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“You haven’t seen one of those diamond detectors that Hank’s been hawking, have you?” I asked as if changing the subject entirely.
“No, but Blake told me all about it,” said Reba. “I thought it was the most ridiculous story I’d ever heard, but Blake’s got it in his head that he’s going to make a fortune by finding the Lost Crown Jewels of Ireland. I think Jimmy getting involved might have made him more interested.”
“Are Jimmy and Blake good friends?”
“I wouldn’t say that, but they used to be close, and I think they’ve started hanging out again recently. Blake’s so busy, though.”
“I suppose Blake must be worried about Crystal,” I said.
“I think Blake would be more worried if Crystal didn’t have such a watertight alibi,” said Reba. “It turns out that she was at the truck stop inquiring if anyone had turned her purse in to lost and found while I was getting attacked. There’s security camera footage and everything, plus the gas station attendant has agreed to testify on Crystal’s behalf in the unlikely event she goes to trial.”
“Crystal thinks she lost her purse at the truck stop?”
“She’s not sure where she lost it. Before she went to the truck stop, she stopped by the Bird Cage and the Post Office.”
That covered most of the places one could lose a purse in the entire village.
“Is Crystal back home?” I asked.
“After it came to light that her purse had been stolen prior to the attack, they let her go without posting bail,” said Reba.
“Do you think she’d be willing to talk to me?” I asked.
“I suppose,” said Reba as if wondering for the first time why I was being so nosey.
“It wouldn’t take long,” I said. “Do she and Blake live nearby?”
Reba reluctantly texted Crystal, who texted back that I could come over to her house a couple of blocks away.
Five minutes later, I was sitting in Crystal and Blake Vance’s living room. Blake was nowhere to be seen, but there were plenty of photographs of him on the walls to make up for his absence, and they all seemed to be rodeo-related.
“Blake was considered the best rodeo clown of his time,” said Crystal.
Rodeo clown was ringing alarm bells in my head, and it took me a minute to figure out why, but when I did, I knew exactly where to go with my line of questioning.
“Do you see much of Duke Dundee these days?” I asked.
If Reba hadn’t yet heard about Duke, then I was guessing Crystal hadn’t, either. Of course, one of the only advantages of being dead is that even your worst enemy is far less inclined to speak ill of you.
I decided to keep the matter of Duke no longer being with us to myself for the moment.
To my surprise, when I mentioned Duke’s name, Crystal blushed.
“I haven't seen Duke lately,” she mumbled.
“I just met Duke for the first time the other day,” I said. “A friend and I were out for a drive, and Roberta Bagley happened to meet us on the road up to the old mine and suggested we stop by her son’s place. I had no idea Duke and Roberta were related.”
“Most people don’t,” said Crystal. “Roberta remarried just a year after she got divorced from Duke’s dad, so their last names haven’t been the same since Duke was five.”
“Does Duke have a relationship with his father?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” said Crystal. “I think Duke’s dad lives in the region, but I’ve never known him to come around. I don’t even know what he looks like.”
Maybe being a recluse ran in the family, at least the male side of it.
“I guess Duke doesn’t get out much,” I said, “and Roberta is afraid he’s turning into something of a hermit.”
I didn’t think it was possible, but Crystal turned a deeper shade of red.
“That’s probably my fault,” she said.
“What’s your fault?”
“Duke becoming a hermit.”
“Why would that be your fault?”
“Before Blake and I got married, Duke and I were engaged for a while.”
“A while?”
“Two years.”
“Why did you break up?” I was being inexcusably nosey, but I couldn’t help myself.
“He was—” Crystal broke off and suddenly got inordinately interested in the quality of her manicure.
“He was what?” I prompted.
“Duke always had a temper,” Crystal said, “and after he retired from the rodeo circuit, he would brood—”
“He was abusive?” I came right out and said what I suspected Crystal was trying not to.
“I suppose some people might see it that way. He never progressed past pushing and shoving, but I decided to break things off before it got worse.”
It almost always does, and Crystal seemed to know it.
“What would set Duke off?” I asked.
“Almost anything,” said Crystal, “but most often, it was because he got jealous.”
“Jealous? Of whom?”
“Duke didn’t like me to spend time with other people.”
“Like Reba?”
“Yes.”
“And Blake?”
“Yes.”
“Was there any particular reason Duke didn’t like Blake besides being jealous of your friendship?” I asked.
Crystal became suddenly obsessed with the state of her nail polish once more.
“Is it possible Duke blames Blake for the injuries that led to his retirement from the rodeo?” I prompted.
“He does,” said Crystal, “but it wasn’t really Blake’s fault that Duke got hurt so bad.”
It didn’t really matter much one way or the other if it had been Blake’s fault. The only thing that mattered was what Duke believed to be true.
“What about Duke and Jimmy?” I asked. “I heard they’re half-brothers.”
“They are,” said Crystal, “but for as long as I’ve known them, they’ve hated each other.”
“Why?”
Crystal shrugged. I couldn’t tell if she didn’t want to reveal the root of the animosity between Duke and Jimmy, or she really didn’t know.
“By the way, did you ever get your purse back?” I asked.
“The police returned it to me when they let me go home.”
“Was anything missing from it?”
“Funny you should mention that,” said Crystal. “Besides somebody taking all the cash out of it, everything was there except one picture out of my billfold.”
“What picture?”
“It was a really old one that I’ve carried around for years,” Crystal told me. “It was Reba, Blake, and me, back when we were all in the rodeo together.”
“Just the three of you?” I asked.
“Well, Duke used to be in the picture,” said Crystal, “but when things got weird with him, I tore off the edge of the photograph so I wouldn’t have to look at his face every time I opened my billfold.”
“Where do you think your purse got stolen in the first place?” I asked.
“It had to have been at the Bird Cage, the Post Office, or the truck stop. I know I left the house with my purse. I realized I didn’t have it when Blake dropped me off at home, and I went to look for my house key.”
“Did you eat lunch at the Bird Cage?”
“We did, but Blake paid the bill, so I might have left my purse behind there and not noticed until we got home.”
“You also stopped at the Post Office and the truck stop?”
“After we left the Bird Cage, Blake and I went into the Post Office together to pick up the mail, and then Blake filled up at the truck stop while I went inside and used the ladies’ room.”
“Duke Dundee wasn’t at any of those places with you, was he?”
“I’m sure he wasn’t. I would have noticed if Duke was around.”
“What about Jimmy?”
Crystal didn’t remember seeing him, either.
“Did you see Duke anywhere the day your purse was stolen, and Reba was attacked?”
Crystal swore that she had not seen Duke that day and that she would certainly have remembered if she had.
Maybe I should have left it at that, but there was something about the crime scenes at both the vet clinic and Duke’s cabin which was niggling at me
“What about your bloody boots?” I asked Crystal. “What did the police say when they found those?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” said Crystal much too quickly.
She was lying; I was sure of it. She might not know where the bloody boots were now, but she knew they existed. When I’d come into the house, I’d made a point of sizing up the pair of women’s sneakers that sat by the door. Crystal and I were about the same height; we also seemed to have a similar shoe size.
Long before now, I’d compared the measurement I’d taken of the bloody footprints I’d observed crossing the concrete slab in front of the vet clinic with my own shoe collection and concluded they’d been left by a pair of size six women’s cowboy boots.
If the pair of sneakers by the door were anything to go by, Crystal was a size six. So were the women’s boots I’d found tumbling out of Duke’s coat closet.
This led to several interesting possibilities: Had Duke stolen the boots as well as the purse, intentionally bloodied the soles, and then, after using them to place bloody tracks in front of the vet clinic, held Crystal’s boots as a sort of trump card? There was a remote possibility that someone else had stolen the boots, then when their scheme to implicate Crystal fell apart, decided to plant the bloody boots and the torn snapshot at Duke’s cabin. Dead men can’t defend themselves. But the more I thought about it, the more this scenario struck me as remote.
The police had seemingly accepted Crystal’s alibi that she’d been looking for her stolen purse at the very moment Reba had been attacked, but to my mind, it wasn’t that simple.
It was hardly unheard of for law enforcement detectives to let their prime suspect go in hopes that he, or, in this case, she would make some incriminating mistake that would give them a water-tight reason to file charges.
It wasn’t possible to pinpoint precisely when Reba had been hit on the back of the head with that trophy. Reba’s own recollection of the time was maddeningly imprecise. I knew when I’d discovered her body on the floor of the exam room, but that was only because I’d dialed 911 within seconds of discovering Reba on the floor.
Proving or disproving Crystal’s alibi was complicated in that everywhere she was supposed to have been just prior to and just after the supposed attack was within blocks of the clinic.
After I confronted Crystal about the bloody boots, I made a beeline out of there. I wouldn’t get any more information out of Crystal Vance, nor would I get any out of her husband should I attempt to interview him. Crystal had viewed me as an ally up until the mention of the boots, but now she no longer did. I hoped fishing for a reaction had been worth it.