Murder In Missoula Read online

  Marie-Justine caressed the petals of freshly cut flowers arranged in a crystal vase on the table near the front door. “I’ll be back soon and open all the windows for you.”

  She scanned the light pastel rooms of the small cottage. Her eyes focused on the back door. She had checked it earlier. It was locked. Still, she felt the urge to check it again.

  “No. Don’t do it.” Refusing to allow her fears to overcome her reason, she forced herself out the front door.

  For a moment, as she locked the door, her joy faded. There was a time she would have left the doors and windows open and gone her way without giving it a thought. But that time was gone. Stepping off the front porch, she said a silent prayer, hoping that those carefree days and nights might come again.

  Four

  Joe Nicoletti lit a cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke. It drifted across the terrace to join other clouds rising from the outdoor tables of the café on Arthur Avenue. He had tried to get a table inside, but smokers were only seated outside, forced to endure the sunshine and gentle breezes of early October. Nonsmokers were huddled inside the darkened restaurant, volunteering to be covered with the smell of home fries, onions, and bacon grease.

  He leaned back, tilting his chair against a white picket fence, which rested against a gunmetal-gray bicycle rack. Four coeds at the next table chattered incessantly. As near as he could tell, each of their revelations revolved around alcohol, sex, and drugs. If their parents ever heard this nonsense, they would jerk the funding out from under them.

  “More coffee?” The waitress poured before he could answer. “You’re a cop, right?”

  “Not anymore. Retired,” Nicoletti answered without thinking. “How—”

  “You were here last April with Agent Pandori. You guys sat at this same table.”

  Nicoletti was at a loss for words. His mouth was open, but no sound came.

  “My uncle’s a sergeant with the sheriff’s office. I know Agent Pandori—he’s a regular. Besides, he’s the only FBI agent in town. Most everybody knows him.” She added another splash to his cup. “So you retired from the FBI?”

  “No, DEA.”

  “Well, let’s keep that between us,” she said in an exaggerated whisper. “I don’t want you to scare off my customers, or half the kitchen staff, for that matter.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Hey, this is a college town and the university is right across the street.” She pointed behind him.

  “Got it.” He crossed his heart. “My lips are sealed. April was a long time ago. How do you remember me?”

  “It was my first day working here. I spilled water all over your table. You helped me mop it up. You guys were very nice about it. Left me the biggest tip I’ve ever gotten. You want something to eat?”

  “Not right—”

  “I’ll check back in a few.”

  He took a swig of coffee. Over the rim of the cup, he saw a bicycle closing quickly on his left. The rider was a very attractive woman—athletic, early forties—wearing a green Colorado State sweatshirt. She slammed the bike into the rack, dismounted, and nodded briskly.

  “Good morning,” she said without sincerity.

  He tried to smile but only managed a nod, thankful she hadn’t pushed the bike rack through the fence and onto his lap.

  Nicoletti watched her enter the patio and toss a small backpack onto a mauve concrete table shaded by a green-and-purple umbrella. Lean and muscular, sculpted by skintight, black Lycra bicycle shorts, she strode past him, ignoring his inspection of her physique. With an air of confidence, she tossed her layered black hair, mounted the stairs to the right of his table, flung open the screen door, and entered the café.

  His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. “Nicoletti.”

  “Hey, Nico. It’s Pandori.”

  “No kidding.”

  “How was your flight from DC?”

  “Delayed. I didn’t get to the hotel ’til after nine. Instead of going to bed, I made the mistake of eating some lousy Chinese food. Lucky to be alive. Where are you?”

  “Working. I’m gonna have to cancel. Someone found a body in the woods a few miles west of town. May be a missing person named Candice Wilson. She disappeared when you were here last April. Remember?”

  “No.”

  “Sure you do. She was a Realtor. I got a call on it when you were over for dinner. We—”

  “Yeah, I remember. Does that make you feel better?”

  “Are you at the restaurant?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Have some home fries for me. I’ll probably be tied up the rest of the morning. Can you keep yourself busy and out of trouble?”

  “No problem. The scenery is just about to improve.” Nicoletti looked toward the screen door and signaled the waitress for another coffee.

  Five

  A white tow truck with O’CONNELL’S AUTO REPAIR, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC written in chipped, red paint on the side pulled up in front of the café. A woman got out of the passenger door. She was talking to the driver, but Nicoletti couldn’t hear anything above the clapping of the diesel engine. She stepped onto the curb, and the truck drove off. She entered the café’s patio and sat at the table under the green-and-purple umbrella.

  The new arrival was dressed in jeans, a gray turtleneck, and a black fleece vest. Her chestnut hair, entwined in a loose braid, was shimmering with red highlights that vanished when she moved under the umbrella’s shade.

  Nicoletti stopped breathing. The woman was too familiar. Her body, her hair, the way she moved, and now the view of her face recalled to his mind the overpowering image of his wife—the center of his world, ripped from his life three years ago. So real was the image that he almost called out “Kristen.”

  She looked directly at him.

  Had he said it out loud? He felt embarrassed, frozen, and awkward. The blood rushed to his face.

  She smiled.

  It’s not her. Could it be?

  Are you mad?

  He started breathing. Combat breathing. He had been warned. If he did not stop obsessing over his wife’s sudden and unexpected death, he could go mad. He had done well for the last three years, gotten his mind and emotions under control, started living and working again. He had come too far to crumble now.

  He strained his eyes to see beneath the umbrella, looking carefully for discrepancies that would dispel this mirage. Finally, he relaxed. The resemblance was striking but not exact. In fact, the more he looked at the woman, the less she looked like his Kristen.

  His thoughts vanished as the woman in Lycra shorts burst through the screen door carrying two coffee cups, then set them in front of the woman with the chestnut braid. They exchanged brief kisses—first one cheek, then the other—and settled into what appeared to be a cheerful and lively conversation.

  Nicoletti leaned forward and tried to listen. He detected a distinct French accent in the voice of the woman with the braid.

  The bike rider took a small box from her backpack and slid it across the table. Laughing and talking in a raised tone, the chestnut-haired beauty opened the box.

  “Jivago,” she said, pulling a tapered glass bottle of perfume from the box. “Where did you get it? Certainly not here.”

  “On my last trip to Denver. Between the two of us, my bottle went so fast I bought two. Now that you have your own place, it seemed silly to keep them both. Besides, today is a special occasion and I wanted to get you something.”

  They exchanged cheek kisses again. Nicoletti lit another cigarette to celebrate too. The women were laughing and taking turns spraying themselves with the perfume. He had no idea what the occasion was, but it smelled damn good to him.

  To his right, he heard a clicking and whirring sound he recognized. It was the clicking of a camera shutter and the noise made by the drive of an automatic film advancer, two sounds he hadn’t heard in years but would never forget. He spotted a young man holding an old 35mm Nikon seated across the patio. F
rom Nicoletti’s angle, it was apparent that the photographer was focusing on the women sitting under the green-and-purple umbrella. He heard the shutter snap and the film advance again.

  Annoying little bastard, Nicoletti thought, as he returned his gaze to the women.

  Six

  Nicoletti was startled. A man in a gray coat walked into the patio area, and as he passed the mauve table, he reached out with his right hand and touched the loose, chestnut braid, running his hand along its soft curve.

  The woman did not react. Preoccupied with her animated conversation, the uninvited touch of a stranger had escaped her notice.

  The man in the gray coat walked into the café without missing a step, turning his head away from Nicoletti’s view. Nicoletti estimated him to be similar to his own six-foot height, maybe a little taller and a little lighter, weighing around one eighty-five or so. The man’s movements were smooth—animal-like, powerful. “Predator” was the only word that came to Nicoletti’s mind.

  A few minutes later, the man was out of the restaurant, heading back to the street. As he passed the woman, his left hand moved toward her. She leaned toward her friend. The left hand abandoned its attempt at contact and entered the pocket of the gray coat.

  Nicoletti shifted forward in his seat and pulled his legs beneath him. He was ready to pounce on the intruder. He did not know what was happening, but he knew danger. He felt the colliding of atoms all around him, setting a tingle in the air—a cosmic disturbance preceding danger that he had come to know from a lifetime of hunting criminals.

  He watched the gray coat disappear into a building at the edge of the campus. The building had the name JESSE HALL prominently displayed on a sign facing the street. It was a dormitory, full of potential victims for those floating hands.

  Nicoletti gave serious thought to following the man, grabbing him by the neck, and threatening him to keep his hands to himself. He could demand the gray coat’s identity. “Let me see some fucking ID, you piece of shit.” Then he would at least have a name to give to the campus police. They could put it on file for future reference should any female student report a Peeping Tom, or molester, or worse.

  The urge faded as Nicoletti sipped his coffee. That’s not the way police worked. If he had followed his instinct and did what he wanted to do, the police would think he was nuts. They’d probably cite him for assault on a student or unlawful detention of a citizen. After all, he wasn’t a cop anymore.

  He imagined the campus police’s reaction. What the hell was a retired federal narcotics agent from Washington, DC, doing in Montana, roughing up law-abiding, tuition-paying students? Just because a guy touched a woman’s hair, possibly by accident, and then went into a restaurant and left without buying anything, did not make him a criminal.

  Not yet, Nicoletti thought.

  Seven

  Charles Durbin emerged from the rear exit of Jesse Hall. He placed the gray coat in the back of his Suburban. A thin layer of dust covered the charcoal-gray paint. He liked the way the road dust made the vehicle appear lighter in color, providing a natural camouflage.

  He was excited. The meeting with Marie-Justine at the café had gone so much better than he could have ever hoped. He congratulated himself on the boldness and delicate execution of the spontaneous plan. Reaching out and touching her hair had sent a thrill through his core. The unexpected pungency of her perfume had virtually transported him into a dream. Reaching toward her a second time was greedy. He blamed the perfume for the inexcusable lapse of self-control.

  He walked to the pay phone on Arthur Avenue at the entrance to the campus parking lot, no more than fifty yards from the café. He took a small pair of binoculars from his fanny pack and focused them on the two women under the green-and-purple umbrella. They were drinking coffee and laughing. He moved the binoculars from one to the other. They both excited him. But he had finally made his choice.

  He dialed Marie-Justine’s home number from the pay phone. The answering machine came on. Durbin listened to her sensual voice—the voice of his chosen lover.

  The binoculars had been added to his ritual only recently. It brought him great excitement to hear her voice and enjoy the smooth tones of her accented English while gazing at her face so near he could kiss it.

  He was so enraptured with the moment that he let the greeting end and the recording of his breathing begin. An ambulance racing down Arthur Avenue blasted its siren at a man crossing the street. Durbin slammed the receiver into its cradle. Another mistake. He looked around. No one was paying the slightest bit of attention to him.

  He calmed himself with deep breathing. His hands trembled. Heat surged from under his shirt. Sweat from under his arms cooled as it slid against his rib cage.

  He returned the binoculars to his pack. Too risky, he decided.

  He dialed again and again, always careful to hang up before complying with her simple request to leave his name and number. He hoped that one day he would be free to leave his number so she would call him upon her return.

  Eight

  Nicoletti broke into a light jog while the ambulance raced by, his foot hitting the curb as the siren switched from wail to yelp. To his right, a pay phone receiver crashed into its cradle. He watched the flustered caller walk a few steps from the phone, only to step back and resume dialing.

  Pandori’s report of the discovered corpse, the siren, and the angry man at the pay phone confirmed Nicoletti’s belief that all towns, no matter how tranquil they appeared on the surface, had an undercurrent of violence and anger.

  Nicoletti looked back across the street at the café. He had left the patio without saying a word to the two women under the green-and-purple umbrella. Donning his best smile as he passed their table, he’d slowed his step. For some unknown reason, he had expected the woman with the chestnut braid to reach out and touch his forearm. In his mind, she calmly whispered, “Please stay. I want to know you, again. I have so much to tell you.” In reality, neither woman had even glanced in his direction.

  “You are such a schmuck, Nicoletti,” he mumbled out loud.

  He consoled himself with the idea that it was a small town and he would see them again. He promised himself that the next time, he wouldn’t hesitate.

  “What makes you think you deserve a second chance, putz?”

  To his left was the entrance to Jesse Hall and the door through which the man in the gray coat had passed. The security mechanism required an activation of the lock by some type of identity card. Nicoletti timed his approach to coincide with two coeds on their way out. They pushed open the door and he grabbed it, allowing them to exit before he entered. Did the creep belong here, or did he get in the same way?

  Looking around the lobby, he realized the man could be anywhere within the dormitory. Even if someone had noticed him, everyone in the lobby was either coming in or going out; anyone who might have seen him enter the building was long gone by now.

  Along the campus walkways, students moved leisurely, alone and in groups, talking and laughing. Only occasionally did one of them acknowledge Nicoletti with a nod or a brief smile.

  After a few minutes of wandering aimlessly, he gave up. The guy was gone. At least Nicoletti wasn’t likely to find him. The women were gone from the café patio too.

  Walking across the mouth of the campus parking lot, Nicoletti had to jump back as a gray Suburban raced past him and into the street. The vehicle missed him by inches, but the driver never touched his brakes or honked his horn.

  “Maybe this town is too dangerous for me,” Nicoletti said.

  Nine

  Charles Durbin parked his gray Suburban across the street from O’Connell’s Auto Repair. He scanned the building. There were no exterior security cameras. The overhead doors of the garage were opened wide. Inside, two vehicles were suspended on lifts, hanging like carcasses in the dark. O’Connell, working alone, moved from the undercarriage of one car to the other, singing loudly and swaying to the country music that blared from
the shop radio.

  Marie-Justine’s silver Mercedes was parked in a fenced area to the right of the garage. Seven or eight other cars were parked closer to the open doors. How much time did he have? Was it worth the risk? He put the Suburban in reverse but kept his foot on the brake. This was his chance. He had to risk it. Waiting for O’Connell to focus his efforts on one of the cars, he let his mind wander.

  Months earlier, when Marie-Justine moved into her home, he already had a key. But she had unexpectedly changed the locks, and for over a month, he had been denied access to her yellow-and-white cottage.

  When he first realized that she was looking for a new place to live, he had been upset. He followed her for several weeks as she shopped for a house. He had tried to silently will her to remain living in Anne Bertone’s home. He liked the convenience of having both women simultaneously at his disposal. He enjoyed watching them at night, walking from room to room, separated from him by only the sheer screens of open windows and darkness.

  He also liked standing in the heavily treed lot behind Anne’s house during the day, watching them lay side by side on Anne’s back deck in the hot July sun. He would crouch in the shade behind the foliage while they talked and laughed, smearing sunscreen on each other. Sometimes he could smell the scent of coconut from the lotion.

  But daylight was more dangerous for him. He had to be conscious of both of them, each just an accidental glance away from seeing him. It was quite stimulating—exciting, actually—but too risky.

  He had finally decided he would be better off if they lived apart. He would have two locations for pleasure. From then on, he was in a better mood as he watched the house-buying excursions.