Buffalo Bill's Defunct (9781564747112) (15 page)

Rob took a pencil from a tray on the desk and used it to flip the wallet open. An Oregon driver’s license lay exposed, address in Portland. It had been issued to Edward Leon Redfern.

Rob felt as if someone had socked him in the kidneys. He cleared his throat. “Where did you find it, in the file cabinet?”

“Stuffed down behind a bunch of folders.”

He continued to stare down at the hopeful young face. Linda shifted beside him. He spared her a glance. “Good work, Deputy.”

Her teeth gleamed in a smile. “It’s a link, huh?”

“It is.” It was more than that. It was damn near an explanation. All kinds of random data clicked into place, like a slot machine running a winner, three cherries in a row. Rob felt a surge of anger at Brandstetter so strong the air took on a red haze.

But Brandstetter was dead, too. Shit. He took the right glove off again, pulled out his cell phone, switched the power back on, and used the speed dial to reach the sheriff, who was going to shit bricks and hit the fan, probably in reverse order.

M
EG
went to dinner with Carol Tichnor. Carol was paying. She hated to dine alone, she had said as she extended the invitation in Meg’s chaotic living room. Meg wasn’t sure why she agreed. She didn’t like Carol.

“Vulgar curiosity, my dear,” she told herself as she parked the Accord outside the Red Hat’s rustic restaurant.

It was seven and dark. Carol sat at the bar with an empty margarita glass on the high counter in front of her. A stuffed elk head stared balefully down on a scene of subdued chatter. There was no sawdust on the floor. Handsome people dressed for the weekend by Norm Thompson clustered in twos and fours around rustic tables. They were waiting to be called into the restaurant. Meg was glad she’d taken the trouble to put on a cowl-necked cashmere top over velour pants.

She ordered Scotch-rocks and perched on the high stool next to Carol. She hated high stools. Her feet swung like a six-year-old’s at a soiree. “How’s it going?”

Carol gave a short laugh. “Great, considering I spent two fucking hours repeating myself.”

“I take it Lieutenant Neill showed up to question you. He was pretty busy this afternoon.”

“Not too busy to waste my time.” She brooded. The bartender set a fresh margarita in front of her, removed the empty, and placed Meg’s drink on a small cardboard coaster decorated with a red hunting hat. “And he didn’t tell me a damn thing.”

Meg took a swallow. Not Laphroaig.

“He just kept on and on about the keys. I don’t see the point.”

Meg thought the point was obvious.

“And he wanted to know about my business.”

“Your antiques shop?”

Carol drank and licked salt from her lips. “How do you know… oh, good old Darcy.”

“She’s a bit intrusive.”

Carol dismissed Darcy with a wiggle of her fingers. “I specialize in needlework, not Indian junk.”

The flute player was hardly junk. Meg said, “Quilts?”

“Some. Mostly white-on-white embroidery and appliqué-work. Old lace.”

“Must be interesting. Where do you find your stock?”

That was good for ten minutes on the joys of business travel. Carol traveled a lot, mostly in the South and Northeast, occasionally in Belgium and France. They finished their drinks. Melting ice had rendered the whisky innocuous. Carol ordered another margarita.

“Tichnor, party of two.” The hostess bearing menus.

Carol made a face at the bartender, canceling her drink, and they rose. Meg slid off the stool with a thud.

The dining room faced the river but it was too dark to see much. When they had ordered, baked turbot for Meg, planked salmon for Carol, and Carol had approved the wine, a local shiraz-merlot blend that tasted surprisingly good, Carol said, “Ethan’s in a snit. He’ll miss his Sunday afternoon symphony concert.”

“You contacted your brothers?”

“Deputy Dawg did. He got through to Ethan and left a message for Vance. I think Vance and Moira went to Salishan for the weekend.”

It was plain that Rob’s attractiveness had worn off where Carol was concerned. He cracked the whip one too many times, Meg reflected, amused.

The waitress brought warm herb bread and a mesclun salad dressed with a subtle vinaigrette.

At that point, Carol made an effort to play the gracious hostess. She asked Meg why she had moved to Klalo. Carol was enough of a Northwesterner to assume that Meg wanted to leave the Los Angeles Basin, but too much of a city girl to understand the call of the wild.

Meg was beginning to wonder about it herself. She made an effort to explain why she’d taken the job. Despite her summers in Klalo, Carol didn’t remember who Hazel Guthrie was until Meg reminded her.

“Oh, the woman in the gingerbread house. Her husband was a pharmacist, I think. They had a little kid.”

“No, Robert Neill is her grandson.”

Carol digested that. “So she was a librarian?”

Meg said yes but didn’t bother with further details.

They talked, mostly about Carol’s ex-husband, an insurance executive with a taste for trophy blondes. The turbot was delicious. Carol poked at the salmon and drank another glass of wine. The party at the next table sang happy birthday to an elderly lady. Everyone laughed. Carol wrinkled her nose.

When Meg’s description of the library met with palpable boredom, she diverted the conversation to other matters. She found Carol heavy going. The woman was either preoccupied or self-absorbed. She was also three sheets to the wind by the time they reached the last sip of shiraz.

Meg declined dessert and asked for decaf. Carol ordered a brandy. The waitress brought both, along with the tab, which was probably extortionate. Meg didn’t offer to split the check. Carol scrawled her room number on it.

“Hey, it’s my big sister.” A tall, fleshy man with razor-cut blond hair beamed down at them. He wore a khaki jacket with lots of pockets over a ragg pullover and tan pants with zips and tabs. Hunter chic?

“Vance, honey.” Carol lurched to her feet, sloshing brandy.

Vance Tichnor kissed his sister’s cheek and she sank back onto her chair. He pulled one out for himself.

“And who is your lovely guest?”

Ew, Meg thought. She allowed herself to be introduced.

There was a moment when Vance Tichnor’s blue, blue eyes looked her over, flicked, and dismissed her as not worthy of effort. She was at the age when women experience that look, so she caught it.

However, Vance ordered a brandy and turned the charm on. It almost worked. Unlike his sister, he knew of Meg’s job and said appropriate things. He spoke with becoming affection of his dead grandfather, waxed nostalgic about summers in the old house, amused her with tales of the bathrooms’ eccentricities, and described the elaborate lodge he was building on the banks of Beaver Creek.

Meg sipped cold decaf. “I know people fish at Lake Tyee in summer. What do they do this time of year?”

Vance’s eyes crinkled in a fetching smile. “Hunt. And later, when the snows come, there’s cross-country skiing. I have five acres to play around with. I may put in a toboggan run.”

Meg had once fallen off a pair of skis at Lake Tahoe. “A toboggan run. Like sledding?”

He laughed indulgently.

Meg wondered whether he had filed an environmental impact statement. “What happened to the still?” Oops, she thought. A Scotch and two glasses of wine and I run amok.

The laugh segued to a smile that sobered her. “Ah, the famous still. Long gone, I’m afraid. The copper probably went into scrap drives during World War Two.”

“Very patriotic,” Meg said cordially. She rose and extended her hand. “It was good to meet you, Mr. Tichnor. Your lodge sounds impressive. Thanks, Carol. Nice dinner.”

Carol turned back to her brother and her brandy.

Meg drove home with care. A DUI would be a bad idea at the start of one’s career in a small town. A patrol car sat in front of the Brandstetter house, dark, engine running. The yellow tape around the driveway and the front deck flapped in the wind. She reversed directions, using Rob’s driveway because hers was still taped off, and parked in front of her own house. Her headlights caught Rob, Towser on a leash, and a thin young man coming back on the sidewalk across the street.

They crossed over when she killed the engine and waited while she got out of the car. She locked the door and fumbled for her house key. “Good to see Towser on a leash.”

The dog gave a bounce and woofed at her. “Down, boy,” the young man said. He was short and thin with a nose stud and dark cropped hair.

Rob was holding an unlit flashlight and wearing a heavier jacket than the windbreaker he’d worn that afternoon. “Meg, this is Tammy’s son, Tom. He’s staying with me until they release his mother from the hospital.”

Meg said, “Hello, Tom. I’m sorry about your father.”

“Hi. Emil used to take me fishing. You bought a great house.” Tom had a light tenor and sad eyes. He resembled neither parent. Perhaps he was a changeling.

“I think so, too.” She turned to Rob. “I ate dinner with Carol at the Red Hat. She said you couldn’t reach Vance Tichnor this afternoon because he was off some place with his wife.”

“Salishan. It’s a resort at the coast.”

“He showed up alone about forty-five minutes ago.”

Rob frowned.

“I got the impression she was expecting him.”

I
suppose that hound is sleeping in your guest room.” Meg poured Rob a stiff Scotch. She was drinking herb tea herself, having gone past her usual limit. Strange, she felt wide awake, though it was after eleven.

“Back porch.” He looked sheepish as well as tired. He’d seen that her light was still on when he returned from his unscheduled detour to the Red Hat. “Short of sending Towser to a kennel, I couldn’t think what else to do.”

“What’s wrong with a kennel?”

Both eyebrows went up. “Consider the size of that animal. Picture him sick and covered with fleas.”

Meg shuddered. “I get the point.” She didn’t exactly. Fleas or no fleas, Towser wasn’t Rob’s responsibility. Nor was young Tom. “Is the kid sleeping on the porch?”

He grinned. “I offered Tom, not Towser, the guest room, but he wanted a sleeping bag on the porch with the dog. Fortunately, the back porch is enclosed and not much colder than a meat locker.” His eyes narrowed. “There’s a space heater somewhere…”

Before he could dash off on another rescue mission, Meg said, “Did you interrogate the Tichnor siblings?”

He swallowed Scotch, savoring it. “Carol passed out. I talked to Vance.”

“And?”

He took another sip of Scotch and set the glass down. “I ought to go home before I fall down.”

“I think I’m entitled to know who has keys to my garage. That’s what you were asking him about, wasn’t it?”

He stood up. “I can’t talk about the investigation. You know that, Meg. Goddamn.”

“So swear me in as a reserve deputy.”

Dead silence for the space of three breaths. He said something rude.

She looked at him over the rim of her mug. “Hey.”

He sank back onto his chair.

“This is a very small town,” she said.

“It’s bigger than Two Falls.”

“Small.” She swallowed tea. “And it’s a small department.”

“And your point is?” He was watching her, eyes shadowed.

“Tell me about your boss.”

The frown between his brows deepened. “McCormick? I like him.”

She waited.

“He’s up for re-election. He’s going to want quick and easy answers.”

“A cover-up?”

“No,” he said patiently. “I like Mack. He’s a good man. He wouldn’t do anything dishonest, but he’s bound to worry if I don’t come up with solutions before Election Day. That means he’ll
want
to think simple. He’ll convince himself that he’s just using Occam’s razor.”

“And he has the power to stop the investigation?”

Rob made a circle on the surface of the kitchen table with his whisky glass. “He has the power to cut off the funds, and he can take me off the case, though I don’t think he’d do that unless I goofed up big-time.”

“Is
there a simple solution?”

He shut his eyes, opened them, stared at her. “Raise your right hand.”

“What?”

“ Repeat after me…”

When she had sworn to uphold the Constitution of the State of Washington and ordinances of Latouche County she had never read, she murmured, “Feckless Meg.”

“Surely not.”

“I’m a creature of impulse.” Such as the time she found herself pregnant at twenty-three outside the bounds of matrimony. “Will that oath hold water?”

“Unless somebody challenges it, and they won’t. I’ll enter your name on the reserve roster tomorrow.”

“I was kidding!”

They exchanged a long look, long and somber.

Rob ran his finger over the rim of the whisky glass. “You’re intelligent, detached, and observant. You’re also in the clear for the crucial weeks of August, according to your former co-workers.” A fugitive smile quirked his mouth. “And you have special skills I intend to call on at no expense to the county.”

“Skills?”

“You’re a librarian.”

“No lie.”

“As you said, it’s a small town and a small department.” He shoved the glass away. “I need help, Meg. I also need somebody to let me know when I’m crazy.”