Death on Heels (10 page)

“Why not? Tucker’s not dangerous.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“Buy me lunch after the arraignment?”
At least I’ll see you later.
They signed off.

Her thoughts about Tucker and Vic tumbled together as she sipped her coffee. She slowly became aware of a large shadow darkening the coffee shop door. The shadow stopped to peer inside. It was looking at her.

You’ve got to be kidding
. Lacey felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. She shuddered. The shadow opened the door and came in.

“Well, great day in the morning, look what the cat dragged in,” said Dodd Muldoon, Lacey’s old boss, the editor and publisher of
The Sagebrush Daily Press
. He sat down at her table without an invitation and waved at
Jett behind the counter for coffee. Though his longish hair was thinner and grayer and his jowls were even droopier, Muldoon looked much the same.
Like an overfed walrus,
Lacey thought,
or a pig on a platter
. Lacey grinned at the old urge to shove an apple in his mouth.

Muldoon wore khaki slacks and a short-sleeve navy polo shirt, over which he wore a yellow cardigan sweater. It must have been what Muldoon considered his wise-old-editor attire, a variation of what he had always worn. As usual he shunned a coat. It could have been twenty below zero and Muldoon would have refused to wear a coat. It was his version of macho.

“Jett, her coffee’s on me,” Muldoon said, gesturing elaborately toward Lacey.

“Sure it is,” Lacey said. “I already paid for it.”

Muldoon chuckled his way into a coughing spell. “Then how about I split an omelet with you? No? Jett, gimme the omelet du jour. With everything. Lacey, Lacey. I was wondering when you’d come rolling back into Sagebrush. You want a job?”

“No.” Lacey sighed. “Just visiting.”

“You look good, Scoop. But then, you always did.” Muldoon stirred multiple spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee. “Your old job’s open, you know.”

“Lost another reporter, huh? Maybe if you tried paying them. Just a thought.”

“Aw, they come and go. Just say the word. I’ll fire one of ’em and take you back.”

“Take me back?!” Lacey stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”

“Serious as a crutch.”

“Maybe you haven’t heard, Muldoon, I have a reporting job. A real one, in a real city. Nation’s Capital. Ever heard of it?”

“Don’t try to hurt my feelings, Scoop. Better reporters than you have made the attempt. Heard you were doing some kind of ‘lifestyle’ beat back East.” He made air quotes with his fingers. “Lifestyle. Ha. What happened to you? You were a hard news reporter when you left here. Trained you myself.”

“I
am
a hard news reporter,” Lacey spluttered into her coffee. “And since when did you ever train anyone to do anything but—”

“You’re not writing serious stuff anymore. It’s all hemlines and handbags, pigs’ ears and silk purses. Fluff.”

I’d like to turn you into a silk purse, you pig’s—
She took a deep breath. “I make my own beat. I write about fashion. And style. And murder.”

“Murder, huh? Well, you always were different.” He took in her outfit with a lascivious look. She didn’t like him looking at her like that. He sipped his coffee-flavored sugar and smacked his lips. “Everyone knows fashion’s not real news. Bet you don’t wear those fancy boots back East. Where everyone is all fashion
this
and fashion
that
.”

Washington, D.C., the City Fashion Forgot?
“Score one for you, Muldoon.”

“We got real news here. Solid gold news. Three murders, one killer. Your old boyfriend, Cole Tucker. Always knew there was something funny about that boy.”

“There was nothing funny about ‘that boy.’ He didn’t kill anybody. And I imagine there were other suspects.”
Like you.
Lacey stared him down, then shook her head. It wasn’t worth her time indulging her old boss in his head games. Not now. “What do you know about those murders, Muldoon?”

“This and that. You hear things.”

“Anything specific?” She swallowed the last of her coffee.

“All in
The Daily Press
. Read it and weep, Scoop.”

“Don’t call me that,” Lacey said. “Scoop” was Muldoon’s pet name for whichever reporter he was trying to needle at the moment.
How many “Scoops” have there been since I left?
she wondered.

“I always called you Scoop. That’s a badge of honor here. Till you got all snotty and went East. Our star reporter.”

“It’s not so hard to be a star when you only have three reporters.”

Muldoon shook his jowls at her and his face turned
red. “You ought to be more grateful to
The Daily Press
. I gave you your start in journalism.”

“My start? This town nearly finished me off. I’m lucky I made it out of here alive and onto a real paper.”

“Yeah, yeah. Still a prima donna, aren’t you, Scoop?” He looked even jowlier with his mouth turned down in disapproval. Jett arrived with Muldoon’s omelet and a coffeepot. She refilled Lacey’s cup. “Just because it gets a little cold in Sagebrush, you have to up and run off clear across the country? Gets hot here too, you know.”

Lacey stood to go. “The day my plumbing froze solid, that was enough for me, Muldoon. I realized I could be just as broke someplace warm. And I’d rather be broke anywhere but Sagebrush.”

Muldoon chortled into his omelet. “But now Scoop Smithsonian is back in town. Here to see your old boyfriend get charged with murder. Tucker’s true love, come to town to write the real untold story. Ha. Hell of a story if you get him to confess.” He stared at her over his coffee cup.

“Do you think Tucker is guilty?”

“Me?” He shrugged his big shoulders. “Got no opinion one way or the other. You know me, Scoop. I just print the news.”

She crossed her arms. “But never
all
the news. Isn’t that right, Muldoon? Like the advertisers’ dirty secrets?”

“Hey, advertisers keep us in business,” he protested. “There’s always a little quid pro quo in the news biz. You know that. I just reserve judgment sometimes. A man’s got to live with his neighbors.”

“But it’s okay to throw Tucker to the wolves? Like your front page story did? Didn’t he buy enough ads?”

Muldoon put his hands up. “He’ll have his day in court. Starting today. Now, an intimate jailhouse interview would sell some papers. You got as good a chance as anyone. What do you say? Front page, Scoop.” He was tone-deaf to the mood of the conversation.

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

He dug into his breakfast. “Cole Tucker never should have asked you to marry him. You never would have left. You’d still be my star reporter. My Scoop.”

“You’re insane, Muldoon. You paid me dirt wages, it was forty degrees below zero, and my toilet froze. I can’t believe I stayed as long as I did.”
It had to be brain damage.

“Ancient history.” He waved the thought away. “So what’s on your
fashion
beat for the day? You writing a story for that D.C. rag? You talk to Tucker, you write that story for
The Daily Press,
I’ll pay.”

“No thanks, Muldoon. I work for
The Eye Street Observer
.”

“What kind of name is that for a newspaper? The
who
street
what
? It sure ain’t
The Washington Post,
is it? Out here
The Daily Press
is the only game in town. And I’m sure no matter how much you smart-mouth Sagebrush, you still got a warm spot in your heart for this town and my paper.”

More like acid reflux
, she wanted to say. In the meantime, Muldoon was turning purple. Lacey could always tell when his blood pressure was rising. The other conversations in the café had stopped. She slipped on her jacket and grabbed her bag. “I don’t think so.”

“Someday you’ll appreciate what we taught you here at
The Daily Press
,” Muldoon rattled on. “You piss me off, Scoop. You always did. But the offer’s still open.”

The door opened and two young men and a woman came in, looking freshly minted out of journalism school. They nodded to Muldoon and sat down at the table where Lacey had just stood up. Another older, tired-looking man walked in a moment later. Lacey recognized the paper’s printer, still there after all these years.
Still on parole? Or did he drink Muldoon’s Kool-Aid?

True to form, Muldoon was holding his morning editorial meeting at a coffee shop. He was still too cheap to supply a coffeepot at the newsroom, or even buy the staff a doughnut.

“Muldoon, it’s been real,” Lacey said. “I’m out of here.”

“Take a lesson, boys and girls,” Muldoon said to his little staff, loud enough so Lacey would hear it on her way out the door. “That’s what happens when you leave Sagebrush, Colorado, and
The Daily Press
. You get snooty as all hell and start to think you’re too good to work on a
real
newspaper.”

Lacey laughed as she stepped through the door. She had an appointment to see Cole Tucker, notorious accused serial killer. The man who used to love her.

“I’m going to leave you alone with him, Ms. Smithsonian. Ten minutes. If he tells you anything that could help his defense, you’ll let me know, right?” Karen Quilby was nervous, as if this might be the stupidest decision she’d make all day. She’d apparently never defended an accused murderer before. The ink on her law degree was barely dry.

“Don’t worry. I’ll let everyone know.” Lacey thought of her feature for
The Eye.

Quilby nodded. Tucker’s defense attorney looked just a few years younger than Lacey, but several years more serious. She even wore a black wool suit for the occasion, if a trifle ill-fitting. The skirt was a little short and the sleeves a little long, but Quilby was trying. Her luxuriant auburn hair was caught back in a large clip and she wore a bit of lipstick and blush. The attorney clutched a lawyerly leather briefcase and Lacey noticed that her nails were bitten to the quick.

“He hasn’t been exactly forthcoming, if you know what I mean,” Quilby said.

“Maybe he’s still in shock,” Lacey said.

“Cole said you were his girlfriend.”

“A long time ago.”

“And you’re a reporter? First here in Sagebrush, and now in Washington, D.C.?”

“That’s correct.”

Doubt creased Quilby’s forehead. “Oh, boy. He said
he’d like to see you. That’s the only reason you’re getting in. I hope I’m not making a mistake.”

“You’re not,” Lacey said. “It’ll be fine.”

The women spoke outside the courthouse, near an oversized bronze statue of a cowboy, reflecting the area’s ranching heritage. The attorney escorted Lacey up to the second floor, to the small waiting room outside the county courtroom. The building looked the same as Lacey remembered it, a midcentury concrete shell over the original blocky brick government building, constructed during the 1920s. The only thing new to her was the metal detector and gate they passed through at the top of the stairs, which guarded the entrance to the second-floor courtrooms.

Tucker wouldn’t have far to travel to go to court. The Justice Center, which housed the police and sheriff’s offices and detention facilities, was just a few blocks away.

The jail had once been housed below where Lacey stood, in the basement of the courthouse. The old cells were still there, left as they were the day the jail moved to the new Justice Center. Lacey wondered if they gave Halloween tours for charity. A Halloween “haunted jail” could conjure up the spirits of some of the most notorious outlaws of the Old West, all of whom had haunted the Northwest Colorado of yesteryear: the Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Kid Curry, Tom Horn, Etta Place, and Queen Ann Basset, among many others.

Feeling jumpy, Lacey paced around the table in the waiting room. Karen Quilby scanned court papers while waiting for her client to be delivered. The room was bare except for the wooden table and six padded chairs. There was nothing on the walls. The door was partially open. Through it, Lacey observed a few media types passing through the metal detector with their laptops. But no cameras. All cameras were being turned away at the gate.

Eventually a deputy stopped at the door. Surprisingly, it was someone Lacey recognized from her days of
covering the Sagebrush Police Department and the Yampa County Sheriff’s Office. Deputy Grady Rush had never been a ball of fire. He was still a deputy.

“Long time, Lacey.” Deputy Rush smiled at her and inclined his head. He was big and baggy, with close-set eyes and thin lips, and he looked rather like a very large duck. When he smiled he looked a little crazy, but happy, his wide mouth barely closing over his crooked teeth. She supposed he couldn’t help it if he had some duck in his gene pool, somewhere along the line. He smoothed his dark hair back with one hand.

“Hello, Grady. Nice to see a familiar face.”

“Yeah, same here, and I guess I got someone here you want to see. I’ll be right outside this door. Now, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Deputy Rush moved aside and Cole Tucker stepped into the room.

Tucker’s attorney stepped close and murmured something in her client’s ear that Lacey couldn’t hear. She stepped back.

“Ten minutes, Cole. Then you and I need to talk again before we go see the judge. We don’t have many minutes to spare this morning.” Tucker nodded, and Karen Quilby left, closing the door behind her.

Lacey and Tucker both drew a long breath. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself, if she could help it. She was the only reporter granted access to the prisoner. But he was more than just a prisoner. He was a part of her history.

She held her breath for a moment. The room felt very close. Lacey stared at him. It had been seven years since she fled Sagebrush with Tucker’s marriage proposal still ringing in her ears. Her whole world had changed since then, but Tucker looked the same. Fit, tanned, trim, and muscular. His straight, light honey-brown hair fell across his forehead to his eyebrows. His face had a few more lines, but his eyes were the same deep brown eyes she remembered.

Lacey had expected to see him in typical jailhouse blaze orange, but he was wearing a brown jumpsuit, the color worn by delivery guys everywhere, except for the
white lettering on the back: Y
AMPA
C
OUNTY
J
AIL
. His hands were cuffed to a chain around his waist. On his feet he wore a pair of brown slip-on sneakers.