real trouble now. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the cops didn’t kill her and plant her here to make us look bad.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Well, right now crazy sounds pretty sane to me.”
“Who is she?”
“The minute I say her name you’ll know how much trouble we’re in.”
“Humor me. Who the hell is she?”
“It’s Vanessa Mainwaring.”
“What the hell was Paul Mainwaring’s daughter doing out here?”
The laugh was cruel. “A little high-class for pigs like us?”
“Don’t give me any more of your overthrow bullshit right now, Donovan, or I might tell you to go to hell and I’ll walk away. Don’t forget, there isn’t another lawyer in town who’ll work with you.”
I pushed him out of the way and grabbed a rusty rake. Awkward as it was, I managed to ease it under the blanket until I could gently lift it and set it aside. Because I knew her father, I’d seen her a number of times. Now, as she lay on her side, her profile was statue-perfect.
I hunched down. The wounds I could see were concentrated around her heart. There were six of them. Somebody had been very angry with her and had let a knife convey the rage. In books, beautiful dead women always retain some remnant of their beauty. Not so in real life. Heartbreaker that she’d been, now the skin was gray, and the tongue lolling out of the right side of her mouth looked lurid and sickly. Vivid blue eyes stared into eternity; even the dark hair was dusty and flecked with straw.
I looked up at Donovan. “How many people were in this stall to look at her?”
“Just about everybody. Why?”
“You’re not stupid, Donovan. You’ve never heard of a crime scene? The cops’ll look for all kinds of evidence. People tramping around in here’ll just make it tougher for them.”
“Cliffie’s a moron. He won’t look for any evidence at all.”
I pushed against my thighs to stand up and face him. “Cliffie’s daddy hired a so-called police commander to do all the serious work. The old man got tired of everybody bitching about his son. The police commander’s name is Mike Potter and he was a detective in Kansas City for six years before he had a heart attack and decided to look for a nice little nook to spend the rest of his career. He’s good. And the first person he’ll want to talk to is you. And one of the first questions he’s going to ask is how many people tramped around in the barn after you found her body.”
“You mean I was supposed to stop them?”
He wanted to argue. His question had been an accusation. “Who put the blanket on her?”
“I did.”
“What time did your dog start barking?”
“Maybe an hour and a half ago. And listen-I’m not some zombie, man. I’m sorry she’s dead, if that’s what you’re worried about. But I also kinda run this place, you know. I’ve got to worry about everybody else, too.”
“Who did she know out here?”
“Everybody. She tried hard to fit in but most of the people didn’t like her.”
“Why not?”
He took the time to slide a package of Pall Malls out of his shirt pocket. He was stalling.
“Why didn’t they like her?”
“Because of Neil, Neil Cameron.”
I’d had to represent Cameron a few times. He had a temper. When townspeople hassled him, he hassled back. “What about Neil?”
“She kind of jacked him around.”
“He went out with her?”
This time he got a full one-act play out of lighting his cigarette with a stick match. “Some people said he was obsessed with her. When she broke up with him he just kind of…”
“Kind of what?”
He shrugged lean shoulders. “You know what it’s like when you’re dumped. You get crazy for a while.”
“Was he still crazy these days?”
He was good at evasion. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.”
“Where do I find Cameron now?”
“I’m not sure. His sister would know.”
“Sarah Powers?”
“Oh, that’s right. You handled a couple of cases for her, too.”
Neil and Sarah had different last names because their parents were killed before the kids were even ten, and different sets of aunts and uncles raised them.
“Sarah doesn’t like you very much.”
“Then we’re even. I don’t like Sarah very much, either.”
She was one of the troublemakers out here. She’d been ticketed for parking the van in a No Parking zone and then had screamed at the cop while he was making out her summons. Then she got in another screaming match with a check-out woman at one of the supermarkets, accusing the woman of overcharging her because she was a hippie. Two weeks ago she was in a record store telling all the customers that they should steal anything they wanted, that the filthy capitalists were ripping off the country and getting away with it. The owner of the store called me and said if I didn’t remove her in five minutes-she had threatened to punch him if he touched her-he’d call the police. Fortunately, I’d been in my office and got there in time. The owner was a twenty-eight-year-old who fancied himself to be very counterculture. I wondered how he was feeling about things now that he’d heard Sarah’s everything-for-free rap.
“Let me see the soles of your sandals.”
“Why?”
“I want to check footprints. I need to eliminate yours and mine.”
He wore tire-tread sandals, easy to identify. I checked my own, then began dragging the lantern low over the immediate area. There were numerous fresh imprints. “You said ‘just about everybody’ was in here looking. How many people would that be?”
“Well, not everybody’s here tonight. I suppose fifteen or twenty.”
“You should’ve sold tickets.”
“Hey man, you’d be interested, too, a dead girl in your barn. It’s natural to be curious.”
“Let’s go find Sarah.”
He put his fingers against my chest as if he didn’t want me to move. He shook his head as if I’d said something he didn’t agree with. “Look, I might as well tell you.”
I shoved him away. “Tell me what?”
“About Neil.” He sighed. “And Vanessa. They-she came out here the other night and he started screaming at her. We were all afraid he’d hurt her or something. Finally Sarah broke it up. She didn’t want to see Neil hurt Vanessa. She and Van were good friends.”
“So you think Neil killed her?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yes, you did.” I wondered why it had come so easily from him. He’d been protective of everybody in the commune and then he set Neil Cameron up with a motive and a possible foreshadowing of the murder.
“I feel like hell telling you about Neil.”
I almost smiled. He was a terrible actor. “Yeah, I can tell.”
His eyes narrowed in the dusty gold of lantern light. He was probably trying to figure out if there was any sarcasm in my response.
I walked to the rear of the barn. The doors hung askew and there was a wide gap separating them. An average-sized person could walk between them with no problem. I went out and stood in the back. At this point the woods were close. A person who’d climbed up the hill from the road below wouldn’t have had any trouble sneaking into the barn without being seen.
I went back inside.
