Ghoul Interrupted (32 page)

I stood just down the way, out of sight but not out of hearing range, because I was pretty sure he’d have better luck on his own. “Remember me?” he asked.

“Oh, hi!” she replied. “I do remember you. Did you find Wyatt?”

“No, and it’s so weird that he’s not returning my texts or voice mails.”

“Yeah, well, that’s Wyatt for ya.”

“Do you think maybe Brad would know where he is?” Heath pressed.

“Like I said, Wyatt’s not doing much for Brad these days.”

“Do you have Brad’s number, so I can call, just to check? I mean, I don’t want to say that I think anything bad has happened to Wyatt, but it’s weird for him not to call me back.”

There was a hesitation and then the woman said, “I don’t know Brad’s number. But he knocked on my door once looking for Wyatt and he left me his card. Hang on a sec and I’ll see if I still got it.”

I leaned out from my hiding place and saw Heath looking in my direction. He managed to give me a discreet thumbs-up before his attention turned back to the door and I ducked back out of sight.

“Here,” she said. “I found it.”

“Aw, man, you rock!” Heath told her.

“My number’s on the back of the card,” she said.

Uh-oh. I peeked around the corner and saw the woman leaning seductively against the doorframe.

Heath turned the card over. “Thanks, Holly,” he said, leaning in to give her a peck on the cheek. I think she blushed down to her toes. “Later!” he said, and took his leave. She watched him walk away until she spotted me looking at her and her expression changed in an instant.

I smiled.

She snarled.

We understood each other perfectly.

Heath reached me at that moment. “I got it,” he said, showing me the card.

“Art Treasure Movers,” I said. “What kind of a name is that?”

“They move art,” Heath told me, obviously getting the subtext better than I did. “They’re probably hooked into the art dealers around Santa Fe, and whenever one of the locals purchases a large work of art, or something fragile, these guys move it from the gallery and install it for the buyer.”

“Huh,” I said, never even considering that there could be a need for something like that until Heath talked about it. “Now we know how Wyatt came by a twenty-thousand-dollar statue. He was probably delivering it from one of the dealers when he dropped it.”

Heath nodded and we went back to his car, hopped in, and drove mostly in silence to the address listed on the top of the card. It led us to a grungy-looking office space next to a car wash. The signage out front matched the logo on the card, and we went in to find a young blonde with pigtails manning the front desk. “Hi,” she said cordially. “What can I do for you?”

“We’re here about one of your employees,” I said to her, deciding to take the lead. “Wyatt Benoit.”

The girl appeared taken aback by the mention of Wyatt’s name. “Did he damage something?” she asked quickly.

I swiveled slightly on my heel to discreetly make eye contact with Heath, who seemed to read my mind. “Actually, yes,” he said. “He did.”

Pigtails became gushingly apologetic. “Ohmigod! I am so, so,
so
sorry! Wyatt’s usually pretty good, but sometimes he’s not, you know?”

Heath and I nodded like we knew perfectly.

Turning to her computer, the woman said, “What was the name on the account?”

“Uh . . . ,” said Heath.

“John Dodge,” I told her quickly, giving her Teeko’s fiancé’s name. “Although it could also be under Karen O’Neil.” I turned to Heath and flashed him a smile. “I can never remember, honey, if I put things under my name or yours.”

After typing on the keyboard, Pigtails nodded and said, “Here it is. You put it under Dodge.” I breathed a huge sigh of relief while she dug into a drawer rummaging around for something. She came up with an entire folder of forms. “Mr. Windsor will need you to fill out and sign these, and he’ll probably need you to take some photos, if you don’t mind. Then we’ll have our appraiser come out and take a look. If the artwork can be salvaged or repaired, he’ll be able to tell on the spot. He’ll also be able to give us an idea of the current market value of your artwork given the damage, and then, as long as everything checks out, we’ll give you a check for the difference between the damaged value and the original appraised value. Or, if you’d rather, we can buy it from you for a negotiated price.”

“An appraiser’s coming out to look at it?” I asked. This was suddenly becoming a little bigger lie than I’d anticipated.

Pigtails, however, misread my apprehension. “Oh, he’s wonderful!” she assured me. “He used to teach art history at Santa Fe University and he knows his stuff, believe me!”

I felt a little buzz of excitement. “He was a professor of art history?” I said, taking the forms and swiveling them around as if I’d like nothing better than to fill them out.

Pigtails nodded. “For, like, twenty years or something.”

“I was an art history minor at SFU,” Heath said. “I probably had him. What’s his name?”

“Dr. Richard Bissell,” she said.

“Professor Bissell?” Heath said, as if he knew the man well. “No way! I loved him!”

Pigtails looked relieved, and I had the strange feeling that she’d had to calm down upset clients before—perhaps more than a few times.

Heath turned to me. “We can trust Professor Bissell, Karen.”

I worked to look relieved too. “Awesome,” I said. “Let’s take these forms home and fill them out there so we can take some pictures and come back with everything at one time.”

And then Heath and I made a hasty exit.

Once we were safely back in Heath’s car, I made the call to Gilley. “We found out where Wyatt and Daryl worked,” I told him. “Some place called Art Treasure Movers. They move art from the local galleries to the buyer’s home. Anyway, they have an appraiser on the payroll who assesses any damage caused from the move or the mounting.”

“I know you’re going to land that plane and make your point soon, M. J.,” Gilley said smartly, “but if you don’t mind, I’ve already put up my tray and my seat, so could you get there faster?”

I refrained from growling back something mean and got to the point. “The appraiser is a former professor of art history at Santa Fe University. His name is Dr. Richard Bissell. We think he’s this professor character Wyatt was talking about.”

I could hear Gilley scribbling himself a note. “. . . Bissell,” he said. “Got it. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll get back to you.”

I hung up with Gil and told Heath that he’d call us in a bit, but Heath didn’t look like he was listening. “Hey,” I said. “You okay?”

Heath’s expression was serious, and although he was obeying all traffic signals, I couldn’t help but feel he wasn’t really focused on the road. “Yo!” I said loudly. “Earth to Heath.”

“Something’s wrong,” he told me.

“What?” I sat up and looked around nervously. “Is it the demon?”

Heath shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted, making a left at the next light.

“Where’re we going?”

“I have a hunch.”

“What kind of hunch?”

“A bad hunch,” he said. “One that I hope I’m wrong about.”

“Okay,” I said, deciding against pressing him for details. Either I’d figure it out when we arrived at our destination, or he’d tell me sooner or later.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a little of both. The longer Heath drove, the more I recognized the area around me. “We’re heading back to Daryl’s grandmother Trudy’s?”

Heath nodded, and in that moment, I too had a sense of dread. No sooner did we pull into the front entrance of the trailer park than our fears were confirmed. There was a patrol car by the side of the road leading to Trudy’s trailer about a half mile down with its lights on and obviously there to intercept traffic. Heath pulled to the side of the road and looked at me. “They’ll never let us through.”

“What do you think happened?”

Heath eyed the road. “Nothing good.”

We sat there for another minute or two, and the county sheriff’s officer watched us suspiciously. “I don’t think he likes it that we’re here watching him,” Heath whispered.

And just as he’d said that, the officer approached our car and waved us forward.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

Heath pulled up to the patrolman and rolled down his window. “Morning,” I said, leaning over so that the man could hear me. “We came to see Trudy. Is she okay?”

The officer eyed first me, then Heath, and I couldn’t help but notice his gaze stayed on Heath for a minute. “You two family?”

I shook my head. “No, just friends. We came out to visit her yesterday and thought we’d drop in again today.”

Heath discreetly gave me a look that said to stop giving the man so much information, but I couldn’t help it—cops make me nervous.

“You Pueblo?” the sheriff asked suddenly, indicating Heath.

“Yes, sir,” Heath told him.

“Zanto?”

“Uh . . . yes, sir,” Heath confirmed in a way that suggested he was surprised the guy guessed the right tribe.

The officer turned away then and spoke into the mic Velcroed to his shoulder. “You two pull over there by that cone, and wait for Sheriff Dunlap.”

“Keep cool,” Heath said as he slid to a stop where the deputy had pointed.

“Do you think we’re in trouble?”

“Do you think we’re not?”

I could tell by Heath’s tone that he thought I might’ve been the one to put us in this particular predicament, but I wanted to know what’d happened to Trudy, and if we left, we weren’t going to find out until the news later that night, if they even reported it.

A large man with a barrel chest and egg-shaped head with one of those marine-type buzz cuts walked toward us wearing mirrored sunglasses. I knew he’d wear them through our conversation, which made me even more nervous. “Mornin’,” he said, tipping his hat to us, when he stopped at Heath’s window. “I understand you were friends with Trudy West?”

“Yes, but we didn’t know her very well,” Heath said.

“When did you meet Trudy?” the sheriff asked next.

Heath hesitated and I jumped in, going for the truth, as it was likely the quickest way to get us out of there. “We met Trudy yesterday, Sheriff,” I said. “We were looking for an old acquaintance of her grandson’s and thought she might be able to help us find him.”

The sheriff took out his pen and small notebook and began to scribble into it. “Who were you looking for?”

“A guy named Wyatt Benoit,” I said, watching the sheriff closely. The sunglasses hid a lot of his expression, but I swore he stopped writing for a moment as if I’d surprised him.

“What did you want with Wyatt?” he asked, lifting his chin to look into the cab of Heath’s car at me.

“That’s our business,” I told him boldly. I already knew by the way he’d called Wyatt by his first name that he and the sheriff had a history together.

“I see,” he said, shifting slightly. He was used to asking a question and getting it answered, and he didn’t seem to like that I’d dodged him. “What time did you say you two were here talking to Trudy?”

We told him and answered a few more, somewhat mundane questions when the sheriff surprised us by reaching into his pocket and pulling up a small evidence bag with a crumpled and bloodstained piece of paper in it. “You two recognize the handwriting on this?” he asked.

I pressed my lips together so that I wouldn’t answer, and let Heath take the lead. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t.”

The sheriff pushed the plastic bag into the window toward me. “How about you?”

I stared at the small bit of scrap paper where Heath had scribbled the name of Sheriff Pena and written the Pueblo sheriff’s phone number under it, trying not to let my face show that I recognized it. I pretended to study it, though, then shook my head as well. “It’s not Trudy’s?” I asked innocently.

“No,” said the sheriff. “It ain’t.”

“Is she okay?” I asked next.

The sheriff just looked at me and I pointed to the blood on the note. “No,” he repeated. “She ain’t. We found this clutched in one hand and her phone in the other.”

That was all he would tell us before asking us for our cell numbers and snapping his notebook shut, shoving it back into his pocket. “You two stay close to town for the next few days in case I need to reach you, you hear?”

“We hear,” Heath muttered, and pulled back on the gearshift to move his Durango into reverse. As he backed up and turned the car around, I saw another patrol car drive on down the road and get waved over to the side.

Heath moved his vehicle to the far left side of a large tree and waited until the driver of the other car had gotten out and turned his back to us; then Heath sped on down the road and got us the hell out of there.

“Do you think he saw us?” I asked, twisting around to look back in the direction Sheriff Pena had parked his car.

“I hope not,” Heath said, his face grim. “I can’t deal with Pena right now. He’ll have way more questions than Dunlap, and I’m not sure how to answer him in light of what I think happened to Trudy.”

I was silent for a moment. Then the image of that bloody slip of paper Dunlap had tucked into an evidence bag came to my mind. “Trudy must’ve tried to call for help when the demon showed up,” I said. The way the sheriff had told us Trudy wasn’t all right and that they’d found the paper and her phone clutched in her hands led me to believe they’d also found her dead.

Heath’s shoulders slumped. “Do you think we led it to her, Em?” he asked me.

“The demon?”

“Yeah.”

I turned toward the side window, hating to admit that there might be a possibility that we’d done just that. “It’s impossible to know,” I told him. “It could’ve just as easily been that the demon finally tracked down Daryl’s next of kin.”

“But why kill Trudy?” Heath asked. “I mean, what’d she have to do with any of this? The woman wasn’t even Pueblo.”