Prime Cut

Nothing happened. No strobe, no light. Dammit! I’d plugged in Gerald’s fool compressor, now minus its loose housing that Ian had sent sailing. I charged toward the door. Ian lunged to block my way. I charged the other way and knocked into the card table.

Swiftly, Ian grabbed the strobe pole. An idea seemed to form in his mind. “This has been a most unfortunate shoot,” he said. “First Andre, then Leah, and now you. This very heavy light is going to fall on you, and a terrible accident will befall our second caterer.”

He advanced toward me. The light stand scraped as he yanked it along. There was nothing between us except the compressor, its engine guts exposed. Coffee, I thought wildly. All I need is coffee….

I yanked the pot from the tray and heaved the contents at Ian.

He jumped sideways so that the steaming, dark liquid missed him and sloshed onto the compressor and the floor. Ian cursed and lunged at me. I’m dead, I thought. Poor Arch won’t have a mother. Tom was right—I should never poke my nose into murder.

And then it happened. As Ian careened toward me, intent on ending my life, he stepped into the lake of coffee and the exposed, live current of Gerald Eliot’s broken air compressor. The surge of voltage caused his body to jerk up and away from me. Before he fell to the floor, he was dead.

Chapter 24

“Leah told us Ian wanted the road to the cabin kept closed,” Tom proclaimed matter-of-factly as he drove me to the museum from Lutheran Hospital on Monday, the first of September. “If he had the place to himself all winter, she said, Ian was sure he could figure out the code and find Smythe’s stolen treasure.”

It was Labor Day, except we weren’t working, even though Tom had finally been taken off suspension by his captain. With a search warrant in hand, the investigative team had toiled through the weekend at the Merciful Migrations cabin. Underneath the spare tire in the locked trunk of Ian Hood’s Mercedes, they had found The Practical Cook Book and the original note Gerald Eliot had discovered tucked in oilcloth inside the kitchen wall.

“Leah says, early last Monday morning, Ian told her he’d remembered some equipment he needed. Of course, he knew Andre wanted to get into the place early. He just didn’t know why. Ian must’ve surprised Andre prying up the wall, and told him much more food was needed. But he knew Andre had figured out Smythe’s code at that point. He just didn’t know what or how—only that the secret the wall had held was exposed. When Andre was involved with extra cooking, Ian burned him with the salamander. Maybe Ian meant to startle him, make it look as if Andre had an accident.” Tom turned on Homestead Drive. “But from the heart-problem incident at the museum, Ian knew Andre kept the nitroglycerin with him, and that he was acutely sensitive to it. So when the hot salamander had done its damage, he must have overdosed him. Andre died and Ian nailed the plywood back over the wall.”

“But why did Ian feel he had to kill both Andre and Gerald?”

“He was greedy.” Tom glanced at me. “He wanted the treasure for himself, wanted to start up someplace else saving the elk. Leah had told him he could have Charlie Smythe’s cache if Bobby could keep the proceeds from the sale of the cabin. Ian took her at her word. What Leah didn’t bank on was that her boyfriend Ian would try to eliminate anyone else who knew about the code and his secret. He didn’t want to share. Couldn’t stand competition.”

Oh, brother, I thought as guilt and insecurity reared their unattractive heads. Now who does that remind me of? Craig Litchfield hadn’t played fair, and had been in cahoots with The Jerk. And yet I had to admit I didn’t have catering in Aspen Meadow to myself anymore. So, the same insecurity that had plagued me the last month had eaten up Ian Hood, and driven him over the line to murder.

Our cellular rang as we pulled into the Homestead lot: it was Cameron Burr. He had been released and would join us at the cabin for an early dinner, thank you very much, to work with Sylvia and a crew of volunteers. And he had great news: Barbara was finally off the ventilator. The doctors were certain she was well on her road to recovery. Tom and I promised to visit her soon. And, Cameron asked, did we know Leah Smythe had vanished? We knew, we said, and hung up.

While Leah was still in the hospital, she had been questioned by Andy Fuller and two investigators from the sheriff’s department. Her face had still been bandaged; her broken ribs had made talking difficult. After they left, so did she. The hospital had called the department when they’d discovered her gone. She wasn’t a suspect in any of the crimes that had taken place at the cabin, and yet why had she slipped out? When Tom called Bobby Whitaker to ask if Leah wanted to join us at the cabin, Bobby had replied that his half-sister was too busy. Too busy, to come see historic treasure buried by her grandfather unearthed? Too busy doing what? She was at the museum, Bobby confessed, just looking at her grandfather’s old stuff.

So we were at the Homestead. We were going to talk to Leah together because I was a friend, not a cop. Besides, I wanted to know for myself what had happened with that falling flat.

But as Tom and I crossed the Homestead dining room, we immediately heard Leah arguing with Sylvia Bevans in the kitchen. Between them, on the island, were the letter from Leavenworth and the framed Times article on the 1915 stagecoach robbery. Apparently Leah was demanding that the letter and the article be deacquisitioned so she could have them for mementoes. And Sylvia, fiercely protective of the museum, as usual, was telling her that she absolutely could have neither the newspaper article nor the letter.

“But why do you want them?” huffed Sylvia, trembling indignantly inside a lime- colored linen suit. “After all this time? The police told me you want The Practical Cook Book, too. Have you gone insane? Why don’t you just take a photocopy?”

Leah, bandaged and holding herself at an awkward angle, shot back: “No, Sylvia, I have not gone insane. I’m leaving Aspen Meadow. I’m moving to Arizona, okay? The only things I want to keep are the messages my grandfather sent, and the newspaper reporting his last caper.”

“You absolutely cannot take museum property—”

“We need to talk to Miss Smythe, Mrs. Bevans,” Tom interposed gently as we joined them. “If you would excuse us. And please bear in mind all that Miss Smythe has done for the museum,” he added. “Especially this afternoon.”

Snapping her mouth shut, Sylvia stomped past Tom, back toward the sacred realms of her office. She did not acknowledge me.

Leah shuffled over to one of the stools and sat gingerly. A bare spot above her ear had been shaved and stitched. Her face was still swollen and covered with bruises, and the streaked pixie haircut looked disheveled and shorn.

“Are you here to arrest me?” she asked Tom defiantly.

“No,” Tom replied easily. “Why don’t we sit and talk?”

Leah gestured impatiently. “I’m leaving the Smythe land. When I have the property, everyone wants it. They use me to try to get it. That’s why I’m going away.”

“Begin at the beginning,” Tom advised. “Goldy hasn’t heard your story yet.”

Leah raised one eyebrow at me and hrumphed.

“I’m sorry about Ian,” I said, and meant it.

“Don’t be. Ian and I have … had been together for ten years. What kept us together was preserving wildlife migration routes.” Leah touched the bare spot on her scalp. “I guess even a good cause isn’t enough when you’re not getting along, especially when the person you thought you loved turns into a self-centered, temperamental guy.” She shifted her weight on the stool and winced. “They’re doing a lot of shooting down in Phoenix now, what with the good weather … anyway, Ian said he didn’t have the capital to set up in a new place. But I wanted to leave, and I wanted Ian to move his studio somewhere, anywhere, away from my cabin, so Bobby could sell it. I feel responsible for Bobby, and I’m the only one who does. I wanted to let him sell that land to the paint-pellet people, so he could have a way to live, now that the modeling was finished for him.” She took an unsteady breath and shook her head. “I don’t give a damn about anything buried up there. If they don’t find any of the victims’ heirs, and the county historical society people want it, they can have it. I have a big family house in Aspen Meadow that I’m about to put on the market—”