Bodyguard Father. Alice Sharpe
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They’d rubbed down Scio after his walk. The big bay gelding, now locked into a stall, munched on hay, a blanket secured on his back. He looked cleaner, drier, and better fed than either one of them.
Annie stretched out her legs and took a bite of a Golden Delicious. Though the stall was plush by barn standards, it was still drafty and cold. What she wouldn’t give for a shower and realized with a start that she still had a room at the motel in Poplar Gulch. That meant clean clothes!
“Annie?”
“Sorry. Okay, two men drove up. They cracked a few jokes about the wreck at the top of the driveway then went looking for you. They said you’d probably killed me and buried me on the hill. And then they laughed.” It still made her tremble deep inside.
“What did they look like?”
Annie described them: one bald, one a smiling man with a single eyebrow.
“Sounds like they were distinctive,” Garrett said. “Do you know them?”
“No. Did they know about you? Did they know your name?”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone besides Shelby Parker know you intended to come to Ben Miller’s cabin?”
“Nope, and that means they know Shelby Parker, right? That means Shelby sent them instead of the police. Why?”
“I don’t know. I expected Klugg to try something like this, but what does Shelby Parker want with me?”
“Well, you did kill her mother.”
As soon as the words left her lips, Annie had one reaction followed by another. The first was a jolt of pure panic: she was munching on an apple while in the company of a killer.
The second reaction was just as strong. No, she wasn’t. This man wasn’t a killer, at least not in the cold-blooded way Annie suspected the two gangster-types who had burned down Ben Miller’s cabin might be.
“I didn’t kill her mother,” he said. “But I guess Shelby doesn’t know that. What I mean is why doesn’t she want me brought to justice? Why would she want me brought to her? To kill me herself? Isn’t that a little far-fetched? And wouldn’t she be concerned about your safety?”
“Beats me. Maybe someone tapped Shelby’s phone, maybe they heard she hired my father and were waiting to get a message that he’d found you.”
“I wouldn’t put anything past Klugg.”
“But they never mentioned the name Klugg, you know.”
He rubbed his temples.
“Who is this guy, anyway?”
“Klugg?” He finished off a granola bar, and brushed the crumbs from his fingers. “He used to be a boxer. He owns a string of health clubs now as well as a few gyms where people train. When two of his associates ended up dead, he was charged with hiring a hit man. Elaine was his attorney. He blamed her when he got a guilty conviction. First he fired her and then he started making threats.”
“What kind of threats?”
“The kind that make a person scared to go out in the dark. Someone followed her home one night, ramming her bumper, turning off their headlights and then there was a delivery of dead roses—stuff like that.”
“But you said Klugg was in jail.”
“Trust me, a guy like Klugg maintains connections on the outside. All he has to do is give orders.”
“Why would anyone think you’d kill Elaine Greason? What motive would you have had?”
He was silent for a moment, then took a deep breath. “I went to see Klugg in prison.”
“Then you know him?” She couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice.
“No, I don’t know him. What happened was this—he demanded a visit from Elaine. She didn’t want anything more to do with him. I was supposed to tell Klugg to leave Elaine alone or she’d get a court order. I delivered the message. The man stared at me like I was a piece of dead meat. The cops decided that meeting was when Klugg hired me to take care of Elaine for him.”
“Then the motive they settled on was—”
“Money. I heard they found an envelope of unexplained cash in my apartment after I left. It appeared I had motive, opportunity and the know-how because I worked briefly with munitions in the army. I was like the poster boy for this murder. Add to that the fact I got into a gunfight with Randy Larson when he tried to detain me, and it doesn’t look so good.”
“No,” she said, “it doesn’t. If you didn’t kill Elaine Greason and Klugg did then he’s going to want your mouth permanently closed.”
“Exactly,” he said.
For Annie, the euphoria of escaping the fire was being quickly replaced by anxiety. What was she doing in a world of murder and arson and assassins? She was a preschool teacher!
She thought back to hiding in the barn, to lurking in the hay loft, and suppressed a shudder.
“Tell me what else those men said.”
“It sounded as though they were ready to shoot me if they saw me.”
“I’m sorry I left you tied up,” he said. “It’s a good thing you’re such a pro at getting free.”
“Why would Shelby agree to that? What have I ever done to her?” Besides lie about my father’s condition, Annie added to herself. But no one was supposed to know about that.
“You’re apparently the only one who knows she’s out to get rid of me,” Garrett said. “But again, if Klugg is intercepting her messages, she may not even have gotten the one you left. It might have gone directly to him. When you met with her, did she say anything to suggest she wasn’t acting alone?”
Since Annie had never actually spoken with the woman, she shook her head. She got up and walked over to Scio, offering him the rest of her apple, glad to be out from under Garrett’s scrutiny for a second.
The big horse daintily sniffed the apple before nibbling from it with huge teeth. Annie handed it over, glad to escape with all her fingers.
“Did those goons say what they were going to do next?” Garrett said.
She turned to face him, standing with her back to Scio’s stall. She tried hard not to think about the many times she’d avoided death that night, but the harrowing memories were stacking up like planes over a busy airport. “When they decided to burn the house and barn,” she said, “I got the feeling it was to get rid of something. Not someone, something. Oh, and they said they would try the Reno place tomorrow. They said they would stake it out.”
Garrett grew very still. “The Reno place?”
“What does it mean?” she asked, stepping closer.
“The only place I had in Reno was an apartment at the back of Greason’s property. Even if it was still mine, they wouldn’t go there.”
“But it’s not yours anymore?”
“Of course not. A man doesn’t pay the rent for a man he believes blew up his loving wife.”
“I guess not.”
“Plus, he saw me shoot poor Randy. Trust me, Greason isn’t losing sleep worrying about keeping a roof over my head. And if two goons show up and he figures they’re in any way connected to his wife’s murder, he’ll have the cops there so fast…”
“How about your daughter? She lives in Reno.”
“But they don’t know her name. My ex took her maiden name back and I didn’t advertise Megan’s existence.”
“Did you tell Elaine or her husband about Megan? Might they