Holding Out for a Hero

by Pamela Tracy

  A garden hose lay in the front yard. Dripping water spread onto a small section of struggling grass. If Candace died yesterday morning, it had dripped all night. Judging by the amount of sogginess, it had.

  Ornamental chimes hung overhead.

  No wind today.

  No sign of life, literally or figuratively.

  Chief Riley exited the front door, carefully closing it behind him. He joined Oscar and gestured to the yard. “You see anything out of place?”

  The cotton in Oscar’s throat doubled in size, and tears threatened to spill as he shook his head. He didn’t mind. He’d watched Lieutenant Colonel Townley, who Oscar considered the biggest hero America had, break down and sob over situations he had no control over.

  Men he’d lost.

  Riley seemed to understand and waited while the sun beat down on them and minutes ticked by.

  “You call the medical examiner?” Oscar choked out.

  “You think I don’t know my job?” Riley queried.

  It was the kind of sarcastic response Oscar needed to snap out of his stupor. “I’ve known the victim all my life. She’s from my hometown of Runyan, New Mexico.”

  “I didn’t know that. And the state police who are already on their way will be interested, too.”

  “You know who else has a home in Runyan?”

  “Who?”

  “Jack Little, who owns the chain of Little’s Supermarkets.”

  “And that concerns us because...”

  “Candace is his daughter.”

  Riley said a bunch of words Oscar knew he would not want put in the report, ending with “No kidding. Why didn’t I know that?”

  “She didn’t want people to know. She wanted to make friends, get established, before everyone started seeing her for her family’s name and power instead of who she was.”

  “It’s time to make some phone calls,” Riley said. “Give me a few minutes.”

  Oscar figured it would take more than a few minutes before he was ready to go inside. Carefully he stepped over the cordon tape and stood at the front of the driveway, looking at a pair of sandals by the side gate. They, too, were Candace’s. She always preferred going barefoot.

  Riley returned, but he didn’t share who he’d called. “See anything?” he asked.

  “Nothing out of place in the yard that I can see, except the hose has dripped all night. Candace never would have left it on.”

  Riley nodded, waiting.

  “You need to find Shelley Wagner. She lives in—”

  “Shelley Wagner,” Riley interrupted. “What does she have to do with this?”

  “She lives in the garage apartment across the street. I encountered her yesterday morning walking her little boy. He ran to this window and she followed. Maybe she saw something.”

  “I know Shelley Wagner,” Riley said. “And I know where she lives. You say she’s involved in this?”

  “I didn’t say she was involved.” If she was, no way would she have been so calm—

  But she hadn’t been calm. Not exactly, not when she was hurrying away. Maybe it hadn’t been the encounter with him.

  “I don’t think she is involved,” Oscar started again. “She just happened to be out here, taking a walk.” What he couldn’t tell Riley was that she walked every morning and he knew what time she returned. Oscar couldn’t share that she was paying four hundred dollars a month for her one-room apartment and that she had two thousand, three hundred dollars in her bank account.

  Oscar knew because Townley via the FBI had provided the information.

  “You sure it was Shelley?” Riley asked. “I wasn’t aware you were acquainted with her.”

  “Just under six foot, very pregnant, not much older than Candace. Ran into her yesterday morning during my walk with Peeve.”

  She’d worn sensible shoes, Oscar remembered. They’d landed silent on the sidewalk when she’d stopped to talk to him. Peeve, his German shepherd, had sniffed at them and then been distracted by a bird fluttering in a nearby bush.

  “That’s our Shelley,” Riley agreed.

  Oscar remembered her chasing the toddler, who’d taken off across the sidewalk and tottered into Candace’s yard and then to the picture window. He hadn’t watched what happened next. There’d been a noise, and Peeve had barked until finally a cat scurried from its hiding place. When he’d turned back to the street, Shelley had been carrying Ryan up the apartment stairs, and Ryan had been crying. Just another day. That was what he’d figured.

  He’d been wrong.

  He wished more than anything he hadn’t been distracted by Peeve and the cat.

  “Anything else you remember about the encounter?” Riley asked. “It might be important.”

  “No, except something was bothering her.”

  “You could tell that by how she looked?” Riley smirked.

  “I’ve a sister. She had the same look Anna gets when something is bothering her.”

  Speaking of Anna, Oscar needed to call her, break the news about her best friend, let her know he would do all he could to bring the killer to justice.

  Riley raised an eyebrow. “I’ve got Bailey canvassing the neighborhood, asking if anyone noticed anything out of the ordinary yesterday. I’ll have her go to Shelley’s apartment. They know each other.” Immediately Riley pulled out his phone, called Bailey and gave the order.

  Riley managed only a few words before he stopped talking to listen. It was all Oscar could do not to snatch the phone from his chief so he could hear, too.

  “You’re sure?” Ending the call, Riley shook his head in disbelief. “Bailey’s talking with Shelley’s landlord right now. Apparently she’s packed most of her stuff and fled. Shelley Wagner’s gone.”

  Not what Oscar had expected. He glanced up at Shelley Wagner’s apartment. Bailey and Shelley’s landlord, Robert Tellmaster, were just coming out the door.

  Oscar turned to Riley. “I need to see the...the crime scene.”

  Riley raised an eyebrow. “The State boys wouldn’t like that. It’s best—”

  Oscar took a breath, opened and closed his hands a few times before balling them into fists. “Candace didn’t deserve this. She’s—was—a kindergarten teacher, great sense of humor, could play second base like...” Oscar was rambling, which was out of character. But he knew the victim, knew her well. Loved her like a sister.

  The two men stood, sizing each other up. Oscar didn’t so much as blink. He had two inches on Riley, but that didn’t seem to matter. Maybe Oscar needed to check—Riley sure looked ex-military.

  “One minute is all I ask,” Oscar finally said. “I won’t go in. I won’t touch anything.”

  Riley’s eyes narrowed.

  “I’ve been in this house several times. You asked me about what I noticed outside. I can tell you about the inside.”

  Riley didn’t like it, Oscar could tell, but he marched to the front door and opened it, backing out of the way. Oscar didn’t hesitate.

  He saw Candace first, lying belly-down on the floor. She wore a pink nylon shirt and jeans. One foot still had a sandal. The other was bare. Her brown hair was matted and her head was next to a leg of the coffee table. The table was scooted a few feet from its regular position near the middle of the room. Blood smeared a corner. The couch was bare, except for two pillows and an upended book. The television was off and a few movies were stacked next to it. Across from the couch there were a dozen antique wall clocks. All told the correct time of fifteen minutes after ten. Two easy chairs were in the room. Nothing on them. No animals—Candace’s husband, Cody, was allergic. Oscar couldn’t bring Peeve when he visited.

  A large wedding portrait hung over the couch.

  Except for Candace, nothing appeared out of place.

  He
stepped back, bowing his head to say a quick prayer, mostly thinking of how devastated Cody would be.

  “Everything is as it should be.” Oscar proceeded to fill Riley in on his and Candace’s history, last time he’d seen her, family and friends. After a few minutes, he asked, “What do you know about Cody’s whereabouts?”

  “He’s supposedly at a two-day meeting in Albuquerque. We’ve got the police there looking for him. He’s not answering his cell, and it doesn’t look like he was in his hotel room last night. No one’s seen him since yesterday morning.”

  “I know Cody. He wouldn’t kill his wife.” Oscar heard the conviction in his own voice yet knew the husband was always the first suspect in a case like this.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Riley said, but Oscar could tell he didn’t mean it.

  It was after eleven when he made it back to his office and started searching the computer for information about where Shelley might be. With Ryan, she’d need to stop. And since she was eight months pregnant, she’d likely need to stop, too. A lot.

  He called Townley, who was able to tell him that Shelley had withdrawn two hundred dollars from an automatic teller before she left town. If she used her debit card again elsewhere, she could be tracked.

  Townley suggested that Oscar head for Santa Fe. It was big enough to get lost in. “She has no known relatives except her father,” Townley reminded him. Oscar added the address of the father’s care center to his notebook. Townley sent a file detailing Shelley’s history, including names of college roommates, instructors, people she’d worked with.

  Oscar printed it out and compared it to the file Sarasota Falls had on her, looking for repeated names. There weren’t many, as her local file had more to do with her connection with Larry Wagner.

  Wagner had stolen and scammed roughly seven hundred thousand dollars from the good people of Sarasota Falls.

  Over three hundred thousand of that came from the sale of Shelley’s family home and its furnishings.

  Riley was good. Thorough. He’d ferreted out two women who’d had affairs with Wagner during his short marriage to Shelley. One worked at the bank. The other wasn’t named, but a desk clerk at the Sarasota Falls Inn swore Wagner had checked in with a high-class blonde at least five times. The signature on file matched Wagner’s handwriting. Unfortunately, the female hadn’t signed any receipts, and Wagner hadn’t called her anything but Sugar.

  Picking up the phone, Oscar called Riley. “I’m going to head over to the care center where Shelley’s dad is.”

  “Good idea. Wait for me. I’m coming in.”

  “State police arrived?” Oscar asked.

  “An hour ago. A couple of pretty decent guys. They looked over our reports of what the people in the neighborhood did and didn’t see. They took even more photos than I did. They think she was pushed and happened to hit her head on the table. But, based on the condition of the bedroom, they know there was a struggle. Coroner arrived right after they did.”

  “Struggle in the bedroom. Did...?” Oscar hated that his attempt not to contaminate the crime scene meant he’d gone no farther than the front door. There’d been more to see, more that other people might miss.

  “Lead guy said he didn’t think so. Seems someone broke in and disturbed her while she was getting dressed.”

  “Time of death?”

  “Between six and eight a.m., but only because she was dressed. The coroner says it could have been earlier. He prefers, for now, to say midnight and six.”

  “If she fell and hit her head, then it might not be a murder.”

  There was a full ten-second pause. “There are marks on the back of her shirt that could be handprints. Then, too, the way she landed implies speed and gravity. They figured this out by measuring. At the very least, it’s involuntary manslaughter.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “They’re still gathering evidence, from a strand of hair they found on the floor to a drop of blood taken by swab from the edge of the coffee table.”

  “Have they moved her body yet?”

  “Yes, but it will be a few days before we know anything.”

  “And you’ve told them about Shelley Wagner and—”

  “Yes,” Riley interrupted, “and they find it quite interesting that from the window of Shelley’s garage apartment, you can see right into Candace’s living room and backyard. One of Candace’s coworkers said Candace noticed the young woman across the street watching her and was spooked about it.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tell and you’ll be sorry.

  SHELLEY HAD ALREADY been frantically packing when the text from her ex-husband arrived. It had only made her pack faster because—just great—after Larry had taken her life savings and left her to deal with the authorities, her first communication from him was a threat.

  Sorry? She was already sorry. Sorry for making such a bad decision as marrying Larry.

  Unfortunately, every decision she’d made in the hours since receiving the text had been wrong, really wrong, and downright stupid.

  If she could do one thing over, she’d scream for the man with the dog to come back. She’d scream as loud as she could. Scream so loud they’d hear her in the next county. There’d been a moment when she could have brought down her husband.

  The memories of what he could do when angry had stilled her voice; the memories hadn’t stilled her feet. Which was why her first instinct had been to run.

  She squinted at a green sign up ahead and shook her head when she could make out the town’s name. One more small town she’d never heard of. She’d already put almost three hundred more miles on her old green Impala. She wasn’t even sure where she was heading.

  She checked the rearview mirror. Ryan slept at last. She’d not handled him well, either. It was her own fault she’d wound up traveling with a tired, confused three-year-old because she’d utterly failed during the split-second packing stage. She’d correctly grabbed his worn Thomas the Train backpack and necessary box of Legos. However, she’d undervalued the beloved Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animal.

  She’d never do that again.

  The only thing she’d done right, because she couldn’t leave that poor woman lying in her living room with no one knowing she was there, was stopping at a convenience store and telling the cashier that she thought she might be in labor and needed to call her husband but didn’t have a phone.

  Sometimes being eight months pregnant got results.

  She’d called Crime Stoppers. Then she’d headed west. That had been over four hours ago and it was time to stop for gas and check her messages. She had one.

  And not from her ex-husband; she’d blocked his calls.

  A nurse at her dad’s care center texted to say her dad was having a bad day and was restless and confused. Would she please come?

  If not her, who else?

  A new wave of guilt and worry overtook her. She couldn’t run away from Sarasota Falls. Her dad was all she had left of her old life, and there was no one else who cared as much as she did.

  And, really, where was she heading to? How would she survive? Who could she turn to?

  She’d been relying on herself since Larry left. She’d continue to do so. Only now she’d need to constantly look over her shoulder.

  The middle of nowhere offered the perfect turnabout, and soon, she was making her way back home. Glancing in the rearview mirror again, she made sure Ryan was still asleep. Tears streaked his cheeks. Winnie-the-Pooh was the least of her worries. Returning to Sarasota Falls was not the safe or sane thing to do. But she couldn’t leave her father alone.

  Soon her cheeks looked like Ryan’s.

  The miles passed as one small town after another whisked by. In each, people did normal, everyday tasks. None would guess the turmoil going through her mind.
She envied them, their quick trips to the store or to pick up kids. A simple day sounded heavenly.

  But not for her. Her back hurt, her side had some sort of pulled muscle and all she wanted to do was walk. Maybe that wasn’t what she wanted, but what the baby wanted. Sitting still this long hadn’t been easy. Careful to check for traffic—none—she queried Siri and found out that Sarasota Falls was still miles ahead.

  It would be an hour or so before she could check on her father. She’d called, and a nurse reported that her dad was in his room sleeping. Shelley needed to see for herself, first thing, before she returned to an apartment that would never again feel safe.

  Eventually, the city limits shimmered ahead. There were no tall buildings, more a gentle sloping of a small business district surrounded by homes.

  She stopped at the first light, feeling panic start to surface. Then the light changed to green. Shelley needed to turn right to get to the apartment. Instead she turned left. She wanted her father. It didn’t matter that he could offer her no real advice.

  A few minutes later, she pulled into a fairly deserted parking lot. She gathered her purse and rounded the car to help Ryan from his car seat. She’d just put her hand on the door handle when her phone pinged.

  Don’t look at it.

  She took Ryan from his seat, balancing him against her. He was getting heavier, growing, and with her advancing pregnancy, she was getting bulkier. She kicked the door shut with her foot and was soon inside the building, at the front desk, saying, “Did you just call me?”

  “No,” said the nurse, scooting the sign-in sheet toward Shelley.

  “How’s my dad?”

  “Better now. He was very agitated, awake several times and roaming the halls more than usual.”

  Shelley wrote down her name and the time of arrival on the sign-in sheet before heading down the hall. Music came from the piano room. Wheelchairs were in the hallways. Most of their owners were elderly, but not all. Alzheimer’s wasn’t limited to those in their twilight years.