A Luring Murder (11 page)

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CHAPTER NINE

Dawn Liston waved us into a corner booth the moment we stepped through the door of the Long Neck. We slid into the booth and waited. After a few minutes, she came and sat on the edge of the booth.

“Patrick called and told me you’d be coming to see me and why.” Dawn rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. “He was with me the night Warren was murdered. That was all you needed, right?”

She got up to leave, but Louise’s fingers wrapped around her forearm and brought her to a halt before she could escape.

“Wait one minute, Ms. Liston.” She pulled Dawn back into the booth. “Please, have a seat. We have a few more questions for you.”

“What questions?” She yanked her arm away. “You want to corroborate his alibi. I’ve done that. There’s nothing else you need to know.”

“Oh, yes there is,” I said.

“What?” She slouched and crossed her arms over her chest like a pouting child.

“Let’s start with the first time we met.”

She shifted in her seat and looked toward the counter, as if hoping someone had come in, and needed her attention, or the kitchen had suddenly caught fire – anything that would allow her to avoid interrogation. There were hard questions that needed to be asked and answered.

“You lead us to believe that you thought Patrick killed Warren. If you were with him, then you knew he didn’t kill him. This leads me to one of two conclusions.”

I held up the index and middle fingers of my left hand like a peace symbol and held them out toward her face, so she couldn’t miss my visual. I pinched the index finger with my right hand and moved it back and forth.

“Either you’re a psychotic liar who wants to have this man put away for some reason, known only to you.” I pinched the middle finger and wiggled it. “Or you’re the town trolley, and for a nickel, anyone can take a ride, and you didn’t want us to know.”

I swear I heard her spine crack as each vertebrate aligned to push her up straight. The fine crinkles around her eyes turned to canyons as her eyes narrowed to tiny slits.

“Which is it?” Louise said and straightened the silverware laid out on a napkin on the Formica table in front of her.

“Fuck you both.”

“Excuse me, but you have a lot to explain.” I leaned forward. “You were so angry toward Patrick you sounded like you were convinced he was the murderer.”

“No, what I said was that he had more motive than Samantha does.” She twisted her hands in front of her.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Samantha is a friend of yours.”

She nodded.

“That’s why you’re screwing her husband? To let her off the hook so she didn’t have to screw him.” I smiled. “That’s mighty kind of you. Everyone should have a friend like you.”

“You are disgusting and vulgar.” Dawn’s stiffened body sagged. “You two come here and you think you know what’s going on, but you don’t.”

I splayed my hands in front of me then folded them together. “So tell us. If you lie to us, we can’t help you or Patrick.”

“Yesterday you asked me questions in front of the sheriff and the deputy. I couldn’t tell you anything in front of them. We’re trying to be discrete.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Plus you came in here with Deputy Watkins. He would love to see Patrick in prison. If he found out about us, he would relish in the chance to humiliate Patrick all over town.”

“And you at the same time.”

She nodded.

“My relationship with Patrick started before he even met Samantha. It wasn’t like I went after my friend’s husband.”

The excuse of,
I saw him first
, didn’t answer all the questions for me. Dawn was going to need to do better.

“How long were you involved with Patrick before he met his wife?” Louise asked.

“Years.”

Still not a great excuse.

“Why didn’t your relationship end when he got married?” Louise said.

Good question. I thought about Gavin and his ex-girlfriends, especially the one he was seeing right before we met. The one who wanted him back and did everything she could to get him back. She still occasionally reared her serpent head whenever one of her relationships went sour.

Nausea rose to the back of my throat.

“There was no need to end it,” Dawn said. “Samantha wasn’t in love with Patrick. She tells me that she doesn’t love him all the time. Why should we stop seeing each other?

The physical part is good. I don’t need a commitment from him, and I don’t want to take him from Samantha. There’s no harm being done here. Samantha is getting what she wants. Why shouldn’t Patrick and I get what we want too?”

“Didn’t it bother you that he was sleeping with you and then suddenly married Samantha?” I asked.

She thought for a moment, pressed her lips flat, then shook her head.

“Maybe at first. Especially considering the two of them met at one of my parties.”

She reached into her apron and pulled out a pack of gum, shook one out, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth.

“That pissed me off for a little while, but I got over it.”

“Are you sure you’re over your anger?” Louise said.

She chewed off a cuticle and shrugged.

“Life goes on and so did we. Now, if you don’t mind I have to get to work. The lunch rush will start soon.”

“Of course,” Louise said. “We’ll be staying for lunch. Could we get some menus?”

Dawn reached across the table, pulled a paper menu from behind the tin napkin dispenser, and handed it to Louise.

“You ladies want something to drink?”

“Coffee for me.” There still wasn’t enough caffeine pumping through my veins yet today.

Louise opened her menu. “Water for me, thank you.”

Samantha left to get our drinks. I propped my elbows up on the table, leaned my chin on my palms, and smiled at Louise.

“What?” She didn’t look up.

I drummed my fingers on my cheeks. “You weren’t very nice, nice, Ms. Louise.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Then I’ll clarify.” I sat up and folded my hands together on the table in front of me. “I was nasty to Dawn, and you got my back.”

“I did not.” She closed the menu and laid it on the table.

“You did.”

“Do you need the menu?”

“No, I know what I want. So, what do you think?”

“I think I’ll have a salad with a broccoli and cheese baked potato on the side.” She tucked the menu back behind the napkin dispenser.

“Very funny. What do you think about our little murder case here?”

This was the fun part. A private moment to bounce solid ideas off one another. This is where Louise and I excel. We create synergy at lunch and dinner tables; full bellies made for full brains.

“I think there’s something strange about this whole situation. Maybe it’s that we’re not on or own turf, but there’s something off kilter, and I can’t get my bearings. Nothing in this town makes sense.”

“I agree. Who’s our best bet so far?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t think Dawn’s telling us everything.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the counter where Dawn was setting a tray up with a water glass and a coffee mug.

“Did you notice the hand twisting and nail biting,” I said. “She’s nervous about something.”

“But what?”

We stopped talking when Dawn came back and set our drinks on the table. Louise examined the pealing pink and blue bubbles on her plastic cup as if trying to decide if the bubbles were on the inside, or the outside, of the glass.

“Do you know what you want to eat?” Dawn jammed her hands into her waist. “Or do you need a few minutes more?”

“I’ll have the grilled cheese and tomato soup,” I said.

She nodded, and then turned to Louise. “And you?”

“Salad and a broccoli and cheese baked potato.”

“Dressing.”

“Extra Blue Cheese.”

Louise ate healthy on a regular basis; her only Kryptonite was gobs of Blue Cheese dressing. It was disgusting to watch her shovel lettuce dripping with chunks of blue and white dressing.

Dawn left to start our lunches, and I picked up my coffee cup and took a drink.

“Oh, I hope she’s not our killer,” I said.

“Why?” Louise said.

“Because she makes the best cup of coffee I’ve ever tasted.” I took another swig. “She’s a saint in my book.”

“Oh, please. A good cup of coffee doesn’t make someone innocent.”

“Neither does nice glutes.”

I savored another sip. Juan Valdez couldn’t have produced a better cup himself. Dawn Liston must have been a coffee protégée of some kind.

Louise let out a deep breath. “I never said anything about Deputy Watkins’s glutes.”

“Funny. You knew who I was talking about though.”

Louise blushed. She took a sip of water, then looked at the glass as if it had talked to her. “We have Samantha, Patrick -”

“Glutes.”

“Deputy Watkins,” she said and shot me a dirty look. “Bruce McMahan, the resort owners, and I think we need to add Ms. Liston to the list.”

“I don’t want to believe it, but I have to agree. Add her to the list, even if she does make the best coffee I’ve ever tasted.”

“First we should find out if Bruce McMahan’s alibi checks out and where that leads us. We might be able to rule him out right away,” Louise said. “After that we’ll find out if Digs has anything new for us, then go from there.”

I bobbed my head in agreement. “I still want to know what that nasty gum stuff was under the table.”

Dawn came back and set a massive salad, dripping in blue cheese, with a side of extra dressing in front of Louise. She didn’t know it, but Dawn was making friends fast.

Then she set a grilled cheese sandwich, the size of my head, made with thick slices of homemade bread in front of me. My jaw dropped.

“Is something wrong?” She said. “I can get you something else if you’d like.”

“No this is beautiful.” I looked up at her. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

She smiled and left us to our meals.

“She didn’t do it.” I grabbed the ketchup and made a large red puddle between the two sandwich halves. “She’s not involved in the murder at all.”

“Why?” Louise stabbed at her mountain of lettuce and came up with a bite sized piece oozing in blue cheese.

“No one who can make a sandwich this beautiful can be a murderer.” I dunked the sandwich into the ketchup and took a bite. Perfect. “I won’t accept it.”

She rolled her eyes. “So now your stomach is as good as a lie detector?”

I grinned. “The taste buds of justice.”

“Eat your food.”

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CHAPTER TEN

As we crossed the rickety, wooden bridge to the resort, I saw Gavin in a boat floating a few feet away from the bridge. I honked and waved at him.

He waved, and then put his hand over his heart, which was our signal for, I love you.

A warm feeling wrapped around me. He must have forgiven me for not sitting in a boat in the rain with him. He’d probably figured out that I would have been miserable and would have made him miserable too. I don’t believe in the privilege of suffering in silence. If I have to suffer, everyone around me will suffer too.

Louise did the honors of finding out from Mrs. Peterman which cabin the McMahan family had rented for the week. I didn’t plan to come within fifty feet of that woman without full backup, but Louise somehow managed to get the information we needed without beating Mrs. Peterman over the head.

Because of my impractical (or stupid, depending who you were speaking with at the time) choice of footwear, and Louise’s injury we chose to drive down to the other end of the resort.

The McMahan cabin looked like all the other rented cabins, except for the pile of floaties, noodles, kickboards, and inner tubes out front. With the amount of swimming paraphernalia, it looked as though the McMahans taught swimming classes in their spare time.

Louise knocked on the screen door. Over the high-pitched squeal of children, we heard a woman yell, “Come in.”

We found Mrs. McMahan elbow deep in dirty dishwater. The sleeves of her plaid shirt had unrolled, and dipped into the water each time she plunged in for another dish. Her hair pulled out of the alligator clip at the back of her head and hung in sweaty tendrils around her face.

Another shrill scream pierced the air.

“Kevin,” Mrs. McMahan yelled, “Leave your brother alone!”

“I’m not touching him.”

She slapped at the water. “Don’t make me come in there. I swear to God, Kevin I will send you to a boarding school, and you will never see your Xbox again.”

“Mrs. McMahan?” I felt the need to rescue Kevin. As a former inmate at an all-girl Catholic school I felt it was my duty.

She spun around. Her hand struck one of the plates in the strainer perched on the edge of the counter. The strainer and its contents clattered to the floor. A plastic cup spun to a halt at my feet.

“Damn it.” She stomped her foot. “Damn it.”

She stared at the dishes on the floor as if they would reverse themselves and fly back into the strainer at any second. I bent and picked up the cup, then made my way over to where the majority of the dishes landed and began clearing the mess.

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. McMahan. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Mrs. McMahan blinked twice then focused on me. She crouched down next to me and picked up some dishes. “It’s okay. I’m sorry, I was distracted.”

I held the dishes out to her. “I heard.”

She laughed and took the dishes from my hands, when she did I noticed a red mark on the inside of her forearm. She stacked the dishes in the sink.

“Yeah, everyone gets a vacation except Mom. We can afford to go to an all-inclusive resort where the cooking, cleaning, and dishes are done for you, but no, we come to this dump. All because it’s what my husband’s family always did. Maybe my mother-in-law enjoyed cooking and cleaning all day, but I don’t. I guess that’s why the mothers around here start drinking at eight o’clock in the morning. Bloody Marys for breakfast – wine by lunch.”

She took a swig from a large, bowled glass of red wine, which was filled to within an eighth of an inch of the top.

“What can I do for you ladies? You’re not selling Avon or Home Interiors are you? Because we’re full up. Not that I have time to decorate my face or my home.”

Her hand fluttered around her face like a magician waving his hand in front of a hat to prove there’s no rabbit inside.

“Neither,” Louise said. “We’re here to ask you a few questions about your husband.”

Mrs. McMahan leaned against the kitchen sink and folded her arms over her chest. “Bruce? Why? Who are you?”

“We’re investigating the murder that was committed here at the resort.”

She bobbed her head up and down. “And what does that have to do with Bruce?”

“We need you to corroborate your husband’s alibi.”

Shock flicked across her features. “Why would Bruce need an alibi?”

“We’re just checking everyone who knew the victim.” Louise had a way of making people feel at ease during questioning, and this time was no different. “It’s standard procedure. Nothing to worry about.”

“Oh? Okay.” She took a sip of her wine.

“Your husband said he was with you that evening,” I said.

“The night your kids camped at the main house.”

“Mrs. McMahan narrowed her eyes, looked right, then left and finally at the ceiling. After a few moments, her face split in a wide smile. “Yes, he was here that night. He was with me.”

Louise flicked her gaze over to me. I gave a short shake of my head. She was lying, and she was caught.

“Mrs. McMahan.” Louise pressed ahead. “You’re sure he was with you all night. He didn’t leave you at any time?”

“Nope. Bruce was with me until about nine in the morning.”

From the living room, a child screamed. Apparently, Kevin was at it again. This time a towheaded boy about five years old ran past me and clamped onto his mother’s leg. He sobbed with his whole body. The side of his face and hair were covered in mud.

“Kevin threw clay at me.”

She put her hand on his back and rubbed a comforting circle.

“Did not.” Came a voice from the living room.

“Damn it, I knew sending you two to that class was a bad idea.” She smiled the smile only a mother could manage at the pitiful sight of a crying child. “The resort offers craft classes for children. These two took sculpture from a local artist.”

Louise seized the opportunity while Mrs. McMahan’s guard was down to pounce. “Mr. Peterman saw your husband the morning of the murder. We know he wasn’t here with you.”

She went still.

“Andrew.” She took on the mother tone. “Go to your room and wait for me. Kevin, I know you’re listening. Take your brother and wait in your bedroom.”

A boy about seven, with sandy brown hair came into the kitchen with his head down. He took his brother, who struggled wanting no part of his assailant’s assistance, by the hand.

“Come on, Andy,” he said. “Now you got us in trouble.”

Mrs. McMahan waited until she heard the bedroom door slam shut.

“What kind of game are you playing? If you knew where my husband was, why did you ask me?”

I shrugged. “People can be mistaken. Especially early in the morning. The lights are dim, Mr. Peterman is getting old, his eyes could be failing.”

“That’s right.” She pulled her arms tight around her waist. “Bruce was with me the whole night.”

“No,” Louise said. “He wasn’t.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“Only if you make me.” Louise took a seat at the kitchen table and indicated the chair next to her for Mrs. McMahan. “Let’s talk.”

Exhaustion pulled at both her shoulders. She shuffled to the table and sagged into the chair next to Louise.

I chose the seat across from her.

“How did you know I was lying?” She asked.

“Your boys gave you away,” I said.

Mrs. McMahan glanced toward the door her sons had disappeared through, then back at me. Her brows knitted together, and her lips worked to find words that never came.

“Your husband claimed that your kids were camping alone at the main house,” I explained. “He said you were taking advantage of the time alone.”

Her brows smoothed, and the corners of her mouth twitched up.

“That idiot.” She chuckled and shook her head. “He probably thought you two ladies would be overwhelmed by his charms, and wouldn’t check his story.”

Louise and I chuckled along with her. The tension in the room ebbed and Mrs. McMahan relaxed against her chair.

In the five minutes that we’d been in the cabin, the McMahan children couldn’t play alone together. There was no way Kevin and Andy spent quality time alone in a tent for a whole night without parental intervention. Kevin would have scared the shit out of Andy long before morning, and sent him running for Mom’s comforting arms.

“Can I get you two ladies something to drink?”

We waved off the offer.

“So Bruce is involved in this murder somehow?” She shook her head. “I knew the two didn’t get along, but I find it hard to believe he’s capable of murder. The man can’t change a poopy diaper without gagging. I think the sight of blood would make him sick for a month.”

Her hands folded around her wine glass.

“We don’t know that your husband is involved.” Louise did her best to sound reassuring. “We’re investigating all the angles.”

“It’s your job.” She pressed her lips flat. “I understand.”

“Do you know where your husband was when Warren Pease was murdered?”

“Fishing. At least that’s what he told me.” She ran her shaking hands through her long dark hair. “But it wouldn’t be the first time he lied to me.”

She let her head drop back and stared at the ceiling.

“Oh, God. What has he done?”

“We don’t know that he’s done anything yet,” Louise said. This time more emphatically.

“Why lie to you about where he was if he had nothing to do with the murder?”

“Because fishing alone in a boat is no alibi,” I said. “Or maybe because he didn’t want you to know where he really was. There are a hundred different reasons. He could have simply panicked.”

Everything I said was obvious, but sometimes, when you’re close to a situation the obvious is the furthest object in your rearview mirror.

“Don’t worry, Detectives, I intend to find out where he was as soon as I see him again.”

“No, don’t. . ..”

She held up a hand to stop me, then cocked her head toward the living room door.

“Kevin Timothy McMahan, if you’re not in that room in the count of five, you’re not going swimming for the rest of the week.”

She waited but heard nothing.

“One.”

Still nothing.

“Two.”

My stress level hit ten. My own mother used to count backward, but the principle was the same.

“Three.”

Maybe Kevin wasn’t out there.

“Four.”

The sound of bare feet on the wood floors running made me smile. Mothers always know.

“Five.”

Just as the word formed on her lips a door slammed.

“I’m sorry, Detective. Go on.”

“We prefer that you not mention anything to your husband.”

She let out a snort and shook her head.

“Let us do our investigation, Mrs. McMahan.” We’ll find out where he was that night. If there is anything to find.”

I shrugged and splayed my hands in front of me. “He could have been fishing.”

Her eyes darted from me to Louise; me to Louise.

Louise finally nodded and smiled.

Mrs. McMahan let out a long breath. “Alright, I’ll wait, but when this is over if he wasn’t involved, I’m going to find out exactly where he was and why he lied.

“Fair enough,” I said.

“Do you have a boat that your husband uses to fish?” Louise asked.

“Of course.” She nodded. “It’s a blue Lund. Bruce had it custom painted with flames. It’s at the main docks. You can’t miss it.”

“Can we have your permission to search the boat?” I said.

She pushed back from the table and crossed to the sink. She tugged open the second drawer down on the left, pulled out a yellow floater key chain, then handed the key chain to me.

“The brass keys open all the lock boxes on the boat.”

I took the keys.

“Ouch! What happened to your arm?” I touched the inside of her right arm.

She turned her arm out so she could see the red mark. “Must be a bug bite of some kind.”

She ran her fingers over the top.

“It looks more like a scratch,” Louise said.

“I probably itched it. Not a big deal. I’ll throw some Bacitracin on top, and the mark will be gone in a day or two.”

“You do that,” I said. “Thank you, Mrs. McMahan.”

Louise and I stood in unison.

“I hope for your sake, and the sake of your boys, that we’re chasing wild geese.”

A faint smile played on her face. She hugged her upper arms. “Thank you.”

I parked my Charger next to the mobile forensic van, which had been relocated to the resort when Digs discovered an empty camper hook up that had enough juice to power him up.

He claimed that he needed the van close to him so that if he were inspired by an idea in his sleep he could test it immediately. I think he couldn’t stand being too far away from Louise. He’d finally gotten her all to himself, and he was miles away from her. That and the resort had bike paths zigzagging through its acreage, and instead of staring at the wall while a computer program was running, he’d been exploring the paths on his baby.