Dove in the Window (29 page)

That picture certainly shut my mouth. “The frug?” I managed to say after a few seconds.

“A dance from the sixties,” she said, taking the dress off the padded satin hanger. “Been learning all sorts of useless trivia since I agreed to be in charge of the costumes and write the program.”

Resigned to my fate, I stood in my bra and underwear and held out my hand for the ballgown.

“This first,” she said and handed me the corset. “Otherwise that wide waist of yours will never fit in this dress. I swear, Benni Harper, you are as straight up and down as a boy.”

I held the underwear contraption in front of me. “How do I work this thing?”

She turned me around and within a few minutes, after some enthusiastic pulling on her part, I was being punished for every bad thought and deed I’d ever done or would do in the next ten years. “Oh, man,” I moaned. “I’m going to kill you, Elvia.”

“She’s the toastmistress,” Helen said as she strapped the basketlike bustle around my waist.

“Good. That’ll give me a clear shot at her up there on the podium. Tell me, does this come with a matching pearl-handled revolver?”

She gestured at me to bend over as she slipped the dress over my head. With the help of the torturous undergarments squeezing my insides into Brunswick Stew, it fit perfectly.

“Turn around and let me button you up,” Helen said.

Since there were about two million buttons, it gave us time to catch up on local news.

“Heard on the radio this morning about that hand of yours getting killed out at the Frio Saloon last night,” she said. “Suck in some air, honey. I’m having trouble with these middle ones.”

I breathed in and wondered briefly how in the world women survived in the 1880s. No wonder they were fainting all the time. They never got a clear lungful of oxygen. “Yeah, people are a bit upset out at the ranch.”

“They’re thinking Wade did it, I heard.”

“He didn’t. I don’t know who did, but he sure as heck didn’t.”

I heard her cluck under her breath. “Now there I agree with you, Benni. I’ve known that boy a long time. He’s no killer.” She turned me around and nodded her head in approval. “Why, you look like a fairy tale princess. There’s a little torn place on the hem there, so as long as I got you here, I’ll sew it up. Step up on this box here. So, you going to find out who killed those two kids and prove your brother-in-law’s innocence?”

“My former brother-in-law,” I said, avoiding her question so I wouldn’t be forced to lie.

“What’s this world coming to? We have certainly had our fair share of murders these last few years.”

I made a sympathetic noise in my throat and decided to change the subject before Gabe’s name worked its way into the conversation. “So, who else has been in here getting fitted?” Since I hadn’t been involved in the fashion show and not gone to any rehearsals, I had no idea who was in it.

Helen rattled on about who was wearing what and what they felt about it, people’s scars and stretch marks, who caused her a headache with having to alter their costumes because of weight gains, and how shocking she found that new thong underwear. “Why, we used to throw out panties that rode up like that!”

I let my mind wander as she talked, thinking about what exactly my next move should be in at least steering the suspicion of Shelby’s and Kip’s deaths away from Wade. The mention of Greer’s name brought me back to Helen’s conversation.

“What was that about Greer?” I asked.

“Wake up, missy. I was just saying that when Greer came in here the other day to be fitted for her costume—she’s wearing a 1930s rose-colored tea dress with the prettiest lace inserts—she was talking on one of those fancy phones people carry now.”

“A cellular phone.”

“That’s it. Bob wants me to get one and I told him that, thank you very much, there isn’t anybody in this world I need to talk to so badly they can’t wait till I get home. She didn’t know I was in that room over there.” She pointed to a small alcove behind the racks of costumes that contained a sewing machine and a wall-to-ceiling shelf filled with various tailoring tools. “She was really giving someone the riot act, if you know what I mean. Said she didn’t care one whit about Shelby Johnson, that she was alive and she wanted what was due her. That’s what she said, wanted what was due her.” Helen’s voice sharpened in disapproval. “I was surprised at her, to tell you the truth. Sounded a bit cold to me. Not at all what I expected from Greer. Why, her mother was head volunteer at the Red Cross for years before her arthritis crippled her up. But I didn’t let on I heard a thing.” She patted my shoulder. “All done now. The shoes and such are in that bag there. Now you be careful with that dress. It’s a genuine antique.”

Her words about Greer echoed in my head as I carried the dress to my truck. I couldn’t help but agree with Helen’s disapproval of Greer’s attitude. Actually, all the artists were starting to get on my nerves—Olivia’s anger at the pictures Shelby took of Bobby, Parker’s obsession with her public persona, Roland’s determination to make as much money off this tragedy as possible, and now Greer’s insistence on her so-called “rights” as a featured artist. Everyone seemed to have forgotten—or didn’t care—that a young woman and a young man were dead. I was disappointed in their self-centered attitudes and in the calculating and uncaring commercial side of the art world.

I had about five minutes to get to Blind Harry’s to meet Isaac. I wished I had more than Kip’s phone call to tell him. Maybe he found some clue in her apartment that the police missed.

He was sitting at a back table and had a cafe mocha waiting for me. He stood up and pulled out my chair for me.

“Thanks. How did it go?”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his dark eyes. A strand of white hair had escaped his ponytail and hung next to his weathered cheek. “Fine. I think I might have found something.”

I swiped a finger across the mound of whipped cream topping my drink and stuck it in my mouth. “What?”

He pushed a black three-ring notebook across the table to me. I pushed my drink aside and opened it. It held about fifty or sixty plastic pages holding strips of negatives. I glanced back up at him. “I don’t get it. Did you find some incriminating pictures or something?”

“No, nothing that obvious, which is why the police probably missed it. It occurred to me that if she was killed because of something she saw, she most likely took a picture of it.”

“That seems logical. I never saw her go anywhere without her camera.”

His smile was wistful. “I know. It’s hard to believe we weren’t genetically related.”

“So, what did you find that the police missed?”

“I’m sure they looked through her negatives and took any that contained people. But it occurred to me that maybe what she saw didn’t have anything to do with people, that there was something else she photographed that caused someone to kill her.”

I lifted my drink and took a sip. “And?”

“Look at this.” He pointed at a strip of negatives. I opened the binder and took them out, holding them up to the overhead lighting in the coffee house. They were of a barbed-wire fence in the woods somewhere, some oak trees, the edge of a wooden building—a barn or shed maybe.

I lowered the strip and shrugged. “I don’t recognize where that is. It could be anywhere in the county.”

“Look at this one.” He tapped his big finger on the strip in the section below the one I’d pulled out. I held up that one. More trees, a hawk, the edge of a metal corral, another corner of a building.

I looked at him in question, still not getting what he was trying to convey.

“Look at the numbering on the side of the strips.”

I peered down at the almost indecipherable numbers. The first strip was numbered one through four. The second, nine through twelve. I looked up at him. “A strip is missing!”

“Exactly. Remember what I said—that what you leave out of a photograph is almost as important as what you allow in? The police were looking for something that was there, not for something that wasn’t.”

“So, what do you think was on this strip? And more important, where do you think it is?”

“Good questions, and I have no idea about the answers to either. You know this area. I was hoping you’d be able to tell me.”

I studied the negatives again. They looked vaguely familiar but they could have been any of ten or twenty places I knew. “Can you have these made into prints?” I asked. “Maybe I’ll see something I recognize then.”

“Absolutely. I’ll have them done this afternoon and give them to you at the party tonight.” He leaned back in his chair. A deep weariness seemed to flood his broad, lined features, and he looked every minute of his seventy-nine years.

“This is hard for you,” I said softly.

“Yes, it is.”

We were both silent for a moment. The buoyant laughter and conversation of the surrounding tables seemed loud and almost unbearable.

“I only have a couple of things.” I quickly told him about the message Kip left on my answering machine at the museum and what little I’d learned from the lady at the Frio Saloon. “It does fit into your theory that they knew something. Something someone felt was important enough to kill for.”

“Something Shelby most likely photographed. What could she photograph out in the woods that would be worth killing her over?”

I shrugged. “Could be anything these days. Drugs, cattle rustling, toxic waste dumping, smuggling. There’s not a ranch in San Celina County that hasn’t experienced all of those things to one degree or another.”

“Cattle rustling?” He smiled, slightly amused. “Maybe we should round up a posse.”

“Hey, it still happens and it’s very sophisticated now. There was one group of rustlers they caught a few years ago who had the inside of an RV gutted and made into a small rendering operation. It would pull up to a fence that borders a side road—or sometimes even a main one if it was late at night—shoot the steer, and drag it into the pseudo-RV. In less than a half hour that steer would be steaks and roasts that they’d drive up the coast and sell black market to different restaurants. Daddy and I have unexplained cattle losses every year, and they aren’t all to coyotes and mountain lions.”

He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the oak table. “Do you think she might have taken a picture of that?”

I sighed. “I don’t know, Isaac. Like I said, there’s also drug labs, toxic waste dumping. I even read recently that they caught some people smuggling counterfeit CDs on a fishing boat in Morro Bay. And I’m sure the Sheriff’s Department could tell you even more illegal things that take place out in the boonies. One time Daddy and I were riding fence and way at the back of our property found some rusty leg irons locked to a tree with one old tennis shoe nearby and a bunch of empty pork-and-bean cans. It still makes me shudder to think about what that might have been about.”

Isaac shook his head. “Makes a person think twice about traipsing off in the wilderness by themselves, doesn’t it?”

“No kidding. Did you go through everything in her apartment? Maybe she hid them somewhere.”

“Checked every place I could think of.”

“No indication of a safety deposit box or anything?”

“No.”

I finished my drink and stood up. “I’ll think on it and try to come up with something. Maybe seeing those pictures will help.”

“I’ll do the whole roll. Looks like there were twenty-four of them. You’ll have them tonight.”

At home I found the shower occupied and Gabe lying on our bed reading the newspaper. His hair was damp, so apparently he’d showered already.

“The party starts in an hour and a half,” he said, not looking up.

“Oh, goody,” I replied, opening our closet doors and contemplating my clothes, wondering if I could get away with wearing black Wranglers one more time. I compromised by choosing cocoa-brown, narrow-legged wool slacks and a beige cashmere pullover—part of the new wardrobe Elvia had picked out for me. For familiarity, I pulled on my glossy brown Lucchese boots. Society could have everything tonight ... except my feet.

When Emory finally emerged from the bathroom, it took me all of forty-five minutes to shower, dry my hair, and slap on some mascara and blush. By the time I finished, Gabe was dressed in a tweedy sports jacket, blue chambray shirt, and black Levi’s.

When Gabe was in the other room hunting his eyeglasses, I asked Emory, “Did you find out anything?”

“Still got my feelers out,” he said, pulling on his Armani sports coat. “Should have something by tomorrow.”

ARTHUR CROSSMAN, OUR current mayor, and his wife, Rianna, lived in an exclusive neighborhood out past San Celina’s miniature airport. The houses were big and custom built for entertaining with lots of glass and huge backyards bordering a pristine, man-made lake. He was a retired insurance executive and she an ex-Miss California who owned a successful interior decorating business based in Santa Barbara. Arthur and Rianna made the society pages of the
Tribune
on a regular basis with parties that more often than not were fund-raisers for some worthy and newsworthy cause. Tonight’s was a combination of honoring our local women artists and Isaac Lyons, whose work Rianna had collected for years.

“Gabe, Benni, I’m so glad you could come,” Arthur said when we were shown into the crowded living room already rumbling with the murmur of cocktail chatter. His eyes flickered when he saw Gabe’s ravished face, but as an experienced politician, he covered it quickly with a wide smile. “Come in and help yourselves to the caviar and champagne.”

He led us through the living room to an elegant dining area where a cherrywood table was covered with silver and crystal dishes. The rooms were decorated in jewel tones of blues, greens, and reds and had a Kentucky country-home feel to them with rich wood trimming and paisley-print wallpaper. At the long dining table, Rianna was directing a woman wearing a black-and-white maid’s outfit.

She smiled when she saw us. “Have some caviar, you two. It’s quite the rage, you know. We have fourteen flavors of Carolyn Collins’s best caviar and some very amusing wines and champagnes to accompany them. The caviar arrived from Chicago today. We can’t let Isaac Lyons think we’re a bunch of country bumpkins, now can we?”