“And then?”
“He cranked it up halfway and looked at Mr. Bannon close, and cranked it up the rest of the way and let it fall on him again. When he cranked it up again, Mr. Bannon looked… kind of flattened out. He didn’t put it all the way up again. He just let it fall from there and he left it there and picked up some thing off the ground and then kind of stopped and dropped it and then picked it up and wiped it on some kind of a rag and dropped it again. He was nearly running when he left. And then I heard one car door slam and after a little while the car started up. I stayed way down until it was gone.”
“Which way did it go?”
“Back this way, toward Sunnydale.”
“Did you get a good look at the man?”
“Yes Sir, I did.”
“Had you ever seen him before?”
“Yes Sir.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
“Yes Sir.”
“Do you know him by name?”
“Yes Sir.”
“What is his name?”
“His name is Mr. McGee.”
“Under what circumstances did you first see Mr. McGee?”
“I only saw him two times before that, both on the same day. It was back in October. I don’t know the exact day. He was a friend of theirs and he came in a nice boat to visit them. He took them over to Broward Beach in the boat that night for dinner and I sat with the little boys. So I met him when I came over to sit, and then I saw him again when they came back.”
“Did they seem friendly, McGee and the Bannons?”
“I… guess so.”
“You seem hesitant. Why?”
“I had the feeling it was Mrs. Bannon he came to See.”
“What gave. you that feeling?”
“Well, actually I saw him three times that day. It was an awful hot day. Mr. Bannon and Mr. McGee had fixed Mr. Bannon’s car. Then Mr. Bannon went off to get the boys from school. I saw Mrs. Bannon taking a pitcher of iced tea to one of the units. I wanted to ask her about something she was going to bring me from town, to save a trip. I needed it in my work and I went down there to where she took the iced tea, thinking she would come right out. When she didn’t, I sort of looked in the window. I didn’t know his name then, not until later. But I saw Mr. McGee and Mrs. Bannon laying on the bed, kissing.”
“Did you notice anything else that day in October that seemed odd or unusual to you?”
“No sir. Nothing else at all, sir.”
“What did you do after McGee drove away?”
“Well, I thought I better wait a little while in case he forgot something and came back. So I looked for the wire some more and I found it. I left and made sure the door was locked and then I ran all the way to our car. I threw the key in the bushes when I was getting into the car, the room key.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I was very frightened, I guess. I didn’t want anybody to know I’d been in the motel.”
“I show you a motel room key. Is this that same key you threw away?”
“I think so. Yes sir. That’s the key.”
“Did you relate all this to your husband?”
“No sir. I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Why not?”
“Because he said I shouldn’t go out there, and even though I did find the silver wire, he was still right about that. I wish I hadn’t gone out there that Sunday morning.”
“Will you tell us why you finally came forward, Mrs. Denn?”
“I thought they would catch Mr. McGee. But they didn’t. I worried and worried about it and the other night I told my husband the whole thing and he said I had to come and see you. I begged him not to make me do it but he said I had to. That’s why I’m here.”
Sheriff Burgoon turned it off. “There’s more. But it covers the same ground. It doesn’t bring up anything new. It’s an eyeball witness, boy, with nothing to gain or lose. We took her out there and she showed us the window and you get a real good view from there.”
He had demoted me back to boy, heartened by his evidence.
“I think she saw almost exactly what she says she saw, sheriff.”
“Want to change your mind about a lawyer?”
“Motive, opportunity, weapon, and an eyewitness. Sheriff, don’t you think it’s all wrapped up just a little too neatly?”
“A man can be damn unlucky.”
“How true. I wonder just who he is.”
“Suppose you make a little sense.”
“Okay. Here is something that the unlucky man, whoever he is, had to take a chance on. He had to take a chance on there being some probability or possibility of my being in this area at that time, and my having no way to prove I wasn’t.”
“It’s going to take a pretty good piece of proof.”
“I can place myself aboard my houseboat where I live, the Busted Flush, Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, Fort Lauderdale, at nine o’clock that Sunday morning. Does the rest of the tape establish her best guess as to the time I’m supposed to have left after the murder?”
“Maybe eight thirty, give or take fifteen minutes,” he said. “But let’s get to just how you place yourself there and how come you’d remember it so good.”
“Because I arrived at Bannon’s place the following afternoon and found out he was dead. I found out he had died the previous morning. Somehow you remember what you were doing at the time a good friend died.”
“And just what were you doing?”
“Socializing, Sheriff Burgoon. Being a jolly host, right out in front of everybody. I think that I could probably come up with the names of at least twenty people who saw me and talked to me between nine and ten o’clock that morning. Some of them are totally unreliable. I don’t pick them for social standing and credit rating, and I wouldn’t ask you or anyone to believe them if they swore on every Bible in Shawana County. But there are a half dozen well worth believing. Suppose you write down the names and addresses and pick a couple of names off the list and question them by phone right now any way you feel like. Try any trick or trap you can think up.”
“What did you mean saying she saw almost exactly what she says she saw, mister?”
“She saw everything except me doing it. She saw somebody else do it, and that changes your theory about nothing to gain or lose.”
“How do you mean?”
“Somebody prepped her pretty good, Sheriff. I might even have thought that she saw somebody she sincerely mistook for me. But the iced tea sequence was a little too much.”
“Didn’t happen?”
“I got hot and sweaty helping Tush fix the spring shackle on his car. I showered in the motel unit they loaned me. I had just finished dressing when Jan brought the pitcher of tea and two glasses. We talked about the problems they were having. Maybe fat-girl even looked in the window. But no bed and no kisses. Nothing like that between us. Not even any thought of it on either side. At the moment I happen to own the Bannon place, Sheriff. I bought it from Jan Bannon. Why in hell would I do that?”
“You are the one bought it!”
“I’m here today to try to resell it to Press LaFrance.”
Burgoon looked very thoughtful. “He’s surely been wanting it so bad he could taste it. Trying to put some kind of parcel together for resale. Don’t he own a patch out there, Tom?”
“Fifty acres right behind.”
Burgoon nodded. “Probably could move it if he had river frontage to go with it.”
Tom scrubbed his snow-white brush cut and coughed and said, “Bunny, that Bannon woman didn’t seem to me to be that kind of woman when I had to go out there and roust her and the kids out and seal it up. That’s one part of this job I surely hate. We tried to make it easy as we could, but there isn’t any good way to make it easy. She was one upset woman and you can believe it.”
The sheriff asked me for the names of my witnesses and wrote them down.
I thought of something else. How come they had been waiting for me at the hotel? And did that have anything to do with LaFrance’s evasiveness when I had phoned him?