Darlene Franklin - Dressed for Death 01 - Gunfight at Grace Gulch (13 page)

“We could use some of that wisdom with this mess.” I summarized my day’s investigation. “The only hint of a motive I found concerns Mayor Grace. Penn supported Malcolm. But the mayor won reelection in spite of the opposition. So why should he care? And I can’t imagine him murdering someone.”

“None of them seem like credible suspects,” Audie reminded me.

That was the core of the problem. While I knew in my heart of hearts that neither Dina nor Cord committed murder, I didn’t want to believe that anybody I had known my entire life had done it either. Maybe that’s why I latched onto Suzanne as a suspect. She was a newcomer to Grace Gulch. The possibility left me cold, and I shivered.

“I’ve kept you outside too long. Let’s go inside.”

He held my hand as we crossed the porch and then opened the door like a gentleman. Light splashed out, casting shadows across the wooden boards. I saw the porcupine outline of my head, and remembered my unkempt appearance. I hurried inside.

“All I have is some macaroni and cheese and a salad,” I said once we entered the living room.

“That’s almost a honeymooner’s delight.”

I lifted my eyebrows.

“You know, honeymoon salad, lettuce alone.”

I smiled to let him know I understood the play on words: let us alone.

He grinned at his corny joke. He sniffed the air. “It smells good.”

I looked down at my paint-stained shirt and holey jeans and drew in a deep breath. “Okay. Why don’t you get our drinks ready—I’ll take some hot chocolate, it’s in the cupboard—while I dress for dinner.” I had changed my mind.

“Change your clothes?” Audie wrinkled his nose. “Why?”

I blushed. “I’m not exactly dressed for company.”

Audie turned me around to face him. “Cecilia Wilde, you are beautiful just as you are. Don’t you dare change on me.” He reached out a hand to touch my dandelion hair. “I like the hair. I like the look. I like
you
.” He leaned in and kissed me, a gentle touch that feathered warmth on my lips, one that lingered and shattered me inside. My arms stole around his neck as I returned his kiss. Stars danced in my head, and I was Cinderella, with the feeling that “the room had no ceiling or floor.”

Audie broke off the kiss and backed away, still holding onto my hands. “I never knew it could be like this.” He brushed my cheek with his fingers. “I want more—much more—but not now. A few other things need to happen first.” He drew in a deep breath. “Like a wedding.”

Cinderella-like, the room twirled. Did Audie use the word wedding? Was this a proposal?
Or was he indicating his adherence to biblical standards regarding the sanctity of the marriage bed? In either case, my worries about Audie’s possible interest in Suzanne or Jenna subsided. Audie was a godly man, someone I could trust.

I gazed into velvet blue eyes and wondered if the same stars danced in mine. He looked great, a dark cardigan a perfect match for neatly pressed corduroy pants. His hair smelled like wood shavings. I wanted to fling myself into his arms again. Instead, I forced myself to step back.

“At least let me go splash water on my face.” I smiled, as shy as a girl on her first date.

“And I’ll fix the hot chocolate,” he said, walking toward the kitchen.

I didn’t change, but I did spray on lily of the valley perfume before I returned. The teakettle sang merrily in time with Audie’s whistling as he stirred two mugs of hot chocolate. The macaroni and cheese bubbled on the table and tongs lay beside the salad bowl.

“May I return thanks?” Audie asked after we sat down. I nodded. “Heavenly Father, thank you for this meal. More than that, I thank you for Cici. For her hard work. For her kind heart and inner and outer beauty that shines through whatever she wears. Give us your wisdom as we try to learn the truth about Penn’s death.”

Warmth hugged me, and it wasn’t from the oven.

For the next few minutes, we dug into the food and didn’t say much. “Mmm, this is creamy. Care to share your secret?” Audie dished out a second serving of macaroni.

“It’s just Velveeta and cream cheese, milk and butter. I call it my busy day special. Enid Waldberg passed the recipe among the church ladies.”

“Another feather to add to your cap,” Audie said. “And this salad is great. Suspiciously familiar, in fact.”

I felt heat rise in my cheeks. “I decided that I liked Jenna’s salad recipe.”

“Good idea.” He speared lettuce and an Ariane apple on his fork. “You don’t have to prove anything. Not to me. Not to anyone else. You’re nothing like your sisters. God made you the way you are—unique. Special. Beautiful.
You don’t have to pretend to be someone else.” Then a smile creased his cheeks. “Although you look fetching in your costumes.”

Audie wheeled his way past my defenses and pointed the finger at my deep-seated insecurities. “Oh, but I do have something to prove. I spent my life on a ranch, but I never wanted to be a rancher’s wife, not even as a little girl. Then Mom died and Jenna left home and I took over running the house when I was thirteen. Everyone assumes that I love ranch life.” Even Cord. Especially Cord.
“But I don’t. I got away for a couple of years, and now I’ve escaped as far as town. My business is about as different from ranching as you can get. But sometimes I feel like Jenna is living the life I wanted.”

“It’s not the ranch you love.” Audie set down his fork. “It’s the people. And the community.”

“Yes.” The word pushed past my teeth in a gush of breath. How could this man, who had known me for only a few months, understand me so well?

“And now we have to solve Penn’s murder to return Grace Gulch to happier days.”

My heart leapt at his use of “we.”

“Yes, we do.” I agreed, in every sense of the word.

13
             

You have heard of the Boomers and the Sooners. The Boomer movement is fading. They accomplished their purpose of forcing the government to make the lands available to white settlement. I suppose they achieved individual glory in the same proportion as the rest of us, and many of them wait at the border by my side, hoping for a second chance.

Sooners still abound. There is a heavy presence of marshals to prevent premature entry into the Indian lands. Some of the marshals are women, who look rather odd in their sidesaddles and skirts while holding a rifle as steady as an Indian scout.

Even so, I am sorely tempted to become a Sooner myself. I want our land so badly that I am ready to cheat to earn it. I have found a cave near the gulch where I can hide until the noon hour has passed. Then I could join in the run—just farther ahead of anyone else.

~

Tuesday, September 24

“Last night’s revelations disturbed me more than I care to admit,” I confessed to Audie while I was loading the dishwasher after dinner. “I wanted to believe that Grace won the race fair and square.”

“So you’ve decided that the letters aren’t connected to Penn’s death?”

Trust Audie to hit the nail on the head. I shrugged uncomfortably.

“I don’t know. I don’t see how they could be.” Unless the mayor wanted to protect the Grace family name.

“Do you think the mayor resented Penn’s support of his opponent?”

“Not enough to kill him!” The vehemence of my retort surprised even me. “After all, Penn supported his campaign after he won the primary.”

“But if you mix in a possible scandal involving the town’s sacred history?” The question hung in midair.

“I can’t imagine that Mayor Ron would kill somebody in cold blood.” That lay at the heart of my objections. I voted for Ron Grace ever since my first election. I liked the man and thought he did a good job for our little town.

Audie sighed. He ticked off the names. “Do you think Gwen Hardy is capable of murder? Suzanne? Mitch Gaynor? We know Dina didn’t do it.”

I squirmed in my seat. He was right.

“The murderer is going to be someone you know.” The compassion on Audie’s face just about did me in. “We have to be objective. We can’t let our emotions get in the way. ‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple.’ Wilde understood the paradoxical nature of truth. It doesn’t stand alone. The murder didn’t occur in a vacuum.”

That was the problem. I wanted the murder to separate itself from my everyday life and the people I knew. But it did not occur in a vacuum, and the sooner I accepted that and moved forward, the better off I’d be. How much better it was to identify the killer and see him, or her, of course, brought to justice, than for a cloud of suspicion to hang over a group of people. Especially when that group included my sister. I blotted out my feelings and considered the facts we had uncovered.

“I admit that the mayor had a couple of reasons to dislike Penn. Not supporting him in the mayoral race—I don’t think that’s enough of a motive for murder. But rewriting the history of the land run. . .I just don’t know.”

“Let’s clean up in here and then talk about it some more.” Audie helped me load the dishwasher. “How about a fire tonight?”

The fall evening had a chilly edge, and I agreed. Soon flames leapt up the chimney. Each hiss and crackle spat another question into my mind.

“If only I knew someone at the
Herald
. Knew them well, I mean.”

Audie slanted me a suspicious glance. “Why?”

“I keep wondering what the story was that Penn mentioned to Suzanne.”

“You don’t think it was the Grace papers?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Because Penn didn’t run the story.”

“Do you think he might have tried blackmail—”

I shook my head even before Audie could finish his thought.

“Think about it.” Audie continued to press his point. “Penn told Suzanne that he needed money. Maybe he thought the mayor was an easy mark.”

“It wasn’t in his character. Penn was a newsman first. Biased, yes, and not exactly Pulitzer Prize material. But if he thought he had the goods on the land run, he would have run the story. Whatever story he was working on involved something else.”

Audie leaned forward and poked at the log with the fire tongs. Sparks hissed in the air. “If it’s a local story—which seems likely—the
Sequoian
could be pursuing the same leads. And you do know an insider there.”

I heard the smile in his voice. “Dina! But if she knew anything related to the murder, she would have told us.”

“But she may not realize the significance of what she knows. If she knows anything.”

“If she knows something. . .” Fear tightened the vise on my throat, and my voice squeaked through the tiny airhole. “She’s in danger! Let her stay blissfully ignorant.”

But blindness wouldn’t guarantee her safety. If the murderer thought Dina knew something, she remained in danger. Worse than that, she worked for Mitch Gaynor, the only one on our list of suspects that we hadn’t interviewed yet. Why had Dina decided to major in journalism and apply for an internship with the town newspaper?

“Talk to her again,” Audie said. “Ask her what she knows about stories that didn’t make it into print.”

I reached for the phone on the end table—I confess that I stayed with an old-fashioned, olive green model for my living room at least—and dialed Dina’s number.

“Yo, Cic,” she answered on the second ring. The joys of caller ID. Loud pounding of the press in full run almost drowned out her voice. “Let me go to the break room and call you back. I can’t hear when the presses are running.”

My phone rang a few minutes later. I explained the situation. “We’re looking for any unpublished stories, especially anything involving the Hardys, Suzanne Jay, or the mayor.”

“Sure. I have an appointment with Mitch tomorrow, you know, a review, when he looks at what I’ve done this summer and what more I want to learn. I’ll ask him about it then.”

“That might not be such a good idea. He’s one of our potential suspects.”

“Don’t worry! I can, you know,
act
, and he won’t guess a thing.” She giggled. “Look, I’d better get back to work before somebody fusses at me for being on the phone.”

“It’s late,” Audie said after I’d hung up. “We’d better call it a night.” He reached out a hand and brushed his fingers against my hair. “I like this look. Wear it again sometime.”

Wow. I hadn’t thought about my “natural” appearance since before supper. I patted down the ends. “If you say so.” No matter how much Audie professed to like the look, I didn’t feel comfortable with the flyaway state of my hair.

“I do.” He kissed me briefly on the lips, a promise of things to come. “See you tomorrow?”

“I’ll call when I hear from Dina.”

“Au revoir, then.” With a nod of his head, Audie let himself out the front door.

[SB]Dina stopped by the store on her way to work on Wednesday afternoon. I locked the door behind my last customer and took her to my office.

“I have an assignment!” Dina saw herself as the Lois Lane of Grace Gulch, ready for Superman to appear and sweep her away. “Mitch wants me to cover the PTA beat.”

I let her describe her ideas for unique angles for the story in excruciating detail. At last, she wound down. That’s when I asked, “Did you learn anything about stories that weren’t published?”

“No. Not about anybody you mentioned, or anyone I remember seeing close to the action.” Her voice rose in contrast to her negative answer.

“Tone it down.” When excited, her voice grew loud enough to carry through walls. Anyone walking by my office window could hear, and now more than ever discretion was key. “There is no need to tell the whole town your news.”

“How’s this then?” She whispered. “There is something fishy going on. You remember how I ran the printing press by myself last week?”

I nodded. How could I forget? She arrived at the store with ink-stained hands and smeared some of the Land Run merchandise, causing a lot of extra work. Her excitement at seeing her words appear in bold type on paper bubbled over onto me, and I couldn’t stay upset with her.

“I double-checked the circulation run listed on the front page—’cause it seemed weird, the population of Grace Gulch is only 2,000 and that includes families, you know, but the circulation is listed as 2,500. So I loaded enough paper for 2,500 copies.”

“Hyperbole, maybe.” I wondered what circulation the
Herald
boasted.

“The printer came out and yelled at me. Asked me what I thought I was doing, wasting all that paper, we only needed 1,500 copies.” Dina pouted, the same expression on her face that she used to get her way with Dad. She looked like a naughty child.

“It sounds like an honest mistake,” I said. Although almost doubling the real circulation numbers stretched hyperbole past believability. “Maybe they run 2,500 copies for the Sunday edition or something.”

“He acted like he was going to take the extra cost out of my paycheck. I mean, I checked the records before I started. Every day it says they print 2,500 copies. How was I supposed to know that they only needed 1,500 this one time?” She bounced in the chair and tucked a knee under her.

“Wait a minute. You mean that the records indicate that they print 2,500 all the time?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” She twisted her face as if to say, you can be so dumb. “And there’s more.” Her voice trilled on the last word, a ghostly whimper. “I worked with the bookkeeper last week.”

“Oh?” I bet that didn’t last long. Dina didn’t get along with numbers. She needed a calculator to add one plus one.

“She was working on accounts payable. And there were
tons
of overdue notices. I mean,
everything
was at least a month overdue.”

I glanced at the pile of bills on my desk and wondered if they constituted a “ton” in Dina’s mind. “Maybe she pays the bills once a month. That’s what I do. Sometimes payments and overdue notices cross in the mail.”

“Man, I’m not talking about a late payment notice. I mean like, dun letters saying ‘no more deliveries if you don’t pay immediately.’ ”

Now that surprised me. The
Sequoian
was a Grace Gulch institution. It shouldn’t have that degree of financial trouble.

“So I wonder if someone is cooking the books.” Dina announced it like a foregone conclusion. “That, or the bookkeeper is really bad at her job.”

“Or they can’t afford to pay their bills.” Which seemed unlikely.

“Maybe that’s why they hired me.” Dina laughed with a toss of her head. “Double the work for half the money. That’s what interns are good for.” She turned serious. “Do you want me to spy it out?”

“Definitely not.” Too dangerous, but I wouldn’t say that to my sister. That would ensure her plunging into the most turbulent waters.

She pouted. “I’ll keep my ears and eyes open.”

“Don’t you have a term paper to write or something?”

She laughed at me. “Not until the end of the semester. Last-minute Lucy, that’s me.”

We finished sharing our lunch—a turkey club sandwich, Gaynor Goodies’ daily lunch special—when someone banged on the front door. I ignored the sound. Couldn’t they read the
Closed
sign? A few minutes later, the knocking renewed on the back door.

“I’d better see who it is.”

“I’ll get it.” Dina swallowed the last bite of her sandwich with a Red Bull and went to the back door. She returned in a minute. “Look who the cat dragged in.”

“I couldn’t stay away.” Audie grinned at me. Warm feelings welled inside of me, which had nothing to do with the coffee I held in my hand. We gawked at each other like teenagers at the prom.

Dina looked from one of us to the other. “Should I leave?” A smirk curled the edges of her shocking red lips.

“No,” I said.

“That’s not necessary,” Audie said at the same time.

Heat rose in my cheeks, revealing my feelings more clearly than if I had spoken them out loud, but Audie pretended not to notice.

“In fact, I’m glad that you’re here.” Audie spoke to Dina “This concerns you, too.”

Foreboding dampened my spirits. That meant he had news about the investigation. And it involved Dina, the one person I most wanted to protect.

“It’s about the guns. The props we used in the play.”

“Was Cord’s gun the murder weapon? I don’t believe it.” Dina’s cheerful facade dropped for a moment, and she looked like a worried little girl afraid to show Daddy her bad report card. “That’s—”

“No, that’s not the problem.” Audie interrupted her. “That is, I don’t know the details of the ballistics report or if they even have it yet. It’s something else.”

“What is it?” My anxiety burst the words out.

“I went over everything we did with those guns, to be sure my memory was accurate. Frontier guns are hardly my specialty. We decided to use the real thing—”