Diane Davidson - Prime Cut

My sleep was predictably fitful. At seven A.M., the phone bleated. Tom, who’d been up and dressed since six, snatched it. He listened and scribbled in his spiral notebook while I hugged a heap of pillows and pretended to be asleep. My hand throbbed. So did my head. I wondered how Cameron was doing. I wondered how I’d gotten so mixed up in this mess, when all I’d done was try to take food over to a friend.

When Tom hung up, he stood, paced, then slumped down on our mussed bed. His face, ordinarily ruddy, was pale. “Problem?” I asked gently.

“Fuller’s demanded a full investigation.” He shook his head.

“Of what?”

Tom took a deep breath. “I’ve been charged with insubordination. And with compromising a homicide investigation.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it. My buddies protested, of course. Some even threatened to quit.”

“Good.”

“Don’t say that, Miss G. The department has a ton of work to do, even if Fuller is screwing things up. Now listen. You’re not in trouble. The deputies all say they saw Fuller swing at me before you got in the way. Still, because this is the bad end of a lot of problems with him, I’m the one being investigated. The process will take four to six weeks.”

“Oh, for crying out loud!”

He held me with his gaze. “During that time,” he continued, “I’ll be suspended without pay.”

Chapter 5

Tom hugged me and told me not to worry. I held his handsome face in my hands and kissed him. Of course I would worry. And feel guilty. If I hadn’t interfered, he wouldn’t be in this mess. Tom kissed me, then said he’d fix me an espresso if I’d stop trying to take the blame for the world’s wrongs. I followed him to our topsy-turvy kitchen.

“What happens to Cameron?” I asked. “Can you tell me? Or am I considered a witness?”

“I can tell you. It’s Cameron Burr who shouldn’t get in touch with you.” Tom filled the espresso machine with water, pawed through the pile of china on the counter, and finally placed two Norwegian china demitasse cups under the doser. “I’m waiting for a fax from Boyd. He’s sending me a map of Blue Spruce showing the Burrs’ place in relation to Open Space.” He pressed the button and a moment later handed me a small, crema- topped drink. “The scenario Fuller is going with is this.” He sipped his coffee. “The window frame incident at the Grizzly Saloon occurred just before eleven the night before last. Fuller thinks Cameron Burr followed Gerald Eliot from the Grizzly to his nighttime security guard job at the Homestead Museum. By the way, it was a job Burr got for Eliot. That doesn’t look too good, Burr knowing exactly where to go.”

The dark, luscious espresso ignited the perimeter of my brain. “Lots of people knew Eliot worked there,” I observed. “Marla told me the museum board wasn’t happy with Eliot’s performance. If she knew where he worked, so did the whole town.”

“Fuller thinks Burr broke into the museum, strangled Eliot, faked a robbery, threw Eliot’s body into the back of his pickup, and drove out to the unfinished sun room. There, Fuller claims, Burr stabbed his building contractor with molding, broke a piece of drywall over his head, and hung him up by his Samson-style gold locks. Supposedly, Burr then shot his contractor through the head with a nail gun. For good measure.”

I flinched and set down my cup. I thought back to my entry into the sun room, my confusion in trying to find the coffeepot, seeing Gerald’s body … “What about that hiker who supposedly saw Gerald? Do you know his name? I don’t believe you could see the body unless you were ten feet away from it.”

Tom shook his head. “The hiker called from the Open Space parking lot by the trailhead. He didn’t give his name. It could be a setup, Goldy. We always have to consider it. Although, with Fuller bucking for higher office, he might not consider it.”

“Has Sheila O’Connor come up with anything yet?”

“Sheila said Eliot’s neck and face were badly bruised when he was strangled. Glass in his scalp is consistent with one of the two breaks in the glass-fronted display cases at the museum. Time of death probably not too long after one A.M. The evidence that Cameron’s pickup was used to transport the body is pretty convincing, too.” He drank more coffee. “Looks like Eliot’s T-shirt snagged on a protruding piece of metal in the truck. A fragment of the T-shirt fabric is still in the back of the pickup. Plus there’s grease on Eliot’s face and clothing, very similar to the grease in the vehicle.” He sighed. “We have no way of knowing if somebody borrowed Cam’s truck. He always leaves the keys in it. And it’s been so dry, there aren’t tire tracks we could analyze. Sheila’ll know more after the autopsy, you know how that goes.”

I nodded and got up to fix us both more coffee.

The fax rang. Tom removed the wall of dishes surrounding the fax machine, pulled out the slick sheet, and perused it. He looked up. “Here’s the layout from the fence separating Burr’s property and the trail to Smythe Peak.” He slapped the smudged map of Blue Spruce next to the cluttered sink; I peered down at it. Most prominent was the Smythe Peak Open Space area, the two thousand acres that surrounded the mountain. All of the land had been sold to the county by the Smythe family. Cameron Burr’s property was marked with a rough rectangle. According to thick hand-drawn lines and numbers, the framed sun room was only fifty feet from Cameron’s fence.

Tom said, “Cam’s lawyer is going to want to know why a killer would strangle a guy, take the time and trouble to rob a museum, and drive the dead or near-dead guy out to his own house . Then the killer tortures Eliot or defiles his corpse with building materials, and shoots him with a nail gun? I don’t think so. You can be really drunk or really angry. To do all that, you couldn’t be both.” He shook his head.

I slugged back the espresso. “Cameron didn’t do it, I’m telling you. Yesterday André told me Leah Smythe—or somebody at the cabin—fired Eliot for sleeping with a model. Maybe they broke up.”

“So you think some skinny model killed big, strong Eliot? Then hung him up in Cam’s sun room?”

“Not necessarily.” I tried to think. “I’m just suggesting other people besides Cameron disliked Gerald Eliot. Take me, for instance, although I didn’t really want to see him dead . But there might be more to Gerald Eliot than Fuller wants to see. Did you have a look at the Homestead?”

Tom nodded. Before he could elaborate, the phone rang and he answered it. He murmured a couple of questions, took notes in his spiral pad, then hung up. “Interesting update. I’m going to heat muffins. Sound good?”

“Sounds great.”

“Okay, early yesterday morning the call came from Sylvia Bevans about a break-in at the museum. My team covered the call, by the way. I just hadn’t told you about it; it seemed so routine. Sylvia was beside herself, babbling about a missing cookbook.”

“Cookbook?”

He smiled and spread frozen cinnamon-raisin muffins on a cookie sheet. “Yeah, I thought you’d take some professional interest in the theft. Sylvia Bevans, of course, reamed us out, but good.”

“Oh, brother.” Now this was a scenario I could imagine. The much-feared, seventy-year-old curator of the Homestead Museum would have ushered the cops into the sacred precinct of her cluttered historical society office and puckered her already thin-lipped mouth in fierce and undisguised disapproval. One of her seemingly endless wardrobe of pastel linen dresses—lilac, lime, or pink—would have strained at mother-of-pearl buttons over her ample body as she indignantly demanded the authorities find the culprit immediately!