Linda Crowder - Jake and Emma 02 - Main Street Murder

by Linda Crowder

  Still, Wyoming had beautiful mountains, friendly people and the best trout fishing in the world. Emma smiled to herself at the memories that last one conjured up. When they were newly married, Emma was excited to embrace all of the to her exotic activities so dear to her new husband. Jake loved fly fishing and he’d taken her to Wyoming’s famed Miracle Mile to show her the fine art of the sport.

  Emma hadn’t counted on the 4am wake-up but she trundled out of her sleeping bag when Jake shook her gently that spring morning before he went out to start breakfast on the camp stove. She’d struggled into hip-high waders, which Jake had been delighted to buy for her when she’d expressed an interest in fishing. The waders, he’d told her, would keep her warm and dry while standing in the river.

  She hadn’t, of course, realized what an exaggeration that was or that her concept of “warm and dry” didn’t match his but she found that out when she waded into the frigid river after breakfast. “Why do we have to stand in the water?” she’d asked Jake after losing feeling in her feet.

  “Because that’s where the fish are,” he answered. He had been patient with her, helping her master the flick of the arm and wrist so vital to successful fly fishing. Well, thought Emma, master might be a bit strong for the level of skill she’d developed over the years but she did keep at it until she caught her first rainbow trout. The fact that the fish had slipped from her hands the moment the hook was out and disappeared into the river was completely beside the point.

  One catch had been enough to satisfy Emma’s curiosity. While she still enjoyed accompanying Jake on his fishing trips - in a small camper trailer now instead of a tent - she stayed on the shore. The waders Emma had passed along to a friend.

  She was jolted from her wandering thoughts by the sound of her name and to Jake jabbing her in the ribs and pointing up at a float. She looked up to see Kristy sitting next to Cheri Jackson. Both women were waving to her from their seat of the Casper Greeters’ Welcome Wagon. Emma smiled and waved back.

  Cheri joked that she knew everyone who was worth knowing in Casper. She was a social butterfly, involved in every worthwhile civic activity she could fit into her schedule. She was a founding member of the Greeters, a welcoming committee that attended community events and helped new residents feel at home.

  The Wagon slowly moved past her, flanked by at least 30 members wearing their distinct blue shirts who flitted back and forth between the wagon and the crowd passing out candy to the children. Emma smiled when a Greeter had to run to catch up with the wagon, having stopped to chat with a friend in the crowd. Good natured ribbing turned his ears red as he reached into the wagon for more candy.

  Cheri had invited Emma to join the Greeters and she had gone to a couple of meetings but it wasn’t really her passion. Kristy had volunteered to join, representing Emma’s practice, and she seemed to be enjoying herself immensely.

  Emma had joined the Rotary when she moved to Wyoming, transferring her membership from California. Her client load had built steadily and while she was thankful, she had trouble getting away from her office. Seeing what fun Kristi and Cheri were having with the Greeters, Emma made a mental note to start volunteering with the Rotary’s playground project. Life had to be more than just work.

  Her thoughts on happier things, Emma missed most of the conversation behind her. She jerked to attention when she thought she heard someone mention Kristy’s name.

  “That’s her then?” she heard a man’s voice reply. They were speaking in low tones so Emma strained to hear the first man’s response.

  “…take care of it….” she made out, then a few mumbled words Emma missed before catching just a name. Shipton. Where had she heard that name before?

  Emma turned to see the backs of two men, pushing their way to the rear of the parade crowd. They were tall, or seemed so from her vantage point sitting on a folding lawn chair at the edge of the sidewalk. They were dressed, as were many of the parade-goers, in jeans and tshirts. The shorter of the two was dark haired just beginning to turn gray. The other had light hair that was just visible beneath a dirty baseball cap.

  Shipton, thought Emma. The men had disappeared into the crowd before she remembered why the name rang a distant bell. The man killed in the apartment below Kristy’s loft was named Shipton. Vince Shipton.

  Emma’s heart skipped a beat when she remembered what little of their conversation she’d heard. They were looking at Kristy and talking about taking care of something that somehow involved the murdered man.

  “Jake, did you hear what those men were saying?” she asked her husband, poking him in the ribs to get his attention.

  Jake wrenched his eyes from the all city marching band playing a rousing How the West Was Won and looked at his wife. “What?” he asked. “What men?”

  Emma scrambled to her feet, hastily folding her chair and tucking it under her arm. “I’m sorry,” she said to a man whose knee she bumped with the chair. “So sorry,” to a woman behind him who stepped aside to let Emma through. Jake scrambled after her, apologizing to the same people as he struggled to catch up to her.

  Reaching the back of the crowd, she caught sight of the taller of the two men about half a block to her right. Jake put his hand on her arm and shouted over the crowd noise, “What are you doing? The parade’s not over yet.”

  Pressing herself against a storefront and shifting her chair to the arm opposite the parade crowd, Emma followed the men, dragging a protesting Jake along behind her. It was slow going because the crowd was large and several times Emma lost sight of the men for a minute or two before spotting them again, every time a considerable distance further ahead of her.

  It slowed her down to have to weave around the edge of the crowd taking care to neither run into someone or knock into a store window with her lawn chair. Finally, Emma saw the bobbing head of the taller man turn left, away from the parade route and in the direction of the only parking garage in Casper.

  Just as she thought she would close the distance between her and the men, the parade ended and the crowd surged toward the lot. She lost sight of the men in the crowd and finally gave up looking for them.

  Disappointed and fearful for her friend, Emma fought her way across the street and walked the few blocks to her office. Jake followed, still wondering what on earth had gotten into her.

  “What were you thinking?” asked Jake when she told him about the men. “Are you insane? What were you planning to do if we did catch up to them? Hit them with your chair?”

  Emma frowned. She hadn’t thought about that. She hadn’t thought about anything except the threat to Kristy. What would she have done? Since she’d had to use her handgun to save Jake, Emma made a point of carrying it in her purse, but she hadn’t taken her purse to the parade.

  She never carried her gun in a crowd, she didn’t think it was safe, and she hadn’t been expecting to hear people talking about a murdered man in the crowd behind her. “You’re right, you’re right. I just didn’t want to lose sight of them. “

  Jake sighed. “I know and I appreciate your quick thinking. Following them at a safe distance was fine, just don’t approach them if you ever catch sight of them again. If these men did have something to do with Vince Shipton’s death, I don’t want you anywhere near them.”

  “Agreed,” said Emma. She didn’t want to tangle with killers either. Then she sighed, “But I wish I’d been able to see their faces. When I tell the police what I heard I won’t be able to give them much of a description.”

  “Are you going talk to Kristy?” asked Jake.

  “Yes, I should do that,” Emma agreed. She picked up her phone and dialed Kristy’s cell number. The noise on the other end of the phone, since Kristy was at the post-parade BBQ in the park, made Emma repeat parts of her story several times before she could be certain Kristy understood her.

  Emma frowned as she hung up. “She didn’t seem concerned. She said they couldn’t have been talking about her. She reminded me there were at l
east 10 or 15 women walking with the Greeters and they could have been talking about any of them.”

  “If they were even talking about someone in the parade,” observed Jake. “They could have been talking about someone watching the parade from the other side of the street.”

  “It’s possible,” Emma mused, not sounding convinced. Jake raised an eyebrow at Emma, a movement that always annoyed her, mostly because she’d practiced and practiced in the mirror but could not get just one eyebrow to move independently of the other.

  “Jake, I know there were other women at the parade, but there was only one who lived in the same building as Vince Shipton. What kind of coincidence would it be for these two to turn up where Kristy is, talking about Vince and not be talking about her?”

  Jake answer. As a defense attorney, he knew world was full of coincidence. It was coincidence that Emma overheard the men in the first place, but that wasn’t something he was willing to bring up to his wife at that moment. He knew once she set her mind on something, she had to work it out for herself.

  He waited while Emma spoke with the police detective assigned to Shipton’s case. This time she smiled as she hung up the phone.

  “Are the police going to be able to do anything?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Emma, her face lighting up. “They are going to review the surveillance footage for that part of the street during the parade and see if they got the men on camera.”

  She looked up at Jake, “Did you know they have cameras all along Main Street?”

  “Yes, much to the disappointment of a client or two of mine,” said Jake smiling. “It’s not something the city talks about.”

  “I should think not,” agreed Emma. “I can’t believe that here in sleepy old Casper, the police have surveillance cameras watching everything we do.”

  “Well, not everything,” said Jake, smiling down at his wife.

  Emma blushed, “Thank God for that at least.” Then her face grew sober again. “Jake I’m afraid for Kristy. What if it’s not a coincidence? What if these men were talking about her? What if…”

  “What if we stop imagining terrible things?” interrupted Jake. “You said that Kristy didn’t know Shipton, had barely even met him except to say hello and goodbye at the mailboxes, right?” Emma nodded. “Then I can’t see how Vince’s murder would have anything to do with her.”

  Jake continued after a long silence, “It’s been two months since Shipton was killed. If someone wanted to come after Kristy, I don’t think they’d be likely to wait so long, do you?”

  “No-o-o,” said Emma, not convinced but wanting to believe Jake. “I don’t suppose I can do anything more about it, but I’m going to keep a close eye on Kristy and I hope she keeps her guard up just in case.”

  6

  Kristy had no intention of becoming the next victim. She’d made light of Emma’s concerns when she relayed the two men’s conversation but only to calm Emma. Returning to her loft after the parade, Kristy locked the door, which she rarely did. Mindful of the fear in Emma’s voice, she locked the deadbolt as well, something she never did.

  Standing in front of the door, Kristy recalled that terrible morning when she’d opened that door to find the police there to tell her about the murder on the floor beneath her. “There were no signs of a break-in,” the building manager had told her when she’d seen him afterward in the lobby. “The police think whoever killed him either he let them in or they had a key.”

  Kristy shivered. What must it be like to open your door to someone you know and trust only to realize that person is there to kill you? She closed her eyes tightly against this line of thinking. There were things she never wanted to find out.

  Opening her eyes she stared at the deadbolt. What if someone did have a key? She made up her mind to buy one of those privacy door latches like they had in hotel rooms. Then someone would have to break down the door to get in, key or no key, and that would give her time to be ready for them.

  Kristy sighed and turned away from the door. This was not the life she’d expected to be living. She took a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator and poured a glass. Leaving the bottle on the counter, Kristy walked into her living area and stood staring out the window.

  She fell in love with this condo for two reasons. First, it was downtown, three stories high on Main Street in the heart of Casper’s night life and a short walk to Emma’s office. Second, the wall of windows framed a spectacular view of downtown with the Casper Mountain as a backdrop. Day or night, winter or summer that view took her breath away.

  Normally the view of the mountain made her feel at peace. She’d moved so many times before coming to Casper, always trying to settle in, but always forced to move on. Casper was the first place where she’d felt safe.

  She didn’t feel safe tonight. Emma’s conversation had brought back memories that Kristy had thought had been put to rest years ago. She’d gotten the phone call about her ex-husband’s death and remembered vividly the sense of relief that had flooded through her.

  She’d gone back to Tennessee for the first time in so many years when she was told about his death. She’d sat in the park across the street from the funeral home during the viewing, waiting for the family to leave.

  When they did, she‘d slipped across and into the room where her ex-husband lay in an open coffin. Staring down at him, she had tried to blink back the tears but her emotion had been more powerful than her control. Tears of anger and hurt and pure relief had streamed down her face and she’d found herself lost in a world of dark memories.

  A quiet step in the room behind Kristy had roused her and she’d turned to see the funeral home attendant approaching her respectfully. She had accepted the tissue he offered with thanks and dried her eyes. She’d noted gratefully that the attendant was young and not someone she recognized.

  He had explained sympathetically that the viewing hours were over and he had been closing up when he’d heard her. He’d asked if she needed a few more moments, but Kristy had declined. Thanking him for his kindness, she’d turned to leave.

  “Would you like to sign the guest book?” the attendant had said, showing her an open book with very few names. Her ex-husband was no more popular in death than he had been in life.

  Kristy had thought about it for a moment then, accepting the pen the attendant held out to her, she’d bent over the book and hastily signed her real name. She had put the pen down in the crease of the book and looked at the name that seemed foreign to her now. She’d left the funeral home and wondered what his mother would think when she read that name in the book.

  Going out into the evening, Kristy had enjoyed the cool breeze against her cheek. That name was dead to her, as dead as the ex-husband who had given it to her. It was finally over and his mother could bury that name along with her son.

  Kristy had crossed the street again and walked across the park to where she’d left her car in the lot on the other side. Getting into the car, she had rolled the window down and taken a long, deep breath. He was dead. She was safe.

  Only was she? Kristy closed her eyes and recalled what Emma had told her. She hadn’t heard much, certainly nothing Kristy should really need to be concerned about. Yet she agreed with Emma, even through she’d tried to talk her out of it. She must be the woman they were looking at during the parade.

  If that were true, what about the rest? What was it the first man wanted the second to “take care of” and what was their connection to Vince Shipton? Had they “taken care of” him too? She went over the day of the blizzard for what seemed like the hundredth time but still there was nothing.

  As she’d explained to the officer when he’d come to her door asking if she’d heard anything, the walls and floors in the building were soundproof. In a downtown loft, with busy shops and restaurants on the ground floor, that was one of the featured selling points. There were four apartments below her loft, including Shipton’s. One had been vacant but there were two other tenants
living on that level yet no one in the building had heard anything out of the ordinary.

  Kristy thought about those two other tenants. What did she know about them? She owned her loft, perched at the top of the building, but the apartments below were rented out. They were all taken at the moment, even the one where Shipton had been found. The rental market in Casper was hot and the location was ideal so as soon as the police cleared the apartment, the building manager had swept in with a cleaning crew and the next day the new tenant had moved in.

  She didn’t know any of her neighbors well. A hold-over of her roving days, Kristy had always found it best to keep to herself. After her ex-husband died, she’d started to relax. She’d grown closer to Emma, who had given her a job when she first came to town.

  She’d joined the Greeters a few months ago at Emma’s suggestion. Kristy suspected Emma was trying to coax her out of her shell but she’d been glad to go. She’d made a few friends there and found that, in a safe environment, her true personality was beginning to resurface. Kristy had always been out-going by nature.

  And now? Kristy had lived with danger for too long to lose her nerve now but this was a different kind of danger. In the past, she’d had to keep moving to keep one step ahead of her ex-husband. His father had been a police chief in that tiny Tennessee town and her ex-used his father’s network to track her down every time she moved.

  Kristy had lived with the fear that he would find her and either drag her back to the hellish life they’d lived in Tennessee or finally make good on his threats and kill her. She hadn’t been sure which would be worse.

  Now that he was dead, it seemed impossible to believe that there would be anyone else out there who would want to harm her. Her father-in-law had drunk himself to death before Kristy broke away from his son and her ex-husband had no brothers. He had no family at all that Kristy knew of except for his mother and she was more doormat than danger.

  Try as she might, Kristy could not conjure up anyone she’d ever met who could be so full of hate as to either come after her or hire someone else to kill her. She closed her eyes and recalled the picture the police had shown her of the unfortunate Vince Shipton, but she could make no connection between him and anyone she had ever known.