High Country Fall

CHAPTER 21

TUESDAY EVENING

While George Underwood waited for Deborah Knott to start her car and drive away, he called Fletcher’s pager and left a callback message. If that asshole had overlooked something that critical, he was due a serious butt-chewing.

Underwood’s cell phone rang as he circled the monument and headed on down toward the Trading Post, but it wasn’t Fletcher.

“Hey, hon,” his wife said. “I’m putting the biscuits in the oven. You gonna be here when they get out?”

He’d planned to stop and talk to Simon Proffitt, but the judge’s sweet rolls were all he’d had since breakfast and the thought of his wife’s biscuits and smothered pork chops was too tempting.

“Be there in fifteen minutes,” he promised.

For once, luck was with him. As he pulled up at the Trading Post, he spotted Simon at the door and waved the old man over.

“Get out and set a spell,” Simon invited.

“Can’t stop right now, but we need to talk, Mr. Proffitt.”

“Mister Proffitt? What’d I do now?”

“Nothing, I hope, but I do have to ask you a few questions tomorrow. In my office.”

“’Cause Norman Osborne went and got hisself killed last night and somebody tattled that I told him to go to hell?”

“I hear you told Dr. Ledwig the same thing and offered to help him along with Lizzie.”

A nostalgic smile started to spread across the wrinkled face, till a scowl abruptly replaced it as Proffitt realized the implications of what the sheriff’s deputy was saying. “You ain’t trying to hang them two on me, are you? Ledwig won’t shot. Osborne neither.”

“I know, I know,” Underwood said in a soothing tone. “Be at my office at nine tomorrow. I’ll take your statement. You’ll tell me what you were doing when Ledwig died and who-all you talked to last night before Osborne went missing and then I can cross you off my list, okay?”

“Go to hell!” Proffitt said and turned to stomp back to his store.

“Nine o’clock,” Underwood called. He knew he ought to collar that old hothead and get his alibi right then, but it had been a long and hungry day, so he headed on down the hill to Howards Ford, where his wife and children and hot biscuits waited.

He was just pulling into his own driveway when his phone rang again.

“Hey, Captain,” Fletcher said. “What’s up?”

TUESDAY EVENING, 10 P.M.

“Mom?”

Tina Ledwig dragged her eyes from the television screen to her younger daughter standing in the doorway of her bedroom. Her new spaniel scrambled off her lap and bounded over to dance around Trish’s ankles, paws in air, till Trish bent down to pet it.

“Hey, honey. Homework all done?”

The girl gave the dumb question all the attention it deserved by ignoring it completely. “Have you seen a UPS package from Amazon?”

Tina looked at her blankly.

“I ordered some CDs from them, and with all the stuff about Dad and Carla, I forgot till just now. I checked it out on the computer, and according to the tracking number, it came the day Dad died. Have you seen it?”

Tina tried to focus. “CDs? UPS?”

“Oh shit!” Disgust and despair filled Trish’s young voice as she turned away.

“No, wait!” Tina said. “There were some packages and stuff by the deck door that day. I thought they were all for your dad and I put them on the desk in his study.”

If Trish heard, she didn’t respond, just kept going, the little dog at her heels.

Tina turned back to the television. Something else that was going to need cleaning out before they could move. Carl’s study. Where he holed up every night after dinner before coming up to bed. Not her bed, the bed in the room next to this one, through that connecting door.

Only they hadn’t connected in—how long was it?

He’d blamed the vodka for his lack of interest, but they both knew it was his lack of interest that caused her to turn to vodka.

She lifted the skirt of the table next to her lounge chair and reached for the bottle hidden there.