Prime Cut

Drive turns into a dirt road. You taking notes? Pass a For Sale sign, pass a gray house with red trim. Their house is the first place on the right after the last set of mailboxes on Troutman. Brown house, green trim. You get to a dead end, you’ve gone too far.”

“Got it.” If that wasn’t an Aspen Meadow set of directions, I didn’t know what was.

“I called Sheila—”

“Go ahead.” I put my notebook away.

“Remember what you asked about how Andre took too much medication?”

“Yes.”

“There was a very slight amount of bruising around his mouth, but it is inconclusive. So it is not impossible that he was forced to keep the pills in his mouth, although Sheila still doesn’t think so.”

I checked my rearview mirror and pressed the accelerator to get back on the road. “Thanks, Tom. You’re the best.”

Rain splatted gently across my dusty windshield by the time I reached the western end of Troutman Trail. When I drove up to the very plain-looking brown house with peeling green trim, Lettie and Arch were jumping on the trampoline in the front yard. Julian was nowhere in sight.

I parked under a lodgepole pine and considered my wet-haired, happily leaping son. He was dressed in a clean but faded polo-style white shirt as well as too-large navy shorts—both hand-me-downs from Julian, both now quite wet. He was bouncing on an unstable, steel-framed trampoline, in the rain, when lightning could strike any moment. And all this with a girl, no less. Should I tell him to stop? Or confront him about sharing my confidential client information with The Jerk? Neither. The first could be finessed, the second would wait until we were alone.

“Arch! I don’t know where your suit is! You’ll have to find it.” I pulled open the van door. “Lettie? Are Julian and your sister inside?”

When Lettie nodded, I knocked on the front door. Julian, his finger marking his place in the new edition of The Joy of Cooking, admitted me.

“Catching up on your reading?” I asked.

He blushed. “I brought it with me, along with poached veggies for the girls. Arch ate at home, which is probably a good thing. Have to warn you, this place is a mess. I didn’t feel right about cleaning it up, but I don’t know if Rustine would want you to come in. They had a housekeeper, but she quit a month ago. Anyway, Rustine’s doing some beauty treatment. I hollered to her that you were here.”

“No matter what, I want you to keep an eye on Arch,” I said quietly.

“That’s why I’m sticking around.”

Rustine, sporting newly painted toenails and toes separated by wads of cotton, appeared behind Julian. She was wearing a white shortly robe. Underneath a shower cap, her hair was covered with green goo. Her face was plastered with mud.

I said, “Are you going like that to the rec center?”

She tsked. “It’s almost time to rinse this stuff off. Have you been able to find out who wanted to kill Gerald?”

“May I come in?”

She moved in front of Julian, opened the door, and ushered me into a space so cluttered with furniture and boxes that it was hard to make out where to go. It was a contemporary-design house, with the dining room, living room, and kitchen all open to each other. The dining room table was covered with papers: resumes, letters, files, want ad sections of old newspapers. Every chair in the dusty living room was heaped with boxes of papers.

“Want something to drink?” Rustine eyed the sinkful of dirty dishes, which probably included every glass in the house. “Check the refrig.”

Opening the refrigerator door, I was dazzled by gleaming rows of bottled water, flavored with everything from passion fruit to mango. I looked longingly at the kitchen faucet and ended up choosing water flavored with kiwi. In the living room, Rustine perched on the arm of a once-white, now charcoal gray, wing chair filled with a pile of papers. I sat on a stool close enough to the black wall-to-wall carpeting to see it was embedded with hair and dust. Julian hunkered down on the undusted hearth of a moss-rock fireplace. So much for models living in surroundings as gorgeous as the ones in which they’re photographed.

“Where did you say your dad was?” I ventured.

“I told you, in Alaska, looking for a job. Then he’s going to Orange County, then he’ll be back after Labor Day. If he gets a job, he’s going to hire a new housekeeper.”

Julian closed the cookbook. “You want me to clean up that kitchen for you?”

“No, thanks,” she said dismissively.

“Aw, I’m used to doing dishes.” He grinned and made for the kitchen. “That way you can ask Goldy about your former boyfriend and not be embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed.” She watched Julian filling the sink with hot sudsy water, though, then stood up and beckoned for me to follow. A few minutes later I was perched on the edge of a tub in a large, messy bathroom tiled in avocado and lemon, While Rustine rinsed the mud off her face. As she was patting her cheeks with a dingy towel, she said, “I just need another few minutes for my conditioner, then Julian and I will take the kids swimming. That’s okay, isn’t it?” I nodded. She went on: “So, what have you been able to find out about Gerald?”

Two things I had learned from Tom: always take charge of an interrogation. Even when you’re sitting on a tub. And when you think a criminal might have done something, first pose a question he can truthfully deny, then ask him what you really want to know. If he hesitates, you’ve got him.

I studied Rustine’s reflection in the mirror. “Are you the one who’s been sabotaging my food up at the cabin?”

“No! What sabotage?”

I kept my eyes on her. “Foreign matter has appeared in the food. Whoever’s putting it there might have sabotaged Andre, too. I suspect Craig Litchfield’s behind it.”

“Well, I’m not the one doing it. And it sounds disgusting. I’m going to stop eating your food!”

“Rustine, you told Tom and me that Gerald Eliot found a weapon. Then you immediately asked us if we’d found out some secret about Charlie Smythe. But it was a rifle Eliot found, and something told you it was Smythe’s, right? You were Gerald’s girlfriend. I think you know a lot more about what he found.”

Rustine reddened; she checked her eyelids for specks of mud before responding. “I didn’t say … I don’t remember saying—”

“Cut the crap.”

“I—” She sighed. “Okay. Gerry found Charlie Smythe’s old rifle. You’ve seen it on the wall of the cabin’s great room, haven’t you? Leah put it there.”

“What else? Tell me. Otherwise I’ll call the department. You’ll be arrested for withholding evidence in a murder case faster than you can say anorexia nervosa”

She tapped the side of the sink, thought for a moment, then shrugged. “All right. I used to be at the cabin with Gerry, kind of keeping him company, you know, when he was working. It was fun to watch, all that destruction. He’d take off his shirt, Mr. Rippling Muscles, you know—” She giggled, then said, “He pulled everything away from the wall, and used his sledgehammer to rip the plaster off the kitchen wall. When he got to the laths underneath —”

“I don’t need a course in construction, thanks.”

She pulled the shower cap off and checked her hair. “Right. Tucked between the laths, he found this … package, wrapped in oilcloth. He was really excited, and kind of afraid, too. Like he’d discovered a ghost or something. Inside the oilcloth was this old rifle. But Rufus barged in right after Gerry unwrapped the rifle. So Gerry had to give it to Rufus, who left to give it to Leah and Ian. Gerry felt … gypped.”

“So you knew all about the rifle, but you only told us it was a weapon. What exactly were you looking for up at Cameron Burr’s place?”

“I need to rinse my hair—”