Murder in the Dog Days (Maggie Ryan) (23 page)

Olivia squinted at the house. The windows facing the porch were cracked open, the curtains within stirring in the breeze. And the truck was here. So maybe someone was home, though in the country you never knew. Could be out riding a tractor or feeding the hogs. She picked up her tape recorder and notebook, gave the silent hedge one more careful look, and opened the van door.

An explosion of noise sharp as guncracks, a flash of fang and brown fur. Olivia shrieked and slammed the door again in the face of the raging dog. German shepherd, part of her mind catalogued, while her heart kicked in her chest like a rabbit in a sack. Goddamn German shepherd.

“Sarge!” A male voice broke authoritatively through the hoarse bombardment of barking. “Off!”

Sudden silence. The big animal, tan with smoky black saddle and mask, trotted wagging past the front of the van toward Olivia’s savior. “Lie down,” the man said conversationally, and when the dog dropped, “Good dog. Hey, lady, you can get out now!”

“Are you sure?” Olivia’s mouth was dry. Her heart was still thudding.

“Sure I’m sure. Old Sergeant Rock, he won’t do a thing unless I tell him to.”

What would Woodward or Bernstein do? Or Gloria Steinem? They’d get out and get the story, Olivia decided unhappily. She pushed down the door handle, eyeing the dog unwaveringly. Nothing. She pushed the door open a crack. He didn’t budge. She took a deep breath, sternly instructed her knees not to collapse, and climbed out.

Sergeant Rock lay calmly on the porch.

“You’re a brave lady,” said the man.

“Thanks, I guess.” If this was what brave felt like, she’d hate to try fear. She flicked her gaze to the man for a brief instant. A short dark beard, nice smile with dimples, but dull brooding eyes
.
Dim as a sickroom lam
p
. He wore jeans, a maroon plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a Day-Glo orange vest and billed hunter’s cap. Upright against his shoulder, pointed casually at the porch ceiling, was a rifle. Fancy telescopic sight, the whole gleaming with the sheen of loving care.

Sergeant Rock blinked sleepily at her.

“He’s a very obedient dog,” Olivia said, as much to convince herself as to the man.

“Oh, yeah. He’s been to school. Attack dogs like this, they get heavy-duty training. Total control.”

“Well, that’s good.” Olivia licked her dry lips. “Um, I’m looking for Ernie Grant.”

“That’s me.”

“I’m Olivia Kerr.”

“Hi, Olivia Kerr.” He grinned again, the smile lines disappearing into his beard. “And Sergeant Rock you’ve already met.”

“Yes, I sure have. Um, I was wondering if you’d talked to a guy named Dale Colby recently.” She was poised to leap back into the van if the dog or the rifle moved. Drops of rain were beginning to fall again, but she sure as hell wasn’t going onto that porch.

But Ernie Grant merely shook his head. “Dale Colby. No, I don’t know him.”

“Middle-aged guy, sandy hair—can I show you a picture?’’ She glanced fearfully at the dog.

“Just a minute.” He swung open the front door. “Sarge, inside!” The dog ambled in politely. Ernie Grant shut the door on him and smiled at Olivia. “He wouldn’t do anything, but you still seem nervous,” he explained.

“Yeah. Thanks. He’s quite a dog.” Olivia pulled out the photo of Dale and walked up the porch steps. Ernie leaned the rifle next to the door behind him and studied the picture.

“No,” he said, shaking his head again. “Never met him. How come you ask?”

“Well, he was a reporter.”

“A reporter?” Wariness flared in Grant’s dark eyes. Olivia decided to go step-by-step.

“Yes. He was working on a story about a plane crash. Do you remember? Back in January. Representative Knox’s plane?”

She had his attention now. The skin around his eyes had tensed as he studied her face. “What about it?”

“Well, I was told you knew one of the guys in that plane. The pilot. Corky Lewis.”

He stared at her, unmoving. She wasn’t sure he’d heard.

She said nervously, “Well, did you?”

“Did I what?” His gaze was on her but his thoughts could have been on the moon.

“Were you a friend of Corky Lewis?”

“A friend.” The dimpled smile returned suddenly. “A friend of ole Cap’n Corky. You want to know if I was his friend.”

“So you did know him!” She had begun to wonder if the bartender had somehow misremembered. “Well, I was wondering if you could tell me a little about him.”

“What’s it to you, lady?” He was wary again. “What are you really after?”

There was a story here, all right. There was also Sergeant Rock and that rifle. Olivia wished she’d brought Nate along. Or Nick. She held out her palm in a gesture of appeasement. “Sorry! Let me explain how I got involved.”

“Yeah. Do that.” He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, the immemorial no-nonsense position. Olivia decided to avoid nonsense.

She said, “Dale Colby was a friend of mine. He got killed while he was working on a story about the plane that crashed. He was talking to a lot of people. The congressman, and that developer Moffatt, and the lawyer’s widow. So I thought maybe he’d talked to you. And—”

“He didn’t. Why would he talk to me?”

Olivia smiled nervously. The Donovan’s Bar napkin glowed in her memory. This man, not Moffatt or Bates, had been at Dale’s despite his claims not to know him. And she realized uneasily that the nearest humans were those guys in the bulldozers back around the hill at the turnoff. Working in that clamor of mechanical noise they’d never hear a scream or even Sergeant Rock’s barking from over here. Olivia said soothingly, “Well, Dale talked to a lot of people. But if he didn’t talk to you, well, that’s all I wanted to know.” She moved down the steps toward the van. “Sorry to bother you.”

“Wait.”

Olivia turned, still backing toward the van. “Yeah?” she said in what she hoped was a friendly confident voice.

He came down the steps toward her. “This Dale you keep talking about. What paper is he with?”

“Mosby Sun-Dispatch. And so am I.”

“You’re a Sun-Dispatch reporter too?” He looked incredulous.

“Yeah. But if Dale didn’t talk to you, that’s okay, never mind.” She swiped raindrops from her forehead, took another step back.

“Hey, I think you ought to come inside a minute.”

“No, it’s okay,” Olivia soothed. “Sorry I bothered you.” Her fingers finally found the handle of the van door.

“I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to make a call.” He jerked a thumb toward the farmhouse door. “C’mon.”

“Well, make your call and I’ll check back with you a little later, okay?” Olivia wrenched open the van and jabbed her keys into the ignition as she slammed the door behind her. She spun the wheel and started backing up. She had to make a K-turn to clear the pickup truck and switch directions without going into the ditch. But the driveway was plenty wide.

Ernie Grant was running up the steps back toward the farmhouse door. She was free. Or was he going to release the dog? But Sergeant Rock couldn’t get into the van anyway. Olivia completed her turn and began to roll down the driveway. She’d be back, of course. Bring Nate, maybe even tip off the cops. Because there was one hell of a story here. She could taste it.

Then the world lurched.

Green unkempt hills zipped upward to the left, thick tangled weeds of the ditch careened toward her in a blur, clarifying at last into the rain-sparkled cheeriness of Queen Anne’s lace and black-eyed Susans nodding welcome a few inches from her eyes. Her forehead rested somehow on the steering wheel.

Ernie Grant was opening her door, slinging the rifle back over his shoulder, grabbing her wrist to help her out. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said gently. “Just hang around until I make my call, okay? I’ll help you change your tire in a few minutes.”

Her tire. Olivia gaped at the van, which tilted drunkenly into the ditch, rain sliding down its roof, front tire flat as an old toothpaste tube. Mystified, she rubbed her forehead with her free hand.

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“Bumped my head.”

He peered at it solicitously without releasing her wrist. “It’ll be okay. C’mon, let’s go in.”

There was no choice now.

Help would come eventually.

He said he wouldn’t hurt her.

Her job until then was straightforward if not simple.

Survive.

But one tiny unregenerate corner of her mind was dancing, thinking, what a story!

Mosby, Virginia

TUESDAY

AFTERNOON

AUGUST 5, 1975

14

Kent Edgerton was five eleven, maybe a hundred eighty-five, brown hair, brown eyes. The managing editor was wearing a short-sleeved button-down oxford shirt with khaki trousers, no tie. Holly had refused his offer of coffee. She was wired enough already, after that talk with Mitch. But she had herself back in grip now. Focus on Dale Colby, Schreiner. On details that might add up to answers. No need for coffee. Besides, the Sun-Dispatch’s scuffed urn looked like the twin brother of the sludge producer back in the station house.

But Edgerton had taken a foam cup of the stuff himself before leading her to his office, which was built at the end of a big room where people typed in cubicles, answered phones, and moved in and out in response to purposes she couldn’t guess. The office had interior windows so Edgerton could watch the activity in the large room. He took his coffee to a big battered desk already strewn with empty cups as well as stacks of papers.

“How long did Mr. Colby work here?” Holly asked him after the preliminaries.

“Must be fifteen, sixteen years,” he replied. “I’ve only been here eleven years myself. He told me he’d worked in Harrisburg before.”

“Did you know him well?”

“As a newspaperman, yes. Socially, not much. We each had our own circle of friends.”

“Who was in his circle of friends?”

“Don’t really know.” He sipped at the coffee, small eyes surveying her as she was surveying him.

“Neighbors? Drinking buddies? Poker players?”

“God, I never thought about it. I knew him only as a newspaperman. Seemed to be a workaholic.”

“Tell me about him as a newspaperman.”

“Reliable,” said Edgerton promptly. “Compulsive checker of facts. Really solid stories. Kept the best files of any of us.”

Holly nodded. It fit the picture of Colby that was forming in her mind. Workaholic, yes. A neat person, clothes unrumpled even in squalid death, married to a woman who kept a neat, unrumpled house. Tidy, no loose ends. In his job as in Holly’s it was difficult to tie off all the loose ends, but apparently he did his best. She glanced out the interior window at the big room. Most reporters’ cubbyholes had surfaces stacked with paper, used coffee cups like Edgerton’s, notes taped crazily to walls and file cabinets. Dale’s home office had been much better organized. The desk surface had been orderly: phone book squarely next to the phone, the oval dish of lemon drops lined up with the axis of the desk, even the dirty lunch dishes stacked neatly in a corner to be taken away. The latest equipment all through the house: IBM Selectric, labeled files, Sony TV, thermostat, even coffee maker. No sludge for Dale Colby. His bedroom closet neat, shoes lined up. Tools on the garage pegboard hung carefully, each on its own silhouette. Only that lamp out of place.

“What was Colby’s reaction when he found something that didn’t fit?” Holly asked.

“Like a hound dog on a scent,” Edgerton said. He’d finished his coffee already. “Most of us have that basic instinct. But he was especially likely to keep working at a story until ever
y
i
was dotted. Dale took inconsistencies almost as personal insults. His greatest strength was his tendency to keep after stories until he understood every nuance.”

“And his greatest weakness?”

“Same thing, really.” He poked at the used foam coffee cups on his desk, arranging them in a military row as though in unconscious homage to Dale Colby. “He’d hold on too long. Fairfax scooped us several times because Dale was checking something in his last paragraph and didn’t get the story in. Most of us prefer to get it out fast even if we have to cut the last paragraph.”

“Did he usually tell you what he was checking?”

“If it was hot stuff. Or if I asked why the hell he hadn’t filed the story yet.”

“Do you know what he was checking yesterday?”

“No, damn it.” He picked up one of the foam cups and began to pinch off the rim in tiny fragments. “He was working on the plane crash story. We’d printed his update yesterday and I had the feeling he was using that piece in part to rattle cages. Certainly Moffatt and Mrs. Resler called in about it.”

“You think one of them might be upset enough to be involved with his death?”

“Hell, I don’t know.” The foam cup had been destroyed. Edgerton began to pick up the pieces and drop them into another of the cups. “I keep asking myself who would benefit. He had a first wife, you know, a tough blonde—”