The Fred Vickery Mystery Series: Books 1-3 (Fred Vickery Mysteries)

by Sherry Lewis

  “You think I ought to go see her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you believe that when I see her, I’ll be swept off my feet and experience a surge of maternal instinct?”

  “No.” Fred believed in miracles, but that was too much of a stretch, even for him.

  “Then why do you keep bringing it up?”

  “I just think it would be the best thing for both of you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you don’t, she’s going to grow up empty and alone—just like you.”

  Kate gasped. “You think I’m empty?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what would make me ‘full’? A husband and a dog and two-point-three kids in a little white house with a picket fence?”

  He threw his hands up and turned away. “There’s no point even trying to talk to you. You closed your mind and your heart a long time ago.”

  “I wouldn’t even know how to love her, dammit!”

  “You could try,” he called back over his shoulder.

  After a few minutes, he heard the sound of hurried footsteps and Kate fell into step beside him. “If the only thing of Joan’s that Brandon inherits is the property he and Joan owned together, that means the house, the money—all of it—goes to Madison. Do you know what that means?”

  “It means Madison is a wealthy young woman.”

  “Yes. And it means that whoever controls Madison controls Joan’s fortune.”

  Fred’s toe hit an exposed root. He stumbled and twisted his knee uncomfortably, but managed not to fall. “Did Brandon know about the will before Joan died?”

  Kate shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but I imagine he must have. And if he did, Winona did.”

  “But Winona would never get her hands on it.”

  “Not directly. But once they got Joan out of the way, taking care of Madison’s money would be easy. Brandon’s the executor of the will. You were right not to rule them out.”

  Fred nodded, happy to have put their disagreement behind them. “I think it’s time to get back out there and ask some questions. Let’s talk to Logan and find out what he knows about Shadow Mountain. I’d like to know where he got his hands on a million dollars and how desperate he is for the project to go through. But how are you doing? Are you ready to hit it again?” he asked.

  Kate gave him a playful nudge with her shoulder and grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  eighteen

  Logan Ramsey did not look pleased to see Fred and Kate a second time. Scowling, he led them into his office and dropped into his seat. His starched white shirt gaped open around its buttons and his fat sausage fingers drummed on his desk. “What can I do for you this time?”

  Fred settled into a chair and met Ramsey’s wide, too-innocent gaze. “We need to ask you one or two more questions.”

  Ramsey worked his big face into an expression of confusion. “I can’t imagine why you’d need to talk with me, but I suppose I have a minute or two.” He made a show of clearing the center of his desk, arranged his hands carefully on the blotter and turned a bland face in their direction.

  Kate didn’t mince words. “We want to know about Shadow Mountain.”

  Ramsey’s eyes narrowed. He looked from Kate to Fred, trying unconvincingly to look perplexed. He shook his head vaguely. “Shadow Mountain? The old abandoned mine? What about it?”

  “We want to know about the project Basin Development is working on,” Fred said.

  “A development? I—”

  “And about your plans for the property you’ve purchased on either side of the old mining site,” Kate added.

  Ramsey’s face twitched. He twisted in his seat and rubbed the back of his neck with his big, open palm. “You must be mistaken. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “We know you’ve been buying land around Shadow Mountain,” Fred said. “We know that Joan Cavanaugh owned Shadow Mountain and that Basin Development plans to build a resort community over the old mine.”

  Kate took up where Fred left off: “We know that Brandon Cavanaugh and Tony Striker own Basin Development. We know you’re all involved with Shadow Mountain and that you, and a few others, argued with Joan the night she was murdered. What we want you to tell us is what we don’t already know. For instance, what did you argue with Joan about the night she died?”

  Ramsey pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead. “I didn’t argue with Joan. And I don’t know why you’re asking me about Shadow Mountain.”

  “But you did argue with Joan,” Kate insisted. “We’ve spoken with witnesses who’ll testify to that. And we’re asking you because you’re in a position to know. You’re involved up to your eyeballs. There’s a very clear paper trail connecting you to the Shadow Mountain project.”

  Ramsey shifted uneasily in his chair and shook his head. Spots of color crept into his cheeks, but he didn’t answer the questions.

  Obviously, Kate’s method wasn’t working, so Fred tried to take over. “There are just a few things—” he began, but again Kate cut him off.

  “You’ve heard about the autopsy, I suppose. No secrets in this town, are there? My sister was murdered, and you were one of the last people to see her alive. Don’t deny it again—we’ve talked with witnesses who say you threatened her just a few hours before she was killed.”

  “I never threatened her!”

  “There are witnesses who heard you—”

  Fred dropped his hand firmly on Kate’s arm. She tried to shake him off, but he held on and shook his head. If she didn’t back off a little, they’d never get the answers they were after.

  Ramsey’s beady little eyes followed the exchange and flickered toward Fred. He swiped at his forehead with his handkerchief and made an attempt to pull himself together, but it was clear that Kate’s assault had rattled him. He reached up with one trembling hand and rubbed his temple. Beneath his thick fingers, a vein throbbed and his skin had taken on a mottled look.

  “You’re an important man here in Cutler,” Fred said, hoping he sounded sincere. “You’re in a position to pick up on information the rest of us can’t. It would help a lot if you’d just tell us what you know about Shadow Mountain.”

  To Fred’s utter amazement, Ramsey seemed to believe him. “Well, you’re right. I’ll admit I’ve heard rumors that there might be something happening up there, but I don’t know much.”

  “You know enough to buy up some land,” Kate said.

  Ramsey shrugged. “I heard talk and I used a little extra money to pick up some property. I thought it sounded like a good deal.”

  Kate raised her eyebrows. “A million dollars is a little extra money?”

  Ramsey’s face closed down. His eyes blanked and his jaw set firmly. Now she really had pushed too far.

  Fred jabbed her with an elbow and wished vainly for something to stuff in her mouth. The question was out there now. He couldn’t pretend it wasn’t, so he said, “Where did you get that kind of money, Logan?”

  Ramsey stood and shoved his handkerchief into his pocket. “I think this conversation has gone far enough. I have no intention of answering any more of your questions. I want you to leave my office.”

  Fred stayed in his seat. “Everybody knows you and your family had financial trouble earlier this year, but suddenly you’ve got a million dollars to invest. There’s only one place I can think of you could put your hands on that kind of money.”

  “Where I got my money is none of your business.”

  “Maybe not,” Fred agreed, “but I think I’d want to clear up any misunderstandings about it if I were you. Just in case anybody got the wrong idea.”

  Ramsey’s lips thinned and tiny lines formed around his mouth, but his eyes widened, whether in anger or fear Fred couldn’t be certain. “I arranged a number of short-term loans.”

  “Through this bank?”

  “No. Through a bank in Denver I sometimes use.”

  Kate couldn’t
resist adding her two cents worth. “You’ll want that information available for the sheriff. I’m sure he’ll want to check out your story. Now, why did you and Joan argue the night she died?”

  Flushing darkly, Ramsey pulled open a desk drawer and rummaged through it. “I don’t have to talk to you.

  Kate’s eyes narrowed. “No, you don’t, but you should. I have to warn you, I’m not a nice woman when I’m crossed. Someone in this town murdered my sister and I won’t rest until I know who did it.” She sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. “I’m not Fred, Mr. Ramsey. I don’t live here and I don’t have to like you people. I don’t know your wives and children. I don’t have anything to lose by hounding you until I get the truth. Now, let’s try it again. Why did you threaten my sister the night she died?”

  Apparently, the hard glitter in Kate’s eyes convinced Ramsey to cooperate. “I didn’t mean I’d kill her!” He looked from Kate to Fred frantically. “She called me that night and told me she’d decided to back out of the Shadow Mountain project. I went up there early, before the other guests arrived, to talk some sense into her. She’d found out about Brandon and Winona and she’d told Brandon she was going to divorce him.”

  Kate shot a look at Fred. So Joan had known about her husband’s infidelity. Interesting. “How did Brandon react to that?” he asked.

  “He begged her to stay with him one more night, just so he could get financing for Shadow Mountain from their dinner guests. She told me she’d agreed because he promised he wouldn’t put up a fight over custody of their little girl. I went there to try talking her out of her decision. I didn’t care if she divorced Brandon, but I didn’t want her to pull out of the project. By the time I got there, she was running around like a crazy woman. I think Brandon must have hit her because she had a swollen lip and it looked like she’d had a bloody nose. They must have had a real bad fight—there was blood and glass everywhere.”

  His eyes darted between the two of them almost pathetically. “She and Brandon were being selfish. They weren’t the only ones involved in the project. She didn’t have to pull out and leave everybody else hanging. Without her, the whole thing would have crumbled and the property I bought would have become virtually worthless.”

  Kate looked unconvinced. “Aren’t you exaggerating a little? Property in this area would never be worthless.”

  “It might as well be. Eventually it’ll be worth a lot. Somebody will clean up that old mine someday, but I need a quick turnaround. I figure I’ve got six months, maximum. I can’t wait years for someone else to come along with enough money to develop the land. But Joan didn’t care about anything but destroying Brandon. She knew if she pulled her money out, she’d ruin him.”

  “Yeah? Well it’s just what he deserves,” Kate muttered.

  Ramsey gave her an odd look. “He’d already borrowed heavily and used that money to begin reclamation at the mine, but he needed more. Lots more. I begged Joan to reconsider. She wouldn’t even listen to me. She was so angry I thought she might hurt herself—really. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when they said she’d committed suicide. Anyway, after a while I gave up and went downstairs. I’ll admit I was angry. Really angry. But I didn’t mean that I’d try to stop her that way.”

  Fred didn’t know about Kate, but he believed Ramsey. “Is Basin Development planning to move forward with the project now that Joan’s dead?”

  Ramsey bobbed his head almost frantically. “They have to. If they get back on track, I can sell my property at a decent profit within a few months and I can pay back . . . my loans.”

  Fred glanced away. It was too hard to look at the desperation on Logan’s pudgy face. If Fred’s suspicions were correct, Ramsey hadn’t borrowed the money legitimately and it wouldn’t take long for someone at Silver City Bank to figure out that the money was gone. Fred suspected that Logan had a lot of suffering ahead and a long way to go before things looked up for him again.

  Kate looked disgusted, but it didn’t stop her from launching another volley of questions. “How did Joan find out about Brandon and Winona? Who told her?”

  “How should I know? Everybody knew about them. They haven’t exactly been discreet. Joan must have heard the rumors before that night, but maybe she didn’t want to admit it. You know, ignore it and it will go away? I remember thinking maybe she’d caught them together and she couldn’t deny it anymore, and that’s what upset her so much. I don’t know. Like I said, we didn’t exactly have a coherent conversation. I couldn’t have cared less about her and Brandon. I just wanted to save Shadow Mountain. But she didn’t care about anyone but herself. When she wouldn’t listen to me, I got mad and left.”

  Kate looked as if she might be sick. She turned away from Ramsey as if she couldn’t stand to look at him any longer.

  “Brandon should have done something,” Ramsey whined. “He’s the one at fault. If he hadn’t screwed around on her, none of this would have happened. I just wanted him to talk some sense into her, keep her from pulling out, that’s all. You’ve got to believe me—I didn’t kill her.”

  “The trouble is we only have your word that you left the party then,” Fred said. “Did anybody see you leave?”

  “I left before they sat down to dinner. People were milling around, but I didn’t know any of them so I can’t give you names. I was so angry I decided to drive for a while. I ended up in Denver—I told you that already.”

  “So there are no witnesses who can back up your story?” Kate asked.

  Looking miserable, Ramsey shook his head. But all at once his eyes widened and hope shimmered on his face. “Wait a minute! That artist—what’s her name? Summer Dey! She was coming in just as I came out. We nearly into each other on the deck. She saw me!”

  Summer Dey had been at the party? Why hadn’t she mentioned that? “What was she doing there?” Fred asked. “Was she a potential investor?”

  “I don’t think so,” Logan said. “I don’t think she was invited at all. She looked pretty rough—like she’d been crying. And she was angry, I can tell you that. She was swearing up a storm and nearly ran right into me. I had to jump out of the way or she would have knocked me flat. Ask her. She can tell you when I left.”

  Fred mentally moved Summer a notch higher on the suspect list and promised, “We’ll check with her.”

  Ramsey wasn’t finished yet. “You want to know who killed Joan? Talk to Brandon. She was ready to cut him off without a dime. Do you know what that would do to a man like him?”

  “You think Brandon killed her?” Kate asked eagerly.

  “I don’t know,” Logan said. “But if you’re smart, you’ll talk to him and quit harassing innocent people like me.”

  “Do you believe him?” Kate asked a few minutes later. They had escaped the stuffy atmosphere of Ramsey’s cramped office and stepped outside into the cool, fresh air.

  Fred thought of Ramsey’s face, twisted with pain, white with fear. “About which part? About the loans? No. I think he’s been playing with money that doesn’t belong to him and he’s about to get caught with his fingers in the cash drawer. Now his back is up against the wall and he can’t do a thing to fix it. His wife will never stay with him through this. He’ll lose his kids, his home. He’ll definitely lose his career.”

  “How far would a man like that go to escape a prison sentence?”

  “I don’t know. The man’s a wreck. He’s ruined his life and he knows it. I believe he’d do almost anything to change things. Whether that includes murder—I don’t know.”

  “People do strange things for money,” Kate mused. “He certainly had motive enough to kill Joan—and he had the opportunity.”

  “I don’t know why he took the money in the first place,” Fred said. “If we can believe him, he did it all based on a rumor. Logan’s not the brightest bulb, but that’s just plain crazy, even for him.”

  Kate pursed her lips. “I know it’s hard for you to believe, but some people find this kind of life a little
stifling. I think Ramsey’s one of them. I think he wanted a better life—all right, a different life. He knew he’d never get it here, not in this town. When he heard talk about Shadow Mountain, he saw his chance. There are a lot of people who can’t resist money and power. He probably thought if he could get in on the ground floor and it became bigger than Aspen, all his troubles would be over.”

  “And all he really did was to create more problems. He juggled the books at the bank and took money that didn’t belong to him, and somehow he believed he’d never get caught. I don’t know how he thought he’d get away with it.”

  Kate smiled wryly. “People do that kind of thing all the time, Fred. Somehow, in our own minds, we’re invincible. We don’t believe the bad stuff will happen to us. Most of us tear through life without ever stopping to really think about consequences. Otherwise, we’d probably never do anything at all. Life would scare us too much. You do it with your heart condition. You can’t face it and continue to function, so you deny it and keep on living the only way you know how.”

  “Foolish, foolish people,” he said softly, not entirely certain whether he included himself.

  Kate stopped walking. “So now what?”

  There was only one answer. “You’re not going to like it,” Fred warned.

  “Brandon?”

  Fred nodded.

  “Why not Summer again? She’s got a few secrets. She neglected to mention that she was at Joan’s house the night Joan died. Why was she there? You aren’t forgetting about the heel Ben found in her shed, are you? Don’t you think we ought to check into that? We probably ought to follow through with Enos and see what he found.”

  “We will,” Fred assured her. “But I think it’s time you asked Brandon and his cousin a few questions. Questions only you can ask.”

  Kate slanted a glance at him. “Like what?”

  Fred shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll think of something you want him to tell you. The important thing is to get Brandon face to face with you. I think we’ll learn a lot that way. And it’s not as if you haven’t already seen him…”