Calamity Jayne (17 page)

I went to the door, the front one this time, and rang the bell. I whistled while I waited, wondering if Sheila Palmer would
check me out through the peephole first. You do realize what a peephole is really for, don’t you? Security, you say? Come
on. If someone comes to your front door to do you harm, they’re too stupid to be much of a threat. Like, are they really going
to let you get a look at them through the peephole first? Naw. They’re gonna put their thumb over the hole. Or better yet,
they’ll go around to a back peepless door. No. Peepholes were invented so you could pretend not to be home if the Latter Day
Saints are out door-to-door in your neighborhood with their pamphlets, or the kid down the street is selling ugly wrapping
paper for a fundraiser. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what a peephole is really for.

After I’d been peeped at, the door opened.

“Yes?” A slim, young woman with shiny brown hair (yay, another brunette), and a tan that didn’t come out of a can, looked
up at me.

My mouth dropped open. I know it did. “You’re Sheila Palmer?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice. Here I’d been
expecting Naomi Judd and gotten Ashley.

“Yes? May I help you?”

I fumbled with my press pass and stuck a toe in the door so she couldn’t close it. I’d picked that up from the big screen;
I just never thought I’d use it.

“Hi,” I shoved my ID under her nose. “I’m Tressa Turner. I work for the
Gazette
and I’d like to ask you a few questions.” Geez, I almost sounded like I knew what I was doing!

“You’re Tressa Turner?” It was her turn to show surprise. “I’ve heard of you.”

I nodded. “I have attained some notoriety,” I admitted. “But don’t believe everything you hear.”

“I heard you got buried alive under a pile of pumpkins trying to find the perfect jack-o-lantern. Was that true?”

“Well, yes, but I was only ten at the time.”

“I heard you collected horse manure and stuffed it in Annette Felders’s gym bag. Was that true?”

“Well, yes, but she’d dyed Joker’s tail orange.”

“I also heard you found my husband in the trunk of a car. Was that true, too?”

I met her speculative gaze with a steady one of my own. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Palmer, but yes, that’s true, too.”

She hesitated for a moment, then opened the door. “Well, I guess you’d better come in.”

I stepped into the Palmer foyer and looked around. Quality and style were apparent in the carefully chosen furnishings, wall
coverings, draperies and accessories. “You have a lovely home,” I told her in all honesty, and with just a touch of the little
green-eyed monster.

She motioned for me to take a seat. “It’s Peyton’s home, really.”

Correction. It was all hers now.

“I can’t imagine what you thought when the police came to you with the story of what occurred Friday night,” I began.

“Actually, the police didn’t tell me about the events of that evening.”

I paused in the process of opening my notebook to my list of prepared questions. “Oh? Who told you then?”

Her hands fluttered nervously in her lap. “Rick told me. Rick Townsend. You know Rick, of course.”

I gave a quick nod, hoping my pencil wouldn’t snap from the death grip I had on it. “And this was when?”

“It was sometime Saturday. I don’t know. Mid-morning, I guess. I can’t recall.”

“I thought you were out of town?”

Her hands fluttered again. “That’s right. I was in Omaha.”

“At a stamper convention. Right?”

She nodded. “I’m hoping to open a craft shop, and I wanted to learn all I could about stamping, so I could present workshops.”

Workshops? On stamping? Didn’t you just jam the stamp down on an ink pad and slam it on your paper?

“So, what did Ranger Ri... Townsend tell you?”

Sheila hesitated and looked down at the hands in her lap, as if she had the answers written there. Not that I’d know anything
about that kind of activity, of course.

“He told me there had been a report filed with the sheriff’s office that indicated Peyton had met with an accident, or foul
play, and he was either injured or possibly even dead.”

“Did he give you any specifics?”

Again the pause. “He said the information hadn’t been verified and there was some reason to believe it was bogus because...”
She stopped.

“Because?”

“Because the, uh, source of the information was... unreliable.”

I began to draw little nooses in the margins of my paper. “Did he tell you who this unreliable source was?”

“No, not at that time.”

“What
is
the nature of your relationship with Rick Townsend, Mrs. Palmer?”

She twisted the rather large diamond on her ring finger. “We’re... friends. I’ve known Rick since grade school. I was two
years ahead of him.”

This sounded a lot like the story Ranger Rick had given me at the marina. I made a pretense of writing something on my notepad.

“Did the police ever contact you about your husband’s disappearance, Mrs. Palmer?”

“Yes, a Deputy Samuels contacted me when they found Palmer’s boat on the lake, and his vehicle at the marina.”

“When was that?”

“Sunday afternoon.”

“Were you still in Omaha at that time?”

She shook her head, and her silky brown hair fell neatly into place. “I was back. I got back in town around noon, I suppose.”

I made another note, to check if this jibed with Joe’s log.

“Did your husband ever take other people out on his boat? Ever lend it to anyone?”

Sheila smiled. “Peyton loves to show off his little toy. He’d entertain clients, friends—”

“Business associates?” I interrupted.

She shrugged. “My husband is a very generous person. He’s lent the boat out a time or two. And, as I said, we do lots of entertaining
on the boat, so everyone within our circle of friends and acquaintances is familiar with it.”

“Speaking of business associates,” I said, “there’s talk that you and your husband’s law partner, Dennis Hamilton, were, uh,
keeping company? Any comment on that?”

She gave me a vague smile. “Don’t believe everything you hear,” she said.

I figured she wasn’t going to say any more about her extramarital gymnastics, so I dropped that subject. “Can you think of
anyone who might want to harm your husband? A client who threatened him, or was unhappy with his representation? What about
Mike Hill? He was your husband’s client, the one your husband smuggled drugs to in the county jail. Did he ever threaten your
husband?”

“Allegedly
smuggled,” Sheila Palmer corrected, and I could tell from the set of her mouth I was on treacherous turf.

“You mean your husband was innocent?” I asked.

“Is innocent. I’m not sure of a lot of things, Ms. Turner, but I am sure of one thing. My husband would never give drugs to
a client of his. Never.”

“Then how do you explain the charges?” I asked. Then, “Wait! Are you saying he was set up? By who? Why?”

She looked me straight in the eye. “You’re the hotshot investigative reporter,” she said. “Investigate.”

I gave her a long, assessing look. She had a lot to gain if Palmer was dead, yet here she was defending him, at least on the
drug charges. That didn’t square with me. I reckoned she knew much more than she let on, but was being very tightlipped. She
was a suspect, I reminded myself. A prime suspect. I had to dissect each tidbit of information as closely as I did each selection
at the China Wall buffet on a Friday night.

“What was your husband’s reaction to the drug charges?” I asked.

“Initially, he was stunned. Later, the anger came.”

“Who was he angry with?”

“My husband has been... preoccupied for some time. He seemed in a world of his own. Secretive. At first I suspected he was
having an affair.”

“Was he?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. His preoccupation had to do with his law practice. His business. At least, that was my impression. He wouldn’t discuss
it. When I asked, he would just say it was a case he was working on. Once I learned Peyton had disappeared, I went to his
office to see if I could find anything that would point to what he’d been struggling with the last few months.”

“Were you successful?”

Another poignant pause. “No, not really.”

“Let’s get back to Mike Hill. What do you know about him?”

“Not much. He was charged with possession with intent,” she said, and I raised my eyebrows. “I’m an attorney’s wife. I’m familiar
with legal terms.”

“Had your husband represented him before?”

“I don’t think so. I think he was referred to him or something.”

“Referred? By who?” Or is that
whom?

“I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t a referral, per se. I remember Peyton was hesitant to take the case. He didn’t normally represent
drug dealers. He had a younger sister who was an addict. She died of an overdose. I don’t think he ever got over that.”

“So why did he take the case?”

“I believe Dennis convinced him he should. I think he waved the old every-person-deserves-a-defense banner in Peyton’s face.
Peyton takes his obligations as an attorney seriously. So, he took the job.”

“Did your husband and Hamilton disagree over anything else?”

She pushed her dark hair away from her face. “There’s tension. There usually is in any partnership. Dennis wants Peyton to
be less selective about clientele, take on more criminal cases, and Peyton is reluctant to do so. It’s basically just a difference
in philosophies.”

“So, there were problems between Hamilton and your husband.”

“Certainly. But none that I think rise to the level of a motive for murder, Miss Turner.”

“What about a crime of passion?” I threw it out there. What the heck? She could only show me out.

“Dennis is a very complex individual. I might see him killing for gain, but not to gain a wife.”

“So, you do think he’s capable of murder?”

She stood, signaling an end to our interview. “Under the right circumstances, Miss Turner, anyone is capable of murder.”

C
HAPTER
16

With that comforting thought in mind, I made my way back to my clunker. The heat had broken earlier and the evening had cooled
off considerably. I slid into the front seat, and was just about to pull out when someone popped up in the back seat. I did
a Pavorattipitched squeal and punched at the figure.

“Hey, stop hitting me!”

With a groan, I recognized the voice. I should have seen the glow-in-the-dark wind suit.

“Geez, Joe, you scared the living crap out of me. What are you doing back there?”

“So, what did you learn? What does she know about the vic from the other night? Does she believe her husband is dead? And
which time, the first or the second? Did the leopard thong belong to her? Is she boinking my grandson?”

I gave a grunt of disgust, pulled out of the Palmer driveway, and into Joe’s.

“I can’t divulge what a confidential source tells me, Joe. I’m a reporter now. There are rules.”

“Did she say she was telling you the stuff in confidence?” Joe asked.

“Well, no.”

“Then you can tell me. I’ve shared with you. Surveillance information. License plate numbers. Vehicle descriptions. Brownies.
Cinnamon rolls.”

“Complaints. Ulcers. Colt Pythons. Colt Pythons that are used to kill people.”

“Who else can you trust?” he pointed out. “I have cinnamon coffee cake drizzled with cream cheese frosting.”

I was so hungry my belly button was touching my backbone. “You do have a point,” I said. Joe was the one individual I could
say for certain had not committed either murder. And it didn’t hurt to have another perspective, an alternative point of view.
And there was that coffee cake to consider.

“Can we nuke the coffee cake?” I asked.

“You can even do the honors,” Joe said.

“I’m in.”

Although the coffee cake took the edge off my hunger, when I left Joe’s I was still hungry. Pizza, I thought—Thunder Rolls
Bowling Alley’s pizza. The bowling alley serves the best in town. In the small cozy lounge, you can get a cold draw and a
small pizza (okay, in my case, medium), and be content as a new foal enjoying its first warm meal. I checked my billfold to
make sure I had the moola to cover my order this time around.

I took a booth in the corner, my back to the wall, and facing the only entrance, and ordered a medium sausage and pepperoni
with green peppers, mushrooms and onions, and a light beer. I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes. I really needed
to get some sleep; when I blinked, my eyes felt like sandpaper rubbing together. I yawned, thinking maybe I’d just curl up
right here in the booth and sleep ‘til they booted me out at two.

I was about to dig into a second slice of heaven when I heard the name Mike Hill. I looked up and saw two rather tough-looking,
black-clad biker types at the bar nearby.

“I heard he got it with an effing cannon. Blood and guts all over the effing boat,” said a thin guy with a pasty white complexion
and greasy, long black hair, to his drinking partner who could’ve passed for a bald Scorpion King.

“Serves the bastard right,” the companion, a very well-muscled specimen with a head as shiny as a bowling ball, replied. “News
on the street is Mikey was a snitch. Nobody touched Mikey. Nobody.”

“Well, somebody reached out and effing touched him, didn’t they?”

The big guy laughed. “Guess it don’t pay to be no snitch, huh?”

“You got that shit right,” his comrade agreed, already ninety-proof.

I slipped out of my booth and sashayed up to the men. “I’m sorry. I was just over there eating my pizza, and I overheard you
talking about Mike Hill. Are you friends of Mike’s?”

“Who the eff wants to know?” the foul-mouthed biker slurred.

I pulled out my identification. I was doing that a lot. “I’m a reporter for the
Grandville Gazette
. I’m doing a story on Mike’s death. What can you tell me about him?”

“He was a prick,” biker number one said. “He was a piece of effing dung.”

I winced. “I don’t think I’m allowed to print that in the newspaper,” I said. “Does he have family hereabouts? A mother, father?
Wife? Siblings?”

“How the hell do I know? Do I look like a freakin’ genie-logical expert? He was a traitorous prick. He’d prostitute his own
mother for a dollar. The little worm got what he deserved.”

“I heard you say a moment ago that he was a snitch. Does that mean he was working for the police as an informant? On drug
cases, specifically?”

The straggly speci-man laughed. His teeth were the color of my motor oil. “He was an equal opportunity chickenshit. He’d screw
a friggin’ goat if there was money in it.”

My legs shook. I was so, so thankful in that moment that Mikey hadn’t had the opportunity to further our own acquaintance.

“Do you happen to know who he was working with? Which cop, or cops, I mean?”

Stocky-biker number two gave me an up-and-down look. “Cops keep their informants under wraps when they are alive. That’s why
they call ‘em
undercover
informants. You think they gonna fess up if it’s their snitch who dies? Hell, they’d never get another informant to work with
‘em again. You better go on home and play with your Barbie dolls, blondie.” He dismissed me and returned his attention to
his drink.

I could feel the tips of my ears grow hot and my nostrils flare. This was way too close to the head-patting, cheek-pinching
(face, not rear) patronizing I’d endured for way too long. I straightened my shoulders and thrust my chest out. “For your
information, gentlemen, in the last seventy-two hours I have discovered one dead body in a trunk, another on a boat, found
a wad of dough that would keep you in black leather for some time, had my sister’s car trashed and my home destroyed. I’ve
been harassed by a tattooed maniac, been thrown in the lake and questioned by the police not once, not twice, but three times!
I’ve been assaulted, insulted, ignored, and followed. I’ve received death threats, prosecutorial threats, and blisters the
size of half-dollars. Barbie dolls? Try freakin’ Colt Pythons and crime scene tape, buckos!”

I guess maybe that lone beer had gone to my head. I waited, prepared to have to defend myself from the sharp edge of a broken
beer bottle, but I held my ground. I expected vile language to spring forth, for hands to clamp around my throat and squeeze,
to hear my last gasping breaths forced from my body.

Instead, what I got was laughter. A lot of it. I looked from biker number one to biker number two. Their shoulders were shaking
with uncontrollable mirth. Biker number two grabbed a napkin and mopped his eyes. He patted the bar stool next to him.

“Have a seat, blondie. Now, tell Manny, whaddaya need to know?”

By the time I left the bar, I had some solid information, a new understanding of bikers in general, and had exchanged numbers
with a giant named Manny. Call if I ever got in a jam, he said. Yeah. As if.

I checked my back seat for nosy old men, then decided to take another spin by Dennis Hamilton’s house. No real reason. I just
wanted to feel like I was doing something. Besides, if I wanted to make my part-time job at the
Gazette
a full-time gig, I’d have to produce more than the average bear cub reporter.

I circled Hamilton’s cul-de-sac and parked illegally. The neighborhood was dark. Small-town folks are generally early-to-bedders.
My folks usually make it through the weather on the ten o’clock newscast, but rarely to Leno. They’re early risers, though.
Sleeping in to them is anything past dawn. I, on the other hand, am a night person. I love to sleep in. We’re talking noon
here. Of course, the last time I was able to indulge myself in a sleep-in was around the last time I enjoyed a nice, leisurely
bubble bath rather than a shower. Working two jobs and keeping a menagerie tends to cut into personal time.

I flipped on the interior light and pulled out my notes from my recent interview (if one could call it that) with Sheila Palmer.
She didn’t react the way I expected a widow to act, grieving or not. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure she believed me about her
husband being dead. She had that poker face down to an art. And I still couldn’t get a handle on where she stood with Rick
Townsend and Dennis Hamilton. Something told me Palmer’s trophy wife was collecting some trophies of her own on the side,
but I still had difficulty casting Rick Townsend in the role of gigolo. Maybe that was because I didn’t want to believe it.

I did believe Joe, however, when he said Hamilton and Sheila Palmer got together when Peyton was out of town. Hamilton was
certainly planning to entertain a lady friend Sunday evening when he’d bought the CDs. Had he and the widow lady planned a
cozy little get-together to celebrate the removal of an inconvenient hubby? Sheila Palmer had said she returned early Sunday,
but we only had her word on that. The neighborhood watch commander hadn’t clocked her back in until Sunday evening at around
seven.

I was most intrigued, however, by the information I’d elicited from my two inebriated friends at Thunder Rolls. With a murdered
snitch, the finger of suspicion usually pointed to those individuals being ratted out. Okay, so then where did the snitch’s
lawyer fit into the picture? So far, I had a jailed drug dealer-turned-snitch, a possible set-up of his attorney, the murder
of his attorney, the murder of the snitch, and a payoff of some sort. Just what that added up to, I didn’t know, but I was
more determined than ever to find out.

I made a few more notes, and was just about ready to head for the barn when red lights filled the interior of my car. I flipped
my interior light off and felt a moment of been-here-done-this as I tracked the progress of the officer by his flashlight
beacon. I was smart enough to look away this time before the blinding beam hit me in the face.

“Good evening, Miss Turner. Or I guess I should say, good morning? What brings you out here at this time of night?”

I let out a long, loud breath. Great. Another installment of Calamity Jayne meets Deputy Dickhead.

I dropped my notepad to the floor and pushed it under the seat with my heel. “Oh, hello, Deputy. Nice night, huh?”

“It was,” he said with a bit of a snarl. “The city got a call about a suspicious vehicle parked on the cul-de-sac here, so
I offered to check it out.”

“That was sweet of you,” I said, “but isn’t this city jurisdiction?” I was at once suspicious of this fellow who showed up
more frequently than zits on a first date.

“They were tied up with a disturbance at the Thunder Rolls.”

I thought of Manny and Carver, and was glad the deputy couldn’t read my expression.

“So, what are you doing?”

I remembered Townsend asking a similar question, and the lame house-hunting excuse I’d given, but I didn’t see any other semi-plausible
reason for being here, so I used it again, with a few modifications, “The folks have been considering a move to town, and
I saw this place—”

“Cut the crap, Turner. Your father would sooner sell his first-born daughter than get rid of his little hunk of the American
dream. I know exactly what you’re doing here.”

I gulped. “You do?”

“Yep. And I don’t like it.”

“You don’t?”

“Nope.”

“And?” I was fairly certain there was more.

“And, you ever heard of interference with official acts?”

I hadn’t really, but guessed it was just a judicial way of saying I was butting into an official investigation, and there
were legal consequences under Iowa law for doing so. But that was just a guess. “How am I interfering with official acts by
sitting in my car?”

“For starters, you’re parked illegally.”

I’d forgotten about that.

“Listen, Turner.” He crouched by my window. “And listen real good.”

“Listening good,” I whispered.

“There is an ongoing criminal investigation. You could be considered a material witness in that investigation. As such, you
could be detained and incarcerated for an unspecified period of time. Is that what you want?”

Was he kidding? Who wanted to be put in jail?

“No more bad impressions of Nancy Drew,” he continued. “Things could get real unpleasant if you continue to stick your nose
into things that are better left to the professionals. Are we clear on this?”

Great. I was being threatened again. Not by a tattooed snake charmer with arms like logs, but by a no-necked officer of the
law. I had to hand it to Deputy Doug. His threat was subtler than “Pay up or else.” Loss of life as opposed to loss of freedom
was still more compelling, but I had no desire to share a cell with a woman prisoner who could bench-press me, or one who
might take a fancy to my gorgeous blue eyes along with everything else.

“Clear as the Dairee Freeze drive-up window,” I said.

“Good.” He then proceeded to ask for my driver’s license, registration and proof of insurance, and scribbled out a ticket
for illegal parking, and a warning for defective equipment. Dang. He’d noticed the droopy tailpipe.

I snatched the tickets from him, signed them, and thrust his metallic clipboard back at him. “I do have one question, Officer,”
I said, so angry with the deputy that the words rolled off my tongue faster than Joe Townsend snapped up the last piece of
Mrs. Winegardner’s coffee cake. “Which officer was working Mike Hill as a confidential informant? You, maybe?”

His quick intake of breath satisfied my thirst for payback. I pulled away to let him stew for a change. Butt out? Get real,
Kojak.

I was feeling pissy after my encounter with Deputy Doug and decided, who better to share that pissy mood with than Ranger
Rick. Besides, I had a few questions to ask the good ranger, not that I thought I had a Dairee Freeze dip cone’s chance in
Maui to get any answers. I also wanted to see if Sheila Palmer had run to Townsend for comfort and assurance after I’d grilled
her. Okay, okay, so maybe “grilled” is a bit much when she kind of led the discussion. Still, it was safe to assume she’d
want to talk things over with someone, and that led me to Rick Townsend’s doorstep. Well, actually to his windows—initially.