Darlene Franklin - Dressed for Death 01 - Gunfight at Grace Gulch

by Darlene Franklin

  ~

  Tuesday, September 24

  “Last night’s revelations disturbed me more than I care to admit,” I confessed to Audie while I was loading the dishwasher after dinner. “I wanted to believe that Grace won the race fair and square.”

  “So you’ve decided that the letters aren’t connected to Penn’s death?”

  Trust Audie to hit the nail on the head. I shrugged uncomfortably.

  “I don’t know. I don’t see how they could be.” Unless the mayor wanted to protect the Grace family name.

  “Do you think the mayor resented Penn’s support of his opponent?”

  “Not enough to kill him!” The vehemence of my retort surprised even me. “After all, Penn supported his campaign after he won the primary.”

  “But if you mix in a possible scandal involving the town’s sacred history?” The question hung in midair.

  “I can’t imagine that Mayor Ron would kill somebody in cold blood.” That lay at the heart of my objections. I voted for Ron Grace ever since my first election. I liked the man and thought he did a good job for our little town.

  Audie sighed. He ticked off the names. “Do you think Gwen Hardy is capable of murder? Suzanne? Mitch Gaynor? We know Dina didn’t do it.”

  I squirmed in my seat. He was right.

  “The murderer is going to be someone you know.” The compassion on Audie’s face just about did me in. “We have to be objective. We can’t let our emotions get in the way. ‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple.’ Wilde understood the paradoxical nature of truth. It doesn’t stand alone. The murder didn’t occur in a vacuum.”

  That was the problem. I wanted the murder to separate itself from my everyday life and the people I knew. But it did not occur in a vacuum, and the sooner I accepted that and moved forward, the better off I’d be. How much better it was to identify the killer and see him, or her, of course, brought to justice, than for a cloud of suspicion to hang over a group of people. Especially when that group included my sister. I blotted out my feelings and considered the facts we had uncovered.

  “I admit that the mayor had a couple of reasons to dislike Penn. Not supporting him in the mayoral race—I don’t think that’s enough of a motive for murder. But rewriting the history of the land run. . .I just don’t know.”

  “Let’s clean up in here and then talk about it some more.” Audie helped me load the dishwasher. “How about a fire tonight?”

  The fall evening had a chilly edge, and I agreed. Soon flames leapt up the chimney. Each hiss and crackle spat another question into my mind.

  “If only I knew someone at the Herald. Knew them well, I mean.”

  Audie slanted me a suspicious glance. “Why?”

  “I keep wondering what the story was that Penn mentioned to Suzanne.”

  “You don’t think it was the Grace papers?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Because Penn didn’t run the story.”

  “Do you think he might have tried blackmail—”

  I shook my head even before Audie could finish his thought.

  “Think about it.” Audie continued to press his point. “Penn told Suzanne that he needed money. Maybe he thought the mayor was an easy mark.”

  “It wasn’t in his character. Penn was a newsman first. Biased, yes, and not exactly Pulitzer Prize material. But if he thought he had the goods on the land run, he would have run the story. Whatever story he was working on involved something else.”

  Audie leaned forward and poked at the log with the fire tongs. Sparks hissed in the air. “If it’s a local story—which seems likely—the Sequoian could be pursuing the same leads. And you do know an insider there.”

  I heard the smile in his voice. “Dina! But if she knew anything related to the murder, she would have told us.”

  “But she may not realize the significance of what she knows. If she knows anything.”

  “If she knows something. . .” Fear tightened the vise on my throat, and my voice squeaked through the tiny airhole. “She’s in danger! Let her stay blissfully ignorant.”

  But blindness wouldn’t guarantee her safety. If the murderer thought Dina knew something, she remained in danger. Worse than that, she worked for Mitch Gaynor, the only one on our list of suspects that we hadn’t interviewed yet. Why had Dina decided to major in journalism and apply for an internship with the town newspaper?

  “Talk to her again,” Audie said. “Ask her what she knows about stories that didn’t make it into print.”

  I reached for the phone on the end table—I confess that I stayed with an old-fashioned, olive green model for my living room at least—and dialed Dina’s number.

  “Yo, Cic,” she answered on the second ring. The joys of caller ID. Loud pounding of the press in full run almost drowned out her voice. “Let me go to the break room and call you back. I can’t hear when the presses are running.”

  My phone rang a few minutes later. I explained the situation. “We’re looking for any unpublished stories, especially anything involving the Hardys, Suzanne Jay, or the mayor.”

  “Sure. I have an appointment with Mitch tomorrow, you know, a review, when he looks at what I’ve done this summer and what more I want to learn. I’ll ask him about it then.”

  “That might not be such a good idea. He’s one of our potential suspects.”

  “Don’t worry! I can, you know, act, and he won’t guess a thing.” She giggled. “Look, I’d better get back to work before somebody fusses at me for being on the phone.”

  “It’s late,” Audie said after I’d hung up. “We’d better call it a night.” He reached out a hand and brushed his fingers against my hair. “I like this look. Wear it again sometime.”

  Wow. I hadn’t thought about my “natural” appearance since before supper. I patted down the ends. “If you say so.” No matter how much Audie professed to like the look, I didn’t feel comfortable with the flyaway state of my hair.

  “I do.” He kissed me briefly on the lips, a promise of things to come. “See you tomorrow?”

  “I’ll call when I hear from Dina.”

  “Au revoir, then.” With a nod of his head, Audie let himself out the front door.

  [SB]Dina stopped by the store on her way to work on Wednesday afternoon. I locked the door behind my last customer and took her to my office.

  “I have an assignment!” Dina saw herself as the Lois Lane of Grace Gulch, ready for Superman to appear and sweep her away. “Mitch wants me to cover the PTA beat.”

  I let her describe her ideas for unique angles for the story in excruciating detail. At last, she wound down. That’s when I asked, “Did you learn anything about stories that weren’t published?”

  “No. Not about anybody you mentioned, or anyone I remember seeing close to the action.” Her voice rose in contrast to her negative answer.

  “Tone it down.” When excited, her voice grew loud enough to carry through walls. Anyone walking by my office window could hear, and now more than ever discretion was key. “There is no need to tell the whole town your news.”

  “How’s this then?” She whispered. “There is something fishy going on. You remember how I ran the printing press by myself last week?”

  I nodded. How could I forget? She arrived at the store with ink-stained hands and smeared some of the Land Run merchandise, causing a lot of extra work. Her excitement at seeing her words appear in bold type on paper bubbled over onto me, and I couldn’t stay upset with her.

  “I double-checked the circulation run listed on the front page—’cause it seemed weird, the population of Grace Gulch is only 2,000 and that includes families, you know, but the circulation is listed as 2,500. So I loaded enough paper for 2,500 copies.”

  “Hyperbole, maybe.” I wondered what circulation the Herald boasted.

  “The printer came out and yelled at me. Asked me what I thought I was doing, wasting all that paper, we only needed 1,500 copies.” Dina pouted, the same expression on her face that she used
to get her way with Dad. She looked like a naughty child.

  “It sounds like an honest mistake,” I said. Although almost doubling the real circulation numbers stretched hyperbole past believability. “Maybe they run 2,500 copies for the Sunday edition or something.”

  “He acted like he was going to take the extra cost out of my paycheck. I mean, I checked the records before I started. Every day it says they print 2,500 copies. How was I supposed to know that they only needed 1,500 this one time?” She bounced in the chair and tucked a knee under her.

  “Wait a minute. You mean that the records indicate that they print 2,500 all the time?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” She twisted her face as if to say, you can be so dumb. “And there’s more.” Her voice trilled on the last word, a ghostly whimper. “I worked with the bookkeeper last week.”

  “Oh?” I bet that didn’t last long. Dina didn’t get along with numbers. She needed a calculator to add one plus one.

  “She was working on accounts payable. And there were tons of overdue notices. I mean, everything was at least a month overdue.”

  I glanced at the pile of bills on my desk and wondered if they constituted a “ton” in Dina’s mind. “Maybe she pays the bills once a month. That’s what I do. Sometimes payments and overdue notices cross in the mail.”

  “Man, I’m not talking about a late payment notice. I mean like, dun letters saying ‘no more deliveries if you don’t pay immediately.’ ”

  Now that surprised me. The Sequoian was a Grace Gulch institution. It shouldn’t have that degree of financial trouble.

  “So I wonder if someone is cooking the books.” Dina announced it like a foregone conclusion. “That, or the bookkeeper is really bad at her job.”

  “Or they can’t afford to pay their bills.” Which seemed unlikely.

  “Maybe that’s why they hired me.” Dina laughed with a toss of her head. “Double the work for half the money. That’s what interns are good for.” She turned serious. “Do you want me to spy it out?”

  “Definitely not.” Too dangerous, but I wouldn’t say that to my sister. That would ensure her plunging into the most turbulent waters.

  She pouted. “I’ll keep my ears and eyes open.”

  “Don’t you have a term paper to write or something?”

  She laughed at me. “Not until the end of the semester. Last-minute Lucy, that’s me.”

  We finished sharing our lunch—a turkey club sandwich, Gaynor Goodies’ daily lunch special—when someone banged on the front door. I ignored the sound. Couldn’t they read the Closed sign? A few minutes later, the knocking renewed on the back door.

  “I’d better see who it is.”

  “I’ll get it.” Dina swallowed the last bite of her sandwich with a Red Bull and went to the back door. She returned in a minute. “Look who the cat dragged in.”

  “I couldn’t stay away.” Audie grinned at me. Warm feelings welled inside of me, which had nothing to do with the coffee I held in my hand. We gawked at each other like teenagers at the prom.

  Dina looked from one of us to the other. “Should I leave?” A smirk curled the edges of her shocking red lips.

  “No,” I said.

  “That’s not necessary,” Audie said at the same time.

  Heat rose in my cheeks, revealing my feelings more clearly than if I had spoken them out loud, but Audie pretended not to notice.

  “In fact, I’m glad that you’re here.” Audie spoke to Dina “This concerns you, too.”

  Foreboding dampened my spirits. That meant he had news about the investigation. And it involved Dina, the one person I most wanted to protect.

  “It’s about the guns. The props we used in the play.”

  “Was Cord’s gun the murder weapon? I don’t believe it.” Dina’s cheerful facade dropped for a moment, and she looked like a worried little girl afraid to show Daddy her bad report card. “That’s—”

  “No, that’s not the problem.” Audie interrupted her. “That is, I don’t know the details of the ballistics report or if they even have it yet. It’s something else.”

  “What is it?” My anxiety burst the words out.

  “I went over everything we did with those guns, to be sure my memory was accurate. Frontier guns are hardly my specialty. We decided to use the real thing—”

  “—because too many people would complain if you substituted a modern weapon.” Dina nodded. “And the mayor offered to let us use guns from his collection. He has some cool stuff, a flintlock rifle and Winchesters. That sort of thing.”

  “And you. . .” Audie looked in my direction. “You and Cord figured out which weapons would have been used in the gunfight.”

  “The Colt model 1892. Cord had given Bob Grace’s gun to the mayor for a Christmas present.” I didn’t like the direction Audie’s questions had taken. It felt like a police interrogation, only the tables had turned. Dina and I were the bad guys, and Audie was the detective hot on our trail.

  “So the mayor had Bob Grace’s original Colt—in prime condition, according to him—and several others of similar vintage. And he offered to loan three of them to us, in case something went wrong with one of them. Three, not two, right?”

  “Yeah. I kept them locked up at the MGM.” Dina’s facade slipped back into place, pleased at the memory of the confidence Audie had shown in her. “Cord, Penn, and I test fired them a week before the festival. They all worked.”

  “And they both took the guns home after our last practice. And after the. . .incident, the police bagged both of those guns.” Audie’s face reflected his distaste of the memory.

  “That’s the way I remember it.” I recalled the look of shocked disbelief on Cord’s face, the way the gun had slipped out of his fingers into the evidence bag in Reiner’s waiting hand.

  “But they didn’t know about the third gun? They didn’t take it?” Audie asked.

  “They asked me where the guns came from, and I told them. I don’t think I mentioned the extra gun. Why should I? We didn’t use it in the play.” Dina shrugged. “I haven’t checked the gun case since Saturday. Maybe I should have, but I couldn’t put the guns back until the police finished with them. They weren’t props anymore. They were evidence—” She pronounced the “i” with an “ee” sound—“in a murder investigation. I didn’t want to think about it.” The worried little girl tone returned to her voice.

  Audie’s questions began to make horrible sense. “Why?” I demanded. “What’s wrong?”

  “I checked the gun case when I thought about it this morning, when I was putting away some of the other props.” Audie’s face set into grim lines, the hint of wrinkles marring his pale forehead. “It was empty. The third gun is missing.”

  14

  September 19, 1891 Excerpt C

  When I rode out yesterday, searching for the cave, Gaynor followed me out of town. He as much as accused me of cheating. For a moment, I wanted to challenge him to a duel for the insult. But then I thought of you and our future, and I relented.

  He told me that he has pointed me out to the marshals as a troublemaker, and that any move I make will be closely watched. After he left, I found the cave in a perfect spot, hidden by leafy sycamore trees. I wonder if I can escape the marshals’ attention long enough to return to the spot before Tuesday.

  I wonder about Gaynor’s motives. Maybe he is also seeking a way to speed his race. I sense that you are disappointed in me, but I will do whatever I must to secure our future.

  Your loving fiancé,

  Robert Grace

  ~

  Wednesday, September 25

  “The third gun is missing?” Dina repeated. “But that’s impossible. I was very careful with the keys.” Her hair fluffed out like a rooster’s hackles, preparing my sister to take offence against any accusation of failing to do her duty. For all her rebellious style, she was a responsible young woman. She never missed a day’s work or flunked a class.

  “I k
now you were.” Audie jingled the keys in his pocket. “But I had a second set, and I kept them at the office. Somebody might have borrowed them, or made a copy, or something.”

  “But that’s. . .” Dina’s lip trembled. “That’s terrible. Have either one of you read the paper this morning?”

  I shook my head. Yesterday’s immersion in news would last me for a while.

  “Not yet,” Audie said. “I went straight to the theater.”

  “Look at this.” Dina shoved the Herald at us. “I have to keep up with the competition.”

  Penn’s murder remained on page one—the Herald would keep it there until the case was solved and the murderer sentenced—and today’s headline screamed: Hardy Shot with Vintage Gun.

  “Does it mention the murder weapon?” Audie asked over my shoulder.

  I scanned the paragraphs. “It doesn’t say. But the police are sure that Hardy was shot by a Colt revolver—”

  “—Probably a model 1892,” Dina finished for me. “The same kind we used in the play.”

  The three of us looked at each other. With all the guns in our part of the world, why didn’t the murderer choose a more modern weapon?

  “They’re going to suspect me again. Me and Cord.” Dina kept her tone light, but I could tell that the cloud of suspicion bothered her. “It was one of our guns. You know it was. It must have been.”

  “There’s no need to jump to conclusions,” Audie said. He used the kind of soothing voice that worked with babies. I could have told him that it wouldn’t work on my sister. “It says here that the police have sent the weapons used in the reenactment to the crime lab in Oklahoma City for further testing. It sounds like they don’t have a match for the murder weapon yet.”

  I could have warned him that logic probably wouldn’t work with Dina either.

  “But don’t you see? People are going to talk. They’re going to say, ‘I wonder what revolver they used in the play. That Wilde girl must know something about it.’ ”