by Brenda Novak
Francesca came to her feet. “What about the body?”
He grabbed his sports jacket from the back of his chair and herded them out of his cubicle. “Hunsacker can’t find a body.”
3
At Butch’s place, four police cars and an ambulance cluttered the sides of the road. As Investigator Finch slowed to a stop, Francesca caught sight of a young paramedic treating Butch’s injuries right there in the front yard. Already sporting a bandage over his left eye, presumably where she’d hit him with the pepper spray canister, he allowed the medic to dab some antiseptic on his cheek. But Francesca got the distinct impression that he was trying to make her look bad.
Somehow, in the short span of time since she’d driven off, he’d hidden April’s body. Now he was playing up his injuries as if Francesca had attacked him for no reason.
His wife, another man far slighter in build who looked just like his wife, and an older couple stood beside him while his four- or five-year-old son played in the yard. Francesca wasn’t sure if the older people and the smaller man were friends, family or neighbors, but the way they rallied around him made her think they were close, probably family. All the adults glared at her as Finch wedged his sedan into a spot not far from where she’d parked her BMW less than two hours ago. But it was the hatred in Butch’s eyes that unnerved her.
“He’s a murderer,” she muttered.
Finch shoved the gearshift into Park. “Yeah, well, we need proof. So let’s find it.”
Jonah made no comment but, even as upset, distracted and worried as she’d been, Francesca hadn’t been able to forget that he was the man who sat behind her in Finch’s car. She hadn’t seen him in ten years and yet her reaction to him hadn’t changed. It was as if she had some sort of internal radar that pinged at regular intervals when he was within range. Obviously, basic attraction couldn’t be trusted. He wasn’t the type of man she ever wanted to be with. After what he’d done, there was no question about that. So why did her heart skip a beat every time she looked at him?
Refusing to acknowledge the emotions Jonah made her feel, she got out of the car. One situation at a time. She was going to lead Finch to April Bonner’s body, then get the hell out of here. She’d go home, strip off her dirty clothes and sink her scraped and bruised body into a nice hot bath, where she’d soak until she was as wrinkled as a prune before diving into bed. Tomorrow would be another day—hopefully, a day she could spend at her newly remodeled office with the assistance of Heather, her receptionist, as she delved into her work. A day with no dead bodies or homicidal maniacs.
Investigator Hunsacker approached them first, wearing a tan-colored lightweight suit with distinct rings of sweat at the armpits. Although it was nearly five o’clock, the temperature hadn’t dropped more than a degree or two from the high of one hundred and eight; Hunsacker’s weight obviously made it difficult for him to tolerate the heat. Only five foot seven, no taller than Francesca, he had to weigh three hundred pounds. Sporting long Elvisstyle sideburns to go with his slicked-back hair, he wasn’t much to look at. He didn’t move well, either. He’d worn the sides of his mahogany-colored wing tips so far down on the outside edges that his feet appeared deformed.
“There’s no proof of Mr. Vaughn having done anything illegal,” he told Finch as soon as he was close enough to speak. “Certainly no proof of murder.”
“But I saw the body!” Francesca insisted.
Hunsacker’s eyes matched his black hair. They moved in Francesca’s direction, then darted back to Finch. “You didn’t tell her?”
“Not yet.” Finch frowned. “I want to make sure we’re talking about the same figure and the same tarp.”
“Should we take care of that now?”
Finch cast a glance at Butch. At least six feet six inches tall, he towered over everybody else like a giant lumberjack or the wood carving of Daniel Boone Francesca had once seen at a campground. “In a minute. Let me talk to Mr. Vaughn.”
Hunsacker waved them past. “Be my guest.”
“What didn’t you tell me?” Francesca whispered as they circumvented Hunsacker.
“You’ll see.”
There was no opportunity to press him for an answer. She had to deal with Butch, whose animosity stabbed her like a million invisible darts.
Refusing to be intimidated, she held her head high, but found it difficult to remain calm, especially with everyone else studying her, too. The police and paramedics watched her with open curiosity; those who weren’t with the police watched her with hostility. The people clustered around Butch had to be his family.
“Why’d you attack my husband?” Because the paramedic stood between them, Butch’s wife came forward before Butch could, but Jonah intercepted her.
After what she’d already been through, Francesca couldn’t help being grateful for the shield he provided. But she was determined not to show it. A few minutes ago, he was the enemy.
“I was only defending myself,” she replied coolly. “I came here to speak with Mr. Vaughn regarding—”
“You were what?” Butch had overheard. “Did I sneak onto your property? Was I going through your stuff? No. You had no business here.” Stepping past the paramedic, he shifted his attention to Finch and adopted a far more plaintive tone. “I didn’t mean to make her think I was dangerous. I was only trying to figure out if she was stealing from me. Or if she’d come around hoping to sell me something.” He grimaced as he raised a hand to his cheek. “Maybe I surprised her, but there was no call for violence.”
“She gouged him good,” the paramedic volunteered.
Francesca nearly asked the medic to butt out but chose to ignore him instead. “What about the woman you murdered and stashed under that tarp?” she demanded, speaking to Butch. “Have you told your wife about that?”
A pained expression, one that said she must be nuts for even suggesting it, settled over features as big and bold as the rest of him. He looked like a prizefighter, bulky but powerful. His dark hair needed a good trim—the front hung down practically to his eyes, and he had a wide nose that was slightly crooked, as if it’d been broken once or twice in the past. He wouldn’t have been attractive, except that his chin was strong enough to carry off such an intensely masculine face. “There is no body.”
Francesca had no intention of backing down. “I saw it with my own eyes.”
The old lady Francesca had noticed before pulled away from the man who’d been consoling her. “You don’t know what you saw. My son-in-law is a wonderful person. He’d never hurt a soul.”
Only the slight man with a fair complexion and pale blue eyes standing beside Butch’s wife seemed to look on without agitation. What was his take on this? Francesca wondered.
Butch drew the woman back. “Elaine, stay out of it. This lady is crazy. Who else would come onto a man’s land and nearly claw his eyes out?”
Francesca had seen what she’d done to his eye and cheek. The pepper spray can she’d thrown had split his eyebrow and she’d scratched his face. But she hadn’t blinded him, hadn’t even come close. He was exaggerating his injuries, hoping for pity. “You came after me,” she said.
“Give me a break! Do you really think I’d look like this and you’d look as good as you do if I’d wanted to hurt you?”
“How dare you claim I’m the one who’s at fault here!” she cried, but then she felt Jonah’s hand at the small of her back.
“Take it easy.”
Take it easy? She was shaking, from rage and the memory of Butch wielding that bat. He’d intended to smash in her window; he’d been that determined to reach her. What reason could he have for going to such lengths except to hurt her? If he was truly concerned that she might’ve stolen from him, he could’ve jotted down her license plate number and called the cops. He knew she wasn’t getting away with anything. She’d even left her purse behind.
The old lady wrung her hands. “This is so wrong! I don’t understand what’s going on. Everyone knows Butch wouldn�
��t hurt a soul.”
“Calm down, Elaine,” the elderly man, presumably her husband, said. “All this upset isn’t good for you.”
It wasn’t good for anyone. Struggling to control her emotions, Francesca filtered out everyone and everything except Butch, who was spinning the tale of the afternoon’s events to his own benefit. “What have you done with it?”
His pained expression didn’t change. “With what?”
“With the body. I saw it there. If it’s gone, you must’ve moved it. Where?”
“I didn’t move anything! It was a mannequin. That’s what you saw. This is a junkyard, lady. You never know what you’re gonna find.” A mannequin? Could that be true? There was nothing else remotely similar to a mannequin in the yard. For the most part, Butch collected metal. A mannequin would’ve been an unusual item, even here. But that had to be what he’d shown Hunsacker. Otherwise, Finch’s partner wouldn’t have reacted so oddly when she arrived. You didn’t tell her?
A hard knot formed in the pit of Francesca’s stomach. “No,” she said, shaking her head. She’d smelled death, hadn’t she? Yes. Maybe. Had she imagined it?
Spreading his arms wide, Butch appealed to the cops as if to say, See? She’s irrational.
“Stop it!” she snapped. “You know what happened here as well as I do.”
“And I’ve told the truth. But if you won’t believe me, come on. Let’s go take a look.”
He was too eager to prove himself. The knot in Francesca’s stomach grew bigger.
Investigator Finch caught Butch’s arm as he started off. “Why don’t we let Ms. Moretti do the showing?”
Butch didn’t appreciate being touched. His gaze lowered pointedly to Finch’s hand and a muscle flexed in his cheek. But as soon as Finch released him, he laughed and shrugged. “Fine by me. She likes to make herself comfortable on other people’s property.”
“Spare us the unnecessary commentary,” Jonah growled.
Butch seemed to notice him for the first time. Until that moment, he’d been looking only at Francesca—at least, when he wasn’t pandering to the cops. “Who are you?” he asked with apparent disdain.
Jonah coolly assessed Butch, as he might look at a man with whom he was about to step into the boxing ring. “Jonah Young.”
Butch’s eyes swept over Jonah as if taking note of his smaller but more defined body, assessing him in return. “A cop?”
“A consultant.”
“They bring in consultants for assault cases, do they?”
Jonah’s lips curved into a thin-lipped smile. “I’m not sure this is an assault case.”
That shut Butch up, told him that there might be at least one person present who wasn’t buying his act. When his nostrils flared, Francesca decided he didn’t like having a skeptic, any more than he liked being touched or having to suffer this influx of policemen. Still, he adjusted his expression and, if anything, broadened his insolent grin. “Well, you can always ask Investigator Hunsacker. I’ve given him and the rest of these boys access to the whole yard. They’ve poked through it all. If there was a body here, they would’ve found it.”
Hunsacker joined them just in time to confirm it. “That’s true.”
Francesca could feel Hunsacker’s support of Butch. Finch’s partner regretted being here. But she refused to let that shake her. She couldn’t imagine how Butch had sidestepped what should be coming to him, but…something wasn’t right.
“We appreciate your cooperation,” Finch said. Then he sent her a pleading look and straightened his tie. He was beginning to sweat, too. Small beads gathered on his forehead. She got the impression the weather wasn’t exclusively to blame. She felt a little dizzy, a little nauseous, herself. The only person in her corner seemed to be Jonah, and she guessed he was sticking by her out of guilt, or some crazy notion that doing so might redeem him for his actions of ten years ago.
Would she embarrass herself? Maybe. A mannequin, especially if it was covered and seen from such a distance, could easily be mistaken for a human. Plastic or wooden limbs would even explain the “rigor” she’d noted. But what about the stench? Hadn’t she smelled rotting flesh?
She couldn’t say for sure. She only knew she couldn’t have been wrong about the level of danger she’d sensed when Butch came after her. Just the memory of how he’d looked at her when she managed to lock him out of the car made her skin crawl. He’d wanted vengeance, pure and simple. And she believed he would’ve taken it.
The walk around the house and into the salvage yard seemed to drag on forever. With every step, tension hummed through her like the electricity passing through the high-voltage wires overhead. Butch’s wife carried their son. He and his family trailed behind her, along with Jonah, Finch, Hunsacker, the paramedic and his partner and the deputies. They formed quite a group and would provide quite an audience.
Butch’s confidence and swagger told her this wouldn’t end well, but she was stubborn enough to have to see for herself.
The dog was secured to his usual spot. As soon as they came into view, he barked and strained against the chain that held him as if he’d like to devour one of them, but Butch snapped a command for him to “shut his trap” and he did. He whined and danced instead of acting aggressive, but he watched with razor-sharp interest as they crossed in front of him.
The office where Francesca had hidden earlier wasn’t difficult to locate. Neither was the spot where she’d seen the body—because the body was still there. The sawhorses and pallets had been shoved to one side, making a path, but the tarp-covered figure remained.
Once again, she felt hesitant to approach. It looked so real. But this time she didn’t stop until she stood barely a foot away.
No scent of decay filled her nostrils, only the astringent smell of desert scrub, which grew between the wrecked car bodies and other odds and ends. She told herself this might mean April Bonner was still alive. But she didn’t really believe it.
Stepping forward, Butch pulled back the tarp, showing her exactly what he’d told her she’d see. A mannequin. “I keep it covered to protect it from the sun,” he explained.
Francesca had to squint against the glare of that sun, but now there was no mistaking what she was looking at. She’d jumped to the wrong conclusion earlier. Finding Janice Grey’s remains a year ago had set her up, made her think she’d solved April’s case the same way. But, obviously, this was very different….
Finch fondled his goatee, then dropped his hand. “I’m terribly sorry for the trouble we’ve caused you and your family,” he told Butch. “We’ll get out of here and let you return to whatever you’d be doing if you weren’t entertaining us. Ms. Moretti, shall we go?”
“I told you he was innocent!” Butch’s mother-in-law cried.
“And look what you did to his face!” his wife added. The dog braved a bark and, surrounded by so much animosity, Butch’s son began to cry. But, once again, the slight blond man seemed oddly detached from the whole scene. Did he know something he wasn’t saying? Possibly, but not necessarily. He attracted her attention simply because he was so…placid. “He attacked me,” she repeated, not taking a single step. Was she imagining it or was the color of the mannequin’s hair a little different from what she’d seen earlier?
Squeezing her eyes closed, she quickly corralled that thought. The hair color couldn’t be different. What were the chances that Butch had been able to trade out the real body so fast? Very small. She was grasping for any way to avoid the chagrin and embarrassment of having dragged the police out here with such a wild accusation; that was all. She’d never been in a situation like this, where the integrity of her work was called into question, didn’t even know how to react to it.
“Ms. Moretti?” Finch again.
“Just a minute.” I know you’re there…. What are you doing trespassing on my property? Don’t you have any manners…? Who are you…? What the hell’s wrong with you, lady? I just want to talk…. Butch hadn’t actually threatened her
with violence, hadn’t said anything that suggested he might kill her. And yet she’d known she was in serious trouble. Or did her panic all stem from having mistaken this mannequin for a corpse?
Jonah came up beside her. Knowing that he’d had a front-row seat to what had to be her most embarrassing moment ever made her humiliation complete. She’d often dreamed of running into him again, but those fantasies had always included an element of satisfaction, of finding some proof that he’d lived to regret cheating on her. After what he’d witnessed here, he had to be glad they hadn’t ended up together. “You okay?”
Lifting her eyes, she found Butch waiting for her reaction, a victorious smile on his lips. There was something twisted in his expression. Was she the only one who could see it? Dared she trust her own instincts after this?
“I won’t press charges if you’ll give me an apology,” he said.
Part of her agreed she should be big enough to admit her mistake and say she was sorry so they could move on. But another part rebelled at the thought of making any concession. He was dangerous. She should know. She was the one who’d been alone with him. She’d seen what he’d been like, the sudden change that’d come over him when his wife and son returned. Maybe he hadn’t stated his intent, but she’d felt it down to the marrow of her bones.
“You’re still the last person to see April Bonner alive,” she said.
He blinked in surprise. “Excuse me?”
“What did you do to her?”
“I don’t believe this shit!” The veins stood out in his neck as he appealed to Finch. “I’ve been as cooperative as I could possibly be. I’ve let your men parade around my property for almost two hours, treating me like I’m some kind of killer. I’ve proven that all her accusations are false—and you allow her to say this? Get off my property! Now! Every one of you! And don’t ever come back!”
Finch took hold of Francesca’s elbow. “Let’s go.”
She refused to budge. “I’ll leave as soon as he returns my purse.”