House Standoff Read online

  I didn’t find a book showing photos of Wyoming, but on an end table near a recliner I saw a photo in a silver frame partially hidden by a lamp. I picked it up. It was a photo of Harriet and her husband taken years ago when they were both very young. Harriet’s hair was dark and wavy and framed her face. She looked so pretty. Her husband was a thin guy, several inches taller than her, and he had curly dark hair and a crooked smile. He wasn’t handsome but still very appealing. They were standing in front of a restaurant but the name of the restaurant was only partially visible. All I could read was “gretti’s” but I couldn’t see the letters in front of the “g.”

  Anyway, Harriet found the book she was looking for and came back into the sitting room and when she saw me holding the photo she said, “What are you doing with that?” She practically shrieked at me and I could see she was upset. Maybe she was afraid I’d drop the photo or just angry that I’d picked it up in the first place. I said something like “Oh, look how pretty you were. And your husband, he looks like he’d be a lot of fun. Where was this taken?”

  I could tell she was still upset but she said, “Cleveland, thirty, forty years ago.” I pointed at the restaurant in the background of the photo and asked, “Is this the restaurant you used to own in Cleveland?” She said, “No, that’s just where the picture was taken, somewhere on the street. I can’t remember where or who took it.” The thing is, I got the distinct impression she was lying, but about what, I have no idea. After that she pretty much shooed me out. I hope I haven’t damaged our relationship by being so nosey.

  Carly Turner needs to get some help. I was walking back to my room after picking up a few things at the convenience store and she was waiting in the parking lot in her car. As soon as she saw me, she got out of her car and yelled at me, “Are you having an affair with my husband?” She was obviously drunk. I asked her what on earth she was talking about and she said she saw me talking to Jim the other day, standing outside my room. And I had been talking to him. I’d just come out of my room to go for another horseback ride and I saw him in the parking lot, by his car, talking to someone on his phone. When he saw me, he walked over and said hello. He told me that Sam Clarke had called him to the motel because a couple on the second floor had gotten into a screaming match and Sam had called Jim to settle them down before they killed each other. So he and I just chatted for a bit, and he went on his way—and I told Carly this. She said, “I don’t believe you.” For a moment I thought she was going to attack me, in which case I would have been forced to kick her ass, but she didn’t. She said “You stay away from him,” and got into her car and roared off, almost getting t-boned by a semi as she pulled onto the highway. The thing that occurred to me after she left was: How did Carly know Jim had talked to me? Had she been following him?

  DeMarco almost missed a short paragraph that said:

  I don’t know why, but sometimes I just can’t seem to stop myself. I called John Bradley and asked him about the photo I saw in Harriet’s apartment. I couldn’t believe what he told me.

  He came to the last entry in Shannon’s journal.

  I talked to Harriet tonight, to tell her I’d probably be leaving soon, then, like a dummy, I had to go and show off and tell her what I’d learned. When I did, I thought she was going to faint. I told her repeatedly how I admired what she’d done but I could see that it had been a mistake to say anything. I scared her to death.

  It’s time to leave. Carly Turner thinks I’m screwing her husband, Lisa Bunt thinks I’m going to write a book about her affair with Handsome Jim, and then I almost go and give the person who’s helped me the most a heart attack. It’s definitely time to get back to California and write the book. I’ve gotten everything I need here. I can see the land and I can see the characters in the novel. It’s time to go home and do the work.

  DeMarco flipped the last page over and sat back to think. He had three female suspects and one male, the male being Jim Turner. Either Jim Turner or Lisa Bunt might have killed Shannon because they were worried about her exposing their affair, in which case Turner would lose his job and Lisa would lose whatever chance she had of inheriting Hiram Bunt’s fortune. Then there was the drug-addicted maid. She could have killed Shannon to steal her laptop and sell it to pay for drugs. That seemed unlikely though, that the girl would murder for whatever price she could get for a pawned laptop. But then addicts aren’t known for being rational. The final possibility was Turner’s alcoholic wife. Carly Turner could have killed Shannon in a drunken rage because she believed Shannon was trying to steal her husband from her.

  Whatever the case, he had no proof that any of these people had killed Shannon. He also had no way to eliminate suspects. He could question them to see if they’d tell him where they were the night Shannon died, but the murderer would lie to him and the others most likely wouldn’t answer his questions. Nor could he think of any way to force law enforcement to get a warrant to do ballistics tests on any weapons they might have. For one thing, a member of law enforcement was one of his suspects and DeMarco wasn’t about to break into the homes of three people to see what firearms they had. And after what had happened to Sonny Bunt, if the murderer hadn’t already disposed of the murder weapon, he or she certainly would have done so by now.

  He needed to get Harriet to talk to him. Shannon had confided in her and Harriet knew more about the people in this snake pit than anyone. She might know if Shannon, in the last few days of her life, had done something or learned something that could have pushed one of them over the edge. He didn’t know what it was that Shannon had learned about Harriet—obviously something to do with her past—but whatever it was, Shannon had said that she admired Harriet for what she’d done. Being admired wasn’t a motive for murder. Yeah, it was time to force the ol’ gal to talk to him.

  29

  DeMarco had dinner at Harriet’s, again taking his time eating so that he was the only customer left when it was time for the café to close. When Harriet presented him with his bill, he said, “Harriet, you have to talk to me about Shannon’s murder.”

  “No, I don’t. And it’s time for you to get going.”

  “Yeah, you do. If you cared about her, and I know you did, you have to help me catch the person who killed her.”

  Before Harriet could respond, DeMarco said, “Shannon kept a journal, like a diary, while she was here in Waverly.”

  When he said this, Harriet’s reaction surprised him. She blurted: “Oh, my God! What did she say about me?”

  “She said how much she liked you, and how she enjoyed talking to you, and how grateful she was for the help you gave her. “

  “That’s all she said?”

  “Yeah, pretty much, but I’m not here to talk about you. I know from reading her journal that there are four people who might have killed her. Two of those people are Jim Turner and Lisa Bunt because they were afraid that Shannon might reveal that they were having an affair. Then there’s Sam’s daughter, Lola. She stole Shannon’s earrings and, because she’s a junkie, she might have killed Shannon to steal her laptop and whatever cash Shannon had in her purse. Lastly, there’s Carly Turner. She’s got a drinking problem and she thought Shannon was having an affair with her husband. She even confronted Shannon, accusing her of the affair.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Harriet said.

  “That was almost the last entry in Shannon’s journal, Carly Turner showing up at the motel and accusing her of sleeping with Deputy Jim. Anyway, I think you saw something the night Shannon was killed. Right before Sonny Bunt was arrested, I told you that they might have caught the guy who killed her and you acted surprised when I said it was a guy. Like you knew it wasn’t a guy. So talk to me, Harriet. Tell me what you know. You owe it to Shannon.”

  Harriet closed her eyes briefly, then finally, reluctantly, sat down at DeMarco’s table. The woman looked bone-weary and ancient, and DeMarco felt momentarily sorry for the way he
was pressuring her.

  “I don’t know who killed Shannon,” she said. “The night it happened, I was sitting here in the café in the dark because I couldn’t sleep and I saw someone knock on her door. I saw the door open and the person who knocked walked into her room, then just a minute later she walked back out. I thought Shannon must have invited her in but I didn’t know why she left so soon. I thought that maybe Shannon gave her something she came to collect. I didn’t know until the next morning that Shannon had been killed.”

  “So who was she?”

  “I don’t know.” When she saw the look of disbelief on DeMarco’s face, she said, “Hey! Look across the highway at the motel. You can’t make out a person’s face from this distance, or at least I can’t, not with my eyesight. But it looked like a woman to me, one with dark hair. The thing is, in case you haven’t noticed, is that Lisa Bunt, Carly Turner, and Lola Clarke are all about the same height and build, and they all have dark hair. But I don’t know if it was any of those three who came to see Shannon that night because, like I already said, I couldn’t see her face. So I can’t help you, DeMarco. I don’t know who visited Shannon that night.”

  “You could have told the sheriff that it was a woman.”

  Harriet said, “What good would that have done? Do you seriously think that Jim Turner was going to investigate either Lisa or his wife?”

  DeMarco left a few minutes later, satisfied that Harriet had finally told him the truth, although there was something off about why she didn’t tell Jim Turner what she’d seen. DeMarco wondered if the reason could be that she hadn’t wanted to get involved because of whatever Shannon had learned about her past.

  Whatever the case, he could only think of two things he could do to expose Shannon’s killer. One of those was to let it be known that Harriet had seen the murderer. If he did that, the killer might go after Harriet—and that was unacceptable. He couldn’t use an old woman for bait.

  But the person he could use for bait was himself.

  30

  A couple of years ago, an enormously wealthy couple in Boston was killed in a plane crash. Their fifteen-year-old daughter miraculously survived the crash and became the beneficiary of a five-billion-dollar trust fund. The girl was also the goddaughter of John Mahoney and DeMarco had been sent to Boston to check on her and stumbled into a case of murder and embezzlement. It turned out that the lawyer managing the family trust fund had been stealing from it, had sabotaged the girl’s parents’ plane, and then fled to Montenegro to keep from being arrested. She’d picked Montenegro because the country had no extradition treaty with the United States.

  To bring the woman to justice, DeMarco employed the help of an ex-Boston cop named Tommy Hewlett. And because the lawyer couldn’t be legally extradited from Montenegro, DeMarco, with Tommy’s help, illegally extradited her. That is, they kidnapped her and shipped her murderous, thieving ass back to Boston where she was arrested and convicted. Tommy Hewlett was currently employed by a security company in Boston; he was competent and experienced and carried a gun. DeMarco figured that Tommy might be useful insofar as keeping him from getting killed.

  DeMarco called Tommy, told him what was going on, and generally what he had in mind. Tommy said, “Things are never simple with you, are they, DeMarco?” Nonetheless, Tommy said he’d tell his boss he needed some time off and would be in Rock Springs tomorrow.

  The next afternoon DeMarco was waiting for Tommy at a restaurant on the outskirts of Rock Springs that had parking spaces long enough for RVs. The restaurant was also conveniently located near a gun shop where DeMarco had purchased a bulletproof vest. That is, the vest was bulletproof provided he wasn’t shot with a .50 caliber bullet. Considering what he was about to do, and knowing how Shannon had died, the vest seemed a prudent investment.

  About the time Tommy had predicted he’d arrive, DeMarco saw a white Jeep Grand Cherokee pulling an Airstream travel trailer roll into the parking lot. There’d been no accommodations available for Tommy in Waverly so he’d rented the light Airstream in Salt Lake, along with a vehicle with enough power to tow it.

  Tommy walked into the restaurant dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and work boots, attire which DeMarco had suggested so he’d fit in better with the folks in Waverly. Waverly wasn’t a place where you saw men in suits and ties. Tommy was almost sixty, a lean six-footer with gray hair, blue eyes buried in wrinkles, and an aquiline nose. The first time DeMarco met him, DeMarco thought he looked like an old-time Western gunfighter; the fact was that in twenty years on the Boston PD, Tommy had never fired his weapon in the line of duty. DeMarco was just assuming he knew how to use a gun.

  Tommy sat down at DeMarco’s table in the café and ordered a piece of apple pie and a glass of milk. He said, “So. We got a plan here?”

  “First, we need to discuss your fee. Naturally, I’ll pay for your flight and the rental fees for the Jeep and the trailer, but I don’t know your daily rate.”

  “For you, my daily rate is zero. We both know I owe you.”

  DeMarco was relieved to hear this. This adventure was putting a major dent into his savings account between flights, lodging, lawyers, and accessories like the bulletproof vest, which had cost him four hundred bucks. As for Tommy owing him, that was true. Tommy owed him big time.

  DeMarco met Tommy under odd circumstances, those circum­stances being that Tommy had been trying to blackmail John Mahoney. After Tommy retired from the BPD, he’d taken a job on Mahoney’s security detail, functioning as Mahoney’s driver for a few years, and while performing that job learned about one of Mahoney’s affairs. Mahoney, a man who’d had many affairs, wouldn’t have been particularly damaged if the affair had been revealed, but the woman involved would have been.

  DeMarco had been sent to pry Tommy off Mahoney’s back and learned that Tommy had fallen on hard times. After he left Mahoney’s service, he went to work for a Boston security company as an investigator, but then his wife contracted cancer and her medical expenses wiped out his savings—after which he tried to drink himself to death and was fired from his job. At the time DeMarco met him, Tommy was about to lose his house and blackmailing Mahoney had been an act of desperation and completely out of character for the man. DeMarco, however, took pity on him and gave Tommy a second lease on life by getting the security company to rehire him so he could help DeMarco in Montenegro. He also got a banker, one who wanted some political suck with Mahoney, to give Tommy some breathing space when it came to the loan he had to repay to keep his house.

  So yeah, Tommy owed him.

  As for DeMarco’s plan, it was pretty simple: Tomorrow he was going to poke a stick into a hornet’s nest and see which hornet tried to sting him. Tommy’s job was to swat the hornet if it came too close.

  31

  Bright and early the next day, DeMarco strolled into Jim Turner’s office and plopped down into the chair in front of the deputy’s desk.

  “What do you want?” Turner said. “And why the hell are you still here in Waverly?”

  “To answer your second question first, I’m still here because you haven’t arrested Shannon Doyle’s killer. As for what I want, I don’t want anything. I’m just here to tell you what I’m planning to do.”

  “And what’s that?” Turner said. His tone and relaxed body language made it clear that he wasn’t concerned about anything DeMarco might do.

  “Jim, as I’m sure you know, I got a copy of a journal that Shannon Doyle had been keeping while she was here in Waverly. In this journal, she wrote down all her observations and opinions and the gossip she collected on the fine folk of Waverly.”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Come on, Jim. Of course you knew about the journal. That night when I was smacked on the head at my motel, a copy of the journal was stolen. Now I can’t prove this, but I think there’s a very good possibility that you’re the guy who hit me.”

 
DeMarco had originally thought that Sonny Bunt might have attacked him to steal Shannon’s journal—but he now knew that Sonny hadn’t killed Shannon. And he figured that if Sonny had wanted to see the journal and stop DeMarco’s investigation, Sonny probably would have shot him in the back the way he had Hunter. It now seemed more likely that Turner or one of his three female suspects had attacked him. He knew it wasn’t Lisa Bunt, as she’d still been in the restaurant when he’d left that night. So too had Lola Clarke; she’d been having dinner with her dad. Which left Carly or Jim Turner. He’d seen Turner in the restaurant but hadn’t noticed if he was still in the bar when he left. And of the two Turners, a large, healthy male struck him as a more likely suspect than a small female.

  Turner came out of his chair and pointed a finger at DeMarco’s face. “Hey! Are you accusing me—”

  “Jim, I’m going way beyond accusing you of mugging me. That journal made it clear that you’ve been having an affair with Lisa Bunt, and what that means is that both you and Lisa had a motive for wanting Shannon dead. If your affair became known, you’d lose your job, Hiram would divorce Lisa, and she’d have wasted the last ten years being married to the old goat.”

  “That’s a goddamn lie!” Turner said.

  DeMarco didn’t know what part of what he’d said was a lie, but it didn’t matter. He said, “What I’m going to do is get the FBI or the Wyoming State Police to take over the investigation of Shannon’s murder. This has happened before when local police forces are proven to be corrupt or poorly managed. They bring in the feds and they set up some kind of task force or commission to oversee things. Well, that’s what’s needed here, my man. You can’t have the guy in charge of Shannon’s investigation screwing one of the main suspects.”