The showroom inside displayed a Mustang and a Taurus, and an F-250 that no self-respecting farmer would take into the field, lest it get dented or dusty. Daniel saw John Gray sitting at his desk and the backs of three heads. When John saw him, he stood and waved him in.
The others did not stand as he and Lianne entered the room.
"This is Officer Daniel Minco, our ranking law enforcement official since Sheriff Harris is recovering from an illness," John introduced.
"Heart attack, you mean," one of the visitors, a woman in her mid-thirties, said. "We know what's going on here at all times, Mr. Mayor."
"Of course. And this is Officer..." John seemed to block on her name.
"Ortega," Lianne said. "Lianne Ortega. From Tulsa."
Both the other visitors were men, and one of them stood and extended his hand. "Don't mind my sister. I'm Murray Stone. My sister is Sonia, and her husband is Rudy."
The other man stood and gave an easy grin. "Rudy Hale."
"They're all on the board of Stone Energy," John said.
"I'm actually the CEO, since Dad retired," Murray said with a smile. "Which only means I move more paper around than people who have real jobs."
Daniel noticed all three were dressed casually, but it was the kind of casual worn by people used to wearing suits or formal dresses. Pressed slacks, starched sports shirts, and shined shoes.
"What can the Oak Valley Police Department do for you?" Daniel asked.
They all sat, Daniel and Lianne on folding chairs Cynthia, John's wife and office manager, brought in. Rudy took over. "It's actually something the family wants to do for Oak Valley. We want to revitalize the town square. Green space, a community center, a statue honoring Alphaus Stone, maybe even a new police headquarters and city hall. All befitting the town that is hosting the newest road in Oklahoma."
"I don't know if you heard, but there's an injunction stopping the highway. It may not go through here," Daniel said.
"Threefeathers," Sonia snorted.
"Leave the archeologists to us," Rudy said. "And to answer your question, what we need from the Oak Valley police is for you to keep an eye out around Stone Mansion. Our plans are to turn it into a bed and breakfast/restaurant. A real tourist destination. We don't want any bad publicity or, God forbid, protesting archeologists to set us back."
Lianne spoke up. "We've met your caretaker and he has our number to contact us. Isn't that sufficient?"
The three looked at each other.
"Caretaker?" Murray asked.
Lianne reflected that she was grateful to have something to do as she and Daniel walked back to the office. She was getting in the cruiser to go check on the mystery caretaker at the Stone Mansion when Daniel stopped her. "I'll go out to the mansion and run off the squatter. Do you mind doing some research on our guests? I think there may be a little more to their story."
"A hunch?" Lianne felt like she was being sidelined – again – but he had asked politely. She sensed that he didn't want to fight, so she said, "Sure."
The poor guy looked relieved. "Thanks. Call if you need me."
"I think I'll be fine, unless the computer gives me a mild shock." She couldn't resist a little shot at him.
She went inside and settled at the sheriff's computer despite Eileen's disapproving glance. She opened a web browser and began. Murray and Sonia were great-grandchildren of Alphaus Stone. He was a Texas oil wildcatter in turn of the century Oklahoma a few years before it was even a state. By the age of 25, he was wealthy beyond dreams of avarice. After statehood in 1907, he was active in state politics and even ran for governor a couple of times, but he never won. There was always a bigger crook running against him. In fact, Al seemed to have something of a social conscience.
Lianne clicked on the blue letters Stone City and followed the link. In 1920, Al founded a city for Indians displaced by his company's wanton drilling. There were sturdy row houses, a school, and even a business district. It was nice, but probably not enough compensation to repay what the inhabitants would have earned if they had been paid fairly for the mineral rights on their land. The Kiowa in Osage County in northern Oklahoma were some of the richest people in the world at that time.
Al rubbed a little salt in the wound by building his mansion on the hill just above Stone City. The Indians of the town were the primary workers as it was built, and Al and his son Lewis continued to use the town as a labor pool for his many improvements. Lianne read they were paid only token wages, and she imagined they resented it.
It all came to tears on June 19th, 1927. On a hot Oklahoma night, fire swept through the town, leaving nothing but an abandoned post bellum mansion to slowly rot. The inhabitants scattered, and the Stone family moved themselves and their company to Dallas.
As a postscript, before he left Lewis Stone diverted Cowsherd Creek to create the lake Lianne saw the day before. Stone Lake obliterated all traces of the Native American city.
The telephone rang, startling Lianne.
Eileen answered, writing notes as she listened. When she hung up, she said, "That was Marjorie. There's been a break-in at the Sentinel."
Chapter 7
Lianne raised her eyebrows, so Eileen interpreted. "Marjorie Reynolds runs the insurance agency on 3rd. Her office is next to the newspaper."
"Got it. On my way."
"Would you like to wait for Officer Minco? I can call him."
"Feel free to call him, but I won't be waiting."
She stepped outside, and was chagrined the cruiser was gone. It was only three blocks, nothing for someone who ran five miles four times a week as she did, but it was the principle of the thing.
She was surprised at the number of people who waved at her as she passed. Nobody approached her, though. She must be giving off her don't bother me, I'm busy vibe; but many people smiled and all the cowboy hats were tipped.
She remembered the Sentinel's editor from the council meeting the night before. What was his name? Double? Dribble?
She turned the corner. Dibble. She saw it above the shattered picture window.
A slender older woman came out of Reynolds Insurance Agency. "Thank goodness you've come! I came in late this morning and saw the window like this. I haven't gone in. I'm afraid to."
She didn't ask about Daniel, or Sheriff Harris' health. Another surprise. "Where is Mr. Dibble?"
"I've called him several times, but can't get him. That's unusual. We've worked side by side for more than 30 years."
Peering through the window, she saw a bank of filing cabinets along the back wall, all the drawers open. The desk was in disarray, and the chair was knocked over. Lianne took a step back, her right hand on the handle of her holstered gun. "Call Dibble again. I'm going in."
She pushed on the front door, and it opened easily. Stepping inside, she could see that not only was the front office in chaos, there was a large back room that served as storage and production space that was torn apart as well.
She heard a muffled phone ringing, the old-fashioned bell sound, but it wasn't any of the business phones. It led her to an unvarnished, thin plywood door. She opened it, and there was Dibble, crumpled like a piece of old newsprint on the floor of the small bathroom. She pulled him onto the warehouse floor, but noticed his head lolling at an extreme angle.
"Ms. Reynolds," she yelled over her shoulder. "Call an ambulance!"
"Child, it'll take them 45 minutes to get here!"
"Please do as I say," Lianne said. Then, under her breath, "There's no hurry."
Daniel was a little nervous as he went to the back of the house. He was sure he could handle any situation that arose with the fake caretaker, but the fact was his job hardly ever put him in danger. He wondered if Lianne, with her big city experience, would be anxious if she were here.
Aside from the general foreboding, the first thing he noticed was the car was gone. The grill and the cooler remained on the porch. Against the retaining wall were shovels, a hoe, and mud-covered boots. Inside
the screen door, on an old table, were stacked some books and what looked like maps.
He pulled his flashlight off his belt and went inside. The books were diaries, and the map was a drilling platte for the area around the house. There was no lake on the map. The ground floor was unchanged since the day before. He shone his light around and rested on the staircase. He saw footprints in the dust.
He went up. There was a central landing surrounded by 3 bedrooms, all smaller than in modern homes. The beds still had quilts and pillows on them. Clothes were hanging in open wardrobes. Daniel remembered one of the few times he was in the house as a teenager he was creeped out by the way it looked like people left, or even disappeared, suddenly.
Another room was a library. He looked at the shelves, crowded with disintegrating books. In the center was a wooden table. On it was a chest, ornate with a gold-plated lock. It was not as dusty as the rest of the room, so Daniel figured it must have been opened recently.
He bent the lid back. Inside was white material, perhaps curtains or a dress. He lifted it out: it was a hood with large holes for the eyes. Still resting in the bottom of the chest was a metal cross on a chain. Someone in this house had been in the Ku Klux Klan.
His radio chattered to life. "Danny, are you there?"
His hand was trembling as he depressed the talk button. "Go ahead, Eileen."
"Officer Ortega reports that Charlie Dibble at the paper has been murdered."
Chapter 8
They got Charlie loaded up and the crowd dispersed. Daniel and Lianne walked over to Zach's and sat at a table in the back.
"Let me see what you got," Daniel said.
Lianne sat next to him with her phone out. She swiped picture after picture, at least a hundred of them, documenting every aspect of the body and the scene.
"Nice job," Daniel said. "Get those downloaded to the computer when we get back to the office, and choose 20 or so print out for the file."
"OK. How did it go with the squatter?"
"He was gone. I wonder if he had anything to do with this."
"Sounds like a stretch. Just because he's a stranger in town doesn't make him a murderer."
"That means that his murderer wasn't a stranger?"
"They usually aren't."
Daniel thought about that. He didn't have any experience with murder.
"What are you thinking, then?"
She chewed on her bottom lip. "It's not just that Dibble was killed. The place was trashed, somebody was obviously looking for something. What? Did they find it? I assume Oak Valley has its share of secrets. A newspaper office is as good a place to find the secrets as anywhere."
"Or cover them up."
Her eyebrows raised. "Or that."
"So poor Charlie comes in late last night, tired from a city council meeting, and someone is going through his stuff. He surprises them and it costs him his life."
"That's a workable narrative as any for now. How can we find out if anything is missing? The place is a wreck."
"Let's go back, now that the circus has died down, and see what we can see."
Daniel was in the back room of the newspaper office while Lianne was in the front. The amount of stuff was overwhelming. Even if someone hadn't torn everything apart, it was barely controlled chaos.
Lianne walked in. "I didn't find anything. How about you...wait, look back there."
He followed her gaze. He saw junk scattered ankle-high on the floor, and large ledgers piled against the back wall. "What?"
She passed him. "There are files and papers on the floor to here," she stopped, "then it's these ledgers. But back there are ledgers still neatly stored. Were they interrupted, or did they find something?"
Daniel picked one up. "They’re bound copies of the paper. It looks like a year's worth. These are from 1953."
"The dates are on the spines," she said, stepping closer to the back wall. "They go back to 1889."
"Land run."
"The last one stacked is...1926. Let's see if we can find 27."
They lifted and stacked, and found 1928 on, but no 1927.
Lianne said, "So what happened in 1927, apart from the first talking picture?"
Daniel said, "The fire at Stone City."
"You know who's interested in that? Sherry Threefeathers."
One thing you can say about small town police work, Lianne reflected as Daniel knocked on the door of room 12 of the King 8 Motel, is it doesn’t take very long to find a suspect when there’s only one motel in town.
Daniel knocked again.
They had seen a car with OU tags in the darkening parking lot, and an Oklahoma Department of Transportation fleet car that she guessed belonged to Caleb Morris. She felt sure they were not sharing any laughs over an evening beer.
The people who weren’t parked at the motel were the members of the board of Stone Energy. She was sure they were at the Doubletree in Tulsa or some other luxurious accommodations. Not that she blamed them.
Daniel started to knock again when the door opened. Threefeathers’ sleepy eyes and mussed hair made it clear they woke her up.
“Yeah?” she said, then focused on Daniel. “Why, hello, officer.”
Oh brother, Lianne thought. She’s almost purring.
“May we ask you a few questions?” Daniel asked.
“Please, come in.” She stood aside as Daniel entered, then followed him into the room, forcing Lianne to bring up the rear.
The room was more like a cluttered office than sleeping quarters. One of the two twin beds was covered with books and magazines, while the round table held notebooks and a laptop computer. An overnight bag was on the counter in front of the TV – she hadn’t been watching any HBO. Lianne didn’t notice any newspaper ledgers.
“Sorry there aren’t more places to sit,” Threefeathers said, perching on the edge of the bed. “Did you come to tell me you’re enforcing my cease and desist order?”
“The lawyers have to fight that one out,” Daniel said. “We need to know where you were after the meeting last night.”
“I went looking for a place to stay. There was good news and bad news. There was only one place, and it was this one. I’ll leave it to you to decide which was the bad news.”
“What time was that?”
“The meeting crumbled around 9, and I was at the front desk 15 minutes after that. Why do you ask?”
Lianne fielded that one. “There was an incident last night, and we’re trying to piece together everyone’s whereabouts.”
Threefeathers leaned forward. “What kind of incident?”
“Not your concern…”
Daniel interrupted. “The newspaper office was broken into and the editor was killed. Certain items are missing.”
“You suspect me? What was missing?”
Lianne regained control. “I take it the desk clerk can verify your story.”
“Surely there’s a time stamp on my credit card transaction.”
“Thanks, ma’am, we’ll check it out. That’ll be all. Please don’t leave town without checking with us.”
“Oh, I wasn’t planning on it.” Was it Lianne’s imagination, or did she wink at Daniel?
Lianne got him out of the door and herded him down the hall toward the front desk. “Way to play it cool, Kojak.”
Daniel watched in sullen silence as the clerk retrieved the previous night’s receipts from a zippered bank bag in a drawer.
“I don’t want people to know where I keep this,” the harried looking middle-aged woman said to Lianne. “I guess it’s OK, seeing how you’re cops and all.” She rustled inside the bag. “Room 12, you say? Here it is.” She handed it over.
Lianne looked at it then said to Daniel, “9:26. Matches her story.”
“That’s about right. When I sat back down, Law and Order SVU was half over.”
Lianne handed the paper back. “Thank you. Get that money to the bank, ma’am.”
“Will do. Danny, give your folks my regards.”
Daniel’s reply was interrupted by the distant sound of breaking glass, then a muffled explosion.
“Back down the hall,” Daniel said, running toward the sound. Lianne followed, and they passed a surprised Sherry Threefeathers standing in her doorway.
“What…”
“Get back inside,” Lianne said, but Threefeathers fell in behind them. The clerk was a distant fourth.
They rounded the corner of the hallway to find Caleb Morris, the engineer for the Department of Transportation, standing in the hall surrounded by smoke. Lianne and Threefeathers got him to an area where the air was clearer, and they waited as he coughed and sputtered.
Daniel disappeared into the smoke but came back a few seconds later. “It’s too thick to get in the room. I’ll go out and around.”
When he returned he said, “I didn’t see anything but a broken window.”
Caleb had recovered his breath. “I was leaving to get something to eat. As I closed the door, the window shattered and what looked like a grenade hit the floor. If I’d been inside…”
“Let’s get you to the police station.” Daniel looked at Sherry. “Maybe you should come too, just in case.”
“Yeah…” She went back inside her room and re-emerged with a backpack.
They pushed past the wide-eyed clerk as the Volunteer Fire Department’s sirens sounded in the distance.
They got Sherry and Caleb settled at the police station. After dinner from the diner, Threefeathers lay down on the cot in the single cell, and Caleb used an office phone and Sheriff Harris’ computer.
Daniel went back to the motel to be on the scene and returned to find Lianne bored to distraction. She almost looked happy to see him.
“What did you find out?”
“No one within 100 miles is an explosives expert, but it sure looks like the explosion came from a source in the middle of the room.”
“Like a grenade.”
“Exactly. We didn’t find any witnesses.”
“Security footage?”
Daniel looked at her silently.
Sooner Dead Page 3