High Country Fall

CHAPTER 30

THURSDAY EVENING

“Captain Underwood?” The blond who got up from the piano and came forward when the housekeeper showed him into the music room was a younger, plumper version of Sunny Osborne.

“I’m Laura Osborne. My mother will be down in a minute.”

She was not as attractive as her mother. Her sweater was too tight to flatter her overly generous curves, her hair was cut too short and tufts of it stuck out as if she’d slept on it wrong, but her voice was bewitching when she asked if she could get him something to drink.

He shook his head, waiting for her to speak again, and when she merely stood there with a quizzical look on her broad face, he blurted, “I’ll bet you sing like an angel.”

She laughed, a rich chord of descending notes.

“Thank you. Some people have said so.” Her voice softened. “My father thought so.”

He looked at the sheets of music on the piano and remembered what the housekeeper had said when he called this afternoon.

“You’re choosing music for him?”

She nodded. “And it’s harder than I thought it would be. He was bluegrass and gospel, I’m Purcell and Bach. He’s definitely not Bach, but bluegrass sounds really dumb when it’s sung by a trained contralto.”

“Please don’t let me interrupt you, then,” he said, half hoping that she would sing a few lines as she sorted through the music.

“That’s all right. I— Ah! Here’s Mother.”

“Sorry to have kept you waiting, Captain,” Sunny Osborne said. She crossed the room briskly to take his hand. “What can you tell me?”

“Is there some place we could speak privately?” he asked, with an apologetic look at Laura Osborne.

“No problem,” said the younger woman. “I’ll be upstairs if you want me, Mother.”

She pulled the door to when she left.

“What is it that Laura shouldn’t hear?” Mrs. Osborne sat down on the sofa and waved him to an adjacent chair.

“The day that Dr. Ledwig died,” he began.

“Carlyle?” Her bright face darkened with anger. “I’ve told you and told you. Carlyle’s death has nothing to do with Norman’s. Nothing! Why do you people keep saying it does?”

“The day that Dr. Ledwig died,” he repeated firmly, “were you there on the deck?”

“I beg your pardon?” She sat very still and her blue eyes regarded him steadily.

“Were you on the deck the afternoon that Dr. Ledwig died?”

“Does someone say I was?”

“Mrs. Osborne?”

“Oh, very well. I suppose it was that UPS man?”

“Yes, ma’am. Why didn’t you mention it to us before?”

She shrugged. “No one specifically asked me.”

“You knew we were asking anyone who’d spoken to Dr. Ledwig that day to come forward.”

“And if I’d had anything to contribute, I would have. But I didn’t. I felt like a game of tennis and I stopped by to see if Tina wanted to play. When no one answered the front bell, I heard hammering and went around to the rear.”

“Dr. Ledwig was still alive?”

“Well, of course he was! I asked him about Tina. He said she was already at the club and I left.” She gave a wry smile. “At least I would have left if that UPS truck hadn’t been blocking my car. He assumed I was Tina and handed the stuff to me. It seemed like more trouble than it was worth to tell him differently, so I carried it back around and Carlyle told me to put it on the table by the door. And then I really did leave. You can ask at the club. I was there before three.”

“You saw no one else as you were leaving?”

She shook her head.

“Who do you think killed him, Mrs. Osborne?”

“That boyfriend of Carla’s, of course. He was there. He had the motive.”

“And if not him?”

She shook her head. “Then I don’t have a clue.”

“I see.” He stood to go. “Thank you, Mrs. Osborne. I’m sorry I had to bother you tonight.”

“That’s it?” she asked, surprised. “You came all the way out here just to ask if I saw Carlyle that day? What about Norman? Don’t you have anything new to tell me?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. Soon as we know, you’ll know.”

“It’s not fair.” Tears filled her eyes. “Norman’s dead and the only one you worry about is Carlyle?”

“No, ma’am,” he said gently. “We worry about both of them.”

To return to the road Deborah Knott had disappeared on, Underwood had to go back almost to the main state highway, then head west up over the ridge. As he drove, he checked in with the dispatcher. “Any word yet?”

“Negative, Captain. ETA for the chopper is about another twenty-five minutes. Volunteers from two fire stations are already there, with three others on the way.”

“What’s taking the chopper so long?”

He heard a snort of laughter across the airwaves. “They were changing the oil filters on it when we called.”

Underwood pulled up at the bottom of the hill where they assumed the judge’s car had gone over just as the helicopter came over the ridge. A welcoming cheer went up from the men and women who’d turned out to help search.

Deputy Fletcher sat in a patrol car with his radio tuned to headquarters and his walkie-talkie set to the chopper’s frequency. First it made a sweep with the heat-sensing elements.

For a moment, they thought they were going to get lucky right away. Infrared showed them one warm body that didn’t bolt and run the minute they got near. They swooped lower toward it and suddenly a ten-point buck bounded up from the rhododendron bushes and raced straight down the mountain.

“So we do it the hard way,” someone said.

With the lights from above turning the mountainside into day, the volunteers fanned down across the slope, all eyes alert for a black Firebird.

They had been at it almost an hour when the Lafayette dispatcher broke in excitedly. “Captain? You there? I got her on her cell phone! Patching her through to y’all. Go ahead, ma’am.”

The signal was faint and wavering, yet Deborah Knott’s voice itself sounded strong. “I keep losing the signal so I’ll talk fast. I can see a helicopter about a half mile to the right of my position. West of me, I think. I was heading back toward Cedar Gap when that bastard Barringer ran me off the road with his truck near the top of a hill. Hey, is anybody hearing this?”

“Loud and clear, ma’am!” Underwood said happily.

“George? Is that you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I can’t get out of my car. The door’s too heavy, but—Oh, good! Finally! The chopper’s heading my way. Tell them to keep coming … keep coming … down the slope more … yes! They’re right overhead.”

“Hang on, ma’am. Somebody’ll be with you in a minute. You okay?”

“Just banged and bruised. And, George?”

“Ma’am?”

“I want to swear out a warrant against Barringer.”

“We’ll certainly talk about that, ma’am.” Underwood put his car in gear and joined the parade up the hill. Why she was going in this direction was something else to talk about. Time enough to tell her that Barringer was dead once she was back on level ground.

A rope line was stretched down to the car and an EMT team went down with a stretcher, but Judge Knott insisted on walking out by herself.

“She’s a pistol,” one of them told him later. “Made us get her sneakers out of the back and wait till she put them on. Told us if we wanted to carry something, we could grab her guitar and her laptop, but nobody was strapping her into anything unless we gave her a pair of scissors to hold.”

“Welcome back, Judge,” Underwood said, reaching out a hand to help her around a rock.

There was a bruise on her left temple that extended up from her eyebrow and another on her neck, but her smile was radiant. “If my arm didn’t hurt so bad, George, I’d hug you here and now. Please thank everybody for me.”

She waved to the television camera and to the circle of people who wanted to see her for themselves. “Thank you!” she called. “Thanks for helping. I really appreciate it.”

Underwood had a feeling she would have gone over to shake every hand there and thank each volunteer searcher individually if the EMT team hadn’t persuaded her to let them take her on down to the hospital.