by Gilian Baker
I’d start by talking with Betty and Natalie, since I’d witnessed Betty having an intense discussion with Paula, and Sheryl said there was bad blood between Natalie and Jack. Maybe if I cross-reference both of their adversaries, I’d discover who had issues with both victims.
After checking my email and the business project management system Geena and I used, I returned urgent messages and then signed off. I had pressing business to discuss with Gabby.
***
Gabby greeted me when I walked through the door of the firm’s reception area. She and Lucy were discussing appointment arrangements, so I went on through to Gabby’s office. As usual, it was cool and dim. She rarely used the jarringly bright overhead light, saying it gave her headaches.
Instead, she used small lamps strategically placed around the office. The one on her desk was an old fashioned library lamp, complete with a green rectangle glass shade. The room was personalized, making it feel cozy and safe—you could relax here, trusting your legal concerns were in the best of hands.
Gabby got straight to the point as she walked to her desk and sat down. “Are you making any headway?”
“I don’t have the influence with Dillon you assumed I had. He’s sticking to his story, and it seems plain to me that someone is behind his unusually smooth talk. Normally he blushes and trips over his words when uncomfortable subjects come up. But now, his retorts about the murders flow right off his tongue, and his demeanor is confident. Could it be he’s protecting someone, and they are feeding him what to say?”
“That’s one possibility. I agree with you—someone could be coaching him so he’s not worried about the outcome of the investigation. He seems like a very different young man now than just a few days ago.”
“He can be naïve, but he’s not stupid. Maybe the person who’s coaching him has legal knowledge.”
“We could speculate, but let’s wait on that. It might not matter that much in the end. Who else have you talked to and what have you learned?” She pulled out a fresh bright yellow legal pad and gold fountain pen, and then leaned back in her chair, leg crossed, ready to listen.
I filled her in on everything I’d learned and ended the report by saying, “We need to face the fact that our client could be the killer.”
A heavy silence filled the room. Finally, Gabby said, “This does sound bad, I admit.”
“What should we do? I like Dillon, but I’m not willing to be responsible for letting a killer back out on our streets.”
“I’m not convinced we need to make that determination just yet. Who else do you plan on speaking with?”
I gave her the rundown, and then we sat in the quiet for a few beats before I said, “Charley Hesston has the best motive other than Dillon. I need to talk to him.”
“But how does he tie in with Jack? Did they even know each other?”
“I don’t know, but I have a theory. Let’s say Paula and Jack were having an affair. Paula tells Jack about stealing Charley’s glaze recipe and lets him know Charley has more valuable stuff, ripe for the picking. Maybe he has other glaze or a special way of creating pottery that’s unique enough to be sought out by ceramic connoisseurs. Anyway, Jack and Paula devise a plan to get more out of Charley. Maybe they blackmail him, telling him unless he pays up, they’ll tell the pottery world he stole the glaze recipe from her.”
“But why?"
“Money, of course. We know Jack wasn’t above breaking the law, or at least the code of ethics of real estate, when it could fatten his wallet. And Paula is a thief. Neither one is what I’d call above reproach. Charley may have felt he had no choice if he wanted to stop the blackmail. Haven’t you ever read British mysteries? Blackmailers never go unpunished, and they usually end up dead.”
“Okay, I see your point. Though I don’t have any clout to hold over him. He could refuse to talk to us. I mean, what motivation would he have to help Paula’s husband?”
“Probably none. But I’d at least like to try. Would you call him? The request would have more impact coming from a lawyer.”
She made a note on the legal pad. “Okay, I’ll call him today. And, I’ll have Lucy see what she can find on him. See if there’s any record of him knowing Jack.”
“Thanks, Gabby. Can you also have her look into the background of Natalie Fisher? What was her dispute with Jack? Sheryl seems to think he misrepresented the property she bought from him, along with his lascivious ways.”
“Sure, I can get Lucy on all of this and let you know what we find out. Will you speak with Dillon again?”
I opened my mouth to protest that he wasn’t going to tell me anything, but she interrupted. “I know it’s unlikely, but we have to keep trying. Ross’s entire investigation could stop immediately if he’d just own up to things.”
“I know. I thought I’d talk to Ellie about it tonight. He might’ve told her something she’d be willing to share if it would clear his name.”
“That’s a great idea. Hey, could she go with you when you speak to him? Maybe soften him up a little?”
“She’s pretty protective of him, so I don’t know if she’ll be open to it, but I can ask.”
The last thing I wanted was to cause a rift between my daughter and me—or help the murderer go scot-free.
***
I left Gabby’s office and went straight over to Garber’s Grain & Feed, hoping Betty would be there. Entering the main office area, I could see her talking on the phone. While I waited, I filled my lungs with the fragrance of fresh hay and the chemical scent of unplanted seeds. City folks would think it stank, but to me, it smelled like home. Like most people around here, I’d grown up on a ranch and was intimately familiar with the aromas of a grain store.
Betty saw me waiting and held up a finger indicating she’d be right with me. I rarely came in here since we don’t have any large animals or do any farming. The ambience was masculine and all about the business of earning a living off the land. No frills, no comforts. Lots of dust.
I heard the receiver return to its cradle, and Betty made her way over to the long counter that separated the office from the reception area.
“Hi, Jade. What can I do for you? Don’t tell me Christian finally wore you down and you guys got a horse.”
“Not in this lifetime, Betty. Actually, I’m here to speak with you about Paula and Jack’s murders, if you have a few minutes. Is there any place private we could talk?”
Opening the hinged part of the counter to allow me entrance into the office, she went back over to her desk and spoke into a microphone that must have gone to an intercom in the open store area. “Sam, I’m taking a break. Keep an eye on the office in case someone comes in, okay? Won’t be long.”
After a tinny “10-4” came through the intercom on our side, I followed her back to a small kitchen that smelled strongly of burnt coffee. It was all I could do not to pinch my nose closed against it. Manure I could deal with. Burnt coffee, not so much.
“Have a seat.” She sat herself on one of the 1950’s era kitchen chairs around a dented table covered in coffee rings.
“Would you like coffee or tea?”
Since my choices were between scorched coffee and an ancient Lipton tea bag plopped into lukewarm water, I declined.
“How can I help?”
“This is delicate, Betty, and I hope you don’t take offense.” I handed her one of my new business cards with pride. It probably wasn’t strictly necessary, since everyone in town knew me, but I had a whole box and was eager to use them.
Running her index finger over the engraved information, she said, “You want to know if Roger was having an affair with Paula.”
“Well, yes.”
“You want to know if I killed her to keep my husband out of her clutches.”
“Yes, that’s about the size of it.”
“I thought you’d have been here days ago…I’ve been expecting you.”
“Well, I just actually took on the case, so…”
; She took a ginormous breath and blew it out. “No, I didn’t kill Paula. And Roger wasn’t seeing her, though not from a lack of trying on his part.”
“But would you know, Betty?”
She snorted. “After all these years, yeah, I would have known, Jade. There are signs that can’t be missed once you know to look for them. And I know them like the back of my hand.”
“I’m sorry to intrude on you like this. I know it must be horribly embarrassing.”
“It’s okay. Just go ahead.”
“I need proof you didn’t kill her so I can cross you off the list. Where were you that night?”
“Tucked up in bed, of course. We’re up with the rooster, so we hit the hay early, like most folks around here.” She looked up at me with sad eyes. “And honestly, Jade, if I were going to kill someone, it would have been him, and it would have been long ago. He’s been making a fool of me for decades now. Practically since we walked down the aisle, and probably before that too, though I was too naïve to know it.”
She stood up and poured the drudge she called coffee into the sink and rinsed the pot. She dried her hands with a dishtowel as she turned back around to face me. Her body sagged a little. “It wasn’t me, Jade. And it wasn’t Roger. He was in bed with me the whole night. He snores something awful, and I’d have known if he was faking it, like he does when he is going to sneak out later.”
She turned back and refilled the coffee pot with water from the tap. “And besides, why would I kill Jack? He was a friend of ours. Well, at least a friend of my husband’s.”
“Roger’s friend or not, I thought maybe he’d tried it out on you or that there could have been a real estate deal gone bad.”
She shook her head.
“I have to ask these questions, you understand.” This felt crummy.
“I know, and I have nothing to hide. Poor Dillon. He’s got a long road ahead of him.”
“Yes, I’m afraid he does.” I paused for a moment. “Betty, I saw you and Paula intently whispering during class on the Friday before she was killed. Can you tell me what that was about?”
“I was asking her to refrain from flirting with my husband. She didn’t know his reputation, being new here, and I could tell all her attention was driving him mad. He was becoming obsessed about her, and I didn’t want her egging him on.”
“And yet you still say nothing was going on between them…” I let the unstated question hang in the air.
“No, nothing had happened, and I didn’t want it to.
I thanked her for her time and left feeling guilty. I didn’t liked interfering with good people and making them feel like criminals.
I headed into the grain store area where people came through to load up fifty-pound bags of cattle and horse feed and to chew the fat. This was where the old timers came to rehash the good ole days and prophecy how the world was going to heck in a handbasket.
There were several of them sitting around on the same kind of kitchen chairs with stuffing sticking out of the padded seats. Some were chewing tobacco and spitting into their little Styrofoam cups, while others were drinking what I could only assume was the singed coffee, though it looked like the juice the chewers had spit out.
When I walked near them, the one holding court paused and all eyes turned to me.
“Hey fellas. I’m looking for Roger. He around?”
“Naw. He had to run into Laramie to pick up some tool or other.”
“Okay then. I’ll come back later. Sorry to intrude on your storytelling.”
No putting it off any longer. It was time to talk to Dillon again, a talk I was dreading.
After returning to my car, I took a peek at the list of questions I had for him and started the engine to once again head to the gloomy apartment complex.
When I pulled into the parking lot, Dillon and Harper were outside, she trying to ride a tricycle while Dillon watched from one of his dilapidated lawn chairs. I got up close to him before he realized someone was near.
“Hey, Dillon. Enjoying the sunshine?”
“Yeah.”
“Mind if I sit down?”
“Help yourself.”
“Had any luck getting rid of the pottery machines and the building?”
He looked up at me and leaned back in his chair. I heard it creak and hoped he didn’t end up on the ground.
“Yeah, I got some leads. I’ve off-loaded a few things and have someone comin’ by tomorrow for some more. It’s been a real pain. I’ve had to do a bunch of research to see what the stuff was worth and then had to haggle. I hate that kind of crap.”
“I’m truly sorry you’ve been put in this situation, Dillon. You know Gabby and I are doing all we can to help you, right?”
“I know.” He sounded gloomy.
“How about I go in and get us each a big glass of tea or something and we can chat.”
He grunted, which I took as a yes.
Before getting the drinks, I took the opportunity to snoop around a little. Thumbing through the mail piled up on the coffee table, I was forced to acknowledge that putting an end to accumulating debt was just one more of Dillon’s motives. He might still end up with some to deal with even after selling everything off.
I scurried back to the kitchen to hastily pour two glasses of lemonade and a sippy cup of Kool-Aid. Walking towards the living room, I noticed several containers on the table covered in tin foil. More homemade meals for the widower, I suspected.
Once outside, I sat the cups down on the rickety table near where he sat and asked, “Dillon, you told me before that Paula would go to the studio at night. Are you sure there wasn’t a pattern to it? Think back. Did she usually go on the same night? Did she go every week?” I handed him his glass of lemonade.
“Naw. She went whenever the mood hit her or she was running low on stock for the gallery. She did probably go once a week, but she coulda skipped sometimes. It wasn’t a planned thing.”
“Okay. Did you leave Cheyenne because of the feud between her and Charley Hesston? Is that the real reason?”
“Yeah. Stupid woman. Why she felt she needed to rip him off, I’ll never understand. She was great at what she did. She didn’t need to take someone else’s stuff. All it did was rain down more crap on us. We left behind a good job and a secure place for her to sell her work. We were doing good. Then she had to go and ruin it.” He hurled a small plastic ball he’d been playing with across the yard. “She’d still be alive if she’d just kept her nose clean so we coulda stayed there.”
“And your parents don’t know about that.”
“Right. All I need is them to find out and have just one more thing to hate about her. It’s been hard enough without that.”
I let the quiet settle between us for a few moments. I watched Harper get off the trike every once in a while to pick up a rock or stick and then return to her mode of transportation. She obviously had a reason for collecting those things, but the story was lost on me. She was in her own little world where everything that came to her seemed logical and possible. I envied her.
Having seen the pile of bills and now watching his young child play made me wonder about their future. “Dillon, did Paula have life insurance?”
He jerked his head up. “What?”
“It could take some time to get rid of the pottery studio equipment and I wondered if maybe she’d left some money for you.”
“She was barely twenty-six years old. No one that age thinks about needing life insurance.” His angry tone was back. Had I hit on another nerve or was it just the overwhelming worry about the debt that had caused his outburst?
“I wasn’t accusing you of anything. It common to plan for the future when you start a family.”
“Or maybe I bumped off my own wife to get her life insurance.”
“That wasn’t what I was thinking at all, Dillon.” How could I get him to believe that it had been an innocent question? “I’m on your side, remember?”
“Sounded like you we
re trying to find another reason I might be guilty. That’s just great. Even my own attorney thinks I’m guilty.”
“That’s not true. But you are making it exceedingly difficult for us to defend you if you don’t come clean about where you were the two nights in question.”
“I told you already.”
“What you told us is a load of bunk. I know you didn’t arrive at work until after Paula’s time of death and that you weren’t home like you said you were the night Jack was killed. You’d just had public altercations with each of the victims right before their murders, Dillon. For crying out loud, you have to see how incriminating this is.”
“That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.”
“Well, I hope that’s of great comfort to you while you are rotting in prison the rest of your life while your little girl grows up without you.” I shouldn’t have let him get to me, but his lack of interest in defending himself, at the expense of his daughter, was unbelievably selfish.
“So if you won’t tell me the truth, how are we supposed to defend you? Because from where I’m standing, you have the best motive.” Okay, that last part might’ve been better left unsaid, but darn it, I was mad. Mad he was being so obstinate when we were just trying to help.
“Oh, yeah?” He glared at me and balled up his fist. “Well, why don’t you go hound Shelly Blankenship, huh? She’s been driving me nuts, coming round night and day. You know, she was practically stalking me on Facebook the whole time we lived in Cheyenne. Why don’t you go see what she has to say about Paula’s death? And while you’re at it, why not lock her up for a couple of days so I can get some peace and quiet?”
Why was I just hearing about this? Sure, Ellie had been going on about Shelly’s intrusion, but I’d taken that as jealousy for Dillon’s attention. Could Shelly be less innocent than she appeared? A nuisance, certainly, but a murderer?
Harper was staring at us, her thumb in her mouth, her eyes big. Our rising voices must have frightened her. I smiled and waved to put her at ease.