A Rendezvous to Die For (22 page)

Hammer cocked, I braced myself,
gritted my teeth, and pulled the trigger. The gun exploded at the end
of my hand, pushing me back against Jack and jerking my hand up in
the air. “My target would have been laughing uproariously with that
shot,” I said, watching the splatter of sand that flew up when the
bullet hit the earthen backdrop.

“
It’ll get better, Cass.”
Jack smothered his laugh. “Before you know it, holding a .38 will
be as automatic as holding your thirty-five mm.”

“
That, I seriously doubt.” I
felt as if I were on a runaway bus, driving, but completely out of
control. This latest step—arming myself—might help relieve some
of my fears, but I was skeptical of how I’d handle myself in a
situation that required a gun. Being a realist, however, I knew I had
to take steps to defend myself and not remain a sitting duck. I was
turning some undefined corner in my life. Where, I wondered, would it
take me?

“
Let’s try again,” Jack
said, showing me how to plant my feet and point at the target. By
keeping at it for the next hour, I managed to ding the target with at
least one out of five bullets. It increased my confidence, but not
much.

Back in the parking lot, Jack
bumped me with his shoulder as we strolled towards his truck. “You
were bearing down on that target like your life depended on it,” he
said. “Were you seeing any face in particular?”

“
Maybe. Maybe not.” Then I
dropped the news I’d so far neglected to share with him. “The
carriage house was fire-bombed last night.”

He stopped, grabbed my arm, and
spun me around. “Damn it, Cassandra!” he said. “I told you to
get out of that place until this is all over. Now maybe you’ll
listen to me. The only good thing is you don’t live in that
firetrap where you used to live.” We resumed our trip across the
parking lot. “Did it do much damage?”

“
Some. The deck was destroyed.”
I kicked a stone out of the way. “But more to the point, I’d like
to know who is doing this to me, Jack.”

“
I talked with one of your top
suspects today,” he said, pausing. “A Mr. Guy Strothers.”

My head spun around so fast I
almost got a whiplash. “What did you just say? What kind of
conversation?”

“
Strothers stopped at the
stable today. He pounded me with all kinds of questions about one of
our boarders. Virgil Dewitt.”

“
Midnight’s owner?”

“
Right.”

“
Is he interested in buying
Midnight?” The thought of not having him in my life hurt.

Jack shot me a worried look. “He
asked a lot of questions about the horse, but they weren’t
questions an experienced horse person would ask. I think he was more
interested in Virgil.”

I relaxed a bit. “What did you
tell him?”

“
I didn’t even tell him his
name,” Jack said. “We just talked about ‘the owner.’ But he
kept bringing the conversation back to the owner so often, it
bothered me.”

“
Like . . . how?”

“
Like whether the owner comes
to the stables to ride him and, if so, when he comes. Like how far
away the owner lives. He came right out and asked me where he lives,
on the pretense that he’d like to see him to talk about the horse.”

\
“Did you tell him?”

“
Of course not. Anyway, I
couldn’t, even if I’d wanted to. I don’t know where he lives.
He always pays Midnight’s board in cash.”

“
How often does he come?”

“
Once a month. And on those
visits, he rarely checks on Midnight. He just peels off a couple of
bills and he’s out of there.”

I stroked my forehead and felt
the worry wrinkles. “I’d sure like to know what drove Strothers
to drive all the way out to the stables to ask those questions. Anna
knows a lot about him and she’s due back in town tomorrow. I’m
going to ask her if she knows of any connection between . . . what’s
his name?”

“
Virgil Dewitt.”

“
Right. Between Strothers and
Virgil Dewitt.”

On the way home, I reiterated
where I stood. Law enforcement held most of the cards and most of the
tools needed to solve the three crimes. What did I have that the
police and sheriff might not have? Marty had bad feelings toward all
three of the victims. Eric had been blackmailing Strothers. I had a
flimsy photo of Strothers’ truck at the Rendezvous, but I couldn’t
very well tell them how I got the picture. I had seen Strothers drive
to a farmhouse outside the city and hold a several-hours meeting with
a man in overalls and red suspenders. I had seen that suspendered man
on a hiking trail and taken his picture. Strothers had questioned
Jack about the owner of a horse.

Back in my darkroom, I knew I had
two tools that might give me an edge—my camera and my computer.
And, I had some hazy images on a disc the sheriff didn’t know I
possessed. Putting away all my concerns about who was out to “get”
me, I carefully examined the dozen parking lot photos, to see if I
could put Strothers or any of my other suspects at the scene. I went
over them again with the Mac equivalent of a fine-tooth comb. Trying
all the tricks my Photoshop program could provide, I clicked on the
magnifying zoom tool and pointed it in the corner of the first image.
A click of the mouse doubled the portion of the image.

I proceeded through the first
photo—across, down, across, down—until I’d explored every inch
of it. All I had to show for the tedious exercise was close-up shots
of vehicle doors, windows, an occasional face or arm, and a few
stretches of empty parking lot. The next two photos revealed as
little as the first one. I remembered that when I’d returned to the
parking lot on the day of the Rendezvous, it was still fairly early
in the day, so most attendees of the event had already vacated the
parking lot.

The next two photos showed a
couple of stragglers strolling toward the Rendezvous grounds. The
first one in my zoom search was a woman. The second had
possibilities. It showed a man walking toward me as I snapped his
picture. Unfortunately, he had turned his head at that very instant,
resulting in a blurred image. I printed out the photo for further
examination anyway and moved on to the next one, hoping I had taken
another shot with the man facing me. But the next one was more of the
same—vehicles and the stomped-on grass parking lot.

I switched my focus on the as yet
unexamined group of six hoping they would be more revealing. The
first photo revealed nothing more than trees and more parking lot.
The second showed a shape of what looked to be a person in the
periphery of the shot. I opened the next image, hoping to see more
details. For once, I had turned the camera in the right direction. A
man was approaching the parked vehicles from the edge of the lot,
which was bordered by trees. Was it a man? Hard to tell. The person
was wearing a long coat that extended to the top of the his/her
footwear. The good news was that I had a full shot. The bad news was
that the face was hidden by the morning shadows and a fur hat was
pulled over the eyes. I printed the picture and moved on to the next
two. They caught a portion of the person again, just at the edge of
the photo. The last two photos showed more parking lot and trees.

I returned to those revealing a
person and zoomed in again, studying the image inch by inch. A beard
was peeking out from the turned-up collar of the coat. I could now
assume the mystery person was a man. I printed out a stack of
close-ups to examine side by side. The man’s outfit suggested he
was a Rendezvous participant. I tried to recall if I’d seen the man
in the dozens of photos I’d taken at the event. My memory was
defective, so I brought up the entire portfolio of computer images
and ran through them to see if he appeared again. No luck.

With my brain fried, I decided to
take a break, lift some weights, and put a few miles on my treadmill.
After my workout, I showered and changed. As I was pulling on my
shirt, the image of the man crossing the parking lot popped into my
head. Something about that picture bothered me. The thought sat just
beyond my consciousness and wouldn’t come forth. I put in a call to
Anna and she invited me to meet her for a couple drinks. “Bring the
photos with you,” she said. “Maybe I can help. And let’s hold
our repast at Red’s Roadhouse.”

Red’s Roadhouse was a
new supper club that had opened up a couple of months ago. Anna had
stopped in one night and pronounced it “just fine,” which I took
to mean “fine by Colton Mills standards.” With my head feeling as
if it were in overdrive, I looked forward to an evening of
alcohol-inspired downshifting.
The
roadhouse still retained the shake-shingled outside wall that had
defined the former establishment. Now, however, the door had been
painted a bright red. Inside, chrome and stainless steel had replaced
the heavy dark wood and the reds favored by seventies supper-club
designers—red booths, red drapes, red carpet. There must be a
supper-club designer bible somewhere, for I’d seen the same look in
many towns. Red’s was a decided improvement. Maybe in twenty years,
critics would scoff, but I was impressed. Mrs. A would have
pronounced it “ritzy.”

The dining room was on the right.
I turned left into the bar. It was dark. Across the room, a dim light
illuminated a guitarist who was perched on a stool and strumming in
an unfocused style, as if he were looking for chords he’d lost. At
first, I couldn’t see much of anything, after coming in from the
lighted room. I shaded my eyes, to find Anna. As my eyes adjusted to
the lack of light, a raised arm waved me to a booth against the wall
and midway across the room. “Hi, Anna,” I said, as I leaned in
for a hug. The startled face of another person swam into my field of
vision. “Willis! I’m so sorry. I thought . . . .” I was without
words to explain my faux pas. My familiar world wobbled on its axis.
Anna grinned from her place beside him. “Nice to see both of you.”
I tossed my briefcase onto the bench before me and slid onto the
padded seat across from them.

“
Nice to see you too, Cass,”
Anna said, purring like a contented kitten. No explanation about
Willis, but what did I expect from someone with Anna’s aplomb? I
ordered a Sam Adams.

Anna filled me in on her recent
buying trip. Willis told Anna about our black-powder-shooting
afternoon. I sipped my beer, relaxing. The guitar player had found
his groove. A very nice one, I thought dreamily. Original stuff with
riffs that could make Eric Clapton take notice.

Anna was giggling. “Cassandra,
you are much too immersed in the 1840s.” She leaned toward Willis,
who fondly took her hand in his own. The tableau unnerved me. What
was Anna drinking?

“
Speaking of the 1840s, I’ve
got something to show you,” I said, pulling out my briefcase. Just
as I reached for the photos, Jack’s .38 clattered onto the table.

“
Why, what on earth,
Cassandra?” Anna threw me an alarmed look. “When did you start
carrying a firearm?”

I hastily replaced the .38 into
my briefcase and pulled out the folder of photos. “I had a couple
of scary incidents while you were away.” I filled her in on the man
in the woods and the firebomb incident. “Of course, that’s in
addition to my darkroom being trashed.”

“
That’s awful, just awful!”
She clasped her hand over her mouth. “Who do you think is
responsible?”

“
If I knew that, the guy would
be in jail. Could be anyone, I guess.”

Anna reached across the table to
squeeze my hand. “I’ve told you Strothers is a vindictive man,
Cassandra.”

“
I think Strothers is after
someone else in this area.” I told her about his visit to the
stables.

“
Virgil Dewitt,” she said and
frowned. “That name doesn’t ring a bell.” She turned to Willis.
“Do you know him, Willis?”

“
No, I do not, Sorry,” he
said, sipping his glass of wine.

“
I’d really like to know if
Strothers has some connection to Dewitt,” I said. “Do you think
any of your Chicago friends could help?”

She nodded. “I’ll call a
friend there. She may know who he is.”

“
I’d appreciate that, Anna.”
I fanned the photos out on the table, facing Anna and Willis. “But,
meanwhile, I have another mystery to solve. I took these in the
Rendezvous parking lot the day of the murder,” I said. “In fact,
it could have been near the time of the murder. I had returned to my
car to replace my battery packs and shot these on my digital. Do you
find anything unusual about them?”

Anna studied them closely through
her half glasses. “The man’s dressed in frontier clothing,” she
said. “What was the temperature that day, do you remember?”

“
It was really hot for June,”
I said. “In the eighties. I remember sweating up a storm.”

She tilted her head, pursing her
lips. “Isn’t it rather strange that the person is dressed in a
fur hat, long coat, and long, laced-up moccasin boots on such a hot
day? People who dress for Rendezvous try to stay in character, not
only for the period, but also for the weather. He must have been
sweltering in that outfit.”

I’d totally missed the
significance of the winter clothing. Maybe that was what was so
jarring about the photo. “Do you recognize any of the clothing,
Anna?”