Hometown Homicide Read online

  “No, ma’am,” she said, her denial firm. “I’m not implying anything. Not jumping to any conclusions, either. Deputy Zantos speaks for himself.”

  Jesselyn remained on the other end of the phone, silent, except for the sound of hurried breathing. Frankie maintained her quiet and waited.

  “Is this because of all the stuff Denise left in the apartment?” Jesselyn asked at last. “I know you were worried. Is that it? But Vic got that email saying Denise was leaving. The message came from her phone. Doesn’t that prove anything?”

  “Pretty easy to send a text from a phone,” Frankie said before she could stop herself. “Anyone’s phone. All you have to do is hold it in your hand.”

  “Frankie, just what is going on?” Jesselyn’s tone indicated she meant business, but Frankie wasn’t about to fall for the added pressure.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” She wriggled uncomfortably at the lie. “The deputy is looking into the break-in. That’s all I know.” It just wasn’t all she suspected. And what about Howie? Tension nagged at her.

  “Where are you?” Jesselyn demanded. “I know you’re not at the apartment. I just drove past and didn’t see your pickup. But Rudy Swallowtail’s rig is parked out front.”

  “Rudy Swallowtail?”

  “The tribal cop. Frankie, we need to meet and talk.”

  Frankie glanced at her watch. “Sorry. No time, today, Jesselyn. I’ve got to get to work.”

  “You have an hour. Where are you?” Jesse asked again.

  The question dragged an answer from her. “I’m at home. Grandma’s house,” she clarified.

  Jesselyn gasped. “With Gabe? That was fast.”

  “What was fast? The deputy wanted me out of the duplex and offered me a bed.” That didn’t sound quite right either. “He’s not here! He’s working. He knew I needed to crash somewhere that would accept Banner. That’s all. Simple.”

  “Hah! You’re simple.” Jesselyn abruptly hung up, her final sentence puzzling Frankie no end.

  She doubted she’d heard Jesselyn’s last word on the subject.

  Chapter 8

  Providence must have been on Frankie’s side for once. On her way to the station, she met Howie headed toward the apartment, trudging along the verge of the road. His flip-flops slapped through dry, yellowed weeds, stirring grasshoppers into motion.

  Relief flowing over her, she stopped beside him, reached across and rolled down the window. “Howie! Are you all right?”

  He raised his head, squinting bloodshot eyes against the sun’s glare. “Kind of sick, Frankie. Got a little drunk last night.” He raised his arm, the one in the dirty cast. “Kept this damn thing from itching. Anyhow, lost my coat hanger. Think somebody stole it.”

  Frankie fought back a relieved giggle. “Have you seen Gabe Zantos today?”

  “Nah. Not for several days. He pretty much leaves me alone since I ain’t got a car anymore. The only one I gotta look out for is Rudy Swallowtail.” He noticed Frankie’s puzzled expression. “Tribal police. But,” he added hastily, “I ain’t done anything wrong in a coon’s age. Ask anybody. They’ll tell you.”

  “I believe you.” She glanced at her watch. “Get in, Howie. I’ll give you a ride home.”

  He lit up. “Heh, thanks, Frankie. I appreciate it.”

  With her neighbor belted in—under protest—she turned the pickup around and drove slowly toward the duplex. “You know those noises you told you’ve been hearing at night? Well, my apartment was broken into again last night.”

  “Wasn’t me. I wasn’t home.” His reply came quickly.

  “I know. I told the deputy so. But we found something—” Frankie couldn’t bring herself to tell him the details. Gabe would probably frown on her for spilling the beans.

  Howie’s face lit up. “Heh. Yeah. How’s the dog. Shine gonna be okay? She looked pretty beat up.”

  She gave him a succinct synopsis of Shine’s ordeal and Banner’s heroism. “The thing of it is,” she continued, “we—Deputy Zantos and I—think whoever keeps entering my apartment is looking for something.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t know.” She waited until he looked at her again. “Do you have any idea? See, Denise... well, she may not have been the person you think she was. She may have hidden something in the apartment. Something the burglar badly wants.” A beat later, she realized she’d use the past tense again. Howie, fortunately, didn’t pick up on her slip the way Jesselyn had done.

  “Whadaya mean?”

  “I mean because she seems to have disappeared, and she’s not answering her phone, and because someone keeps breaking into my duplex.”

  “Disappeared?” Howie fixated on the word. “I thought you said—” He stopped, his expression hangdog.

  “What?”

  He gave a little jump.

  Frankie took her eyes off the road long enough to give him a good stare. “I hoped you might know why she’d leave like that. Or if you think she left of her own volition.”

  “Her own what?”

  “Because she wanted to leave.”

  “I don’t know. Why ask me?” he answered. Fast, like he couldn’t wait to get the words out.

  “Because you said you were friends. Friends sometimes tell each other things.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted, “we’re friends.”

  Excitement quickened. “And does she tell you things?” It was almost a disappointment to wheel into the duplex’s driveway. Apparently, nothing much had changed since early morning except for the tribal police cruiser parked out front. That, and the yellow crime scene tape blocking off the door to her unit.

  “Crap. What’s he doing here?” Howie glared at the cop.

  “I told you. The break-in. I think it’s just procedure. Never mind. They’re not after you. Anyway, you’re not a Coeur d’ Alene tribal member, are you? So he can’t hassle you.

  “Says you.”

  She flapped a hand. “Please, Howie. Tell me what you know about Denise.”

  “She didn’t tell me anything much.” His voice was muffled as he looked out the window instead of at her. “But there was this box of old DVDs and computer stuff. It was just junk waiting to go in the garbage, or so she said when I asked her about it. But she had a funny look on her face when she was talkin’.”

  “And?”

  “And nothin’. Then yesterday. You know, after you took Shine to the vet, I found the box shoved under the porch. My side of the porch. It was almost hidden under an old piece of canvas. Seemed strange to me.” He rattled off the last so fast Frankie had to wonder.

  “Very strange. Just junk, huh?” Frankie pondered. “What did you do with this junk?”

  “Nothin’. I threw it out again, of course. What do I want with a bunch of—” He broke off then said, “—old computer programs. I ain’t got a computer.”

  A flash of movement made her glance in her side mirror. It showed Gabe’s SUV turning the corner and proceeding toward them. A police cruiser followed the SUV and an unmarked van. Looked like the crime scene unit had arrived at last. Her talk with Howie had come to an abrupt end.

  And if she didn’t hurry to work, Lew would have a fit.

  “Thanks, Howie,” she said. “I want you to tell Deputy Zantos everything about Denise that you just told me, okay? It might be important.”

  “Okay.” In a hurry now, he got out of the pickup. “Thanks for the ride. Appreciate it.”

  “Anytime.”

  Gabe waited to pull in, allowing Frankie to back out of the driveway. She stopped beside his SUV. “I hope it’s all right, but I left Banner in the back yard. I didn’t know what else to do with him. I can’t keep taking him to work with me and this place—” She made a helpless gesture.

  “Fine by me.” He jerked a thumb toward Howie who was fumbling, trying to fit his key in the lock, and making slow work of it. “St. James is not the most reliable of witnesses, you know. He has a few bad habits that skew his thinking.”
r />   Frankie felt her face flushing. “I wasn’t trying to preempt you, deputy. I just saw him walking along the road and gave him a ride home, that’s all.”

  He grinned. “Yeah?”

  “And I told him to tell you everything he told me.” Virtue oozed from her every pore.

  “Good of you.” His voice was so dry it crackled. “I’ll do a cross check with you later.” He drove on, the cruiser and van parking behind him.

  Howie, Frankie came to realize, had been lying to her. He either knew something or had suspicions about Denise and her sudden departure, and for some reason was keeping mum about it. Judging by the bold manner in which Mr. Size Twelve had tracked mud across her floor, as if he didn’t care who knew he’d been there, Howie may have been wise. Wise to stay out all night, too, away from harm. With a broken arm, defending himself, if necessary, became an issue.

  She drew into the station’s parking lot dead on time, which, according to her, meant five minutes before the hour. Heat shimmered off the pavement, a stench of old motor oil rose from a stain beneath one of the firemen’s cars. Garbage in the dumpster behind the station exuded an alcoholic pungency. Frankie hurried into the building, away from the smells.

  Maggie, seated at the computer station, called a greeting when she entered. Chris Adkins, about to go off shift, grinned a welcome as he slammed his locker and keyed a two-inch padlock closed. Beyond him, in the glassed-in office, she saw Lew talking to Captain Karl Mager.

  “Thought you were gonna be late.” Chris made heavy business of winking at her. “A word to the wise, Lew doesn’t like that.”

  “So he told me,” Frankie said. “Good thing I’m never late. Busy day?”

  He flapped his hand in a teetering motion. “So, so.”

  “Dull,” Maggie said, then, as her screen lit up, added, “Looks like the calls were waiting for you to get here.” She hit a key and spoke into her headset. “Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”

  A scant sixty seconds found Frankie and Lew speeding down a gravel road toward the lake. Frankie was at the wheel, Lew in the passenger seat. Rocks spurted from beneath the ambulance’s tires. The siren wailed. Lights flashed. A bulk semi-truck, its racks filled to the brim with a load of wheat bound for the elevator in town, swayed out of the road’s middle as they crested a hill.

  Lew leaned past Frankie and sketched the driver a salute. “Dry enough for Wright to resume cutting wheat, I see. Guess the storm didn’t do too awful much damage the other night.”

  Frankie answered, absently. “The rain didn’t last long, even it was a gully-washer. And it’s been hot. The fields dried pretty fast.”

  “Yep.”

  From there, another mile took them off the main road onto a narrower private one leading down to Breezy Bay. The road stopped at a dock, a neat affair formed of Trex decking with a thirty-foot SeaRay tied to it, fenders bumping lightly. Looming above the water was a stone and timber house sporting turrets and a copper roof. Like something out of the Middle Ages, Frankie thought, eyeing the edifice, only more expensive.

  Where the dock ended a hundred feet out on the water, they found two women and a kid in his late teens hovering around a bikini-clad girl lying on a hot pink beach towel. A lean, well-preserved man of about fifty was leaning over her performing CPR. The girl wasn’t moving.

  Lew carrying the medical kit, he and Frankie trotted onto the dock. Pushing through the bystanders, they knelt beside the woman. Frankie eased the man doing CPR aside and took over. Lew applied a blood pressure cuff and felt for a pulse.

  “Thank God you’re here,” the man said. “Finally. It’s been ten minutes.” He was panting, sweat dripping down his face and onto his hands. No surprise, A fine summer day, the temperature had hit ninety degrees at last report. Sunlight glared off the water that sparkled as though strewn with diamonds.

  Besides, CPR was always hard work.

  “We’ve got it now, doc,” Lew said, which was when Frankie realized the CPR guy looked familiar because she’d seen him in the hospital during the run with Russ Pettigrew. This doctor had looked in on a patient in the next cubicle, an elderly man with breathing problems.

  “How long was she in the water?” Lew asked as he shook his head and made another try for a blood pressure.

  The doctor arched an eyebrow at the three bystanders.

  “Maybe four or five minutes.” A tall, skinny kid wearing wet swim trunks answered. “We were going over to the resort in Coeur d’Alene to get a hamburger. I was almost out of the bay when I noticed she wasn’t behind me. I turned around, saw her machine bobbing close to Dr. Muncie’s dock, and heard a woman yelling. It wasn’t my fault.”

  “Nobody said it was.” One of the women, an almost emaciated blonde, patted the kid’s shoulder. “I saw it happen. Looked to me like she was going too fast, lost control and ran her jet ski head-on into the dock. It bounced. She held on long enough to head back out, but then she just fell off. Went under like a rock.”

  Frankie noticed the woman’s bikini was dry. Evidently, she wasn’t the one who’d pulled the girl in.

  “Will Chandra be all right?” The young guy still sounded scared.

  Frankie, bending over the girl and breathing into her mouth, raised her sights above the pair of big bare feet to the kid’s concerned face. She left the answering to Lew who gave a nod that could’ve meant anything.

  “Got a pulse, Frankie. You can stop chest compressions now.”

  In affirmation, the girl suddenly turned her head and choked out a mixture of lake water and vomit. Frankie helped her onto her side, waited until the spasm was over, and cleared her mouth. In the background, she heard someone say faintly, “Eww.”

  “Keep it up, Frankie. I’ll get a blanket and the oxygen.”

  She started the breathing part again. Back before she missed him, Lew had made the roundtrip to the ambulance with a stride almost as fast as a flat out run.

  They worked in quiet tandem until the girl stirred and pushed weakly at Frankie, who rocked back on her heels. Her foot hurt, toes pressed—hah, a joke—too hard against the dock. Lew snapped an oxygen mask onto the girl’s face, and they wrapped her in a couple layers of blanket.

  “Why a blanket?” one of the women demanded. “It’s already so hot. She’ll suffocate.”

  “They know what they’re doing.” The doctor, whose name Frankie had already forgotten, snapped an answer.

  Lew, monitoring the girl’s pulse, exchanged a worried glance with Frankie when Chandra started coughing. Pink froth formed around her mouth.

  In another five minutes, they had the girl stabilized and on a stretcher. Lew at the head, Frankie at the foot, they carried her up to the ambulance and soon had her out to the main road and on the way to Kootenai Medical Center. Lew drove, leaving Frankie in charge of the girl. He pushed the ambulance to the limit on the straight stretches of highway.

  “Was that the doctor’s place? You know, where we picked up the girl?” Frankie yawned, tired to the bone as, the run completed, the ambulance rumbled toward Hawkesford.

  “Yep. His summer place. Pretty palatial, huh?” A note of amusement tinged Lew’s voice.

  Frankie looked at him. “I’ll say. I wouldn’t have recognized Breezy Bay. Seven years ago, we had our senior high school keg party down there. Lit a fire of driftwood, sat around on stumps, and drank beer. Now the whole area is bought up, and million dollar vacation homes have taken over the whole shoreline.”

  “And not a one belong to locals.” Lew scowled. “And don’t ever overlook the No Trespassing signs. I understand the doc’s place owes something to his wife. She’s a high powered lawyer with an outfit that has about a dozen names in the title. Works mostly over in Seattle and is only here a couple weekends a month. Or so I hear.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. And the happy couple’s nearest neighbor is Bugs Swisher.” Lew noticed Frankie’s blank expression. “Football player. Retired to beautiful North Idaho with a boatload
of money.”

  “Oh. Well, I liked it the way it was before. It looks like Breezy Bay is about to become another Tahoe.”

  “Wouldn’t know.” Lew shrugged. “Never been there.”

  In another fifteen minutes, they were back at the station, ready for their next run. Frankie was still bummed about the local changes, almost enough to take her mind off the duplex break-ins, spilled blood, and the missing Denise Rider. Almost, but not quite.

  When Dr. Kelly called Frankie at the end of office hours to tell her Shine was ready to be released from the veterinary hospital, yet another problem presented itself.

  “She’ll need antibiotics, pain meds, and the dressings changed periodically over the wound for the next few days,” the vet warned. “In other words, someone who knows how to care for her. If you’re serious about taking her on, that is. You’re about her best bet right now.”

  Frankie couldn’t help sighing. “I guess I let myself in for it when I brought her to you, didn’t I?”

  This time, she heard a smile in Dr. Kelly’s voice.

  “That’s what I wanted to hear, Ms. McGill.”

  “Frankie,” she corrected.

  “Frankie. Has anyone heard from Denise? Or found any trace of her?”

  Doubting the deputy would want the news of their discovery noised about, Frankie didn’t know what to say. Finally, she settled for, “Not that I know of. I’ll pick Shine up around noon or so tomorrow if that’s all right.”

  “Fine. I’ll have her ready to go. You won’t be sorry, Frankie. She’s a loving little thing.”

  Yes. And so was Banner. She hoped he wouldn’t get his nose out of joint.

  What in the world was she going to do with two dogs, one of them hurt? With her duplex out of commission, where was she going to find a place for them to stay, let alone find a bed for herself when she got off shift?

  Turns out Gabe Zantos came through for her again. Sort of.

  Chapter 9

  Frankie, busy checking supplies and cleaning the ambulance an hour before day shift came on, looked up when Gabe Zantos strode into the station just before daylight. He greeted Lew and the dispatcher and, ignoring the glance the other two exchanged, ambled into the garage where she was working.