by Sherry Lewis
“Fred Vickery. Tell him we met at the gas station the other day.”
The boy relayed the message, mumbled something else and replaced the receiver. “He’s in 115, sir. Around back. Ground floor. About the middle of the long center section. You can go out through these doors here if you’re walking around.” He nodded toward a set of doors set off to one side.
“You’ve been a big help, son.” Fred started away, then turned back. “One more thing. Can you tell me if Roy Dennington is still registered?”
The wary look returned in the boy’s eyes, but he punched at the computer and nodded. “Yes, sir. But I can’t tell you the room number—”
Fred waved a hand to ward off his concern. “Wouldn’t even think of asking. You did say Mr. Yarnell is in room 115?”
The boy nodded.
Fred hurried outside and around to the back of the Inn. Sure enough, Kelley Yarnell’s car was parked not far from the room 115. He must have been watching out the window, because the door flew open before Fred could even lift a hand to knock.
The young man looked as if he’d just shaved and showered. Little track marks in his wet hair showed where his comb had been, and his aftershave still smelled bottle-fresh. He stepped aside to let Fred enter and fastened the last button on his shirt. “Is something wrong? Is that why you’re here?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Fred said.
The young man’s face lost all its color.
“Nothing’s wrong with Nancy or with the baby,” Fred explained. “Yet.”
A pause, the return of a little color, and a look of intense embarrassment. “You know about the baby?”
“I know about you, and about the baby.”
Two double beds stood side-by-side with nothing but a small table between them. Kelley dropped to the foot of one and looked miserable. “You must think I’m an absolute son-of-a-bitch.”
“I think you and Nancy made a serious mistake.”
Kelley didn’t look up. “But Nancy’s all right?”
“For the moment.” Fred perched on the foot of the other bed and tried to catch the young man’s gaze. “I need to ask you some questions. Are you up to answering?”
Kelly nodded miserably. “I guess. What do you want to know?”
Fred had to give him credit for his reaction. A lesser man might have tried to dodge his questions. “Nancy tells me you moved out of the area a while ago. Is that true?”
Kelley nodded again. “I’d been offered a job in Colorado Springs, and when she found out about the baby and decided to stay with Adam, I accepted the offer. I certainly couldn’t stay here.” He smoothed his hair with his palm. “You know, I really thought I could walk away. That I loved her enough to let her stay with Adam and raise my baby as his. . .” His voice trailed away into silence.
“But you were wrong?” Fred prompted.
Kelley laughed without humor. “Big time. I haven’t been able to think of anything else since I left. I love her so much it hurts. And then there’s the baby—”
“Did you know that Adam wanted Nancy to have an abortion?”
Another miserable nod. “I tried to leave her alone, but something always pulled me back. When I found out what Adam wanted, I begged her not to do it. I asked her to leave him and marry me, but she wouldn’t. Too much guilt, I guess.” He jerked to his feet and stalked to the window. Shoving aside the curtain, he looked outside. “I don’t think she wanted an abortion. That’s just now who she is. And I really thought she loved me, but she had all that history with Adam . . . I just couldn’t compete with that.”
It seemed to Fred he’d competed quite well, but he didn’t offer his opinion. Instead, he asked, “When did you come back here?”
“Tuesday.”
“The day before Adam was killed?”
Agitated, Kelley dropped the curtain and fell into a chair beside a small round table in the corner. “I found out Nancy had an appointment with an abortion clinic, and I just couldn’t let her go through with it. It’s my baby, after all.”
“So you came back.”
A nod.
“Did Nancy know you were coming?”
“No. I tried to call her the first day, but she wasn’t home. That night I walked over to the Silver Mine for a beer and ran into a friend of mine. We had a couple of drinks and talked for a while. She told me Adam and Nancy were separated, and that Adam was staying at his office.”
So Kelley had known where to find Adam. Fred tried not to look overly interested, but he feared his voice would give him away when he asked, “Who told you?”
“Charlotte Isaacson. I’ve known her for years. We used to be neighbors.”
Fred wasn’t surprised they knew each other. Mountain Home was a small town. It would be more surprising if they hadn’t had at least a nodding acquaintance. Still, this new information about Charlotte chilled him. “What did you do when she told you about the separation?”
“Celebrated. Got plastered, if you want to know the truth.” Embarrassment colored his face and he looked down at his fingernails. “I called Nancy the next day morning. She seemed ready to listen, and agreed to meet me that night after she had dinner with her parents.”
“Then what?”
“Then I hung out for a few hours. Then I called Adam.”
That got Fred’s attention. “Why on earth did you do that?”
“To stop him. He wanted her to kill my baby. Doesn’t anybody get that? We’re talking about my baby. It wasn’t even a big secret anymore.” Kelley jumped up again and gestured broadly as he talked. “Adam laughed at me. Told me I’d lost Nancy and the kid. He claimed that Nancy had agreed to have the abortion and that she was going that afternoon. He said that by the time I saw her again, the baby would be gone.” His jaw clenched with remembered fury and the color in his face changed from embarrassment to anger.
“What then?” Fred asked softly.
“Then? Then I tried like hell to find Nancy, to stop her from doing something she’d regret the rest of her life.”
“Did you find her?”
He shook his head. “No. So I got drunk again. I figured she’d gone through with it, and I was planning to give up and head back home.”
“When did you find out the truth?”
Kelley hesitated and looked away. “Not until later.”
“Later that night?”
Kelley nodded as if that sounded good. “Yeah.”
“Before Adam was killed?”
His eyes shifted. “No. After.”
“Did you see Adam the night of the murder?”
The young man’s face froze. “Why do you ask that? You think I killed him? I’ll admit nobody had a better reason than me to want Adam Bigelow out of the way, but I didn’t do it.”
“Then who did?”
“Somebody with a lot more nerve than I’ve got,” Kelley muttered. “But why are you asking me? I don’t know.”
Fred pushed to his feet and stepped into the young man’s line of sight again. “I think you’d better tell me everything, Kelley. Right now. You and Nancy are in too much trouble to play around any longer. The sheriff’s given me until six o’clock to bring Nancy in so she can tell him the whole truth. That’ll include you and the baby. You might think there are no more secrets, but she’s carrying around a whole heap of them. The only way I’m going to be able to help her is if I know the whole truth. So start talking.”
Kelley turned away and buried his face in his hands. “Can’t we talk about this with Nancy?”
He looked so miserable, Fred felt a twinge of pity for him. But he didn’t have time to wait. “You tell me a story I can believe, and we’ll see.”
“I’ve told you the truth,” Kelley shouted. He paused, pulled himself together, and folded his arms across his chest. “Look, the only thing I didn’t tell you was that I came back because Charlotte wrote and told me Nancy and Adam were separated. But the rest is exactly what happened. I got in on Tuesday night. I went to the S
ilver Mine for a beer, and Charlotte was there. She told me everything then—about how Adam wanted Nancy to get an abortion and how she already had an appointment.”
He broke off and balled his hands into fists. “I was furious—with Charlotte, with Nancy, and especially with Adam. So I called him. Told him I wanted the baby, even if he didn’t. I told him if he and Nancy wanted to stay together, fine. But I wanted the baby.” He paced toward the bathroom and swung back. “He told me staying with Nancy wasn’t an option unless she got rid of the kid. That he wasn’t about to raise some little bastard for a low-life like me.” Kelley laughed bitterly. “So I told him that was fine, that I’d be happier if he gave them both up. And he said that would only happen over his dead body. Next thing I knew, he was dead.”
A chill raced up Fred’s neck. “Who else knew he said that?”
Kelley lowered his head and didn’t speak for a long moment, and when he finally did, it was to give the answer Fred feared most.
“Nancy.”
Fred waited to speak until the roaring in his ears subsided a little, then he asked, “You told her?”
Looking as if he’d rather die himself than admit it, Kelley nodded. “I was drunk.”
“When did you tell her? Wednesday night? After dinner with her parents?” When hopefully Adam was already dead. When Nancy’s knowledge of his ugly words wouldn’t have given her a motive to end his life.
Kelley just shook his head slowly. “Actually, Nancy came here Tuesday night. Somehow Adam found out she’d come to see me—that’s why he finally demanded a divorce.”
Fred struggled to hang on to the shreds of truth from all the stories he’d heard. “She came here the night before the murder?”
“Yes. But we didn’t do anything. We had to talk. To decide what we wanted to do. What would be best for the baby. We thought we could keep it quiet—that Adam wouldn’t ever need to know we’d seen each other again.”
“But he found out.”
Anger flashed across Kelley’s face. “Yeah. Somehow.”
“Any idea who told him Nancy’s been here?”
“There’s only one person I can think of, but I don’t have any proof.”
“Who?”
“Charlotte. It had to be her. Nobody else even knew I was around.”
“Why would she do that?”
“You figure it out. I sure as hell can’t. All I know is, she set me up, man. Right from the beginning.”
Fred thought about Brooke’s claim that Charlotte had been eager for a relationship with Adam. For the first time, he gave the idea serious consideration. And he wondered just how far Charlotte would have gone to get what she wanted.
TWENTY
Pondering what he’d just learned from Kelley, Fred walked slowly around the Inn on his way back to the Buick. He believed the young man’s story—most of it, anyway. He didn’t think Kelley had lied to him, but experience had taught him that even people who believed they were telling the whole truth tended to downplay important points and emphasize others. In that way, they could alter the picture without even realizing it. Four children of his own and forty years with the school district had taught him the value of hearing all sides of a story before he passed judgment.
He checked his watch and calculated his travel time. It was just after two o’clock now. He could drive home and spend the next few hours trying to convince Nancy to be honest with Enos, or he could try to learn something that might convince Enos that Nancy was innocent without having to drag her through the unhappy story again. Allowing a little more than an hour to reach Mountain Home from here in Granby, half an hour with Charlotte, and an hour back to Cutler, he’d still have a little time to work on Nancy if he needed to.
A few feet ahead of him, a door opened and a tall black man in a gray pinstriped suit stepped out onto the walk. He pulled his room door shut, double-checked the lock and started toward a late model Lincoln just a few feet away.
It probably was too much of a coincidence for this to be Roy Dennington but Fred quick-stepped after him anyway. “Excuse me. Mr. Dennington?”
The man turned and studied Fred with evident curiosity. “Yes. What is it?”
Scarcely daring to believe his luck, Fred closed the gap between them. “Could I have a minute of your time?”
“Do I know you?”
Fred extended his hand with a smile. “My name’s Fred Vickery. I happened to see you the other day at EnviroSampl.”
Roy folded his lips together and scowled down his nose at him. “I see. You don’t work there?” His voice sounded like whipped chocolate. Smooth and dark and reminiscent of that guy who did the 7-Up commercials—without the accent.
“I’m Nancy Bigelow’s uncle. Her husband Adam was killed. . .”
“Ah. Yes. Of course,” Roy said with a brisk nod. “How can I help you, Mr. Vickery?”
Fred wasn’t prepared for this chance encounter and he tried to decide where to start. Roy frowned impatiently and Fred blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “It’s been suggested that you were offering Adam bribes to doctor the results of the Shadow Mountain tests and that may be why he was killed. Is that true?”
Roy’s face worked its way through confusion and anger before his brow straightened and he laughed aloud. “That I what?”
Fred hadn’t expected him to be amused. Maybe Roy had misunderstood him. “I heard that you were interested in the Shadow Mountain property and that you might have offered a kickback to Adam if he could make the tests pass EPA standards.”
Roy leaned against the hood of his car and looked amazed. “You’re joking.” He paused and looked Fred over for a long moment. His smile faded slowly. “You’re not joking.”
Fred shook his head. “No, I’m not.” But at that moment, he certainly wished he were.
“Where did you hear a ridiculous thing like that?”
Rather than divulge his source, Fred returned a question. “Then it’s not true?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You’re not interested in Shadow Mountain?”
“I didn’t say that. I’ve got a great interest in the mountain. With the right investors, the right kind of money, that place could be bigger than Aspen.”
Over Fred’s dead body, but he didn’t want to tempt fate by saying so. “Can I ask whether you’ve made an offer?”
Roy pushed himself up from the car and walked to the driver’s door. “No.”
“No, you haven’t made an offer?”
A headshake. “No, you can’t ask. My financial dealings are strictly confidential—especially in the early stages.” Roy slid behind the wheel and jammed the key into the ignition. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”
To keep him from driving away, Fred grabbed the door handle and wedged himself in the opening, making it harder for Roy to close it. “When was the last time you talked to Adam Bigelow before his death?”
“I never talked to Adam Bigelow.”
“Never?”
Roy looked put out by the questions. He was ready to leave, and clearly annoyed with Fred for preventing him from doing so. “Never.”
“But I thought you were there the morning of the murder because you had an appointment with him.”
“I was. I had an appointment with him that morning because his secretary called my office to set one up, but I don’t have any idea why he wanted to see me.”
“Why Adam wanted to see you?”
“That surprises you?”
“I thought it was just the other way around.”
Roy managed to look slightly amused. “I guess you would if you thought I was bribing him. Listen, you want to know what I was doing there, ask his secretary. She’s the one who called my office. Now, do you mind? I’ve got an appointment and I’m already late.”
Fred’s head buzzed with unanswered questions, but he stepped away from the car and let Roy pull his door shut. The man shot out of his parking spot, screeching tires in the process. By the time Fred got
back to the Buick and followed Roy Dennington onto the highway, the Lincoln had already disappeared from view.
When Fred passed the One-Stop on his way back through Cutler, he checked his dashboard clock and cursed under his breath. Already two-thirty and he had so much he wanted to do before Enos expected Nancy in his office.
His stomach grumbled about giving it only three bites of paprikás for lunch, but he didn’t have a minute to waste. He drove past the Bluebird Café at a snail’s pace. But when he caught a glimpse of Pete Scott’s new wife in the window all hesitation vanished. Might as well stop for a bite—there was no time like the present to find out about the appointment she’d made for Adam with Roy Dennington.
He whipped around the corner onto Estes Street, found a shady spot for the Buick, and hurried back to the Café. Half a dozen heads turned as he stepped inside. George Newman had probably been in the same spot since before lunch. Arnold Van Dyke leaned up from his seat and shouted something about the drought into Grandpa Jones’s good ear. Bill Lacey sucked soda through a straw and looked relieved to see Fred instead of Janice coming through the door. Douglas sat on a stool next to Grady Hatch, and Grady was perched in his usual spot by the kitchen where he could talk to his mother as she worked.
Douglas swallowed the bite he’d been working on and turned around on his seat. “Hi, Dad. What are you doing here?”
“I need lunch, and this seemed like a good place to get it.”
Douglas took another mouthful and checked his watch. He seemed to consider Fred’s answer, as if he needed to pass approval before Fred could take a seat. “Want to join me?” he asked, nodding toward the empty seat next to his.
Fred shook his head and patted the small of his back. “Don’t like the counter, son. I’ll just go on over to a table.” He turned to leave, but Douglas started stacking silverware on his plate and scooted a cup of something icy toward the edge of the counter. “Then I’ll come sit with you.”
Fred didn’t want company, but he didn’t want to insult his son or make him suspicious. He glanced over his shoulder, to see whether the new Mrs. Scott had moved. She hadn’t. “No need,” he said with a smile. “Stay here. You’re right in the middle of your meal. Besides, I don’t want to interrupt you and Grady—”