Страница 7 из 43
“I don’t imagine it was in one of those fancy office buildings you used to work in. He looks more like a construction worker than a programmer,” Bo
“Tempting after what I’ve been through today, but no thanks. I need to go into town for a new door in a bit. It’d be my luck I’d get stopped by a cop.”
She gave me her Elvis look again. “One little drink won’t get you drunk,” she said before her phone started ringing.
Bo
Margot is Bo
***
The drive to the building supply store on the other side of town gave me time to reflect on my life and my decision to turn down a good-paying programming job. I thought that was all behind me until Bo
I met Julie the previous summer when she had been investigating a rash of bear and elk poaching in the hills behind my home. She was so cute with her red ponytail sticking out the back of her warden’s cap that I fell for her before she even spoke. She saved me from being arrested that day when she and her team found a planted compound-bow in my motor home. Julie noticed I was left-handed, and the bow was made for a right-handed person. My vision still gets blurry whenever I think of her.
Fred tired of catching bugs, or whatever it is dogs do when they stick their head out of an open car window, and put his head on my lap. I didn’t have the heart to push him away, even though he would soon be drooling on my leg. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was thinking of Julie too, when my cell phone rang. It was all I could do to get Fred off my lap and pull the phone out of my pocket; I nearly sideswiped the car next to me.
The other driver honked her horn and showed me her middle finger before I finally managed to turn on my phone. It was Bo
“Jake! Thank God I got you. The cops are here asking a bunch of questions.”
“They came anyway?” I asked, waving to the girl who had just saluted me. “The nine-eleven operator acted like I was bothering her.”
“No! Not the sheriff, Jake. It’s a couple homicide detectives.”
I made a quick U-turn and headed back home.
***
“So where are they?” I asked as I jumped out of my Jeep after parking it in her driveway.
Bo
Suspecting Bo
I sat down in the rocker next to her. “It’s okay, Bon. You have an alibi for the night of the murder. Me and Fred will vouch for you.”
Fred looked up and barked at the mention of his name. He knew Bo
“Would you do that for me, Freddie?” She asked, with the hint of a smile.
“You can bet your next pension check on it,” I answered for my speech impaired dog, silently praying it didn’t come to that. I wasn’t in the habit of perjuring myself, nor was Fred.
Her smile had become a certified grin.“My, what a strange voice you have, Fred.”
It made me smile too. “I guess I deserved that, but tell me what the cops said to you. We may have to find you a lawyer, muy pronto.”
Although Fred and I were on the wagon, Bo
The detectives played the good-cop, bad-cop routine on her in an effort to get her to confess to Shelia’s murder. The cops weren’t buying the sweet, old-lady routine; not after Craig had told them how Bo
She tried to tell the cops about how Craig beat Shelia, and that he should be their number-one suspect, but they weren’t interested. They didn’t quit badgering her until she’d said she needed a lawyer.
I waited for her to regain her composure with the help of Mr. Daniels. “I don’t think it was Craig anyway, Bon.”
“Of course it was him. Who else could it be?”
“Think about it, Bon. Craig told the television reporter he had been watching the CU game with a friend, and found Shelia dead on his return home. Craig is a mean SOB, but he doesn’t strike me as dumb. He must know the cops will check out his alibi, so it only follows that someone else killed Shelia. My guess is she was killed for her copy of the book, and when it failed to be the key copy, the murderer went looking for another — mine.”
The evening sun illuminated every wrinkle in her sixty-nine-year-old face. “The bald guy with tattoos and no sleeves? The guy who broke into your house?”
***
That was when I decided to find Shelia’s killer. It was bad enough the guy stole my copy of Tom Sawyer and trashed my house, but I couldn’t let them pin a murder on this old widow. I had to get him before the district attorney decided to go after her.
CHAPTER THREE
Between Bo
It wasn’t until the next morning that my plan started to come together. We were on our way to the building-supply store again before a family of skunks, or some other unwelcome visitors, decided the downstairs busted door was an open invitation to make themselves at home. What little traffic we encountered was in the opposite direction, weekend tourists headed to the lake, which gave me time to think without exercising the defensive driving skills required in Denver.
The plan was simple. On Monday, I would stop at the bookstore on my way home from the job in Bailey and try to get a list of the people who had been at the reading. I remember signing a guest register of sorts, so I could only hope Sleeveless did too. It wouldn’t be easy, but once I eliminated the feminine names and everyone I knew, I should narrow the list down to less than a half dozen. But checking even five or six names could be tedious.