Sign Off (Caught Dead in Wyoming, Book 1)

by Patricia McLinn

  He had Brent Hanley by the arm. Even Mike’s good-sized hand didn’t close around that stalwart limb.

  “We have a few questions, Brent,” Mike said as I came up.

  “I don’t have nothing to say.”

  “You can’t know that until you hear what we ask,” Mike said with unimpaired reasonableness. “Brent, did you hear about Deputy Redus’ body being found yesterday?”

  “Everybody heard. Nobody gives a shit.”

  “But you have a special reason to give a shit, don’t you, Brent? Because you consider Redus responsible for your cousin Rog’s suicide, don’t you? So maybe you’re happy about his being dead.”

  “So what. Redus was a prick.”

  “And you feel Rog is avenged now?”

  His eyes slashed to Mike, then away. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Maybe you helped that vengeance along some last fall, huh?”

  Without a shot put in his hand, Brent Hanley looked a lot more like a scared sixteen-year-old. Big, but scared.

  “I didn’t say that. I didn’t say nothing. And I got a class now.”

  “Okay. But this isn’t over, you know.” Mike took my arm—in a decidedly more gentle grasp than he’d used on Hanley—and started down the clearing-out hall.

  I looked over my shoulder as we reached the door, and changed my assessment of Brent once more. Big, scared, and furious.

  * * * *

  FOR THE NEXT STOP on our tour of Paycik’s suspects, we pulled in at the Johnson place on our way out of town.

  Myrna wasn’t there, but Roger Senior was washing his hands at an outdoor spigot under a rapidly leafing-out cottonwood tree. He looked about a decade younger than he had the first time I saw him.

  He smiled at me and raised a hand in casual greeting. Then he looked at my companion.

  “Hey, you’re Mike Paycik. I followed you from the time you played for Sherman High. Knew even back then you’d be great.”

  “Thank you, but—”

  “Right through UW and into the pros. Why, we even got a satellite dish so me and my boy could keep up with you in the NFL. Shame about your knees. Glad to have you back in Cottonwood County, though.” Mike took Roger Johnson’s outstretched hand. “Real glad.”

  “Mr. Johnson.” I waited until he’d dropped Mike’s hand and looked at me. “You’ve heard that Foster Redus was found dead, haven’t you?”

  “Yep. Heard on the radio yesterday, then saw it on the news last night.” He smiled broadly. “Heard that truck he was so proud of got smashed, too.”

  “Yes, uh, the truck was in pretty bad shape. That was quite a drop.”

  He faced me, shading his eyes with a hand to his forehead. “You saying it was an accident?”

  “I don’t know.” I thought of Redus’ head. “It seems unlikely.”

  “Good. I don’t want Redus to have gotten off that easy.”

  Mike and I looked at each other. If he had anything to ask, it didn’t show in his face. And in the face of this man’s unabashed satisfaction at Redus’ death, my mind was as empty of questions as the sky was empty of clouds. Not a puff.

  As we turned to go, Roger Johnson lowered himself into an aluminum-framed chair with green and white webbing with a satisfied grunt. His right arm trailed over the side and he stroked the dog, who lay facing the road. Waiting. “I suppose this old dog and me’ll both die looking down the road waiting for Rog Junior to come home. Difference is, I’ll spend the years ’til then resting easier now I know that bastard Redus is dead for sure.”

  It should have been chilling, to have one human find such comfort in the violent death of another.

  I wondered what it said about me that it didn’t chill me.

  * * * *

  GINA OPENED THE DOOR. She was pale, her hair flat on one side as if she’d slept on it strangely and hadn’t bothered to comb it. Her T-shirt and jeans were wrinkled and carried the faint stale scent of having been worn too long.

  Gina stared at us from red-rimmed eyes for an uninterested moment, then stepped back, leaving us to come or go, to close the door or leave it open.

  She went into the living room and sat on the chair. Newspapers spread around the chair and across the worn coffee table like oversized confetti. Papers from Denver, Cheyenne, Billings, Butte, Bozeman and Cody, plus a couple others whose mastheads were obscured. Mike and I took the same spots on the couch we’d occupied last Saturday.

  All the papers were opened to accounts of the discovery of Foster Redus’ body. Some were briefs, some were multi-column headlines.

  “We’re sorry, Gina,” Mike said quietly. “If you’d rather not talk . . .”

  She lifted her shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not exactly a shock.”

  Yet she looked like someone dealing with a shock.

  “Have you had a lot of officials asking you questions?”

  “No. They know Foster and me were getting a divorce. Probably figure I don’t count for much in this.” Gina’s attention never wavered from the gap between my right shoulder and Mike’s left. “You know how Mona got Tom to marry her?”

  “Gina, we’re hoping you can tell us something about Foster that might help—”

  She gave no sign of hearing. “You know how Mona got Tom to marry her?” she repeated, then didn’t wait for an answer. “She told him she was pregnant. So Tom dropped out of college and married her right away.”

  “But Tamantha . . .” I knew I was being detoured, but inconsistencies grab me, and this was a decade’s worth of inconsistency. Tom Burrell had graduated from high school eighteen years ago, and his daughter was eight.

  Gina nodded. “She lied, pure and simple. Mona Praver got Tom Burrell by the oldest trick in the book. After they were married she told Tom she miscarried. Got more sympathy that way. But she never was pregnant. She outright lied because she couldn’t stand Tom getting away, going off to college, off to this world where she wasn’t important. She couldn’t stand it.”

  “How could you know she wasn’t ever pregnant? Were you friends?”

  Gina looked at me. “No, we’ve never been friends. But the silly bitch told someone she did think was a friend—bragged about it. And, of course, it was too good a story not to pass on. Pretty soon everybody’d heard, everybody knew how that bitch cheated Tom.

  “It could’ve been just a story. Only, you see, I was working as a summer replacement for Doc Drescott’s secretary that next summer, and I looked up Mona’s records. She’d never been pregnant, she’d never had any miscarriage. I didn’t tell anybody, not ever until this moment. But I had to know. I had to know for sure.

  “She tricked Tom out of his future, and then she let Foster turn her head.” Her contempt soured her disbelief. “God, she had her choice, and the stupid, silly bitch chose the wrong man.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  MIKE WANTED TO COME to my place after he did his late sportscast to hash over what we’d learned. He said he’d be gone all the next day doing a report on fishing, so we wouldn’t have a chance to talk things through until Saturday.

  I begged off, saying I was beat and was going to make it an early night.

  I was beat, but I discovered after watching the early news, then trying to pass restless hours by starting to peel wallpaper from the wall behind the bathroom mirror, that I also wasn’t sleepy.

  After the ten o’clock show added not one iota of information to my store, I got in my car and drove through a steady rain to sample Sherman’s work-week nightlife. Not in the center of town—they weren’t kidding about rolling up the sidewalks—and not at any of the bars on the outskirts of town.

  Sherman Supermarket, open ’til midnight every other Thursday. Nothing like a little recreational grocery shopping to soothe the soul. My soul needed soothing after Gina Redus. After that initial burst, she’d seemed to sink inside herself. Finally, Mike had called his Aunt Gee, who shooed us out, saying Gina needed a hot toddy and a good night’s sleep.

  I joined some
half dozen other shoppers and Penny. The place echoed with the drumming of rain on the roof. Shopping wasn’t really holding my interest, but I still loaded a jumble of the items that keep body and soul together into a cart around the dripping umbrella I’d propped in one corner of the basket. I had added a twenty-pound bag of dog food to the shelf just above the cart’s wheels, and was turning to head up the second-to-last aisle when I caught sight of a lanky figure topped by a damp cowboy hat.

  Tom Burrell.

  He gave no sign of seeing me, but doggedly steered his cart, pausing only long enough to snag an economy-sized carton of oatmeal from an end cap before disappearing behind the row of shelves.

  That’s when I became aware of five other sets of eyes trained on the same spot—the four remaining customers and Penny. In those faces I saw avid interest, and deep discomfort.

  I pushed hard to make up time, hoping to meet Burrell as he started coming down this row. But I was only halfway up when he crossed my line of vision and kept going, skipping my aisle.

  “Tom, can I talk to you?”

  He ignored me.

  I kept going and turned to follow him. He was almost out of sight. Those long legs could really move a grocery cart.

  He had his cart partly unloaded and his selections passing under Penny’s expert hands by the time I cleared the last aisle. Worse, a man I didn’t recognize stood in line behind him.

  I stepped in behind the stranger. Burrell never looked up.

  The stranger made determined conversation about the weather, addressing his comments evenly between Burrell and Penny. The fact that Penny allowed anyone else to talk had to indicate how rattled she was. The three other customers stood nearby, making no pretense of shopping while they listened.

  Burrell contributed a few grunts of agreement, enough to not be outright rude, not enough to be encouraging.

  After Penny handed over change and Burrell started out, the man said loudly, “Good to see you again, Tom.”

  Burrell waved without turning around.

  I stepped out of line with my cart.

  “Burrell, can I talk to you?” I kept it short of a shout, but he had to have heard me.

  He kept going.

  I abandoned my cart, not bothering to grab the umbrella. The rain fell as if it wanted to punish the earth, hard and fast. He was a dim figure, moving steadily away. I ran. When rain penetrated to my scalp, I yanked up the hood of my slicker, but moisture dripped down the left side of my face as I reached him. He was loading bags on the passenger-side floor of his truck cab.

  “Burrell!” He stopped only when I grabbed his arm. He looked down at my hand, then slowly up to my eyes. I removed my hand.

  “You should have stayed inside.”

  “I would have if you’d stayed inside. I want to talk to you.”

  “You got your pictures, didn’t you?”

  If he was trying to make me cringe, I refused. “Pictures, yes, but no words. I want to talk to you.”

  “I thought this wasn’t your story.”

  “It is a story, and you’ll have to talk to somebody sometime. Might as well be to me.”

  “I’m not giving television interviews.” If I hadn’t already removed my hand, I certainly would have at that tone.

  “Did you ever think that I might find something that’ll help you?”

  Before I finished, he was shaking his head, creating a slow-motion spray of water off the back of his hat.

  “You don’t understand, do you? I told you before, this isn’t any place you’ve been before. Now that they found Redus, there’s no more pretending it might not have happened. It’s black and white now. Each time they see me, folks have to make up their minds—am I a murderer or aren’t I? Anybody who’s with me gets painted with the same brush. Including you.”

  I’d never had anyone refuse an interview before with the argument that it was for my good. It boggled me enough that I didn’t think to protest that I was hardly with him before he went on.

  “They got to make a decision now and stick to it. Every turned head’s a verdict. It won’t matter if a court says not guilty in six months or a year. They won’t believe it. And not just the ones that think I murdered Redus. The ones that side with me, too, they won’t ever believe, not if they saw film of me doing the deed. Because none of them—either side—will want to think they’ve been fooled. Only ones who can stay neutral are the ones who stay away from me.”

  “So what are you going to do? Sit on your ranch by yourself like a hermit?” The hood was slipping back, letting rain plaster hair to my forehead.

  “Pretty much,” he said calmly. “Maybe there’s a few around here who don’t care—who think if I did kill him it was no great loss, but I’m not sure I want to be around them.” The lines around his mouth had eased momentarily, but now they returned. “It’s best if I stay away from folks ’til this blows over.”

  “’Til this blows over? ’Til this blows over? You’re the primary suspect in the murder of a sheriff’s deputy. That doesn’t just blow over.”

  “It will.” He tugged the hood back over my head, the way he would for Tamantha. “One way or another.”

  “And what about your daughter? What if when this blows over, you’re in prison, convicted of murder? You think she’s going to be satisfied?”

  His hands dropped from my hood. “Leave my daughter out of it. And you stay out of it, too.” He leaned in, a deliberate encroachment. “You hear me, E.M Danniher, you stay out of it. Quit asking questions.”

  “Asking questions is how I get to the truth. Are you afraid of the truth, Burrell?”

  “Sometimes you learn as much about the truth from the questions that don’t get asked.”

  With that cryptic comment, he slammed the passenger door, went around to the other side, climbed in and drove off without another look at me.

  Learn the truth from questions that don’t get asked? What the heck did that mean?

  I went back in the supermarket, mostly to retrieve my umbrella and the dog food. I had no interest in the food for myself. I felt weary, deflated.

  But my cart, still filled, had been neatly parked to one side of the register lane and no one else was in line. What the hell. I pushed the cart into place and started unloading.

  Penny put down her nail file, drew in a breath, and was off.

  “Well, that was something, wasn’t it? Hard on a body to know how to act in a situation like that. Hard on him, too, I suppose. What with people acting so strange.”

  I wondered if she included herself.

  “Comes to that, all sorts of folks are acting strange these days. It’s not like it used to be around here. Word’s all over about Gina buying things.”

  “You told me that, Grey Poup—”

  “Not just the food,” she said. “The fancy mustard and breads an’ all. That’s what I’m saying. That’s all I saw, but when it came out about them finding Foster dead, and it looks like he was murdered, well, then some of us started putting our heads together.

  “Lou, that does Gina’s hair, says last fall Gina started having highlights put in, not just rinse for her gray, but a special process. Costs double. And Wendy, whose mother-in-law lives kitty-corner from Gina, says the UPS driver’s been leaving packages regular the past six months. Some of ’em from Victoria’s Secret.” Wendy’s mother-in-law must have very good eyesight. “Nobody knows where Gina’s getting the money. Used to be she stayed home all the time, hardly spent a dime. But she eats supper out at Ernie’s right regular since November.”

  Penny nodded wisely. Any fool could see a regular diet of Ernie’s cooking clearly indicated guilt of something. High cholesterol at the very least.

  “Not exactly a widow in mourning, that’s for sure. ’Course that Marty Beck what was taking on with Foster isn’t qualified for being a saint, either. And Mona, for all her wailing, hasn’t stayed home night after night.

  “She’s getting her ducks in a row, that one. Went to see a lawyer
, that Ames Hunt that’s going to run for state senator, and she found out all about her legal rights and all that. That’s what she said, standing right here in this line.”

  I would have found it difficult to believe anyone said anything while standing in Penny’s line except Penny, if I hadn’t seen it happen, not ten minutes ago. On the other hand, maybe Mona had said those things in the farthest reaches of the store, and Penny’s radar picked it up.

  “She’s looking what rights she’s got to take Tamantha away.” I focused fully on Penny. She nodded, emphasizing her statement. “That’s right. Mona’s talking from here to tomorrow about leaving Sherman and taking Tamantha.”

  On that dramatic finale, she sent me on my way.

  Momentum carried me to the automatic door. But there I stood, the curtain of rain in front of me, the chatter of Penny’s voice and register behind me, staring in the direction Tom Burrell’s taillights had disappeared.

  Did he know of Mona’s talk about leaving and taking his daughter?

  Chapter Twenty

  WHEN I GOT HOME, there was a message on my machine from Matt Lester in Philadelphia.

  “Give me a call, Danny. I’ll be in the office ’til eleven your time.”

  It was almost an hour later than that, but I tried the number. I got his voice mail, and told him he was now “it” in telephone tag.

  * * * *

  AFTER EDITING THE GOAT STORY for “Helping Out” in the morning, I waited for Myrna Johnson to leave the storefront office her husband used for managing delivery of fuel and heating oils.

  “I’d like to talk to you, Mrs. Johnson. May I take you to lunch?”

  She glanced back as if to check if we were visible from inside her husband’s office. We weren’t.

  “I don’t know what I could tell you.”

  “Let’s have lunch and see.”

  Several people said hello to Myrna as we ordered at the Sandwich Shop. I suggested we eat in the park since it was a nice day.

  We found a bench across from the courthouse. A fluttering wind licked at the paper wrappings of our sandwiches and swirled her curly hair into a froth.