Death on Heels (18 page)

“Not so you could prove it.” Tucker grinned at her take on his family history. “He liked running his cattle and his horses, and catching the wild ones up here in the Sand Wash. He wasn’t thinking oil rigs and natural gas pipelines.”

“You could still ranch the land, couldn’t you?” Lacey knew that’s what other people were doing. “Keep the surface and water rights?”

“That’s what Stanford says, but you sell the water rights and you end up with no water. You sell the mineral rights and the drilling screws up the land. Companies say it’s safe, but there’s evidence the drilling contaminates the water. Then the fracking makes it worse.”

“Another fine mess.”

“Besides, I always thought if you owned land, you ought to own it all the way up and down. Right down to the center of the Earth. Right up to Heaven.”

“Where does the rest of the family stand?”

“They’re with me. For now. But they’d do anything to save my hide from a phony murder rap.”

Lacey’s notes were a mess. She was too tired to think straight or write legibly. “Tell me about the oil and gas man.”

“Mitch Stanford came to us directly. Without the Averys. Offered us the same deal. We gave him the same answer. No lease, no sale, no way, José.”

Lacey leaned back in her hard-bottomed chair. The sofa was looking more inviting.

“But Tucker, what does any of this have to do with the murder of three women?” She tried to clear her head. She swallowed the last of her lukewarm tea. “If any of these guys set you up, then
they
would have to have Corazon’s things. One of them would have to be the killer, or know who the killer is, or make a deal with the killer. What are the odds against that? Or maybe—”

“What?” Tucker leaned forward.

“Who’s to say they didn’t somehow steal Corazon’s things, and manage to get their hands on the other women’s property? Maybe these guys have nothing to do with the murders. They’re just taking advantage of them to put you in a bind. And in jail.”

“That sounds just as far-fetched as anything else, Chantilly. All I know is the Averys have been after my land, Muldoon’s been after my land, and Stanford wants it any way he can have it, leasing or buying. If those guys want it, other people want it too. And Grady Rush is a tool.”

“Did any of these guys know the victims?”

He shrugged. “Probably. You know how it is in a small town. Your old boss was seeing Ally for a while.”

“Muldoon? He’s married! And ugly!” Lacey sat up straight, her eyes open wide.

“I think he finally got a divorce. And when did ugly ever stop him?”

True,
Lacey thought. Muldoon and morals performed a complicated dance. Dodd was acquainted with the concept, but he rarely let that stop him if he was after a goal, whether monetary or otherwise pleasurable. He
thought having affairs made him a big man. He always liked to hit on younger women, occasionally even his own reporters. But how much was talk and how much was action? Lacey was never sure.

“He really dated Ally Newport? Miss Sagebrush’s Favorite Bartender?”

“I’m just saying he knew Ally. Biblical sense and all that.”

“And he tried to get your land.”

“You gotta keep taking notes, sunshine.” Tucker yawned. “He’s just one on the list.”

After her years of hard labor at
The Sagebrush Daily Press
, Lacey was willing to believe just about anything bad about Muldoon. Starvation wages, seventy-hour workweeks, no benefits, no respect, and one measly week of vacation a year added up to very little sympathy for the man. Muldoon’s only saving grace was that he loved his newspaper and loved being a newspaperman, even if he treated the newsroom like his personal fiefdom.

“I always thought he’d rather assassinate people in print than in person.” Her head was whirling. “Still, we have to consider everything.”

“Everything?” He leaned in to her. “Does that include us?”

“Everything about the murders. Not us.” She looked away. “And we’ve been over for a long time.”

It was time for Tucker to stand and stretch. “That was almost a nice moment. But okay, Chantilly Lace, what else is on your mind?” Tucker put another log on the fire in the woodstove and stirred up the flames.

“There’s another possibility, Cole. What if the murderer is what they call a highway killer? He comes to town, stalks, abducts, and kills a woman, and leaves. No connection to any of them. There are three murders, so maybe it’s someone with a schedule of visits to Sagebrush or the area. Like a sales rep or a delivery driver. This guy’s not on anybody’s suspect list because he’s not local, he’s just a predator with a regular route. There
might be other disappearances or murders like these in other towns and no one has connected the dots yet. Maybe he dropped his cache of trophies somewhere, and someone else found them and figured out it belonged to the victims. Now that someone else is using the victim’s property to frame
you
.”

“You have a very dark turn of mind, Lacey Smithsonian. Is this what happens when a reporter covers the seamy world of fashion?”

She ignored the crack. “You already pointed out that in a county this big, there are places to lie low. We’re lying low in one of them right now. Maybe this predator has hideouts somewhere. Like this place. I hate to think those women died in such a lonely place. Barefoot. With nothing but the ghosts of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid haunting the hills.”

Lacey stopped talking. She was in just such a lonely place herself. Off the beaten path, whereabouts unknown, in the company of a murder suspect. She was grateful to be indoors and warm, but in the quiet of the flickering firelight, there was something chilling about this remote cabin, a hermit’s lonely home on the range. Some bad vibration in the walls, a melancholy in the air. Or perhaps it was all those illicit teenage trysts. Her imagination was slipping into overdrive.

Taking the hurricane lamp, she surveyed the cabin’s tiny bedroom. A thin blanket covered a stained and sagging mattress on the old bed. The bunks had no mattresses, just rusty springs. She lifted the lamp to the walls. Old-fashioned wallpaper, torn and faded, green with pink roses: a forlorn stab at homespun comfort. Without a homeowner to give it life, the little cabin was a sad place indeed.

“There’s a bed,” Tucker said, behind her. “Why don’t you take it? I’ll take the couch. I won’t bother you, Scout’s honor. Unless you say so.”

“That bed gives me the creeps. You can have it.”

“Lie down, Lacey. You look about ready to fall off your horse.”

She eased herself down gingerly on the hideous plaid sofa, too tired to say another word. No exotic animal life emerged from the cushions. With her last crumbs of energy, she made a pillow of her shawl.

“Just for a minute.” She closed her eyes and she was out like a light.

When she awoke, Lacey’s head felt heavy and her limbs were stiff.

She hoped for a moment it was all a bad dream, Tucker’s great escape from the courthouse and their subsequent flight from the law, but no luck. It all came back to her in a rush. She was lying on the sofa with her coat tossed over her and a threadbare blanket over her legs. She sneezed.

“You’re up,” Tucker said.

“No, I’m not.” She yawned and sniffed the air. She raised herself on one arm. “Something smells good. How long did I sleep?”

“Couple of hours. I’m heating up that can of stew. Tastes okay to me, but you don’t have to eat it if you’re afraid of being poisoned. Me, I’m an outlaw, can’t poison me.”

“I take back what I said.” A doughnut and a bagel a day weren’t enough to keep Lacey’s hunger away. “Prehistoric canned stew, yum. Probably woolly mammoth stew. Let me know when it’s ready.” She let her head fall back.

“Are you gonna go back to sleep again?”

“No. I’m wide-awake. I’m just resting my eyes.” She shifted her position, adjusted the coat, and wiggled her toes. Tucker had taken her boots off. Lacey opened her eyes and saw them on the floor.

How on earth could I sack out?
Some part of her must have trusted Tucker or she never would have been able to fall asleep.

She was still out in the middle of nowhere where they would be hunted down. And somewhere out there was a killer who believed the heat was off him. She was still angry and frightened, but there was a measure of trust growing in her heart. She hoped she wasn’t wrong. At the moment, however, her instincts were the last thing she’d trust.

Lacey gazed at Tucker’s back. He was busy at the stove, stirring the stew. He wasn’t Vic Donovan. And in spite of the incident at the courthouse, he wasn’t a monster either. Lacey felt a pang somewhere in the region of her heart and told it to go away.

It’s just hunger, Lacey. Nice predicament, Smithsonian
. At the moment she couldn’t remember a worse one, and she didn’t try. Her limbs felt like lead. She told herself she’d get up in a minute. Really she would. Still lying down, she put an arm out for her boots. They were just out of reach. Her eyes were adjusting to the dim lantern light.

“What time is it?”

“About eight. It snowed some. Sky’s clearing up. It’s real pretty. You can see the stars.”

Lacey was almost upside down, one boot nearly in her grasp, when something caught her eye under the sofa, toward the back. Firelight glinted off it. Lacey rolled onto the floor and stretched one arm under the sofa, but she couldn’t reach it.

“What on earth are you doing?” Tucker removed the pan from the stove.

“Something’s under the sofa.”

“Probably a mouse.”

“Yuck!” She pulled back her arm and sat cross-legged on the floor, peering into the darkness beneath the sofa.

“You face down killers and you’re afraid of a mouse?” He looked bemused.

“Well, I’m just not fond of disease-carrying four-legged vermin.”

With Lacey still crouched on the floor, Tucker pushed the sofa away from the wall and lifted the flickering hurricane lamp over the gap. The cabin had settled over the
years, leaving the floor uneven. Something was wedged between the wall and a floorboard. Tucker crouched down and extracted the thing that had caught Lacey’s eye. It gleamed in his hands.

“What is it?” Lacey asked. “Let me see.”

“Looks like a heel. Heel of a boot, maybe.”

“Please. Give it.” She put out her hand.

He tossed it to her. She caught the thing and turned it over. A bootheel. She compared it to her own. It was almost the same size, about two inches tall. A thin strip of slightly tarnished filigreed silver wrapped around the outside of it. The bottom of the heel was badly scuffed and part of the silver filigree was dented.

“This is from a woman’s boot.” Lacey turned it over and over.

Tucker shrugged. “Could be from a small man’s boot. Or a big kid’s.”

“With silver decoration? Pretty fancy for a kid.” Lacey held it up to the light of the lamp.

“You see some fancy boots at the stock show. Rodeos too.”

“If this is any indication of the rest of the boot, it must have cost a lot.”

“No argument there. You ready for some woolly mammoth stew?” He indicated the table, but she stayed put, staring at the heel.

“Does this look like the kind of thing your old friend what’s-his-name would have worn?”

“Thompson? Hell no, he was a big guy, and a simpler man you’ve never met.”

“It’s a woman’s heel anyway.” Lacey was convinced. “Was a woman living here?”

“No. Thompson was near eighty years old and damn near a hermit. Hadn’t anything to do with women in forty years or so, I’d guess. His wife died, his daughter left. He just had this one granddaughter back in Grand Island, Nebraska. She never visited.” He paused. “Hey, if that thing was really old, the silver would be tarnished black.”

Lacey turned the heel so the silver glinted in the lamplight. “When a heel comes off, especially one this
expensive, you’d take it to a boot maker. There’s one in Steamboat.”

“Or else it rolls under the sofa and gets lost,” Tucker said. “You getting at something? Is this where the magic happens? That fashion clue thing you do?”

“Sarcasm will get you nowhere, Cole.” She made a face at him. “For argument’s sake, this is a lady’s bootheel that belongs to a pretty fancy pair of cowboy boots.” The cowboy boots decorated with silver rosettes that she saw at Crybaby Ranch flashed in her mind.
What is it doing way out here?

“I’ve seen some fancy ones,” Tucker said. “Silver-tipped toes, silver heels, with Mexican coins stitched in them, but you don’t see much of that around on a ranch.”

“These are custom designed, Cole. You wouldn’t be able to replace them off the shelf. If you lose that heel, you’re going to look for it, long and hard.” Lacey wondered if this heel could be traced.

“We can agree this one got lost. Now let’s agree on that stew. I’m hungry.”

“How did the heel come off? Perhaps in a struggle? Or was it dragged along the floor?”

“Or pulled along the ground by a bull,” Tucker suggested.

“And if it belongs to a dead woman?” Lacey stared at him and held out the heel.

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

“You said Corazon had a pair of fancy boots.”

He took the heel from her. “I don’t know whose this is, but it didn’t belong to Corazon. Her boots were pretty nice, but there was no silver. I would have remembered that.”

A piercing howl from outside the cabin startled them. It seemed to go all the way down Lacey’s spine. She jumped off the sofa. “What was that?”

“Coyote call. Moon’s out.” Tucker grinned at her. “They don’t just howl at the moon. They howl because they feel like it. Or they got something to say.”

“That’s a pretty hair-raising sound.” Her heart was beating fast. Tucker laughed.

“Only to you! Probably just an old coyote looking for his mate.”

The coyote howled again. More chills tickled the back of Lacey’s neck. She breathed deeply and went to the window, pulling the ancient curtains aside. She couldn’t see anything but her reflection in the black glass. She turned back to Tucker.

“Maybe the heel isn’t Corazon’s. But what about the other women? Ally and Rae?”

“That’s a mighty big stretch, Chantilly Lace. They weren’t found anywhere near here. We’re hell and gone on the other side of the county.” He scratched his head. “So this is what you’d call a fashion clue?”