Death on Heels (23 page)

Her phone was scratched and dented, but still jingling. Scowling, she answered. “Hello?”

“Smithsonian, where are you? Are you safe? Can you talk? Are you with the fugitive?”

“Mac?” Why was Douglas MacArthur Jones calling her from Washington? Did he want her to file a story
already
?

“What’s the story, Lacey? Are you with him? Are you being held captive? Are you all right?”

“If you heard I was kidnapped, why did you call me?”

“To see if you’d answer. I thought you might have your phone with you. People in car trunks have cell phones.”

“I wasn’t in a car trunk! Tucker was…a gentleman.”
Well, pretty much. Except for that kiss.
“He sent me back this morning. I’m in Sagebrush right now. Trying to eat lunch.”

“What about your killer?”

“He’s not a killer! And he’s still out there.” There were odd noises in the background. It didn’t sound like the newsroom at
The Eye Street Observer
. “Where are you, Mac?”

“Denver. At the airport. Tony’s seeing about getting a flight to where you are.”

“You’re at DIA? You’ve got Trujillo with you? Why?” Her face was burning. Lacey had had too many shocks today. Her throat constricted.

T-Rex and Rico Firestone were staring at her. Lacey turned away, but she saw the sheriff smirk. “Payback is a bitch,” he said to Rico. He waved to the waitress to top off his coffee.

“Listen, Smithsonian,” Mac said. “We can’t have an
Eye Street
reporter grabbed from a courthouse by a suspected murderer and not follow up. What kind of paper would we be if we didn’t respond? Someone’s got to keep an eye on you, all the trouble you get into.” Funny thing was, Mac didn’t sound unhappy about anything. He sounded like a former reporter who was getting bored as an editor. Mac Jones was champing at the bit to get back in the saddle. So to speak. “When did you get back?”

“Not quite an hour ago.”

“We’re going to cover this story like a blanket. The works.”

“The works? You and Tony are the whole works?”

“The
works
,” Mac said without any apparent irony. “That’s why I’m bringing in our police beat reporter.” The thought crossed Lacey’s mind that Mac had always had a hankering to see the Rocky Mountain West, what with all his talk of cowboy hats. And he was a Californian by birth, after all. Practically next door, from a Washington, D.C., perspective. “What are they doing to find Cole Tucker?”

“The posse is after him,” Lacey said. T-Rex and Firestone studied her, along with the rest of the restaurant. She turned her back on them.

“Did you say posse? A real posse?” Mac half covered his phone and Lacey heard snippets of urgent conversation with someone, presumably Tony Trujillo. When Mac came back on he informed her there were no planes heading her way anytime soon. “We’re renting a car and driving.”

“You’re driving? You hate to drive.”

“Trujillo will drive, says he knows the territory. Call you later!”

Mac hung up, leaving Lacey to stare at her cell phone. She noticed she had more than twenty-five voice-mail messages waiting.
Oh, no. Stella and Brooke and Cherise and my mother and Mac. But where’s Vic?

“Who was that?” Firestone asked.

“My boss.” Lacey was still staring at the phone. “Not Dodd Muldoon. My
real
editor, Douglas MacArthur Jones of
The
Eye Street Observer
. He’s coming to town and bringing reinforcements.”

It was beginning to feel to Lacey like a scene in a surrealist play. People who didn’t belong anywhere near Sagebrush were threatening to make dramatic entrances.

A loud commotion at the front door of the Amarillo made every head in the café swivel. “That’s my daughter! You have to let me in.” The Smithsonian family cavalry, minus dad, had arrived. “I’m not going anywhere until I’m sure she’s safe,” Rose Smithsonian told the big deputy at the entrance. If Lacey could have sunk through the floor she would have.

“I told you, Firestone, we should have taken Smithsonian back to the Justice Center, where we’d have some control,” T-Rex said. “But no, you insist on
feeding
her.”

T-Rex knew when to give up. He could withstand a lot, but he couldn’t fight an angry mother. He nodded tiredly to the deputy and Rose came charging in.

Lacey found herself engulfed in her mother’s hug, followed by Cherise’s. Rose broke away and held Lacey
at arm’s length, her nose wrinkling. “Honey, you need a shower. You smell like a horse.”

“No kidding,” Lacey said.
Eau de Buttercup.

“I knew you’d make it out all right, sis.” Cherise looked bone weary, but relieved. “Mom, on the other hand, is driving me crazy.”

There was another commotion at the door. “Where is she?” It was the deep baritone voice Lacey had been longing to hear.

“Vic, over here!” She raised both arms and broke free of her ferocious family hug.

Their eyes met. Vic was wild-eyed and unshaven. His rebellious curl dangled over his forehead. He parted the crowd with one arm. Even her mother stood aside for Vic. He grabbed Lacey and held her close.

“I smell like a horse,” she managed to say.

“You smell wonderful,” he said.

Lacey realized tears were leaking from her eyes. She rested her head against Vic, not caring about the spectacle they were making. She ignored Avery and Stanford and the posse, the deputies and the sheriff, the CBI agent and the crowd. And her mother. She kissed Vic long and hard.

“Vic, I have to tell you,” Lacey started. “So much.”

“That’s it.” T-Rex had had enough. He stood up, his thumbs tucked into his gun belt. “Show’s over. We’re going to the Justice Center. Now.”

“Wait a minute, Sheriff,” Vic said. “I just got here.”

“Later, honey. I promise.” Lacey grabbed her tote bag and held it close to her chest. Vic followed her and the sheriff to the door, holding on to her.

“You’re not the top cop here anymore, Donovan. And it’s Smithsonian’s turn to answer some questions.” T-Rex took her arm and wrestled her away from Vic. “Firestone. Pay the bill. Get a receipt. This is on the county.”

“It’s a fancy bootheel. So what? You got a point?” Sheriff T-Rex sat back and scowled at the ceiling, arms crossed over his chest.

The bootheel, with its delicate silver filigree decoration, looked smaller sitting in the middle of the table in the sheriff’s interview room. It was oddly elegant, yet stubbornly silent.

“I already told you,” Lacey said.

“You expect me to believe this heel’s got something to do with those women? You been smoking dope or something? Can I add that to your aiding and abetting a fugitive?”

Lacey was trying to hold on to the last of her cool. The interview room was small and tight. She felt penned in by Rico Firestone and T-Rex Rexford.

“I’m saying this bootheel was found in a remote cabin,” Lacey repeated. “The kind of place where a killer could take a victim. Victims who were found barefoot. Just saying.”

“The cabin where Tucker took you?” Firestone said.

“Yes.”

“And where is this cabin?”

Lacey sighed, long and eloquently. “It’s not like I have the address. West of here. Tucker said the owner was an old guy, Thompson, who died a couple of years ago. Local kids have been going up there and using it as a no-tell motel.”

“Sound familiar?” Firestone asked T-Rex.

“Maybe. More than one cabin in this county fits that description. Anything else you can think of might help us pinpoint this cabin you allegedly stayed at?”

“There was a dead coyote stuck on a fence. Not that I could tell. It was mostly bones and teeth, but Tucker said it was a coyote.”

“Dead coyote.” T-Rex nodded. “That’s more like it. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, it’s a high school hangout.” He pointed at the heel. “How do you know this doesn’t belong to one of them kids?”

“I don’t know,” Lacey said. “But if I’d lost an expensive custom-made bootheel, you can bet I’d look for it, particularly if I was a seventeen-year-old girl living at home. And my parents paid for those boots. I’d sure as shooting get down on my hands and knees and move the furniture. But no one found this heel. Until I did. Why not? And I don’t know that it belongs to any of the dead women, because they were found barefoot. But if it came off one of their boots, they weren’t in a position to look for it. Did any of them wear cowboy boots?”

“We’ll ask the questions,” T-Rex said. “If you don’t mind, Miss Fashion Reporter.”

“Maybe the killer took them as trophies,” Lacey added. “Maybe I have part of a killer’s trophy right here.”

“Trophies. Believe it or not, we’ve considered that possibility.” Agent Firestone put his hands on the table. “We do know what we’re doing out here, Lacey. The fact they were missing their shoes has been taken into consideration.”

“Then you don’t know what
kind
of shoes they wore? High heels, tennis shoes, loafers, fuzzy bunny slippers?”

“I should have guessed a female would get all het up over something like shoes,” T-Rex said, disgusted. “Maybe the killer just took their shoes to keep them from running away. Didja think about that? Maybe he threw them all away, put them in a Goodwill box, or burned them in the dump. Might have nothing whatsoever to do with trophies or this bootheel you found, wherever you say you found it.”

Lacey slapped her forehead.
Why is this so hard?

“All right. You don’t know what kind of shoes your barefoot victims wore. And you haven’t found any of their shoes. Did you
ask
anyone who knew them?” They didn’t answer, so she knew she was right. “Are you going to just sit there and do nothing with this clue, and let me write it up the way I see it?”

The sheriff of Yampa County was not used to being talked to this way by a reporter. He started turning beet red again. Agent Firestone cleared his throat. Lacey turned to him in disgust.

“Help the class out here, Rico. Were the dead women missing more than their shoes? Something that wasn’t in the papers?”

“You know we wouldn’t release all the information pertinent to the case,” Firestone said. “Of course, we held back some key elements of the killer’s signature.”

“His signature? Like what? Besides taking their shoes?”

“You’ve got nothing, Miss Smithsonian, except a fancy bootheel and an even fancier imagination,” T-Rex said, after catching his breath. “That sort of thing might go over big in Washington, D.C., but not here in Sagebrush. My God, what’s next? Am I going to have some lunatic psychic walk through the door and tell me my business?” He slammed his hands down on the table and glared at her.

Their skeptical reaction to the bootheel made up her mind. There was no way Lacey was going to tell them Tucker’s theory about the line camps that might have sheltered the killer. The map Tucker drew for her was safe and sound in the lining of her tote bag. Lacey told herself that she wasn’t withholding evidence.
They didn’t ask me about any maps. I’m no psychic.

She wanted to talk to Vic. She longed to wash off this day and its bad memories in a long, luxurious, hot shower. She wanted to change her clothes and go to sleep. T-Rex raised his voice another octave.

“Is someone else going to walk in here and tell me something else I don’t need to know? I am beset by morons! I got a murder suspect on the run, I got a prisoner-
losing dumb-ass of a deputy, and I got a fashion reporter who thinks she’s a detective!”

The room was warm and stuffy. Lacey yawned and covered her mouth. Her only comfort was that these buckaroos were beginning to look as tired as she felt.

“Are we boring you, Miss Smithsonian?”

“Heavens no, T-Rex. It’s just hard to get any rest with coyotes howling all night.”

“Did Tucker tell you what he did to those women?” It was Firestone’s turn again.

“Yeah. He did.” Lacey stared him down. “He did
nothing
to those women. Cole didn’t have anything to do with them. Except Corazon Reyes, whom he was seeing for a few weeks. But you already know that. You’ve asked me that question ten times, five different ways, and my answer is not going to change.”

“What did he tell you about Corazon, then?”

“She was pretty. She was a cook who couldn’t cook. They went out dancing a few times. Corazon wore cowboy boots when they went dancing. Short skirts and cowboy boots. Her signature style.”

“Did her boots have silver heels like these?” Firestone pressed.

Lacey shook her head. “Her favorite boots were tooled leather with multicolored sombreros.”

T-Rex leaned on the table. “We’re going to go over it one more time.”

“I’ve been through it over and over, and I’m done.” Lacey glared at the two of them and stood up. “I’m leaving.”

“No, you’re not!” The sheriff was taken aback. “Material witness, probable conspiracy, suspicion of aiding and abetting a fugitive, other charges pending. Law says I can hold you for twenty-four hours.”

Lacey looked from him to Firestone, who simply shrugged. “He can do that.”

“I want a lawyer. Now.” Lacey realized those words were the first ones that should have come out of her mouth, as Brooke Barton, no doubt, would have lectured
her.
And no doubt will
. “You can keep me for twenty-four hours, but you can’t make me talk.”
Any more than I already have
.

There was a knock at the door. A deputy she didn’t recognize opened it and waved to the sheriff. T-Rex slipped out of the room, leaving her with Agent Firestone. He leaned forward, his elbows on the table.

“This is the problem we’re having with your little boot story, Lacey,” he said. “Why should we waste our time going out to that cabin on this wild goose chase, when Tucker has already skedaddled out of there? Are you playing games with us?”

Lacey tried to speak slowly and patiently. “If one of those victims was in that cabin, you might find more evidence. Wouldn’t more evidence be a
good
thing?”

“I appreciate your loyalty to Cole. You might have a low opinion of our good sheriff here, and off the record, I just might have an opinion of my own, but the law doesn’t arrest people for murder without cause.”