by Dakota Kahn
They were completely immersed in the business, the Ws and the Gs. How, and with what arrangements, were mine to guess. But I also had less than a guess how I was actually going to approach these people.
Why would they talk to me? If the brief meeting from this morning were any indication, they were firmly convinced of Rip’s guilt, and Mr. Greene looked like he was going to tear me limb from limb just for doing my job.
Mrs. Wendover though… I couldn’t read her. She was dressed like a doll, the two times I’d seen her, and though she didn’t have any porcelain perfection in her cheeks she might as well have been a doll for all I saw her expression change. I know if my husband had been murdered… I’d be a mess. And likely a furious one.
But just because she wasn’t grieving in public didn’t mean anything. Just because I didn’t have the keys to unlocking her public persona didn’t mean anything. What meant something is… I didn’t know how Mr. Wendover really died, and neither did they.
It was almost a shock, stepping from the crisp outdoor mountain air into the artificially warm atmosphere of the Whispering Pines hotel. I nearly pulled my jacket off, but when I started I got a look at my shirt underneath.
I had not thought to go home and change my clothes since my close encounter with the stairs in the ghost town. I was filthy, discomfited, with splotches of dust and dirt on my skirt and some tears in my shirt I somehow hadn’t noticed when I was dressing in the hospital.
I ran a hand through my thick hair, and could feel it was not in any order I would have left the house in. Oh, why didn’t Linda warn me?
Maybe she didn’t see anything peculiar in how I was situated. Maybe she thought it was funny. Either way, I turned tail to run before anybody saw me that I knew…
And that’s when I saw Mrs. Wendover. Just off the lobby was a coffee shop, where they sold pastries and grown-up milkshakes people call “coffee drinks” and little sandwiches. She was sitting there, dressed and looking much the same as she had this morning, with a little cup of tea in front of her. She was mechanically lifting and lowering the tea bag, and I caught myself staring, waiting for her to decide it had steeped enough, darn it.
With just a moment’s hesitation, I walked through the lobby, my hair and clothes be damned, and went right up to Mrs. Wendover’s table.
I took a throat clearing before she acknowledged my presence. She looked up at me without much interest.
“You’re the lawyer woman,” she said.
It was true, and I owned up to as much. “I’m Kate Becker, and I am a lawyer in town.”
“Did you get mugged?” she said, with no change in expression or in her mellow, slightly drowsy tone.
“No. I fell through a rotten flight of stairs in a ghost saloon.”
Her dipping tea bag paused for a moment, and she looked at me again, a little more life in her eyes.
“You went to the ghost town. Where James…” She let the sentence drop.
I waited for her to motion for me to sit down. When she didn’t I took the initiative and stole the seat across from her. That didn’t earn me any shouts for guards to seize me, so I plowed on ahead.
“I didn’t get a chance this morning to express my condolences. I’m so sorry for what’s happened to you,” I said, and waited to see if any of my sympathy passed through this woman’s considerable armor.
She nodded, like I had just told her the time, then picked up her tea to take a sip. Steam rose up from the cup in a twisting swirl of mist. She seemed to stare at the swirl for a moment, then looked back at me.
“Thank you,” she said, coldly.
“And you know that I’m—”
“I know who you are and what you’re doing. It’s your job and I suppose one can’t fault you, though I don’t mind saying it seems in rather poor taste, your coming to me to do it. I’m not going to help you get the man who killed my husband out of jail,” she said.
“I’m not going to ask that you do. As much as anybody, believe me, I want to find out who killed your husband. But I know it is not my client. I’ve known him for years.”
“So you’re biased toward him,” she said.
“I would be biased toward any client of mine. Juries and judges are impartial. Not lawyers. I’m on a side, sure, but I’m not just on his side. This little town is my favorite place in the world, Mrs. Wendover. And something bad happened here. I’m in a position to try and right a wrong, and I’m going to do my damnedest to do that. So I need to find out just what happened in my town.”
“My husband was hanged,” she said, simply.
“Yes. I know, and I can only imagine how difficult this must be for you.” I had to imagine it because, from watching her she didn’t seem to be having any difficulties at all. “But I need to ask you some questions, so I know what happened.”
“Isn’t that what the police do?” she said.
“Yes, well, if we only let the police do it, then we’ll be struck just trusting the police. That’s not good enough for me. Now, please, could you tell me about last night. Why was your husband on the site?” I asked.
She took a long sip of her tea. “I told the police. He received a call late at night. There’d been an injunction of some kind - I didn’t know the courts worked late at night, but it seemed they convened special, just to try to get in our way.”
This was the first hint of real fire I’d heard from the woman. She must really care about the business her husband was doing (or was she doing it, too? Was Wendover just the CEOs wife, or did she have any part directly in the company? Inquiring Kates want to know).
“It’s the deadline.”
“With that Landowner,” she said, her venom and fire increasing. Nobody liked the mystery partner who somehow owned all the land where old Crestgold lay, and also somehow called all of the shots.
“But wasn’t it strange of your husband to have gone ahead and built the gallows, anyway? The whole town knows that nobody has any permits to build anything there, not until the contracts are awarded. But Wendover just went ahead—”
“Because this is a small town with small minded people, no offense. James Wendover was a man with big visions. Dreams. Enormous dreams that nobody in a little town could see in front of their face, not until he hammered some wood together to show them.”
“But a gallows,” I said, shrugging. It seemed such a strange thing to begin with. Morbid and unpleasant, like building a kid’s petting zoo with a special slaughterhouse.
“All part of the show. For James, all of this was a show, and he was the master showman. God help him, he wanted to stay here for three months out of the year so he could act in the Wild West shows,” she said with an eye roll and something almost like a chuckle. It was the most human I’d seen this woman be since she rolled into town. “It would never happen, because his time was too valuable to be spent in one small part of Wendover Amusements. But he would have loved it.”
She sighed, emptied her cup, and signaled to the girl at the counter. The coffee shop didn’t usually have a waitress, and I don’t think she was supposed to leave the counter but the mix of Wendover’s wealth and widowhood brought about exceptions. More hot water was brought over, and Mrs. Wendover pointed at me.
“Oh, nothing, thanks. I’m… I’m fine.”
“Get her a coffee,” Mrs. Wendover said, not even looking at me. “The Gallows wasn’t even in the plans we had drawn up. It was just something that James came up with on the spur of the moment. He’s not an architect, but he drew them up, directed the builders, and had it all done overnight. He was going to tear it down.”
She put such an emphasis on that last sentence that I wondered if there were some special significance in it I was supposed to catch and failed to.
“That’s the answer to your question,” she said, slowly, as if her estimation of my IQ had just been lowered. “He was out late at night because he’d had a call about the injunction. He and Lawrence went out to the site. He told me not to wait up, so I went
right to bed. Woke up early to find out… what I found out.”
“Lawrence is Lawrence Greene?” I said, trying to sound casual. My coffee arrived, black, and when I asked for some creamer I got an eye roll and a finger pointed rudely to a set-up in the back of the shop, where the milk and creamer were.
“Yes,” Mrs. Wendover said, then she went to dipping a new tea bag. I got my hazelnut creamer and a goodly amount of sugar, all while I tried to figure out how to approach my next line of questioning. Lawrence Greene, the bull in the china shop. A large man who looked like he’d accidentally inherited his way into this business, when his natural calling was slinging sheet rock, or breaking rocks in prison.
“Why did Mr. Greene go with him to the site?” I said, sitting back across from Mrs. Wendover.
“They were business partners. Of course, James started the business but Lawrence dealt with the crews directly. He was always integral in the hands-on work.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said. I watched the swirling clouds in my coffee and wondered how to dance around accusing Mr. Greene of being complicit in the murder of her husband. I had no facts, barely an instinctual dislike of the man that led my thoughts that way. But he was there.
“And so he would deal with the actual dismantling of the gallows?” I said.
“Right,” said Mrs. Wendover. Then she looked at me again. The way she looked at you, it was like trying to hide her eyes and give you a hard stare at the same time. “Except it isn’t the easiest thing in the world to get construction workers to come out to a job site at midnight to work in the dark.”
“Seems like the kind of thing you can leave to the morning,” I said.
“Not James. He was impulsive, like I said. When he wanted a thing done, he wanted it done by the time the sentence was out of his mouth. And while Lawrence was going to call in people, get anyone he could, James went down to the work site to get lights on and have a last look at… a last look at what he made.”
She retreated back into her tea, and I stared at my coffee, waiting for another approach to come to me. I was getting close to something, now. I just needed to figure out, for myself, just what the heck that something was.
“Who owns the company now?” I said, taking a long drink of coffee, watching her for any expression. She made a slight shrug of her shoulders.
“James and I owned a controlling interest in the company, so it’s me, mainly, though there are some provisions in his will as to dividing parts of the company up in case of his passing, so it doesn’t all come to me. Wendover Amusements will likely become Wendover and Greene.”
Then for the first time she gave me a real smile. An indulgent one, like she was looking at a kitten doing something stupid and cute.
“Cui bono, Miss Becker? Who benefited from my husband’s death? Why, the wife who doesn’t have nearly his vision, the business partner who was happy to leave all the big plans to his boss? Maybe you even think it’s me because I’m not weeping and rending garments. I loved my husband, and more than that I respected him. He was dedicated and interesting. And without him, the company might go on, but its best days, well…”
She stopped and just shook her head.
Maybe there was something in what she was saying.
“Still, it seems strange that your husband would be murdered with Mr. Greene just a few hundred feet away and—”
“What the holy hell is this?” a man said, in a booming, room filling voice behind me.
I twisted in my seat just as Lawrence Greene barreled into the coffee shop. He stood above me with a face twisted and angry, his pale white skin clouding into red.
“Claire, what are you talking to this shyster for? Don’t you know who she works for?” he said, flecks of spit flying off of his chin.
“Of course I do, Lawrence. She’s just doing her job, and I don’t mind having someone to talk to,” Mrs. Wendover said, her eyes going coolly toward Mr. Greene. There didn’t seem to be much love lost there.
“Someone to twist your words, you mean, to get you to say lies then put you in jail for ‘em,” he said, breathing heavily. Sweat had already broken out on his forehead, and his massive fists were flexing open and closed. Whatever Linda Parr had done for him, it hadn’t adjusted his frame of mind.
I got to my feet, saying, “Thank you, Mrs. Wendover,” and I smiled as I darted past him.
I’ll admit it. The lummox scared the living bejeezus out of me. He seemed to be barely in control of himself. Just the kind of guy to do his boss in, actually.
I was out of the hotel in seconds, and walking down the street when I realized I was heading the wrong way. I’d parked in the shopping center, not the hotel parking lot. Greene and his big angry thug demeanor had busted up all my cool.
When I turned back, I noticed something, there, across the street. It was dark enough that the other side of the street was hazy and black-blue with night, and though the parking lot of the California Gold was lit up, the rest of the street wasn’t, so it was just a shadowy figure I saw, moving big and bold up through the alleyway.
Why she caught my attention I couldn’t say right off the bat… until she came to a back door, and knocked. Then a light flicked on, and I could see Miguela Sepulveda, wearing a dark coat and a head covering hat, looking as anonymous as she possible could, sneaking in the back of the hotel.
Chapter 9
A whole new scenario presented itself to my brain. It wasn’t even like I’d thought it up - it was like it came at once, a text from my subconscious to my waking mind telling me the whole score. And the score was - there are a lot of people who could have benefited from Mr. Wendover’s unfortunate fate, and not all of them would have been in his business. There was the other developer, Mr. Sparks, of course. And then there were the people who wanted to stop all development regardless of who was doing it.
And their leader was being very odd and sneaky and going into a hotel room across the way. A hotel that I knew for a fact was the very place that other developer, Mr. Sparks, was staying.
Then my subconscious info-dumped a whole bunch of irrelevant scenarios that couldn’t possibly be true, some of which involved Miguela Sepulveda as a secret third party with her own development contract, or as an international murderess with a string of developer corpses behind her…
I’m new at this. The ideas are not all gold.
But I knew that there was something afoot. Miguela Sepulveda lived in Blue Aspen - the closest thing to a gated community we had here in Whispering Pines. It’s all above the aspen line (that’s the elevation at which aspen will grow) and has a private shared community lake. Mayor Reynolds lives there. Barker, King and Hill own probably half of it. I’ve only driven by once, and I’m pretty sure a security guard noted me and followed me in his golf cart to make sure I’d cleared out before I’d made too much of a nuisance of myself.
I’m saying Miguela’s from a well-to-do family and had no reason to go sneaking into anywhere, let alone a hotel room.
And she’d been let in by a maid. The little maid face (anyone looked little next to the impressively bulked Miguela) peered out around the door in the instant that Miguela swung herself into the hotel. Short, pale white face, eyebrows so dark they looked like someone had drawn them in with charcoal. Just look for that face, Kate.
Except, I realized as I walked into the lobby of the California Gold, I had no idea where they could be going. This was a big place, about twice the size of the Whispering Pines hotel and so modern looking I could have been back in San Francisco, except I didn’t have to trip over a homeless person coming in the front door.
It wasn’t nearly as stiflingly warm as the Whispering Pines hotel - clearly more modern climate controls, with more modern insulation and a modern desk and modern everything.
Sitting at the front desk was a cheerful looking young modern woman whom I did not know and who welcomed me with a broad smile that became a little strangled as she got a better look at me.
When I get big money
(as if) I’m putting a wardrobe and shower in my office. Never again will I need to do my investigations looking like I’d just cleaned out an attic.
“Hi,” I said, putting my hands on the desk and freezing my own smile on my face as I realized I had no idea whatsoever what I was going to say.
“How may I help you?” the young woman said, finding her politeness.
I have no idea I didn’t say, though it was the only phrase going through my mind.
“Um…” I started.
Then a tiny stroke of luck hit. The door behind the front counter opened, and a rotund, glasses-wearing man (barely more than a boy) came out, twiddling pudgy fingers on his chest.
“Uh, Violet, I need to get some check-in logs from your terminal. There’s a bit of a—”
Violet responded through clenched teeth. “I am with a customer, Tyler. Please—”
“Tyler Zane!” I said, my voice way too loud from my relief at finally coming up with an idea.
He nearly fell backwards in shock at being shouted at, then he blinked at me from behind his glasses.
“Katie B!” he said, and then paused, because he was still getting the dark-eyed look from Violet.
“Just who I came in to see,” I said, which was a lie, but maybe would turn out to be the truth. I smiled back at Violet and said, “I’m just meeting a friend.”
Her own smile looked even more skeptical now as she glanced back at Tyler, then at me. I didn’t like Violet very much.
I did like Tyler, though. I hadn’t seen him for years, but I’d known him since before he was in high school. While my main squeeze was eventually Blake, a girl’s heart is a fickle thing, and in Junior High Byron Zane was the handsomest thing in braces I had ever seen. Was he my first kiss? I don’t know, don’t ask.
But he did have a little brother that completely idolized him, and was smart as obnoxious little brothers tended to be. I think he had a complete crush on me, but I didn’t realize it until years later. Something innate in me made me flirt with him, just a little, when I was a pre-teen. It’s like there’s an instinct in girls to be kind of horrible, and to use what we can in men when we see our chance.