Buffalo Bill's Defunct (9781564747112) (22 page)

Meg removed a small metal car from the nearest chair and sat. A tattered copy of
The Poky Little Puppy
on an end table was the only other evidence of a child in the unnaturally tidy room. Darcy’s color scheme was mostly ivory with indigo and off-pink patterns, lots of patterns. She favored gingham and spotty wall-paper with stylized tulips. The lace curtains displayed elaborately worked chevrons and stars.

When Darcy reentered, followed by a sullen hunk with an Elvis mouth, Meg was relieved. The decor made her dizzy. The computer continued to zap aliens.

She rose. “You must be Dennis.”

“Yeah. Darcy says you want Old Strohmeyer’s keys.” Elvis ignored her out-thrust hand.

She let it fall. “My keys, actually.”

“How the hell did you know about them?
She
never asked me for them.”

“She?”

“The old lady. Charlotte Tichnor. Who told you I had a set of keys?”

It was only then that Meg remembered she wasn’t supposed to know about Dennis’s keys. Rob had told her about them under seal of the confessional.

“Hmmm, now who was it?” She mimed bafflement while her mind raced in circles. “Somebody mentioned those keys just the other day.” Yesterday.

“Carol Tichnor, I bet.” Darcy smoothed her hair.

Kind of Darcy to rescue me, Meg thought. She gave Dennis a big smile. “Carol took me to dinner at the Red Hat. Wasn’t that sweet of her? We talked.”

Dumb bitch. Dennis didn’t say that aloud, or Meg, who was feeling dumb, might have taken umbrage. Afterwards, it occurred to her that he meant Carol.

He dug in a pocket of his Dockers, came up with a key chain, and thrust it at her. The chain had a plastic Day-Glo tab on the end with a large black
S
in Gothic script, S for Strohmeyer.

Meg counted the keys. “Which of them opens the back door of the garage?”

He touched one that was brighter than the others. “He, Emil, changed that lock a couple of months before he died.”

“I see. Thank you.”

The doorbell rang. Darcy gave a little jiggle and ran a dampened finger over her eyebrows. Dennis shrugged his massive shoulders.

“See you later,” Meg fluted. She slid out the front door past a young man in jeans who was laden with a tape recorder and a digital camera.

“Hey, aren’t you…?”

Meg fled. When she reached the sanctuary of her kitchen and looked out the window, she spotted a video crew filming her backyard from the alley. The camera bore the logo of one of the Portland television stations. She drew what curtains she could, threw the keys into her junk drawer, and hunkered down to wait out the siege. She had meant to drive to the grocery store.

Media assault was bound to happen. Two whole days of homicide investigation without journalists thrusting themselves onto the scene constituted some kind of rural miracle. That didn’t make the prospect of urban notoriety welcome, however brief it might be.

After she had put her notes into the computer and made printouts, Meg salvaged the leftover chili. Since she’d made a lot, she was able to scrape four portions into microwaveable containers. She stuck them into the freezer beside the leftover shepherd’s pie and vegetable soup. They’d come in handy when she started work.
Work.
She wondered whether she ought to call Marybeth Jackman and decided to let sleeping assistants lie. It was Sunday.

Meg didn’t feel restful. She was still jangling with relief that Rob Neill had survived what sounded like a drive-by shooting. It was such a Los Angeles event, she almost felt guilty, as if she had brought a plague of violence north with her. And she was having emotional avoidance symptoms. She liked Rob a lot. She hoped that the depth of her distress hadn’t made that too obvious to Jeff. Now that she knew Rob was all right, she didn’t want to consider why she had been more shaken than she had a right to be.

Margaret the Magnificent was beginning to look a lot like her old impulsive self, so she tried chanting one of the mantras she had selected to combat fecklessness. “‘And keep you in the rear of your affection,’” she intoned, “‘out of the shot and danger of desire.’” It had to work.

She was glad Lucy didn’t call.

She made herself an omelette for dinner and settled in for an evening of unpacking. When she stuck her head out the side door around seven, the camera crew had gone and she didn’t see the reporter’s car either, so she wandered out for a breath of fresh air.

She bumped into Tom and Towser in front of her garage. Towser consented to have his head scratched and didn’t even leap on her. He did grin.

“How’s your mom?”

“Fine. Hiding out in her motel room. We had a room service meal.” Tom made a face.

“What a shame. Tell her she owes it to your education to feed you dinner in the dining room.”

He was a solemn young man but he smiled at that. “Yeah.” The smile faded. “You hear about the shooting?”

“I heard that somebody fired shots at Rob.”

“He had to have twelve stitches.” Tom shivered.

Meg felt a frisson of alarm. Jeff had said Rob was all right. “Is he home? I need to talk to him.”

“No, he had some work to do on Dad’s computer.” Tom gestured down the street. “The sheriff’s holding a press conference at the courthouse right about now.”

“So that’s where the journalists went.”

“Rob’s hiding. He says they’ll get bored after a day or two.” Towser woofed. “Okay, boy. Ms. McLean, do you think Mom should have Towser put down?”

“What! Of course not.” The dog might be a nuisance, but he didn’t deserve the death penalty.

Tom patted Towser’s square brown head. “The thing is, she’s afraid she won’t have enough money to stay in the house, and I can’t take him to Portland. No pets in my apartment house. You wouldn’t want to adopt him, would you? He likes you.” A definite wheedle.

“I…no, absolutely not.”

“Rob can’t because his schedule’s too erratic.”

“Mine, too,” Meg lied. If anything, her schedule was going to be too predictable. Inspiration struck. “Your father had a valuable gun collection, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Sell it and use the money to support Towser in style. Your mother can hire a dog walker for him.”

Tommy looked at her, wide-eyed, then laughed aloud. “Yes! That’s brilliant, Meg. Dad would hate it.”

Meg was feeling sententious. “Things work out, Tom. I know you don’t believe that now, but it’s true.” And keep you in the rear of your affection. Towser woofed and gave a small bounce of agreement.

When Tom went on his way, Meg returned to her house and started in on the boxes stacked on the dining room table. She had finished clearing that room out, and was flattening cartons with an eye to baling them, when a knock came at the kitchen door. She glanced at her watch. After ten.

It was Rob, shivering in the risen wind.

“Come in. You look like death,” she said frankly.

“I’ve been told that already.”

“I like the outfit.”

He glanced down at the knee-shot jeans and the T-shirt that peeked out from a mungy gray zippered sweatshirt. “Be grateful it’s not covered with gore.”

Her throat closed. She cleared it. “Would you like a drink?”

“I would like a complete anesthetic.” Wincing, he sat down at the table. “But a finger of Scotch will do. I need to talk to you.”

“Me, too, or vice versa, but first things first.” She got out the Scotch and poured two moderate dollops. “Tom said you were working on the computer.”

“Yes. Thanks for setting the German Bible aside. Hal’s passwords were in it.”

“Heavens, in code like numerology?”

“A straightforward list tucked between the pedigree of a remote cousin and a reminder to send the garnet earrings to Tante Anna.” He rolled a sip of Scotch on his tongue.

“That must have made things easier.”

“It did. I got financial data the 1RS would be happy to have and some interesting phone numbers. Hal’s e-mail was overflowing. He must have corresponded with every paranoid freak in the country. We may even have to interview some of them. And I found out where he went Friday evening.”

Meg leaned forward. “Where?”

“Portland Airport. I accessed his credit card records. He tanked up the SUV at an airport station. I called and talked to the attendant. Unfortunately, Hal was alone at the time or I might have a description of the killer.”

“Somebody flew in and killed him?”

He swallowed Scotch, frowning. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s confusing.” He looked at her. “I ought to fire you.”

Meg had been expecting that. She took a judicious swallow of her own Scotch. “Sorry. Fire me and I sue the county.”

“Meg…”

She met his eyes for a long moment. He looked gaunt and bruised and very tired. “You’re feeling guilty about the poor lady you were talking to when the man shot at you, and you want to take it out on me. No way.”

He lowered his eyes. “I seem to have made myself a target. I’d rather not do that to anyone else. Mrs. Crookshank was bad enough.”

“That’s a great name.”

“She was my fourth-grade teacher.” He traced the rim of his glass. “She’s okay and she forgave me, but we must have been quite a sight.” He described Mrs. Crookshank’s adventure in sufficiently comic terms to provoke a smile, but Meg thought he was forcing the humor.

“So you rolled across the lawn in your fourth-grade teacher’s embrace? That’s funny, all right, but you must have one hell of a headache.” She tapped her skull. On his, a shaven strip showed ugly black stitches.

“It’s just sore. I bet you think I was shot.”

“You weren’t?”

He touched his head. “I ripped my scalp open on one of those underground lawn sprinklers they used to install in the nineteen-fifties. You know, the kind with the round metal cap that sticks up into the lawn and makes the mower clank. Bled all over the place.”

Startled, she met his eyes. They both laughed. “Oh, dear, I’m sure your head hurts, but it
is
a little anticlimactic, isn’t it?”

“Anticlimactic is good.”

“And Mrs. Crookshank is all right?”

He grimaced. “She’s grateful. I saved her life, or so she thinks. She told me my father would be proud of me.”

“Would he?”

“How would I know?” His brows snapped together. “How the hell would she know? He’s been dead since nineteen sixty-eight and she never met him.” He took a hasty sip of Scotch. “Sorry. It always burns me when people do that phony channeling act.”

“Did she do it to you in the fourth grade?”

He was silent.

Meg swallowed whisky. “How old were you when your father died?”

“Eight. He was killed during the Tet Offensive. February. My mother and I were living here with my grandparents. I don’t remember the rest of the third grade. We moved up to the cabin on Tyee Lake when school let out, and my mother started drinking. I guess she didn’t know how to be a widow.” There was no sarcasm in the last comment, just sadness.

“It must have been terribly hard for her.”

“I can see that now. Then I was angry, angry and scared. I didn’t know what to do.”

Meg shivered.

“By the time I got to the fourth grade, I was a walking ball of fury. I kept picking fights with kids who were bigger than I was, which was practically everybody in my class. I was a trial to Old Lady Crookshank.”

“And you dislike her—”

He interrupted. “I don’t dislike her, Meg. She tried to be sympathetic and failed. Anybody would have. When I see her, though…”

“It throws you back into that state of mind?”

He sighed. “That’s it, and I can’t avoid her. She was a friend of my grandmother’s.”

“I’m sorry,” Meg said softly. “Your mother died, too?”

“One of her drinking buddies drove off the River Road in a sleet storm almost exactly a year after Dad died. They were both killed.” He shivered and took a gulp of Scotch. “Jesus, I have not had a good day. I ought to go.”

“Well, at least you didn’t apologize.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Tell me about your father. Do you remember him?”

He rubbed his shoulder and took a sip of whisky. “He was a nice guy, funny, a Chicago Irishman with red hair and freckles. The name was originally O’Neill. By the time he volunteered for a tour in the combat zone, he was a staff sergeant. He told my mother it would be safe but boring. He’d spend his time at brigade headquarters in Saigon typing forms in triplicate.”

“And it would have been safe enough, I suppose, if headquarters hadn’t come under rocket attack?”

He glanced up from his drink. “You know about that? Most people don’t.”

“I read a little about it. He volunteered? He must have been career military.”

“A lifer,” he agreed. He rubbed the side of his face, winced, and dropped the hand. “My mother met him in Tacoma when he was stationed at Fort Lewis. Grandma sent her to Pacific Lutheran, which is a good, quiet liberal arts college. I guess Gran was hoping Mom would settle down, but she was a party girl and probably rebelling against all those books.”

“It was the beginning of that era of rebellion.”

“Not at PLU,” he retorted. “They, my grandparents, kept expecting her to do well in school and she never did. She was their only child. She eloped with Dad, and I came along seven or eight months later. He was almost thirty and she was nineteen.”

Meg was thinking about her father, who had been in his thirties when she was born. “Did you get along with him?”

“Sure. We enjoyed each other.” He took a thoughtful sip. “He could see I was going to be small for my age. I guess he showed up at some first-grade fiesta and spotted that I was the runt. So he started teaching me judo.”

“Wow,” Meg said feebly. Judo sounded like a recipe for disaster to her. “He taught you to fight?”

“No, he taught me how not to get picked on.”

“Oh. I guess that would be a problem for a little boy. I was small, too, and I stayed that way.” She smiled at him. “Unlike you. For girls, being small can be an asset, the Gidget syndrome. Did your father teach you when to fight and when not to?”

“He was strong on avoiding fights, used humor to defuse tension. He didn’t teach me that. I observed it.”

“You admired him, didn’t you? I wish I could feel that way about my father. Not that he was Hal Brandstetter. I feel so sorry for Tommy.”