Jennifer wrinkled her nose. “He didn’t bowl.”
“I mean she could have known him somehow.”
“No matter how high the weeds are, I want to know who this woman is,” Jennifer said stubbornly. “I have people looking into that name, trying to dig deeper.”
“Maybe at this point, we approach Asheleigh. Get an initial take on whether it’s worth pursuing.”
“I’m gonna find her records anyway,” Jennifer warned.
On that note, Tom announced it was getting late and the call ended. Jennifer left almost immediately, eager to get to her computer setup at her parents’ home.
* * * *
Diana lingered. A look in her eye made me edgy.
A feeling totally justified when she asked, “What are you afraid of with Mike and Tom?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t tell me, but don’t lie.”
“I’m not. There’s nothing wrong. We get along fine…”
“You could be talking about two old guys playing checkers in front of the fire who get along fine. I thought dating both Mike and Tom was a real step forward and a bold one. But have you had a real conversation with either of them about your feelings for each other since this dating thing started? I didn’t think so. They’re not pushing to give you time and you’re not advancing because you’re afraid.”
“I’m…” Denial wasn’t good enough. Not for the friend Diana had become. I faced her, feeling the hot band at the bridge of my nose that predicted tears. “I’m going to lose one. It can’t stay the same. I know that. And I don’t want to lose either one.”
“You’re in love with both of them?”
The threatening tears dried up from shock. Had I even considered if I was in love with one, or both? We’d talked about seeing where things went, and I supposed that meant love at some point. Possibly. Maybe.
“I don’t know. I’m not lying, Diana. I’m really not.”
“I know you’re not. Listen—” She swore. “Your parents and Tamantha are back. This isn’t over.”
* * * *
“Should have known.”
Mom’s quiet voice made me jump.
Tamantha was sound asleep on the sofa bed, none of the light from my bedside lamp reaching her.
Mom stood at the partially open door. She must have come up the stairs very quietly. I’d swear I hadn’t been that absorbed. Lulled to near-unconsciousness, but not absorbed. First by Leah Pedroke’s basic data. Then by the list of Lukasik’s cases Jennifer compiled. Once his career took hold a few years after he got York off, it was fast-track all the way.
York’s timeline still had a gap between his trial and his return to Cottonwood County to work on the ranch.
“I was on the way to the bathroom and saw your light. You’re working late.”
It was such a Mom comment. A seemingly innocuous statement with layers upon layers of meaning, coming together to draw out deepest, darkest secrets like the inexorable hand-over-hand reeling in of a rope.
“Catching up on work.” I closed the laptop lid. “You know how it is.”
She looked toward where Tamantha slept. “Let’s go downstairs. I’ll make you cocoa.”
Downstairs, I said, “Sorry. It’ll have to be decaf. I don’t have cocoa. Or milk.”
“Yes, you do.” She moved around my kitchen with more certainty of where things were than I had. “Tamantha is a remarkable girl.”
“You have only scratched the surface.” Temptation to tell her Tamantha got me into this mystery investigating racket came… then went. No reason to dent their connection.
“She and Tom are very close,” she said.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Maybe it’s impossible for parents to truly see their beloved child accurately.” The way she looked at me stung my eyes. “Tom has his blind spots about Tamantha.”
“Boy, is that the truth. He likes her singing.”
She smiled, but it wasn’t full-bore.
Impulsively, I said, “I’m glad you and Dad came.”
“I’m glad we did, too. If we hadn’t, I’d never have recognized what’s going on with you and Tom and Mike.”
I blinked. The love was still there — now the tough kind now, not the fuzzy kind.
“We’re friends. We see each other—”
“Piffle.”
“Piffle?” I’d never heard that word from Mom.
She doubled down. “Absolute piffle. You’re half in love with both of them, wholly in love with one of them. But you can’t tell which because of half of the other one clouds the issue, leaving—”
“Mom, that’s four halves, equaling two wholes.”
“—temporary lack of clarity.”
“Temporary?” That sounded… hopeful.
“Temporary. Until you’re forced to face it. Now, drink your cocoa.”
DAY FOUR
Chapter Forty-Seven
They say you shouldn’t grocery shop when you’re hungry.
That made after a Mom meal the perfect time for another trip to the Sherman Supermarket and cashier extraordinaire, Penny Cyzlinksi.
Besides, if I let my stockpile of Double Dark Chocolate Milano cookies dip much lower, I’d be in danger of running out in a month or two, prompting a Pepperidge Farm’s stock crash.
Mom, Dad, and I sat at the counter talking for a long time over that meal. I called it breakfast. Mom insisted it was brunch.
Tamantha ate with us, then took Shadow out in the back yard for training. She took this seriously, having read books and studied videos on the topic.
Shadow took it seriously, too, because it involved treats. Lots and lots of treats. As he’d become more social, his willingness to trade obedience for treats had skyrocketed. Or was that vice versa?
My conversation with my parents didn’t cover important topics, but was important for the companionship.
All in all, I felt mellow as I walked through the familiar automatic doors of the Sherman Supermarket.
Until Penny yelled at me, “Go. You got plenty of cookies. Go on, get out of here.”
I didn’t turn and flee before that oddest of greetings.
I’ve been told plenty of times to get out of someplace in my journalistic career. A few of those places I dearly wanted to get out of. I didn’t flee any of them. Wasn’t going to start with the Sherman Supermarket.
I stopped in the entry and stared at Penny, shooing me with both hands and — most remarkably — not talking at her checkout customer.
“What are you waiting for? She’s out there. Musta just missed her.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Know you don’t need them. You’re supplied, and not just cookies. She filled in around the cookies. Don’t come in here shopping when—”
Approaching from the service desk, the manager objected, “Penny, you can’t tell people not to shop.”
We both ignored the interruption.
“My mom filling my freezer? But—”
“—Love Me Tender. Right there if—”
Love Me Tender…
“—you get moving. Some things more important. Start bagging these groceries, boy. Now, what was I saying? Asparagus—”
“Thank you, Penny!”
I was already out the door. Clearing the front of the building, I spotted an older woman all in black closing the hatch of a venerable SUV — also black — on a collection of grocery bags. A glance through the front glass into the store showed the store manager — boy, in Penny speak — bagging, as ordered.
I left him to his fate and concentrated on the woman, jogging across the lot radiating the sun’s heat up through my shoes.
“Yvette! Hi! So nice to see you.”
She smiled tentatively at the lunatic running toward her.
“It’s Elizabeth. Elizabeth Margaret Danniher from KWMT-TV. We met at—” Darn, darn, darn. Couldn’t remember the couple’s names. And she still looked uncertain. “—at a wedding a while back. Leona D’Amato intro
duced us.”
All uncertainty evaporated. “Oh, yes. Leona’s little friend. How nice to see you.”
I had to be half a foot taller than her, but little friend I’d be.
“Yes. That’s me. Delighted to see you again.”
Her smile slipped as she looked into the SUV at the grocery bags occupying the cargo area.
Ice cream. I saw cartons in at least two bags. No time to waste on finesse.
“I’m so happy, too, to hear about you and Hiram Poppinger.” I ignored her mouth forming an O and a blush rising up her wrinkled neck. “He’s been quite the romantic courting you, hasn’t he? Something about a record…?”
She giggled, the blush still spreading. “He has been romantic. Never thought it of him. You know I love the music of the King?”
“I do remember that about you.”
“It’s what he doesn’t understand. Some call me obsessed, but it was never part of my thought to drive him into hiding and pretending he’s dead.” Ah. The topic was Elvis, not Hiram. “I’ve always loved his music too much to lose that, even if it meant sacrificing our ever being together.”
I shook my head in sorrow. “Shame that wasn’t clear to him.”
“I know. Now, perhaps he’ll understand, with me pledging to another man. Why, do you know Hiram made sure to call me and tell me he could not make our date the other night because he’d been arrested for murder? I call that gentlemanly.”
One of the top ten best excuses for missing a date. It also accounted for Hiram’s one call from jail.
“And yet the record…?” I nudged.
“He was so apologetic about that, but the deputies were quite stern and said he couldn’t retrieve anything from his truck to send to me. He’s promised to bring it to me as soon as he can.” She giggled. “He was excited at finding the record after I told him it was the only forty-five of the King’s lacking from my collection. It’s those little touches that matter, isn’t it? Knowing a man is thoughtful.”
She sighed gustily. “I do plan to love him tender. As soon as he’s out of jail.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
When I called, Mike and Tom were arriving at the third livestock dealer.
“First two were clean,” Mike said. “Well, relatively.”
“Better luck with the third one,” I said hurriedly. “What I want to know, Mike, is if the things your grandparents left in the house that now belongs to the grazing association included the record player and old records you mentioned.”
Dead silence. Except for road noise from hundreds of miles away.
“Yeah,” he said cautiously. “Least they were there last time I was inside, a few years ago. Tom?”
“Can’t say when I last saw them but I remember a record player and some of those little records — not albums.”
“Forty-fives,” I supplied. “Mike, did your grandparents like Elvis?”
“Okay, this is just weird, Elizabeth. What is this about?”
“It’s about Hiram not going to the grazing association for a wrench or to kill Furman York. He went there for love.”
* * * *
When I finished explaining — Mike couldn’t swear one way or the other about his grandparents’ collection including Love Me Tender — I drove out to the grazing association.
I made only one wrong turn, and that looped right back to the track I’d been on so didn’t go far astray.
The house, the roses, the landscape hadn’t changed. The screening and police tape were gone.
I tried figuring out where the body had been by the population of smudged bootied footprints nearby, but there were a number of population centers. I satisfied myself with standing in the middle and looking around.
If Furman York had stood on this spot three mornings ago, he would have seen the front porch of the house, but the house blocked a view of where Hiram parked and of the back door, which was the only one used now.
Surely he would have heard Hiram arrive, though — if he was still alive.
I walked toward the house, stopping where the bootied footprints stopped.
No better view of the house or where Hiram had parked. And this was the best angle, as well as closest.
If not to look at the house, why had Furman York come up here?
I returned to the concentrations of bootied footprints, turning and looking like a lighthouse beam.
The slight elevation gave a better view than being at road level, but view of what? Looking in the opposite direction from the house, two pasture fences came together. That was it. Nothing else to see except pasture land.
I went to the house.
The back door was locked.
I went around to the front, sidling between grabby rose bush branches to get up the front steps. Not all the windows’ dust came off, even with several strokes. Still, I saw inside.
To a closed-up vintage portable record player not in vintage condition. A wall rack above held albums. On the floor beside the player, sat a short, square case with a handle on top and clasp on the side. The right size for forty-five records. Its top showed disturbances in the layered dust.
Hiram had been here.
* * * *
I had the double treat of explaining Hiram’s love life to Shelton and Sheriff Conrad.
I’d taken the precaution of calling Shelton on my way back from the grazing association.
So when Ferrante, from behind the front counter, tried to tell me Shelton wasn’t available, he was interrupted by Shelton calling from the door to the sheriff’s office, “Elizabeth. Get back here. Now.”
Under other circumstances, I might have made him pay for that attitude, but Ferrante’s expression marked it paid in full.
I reconsidered that stance when Shelton and Conrad left me sitting in the sheriff’s office alone for a full half hour while they went off and did law enforcement stuff.
Or watched me through a secret peephole to see if I’d try to look at papers in Conrad’s drawers — there were none on the desktop — or break into his computer. Tempting if I’d had Jennifer along, though it would have seriously undermined my hacking lectures.
I satisfied myself with prowling the bookshelves, stocked with the most boring titles ever, mostly on thick binders.
No apology for keeping me waiting when they finally returned, either.
“I’m here to tell you why Hiram went to the grazing association. It wasn’t for a wrench.”
Shelton growled. I interpreted that as his having already been aware of that.
“Did you find an old forty-five record by Elvis — Love Me Tender — in the truck? That’s what he went there for. A courting gift for his lady friend.”
Without more pleasantries, I explained succinctly, ready to get out of there.
Conrad looked highly skeptical.
Shelton stared at me for a long moment, then patted the arms of his chair lightly.
“Yvette. Should’ve known—” He bit that off. Then, as if I were Hiram Poppinger’s attorney, he said, “It doesn’t clear him.”
“It explains a number of odd things about his conduct, which, in turn, lowers the likelihood of him being the killer. Especially—” I stood and smiled sweetly at them. “—since York was shot with his own gun, not Hiram’s.”
Neither man was the kind to froth at the mouth to prove I was right, but I got eye-narrowing twitches from each as ample reward.
“If you know things about this murder—” Conrad started.
“I just generously shared information I was under no obligation to share. In addition to what Tom Burrell told you yesterday about that friend of York’s who hauls cattle being a good person to talk to about the rustling that’s been going on around here.”
I left before either could outline their view that I should spill everything to them all the time and get nothing in return.
* * * *
I picked up Diana’s incoming call as I walked to my SUV in the sheriff’s department parking lot.
She started with, “Hiram took an old record from that house to give to Yvette?”
“Russ Conrad must have you on supersonic speed dial.”
“Wasn’t Russ. It was Mike, an hour and a half ago. Didn’t you see my message? Or Mike’s?”
“No.” I checked now and saw both messages. Connection could have been spotty at the grazing association and in transit. Or I’d missed the vibrating by leaving my phone in my bag by the chair while roaming Conrad’s office.
Diana’s message said, “Call me about the Elvis song.” Mike’s from about an hour ago, said, “Taking off soon. Will call.”
“Taking off? In the plane? Or to the next stop? They still had places to check.”
“I know. But there’s been no answer. Go back — you told Russ?”
“And Shelton. As usual, their gratitude knew no bounds.”
She chuckled. “As yours would if the situations were reversed.”
“Except they never reciprocate. I know, I know. That’s not their job. Where are you?”
“Leaving the station. Thought I’d come be your wingman for the rest of the day. First, though, we better call Jennifer and let her know this development. She won’t like being the only one not up to date.”
But when Diana added Jennifer to the call, she was uninterested. “I have something good. I’ll be at your house in five minutes, Elizabeth. Wait for me there.”
* * * *
Jennifer had that found-it glow when she pulled up in front of my house.
I’d stopped on the front steps when Diana arrived and waited for her. Now, drawn by that glow, we both walked toward Jennifer’s car parked at the curb.
“I got it,” she said, coming around the front of her mother’s vehicle. “Followed the trail all the way back to the start and I got it.”
“You found York during those three years?” I asked.
“Better. Odessa Vincennes’ birth name. You’re not going to believe it.” She looked around to be sure she had our attention. She did. More from her tone than her words. “She was born Linda Pedroke. She’s Leah’s younger sister.”
Reaction Shot (Caught Dead in Wyoming, Book 9) Page 27