Jude Devine Mystery Series (48 page)

Sympathetically, she said, “You must feel terrible about all this. People are going to think you took that little boy.”

“I know. Jesus.” His shoulders shook, and he distracted himself by combing his fingers through his nondescript brown hair. “Man, what are the odds? So, we did a dumb thing, no question about it. But that kid disappearing…that’s got nothing to do with us.”

“Your sister seems very angry.”

“Fuck, she’s like…lost her mind. I don’t know what else I can tell her. Like we’d ever take a little kid and…do stuff. Fuck. We’re not animals.” He paused, lost in self-pity. “I’ll never get a job now. It wasn’t even my idea. I didn’t want to kill My Pet Goat. That was Gums. Him and his fucking crazy ideas. I’d have never listened to him if I hadn’t been drinking.”

“People make mistakes under the influence,” Jude said, intentionally letting him off the hook. “They do things that are out of character.”

He nodded emphatically. “That’s exactly what happened. I just wanted to break into the place and get back this ring I bought her, but no. We had to make a fucking statement. Gums was like…scare the bitch. Show her she can’t mess with you. God hates faithless whores…shit like that.”

“Gums” certainly sounded like a person of interest, so far. “You were engaged to Tonya, weren’t you?” Jude asked.

“Yeah. Until she started screwing that asshole Miller. I broke up with her soon as I found out. But she wouldn’t give back the engagement ring, and the problem is, I borrowed the money to pay for it off Heather in the first place.”

Jude nodded. “Sounds like Tonya caused a problem between you and your sister.”

“No kidding.”

“Matt, I can see you didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. Or for the animal cruelty.”

“No way. Fuck no! I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” He started sobbing noisily again and rambling on about his goat and 9/11.

Jude let it run for a while, then steered him back on track, “Your sister says you and she had some words in the bar and you left. What time was that?”

“Maybe twenty past ten.”

“What did you do then?”

“I went and picked up Gums, and we drove around town drinking tequila for a while. That’s when he got his bright idea about smashing Tonya’s place up and leaving blood or something to scare the shit out of her. We went round there, but Wade’s truck was in the driveway, so we just shouted some shit and left.”

So far the story confirmed Wade Miller’s. Jude asked, “You kept driving around?”

“Not for long. I was telling Gums how Heather was all pissed about the goat and everything, and he had one of his fucking brain waves. So we went back to my place and…you know…dealt with the goat. A couple of our other buddies got back from the bar then, and they wanted to join in. So Gums wrapped up the head in a towel, and we got some bricks and drove back to Tonya’s.”

“What time did you get there?”

“Maybe half past eleven.”

“Half past eleven.” Jude kept her voice very even, not wanting to reveal how important the next questions were to the investigation. “Was Mr. Miller’s truck in the driveway then?”

“No.”

“What did you do?”

“We got out of the car and got the bricks and smashed the front windows.”

“What did you do with the goat’s head?”

“After we broke the windows Gums took the towel off it, and we threw it in the front room.”

“You threw the goat’s head into the living room?”

“Yeah.”

“What then?”

“One of the neighbors was turning on lights so we got the fuck out of there.”

“Which neighbor?”

“Across the road.”

“I hope you’re not lying to me, Matt,” Jude warned.

“No. This is the God’s honest truth, I swear. I don’t know how the fuck that head ended up in the yard, but we didn’t put it there.”

“Did you go inside the house to get the ring?”

He shook his head, bemused. “Weird thing about it…I forgot. With all that was happening and I was upset about my goat and all, I just plain forgot.”

“That’s perfectly understandable.” Casually, she asked, “While you were there, did anyone happen to look inside the middle room?”

“That’s the kid’s bedroom, right?”

“Yes.”

Roache shook his head. “The curtains were closed in that room. I looked in Tonya’s room, right at the end. Don’t know why. You’d have thought I’d remember the ring then. But I didn’t.”

“I’ll need to speak with all your friends.” Jude pushed a notepad and pen across the desk toward him and asked him to jot down their names. “Casting your mind back, is there anything else you remember seeing? Anything unusual?”

Roache frowned. The demands of this open-ended question clearly strained his limited imagination. “Like what?” he asked finally.

“Anything that made you look twice.”

He dug deep. “A hat. One of those elf-type ones little kids wear.”

“Where was it?”

“In the driveway, lying in the snow.”

“What did it look like?”

“Hard to say. It had snow on it.”

“A lot of snow?”

“No. It wasn’t buried or anything. Just covered with flakes. Looked like Denver Broncos colors. Dark blue and yellow.”

“You’re certain this was a child’s hat?”

“Well, I sure wouldn’t wear it.”

“Any idea who it belongs to?”

“No. Sorry.” With agonized expectancy, Roache asked, “Am I under arrest?”

“Not right now. You did the right thing by coming forward. You’ll probably face felony charges for criminal mischief and animal cruelty, but because you’re a witness assisting us in our inquiries, I’ll wait and see what the sheriff says about that.”

With a huge sigh, he sagged forward, cradling his head in his hands. “I wish I’d never got involved with Tonya Perkins. She’s a piece of work.” He raised his head. “Fuck, this is exactly the kind of stunt she’d pull just to get attention.”

“Why would you say that?”

“She was always going on about getting a job doing the weather on TV in Denver or trying out for
American Idol
. She blames that kid for ruining her life.”

Chapter Six

Agatha Benham had almost removed her snow boots, out front of the sheriff’s office in Paradox Valley, when one of those climate-warming SUVs crunched through the snow and rolled to a halt beneath the huge Marlboro Man sign that dominated the parking area. The car windows fogged within seconds, so Agatha couldn’t see inside. But she knew who the driver was. Dr. Mercy Westmoreland from the medical examiner’s office in Grand Junction, a woman far too elegant for her repugnant occupation.

The pathologist descended from her gas-hog car and raised a kid-gloved hand to Agatha in a pretty greeting. She looked like Grace Kelly from
Rear Window
, a film Agatha would have liked better if James Stewart had not been stuck in a wheelchair. She thought his morbid voyeurism gave the disabled a bad name.

“Miss Benham. Good morning.”

The full-cut ivory cashmere coat she was bundled into only made her skin seem more flawless. Her cheeks glowed pink, stung no doubt by the cold. Her honey-silver hair was contained in a tight chignon, and a black beret clung at a jaunty angle to her head. She belonged in Paris.

“Good morning, Doctor. What a pleasant surprise.” Agatha un-locked the front door and the security door.

She was usually the first to arrive on the days she worked. Detective Devine and Deputy Tulley came in after seven, which gave her time to make coffee and straighten up the office. Like most law enforcement personnel, the officers she took care of were incapable of neatness in the workplace. They hid mess exactly the way children did, crammed in the bottom drawers of their desks, stuffed into the cherrywood wall console, and piled high in important-looking stacks of files on their desks.

Agatha had spent thirty-eight years working in this schoolhouse before it was converted to a joint substation for the Montezuma and Montrose county sheriffs. She still couldn’t see the sense in that initiative, despite the employment it provided her. There wasn’t enough crime in the canyon area to keep a detective busy, and Devine was always being called into Cortez to work on this or that case, leaving Agatha to mind the station and make sure Deputy Tulley kept his weapon holstered when the occasional misguided felon poked fun at Smoke’m, the bloodhound.

“How are things out here?” Dr. Westmoreland asked, kicking her boots against the steps to dislodge snow.

“We’re doing fine apart from this weather.” Agatha was about to continue the chitchat with an equally trivial remark when her jaw locked and her concentration faltered as a second woman emerged from the SUV and picked her way across the crushed snow toward them.

Tall and willowy, brilliant Titian red hair tumbling about her shoulders, she walked with a silver-topped ebony cane. As she reached the bottom step up to the porch, she clutched her black leather trench coat to her and exclaimed in a perfectly modulated British accent, “Where in God’s name are we? Fargo?”

Agatha’s laughter rose like vomit. Tears splashed the lenses of her reading glasses. In her seventy-one years, she could not have imagined the day would ever dawn when she would stand on the schoolhouse porch next to one of the great actresses of the generation, for that’s what Elspeth Harwood was destined to become. Agatha could hardly believe the star was right here in Paradox Valley, looking even more luminous than she did on the big screen.

“Miss Harwood,” she squeaked. “What an honor.”

“You remember my name—how sweet.” The radiant one pressed Agatha’s quivering hand in hers. “I’m always amazed when anyone across the pond knows who I am.”

Agatha laughed over this absurdly modest comment. She could not have felt more giddy if she were meeting the President. “I’ve followed your career since you played the psychopathic nun in
Unveiled
.”

“Oh, dear God. You saw that?”

“I have it on video. And I bought a signed photo of you in the nun’s habit on eBay last year. That’s on the wall in my living room.”

Dr. Westmoreland said, “Elspeth broke her leg shooting in Wyoming, and she decided to recuperate here. We just spent a few days in Moab.”

“A broken leg. How terrible. I hope you’re feeling better.” Agatha suddenly became aware of the freezing air and urged belatedly, “Please, come in out of the cold. My goodness, what was I thinking?”

She could already hear herself recounting the anecdote at the next Paradox film circle meeting—how she kept Elspeth Harwood standing on the front porch while she gushed over her like a starstruck adolescent. Mortified, she led her visitors indoors and showed them to seats in front of Detective Devine’s desk.

Miss Harwood unfastened her leather coat and slung it over the back of her chair before sitting down. Agatha could not stop staring at her. She had always imagined screen beauty to be nine-tenths mirage; everyone knew lighting, makeup, and camera angle could hide the flaws in a face. But sitting right in front of her was an actress whose skin looked well scrubbed and who was not even wearing lipstick. If anything, Elspeth Harwood was even lovelier in person than she was on camera.

Awed, Agatha confided in an embarrassed rush, “They should have given you the role of Elizabeth in Shekhar Kapur’s film. Cate Blanchett has that voice, but her face is horsy, don’t you think?”

At this, Dr. Westmoreland stifled a giggle. Agatha guessed that she probably shared the opinion but, being a personal friend of Miss Harwood’s, would not want to seem like a cheerleader.

Miss Harwood modestly said, “I respect Cate enormously. She is utterly dedicated to her craft.”

Agatha knew this was code for
She only does nudity for the art.
“Well, it’s just my opinion,” she said. “But you look like the real thing…like you have genuine royal blood.”

“We should visit you more often. It’s good for my ego.” The star gave a warm smile that was so natural, Agatha could almost see her as just anybody.

Sweeping this ludicrous idea aside, she asked, “May I offer you both a refreshment? I’m making coffee.”

“Excellent. Thank you.” Miss Harwood ran her hand cautiously over the leg stretched before her and asked, “Would you happen to have a couple of aspirin?”

“Will Advil suffice?” Agatha rushed to the medicine chest, thrilled to be of help to the star in a time of need.

“When are you expecting Detective Devine?” Dr. Westmoreland asked. “I thought we might catch her on our way back to Grand Junction.”

“I’m not sure if she’s coming in this morning.” Agatha shook pills into a small paper cup and poured a glass of water. She handed these to Miss Harwood and noticed, with a small flutter of delight, that she could smell the star’s perfume. It was a heady but subtle floral, so appropriate for her English beauty. “You probably haven’t heard the news if you’ve been in Utah. There’s a little boy missing, and Detective Devine was in Cortez all yesterday conducting the investigation.”

“There’s no body yet?” The doctor looked pensive. “I wonder if I should go down there and make myself available.”