, “tell us how talking to the Northwestern folks went.”

  “Fine, I guess.”

  “What did they ask?”

  “Lots of stuff.”

  “Who did you talk with?”

  “Three— no, four professors, a dean, and a couple students.”

  “How long were you there?” Diana asked.

  “Ten until about nine-thirty.”

  “Jennifer, that wasn’t an interview, it was a courtship,” I said. “What did they say about you going there?”

  “Nothing. Do you want me to search more about Palmer Rennant now that I’m home, where I belong, and with my own system?”

  I opened my mouth, but used the indrawn breath meant for words to ease out pain after Diana kicked my bare little toe.

  “We’ll talk about the murder when Mike calls.” Diana’s words covered my agonized sound. “Ah, and I bet that’s Mike now.”

  It wasn’t.

  It was Audrey.

  “Thurston’s doing a news break at the top of the hour. Russell Teague’s death.”

  “But that broke hours ago.”

  “He just found out. Elizabeth, he’s going on live. And he’s writing it himself. He keeps muttering about how you’re not the only news person. He won’t listen to anything I say. I tried to call Les, even though…”

  Even though he hated being called and seldom helped anyway.

  I looked at the clock. Our enemy and our friend.

  “Audrey, you have great instincts not wanting him to screw this up. But you have to put your efforts where they will do the most good. How many people will see a live news break? Let him win this. Save your ammunition and your time for the Five and Ten, when more people are watching.”

  More still being not many for KWMT-TV.

  “Thank you, Elizabeth,” she said fervently. “I will. I—” Shouting came from the background. “Gotta go.”

  We had the TV on when Thurston came on screen, still adjusting his tie.

  * * * *

  He pressed his lips together, then said, “It is with deep regret that I inform you of the passing of a leading member of Cottonwood County, Wyoming. Russell Teague died this hour—”

  “Wrong.”

  “—in Chicago Hospital.”

  “No such place.”

  “My sources — deep and well-informed sources have told me that among the beneficiaries of Russell Teague’s will is Palmer Rennant, who so tragically died recently. Specifically, he inherits property owned by Russell in Cottonwood County.

  “It is a testament to their friendship and meeting of minds on intellectual matters that the acreage here in Cottonwood County will pass from one friend to another.”

  “No, it won’t.”

  “Shh,” Diana ordered.

  But it didn’t matter. Thurston wrapped up with a promise of the complete story at five o’clock.

  “Less than a minute on the air and three major errors. That has to be a record. Even for— That’s got to be Mike.”

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “The darned video’s not working. Are you all there? What are you talking about?”

  “All here. We listened to Thurston report that Russell left his ranch to Palmer Rennant.”

  “That’s wrong,” Mike said.

  “Exactly what I said, but I didn’t tell Diana and Jennifer more so you could reveal your scoop.”

  He told them about the split will, Tom being executor for the Wyoming holdings, the provisions about Palmer Rennant, the museum being the backup beneficiary.

  “But that’s what Thurston said. Rennant inherits all Teague’s Wyoming stuff,” Jennifer said. “That’s a big motive for Willa to kill Palmer.”

  “They’re divorced. Besides—” Mike objected.

  “Then her kids. Close enough for—”

  “Not them, either. Teague died after Palmer Rennant. Rennant couldn’t inherit because you can’t inherit when you’re dead. He didn’t get Teague’s stuff, so he can’t leave it to his heirs. Thurston was totally wrong. The museum gets it instead.”

  “Wow,” Jennifer said.

  “What if
she didn’t know?” Diana asked.

  “Great point. In fact, the question of who knew is vital for several of them.” I repeated what James said, concluding, “Meaning there’s no public-record way for people to have known the will’s provisions.”

  “More questions without answers?” Diana muttered. “This leaves out Rennant’s heirs, too, right?”

  “It cuts out that motive,” I agreed. “But there could be personal motives.”

  “Like Willa decided a divorce wasn’t enough,” Mike said.

  Jennifer added, “Or Otto and the dog. Or did we rule him out because of why wait to kill the guy Thursday when he hit the dog Tuesday?”

  “That doesn’t rule him out. He didn’t have opportunity Tuesday because his nephew kept them apart at the vet’s office. Didn’t kill Rennant before Thursday afternoon, because Penny saw Rennant then. After that…” I shrugged.

  “But what about what he heard Thursday night or early Friday morning? And you worked out that Otto heard the vehicle driving away after Devil’s noisemaking, which should have triggered Rennant calling the sheriff’s department and therefore he was dead and the fast driver was the killer?” Diana asked.

  “Pretty neat reasoning,” Mike said.

  “That’s easy. Otto lied. Devil went over there — the scratches prove the dog was there at some point — Rennant called Otto to complain, Otto went over there and killed him, then lied about the vehicle driving away fast in the middle of the night.”

  “How?” Diana asked. “How did Otto kill him?”

  “That goes for anybody. We don’t—”

  “Wait. I talked to Aunt Gee. She was cagey, but the short answer is no, the sheriff’s department doesn’t know a cause of death. She talked about how long toxicology can take, so I’d say that rules out the obvious — shooting, stabbing, strangling, and blunt force trauma.

  “Also, Elizabeth, she would not say if the sheriff’s department views Rennant’s house a potential murder scene, but they have pulled in his truck, but it will take a while to be gone over.”

  Before they could ask what that was about, I caught up Diana and Jennifer about my trip to Rennant’s house and meeting Kamden Graf. Then I brought us back to where we’d been.

  “Along with the sheriff’s department, we don’t know the means. What we do know is the approximate gap between time of death and when he was found, that he stayed in that particular position until rigor was established, and that he wasn’t discovered during that time.” I reconsidered. “Probably he wasn’t discovered. Let’s say no one reported discovering him.”

  “You think somebody saw him and didn’t mention it?” Diana did not like that idea.

  “Possible.”

  “But Clara Atwood has to be the Number One suspect now,” Mike said. “All that stuff going to the museum? Bet she gives herself a raise.”

  “It depends.”

  “Of course it does,” Mike grumbled. “And here I thought I missed that phrase. Okay, Elizabeth, what does it depend on?”

  “The obvious, for starters — did Clara Atwood know the museum was the backup beneficiary?” Then, I took another angle. “Remember your objection to my third possible reason for moving the body? That there were easier places to dump it and still have it found quickly? How about picking the buttes because you wanted to know when the body was found — so it was clear Palmer predeceased Teague — but you didn’t want to be the finder yourself.”

  “Not bad.”

  Diana added, “The buttes would be familiar to Clara. Comfort level.”

  “Always wise for dumping a body.” More prosaically, I added, “The roads to and from were almost certain to be deserted.”

  “She’d know immediately when the body was found,” Diana said.

  I pointed to her, signifying you got it. “Although, on the flip side, somebody like Otto could have wanted to get the body away from his place — and his dog. Chose the butte because the body would be found and he wouldn’t be associated with it.”

  “That goes for several of the others.” Mike said.

  “Like who?” Jennifer challenged Mike.

  “Willa,” he responded immediately. “Jolie.”

  “You guys haven’t seen Jolie, but the issue with her would be how she got Palmer’s body there — or anywhere. She’s emaciated.”

  “An accomplice?” Jennifer proposed. “Maybe she and her husband were in on it together?”

  “What about Kamden Graf on his own?” Mike said.

  “The business association stuff?”

  “I have something—”

  “Kamden?” Diana repeated doubtfully. Something was bugging her to have interrupted Jennifer that way. “Jolie has the motive, if Palmer dumped her or—”

  I inserted, “Which we don’t know.”

  “—something went wrong in the relationship.”

  But Diana’s frown deepened as she spoke.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  “What’s bothering you?” I asked her.

  “What I hear keeps getting muddled.”

  “Muddled how?”

  “First, there is nothing — I mean nothing — about Palmer Rennant having affairs before the divorce. He’s been connected with a few people since, mostly in public dating situations, all the ones we know about. Pretty darned innocuous — movies in Cody, dinners at the country club, that sort of thing. Clara Atwood is generally considered a rebound situation, because it didn’t last long.”

  And the end of their dating lined up timewise with the committee learning Rennant was kicking the camp and reenactment off his property.

  “You said first, what’s second?”

  “Everyone I talked to heard rumors that Jolie Graf and Palmer Rennant were having an affair. They surfaced about three weeks ago. Starting at the country club. They seem to have spread from the pool set to the golf set, then beyond.

  “But maybe half are inclined to dismiss it as a rumor with no grounding in reality. Including some folks who usually grab onto any rumor with both hands.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s not true,” Jennifer said.

  “No,” Diana agreed slowly. “But it is weird. And everybody I talked with did believe Kamden was having affairs — people who doubted Jolie was having an affair, were sure he was.”

  “Does Jolie know about them?” I asked.

  “The general feeling is she’s tried really hard not to, but even she couldn’t miss them lately.”

  “Could that have started the rumors about an affair with Rennant? People felt like she should have an affair, and here was this recently divorced guy, the right age, the right social circle, and someone put one and one together for twenty-five?”

  “I suppose.” Diana’s heart wasn’t in it.

  “Still, it gives Kamden a motive — jealousy.”

  Jennifer scoffed at Mike’s suggestion. “If Kamden Graf was having all these affairs, he couldn’t be mad at Jolie for having one.”

  Diana and I looked at each other, then her.

  “Au contraire, mon ami.”

  “What does that mean, Elizabeth?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Literally, it means, to the contrary, my friend. What it means in this case is there are plenty of men and not a few women who think they’re entitled to have an affair, but not their spouse. There was a news article about a woman who shot her boyfriend when he broke into their home and caught her doing the deed with someone else. She said she shot him because she hadn’t given him permission to catch her.”

  Diana snorted.

  “People are crazy. I like my research better.” Jennifer paused. “Most of the time. Beside the early background on Palmer Rennant, I don’t have much. But I put the guys on Russell Teague to cover the bases. They found a recent application for an LLC — Limited Liability Company — but it’s really vague. One interesting thing is it used his address at the ranch, like it’s something local, when his others don’t. Wondered about that with Kamden and the business associ
ation stuff.

  “I’ve had no success getting the postmortem. We’ve kicked around ideas, but…”

  A three-way chorus of, “No hacking.”

  “Stay on that LLC,” I told Jennifer. “Especially for any connection with Rennant or Graf. It sounds like they weren’t going to limit themselves to going after the reenactment and Three Rivers Camp, but spreading out to broader history.

  “I’ll follow up with Willa, but Jennifer, if you could see about Fort Phil Kearny — check if there was ever a Rennant there.” I stared off for a moment. “Also see if you can access the first-hand accounts of the Miners’ Camp Fight at the library. If you can send me copies, that would be great.”

  “Sure. You think there’s a connection?”

  “I have no idea. But I do have one more thing.” I shared the Rennant family history, as told to me by Willa.

  Jennifer reacted first. “Weird to get worked up about stuff like that.”

  “You’d be worked up if it were about your parents or grandparents.”

  “Because I know them.”

  “Some people feel strongly for more generations.”

  “Still weird. First, there’s a lot less of some ancestor in you for each generation you go back. Four grandparents, eight grandparents, then sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, a hundred and twenty-four, two hundred and forty-eight, four-hundred and ninety-six… And there’s less and less chance you’re related to the person with each generation.”

  We all looked at her. “How do you figure that?”

  “Don’t you watch those shows where celebrities find their ancestors and they do the DNA and find something completely off the wall — something that shouldn’t be there if the people who were supposed to be related really were, so then you figure somewhere along the line, somebody had a baby who wasn’t fathered by the husband, or somebody else was swapped at birth or something. So, chances are, Palmer Rennant wasn’t even related to the guy who screwed up in the Civil War, must less the one who screwed up in the War of 1812.”

  That was certainly an interesting way to look at ancestry and family pride.

  “It might be weird, Jennifer, but it seems to be Rennant’s pattern,” Diana said. “We have that from other people than his ex-wife — like Clara and Nadine — as well as his actions.”