Buffalo Bill's Defunct (9781564747112) (14 page)

It wasn’t until then that the political consequences of Brand-stetter’s death struck him. Jesus, the sheriff. He decided he couldn’t take it for granted that Teresa had called Mack, so he phoned the sheriff himself. Mack sounded stunned and almost as mournful as if he hadn’t detested Hal. He promised to come right over.

Just what I need, Rob thought without gratitude. He was standing by the county car, watching the scene. Myron had moved the city car so it blocked the corner. Thayer and the rookie were conferring under the street light. Beside Rob the radio squawked. It was Earl and he was incensed.

“Yeah, Brandstetter’s been shot,” Rob agreed. “And yes, I’ll need you and everybody else you can get your hands on. I have a job for you first.” He read off the Portland phone number. “Call the Portland police ASAP and have them contact Tom Brandstetter. They can break the news if they’re feeling generous. His mother’s in the hospital. I need to talk to Tom. Have them ask him to call me.” He read off his cell phone number, squinting. For some reason, he could never remember the number.

When he had soothed Earl down, he went back to the espresso stand and ordered another coffee. Marge gave him one on the house.

A
RE you Margaret McLean?”

Dust cloth in hand, Meg stared at the woman standing on her porch. Blond, middle-aged and fighting it, a total stranger. A reporter? It was a blessing of small-town life that the house was not yet under media siege. In LA there would have been at least three video teams in the street outside. The press was bound to catch on some time.

Meg admitted who she was.

“I’m Carol Tichnor,” the woman said. “You bought the house from my mother.”

“I see.” Meg didn’t.

“What’s going on?” The woman gestured to her left.

“I don’t know for sure. My neighbor said Mrs. Brandstetter down the street shot her husband.”

Darcy had banged on Meg’s door at seven-thirty with the appalling news. Perhaps because she had not yet drunk a full cup of coffee, Meg leapt to the conclusion that returning the dog to its owner the previous night had triggered the shooting.

Guilt had kept her pent up in the house ever since. She had glimpsed Rob a couple of times in the distance, but she hadn’t wanted to go out and harass him, not just to satisfy her curiosity, not even to ease her conscience. Darcy was long gone.

“My God, bodies all over the place,” the woman on the porch was saying. “ Klalo’s turning into a regular abattoir. May I come in? It’s cold.”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry, I’m a bit distracted.” Meg opened the door and ushered her unexpected guest into the hall. “Excuse the mess. I’m still unpacking.”

It was chilly out. There was no rain, but an icy breeze blew from the east, a feature of the microclimate. On her spring visit, Meg was told that the wind funneled through the Gorge from the west or the east. From the west it was wet and ocean-cool. From the east, it was cold in winter, hot in summer, always dry. Wind surfers loved it. People had even been known to build high-tech windmills in the area, though the presence of Bonneville Dam made alternative methods of producing electricity seem redundant.

Meg took the woman into the living room, removed a sheer shadow-panel on a rod from the love seat, and offered coffee. The sofa was covered with a brocade swag, also on a rod, and the armchair held a plastic tray with assorted nails, screws, staples, a tack hammer, and a screwdriver. A stepladder stood in front of the bay window. The woman looked around with a critical air.

It was almost lunch time, but Meg had no intention of feeding anyone who left her with a dead body in the garage. She doubted that Carol Tichnor was the murderer. All the same, the contract for the house had specified full disclosure. At that point in Meg’s reflections, her sense of humor caught up with her, and she relieved her guest of her camel’s-hair coat.

When they were seated with a tray of steaming mugs, sugar, and cream on the coffee table before them, Meg said, “I’m happy to meet you, Ms. Tichnor—”

“Please, it’s Carol. May I call you Margaret?”

“Meg. As I said, lovely to meet you, Carol, but why?” It had not escaped Meg’s attention that she was treating Carol with far more formal hospitality than she had shown Darcy. Such are class distinctions. “Why?” she repeated.

Carol grimaced. “I’m under orders from my mother to find out what’s happening. The neighbors at home said we had a cop-car outside the house for more than half an hour yesterday. I drove down from Seattle last night. This morning I couldn’t reach the deputy who called me. The dispatcher said he was down here, but he’s out by the other house, the Brandstetter place, and the officer wouldn’t let me past the crime scene tape. So I thought I’d ask you.”

“Good luck,” Meg said ruefully. “I probably know less than the average passerby.” She gave a brief account of finding the petroglyph and the ensuing melodrama, wondering whether she shouldn’t just record the story and press Play when somebody asked. “I believe they’ve identified the victim.” Rob had told her that much the night before.

“Who?”

“I don’t know. It’s not yet official. Maybe they’re still contacting family members.” Time to shift gears. “Will you tell me why nobody mentioned the storage compartment in the garage floor? I felt awfully stupid.”

Carol shifted on the love seat as if it were uncomfortable. “ It was a joke to everybody in the family but my mother. Great-grandpa Otto’s stash. We should have nailed the lid down.” She described the old man’s bootlegging activities as if she’d told the tale many times for comic effect, but her heart wasn’t in the telling.

“Your mother disapproved?”

She sighed. “My mother disapproves of anything even remotely tacky. Her grandfather was her ultimate humiliation, though her father made her wince, too. I think she married my father because he was correct and colorless. I loved Dad but he was not an interesting man. Total workaholic. He treated everything as work. It killed him.”

Meg thought of her own stern, humorless father who had not been pleased to acknowledge a “bastard granddaughter.” His term. Meg and her father had come to a parting of the ways. That still hurt. “She wanted him to be dull?”

“She wanted him to be correct,” Carol said. “My brother Ethan is like him, though Eth at least enjoys music and once smoked a joint. Vance and I were a great trial to my parents. He cleaned up his act when he married. Have you met Vance?”

“No.”

“Charming is the word.” She gave a small, reminiscent smile. “He’s a very good salesman. Makes a bundle selling overpriced houses in Lake Oswego and spends it all on the Good Life. He collects wine, used to open a five-hundred-dollar bottle with a weekday dinner sometimes, just to say he could. Moira put a stop to that with one lift of her eyebrow. She’s rather like Mother.” That seemed to surprise her. She took a brooding sip of lukewarm coffee. “Didn’t somebody once say all boys marry their mothers?”

Sophocles? Meg suppressed the thought.

Carol gave herself a small shake. “Vance can charm the birds out of the trees. Has he dropped by?”

“No.”

“Earlier this week, he said something about visiting the old place on his way to that lodge he’s building up on the lake.”

“Maybe he came before I got here Tuesday. I look forward to meeting him.” The doorbell rang. Meg rose and went to answer it.

It was Rob. Worried, she thought, and who should blame him? His shoulders in the gray windbreaker hunched against the wind. It ruffled his hair and stung color across his cheekbones. “Is Carol Tichnor here?”

“I was just getting acquainted with her. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

He shuddered. “I OD’d on double-shot espresso. You heard about Brandstetter?”

“I heard that Tammy shot him.”

He frowned. “We have no idea who shot him.”

Meg drew a long breath. “My God, what a relief.”

“Relief?”

“Yes, I thought perhaps having the dog in the house drove her over the edge. I felt guilty.”

“That may be what happened, but I doubt it.”

“Come in. You’re running up my propane bill.”

He followed her into the living room and exchanged courtesies with Carol, who addressed him as Lieutenant Neill and apologized with a little too much gracious humility for not returning his telephone calls.

He, in turn, treated her with steely deference. He asked her for an interview that afternoon. It was plain that interview was a euphemism for interrogation.

“I have business with the realty office, but I guess I can manage it. Four o’clock? I’m staying at the Red Hat. They do a decent margarita.” She batted her lashes at him.

“At my office in the courthouse annex.” He gave terse directions. He also suggested that she arrange for her brothers to meet with him.

“Good heavens, Lieutenant, when? It’s a long drive up here and they’re busy men.”

“So am I a busy man,” he retorted. “This is a homicide investigation, Ms. Tichnor. I want to see them in person as soon as possible.”

“But Ethan’s a doctor!”

“He can tell his patients he’s going to Mazatlán,” Rob snarled. “Tomorrow. It’s Sunday.”

“I’ll try.”

“Thank you. I have to go. I’m waiting for a search warrant.” He hadn’t sat down, and he made for the door with a curt nod to Meg as he left.

“So that’s Robert Neill,” Ms. Tichnor purred. “What an attractive man.”

Meg stared at her. Maybe she was into bondage.

T
HE
warrant might not have been necessary. It was a murder scene. However, the killing had happened outside the house. Considering the political ramifications of Brandstetter’s death, Rob preferred to play it safe.

He intended to read every scrap of paper in the frowsty office. He also wanted Forensics to do a thorough examination of the SUV and the garage. Hal was bound to have had a gun collection. Rob wasn’t about to wait for Tammy to sober up long enough to give permission.

While he waited for Earl to bring the warrant, Rob had deployed the skeletal Crime Scene Team to see what they could get from the footprints on the steps and the deck. He wasn’t hopeful of results because the wind was drying everything rapidly, but Jake Soren-son thought he’d got one footprint that wasn’t Brandstetter’s. It was at that juncture that Rob went in search of Carol Tichnor. He was already having trouble keeping the two cases going at once— and keeping them separate in his mind.

Shortly after he got back, Linda Ramos showed up. She had delegated the “death-watch” chair at the hospital to Jeff Fong after Earl called Jeff to duty from his son’s soccer game. Jeff would not be happy.

Rob was happy. He needed Linda. He set her to photographing the exterior of the SUV as soon as she and Jake had finished the steps. When Earl arrived with the warrant, having chased down Judge Meyer at the supermarket, Rob turned examination of the deck and SUV over to him.

Rob donned protective gear, and Linda and Jake followed him inside for a fast but hopefully thorough take on the office. The rest of the house could wait. After the initial forensic chores were done, he sent Jake back outside and began to organize the real search of Brandstetter’s office. It was not a large room, but Hal had crammed it with books and pamphlets and heaps of paper, mostly printouts. The computer loomed. A large poster of Jesse Ventura in full wrestling costume hung over the desk. The edges of the poster curled.

Rob and Linda were deciding on a division of labor when Tom Brandstetter called on the cell phone. Rob backed away from his territory, the desk. Fingerprints smeared the flat surfaces. They’d used the iodine gun. He covered the receiver. “I need to take this now, Linda. You might as well get started on the file cabinet.”

“Right.”

He stepped into the empty hall, peeling the thin latex glove from his right hand. “Hello, Tom. Did the Portland police explain what happened here?”

Tom’s voice came across quiet, detached. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.”

Rob could think of nothing to say to that.

The boy said, “They told me my mother is in the hospital. Was he beating on her again?”

Rob described what he’d observed of Tammy the night before and suggested, with ponderous delicacy, that she had used vodka to deaden the pain.

“She does that.” Same detached voice. “I guess I’d better come.”

In the office, Linda said something in Spanish.

Rob said, “She needs you, Tommy, and so does Towser.”

The boy gave a laugh that was half a sob, the first sign of emotion he had displayed. “Poor old guy. I couldn’t take him to Portland with me.”

“Rob!” Linda called.

He waved an arm in the direction of the office and wound down his conversation. Tom said he had enough money to take the commuter shuttle home. The bus got into Klalo around five on Saturday. Rob doubted that the Crime Scene Unit would be done with the house by then. He supposed he could put Tom up in his guest room. But not Towser. He didn’t say that. When he and Tom had finished the conversation, he clicked the cell phone off to give the battery a rest.

“Find something?” He pulled the latex glove back on.

Linda was all but bouncing in the doorway. “You got to look at this, Rob!” She pulled him into the room and led him to the desk. On a clear patch of surface she had laid a brown leather wallet.