Trouble at the Red Pueblo (30 page)

Laurie’s auburn hair cascaded down her back as she looked up, too. “It would destroy the evidence. I think I’ll pray for rain.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.”

“You’re going to pray, too?”

Spider smiled. “No. I’m going to preserve the evidence. Come on. Where can we get some plaster of Paris?”

SPIDER AND LAURIE
were having a silent breakfast at Parry Lodge the next morning. He wore sunglasses at the table, so the public didn’t have to look at the bruising around his eyes. When his phone rang, he raised them to read the ID of the caller and answered, “Hi, Martin.”

Laurie looked up from the French toast she’d been pushing around her plate.

Spider frowned as he listened. “Do you think you’d better have a lawyer there when they come?” He listened, looked at his watch, and said, “We’ll be there.”

“What is it?” she asked when he stowed his phone in his pocket.

Spider smeared some jam on his toast. “Martin says Toby’s on his way to the museum. Says he wants to talk to everyone there. He’s bringing a St. George policeman and the Fredonia Marshal. It’s going to be Cop City at the Red Pueblo.”

“Why did you suggest he have a lawyer?”

“Because Toby’s hot on the trail of arresting Matt, and possibly Linda too, for Austin’s murder.”

“How do you know that?”

Spider didn’t answer. He took a bite of toast and gave a half smile as he chewed.

“Okay,” she said. “I know the answer to that. We all saw Matt heading to Austin’s house. What did Martin say? About the lawyer?”

“He didn’t see the need, and besides, he says he can’t afford one.” Spider pointed his fork at her plate. “You haven’t eaten a bite.”

“I’m not hungry. I’ve been all tied up in knots ever since yesterday afternoon.” She set her fork on her plate. “Do you really think Toby will arrest Matt on the strength of the video footage?”

Spider shrugged. “Maybe the forensic team found something at the house.”

“If Matt did it, that means that Jack didn’t, and that’s good,” Laurie said. “But I can’t believe that Matt had anything to do with it, either.”

“Well, we’ll know what Toby knows in just a bit. Want to head on down, since all you’re going to do is worry that French toast to death?”

Laurie smiled and laid her napkin beside her plate. “Yes. Let’s go. Do you think you need to prepare them, just in case?”

“I don’t think they need preparing. I think they’ve been on edge about what Matt’s volatile temper might cause him to do.”

Laurie stood. “Do you think Matt did it?”

Spider picked up his hat and stood as well. “Don’t look so hopeful, Darlin’. I don’t think anything yet. Like Toby Flint, I’m keeping an open mind.”

Half an hour later, they pulled into the Red Pueblo parking lot. Linda’s SUV was missing, but everyone else seemed to be clustered in the lobby, watching Spider and Laurie walk up the sidewalk.

They all offered a subdued greeting as Spider pushed open the entrance door. Matt, who had been squatting down, arranging things in the bottom of the glass display case, stood. He closed the case and locked it, pocketing the key. “Mornin’, Spider.” He cleared his throat. “I wonder, would you come out into the yard for a minute? I’d like to talk to you.”

Spider briefly met Laurie’s troubled eyes. He saw the same fearful look mirrored in Neva’s and LaJean’s eyes. “Sure, Matt,” he said. He walked to the side door and held it open for the younger Taylor.

By silent accord, they walked past the log cabin to the timber drill rig. Matt sat down on the cross beam, and Spider rested a boot on a horizontal wheel spoke. “Whatcha got on your mind?” he asked.

Matt cleared his throat. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you. I had a talk with Tiffany.”

“Oh? How’d it go?”

Matt spoke through clenched teeth.“I’m not good at stuff like that. I didn’t know what to say.” He reached down and picked up a rock. “I was going to have to call her a liar. That’s a hard thing to do.”

“But, how did it go?”

Matt balled the rock in his fist. “She did most of the talking. Said she wanted to help so bad that the promise just came out. She didn’t mean to lie.”

“Do you believe her?”

Matt dropped the rock. “Almost.” He turned and squinted into the sun as a St. George police cruiser pulled into the parking lot followed by the Fredonia marshal’s rig. “They’re here.”

“Yeah, we’ll go see them in a minute. So, what’s Tiffany going to do?”

Matt looked down as he ground a boot heel into the soil. “She says she’s going to travel on. She mentioned St. George and asked about Austin Lee, about whether he was still interested in Linda.”

“You didn’t tell her he was dead?” Dang, why hadn’t he watched the stop light footage better? Did they miss a red BMW convertible?

“I talked to her on Saturday morning. He wasn’t dead then.”

“Huh.” Spider rubbed his jaw and looked at the toe of his boot. Where did this new bit of information fit into the puzzle?

“There’s Isaac, waving us in.” Matt wiped the dust from his hands onto his pant legs.

Spider looked up to see the older man in the parking lot, limping toward the entrance. “Looks like he’s closed the gate, so we won’t be disturbed.” Spider began walking with Matt across the Heritage Yard. “I asked your dad if he didn’t think you all should have a lawyer present. He said no.”

“I agree,” Matt said. “We’ve got nothing to hide.”

“I wish you thought differently about that, but there you go.” Spider held the side door open for Matt to precede him into the lobby.

The three officers of the law turned their heads in unison at their approach. Toby was again shined and creased, standing with his thumbs inside his glossy black leather duty belt. Next to him stood Sergeant Whipple, a tall, thin, uniformed officer from St. George that Spider remembered being introduced to at the crime scene. The third man was middle aged with thinning hair, a wiry build, and a hawk nose. He wore a blue uniform, and Toby introduced him as Marshal Thayne.

Spider stood by Matt. He took off his hat and nodded a greeting as each officer was introduced.

Sergeant Whipple murmured something to Toby, who said, “Could you remove your sunglasses, please, Mr. Latham?”

As Spider took them off, Toby took a step back. “Oh, geez! I forgot about the black eyes. Sorry, Spider. Geez. Put ‘em back on.”

“No, that’s fine.” Spider parked the glasses on top of his head. “I’m more comfortable without them.” He looked around. “So, how long is this going to take? Do we need to find a place for people to sit? We need chairs for Isaac and LaJean at least.”

“And my parents,” Matt added. “I’ll get chairs out of the office.”

Marshal Thayne silently followed him and helped carry chairs from the office into the lobby. He wheeled the office chair in and placed it beside the others Matt had lined up, He gestured for Laurie to sit, then stood at the back of the room with his hands clasped behind him.

Spider set his hat on the glass display case and joined the rest of the museum personnel, leaning a shoulder against the archway that divided the exhibit room from the lobby. He tried not to smile, watching Toby’s discomfort as he operated under the gaze of the metropolitan policeman.

Deputy Flint pulled his notebook from his pocket. “Though Sergeant Whipple is senior to me, since I’m a reserve officer in the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office and thus am certified to work here in Fredonia, I’m taking charge of this— we’ll call it a meeting, for now.” He glanced at the silent, uniformed man at the back of the room. “We’ve asked Marshal Thayne to be here as a courtesy, to keep him in the loop.”

The deputy’s gaze swept the room. Nobody spoke.

“Right.” Toby took out his pen and clicked the point down. “Pushing on, I guess you all know that Austin Lee was murdered last Sunday. He was beaten to death with a blunt instrument. We’re checking on people who had a beef with him—”

“Of whom there are many,” Spider murmured.

Toby shot a glance at Spider but went on. “—who had a beef with him who were in the vicinity on that day.” He blinked and looked around the room again. “Where is Linda Russell?”

“She’s not here,” Neva said.

Toby clicked his pen several times. “Why not? I specifically asked that she be here.”

Neva shrugged. “I called her cell phone and left a message. That was the best I could do on short notice.”

Toby stood still, his thumb furiously working the button on his pen. He shot a look at Sergeant Whipple. “Right. We’ll talk with her separately, I guess. Okay. Austin Lee. I understand that he had been causing the museum some trouble?”

The statement hung as an interrogatory, but no one volunteered to tackle answering it. They all stared with blank faces at the deputy.

Finally Matt, who had one hip perched on the guest book table, stood. “What do you want us to say? You know what he was up to. Do you also know that his fraudulent lawsuits, his greed for land, especially land that had been extorted from families who had held it for over a hundred years, his weaseling and sliming around, forcing people against their will—” Matt stopped. He cleared his throat and started again. “He put my father in the hospital. Do you have that in your notebook?”

Toby clicked his pen. “No. When was this?”

Neva answered. “It was a week ago yesterday.”

As Toby wrote down Neva’s information, Spider watched Sergeant Whipple move past Isaac to the glass display case in front of the reception desk. He squatted down and began to look at the artifacts that were for sale, the little white tags turned so the price was visible.

“What other doings did you have with Austin Lee?”

LaJean spoke up. “Some of us had some interaction with him, but none of it amounted to a hill of beans. What do you want to know?”

Toby glanced over at Sergeant Whipple. “Anything you can remember.”

“Well, he leaned on that glass counter and told me he loved seeing senior citizens overcoming disabilities to be of service. It sounds patronizing now, but when he said it, it sounded right pretty.”

Isaac said, “Ha! Salting the cow to get the calf.”

“What do you mean by that?” Toby stood poised to write, but his eyes cut over to the sergeant still crouching in front of the glass.

Isaac answered Toby’s question, but he was watching Sergeant Whipple, too. “He was fixing on Linda. She wasn’t paying him any attention, so he figgered if he got LaJean on his side, the conquest would be easier.”

A half smile lifted the corners of Spider’s mouth as he watched Toby scribbling Isaac’s words, obviously oblivious to the fact that the tall St. George officer had stood and silently made his way to stand next to him. When Whipple bent down to murmur something in the deputy’s ear, Toby was so startled that his hands flew up, and the pen went flying.

Spider grabbed the missile as it flew by him and waited until Sergeant Whipple had finished before handing Toby his pen back.

Toby took the pen without a thank you and cleared his throat. “I’m going to turn the time over to Sergeant Whipple. He’s got something to bring up.”

The tall officer walked to the front of the room and did a military about face. Spider almost expected him to click his heels. Whipple’s eyes swept the room. “We appreciate your being here this morning. We appreciate your cooperation.” He pasted on a wooden smile, as if he were reading from a script and obeying instructions in parentheses. “We wonder if you would mind if we examined the contents of this case?”

“What do you mean by that?” Martin looked from Matt to Neva and then to Spider. “What does he mean by that?”

“He wants to do some searching without a search warrant,” Spider said. “You can say no.”

Sergeant Whipple made a steeple of his fingertips. “That will simply delay the inevitable. We can get a court order by phone in half an hour.”

“Maybe,” Spider said. “Maybe not. Depends on the judge. Depends on your reasons for asking.” He met Marshal Thayne’s eyes, and the other officer gave a tiny nod.

Matt took a step forward. “Here’s what I say. Let them look through the display case. We’ve got nothing to hide. Anything to get this prissy clown out of here sooner.”

Toby held up a hand. “Easy, easy. No need to get personal.”