Hazard of the Hills, page 8
“But what about this guy?” Margie pointed to a head that was turned at a different angle from everyone else. Black cowboy hat. Western shirt. Like many of the people who attended Stampede functions around the city, both on the Stampede grounds and off. Or even just people who enjoyed dressing up a little for Stampede when they weren’t going anywhere. Margie herself had been tempted to pull out some of her traditional Métis clothing a couple of times during the week, but she wasn’t sure how it would go over at work and when dealing with the public, so she had not. Cruz, a Filipino immigrant, had been wearing a different western shirt and belt buckle every day of the week. People were fine with the cowboy-themed stuff, but Margie wasn’t sure they would be quite as accepting of her traditional dress. Fine for the Elbow River Camp, not so much everywhere else. There was a lot of prejudice toward the visibly Indigenous, even in times when they were supposed to be sensitive about racial bias.
“What’s he looking at?” Jones mused.
Margie switched pictures to one that was pulled a little farther back, giving a bit more context.
“At the tree. Where the phone was at the time.”
They both studied it. Margie zoomed in on the tree, hoping to be able to spot the phone in the branches. But she suspected she would have to be on the ground like the cowboy hat dude. Or like Ross, to have a drone that she could send closer to have a look around. It had been fun operating the drones as part of their search for Wyler’s phone and the purse.
“Some of the later pictures are lower and have a better angle,” Jones said, pointing to the file explorer on Margie’s screen. “When you made him land his drone.”
Margie started to page through the photos, looking at the spectators, keeping her eye on the man in the black hat. As the drone got lower and closer, he started to look more familiar. Who was he? Where had she seen him before?
“Oh!” She and Jones both got it at the same time.
They had seen him at the Wildwood Stampede breakfast. When they had been approached by the schmoozing Vincent Skinner, mayoral candidate, and his campaign manager.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“What is he doing there?” Margie demanded. She pulled out her notebook to find the notes she had made while at the breakfast to refresh herself on the names. “Harland Roberts.”
“Maybe… he was just hanging around, getting ready for their appearance at the Stampede breakfast, and he was attracted by the lights and sirens, decided to go see what was going on.”
“All right,” Margie said slowly. “Then why wouldn’t he be rubbernecking like everyone else? Trying to catch a glimpse of the body or overhear our discussions? Why is he looking over there?”
Jones nodded. “Because he saw the phone.”
“And wouldn’t normal Joe Public point that out to the police? Be helpful and get brownie points for helping with an investigation? Especially someone like this, so used to spinning stories for the media and getting all the attention for the campaign that he could.”
“Yeah. Of course he would.” Jones’s lips pressed together. “It’s not proof, but it’s compelling. We need to know what he did with the phone. And what his connection is to Wyler. Were they lovers? Is that who she was waiting for when she was standing at the top of the hill?”
“Or is he there for Skinner, Mr. Elect-Me-Mayor? Maybe Skinner sent him to clean things up. Make sure that there wasn’t anything left behind to implicate him.”
Jones hmmed and nodded. “Can’t rule that out,” she agreed. “We need to find out which one of them was connected to Wyler, if one of them was. This can’t be a coincidence. He didn’t just happen to be there to see what was going on, and see a phone, and then not point it out to the police. And then go back and take it once the scene was released.”
“We got her computer on that warrant too, didn’t we?”
“Yeah. Siever’s got it. Siever, you still have Wyler’s computer?” Jones called across the bullpen, but walked closer to Siever’s desk as she spoke to be polite.
“Better,” Siever said, holding up a small, oblong box, “I’ve got a copy of it.”
“How is that better?” Margie asked.
“Because we can play around with it all we like and not mess up the original, which forensics has. We don’t have to wait for anyone else, if you know what you’re looking for.”
“Well,” Margie looked at Jones.
“It turns out we do. We’re going on the working theory that Harland Roberts or Vincent Skinner are involved in this and have some kind of connection with Wyler. Can you search that for any reference to either of them?”
“Sure, I can do that.”
“I’ll call the husband and ask him whether he knows either of them or if there is some way that Wyler could have run into them,” Margie offered.
“And I guess I’ll run background and see if there are any court cases or charges that the two of them were both involved in. See if there are any intersecting interests or favorite haunts,” Jones decided, though she didn’t look too excited about the prospect. Computer background was not her favorite thing, but Siever was already tied up with seeing whether there was anything on Wyler’s computer to do with the case.
Margie could swap jobs with her. Jones was the primary, so she was entitled to make assignments. But Margie didn’t really want to be stuck doing background all day, and Jones decided to let her do what she had volunteered for.
Margie turned back to her computer and closed the various pictures, except for the one that showed Roberts’s face. She brought Vance’s number up on her screen and dialed the phone.
Margie, Jones, Siever and the others all gathered around the conference room table later for a quick bull session, making sure that everyone was up to speed on all the progress on the file.
Jones shook her head in disgust. She stretched, showing that she had been hunched over a computer keyboard for too long already. “I wasn’t able to find any connections between either Skinner or Roberts and Wyler. Other than that Skinner was scheduled to campaign in the area the day that Wyler died. That’s not a connection that we could use to convince a judge of anything.”
“So Roberts just happened to be at our accident scene for no reason that day? I don’t believe that,” Margie offered. “I talked to the significant other, but he couldn’t connect them either. He’d never heard of Skinner or Roberts. Wyler had never mentioned them.”
“Wyler doesn’t have any credit card charges to a hotel nearby or anything like that,” Jones said. “I don’t see any suspicious spending patterns.”
They looked at Siever. The other detectives in the room quieted, waiting for his response.
“No mention of Skinner or Roberts on the computer,” Siever said. “I’ve done a full search of all files, and neither name is ever mentioned.”
Jones groaned. “So it’s a dead end.”
“I did get access to their phone bills through Vance’s phone, though. Logged into their service provider.”
Margie remembered asking Vance for the information that he had on passwords and providers in hopes that it would help them to track the location of Evie Wyler’s phone. That had paid off in more ways than one.
“What did you find?” Jones asked, her voice squeaking slightly. It was clear that Siever must have found something. He wouldn’t tell them that he had logged in to the phone service provider just to tell them that it was a dead end.
“There were calls and texts to a burner phone in the days before her death. Phone was registered to a fake name and address.”
“Which may or may not have anything to do with Skinner,” Jones said, let down.
“Before she started using that number, there was a call to Skinner’s campaign office.”
“What?” Jones slapped her notepad down onto the boardroom table with a crack. “We know she called Skinner?”
“We know she called Skinner’s campaign office,” Siever corrected precisely.
“Well it comes out to the same thing.”
He shook his head. “We don’t know who she talked to at the campaign office. Was it Mr. Mayor himself? I don’t think so. He probably just goes by there once a week to wave to people and tell them what a great job they’re doing.”
“But Roberts would be there almost full time,” Margie said. “So maybe when she called, it was Roberts she talked to.”
There were nods around the room.
“No guarantee,” Siever said, “but that would be my guess.”
Margie didn’t sugar coat it. “We have her calling his office, and we have him showing up at the scene of her death. But we don’t have anything to show what they talked about or if he had anything to do with her death. Maybe Roberts was who she was waiting for when she died. Maybe they missed each other and he was still waiting when he heard the sirens.”
“And maybe they found each other, and he took care of her,” Jones said, her voice clipped. “He pushes her off the cliff, opens her purse, rifles through the content and checks her identification to see who she is. Or if she is who she says she is. Then he tosses it over as well.”
It fit the evidence. It could have happened that way.
“But what started it? Why did she call the campaign office to begin with? Obviously, it wasn’t because she was there to make a campaign donation. She would have just sent it electronically or put a check in the mail. They wouldn’t have had to have an ongoing conversation and more than one meeting for that.”
“Unless she was working with a foundation that would give grants under certain circumstances, and they needed Skinner to get all his ducks in a row before she would send it. Sometimes those kinds of thing take several meetings,” Gagnon suggested.
“It’s possible,” Jones said, but shook her head. “But I don’t think she was working with anything like that. What was it her husband said she was doing?” She looked at Margie.
“Online teacher. Grading papers and such.”
“Right. I don’t see how that would have anything to do with Skinner’s mayoral campaign.”
“I don’t either,” Margie admitted.
It was frustrating to be able to see that there was some kind of connection there, but unable to figure out what it was.
“With her calling the campaign office, it doesn’t sound like an affair,” she said.
“No. I think you’re right,” Jones agreed. “Unless they started an affair after the first time she called, and that’s why he switched to a burner.”
Margie thought of little Ada. How could Wyler have done anything to hurt her? It happened, of course. Parents had affairs all the time; it didn’t matter how close they were to their children. Even those who appeared to be so close to their spouses could wander.
“What about asking around at the coffee shops?” Gagnon suggested. “If that’s where she often worked from, it may also be where she met up with him.”
“Yes. Good idea,” Jones agreed. “Oh, and while I’m thinking of it… let’s do a garbage search on Roberts. If he retrieved Wyler’s phone and threw it out at home, or if he threw out other evidence that connects him to this case, that would be a starting point.”
Margie glanced around the room, not expecting anyone to jump in and offer to do that job. Everyone was looking away, checking their watches or phones, attempting to look as though they had somewhere else to be. Margie smiled at Jones.
“You’ll help out?” Jones asked, letting out a sigh of relief.
“Sure, why not? I want to get this guy.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Despite the fact that it was a cooler day with the sun blocked by the smoke of the BC fires, sweat trickled down Margie’s forehead. She used the back of her wrist to wipe it away. They had turned up the van’s air conditioning as much as possible, but it didn’t seem to be doing much. Probably because they also had the windows open in an effort to circulate air so that Margie and Jones wouldn’t die from the stench of the garbage bags.
Margie had hoped that a guy like Harland Roberts would be a bachelor subsisting mostly on restaurant food, so that his household garbage would be mostly paper products, plastic wrap, and whatever other non-recyclables Roberts went through.
But bless his heart, he was not a bachelor, but married with two young children. Two very young children. Children still in diapers. And the diaper changers did not seem to put all the used diapers into one diaper pail bag, but into whatever garbage happened to be closest at the time, so every bag they had pulled had little—and not so little—stink bombs lurking amid the rest of the refuse.
Margie gagged. Was she ever glad that she no longer had a baby or toddler. Little children like Ada were wonderful to be around for a few minutes, until they stopped acting like angels and had explosive diarrhea. Which happened all too often for Margie’s tastes. She was so glad to have a teenager who could take care of all of her bodily functions herself.
And the food… it appeared that Roberts, and maybe Skinner too, were dressing above their class. They had looked like the rich and powerful businessmen that she associated with mayors and their offices, but Roberts didn’t appear to be making enough money to take people out to fancy restaurants. There was a lot of KD, frozen burritos, and Ichiban noodles. The family threw a lot of leftovers out in the trash instead of the green bin, with only the occasional fast-food wrapper thrown in. And after sitting outside for a week or more in thirty-degree temperatures, everything was rotting and liquefying.
Jones’s phone rang. She crouched there for a moment looking at the garbage, then straightened. She slowly stripped off her gloves, wiped sweat from her face, and answered the phone.
“Hey, Cruz. Tell me you have some good news.”
She listened, nodding and making sounds of acknowledgment. “Okay. All right. Thanks for letting me know.”
She hung up the call. Margie looked at her, eyebrows raised.
“Did he find anything? Tell me we don’t have to go through any more garbage.”
“Well, no one said that they had seen Roberts at the coffee shops.”
Margie groaned. “So that’s a dead end. And I seriously don’t think that we’re going to find anything in here.” She looked at the heap of trash they had already been through.
“Yeah. I think this is going to be a bust too. But… one of the coffee shop employees did remember seeing Wyler.”
“We already know that she frequented coffee shops to do her work. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“He said that he saw her there with another woman.”
“Okay.” Margie considered. “Is there something about this other woman that helps us?”
“I don’t know. I’m thinking about it. Her job is online, on the computer. Vance said she didn’t do any face-to-face tutoring, even virtually. So who was she there with?”
“A girl friend. If you know your best friend is at a coffee shop all day long, why not stop by at some point for a cup of coffee and a visit?”
“Maybe,” Jones admitted. “But if that’s where I went to get away from the distractions and get some work done, I’m not sure I would tell any friends where I was, for just that reason. Everyone would think it was okay to interrupt.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“The witness said that the other woman seemed to be upset about something. He thought maybe Wyler was trying to pressure her into something.”
“Wyler was trying to pressure someone else into something?”
Jones nodded. “I’m wondering… maybe this was blackmail. Wyler was trying to get someone to pay up. Maybe this girl was having an affair with Roberts, and that’s the tie between them.” Jones looked at the trash around them. “I mean… I could understand if he didn’t want to come home to this. A politician with a girl on the side, that’s not exactly a shocker, is it?”
“No. So would she be able to blackmail him for something like that?”
“Sure. Just because it’s common, that doesn’t mean that he wants everyone to know about it. If it’s Skinner, he doesn’t want his public to know that he’s not the perfect family man. If it’s Roberts, he doesn’t want his boss to know that he’s got a girl on the side. It’s bad optics, if he gets found out. So if Skinner finds out Roberts is playing around on the side, he’s gone.”
“Maybe. It does seem like they’re both trying really hard to appear to be something that they are not.”
“Fake it ’til you make it. That’s the world of politics.”
“So how do we find out who has a girlfriend?”
“See if we can get the phone logs for the burner phone, to start with. See if there is another number that it calls regularly. If he had a different phone to talk to Wyler, that’s probably the same one as he used to talk to his girlfriend.”
“Nice. We can do that.”
“We may as well go back to Vance too. See if he knows anything about this woman Wyler saw at the coffee shop. Maybe we’re wrong and it’s his sister, or someone else from work, or a best friend. Maybe he can tell us something. Whether we’re on a wild goose chase.”
Margie wiped her face. “I think we’d better get cleaned up first.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Vance did not look too impressed when he saw the women on his doorstep. Margie felt like checking the mirror again to make sure she hadn’t missed a smudge or something else offensive. He should be happy that they were clean and presentable. He wouldn’t have liked it if they had shown up on his doorstep half an hour earlier.
“You again.” His forehead was creased. “Do you have news? Are you closing the case?”
“We’re getting closer,” Jones said with a bland smile. “We’ll be sure to let you know our findings when we have something to report.”
“Then what are you here for? You already got my phone and Evie’s computer. I don’t know what else to tell you. She fell down and died… it was an accident. I wasn’t there. She just… I guess she just tripped and fell. Sometimes that happens. People do trip and fall.”
