Dead in Hog Heaven (A Thea Barlow Mystery, Book Three)

by Carol Caverly

  "I've already got my men looking for him," he said, leading me firmly toward Max.

  "You do?" I said, totally surprised. "How did you know?"

  "I called the professor Max talked to at the college. While he was corroborating Max's story he mentioned that the largest diamond deposits found in formations similar to those around here are in Australia. That and the fact that Colton and Dan Lorenzo were close buddies awhile back was enough to arouse my curiosity. I ran a check on him."

  He deposited me by Max, who was propped up on both elbows, looking as alert as a person can look with a chicken hunkered down on his belly.

  "What's this about Colton?" he asked Rusty.

  "He worked for years in and around the Australian Argyle diamond fields. Has a record there a mile long: assault and battery, theft, suspicion of murder, you name it. A real loose canon. I want to check his papers, see if he's in the country legally or not." He turned to leave. "I need to find my reinforcements; they should have had him by now. What about that evidence?" he asked me.

  I could tell by the tone of his voice that he wasn't expecting much, but when I described the belt with the scrap of ribbon caught in it, he sprang to attention. He gave a low whistle. "Let's go get it." But the whop, whop, whop of the helicopter detained him. "Stay here. I'll be back." He took off to supervise the landing.

  "I'll get the belt, Max. I don't want anything to happen to it."

  I hurried through the throngs of onlookers now gravitating toward the landing helicopter.

  Most of the booths were empty; the few owners who chose to stay close to their merchandise were standing in-between the booths or at the end of the rows, anywhere that they could view the action. I thought I could walk right up to the stall where I'd left the box of bargains. I knew it was in the first aisle, but found I couldn't identify which one of the many merchants offering similar items was the one I'd stopped at. I began to peer under the tables, looking for the box itself.

  "Hey," a voice yelled from another aisle, "somebody robbed our till!"

  Seconds later, another. "Our money's gone!"

  I backed out of one booth and went to the next. The owners surged back to their stalls.

  "Shit! Mine, too," a man not far from me said.

  I lifted the drape on the table of the next booth. The box wasn't there, but might have been moved. I ducked into the booth for a better look.

  "What are you doing?" A man dressed in knee britches, vest, and a loose shirt grabbed my arm and pulled me back out of the booth. "What are you doing in there?" he demanded again.

  Another man burst through an opening from the next aisle. His eyes lit on me. "There she is!" he said, assessing the gathering group of costumed merchants in an instant. Wiley Colton!

  Before I could protest, he seized my arm and twisted it behind my back. I yelped with pain.

  "I've had me eye on this bird," he said. "She's been going from booth to booth, taking what she can."

  "No! He's—" His other hand whipped to my neck, the thumb and forefinger pressing deep into the hollows behind my ears. My knees wobbled, my mouth slackened, consciousness flickered like an expiring light.

  "I'm taking her to the sheriff." He eased the pressure behind my ears and shoved me along with him. "Tote up your losses, mates," he said, deterring any who might have wanted to tag along. "We'll get this taken care of."

  He pushed me in front of him, wrenching my arm at the least sign of resistance. Out of sight of the booths he hustled me toward the walkway into the Hog Heaven compound, ducking in and out among the people, mostly couples with children, who were wanting to get away from the danger zone. "Where's the bloody diamond?" he hissed in my ear.

  "What diamond?"

  "Don't play innocent, luv. You'll regret it." He gave my arm, still twisted behind my back, another shove toward my shoulder. I yelped in pain. A young man trying to herd his wife and three little children past all the distractions and through the front gate looked up. The Aussie quickly turned me away from them, passing my cry off as a joke. They went through the gate. Colton shoved me behind a red-and-white-striped concession tent.

  He held me in front of him, my back to his chest so no one could see the treacherous hold he had on my arm. We weren't hidden, just out of the way, standing between the back of the tent and the parking lot fence.

  "Don't even think about screaming," he said, reading my intention. He let me see the thin sliver of a knife he pulled from the folds of his baggy pants, then held it against my back, letting the point dig in enough to straighten my spine.

  "One sound and I'll slide it in your liver, luv. Now, where's the diamond? The auld bitch told me she gave it to you, so don't lie."

  "Who? Who are you talking about?"

  "Opal Bodie. Don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about." He shook me. "The bitch told me she put the diamond in a safe place, then when I prodded her some more"—he dug the knife's point in a little deeper, as if to demonstrate—"she told me she gave it to you. Where is it? I'm going to need all the money I can get to get out of here." He kept his eyes on the people trickling through the gate, and looked around the corner of the tent. I was angled away from him and had a better view of the parking lot through the fence. I thought I saw the brown uniform of a deputy, but my view was blocked before I could be certain.

  "She didn't give me anything," I began to say, but then the knife broke the skin. "All right," I gasped. "I have the diamond." I knew how Opal must have felt. Terrified. Willing to say anything to save her life.

  "That's the way, luv. Where is it?"

  "My car," I said desperately. I knew he wouldn't believe me if I told him I'd given the diamond to the sheriff, and the thought that there might be a deputy in the parking lot seemed like my best chance.

  "It wasn't in your car before." His eyes hardened with suspicion.

  "So it was you who trashed my car, and my house, too?"

  "So what if it was? I should have stuck you then and been done with it."

  "How did you get in?" I asked, surprised that I could be interested in details at such a time. But I was.

  "Your friend Yvonne flipped the lock on your door." He grinned maliciously, enjoying the telling. "You didn't know she was such a slick bird, did you? Then she called me to say the coast was clear."

  Yvonne. What a dupe I'd been. I'd been so sure the door was locked. My usual fiddling with the key must have simply locked then unlocked the door.

  He loosened his grip on my wrist and let my arm drop. Just as quickly he grabbed me around the waist with his right arm, pulling me close to his side. He held his left hand at my waist with the knife blade partially concealed by our shirts, but I could feel its threat, digging me in the side. He moved us quickly away from the tent, melding into and through another group of people passing through the gate into the parking lot.

  "You're sure that diamond's in your car? Not bloody lying to me, luv, now are you?"

  "After you looked through it once it seemed like the best place to hide it again."

  "Well, we'll find out, won't we? Which way?"

  "Second row," I said quickly, leading him away from the spot close to the entrance gate where my car sat hopelessly exposed now that the rural fire truck had left its place behind mine.

  We lurched awkwardly over the uneven ground, dodging the cars inching their way out of parking spots. I searched frantically for any sign of a brown uniform.

  "So that was you shooting at the hillside, wasn't it, dressed in that silly little monk's robe?" I said, wondering how I could distract him. How was I going to break away from him if I did find a deputy? "You nearly blew my head off with that shot."

  "Too bad you took me by surprise," he said with a sly grin. He was enjoying this. "Or I would have got you good with the next one."

  "Blown to bits by diamonds, rubies and sapphires," I said sarcastically. "What a way to go."

  All traces of humor disappeared from his face. "So you know that, too. You and the
auld bitch must have had some kind of game cooked up, didn't ya?"

  I was struck by an appalling thought. "You went right from killing Opal to the claim site. No, first you went back to the store and searched my car, didn't you? What did you do, send Dan up to find me? You probably even told him some cock-and-bull story about how I killed Opal."

  "Aren't you a smart bird? Where's your friggin' car?"

  "You're a cold-hearted bastard." I knew my time had run out, and that he'd have no compunction about running that blade in me whether he was caught or not. "Over there," I said, pointing to the next row, where there was a largish group of people. "It's behind the guy in the straw cowboy hat."

  He cut between two cars, jerking me along with him. Then fortune struck. His left foot stepped hard into an unseen depression. He lurched off balance, his knife arm pulled away in an automatic reflex for balance. I screamed like a banshee, throwing myself in the opposite direction, but his grip on my waist didn't break.

  "He's got a knife!" I screamed again, and tried to stomp his feet, and jab an elbow into his belly. I swung my right fist blindly across my body, aiming for an eye, a nose. Anything to keep the knife from finding its mark. A blond who'd just loaded her toddler into a van grabbed her backpack by the straps and slung it at the Aussie seconds before a tan-shirted deputy grabbed Colton's knife arm from behind, immobilizing him. Free from his grip, I couldn't stop myself. I bashed my fist into his eye. "That's for Opal," I said, taking another shot at his nose. "And that's for me!" I marveled—with no regrets—when blood began to dribble from his nose, and would have continued raining blows for a litany of friends, if someone hadn't grabbed me from behind. Rusty.

  Chapter 28

  Wiley Colton was hauled off. Rusty and I located and retrieved my box of bargains. At the same time, he told the angry group of vendors that it was the Aussie who had robbed their cash boxes, and recompense would follow. "He was planning to leave town with as much easy money as he could find."

  Rusty was suitably impressed with Colton's incriminating belt. "I don't think he knew I had it," I told him.

  "He might have dropped it in the box without noticing the ribbon. He's a sharp enough customer that if he'd seen that, he'd have disposed of it in quite a different manner. Good work, Thea." He handed the box to two of his men. "Here's our case, guys. Take good care of it."

  I followed him back to the fire and Max. Sugar rushed to greet me. I picked her up, held her close and scratched her feathers. She nuzzled my neck. We were buddies. I couldn't believe it.

  Max was sitting up now, and looked amazingly well. Charlotte sat by the woman and her husband, who still hovered protectively by him. A medic had taped his ribs, but he moved gingerly when he turned to me and held out his hand.

  The helicopter had taken off with Dan and Monty. There wasn't room for Max, who, with broken ribs and a mild concussion, wasn't deemed as seriously injured as the other two. However, his crutches were gone and we'd need help to get him to the car. The third man was still missing and feared to be a casualty.

  The fire seemed to be under control. The line of people at the edge of the blaze stood at rest, only occasionally swinging a wet bag onto an errant flame. Twila and Clyde walked by, arguing intently. "Let the professionals fight the fire," I heard Clyde say. "You got no business being out there slinging a sack for so long."

  "Don't you tell me what to do, Clyde Bodie."

  "Twila," I called. "Here's Sugar." She whirled, surprised to see her chicken in my arms.

  "Made another friend, I see," she said acerbically. Sugar stretched her neck at the sound of her master's voice.

  I handed her over. "You're right. She is a hero."

  Twila harrumphed, but was too exhausted to be aggressive. Her bristly hair stood on end, her clothes were soaked and covered with grime.

  "Come and sit down with us," Charlotte said, to my surprise. "You need to hear the story of what happened here today." She pulled them into our group, huddling close and I got the feeling that she was feeding off the bright, uncomplicated auras of honest people, regaining her strength. She held Clyde's hand and looked at me.

  "Wiley Colton has been arrested for Opal's murder," I told him.

  "Wiley Colton? The Aussie?"

  "Yes." I told them about Colton's belt that I'd found, then Max and I filled them in on the rest of the story. "There's a lot that we don't know yet, but I'm sure that when Rusty talks to Dan we'll find out all the details."

  Clyde shook his head in disbelief. "Diamonds," he snorted. "Of all the fool ideas. I woulda thought Dan and Ronnie Mae had more sense."

  "Humph," Twila snorted. "Good sense was never a strong commodity for those two."

  "But I'll tell you this," he said, "if Opal found one of their diamonds, she'd know what it was all right. She's been a rock hound all her life, always collecting stones of one kind or another. I just don't know why she didn't tell me about it, is all."

  "She didn't have time, Clyde," Twila consoled him. "She was busy getting ready for the town meeting, and I don't think she knew for sure what Dan and Ronnie Mae were up to anyway. That's why she wanted me to come by with my truck that morning. Said she hadn't been out back on the property for a long time, and wanted to check things out. She probably would have told us both about her suspicions, but..."

  "She didn't have a chance," Clyde finished for her. He rubbed one of his heavy hands roughly across his face. We were all silent for a minute. Then he said, "I knew Danny and that Aussie was good friends a year or so back, then it just kinda died out, and I didn't see him around so much. Once in awhile I thought I saw his truck out behind Danny's trailer, but never paid no mind to it."

  "Once they put the plan in motion and started salting the site, they probably didn't want to draw attention to themselves anymore," Max commented.

  Clyde shook his head, still trying to make sense out of what he was hearing. "So it was his truck I saw leaving Hog Heaven that morning," Clyde said wearily. "If I'd been closer I would have recognized it, and none of the rest of this would have happened. I'm sorry for the trouble you've been through," he said to me. "I always knew you couldn't have done such a horrible thing, or Danny either. Hasn't got it in him."

  Twila sniffed indignantly. "I guess we all got fooled by that Sullivan woman. All those times she called on Opal admiring her artwork, I suppose she was really just out here keeping an eye on Dan and Ronnie Mae."

  "We don't know the details yet, but I suspect Yvonne was the brains and the money behind the whole deal."

  "She played us all like a fiddle," Charlotte put in. "Me, the sheriff's wife, more than anyone else. One way or another, she knew everything that went on in town. She had us all under her thumb."

  "Except for Sugar," I said, remembering how Yvonne had detested Twila's pet. Sugar heard her name and rose from Twila's lap to strut importantly in front of us. "Sugar is the real hero of the day." I told them all how Sugar had grabbed the burning fuse and saved us all from another deadly explosion.

  Twila was delighted with the story. "I saw her running around out there, but didn't want to take the time to catch her. Fighting the fire seemed more important. She can take care of herself pretty good."

  She can indeed, I thought.

  * * *

  "What I really don't understand is, why did Yvonne and Colton want to kill Dan?" I asked.

  It was two weeks later. The funerals were over: Opal's, Ronnie Mae's, and the man in the leather apron, whose name I'd never learned. His reenactor friends had taken the body back to Montana where he was from, with a great deal of help and concern from the community. Monty had been released from the hospital, but was still bed-ridden with broken ribs, a severe concussion, and burns on his arms and legs. Dan had been flown to Denver with similar injuries, but worse in all cases, and was still there. Max had been more fortunate, freakishly shielded from the worst of the blast and fire by the picnic table. His wounds were well on the mend, his leg in a new walking cast.

  R
usty, Charlotte, Max and I were seated around the white ash table in Max's adobe house, a loaded picnic basket standing at the ready by the back door.

  "I believe they thought that with Dan dead they could pin both the murders on him on the strength of circumstantial evidence and retain the mining claim for themselves," Rusty said, answering my question. "They were part of the corporation whose name it was filed under. Besides, they knew Dan was getting scared and beginning to realize how vulnerable he was. They were afraid he was going to talk. Which he is, freely, to me, to Clyde, to anyone willing to listen. As is Colton, whose main concern is that Yvonne Sullivan gets her due share of blame. There was a lot of bad blood between all of them. Evidently, the idea for the scam originated with Colton, who was familiar with lamproite formations. He came up with the salting scheme and Dan and Ronnie Mae went along with it. Colton went to New Mexico, looking for the proper rough to salt the site with, and caught Yvonne's attention. She knows the gem business and had the right contacts. She put up the money and expected a large share of the profits. Or, as Dan and Colton complained, took over the whole operation. Ronnie Mae hated her, and created one hassle after another. She thought she should be the boss because the land was hers. She kept threatening to cut Yvonne out of the deal, felt they could run it on their own. That's why Dan thinks she killed her. Yvonne is still proclaiming her innocence and throwing the blame on Dan."

  "What do you think?" I asked.

  "There's as much circumstantial evidence against her as there is against Dan," was all he would say.

  "And were we right?" Max asked. "Did Opal find out about their salting scheme?"

  "I don't know how much she suspected, but Dan poured the whole story out to both Clyde and me," Rusty replied. "You also guessed right about their method for salting the claim. Opal walked into the store's back room while Dan was loading one of the shotgun shells with the salting mix. He was so surprised he dropped the shell on the floor, scattering the stuff. As luck would have it—bad luck—Opal picked up the diamond. Danny didn't know if she knew what it was or not, but she wasn't satisfied with his explanations and wouldn't give it back to him. Dan was too frightened to demand its return."