Body Brace (Caught Dead in Wyoming, Book 10)

by Patricia McLinn

  The phone had a different idea.

  It rang less than a minute after reclosing my eyes.

  I could have waited it out, but caller ID said Audrey Adams, KWMT-TV.

  “Elizabeth, the sheriff’s department’s called a news conference.”

  “What about?” They’d already solved—?

  “Only said an ongoing case. Thirty-five minutes in the sheriff’s office.”

  Thoughts about the potential topic of the news conference sank beneath the jolt of the timing. “Thirty-five minutes? I’ll barely get there in time. What about—?”

  “He’s on his way. Not happy because it’s early. He’s probably already planning an extra nap this afternoon. If you don’t want to go… At least the story will get on-air with him covering it. Diana’s on another assignment, but I’m sending Jenks,” Audrey said.

  “Good.” The veteran cameraman had become my second-favorite. “I’m going, but Thurston will insist on doing the story.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll send you bullet points to check his story.”

  “Thank you,” she said fervently.

  Glad somebody’s day had improved.

  * * * *

  My phone rang again — probably a good thing, because I’d closed my eyes again. The call came fast enough to be an I-forgot-something-callback. I answered only with hello.

  “Elizabeth?”

  Not Audrey. A male voice, familiar.

  “Yes, this is Elizabeth Margaret Danniher of KWMT-TV.”

  “James Longbaugh here. There’s going to be an announcement about the disposition of Russell Teague’s Wyoming holdings. It will be held at the Teague Ranch. You’re welcome to come.”

  “A news conference?”

  “Wouldn’t call it that.”

  “But you’re inviting the media?”

  “Inviting you. And a few other selected people.”

  “Okay, what time?”

  “I’m asking you to meet at a, uh, staging location rather than going directly to Teague Ranch. If you’d be at the Circle B in two hours, please.”

  Tom Burrell’s ranch.

  Not a choice based solely on geography, even though Teague’s was the next ranch north of the Circle B. Executor duties? I felt my forehead crinkling as my eyebrows rose.

  But all I said was, “I’ll be there.”

  And hoped the Cottonwood County Sheriff’s Department was succinct.

  * * * *

  Sheriff Russ Conrad stood behind his desk — swept clear of its usual papers, the computer screen turned off, and no keyboard in sight.

  He looked tired. Others might think it was from working hard on whatever led to this announcement. I knew better.

  Shelton was on one side of him. Alvaro, Sampson, and the main desk officer named Ferrante on the other. I had the impression Ferrante slipped in front of the other two at the last second.

  Jenks was there and set up.

  Not straight in front, which would produce a boring and flat shot, but slightly at an angle to Conrad, with the potential to shift to Shelton and the trio.

  He winked at me.

  He’d taken the best position, leaving a crew from Cody a less advantageous spot. We were hitting the big-time to draw crews from out of town.

  It also meant the sheriff’s department called Cody well before notifying KWMT-TV of the news conference. Unless Thurston had turned off notifications again.

  Needham and Cagen came in, both nodding to me. Needham eyed Jenks’ set-up and sat in the one chair that would ruin it.

  Jenks said, “Hey.”

  Needham feigned innocence, the old devil. He did move, though.

  Sheriff Conrad gathered attention with a slight shift.

  “I won’t stand on ceremony. You all know who I am. I’m here today to let you know about fine policing done by the Cottonwood County Sheriff’s Department in identifying the body found Saturday in a cave in the buttes. That successful effort was led by Sergeant Wayne Shelton. He will give you the information. Sergeant Shelton.”

  The two men swapped spots, with the sheriff stepping behind Shelton, an unexpected gesture of modesty or generosity.

  Or cleverness.

  Especially since his self-introduction minimized the way it could be used in packages.

  Conrad took over as sheriff less than a year ago and, in a few more years, he’d face an election. He had a reputation for toughness. That might not get him support in the department. But ensuring the credit went to Shelton, who was popular with the deputies for unfathomable reasons, would.

  Shelton looked at each of the members of the media as if we were suspects.

  “The body found Saturday in a cave in our county was that of a long-time Cottonwood County resident last seen alive sixty-one years ago, by the name of Luther Tipton.”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  I sure got my wish for succinct.

  Though not my wish for much information. At least they confirmed he was Sally’s father.

  I was messaging Jennifer — and cc’ing the others — to call off the hunt for missing people in Cottonwood County, when Thurston Fine stood to leave with an aggrieved sniff.

  “A waste of my time,” he grumbled as he walked to the door, cutting off other people trying to exit. “Nobody cares about a nobody missing for decades.”

  I couldn’t totally disagree with the first part, since Shelton and Conrad clamped the lid down on any information past the identification and information from the original report that Tipton had been involved in a bar fight. Arriving law enforcement found the other participant badly hurt and no sign of Tipton.

  The next day, the other man died. Tipton’s truck was found not far away from the bar, out of gas. The official conclusion at the time was he’d wandered off and died somewhere.

  As for now, officials decreed no speculating on the cause of death, how or why Luther Tipton was found in a cave in the buttes, or anything else.

  Their refrain was that the investigation awaited results from scientific experts looking at the remains.

  Echoing my earlier question to Radford Hickam, I asked if there was any reason to rule out natural causes. That got a “that would be speculation at this time” and twin scowls.

  The second half of Thurston’s plaint — that nobody cared — was laughable, unless you worked for the same station he did, which drained the humor.

  As Jenks passed, I said quietly, “Audrey knows it’s a good story. You’ll get plenty of footage in.”

  He winked and kept going.

  As I messaged Audrey suggesting she put together a package for the network with today’s announcement supplemented by Diana’s best footage from the weekend, the Cody crew left, chattering about how viewers would love this up and they sure wished they could get into the cave. If only there hadn’t been another murder outside it.

  I stifled my victorious grin. Wait until they saw Diana’s stuff.

  Needham patted my shoulder, then leaned down to say close to my ear, “Some stories shouldn’t be chased.”

  I looked up in surprise, but he’d already moved on.

  I remained seated.

  What was bugging me about this?

  We now knew who the body in the cave was. He’d been missing more than sixty years, declared dead more than fifty years ago. Hickam had basically said he couldn’t rule out foul play, but couldn’t rule out an accident, either.

  “You going to sit there all day?”

  I looked up and saw Shelton and I were the only ones left in the sheriff’s office. Even Russ Conrad had left.

  “Maybe. Unless you answer some questions— No, not the ones you already said you wouldn’t answer. New ones. You suspected it was Luther Tipton from the start, didn’t you?”

  He almost grinned, replacing the urge with his more habitual scowl. But he pulled around a chair and sat facing me.

  “Kept it in mind as a possibility. Only man in the county who went missing that period.”

&
nbsp; “How’d you know what period before UW got the body?”

  “Vehicle keys. Right period. Right kind for what he drove.”

  “There were keys by the body and you didn’t tell me?” I hoped my indignation sufficiently covered Lloyd Sampson’s derriere from any exposure.

  His information hadn’t helped much, but that wasn’t his fault and I wanted to keep him in a position to be a source — unwitting, but still a source.

  Another part of my mind, though, noted that Mrs. Parens hadn’t had those advantages, yet I’d swear—

  “Not my job to tell you. As for the wallet, wasn’t surprised Luther Tipton’s wallet survived all these years. He didn’t ever pull it out voluntarily.”

  “You said he went missing nearly sixty-one years ago. You couldn’t have known—”

  “Glad you can do that much math, anyway. I wasn’t even thought of then. But my father and I used to go over the county’s cold cases, from the time I was a kid. Different one each weekend.”

  “Some families play board games or cards, maybe put together a puzzle. Figures the Sheltons combed over cold cases.”

  He didn’t deign to respond. “My father always said Luther Tipton kept his money in an iron grip.”

  “And what did your mother say? Was there any rhubarb pie involved with Luther Tipton?”

  Rhubarb pie had figured into his parents’ interactions with another old-time Cottonwood County resident and with their courtship.

  He t’ched. “She was a teenager when he disappeared. Dad not much older.”

  “Disappeared, huh?”

  “There one day, gone the next — or one night. After the fight outside the bar. Other guy died, Luther disappeared, presumed dead. The county didn’t go into mourning over either one.”

  I’d heard him tell the story about the bar fight from the original reports. Just wasn’t sure I believed it. “Not well liked?”

  I remembered Mrs. Parens saying her father worked for Luther Tipton for a brief time, leaving over his employer’s treatment of animals and people.

  “Doesn’t mean anything. Most folks stayed away from him. And he wasn’t the kind to go toe-to-toe. More a sidewinder.”

  “Sidewinder? Who are you? Gabby Hayes?”

  “Gabby Hayes? Who are you? A hundred-year-old cowboy?”

  “I might have watched a few old movies lately. Nothing wrong with that. It expands our horizons and puts us in touch with our cultural past. But what about the people who couldn’t stay away from Luther Tipton? Like his family. Like Sally.”

  He lifted one shoulder. “Sally was a kid.”

  “You and I both know that doesn’t mean she couldn’t have killed him. Especially if…”

  “Never any rumors about him messing with her.”

  But he and his Dad had considered it during their cold case roundtables, or he wouldn’t have answered so quickly. “What about Sally’s mother?”

  “Long dead. Driven into an early grave, according to most of the county.”

  “Just him and Sally, living alone?”

  “Not for long. He married a woman from South Dakota about six months after they buried Sally’s mother.”

  “Ah.”

  “No ah.” He exhaled shortly. “They looked into that. Looked into it plenty. The stepmother and Sally were both on the place when he disappeared. Came into town to report it together. Sheriff tried to get one to say they’d seen the other do something suspicious, or had been away for a while to open an opportunity. They said they were together the whole time.”

  “Mutual alibis? Really? Nobody considered they could be accomplices?”

  “Problem with that is everybody said Sally and the stepmother hated each other — neighbors, the school, the preacher, even the band of despicables Luther played cards and drank with. No outward conflict, because Luther would whale away on both if either of them disrupted his peace … or for other reasons if the spirit moved him. But never spent a second with each other they didn’t have to. Didn’t have a good word to say about each other.”

  “Misdirection? Conspiracy?” I’d used those same words with Mrs. P in a discussion of a hypotheses about the Montana Road and the building of the railroad … when the discussion wasn’t about that at all.

  “Then it was a conspiracy they started the day Luther brought his second wife back to Cottonwood County and it continued every day before and after his disappearance. Everybody said, those two females did not like each other.”

  He looked at me without moving his head.

  “Including Emmaline Parens. As soon as the Tipton place sold and they split the proceeds in front of an old judge — who declared Luther gone for good, if not dead until the seven years were up — the stepmother packed up and went back to South Dakota. Barely waited long enough to put Sally with a local family. That’s where she stayed until she finished school. Her share from the sale of the property was enough for that little house of hers. Right out of school, she started working at the high school cafeteria and stayed there until she retired.”

  “But if Luther Tipton left his vehicle on the highway, how did he get to—?”

  He stood. “No more buts. No more questions. Get your foot out of the door, Danniher. Metaphorically speaking. Time for you to go. And that’s not metaphorically speaking.”

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Before I was even out the sheriff’s department door — not metaphorically speaking — my phone rang.

  The sheriff’s department news conference.

  James Longbaugh’s call.

  What next?

  I kept walking to be clear of listening ears. It also gave me a chance to see I had a message from Jennifer.

  It rang twice more before I answered.

  Aunt Gee was what was next.

  “You need to come to the hospital, Elizabeth. Sally wants to see you. Right now.”

  “You said that before, but—”

  “You and Diana. She’s on her way. We need you both.”

  * * * *

  Diana appeared at the open driver’s window of my SUV in the hospital parking lot, startling only half of the life out of me.

  “Putting off going inside?”

  “I’m making phone calls,” I said with dignity. I held up my phone. “Say hi to Mike and Jennifer.”

  Diana had circles under her eyes but seemed cheerful. I added those to Conrad’s appearance and came up with a suspicion.

  “Hi, Mike and Jennifer. Wait a second and I’ll get in the passenger seat so I can hear better.”

  With her settled in beside me, Mike said, “Okay, enough build-up. Who’s the body in the cave? No fair keeping Jennifer and me in suspense.”

  “I already know,” Jennifer said. “Elizabeth messaged me from the news conference. And it’s my fault we didn’t figure it out first. If I’d started searching missing people from my setup right away instead of being in Chicago—”

  “Hey, it’s not anybody’s fault and the important thing is the body’s identified,” I said.

  “Who is the body?” Mike asked plaintively. “Everybody knows but me.”

  “Luther Tipton. Sally’s father.”

  “Sally Tipton’s father? Why isn’t he in the cemetery like everybody else?”

  “He went missing when Sally was barely a teenager. Long presumed dead, but now the question is what was he doing in the cave.”

  “Oh, right, I do remember hearing something about that. Interesting. Has he been in the cave all along?”

  “Looks like it. Shelton suspected it was Luther from the start. He was holding out on us and still is. News conference my derriere. It was a deliberate move to get the word out widely so we couldn’t find it out ourselves, then leverage that information to force more information out of Shelton.”

  “When you put it that way, it was downright rude of them to disclose the ID,” Diana said.

  “Go ahead, be sarcastic, but it was.”

  “Elizabeth. The experts found enough identificat
ion in the man’s wallet to make it official—”

  “And that’s another thing. Not waiting for the DNA? The final report from the forensic anthropologist?”

  “You know the dental records matched.”

  “After sixty years? How is that even possible?”

  “It’s possible when the current Dr. Fortinel is the third generation in that practice and they don’t throw anything out.”

  “How do you know all details, Diana?” Jennifer asked.

  “Jenks sent me his footage.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Mike asked. “Luther’s been dead a long time, no matter what. Not like your other victim.”

  “Not my victim—”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Jennifer spoke up. “About Palmer Rennant, did you make anything of those Miners’ Camp Fight accounts?”

  I groaned. “I read them. Not much.”

  “Me, either. Took me forever to decipher that handwriting. I kept trying to figure out why they were capitalizing When until I realized it was the name of one of the guys. I thought it was the deserted When, but it must have been they deserted When … and then the poor guy had his head split open. They must have felt guilty about it.”

  I hadn’t gotten any sense of guilt from what I’d read, but I’d have to try the difficult handwriting again. I had gotten more than his head was split open.

  “You know, one good thing about the sheriff’s department’s news conference,” Mike said, “is it solves one of those three mysteries you said we had going. We can put more energy in this … and Mrs. P.”

  Unwilling to acknowledge Luther Tipton as wrapped up, I said. “We’ve gotta go. Sally Tipton asked to see us. Both of us.”

  Mike said. “She’s up and talking? Good for her. I thought she wasn’t doing well.”

  “She isn’t.”

  * * * *

  “How’d it go after I left last night?” I asked Diana as we walked into the hospital.

  “First, thank you for coming. I might not have shown how much I appreciated the support. Shadow was a huge help. He was in with Gary. Then, when I was leaving Jessica’s room, he slipped in and crawled in with her. He put each of my kids to bed last night.”