The Readaholics and the Falcon Fiasco (19 page)

I
was halfway to my van, trying to figure out how to approach Hart with my questions, when my phone rang. The man himself, returning my earlier call. Serendipity. I smiled and answered.

“You said you have more information for me,” he said without any preamble. He sounded pressed for time and cop-ish.

“I’ll buy you a beer,” I said, hoping what I had to tell him would go down better with a little alcohol.

“I’m still working. I’d appreciate it if you’d come to the station.”

Uh-oh
. That didn’t bode well. “Um, okay. Now?”

“Now would be good.” After a brief hesitation, he said in a lowered voice, “I’ll take a rain check on that brew.”

I told him I’d be there in half an hour—I needed a shower and soot-free clothes—and smiled as I hung up.

*   *   *

I fed the meter outside the police department and was walking toward the doors, head down to
restore my wallet to my purse, when I bumped into someone exiting the station.

“Oh, sorry!” I said, looking up.

Clay Shumer shouldered past me without acknowledging my existence. His face was pale and set, his lips drawn into a thin line. I didn’t think he was being rude; I was pretty sure he didn’t even notice me. Fiona followed him out, her expression also set to “death mask.” She noticed me with a flick of her gaze in my direction, but she was so focused on her thoughts, or on Clay, that she couldn’t be bothered to say hello or even sneer at me. I was reaching for the station door when someone yelled, “Hey, Mr. Shumer! Over here.”

I spun in time to see a photographer from the
Heaven Herald
aim a camera at Clay and Fee.

“You can’t do that!” Fee screeched, lunging toward the photographer.

He sidestepped nimbly, taking photos nonstop, until Clay grabbed Fiona’s arm and stuffed her into their car. He hadn’t said a word since the photographer hailed him. Hunching and cupping his hand to obscure his face, he slid into the driver’s seat and peeled away from the curb. The photographer, who had approached to take photos through the car window, sprang aside with a curse. Sobered by the encounter, I stepped into the station. The smoky odor had dissipated somewhat after a day with all the windows open, and the place now smelled like a charcoal grill whose ashes hadn’t been emptied.

Mabel Appleman greeted me. Her perm looked a bit frizzy today, the gray curls poking up around the glasses she had tucked into them.

“Detective Hart’s expecting me,” I said. Lowering my voice, I added, “What’s up with them?” I nodded in the direction of the departed Shumers.

Mabel glanced over her shoulder to ensure that no one was listening. “Well, I really can’t talk to you about police business, but let’s just say there’s been big doings this afternoon. Big doings. I heard Detective Hart say you were right.” She gave me a congratulatory look.

“About?”

“About Ivy Donner being murdered. And I didn’t say this”—she laid a finger alongside her nose—“but you may have just bumped into the guilty party.”

“Thanks for coming, Amy-Faye.” Hart had come into the room without either of us noticing. He looked harried, his tie slightly askew, and a shade grim.

Mabel started guiltily and immediately turned her attention to a folder open on the counter.

“Happy to,” I babbled, hoping I hadn’t gotten Mabel in trouble by asking about the Shumers.

Hart led me back to his office, a small room with windows on two sides, and I looked around with interest. Paint, flooring, and furniture were all taxpayer-funded blah and utilitarian, but a full set of Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories were bookended by a plaster deerstalker cap and pipe, a set of golf clubs slouched in one corner, and a stuffed bulldog wearing a red jersey perched atop the printer.

“You went to the University of Georgia?” I asked.

“On a football scholarship,” he said. “Sit, and tell me what you’ve got this time.”

I sat, slightly chastened by his emphasis on “this time.” Silently, I pulled out the decoded ledger page and passed it to him. As his gaze swept over it, I said, “That’s from a copy of the page I gave you earlier. The one that got burned up.
Accidentally.
” Two could play that game, I thought. “Maud—Maud Bell—decoded it.”

As his brows rose ever higher, the whole story spilled out in a rush: Maud determining the cipher was a book code, my visit to Clay’s office, the list of books, Maud’s decoding efforts, and our conviction that Clay was running a gambling business and might have killed Ivy to keep her from spilling the beans. I finished, flushed, and looked at him for a reaction.

Putting both palms down on his desk and taking a deep breath through his nose, he studied me for a long minute. “Damn it, Amy-Faye,” he said finally, the words no less hurtful for being uttered in a low voice. “You are messing around with a potential murderer, putting yourself in the line of fire. I don’t want to see you end up like Ivy Donner! Is this everything you have that pertains to the case?” He slapped his hand on the page. “And I mean
everything
?”

I blinked away tears at his harsh tone. Then it occurred to me that he seemed angrier about the possibility of me being in danger than about my withholding evidence, and I regained my composure. “Yes. Everything. I’m sorry.”

“You should have given this to me immediately, and not run around like Miss Marple—”

“Can’t I be Stephanie Plum or Kinsey Millhone?” I asked. “Miss Marple is in her eigh—”

My attempt to lighten the atmosphere failed when he cut me off with “This isn’t fun and games. This is murder. Cop business. By all rights, I should arrest you for impeding an investigation.”

“I haven’t impeded,” I said, getting mad myself. “I’ve given you evidence you didn’t dig up on your own because you didn’t believe Ivy had been murdered. And if you want to know why I didn’t come running straight here with that”—I pointed to the page—“it’s because that’s only a partial list. We don’t know who else’s names are in Clay’s little black ledger.”

“So?”

I drew in a deep breath. “So, given that the original ledger page got destroyed, I can’t help but wonder if one or more of Heaven’s finest appear in that book.”

To his credit, he didn’t immediately discount the idea. Instead, he leaned back slightly and thought it through. “I’m honored that you trust me,” he said finally.

I was still pissed off enough to come back with “Yeah, well, you haven’t been here long enough to get in bed with the crooks.”

That got a small smile, like he knew that wasn’t the only reason I’d come to him. “Still, thank you for trusting me with this.”

“What will you do now?” I ventured to ask.

“Hell if I know.” He stared at the ledger page with distaste. “I’ll get a search warrant for
Shumer’s home, office, and car to see if we can’t dig up the ledger itself. And I’ll hope like crazy that the judge who signs the warrant isn’t one of Shumer’s clients. Then I’ll get Shumer back in here to see if he knew Ivy had copied a page, and if so, what he did about it. It doesn’t look good for him.”

“Why did you bring him in today?”

“We got a photo in the mail.” Hart wrinkled his nose with distaste. “A grainy, long-distance shot of Shumer and Ivy. Kissing. And not the way you’d kiss a sibling or your best buddy.”

“Oh. Who was it from?”

“I’d like to know that myself. We got Shumer’s fingerprints, and an initial comparison shows his dabs all over Ivy’s place—including on the tea canister.”

“And the Baggie?”

He shook his head. “Nope—his prints aren’t on it. Which makes me think Ivy filled the Baggie from the canister, like we thought. So whoever poisoned her had access to that canister.”

The scenario he was painting made me feel sick to my stomach. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have someone you loved poison you, sneak into your home and slip a toxic substance into something you ate or drank. A bullet through the head would almost be more merciful. I wondered if Ivy had died thinking that Clay, the man she loved, had caused her agony. “That’s so sad,” I murmured.

He came around the desk and helped me to my feet, holding on to my hand for a moment. “Murder is almost always sad. Sometimes grotesque or
perplexing or enraging, soul eating or tragic or all of the above, but always sad. Sad for the person who was killed, sadder for the ones who loved him or her, and even sad, lots of times, for the murderer. More murders than not are in the heat of passion when a boyfriend or spouse loses it. Their grief, when they realize what they’ve done, is genuine.”

“Do you think Ivy’s murderer is sad?” I asked, my hand tightening unconsciously around his.

“This was planned, premeditated, and executed with cold precision. I’d guess not. Only time will tell.” His hand returned my pressure and his eyes gazed into mine. For a moment, I thought he would pull me into his arms and kiss me. I caught my breath, but a sound from the hall reminded us where we were and he stepped back. Good thing. It was early days for kissing, even though for a moment I’d really, really wanted to. Reaction to the stress, to talking about murder, I decided, taking hold of the doorknob. A need to experience something life affirming.
Total BS.
He was hot and it’d been way too long since I’d kissed anyone. Feeling myself blush, I let myself out with a strangled “good-bye.”

I walked away too quickly to hear what he said in reply, but I thought I caught the words “rain check.”

T
hursday morning’s
Heaven Herald
had a large photo of Clay Shumer on the front page above the fold with a caption that said Heaven’s chief financial officer had been asked to assist the police with their investigation into the death of Ivy Donner, now categorized as a homicide. Fee was in the background, the tendons on her neck standing out in an unflattering way. I suspected neither of them would be happy with the article, which combined innuendo and vague quotes to make it sound like Clay was the main suspect in a homicide investigation. Which, of course, he was. A long, rambling quote from Ham Donner said he’d known all along that his sister wasn’t the type to kill herself and said he’d been pushing the police to pursue the investigation. I made a disgusted sound, folded the paper, and went to work. No yoga today. I didn’t know if Fee would show up for class, but I didn’t need another confrontation to start my day. I was already semidreading the day, what
with the appointment to listen to bands with Doug and Madison scheduled for this afternoon.

Work today started at the Club. I needed to talk to the pro about setting up the tournament for Madison and Doug’s family and wedding guests. It never ceased to amaze me how often golf played a role in destination weddings. I guess it gave the men an alternative to mani-pedis and oohing and aahing over gifts. Women played, too, of course, but it was mostly men, in my experience. When I stepped into the pro shop, it was almost eight thirty, so the early morning golfers were well on their way around the championship course. A lone man was examining drivers set in racks beneath the plate-glass window that looked out to the ninth green and a row of golf carts. The pro shop carried the usual assortment of clubs, shoes, gloves, and golf apparel. I’d bought Doug cute club head covers here one Christmas when we were still dating. Looney Tunes characters: Bugs, Daffy, and Tweety Bird. I smiled sadly at the memory and headed toward Betty, who was giving someone a tee time over the phone.

Betty Bullock, the Club’s pro, was a short, no-nonsense woman in her sixties who had competed on the LPGA Tour for six or seven years. Her skin, baked by too many rounds in the sun, had the texture of a golf bag, and it creased when she saw me and grinned. “Amy-Faye! Here for another lesson?”

This was a joke. Doug had encouraged me to learn to golf when we were dating and I’d signed
up for a series of five lessons. To say I had no aptitude for the game was to grossly understate the case. I’m sure gophers have moved into some of the divots I dug into the course—that’s how deep they were. And I’m pretty sure that by our third lesson, Betty was having to fortify herself with a shot of Cuervo Gold before meeting me on the driving range. I nodded with feigned eagerness.

“Yes, indeed! I’ve noticed that a lot of networking and business gets done on the golf course, and I need to be able to play a respectable round to get in on that. I need to develop a wider customer base. Does Tuesday afternoon work for you?”

Betty blanched but then caught my grin. “Had me going there for a moment. Now, what can I really do for you?”

We worked out the details for a best-ball tourney and she blocked out the tee times. “I’ve hired two vans to get them all here on time,” I told her. “I’ll let you know by Monday how many of the players will need to rent clubs.” I made a note to ask Doug how many of his guests were traveling with their own clubs.

“Things go smoothly when you’re in charge,” Betty said.

Her compliment made me feel surprisingly good. “Thanks, Betty. Back atcha.”

The clicking of plastic spikes heralded the approach of multiple golfers. I turned and found myself facing the Troy Widefields, Junior and Senior, and a man I didn’t know. They were kitted out for golf and discussing the terms of their bets for the day. “Five bucks a hole,” Brooke’s husband said.

“With a hundred for the winner to make the round worthwhile,” her father-in-law replied. “No mulligans.”

The stranger assented with a nod.

They noticed me and Betty and greeted us. Troy Jr. looked away from me and made a big production out of picking out a scorecard. I guessed he wasn’t over our tiff at his house.

“Is our fourth here, Betty?” Troy Sr. asked.

“Ready and waiting with the cart at the practice green.”

I couldn’t help wondering, as I said my good-byes to Betty, whether it was Junior’s or Senior’s name in Clay’s ledger. Who was the big bettor? If it was Senior, well, he might be a bit embarrassed to have it come out that he placed bets with the city’s CFO, but if it was Junior . . . I didn’t think Brooke and her husband could afford to lose a fifteen-thousand-dollar bet. Also, if Troy Jr. was about to run for state senator, it wouldn’t do his campaign any good if word got around that he had a gambling problem. The question was: Did he care enough about it to silence Ivy? My eyes slid to his father, handing Betty a credit card to pay their greens fees. Troy Sr. certainly cared enough about his son’s future to take care of any problems that arose. Would he, though, resort to murder to solve those problems? Maybe I should just ask, seeing as they were both standing here in front of me.

“Did you see the article about Clay Shumer in the paper this morning?” I asked, directing the question impartially toward the four people standing at the counter. “Hard to believe, wasn’t it?”

Troy Sr. looked down his nose at me. “Speculation. Shumer’s a good man.”

“You’re not still on about that, are you?” Troy Jr. asked, a hint of exasperation in his voice. “Give it a rest already, will you?”

“Give what a rest?” Troy Sr. asked, looking from his son to me.

“Nothing,” Troy Jr. muttered. Then, as if unable to keep mum, he added, “Amy-Faye is convinced that someone murdered Ivy Donner and is now out to get her.”

Troy Sr., the stranger, and Betty all looked at me and I flushed. “Not exactly,” I said, wishing I could punch Troy Jr. “You’ve got to admit I was right about Ivy being murdered. The police have reclassified her death as a homicide.”

“Even so, why would someone be out to get
you
?” Troy Sr. asked with a slight frown.

“They’re not,” I said shortly, hoping that would end it. I was sorry I’d started this conversation.

“Because she found a ledger page at Ivy’s, written in code allegedly, that she thinks is connected to Ivy’s death.”

I glared at Troy Jr. I’d known he was immature and spineless, but his betrayal of my confidence, of what I’d told him and Brooke privately, hurt and enraged me. Still, would he have mentioned the ledger page if he was afraid his name might be on it?

Troy Sr. made a dismissive gesture. “I suppose you decipher it with the secret decoder ring from a box of cereal?”

The three men laughed, Troy Jr. a bit shamefacedly, and Betty looked at me with sympathy.

“Have a nice round,” I said, hoping they each put half a dozen balls into the several ponds on the course and lost a few more in the woods that bordered the narrow fairways. Maybe Troy Jr. would get bitten by a rabid gopher. I said another good-bye to Betty and headed toward the door.

My encounter with the Widefields put a damper on my mood. I was feeling bummed out as I reached the van and unlocked it. As I drove away, I glanced toward the course and saw a foursome bumping their way to the first tee box in two carts. Troy Jr. and the man I didn’t know were in the lead, with Troy Sr. driving the second cart and Chief Uggams seated beside him. I watched until they rounded a bend and I couldn’t see them anymore.

*   *   *

I was driving back to the office when, on impulse, I detoured to Brooke’s house. Troy was on the golf course; we could talk privately. The more I thought about it, the more I thought I was wrong to hide what Maud and I had discovered on the ledger page from my best friend. She had a right to know. Now that the police had the decoded page, it was in severe danger of becoming public and I didn’t want Brooke’s first hint of trouble to be an article in the
Herald
. Besides, she might be able to tell me whether it was her husband or her father-in-law who enjoyed wagering a sum large enough to pay my annual mortgage on a NASCAR race.

I called ahead and discovered she wasn’t home; she was pulling her shift at the animal rescue shelter she had helped found a few years back. I pulled up outside Heaven Animal Haven ten minutes later. HAH was located on five acres of land on the east side of Heaven. Bordered by a scraggly line of lodgepole pines and set three-quarters of a mile off the road, it wasn’t the kind of place you’d run across by accident. A mobile home served as the office, while two buildings housing animal kennels and runs took up the rest of the clearing. HAH cared mostly for abandoned cats and dogs, but people sometimes brought in wild animals, which volunteers rehabbed, if possible, and released to the wild. The wild animals stayed on the far side of the compound, completely separate from the domestic pets and the people who came to adopt them. HAH didn’t always have wild animals on hand, but since Brooke’s car was parked outside the rehab complex, I deduced that there must be at least one critter in residence.

A painful screech startled me when I walked into the concrete-block building. I whirled and found myself facing a tiny screech owl in a flight enclosure. Unblinking golden eyes were set in the white dish of feathers that made up his face. He let out another ear-piercing shriek and turned his back on me.

“Brooke?”

“Back here.”

I followed her voice to the nursery, where I found her seated on a chair, a tiny red fox kit in her
lap, nursing from a bottle. The kit’s sibling mewled from a blanket-lined box set atop the table.

“Oh, how darling,” I cooed, completely forgetting why I’d come.

“Hersh brought them in yesterday. He found them when he was replacing fence posts in his orchard. He heard them crying and located them in an old tree stump. He got his youngest to keep watch for half a day, but when the mom didn’t show up, he brought them here. She was probably hit by a car, or maybe coyotes got her. Here, you feed Copper.”

She passed me the kit, wrapped in a hand towel, and stood to get another bottle and the other kit. “This is Penny. I don’t know if she’ll make it—she’s awfully weak. I think the mom must have been gone for a day or so before Hersh rescued them.”

Copper resembled a newborn kitten, except for his fuller tail and his pointy snout. His eyes were closed now as he suckled, but he’d opened them when Brooke passed him to me, so he must be a couple of weeks old. I ventured to stroke the top of his head with one gentle finger.

“Ah-ah,” Brooke said, shaking her head. “We want to release them eventually. No bonding. No making them like people.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to name them, either,” I said.

She gave me a guilty look. “I have to call them something.”

When the hungry foxes had had their fill of
milk or formula or whatever it was, we placed them gently in the box and Brooke slid it into a plastic-sided kennel. They had curled around each other, tails over their noses, and were fast asleep. Brooke made notes related to time and amount of milk they’d drunk, and led me into the hall.

“You should do this full-time,” I blurted. “You could raise funds, get professional staff, get people trained. You’d be great at it, and you’d love it.”

Brooke looked startled and pushed her heavy hair off her face. “I do love it, and it’s important work.”

“You could build a Web page and advertise the pets for adoption across the country. I’ve seen animal rescue places that do that. You could put a Web cam in with the foxes, or the owl or whatever animal you’re rehabbing, and get donations from everywhere.” I was getting excited by the idea, completely forgetting why I’d tracked Brooke down.

“I’ll think about it and talk to Troy,” she said.

That reminded me why I was here. As we trekked across the gravel parking lot from the rehab building to the adoption center, I said, “I saw the Troys at the golf course this morning.”

“What were you doing out there?”

I told her.

She gave me a searching look. “Are you coping okay? With Doug’s wedding?”

I answered as if I’d misunderstood her. “Oh, yeah. It’s a simple one. No live animals or roller skaters in the wedding party, only a hundred fifty guests, reception at the Club. I could plan it in my sleep.”

She blew a raspberry. “You know what I mean.”

I shrugged. “I’m not thinking about it much.” Realizing I’d drifted away from my purpose again, I said, “Maud decoded the ledger page. It’s a list of names of people who placed bets with Clay Shumer. You saw the police took him in for questioning? I guess he was a bookie, running a pretty significant betting operation.”
Not that I’d know what was small potatoes and what was big-time.
“Anyway, there are lots of names there and, of course, it’s only one page, probably from a while back. Maud thinks anyone on there might have been afraid of Ivy making it public and killed her.”

Brooke’s eyes widened. “Really? What do the police say?”

I felt vindicated that Brooke immediately assumed the police should have the page. “They’re interviewing people.” We had reached the entrance to the adoption center, and muffled woofs came from inside. We pushed through the door and heard another volunteer telling a dog to hush up and eat. The place smelled like disinfectant and animals—not in an unpleasant way—but such that you knew immediately there were plenty of dogs and cats in residence. Of course, the bags of dog food and kitty litter stacked against one wall were a big clue, too.

“Donation from a pet store going out of business in Grand Junction.” Brooke nodded at the bags. “Help me move them into the storeroom?”

“Sure. In a minute.” I bit my lip. “One of the names on the ledger page was Widefield,” I said.

Her smooth brow wrinkled. “Are you telling me that Troy—?”

“Or Troy Sr., or your brother-in-law, or Clarice, for that matter,” I hastily added. “It was a big bet—fifteen thou on a NASCAR race.” She went silent and I asked, “Do you know who—?”

“No.” She bent to pick up a forty-pound bag of dog food, hiding her face. She lugged it to an open storeroom door and I picked up a similar bag and followed her. “It’s not my Troy,” she said, letting the bag fall with a rattle of dog kibble. She nudged it against the wall with the side of her foot.