Kathy planted her hands on her hips. “Why did he refuse? Because honest citizens shouldn’t have to give their fingerprints when they haven’t done anything,” she declared righteously. “I refused too.”
“Did they want your fingerprints also?” I asked.
“I just wanted them to know I wouldn’t do it either. If they did want them.”
Yes, definitely the poster girl for Stand by Your Man.
“Do you still think it was an accident?” I asked. “Spark plugs or something like that?”
“I thought it was. But now . . . I don’t know. It’s terrible to think, but maybe someone was trying to kill Brian.”
“We understand they may be looking for the dead woman’s former husband,” I said.
“Really?” She brightened. “Maybe he’s the one who did it! Actually, I talked to him once. I saw him coming out of that woman’s house in Eureka and followed him to a bar in McKinleyville. This was before she was killed, of course.”
We stared at her, mutually flabbergasted. Kathy, stalking Renée’s ex?
“He wasn’t a pleasant man. He seemed to blame both Brian and me for—” She broke off and then ended with a vague wave of hand. “For . . . things.” Then she clutched her apron and drew her shoulders in with a kind of combination shiver-shudder.
I felt mildly indignant for her. Ric Echol was blaming Kathy for not being a good enough wife to keep her husband from chasing after his ex-wife? Unless there was really some more sinister reason she’d talked to him. Maybe she’d thought the two of them could figure a way to break up Brian and Renée’s relationship?
Mac had a more practical thought. “Where was this bar?”
“On a side street somewhere in McKinleyville. The Office. I thought that was a peculiar name for a bar. But then I don’t know much about bars.”
“Have you told the sheriff’s deputy that you talked to him?”
“No. Maybe I should. But I can’t go anywhere right now. Brian has the car. And I have a new chocolate soufflé recipe I want to make before he gets home anyway.”
When the going gets really tough, maybe the tough up the ante to soufflés.
Kathy scooted on over to their apartment, and we went up the ramp to Duke’s trailer. We told him about our windstorm disaster and that we were staying in Sheila’s garage room temporarily. I noticed the handgun and holster were hanging by the door now, along with his overloaded key ring. He said Sheila had been by to tell him she’d be gone for a few days. He didn’t seem disturbed by the prospect of her absence. Maybe she’d pushed for a let’s-get-married-in-Vegas trip. We talked about the explosion. Mac asked if he had any thoughts on what may have caused it.
“Probably what Kathy said. An accident.”
“Sheila had another theory. You probably heard her.”
Duke snorted. “That woman has more theories than Carter has liver pills.”
Another old saying I hadn’t heard in a long time. Younger people probably have never heard it.
“Say, you folks don’t happen to be going into town, do you? With Sheila gone, I need to pick up a few groceries.”
“We thought we might run into McKinleyville. We need groceries too. Want to come along?”
“Great!”
We’d brought BoBandy along, so the little pickup was crowded with three people and a dog, but BoBandy draped his rear end across Duke and his front end across me, and we managed. We certainly wouldn’t make him ride in the back of the pickup.
In McKinleyville, Duke directed us to Safeway, where we bought groceries to last as long as we thought we’d be in Sheila’s room, and Duke got groceries for himself and the cats. Afterward he said, if we had time, he’d really like to get a haircut, so we took him to a barbershop. I thought we’d be better off not looking for Ric Echol, but we did have some spare time, and Mac used his phone to locate The Office.
We found it a few blocks away, a generic-looking, concrete block building next to a martial arts academy. It bore no resemblance to an office. We sat at the counter, which had a dagger and some initials carved into the wood. I felt we should order something, but I had no idea what. Mac took care of it with a request for two glasses of 7Up.
“We’re interested in a classic old bike we heard someone around here rides,” Mac said when the bartender brought our drinks. “A Harley Screamin’ Eagle Softail.”
The bartender gave the counter a swoop with a rag. “You looking to buy a bike?” He sounded as skeptical as if Mac had asked about availability of a used flying saucer.
“Just interested,” Mac said. He’s kind of stuck with the truth, same as I am.
“Yeah, there was a guy used to come in rode an old Eagle. But he doesn’t come in anymore.”
“He left the area?”
“Nah. Well, I don’t know. Maybe he did. But he kept pickin’ fights with other customers, so we told him he wasn’t welcome here anymore.”
“Were the police ever called?”
“We took care of it ourselves.” He unexpectedly grinned and pulled a baseball bat out from under the counter. “Meet Shorty. He’s our friendly persuader.”
I was persuaded. I hadn’t planned to start a fight with the two guys at the other end of the bar, and I certainly wasn’t going to do so now.
“You happen to know this guy’s name or where he lives?” Mac asked.
“I’m not that nosy.”
“Did he usually come in alone or with someone?”
“Usually him and another biker.”
Interesting information, but not helpful enough to win us any points with Deputy Hardishan. We finished our 7Ups and by then it was time to go back to the barbershop and pick up Duke. He looked quite spiffy, with a beard trim as well as a haircut. He insisted on taking us to lunch at a place called Billie’s Burgers, where we had great burgers and Duke flirted with the buxom older woman for whom the eatery was named. Somehow I doubted he’d have any trouble finding another girlfriend if Sheila abandoned him permanently for warmer weather.
Back at Duke’s trailer, we helped pick up the broken debris under the trees. Kathy’s old Honda was back but not in the carport. Apparently that was reserved for the ghost of Porsches past. Neither Kathy nor Brian came out to talk to us. We could see through the dinosaur park gate that broken branches and windblown debris littered the pathway.
Back at Sheila’s place, we discovered a couple of cans of peaches had fallen out of one of Duke’s sacks of groceries in the pickup, but we decided we’d wait until later to take them to him. He’d bought bananas and apples so wouldn’t be needing the canned peaches right away.
We started cleaning up the yard at Sheila’s place, stacking broken branches on the pile the pastor’s friend had started. By then, the knee Mac had injured when he was trying to retrieve the shovel from the dinosaur park was bothering him, and he stretched out on the sofa with BoBandy snuggled up beside him. He used his cell phone to peruse the internet for the gift we wanted to get for Duke, but I felt very much at loose ends. Accompanied by Koop, I wandered down to Sheila’s garage sale area and studied an assortment of mismatched wine glasses. Someone knocked on the door while I was there. It was a young man who wanted to talk to Sheila about some incense sticks. Koop took one sniff at him, hissed, and bounded back upstairs. Koop isn’t shy about expressing his aversion to smokers, and this man had a definite smoker aroma. I told the man this wasn’t one of Sheila’s regular yard sale days, but I did show him her giant-sized cup of incense sticks. He merely seemed impatient and actually swatted at them. I had to grab the cup to keep them from tumbling over.
“No, no. I want the Golden Temple. The Golden Temple.” He snapped his fingers, apparently annoyed that I didn’t produce the incense by snapping my own fingers. “Maybe she left a package for me?”
I cautiously peered in a couple of drawers, but I wasn’t sure I’d give him a package even if I found one. “I don’t see any package.”
He
stormed back to his nice Lexus and roared off. I thought his reaction was rather excessive for something as minor as a missing stick of incense. What was so special about the Golden Temple scent? When I went back upstairs, Mac said he’d ordered the gift for Duke.
Sheila called that evening. I told her about the young man and she muttered something uncomplimentary about “that jerk.” She asked if the electricity had come on and if Duke was okay and if we’d heard anything more about the explosion of the Porsche. She finally said the weather in Las Vegas was lovely, but her daughter was such a messy housekeeper that she thought she’d come home in a few days. “I found three socks and a mummified pork chop under the living room sofa,” she stated, and I could practically see her nose wrinkle in disapproval.
Okay, maybe a little messy, I agreed. But I wasn’t sure three socks and a mummified pork chop were any worse than a stuffed raccoon. I also figured guests peering under sofas deserved whatever they might find.
The next afternoon we decided it wouldn’t hurt to do a little more checking on Ric Echol. We thought if he’d gotten himself blacklisted at one bar he’d undoubtedly found another, so Mac used the internet to get a list of local bars and taverns.
We went to a couple of sophisticated lounges connected with nice restaurants, a couple of rough places that looked as if a beer belly was required for admittance, and several others in between. At each one, Mac used the starting point of asking if they remembered a customer with a Harley Screamin’ Eagle. We got a couple of maybes but no specifics.
We were also becoming way more familiar with bars, taverns, lounges, and beer joints than I ever wanted to be. Although we met some friendly people. A bartender suggested I try a “Pink Lady,” and when Mac went to the restroom, a sociable guy wanted to buy one for me. I politely declined, but it seemed like a nice offer, except for the look that went with it. But I decided I must be mistaken. Who leers at an LOL? We talked with a young man whose wife had just left him and taken their dog and boat with her. We commiserated with him, although I suspected part of their marriage problem may have been that he sounded as if he missed the dog and boat more than the wife.
We also found one bar where the bartender said a biker had been in asking if an older couple in a Toyota pickup had been in there looking for him.
Ric Echol had found out we were looking for him, and now he was looking for us? Uh-oh.
By that time we were both fairly well saturated with 7Up, and it seemed a good time to abandon our tiger-by-the-tail search, at least temporarily.
The next day we chose a different project.
MAC
“We came over to see if Brian needed help with cleanup out in the park,” I said when Kathy answered my knock on their door. We’d decided encountering a few ghost goats and a cougar or two might be preferable to searching for a man whom Ron Sweeney had rather crudely but perhaps accurately described as having a temper like a bull with porcupine quills stuck in his butt.
Kathy clapped her fingertips together. “Oh, that’s wonderful! Brian is lying down. He isn’t feeling well, so I know he’ll really appreciate you doing the cleanup. There are a couple of rakes out in the carport.”
Apparently our offer to “help” had morphed into an offer to do the cleanup. Was Brian not feeling well because he was still mourning the Porsche? Although I was more inclined to think he was just allergic to work he knew was out there.
“Have you heard anything more about the cause of the explosion?” Ivy asked.
Kathy rolled her eyes. “They don’t tell us anything.”
“Did Brian find a lawyer yesterday?” I asked.
“He talked to a couple of them, but they wanted ridiculous retainers. Would you like some peanut butter cookies? I just made a fresh batch.”
“Sure,” Ivy said. Ivy is a great cook, but she never turns down goodies someone else has made.
“Come on in and I’ll put them in a bag for you.”
We’d no more than stepped inside and closed the door than we heard a vehicle outside. Kathy looked out a window and her response was almost melodramatic. A gasp. A drop of cookie. A touch of chest.
We couldn’t see why she was gasping, but a moment later someone knocked on the door. Kathy didn’t move to open it, so I made a questioning motion in that direction. She didn’t respond, and I cautiously opened the door. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a Harley Screamin’ Eagle and a bearded biker sporting porcupine quills, but what I saw were two cars emblazoned with Sheriff on their sides and four armed officers. The one in front had some official-looking papers in his hand.
“Mr. Morrison?”
Before I could say anything, a deputy I recognized said, “That’s not Morrison.” Deputy Hardishan stepped up to the door. “What’re you doing here, MacPherson?” The question had a definite touch of how-come-you’re-always-around-when-something’s-happening? suspicion.
A flippant We’ve got to stop meeting like this came to mind, but more prudently I managed to say, “Just, uh, visiting.”
Kathy apparently overcame her qualms and pushed her way in front of me. “I’m Mrs. Morrison.”
“We’re here to serve a search warrant and search the premises,” the first officer said. He handed her one of the papers.
Kathy momentarily looked as if she might do a maidenly faint, but then she reversed that to an attacking-mama-bear stance. “Search? Search for what? This is outrageous!” She shook the paper at him without looking at it. “You can’t just come into our home and start digging in our things!”
“It’s all in the warrant, ma’am, so—”
“No. Definitely not. My husband is ill. You’ll have to come back some other time. We’ll talk to our lawyer and see . . . see what he says about this infringement on our rights.” She tried to thrust the paper back at him, but he blocked it with an uplifted palm.
I knew her protest wasn’t going to work. They didn’t have a lawyer, and even if they did, I also knew that with a search warrant the officers could definitely come in and search. Brian, dressed in a robe and needing a shave, blundered out of the bedroom.
“What’s all this about?” he demanded. He grabbed the paper from Kathy and studied it. “You’re looking for a gun? There’s no gun in here. Go ahead and look.” He tossed the paper as if it was confetti and stalked back toward the bedroom.
Kathy, following Brian’s arrogant disdain, left the paper on the floor.
“Please come back out here, sir,” the officer said. “You may remain on the premises while the search is conducted, but you may not interfere in the process.”
I thought for a moment Brian might just slam the door and barricade himself inside, but after a moment he turned and stalked back to the living room.
“After the search is completed, you will be furnished with a list of items removed.”
“What I’m going to do is sue you,” Brian stated.
“That’s your right, sir, but right now we are going to conduct our search.”
Ivy and I looked at each other. No one was paying any attention to us. We could apparently leave if we wanted, but we weren’t being kicked out. Were we leaving? Ivy answered that by unobtrusively dropping to the sofa and patting the space beside her. Curious may not be Ivy’s middle name, but curiosity is embedded in her genes. Okay, I was curious too. Would they find a gun? Brian sat in one of the blue recliners, yanked the lever to raise the footrest, and folded his arms across his chest. Kathy perched on the edge of the other recliner. The paper still lay on the floor.
The officers spread out to the kitchen and bedroom and the computer area concealed by a folding screen. It didn’t seem like an appropriate time for small talk and we all sat there in silence. I kept thinking Brian would order us to get out, but apparently his mind was on other things.
I’ve heard law officers aren’t necessarily neatniks about doing searches, and, from the clunks and thuds issuing from various places, I guessed that was true. A
deputy filled the kitchen counter with items from the cabinets as he searched them. Apparently, he didn’t feel obligated to return everything to its proper place. The search seemed to go on and on. We had to stand aside when they removed the sofa cushions to search under them. They also moved the sofa itself to look underneath. No socks or old pork chops under Kathy’s sofa.
Finally Deputy Hardishan came out of the laundry room carefully carrying a cardboard box. A second officer followed with a plastic bag holding a box of powdered laundry soap and a third bag holding a small box with printing on the side. I thought it looked about the right size for a box of shells.
The officers had apparently found what they were looking for because a few minutes later Deputy Hardishan handed Brian—where he was still glowering at them from the recliner—a paper. Brian grabbed the paper and suddenly roared to life. He leaped out of the recliner, yanking himself upright on one foot when his other foot snagged on the footrest.
Chapter 19
IVY
The caught foot and flailing arms lent a certain Three Stooges aspect to Brian’s fury, but then he jerked the foot free and lunged toward the closest officer.
I don’t know what he had in mind, but three officers instantly formed a formidable line of defense. They didn’t draw guns, but for a moment I thought they might. Brian, apparently realizing he was outnumbered and outgunned, backed off. But not silently.
“I’m gonna sue you! I’ll sue for every cent this county has! I’ll sue every one of you personally for every cent you have!”
I wondered what had prompted the search. Law enforcement doesn’t serve a search warrant on a hey-let’s-dig-around-and-see-if-we-can-find-anything-interesting basis. A search warrant has to be for a specific item or items, and a judge has to approve and sign the warrant. So they’d had information from somewhere. Would a search warrant be issued on the basis of an anonymous call? I doubted that.
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