Buffalo Bill's Defunct (9781564747112)

by Simonson, Sheila

  “Oh, I don’t know. First week of August. Must have been a Friday.”

  “You entered the back door?”

  She gave a short laugh. “Okay, okay, I confess. After going to the trouble of getting the key, I just peeked through the window. The garage was empty. I didn’t bother to go in.”

  Rob wondered whether she was telling the truth. If she was, the back-door window had not been blocked by the plywood lid at that point. “You could see clearly?”

  “It was dim,” she admitted, “but I was looking for a big piece of furniture, an oak chiffonier. It wasn’t there. The place was empty,” she repeated, sounding peevish.

  He allowed his skepticism to enter his voice. “Are you sure you didn’t go into the garage and open the storage compartment in the floor?”

  To his surprise, she gave a gurgle of laughter. “Great-grandpa’s hidey-hole?”

  “What?” He sat up straight.

  “I can tell you don’t know our scandalous history. My greatgrandfather, Otto Strohmeyer, was a notorious bootlegger. He had a still up near Tyee Lake. He used to stow the hooch in his garage until it was time to distribute it to his clients.”

  Rob swore under his breath. The garage had obviously been built in the 1920s. Why hadn’t he thought of bootlegging? It was the kind of thing Gran would have left unsaid. She would have known about it, of course, but she wouldn’t have wanted Rob-the-child to judge Emil Strohmeyer for the sins of his father. Not that she would have considered bathtub gin much of a sin, nor did Rob. It was the scofflaw mentality that bothered him. That and the violence. A Clark County sheriff had been killed in a shootout with bootleggers.

  “Did everyone in your family know about the cache?”

  “Mother did, of course. We—my brothers and I—used to spend a month with the grandparents every summer. Grandpa showed it to me one day when I got bored and wanted to go home to Seattle. I was thirteen. He’d probably already showed it to the boys.” She hesitated, then gave another giggle. She had to be pushing fifty. “Mother would not have approved. She’s always been the soul of propriety.”

  “So she might not have discussed the space with the real estate people?”

  “Probably not. It’s like cancer.”

  “What?”‘

  “The C-word. Her generation never mentioned it, like it was shameful or something. Same with bootlegging. Never mind that the old man’s illicit sales kept the family off the soup line during the Depression.”

  “Wasn’t the Volstead Amendment repealed by then?”

  “It took years,” she said coolly, “and meanwhile the sale of moonshine flourished. Grandpa had some good stories. His dad used to take him along for the ride when it was time to go out on the delivery route. The sight of Grandpa’s innocent face probably disarmed the revenuers.”

  Rob stared at the wallpaper pattern in Hazel Guthrie’s home office, cabbage roses in sad need of replacement. “I see. Well, Ms. Tichnor, I’m sorry to be the one to break the news, but we found human remains in that compartment, very likely a murder victim. I’m afraid your mother is in for a little embarrassment.”

  There was silence on the line. Finally, Carol Tichnor said, her voice high and tight, “A murder victim? Who?”

  “No idea, ma’am. Male, dark hair.”

  “Oh, God, oh, uh, excuse me. This is awful. I need to think….” The line went dead.

  Rob hit Redial and after six rings got an answering machine. He left his phone numbers, home, cell, and office, but he had the feeling Carol Tichnor was not going to return his call until she’d talked to someone—her mother? And a lawyer, or the family insurance agent. People like the Tichnors were apt to worry about liability.

  He set the receiver back in its cradle and rose, yawning in spite of the stimulus of new information. His eyes kept going out of focus from lack of sleep. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Roberto.

  The second-story window overlooked his backyard and a generous portion of the Strohmeyer yard. He corrected himself. The McLean yard. Thayer Jones was pacing behind the garage, head bent. Good luck to him. He would need it.

  Just how upset was Carol Tichnor, and why? And what about the old lady? The soul of propriety. He’d known women like that, older women mostly. There are two kinds of social constraint, guilt and shame. Some people worry about their souls, and others worry about what the neighbors will think. Charlotte Tichnor was apparently the second type.

  Rob made a mental note to get the King County Sheriff’s Department to talk to the Tichnor ladies. A patrol car parked in front of the house with its lights flashing would be just the thing in a super-respectable neighborhood. As he recalled, Charlotte Tichnor was the widow of a surgeon. What would the neighbors think?

  Neighbors. His tired brain slid back to Klalo. Commissioner Brandstetter and the egregious ridgeback. The Wheelers: wholesome couple, nice little boy. Dennis Wheeler was a sports bore and proudly red-neck. Darcy was into crafts and good deeds. Rob liked her but thought she needed a job, something with a lot of office intrigue. As it was, she came across as intrusive sometimes, even downright nosy.

  After Hazel’s death, Darcy had kept bringing him pies and cookies and casseroles with orange cheese melted over them. She’d told him he should replace Hazel’s furniture with country kitsch. He wondered how much she knew about the Tichnors. She had hung out at their garage sales.

  All of the neighbors would have to be interrogated. The hell of it was, he wasn’t sure of the time line. It would be unfortunate if the crucial month was August, and it probably was. People took their vacations in August. He had. He’d driven his daughter, Willow, up to Tyee Lake for two solid weeks of fishing and bonding. A good time.

  He forced his mind back to the case. Had the Wheelers gone away, too? And what about the folks across the street? Three houses, two with elderly couples who went to bed early, one with three girls who didn’t and a red Mustang in cherry condition.

  Two of those young women were wind surfers. They supported their passion with jobs in the tourist trade. The third, Kayla, the nurse, was a pistol. Their older neighbors had gossiped about drugs, but he thought it was mostly talk. The surfers paid their rent and mowed their lawn. One of them had a Lhasa Apso.

  Towser. Something would have to be done about that dog. He was well trained and amiable but he needed scope—twenty square miles of African veldt, ideally. Towser was Tammy Brandstetter’s, and she was too lethargic to give him the exercise he needed. Hal didn’t care. The dog had become a nuisance after the Brandstetter son left home.

  There was something about Brandstetter’s son. What? A pot bust, Rob thought: possession, not a serious charge. Tom was a quiet boy, into black T-shirts and nose rings, but polite enough the few times Rob had spoken to him. Rob thought Tom had moved to Portland. He wondered if the Brandstetters heard from the kid these days, or if he’d dropped out of sight. Tom had dark hair when it wasn’t purple or green. Maybe he’d given up nose rings. The corpse had no studs or rings or tattoos Rob had noticed.

  He thought about Earl Minetti off in Vancouver. What if the victim the ME cut open was Tom Brandstetter? Better Earl than me, Rob thought wearily. He hated autopsies almost as much as Earl did.

  He walked back to the desk, bent down, and wrote “Bootlegger’s cache, how many knew where it was?” on his notepad. It would be great if nobody did outside the family. Somehow he didn’t think that would be the case.

  He sat down and picked up the phone. Time to get on to the agencies that might have information on looting and looters—the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Land Management, and the Inter-tribal Fish Commission. He thought he was looking for a collector as well as a thief or thieves.

  During the ten years since the Lauder Point theft, Rob had kept track of the sale of native artifacts, or tried to. It was a flourishing trade with an international dimension. In that time, none of the distinctive pieces from the heist had surfaced in area antiques shops, at swap meets, or on eBay nor was there anythin
g on the NCIC database. There was no way of checking on the less remarkable arrowheads, baskets, and blankets. If the thieves hadn’t shipped their booty off the first day—to Germany, or Japan, or New York— somebody here was hoarding it, gloating over the petroglyphs and the beautiful ceremonial knife with the obsidian blade.

  THE doorbell rang. Linda and Jake had given Meg the go-ahead, so she was unpacking lamps in the living room. I’ll have to teach Darcy to use the back door, she reflected, dusting Santa Ana grit from her hands. It was amazing how much topsoil she had brought north. The caller had to be Darcy Wheeler. Or the Avon lady.

  Darcy beamed at her, confident of welcome. “Hi, Meg, I hear you had a little excitement last night.”

  “Come in,” Meg said with resignation. “I owe you a cup of coffee.” Not for a second did she doubt that Darcy knew everything the other neighbors knew.

  She did, of course, but she hadn’t seen the police activity herself.

  Meg poured coffee, gave Darcy a terse account of the previous evening, and listened to her almost apologetic reason for missing the excitement. It turned out that Darcy’s son went to bed early. Around 8:30 she had begun their nighttime ritual. He had read her Green Eggs and Ham and, for the umpteenth time, she had read him The Poky Little Puppy. Meg remembered that book. Lucy had been mightily fond of it, well past the age of reason.

  Meg’s heart warmed to Darcy. Anyone willing to read and reread The Poky Little Puppy was a Good Parent.

  Mother and son had fallen asleep together before nine out of sheer boredom. The boy’s name was Cody. After Buffalo Bill? Not a prepossessing role model. Meg restrained herself from reciting e.e. cummings’s subversive poem about William Cody to the mother of Cody Wheeler, but she thought of Rob Neill and wondered if he knew it. She decided to save it up for him. How do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mr. Death?

  “So who’s the stiff?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Meg warmed Darcy’s coffee.

  Darcy giggled. “I watch too much TV. Do they know who was buried in your garage?”

  Meg said, “I don’t think so, but it’s not the sort of thing the police tell innocent bystanders. Such as myself.”

  Darcy craned around, looking. “Didn’t the cops make a mess? I thought fingerprint powder was black?”

  “They used something called an iodine fuming gun. The iodine fades after awhile.” Meg wanted Darcy out of her kitchen but curiosity intervened. “Did you or your husband notice anything odd going on in the garage after the for sale sign came down this summer?”

  “Is that when they think the murder happened? No, we didn’t, but we wouldn’t have. We took Cody to Disneyland the first week in August and took our time coming home. Dennis’s dad and his wife live down in Valencia. We drove through the redwoods on the way back.”

  “Lots of traffic on 101 that time of year.”

  “There sure was. The car overheated in Ukiah. We had to stay overnight. Dennis was pissed.”

  Meg wondered whether Dennis had been angry or drunk, or both. “What does Dennis do?”

  “He’s a machinist. Makes good money when he’s working. A lot of the jobs are in Portland or The Dalles or Vancouver, though. Sometimes Cody and me go with him.”

  And what do you do? Meg caught herself before she asked. “Tell me about the neighbors.”

  Darcy made a face. “They’re pretty dull except for the lesbos across the street.”

  “Lesbos?”

  “Oh, that’s just Dennis. He doesn’t like gays. There’s these three women, all muscle. They wind-surf up at Cascade Locks when the weather’s right. I think they’ve packed it in for the season now, though.”

  The Gorge was prime wind-surfing territory, according to the tourist information site. Meg tried to look encouraging.

  Darcy bit a hangnail. “Tiffany and Lisa staff the shop on Main Street that carries wet suits and boards. Kayla works at the nursing home on the River Road. She’s an RN.”

  Solid citizens, in other words.

  Perhaps Darcy read disapproval in Meg’s face. “I kind of like them myself,” she offered, “and they’re probably not lesbians.” She gave an uneasy laugh. “Never came on to me. Guys hang out with them in the summer, real party animals. The old folks don’t like the noise.”

  “I get the picture.” And I wouldn’t like the noise either, Meg reflected, rueful. Old folks.

  “Mrs. Iverson’s deaf.” Darcy giggled again. “That doesn’t stop her from complaining about the music. Her husband’s sort of past it. The other old couple, the Brownings, are snowbirds. They spend half the year here and winter in Arizona. He’s retired military. They’re leaving for Flagstaff next week.”

  “What about the Brandstetters?”

  Darcy scowled. “If that damned dog gets loose again I’m going to complain, I don’t care if Hal is a county commissioner. Towser knocked Cody down twice this summer, scared the pants off him.” She glanced at Meg as if for reassurance. “Cody’s not a chicken, whatever Dennis says, but that animal’s bigger than a little boy. It scares me.”

  “Me, too. What’s Mrs. Brandstetter like?”

  Darcy shrugged. “Nice enough. She’s a bookkeeper. I don’t see much of her. Their son gave me the creeps, but he’s been gone now more than a year.”

  “No youngsters around for Cody to play with.”

  “Not on this block. There’s plenty farther along the street, past Rob’s house. He’s okay, I guess—quiet, not very friendly—but then he’s a cop. I liked the old lady.”

  “Hazel Guthrie?”

  “Yeah, she started me reading to Cody when he was real little. I was never very good at school, but I want him to be educated. He reads like crazy, loves books.”

  And what does Dennis think about that? Meg left her question unvoiced and gave silent thanks, first that her child was a daughter, and second, that Lucy’s father was out of the picture. I’m subversive, she thought guiltily. “Well, Darcy, I’d better get back to work. Thanks for telling me about the neighborhood.”

  “I guess you got a bad first impression. Give us a chance.” Darcy rose.

  “I won’t jump to conclusions.” Meg moved to the hall. “Did you know the woman I bought the house from?”

  “Her with the Mercedes? She wouldn’t give me the time of day. Her daughter runs an antiques shop in Port Townsend during the tourist season—divorced, took her maiden name back. Lives up in Seattle with Madam Charlotte when she’s not at Port Townsend or off on a buying trip.”

  Darcy took a good look at Meg’s china and drifted into the hall. “Carol and me talked a lot in July. Carol’s the daughter. She came down to help run the estate sale. Sales, I should say. They held two. She must have closed her shop up north or left somebody else in charge. July’s prime tourist time. I like Carol but she drinks a lot.”

  “Interesting.” A lot compared to what?

  Darcy stopped to gawk at the living room again. Meg’s furniture was fairly decrepit and she hadn’t hung any of her watercol-ors yet.

  “I like the love seat,” Darcy said generously.

  Meg shepherded her guest to the door. “Drop by again.”

  “Okay. See you later.”

  Meg thought she probably would.

  EARL Minetti’s phone call woke Rob from a nap. Though he was expecting it, the ring jolted him awake with his heart racing.

  “What have you got?” he asked when Minetti had identified himself.

  “You know Doc. He doesn’t like to commit himself.” The phone crackled. “Here’s what I picked up. We got a male Amerind, early twenties, dead about ten weeks.” Earl cleared his throat. “His head was bashed in. Skull fracture, multiple blunt-force trauma. Doc will fax the details. Oh, and he thinks the guy was moved after death, maybe as much as twelve or fourteen hours.”

  Time for rigor to set in. “You okay?”

  “I threw up. Par for the course.”

  “Have you had a look at his effects?” Rob kept his tone matter-of-fact. Earl
rarely admitted a weakness.

  “The lab’s running tests on his clothes. I’m bringing the rest with me. There wasn’t much.” A horn sounded and a whooshing noise. “I’m in the car, just passing Washougal.”

  “Okay.” It wasn’t. Earl should have used a secure line. He had to be upset. “Put the stuff in the evidence locker and go home. We can look at it tomorrow.” When Earl squawked a protest, Rob said firmly, “Go home. Remember what Our Leader said about overtime.”

  Earl laughed. The phone crackled again.

  “I sent your team home at three,” Rob added. “Thayer found signs that the ground behind the garage was disturbed, but Ms. McLean parked her tow trailer back there, so the area’s mucked up. Nothing in the house.” They’d found Meg’s fingerprints, Jake’s and Todd’s, and a few that were probably the realtor’s or another viewer’s. No traces of blood at all. “Linda did a thorough job.”

  Earl grunted. “So our guy stumbled on the perps out behind the garage, and they hit him with a shovel?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Maybe he was in on it.” Earl’s voice sounded easier.

  “A falling out among thieves? Maybe.”

  “I could come in this evening.”

  “Go home, Earl. See you tomorrow bright and early.” Rob hung up and took a swallow of very old coffee. He intended to put in some unpaid overtime himself that evening, but his people had been on the job for upwards of eighteen hours. Enough was enough.

  It always bothered Rob on cop shows when the police worked twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, without sleeping or eating anything except doughnuts. In this case, the petroglyph had been missing for ten years and the homicide victim had been in the ground over two months. No point in rushing things and doing a bad job. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at the man’s effects.

  The phone rang.

  “Robert Neill.” He fiddled with the notebook. Something Earl had said…

  “Lieutenant Neill, this is Madeline Thomas.” Maddie was probably the only county resident who bothered to use the department’s quasi-military ranking system.

  Rob drew a long breath and laid his pen down. “Afternoon, Chief Thomas. What can I do for you?”