Shawn’s body had been fished out of the pool and laid out beside it. A waterproof tarp covered the late personal trainer. Dee and Jeff watched, senses dulled, as sheriffs, rangers, and unidentified officers conferred with each other. Ranger O’Bryant appeared to be throwing around his weight, per usual, barking orders at mystified representatives of other departments, as well as his own.
“This sucks,” Jeff said.
“Agreed.” Dee watched O’Bryant lumber over to the inmate crew members, who were huddled together with their captain. “I want to see what’s going on over there.”
She grabbed Jeff’s T-shirt sleeve and pulled him with her a few feet closer to the crew, where crew captain Perez was purple with rage as he confronted O’Bryant.
“Instead of calling my men suspects, you should be thanking the Almighty they’re willing to risk their own lives for your sorry butt. I can vouch for every one of ’em being in my eyeline our entire time here.” He got in O’Bryant’s face. “So you accuse them, you accuse me.”
O’Bryant literally backed off, taking a step away from the furious captain. “Get statements from all of ’em,” the ranger instructed one of his underlings. Then to Dee’s dismay, the park ranger made eye contact with her. But she summoned up the strength she needed to deal with him.
“Don’t even think we did this,” she declared as he approached. “We’re spending down our life savings to bring back the Golden. We want to attract guests, not drive them away.”
O’Bryant shrugged. “Could be a desperate ploy to book true-crime podcasters.”
“I could see that,” Jeff said.
“Citiot!” a frustrated Dee yelled at her friend.
“But not us,” Jeff quickly amended. “We’re not that desperate. . . yet.” He added the qualifier under his breath.
O’Bryant glanced over to where crime-scene technicians from West Camp were working the area around the pool. “It’s not much of a leap to assume Radinsky’s murder is related to Baker’s. We’ll be looking at every possible link between the two.”
“The operative word there is ‘assume.’” This came from Raul Aguilar, who’d peeled off from his coterie of fellow sheriffs to join them. “Until that assumption is bolstered by actual facts, this death is under my jurisdiction. And it will be referred to as a death, and not a homicide, until we have a report from Harry Liu proving otherwise.”
O’Bryant began to grumble, then stopped. “We’ll keep working our end. If we find a connection between the case, we’ll alert you. And I’ll count on you to do the same.” He gave a slight nod. “Deputy Sheriff.”
Raul returned the nod. “Chief Ranger.”
With that, O’Bryant walked away, leaving behind an open-mouthed Dee and Jeff.
“What just happened?” Dee asked, staring after him.
“He did his job” was Raul’s simple reply. “He may be a pain in my keester, but at the end of the day, he’s a professional. We all are.”
“ ‘Keester.’ Adding that to my Goldsgone dictionary of old-timey words,” Jeff observed.
“You mind if me and my men use a few of your rooms for interviews?” Raul asked.
“Sure,” Dee said. “Just not the rooms I finished prepping yesterday. They still reek of paint and varnish fumes. Plus, I want to keep them as pristine as possible for our guests. We’ve got a few booked for this weekend.”
Sadly, this proved to be wishful thinking on Dee’s part.
* * *
After one of the many sleepless nights that had dogged Dee over the recent weeks, she awoke to a loud thump from outside. The sound startled Nugget, who gave an obligatory warning bark, then resumed snoring. Dee cautiously opened her front door and found a bundle of Goldsgone Gazettes gracing the doorstep.
She carried the bundle inside and used a serrated kitchen knife to saw through the twine wrapped around the newspapers. The twine broke and fell to the bundle’s sides. Dee picked up the top newspaper. She saw the headline and let out an infuriated shriek.
She stormed out of her apartment to Jeff’s cabin and pounded on the door. “Wake up, wake up!”
“Huh? What? Hold on.”
Dee heard him mutter a few choice words in a sleepy voice.
He yanked open the door. “It’s practically dawn. Why the drama? What’s the problem?”
“This.”
Dee thrust the slender local paper into his hands. Jeff rubbed his eyes, then widened them as he read the headline: MURDER MOTEL MAYHEM! KILLER STRIKES AGAIN!
“What the f—”
“Exactly.” Dee pushed past him into the cabin’s tiny main room. She collapsed into Jeff’s office chair and it rolled backward, hitting a wall. She used her foot to propel it back to its original position at Jeff’s desk.
Jeff, eyes still glued to the newspaper, closed the door. “I flirt like a mofo with Verity ‘Yes-that-Donner’ Gillespie and she pulls this? It’s outrageous.”
“Oh, it’s way worse than that.” Dee gestured to the Goldsgone website she’d opened while Jeff was talking. The same headline filled the top half of the site’s landing page. “You can bet she’s broadcasting it everywhere. Not that a story like this needs a boost. We’re talking about a double murder in a tiny town that probably hasn’t seen one since two miners got into a fight over a mule in 1849.”
Jeff grabbed his cell phone off the coffee table. He thumbed it and cursed. “You’re right. Shawn’s death has officially been classified as a homicide. It’s all over the internet, locally and otherwise. The coroner, that guy Liu, worked quickly. He released his findings late last night. We’d both passed out by then.”
“Does it say ‘cause of death’ anywhere?”
“He ran a tox screen. Poison. Cyanide.”
“So someone poisoned the poor man, then dumped his body in our pool, obviously hoping to incriminate us.”
“Seems like it. But it was a stupid move. You and I can prove we haven’t been near Goldsgone in days. Still . . .”
