Buffalo Bill's Defunct (9781564747112) (23 page)

“Me, too. I had a great dad and I was damned angry when he died, but I think I would have been all right if my mother had known which way was up. Fortunately, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents that last year of her life. They were terribly grieved when she died, but they made the effort to help me deal with it. We had a bumpy road for a couple of years, though, and fourth grade was the worst.”

“If Hazel Guthrie had feet of clay, don’t tell me.”

“She kept me busy.” He rubbed his arm again and rotated the shoulder. “She could be a bit overwhelming, but I didn’t rebel against her until high school. Gran was great on board games— Scrabble and things like that. And she fed me science fiction, so I learned to like books. She also gave me my first computer.”

“Let me guess. Radio Shack?”

“A TRS80 Model I. Great machine. I made it sit up and bark.”

“Was your grandfather into computers, too?”

He gave a reminiscent grin. “Lord, no, he even distrusted electronic calculators.”

“What did he use at the drugstore, an abacus?”

“Cash register. The kind with a bell.”

“I remember those.”

He sipped Scotch, raising the glass in a half salute. “Grandpa was quiet, a birder and a fly fisherman, and he used to take me canoeing on the lake. The best thing he did for me in that period, though, was to enroll me in the karate school. He was no fighter himself, but something had to be done about my temper. He knew I would associate martial arts with my father and work at it. I did, too. I never tried for a black belt, but I liked the discipline right from the first, the calmness, being in the moment.”

Meg made a mental note to read up on karate. The fashion these days was for tae kwan do and tai chi, but karate had a long and honorable history. She liked the idea of a small boy being taught to contain his belligerence in a ceremonial and effective way.

For a while they sat silent, thinking separate thoughts, then Rob finished his drink and shoved the chair back. “Thanks. I’d better take myself off before KATU-TV decides we’re trysting in the kitchen.”

Not a bad idea, trysting. Meg stood up. “Wait. I have a report for you.”

“Already?”

“I’m fast and cheap. “ Lordy, like an airport whore, Meg thought. Keep you in the
rear
of your affection. She ran from the room, returning in better order with a printout of her notes. “Here. I also had a couple of ideas.”

He groaned theatrically.

“Oh, shut up. What about Charlotte Tichnor as the collector, the mastermind? She has the profile of an obsessive.”

“Kind of long-distance.”

“Say she uses her children to do the work.”

“It’s a thought.”

She eyed him suspiciously but his face was grave. “The thing is, Brandstetter wasn’t the collector, though he may have been the thief. He wasn’t interested in any kind of art, and he had no sympathy for anyone else’s culture.”

“I agree. A person of taste and refinement, that’s the kind of suspect I need. Carol?”

Meg shook her head and repeated Carol’s offhand remark about Indian junk. “She was too looped to con me. She’s intense enough about needlework, but I don’t think she’d kill for an antimacassar. And if she wouldn’t kill for needlework, she certainly wouldn’t kill for rock art.”

“What about her brother?”

“Vance?” She visualized the high-colored face, the confident swagger. “I don’t know. He has a glittering surface.”

“Maybe surface is all there is.”

She frowned. “Maybe. He’s one of those people who are always onstage. I had no sense of what he was really thinking or what his interests are other than making money and showing off.”

“He collects guns and cars.”

Meg made a face. “What’s the doctor like?”

Rob described Ethan Tichnor’s indignation over the felled trees on his brother’s property.

“So he has intensity? Carol said he was boring.”

“Boredom is in the mind of the beholder or something. I thought
she
was boring, not that I’ve seen much of her. She was role-playing, too, when I talked with her here
and
in the official interview.”

“She’s a born tool, you know. Her mother uses her. I suspect her husband did. Why not the perpetrator?”

Rob yawned. “Ouch. Face hurts when I do that. You said you had ideas, plural.”

“Oh. Well, about Edward Redfern. You’ve been assuming he was onto the thieves, that he tailed Brandstetter here.”

“Yes.”

“What if he was pursuing the collector instead? What if he thought he was safe and Brandstetter surprised him?”

His eyes widened. After a moment, he said, “You may have something. I need to think about what that would mean.” He tapped the printout. “Thanks, again. Good night, Meg. I’ll fire you if things heat up again around here, but you do good work.” He cocked his head. “And your ideas aren’t half-bad either.”

She decided to make a clean breast of things. “Uh, speaking of ideas, I sort of goofed. I asked Dennis Wheeler for his set of keys.”

He went still, frowning.

She scrabbled in the junk drawer, found the keychain with its Day-Glo tab, and handed it over. “I’m sorry. That was stupid.”

“Did you try it? The back door key.”

“No.”

“Let’s see if it works.”

It didn’t.

Rob took the keys and the printout with him, and Meg went back inside. She almost wished he had reproached her.

D
AVE Meuler did good interviews. Chief Hug had let him come back on duty. Rob decided to borrow him and asked Dave to interview all the residents living on Old Cedar Street and in the three houses behind Brandstetter’s, looking for witnesses to the killing. Some of the interviews would duplicate Thayer’s hasty survey of Sunday afternoon. It was hard to believe there weren’t eyewitnesses to the shooting, but what bothered Rob most, on reflection, was all the noise.

Two shots fired from a .357 must have made a loud report. True, people in the area were used to hearing gunfire in October. It was hunting season. But not in town and not in the small hours of the morning. There had been the sound of the killer’s vehicle, too, coming and going, doors closing, voices maybe, and the dog.

Rob couldn’t imagine Towser snoozing through a commotion like the shots that had killed his master. The dog didn’t yap. His voice was low-pitched, but it could reach a considerable volume. Tammy had been unconscious and Mrs. Iverson was deaf, but the wind surfers should not have been insensible, and they had been at home by that time.

“Shall I start with the Brownings?” Dave flicked lint from his navy blue uniform sleeve.

“Listen, Dave, I’m not trying to horn in, but I’m going to see if I can catch Kayla Graves.”

“Hot stuff,” Dave said appreciatively. Kayla had quite a reputation.

Rob clucked his tongue. “Come with me. Those kids are more likely to have noticed something than the Brownings.”

“Okay. Which of us is the Good Cop?”

Rob had to laugh. “You. I look like a villain.”

“Wait till the bruise turns green. You’ll look like Algae Man.”

The red Mustang was missing. Kayla was on night duty at the nursing home. She usually had breakfast/dinner at Mona’s after she came off her shift, but she was due back at any moment, or so Tiffany said.

It was Tiffany’s day off. She blinked at them sleepily when they rang, and led them toward the kitchen. She wore boxer shorts and a T-shirt that extolled her favorite sport. Her Lhasa Apso sniffed at the two of them without much curiosity when they stepped into the hall, then stumped off. It was a fat, somnolent creature.

“Um, coffee?” Tiffany offered.

Rob declined. Dave accepted instant colored water and dosed it with sugar and creamer. They sat at a sticky-looking table.

Tiffany punctuated her account of her roommates’ whereabouts with yawns. Lisa had breakfasted early and left to receive a shipment of new boards at the shop.

While they set up the recorder and Dave recited the time, date, and persons present, Tiffany drank half her coffee. It seemed to revive her. “It’s about Old Brandstetter, right? Somebody did the world a favor.” She yawned again. She had perfect teeth.

Dave said, “The killing happened between midnight and five Saturday morning.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Bad luck. We partied until eleven on Friday. Kevin and I went to bed then. I don’t know about the others for sure, but they probably hung it up around then, too. We were all going out on the river early Saturday. Except Kayla. She doesn’t surf after the end of September.”

“Who’s Kevin?”

“Friend of mine from Portland. Kevin Dykstra.” She spelled the name for him. “Want his phone number?”

“Yes.”

She screwed up her face, shook her head, and went off. Eventually she returned with her purse and a bathrobe. She shrugged into the robe and began digging in her handbag. “Ha, found it.” She brandished an address book and read off a number. “That’s his cell phone.”

“Have you talked with him since Saturday?”

“No. We’re not, like, engaged or anything. He’s a grad student, a bit young for me.” She dimpled. Rob thought she couldn’t be thirty.

“So you had a few beers?” Dave prompted.

“Quite a few,” she admitted. “That’s probably why I woke up when the dog started barking. Bladder overload.”

Dave said, “Did you hear shots?”

She frowned, pensive. “Uh-uh. No shots, not consciously anyway. I heard the dog. He barked for quite a while.”

“Did you see anything?”

“My bedroom’s in the back. I peeked out the front hall window.” She pointed upward. “I didn’t see anything and the dog was, like, calming down, so I used the toilet and went back to bed. It was cold in the hall. I went right back to sleep. Kevin didn’t move.”

Rob said, “Did you hear anything other than the dog?”

“No, sorry.” Outside, a car door slammed. She cocked her head. “That’s Kayla. Maybe she can do better than me.”

Dave took her through some of his questions again while they waited for Kayla, but Tiffany stuck to the same story. No hesitations, no contradictions. She was probably telling everything she knew.

Kayla dragged in, handbag over her shoulder, coat open over a neat rose-pink uniform. She looked her age, which was thirty-one.

Her eyes brightened when she saw she had visitors. “Hey, cops in the kitchen, sounds like a great TV series. How’re ya doing, Rob?”

Dave shot Rob a look, and he felt his neck go warm. “Fine, Kayla. Do you know Officer David Meuler? City force. We’re looking for witnesses to the Brandstetter killing Friday night.” Saturday morning, actually.

She tossed her coat and bag on the counter and sat beside Rob. “Friday. Hmm. My night off. We boogied awhile, didn’t we, Tiff? Polished off a case, which is not terrible for six people. I had a couple of beers and too many potato chips. My, uh, date drank maybe six beers. He fell asleep as soon as we crawled into bed.” From her tone of voice, Rob gathered that the date would not be crawling into Kayla’s bed again any time soon. She gave them a name Rob didn’t recognize and a local phone number.

Dave said, “Do you remember hearing anything, say, between two and three?”

“About two-thirty. I probably heard the gunshot without, you know,
hearing
it, but I would have just rolled over and gone back to sleep if the dog hadn’t made such a racket.”

Good old Towser. Rob said, “Did you go to the window?”

She nodded. “I lay there a few minutes, but when Towser kept barking I got up and went to see what was going on. My room’s at the front. I saw a car pulling away, as if it had just backed out of the driveway. He had his lights off. I thought that was weird. He tapped the brake once when he got to the corner, then turned south.”

“You said he. Did you see the driver?”

“Nope, could have been anybody, male or female.”

“Could you see Hal?”

“No, there are bushes screening part of the deck. I looked for a while but I didn’t see anything else. I heard he was shot sitting in one of the deck chairs.”

“Yes.”

She was silent a moment, eyes dark with weariness. “I almost got dressed and went over, because the dog barked and barked, but I was too tired. Would I have been able to do something for Brandstetter if I had?”

“No,” Rob said without hesitation. Among her many positive attributes, Kayla was an excellent nurse.

She gave him a small smile. “Thanks.”

Dave pushed the recorder a millimeter closer to her. “You said you saw a car.”

She made a face. “Yes, but I’m nearsighted and wasn’t wearing my contacts. I think it was more like a van than a car, and sort of gray or light blue, but I have no idea of the make and I couldn’t see the license plate numbers. No, wait a minute.” She closed her eyes. “The red brake light came on. May have been an Oregon plate or a vanity plate, something like that. I have the impression of letters rather than numbers. Does that help?”

Rob let out the breath he had been holding. “Yes, thanks. It helps a lot.”

She looked almost alarmed. “I wouldn’t recognize it if I saw it again.”

“It’s okay, Kayla. You’ve narrowed the field for us. Is it too much to hope for that you looked at your watch?”