Page 42 of In Safe Hands
“Really?”
Lou glared at Rory. “Yes. I accept that I am not an artist, okay? If you are going to be judgmental, then you can be the draw-er.”
“Why are you drawing pictures?” Ellie asked. “We’re all literate. You can use, you know, words.”
“Fine.” Lou sighed, scribbling beneath the feet of the stick people. “Everyone’s a critic. So, Willard Gray was a Vietnam vet who lived by himself in a run-down cabin at the edge of Simpson. According to town gossip—which is kind of hit-and-miss as far as accuracy—he kept to himself, except when the Esko Hills home development was about to be built next to his property a few years ago. He de-hermit-ified long enough to attend a few City Council meetings to protest the new construction, but the homes were built, and he retreated back to his cabin, shaking his angry fists.” Lou picked up her glass from the coffee table and took a drink. Placing the water back on its coaster, she looked around at the other women. “How am I doing so far?”
“This matches what I’ve heard about him,” Rory said.
“Good. So, sometime between last fall and this past January, someone kills Willard, cuts off his head and hands, and tosses him into Mission Reservoir. In early March, a lucky, lucky dive team volunteer manages to find the body during an ice-rescue training exercise.”
With a cough that might have been disguising a laugh, Rory interjected, “She kicked him.”
Frowning, Lou turned her glare onto Rory. “Ian is rubbing off on you, and not in a good way.”
Widening her eyes in mock-innocence, Ellie asked, “So, you didn’t kick poor Willard’s corpse?”
“Not really relevant.” Lou sent all three women a warning look, which Daisy didn’t feel she deserved. Until that moment, she hadn’t known about Lou’s method of corpse-discovery. “Moving on. We didn’t have a name for the victim at first, since his…um, missing parts made identification tricky. I felt sort of responsible for the poor dead guy, since I…discovered him—don’t say it!”
Ellie and Rory gave her innocent looks.
“So, I started trying to find out who this guy was. Once Cal and I figured out the ‘Willard’ part, Chris was able to ID him as Willard Gray, Simpson’s resident grumpy hermit.”
“I think more than one person qualifies for that position,” Rory said dryly. “The town is made up of about seventy percent grumpy hermits.”
Lou laughed. “True. Once we knew who the victim was, though, we couldn’t figure out a possible motive, much less narrow down the suspect pool. No one knew Willard well enough to hate him, at least that we’ve been able to find out. I mean, his Esko development protests were really minor, as far as irritations go.”
“So there haven’t been any suspects at all?” The Gray case was much more interesting than the tiny bit of information that Chris had given her had suggested.
“A few.” Lou shot an amused glance at Rory. “Ian was arrested for a minute.”
“It felt like much longer than a ‘minute’ at the time,” Rory grumbled.
“Ian?” It shocked Daisy to think that her neighbor had been a suspect.
“His pendant,” Lou said, “which is not to be called a necklace—at least not in front of Ian or he’ll get pissy—was found in the reservoir, attached to the weight holding down the body. The cops theorized that he’d lost it while disposing of the evidence, but Rory managed to prove that he’d still had possession of his pendant long after the body was dumped.”
Scowling, Rory added, “Someone stole the pendant while he was showering at the clubhouse, then planted the evidence.”
“Whoa.” This was better than any mystery novel.
Ellie gave her a wide-eyed look. “I know, right? Isn’t this just crazy?” Daisy nodded before turning back to Lou, who’d flipped to the next sheet of paper on the oversized pad and seemed to be scribbling some sort of timeline.
As she wrote, she kept talking. “The main suspect right now is Anderson King, a local drug dealer.”
Rory explained, “When the Liverton Riders—the local motorcycle club—started falling apart, Anderson was right there trying to fill the criminal void. He came to talk to me at my shop one day about buying—” She stopped abruptly, swallowing the rest of what she’d been about to say and looking so discomfited that Daisy’s curiosity shot through the roof. “Uh, buying guns. He killed the guy who headed up search and rescue, and now Anderson is after Ellie and her dad.”
“I was just getting to that part,” Lou jumped in. “Willard’s one friend, Baxter Price—”
“My dad,” Ellie interrupted.
“The one who’s missing?” Daisy instantly regretted asking when the woman’s face dropped.
“Yes. He checked himself out of a mental-health facility north of Denver almost a month ago. I haven’t heard from him since then, though we’ve been looking everywhere. He’s schizophrenic.”
It was Daisy’s turn to reach for Ellie’s hand. “I’m sorry.”
Ellie gave her a watery smile before turning back to Lou.
