The McHenry Inheritance (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 1)

by Michael Wallace

  Interest in the shocking event was only heightened by the involvement of a personality of Radio’s notoriety. Up until Tuesday of this week, representatives of the national news media have been in Summit County covering the story, and every motel in Harperville was filled to capacity each night.

  In addition to capturing the national imagination, the standoff on the McHenry ranch brought about the conclusion of the investigation into the murder of Daniel McHenry, son of the late cattleman Frank McHenry. The younger McHenry had been shot to death while fishing on the family ranch Sunday Sept. 12.

  Sheriff Baca said in a news conference this week that a rifle missing from the McHenry family home, and now believed to be the murder weapon, had been positively identified as being at the encampment maintained by Radio and his followers at Sullivan Meadows on the West Fork of the Buchanan River.

  In serving a search warrant at that location Friday Sept. 17, Baca discovered that the group had pulled up camp and left behind the body of one of their members, George Horton, 32, a close friend of the late Daniel McHenry. Horton was found hanging lifelessly from a tree, a rope around his neck.

  During the standoff later that day, Radio blamed Horton, who had possession of the weapon in question, for the killing of young McHenry and said that Horton had been “executed” for his alleged role in that death.

  “We’re operating on the premise that George Horton or someone else in the Rex Radio encampment committed the crime,” Baca said at his Tuesday news conference. “There is no evidence whatsoever linking anyone else to it, and we have therefore closed the books on our investigation.”

  The gun in question was with Radio and his followers when the explosion occurred, and, like them, has been permanently entombed.

  “The morning after the murder of Dan McHenry, we asked for permission to search their camp, and it was denied,” Baca said. “We had no cause to ask for a warrant until Friday of that week. If we had been able to locate that rifle the day after the shooting, there are 16 men who would be alive today, and a great many innocent people would have been spared a lot of pain.”

  Finally, the events of Sept. 17 have had one more effect. On Monday of this week, the trial over the McHenry will came to court after two continuances. Manfred Bosso, San Francisco attorney representing Daniel McHenry, moved to dismiss his challenge to the will, and Judge Hawkins accepted the motion.

  Bosso explained in court that Daniel McHenry had drawn up a will leaving his estate to Rex Radio, who had planned to continue the challenge. With Radio’s presumed death in the mine explosion, any right to continue the challenge fell to his designated beneficiary, the American Militia Foundation.

  The Foundation notified Bosso that it would not pursue the challenge to the will, but would be content to accept Daniel McHenry’s annual share of income from the ranch, as provided in the will that was being challenged. With Frank McHenry’s last will now uncontested, the ranch, its stock, and its improvements, which constitute the bulk of the estate, will go to his daughter, Ellen, thus making good his dying wish.

  Probate is expected to take several months. Miss McHenry, who has been sorely tried by the death of two family members this year, not to mention the legal struggle over her father’s will, has temporarily taken leave of Summit County. She is reportedly staying with a friend in San Francisco and could not be reached for comment.

  Epilogue: Monday July 18, 1994

  The clock outside the First National Bank of Summit County read 2:28 as Gordon drove by, and the temperature was a cool 72 degrees, owing to the thunderstorm that was rapidly bearing down on Harperville. Rumblings could be heard in the distance, but it had not yet begun to rain. When he pulled up in front of Mom’s Cafe, it was 2:30, closing time. As he got out of the Cherokee, he couldn’t help remembering that it was almost ten months to the day since the cataclysmic standoff at the McHenry ranch.

  He walked through the door and was relieved to see that the last customer of the day was paying his check. Kitty’s eyes lit up as she saw Gordon, and she ran over and hugged him as the customer walked out the door.

  “Gordon! What a surprise,” she said. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Same here.” He looked around. On the face of it, the cafe appeared to be the same as the last time he visited, but something was different, and he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  “I’m officially closed, but for you I can whip up some lunch.”

  “Please don’t bother. I’m fine. If you have any coffee, though, I wouldn’t mind a cup.”

  “You bet. The last pot’s still pretty fresh. Sit down and I’ll be right back.”

  She went behind the counter, detouring along the way to turn over the sign by the front door so that the “Closed” side was facing outward. She returned with two cups of coffee, and put cream into hers. Gordon drank his black.

  “So what have you been up to?” she asked.

  “Taking it easy,” he said. “Smelling the flowers.”

  “Lucky you. But what does taking it easy mean?”

  “I stay on top of my investments. That takes an hour or two a day. I do more traveling and fishing. And lately I’ve been working as a consultant to nonprofit organizations in the Bay area.”

  “How interesting!”

  “It is. There are a lot of people out there dedicating themselves to good work, and I really respect them. But too often they don’t know how to run the details of their organization. So I show them how to set up their books and track their money and use their computers to the best advantage.”

  “Do you get paid for that?”

  Gordon smiled. “I work for a flat fee of ten dollars, which is enough money for a beer and a tip at the best watering holes in San Francisco. I charge that just to remind them that they’re getting something of value, but in essence, I’m donating my time.”

  He sipped his coffee, swallowed, and took a deep breath.

  “So how’s Ellen?”

  “She’s fine,” said Kitty. “She’s been working really hard on the ranch, and after all the excitement last year, things are starting to get back to normal.”

  “She had enough excitement last year to last a lifetime.”

  “I don’t think even you know what she went through.”

  “Obviously not. I suppose you’re wondering what happened with us?”

  “I’ve heard her story.”

  “That’s probably pretty accurate.”

  “I don’t know. She was upset and confused about it herself. Are you going to see her, now that you’re here again?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You should give it a second chance. She’d be glad to see you.”

  “I’d love to see her, too, but it may not be a good idea.” He got up and walked to the window while he collected his thoughts. “We had two wonderful months in San Francisco. I can always remember that. She enjoyed the city life much more than I thought she would. She got along with my friends, of course, and they all loved her. In fact, I’m avoiding Sam right now because whenever we get together, I have to spend half the time listening to him tell me what a mistake I made.

  “But all that time there was a tension running beneath the surface. You know, in the movies, they always have two people falling in love during some incredible adventure, and that’s what happened to us. But I think in real life, that sort of abnormal situation distorts the relationship.”

  Outside the rain had begun falling. As is often the case in the mountains, it came down in sheets immediately, with no preliminaries.

  “She really appreciates what you did,” Kitty said. “You risked your life for her.”

  Gordon took his coffee cup behind the counter and refilled it.

  “I’m sure she appreciates it, but you know something, Kitty? I think at some level she resents it, too. Ellen’s a wonderful woman, but she’s too proud to feel she owes a man something — even though Sam and I owe our lives to her shooting ability.”

  “She
said you were withdrawn, like you were holding in some demon you couldn’t bear to let loose.”

  Gordon sat at the table again. “She’s very perceptive. I couldn’t tell her, but I have to tell you.” He looked Kitty in the eyes. “You see, I know who killed Dan McHenry.”

  Kitty said nothing for a few seconds, and when she spoke it was in a flat voice. “I thought that was settled,” she said.

  “In a sense it is. But I have to tell somebody, and you’re the only one I can.”

  “Go on.”

  “You gave yourself away the day afterward,” Gordon said. “When Sam and I were having lunch here and talking about the murder, you said, ‘A thirty-ought six could make a real mess out of a man.’ I didn’t notice it at the time, but a few days later when I was reading the newspaper story and came to the part where Baca wasn’t saying what kind of gun was used, I remembered. Aside from the sheriff, Ellen McHenry and myself, only one other person could have known then what caliber rifle was used to shoot Dan McHenry. The person who killed him.”

  The rain was coming down even more furiously now, and they listened to it for a full minute before Kitty spoke.

  “That’s hardly proof, you know. As close as I was to the family, I could have known what caliber Dan’s gun was.”

  “Maybe, but once I realized that, everything else fell into place. Dan McHenry’s killer had to know he’d be fishing on the ranch. You were there the night before when Ellen announced it, and you were really upset. You were close to a surrogate mother for her, and you resented the fact that Dan was trying to undo Frank McHenry’s will, at Ellen’s expense. You knew losing the ranch would devastate Ellen. A lot of crimes have been committed with less motive than that.

  “You also knew the ranch well enough to duck down that road and get in position. You don’t have an alibi for that morning. You weren’t at the cafe when we were there for breakfast, and you weren’t home when Ellen called on you at the time of the shooting. What’s more, you’re a deer hunter who knows how to use a rifle. Everyone says you’re a crack shot. You had what Baca says he always looks for — motive, means and opportunity. It all fits.”

  Kitty was looking vacantly past Gordon, her face pale. When she spoke, it was in a barely audible croak.

  “I wondered for days afterward if you picked up on that and might try to make something out of it.” She paused and stared into her coffee cup. “You know, last year was the first time in thirty years I didn’t go deer hunting. Funny, all of a sudden, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  Then Gordon realized what was different in the cafe. The deer head that had hung on the wall by the front door was no longer there.

  “Too bad we’ll never know what would have happened if Dan McHenry lived,” he said.

  “Don’t be a sentimental jackass. He’d have won the lawsuit, and he and Radio and that gang would be playing soldier on the McHenry ranch right now while Ellen was scraping by and trying to pay her legal bills. It’s too bad it happened the way it did, but with the people he was involved with, he wasn’t going to live to a ripe old age, anyway. Not with Rex Radio as the beneficiary of his will.”

  “You may be right, but still …”

  “You realize, don’t you, that if your theory is right, you risked your life for nothing when you went out looking for Dan’s gun. And you realize that you’re accusing me of putting Ellen in danger of being arrested for murder. Do you really think I would do that?”

  “No,” said Gordon, “I think if it had come to that, you would have done something. It’s funny — although no one was laughing at the time — how a whole set of random circumstances conspired to make Ellen look guilty. You gave her time to get to town so she’d have an alibi, but she went to your place, so she didn’t have one. If Dan had told Ellen he was taking his gun, or if she had noticed it earlier instead of having Baca find a gap in the gun rack, she wouldn’t have been flustered and confused and drawn suspicion on herself. And what were the odds that rifle would be the same caliber as yours?”

  “So what are you going to do now?”

  Gordon took a sip of coffee and tried to frame his words carefully.

  “Let me put it this way. You’re not the only one in this affair who’s carrying a load of guilt. I still wake up in the middle of the night, thinking about George Horton dangling from that tree. He wouldn’t have ended up there if I hadn’t pointed Radio toward that rifle and as much as said George was the killer. You killed a man directly, but I caused one to be killed.”

  “But he would have died in the mine, anyway.”

  “They wouldn’t have been in the mine that day if they hadn’t hanged him. Besides, I think he was getting ready to walk out on that bunch, and if things hadn’t come to a head so fast, he might have done it. Then there’s the other situation. It wasn’t more than ten seconds after that explosion that I realized the position I was in. Only I knew about what you’d said. If Baca had recovered Dan McHenry’s gun, I could have let him figure things out for himself. But with the evidence buried for all eternity, it was up to me to come forward. Against all teaching and inclination, I didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it would have devastated Ellen and made a bad situation worse. If I told Baca what I knew, he would have acted on it, and there would have been no end to the nightmare for Ellen. I hope I did the right thing by leaving well enough alone, but right or not, that was my decision, and I’m not about to change it now. But I had to let you know, which is why I came by today.”

  “Are you going to be around for a while?”

  Gordon shook his head. “I’d better not. I was deeply in love with Ellen, but that’s over now. What I know would come between us, as sure as can be. And what I know will make Summit County an uncomfortable place to be for a long time to come. I have a week off, and I’m going to spend it north of here.” Gordon rose. “Tell her I was by and asked about her, OK?”

  Kitty nodded. “Thanks for sharing your interesting theory with me,” she said, “and thanks for not sharing it with anyone else.”

  “Remember why,” he said.

  Kitty stood up, took Gordon’s right hand between hers and gave it a solid squeeze. Without another word, he walked out the door. As he left Harperville, he thought that Kitty was probably on the phone now, and he wondered what she was telling Ellen.

  He drove north out of town, past the Stage Stop Restaurant, and up the winding road to the top of the pass. The thunderstorm had been of short duration, and when he reached the summit, the rain had stopped entirely, though the dark clouds could be seen moving east. Pulling into a turnout he got out, and gazed down on the valley and the town far below. He made it a long look, because he knew it would be the last one for some time to come. As the events of last September flashed through his mind, a powerful feeling of loss began to grip his body, freezing him where he stood. It took all his will power to shake it off, walk back to the car and start the engine. As he drove down the other side of the pass, with Haperville now out of sight, he could feel the tension draining from his body. He was headed north, to places he’d never been before, and there was, after all, a week of fishing ahead.

  Photo by Greg Pio

  MICHAEL WALLACE has been reading mysteries ever since he got hooked on Agatha Christie’s Murder in Mesopotamia at the age of 12. He has been fly fishing, with varying degrees of success, for 30 years. The two interests have converged in his first novel, The McHenry Inheritance. When not reading mysteries or fishing, he was a reporter and editor for a daily newspaper for 19 years and now has a public relations/publication consulting business. He lives in Santa Cruz County, CA.

  Contact Michael Wallace through his website, quillgordonmystery.com

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