Trent Archer tried unsuccessfully to wave his stepmother to her chair. “And just how do you think you can get away with denying us what is rightfully ours? I remind you we have an excellent case, everything is stacked in our favor.”
“What you mean is that you need the three million desperately,” McLean said calmly.
Mercy looked blank. Trent Archer’s drink wobbled dangerously. He set the glass down. “I don’t believe I follow you.” He avoided looking at his stepmother.
“You should, you’re the one who filed the bankruptcy papers for your father the day before his death. He was nearly two million in the hole.”
“You’re lying,” Mercy said quickly. “My husband was a sharp businessman. He would never have allowed that to happen.”
“Perhaps not, but someone was playing the commodities market, using his account. You know the one, Mr. Archer, with the brokerage house of Amy & Taub.”
With a flash of comprehension, Mercy turned to Trent, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You had power of attorney, from when he had that heart attack.”
He returned her stare with undisguised hatred. “Another week was all I needed, I could have been rich. But the broker started getting worried, sold me out. I could’ve made it. Then you’d see, my father would see. I have what it takes.”
Mercy, moving with the speed of a cornered fer-de-lance, struck Trent with an open-handed blow that snapped his head sideways. “You never had what it took. And you never will...”
McLean’s thick forearm interrupted Trent’s lunge for Mercy, who stood her ground. Trent retreated stiff-legged until the back of his knees caught a chair. He dropped into it, spent.
Mercy transferred her contemptuous stare to McLean. “None of this changes our case against Sutton and that retard of his.”
“Robbie has Down’s Syndrome, he’s not a retard,” Sarah said coldly.
Mercy flopped into her chair. “It hardly matters what his problem is, he did it and he owes me.”
“Robbie’s condition may not matter, but Trent’s does.” McLean flipped open his briefcase and pulled out the tire iron. Trent, who’d followed his moves listlessly, paled.
“And just what does that have to do with anything?” Mercy asked.
McLean pointed the bar’s sharply beveled end at Trent Archer. “He killed your husband with it.”
Sarah gasped. “Jesus, P. J.”
Archer staggered to his feet, his eyes darting around the room. With a triumphant sneer he aimed a shaking finger at his stepmother. “No, she did it.”
Mercy jerked a desk drawer open. Her voice rose to a shriek. “You lying little bastard. You’ve stolen everything from me. Everything.”
Even as McLean threw himself across the desk, he knew it was too late. The Colt Python spat with a deafening roar as he wrapped both arms around her flailing body. She pulled the trigger again, nearly kneecapping McLean. Sarah, wielding a lamp, smashed the pistol from her fist. Trent Archer lay doubled up in front of the chair, crying and clutching his stomach.
Sarah’s eyes were as hard as the thin strip of Formica table separating them. “I suppose you should be congratulated.”
McLean winced, partly from her tone, partly from the pulsating welt where Mercy’s bullet had grazed his knee two days before. “Pardon?”
Her strained smile looked reserved for stubborn children or drunken husbands. She knew all about the latter. “Your hearing isn’t that bad, P. J. You did your job but it cost me the fright of my life, and Trent Archer a long stay in the hospital.”
McLean looked up as the cafe’s redhaired waitress set two cups of coffee in front of them. She gave them a curious glance, then retreated to her corner by the kitchen door.
“After talking to Sergeant Toon, I’d say he’ll prefer the hospital to his next stop. He’s already trying to cut a deal.”
“You knew from the beginning something was wrong. Next time I’d appreciate a little warning before the guns go off.”
McLean looked away, through the greasy windows and out into the first true storm of the season. He didn’t feel as guilty about the outcome as he did about putting Sarah into danger.
He gave her a wan smile. “I apologize. I led you into something I had no right to do. It’s cost me some sleep, and a little self-respect.”
Sarah’s mobile face softened, reflecting genuine fondness. “Stop beating yourself. How’d you figure it out?”
McLean leaned back against the hard booth. “If the sheriff had called the fire department — they didn’t because the blaze had been out for hours — this wouldn’t have gone so far. It was clear from the pictures, at least after they’d been enhanced, that there were several separate fires. A clear sign of arson. There’s no point in going into all the details, but two things stood out.”
He sipped his coffee gingerly. “There was fire underneath the driver’s seat, where they just don’t happen by accident. The adjustment mechanism melted, and the seat fell back. The metal discoloration indicated temperatures reached at least sixteen hundred degrees. That’s too high for a normal fire. Second, the roof was buckled, which shows that the hottest spot of the fire was in the passenger compartment, and that also points to a flammable liquid.”
“How did you know he wasn’t carrying an extra can of gas? Hunters do sometimes.”
“I checked the police report carefully, and asked Toon about it. They inventoried everything in the Blazer. No gas cans, just a rifle. Not even a sleeping bag. Archer’s hunting was confined to one day at a time.”
Sarah folded a napkin into squares. “What else?”
A gust of wind followed by a sheet of rain smacked the cafe window. McLean, ordering his thoughts, ignored it. “The coroner said Archer’s bones were white. Bone only turns white at crematorium temperatures, close to two thousand degrees. Normally it’s kind of a dirty color. Again the temperature was much too high. Legit car fires don’t get much over a thousand degrees. And then there were the missing molars.”
“You’re certainly piling it on.”
“Huumph. Well, you wanted the job done right.”
Sarah just grinned, but rubbed her cheek on learning that molars are reluctant burners that have to be ground up even at crematoriums.
“Their absence was a clear indication Archer’d been hit in the mouth by something hard. And it wasn’t the steering wheel, which hadn’t been struck by anything.”
“How did you know it was Trent?”
“I didn’t. At least not for certain. I did know his car, a red Bronco, had been towed into Sutton’s garage the day of the accident, and that he didn’t get it back until the next afternoon, well after he called the cops, claiming to have found his father’s car. Trent told Sutton he couldn’t change the tire himself because he’d lost the lug wrench. That it’d bounced out of its holder. Now I can tell you, my Ford is set up the same way, with the wrench under the hood, and that hunk of steel has stayed in place for ten years.”
“So Robbie’s mistake didn’t cause the accident?”
McLean dropped some sugar into his coffee. A rare move. “Robbie didn’t make a mistake, at least not this time, but he did provide the idea. I found a large puddle of brake fluid at the top of the hill. The lab confirmed it. There was enough gas in the soil around the wreck to run a lawnmower for a week. Faced with the lab report, Trent admitted bleeding the brakes, refilling the reservoir with power steering fluid, then rolling the car down the hill and torching it. He’d already brained his father. He told Toon the death was an accident, but...”
He sighed and looked out the window, then shook his head. “Before you ask, Mercy knew nothing about it. The body was Archer’s. At first I had my doubts. It wasn’t supposed to be.”