Sign Off (Caught Dead In Wyoming, Book 1)

Chapter Twenty-Five

I felt ashamed.

Snagged by a formidable little girl, irked by a competitive colleague, tempted by Paycik's flattery, and yes, craving a distraction from my limbo, I had meandered into this investigation, taking individual steps seriously enough but acting as if the end result was vaguely frivolous.

Perhaps worst of all, I'd used it like a training program to get my investigating skills back in shape. A challenge to shake off the mothballs of the past months of brain fog and the past years of forty-second sound-bite reporting of political maneuvering. I'd had twinges, talking to Tom Burrell and the Johnsons, but it had taken Mona's death to slap me across the face. I was ashamed I hadn't treated it as deadly serious all along.

As a number of religions know, guilt can be a great motivator.

It can also outshout self-centered whispers about an unknown they, their mysterious orders, and other anomalies of E.M. Danniher's career at KWMT. That mystery would have to wait.

We'd spent three hours at the sheriff's office answering questions. There are only so many ways you can say you touched nothing except the door handle and you didn't tell Tom Burrell any specifics. That didn't mollify them much. They were peeved we had left the scene and even more peeved we'd gotten to Burrell first. But, after a lot of blustering, repetition and bad coffee, Widcuff cut us loose.

Mike and I set up headquarters in my small living room, trying to work through the implications of Mona's death, aided by legal pads, coffee, cola, chips and salsa-mild for me, make-your-ears-sweat hot for him.

He left close to two and was back by eight the next morning. It wasn't enough sleep to rid me of my headache or stiff neck, but it was plenty of time for the bruise on my temple to blossom into gaudy color.

"Do you know you have a dog in your back yard?" he asked as he came in.

Great. I fed and watered him, and the dog showed himself only to visitors. "No I don't," I'd grumbled. And Mike hadn't argued. The guy definitely had some smarts.

Punctuated by phone calls, we'd been at it for nearly five hours, and we were beginning to go in circles.

Mike walked back in from the kitchen. He'd made a pit stop, with a detour to the kitchen for a couple phone calls, one to let his Aunt Gee know where we were in case she discovered anything, the second one to Diana.

Getting her week's vacation lined up had been the small chore Diana had done before heading to Burrell's ranch. With two kids to feed, she'd figured it was a necessary backup.

"How is she?" I asked.

"Great. She's planning to paint a couple rooms and put up a new storm door this week. That woman's amazing."

"Because she knows how to use a paint brush and a screw driver?"

"No, because she sounds as if she's looking forward to it."

We grinned at each other. "Any news from the station?"

"Yeah, Diana said Billy, her technician friend, made two copies. He's got one squirreled away and gave her the other. Apparently he made them in the nick of time, because Thurston commandeered the camera and managed to ruin most of the original-purposely or through ineptitude, nobody seems to know."

With the copies safe I didn't spare more than a grunt for Fine.

"Okay, where were we?" Mike settled into his corner of the couch.

"Mona's murder."

Mike paled-he wouldn't forget what he'd seen in that trailer any time soon-but he nodded. "Doesn't this narrow our list of suspects?"