Prime Cut by Diane Mott Davidson Page B

Homestead Museum. By the way, it was a job Burr got for Eliot. That doesn't look too good, Burr knowing exactly where to go."
     
     
The dark, luscious espresso ignited the perimeter of my brain. "Lots of people knew Eliot worked there," I observed. "Marla told me the museum board wasn't happy with Eliot's performance. If she knew where he worked, so did the whole town."
     
     
"Fuller thinks Burr broke into the museum, strangled Eliot, faked a robbery, threw Eliot's body into the back of his pickup, and drove out to the unfinished sun room. There, Fuller claims, Burr stabbed his building contractor with molding, broke a piece of drywall over his head, and hung him up by his Samson-style gold locks. Supposedly, Burr then shot his contractor through the head with a nail gun. For good measure."
     
     
I flinched and set down my cup. I thought back to my entry into the sun room, my confusion in trying to find the coffeepot, seeing Gerald's body... "What about that hiker who supposedly saw Gerald? Do you know his name? I don't believe you could see the body unless you were ten feet away from it."
     
     
Tom shook his head. "The hiker called from the Open Space parking lot by the trailhead. He didn't give his name. It could be a setup, Goldy. We always have to consider it. Although, with Fuller bucking for higher office, he might not consider it."
     
     
"Has Sheila O'Connor come up with anything yet?"
     
     
"Sheila said Eliot's neck and face were badly bruised when he was strangled. Glass in his scalp is consistent with one of the two breaks in the glass-fronted display cases at the museum. Time of death probably not too long after one A.M. The evidence that Cameron's pickup was used to transport the body is pretty convincing, too.!. He drank more coffee. "Looks like Eliot's T-shirt snagged on a protruding piece of metal in the truck. A fragment of the T-shirt fabric is still in the back of the pickup. Plus there's grease on Eliot's face and clothing, very similar to the grease in the vehicle." He sighed. "We have no way of knowing if somebody borrowed Cam's truck. He always leaves the keys in it. And it's been so dry, there aren't tire tracks we could analyze. Sheila'll know more after the autopsy, you know how that goes."
     
     
I nodded and got up.to fix us both more coffee.
     
     
The fax rang. Tom removed the wall of dishes surrounding the fax machine, pulled out the slick sheet, and perused it. He looked up. "Here's the layout from the fence separating Burr's property and the trail to Smythe Peak." He slapped the smudged map of Blue Spruce next to the cluttered sink; I peered down at it. Most prominent was the Smythe Peak Open Space area, the two thousand acres that surrounded the mountain. All of the land had been sold to the county by the Smythe family. Cameron Burr's property was marked with a rough rectangle. According to thick hand-drawn lines and numbers, the framed sun room was only fifty feet from Cameron's fence.
     
     
Tom said, "Cam's lawyer is going to want to know why a killer would strangle a guy, take the time and trouble to rob a museum, and drive the dead or near-dead guy out to his own house. Then the killer tortures; Eliot or defiles his corpse with building materials, and shoots him with a nail gun? I don't think so. You can be really drunk or really angry. To do all that, you couldn't be both." He shook his head.
     
     
I slugged back the espresso. "Cameron didn't do it, I'm telling you. Yesterday Andre told me Leah Smythe - or somebody at the cabin-fired Eliot for sleeping with a model. Maybe they broke up."
     
     
"So you think some skinny model killed big, strong Eliot? Then hung him up in Cam's sun room?"
     
     
"Not necessarily." I tried to think. "I'm just suggesting other people besides Cameron disliked Gerald Eliot. Take me, for instance, although I didn't really want to see him dead. But there might be more to Gerald Eliot than Fuller wants to see. Did you have a look at the