At Frida’s news, Madeleine swayed and her knees buckled. “I think I need to sit down.”
Grandy and I ran to her and gathered her into our arms. Alex got out of my big easy chair and helped her into it.
“Water,” said Grandy.
“Scotch,” said Alex and Nappi.
I ran to my liquor cabinet and poured her a snifter of brandy.
“Thanks, Eve,” she said and slugged the contents of the glass down.
The color returned to her face.
“When did he die?” I asked.
“We know David has nothing to do directly with his death. He was in jail when Bernard was shot. The medical examiner said he had an alcohol level of .10, indicating he was pretty drunk, but his blood also held traces of other drugs. We’re finding out what they were now. He’d been severely beaten, and he had scratches all over his body. He was dehydrated and hadn’t eaten in a while. The bullet came from a high-powered rifle. We confiscated all the rifles at David’s ranch and those at Reed’s place too.”
“Thank God David was in jail when Bernard was killed.” I knew it was a horrible thing to say, but Madeleine glanced over at me with a look of gratitude.
Frida finished her Scotch and sat forward on the couch. “Yeah, but you’re not going to like what else I have to say.”
I sat on the arm of the easy chair and took Madeleine’s hand in mine. “Say it.”
“One of the rifles at David’s ranch had been recently fired. It belonged to Dudley Thomas, his foreman. He claimed there had been no hunting going on at the ranch since David was arrested, but Dudley has a long history of getting into fights in the bars around here. His favorite targets seem to be Indians. I guess he doesn’t like them much. We took him into custody and he’s being questioned now.”
I was surprised Frida wasn’t the one doing the questioning.
“Isn’t this your case?” I asked.
“It is, but the captain told me to take some time off and let Linc handle the interrogation.”
There was something else Frida wasn’t telling us, but Alex broke in before I had a chance to ask.
He slapped his hand against the top of the coffee table. “Don’t you see what’s going on, Frida? This is all too convenient. David’s rifle kills his client, but David had stopped hunting because of his hatred of guns. David’s card is found in Bernard’s car, but he never met Bernard. Now it appears Dudley’s rifle might be the weapon used to kill Bernard Egret and on David’s ranch. Someone wants David Wilson responsible for all of this and is willing to frame even his foreman for Bernard’s murder. Who benefits if his ranch goes under because no one is running it? Blake Reed, that’s who.” He ran his hands through his thick hair in a gesture of frustration. “I know you can’t arrest Reed. You’ve got no evidence. I also know he’s just too smart to get his own hands dirty. Maybe he’s using someone else.”
“I think you should let me in on what you intend to do, because you’ve got the look of a man who’s about to take action,” Frida said.
She shouldn’t have worried that Alex would do anything outside the law. The man was careful about that—more careful than I was. He had to be. He could lose his PI license.
“I have to begin somewhere. I’m going back to talk with Mrs. Warren, the mother of the boy David shot breaking into his house several years ago.”
“And I’m going with him,” I said. “I’ve got a few questions to ask her. Like is your husband really dead? Who was the guy you were with at the casino? And why did you lie to us about being alone?”
Frida shook her head. “Mr. Warren is dead. I already checked on that. He was working for a utilities contractor in Afghanistan. The Taliban wiped out the unit when they went in to replace an electrical power station north of Kabul. It’s a dead end, Alex. She told me you already talked with her. What can another visit do?”
“He’s dead, but she’s not,” I said.
“You think a woman did this?” Frida asked.
“Why not? Her only son was killed. You think she likes the man who’s responsible? And maybe she had help.” I remembered the tall thin man she held onto the night Sammy disappeared from the casino. “Maybe she had a lot of help. Maybe Reed helped her by paying her. The woman looks like she could use the money.”
“You really don’t like that man, do you, Eve?” asked Frida.
“You don’t either,” I said.
Her cell rang. She held up her finger to signal she had to take it. “It’s my boss.” Frida got off the couch and went into the kitchen. I couldn’t hear much of her conversation except for several yeses and nos and then an exclamation of “That’s not fair, sir.” When she rejoined us in the living room, her face was drawn and white. She held her glass out to me.
“Pour me another of these.”
“You’ll have a doozy of a hangover tomorrow when you go in,” I said.
“I won’t be going in tomorrow. I might as well tell you. It’s now official. I’ve been taken off the case. There have been complaints about the way I’ve been handling the murder investigation on David’s ranch and Bernard’s disappearance and murder.”
“Who complained?” I asked. “I’ll bet it was Reed. What right does he have to interfere in police business?”
“No, actually it was Sheriff Leopold. He told the captain I led him on a wild goose chase at Reed’s ranch earlier today. He questions my professionalism. I think the captain would like to leave me in place, but we need the cooperation of all the law enforcement agencies on this murder. Since it’s clear Leopold doesn’t want to work with me, he thought it was better to remove me for now.”
“You knew this was brewing when you stopped by, didn’t you?” I reached out and gave her arm a pat.
“I suspected it was coming. I know what my captain is doing, and I can’t blame him. Leopold doesn’t think women belong in law enforcement. I’ve had difficulty working cases with him before.” Frida gave a heavy sigh and straightened her shoulders. “My feelings are not important. What’s important is solving these murders.”
Frida was such a dedicated cop. I hoped her boss knew that about her. Now I had two reasons for wanting these murders to be solved. One was clearing David’s name—for Madeleine’s sake but also because David was innocent—and the other was to put Frida back into her rightful place as the best detective on the force. Sitting this case out would be hard on her. She, like me, was an action kind of gal. Of course she had a legitimate reason to be. She carried a badge, while all I carried was a half-off Prada bag. There was more. I worried about Sammy. Where was he? And did anyone from the police care? Frida did. She was the only one on the force I could trust. How things had changed since that day only a week ago when David, Madeleine, Alex, and I were relaxing on board David’s boat. Then Blake Reed came into our lives and spoiled everything.
“I know you want to help, but I don’t think having a cop along when I talk to Mrs. Warren again will make any difference.” It was the next morning, and Alex was speaking on his cell to Frida as he and I headed back out to the Deer Mound area to revisit the Warren house. I had told him about the pipe in the truck parked next to the Warren house and also about the man I’d seen with Mrs. Warren—her date or friend or boyfriend or accomplice—the night Sammy disappeared at the casino. I surprised even myself with how forthcoming I was being about my suspicions. Usually I kept everything to myself and ran off to follow clues alone like a hound on the hunt. I did keep to myself my intention to follow up with the grannies about the off-site poker games. Somehow Bernard got from gambling to David’s ranch and dead, but how and why?
I thought about Sammy often and asked Frida what she had found out from Oscar about his disappearance. She told me Oscar had been released and the Bernard Egret case had been sidelined until he was found murdered. As for Sammy, she said the department saw him as just another Indian off drinking and doing whatever it was Indians do. Sammy was right when he told me no one cared about an Indian disappearing. The authorities had been wrong about Bernard. He was dead. The police seemed to be taking the same nonchalant attitude toward Sammy. Would it take Sammy’s death to make them take action?
Although it had been only two days since the night Sammy disappeared, I knew something terrible had happened to him. Sammy wasn’t an irresponsible Indian, drunk out of his mind and holing up somewhere until he got sober. I knew better.
We’d lost our most important advocate in Frida. She knew Sammy. And she knew he’d never leave his grandfather with no one to run the business. I had told Nappi about Sammy on Saturday night, and he did the most generous thing: he sent Jerry out to the airboat business to help out Grandfather Egret. Jerry had pitched in before, so he knew how to operate the boat. It was only a temporary measure. It meant Jerry had to guard the motor home at night and work for Grandfather Egret during the day. I managed to hide my smug expression when I heard this. Working both places should keep Jerry out of trouble. It also reminded me that I had to talk with the grannies to see what they knew about other Texas hold ’em games going on in the area.
Today I wanted to help Alex with Mrs. Warren. And then there was my business to run. Yikes, but I had a lot on my mind. Maybe there was help at hand.
I knew Frida wouldn’t want to spend her time pushing paper around a desk even though her boss told her explicitly not to follow up on any leads in Bernard’s murder. Now how could she help herself? She’d be off doing something she shouldn’t. Like me. Maybe the two of us could put our heads together and ….
“Eve. I know you’re plotting something.” Alex gave me his best I’m-a-PI look.
“I am. I mean, I am?”
“Let me be clear about your being here. I think Mrs. Warren found you, um, nonthreatening. I think she might be willing to talk to you rather than me, a man.”
“Sure and—”
“And that’s the end of it. You chat her up and find out what you can. Then you’re out of this. Understood?”
“Sure and—”
“The end of it, hear me?”
“Yup.” I smiled my best trusting-girlfriend-Eve smile at him. He scowled back at me.
We parked in front of the Warren house. There was no truck in the drive this time.
“Maybe she’s not home today,” Alex said.
I saw the curtain in the kitchen window move. “Someone’s there.”
We knocked and heard footsteps inside. Mrs. Warren opened the door and said, “I’ve got nothing more to say to you folks. I’ve had my fill of folks snooping around here, digging up my son’s death again. And what for? You never even tried that guy who shot him. Said it was justifiable. He was only a thirteen-year-old kid.”
Alex opened his mouth, and I knew he’d want to soft pedal what he had to say, to turn on his PI charm—and he had plenty of it—trying to wheedle information out of her by playing sympathetic. I had a lot of work to do, plans to lay, people to see, sneaky stuff to accomplish before day’s end. I couldn’t spend my time holding the hand of some woman who might simply be nothing more than a killer and a schemer. Enough, I thought and cut to the chase.
“Mrs. Warren, don’t waste our time. You know damn well your son was in the wrong. He was carrying a gun himself and threatening a child in her bedroom. What did you expect would happen? The man was protecting his daughter.”
At first I thought she was going to slam the door in our faces.
Alex grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him. “Eve.”
“I know you’ve had a hard time of it, losing your son and then your husband, but you can’t just let other people lose their lives too.”
She hesitated a moment, then opened the door wider. “What can I do to help?”
Gosh, I was even better at this interrogation business than I thought. Who knew my tough love approach would work? I think I was more surprised than Alex. Maybe she just appreciated honesty for once. Her willingness to talk with us either meant she was the best actress and criminal I’d ever met or she wasn’t responsible for those two deaths. I chose to believe the latter. I could be wrong, but what did we have to lose? At least we were in and had the opportunity to talk to her. We entered her living room and sat in two straight-backed chairs while she sat on the couch.
Shocking her had worked so far, so I continued in the same vein.
“Do you know Blake Reed?”
Again Alex laid a restraining hand on my arm as if it would prevent me from continuing. I shook it off.
“He’s the guy who runs the hunting ranch outside of Sabal Bay,” she said.
I nodded. The next question was a real shot in the dark. “You know him. How?”
She looked startled at my question and seemed about to deny any knowledge of Reed, but she sank back into the couch and sighed.
“I worked as his housekeeper for a while.”
“When? For how long? And what happened?” Now it was Alex who was asking the questions.
“I was with him for several years. I, uh, left shortly before I got the news that my husband had been killed.”
The hesitation in her voice told me she wasn’t telling us the whole truth. “Why did you leave? It seems to me you could have used the money then. I mean, with your husband’s death and all.”
“I couldn’t stand working for Mrs. Reed.”
Still not quite the truth. I pushed more. “You gave notice then?”
She nodded.
“Don’t you mean she fired you?” Another wild guess, but I was on a roll.
Her head came up and she looked at me with fear in her eyes.
“She told you?”
“No, she didn’t, but I imagine she threatened you somehow. It seems to be her style. What did she say?”
“She said she’d tell the police I stole money from her.”
“And did you steal?” I asked.
“No. I didn’t care if she fired me. I would have quit anyway. The woman was impossible. She treated everyone there like dirt. She even shortchanged me on my salary—twenty or thirty dollars every week—and I was getting sick of it.”
“So you’re not working now?” Alex asked.
She twisted her hands around in her lap and wouldn’t make eye contact with him.
“Mrs. Warren?” I said.
“Not officially,” she said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Alex asked.
I guessed the answer. “Under-the-table work.”
She nodded. “I do house cleaning and pet sitting for some of the folks out on the highway, folks who live in that over fifty-five retirement community. They pay cash, and word of mouth around the community is enough for them to trust my work.”
“Why do you think Mrs. Reed fired you?” I asked.
“I don’t really know. She never gave a real reason. Just said my work wasn’t good enough.”
“But it was fine for almost two years. Doesn’t that seem off to you?” It seemed off to me.
“The ranch was growing—lots more business and more livestock trucks coming in with species I’d never seen before. I was curious so I asked about those animals. She told me it was none of my business. She let me go soon after that.”
“Did your husband know you worked there?” Alex asked.
She nodded. “I wrote him several times each week and told him about my work and about how the ranch was expanding. Then I had to tell him I was fired. I think that was the last letter he received before being killed.” She wiped a tear off her cheek with the back of her hand. “His company settled a small death benefit on me. I invested the money. Really, I work because I have nothing else to do. No husband and no son. I get lonely. I got too much time on my hands and too many bad memories.”
I heard a truck pull up and the front gate open. When I looked out the window I saw a man drive the truck through and then get out to close the gate. He was the tall, skinny dude from the casino. He walked toward the house, a pipe stuck in his mouth. Just before he got to the front door, he stuck it in his pocket.
Mrs. Warren greeted him with kiss on his cheek. “Some people here talking about the Reeds.”
“Those no good bums!” he said. “I told her she was better off not being around them. I think they’re up to some funny business.”
“My name’s Alex Montgomery and this is my assistant, Eve Appel. And you are?” Alex arose from his seat and crossed the room to shake hands.
“Moses Ermlich. Mrs. Warren, Maimie, is my friend.”
“And you know of the Reeds, how?” asked Alex.
“I was his ranch foreman until he tossed me out because he hired another guy, the one who’s still there now.”
“Where do you work? Another hunting reserve?”
“Nope. Reed gave me a lousy recommendation. And for no reason. I’m just as glad of it because I got a job as a janitor at the casino. I’m treated better there, and I got benefits too. I’m through with hunting reserves. Working for Reed left a bad taste in my mouth. The man treated his workers like slaves, especially the Indians and Guatemalans.”
“Did you ever report him?” asked Alex.
He gave a bitter laugh. “After I left, one of the workers who was a friend of mine said he was going to the cops because of the beating the foreman gave one of the workers. Poor guy could hardly continue his work. This was after I had left the ranch. The next day my friend called me and warned me not to say a thing about Reed. He had his foreman pay my friend a visit. The foreman gave him a beating worse than that the poor Indian suffered. But you didn’t hear it from me.”
When Alex and I left, it was with the promise not to reveal either Mrs. Warren or Mr. Ermlich as sources of information about the Reed ranch. They were not people who were easily frightened, I thought, but the threat of a beating or worse was enough to make them cautious about what they said and to whom.
“Frida was right about that place,” Alex said.
“But she’s got no real evidence against him, and she’s riding a desk right now. And how does any of this figure into the killing of the client and Bernard? I wish I could tap into the Miccosukee rumor mill, but Sammy was my source, and he’s gone.” I pounded my fist against the car door in anger.
“It’s going to take Nappi some time to get Reed to trust him enough to let him in on anything illegal that might be going on at the ranch. And he might discover absolutely nothing. Too bad the cops don’t have enough to get a search warrant.” Alex paused, then added, “Snooping there would be dangerous. And illegal.” He gave me a meaningful look. “There’s probably enough firepower in that place to start a small war.”
Well, there were warrants, and then there were warrants. As for all the weapons in there, I wasn’t foolish enough to try the job myself. Now who did I know who might be willing to do a bit of snooping? I missed Sammy and couldn’t stop worrying about him.