He kept his head down and focused on the door of his truck as he unlocked it. When he switched on the ignition there was a tap on the passenger window and he lowered it. The uniformed officer asked if they could talk.
The lawman, who looked surprisingly young, took off his hat and slid in. He introduced himself as Deputy Preston Cody. His voice had a familiar ring, but Dieter couldn’t quite put a finger on it.
“I wonder if I might ask you a few questions, Dr. Harmon?”
Dieter swallowed hard. “Of course. Not a problem.”
“Did you by chance visit the Winslow Memorial Funeral Home recently?”
Jesus! Not that. No one could have seen them. Although he and Josh might have technically broken in, they didn’t harm anyone, didn’t steal or destroy anything. He had to keep his cool with the questions. This wasn’t the worst thing that could’ve come up and he should count himself lucky.
“No, I didn’t, sir.” He wondered how much training the young deputy had in lie-spotting.
“Were you in town on Friday evening?”
Dieter pretended to think about the question for a moment. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Were you alone?”
He could feel the stress in his neck and knew he couldn’t hide the tension in the muscles of his face. “Yes, I was.”
“What if I told you, sir, that someone saw a person matching your description in the vicinity of the funeral home? After hours on Friday night.”
That’s a hypothetical. The deputy wasn’t saying someone did see him, he was just testing him and he didn’t have to answer that. On the other hand, if he hesitated too long, that would arouse suspicion, the last thing he needed right now. “I suppose I did stop in the parking lot.”
“You suppose you stopped in the parking lot?”
Dieter looked out the window and back at the deputy. He was screwing up fast. “I mean, yes. I stopped at the parking lot.” If he were wired to a lie detector, it would all be over. He’d be locked up.
“You stopped there, but you didn’t go inside?” the deputy asked.
“It was closed. Why would I go in?”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll ask the questions. Is that all right with you?”
“Yes sir, it is.” He wondered if the deputy could see his heart pumping through his checkered shirt.
“Why would you stop at a funeral home after closing hours? Long after closing hours, as a matter of fact?”
“I was driving through town when I heard a noise from the engine. I decided to check it out.”
The deputy didn’t respond, but mulled over his answer. That was good—it was an outstanding answer.
“Did something happen at the funeral home?” Dieter asked.
The deputy raised his eyebrows. “Do you think something happened?’
Dieter had fallen for it. He saw the setup coming from a mile away and still fell for it. “I have no idea, sir.”
The deputy reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a business card.
“Have you seen this before, Dr. Harmon?”
The card had an unrecognizable logo, but beneath it were the words Gallatin County Weekly. He read in the center of the card: Claire F. Manning, Editor-in-Chief.
The deputy grabbed the card from Dieter’s grip. “Unfortunately, that particular card was smudged up so much that we couldn’t get any good fingerprints from it.” He gave him a look of you’re lucky on that one and then continued. “I talked with Mrs. Manning. She said she hasn’t been in the funeral home for a year. I forget who she told me died, but he was a close friend of the newspaper’s.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not following you.”
“I figure most people are like me,” the deputy replied. “If someone gives me a business card, I generally carry it around for a day or two and then either toss it away or store it in my wallet. She said the last card she remembered giving out was to you on Friday morning.”
“That may be true, but—”
“Would you happen to have that card on you, Dr. Harmon?”
He pulled out his wallet and flipped through the bills and cards and junk pieces of paper. Then he shoved a hand into each pocket, fishing for anything that felt like a card. “I must have thrown it away. I didn’t have a reason to hang onto it. But I don’t understand what this has to do with me.”
“Well, here’s how I figure it. If you were the only one she gave it out to recently, you would be the only one to have it on him—like in a convenient pocket. Mr. Winslow found the card laying smack in the middle of a hallway on Saturday. That was after I told him I checked out his place the night before. Someone said they saw very suspicious activity around the funeral home and called the sheriff’s office. Could be drug activity or something like that, they thought.”
“You don’t think I was there and somehow just dropped the card on the floor?”
“I’m just trying to put it all together, Dr. Harmon. Don’t know how else it would get there.”
Didn’t you search the place? You didn’t find me, did you? “I don’t understand why you thought I would have any reason to be there?”
“You were the one who discovered the body on the Madison. Do I have that right?”
Dieter nodded.
“Although the county sheriff doesn’t consider you a suspect, we have been alerted that you are a person of interest.” He paused and shifted to a more serious level of concern. “You do understand that, don’t you, Dr. Harmon?”
“I wasn’t told that specifically.”
“I’m telling you now. It turns out that the body was at Winslow’s funeral home on Friday night, waiting on the county medical examiner to come down from Bozeman on Saturday. We know someone was there. The sheet over the body was messed with.”
You did that before you ran out of the room!
“You can see that for you to be the only one to locate the body from a crime that we don’t yet have a suspect for, and then, lo and behold, to find evidence you somehow made your way into the very place where the body was stored… well, you see where I’m coming from.”
The deputy didn’t have any evidence. He was trying to mark time, to get him to admit to the crime, to throw up his hands and say I did it. Lock me up!
The deputy continued. “And you made your way there on the only night the body happened to be there. It all smacks of too much coincidence.”
Dieter’s head was spinning. By now, the medical examiner must have concluded exactly what he and Josh had found. When was he going to report to the sheriff and get him off the hook?
The deputy reached for the handle on the passenger door. “I take it you’ll be staying in town for the next few weeks?”
“I really don’t have any other plans.”
“Good. I was told to ask you to make certain of that. Now you have a good day, Dr. Harmon.”
TWENTY-ONE
Molly slept past seven for the first time in years. The Judge thought she was sick from something she’d eaten because of her trips to the bathroom during the night. She hadn’t yet shared with him the trauma she’d witnessed at the Loudermilk place, much less even mention the shotgun held to her head. He would have hitched a ride there and waited with a pistol for the old man to drive out of the gate.