Sign Off (Caught Dead in Wyoming, Book 1)

by Patricia McLinn

  “I’m fine. How’s everybody there?” Two brothers and two sisters and their families lived within half an hour of my parents, and they saw each other regularly. My second-to-the-oldest brother and I were the far-flung members of the family. But Steve seldom stayed one place long enough to get phone service.

  “Everyone’s fine. Though there’s some concern Justin—that’s Bill’s youngest—”

  “I know who Justin is, Mom.” It was her way of saying I didn’t come home often enough. Subtle she’s not.

  “—is allergic to wheat. Or maybe corn.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “It’s not a tragedy, just an inconvenience. That’s what I told Anna.” I sent my sister-in-law a sympathetic thought. “Now, polio—that’s a tragedy.”

  “We didn’t call to talk about polio, Cat,” came my father’s voice.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Hi, Maggie Liz.” The childhood inversion of my names made me smile despite the hour. “We tried to call you Saturday. Everybody was here.”

  “I’m sorry I missed that. I was shopping for wallpaper.”

  “Wallpaper? Have you found a place to live?”

  “I am living someplace, Mom. Remember? You helped me move in.” Not an experience I hope to ever repeat.

  “Of course, dear. I mean someplace permanent.”

  She hadn’t taken to my temporary housing, especially after the act of plugging in the coffeemaker blew several fuses and caused a burning odor. But as for finding someplace permanent here, that edged too close to topics better not discussed at this hour. Maybe any hour.

  “I’ve been busy, Mom.”

  “Oh, Elizabeth, I wish you didn’t work so hard in that job of yours. It’s cost you enough already. Can’t you slow down now?”

  I had just committed the conversational equivalent of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Dannihers are supposed to achieve, excel . . . but not at the expense of family. Clearly my marriage broke down because I didn’t keep the right balance. Though, my ex, of course, was the real villain.

  It’s not logic, but it is Catherine Danniher.

  It’s also hair-pulling, stop-me-before-I-scream-at-my-sainted-mother crazy-making.

  I went for the biggest diversion I could think of. “It’s not exactly the job that’s keeping me busy. I’ve—”

  “You’ve met someone.”

  Another landmine. “I’ve met lots of people but not the way you mean. It’s something I’m investigating. A missing person’s case. Possibly a murder.”

  “A murder?” My father’s baritone disapproved. “What are you doing investigating a murder? You told us you’re doing consumer affairs stories.”

  “I know you’re surprised,” I started, soothing as I went.

  “I’m not the least surprised,” my mother said firmly. It is one of Catherine Danniher’s tenets that nothing her children does ever surprises her because she knows us better than we know ourselves.

  “Our girl’s out in Wyoming, cut off from family, living in a shack, working in some tin box of a TV station, all alone in life, and now she’s investigating a murder, and you’re not surprised!”

  “Now, Jimmy, don’t get excited. Elizabeth is perfectly capable of taking care of herself,” said my mother, not believing it for an instant, but believing that she believed it.

  Dad couldn’t very well argue I wasn’t capable, at least not in front of me, leaving the floor to Mom. “Elizabeth has always had an overdeveloped sense of justice,” she proclaimed.

  “Justice is justice. There’s no such thing as an overdeveloped sense of justice,” Dad retorted.

  Oh, Lord, they could wrangle about a point like that for days, enjoying it thoroughly and making all around them miserable. I fell on the hand grenade. “I don’t have an overdeveloped sense of justice, Mom.”

  “Of course you do. Remember the first time you saw the movie A Wonderful Life? You were four or five. I remember it perfectly. Jimmy Stewart’s uncle mislays the money for the savings and loan, and the old miser picks it up and hides it. Then Jimmy Stewart gets so desperate that the angel Clarence has to help him see how much his life has meant. Remember?”

  “Sure.” I’ve seen the movie so many times I can recite passages.

  “At the end, when we were all crying because his friends are helping Jimmy Stewart make up the money, you stood there demanding somebody take the miser to jail. ‘He shouldn’t get away with it.’ That’s what you said.”

  Well, he shouldn’t. It’s heart-warming and tear-jerking that Jimmy Stewart’s friends help him, but Mr. Potter steals eight thousand dollars and doesn’t get punished. Is that justice?

  “You were just a little thing, but so sure about what was right.”

  A certainty long gone from my life.

  “Uh, I have to go. I’ll be late for work.” There was a backyard ghost to feed, along with a consumer affairs reporter.

  “You be careful,” came my father’s gruff order.

  “I will. Give my love to everybody.”

  * * * *

  I SPENT THAT MORNING on Cissy’s story. Writing, editing, and doing the voice-over.

  Diana’s footage was great. She’d framed shots of Cissy and the travel agent just right during the set-up—it’s really frustrating when the shots are so tight you end up planting the ID over someone’s chin. Then Diana brought the shot in close, and Cissy’s face filled the frame.

  It was honest and touching, and it alerted listeners to a scam that could be tried on any consumer with a phone and some hope. With that and the video of the arrest from Dallas, it was a good piece. I treated myself to lunch at the Haber House Hotel, where I saw Ames Hunt and Sheriff Widcuff seated with four other suits I didn’t recognize. The county prosecuting attorney smiled at me, the county sheriff did not.

  I also worked in some calls on a story I’d spotted on the wire.

  Nomad scam artists would show up, saying they’d noticed your roof needed work. Since they were in the area, they’d be happy to inspect it, no charge.

  In no time they’d come down, shaking their heads. It’s in bad shape, very bad shape. You need a new roof. Tell you what, since they’ve got work not far away, they can give you a real good deal. But you’ve got to decide now, because they’ll finish the other job tomorrow. When you say yes, they whip out a contract. There’s a stipulation that half is paid on delivery of materials.

  The next evening, a truck shows up with roofing material. You give them a check, thinking you never could have gotten the work done this fast by getting estimates from established roofers. That’s the last you see of your roofers. And most likely you discover the material was stolen from another job. You’re out the half payment, and the crooks have moved on.

  I was about to call consumer affairs sources back East when Les came to my desk. “Have you got something going for next week?”

  “Yes. These so-called roofers—”

  “Something local? More than a toaster.”

  That was a low blow. “Folks are watching how things are handled before they volunteer problems. It takes time. Especially without a high profile. With promos and ads in the Independence—”

  “Whoa. We’ve got a budget, and that’s not in it.”

  “Why did you hire me to start ‘Helping Out’ if you don’t believe in it?”

  “It’s not that I don’t believe in it. This whole ‘Helping Out’ shtick was added way after we’d set our budget and . . . . But consumer affairs—I mean every station ought to be reporting that, right? I mean, who are consumers? Our viewers, right? But you need to key into our audience. Cottonwood County. This isn’t the network, you know. This is where real people live. That’s who our viewers are—real people.” And if they watch network news, what? They turn into pumpkins? “They want to hear a story that affects them. Something in their own back yard.”

  A devious thought struck me. Tamantha had come to me as a result of a ‘Helping Out’ segment. And what was mor
e important to consumer safety than resolving a possible murder? In their own back yard, no less.

  “I have a lead on a local story, but it could take longer to develop . . .”

  “If we skip segments of ‘Helping Out’ to achieve the end goal, that’s okay.” Especially since I figured his goal was getting rid of ‘Helping Out’ reporter E.M. Danniher. Or, more accurately, Haeburn’s goal was to keep Fine happy, and his goal was getting rid of E.M. Danniher.

  “No need. I can keep up—” After seventy-hour work weeks, ‘Helping Out’s’ schedule was a breeze. “—and work the story. But I’ll be out of the office more.”

  His lips pulled back from so many teeth that his grin looked wider than his forehead. “I’m behind you a hundred percent. Keep up the good work.”

  He thumped his knuckles on my desk twice and departed.

  With Haeburn behind me a hundred percent, I better not get close to a cliff.

  I decided to visit the heart of Cottonwood County. The local audience, you know.

  Chapter Ten

  DRIVING INTO THE hinterlands of Wyoming to interview an alleged murderer alone, in a car that came no closer to four-wheel drive than having four tires, wouldn’t qualify as one of the smarter things I’ve done. Unfortunately, it doesn’t qualify as the stupidest, either.

  I pride myself on giving that alleged full weight unless a jury’s guilty verdict tells me to delete it. That’s not to say I don’t carry a healthy respect for the murderer part. So I was not particularly at ease driving the roughly graveled lane that led to Thomas David Burrell’s house.

  I’d found the entrance road Mike had pointed out without much trouble. After passing over a cattle guard and under a swinging sign that I saw had a capitalized B within a circle, the road made the sharp right and dipped.

  It wound along a creek bed, following the erratic course of water cutting through hard land. I could see cattle on two distant hills and three horses in a pasture closer to the road. But mostly, I could see space.

  After a few minutes a branch of the road went east, but it was even less traveled than the one I was on, so I wasn’t tempted. No signs of buildings. I was beginning to wonder if these ruts were truly a road or just a path made by a wide moose, when the road curved around a low hill, dipped down and crossed the creek on a clattering wooden bridge.

  The road branched to the right toward a Quonset hut, a big old white barn and a scattering of smaller buildings. Two brown horses regarded me from behind a fence that formed a corral beyond the barn. The reddish horse at the far side couldn’t be bothered. A formerly white pickup, which might have been new when Carter left office, displayed fans of reddish mud along its side. The truck bed held coils of wire fencing, metal stakes and long metal tubing.

  Straight ahead, a newer pickup of dust-hazed marine blue sat before a log house that was either fairly new or remarkably preserved. A chimney rose from the middle of a steep-pitched roof. Three broad steps led to a central door with a window at each side. Scrubby grass came up to the base of the house, with no sign of landscaping. It was as simple and symmetrical as the boxes children draw to represent houses.

  With the car engine off, I heard a rhythmic sound, too widely spaced for hammering and not the right tone. Wood-chopping.

  I saw no dog, so I didn’t toot the horn. Besides, crossing that bridge was as good an announcement as a trumpet fanfare. I got out and followed the sound toward a bare-dirt path around the house. As I skirted the blue truck, I looked inside. Pine needles and dead leaves were the only things loose in the bed. A built-in box behind the cab was closed and padlocked, some long-handled tools including several varieties of shovel were lashed to the side and covered with a tarp. Yes, I peeked under the tarp.

  The passenger compartment was equally neat. A shotgun was in a rack behind the seat. It looked well-cared for. Not a wrapper, not an empty can, not a crumpled newspaper marred the seat or floor.

  The side of the house was as spare as the front. But the back was something totally different. This—I thought with a glance that took in double glass doors to a wood-slatted patio, picnic table, grill and a sort of log jungle gym—is where somebody lived.

  My second glance took in the man who lived there.

  He was about fifty yards from the house, where the creek curved back around, forming a rear limit to the civilized area. A dead cottonwood tree had fallen from the far creek bank, bringing down a fence on the near side. Someone had sectioned the trunk, and he was chopping the sections into logs. He didn’t pause with his chopping, though I was certain he knew I was there.

  This man could be Abe Lincoln’s cousin—from the good-looking side of the family.

  Growing up in Illinois, I knew Abraham Lincoln’s face as well as my grandfather’s.

  Burrell had the hollowed cheeks, deep-set eyes, prominent brow of Lincoln. His skin was better, well tanned and not as lined. Beneath a baseball cap, his hair was dark, though he clearly had a more skilled barber than Abe. Even at this distance, I could tell Thomas David Burrell’s dark eyes were not filled with the same sad, but kindly interest that Abe’s always were. More like the rock-solid determination of Burrell’s daughter Tamantha.

  There was another difference. I’ve heard stories about Honest Abe splitting logs, but never saw any evidence of it in his physique. This guy qualified as lanky, but he showed the evidence.

  A navy plaid shirt hung from a protruding log. Burrell wore a white short-sleeved T-shirt, faded jeans and hefty boots. Each time he raised his arms, the thin cotton went taut over ridges of muscle. Under other circumstances, I might have appreciated that. In an alleged murderer hefting an ax it was not a particularly reassuring attribute.

  “Mr. Burrell? I’d like to speak to you.”

  “I’m busy.”

  Against the crisp smell of the living vegetation fed by the creek, the pungent scent of cut logs pricked my nostrils. The chainsaw he’d apparently used to section the trunk to fireplace-sized lengths was off to a side with safety glasses beside it. Sawdust covered the ground and stirred with each motion. Even a spider’s web laced between two saplings at the edge of the creek held grains of it like a doily dotted with tarnished glitter. Around the stump he used as a splitting platform, chips littered the ground. On the other side grew a stack of fresh-split logs with not a stick out of place.

  A man who didn’t mind making a mess, if the result was orderly.

  He cleaved a quarter-round of log into a pair of perfect wedges, laid both on the pile, snagged his shirt and started toward me.

  I sure wished he’d left the ax behind.

  I swallowed as he neared. If Tamantha was wrong about her father, it was going to be very sad for her, but it could be damned tragic for me.

  Those kinds of thoughts can slow your mind. So it had almost happened before I realized he intended to walk right past me and into the house. Rushing to stop him, I used what had been my best weapon for most of my life—words. “I’m E.M. Danniher, Mr. Burrell, with—”

  “I know who you are.” He stopped just beyond me, turning his head.

  “Oh. Well, you might not know that Tamantha—”

  “You stay away from my daughter.”

  I would if I could. I was tempted to say it, but the straight, narrow line of his mouth didn’t encourage that bit of honesty. “Tamantha came to me and—”

  “I don’t care. Stay away from her.”

  He turned, rested the ax against the railing and went up the two steps to the deck. Just as I was sure he was about to slam the door on me, he turned back.

  “And quit nosing into my life. Quit asking questions about me.”

  Of all the unfair accusations—

  “I haven’t asked questions about you. I’ve asked about Foster Redus, but I can’t shut people up about you.” I moved to the bottom of the steps, looking up at him. “For some reason they seem to connect you and Redus.”

  That one hit. I was glad, until I saw that it made him all the more danger
ous. “So, you came to see the scene of the crime?”

  “No.”

  “Wanted to see a murderer for yourself, then?”

  I was fed up. “No, I came to see the person Tamantha believes in. But all I see is someone who doesn’t care what this might be doing to his daughter.”

  Silence. The sort of silence where your own words echo at you like a taunt. He narrowed his eyes. “That little speech supposed to make me break down and say I’ll tell you anything you want to know for my daughter’s sake?”

  I stared right back at him. Me and Admiral Farragut damning those torpedoes and steaming full-speed ahead.

  “Of course it was supposed to do that. Would anybody say something that sappy if it wasn’t supposed to break you down?”

  His knees didn’t buckle. His damned mouth didn’t even twitch. But he did step back enough to let me in his house.

  Chapter Eleven

  “WHAT DID TAMANTHA ask you to do?” he demanded before my eyes had fully adjusted to the dimmer light inside. The house was like his truck. Organized, neat, but with enough dust to show he wasn’t obsessive.

  In addition to a couch, a recliner covered by a quilt, and an open cabinet that held books, DVDs and a TV, there were several distinctly Western touches. A wrought iron tree just inside the door held hats; I counted eight cowboy hats and three baseball caps. A ceiling fan descended from an old wagon wheel. A coiled rope and old spurs were mounted over the fireplace.

  What I saw of the room was around his shoulder because he stood in front of me, arms crossed over his chest. But a good reporter knows getting in the door’s the toughest part. After that, it’s a matter of degrees. “Ask? You don’t know your daughter if you think she asked anything. She ordered.”

  “She’s always known her own mind.”

  “I don’t mind that. It’s the effort to take over mine that I find irksome.”

  His eyes lightened, as if he’d stepped out of a cave. “What’s she ordering you to do, besides pester me?” That almost sounded human.

  “Prove you’re innocent.”