Elizabeth C. Main - Jane Serrano 01 - Murder of the Month (8 page)

“—particularly the sodium content,” I finished. I didn’t want to tread the same old path this morning. We could argue about nutrition anytime.

“Exactly. Well, I’m glad you’re at least pretending to listen. Tyler was really paying attention last night though. I could tell. Sometimes it gets discouraging when no one will hear me out about really important things.”

Choosing Morris’s Rule Number Ten about silence from my arsenal, I said nothing. It would be unkind to tell her to lighten up, but hearing her out could usually be translated into being harangued about one “important” cause or another. Her unremitting seriousness was wearing. Meanwhile, I’d just keep quiet and let her think that Tyler’s young brain was eager to absorb her insights into human nature. After all, he had probably even been willing to eat the frosted bran bars, before Wendell took care of them. Maybe next he’d join her for meditation. Let her think, in her naivete, that he just hungered for knowledge. In the long run it was probably better for everyone if she didn’t realize the electrifying effect she was likely to have on young men. All I cared about right now was deflecting her from her cause of the week, Gil Fortune.

Her next question told me that it wouldn’t be easy. “Did you catch the KPHD news this morning?”

“Well, no. Did you?” The last I heard, Bianca hadn’t hooked up the old black and white portable TV that had come with the trailer. “Can you get a signal way out here?”

“I strung an antenna and wire to a juniper tree on the slope out back.”

“How clever of you. I wouldn’t have thought …”

“Dad showed me once. Anyway, it worked well enough to get the news. Gil was on, claiming he was at an open house for a place he and Vanessa were thinking of buying, claiming he loved her, claiming blah, blah, blah. Obviously, not true.”

“What’s obvious is that he was somewhere else.”

“He claims he was somewhere else.”

“Fair enough, but no doubt someone saw him at the open house.” I was determined to take this step by step and force a logical conclusion. “Why do you assume the police haven’t checked that out?”

“They’re all friends of his.”

“Of course they know him, but they’d still follow standard police procedure.” I could hear my voice rising, so I collected myself before continuing. “If they did, and someone saw him …” I paused to let the logic sink in.

Bianca shrugged. “That doesn’t explain Wendell’s growl. You’re just hung up on Gil being a prominent member of this community—”

“He’s lived here his whole life. He’s the district attorney.”

“Does that disqualify him from being a killer? Maybe he went into a career in law because he had these dark impulses.”

“Oh, Bianca, that pop psychology is just, just … “

“Stupid?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, you didn’t, for once. Well, Mom, did you see Vanessa fall?”

“No, and neither did you … or anyone else.”

“But I did see it when Wendell growled at Gil. That’s secondary evidence.”

“Evidence? Wendell is a dog. Dogs sometimes growl.”

“Not Wendell.” We both looked involuntarily at the black dog stretched out asleep in the dust. He didn’t look capable of moving, let alone menacing anyone.

“Maybe Gil stepped on his tail.”

“Nope, he didn’t even touch Wendell. Gil walked up to Vanessa after the WEG meeting when I was talking to her and Wendell growled, clear as anything. Wendell knew even then … and the next day Vanessa was murdered.”

“Vanessa fell. The growling the day before was a coincidence. You’re making something out of nothing. Gil could sue you for slander!”

“And I could be hit by lightning, but this is different. This is a matter of justice.” She was in her Joan of Arc crusader mode now. “I can’t believe you’d want me to walk away from this. Look, it’s easy to slip in and out of sight at an open house. Who’s to say for sure where Gil was at any given time?”

“Let Arnie—”

“Arnie grew up with Gil.”

“Yes, but it’s his job to investigate.”

“You believe that he’ll really do it?”

“Give him a chance.”

“Give me a chance, too. You’ve made it clear many times that you don’t believe in the intuitive powers of animals. Fine. If I hadn’t seen Wendell’s reaction to Gil after the WEG meeting, I might not have given the “accident” a second thought either, but animals are—”

“Animals. Please, just let Arnie conduct his investigation.”

“I’ll watch the noon news and see what they’re saying, but I can’t promise anything past that. Do you want to stay and help me cut out quilt blocks?”

“Quilt blocks?” Her shift of focus took me by surprise.

“For the senior center. I told them I’d bring some for one of their classes.”

“What a nice thing to do,” I said. I was encouraged that her often misplaced energy was being directed at something so beneficial. Maybe her positive impulse would carry over through the noon news.

After we’d spent several hours cutting yards of colorful fabric to the proper size, Bianca set up a couple of rickety folding chairs outside the trailer. It wasn’t quite time for the noon news yet, but already the morning coolness had evolved into the usual hot August day on the high desert.

“Carrot juice?” Bianca stuck her head out of the doorway as she spoke.

“Um, sure.” I’d start with being agreeable about juice and work my way up to murder accusations later.

“I have V-8, too … “

“Even better.” I smiled. She was trying to meet me halfway. Bianca returned, glasses in hand, and sat beside me in the tiny patch of shade at the side of the trailer. “Thanks,” I said. “Do you ever wish you’d left the trailer in town, where there were trees to cool it?”

“
I like the silence out here, and the view.”

We drank our juice and contemplated the dry soil and sagebrush that stretched in all directions. “It’s silent all right,” I offered, “and it does have a stark beauty.”

“It grows on you. Really, it does. I watch the hawks during the day and listen to the coyotes at night.” Bianca stroked Wendell’s glossy black fur as she spoke. “And of course I have Wendell. Good thing this trailer started out in town though or I wouldn’t ever have met him.” She laughed. “When I first saw him, it took me a while to figure out just what I was looking at. His dark fur blended perfectly with the shadows under the trailer. Finally I got close enough to figure out that I wasn’t looking at a monster, just a one-eyed dog. You were waiting for me, weren’t you, boy?” Wendell thumped his tail.

“He must have had an owner at some point.”

“Not that I could find. That trailer had been sitting empty for a long time. I checked at the office with Richard, who was supposed to be the park manager.” Her tone left no doubt that Richard, like most people Bianca met, needed some shaping up. “When I showed up to ask about Wendell, Richard was eating his lunch, which consisted entirely of a store-bought frozen peach pie. Can you imagine?” She drank some carrot juice and shook her head. “After I demanded to know the name of the criminal who had left that poor dog to fend for himself, I warned Richard about the preservatives that go into frozen pies. Have you read those labels?”

“No, and I’m guessing that Richard hadn’t either.” I resisted the urge to call him “Poor Richard.” Bianca on a tear was something to behold.

“You’re absolutely right. He didn’t have much to say for himself, but he swore that he didn’t know anything about Wendell. By the time I left, he did say he’d try to improve his eating habits.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Turned out to be a pretty nice guy. I went back later and dropped off some fresh broccoli and a pamphlet on preservatives. When I moved the trailer from the park, he was real friendly.”

“Broccoli works wonders.” Bianca was so focused on her story that she let that one pass. Usually she picked up my sarcasm better than this.

“I wrote a letter to the
Juniper Journal
about responsible pet ownership, but of course they didn’t print it.”

Bianca had already written to the
Juniper Journal
twice since her arrival in town this spring: the first time about the officious police cadet who told her she couldn’t cool her feet in the swan fountain in nearby Bend’s Drake Park, and the second time about the lack of organic foods available locally. Her letter about pet ownership had been returned bearing a scrawled note informing her that only one letter to the editor per person per month was allowed.

“I know they just made up that rule because they don’t like my ideas, but I’m sending letters anyway whenever I have something to say. Even if they don’t publish all of them, at least the editor gets to read them.”

I said nothing and concentrated on the kindness my daughter had shown to a stray dog. “It took you a few days to coax him out from under the trailer, didn’t it?”

“And another week before he’d trust me enough to get close. Now he follows me everywhere.”

I noted his sleek sides and glossy coat. “He’s filled out a lot.”

“But he doesn’t know it. He still goes at every meal as though it’s his last. You’re looking good now though, aren’t you, Wendell? Oops!” She turned to me and whispered, “That was insensitive of me. His eye, you know.”

Wendell certainly hadn’t reacted, and I couldn’t believe Bianca actually thought her choice of words might hurt her one-eyed dog’s feelings, but maybe she did. She had told me before that she had originally thought of naming him “Winker,” for obvious reasons, but feared he might take it wrong. Then she’d thought of “Patsy,” since for some unknown reason that seemed to her the perfect name for a dog, but his gender ended that plan. Finally she settled on “Wendell” because she thought the name gave him a certain dignity.

Now she gently stroked the underside of his smooth muzzle, studying the concave socket where his right eye used to be. “So, how did you end up under a trailer in Juniper, Wendell?” she asked. He looked at her steadily with his one good eye, but said nothing. It had taken most of Bianca’s small cache of money to have Wendell checked out at the Sagebrush Veterinary Clinic, but she had done it without asking me for help. She was radiant at Dr. O’Hara’s pronouncement that Wendell would be fine once he got a few good meals in him.

Bianca had a good heart, and Raymond Morris urged me to remember that with his Rule Number Five:
Focus on every admirable trait your child possesses
. Bianca had many admirable traits, and as we moved inside to watch the local noon news, I hoped that she’d add tolerance for Gil Fortune to the list.

Tina Marquette’s blonde good looks were somewhat diminished by the make-up she wore, causing me to miss part of her words as I tried to figure out whether our local channel had actually intended their reporter to look like a raccoon with a fever, or if that had merely been an unfortunate side effect of the lighting. Tina read the lead-in to the news too fast, stumbling over words in her excitement at being allowed to report something more exotic than the dates for the upcoming Oregon State Fair. I could hardly blame her. She looked fresh out of school, like most of the KPHD reporters who came and went so rapidly. Some showed up eventually on Portland channels and some quickly dropped off our screens forever. She rocketed through the predictable “the investigation continues” phrases from Sheriff Arnold Kraft about Vanessa’s fall as though she had a hot date waiting off camera. If she did, I hoped she planned to remove a pound or two of make-up before she met the young man, so she wouldn’t scare him.

When she muffed the words “rising Republican star” while describing Gil, I mentally moved her into the category of those reporters we wouldn’t be seeing for long. Mercifully, she finally finished her segment and introduced Jamie McBride, an experienced reporter who had been sent to interview Gil at his home. Jamie was more coherent than his young colleague, though his awe at covering this story still showed through.

“
I’m speaking to Gilbert Fortune, Russell County District Attorney, at his home just outside Juniper, in the heart of Central Oregon.” After a badly-choreographed gesture in the direction of the snow-capped Three Sisters mountains visible in the background, he continued. “However, this beautiful country contains hazards as well as the breathtaking vistas you see behind me. It was here that Vanessa Fortune, Gilbert Fortune’s wife, fell to her death only yesterday from a trail along the three-hundred-foot deep Crooked River Gorge.” He turned to Gil and spoke with hushed earnestness. “Mr. Fortune, please accept our condolences on your loss, and our thanks for agreeing to talk to us at such a painful time.”

Gil nodded his head in acknowledgment and faced the camera. The grainy picture on Bianca’s black and white TV screen made his eye sockets appear deep-set and hollowed, giving him a villainous look. No wonder Wendell had growled. I’d growl at this scary stranger myself. Too bad that Bianca was looking at this image of Gil instead of the handsome, smiling man I used to see at Thornton’s, before he defected to Megabooks Plus! to buy his books.

“See?” Bianca said. “He even looks guilty.”

“It’s just your TV,” I replied. “Besides, he probably didn’t get any sleep last night.”