Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek: A Samuel Craddock Mystery (Samuel Craddock Mysteries) (31 page)

“Yes, that’s my car.” Mrs. Witz points out the black Crown Victoria, a vintage model at least ten years older than Gary Dellmore’s but with the same general shape and size. It’s parked in the driveway in front of the one-car garage. Mrs. Witz lives in the most modest home on the block, but it’s well kept, with a tidy yard. “But nobody has driven it since I called you. To tell you the truth, I’m embarrassed I made that phone call to you. I think I got discombobulated.” She’s in her eighties, but she seems anything but discombobulated.

“Do you ever let anybody borrow it?”

“My son has driven it a time or two when he comes up from Houston. He wants to make sure it’s in good working order. He’s a good son.”

“Does anyone else have a key to it?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“But you’re not sure?”

She hesitates. “My neighbor drove me to the doctor when I had cataract surgery a few weeks ago and we took my car. That’s such a good surgery. I can see without glasses now.”

“You got the key back from your neighbor after she drove you to the doctor? It was ‘she,’ I believe.”

She frowns. “Yes, I had her use my spare set and I thought I got it back. Let me take a look. Come on in.”

While she goes into a back room, I wait in her living room, trying not to choke on the strong scent of potpourri. Despite the smell, I’m happy for her to take her time, because when I leave her, I’m likely going to have to make an arrest I don’t want to make.

She comes back looking flustered. “I don’t believe I did get the keys back. I suppose I could have put them somewhere else, but I’m pretty good about returning things where they’re supposed to stay. You know, when you get as old as I am, you worry that you’ll lose track of things.”

I ask her the name of the neighbor who drove her to have her surgery, and it’s exactly who I feared it would be.

Back at the station, I sit down and write out all the clues that point to the killer, a person who had access to a car to switch with Dellmore’s car, who had every reason to despise Gary Dellmore, and who carried a burdensome secret, with a side dose of ambition to boot. I’m stalling to give her time to finish up her business for the day. Alan Dellmore will have a lot on his plate, and it won’t hurt to give him one more day to grieve his son before he has to start grieving all over again.

Meanwhile, I drive to the McCluskys’ house. Both their cars are in the driveway. I ring the doorbell and Angel opens the door. “Oh, it’s you.”

“I have one more question, to satisfy my curiosity.”

“Great, more questions.” She walks away from the door without asking me in, but I follow anyway. “Slate?” Angel yells out. “Your new best friend is here.” I don’t think it’s my imagination that her accent is considerably more west Texas than usual.

We stand in the living room, and I sneak a glance at the Remington. The light that displays it is turned off, and I like it even better that way. I don’t know why I like Remington. He has a lot of horses in his paintings, and I’m not fond of horses. But in his paintings horses seem to have a purpose and give a sense of what real frontier life must have been like. The one here in the McClusky living room is one of his brooding pieces, with two horses and a cowboy on foot leading them while a small herd of cows looks on in the background. The colors are muted, like night is coming on.

Slate McClusky comes in, and although his manner is strained he has a businessman’s knack for pretending things are okay when they aren’t. He’s retrieved his smile. “What brings you here?”

“I heard that you and Angel were putting your house on the market.”

“I didn’t figure it would take long for the news to get out. We’ve decided we need to start fresh somewhere. Angel never liked it here anyway, so she’ll be glad to move on, won’t you, honey?”

“You’ve got that right. Who needs this place anyway?” Although her words sound like she is supporting Slate, the bitter set of her mouth tells me the support is on rocky ground.

“I presume you have something to say besides rubbing my nose in my financial situation?” His smile doesn’t go with his harsh words.

I nod toward the Remington. “If you have any interest in selling that painting, I’d make you a fair offer for it.”

McClusky blinks. Angel laughs and says, “You know how to twist the knife, don’t you?”

“I didn’t intend that. If it has sentimental value, then I understand.”

“Angel is being sarcastic,” McClusky says, “and not doing a very good job of it.”

“Is the picture an original?”

“How the hell do I know? I got it from an old boy who was going bankrupt a few years back. He said he could give me that picture or a block of strip mall in a slum section of Colorado Springs. He claimed they were equal value. I kind of liked the picture, so I said yes. These days I’d probably take the mall.”

He’d be wrong. I have a feeling he has no idea what this picture is worth. “How much do you want for it?”

“I don’t know. You think it’s worth fifty thousand dollars?” His voice is hopeful.

He might have saved himself a good bit of trouble and maybe been able to buy himself a little leeway if he’d bothered to find out what this picture was really worth. “I tell you what, I have a man from Houston who can come up and give us an appraisal on it. You got any papers for it?”

Slate is beginning to look interested. “Somewhere around here. I’ll look in my files. What do you think it might bring?”

“We’ll have to make sure it’s genuine before I’d be able to speculate.” I’m not going to give him a number. The picture might be nothing more than a good imitation. George Manning can tell me that.

Back at my house I call Manning. He owns a gallery in Houston. Jeanne and I bought a few pieces from him. He says he’s busy this weekend, but he’ll drive up on Monday. I tell him I don’t have a fine restaurant to take him out to, but I can fit him up with some good barbecue or Mexican food, his choice.

It’s mid-afternoon when I stop by Loretta’s place. She’s finishing up the shirts she’s making for her grandsons. “I’m glad to put this aside for a while. My eyes are tired.”

We go into her kitchen and she brews coffee. She’s gotten in the habit of brewing it extra-strong for me and adding water to her own. “You look a little pale. Have you had any lunch?”

I admit to her that I hadn’t even thought about it.

“You’ve got something on your mind.”

“Yes, but I can’t discuss it.”

“That’s okay. I’ll do the talking.” She whips me up a lunch of a tuna fish sandwich with sliced pickles on the side.

Two bites into it, I already feel better. “So talk.”

“I found out that Slate and Angel McClusky are leaving here,” she says. “They’re putting their house on the market. But somebody said it wasn’t all on the up-and-up.” She looks at me keenly. “Would you know anything about that?”

“Yes, but that’s something else I can’t discuss. It’ll come out eventually.”

“Somebody said they also had their house in Vail on the market, and that’s why they’ve stayed in town this winter. But Angel told Camille Overton they planned to consolidate all their places and then maybe they’d buy a house in California. It sounds like Angel has gotten a little bored and maybe she’s going to try for a comeback.”

“Wouldn’t they be going to Nashville for that?” I’m thinking of that poster advertising the comeback tour that never happened and Slate’s claim that Angel had lost her singing voice.

“That’s what I said, but Camille said she only knows what Angel told her. What kind of name is ‘Angel,’ anyway?”

I laugh. She’s no angel, that’s for sure. “What else is on your mind?”

“Oh, that new woman, Ellen Forester, is apparently having problems with her ex-husband. Somebody said he came after her and things got ugly.” She looks at me sharply, but I keep quiet.

“Anyway, it turns out she’s going to have a big party for the opening of the store. I think that’s a nice idea, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“It will be a welcome change. Everybody’s so gloomy with the town having such financial trouble. We need a party to cheer us up.”

I listen to Loretta chatter on, glad for a little respite. But eventually I have to go take care of business.

“I usually go straight home after work,” Cookie Travers says. “I have my routine. I change clothes and then pour myself a glass of wine and look through my mail.”

“The reason I ask is that I need to have a chat with you.”

Maybe it’s something in my voice, or maybe it’s nothing, but she pauses for a minute before she replies. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you follow me to my house and I’ll give you a glass of wine, too, and then we can talk.”

“I’ll wait for you outside.”

It’s twenty minutes before she comes out the front door of the bank, and after she locks the big double doors, she does an odd thing. She looks the building up and down like she’s taking it in to remember it. It’s true, even though she’ll likely see the bank again, it will never be through the same eyes.

Her house is much nicer than her neighbor’s across the street, Mrs. Witz’s. It’s at least three bedrooms. I wonder if she bought it thinking that one day she’d marry and have children.

Cookie says she’d like to change clothes, and I tell her that will be fine. While I wait I look at the photos she has arranged on a table. There are some with her as a young girl, along with what I take to be her parents and two siblings. And there are several of her with people I know around town, and a formal picture of her taken in her work clothes standing in front of the bank. There are also pictures of Alan Dellmore—one with his bank board, another that is several years old, and then a recent one. It’s a curious photo, because it looks like it has been cut. There was someone else in the photo that Cookie didn’t want to display.

When Cookie comes back, she has exchanged her suit for slacks and a sweater with a fleece vest, and her high heels for running shoes. It’s too warm in here for the vest.

She asks what I want to drink, and I tell her I’ll have what she’s having.

“I believe I’ll open a nice bottle of white wine,” she says. She goes into the kitchen and comes back with two pretty crystal stems and a bottle of what I know to be expensive chardonnay. Even though I don’t prefer white wine, I recognize the name from the catalog I buy my red wine from. She opens the wine and pours it into the glasses. “Beautiful color,” she says, and sniffs. “And a nice nose. It’s a special bottle.”

When Cookie sits down, I ask her when she moved here.

“I’ve been with the bank for over twenty years.”

“How did you come to settle in Jarrett Creek?”

She smiles, but it’s not a smile of pleasure—it’s full of sadness. “I met Alan at a banking conference. I was working in Beaumont at the time. We hit it off.” She takes a sip of her wine. “He asked me if I’d consider coming to work for him, and I said yes.”

“Have you ever regretted the decision?”

“That’s a funny question.” She smoothes her hair. “I guess everybody regrets some parts of their life. I was engaged to be married, and if I’d stayed in Beaumont, I would’ve had a different life. Probably kids. I think I would like to have had children, but it didn’t work out that way.”

“What did Alan promise you if you moved here?”

The bottle of wine may be special, but she slugged the first glass back as if it were water, and now she’s staring at her empty glass. “I usually only have one glass of wine, but I think I’m going to have another one tonight.” She doesn’t ask me if I want another, because I’ve hardly touched my first. When she sits back down, her eyes are glistening with unshed tears. “You asked me what Alan promised? I wish I could tell you he lied to me and promised me things, but he didn’t. It was all on me.”

I know from her answer that she’s aware of exactly why I’m here. Like me, she’s putting off the moment of truth. “It must have been hard when Alan hired Gary at the bank.”

She takes a shaky breath. “You have no idea. I helped Alan build that bank to be a fine institution. Do you know that we have people who do business with us all over the county and beyond? Or at least we did.”

“Before Gary came along and started working for his dad?”

“And making a mess of things. In more ways than one.” She wipes her eyes with the heels of her hands, smearing her mascara.

“So you decided to take care of the problem.”

She shudders when I say the words. She sets her glass down very carefully on the coffee table, and when she raises her head, her eyes are dead cold. “Are you suggesting that I killed Gary?”

“Cookie, before we get into that, I’d like you to take off that vest. I don’t see how you can stand to wear it. It’s too warm in here.” As I speak, I pull the .45 out of my holster and point it at her.

She draws a sharp breath. “I’m fine. I’m not too warm.”

“Humor me. I know you’ve got a gun in the pocket and we need to get that out of the way.”

I wait while she thinks it over and realizes there’s no way she can get to that gun before I shoot her. She shrugs off the vest and lets it fall around her.

“Throw the vest on the floor.”

She does so, and it falls with a muffled clunk.