3 Swift Run (17 page)

Charlie’s brows arched, but before she could say anything, the phone rang. I snatched
it up. “Swift Investigations, Gigi Goldman speaking. May I help you?”

An official-sounding voice on the other end asked me if I was the owner of a red BMW
and read off a license plate number. It’s not like I had my license plate numbers
memorized, but I said, “Yes.”

Charlie looked a question at me, and I mouthed, “Dexter’s car.” She scooted closer,
and I held the phone away from my ear a bit so she could hear.

The speaker identified himself as a CSPD patrol officer and said, “Your car’s been
involved in a hit-and-run accident at the First and Main Town Center. Do you know
who was driving the vehicle?”

“I reported it stolen last night,” I said, grateful that Charlie had made me do that.

“You’ll need to come down here and make arrangements to have it towed and deal with
insurance issues,” the officer said in an uncompromising voice.

“Was Les— was anyone injured?”

“There were no reported injuries. The driver fled the scene, according to witnesses.”

“Come on,” Charlie said when I hung up. “I’ll drive. You’re shaking too much to keep
the car on the road.”

“What could have happened?” I shrugged into my parka and zipped it. “What if Les is
injured? Maybe he has a concussion and doesn’t know who he is or how to get help.
He might need me.”

Charlie gave me a not-so-gentle shove out the door. “He divorced you and ran off with
another woman, Gigi. He doesn’t get to ‘need’ you anymore.”

“You don’t stop caring about someone after more than thirty years of marriage just
like that, you know,” I said, my cashmere gloves making it hard to snap my fingers
on “just like that.”

Charlie rolled her eyes. “Then the sooner we get there and have a look around, the
sooner you can play ministering angel. Although, personally, I’d be more tempted to
play Dr. Kevorkian.”

20

We got to the First and Main Town Center on the east side of Colorado Springs twenty
minutes later. It wasn’t hard to figure out where the accident was. A police car with
its lights twirling blue and red in the gray morning was parked half on the sidewalk
near the Cinemark Theater. A tow truck driver was hooking up to the rear of the Beemer.
The front half of the car was covered with a huge
COMING ATTRACTIONS
sign advertising an R-rated movie with werewolves, aliens, and Adam Sandler. Ick,
yuck, and ugh. The sign had apparently fallen on the BMW after it rammed into the
metal post holding it. I knew what I would see if I looked under the sign: thousands
of dollars’ worth of damage I couldn’t afford to get fixed.

“Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks,” Charlie said with false heartiness as we parked
and got out of her Subaru.

“Maybe it’s worse.” I’m not normally a gloomy person, but this week was getting me
down. I signed some paperwork for the police officer and the tow truck driver while
Charlie walked up to the crippled BMW. I didn’t know how I’d tell Dexter that his
car had been flattened by werewolves and aliens. I was about to join Charlie when
the movie theater manager came up, all waving arms and angry voice, to talk about
insurance and getting her sign repaired. I saw Charlie jerk open the car’s back door
before I let the manager drag me into her office.

When I came out, the police car was gone and so was Dexter’s car. Charlie stood on
the sidewalk, a zip-up folder under her arm, talking to a stocky man who was leaning
toward her in a way that made it look like he was sharing a secret. He wore a lumberjack
cap and boots, ready for the snow, and he had dark pouches under his eyes, as if someone
had glued on soggy tea bags. I wondered if he knew that Preparation H, the kind you
can get from Canada, would help with the puffiness.

He broke off when I got near. “Who’s this?” he asked suspiciously.

“My partner,” Charlie said in a soothing voice. “You were saying…”

“Yeah, then the guy takes off running toward the theater. He didn’t even stop to see
if he’d hurt anyone, and there were plenty of people around, I’ll tell you, including
a bus-f of seniors from one of those retirement centers who were here to see that
new Sean Connery movie. I thought he was dead. Anyway, like I say, the guy took off
running and the guy in the other car—at least, I think it was a guy, although it had
those smoky windows, so I couldn’t say for sure—zooms up onto the sidewalk and tries
to run down the first guy. He gets away by the skin of his teeth and ducks into the
theater with the clerks all yelling at him about not having a ticket, and the guy
in the black car takes off. Look, you can see the tire marks.” The man pointed to
marks on the sidewalk, where the water jets would be shooting up if it were summer.

“Do you know what kind of car it was?” Charlie asked.

“Something sporty. Foreign maybe. Black.”

“You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Kimmel.” She handed him a card. “Please call if you
think of anything else.”

“Is there a reward?” he asked hopefully.

Charlie shook her head, and he joined a woman I hadn’t noticed earlier, who was clearly
waiting for him.

“What was that all about?” I asked Charlie, shivering as the wind picked up.

“I’m not completely sure,” she said, staring after the man and his wife as they headed
for the Dick’s Sporting Goods. “It sounds to me like someone is after Les. From what
Mr. Kimmel and another witness I talked to had to say, someone deliberately caused
the accident, trying to run into Les’s car. I don’t know if they were trying to stop
him or kill him, although my money’s on the former since it’d be hard to kill him
in an area this congested and hope to get away.”

A frown puckered my brow. “I hope he’s okay. Where do you suppose he is?”

“Watching the latest
Hangover
movie?” She nodded toward the theater, then grabbed my arm as I started in that direction.
“Not really. He probably ran straight through the building and out the back exit.
He could be anywhere in the city, or halfway to Albuquerque by now.”

Snowflakes started to fall, and I stuck out my tongue to catch one as we returned
to the car. “What’s that?” I gestured to the folder under Charlie’s arm.

“Ah, this.” She held it up. It was a simple black leather-look folder, letter sized,
that zipped around three sides. “It’s not Dexter’s, is it?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never seen it.”

Charlie smiled triumphantly. “Then it must be Les’s. He bolted from the Beemer so
quickly he didn’t think to grab it.”

“What’s in it?”

“Let’s find out.”

We got in the car, and Charlie cranked the heat up. The zipper stuck when she tried
to open the case and then gave with a ripping sound. “It’s better than Christmas,”
I said, leaning sideways to peer into the case.

It contained a tablet of paper elastic-banded into place on the right-hand side and
a pen slotted into the middle. On the left-hand side, letters and papers poked out
of two flat pockets. We shuffled through the four or five sheets of paper, most of
which seemed to be hotel receipts. “Doesn’t look very useful,” Charlie said. She pulled
out the last item, an envelope addressed to Les in Costa Rica. When she shook it,
a newspaper clipping fell out.

I stooped to pick it up and held it so we could both read it. I’d noticed recently
that I was having to hold things farther and farther away to read them. The tiny,
smudgy print on the newspaper clipping was especially hard. I’d bought a couple of
pairs of reading glasses and hunted through my purse for some now. Charlie was done
with the article by the time I pulled out the retro cat’s-eye-shaped pink glasses
with a rhinestone pattern on the corners. If I had to look old, at least I could have
fun doing it.

“Interesting,” Charlie said as I read the brief article. It was about a murder in
Cheyenne, Wyoming. Robert Eustis, a wealthy rancher, had been poisoned with brake
fluid, apparently mixed in his Long Island iced tea, and died. Due to the ranch’s
remote location and the brutal winter weather, the body had gone undiscovered for
what might have been weeks. The police were calling his death a homicide and were
looking for Eustis’s wife, Amanda. “We need to make sure she’s safe,” the local sheriff
said, “and see what she might be able to tell us about Mr. Eustis’s unfortunate demise.”

I turned the clipping over but couldn’t find a date on it anywhere. “Whyever do you
suppose Les had this?” I asked. “He was never interested in any of those true crime
shows.”

“Good question.” Charlie put the car in gear and backed out. “Is there a return address
on the envelope?”

I picked up the slightly worn business-sized envelope and turned it over. “Nope.”
Peering at the postmark, I tried to read it. “It looks like it was sent from here,
though. I can make out ’ings, CO.’”

“Can you read the date?”

“Uh-uh.”

“I suppose Les could have been carrying it around for months, but I’ll bet it was
sent sometime the week before he disappeared. Why else would he bring it with him?
I say we get back to the office and see what we can find online about this murder
and Mr. Robert Eustis,” Charlie said, speeding up once we got back on Powers Boulevard.

*   *   *

The computer search was disappointing. We dug up the article and discovered that it
had been published in January three years ago. Further searching led to a couple of
brief follow-up articles and an obit with a photo of Robert Eustis. “He looked nice,”
I said, studying the photo of the gray-haired man, who had been sixty-three when he
died. He had gentle eyes and slightly overlapping front teeth. “Says here he’s survived
by his wife, Amanda, two children, and three grandbabies. So sad. He was predeceased
by his first wife, also named Amanda. Now, that’s weird.”

Charlie had printed out the follow-up articles and was reading them at her desk. “They
never solved the murder, and they never located Amanda Eustis the Second. I think
a call to the sheriff might be in order.”

She found a phone number in a matter of seconds and was talking to the sheriff moments
later. I listened in but didn’t get anything out of it other than Charlie’s one- or
two-word responses. She was on the phone less than three minutes and had a thoughtful
look on her face when she hung up.

“Well? What did he say?”

She gave me a considering look. “It’s what he didn’t say that interests me.” She paused.
“Are you up for a trip to Wyoming?”

I stared at her in dismay. “What? Why?”

“I think we need to talk to Sheriff Huff in person. He was cagey on the phone, wouldn’t
tell me anything we didn’t already know from the newspaper articles. It’s clear, though,
that there’s more to the story. I think he might give up more face-to-face.”

“But, Charlie, this rancher’s murder might not have anything to do with Les’s disappearance
or with Heather-Anne’s death or anything.”

“Maybe not, but my intuition says otherwise. I think this clipping is key. I think
it’s the reason Les left Costa Rica. A trip to Cheyenne will only cost us a day. I
asked the sheriff to fax us a photo of Amanda Eustis, but he says there isn’t one.
She only married Eustis a few months before he died, and apparently she was camera-shy.”

I ignored the last part. “I can’t be away overnight again. What will I do with the
kids? And now that Dexter doesn’t have a car to drive…”

“I’ll go,” Charlie said.

“You can’t drive all that way on your own,” I objected. “Not yet. Your bullet wound!”

She sucked in her upper lip, and I could see she was thinking about telling me she’d
be fine, but then she caved. “You’re right. I’ll find someone to go with me, do the
driving. I’d ask Montgomery, but he’s made it as clear as vodka that he’s not coming
near this case. Maybe Albertine or Dan.”

“I’m sorry I can’t go,” I said, feeling guilty. “I’m not pulling my weight.”

“Don’t worry about it. You went to Aspen, and there’s plenty you can do here. You
might start by talking to Hollis Sloan, the guy I saw Heather-Anne with at the Y whose
wife accused her of theft. Then you can track down Patrick Dreiser and see what he’s
been up to recently, like maybe plotting revenge on Les and killing Heather-Anne to
get back at him. On second thought”—she gazed at me assessingly—“that can probably
wait until I get back.”

“I can talk to him,” I said, drawing myself up straighter. Dreiser might make me a
little nervous—he was obnoxious and threatening after Les left—but I could talk to
him in a public place. It’s not like he’d get back at Les by doing anything to me,
I thought sadly, since Les had divorced me and obviously didn’t care what happened
to me. If he’d cared, he would have left us a little something more than the house,
the Hummer, and a half interest in a just-scraping-by PI firm. “Should we give the
newspaper clipping to the police?”

“Good idea. Fax it and the other papers from Les’s folder to them and tell Detective
Lorrimore about someone trying to mow down Les. I doubt she’ll be able to do anything
without more info, but you never know what piece of data might bust a case open.”

I made a note. “Thank you for doing this, Charlie,” I said. “I know we’re not even
getting paid to find Les anymore.”

She shrugged away my gratitude. “It’s not like we have any other big cases at the
moment. If we have to find the real killer in order to keep Dexter out of prison,
that’s what we’ll do.” When I teared up, she added, “I can’t have my partner distracted
by running off to the state pen twice a week to visit her son. Think of all the billable
hours we’d lose.”

“I wouldn’t—”

She walked past me and shrugged into her navy peacoat.

“Where are you going?”

“To find someone to drive me to Wyoming, and to visit Mr. ‘My Pecs Are Bigger than
Your Boobs’ Brodnax to find out what else he wasn’t telling me.”

21

Charlie headed for Brodnax’s Wolf Ranch house, keeping one eye on the sky. The snow
had stopped for the moment, but steel-wool clouds obscured the top of Pikes Peak and
the Front Range. The forecast predicted the bulk of the snow for tomorrow, and Charlie
wanted to be out of Cheyenne well before the first snowflakes fell. She called Albertine
as she drove, but the woman turned down the opportunity to drive to Wyoming in the
face of an approaching blizzard.