The Candy Cane Cupcake Killer (25 page)

“Oh, I'm just a business associate, although I'd like to think Nate is a friend, too. I've spent a lot of time talking to him over the past few months.”

Something about that jogged Phyllis's memory. She said, “You're the oil-and-gas man.”

Holbrook grinned and said, “Yeah, I guess you could call me that. I'm a landsman. I was hoping to do some business with Nate, but . . .” He spread his hands and shrugged. “So far it hasn't worked out. And after this terrible business with Barney McCrory . . .” Holbrook shook his head. “It's hard to believe Nate would do something like what they're accusing him of.”

“He didn't,” Phyllis said flatly. “I'm sure of it.”

Holbrook frowned slightly and asked, “What did you say your name was?”

“Newsom. Phyllis Newsom.”

“The detective lady!” Holbrook grinned again. “Sure, I've read about you.”

“Well, you can't believe everything that you read. But I believe in Nate's innocence.”

“And you're trying to clear his name?”

“That's right.”

“Well, more power to you,” Holbrook said emphatically. “If he's innocent, somebody needs to prove it.”

“I'm going to do my best.”

“I'm glad to hear it.” Holbrook leaned his head toward the staircase. “Since Nate's not here, why don't I walk you back out?”

“You're sure?” Phyllis stepped over to the office door and tried the knob. It was locked, all right, and no one responded
to her knock on the wood beside the frosted-glass panel. She sighed.

“Maybe he's out at the McCrory ranch,” Holbrook suggested.

“Possibly,” Phyllis said, without mentioning that Allyson had said he might be there if he wasn't at the office. She didn't know if he would want the landsman pestering him today. Holbrook obviously held out hope that he could still make a deal for a gas lease on the ranch.

She headed for the staircase and Holbrook fell in alongside her, still chatting pleasantly. When they reached the sidewalk outside the building, Holbrook said good-bye and turned to his right. Phyllis went the other way toward her Lincoln.

Something made her glance back. She saw Holbrook get into an SUV, back out of the space, and drive away. Something about the vehicle struck her as familiar. It had the letters
AAA
painted on the driver's door, and under each letter was a name written in fancy script:
ARTHUR
,
ALAN
, and
AMOS
.
ANDERSON ENERGY
was written under the names.

Phyllis stumbled a little, but not because she had tripped.

She had just caught her balance when a vehicle pulled up in the street beside her and a voice asked, “Mrs. Newsom, are you okay?”

Phyllis looked over to see the van belonging to the TV crew. Felicity Prosper had rolled down her window to ask the question. The reporter went on. “It looked like you almost fell.”

“I'm fine,” Phyllis said. “Were you looking for me?”

“Yeah, we went by the house, and Mrs. Wilbarger said we might find you up here. Were you talking to Nate?”

“No, he's not in his office. I think he's out at the McCrory ranch.” Phyllis took a deep breath. “And that's where we're going.”

Felicity frowned a little and said, “What?”

“I need to ask Nate a question, and you might as well go along, if that's all right.”

“Sure, climb on in.” Felicity looked behind her. “Josh, don't just sit there. Open the door.”

The van's side door slid back, and Phyllis got in and sat next to Josh. From behind the wheel, Nick grunted and said, “Where'd you say we were goin'?”

“The McCrory ranch,” Felicity told him. “I figured we'd shoot some footage out there sooner or later, so the location is programmed into the GPS.”

“Umm,” Nick said. He pushed buttons on the little instrument mounted on the dashboard.

Felicity turned in her seat to look back at Phyllis and asked, “What is it you're going to ask—” She stopped short and her eyes widened as she took in the expression of grim determination on Phyllis's face. “Oh, my God,” she said. “You've solved the case, haven't you?”

“That's what we're going to find out,” Phyllis said.

A
multitude of thoughts cascaded through Phyllis's head as Nick drove out of town, following the GPS's directions to Barney McCrory's ranch. As she had hoped, once the missing piece was in place, everything else started to click together. She needed confirmation from Nate about a few things, but if his answers matched up with what she was thinking, then she knew who had killed Barney McCrory and why.

Proving it to the satisfaction of the police and the district attorney might be another story altogether, but if she could present the whole theory to Chief Whitmire and Detective Largo, she thought they would be intrigued enough to investigate.

Felicity's voice from the front seat broke into her thoughts.

“Come on!” the reporter said. “You've got to tell me what you figured out.”

“Yeah,” Josh urged. “I'm really curious, too.”

Phyllis considered for a moment, then nodded and said,
“All right. But remember this is just a theory. It's mostly supposition, connecting dots that may not be really be connected.”

“With your track record, I doubt that,” Felicity said. “But go on.”

“The key is that I was wrong all along about one thing: Barney McCrory's death wasn't an accident. He was the intended victim right from the start, so the shooter didn't miss.”

“Who had a reason to kill McCrory except Nate?” Felicity asked.

“Clay Loomis and one other man: Frank Holbrook.”

Felicity and Josh stared at her in consternation. It was Felicity who asked, “Who?”

“He's a landsman who works for a gas company owned by the Anderson brothers.” Phyllis turned to Josh. “Can you look them up on your phone?”

“Sure.” The young intern took out his phone and started pushing buttons.

While he was doing that, Phyllis went on. “Holbrook had been trying for months to get Barney McCrory to agree to give the Anderson brothers a gas lease on his ranch.”

“We know that,” Felicity said, impatience creeping into her voice. “That's what caused the trouble between McCrory and Nate that the police are using as the motive for murder. You're not saying Holbrook wanted that lease so bad he shot McCrory over it, are you?”

“I'm not sure he would have done that right off the bat,” Phyllis said, “but once Loomis got involved, he must have sweetened the deal for Holbrook.”

“I've got the Anderson brothers,” Josh said.

“Arthur, Alan, and Amos,” Phyllis said, remembering what she had seen written on the door of Frank Holbrook's SUV.

“Yeah. Good grief.”

“Three
A
's,” Phyllis said. “That's what they use as the company logo, too. I saw it on an SUV out at the precinct barn when we went to talk to Loomis. I thought it was from Triple A, you know, the ones you call when you have car trouble. But I'll bet it was Frank Holbrook talking to Loomis about the next step in their plan.”

Felicity said, “So Loomis and Holbrook are working together to do what, exactly?”

“Get that gas lease. The Anderson brothers lease all their trucks from Loomis.” Phyllis held up the paper she had gotten from the woman who worked at Cross Timbers Transport. “I know that for a fact. If they were to put a bunch of gas wells on the McCrory ranch, they'd need a lot of trucks for the operation, and Loomis is in desperate need of the money such a deal would bring in.”

“You know,” Josh said slowly, “that makes sense.”

“Holbrook wanted to sign up the lease, too, and when Loomis offered him a cut of the money he'd make, that was the tipping point. Holbrook agreed to kill Barney McCrory for him.”

“So Holbrook is the missing piece you talked about,” Felicity said.

“I think so, yes.”

“That's a fine theory, but it's spun practically out of thin air! You're basing it on seeing an Anderson brothers truck at Loomis's precinct barn. It might have been somebody else, on some other business entirely, instead of Holbrook.”

“No, I'm sure it was him,” Phyllis said. “Now that I've met the man, I'm certain he's the one I saw leave the office, get in that pickup, and drive off just as we were getting there.”

“Loomis and Holbrook will deny it. It'll be your word against theirs.”

“Other people out there at the precinct barn must have seen Holbrook, too.”

“What of it? Loomis has a business arrangement with Holbrook's employers. They can just say that Holbrook was out there talking to him about something else. About those truck leases, more than likely.”

“Holbrook is a landsman. He doesn't have anything to do with leasing trucks for the Andersons.”

“That you know of,” Felicity said. “Look, I know I'm playing devil's advocate here. I don't want to shoot holes in your theory—really I don't. But if it's not going to hold together, we can't put our faith in its chances of saving Nate.”

Josh said, “What about the rifle? You haven't even addressed that part of it, Mrs. Newsom. How would Holbrook know about the rifle, and why frame Nate? Even if you're right about Loomis and Holbrook plotting to get Mr. McCrory out of the way, it seems like they'd want Nate around to sign that gas lease they were after.”

“The rifle is one of the things I want to ask Nate about,” Phyllis admitted. “As for why they would frame him, Nate can't sign the lease. Legally, Allyson inherits the ranch, so she would have to agree to it. Knowing how strongly her father was opposed to the idea, she might decide not to go along with it, to honor his memory if nothing else. But if she lost Nate, too, by his being convicted of her father's murder and sent to
prison, she'd be more likely to be desperate enough to agree to anything that would bring in money to pay for lawyers and appeals.”

“Maybe,” Felicity agreed with a dubious frown. “But somebody would have to be awfully diabolical to come up with that line of reasoning, don't you think?”

“Not so diabolical that I'd put it past Clay Loomis.”

“So if Loomis is the mastermind, how come he almost got killed, too?”

“You're talking about the runaway horses?” Phyllis asked. “Mastermind or not, he couldn't have predicted they'd do that. He was supposed to have the perfect alibi, sitting right there in the carriage with Barney McCrory when the fatal shot was fired. What happened after that was just a stroke of bad luck that left Loomis genuinely terrified for his life. But as it worked out, that just helped to shield him from suspicion.”

“It sounds like you've got most of it covered,” Felicity admitted with a shrug. “If you can close one or two loopholes, that is.”

“Is that explosive enough for you?” Phyllis asked.

“If we can prove it, yeah.”

Phyllis hoped it wouldn't be much longer before they could do just that. They had been following a farm-to-market road with a tall white boundary fence running along the left side. Up ahead were a couple of stone pillars flanking a gate.

As they came closer, Phyllis saw the words
M
c
CRORY RANCH
on an arched sign above the gate. On the other side of the gate, a gravel road twisted up into the rolling, tree-dotted hills. Both sides of the wooden double gate were open. A
cattle guard across the entrance would keep the ranch's livestock from straying.

“This is it,” Felicity said.

Nick turned and drove through the gate onto the gravel road. Phyllis saw a house and some barns and corrals on the third hill back, about a mile off the main road. Because Nick couldn't drive very fast on the narrow, twisting road, it took several minutes to get there.

A large, level parking area lay between the house and the nearest barn. The house was a sprawling rock-and-frame structure that looked like it had been there a hundred years or more. Phyllis thought it was very impressive. The barns were much newer, probably built to replace the original ones from when the ranch was established.

A car that probably belonged to Nate was parked near the house, but Phyllis didn't see anyone around. She and Felicity and Josh got out of the van, and as they closed the doors, Nate came through one of the open doors of the barn. He stopped short, looking at them in
surprise.

“Mrs. Newsom,” he said. “What's going on? Is there some new development in the case?”

Phyllis and her two companions hurried forward to meet him. A glance back told Phyllis that Nick was still in the van, doing something with his video camera. She wasn't technologically adept enough to have any idea what the problem might be.

“Nate, I need to ask you some questions,” Phyllis said. “We've come up with an idea, but I need some more information to know if it's possible.”

“Sure,” he said. His face was haggard, showing the strain he'd been under. “Why don't you come on in the barn? We can get out of the wind to talk.”

There was a fairly cold wind blowing on the hilltop, so Phyllis nodded and said, “All right.”

Nate turned and led the three of them into the barn, where the metal walls blocked the wind. It felt warmer inside, whether it really was or not.

“Now, what's this about needing to ask me some questions?”

“They're about Frank Holbrook.”

Nate's forehead wrinkled as he frowned. He said, “The gas-lease guy?”

“That's right. He came to your office fairly often for a while, didn't he?”

“Yeah,” Nate replied with a shrug. “He was there once or twice a week, it seems like.”

“Including the day you had your rifle with you, so you could drop it off at the gunsmith's shop.”

Phyllis phrased it as a statement, not a question, but Nate's
eyes widened slightly as he answered, “Yeah. Yeah, now that I think about it, you're right. We even talked about it. He said he did a lot of . . . target shooting.” Nate's voice had gotten hollow. “Oh, hell!”

“Did you tell him where you kept it at home?” Phyllis asked quietly.

Nate lifted both hands and pressed them to his temples as he closed his eyes and moaned softly. He said, “I think I did. I seem to remember telling him I never used it much, so I kept it put away. He's just such a friendly, talkative guy, I never even thought about it again.”

“He's a salesman, in a way,” Phyllis said. “They know how to get information out of people and then turn it to their advantage.”

Nate stared at her. He asked, “Are you saying you think Frank Holbrook is the one who shot Barney?”

“He knew you had a rifle, he knew where you kept it, and he had a reason for wanting Barney out of the way.”

“Over a blasted
gas lease
?”

“That's only part of it,” Phyllis said. “The rest involves Clay Loomis.”

Since she had laid out everything for the others earlier, it was all straight in her mind now, so it took her only a couple of minutes to piece together the theory for Nate. As she was finishing, he started to nod.

“It could have happened that way, I suppose. But how do we prove it?”

“I think we have plenty to get the police interested,” Phyllis said. “I know both Chief Whitmire and Detective Largo have too much integrity to just ignore this. If they start looking
into it and put some pressure on Holbrook and Loomis, there's a good chance they'll turn on each other.”

A voice from behind them said, “That weasel Loomis would, for sure.”

Phyllis turned and stiffened as she saw Frank Holbrook standing in the shadows of the barn, pointing a revolver at them.

“Oh!” Felicity said. “Oh, crap!”

“Frank, what are you doing?” Nate said as Holbrook came closer to them.

“Something I never wanted to do, buddy,” the landsman said. “I really liked you, you know. Loomis just made me too good an offer to pass up. I've got gambling debts to pay—those damn Cowboys—and the money he offered me was enough to keep me from getting my legs broken. It's a real shame about your father-in-law, though. If that old buzzard had just had the good sense to sign off on that lease, none of this would have had to happen.”

Josh's jaw hung open in fear. With a visible effort he forced it closed and then asked, “You . . . really did kill Mr. McCrory, like Mrs. Newsom said?”

“Not much point in denying it now, is there, kid?” Holbrook motioned with the gun. “All of you bunch up a little more there, okay?”

“To make it easier for you to shoot us?” Phyllis asked. She was as scared as any of the rest of them, but she knew she had to keep that fear under control. “Does committing one murder make it that much easier to kill again?”

“I didn't come out here to kill anybody but Nate,”
Holbrook snapped. “And he was going to commit suicide, if you know what I mean. Out of remorse over killing his father-in-law. That would have wrapped everything up nice and neat.” Holbrook sighed. “I didn't expect to find the rest of you here, too. Now I suppose he's got to go on a killing spree and get rid of you three first before shooting himself. It'll really be a terrible tragedy, especially this close to Christmas. I can't risk you stirring everything up, though. I don't trust Loomis not to crack.”