A Luring Murder (9 page)

He laughed then went back to work clearing the foam pressure from the beer.

“Did you?” Louise said.

He laughed, glanced up, and noticed Louise’s humorless face. The smile dropped from his face.

“What are you, a cop?” He tried again to lighten the situation. He failed.

“Yes, we are,” I said. “Where were you this morning when Warren was killed?”

Bruce shook his finger at me then at Louise. “You two are the cops from Saint Paul. I heard about you two, though I’m surprised. I never expected cops to look so good.”

I rolled my eyes. This guy had to be some kind of salesman. Only a salesman could have such a smarmy attitude with a straight face.

“Well officers, as much as I wanted him dead, I’m afraid you have the wrong man. I was curled up next to my wife this morning.”

He gave a sly dog grin. “We had sort of a late start this morning. You know. The kids were camping behind the main house with friends, and we were all alone in the cabin, so we took advantage of our time.”

He poured himself a red plastic cup of beer and guzzled a mouth full, then held the cup at chest level.

“Sorry, I can’t help you ladies. I was nowhere near Warren Pease in the last twenty-four hours.”

“You didn’t go out at all this morning?” I asked. “Because if you had been out and about this morning, you might have seen something that may be helpful.”

His eyes looked left then skyward. “Nope. Sorry. Can’t help you.”

He pointed to something behind us with his cup hand.

“I see my wife. She must be wondering where I’ve run off to. Please excuse me ladies.”

Bruce McMahan disappeared into the crowd.

“He’s one cool liar,” I said.

Louise nodded. “Too bad he didn’t know Mr. Peterman saw him this morning.”

“I wonder what he’s hiding.”

“Should be fun figuring it out.”

I dropped my chin to my chest. “Yeah.”

She turned to me with a questioning gaze. “You don’t seem like yourself. Usually, you’re anxious to go all Charlie’s Angels on me. What’s wrong?”

“Sorry.” I poured myself a cup of beer and sucked it down in one long swallow. “It’s just that the more complicated this investigation becomes the less time I have to spend with Gavin.”

“Oh.”

Louise knew, or at least had a notion, that all was not right in the world of marriage. How the hell could it be? We rarely ever saw each other.

“From what Mr. Peterman said today.” She gave a reassuring pat on my arm. “It sounds to me like Gavin is damn proud of you, Catherine.”

Being proud and being understanding about ruining the first vacation we’d had in five years are two different things.

“If it’s that bad, Catherine. Digs and I can handle this investigation.”

“No,” I said. “Gavin is the one who brought me into this. I’ll finish what I’ve started. I just hope there aren’t too many more surprises waiting for us.”

And I prayed that my husband would understand. It was, in fact, his fault that I was involved in the first place. Had he not been near that fish house at six in the morning, and had he not volunteered me for any of this, I would have slept late and been just like the rest of these endies – mildly curious but removed from the situation.

Gavin was the one who volunteered me as an expert in the field.

“So what do we have so far?” I asked.

“Bruce obviously. Otherwise, in my mind, everything comes back to the same suspects,” Louise said. “The Peterman’s.”

She inclined her head in their direction.

Claire had on her best Jackie-O face. Mr. Peterman still looked dazed from the day’s events.

“I don’t know about him,” I said. “He seems broken up by everything that’s happened. But she’s repressing some dangerous anger toward Warren Pease.”

“You have to stop saying that name.” She cracked a smile. “I know it’s childish, but I can’t take it anymore. Why would anyone name their child Warren Pease?”

“I know. It would have merited a beating every day for life in my high school, and I went to an all-girl Catholic school.”

Of course, a Catholic girl’s school can be tougher than most people realized.

“Maybe that’s why Warren turned out to be the kind of person he was,” I said. “What do you suggest I call him instead?”

“Calling him the victim, works for me.” She turned toward me with her brows drawn together. “What do you mean ‘like he was’?”

“You know having an affair with a married woman, causing problems with everyone around him.”

I shrugged. “Maybe he was hostile because he had to defend himself. Constantly being attacked has to make someone wary – ready to battle at a moment’s notice. Over time, I think that would make you hard.”

Louise considered my harebrained theory.

Before her thoughts could gel into a valid argument against it, I changed the subject. “Who else do we have?”

“Patrick and Samantha King.”

Louise leaned against a white plastic post, one of many that surrounded the Peterman’s weathered, aging deck, and rubbed her injured leg. She looked tired. Not at all how I was accustomed to seeing her.

Being up and around this soon after being shot was taking its toll, though she would never admit it.

“I don’t buy Patrick’s alibi,” she said. “He told you something when you went to the barn, didn’t he?”

I perched my butt on the edge of the deck next to her. Rough splinters pressed into the back of my thighs.

“Yeah, and he admitted to lying.”

Digs wandered over to us in a pink and yellow Hawaiian shirt. He balanced a plate heaped with food in one hand, and a glass of punch in the other. The distinct smell of fried food wafted up with his wake.

A quick glance around and he realized that every picnic table was occupied. He shrugged.

“You two are missing out on quite a spread over there. They’ve got everything.”

He used his tongue to lift a chip off his plate like a lizard trapping pray.

“Nice,” I said. “You plan to eat all that food by shoving the plate in your face?”

“I might, O’Brien.” He brought the plate up, about to snag more food, then looked at Louise. He lowered the plate. “I have utensils. I just came over to see what you two were so tight about over here.”

“Just doing some more investigating,” I said. “Asking people if they know anything about the murder.”

“Found out anything?” He asked.

“We have some new leads,” Louise said. “Did you find out anything after we left?”

Digs got the eager puppy look he got when he was trying to impress Louise. Excitement vibrated from every muscle in his body, with the same intensity as plucking an overly taught guitar string.

“The knife you found under the table was used to cut open the victim. No doubt about it. Pease’s skin and blood were all over the blade. His and a lot of fish blood.”

I really wasn’t hungry now.

“Did the medical examiner ever show up?” Louise asked.

“Yeah, apparently he was in the middle of the lake when his pager went off.”

Digs raised his plate again then glanced at Louise. Finally, his stomach won out over his need to impress Louise. He licked up another chip, crunched it up, then swallowed.

“Since there’s never been a murder here, he didn’t feel any urgency. Until the fourth time his pager went off. Then he was annoyed enough to come in and see what the urgency was.”

I tried to imagine one of our M.E.’s in town ignoring a page. We couldn’t remove the body until the victim was officially pronounced dead. If an M.E. kept a team of investigator’s waiting half a day, the mob mentality would win out, and we’d need an M.E. to pronounce the M.E.

“The knife easily filleted him,” Digs said. “He had been dead for a while by the time he was cut open.”

“How do you know?” Gavin had come up to stand next to me with his own plate of food, not as heaped as Digs’, but teetering on the verge of overflowing.

Close on his heels was the little white mutt. He curled up and laid at Gavin’s feet. He and I were going to have a conversation about that dog soon.

“Louise noticed that there were no spatter marks in the fish house. She thought that indicated he’d been killed somewhere else, because the slash to his neck would have sent blood everywhere.”

Gavin had speared a piece of battered fish covered in red sauce. He turned the fork over and set it down.

“Which would have been correct, except the slash to his neck wasn’t what killed him. The cut was too shallow. He wasn’t killed by a knife at all.”

“Then what killed him?”

Louise leaned forward far enough to make Digs nervous. He knew as well as I did that Louise’s patience for a long reveal was low. She wanted him to get to the point now.

“He had nasty blow to his head. That's what did him in.”

Digs tucked his punch cup in the crook of his elbow and managed to hold the cup without spilling his food, while he grabbed another chip to munch on.

“How can you tell?” Gavin said.

Digs crunched his chip then swallowed. “Because he didn’t bleed out. The blood in his body pooled on his back, from his shoulders all the way down his legs.”

I folded my arms over my chest. Perspiration was beginning to make my under arms sticky, but so far my deodorant was holding.

“What you’re saying is, someone conked him on the head, cut his throat, and then cut him open?”

“It looks that way.”

Louise shook her head. “That gives new meaning to the word overkill.”

“And
that
gives new meaning to the word understatement,” I said.

“Catherine.” It was a warning. I got them often when I used sarcasm on Louise.

“Then we don’t have the murder weapon yet?” I said.

“Not yet, and we don’t know yet if we even have the primary crime scene.” Digs’ face was sympathetic.

This news created a whole new set of problems. With the murder weapon in hand, we had a buoy on the water that might point us in the direction of our killer, but now we were adrift and lost again.

“Any idea where the knife came from?” Louise asked.

“It’s a Rapala brand knife, a pretty common brand of fillet knife.”

“I have one,” Gavin said.

We all stared at him.

“No mine is not missing,” he said.

I smiled. “We already ruled you out after the resort owner said he saw you near the fish house this morning.”

He furrowed his brows at me.

“What about the fabric and the stuff used to stick the knife to the table?” I said.

Digs took a deep breath and glanced at his plate full of food longingly. The layers of fried food must be calling to him.

“Louise was right about the fabric,” he said. “It was pure linen. Nice quality too. Probably imported. I’m still working on the gum you found. The chemical composite analysis is running now.”

“Let us know what you find,” Louise said. “I’m going back to the cabin for some peace and quiet. I can’t think with all this noise.”

The Minnelli wannabe had located a karaoke machine and was bombarding us with her off key bizarre rendition of
Living La Vida Loca
. That might have had a lot to do with Louise’s abrupt exit, but I think she was tired anyway. She shouldn’t have been pushing herself so hard.

“I think I’m going back to our cabin too,” I said. “If you don’t mind, Gavin, all this heavy partying has worn me out.”

“I don’t mind.” Gavin grimaced as Minnelli hit a particularly sour note. “In fact, I’ll go with you.”

Gavin was unusually quiet on our walk back. Hands jammed deep in his pockets, head down and brows knitted together tight. He seemed to be working over some challenging puzzle that wouldn’t quite fall into place in his head.

The white dog pranced behind us despite my attempts to shoo him away. He just moved to the other side of Gavin where I couldn’t reach him.

The mutt might have won the battle, but the war was still on. There was no way he would make it into the cabin. I’d deal with him later, but right now the only thing I could think about was what was bothering Gavin.

I looped my arm through his, pulled him close, and nuzzled his neck. He didn’t respond.

I pulled my arm out of his and slapped him on the ass. This assault should have prompted him to try to grab me. Still he didn’t respond.

“What’s wrong, Gav?”

His lips went thin in a halfhearted smile. “It’s nothing.”

“Liar.” I put my arm through his again and squeezed.

“It’s nothing.”

“Come on tell me.” I shook him back and forth trying to loosen him up. “Maybe I can help.”

Gavin stopped walking and took a deep breath, as if trying to decide whether or not to confide in me. Finally, he looked deep into my eyes.

“Was I really a suspect?”