Dead Body Language (26 page)

“Were you arrested?”

“Nope. ‘Reassigned.’ They promised me a teaching job over at the correctional facility if I resigned. But by then I needed a change. Things were falling apart. I left the state and got a job teaching Administration of Justice at the University of New Mexico and at the C.F. My degree came in handy for all those guys who didn’t get good lawyers and wanted to pursue their cases in appeals courts.”

“But you were terminated there, too.”

He looked at me. “How did you know?”

“I … I thought you told me.”

“You’re a lousy liar, too,” Dan said with a half-grin.

“I am not. I’m a good liar!”

“Your body language gave you away. You blushed, you stammered, you couldn’t meet my eyes.”

“Where did you learn all that about body language?”

“Part of the police academy instruction. Know your opponent.”

“I’m not your opponent. Although I’m not so sure about you.”

He gave me a look that set a few hairs at attention, then downed the rest of his beer. “Okay, so I got fired. Actually I quit, but that’s a technicality. I was working with this one guy who said he was not Mirandized. So I helped him get a new trial. Turns out he was accused of raping the police chief’s daughter. They didn’t appreciate my butting in. So I was canned.”

“Did he rape her?”

“Not according to six other men who had dated her in the past. She used this rape scam with every one of them. It was apparently part of her foreplay. But my guy got caught—and was screwed, so to speak.”

“So you came out here to what—work with your big brother?”

“I don’t know. I wanted to see him. See what California was like. Spend some time figuring out what to do next. I’ve been a cop who’s put criminals in jail and a teacher who’s helped them get out. What’s left? Become a criminal myself?” He laughed.

I didn’t. There was still something he wasn’t telling me. Whatever it was was lurking right behind those dark eyes.

Dan and I shared the bill at my insistence—twenty bucks for two peanut butter sandwiches and two slightly mutilated but mostly untouched beef and chicken orders—and left the restaurant. We rode back to Flat Skunk in silence. At least I did. Dan played the radio and kept punching the buttons to find new music stations. He asked me why I had a radio. I said it came with the car.

When we arrived back at my office, there was a flashing light on my message machine.

“Dan, could you listen to my messages for me? My regular machine is broken, Miah’s not around, and I’m waiting for a call from the sheriff about—” I started to say the break-in at my diner but decided not to mention it. I
still didn’t know who was responsible, and at this point, everyone was a possibility.

Dan didn’t press it. He punched the play button, picked up a pencil, and began to write down the first message.

“Connor—Mickey. Call me—another …”

Dan put the pencil down slowly, punched the rewind button and listened to the message again, combing his beard as the tape played. Then he looked at me with wide eyes.

“What?” I said, feeling those butterflies collecting in my stomach again.

“There’s been another one.”

“Another what?” I said, trying to read his face.

“Another … murder. Some guy staying at the bed-and-breakfast inn over on Front Street. He’s been stabbed.”

B
eau was standing outside the Mark Twain B & B, talking with half a dozen onlookers, rubberneckers, and ambulance-chasers, even though the ambulance was already gone. And along with it, the body of the man in the red Miata, according to Beau.

It was late afternoon by the time we arrived, and growing cool again, a reminder that spring was fickle. The sheriff and Mickey stood among a group of inn guests, taking statements, while television crews packed up their gear into minivans.

Dan and I had apparently missed most of the action.

I couldn’t get to the sheriff or Mickey immediately. They both seemed engrossed in official business, pointing and nodding and readjusting their belt buckles. But Beau looked as if he wouldn’t mind being torn away from the murder groupies. He waved halfheartedly as we approached.

“Excuse me,” he said to a couple of elderly women who were “tsking” and “oohing” and making a bunch of other mouth noises I couldn’t recognize. He made his way over and clasped my hand. “Connor! Did you hear what happened?”

I said I had, then introduced Dan to Beau. “So what are the details?”

Beau took my hand and pulled me over to the side of the inn near the garden pond he had put in last weekend. Dan followed hesitantly, as if he wasn’t sure he was invited. We sat in white wrought-iron chairs that were supposed to create a serene retreat.

“Oh, my God, Connor. I just don’t believe it! That guy, the one who ran you off the road the other day—”

Dan looked at me curiously. I rubbed my knees in memory of my fall.

“He was killed! Sometime last night! Right here in my beautiful bed-and-breakfast inn! Oh, God. It’s awful.”

Beau’s lips quivered. His lashes flashed.

“Were you the one who found him, Beau?” I asked, putting my hand on his knee and giving it a comforting pat.

He nodded vigorously, bit his lip, then turned away for a moment to look at a frog that had hopped out of its watery home. When Beau had composed himself, he continued.

“It was terrible. I knocked on the door with breakfast—cranberry scones and kiwi jam. He always took his breakfast in the room, never came out to join the other guests at the dining table. Anyway, I knocked, no answer, so I thought he was still asleep. I took the tray back to the kitchen, figuring I could reheat the scones when he was ready—although they wouldn’t be as good. Anyway, about an hour later he got a phone call, so I went back to tell him about it and offer him his breakfast again. But there was still no answer.”

He paused to check on the adventurous frog for a moment. The slimy amphibian had filled its neck with air and was opening and closing its mouth. I found myself trying to read its lips. Beau resumed his story with a renewed look of concern.

“I was a little worried, so I used my key to check on him. That’s when I found him, lying on my great-grandmother’s crazy quilt. One of the antique mining picks from the wall was sticking out of his chest! The killer just took it right
down and—God!” He shuddered. “I called the sheriff right then and there.”

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I looked around to see the deputy.

“I see you got my message,” Mickey said, flipping his notebook closed.

I stood up to face him, feeling almost angry. “What’s going on around here, Mickey? Things are getting way out of hand! Another death? Jesus! What happened?”

Mickey bent his head to the side. “We don’t know much more than what Beau here told us.” Beau sat up straighter, acknowledging the reference. “The victim was stabbed with an old gold-mining pick. Looks like it went right through the heart.”

I thought about Lacy Penzance’s stab wound. Wasn’t it much the same? “A pick? How odd.”

“Lacy wasn’t stabbed with a pick, was she?” Beau asked.

Mickey shook his head. “No. We’re fairly certain Lacy was stabbed with an instrument used in embalming cadavers. The mortuary recently reported a theft.”

“An embalming tool! A mining pick! We’ve got some kind of lunatic running around town!” Beau said dramatically, rubbing his hands on his legs. His flashing eyelashes punctuated his statements.

Mickey shook his head. “He’s not a lunatic, that’s for sure. In my opinion, this guy is very intelligent, very cautious, and extremely calculating. We don’t know who it is yet, but we’ll find him—or her, for that matter. We picked up a few hairs, some clothing threads, and we have a partial print on a sheet of paper found in the room that doesn’t seem to belong to the victim. We’ll find him. It’s only a matter of time, believe me. And I’ve got a pretty good idea where to look.” Mickey glanced at Dan and rubbed the butt of his holstered gun as he spoke.

Dan seemed preoccupied, not attending to the conversation any longer. I glanced over at Beau who appeared terrified. The deputy, in contrast, seemed confident and in control, even if he did look kind of goofy with his hair sticking out.

“Do you have an ID on the dead guy?” Dan asked, coming out of his trance.

The deputy nodded. “Yep. Found his wallet, license, something called a Screen Actor’s Guild card—expired—some credit cards, and a business log. He’s an actor, formerly of Santa Monica. Name’s James Russell. Ring any bells?”

“Doesn’t sound familiar,” Dan said.

“How about Chad Anderson?”

He paused.

I blinked.

“Larry Longo?”

I frowned. “Risa Longo’s husband?”

“And Del Morris.”

I gasped. “Oh, my God!”

“And Jeff Knight. His wife, Gail, over in Volcano, has just been notified of his death.”

At that point, I sat down.

Dan and I drove to the tiny former mining camp called Volcano in silence for a few minutes, then Dan hit the steering wheel hard with his hand. “Goddamn it!”

“What? Flat tire? What’s wrong?”

“Stupid!”

“Who? Me?”

“No! Me! Didn’t what’s-his-name say the guy was from southern California somewhere? An actor?”

I bit the inside of my cheek for a moment. “Yeah. He said the guy was married to Risa Longo in Whiskey Slide and Arden Morris in Rio Vista. And now he’s got another wife in Volcano named Gail Knight.”

“Sounds like Hollywood to me.” Dan ran his fingers through his hair.

“So you think maybe he ‘acted’ like he loved these women, married them, and what—took their money? It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s done something like this.”

“Didn’t your deputy say the guy had four other ID’s and an address book full of women’s names and addresses?”

“Including Lacy Penzance. How does someone get so
many fake ID’s? Is it really that easy?” I thought for a moment then added, “And he’s not my deputy.”

Dan nodded. “Extremely easy. All you have to do is to go to another state, check out the microfilm at the library for an obituary of a child who was born about the same time you were, and died before the age of two. Use the name of the dead infant to write to the Bureau of Vital Statistics and request a copy of the birth certificate. Then use that to get a driver’s license and social security number, saying you’ve been out of the country for several years and haven’t applied for one before. That’s it.”

“You know a lot about this stuff.” I got a tickle at the back of my neck when I thought about Dan’s own identification. I pushed the thought away and continued. “So, he must have been the mystery man Lacy’d been seeing. She figured out the guy was a bigamist and she started searching for his other wives to confirm her suspicions. She managed to find Risa Longo. Then she was about to meet Arden Morris when she was killed.”

“By him?”

I didn’t know. But he was dead now, too. So what did that mean? The parts just weren’t coming together like they did on
Murder, She Wrote
.

“That business ledger Mickey said they found in the guy’s room. If it was full of incriminating information, why didn’t the killer take it with him … or her?” Dan asked.

“You think it could be a her? An ex-wife who found out about his past, then killed him? And killed Lacy first to get her out of the way?”

“Could be,” Dan said. “Maybe it was Risa or Arden who killed Lacy, then she got rid of the two-timer for fooling around on her.”

“If that’s the case, whoever did it might be after the other women on the ledger list. The sheriff said one of the pages had been torn out.”

“The possibilities are endless,” Dan said.

I thought a minute. “The weapons aren’t your everyday murder weapons.

Dan frowned, turned off the radio, and gripped the wheel.

“What were you listening to?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention. Uh—” he seemed to be trying to recall something. “I think it was Pearl Jam.”

Music is so invisible to me. I try to make shapes and colors out of it, but it’s not easy. It’s a puzzle, elusive, and yet I know it’s there because other people react to it. They dance. They sing. Their moods change all of a sudden. To me, the answer to this puzzle was kind of like music. I knew it was there, but I just couldn’t hear it. Because I can’t hear things, I try to figure out solutions in other ways. I try to see it, taste it, smell it, touch it. And finally, I’m able, in my own way, to hear it.

“Look, Dan, it’s possible that whoever killed Lacy with that trocar killed what’s-his-name at the bed-and-breakfast with the mining pick. Someone connected to the mortuary? Someone who had a connection to Lacy Penzance and the dead man, and wanted both of them dead.”

We made good time to Volcano, arriving at nearly eight-thirty
P.M
. but the trip turned out to be a waste of time. Gail Knight wasn’t seeing anyone, which was made very plain to us by a burly man who called himself her brother. I tried what I thought were a couple of unusually creative and believable approaches, but he wasn’t buying.

“She isn’t seeing anyone,” the big guy said firmly.