02-A Book to Die For (2014) Read online

  Julie picked up a brush she had brought from the bathroom and ran it through her hair several times before speaking. “Well, Sherlock, you just about nailed it. Except for Jonathan being involved, your guess was pretty good. Alec claims his father had no knowledge of the poaching or the meth lab. He’s trying to put all the blame on Mario and his crew, claiming it was Mario who chased him into the open pit when he tried to run away because he was afraid Mario was going to kill him.”

  I watched while she brushed her hair and caught myself wondering what she’d look like bald. “So what happens to Alec now?” I asked.

  “I’m sure the DA will either drop the making and distributing charge or at least reduce it to possession if he continues to help us.”

  “And Mario and his crew? I can’t wait until you interrogate them. I’m sure it was one of them who followed us from the mine when we went into Idaho Springs.”

  “Me too. My boss is still pissed about the broken radio and window, but Alec did tell us why Mario didn’t take his truck after chasing him into the hole. Alec had the keys in his pocket.”

  “Will you follow up on why he was working at Randolph Motors? I’m sure Chuck is involved too.”

  “That’s all out of my hands.”

  “But you’re still in charge of the poaching prosecution, aren’t you?”

  She stopped brushing her hair and looked up at me. Her eyes were wet. “No. I put in for a medical leave today. I called my doctor and told him to go ahead and set up the chemotherapy.”

  Without any hesitation, she dropped her robe on the floor, hitting Fred, who was sleeping at her side. “Come over here and carry me into bed. I need someone to give me a back-rub and tell me how much they love me.”

  The falling robe woke Fred. He looked up at the naked lady and went right back to sleep. Maybe he wasn’t human after all. Without another word, I did as I was told and carried Julie to bed.

  “Over to the left a little, Jake. Yeah, right there. God that feels so good,” she said in response to my attempt at a massage. “Something tells me you’ve had practice at this.”

  I let my hand slide down to the base of her spine. “Are you sure you don’t work for the CIA?”

  She turned over on her side and slapped my hand. “There’ll be plenty of time for that later,” she said and turned back on her stomach. “Now get back to work and what ever made you think I could work for the CIA?”

  “Well, you surely missed your calling. It seems I’m the one answering all the questions,” I said while going back to rubbing her shoulder muscles.

  “Keep that up and I’ll tell you everything. Now over to the right,” she said, twisting her shoulder so I could rub it too.

  “I keep coming back to Shelia’s motive. If it was the reward she was after, wouldn’t she have to tell you her name?”

  “Not if she called our hotline. We give a code that can be used to collect the reward once we get a conviction.”

  “But she didn’t call the hotline, so I assume she wasn’t after a reward,” I said while trying not to let my hands wander. “Shelia’s words at the hospital keep coming back to me. She said she would make me pay for Lonnie’s death, so maybe she thought I was the one doing the poaching and she wanted you to catch me. When you think about it, she never said it was Jonathan.”

  “I did catch you, didn’t I?” Julie said, rolling to her side to face me.

  Nothing can get a man’s testosterone level up faster than a naked woman in his bed. My ability to solve any mental puzzle vanished. So I did the next best thing and kissed her. “I think I’m the one who made the catch. By the way, have I told you lately that I love you?”

  Once again, it was Fred who woke me from my bliss. I put on the robe Julie had abandoned earlier and let him out. Glancing at the old windup clock on the wall I saw it had stopped at two-twenty. I couldn’t remember the last time I wound it so I checked the clock on the DVD player, forgetting my electricity was off. I had jury-rigged my generator to heat and pump water for Julie’s shower, but now it was off again.

  My cell phone finally confirmed what my four-legged clock had already told me. It was close to sunrise. Julie would be getting up soon to get ready for work and I couldn’t decide if I should wake her so we could continue where we left off the night before or let her sleep. I decided on the latter and took my place in the Queen Anne chair.

  Fred’s scratching at the door woke my sleeping beauty. She looked up at the wall clock with drooping eyes and reached for a pillow. “Wake me up at five, Mister Hunk, and I’ll have time to make us some breakfast before I get ready for work,” she said before covering her face with the pillow.

  I went over and kissed her on the neck, ignoring Fred’s scratching plea to come in. “Don’t worry about breakfast. It’s after five already. Get some more sleep and I’ll have breakfast ready when you get up.”

  The pillow went flying when Julie bolted upright. “After Five? Christ, I’m going to be late.”

  Fred had waited for me to make breakfast, but I wasn’t in the mood and filled his bowl with dry dog-food before pouring myself the coffee I had tried to share with Julie. She didn’t have time to chat and took a cup with her, so now it was just me and Fred; and he had gone back to sleep without taking a single bite of his food. He must have been dining on squirrel in his dreams, for his feet were going while he slept through several phone calls I made.

  The first call was to my sister back in Missouri to let her know about my engagement, and to ask for a loan. I had to get the lights turned back on if Julie was going to move in with me. Then I made a couple calls to some old friends to let them know I was ready to go back to work. My writing and handyman jobs would never be enough to pay for her insurance once hers ran out. I needed a job with benefits.

  The last call was to Bonnie, but not before placing an ad on Craigslist to sell my motor home. Bonnie claimed she was okay with me calling Julie after I learned Alec had come out of his coma. She told me I had done everyone a big favor because the other cops would have crucified him if not for Julie being there. She went so far as to invite me and Fred down for breakfast to show there were no hard feelings.

  Fred was wide awake now. He must have been eavesdropping and heard about the sausage.

  “What do you say, Fred?” I asked. “Want to get some breakfast at Aunt Bonnie’s?” He barked twice and ran to the door.

  “I must have really pissed him off this time,” I said after listening to Bonnie tell me about Chuck’s latest effort to make my life miserable. “Either that or he’s afraid I’m getting too close to the truth.”

  Bonnie put her unfinished breakfast down for Fred and refilled my coffee before I could wave her off. “Negligent homicide is a felony, Jake. Aren’t you worried? Maybe you can get a lawyer before the sheriff comes to get you.”

  I didn’t tell her I already knew about the DA. Julie had asked me to keep it quiet, so I tried to play it down. “Not really, Bon. I can’t imagine the DA trying to pin Lonnie’s death on me. I think Chuck is trying to get me to back off. Maybe he thinks I’ll run away and leave him alone. Whatever his reason, it really doesn’t concern me anymore. I’ve got a lot more important things to think about now that I’ve asked Julie to marry me.”

  Bonnie nearly slammed the coffee pot on the table and reached out to hug me. “Oh, Jake. I’m so happy for you. She reminds me so much of my Diane.” She let me out of her bear hug and sat back in her chair, and said in a less cheerful voice, “I know you would have fallen for her. She was so beautiful, but at last she can rest in peace.”

  Bonnie caught me off guard with her last remark. “At last she can rest in peace? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Did I say that? Silly me. I don’t know what I was thinking,” she answered while subconsciously wiping a few drops of the coffee that had splashed on the table. “But seriously, Jake, Chuck has some powerful friends. I don’t think you should take this so lightly.”

  I was completely out of
breath when I reached my cabin door. Bonnie lived the proverbial stone’s throw from me, but it was all uphill in the thin air of eight thousand feet and I ran the last ten or twenty yards when I heard my phone ringing. I had left it in my cabin in my haste to get a free breakfast earlier. Of course, the phone stopped ringing when I answered it, but there was a message. It was from my old boss. He wanted to talk to me about a job.

  Fred was over by the motor home when I finally got off the phone and went outside to see what he was up to. He was sniffing and scratching at the cargo door that gave access to the area under the couch. It was a couch that made into a bed with storage underneath it. He ran over to me when he saw me, barked and then ran back to the motor home.

  “What’s in there that’s got you so upset, Fred?” I asked and bent down to open the door.

  Chatter flew out of the compartment and headed for the nearest tree, with Fred one step behind. Poor Fred wasn’t fast enough and the squirrel made it to safety only to start teasing Fred with his chatter. I laughed, then went back to the storage compartment to see how the squirrel got in there in the first place.

  There were pine nuts, chewed-up foam rubber and paper everywhere. He had made himself at home. On second thought, maybe Chatter wasn’t a ‘he’ at all. She had made a nest with the paper. How she got in was a mystery. The storage compartment had been closed and locked. Then I saw where she had chewed a hole in the bottom of my couch. She must have come through the door damaged by Julie’s crew and chewed her way into the compartment.

  I recognized the paper she had made her nest with as Ray’s manuscript. It had to be the missing pages that my scanner ate the night I copied it. When I took a closer look I found it barely readable. What my scanner had failed to destroy, Chatter finished.

  Putting the pieces of the manuscript pages back together on my kitchen was like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle without all the pieces. I finished just as Julie came in the door.

  She put some groceries on the kitchen counter, and then came over to give me a kiss. “So this is how you spend your time when I’m not around. Let me guess. You found a new technique to overcome writer’s block.”

  I kissed her back; not the kind of kiss one gives a new lover. It was more of a married twenty-year kiss a husband gives when he’s keeping a secret from his wife. I didn’t want to tell her about the loan from my sister or the job offer until I had those birds in my hand. I had visions of getting on my knees with a ring I was going to buy with whatever money was left over from the loan once I caught up on my bills. I knew it wouldn’t be enough to actually buy the ring, but maybe my credit was still good enough to use the money as a down payment.

  “Not a bad idea, smarty pants. Maybe I should copyright it and call it Julie’s guide to finding your muse,” I said.

  She smiled and tried to read the puzzle. I got up from my chair and stood beside her trying to get a better view. I nearly jumped when she put her arm around my waist.

  “Does that say what I think it says?” she asked without taking her eyes off the scraps of paper that read, “The hipacrit johnson even fathered a child out of wed lock she was a pretty little thing they named Shelia and thats why we never wnet to church again.”

  “If you think it says the good reverend is Shelia’s father,” I answered.

  “Julie squeezed my waist, then let me go and went back to the groceries. “Hope you don’t mind eating off of paper plates. I’m not into washing dishes without a dishwasher.”

  I quit trying to decipher the rest of Ray’s masterpiece and went over to help her prepare our dinner. “You were right about the DA,” I said while opening a bottle of white wine I found in one of the bags. To my amazement, it was still cold. “Bonnie called to tell me Chuck’s trying to get the warrant you told me about. He just won’t quit.”

  Julie produced some plastic wine glasses from another bag and placed two of them on the counter. They were the kind with long stems and resembled the crystal I had borrowed from Bonnie. “Are you sure it’s Chuck?” Julie asked.

  “Who else could it be?” I asked while filling the glasses.

  “Well, there’s Jonathan and Shelia to start with, and what about that guy you put away for life back in Missouri? Didn’t you say he was well connected?”

  Julie had to remind me of Hal. He had murdered my brother-in-law last year and wasn’t even a suspect until I stuck my nose in to free my sister.

  “I doubt if it was Hal.” I answered after setting my wine down on the table and going to the door. Fred decided to join us and was scratching at the door to be let in. He must have smelled the chicken. He ignored me and went straight to Julie.

  “No, it has to be Chuck. Bonnie got the info from Margot. She thinks I should get out of Dodge until it all cools over,” I answered. I tried to make a joke out of the situation, but realized I sounded serious when I didn’t see her smile.

  Julie came away from the kitchen counter with two plates piled with rotisserie chicken and potato salad. She placed the larger portion in front of me then bent down to kiss me on the cheek. “Tell you what, Chicken Little, I’ll make a call and see if the DA got his warrant yet.”

  I started to say something, but she was already on her cell phone. I waited and listened the best I could. She was asking a friend at work to check the computer for any wants or warrants on me. I had forgotten that wildlife agents had the same access to computer files as the state police. She was telling her friend that it would look better if she didn’t run the check herself. The whole process didn’t take more than a few minutes.

  “Looks like you’re clean, Jake,” she said after hanging up and pinching me on my spare tire. “There are a dozen Martins with outstanding warrants, but none by the name of Jacob. I never realized what a common name I’ll be taking.”

  She smiled and added, “You know you really should get more exercise, Chubby.”

  I didn’t know whether to kiss her or pout. We weren’t even married yet and already she was acting like a wife. I chose the former and got up, held her head in my hands and kissed her like never before. Evidently it was too long a kiss. Fred broke it up by barking at us.

  I tried to act annoyed. “What do you want, you mangy mutt? Don’t tell me you’re jealous?”

  He wasn’t buying my act and barked again before running over to the kitchen counter. Julie had to laugh and broke away from my embrace.

  “Michelle said she’d call if any warrants show up,” she said while walking over to Fred.

  “Looks like you won’t have to leave me all alone in the dark by myself tonight,” she added with a wink.

  The nice thing about a Golden Retriever is you don’t need a garbage disposal. Except for the bones, the uneaten chicken didn’t go to waste. That one wink was all it took to carry Julie off to bed. Of course, knowing that I wouldn’t be arrested anytime soon, helped too.

  Another thing about Goldens is that they are always hungry. Fred had no trouble scarfing down the leftover scrambled eggs and sausage we had at Bonnie’s the next morning. I still didn’t trust my phone and the NSA so Fred and I walked down the hill to tell her about my reprieve from the clutches of the sheriff. She must be psychic, for breakfast was waiting for us.

  “How’d you know we were coming, Bonnie?” I asked when I saw the table all laid out with a huge plate of eggs, my favorite sausage links, orange juice and toast.

  She gave me her Cheshire grin and said, “When you didn’t leave yesterday after Julie came home early, and you didn’t follow her when she left this morning, I figured she must have fixed it for you somehow. After all, she is a cop of sorts.”

  Surely I was becoming paranoid; I started to wonder if Bonnie had my cabin bugged. Either that or Fred was blabbing all my secrets in exchange for food.

  “Please don’t tell anyone,” I said. “She could get in a lot of trouble. She ran a computer check for wants and warrants. Seems the DA didn’t get his warrant; at least not yet. But if I don’t find a way to shut Chuck d
own soon, I’ll be on the next plane to Mexico.”

  Bonnie’s grin faded. “Wait here, Jake. I have something for you that I should have given you long ago.” She was up and headed for her junk room before I could ask what it was. It was actually her second bedroom, but I peeked in one day on my way to the bathroom. It was filled from wall to wall and floor to ceiling with what most people considered junk: boxes of garage-sale finds, broken pottery, pictures, books, stacks of old newspapers… well just think of the word hoarder and you know what I mean.

  I helped myself to another cup of coffee while waiting for her to return. Fred followed me to the kitchen; I assume hoping for another handout. I was nearly finished with the coffee and ready to check on her, in case one of the boxes had fallen on her, when she reappeared holding some old newspaper clippings. She handed me a page of wedding announcements.

  “Okay, Bon Bon, I’ll bite. What am I looking for?” I asked when a quick scan didn’t mention Charlie Randolph.

  Bonnie looked at me like I’d just flunked a final, and then pretended to hit herself upside the head. “Silly me. Here, read this one first,” she said, handing me a yellowed paper. This time the announcement I was meant to see had been circled in faded-red ink.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery are proud to announce the engagement of their daughter to Charlie Randolph,” I read aloud. I didn’t have to finish. It would have taken too long for this announcement took up half the page. The name, Montgomery, looked familiar, so I reread the first clipping. Imbedded in all the verbose announcements was a short, one-liner announcing the wedding of Hazel Montgomery to Howard Carson.

  “So she dumped Chuck in favor of this guy, Howard?” I paused to check the dates. “Looks like three months later. What does this have to do with anything?”

  Bonnie smiled and went on, “Shelia’s maiden name is Carson.”