Sign Off (Caught Dead In Wyoming, Book 1)

Chapter Six

She sipped her coffee, but the mug didn't hide her satisfied smile.

"Gina, since you're sure the official version-that Tom Burrell killed your husband-is wrong, what do you think happened?"

"He could have just up and left," she said without interest.

"Would it be like Foster to disappear? Where would he go? And why?"

Even less interested, she shrugged.

I tried a new angle. "How did you and Foster meet?"

"I was dealing in Reno. He worked security, but he wanted to be in law enforcement. We got married, came here a year later when the job opened up in the sheriff's department. I didn't want to come back, but he wanted that job." She bit into a cookie. "And now he's gone, one way or another. And I won't be doing any crying over Foster Redus."

*   *   *   *

"Well? What do you think?" Mike asked as he drove through the dark. We were taking a different return route, one that curved farther west and crept up the bottom slopes of the mountains. "About Gina and what she said about Tom and Mona and Foster."

Dark has a volume, a texture, in Wyoming that I don't remember anywhere else. Maybe it's because there's so much of it, trying to fill that eternity of sky.

I looked over at him, his eyes intent on the headlight's narrow band of light. "Interesting that you said them in that order, isn't it?"

He frowned. "Because that was the order of her interest."

"Mmmm." Noncommittal sounds are very useful.

"You aren't saying it, so I will. It's clear Gina was-is-crazy about Tom Burrell. God, you live in an area practically all your life, you think you know everything there is to know, and then you find out all this stuff under the surface. It's scary."

"Oh, I don't know. It would be boring if everything was just out there for everybody to see. You'd know as much-or as little-about your mailman as you did about your husband."

Come to think of it, that had a certain appeal. But I suppose that depended on your husband. And the mailman.

"Well, Gina sure didn't seem to care to know anything about her husband or his whereabouts. How could she be married to a man and just not care about his running around?"

"I can believe she doesn't care now. Whether she cared in November, who knows? Maybe she did care then-enough to kill him. Or maybe she stopped caring a long time ago." Maybe Gina's caring and loving wore out along with the furniture. Or maybe returning to Cottonwood County rekindled an obsession with Burrell. Or maybe that only flared to life in the vacuum created by Foster's infidelity. "But she didn't realize it, not until his actions showed her the man he'd become, so different from who she'd married . . ."

Mike was cutting quick, curious looks at me. I started talking again to fill the silence of his interest.

"Did you catch what she said about Mona and Tom Burrell?"

"Yeah. That's old gossip, that Mona went after Tom and got bitter when he didn't make the big splash she'd expected. But that's nearly twenty years ago."

"So Mona's been disappointed by a man before. If Redus gave her hopes for the kind of cushy future we heard about from Marty Beck, would Mona let him get away? Or maybe not being the only woman in his life would have been enough for Mona to act."

I slued around on the seat. "You know, Paycik, all this talk about caring reminds me that you haven't told me why you care what happens to Burrell."

He hitched his shoulders-either a shrug or settling back.

"When I was maybe eight, my dad took me to a high school basketball game. Tom Burrell was the star. Everybody in the gym watched him. All the cheerleaders fluttering around him, all the other big kids fawning on him, even the adults listening to him."

"And you wanted to be just like him?"

"Oh, yeah." His half smile faded. "But it's more. I wanted the things he had, sure. But I truly wanted to be just like him. He took it all in, yet none of it seemed to touch him. I sensed that as a kid, but it wasn't until I was out of Cottonwood County, and seeing how some guys reacted to all the chances to screw up your life, that I realized what Tom Burrell was."

"But he never really left, did he?" Not the way Mike had, finding success far beyond Sherman. And he would leave again, seeking out a new kind of success. As much as he loved ranching, his ambition clearly was in television. "He didn't finish college, and he's never gone anywhere else from what I hear. But you made good out there, and you're not done with that."

He opened his hands on the steering wheel, holding it with his thumbs.

"I had a reputation in college and the pros for being real level-headed. My folks sure as hell tried to make me that way. But there were times I thought, how could they possibly know what I was facing? Then I'd find myself thinking, 'What would Tom Burrell do? How would he act if the wife of an agent offered a signing bonus not written up in any contract?' Then I'd follow the advice Tom never knew he gave me." He glanced at me. "Weird, huh?"

"I've heard weirder. So you dragged me out here because you want to clear your hero's name?"

"And want to be around you-want to see you in action. To learn."

His ambition definitely extended beyond Cottonwood County. "Uh-huh."

He grinned.

That little-boy-caught-but-surely-you-can't-yell-at-him-because-he's-so-charming grin. "Okay. And because I always wanted to play Sherlock Holmes. Aren't we supposed to look for certain things in the best Sherlockian tradition?"

"The old standbys-motive, opportunity and means-could be tough this time, even presuming Redus has been murdered-which is a big presumption."

He frowned again. If it sounds as if he didn't pay much attention to the road, that's true. We'd encountered precisely one pickup since leaving O'Hara Hill. He could have aimed the hood ornament at the center line and it wouldn't have much mattered. "Because there's no body?"

"Yup. Without a body or an eye-witness, you don't know cause of death, so you don't know who had means. And you don't know the time of death, so you don't know who had opportunity."

"So we'll focus on motive."

My turn to frown-and not only at his "we." "Motive's the murkiest, least reliable of the three. Lots of people have motive but never lift a gun or serve up arsenic."

"Uh-huh," he muttered, his attention diverted to the east side of the road. "We're passing Tom Burrell's land now-the Circle B."

"So is he a high-sider or low-sider?"

"High-side. But that's no guarantee in ranching these days. That's why he built up the road plowing and grading company his father started."

Marty had labeled Mike with the high-siders. Yet he'd said his father had "sold off" their ranch while he'd continued working on a ranch during his summers. And when he'd made money in football, he'd put it back into a ranch. It struck me that there could be a lot about Cottonwood County and its people-perhaps particularly Mike Paycik-I would never understand if I stayed holed up in Sherman all the time. But did I want to learn about them?

The vehicle slowed. "That's the road to Burrell's house."

Road? I saw only deeper black. Then, from the peripheral brightening of the headlights, I saw a goalpost-shaped structure made of logs with a sign swinging from the crossbar. A dirt track led between the vertical posts then made a sharp right and headed down an embankment.

He offered hopefully, "We could see if the light's on . . ."

I shook my head, but I noted the rest of the route back to Sherman, in case I wanted to follow it in reverse.