In Plain Sight (25 page)

“They? Now you figure the murder was a conspiracy? All the disgruntled ex-partners got together, invested in a pillow, and mapped out a plot to do Leslie in?”

The part about pillow buying was a bit snide, but I ignored it. “A conspiracy isn’t out of the question. Rambough alibies Wagner, he alibies her.”

“We’ll do our best with the investigation, Mrs. Malone,” he said. He sounded resigned, as if he figured I was going to be his burden until the case was solved. One hundred and two pounds of LOL on his back.

“But you don’t think either of them had anything to do with Leslie’s death,” I said.

“As I told you before, until we have the perpetrator, we don’t rule out anyone.”

“So who are your front-runner suspects?”

“Now, Mrs. Malone, you know I can’t discuss that with you,” he chided.

“Are Shane Wagner and Lissa Rambough going to stick around for a while?”

“I have no reason to hold them here. They volunteered their fingerprints, which will be compared with those found in the house and car. They left phone numbers and email addresses where I can get in touch with them.”

“Such helpful folks,” I muttered.

“I also want to thank you for your helpfulness in calling to keep us informed of your observations, Mrs. Malone. The police always appreciate citizen involvement.”

He spoke blandly, but I challenged him with the question I’d been wondering about for several minutes now. “Why do you discuss any of this with me, Sgt. Yates?”

“You did find the body.” He tilted his head and studied me. “And I usually find your questions and observations … interesting.”

Interesting as in amusing? Was I Sgt. Yates’s comic relief in a mostly unamusing job? He tossed the crime scene tape into the police car and slid in himself, leaving me with more questions than answers.

Shane Wagner’s contact with the authorities probably looked good to Sgt. Yates. Conscientious citizen trying to find out what’s going on and be helpful.

Or, less innocently in my mind, it could be a preemptive strike. Shane Wagner surely knew that sooner or later he’d be considered a suspect, so he figured he’d make himself look good by going to them first. It was also possible that Shane and Lissa hadn’t originally intended to go to the authorities, had intended to slip away unnoticed and perhaps contact the police from California, but maybe Shane
had
spotted me at the restaurant and figured he’d better do it now. It was just my word against his about the content of his meeting with Leslie, of course.

But the fact that I knew he was lying, even if Sgt. Yates didn’t, was surely important. Very important.

25

The week dragged by. Sandy was at the gymnastics studio every evening preparing for the upcoming meet. The Fayetteville newspaper sent someone to interview me, probably because the authorities were being so closemouthed. I politely declined. The last thing I wanted was my name hanging out there for curious eyes to see. I received another card from Mac “the Postcard Man” MacPherson, this time one of the standard scenic variety showing a lot of Montana sky. He said his son-in-law’s broken leg was healing, but he’d be staying with them for several weeks yet. I called the Shady Lane Motel and learned that Shane Wagner and Lissa Rambough were not registered there now. I could see lights in Leslie’s house at night, but I didn’t know if that meant Astrid Gallagher was in residence, dripping bubbles as she merrily dashed from bathroom to bathroom, or if Leslie’s light-timing system was still operating.

I assumed Sgt. Yates and other members of the county sheriff’s department were working diligently, but lack of visible progress frustrated me even though I knew there were undoubtedly details the police were withholding from the public.

Shane Wagner’s big lie about his meeting with Leslie put him high on my list of suspects, maybe with Lissa Rambough as an accomplice. Although Astrid Gallagher’s greedy grab for the house also kept me thinking. She, too, would have had an accomplice, the actual killer, who was surely long gone by now. How to run him down? And I kept wondering about binoculars-man Michael, who seemed to have surfaced only the one time and then dropped out of sight. Neither could I eliminate the gate-ramming neighbor or Cass Diedrich’s angry husband.

I spent a considerable amount of time on the Internet but didn’t dig up anything new on CyberPowerAds. Dead dot-coms fade quickly. Individual searches on the partners’ names turned up Lissa Rambough’s personal website about her cat, some rare, naked-looking breed that the good Lord must have created when he was in a joking mood. The website proved she did have a cat, I had to admit. Which might have scratched Shane Wagner. So what? I wasn’t convinced those weren’t Leslie’s fingernail scratches on his face, even though the experts hadn’t found anything under her fingernails to test for DNA. Maybe whatever DNA material had been there had washed off in the lake water. Although the fibers hadn’t washed away … Well, perhaps synthetic fibers cling more persistently than skin off a human face.

But I couldn’t do anything but speculate, so Sandy’s big gymnastics meet in Fayetteville the following Saturday was an especially welcome distraction. The meet was scheduled to start at 10:30. After a light breakfast, we planned to leave the house at 7:45. Sandy came downstairs in baggy blue sweats but with her hair pulled into an elegant knot at the back of her head and wearing a bit more makeup than usual. She seemed more somber than excited. Skye was coming over to go with us. She arrived with news.

“Dad and Tammi are coming to the meet this afternoon! Isn’t that great?”

Sandy, just coming down the stairs with her gear bag, dropped it with a clunk. “They’re coming to my gymnastics meet?” She sounded as horrified as if she’d looked in the mirror and discovered a zit the size of a cherry on her nose. “Why?”

“Because they like you, of course. And Dad’s interested in all kinds of youth activities and wants to—”

“He wants publicity for his election campaign, that’s what he wants! But I don’t want him there.”

Sandy’s statement sounded so hostile that I was taken aback. Skye looked startled, and I threw in a question to defuse what felt like a peculiarly explosive situation.

“What about Baby?” I asked. “Who’ll be staying with Baby?”

“A neighbor down the street,” Skye said with a distracted air. To Sandy she snapped, “It isn’t up to you to decide who comes to the meet and who doesn’t. Anybody who wants to can come. I think I’d better go back to the house and ride with them. Or maybe not come at all.”

Sandy suddenly seemed to deflate. Her shoulders slumped. “No, don’t do that. I’m sorry. Just nerves, I guess.” She leaned over and picked up the gear bag holding her leotard, chalk, bottles of water, and other necessities.

Skye had looked ready to storm out but instead, with an understanding and bigheartedness I had to admire, reached into the funky patchwork bag hanging from her shoulder and tossed Sandy a stick of gum. “Here. Chew this. It’ll relax you.”

Sandy managed a smile. “Thanks.”

The gymnastics studio in Fayetteville was several times as large as the little one in Woodston. Kids, preschool up to mid-teenage, many more girls than boys, were already on the floor warming up in a miniature circus of activity. We got Sandy registered, and she went to change into her leotard. Skye and I found places to sit on the tiers of benches lining two sides of the big room.

It was hard to keep track of everything going on. Children flipping and spinning and tumbling. Parents milling around. A heavy thud punctuated the hum of voices and shuffling feet, and a coach ran out to check on a girl who’d crashed from the parallel bars. Excitement bristled like static electricity. Music blared from a far corner where a girl about Sandy’s age was practicing her floor exercise. She was good, especially on the aerial cartwheel, but with auntie pride, I decided Sandy was better.

“Have you been to one of these meets before?” I asked Skye.

“A couple, but not here.” Skye hesitated, as if uncertain of my reaction, before she said, “Dad and Tammi have never been to one. They’re really looking forward to it.”

“That’s nice. I’m looking forward to meeting your father.”

She leaned toward me, obviously relieved with my attitude. “He really does
care,
you know. About kids and the environment and the economy and everything.”

Sandy came out dressed in her blue leotard spangled with silver stars. She carried her gear bag over to where Miss Cassidy, the coach, had a space set up for the Woodston group. Sandy found a spot on the floor and started warm-up exercises. Stretches and bends, skips, splits, bridges and rolls. She touched her head to her knees both sitting and standing and worked up to forward and backward flips.

“I hope Sandy does well. She’s practiced so hard,” I said.

“She’s really good. She might even take all-around in her age group.”

A statement unfortunately not borne out as the day progressed. And it was a fairly slow progression, even though more than one competition was held at a time, as there were separate age-group competitions for each event. Sandy did okay on the vault, no major falls or errors, although she didn’t nail the landing the way I’d seen her do it before.

Brad Ridenour and Tammi arrived just before 12:00, earlier than Skye expected them. Sandy was right about one thing, I decided as I spotted the photographer trailing along with them. Brad Ridenour definitely intended to use this as a photo op. Skye ran over to meet them and bring them to where we were sitting. Brad’s face was familiar to TV viewers, and he smiled and glad-handed everyone along the way. I saw Sandy glance his way once, but she turned her back and pretended to be absorbed in rubbing her ankle.

“You’ve already met Tammi, of course,” Skye said to me, although she did it with a hand on Tammi’s arm, not as if she were bypassing the stepmother or downgrading her importance. I was pleased. Perhaps their relationship was improving.

“I’m so excited about being here!” Tammi gushed. “All these children with so much talent and energy!” She obviously hadn’t run out of exclamation points. She was in buttercup-yellow today, a sleeveless linen dress that some saleswoman should have received at least forty lashes with a feather boa for selling her. Even in matching yellow and white high-heeled sandals, she barely came up to her husband’s shoulder.

Then Skye introduced her father, her pride in him big enough to crown him king rather than merely elect him to some political office. We shook hands, his firm and personal, his eyes targeting mine with an expert politician intensity that said, “See? I’m noticing you personally. You’re important to me.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Malone. We’ve heard so much about you.”

I wondered if that meant they’d heard of me from Skye or if I was simply notorious as “The Lady Who Found the Body.” In person, Brad Ridenour was even bigger and blonder and broader shouldered than he looked on TV. Not overweight but substantial. His smile dazzled, and the cleft in his chin blended masculinity with boyish charm. He had a definite presence, even a charisma, that would certainly serve him well in the political arena. The Big Brad, as Skye had once said he was called. Yes, indeed. The Big Brad wants your vote. You can trust the Big Brad.

“It’s nice of both of you to come today,” I said.

“Oh, we wouldn’t have missed it!” Tammi turned to the photographer. “Dick, we should get photos of Brad with some of the contestants! Skye, why don’t you get Sandy to come over?”

“I don’t think—” I began. I knew Sandy was already upset and nervous, totally opposed to Brad and Tammi’s presence here, and being dragged into photographs wouldn’t help.

But Skye was already running over to where Sandy was comforting one of the smaller girls who hadn’t done well on her floor exercise. Even from this distance I could see Sandy’s vehement shake of head. Skye captured a couple of other girls and brought them back with a mumbled explanation to Tammi about Sandy being too busy. The photographer posed Brad with the girls doing handstands together, feet touching.

I thought that Sandy, in spite of her negative feelings about Brad, would surely do the polite thing and eventually come over to say hi, but she never did. The announcer kept talking about “amplitude” and “rotation” in relation to the contestants’ performances, which meant nothing to me, but it didn’t take an expert to tell how poorly Sandy was doing. Her performance went from bad to worse.

She slipped and almost fell off the beam during the balance beam competition and bungled the landing as well. Her timing was off during the floor exercises, and she stepped out of bounds once. And her scores, of course, reflected the errors.

I watched her chalk her hands before her turn at the uneven parallel bars. By that time Brad and Tammi had gone, and I hoped this would help Sandy do better. She was so strong and graceful that the bars were usually her best event. Not today. She actually missed her first jump to grab the bar to begin her routine, something I’d never seen her do. From there on, even this proud auntie had to admit her performance was mediocre. She did nail the landing, but by then it was too late.