Shoot First Read online

  Far from acknowledging our aid, Shelton had seemed to view us as pesky encumbrances. On the plus side, he’d delivered a succinct stand-up interview all politicians should study if they want TV newspeople to love them.

  Now he heaved a sigh. “I wouldn’t have come in if I’d known you’d turn up. Now that you have, go away.”

  “I live across the street. I want to get into my driveway.”

  He turned to look at the house I’d rented sight unseen. It might have been a trick of the late August light, but it appeared to be leaning to the right.

  “You live there?”

  An entirely unreasonable surge of protectiveness for the place washed through me. “Yes,” I said shortly. “And I’d like to get into my driveway.”

  He didn’t move. “You happened to come home now? In the middle of the morning?”

  My brief knowledge of Deputy Shelton told me not to pull my punches. “No. I came because I am concerned about a police call saying someone died. Mildred, my neighbor, lives there.”

  He looked at me with squint-eyed concentration. A long enough stare that, even as the perennial runner-up in Danniher Family Stare-Offs, I started to feel restless. Damn. Shelton was even better than our family dogs.

  “I believe you are concerned for your neighbor,” he said at last. “Park in your driveway, and come see me.”

  “Deputy!” I called as he walked away. “I need the police vehicle moved.”

  He looked at the uncurbed slope on either side of the street. If this had been a cartoon, the bubble over his head would have said, “Why not go around like any ordinary Wyoming driver?”

  He looked at me, sighed, and waved to a whip-thin youngster wearing an SPD uniform.

  The next panel’s bubble would have said, “Because you’re not like any ordinary Wyoming driver.”

  My only solace, as I meekly drove through the narrow opening created by the backed-up police SUV, was that Deputy Shelton’s gesture to his colleague was as peremptory as the ones to me.

  I deposited my car in the rutted driveway, stopping short of the ridge that loved to catch low-hanging auto parts. After crossing the street, I bypassed a sheriff’s department four-wheel drive angled across Mildred’s drive and front yard, as if the driver worried someone might try a getaway in Mildred’s staid pickup.

  Even sporting that peculiar lawn ornament, Mildred’s house looked so much better than my rental it was hard to believe they were the same vintage.

  Eight to ten decades ago, most of the surrounding houses started with the same basic design as the Hovel. The front door opened into the living room, with a hallway leading to two small bedrooms and a tiny bathroom. The kitchen sat behind the living room with one corner large enough for a table and chairs, if you were a good packer.

  Some houses had bedrooms and bath on the left, some on the right. The Hovel is a righty, and Mildred’s is a lefty, making them mirror images as they face each other.

  Most of the houses had been improved, expanded, updated, and otherwise tweaked, some into a happy result, some not. The Hovel and Mildred’s house retained the original design, though Mildred’s had an attached garage.

  Yet they had not aged the same. Mildred’s house was Dorian Gray, and the Hovel his portrait, escaped from the attic to come sit across the street. The Hovel had the leaning thing I mentioned. Mildred’s house sat rock-solid straight, like a matron encased in whalebone.

  As I approached, the thin Sherman police officer left Shelton and scuttled past.

  Growling erupted behind me.

  I spun around to see Shadow advancing from around the corner of my house. The dog moved slowly toward the SPD officer, who immediately peeled off toward his SUV. Apparently satisfied, Shadow turned his focus to Shelton. Still advancing slowly, still growling, with his message loud and clear: Go away.

  “Shadow. Quiet,” I said.

  He flicked me a look but didn’t falter.

  I had no idea what came next.

  In the spring, I’d spotted a nearly skeletal stray lurking around the Hovel. I’d put out food and water, and he’d lurked closer, while remaining a thoroughly independent contractor. He was still wary of everything and everyone, except a third-grader of my acquaintance named Tamantha Burrell.

  Yes, we’d made progress in the matter of trust in the past few months. But obeying my commands? Fat chance.

  Still, I had to try.

  I stepped toward Shelton, whose only movement was slowly moving his hand to his gun.

  “Quiet,” I said again.

  The growling continued. I realized with a jolt that the dog — a little taller and longer than a border collie — had filled out, no longer looking pathetically scrawny. And that made him appear more dangerous.

  Another step and I was beside Shelton. I put a hand on his gun-touching arm. “It’s okay. He won’t—” But I didn’t know that he wouldn’t.

  “Shadow. Sit!” I tried in desperation, facing him, now two yards away.

  He did.

  He actually did.

  And he stopped growling.

  He still stared at Shelton with less than full confidence, but he was quiet and he’d sat on command. He’d sat.

  “Good dog,” I said, as if it would mean something to him. Then I pushed it. “Okay, Shadow. It’s okay.”

  His gaze came to me, returned to Shelton for a long moment, then he stood, turned, and trotted back toward the Hovel’s wild backyard.

  I felt discomfort in my left hand and realized my fingers clutching Shelton’s uniform sleeve had cramped. I released his sleeve, flexing my hand.

  “You’ve got him well trained,” Shelton said. His hand was no longer on the gun. “Saw him earlier. Didn’t growl, though. Not until you showed up. Probably thinks you need protection.”

  He chuckled. He might have meant it as a compliment that he found it laughable that I could need protection. Or not.

  It didn’t matter. My heart hammered with the adrenaline response to Shadow’s behavior and its potential consequences. I’d been scared the dog would be hurt. How nuts was that? Terrified for an animal that barely tolerated my presence.

  Pushing aside thoughts of my lopsided relationship with a dog, I shifted to journalist mode. “What happened here, Deputy Shelton?” I asked.

  “That’s what we’re determining,” he said dryly. “Want to see her?”

  “I, uh…”

  He hadn’t waited for my insightful answer, but headed to the door. Dead people were not my favorite sight, but niceties such as squeamishness and sentimentality took a backseat when pursuing any story. Even what happened to the neighbor across the street.

  He opened the door and gestured for me to go ahead.

  As I crossed the threshold, I spotted one reason Mildred’s house sat so upright in comparison to the slouching Hovel: Its walls were thicker than a postcard.

  After the brightness of an unencumbered Wyoming sky, the interior was a dark void.

  That didn’t prevent me from smelling death, heavy and pungent. Another smell … sharp and smoky. Gunpowder? Mildred shot herself? Why—?

  I never completed that internal question. I was stopped by a voice saying, “Elizabeth, what are you doing here?”

  The voice of a dead woman.

  Chapter Two

  Mildred wasn’t dead.

  I had assumed. A cardinal sin for a journalist. Perhaps the reddest of cardinal sins. As numerous professors and longtime editors had singsonged at me over the years, assume made an ass of you and me. Get it?

  Deputy Shelton had played me beautifully.

  Mildred stood with her back to the closed kitchen door and her arms crossed under a substantial bust.

  The room was rigidly neat but packed, making it feel even smaller inside than the Hovel, which I wouldn’t have thought possible. The only sign of turmoil, besides the frown she directed at Shelton, was a section of her silver hair standing out from her head, as if teased, then coated with industrial strength hairsp
ray.

  “She told 911 that she shot him, but she won’t tell us more,” the deputy said from behind me. He remained by the door with an air that in someone else I might have called self-effacing.

  “You. I won’t talk to you, Wayne Shelton,” Mildred said in her uncompromising tone.

  He bowed his head in acceptance, then looked at me. “She won’t talk to me. Apparently my mother’s rhubarb pie beat hers at the county fair back before I was born.”

  “It didn’t beat mine. Oh, it got the ribbon all right,” she said with her voice at high tide of bitterness, “because your father was a judge and he was sweet on her. Only sweetness around, because that pie was as sour as a lemon. A miscarriage of justice. A miscarriage—”

  My phone rang. I ignored it. Shelton grumbled something under his breath. Mildred came closer and looked up at me with suddenly bright eyes. “Hadn’t you better answer? It might be one of your young men.”

  My mouth opened to inform her I had no men, young or otherwise. But her look was so expectant, and I had feared she was dead until a minute ago…

  I answered.

  “You went to a murder without me?” The accusing voice on the phone belonged to Michael Paycik, KWMT-TV’s sports anchor. In fact, KWMT-TV’s sports everything. But not for long if I knew TV news talent, and I did. Add in good looks, a notable college resume, a creditable NFL career with the Chicago Bears before his knees ended his playing days, and Mike Paycik would make the leap from Sherman to some big market, and never look back.

  “It’s not a murder,” I told him. “I’m at my neighbor’s house, trying to help straighten out a little confusion.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “Then you heard wrong.”

  “Aunt Gee said it’s a murder.”

  That stopped me.

  Mike’s Aunt Gee is acknowledged queen of the Cottonwood County law enforcement grapevine, as well as in charge of dispatch for the sheriff’s department substation in O’Hara Hill, the county’s second-largest town.

  Something tugged my sleeve.

  “Just a minute,” I told Mike, then looked down at Mildred.

  “You’ve got it wrong,” she said.

  “I have what wrong?”

  “About there being a little confusion here. The man is dead. The only confusion is this Shelton accusing me of committing murder. Self-defense is what anyone with a brain would call it.”

  Deputy Wayne Shelton had a brain.

  I shot him a look. He also had a poker face.

  Something was not adding up.

  “Mike, I’ve got to go.”

  “I heard. Dead. Accusation of murder. That’s good enough for me. I’ll be right there.”

  “There’s no—” But he’d hung up.

  “That was one of your young men? Is he coming over now?” Mildred asked, her eyes now bright with more than curiosity.

  “I don’t have any young men, and—”

  “Of course you do. Two I know of. One from the TV, and that Tom Burrell who has the Circle B Ranch and has that little girl.”

  “We’re … colleagues, Mildred.” That applied to Mike. Whether Tom Burrell — definitely not a KWMT-TV employee — qualified was dubious. But the word would do.

  She cackled. “Colleagues they’re calling it now, is it?”

  I felt prickles up my back. Had to be from sensing waves of Deputy Shelton’s delight. I didn’t face him, knowing I’d see nothing more in his expression than he wanted me to.

  Instead, I focused on the woman in front of me. “Mildred, you should sit. Let’s find somewhere quiet to talk about this.”

  “This is my chair.” She indicated a large, worn piece upholstered in blue and red stripes. Then she pointed to a chair with swirls of magenta and emerald under plastic. “You sit in the new chair, then we can talk without twisting our necks. I should have invited you in long ago. But I’ve been so distracted with Avis passing and all.”

  I was wondering if there was room to invite me in now.

  All the wall space was occupied by shelving and display units. Two walls appeared devoted to Indian artifacts. Even my untrained eye recognized tomahawks, bows and arrows, arrowheads, leatherwork, and apparel. Another wall was filled with bleached skulls of animals. One row of freestanding shelves held pottery bowls. Another row showed spurs, branding irons, bits, buckles, and other items from Wyoming’s early cattle days. The remaining floor space consisted of narrow aisles. Tucked amid all this like afterthoughts were the two upholstered chairs, a small table holding a laptop computer, and a flat-screen TV. The computer, she’d told me, for inventory and to track sales and prices. The TV, no doubt, for watching the game shows, crime dramas, and reality shows she loved.

  If there’d been a reality show for hoarders with OCD, Mildred could have had her own season.

  “I understand,” I said over the crackling and creaking of plastic as I tried to get comfortable. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. It’s the strange young man who’s not.”

  “What strange young man?”

  “The one I killed.”

  “Mildred, are you certain you killed him?”

  “If he were still alive, I’d think they’d have taken him to the hospital instead of leaving him on the basement stairs.” She turned her head toward the closed kitchen door. Activity could be heard behind it. “I hope they’re not letting all the blood and such get on my clean floor. Not easy scrubbing floors at my age.”

  She had a point. Two points. About his being taken to the hospital if he hadn’t been dead, and about scrubbing floors. Not easy at any age.

  “Oh, he’s dead all right.” Shelton’s words were low, but it would have been more politic to keep quiet and let Mildred forget him. She started up a mutter in which rhubarb pie, travesty, and injustice figured largely.

  Hurriedly, I asked, “You’re certain he’s a stranger? The man—” You killed seemed harsh. “—on the basement stairs?”

  “Certain. Don’t know anybody by the name Ted Edwards like he said his was. Didn’t recognize him before I shot him. Haven’t looked at him since.”

  “Shot him because he startled you by coming up the basement steps?” I asked, edging in that interpretation for Shelton’s benefit.

  “No. Because he was trying to drag me down the basement stairs.”

  I started to ask another leading question, then kicked myself in the metaphorical posterior and switched to “Mildred, what happened?”

  “He started off nice and all, but when we got to the kitchen, he began shouting vile things and tried to drag me to the basement. So I pulled out the gun I’d set nearby, and when he didn’t let go, I shot him.” Mildred’s indignant tone was the same as when she’d complained about garbagemen dropping a lid on her petunias last month. “Then I called the police. Though if I’d known a Shelton would show up, I wouldn’t have bothered.”

  So many follow-up questions sprouted, I hardly knew where to start. Not the least of which was what she would have done with the apparently dead body on her basement stairs if she hadn’t called the police.

  On further consideration, I’d skip that question.

  “You had a gun….” I glanced around but no collection of firearms was visible.

  “Of course. Took it out, checked it was loaded after he called, then put it under my sweater.” She gestured to a glass-fronted case with a neon orange sweater draped over it. She frowned. “I doubt the hole in my sweater can be fixed.”

  “Why did you let him in if you had a bad feeling about him?”

  “We had an appointment.”

  “An appointment,” I repeated. “To do what?”

  “He said he wanted to buy a pair of spurs that belonged to Teddy Blue Abbott. But he didn’t ask the right questions. Plus, I was watching for him, and he came walking from around the block, like he’d parked over on the street behind your house. So his truck wouldn’t be seen and so he’d be sure no witnesses were around before he came i
n.” She nodded wisely. “That’s how these people operate.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Shelton grab a newly-arrived deputy, whisper, then give him a push to send him on his way — surely to look for the car.

  “But Mildred, with all that, why let him in at all?”

  “You think I’m one of those crazy hoarders?”

  “I, uh—” I fought to keep my gaze from going around the room.

  “Hoarders are nincompoops. You don’t buy to keep it all. You buy to sell at a higher price at another time, another place. That’s the only reason to go picking through all the junk. Buy low, sell high. Can’t sell without letting people in. I couldn’t know he was a hoodlum. Could have been a customer.”

  I was momentarily distracted by wondering how long it had been since I’d heard anyone say hoodlum. I pulled myself back. “You have an impressive collection.”

  “This is only some of it. Larger pieces are in my back room. Those that aren’t delicate are in the basement or garage. But you have to be careful about the damp and cold. Some things, might as well put them on the fire and burn them as put them in the damp and cold. Others tolerate it fine.”

  The Hovel had no basement, and I couldn’t imagine a tank tolerating the conditions in what the rental ad had called its garage.

  “That was the difference between Avis and me,” Mildred continued. “She would grab up any old thing and hold on to it forever, all higgledy-piggledy. I swear she never sold a thing, no matter how many like it she had. Of course, she never knew what she had. When I find a better example, I’ll sell an inferior one, so I’m constantly refining my holdings. Quality over quantity.”

  The words sounded well used, perhaps employed many times in debates with Avis.

  In our over-the-trash-cans conversations, I’d learned Avis Finneker had been Mildred’s cousin and frequent companion on “treasure-hunting” trips. Until her death from a heart attack.

  “I understand Avis’ collection is going to be sold at an estate sale?” I asked.

  “Saturday.” Her eyes glittered. Then she clamped down on it. “Collection does it more favors than it deserves. But, yes, it’s all getting sold off by that niece of hers from Atlanta who inherited. Can’t even be bothered to come herself. Just like when she sold off Avis’ truck right after her death. Niece on Avis’ husband’s side, not a Katarese. Never have liked her.”