Die in Plain Sight (36 page)

Savoy Hotel

Wednesday morning

L
acey looked at the three examples of the Death Suite propped against the wall. Then she looked at her watch. “They should be here.”

“They will be,” Ian said.

“Think they’ll bring Bliss?”

“After last night, I doubt it. The sheriff had to hold her to keep her from swinging at me.”

Somebody knocked on the hall door.

Lacey walked to answer it with the quick, snapping steps of someone who is furious. “I still can’t believe that Ward Forrest isn’t under arrest.”

“Even after last night?” Ian asked.

Lacey’s mouth flattened. Her sketchbook was filled with notes from last night’s staggering conversation.

“It’s still wrong,” she said.

“Amen. Now let’s see if we can start making it right.”

Left-handed, he opened the door. Rory Turner and Savoy Forrest
walked in. Both men looked grim and frustrated. Rory gave Ian a hard look and didn’t offer to shake hands. He dumped the files he’d brought onto the wide coffee table.

“This better be good, Lapstrake,” Rory said.

Ian smiled. “Oh, yeah. It’s good.”

Savoy started to say something, but a motion from Rory cut him off.

Ian closed the door and looked at the two men. They watched him with naked hostility in their eyes.

“I’m thinking good old Ward finally woke up and started talking,” Ian said.

“Yes,” Savoy said.

Ian waited.

“If he dies,” Savoy said thinly, “you’ll be arrested for murder.”

“That’s bullshit!” Lacey said, striding right up to Savoy and putting her face in his. “Your father tried to kill us!”

“So you say. He says differently.”

“When did he wake up?” Ian asked.

“Early this morning,” Rory said. “You got any coffee?”

Ian gestured with his cast to the telephone. “Call room service. Shouldn’t take more than an hour.”

Rory sat down on the couch and rubbed his face with a weariness he couldn’t hide. “Okay. Here’s how it is. Ward says he saw a truck go over the edge of the road, went down to help, and was shot for his trouble.”

“You believe that?” Ian asked mildly, nudging Lacey into a chair. He didn’t blame her for wanting to rip out a few smug throats, but it wouldn’t do any good right now and might land them in jail.

“I think mistakes were made,” Rory said carefully.

“Yeah, they sure as hell were,” Ian said. “Let me list them for you. The first one is that Ward was checked out of the ranch by the south gate guard, wasn’t checked back in at all, yet somehow he turned up on the main road anyway.”

“There are more ways in and out of the ranch than the guarded gates,” Savoy said.

“How many of them would you take when it was raining like a bitch?” Ian asked.

Savoy didn’t answer. There was only one paved road in and out of the ranch and everyone at the table knew it.

“Did you call your father to tell him we were coming to see the paintings?” Lacey demanded.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“He must have left the house as soon as he hung up,” Ian said. “Odd, don’t you think?”

“He went target shooting at the club,” Savoy said. “He does it all the time, including when the club is closed. He owns the place, so he has his own key, and comes and goes as he pleases.”

“Does he usually run out to pop off a few right after he’s got people lined up for a visit?”

Savoy shrugged. “He knew I’d come and take care of whatever the two of you wanted. He didn’t have to wait around.”

Ian looked at Rory.

The sheriff looked at his hands on the table.

“The third mistake was shooting out the windshield on my truck,” Ian said. “There’s a slug buried somewhere in the upholstery. Of course, you have to be looking for it to find anything.”

Rory braced his elbows on the table. “You shot at him. He shot back. There might be a slug somewhere in your truck. So what?”

“I don’t believe this,” Lacey said, watching the sheriff with dark, furious eyes. “Did you
look
at the place we went over? Did you
look
at the truck? Did you do any damned thing except rush to cover up for your boss?”

“The road is always a mess after a good rain, the truck is upside down at the bottom of the bluff with the roof crushed into the frame, and what’s left is pretty much buried in mud,” the sheriff said.

“Convenient,” Ian said. “Now I know what my great-uncle meant about nothing changing in Moreno County. No police work then and none now.”

Rory shot to his feet. “Listen, you—”

“No,
you
listen,” Ian cut in. “Ward avoided any manned gatehouses going back to the ranch. Why? He saw our ‘accident.’ How? From the top of the bluff? Okay, then what was he doing there standing in the rain with a rifle in his hands? He shot out the windshield and blew off the right front tire. You look, you’ll find proof.”

“My father had no reason to shoot you,” Savoy said. “You’re crazy.”

Ian ignored him and concentrated on the sheriff. “If Ward saw us go
over the edge and was just trying to help, why did he circle in from the side instead of hurrying straight down to see if we were hurt? Why didn’t he call for help the instant we went over? And then,” Ian said sardonically, “to really put the cherry on top of your fantasy sundae, you say I had a wild hair and unloaded my gun at the Good Samaritan who was coming to help us.”

Rory started to speak, closed his eyes, and put his head in his hands. Ward could and had explained away each point Ian brought up, but listening to them all laid out at once made the explanations less…believable. He shook his head, baffled.

“Speaking of fantasies,” Rory said, his voice rough, “why would Ward want to kill you two?”

“We went over that last night,” Lacey said. “Over and over and
over.”

Ian was more patient. If the sheriff wanted to rehash last night, then that’s what they’d do. At least Bliss wasn’t here, interrupting every other word.

“The instant Lacey showed up with those paintings,” Ian said, “she was a target. Her place was torched as soon as the deputies managed to follow her home. Her storage unit was torched as soon as the deputies followed her there. Her paintings were stolen from a hotel owned by Ward, a hotel you admit that he had access to and whose setup he’d over-seen from security to employee uniforms. If you looked for a missing van from the fleet of white ranch vehicles, you’d find one. If you searched the ranch you’d find the stolen paintings, including the one he swapped out because it showed Bliss’s bracelet too clear for his comfort. Have you looked for any of those things, Sheriff?”

“Talk about bullshit,” Savoy said impatiently. “Have you given Rory one credible reason why my father would do any of the things you describe? If he wanted the paintings bad enough to steal them, he wouldn’t be burning them, would he?”

“Did you bring the records I requested?” Ian asked Rory.

The sheriff gestured at the table.

“And?” Ian asked.

“I agree,” Rory said. “I can’t say much for the police work on any of the deaths except Gem Forrest’s. That one is clean. I headed the investigation myself.”

“So did previous captive sheriffs on other Forrest or Savoy investigations,” Lacey said.

Rory’s face hardened. “What are you saying?”

“The truth,” Ian said. “As far back as you go in the records, if there’s a sheriff called Forrest investigating a Savoy death, a blind two-year-old could have done it better. It gives a whole new angle on how to get away with murder.”

Savoy snorted. “You were right to leave Bliss out of this,” he said to Rory. “She’d be screaming by now.”

Rory didn’t argue. Her father’s near death had hit Bliss hard. She might fight Ward tooth and nail, but she loved him anyway.

“It all started when Benford Savoy the Second was killed on the ranch,” Ian said, “and his great and good friend Sheriff Morley Forrest conducted the investigation and discovered that it was a tragic accident.”

“That sort of accident happens every year, somewhere,” Rory said. “Some fool mixes alcohol and hunting. The fact that this fool was a rich man over sixty doesn’t make it any different than some poor slob from the sticks who drinks too many beers, trips over his own feet, and blows his stupid head off.”

“Who benefited from his death?” Lacey asked.

“Savoy’s? His wife inherited, if that’s what you mean,” Rory said, shrugging. “She wasn’t even in the county when it happened.”

Lacey pulled out her sketchbook and flipped it to the page where she’d made notes last night. “She inherited, but her adult son was supposed to be running the business. Except he was too busy drinking and raving over the countryside to care about the ranch, so Sheriff Morley Forrest kept on being the power behind the throne. He ran the Savoy businesses and everyone knew it. Correct?”

“Yes, but—” Savoy began.

Lacey kept talking. “Then you could say Morley Forrest benefited from his friend’s death. His power became more direct. The widow depended on him to keep her wild son in line and out of jail. As sheriff of Moreno County, Morley Forrest was in a position to keep the family’s dirty laundry out of sight.”

“Are you really saying that my grandfather’s death wasn’t an accident?” Savoy asked in disbelief.

Ignoring him, Lacey flipped a page and continued. “About twelve years after his father’s ‘accidental’ death, Three Savoy died in a car accident on the ranch. The cause? A mysterious ‘mechanical failure’ that somehow managed to dump his car into a ravine and him with it, and then burn so that nothing much was left but twisted metal. Rather spectacular results for an unexplained mechanical failure, but no one seemed curious. Just as no one would have been curious if Ian and I had ended up dead in a wreck that would no doubt have been written off as caused by ‘mechanical failure.’”

“My grandfather was a drunk,” Savoy said, ignoring the reference to yesterday’s accident. “He didn’t need mechanical failure to explain what happened to him.”

“Somebody needed it,” Ian said. “It’s right there in the report.”

“It was kinder on the widow than saying her husband was drunk, I’d guess,” Rory said. “No harm done.”

“Two days later,” Lacey continued, “an artist named Lewis Marten burned to death in his studio on Savoy Ranch. Like Morley, Marten had been a close friend of the family for years, since before Three married Sandra Wheaten. There were rumors that Marten was Sandra’s lover before and after the marriage.”

“There are always rumors,” Savoy muttered. “Jesus, you should hear some of the ones about Blissy.”

Rory slid two folders toward Ian. “Reports on the unattended deaths of Benford Savoy the Third and Lewis Marten.”

Ian flipped through. It didn’t take long. “The same blind two-year-old did the investigation on both of these. Not even dental records on the artist. Just ‘It was his house so it must be his charred bones inside it.’”

“Nobody ever heard from Lewis Marten again,” Rory said dryly. “Adds some weight to the assumption, don’t you think?”

Lacey kept reading from her notes. “Though still in her thirties, and fertile, his widow Sandra Wheaten Savoy never remarries. As before, Morley Forrest remains the faithful factotum in public and power behind the throne in private.”

“Hard on the pride,” Ian said.

“I’d imagine,” Lacey said. “But Morley had a plan. He was grooming his son, Ward, to marry the princess, Gem Savoy, despite the fact that the matriarch of the family was dead-set against it. Forrests were peasant
stock, don’t you know. Fortunately, the old lady died just in time for the engagement to be announced. Another accident on the ranch did her in. Another Forrest investigated. Another Forrest benefited.
Quelle
shock.”

Savoy looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get back to the hospital.”

“Go whenever you like,” Ian said. “We’ll just keep talking to the sheriff, unless he’s going back to watch over the old man, too.”

“I’m staying. I’d advise Savoy to sit down and stay.”

Savoy gave him a hard look and sat down. Rory began searching through the files.

“Here,” Rory said, handing another file to Ian. “Read it.”

Ian looked at the sheriff/coroner’s report on the Forrest matriarch’s unattended death. “Broken neck. Odd.”

“What’s odd?” Rory asked impatiently. “She was in her seventies and fell off her horse at a dead run.”

“My great-uncle was the first deputy at the scene,” Ian said.

Rory stopped rubbing his face and focused on Ian.

“Carl says the tracks showed that after being thrown, Mrs. Forrest got to her hands and knees, and then stood and walked ten feet,” Ian said. “Tough to do with a broken neck. He also told me that it looked like the horse had been scared right out of its steel shoes by something jumping out of a bush.”

“No tracks were mentioned in the report,” Rory said.

“My great-uncle said the ground had been swept before anybody got there.”

Rory’s eyes narrowed. “What did the sheriff say?”

“Sheriff Forrest wasn’t impressed with the idea of someone spooking the horse and then finishing the job when the fall didn’t kill her.”

“What?” Savoy jumped to his feet. “Are you suggesting that she was
murdered
?”

“The ranch worker who found her was so upset, according to the report,” Lacey continued, “that he went back to Mexico as soon as he talked to the sheriff about how he found the old lady with a broken neck. He didn’t talk to anybody else, apparently, not even his buddies. Just took his family and left. The sheriff didn’t see anything odd about that, either.”

Rory sat still, listening. And thinking. “Is that all?”

“A few days later,” Ian said, “Gem duly married Ward Forrest. A
handful of timely deaths through the years had transformed Morley Forrest from factotum to father-in-law of the first family, and Ward Forrest from county sheriff to king of Moreno County.”

“That’s absurd,” Savoy said curtly.

“No,” Ian said, “what passed for police work in this county is absurd. Which brings us to Gem Savoy Forrest.”

Another much thicker folder landed in front of Ian. He didn’t pick it up. He just looked at the sheriff. “Did you check the corpse for broken fingernails, flesh under the nails, bruise marks?”