Saddle Up For Murder

Lavender was in a sullen mood when Annie picked her up four hours later. Martha was also less than her usual sociable self; her face looked anxious and worried, and she said very little to either of them as they walked out of her home.

“Do not slam my truck door,” Annie hissed at Lavender as she walked to the driver’s side of her truck. “Try to act your age for once.”

Lavender flounced into the truck and shut her door with exaggerated care.

“And you don’t tell me how I’ve messed up.” Her tone was decidedly petulant, well honed from years of practice.

Annie glanced at her. Today, her half sister was dressed in overalls and a plaid shirt, her brown hair in two long pigtails. She looked twelve years old, just about on par with her emotional age, Annie thought. Maybe her outfit was a ploy. Maybe she thought Kim would go easier on her if she thought she was dealing with a minor. Fat chance of that happening.

Stony silence permeated the cab on the way to the Sheriff’s Office. Annie interrupted it only once to inquire crossly, “Did you remember to bring your phone?” Lavender did not reply, but merely reached into her purse and waggled it in front of Annie’s face.

“I hope you were smart enough not to erase anything,” Annie warned her. Judging by the look on Lavender’s face, Annie was not sure she was.

Kim and Dan were in the lobby when they arrived. Their faces looked grave, and Kim quickly motioned to Lavender and led her into an interview room.

“And so the little lamb is thrown to the wolves,” Annie muttered to Dan as they walked back to his office, where Dan shut the door.

“Not good, Annie,” he said. “I’m getting tired of getting half the truth from these women. I might lose my temper if it keeps up.”

“I lost mine this morning and still haven’t retrieved it.”

“Well, Kim’ll get the full story from her now, I’m sure of it. It might mean nothing. Or it might break the case. Kim’s told me you now know all about the heart-to-heart chats Ashley and Lavender were having right up to Eloise’s death. Ashley had to tell someone who her new boyfriend was.”

But did she? Annie wondered. Ashley might have had a very good reason for not divulging the name of her new boyfriend. True, she didn’t know what it was, but none of the possible reasons were good. At least Dan appeared to be taking the new boyfriend theory more seriously.

A squawk on Dan’s shoulder mike interrupted their conversation. It was Esther, who as usual conveyed her message to the sheriff in near reverential terms. No wonder he fought so hard to keep Esther on board full-time, Annie thought. Who else would give him this much respect on a daily basis?

“Sheriff, your cousin has been trying to reach you for fifteen minutes. He stopped by the convenience store outside of town on his lunch break and thinks he’s spotted Pete Corbett inside. He wants to know if he should approach him or wait for backup.”

“Damn his hide! What in the Sam Hill do they teach recruits at the academy these days, anyway? Of course he should approach him! Tell him to ask him for his ID, and whether it matches or not, take him into custody. Why am I telling you this when I could be doing it myself? Tell Bill I’m on my way.”

Dan bolted from his desk and was out the door before Annie could fully take in the message. She stared after him. So Pete was still in the area, and with luck about to be put in handcuffs. That is, if Dan got there in time.

She wandered down the hall, lightly knocked on Esther’s door, and then opened it a few inches. Esther had her headset on and put her finger to her lips but motioned for Annie to sit down. It appeared Esther was doing the play-by-play on the impending arrest.

“Yes, Sheriff. I’ve told him. Yes, Sheriff. He said he won’t let him out of his sight. But he’s a bit worried that Pete will make a run for it as soon as he sees him in uniform.”

Annie could hear Dan’s loud, angry voice even without a headset. Esther gingerly picked up her earpieces and delicately pulled them away from her head, rolling her eyes as she did so. But Annie could tell that she was still intently listening.

“Roger that, Sheriff.” A short silence ensued. “On the scene.” Another silence, longer this time. Then she exclaimed, “Oh, well done, Sheriff! Will you or Bill be bringing him in?”

The voice on the other end was less vociferous now, so Annie couldn’t make out the words. But she picked up enough to know that Pete Corbett was now in police custody.

* * *

At three o’clock, Kim emerged from the interview room. To an outsider, her face did not convey any particular emotion, but Annie knew the deputy well enough to know that she had successfully extracted a great deal of new information from Lavender, although it could not have been easy—Lavender had an annoying habit of clinging to her version of events even when the facts were irrefutable. Annie knew this from experience.

She gestured to Kim and asked, “Is the victim still breathing?”

“Sobbing. Used up an entire box of Kleenex.”

“Sorry about that.” Whatever charming expression Lavender could muster washed off as soon as tears started rolling.

“She’s agreed to a polygraph.”

“Whoa! This is serious.”

“I want her to fully appreciate the consequences of withholding information from the police.”

Annie felt a pang of guilt. The last time she herself had been mixed up with a murder case, she’d done the same thing, for reasons she still couldn’t understand, and she’d gotten off a whole lot easier.

“Can you do us a favor, while we’re putting her on the box?”

“Sure, Kim. What do you need?” At the moment, she would have done almost anything to atone for her own previous omissions.

“Dan wants you to take a look through our mug shot books on the chance that you recognize the woman named Clarissa or the guy who drove the blue Toyota pickup. I’ve put the books in the second interview room for you. By the time you’re done, Lavender should be ready to go home. It would really help us out if we could ID either one of those witnesses.”

“No problem.”

Annie stepped into the small room, adorned only with a steel desk and two chairs. Not a terribly welcoming place, she thought, but then, she suspected that was the point. She sat down and started to go through the pages, one by one, carefully looking at each face. To her disappointment, Kim had informed her that identifying the license plate of the blue pickup based on the two letters she had been able to spot was impossible—no such database existed that matched vehicles with partial plates. So unless she recognized someone in these books, she realized, these two witnesses might never be found. Unfortunately, the brief glimpse Annie had had of the man who exited the Toyota and gone into the house didn’t provide enough time for her to pick out any distinguishing facial characteristics. But she had gotten a good look at Clarissa, first when she was in the circle smoking dope, and later running away, down the street.

In any event, it was interesting to examine the visages of local criminals. It was obvious that on the occasions when these photographs were taken, none of the subjects were having a very good day.

Annie was so engrossed in her task that she was a bit discombobulated when Kim knocked on the door almost an hour later. The deputy entered quietly and sat down. She looked intensely serious.

“I think I’ve found Clarissa,” Annie began, and then got a look at Kim’s eyes. “What’s up?”

“Lavender failed the polygraph.”

“No!”

“I’m afraid so. Fairly conclusively.”

“On what subject, if I might be so bold to ask?”

“Whether she knew anyone involved in causing Eloise Carr’s death.”

“Oh, hell.”

“And she was borderline on whether she had been completely truthful in telling us everything about her relationship with Ashley.”

“Oh, double hell. What does this mean?”

Kim sighed. “I’ll check with Dan, but at the moment, we’ll probably do nothing—just give the usual admonitions about not leaving the area and being available to us if we want to talk to her again. Which we will. Soon.”

“Can I do anything? Would beating her up help?”

“It might, but I don’t recommend it. She’s pretty much a puddle as it is, and I don’t think she can take any more probing. She’s just so damn believable—if I hadn’t taken courses in how to uncover deception I’d swear she was telling the truth. I let my guard down during my first interview and am kicking myself now.”

“What did she say about those weird messages she and Ashley sent each other the day before they found Eloise dead? You know, the stuff about ‘today’s the day,’ and all that.”

“She says that was the day Ashley was going to ask you for a job. ‘What I gave you’ supposedly refers to a list of references, which Lavender said she typed up for Ashley on her laptop.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Annie said bluntly. “Ashley’s list of references was handwritten, and not by Lavender—I know her childish scrawl. So what do you think Lavender knows that she’s not telling you?”

“I think she knows more about Ashley’s private life than she’s letting on, and suspects at least one person of killing Eloise Carr, even though I’ve said nothing to imply that Mrs. Carr’s death was anything but accidental.”

“Don’t you still think this is possible? Or have you definitely ruled out suicide?”

“Sorry, I thought Dan already told you. The tox report came in on Tuesday. Eloise consumed a whole cocktail of drugs—many of which were found in her home, but at least two of which were not, and more important, no doctor had ever prescribed them for her. And, since Eloise didn’t drive, she couldn’t have procured them herself.”

Annie’s heart sank. In the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but think what Martha Sanderson would make of all this. After all, she was a senior citizen herself, and not terribly mobile. Would she still trust having Lavender in her home, when the police thought she was at least peripherally knowledgeable about the death of another old woman, someone Martha had known?

* * *

At least Dan was a happy guy. By the time he’d finished the booking process, it appeared that even his cousin, Bill Stetson, was back in his good graces.

“Chip off the old block!” he crowed to Annie. “Stopped Pete dead in his tracks as he was trying to flee the store.”

“Stopped him how?” Annie fervently hoped the use of firearms was not involved.

“With his foot. Tripped him.”

Dan’s exuberance extended to a phone call from Ron Carr, which Esther routed through as Annie waited for Lavender to appear. Her half sister was taking a long time in the women’s restroom, Annie thought, but she was in no particular rush to see Lavender, knowing that all the way back to Martha’s she would insist on telling Annie the many reasons why the polygraph results were just plain wrong.

“No problem, Ron! Happy to talk and bring you up to speed about the case.” Dan’s enthusiasm had catapulted his voice to a volume that made Annie wince.

“You’ll be glad to know we picked up Pete Corbett this afternoon. Yup, two-man collar, although my cousin Bill gets most of the credit. He spotted Pete at a local convenience store. I just mopped up.”

Ron must have been extending his congratulations, because Dan’s face broke into a wide grin. “That’s what we think, Ron. We’ve rounded up most of the players, and pretty soon someone’s going to figure out it’s in their best interest to talk.”

Dan stopped talking again to hear whatever Ron was saying in response. “Well, there’s one more little detail we have to wrap up,” he said in a more serious tone. “Can’t have a case go too smoothly. Never happens. It appears that the woman Ashley was training isn’t being entirely truthful with us—yet. She knows something about your mother’s death that she hasn’t said. But don’t you worry. We’ll get to the bottom of her story.” Dan turned and winked at Annie.

Annie’s cell phone buzzed, and she gratefully exited Dan’s office and went out to the foyer, where Lavender was now sitting, waiting to be taken home. Jessica Flynn was calling to tell her that Fish and Wildlife had reported another sheep killed and that she would be performing the necropsy in the morning.

“It was close to your place, Annie,” Jessica told her. “I thought you should know in case you want to take any extra precautions tonight.”

At the moment, Annie couldn’t think of a single thing she could do to stop the onslaught of bad news.