Roughstock (A Gail McCarthy Mystery) (6 page)

Well. If he was willing to tell me this much, he must trust me, at least a little. In another second I realized the other implication of his words. I
trust you, now you have to trust me. I
was being coaxed to tell what I
knew about Joanna.

Claude Holmquist was waiting. Not asking, waiting. The narrow face and inoffensive demeanor masked, I
already knew, a keen mind. The very fact that I
still wasn't speaking was telling him something.

In the end, I
asked him a question. "Has Joanna told you about her love affair?" The coward's way out, my mind mocked me.

"Dr. Lund stated she had a boyfriend, with whom she was currently at odds. She said she dated Jack Hollister to make the boyfriend jealous. She refused to give us his name, and we didn't press her at this time."

"I see." I thought about it a minute and decided I couldn't do Joanna any harm that she hadn't already done herself. "He wasn't exactly a boyfriend," I said.

I told the story of Joanna and Todd Texiera more or less the way it had been told to me, leaving out my own interpretation. When I was done, the detective asked me, "Was it your impression that Dr. Lund was distraught over the failure of this relationship?"

"Yes, I suppose you could say that," I said slowly. "But she still had no reason to kill Jack and, bearing in mind I haven't seen her in three years, I would definitely say she was innocent."

"Why?"

"She seemed so indifferent to the whole issue of Jack and his murder except in the sense that it was adding stress to her already stressed-out situation. She didn't seem truly worried about being a suspect. She seemed completely absorbed in her failed 'romance.' "

Detective Holmquist looked as if he was about to ask me another question, but Lonny opened the bathroom door at that moment and emerged, wearing a towel around his waist. This necessitated introductions, and I was amused at the contrast-Lonny towering over the smaller man, but rendered somewhat at a disadvantage by his semi-naked state; Detective Holmquist slight and frail-seeming, but lent a good deal of dignity by his gray suit.

After ascertaining that Lonny had been in Santa Cruz on the night Jack was murdered, the detective asked him, "How well did you know Dr. Hollister?"

It took Lonny a moment to frame a reply to this question; even before he spoke, I knew what the gist of his words would be. "Not well," he said, "but I've known him for thirty years or more."

At this, the detective pricked up his ears. "Could you tell me about him?"

Lonny sat down on one corner of the bed, holding his towel firmly around him with one hand, and thought for a minute. "Jack and I were part of the same world," he said at last. "We were both involved with livestock and we knew the same people. We knew each other first through rodeo; Jack was riding broncs and I was a dogger."

"Dogger?"

"Bulldogger. It's a rodeo event," Lonny explained. "Basically you jump off a horse and wrestle a steer to the ground."

I was amused to catch a fleeting expression of what?-surprise? consternation?-disturb Detective Holmquist's flawlessly bland face for a split second. Bulldogging was obviously in the same category as throwing Christians to the lions, as far as he was concerned.

Lonny was still talking, explaining as well as he could the way in which rodeo people all know one another, and Jack's prominence in that world. I listened, thinking while I did so that no real image of Jack Hollister as a human being was emerging from the words. The Jack of whom we were all talking, and thinking, was a cardboard figure-the "big man," the local rancher's son who'd "done good."

I tried to conjure up a more intimate version of Jack and found I couldn't do it. I simply hadn't known him closely enough to have any idea what made him tick.

Claude Holmquist was asking Lonny about Jack's ex-wives.

"I knew them. Vaguely. I hardly remember the first one. Karen,
I
think. They divorced a long time ago. When he was in his early thirties."

"Karen Harding." The detective was looking down at his notepad.

"The second one was Elaine. He called her Laney. Blond and beautiful-that's about all I
remember. The most recent was Tara. They just divorced-a couple of years ago, I
think."

Detective Holmquist nodded. "Can you tell me anything about them?"

"Not much about the first two. Neither of them rode, and the most I
knew of either was that she was Jack's wife. My impression was that Laney was chosen for her rather, um, prominent features. "

Claude Holmquist permitted himself the ghost of a smile. "And Tara Hollister?"

"Tara was, is, tough. Tough acting, anyway. She's a lot younger than Jack, and good-looking in a hard way. She rides and ropes. Considers herself a horse trainer." Lonny let it go at that.

I
agreed with everything he'd said, though I
might have added that I
couldn't stand Tara Hollister. However, nobody'd asked me.

Claude Holmquist was staring at the pad in his lap. "Bronc Pickett?" he asked.

"He's Jack's foreman." Lonny grinned at the thought of Bronc. "He's an ornery old fart, and a hell of a roper. He and Jack went roping together most weekends. He's been with Jack a long time-as long as I've known them."

"Travis Gunhart?"

"Jack's hired hand. Nice kid." Lonny shrugged. "He ropes a little-he's pretty handy. That's about all I know."

The detective closed his pad and asked what sounded like a final question. "Did Dr. Hollister have any children?"

"No. There was always some talk about that, though. I never paid much attention. Ropers are as bad as a bunch of old women at gossip."

I rolled my eyes mentally at this statement, but managed to keep my mouth shut.

"Anything else you can add?" Claude Holmquist stood up, looking at Lonny and me in turn.

I shook my head and Lonny said, "No, I don't think so."

The detective nodded civilly. "You're both free to go. Someone will be in touch with you in Santa Cruz, Dr. McCarthy, if you're needed."

"All right." I stood up, too, and escorted him to the door. He thanked me for my time as he stepped out into the hallway, his rabbitlike demeanor unchanged, but my impression of the ferret within was strong. I wondered if he'd been grilling Joanna and decided that if he had, she was probably reduced to an emotional pulp at this point. Not an appealing prospect.

But one I needed to deal with, for reasons of curiosity as well as altruism. I wanted to ask Joanna some questions.

SIX

An
hour later I was knocking on the door of her room, having showered, dressed, walked Blue, and promised Lonny I'd go skiing with him in the afternoon if the weather cleared. At the moment, it was showing no signs of doing that. Stormy blasts bent the pine boughs outside the windows, and the lake was hidden by a blur of whirling white.

Joanna answered her door wearing the same terry cloth robe she'd been wearing when I left her yesterday. Her hair didn't look as if she'd combed it since then, and her eyes were puffy. She turned without a word and walked back into the room.

Shutting the door behind myself, I followed her and sat down in a chair. Joanna was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring out the window at the blowing snow. I had a feeling she'd been sitting like that for hours, maybe all night. I was trying to decide what to say to her when she spoke.

"I called Todd last night." Her voice was barely audible.

"So what did he have to say?" I tried to keep the what-in-hell-did-you-do-that-for out of my voice.

"Nothing. I told him what was happening to me up here and he basically said that's too bad, honey, and hung up."

I waited, hoping she'd say more.

She raised her eyes from the floor to my face and in the brief turn of her head I saw the pure Swedish structure of her cheekbones, undiminished despite the swollen eyes and tangled hair.

"Some girl answered the phone," she said. "I called Todd, at the apartment where he's living, and this girl answered like it was her place. He's already moved in with someone else."

Slow tears had started to roll down her face as she spoke. Unlike the noisy sobbing of yesterday, this was entirely silent. Simply tears running from her eyes.

I didn't know what to do. Perhaps I should have gone to her and held her, but between the estrangement I felt and my own awkwardness, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Any impulse I might have had to offer more advice and platitudes died at the sight of such abject misery.

After a minute she said, "I know you were right, yesterday. I've got to get over him. It's just hard to do." Her wet eyes shifted to the blowing snow outside the window. "I'm sorry I was such an idiot, Gail. I didn't want to hear it-that I ought to give Todd up. He's the only man I've ever loved, the only one I ever wanted. And now he's gone."

"I'm sorry."

We sat in silence while Joanna watched the snow and I watched her. Hardhearted though it sounds, I was wondering how to bring up the topic of Jack and his murder. I was genuinely sorry for Joanna, but it didn't change the fact that someone had killed Jack and she was still a suspect.

She didn't seem aware of this, or rather, as I'd told the detective, she didn't seem to care. Her misery over Todd Texiera had engulfed her to such a degree that I doubted if she cared much whether she was arrested or not.

"Joanna," I said finally, "I don't want you to be arrested for murder. I feel like it's my fault."

She smiled at me through her tears, and for a second I had a glimpse of the old Joanna, the one I'd lived with in college-spunky, intense, stubborn-a woman with a will to survive. More than that, to triumph.

"It's not your fault. I wanted to be introduced to the man. You didn't force me to date him. And you didn't have anything to do with his getting shot. Neither did I.”
Her tears seemed to be abating. "And I don't think I'm going to be arrested. Not immediately, anyway."

"That's good. What makes you think so?"

"That detective was here last night. After you left. He asked me questions-the same old ones-for hours and hours. But at the end he said I was free to go home tomorrow after the seminar ended. All he said was that I needed to let them know if I left Merced."

So Joanna wasn't a candidate for immediate arrest. I wondered what had drawn Detective Holmquist to that conclusion.

"I don't want to piss you off," I began tentatively, "but how do you think your purse got out on that deck?"

Joanna looked at me oddly; she wasn't crying anymore and seemed composed. Still I crossed my fingers that I wouldn't bring on another onslaught of anger or tears.

"I think Jack took it out there," she said finally. "That detective must have asked me that six hundred times, and I've thought and thought and that's the only thing I can think of. I had the purse at dinner, and I think I had it when Jack and I sat down at a table to play blackjack. After that I don't remember it. What I think happened is that I left it when I went off to try another dealer. Jack stayed at the first table-he was winning and I wasn't-and I think he must have seen my purse and taken it with him when he left. After that, I guess he went out on that deck for whatever reason, and was still carrying my purse when he went."

That sounded reasonable. Now for the tricky part. "Why did you stay out on the deck for five minutes?"

"That's the other thing that detective wanted to know. I guess someone noticed me go out and come in. It
sounds stupid, but I'd been looking for Jack a long time by then, and I thought he'd ditched me for someone else and just left. I was, well, upset."

I could imagine.

"When I went out on the deck I wasn't even really looking for Jack. I just wanted to be alone to cry."

"Did you see anything out there, anything at all?"

"No. No one. Not Jack. Not my purse. I might not have noticed the purse, though, if it were sitting in some inconspicuous spot. It
was black, and I wasn't looking for it at the time. But I know I would have spotted a person."

If the purse had been there, I thought, unnoticed by Joanna, then Jack had already been shot and pushed over the railing. "So, after you had your cry and went back into the casino, then what?"

"That was when I noticed I didn't have my purse. I went back to the restaurant, and then to the first table I'd gambled at, but it wasn't either one of those places. And by then I had just had enough. I told the man at the main desk about my purse, called a cab, and came back here. And that's it."

We stared at each other, all the unspoken hostility of yesterday vanished for the moment. Joanna stood up and looked at me with more animation in her face than I'd seen in awhile. "Don't worry about me, okay? I think I'll take a shower and clean up and try and go to that last set of lectures this afternoon. That's what I came here for, after all."

"Yeah, me too. Joanna ..." I had my hand on the doorknob at this point, but I felt the need to say something to her, something that would bring about a renewed sense of closeness between us. Try as I might, I found I couldn't do it. Like an exhausted marriage, our old friendship seemed empty of meaning. I could find nothing to say except a stilted "I'll see you this evening, then."