Deadly Places: A Mapleton Mystery Novella (7 page)

Colfax showed up at Ed’s office at ten the next morning. With designer coffee.

“If you’d have let me know you were coming, I’d have gone to Daily Bread for cinnamon rolls,” Ed said.

“Not the same now that the cute blonde isn’t making them.”

“Same recipe.” Ed took a coffee. “Angie’s been phasing out much of her Daily Bread time now that she’s a partner in a catering business. Besides, I doubt your palate is sophisticated enough to tell the difference.”

“It’s the principle,” Colfax said. “And it’s no fun teasing you, since she’s Gordon’s girlfriend. His buttons are a lot easier to push.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Did you talk to your sister this morning?”

Colfax settled himself into a wooden visitor chair and sipped his coffee. “You ever going to get more comfortable furniture in here?”

“And have people want to hang around? And it’s not my call. Can we cut to the chase and get to what you drove all the way over here to talk about?”

Colfax put his cup on the desk. “Gertrude Sidebotham.”

“What?”

“You said to cut to the chase.”

“Who’s she?” Ed asked, clamping down on his frustration.

“She’s a seventy-two-year-old retiree living in Anchorage, but that’s beside the point. She has nothing to do with this. But use that name as your Deadbeat Dad referral, and you should be admitted to the next level.”

“Is this some kind of a joke?” Ed asked. “Because if you came all the way over here to feed me a bunch of BS to watch my reaction, it’s not funny.”

“While I confess I do enjoy watching your reactions, no, it’s a viable lead. At least that’s what my sister said, and at this point, I have no reason to doubt her.”

Ed ducked his head and raked his fingers through his hair. “Let’s forget I said cut to the chase. Back up and walk me through it. Like you would for any dumb hick town cop.”

“You do take all the fun out of it,” Colfax said. “Here’s the deal. My sister admitted it was more than a lack of child support. She never told me, but her ex was harassing her.”

“Did she get a restraining order?”

“In Texas, it’s called a protective order.”

Ed gritted his teeth. Easier to let Colfax do things his way. He nodded in what he hoped was an
I bow to your superior knowledge
kind of way and waited for Colfax to continue. After working on his coffee for a bit, the detective continued.

“My sister claims she knew nothing of
Paula’s Places
until someone sent her a letter.”

U.S. Postal Service. The old-fashioned way. Much harder to trace.

“Skipping a few steps here,” Colfax went on, “the person who sent the letter had connections to the court system and knew about Rudy’s continued abuse and failure to pay support. Whoever this person is pointed my sister to the blog and gave her the way in, telling her how to leave a comment and sign up for the newsletter. The way you did, but the person—whom my sister insists is unknown to her—also gave her the next phase, the one you’re trying to crack.”

Ed weighed his words before speaking. “Did your sister admit to taking out a hit on her ex?”

Colfax sighed. “She swears she never went that far. She claims she did follow through on the one questionnaire, but abandoned taking it any further when they sent their response. She was as surprised as I was to find out her ex was dead.”

“I don’t suppose she saved the response—was it emailed as well, or did it come via the postal service, too?”

“Snail mail. And she shredded it.”

“Too bad. I can see pros and cons either way,” Ed said. “Harder to trace an actual letter, although that does leave hard evidence. But you can’t hack into snail mail.”

“On the other hand, there’s nothing to stop someone from saving an email, or printing it out,” Colfax said.

“And, on yet another hand, snail mail means someone knows your address.”

“Not hard to find,” Colfax said. “And that message was mailed to her where she works, not her home.”

“But if this group relies on snail mail, that would explain why it was so hard for Sam Fischer to trace things. Do you think Paula is scouring the court records, drumming up business?”

“I’m not sure what I think at this point.” Colfax waggled his empty coffee cup, and Ed tossed it in his wastebasket. “Clearly, there’s the blog comment point of entry, which you discovered. There’s no reason to think that’s the only way in, though.”

“What do you suggest we do?” Ed asked.

“First, I think you and Sam need to establish some kind of cyber history for your victim.”

“She’s working on it.”

Colfax drummed the desktop. “We need a way to light a fire under these people. People in a hurry make mistakes. You said your victim was from Leadville?”

Ed shook his head. “No, because I didn’t have the magic Gertrude Sidebotham code. All I did was suggest they do an article on Leadville.”

“Great,” Colfax said. “Here’s what I suggest. You put your victim in some big city, where it’s not an
everyone knows everyone
kind of town.”

Ed heard the unspoken
Like Mapleton
, but ignored it. “So, someplace back east? Manhattan?”

“Boston,” Colfax said. “I’ve got some connections there. Anyway, you tell these people your victim comes to Leadville once a year for a week, like clockwork. Maybe he goes camping. That way you don’t need an address.”

Ed scribbled notes. “I’m liking this. Camping—better yet, hunting—opens up a lot of accident opportunities. And they have to act fast or they’ll miss their chance.”

“Unless they turn it down because it’s too short a turnaround, but from what Sam tells me, based on the background she set up, your victim is asking for a killing.”

The two men ironed out more details, then Colfax stood. “You can take it from here. Get Sam to make any changes to your victim’s life story, since nobody’s looking for him yet. I’m going to use some overdue vacation time and head out to Texas.” He gave Ed a brusque nod and strode out the door.

Ed sat at his desk and stared into space, waiting for the snarled thoughts in his brain to untangle. Mary Ellen’s objections rose to the forefront.

Should he drop the case? It was his sideline puzzle, after all, not part of a Mapleton investigation. But if someone was getting away with murder, and he could set wheels in motion to put an end to it, surely it was worth some more of his time. The wrinkle in the revised plan was how to tell Mary Ellen he was going to go to Leadville in the near future, and play a deadbeat dad.

He pulled up the email with the form from
Paula’s Places
, filled in Gertrude Sidebotham’s name in the referral box, then called Sam to make sure Dennis Donovan’s cover was solid before filling in the rest of the fields.

“As a rock,” she said. “In fact, I created a Facebook account for him, and he’s been telling everyone how excited he is about his annual camping trip in Leadville.”

He held his breath, counted to five, and hit
Send
.

Friday morning, Ed stood in front of the row of dark wooden tables separating him, both physically and symbolically, from the assembled Town Council. Mayor McKenna had the center seat. Two of the members leafed through the papers in front of them. Ed’s report, he surmised. Hadn’t done their homework, or avoiding eye contact?

The mayor nodded to the chairs across from the tables. “Have a seat, Mr. Solomon.”

Ed took the aisle seat in the first row. He had his own copy of the report, which he placed on the seat beside him. The door opened at the far end of the room, and Ed turned to see Charlotte Strickland, notepad in hand, taking a seat in the last row.

Great. Whatever went down would be plastered all over the
Weekly
.

The mayor fiddled with a yellow highlighter and glanced at the paperwork in front of him. “First, thank you for stepping in to fill Chief Hepler’s shoes during his absence. From this report, it’s obvious you’ve been doing a careful and conscientious job.”

“Thank you, Mayor.” Ed waited, sensing a
but
to come.

“Given we have had no word from Chief Hepler,” McKenna continued, “I—we—felt it prudent to begin a search for a new Chief.”

“Sir, I’m sure Chief Hepler will be back in plenty of time to resume his responsibilities.” Had the mayor decided to rescind the new contract he’d offered to Gordon—the one Gordon had ignored when he’d walked out?

“We—” the mayor gestured to the other men seated at the table— “would rather have some options ready rather than scramble at the last minute.” He paused, gave Ed a flash of white teeth. “You, of course, would be one of the candidates.”

“Sir, I—”

“No, don’t say anything now. This meeting is to go over your report.”

And there was the
but
Ed had been waiting for. If they liked what he’d written, a simple email or phone call would have taken care of it.

“First,” the mayor said, flashing another politician-worthy smile, “your numbers look very good.”

He’d thank Laurie for that one.

“Sir, I’d like to point out that in almost every instance, I was following the same guidelines put in place by Chief Hepler. There didn’t seem to be a need to make changes, given I’m only filling in until he returns.” Ed refused to use any wording that indicated Gordon would
not
be back.

“Understood. However, it’s some of the questions you answered that I’d like to go over.” He flipped pages, then stopped. “First, on page six, your idea of a Mapleton website has merit. I agree with your points that people choose vacation destinations via the Internet these days. However, on page eight, you propose a social media specialist. What’s that supposed to mean, and why do you think it’s worth our city’s limited resources to implement such a position?”

Ed bought a moment to collect his thoughts—not that he hadn’t been collecting them since the mayor had called this meeting—by picking up his report and making a show of turning to page six.

He stood. “Mayor. Council members. I’m the first to admit I’m behind the times when it comes to what’s out there on the Internet. I use email, and can Google as well as anyone my age, but most of my police work relies on our law enforcement databases. However, it was recently brought to my attention how much information people are willing to share—information that could impact our city and our police work, both positively and negatively.”

Ed went on to explain about Adele Menard’s Facebook post. “Anyone who follows her feed knows there was a bear roaming the streets of Mapleton, and the discussion got quite lively. I’d like to see something along the lines of a Mapleton Facebook Page, where people could ask questions, post pictures, and provide some positive PR for the city.”

“What’s to stop this PR from becoming negative?” a council member asked.

“That’s one job our specialist would be doing,” Ed said. “Nothing can go on the page until it’s moderated by one of us. But it could be more than cat pictures, or meals at Daily Bread or Finnegan’s. People who might otherwise never admit they’ve done something stupid—even illegal—will brag about their exploits on their Facebook pages, or Twitter accounts. By having someone—using an anonymous account, of course—checking social media, we might be able to work proactively as well as reactively.”

Papers rustled at the rear of the room, and Ed had visions of
Police Department Spending Time and Money Playing on Facebook
as the title of Charlotte Strickland’s next article.

He took a breath and continued. “Your honor, this is an idea—which is the way you worded your question. It’s not even a proposal yet. There are things to consider, but I know you’re always looking for ways to attract tourists to Mapleton, and showing them some of the things to do here via the media most of them are already using might be one way to give our economy a boost. A website could help, too. As for the social media specialist, that’s a separate suggestion. It wouldn’t need to start with a full-time staff person—we could rotate the assignment and have an hour or two dedicated to monitoring the accounts each day.”

“Sounds like a volunteer job to me,” another council member said. “Why pay a sworn officer to dick around on social media?”

Mayor McKenna glowered in the man’s direction, tilting his head almost imperceptibly toward Charlotte Strickland. The councilman reddened, then stared at the reporter. “Poor choice of words on my part. Perhaps ‘spend time’ would have been better. I apologize.”

Charlotte’s snicker carried to the front of the room. “So noted.”

Ed had saved his trump card, the one that played to the mayor’s desire to have Mapleton play with the big boys, and now was as good a time as any to bring it out. “I’m basing this idea on what’s done in the larger forces in the larger cities. Many have detectives working to monitor things like chat rooms where sexual predators entice underage kids.” At the frowns on the council members’ faces, he hastened to add, “Which is why I wanted to take a lower key approach. And my rationale for using sworn officers is because they’re trained to know what’s legal and what isn’t. However, I can see a citizen’s patrol volunteer relaying anything they deem suspicious to our officers.”

The mayor squared off the sheets of the report. “Thank you for your input, Chief Solomon. We appreciate your time.”

Ed knew a dismissal when he heard one. The fact that they hadn’t laughed his idea out of the building was a good sign, he assumed. And, if there was something positive he could leave behind when he moved back into Officer Solomon territory, he’d be satisfied to know he’d done some good.

However, the mayor’s words, that they were searching for Police Chief candidates, left Ed with an uneasy feeling. Would he accept the job if it were offered? What would Mary Ellen say?

He grabbed his copy of his report and strode toward the door. He had one hand on the knob when Charlotte Strickland called his name.