Double Shot

And then I saw the pickup. “Visit Nashville!” the bumper sticker screamed. I turned to the firefighters and waved them forward.

“This is it,” I said, indicating the pickup. “I can’t see if anyone’s inside.”

“Okay, ma’am. Stay put.”

The firefighters exchanged a couple of words that I couldn’t hear. Then a pair of them walked toward the truck, one on each side. With a quick nod, they simultaneously opened the driver’s and passenger’s doors.

Arch jumped out of the passenger side and coughed. I shrieked his name. He rushed toward me.

“Why are we here?” he demanded. “Sandee kept asking about Dad’s safety-deposit box and saying we were waiting for you—” He began hacking and thumping his chest.

“Shh, it’s okay now,” I said. I tried to hug him, but as usual, he was not wanting an embrace, especially in front of tough-guy firefighters.

“Hey! Come back here!” the firefighter on the driver’s side of the truck hollered. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Through the smoke, I could just see Sandee Blue/Alexandra Brisbane, clad in some kind of black suit, running into the woods.

“Hey!” I hollered.

I took off after her. The firefighters, cursing, followed us.

The pine forest by the row of trucks ran up a steep hill. Panting, I began stomping through the underbrush, calling Sandee’s name.

When she didn’t answer, I shrieked, “You didn’t have to kill John Richard, you know! You didn’t have to kill him!”

Behind us, the firefighters, whose heavy boots were forcing them to a slower pace, were hollering that the two of us had better stop. Otherwise, their faint voices warned, we were all going to get killed.

Trying to listen to the sound of Sandee maneuvering through the underbrush, I ran blindly up the hill. Four minutes, five minutes, six. The smoke was becoming more and more dense, the air hotter.

Abruptly, the forest opened up at the edge of a wide cliff. There was nothing on the other side of the granite ridge but clouds of smoke. I halted, gasping.

Sandee was standing on top of a gray boulder at the very edge of the precipice. I blinked and squinted into the smoke. She was wearing what looked like a shiny black running suit and black tennis shoes. And…what was that hanging from her neck? A gold chain with a locket? What the hell was she up to now?

The firefighters’ heavy boots crashing through the undergrowth, as well as their raised voices, became louder.

I coughed, tried to get my breath, and peered up at Sandee. “You didn’t have to kill him.” I panted, then said, “You could have had him charged and prosecuted.”

Sandee’s laugh was strident. “The statute of limitations on rape is eight years. Think I would have had a chance? How good a witness do you think a stripper would have been?”

The firefighters slashed through the last bit of undergrowth and arrived at my side. Two of them each took one of my arms. The third one addressed Sandee.

“You crazy bitch!” he shouted. “Get down from here! You want us all to get burned up?” In spite of myself, I shook my head. They didn’t learn negotiating skills in firefighting school.

“No,” she called blithely. “Just me. But you need to listen first. That woman you’re holding, Goldy Schulz, did not kill her ex-husband, John Richard Korman. I did. I stole her gun and a couple more, and then shot him with one of them. My boyfriend, Bobby, wasn’t in on it. I also strangled Cecelia Brisbane!”

Abruptly, she disappeared from the rockface. Had she jumped?

“What the—” I muttered.

“Oh, dammit,” said one of the firefighters, the one who was holding my right arm. “What’s off that cliff, John?”

“Nothing,” John replied. “Raccoon Creek is a hundred yards down. She’s a goner.” He took a deep breath, his shoulders slumped. “We need to get back.”

Three days later, when the fire was finally, finally out, four teams trekked back into the preserve to assess the damage…and look for the remains of Sandee and the hikers.

But they didn’t find any human remains. The preserve is a very big place. So many people were evacuated, so many hikers and campers were forced out of the preserve, that the cops have yet to figure out who’s missing and who’s accounted for.

The team searching Raccoon Creek did make a discovery. On top of a boulder in the middle of the creek, they found a gold chain and locket. Bobby Calhoun, sobbing, identified it as the one he’d given Sandee.

I told Tom, and then Blackridge and Reilly, that it was possible—not probable, but possible—that Sandee had gotten away. She’d been a member of the Explorers’ Club in high school and knew every inch of the preserve, including where the creeks and fire roads led. Besides, I said, who runs into a fire to commit suicide? Sandee had planned everything out—the murders, framing others with fake clues. Why wouldn’t she have planned a getaway, too? Plus, she was a master of disguise, and…

My dear Tom, as well as Blackridge and Reilly, said there was simply no way. The detectives had interviewed the firefighters. They’d examined Cowboy Cliff, where Sandee had disappeared. Yes, there was a very narrow, rocky path down to the creek, but with all that smoke, nobody could have seen it or known its twists and curves. And given the size of the fire, no human could have made it out of the preserve alive.

“It’s over,” Tom assured me, pulling me in for a hug. “I never thought that I would be the one to say this, but we need to let go of this mess and move ahead. Okay, Miss G.?”

I groaned.

We had the memorial service for Sandee and Cecelia Brisbane the next week. Sandee had written up her story and mailed it to the Post, the News, and the Mountain Journal. So much sympathy was generated for her that Father Pete had to tell people to stop sending flowers to the church. Priscilla Throckbottom put an ad in the Mountain Journal saying that donations of pine seedlings could be made in Sandee’s name, and the PosteriTREE committee would plant them in the forest when the skeletons were found. I don’t know if she had any takers.

The church parking lot was filled to overflowing the day of the service. Everyone, it seemed, was trying to make sense out of these deaths. At the reception following the service, the words tragic and pointless kept coming up. Sandee had taken on evil to combat evil, and the whole thing had blown up in her face.

Blackridge and Reilly asked me to make a statement. I began by saying, You think you know people.

I thought I’d known Sandee. A stripper. A blonde. I knew she manipulated men to get what she wanted—first Bobby, then John Richard, then Bobby again. In her interactions with me, sometimes she’d acted ditzy, other times, self-centered. So I’d assumed that was exactly what she was. And all the time, she’d been watching me, watching Arch, asking questions, and taking notes. Did you bring money? she’d asked Marla and me. Planting the idea in our heads: Folks are dropping off money here, doesn’t that seem strange? Only we’d been too dense to get the fact that John Richard was up to something shady.

Oh my, but Sandee was good.

Following the details from Sandee’s letters, which told how she’d stolen both Bobby’s and Dannyboy’s Rugers, Blackridge and Reilly finally caught Lana and Dannyboy. Law enforcement was planning to bring murder charges against the two of them. The Denver PD was reopening the case of Quentin Drake, husband of stripper Ruby Drake. And then there was the incident of vandalizing John Richard’s rental home, looking for the money he skimmed. The crime lab picked up some latents that matched Dannyboy’s.

The Rainbow is closed now, and the archdiocese of Denver is negotiating to buy the place so it can set up a