3 Swift Run (21 page)

“Hell, no,” Charlie said. “It’s too cold. Maybe being face-to-face with a priest will
encourage them to tell me the truth.” She swung her legs out of the truck and winced
at the pull in her glutes.

“You expect them to lie?”

“I expect everyone to lie,” she said. “That way, I’m not disappointed and I’m occasionally
gratified by a kernel of truth.”

“That’s a happy outlook.”

“Don’t tell me you think most people tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth.” Charlie gave him a skeptical look over the truck’s blue hood, now
seemingly frosted with dun-colored dust particles.

Dan gave it some thought as he came around the truck. “I think many people are so
busy lying to themselves about what they want and who they are that they can’t help
but lie to other people. They don’t even know they’re doing it half the time.” He
joined her on the walk to the front door.

It opened as they approached, as if the woman who stood there had been watching them.
As weathered as the house, she could have been any age between thirty-five and fifty-five.
Sandy hair showed an inch of gray roots. Thin, almost bloodless lips split a thin,
sun-speckled face. She wore jeans, work boots, and a heavy shearling coat.

“Storm’s coming,” she greeted them, stepping onto the porch and closing the door.
“I’ve got to feed the stock. You staying in Cheyenne tonight?”

“We’re headed back as soon as we leave here,” Charlie said.

The woman directed a narrowed gaze at the sky. “You might make it.” Holding out a
bony hand, she said, “I’m Tansy Eustis.”

Charlie introduced herself and Dan.

“A priest, huh?” Tansy’s gaze swept Dan. “I’ll bet you give a mean sermon.” Without
waiting for a reply, she started across what would have been a yard if it weren’t
grass-free, packed-down dirt. A dog the size, color, and general friendliness of a
coyote emerged from beneath the porch to accompany her.

Charlie and Dan exchanged a look and followed, hands dug into their pockets against
the stiffening wind. Inside the barn, a dim space smelling of hay and dung and warm
animals, Tansy used a hose to fill the water troughs in each of several stalls. The
dog snuffled at a hole that undoubtedly housed a rodent. “I already dropped hay bales
in the pastures for most of our herd,” she said, rubbing a cow between the eyes. “These
are here because they’re injured or sick. This one”—she swatted the cow’s rump—“got
herself tangled up good in barbed wire.”

“I know it’s a busy time for you,” Charlie said, “so I won’t keep you long. I have
reason to believe that there’s a connection between your father-in-law’s death and
a case I’m working on.”

“Oh? What reason?”

Charlie explained about the newspaper clipping sent to Les Goldman.

“Someone sent this Les a newspaper article about Robert Senior’s death? What do you
think the connection is?”

“I’m hoping you can help with that.” Pulling the Internet photo of Lucinda Cheney
from her purse, she passed it to Tansy.

“I can’t see well without my reading glasses,” the woman apologized. She held the
photo at arm’s length. “This gal’s younger, and Amanda had white-blond hair, worn
shorter.” She chopped a hand at jaw level. “In fact, she looked a fair bit like Robert’s
first wife. Her name was Amanda, too.”

Charlie nodded. “Could this be your Amanda?” She wished more people paid attention
to face shape and the way ears were set against the head and brow prominence—things
that were nearly impossible to change—rather than to hair and eye color.

“She’s not
my
Amanda. Best I can tell you is it’s possible,” she said, passing the photo back.
“Amanda was on the plump side, and she wore glasses, so it’s hard for me to tell.
But it’s possible.”

Charlie remembered what Gigi had said about the photo of Lucinda Cheney. “This may
sound silly,” she said, feeling ridiculous, “but did Amanda get manicures?”

Tansy gave her a strange look but said, “Here she was, a rancher’s wife, afraid to
get her hands dirty or break a nail.” Tansy held up her own work-roughened hands with
their short, unpolished nails. “She always had her nails done so the tips were bright
white with a clear coat over the rest of the nail. You should have heard her squawk
if she ever broke one.” She shook her head in disgust.

Score one for Gigi,
Charlie thought, prepared to accept that Amanda was, indeed, Heather-Anne.

“You said Amanda looked a lot like your husband’s mother,” Dan said, earning a surprised
look from Charlie. “How long after the first Mrs. Eustis passed did your father-in-law
remarry?”

“Within the year,” Tansy said, the corners of her mouth tightening. “My Robert was
fit to be tied.”

“He didn’t like her?”

“He wouldn’t have liked anyone his father married.” Tansy moved away from the stall
and ducked into a feed storage room, emerging with a brimming bucket. “But, no, he
didn’t like Amanda. He didn’t like that she knew nothing about ranching and was useless
on the ranch. Other than her baking—she was just as good with her pie crusts and cakes
as Robert’s first wife, who used to win prizes—she didn’t have much to offer.”

“Robert Senior must have thought she did,” Charlie observed. “Where did they meet?”

“Funny enough, at the stock show and rodeo in Denver. That’s where my husband and
youngest son are right now, as a matter of fact—been there since Wednesday. According
to Robert Senior, he and Amanda got to chatting during the auction, and one thing
led to another. They were married less than three months later.”

Tiny alarm bells dinged in Charlie’s brain. Denver was only about an hour from Colorado
Springs. Was it coincidence that Robert Eustis Junior was in the area when Heather-Anne
was killed? “Do you think Amanda killed your father-in-law?” Charlie asked, carefully
not mentioning that the sheriff thought there was an equal chance Tansy’s husband
was responsible.

“The way it happened, with brake fluid in his drink and all, I don’t see who else
could have done it,” she said. Her voice was muffled and her face hidden as she ducked
down to apply salve to a cow’s injured leg.

“Did she inherit the ranch?”

Tansy stood slowly, letting her gaze rest first on Dan and then on Charlie. “No,”
she said finally. “We did.” Taking off her gloves, she slapped them together, and
a puff of dirt rose up. “You better hit the road if you’re hoping to get home before
the blizzard gets here.”

*   *   *

Charlie and Dan left Tansy in the barn and returned to the truck, not saying anything
about Tansy’s information until they were bouncing down the road back toward the highway.

“You think Amanda Eustis, Lucinda Cheney, and Heather-Anne Pawlusik are the same person,”
Dan said.

Charlie nodded. “I do.” She explained about the French manicure. “Why else would someone
send that newspaper clipping to Les? I think that was a warning, that some Good Samaritan
was trying to let him know that Heather-Anne’s last husband didn’t fare too well.”

“Do you think she killed Eustis?”

“I don’t know.” Charlie wriggled on the seat, trying to get comfortable. “Either she
did and ran to avoid prosecution, or she didn’t and ran to avoid suffering the same
fate, probably at the hands of her nose-out-of-joint stepson. I want to talk to him
and make sure he was in Denver—and not Colorado Springs—when Heather-Anne was killed.”

“Even if Heather-Anne and Amanda were the same person, how would Eustis have known
that, and how would he have known she was in Colorado?”

Charlie shrugged. “Beats me. Probably it’s just coincidence, but I’d still like to
talk to him. You know,” she said, smoothing the Lucinda Cheney photo on her thigh,
“it might be worthwhile finding out how Wilfred Cheney ended up in a wheelchair.”

Dan took his gaze from the road for a long moment to study her profile. “You worried
she has a history of disposing of inconvenient husbands, that she tried to kill Cheney
but something went wrong?”

Charlie shrugged. “The idea just came to me. I know it sounds far-fetched, but stranger
things have happened.”

“For my money, the most curious thing about this whole case is that someone sent the
newspaper clipping to Les. Assuming they did so because Amanda Eustis became Heather-Anne
Pawlusik, who could it be? It’d have to be someone who not only knew that Heather-Anne
was in Costa Rica with Les, but also knew that Heather-Anne used to be Amanda.”

“Maybe we’re on the wrong track here,” Charlie said slowly. The long gray ribbon of
I-80 appeared in the distance. “The clipping was sent to Les, after all, so maybe
Les is who we should be focusing on. Other than being Gigi’s husband and the father
of the two most obnoxious teens in the tri-state area, what do we know about him?”

Dan raised his brows to invite her to continue since it was clear she had an answer
in mind.

“We know he’s a cheating, swindling, embezzling criminal,” she said. “What are the
chances he and Eustis were in business together somehow?”

“From what I know of Les, he was no more the ranching type than Amanda was.”

Charlie waved an impatient hand. “He wasn’t the PI type, either, but he still owned
part of my business. He was a wheeler-dealer. I don’t think he much cared what a business’s
product or service was as long as he thought he could make money off it.”

“I guess he was wrong in at least one instance.”

Charlie backhanded his shoulder.

“So you’re saying we wasted a trip out here?”

“Not necessarily. I need to get Gigi started on researching Eustis’s business relationships
to see if there’s any overlap with Les’s interests. If they were in business together,
I’ll bet you a bottle of Lagavulin that Les ran off with some of his money.”

“Could even be that’s where the missing cash from Eustis’s bank accounts went.”

Charlie gave him an approving look. “You’re not half bad at this investigating thing,
Allgood.”

“This isn’t investigation,” he pointed out. “It’s speculation.”

Charlie tried to reach Gigi as the truck merged onto the blessedly smooth asphalt
of I-80. Dan hit the gas and the truck surged forward, rocking her back in her seat
and jolting the phone from her hand. She gave him a look. “I thought I was riding
with Father Dan Allgood, not Father Dan Andretti.”

In answer, he pointed out her window to the north. A sea of roiling charcoal clouds
advanced toward them, lightning flickering in their depths, snow falling so heavily
it was like someone had drawn a curtain across the northern half of the state.

“What are you dawdling for?” Charlie asked.

26

Nothing exploded. I had ducked behind the concrete-walled convenience store and scrunched
my eyes shut, waiting for the boom, but it never came. Cautiously, I opened my eyes,
stood up, and peeped around the corner. A fat man in a white shirt with a plastic
name tag, who might have been the manager, stood by the big red button that cuts off
the gas flow, his hand still on the switch. If the ice cubes and Coke-colored liquid
were anything to go by, someone had dumped a Big Gulp on the cigarette butt. Another
gas station employee was sprinkling sawdust on the spilled gasoline and sweeping it
into a dustpan. Whew.

I edged around the corner. Some of the soda stealers had scattered when it looked
like the gas station was going to go kablooey, but I noticed a man in a suit peering
into the vending machine to see if any sodas remained in it, and the elderly woman
with the walker was still trying to reach her Dr Pepper. In a half squat, one hand
clutching the walker for balance, she looked like maybe she was stuck. I helped her
up, handed her the Dr Pepper, and earned a “Thank you, dear,” for my trouble.

“It’s her fault,” Dreiser said when he saw me. He stood by the squad car, apparently
in custody, cap missing, hair mussed. “She let those cans loose.” He pointed a bony
finger at me. The police officer, splotches of dark soda on his shirt, gripped Dreiser’s
upper arm and had taken his wrench.

I gasped as employees, drivers, and Dreiser glared at me. “I didn’t—”

“Spilling cans isn’t a crime,” the officer said. “Threatening people with a deadly
weapon is. Come on.” He nudged Dreiser toward the squad car. Dreiser glared at me
with a fury that would’ve stripped paint off a tractor.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean—”

Shrill yapping from a white Pomeranian in the nearest car drowned me out. I shifted
indecisively from foot to foot and finally decided I had nothing to gain by hanging
around. I certainly wasn’t going to get anything else from Dreiser, who was shouting
something about “… payback … get you … find Goldman…” as the police officer locked
him into the backseat. I climbed in the Hummer, grateful for once for its size and
bulk, and drove out of the small parking lot, hearing someone call after me, “Don’t
come back!”

I stewed about the injustice of it all—it wasn’t my fault Dreiser cornered me in his
machine, and it wasn’t my fault that the careless boy hadn’t hung up the gas hose,
and it wasn’t my fault that woman wanted to kill herself by smoking cigarettes—but
got over it by the time I reached the office. No one needed to worry that I was going
back to that gas station. I was never showing my face there again. Come to think of
it, I’d never gotten gas there anyway, so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice. Thank goodness
no one got hurt.

Back at the office, I wriggled out of my ruined tights in the bathroom and tried to
blot the soda stains off my clothes. Maybe my dry cleaner could do it. He’d worked
miracles on my blue satin blouse when I got raspberry sauce on it. Seated at my desk,
I unzipped my boots to ankle level and sighed with relief. They were the teensiest
bit too tight around my calves. Even though they were cuter than cute, I didn’t wear
them too often because by the time I’d had them on for an hour, they cut into my calves
something awful. However, one must suffer for fashion sometimes. I’d said that to
Charlie once and she’d looked at me like I was crazy. At least the boots didn’t hurt
as much as the tank top whose sequins rubbed the insides of my upper arms raw whenever
I wore it. Massaging the red line around each calf, I listened to the messages on
the answering machine. One was from Charlie, asking me to find out how Wilfred Cheney
ended up in a wheelchair and telling me that she and Father Dan were on their way
back. I brewed a pot of coffee, more because I liked the smell than because I wanted
a cup, and Googled Cheney.