The walk from the alley to the mansion was dark and unsettling. Made me grateful that Cindy had told me to “bring the dog.”
When I got to Darrell’s, the front door was ajar. Feeling more than a little uncomfortable, I nudged it open with my toe and called inside. “Cindy?”
Kiska bumped into my leg and then plopped down in an exhausted sit.
Apparently, he hadn’t logged his full 20 hours of sleep yet today.
I shook my head at him. I wasn’t sure why Cindy had told me to “bring the dog,” but I was pretty sure it wasn’t so he could fill in his missing naps.
Fingers squeezed my upper arm and someone jerked me over the doorway.
“Shut the door. Someone might come by.”
Cindy’s face glowed under the beam of a flashlight that she had positioned directly under her chin like some camp counselor intent on giving each of his campers nightmares that would last for the entirety of their formative years.
I moved to pull the door shut.
“Wait. Where’s the dog?”
The dog had already made his way inside and was busy sniffing around a box that sat next to the door.
Cindy turned the flashlight on him. “Oh, good. If Darrell shows up, we turn him on him.”
I raised a brow; not that Cindy could see it in the dark. True as it was that Darrell and Kiska shared no love for each other, my malamute was no attack dog, and I wasn’t sure I could “turn him” on anything except a tasty snack.
“Leave him here, by the door. He’ll let us know if someone tries to get in, right?”
She didn’t wait for my reply, instead taking off down the hall in a trot that caused her flashlight to bob up and down.
It was just as well. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t care for my answer, which was “only if they trip over him.”
I followed her past the room where I’d seen all the boxes in my first visit and into the bedroom. She was busy rummaging through a drawer like a demented squirrel.
“Uh. Isn’t this Darrell’s bedroom?”
She looked up. Even in the dark, I could see the crazy in her eyes.
I took a step backward.
“Not Darrell’s. Darrell doesn’t own this house. All the Deeres own this house.”
That seemed unlikely and a bit complicated, but then it was rumored that the fight for the Deere property was complicated and not all that friendly.
“Are you sure it’s okay that we’re here?”
“I told you. It is. My mother made a call. She’s in Florida.”
The disgust in her voice was evident.
“Snowbird?” I asked. My own grandparents had had a winter place in Texas and they had just been escaping Missouri winters. Nothing like what we saw in Montana.
She snorted. “More of a cougar. An old cougar. She has a 30–year–old boy toy. He dances.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t really think of anything else to say.
“Check the closet,” she ordered.
“Uh.” I walked to the closed closet and set my hand on the doorknob. “Are you sure—”
“It’s fine,” Cindy snapped, flinging what looked like Darrell’s underwear over her shoulder and onto the floor.
“I thought you said—”
She turned. A pair of men’s boxers were draped over her shoulder. I stared at them for a second before continuing. “I thought you said Darrell didn’t live here.”
She snorted. “Darrell isn’t supposed to be living here. Which reminds me.” She handed me the flashlight. “Point it there.”
Holding the flashlight as directed, so it fully illuminated the pile of underwear, I waited as she pulled out her phone and snapped a picture. When she was done, she gestured to the closet. “I thought you were going to look in there.”
Not sure what it was that I was looking for, but a bit afraid to ask, I shuffled back to the door and opened it. The door caught on something. I reached down and pulled the object free. It felt like a ball, on a rope. I hadn’t known Darrell had a dog. Still holding the toy, I realized I also had the flashlight. I flipped it on.
The “toy” in my hand was no “toy.” At least not for dogs.
“Uh, Cindy...”
“What?” She sounded annoyed. Then she walked over and saw what I was holding. “Gotcha!” she yelled and pulled the “toy” from my hand. “I knew I’d catch the old pervert.”
After that, she shoved me out of the bedroom and pointed me to the front door. “The painting is yours. I’ll just box a few other things up while you get your Jeep.”
I glanced around and chewed on my lip. I was not feeling good about this at all.
She watched me from the bedroom doorway. “Do you want the painting or not?”
I did want the painting, and Darrell had promised it to me, and Cindy was a Deere too, and she wanted to give it to me... and as far as I knew, she had as many rights to anything in this house as anyone, but.... Peter. Really. Just Peter. He would kill me. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew he would.
Obviously, reading my indecision, she plopped down on the floor next to Kiska and said, “He can stay with me while you get the Jeep. Don’t worry. He’ll be fine.”
There was a glimmer in her eye. Adrenaline from her discoveries in the bedroom or threat? I wasn’t sure.
Kiska rolled over, belly up. Cindy gave me another stare. “He’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. It’s all just fine.”
Deciding to believe her, I went to get my Jeep.
o0o
Twenty minutes later, Kiska and I were back at the shop.
It was dark, past dark. Which made my mission feel all the more unsavory. But I didn’t want to wait until daylight when the Gulch would be bustling and people like Peter might see me struggling to get the painting inside and decide to ask all kinds of unnecessary questions, like how I had gotten it, or what the other boxes in the back of my Jeep contained, or if I had broken any laws in the past few hours.
Rhonda’s was bad enough, with her raised brows and tilted head as I told her that in Cindy’s words everything was fine.
“So then this could have waited until tomorrow. You didn’t have to call me down here tonight, when no one is around to see what we’re doing? That’s just coincidence.”
“I told you. I don’t want it stolen.”
“So there have been a lot of thefts out of locked garages in your ghost town of twenty?”
She really was being a pain. I scowled at her.
She sighed. “Fine. But I’m denying all knowledge of anything.”
“Fine,” I replied in my most lofty tone.
Rhonda, it turned out, despite her extra height and daily yoga, was not the moving woman that Cindy had been. But then, Cindy’d had a fire in her that my best friend obviously lacked.
Rhonda set her end of the framed painting down on the asphalt. “You know this is why God gave us men.”
I didn’t bother with a verbal response. I just picked up my side and nodded for her to do the same.
Once we were moving, the task didn’t take all that long, but I knew I’d be hearing about it for much longer. Which reminded me...
“Uh, you know I’d rather Peter didn’t hear about how the painting got delivered.”
She swiped a length of her red hair over her shoulder. “Got delivered?”
“Appeared?”
She grunted.
“Anyway, if you wouldn’t mind...”
She shook her head. “You know I won’t say anything, but if this gets you locked up, I am not going to be happy.”
With that and a warning glance, she left.
Kiska and I left my shop and headed out for the rest of the night’s assignment, the dicier part. Delivering the boxes in the back of my Jeep to Frosted.
I drove nice and slow, a good five miles per hour under the speed limit, chanting to myself the entire time. “It’s legal. It’s fine. It’s legal. It’s fine.”
When I arrived, the bakery was dark except for a light in the back. I hooked Kiska to his leash and checked the front door. It was locked.
The back alley was dark enough that I put Kiska back in the Jeep and we drove the twenty feet to the back door. There, we piled out again.
The back door was open. Not wide open. More like “whoever had last entered had been in a hurry and not pulled it completely shut” open.
Either way, I wasn’t standing in the alley in the dark. I pushed it open and let Kiska lead us in.
We found ourselves in a small alcove, which gave us zero view of anything past what appeared to be a giant steel refrigerator door and two trashcans. I jerked Kiska away from whatever tasty treats might be hidden in the can and took a step toward where I guessed the lone light that I’d seen inform the front was located.
A couple of steps past the refrigerator and I heard Cindy talking.
“Yeah, well, you cut me off cold. I don’t owe you anything, but you do owe me.”
Whoever she was speaking to didn’t respond. It took me a moment to realize that she was talking on the phone. A wave of relief washed over me. I didn’t want any witnesses to my part in Cindy’s retrieval of the boxes. Even though I knew it was fine, I reminded myself, and that Cindy has as much right to what was in the mansion as anyone.
“That doesn’t quite match what I was thinking.”
There was a pause as whoever she was talking to replied, or at least that’s what I assumed was happening.
After a minute, Cindy replied again, “I’m sorry if the timing isn’t convenient.” A pause and then, “Where are you?” After that she must have either lost the connection or whoever she was talking to hung up. Cindy muttered a curse and dropped her phone with a thump.
I jerked Kiska back to the alcove, waited ten seconds or so and then kicked over one of the trashcans. True to his history, Kiska dove forward. I, however, was ready for him. With my hands wrapped around his collar, I yelled, “Bad dog. Get out of that trash!”
Cindy came running. She glanced at the dumped garbage and the lunging malamute and muttered something under her breath.
While she went to get a broom, I lead Kiska into the safer, food–free zone of the ordering area and shut him out there. From behind the display case, I watched him for a few seconds, just to make sure no one had left a stray box of cupcakes or a wedding cake behind.
He sniffed around a bit, looked disgusted, and then positioned himself so he could stare longingly at the empty display case.
I left him and went back to where Cindy had finished cleaning up my mess.
She’d turned on a second light. This one illuminated the concrete back porch that Kiska and I had climbed when we’d entered the building.
My ploy with the trash seemed to work. She didn’t waste time questioning when I had arrived or if I had overheard her conversation. She walked to the right of the refrigerator and opened a door that I hadn’t noticed before. It was lined with shelves that were mainly empty. There was just a random pastry box here and there, but a decent layer of flour coated the floor.
“We’ll put the boxes in here.” With that, she moved past me and grabbed a box.
Less than thrilled with the manual labor that awaited, but in a rush to free myself from any ties to her perfectly legal acquisition of the boxes, I followed suit.
We completed the task in what felt like five minutes or less. Cindy practically tossed the boxes from the Jeep directly into the storage room. Each time a box landed, I cringed, hoping whatever was inside was not the imagined irreplaceable highly breakable treasure that popped into my mind.
When we were done, she stood by the door, waiting for me to retrieve Kiska and leave. It was past midnight by now, and I had missed my dinner, but there were no offers of coffee or cupcakes or any of the other major food groups as a thank you for my help.
Only slightly disgruntled, I loaded Kiska into the Jeep and headed home where I would eat and sleep and work very hard on reminding myself of all of the reasons that nothing that I had done tonight was in any way illegal.
o0o
Sunday morning, I was a bit slow moving. Part of it was the late night, but a bigger part was knowing what was waiting for me at the shop.
The painting.
The painting that I had worked so hard to get.
The painting that now felt at best suspect, at worst... dirty.
Betty did nothing to help assuage my guilt.
When Kiska and I arrived, she was standing in front of the painting, assessing it like I might a piece of marked RS Prussia: with a high degree of suspicion.
“So,” she said. “When did this get here?”
Watching as Kiska wandered into my office, I tried to act nonchalant. “Last night.”
“Darrell brought it by?”
“He told me I could borrow it.”
She flipped the end of her feather boa back and forth in front of her and motioned to the two still–unopened boxes that Darrell had also loaned me. “And then sent you junk store rejects.”
“But he said I could borrow it, and I am.” I breezed past her and motioned to the front window. “Where should we place it?”
The boa swished a bit more. “Joe’s arraignment is today. Are you going?”
In my concern over the painting, I’d forgotten about Joe.
She didn’t wait for an answer. “They got some more evidence on him. He had pictures of Missy hidden at his house. The police missed them when they went through the first time, but they found them this morning.”
That got my attention. “Where—”
She gestured to my office and the TV. “Your friend Bev.”
“She’s no friend—”
Betty swiped her boa in the air in an obvious response of “whatever,” and walked to the window where she began rearranging things to make room for the painting.
I went to my office to find out just what Bev had supposedly discovered now. I found the clip from that morning’s news show on their site.
Bev was standing outside a small, square, green ranch–style home of the 1960s variety. It wasn’t rundown, but it wasn’t any too fancy either. In the background, you could hear dogs barking.
“I’m here outside Joe Spencer’s home where police have just completed another search.” The light was dim. I guessed the time had to have been 5 a.m. or so, when I was safely tucked into my bed. “My sources say that new evidence has come to light that indicates the murder of Missy Gill was not, as previously suspected, motivated by greed at all, but was instead a lovers’ quarrel.”
Lovers’ quarrel? Between Joe and the Cutie? There was no way. Not that Joe wasn’t a decent looking man and just all around great guy, but I would have known if he was dating a Cutie. He would have told me, or at least not been so upset about the lost business.
“Love notes, photos and other items of an intimate nature are rumored to have been found inside.” Bev took a step closer to the camera. “We have also learned that the Helena P.D. had consulted with an outside expert who told them that the method of death, and the weapon used, indicate that the motivation for the murder was personal.”
Bev, it seemed, had sources of her own.
I clicked off the TV and called George.
His response was less than helpful. “Can’t tell you anything.”
“Not even why you didn’t find whatever you found the first time?” Call me suspicious, but there was something about all of this I didn’t like.
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“George?”
A chair creaked. Then George answered. His voice sounded weird, like he’d moved into an enclosed space or had his hand over the phone. “There’s stuff going on. Stuff I don’t like.”
That made two of us.
“Klein’s been getting tips.”
“Tips?”
“Yeah, and not the kind you leave on the bar.”
Okay.
“He got one early this morning suggesting we visit Joe’s again. Told us right where to look to find a stash of pictures and notes.”
“That’s convenient.”
“It sure is.” There was a sound on the other end of the phone, then someone calling George’s name. When he returned, his voice was normal again. “Listen, I have to go. It looks like there’s been a break–in at the Deere mansion.”
He hung up, leaving me to stare at my phone horrified.
I looked up to see Betty watching me with a smirk. “Deere mansion, huh? Who would want to break in there?”