Caruso 01 - Boom Town (19 page)

Tony slowed a bit when he heard that.

“You can’t prove he did this,” Dawn said.

Tony made his way around the side of the building and understood immediately why Don Sanders was so angry. Laying on the ground on its side was a horse, its belly bloated like somebody had shoved a helium hose up its ass and started filling it up. Tony stopped and looked down, almost stepping in a huge pile of manure.

Dawn and Don both turned to look at him. She was wearing a pair of blue jeans and hiking boots, a western shirt tucked into her pants. It was a look that totally surprised Tony, considering how she had appeared up to this point. Her brother wore coveralls and steal-toed boots. He yanked on his long beard when he saw Tony.

“What the fuck you doin’ here?” he yelled out at Tony.

“Don!” she said. She stepped closer and gazed up at Tony without the use of her little round spectacles. She was wearing tinted contacts that made her green eyes seem like smooth chunks of jade. “How’d you find me?” she asked.

“I stopped by your office. Thought you might want to do lunch.” Tony glanced around her. “What happened to the horse?”

Her brother stomped closer. “I’ll tell you what happened. Some cowardly motherfucker shot my mare. I come home for a little lunchtime chow and find this.” He waved his hand at the dis-tended gray mare.

“Who?” Tony asked.

“Who the fuck you think?” Don Sanders ran his fingers though his hair. When Tony didn’t answer, he said, “Humphrey!” He spit his client’s name out like it was bile that had bubbled up from his gut.

“You don’t know that, Donny,” she said, placing her hand on
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her brother’s arm.

“Who else?” Don Sanders said. It was obvious she had a calm-ing effect on him.

She didn’t say a thing. Didn’t have an answer for him.

“We been through so much together,” he said, gazing at the mare like a husband would to a wife who had died. “We were out there.” He swished his hand out to no place in particular toward the mountains. “When they came.” He smiled at Tony.

His sister shook her head. “Donny let’s not go there again.”

Tony was confused. “Who came?”

“Don’t ask,” she said.

“I’ll tell you who,” Don Sanders said. “Our friends. They don’t wanna do us no harm. They’re just curious.”

Tony was about to open his mouth when he saw Dawn shake her head at him.

“Them,” Don whispered. “I was riding the mare out there one night. Three years ago. I saw the light. I felt this feeling of rising up into the sky.” He sighed as if he missed the experience, wanted it to happen to him all over again.

Tony let him talk because it was taking his mind off the mare.

Without warning, Don Sanders drifted over to his mare, knelt down, and wrapped his arms around the horse’s neck.

His sister pulled Tony aside. “We think he fell off his horse that night,” she explained. “I found him out in the field the next morning when he didn’t show up to work, the mare standing next to him, and he was hypothermic. The doctor said he had a fractured skull. He hasn’t been the same since.”

“Don’t you go planting lies into his head,” her brother said, getting to his feet and drifting toward the two of them. “I haven’t lost it yet. Humphrey ripped me off to try to drive me off this place.

Wiped me out. Even took supplies so I couldn’t work.”

That got Tony’s attention. “Like what?”

He shrugged. “Actuators. Wire. Some chemicals. Not everything. Just enough to slow me down. I had to drive to Portland to buy more.”

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Now that was interesting. Could have explained the matching wire at Don’s work site and the Humphrey house.

“I think you should have a vet look at the mare,” Tony said.

“Pull the slug out. See what kind of gun shot her.”

Don nodded his head at Tony.

Tony and Dawn walked back to the front of the house. She seemed concerned.

“What do you think?” Tony asked her.

She stopped a few feet from her Toyota 4x4 and turned to Tony.

Her eyes were uncertain. “I don’t know. I’d like to think that Cliff Humphrey wouldn’t do something like this. My God. This is Oregon. It’s almost as bad to kill a horse as a human.” She let out a heavy sigh.

“But?”

“But...I guess it’s possible. I mean, who else would have killed his horse?” Then she pointed off toward her brother’s house. “My grandparents built this place sixty years ago. We were brought up out here, back when Bend was a quiet little town. Now the place has grown beyond recognition. And my brother.” She thought for a moment, shaking her head from side to side. “He doesn’t fully understand the development, yet he’s become a part of it. I think that bothers him on some level.”

She seemed on the verge of crying. Tony stepped closer, unsure if he should take her in his arms.

“What about the break-in here?” Tony asked. “I noticed the door frame was ripped apart.”

“Did you look inside?”

“No.”

“There’s nothing in there. Whoever came here took everything.

Even his damn phone. Donny hasn’t even had a chance to replace anything. He’s sleeping on the floor. He blames himself. He would have been home, but he was given a pair of tickets for a Blazers game. This is an isolated place. Someone must have brought a truck up and just piled his stuff in. The silly thing is, he didn’t have a lot of good things. I mean, nothing of great value. I
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just know someone did it to force a deal with Humphrey.”

“Who knew he was going to the Blazers game?” Tony asked.

“Probably not many people. He doesn’t do much socializing anymore. Not since his accident.”

“The fall from the horse?” Tony said.

“Yeah.”

Tony had more to ask her, but not here. They decided to do lunch, driving separate to a nice Mexican place downtown.

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Having finished their lunch, Tony and Dawn sat for a moment staring at each other. She had a glass of red wine, and Tony had a local microbrew. Their conversation over lunch had dealt with what he was currently working on, and her brother. Somehow he had a feeling Don Sanders was involved, how-ever remotely, with the whole Dan and Barb Humphrey and Frank Peroni situation. Their conversation just turned to Peroni.

“I don’t see what that guy has to do with anything,” she said, taking a sip of wine, but keeping her eyes on Tony.

“I’m not entirely convinced myself. As far as Dan and Barb are concerned, I think Peroni saw something. Something that made him go into hiding.”

Tony sat there thinking about Frank Peroni and what Detective Shabato and Reese had told him about the man. How Peroni was under investigation for robberies in the Portland area. How his boss had reacted when Tony talked with him. Considering everything he knew, Tony had an idea. He needed to get back to his condo and his computer to check out his theory.

Tony’s cell phone rang. He reluctantly picked it up. “Yeah.”

“What the hell, Tony. Someone shoots you and I gotta find out a couple of days later?”

“Uncle Bruno.” Tony lowered his voice and said, “It’s not like I’d put out a press release. It was a grazing shot. A few stitches.”

Tony shrugged to Dawn across the table.

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“You get your ass to Duluth for Christmas. I won’t take no for an answer. All your cousins will be there. Sounds like you could use a break.”

Tony shook his head. “I gotta finish this first. I think I’m gettin’ close.”

“Somebody thinks so.”

“Bruno, I gotta get going. I’m at lunch with a beautiful woman.”

“Well. . .carry on then.”

Smiling, Tony clicked off the phone and put it into his pocket.

“Sorry about that. My Uncle Bruno wants me to go to Minnesota for Christmas.”

“No problem. I’m a beautiful woman?” She smiled.

Rising from his chair, Tony threw enough money on the table to cover lunch. But their departure from the restaurant would be delayed. Walking across the room directly toward them, at a pace that made her determined expression somewhat sinister, was Melanie Chadwick. She was wearing a short gray skirt that slid up her firm legs with each step. She stopped at their table and crossed her arms over her white silk blouse. Tony took his seat again.

“I was wondering if you planned on calling me,” Melanie said, her eyes narrowing toward Tony. “Now I see why you won’t.”

Her glare shifted toward Dawn, who looked embarrassed, which Tony didn’t think was part of her facial repertoire.

“There’s nothing going on between us, Melanie,” Dawn said.

“Right.” Melanie’s foot started tapping, like a mother would do listening to a child try to lie his way out of a fix.

“Why don’t you sit down,” Tony said. “We were just discussing what I was working on.”

“I think I know what you’re working on, Tony.” She raised her brows, but she wasn’t smiling.

Tony was aware of people staring at them. Not that he cared much about that. But he was somewhat embarrassed for the two of them, since they had to do business in Bend.

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Tony got up and Dawn rose after him. Then Tony saw a woman sitting against the far wall, her eyes gazing directly at the commotion of Dawn, Melanie and himself. Mrs. James Ellison. She smiled at him just like she had the last time he had seen her, rising up naked from the hot tub, imploring him to enter and join her.

Without saying another word, the three of them went out to the front of the building. Tony expected a long recitation on how he was a pig like every other man on the planet. And maybe he had it coming, because he wasn’t able to convince himself that he didn’t have feelings for Dawn Sanders. What he got was far less biting.

Melanie calmly looked Tony in the eye and said, “I should have known better than to get involved with another Italian. Always thinking with the little head.” Then she simply turned and walked away.

Ouch. A personal attack was one thing. But to attack his heritage...that hurt, Tony thought

Dawn stepped closer to Tony and took his hand in hers.

“Believe me. From what I’ve seen, the little head is not that little.”

They both started laughing.

Tony had agreed to keep in touch with Dawn. He wanted to see more of her, and that wasn’t the little head thinking. She was a beautiful, interesting person. Someone who he thought would be a friend over time.

On the way back to the condo, he took a quick detour toward the river, parking next to Cliff Humphrey’s Mercedes out front of his development company. As he walked into the building, he tried to prepare himself for the questions he had to ask him.

Questions that would surely strain their relationship, whatever that was.

Inside, he breezed right past the receptionist, past a man and a woman discussing something at a drafting table, and stormed into
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Cliff Humphrey’s office, slamming the door behind him.

Humphrey was surprised and shocked to see him. He started to get up from behind his desk, when Tony pointed his finger right at him, sending him back into the leather.

“I’m sick of being lied to,” Tony yelled. He hesitated, trying to build tension.

When Cliff Humphrey didn’t say anything, Tony continued.

“You know Frank Peroni.”

He had a stupid look on his face, and Tony knew he was searching his mind for the lie of the minute.

“Well?”

Letting out a deep sigh, Humphrey said, “I don’t understand how that matters.”

Tony leaned onto the man’s desk and tightened his jaw. “You let me decide what’s pertinent to the case. I asked you the other day if you knew him, and you lied to me. Why?”

Humphrey slid his hands together as if he were praying. Good.

Maybe Tony was actually scaring the guy into asking for God’s help.

“I’m sure Mr. Peroni had nothing to do with Dan and Barb’s death,” Humphrey said, each word spoken deliberately.

“What makes you so sure?”

“What motive would he have?”

Technicality. Unfortunately, he had a point, and Tony let him know that by loosening his grip on his desk. But he also knew that motives came in flimsy forms quite often. Tony had a feeling there were too many people with too much money involved with this case. He was convinced of that much.

“Why didn’t you tell me Frank Peroni had sold locks to damn near every development you built?” Tony asked.

“It wasn’t relevant.” Humphrey’s voice had an edge to it now, as if the power was shifting back to him.

“He was at the house the night your son died,” Tony said.

“That’s relevant.”

“Says who?”

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“Says me.” Tony backed away from the desk, turned, and started to leave.

“Have you even talked with the man?” Humphrey asked.

Tony stopped and turned. “No. But I plan on it. You hired me to find out what happened. If you can’t handle the truth, you should have hired some hack.” With that, Tony stormed out of the office just as he had entered.

On the way out to the truck, everything was jumbling in his mind. He wasn’t sure what he was investigating any more. He was working for some lying bastard he was beginning to hate.

Which shouldn’t have been a problem, except he promised himself when he got into this whole business that he wouldn’t take a job from some high maintenance puke like Humphrey and he had broken his own rule. Tony could only comfort himself by knowing that his real clients were dead. Dan and Barb. He was completely convinced now that they both had been murdered. His task now was to prove who killed them.

Frank Peroni was key to the whole deal. He knew that much.

He drove back to the condo, thinking he had a pretty good idea how to find the man.