Roughstock (A Gail McCarthy Mystery) (5 page)

I nodded. "Did anyone see the man go out on the deck?"

"No. We asked around, so did the cops. He was noticed in the restaurant and gambling at the tables, but no one saw him go out on the deck. No one that will admit to it, anyway."

I hesitated, but I couldn't think of any more questions, and Cher's gaze had already left me and was roaming through her territory. "Thank you," I said, and she turned away without a word.

I played a few more hands of blackjack, lost most of what I'd won, and started looking for Lonny. Spotting him a minute later, walking between tables, apparently looking for me, I hurried up behind his long-striding form and slipped my arm through his. He looked down at me in surprise and I smiled. "Ready for dinner?" I asked.

"You bet. Where are we eating?"

"How about there?" I gestured toward the unobtrusive door with its posted menu. "The High Desert Room."

"Don't tell me. It's where Jack and Joanna ate."

"Right again." Lonny smiled and shook his head at me. "Just so long as the food's good. And the wine."

"It ought to be. It costs enough. I had a look at the menu a minute ago."

“
Am
I buying this dinner?"

"Why, Lonny." I batted my eyes at him. "You did invite me."

"That I did. I wasn't planning on investigating a crime, though. I was thinking about a, uh, romantic dining experience."

"This will be both," I assured him.

"Both, huh? Well, all right," Lonny grinned, "if you pay for half."

"Done," I agreed. "Now come on."

The High Desert Room definitely intended to be elegant. Its degree of darkness alone arrested to that. Everything was very western-leather-covered furniture, wagon wheel chandeliers, oak-framed Charles Russell and Frederic Remington prints on the walls. The menu, as I'd warned Lonny, featured some pricy food and specialized, as you might have guessed, in steak.

I decided on Steak Diane-flambeed right there at the table, so the waiter told me-and Lonny selected us a zinfandel to drink. As soon as I leaned back into my chair and took the first rich, peppery sip, I started to speculate on Jack and Joanna.

Had they enjoyed their meal? Had it been awkward? First dates could certainly be that way. What had they talked about?

When the waiter brought our salads I asked him, "Did you happen to see the man who was killed here last night?"

I could feel Lonny wince, but the waiter rested his gaze on my face and said, "I waited on him."

"He was a friend of mine," I said, "and the woman who was with him is a friend of mine, too."

The man nodded. He was Hispanic, and he spoke with a strong enough accent that I had some difficulty understanding him. "Yes, I waited on them both. They seemed to be having a good time, both of them. This I told the police."

It confirmed Joanna's story. She had been quite clear that she and Jack had gotten along well enough. He was nice, she'd said, though she'd thought him somewhat long-winded. It was only after they'd separated in the casino and she couldn't find him that she'd felt something was wrong.

So, what had happened? What had drawn Jack out on that deck-to his death?

I ate my salad and sipped my wine and tried to make a reasonable show of conversing with Lonny, but my mind was elsewhere. When the waiter brought out an elaborate serving table and began assembling and cooking the Steak Diane in a skillet next to our table, my thoughts snapped back to the present.

Lonny watched me inhale the strong garlic aroma appreciatively and smiled. "So what have you come up with, Sherlock?"

"I thought I was supposed to be Father Brown," I objected. "And I haven't come up with a thing. Just some questions. The obvious questions-why did Jack go out on that deck? Who went out after him? And why?"

Lonny shrugged.

“
It
isn't inviting out there," I went on, "not this time of year, anyway. There's snow all over everything and it's freezing cold. You can see where the snow's been beaten down in trails; people obviously do go out there some, but again, why did Jack decide to?"

"With a woman," Lonny suggested.

"Well, in that case it would have had to be somebody he met at the spur of the moment. He would never have invited Joanna to dinner if he knew he would be seeing someone else he was interested in. It
would just mess his chances up with both of them. And I can't believe he happened to meet someone while he and Joanna were wandering around gambling, and Jack invited this other woman out on that deck for a romantic interlude. That's pretty quick work."

"Maybe it was someone he already knew. And didn't know would be here."

The waiter served steak sauteed with garlic and mushrooms onto both our plates and pushed his tableside kitchen away. For several minutes we both ate in silence, then I looked up and met Lonny's eyes.

"I just can't really believe it, you know. I can't believe Jack's dead. I think about him eating dinner here with Joanna, just the way we're doing now, and then, sometime in the next few hours he goes out on that deck and someone shoots him in the head, and he's dead. Gone. Over. Finished. We'll never see him again. It seems impossible."

Lonny said nothing. I had a sudden vision of Jack floating face down in the icy waters of the lake. Jesus.

Setting down my fork abruptly, I said, "I don't even know what to feel. I just keep thinking it's impossible. That we'll go back to the hotel and there Jack will be in the coffee shop, talking to some old boy and this will all turn out to be a big mistake." Putting my napkin on the table, I got up. "I have to use the bathroom."

The ladies' room proved difficult to find in the semidark of the restaurant. In the end I discovered a corridor with a sign that said Restrooms. The corridor, I noticed, emptied out into the casino, one of the exits I'd noticed earlier. As I walked toward the door marked Women, I noticed something else. Next to a bank of phones was a door that led out onto the deck.

Peering through the windowed top half I could see white flakes drifting down against the darkness; it had started to snow. This door was shielded from the view of the other doors by a small storage shed outside. Jack could have walked out this way and no one would have noticed.

Suddenly I was sure that was exactly what he'd done, though I had no way of knowing. I stared at the snow, which appeared to float upward as easily as down in lighthearted defiance of gravity, and wondered again, why?

Jack had gone to the men's room, perhaps, and wandered outside for a look at the night. I tried to imagine someone following him-a friend, a stranger? Maybe it had simply been a casual mugging gone awry, Nevada's version of Central Park. I wondered, suddenly, if Jack had been robbed.

Sighing, I went into the ladies' room and then rejoined Lonny. "I think I know how Jack went out on the deck," I told him after we'd finished our steaks.

"Gail." Lonny's face and voice were serious. "Why don't you forget about this? Do you have any particular reason to suppose that the police need your help to find Jack's murderer?"

Instead of snapping back the sharp reply I had in mind, I hesitated and gave Lonny's questions some thought.

"I don't know," I said at last. "I just can't get it out of my mind. A couple of days ago I introduced Jack to Joanna and now he's dead."

"What if Joanna killed him?"

"Why would she? It doesn't make sense. Though I will admit that I don't feel I know her all that well anymore. All this frustrated 'love' for a man she hardly knows and who treated her like shit-it boggles my mind. How could she be so stupid? The Joanna I was friends with in college would never have acted like that. "

Lonny shrugged. "People change," he said. "I've done equally stupid things in my time. Are you ready to go?"

"Sure." I smiled at him, meaning to comfort, guessing that his last remark was a reference to his estranged wife, who had left him, he felt, due to his deficiencies. "It's snowing outside," I added.

Lonny's eyes crinkled at the corners. "I like that. Maybe we'll get snowed in. Have to stay in your hotel room all day tomorrow and snuggle."

I laughed. "What about skiing? I thought you wanted to ski."

"Skiing's fine. But I prefer snuggling." Lonny's green eyes conveyed a warmth no words could ever do justice to.

"Well, let's go get a start on it." I stood up and reached for his hand.

FIVE

Snow sifted down all night, intensifying somewhere near dawn into a blizzard. Snug on the fourth floor of the Foresta, wrapped in Lonny's arms, the roar of the wind in the pine boughs outside was a teasing thrill-no threat involved.

First light showed a white and gray kaleidoscope through the window, all whirling snow and opaque sky. I'd barely had time to contemplate this scene, and feel Lonny's hand reach for my breast, when a knock sounded on the door.

"Detective Holmquist here." The voice was as quiet, and as persistent, as I remembered. The man was like the blowing snow, I thought, gentle, but in the end, overpowering.

"Just a minute," I said and hauled myself out of bed.

Lonny shot an annoyed glance at the clock, which read 6:30, and rolled out himself. "I'll be in the shower," he grumbled.

I threw on some sweat pants and a T-shirt and went to the door. "Good morning, Detective."

Claude Holmquist took in my appearance and said mildly, "I was under the impression lectures started at seven."

"Lectures?" I echoed. "Oh, yeah, lectures." I'd forgotten almost entirely the ostensible purpose of my stay here.

I held the door open. "Come on in."

Blue was lying on the floor near my bed and lifted his head and growled as the man stepped through the doorway, then started to get stiffly to his feet. I pointed a finger at him. "You stay there and be quiet." At this he subsided, nose on paws, a baleful stare fixed on Claude Holmquist, but no further overt signs of hostility.

The detective, for his part, regarded the dog without comment, then walked across the room and took a seat in the one chair that wasn't covered with discarded pieces of my clothing.

Seeing that he held a cup of coffee in a paper cup, I didn't offer him any, but went to the machine the hotel had provided, and started the process of making a cup for myself. Lonny's muffled splashing sounded from the other side of the bathroom door; with my back to the detective, I said, "I have a friend staying with me."

When I turned around, his face showed nothing. As far as I could tell, I might have had four or five friends, all cavorting merrily in my bed, and he wouldn't have raised an eyebrow.

He maintained his polite silence until my coffee was ready in its plastic cup and I had cleared another chair and was seated, then settled those mild eyes on my face. "I'd like to ask you a few more questions about your friend Joanna Lund."

"Okay."

"What do you know of her recent life-since she left vet school?"

"Not much. She's a practicing vet in Merced. We haven't spoken to each other very often in the last three years." I tried to keep my voice as neutral as Detective Holmquist's.

"Any romantic entanglements?"

"Only what she told me. During the time we were together here, I mean."

"And what did she tell you?"

At that, I hesitated. Was I going to provide Joanna with a motive for murder? What should I reveal, if anything?

Claude Holmquist caught my indecision and spoke briskly. "Dr. McCarthy, this is a murder investigation. Jack Hollister was murdered; he did not kill himself." The anemic-looking eyes stayed on my face. "He was shot through the back of the head, at an angle which makes it virtually certain he could not have held the gun himself He was not robbed; his wallet was found on his body with a thousand dollars in it."

There's one piece of useful information, I thought, even as I digested the import of his words.

"We've spoken to the sheriff's department in Santa Cruz County." He was consulting his notes. "I spoke to a Detective Ward, who says she knows you."

"Jeri Ward. Yes."

"She said you would be cooperative."

The words hung between us. I took a swallow of coffee and tried to decide what to say. In the end, I opted for simplicity. "I guess I feel protective of Joanna. I introduced her to Jack, and I truly believe it was a coincidence. I'm ninety-nine percent sure she had nothing to do with his murder, and I'm hesitant to do or say anything that will cast further suspicion on her."

"Ninety-nine percent? Not one hundred?"

"No, not one hundred. I haven't seen her in three years. She does seem to have changed. On the other hand, she has no earthly reason to have murdered Jack."

"These things happen, you know. Anger, perhaps, a spur of the moment rage. Was Dr. Lund in the habit of carrying a gun in her purse?"

"Not that I ever knew. Not in college, anyway. And I'm pretty sure I would have known, if she had one at that time." I hesitated. "Was her purse big enough to have held the gun that shot Jack?"

The detective regarded me levelly. "Possibly," he said at last. "We haven't found the gun yet. I have a feeling it's in the lake. The bullet came from a twenty-two; however we don't know the exact model. We have a suspicion it may have had a silencer on it. However, to answer your question, many types of twenty-two pistols certainly would have fit in Dr. Lund's purse."