Buffalo Bill's Defunct (9781564747112)

by Simonson, Sheila

  Jake was on his feet. “He saw the shooter?”

  Minetti shoved his chair back and stood, too. “I guess so. Some old lady was talking with Rob when it happened. I think she was hit, too.”

  Jeff said, “Just a fucking minute, Earl—”

  Minetti turned. “No. Somebody has to keep after Brandstetter’s killer. You can finish the house. You know what to do. I’ll call you when I get better information.”

  Jeff’s mouth set but he nodded. “House key?”

  Minetti dug in his jacket pocket and threw the key to Jeff. “We’re out of here. Thanks, Meg.”

  “Yeah,” the other two chorused. “Thanks.”

  Meg got up in a daze and turned the burner off under the pot of chili. Jeff trailed the others, disconsolate.

  “Hold on,” she blurted. “I’m coming with you.”

  “But I don’t—”

  “It’s perfectly all right,” she said firmly. “I need to finish sorting the printouts and take some notes. You can supervise me.” And she walked out on the dirty dishes.

  When she returned to the fusty Brandstetter dining room, though, Meg couldn’t remember what the piles of paper meant. Her hands shook.

  Calm down, she told herself. There’s nothing you can do about Rob, so do what you can. You had an idea. She sat on one of the chairs, closed her eyes, and trembled. Jeff was banging around in the master bedroom.

  She hoped Rob wasn’t badly injured or God forbid dead. It sounded as if he wasn’t dead. Yet.

  Collectors, that was it. Something about collectors, their peculiar psychology. J. Paul Getty. When he left his enormous fortune to the museum bearing his name, curators around the world shook in their boots. The Getty Museum could outbid them all. The core and genesis of the Getty was the old man’s personal collection.

  Personal collection, personal obsession. Rob, God willing, should be looking for a compulsive personality, a wealthy compulsive. Somebody with taste and intensity.

  That might do as a general observation. What about specifics? The collector wanted not books nor Greek statues but Indian artifacts, probably just from the Gorge. The Lauder Point collection had not been famous. Someone had had to know enough about it to value it. That was too mild. To lust after it, and, once he possessed it, to keep it so well hidden that no word of its whereabouts leaked out.

  He. She had used the masculine pronoun. Why not she? Carol Tichnor? Her mother? From what Helmi Wirkkala had said, Charlotte Tichnor fit the profile better than her daughter. Meg began to imagine a scenario in which the lady spun a web of chicanery from Seattle, using as agents her father’s neighbors and her own children, especially her daughter, whom she could bully. Charlotte’s web.

  I’m a pushover for literary allusions, Meg reflected, and with a lurch of nausea, I wish I could bounce that one off Rob’s head. She gritted her teeth and forced her mind back into the frame of logic.

  Charlotte had been something of a figure in Seattle society. The logical course was to search the archives of the Seattle Times. Brandstetter’s computer. Meg had jumped to her feet and was halfway to the office before it occurred to her that she shouldn’t mess with Hal’s computer.

  She drifted back and picked up the blank notebook she had brought and not yet used. Time to plod. She ripped off the annoying latex gloves, took out her pen, jotted “Seattle papers/Charlotte,” and then began to write up what she had done and why. It took awhile. Listing the website addresses Hal had used was blessedly mind-numbing. Then there was the question of collectors.

  “Coffee?”

  Meg jumped. “You startled me.”

  “Sorry,” Jeff said. “I can’t concentrate. That doesn’t seem to be your problem.”

  She took a good look at his face. “I could do with a latte.”

  He handed her a cup. “Single, whipped cream.”

  Meg didn’t like whipped cream but she took it. She must have been concentrating if she hadn’t heard him leave the house. She had been lost in her thoughts about the psychology of collectors.

  They went into the living room. Jeff paced and sipped his through the lid. Meg sat on the sofa and watched him.

  “Any word?”

  “I think they found the Datsun pickup.”

  “I meant about Rob.”

  “No. I called the hospital, which is not a good idea, and they gave me the usual runaround. I should know better. My wife’s a physician’s assistant.”

  “Do they have the shooter in custody?”

  “No, and Earl is pretty sure the truck was stolen. It was found unlocked in the Safeway parking lot.”

  “Frustrating.”

  He plopped onto the armchair. “Yeah.”

  Meg took a sip of latte and licked whipped cream from her lip. “How long have you worked for the department?”

  “Eight months.” He shot her a semi-hostile look. “I suppose you’re going to ask why a nice Chinese boy like me didn’t study medicine.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No.” A reluctant smile curved his mouth. “Though my mother did indicate that she thought I should. Vigorously. For years.”

  Meg smiled. “It’s hard for parents not to interfere. I thought my daughter should be a belly dancer, but she prefers physics.”

  Jeff sighed. “I’m a refugee from Silicon Valley. Systems analyst. When the bottom dropped out, we moved north to be near my wife’s family. Keiko got the job here, so I looked around for something to do.”

  “Keiko. That’s not a Chinese name, is it?”

  “Japanese. Another disappointment for my mother. Keiko’s father is Nisei, spent some time in the internment camp in Ontario when he was a kid. He runs a big nursery south of Portland.”

  “Do you have children?”

  “A son. He’s six and into soccer.” His face clouded again. “I was watching him play yesterday when the sheriff called me in.”

  “Do you like being a policeman?”

  “I don’t like being yanked away from my family.” He cleared his throat. “But I do like working for Rob Neill. Jesus, I hope he’s okay.”

  Meg found herself clearing her throat, too. “I can’t say I know Rob very well. So he’s a good boss?”

  “Yeah. He’s evenhanded and smart. Not real sociable, you know, but he can be funnier than hell when he wants to be. The thing is, when he hired me, he didn’t ask me whether I was thinking of opening a restaurant.”

  “What?”

  “He didn’t make insulting assumptions,” Jeff explained. “He looked at the test scores and asked me whether I’d ever fired a gun. I said no, but I was a pretty good wrestler in high school. So he took me to the gym, tossed me over his shoulder a couple of times, and said he thought I’d do. I had to take courses in marksmanship and gun safety, but he let me work part-time while I was training. I needed the money.”

  The cell phone rang. “Fong,” he said. “Yeah. Really? Okay!” He listened for a while, thanked the caller, and signed off. “Rob’s all right and so is the lady who was with him.”

  Meg found she couldn’t speak.

  Jeff was grinning like a maniac. “He was scheduled to interview Dr. Tichnor at two, and he made it to the appointment. I do not envy the good doctor.”

  ROB kept Dr. Tichnor waiting almost half an hour. He hoped the delay, though it wasn’t deliberate, would put Tichnor on edge, but Sheriff McCormick’s infallible political sense led him to show up before two o’clock and greet the oncologist as he arrived.

  Mack and Ethan Tichnor were good buddies by the time Rob got there. Against medical orders, he had showered in the department washroom, and he was wearing crumpled clothes from his locker, including a T-shirt that advised people to visit Powell’s City of Books. He’d stuffed what he had on at the time of the shooting into an evidence bag.

  Mack had made free of Rob’s office and was sitting behind the desk. “Here he is, Ethan. Rob, have you met Dr. Tichnor?” Mack rose and walked around the desk, taking Rob’s elbow and practic
ally shoving him into Tichnor’s arms.

  They shook hands. Rob wondered whether Tichnor had contributed to the sheriff’s campaign fund.

  The doctor said, “I see you’ve been in the wars. Did they ice that bruise?” Aside from the twelve stitches in his scalp, Rob had a ripe contusion across his left cheekbone, assorted muscles ached, and his right kneecap was turning black-and-blue.

  “I’m okay,” he muttered, annoyed and embarrassed. “Did Linda report in, Mack? Ah, there she is.”

  Linda stood in the doorway. She clutched the recorder and notebook to the bosom of her uniform and stared at Rob with unnerving intensity.

  Mack said, “Well now, I’ll let you three deal with this sad business. I’ll take the press conference alone tonight, Rob. You’d look like hell on TV.”

  “Thanks.” That was a relief. McCormick had been dealing with reporters one by one, but the story was now complex enough to interest the Portland media. Rob thought Mack would turn the opportunity into campaign gold.

  The sheriff was shaking Dr. Tichnor’s hand. “Good talking to you, Ethan. Let’s get together one of these days for a little jazz.”

  Jazz? Rob watched his boss disengage. As far as he knew, McCormick’s interest in music began and ended with Elvis Presley. Apparently Mack had said the right thing, though. Tichnor was smiling when the sheriff finally left.

  Rob introduced Linda. “If you’ll sit down, sir, we can get started.” He motioned to Linda to take up her station.

  Tichnor sat in the chair opposite Rob’s and tweaked his trousers. He was wearing slacks and a pullover as if they were an exotic costume. Rob suspected a suit and tie were more his speed.

  “I hope I can help.” A solid, graying man without his brother’s easy manners, the doctor had a voice that was light for his size. “I was shocked to hear of Harold Brandstetter’s death. I remember him well from our summers here. I was two years ahead of him, and Vance, my brother, was two years younger. Hal was Carol’s age.”

  “I hear he played football.”

  Tichnor said ruefully, “So did I. Very badly. Vance was the star in our family. And Carol, of course, was a cheerleader. They have the bounce, I have the brains.” He offered this mild joke with a tentative smile. “It’s a good thing football wasn’t emphasized in our school the way it was in Klalo.” They had attended an elite private school in Seattle. It surprised Rob to hear they played football at all, instead of, say, polo.

  “What did you think of Brandstetter?”

  Dr. Tichnor frowned. “He wasn’t my sort, Lieutenant. Vance thought he was terrific, but that was probably just childish hero-worship. I think they still fished together once in awhile. You can ask Vance.”

  “I’ll do that. Neither your sister nor Vance mentioned knowing Brandstetter when I talked with them yesterday.”

  “That’s strange. Maybe they hadn’t heard about the murder.” Tichnor shifted in the chair, twitched the knees of his trousers again. “I thought we were here to talk about the body you found in my grandfather’s garage.”

  Rob was silent for a moment, then took the gamble. “There may be a connection.”

  “Between that killing and Brandstetter’s?” Tichnor’s voice choked off. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, cleared his throat. “That’s bad news. And your…experience this morning, the shooting in Birch Street?”

  Rob waited.

  “Perhaps some madman…” Tichnor’s voice trailed. He straightened in the chair. “One reads news stories of serial killers, of course.”

  “I doubt that those were serial killings, Doctor.” Rob was feeling his way. Abruptly, he switched tactics. “Where were you between about seven p.m. Friday and seven yesterday morning? For the record, sir.”

  Tichnor’s eyes widened. “I…good heavens, in Vancouver. I live in Vancouver. My wife and I had dinner at Bacchus with friends. We went home before ten and went to bed. I got up around six and did my exercises, swam a few laps in our pool. We have an indoor pool. Marilyn has back problems and swimming helps.” He bit his lip. “I fixed myself breakfast and called the hospital. Marilyn woke around eight. We had coffee together.”

  “Do you share a bedroom?”

  Tichnor blushed. “I suppose you have to ask. Yes. We sleep together, and she’s a light sleeper.”

  “Thank you. And again, for the record, where were you the first two weeks of August? Your grandfather’s house had just been sold.”

  “In and out of town.” Tichnor began to sound annoyed. “And by town I mean Vancouver. Before that, in June, we stayed here at the Red Hat for two days, while my wife went through the family furniture and china to see if she wanted anything. Mother told us to take what we liked. We had attended my grandfather’s funeral, of course. Now he’s gone, we never come up here.”

  “Did you have keys to your grandfather’s house?”

  “Carol was staying there at the time. She let us in.”

  “Have you ever had keys to the house or garage?”

  “No.”

  “Do you use a cellular telephone?”

  “A cell phone?” Tichnor blinked. “Yes.”

  “The number?”

  He rattled it off without hesitation, still looking bewildered.

  Rob stood up. His muscles were more than stiff. He walked to the window of his office and looked out at the parking lot. “I talked with your uncle in Arizona.”

  “Uncle Pete? Good God, about what?”

  Rob turned back and met the man’s anxious eyes. “He said he sold you and your brother property on Tyee Lake. I believe your brother is building on his five acres. Mr. Strohmeyer said you bought ten.”

  “Yes, of course. He wanted us to keep the land in the family. I’m not an outdoorsman, Lieutenant. I always brought a book when Grandpa took us fishing, but I do appreciate the beauty of the countryside.”

  Rob lowered himself into the chair. “Your uncle said you want to preserve the old-growth timber on your land.”

  “I certainly intend to.”

  “Is your brother sympathetic to that idea?”

  Tichnor’s mouth tightened. “Vance deals in real estate. He’d oppose a clear cut, because it would lower the value of housing in the area.”

  “But he’s building a large structure on the site of your greatgrandfather’s still?”

  “He’s building a vulgar palace,” Tichnor grated. “He must have taken out half the trees on the property, and his earth movers have churned mud into that pristine trout stream. Pshaw!”

  Reference to the still hadn’t produced a reaction, but the trees had. Rob found that interesting. “I take it you don’t approve of development in that area.”

  “No, I do not. Have you seen what’s going on up there, Lieutenant? Tyee is turning into Lake Tahoe North. Jet skis on the lake! Convenience stores! Time-share condos! It was one of the most tranquil places in the Northwest. It was unique. Now it’s interchangeable with half the resorts in the country. Next thing you know they’ll put in an outlet mall.”

  “And your brother will be able to take advantage of the rise in real estate values?”

  “The developers ought to be shot, and the county commissioners along with them!” Tichnor sputtered. He took out a white cotton handkerchief and touched his upper lip. “I beg your pardon. That was intemperate. Brandstetter was a commissioner, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. I sympathize,” Rob said wryly. “I have a cabin up there.” There were very few “cabins” left at the lake.

  “A cabin?” He sounded surprised, then his eyes narrowed. “The Guthrie cabin? I thought you looked familiar. You’re Robert Guthrie’s grandson, aren’t you?”

  Rob nodded.

  “You look like your grandfather.”

  “So I’ve been told.” About five thousand times in the past twelve years. By Mrs. Crookshank, among others. Rob flashed on the elderly woman’s wide, frightened eyes as they rode to the hospital in the ambulance. She’d held his hand tight the whole way.

 
Mrs. Crookshank might have checked out all right medically, but she was going to have nightmares. The shooter’s bullets had drilled holes in her front window. He reminded himself to phone her daughter Maxine.

  Tichnor’s voice took on reminiscent softness. “I liked Mr. Guthrie. He knew I wanted to be a doctor like my father, so he used to talk with me about new pharmaceuticals when I stopped by the soda fountain. He knew all the old drugs, too. He had a great collection of mortars and pestles. And of old remedies. Did he show them to you?”

  Rob smiled. “Lydia Pinkham’s Tonic? Sure.”

  “It was mostly alcohol.” Tichnor sighed. “A fine man. Tell me he didn’t die of cancer.”

  “Heart attack.”

  “Good,” the oncologist said fiercely. The intensity faded. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I have to agree with you.” If he had to die then.

  “Well, well, Robert Guthrie’s grandson. That makes me feel my age. Listen, Robert, about my brother. We’ve had our differences but we both enjoyed our time in Klalo. This killing in Grandpa’s garage, it’s a violation of memory.”

  “And a violation of Edward Redfern’s civil rights.” Rob heard Linda suck in her breath.

  Tichnor tugged at the neck of his sweater. “Was that the victim’s name? Who was he?”

  “A college student. A member of the Klalo tribe, the Two Falls band. He was studying accounting at PSU. A promising kid. Does that ring a bell?”

  “My mother said some tramp had been killed in a brawl and buried in the garage.”

  Rob didn’t dignify Charlotte’s theory with a comment.

  “This Redfern was an Indian?”

  “Klalo,” Rob repeated. “A nephew of the principal chief. I think he was being groomed for a position of leadership in the tribal council.”

  Tichnor seemed puzzled.

  Rob looked at Linda. She was scribbling like crazy. Impatience pushed at him. He had played it cautious too long. “We have reason to believe that Edward Redfern was investigating an old theft. Ten years ago thieves made off with a number of Klalo artifacts from Lauder Point County Park. They included three major petroglyphs.”