Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

those paintings,” Ian said, “she was a target. Her place was torched as soon as the deputies managed to follow her home. Her storage unit was torched as soon as the deputies followed her there. Her paintings were stolen from a hotel owned by Ward, a hotel you admit that he had access to and whose setup he’d over-seen from security to employee uniforms. If you looked for a missing van from the fleet of white ranch vehicles, you’d find one. If you searched the ranch you’d find the stolen paintings, including the one he swapped out because it showed Bliss’s bracelet too clear for his comfort. Have you looked for any of those things, Sheriff?”
    “Talk about bullshit,” Savoy said impatiently. “Have you given Rory one credible reason why my father would do any of the things you describe? If he wanted the paintings bad enough to steal them, he wouldn’t be burning them, would he?”
    “Did you bring the records I requested?” Ian asked Rory.
    The sheriff gestured at the table.
    “And?” Ian asked.
    “I agree,” Rory said. “I can’t say much for the police work on any of the deaths except Gem Forrest’s. That one is clean. I headed the investigation myself.”
    “So did previous captive sheriffs on other Forrest or Savoy investigations,” Lacey said.
    Rory’s face hardened. “What are you saying?”
    “The truth,” Ian said. “As far back as you go in the records, if there’s a sheriff called Forrest investigating a Savoy death, a blind two-year-old could have done it better. It gives a whole new angle on how to get away with murder.”
    Savoy snorted. “You were right to leave Bliss out of this,” he said to Rory. “She’d be screaming by now.”
    Rory didn’t argue. Her father’s near death had hit Bliss hard. She might fight Ward tooth and nail, but she loved him anyway.
    “It all started when Benford Savoy the Second was killed on the ranch,” Ian said, “and his great and good friend Sheriff Morley Forrest conducted the investigation and discovered that it was a tragic accident.”
    “That sort of accident happens every year, somewhere,” Rory said. “Some fool mixes alcohol and hunting. The fact that this fool was a rich man over sixty doesn’t make it any different than some poor slob from the sticks who drinks too many beers, trips over his own feet, and blows his stupid head off.”
    “Who benefited from his death?” Lacey asked.
    “Savoy’s? His wife inherited, if that’s what you mean,” Rory said, shrugging. “She wasn’t even in the county when it happened.”
    Lacey pulled out her sketchbook and flipped it to the page where she’d made notes last night. “She inherited, but her adult son was supposed to be running the business. Except he was too busy drinking and raving over the countryside to care about the ranch, so Sheriff Morley Forrest kept on being the power behind the throne. He ran the Savoy businesses and everyone knew it. Correct?”
    “Yes, but—” Savoy began.
    Lacey kept talking. “Then you could say Morley Forrest benefited from his friend’s death. His power became more direct. The widow depended on him to keep her wild son in line and out of jail. As sheriff of Moreno County, Morley Forrest was in a position to keep the family’s dirty laundry out of sight.”
    “Are you really saying that my grandfather’s death wasn’t an accident?” Savoy asked in disbelief.
    Ignoring him, Lacey flipped a page and continued. “About twelve years after his father’s ‘accidental’ death, Three Savoy died in a car accident on the ranch. The cause? A mysterious ‘mechanical failure’ that somehow managed to dump his car into a ravine and him with it, and then burn so that nothing much was left but twisted metal. Rather spectacular results for an unexplained mechanical failure, but no one seemed curious. Just as no one would have been curious if Ian and I had ended up dead in a wreck that would no doubt have been written off as caused by ‘mechanical failure.’”
    “My grandfather was a drunk,” Savoy said, ignoring the reference to yesterday’s accident. “He didn’t need mechanical failure to explain what happened to him.”
    “Somebody needed it,” Ian said. “It’s right there in the report.”
    “It was kinder on the widow than saying her husband was drunk, I’d guess,” Rory said. “No harm done.”
    “Two days later,” Lacey continued, “an artist named Lewis Marten burned to death in his studio on Savoy Ranch.