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“Who did what to you?”
“Said I fell,” he says, his voice barely audible. “Said I fell. Didn’t fall. I was pushed.”
“Last night? In the forest?”
“No, before that. The cliff. Pushed me off the cliff.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Bruno loses consciousness after that. Oh, I damned well try to find out who pushed him. I keep trying until April orders me out of the room. I’m in the doorway, watching, when Bruno codes, his heart stopping. Anders rushes in then, and they try to bring Bruno back, but I can see by their faces that they don’t expect it to work. They knew this was coming, and they only try as a last-ditch effort, in case there is some hope.
There is no hope.
Twenty minutes after those last words, Bruno is dead.
Dalton and I are in the town hall. We’ve interviewed everyone. As much as I wanted to put that on hold, I knew better. This is now a murder investigation, and I can’t give the killer time to come up with a story.
No one has anything else for me. Nearly everyone was asleep when Bruno left the clinic, and the few who weren’t had been indoors, either unable to sleep or using the restroom or just upearly, waiting for the rest of the crew to wake before venturing out of the residences. Because even if you’re awake at five, unless someone’s brewing coffee, you’re not going outside when it’s barely dawn and barely above zero.
Because all the bedrooms are private, it’s easy to just stay in your room reading until a reasonable hour. It would also be easy to sneak out and meet Bruno in the forest without anyone noticing becausethey’reall intheirrooms. Even Gunnar reports it’d been a quiet night from his perch. He’d had no “visitors,” and he’d gone to bed just after midnight, having seen no one out past eleven.
Once the interviews are done, I’m alone in the town hall with Dalton and can finally tell him what happened in the clinic. The man has the patience of a saint. Well, no, it’s more that he knows me well enough to realize that once I started talking about it, I’d never get on with those interviews. So he kept his curiosity in check.
“Huh,” he says when I finish.
“‘Huh’? I don’t even get a mild profanity?”
“I’m trying to cut back.”
I snort a laugh. “I don’t get a profanity because you aren’t all that surprised. Did you suspect he’d been pushed?”
“Nah. I just suspected—as you did—that there was more to his story than that bullshit about going out to walk it off and stumbling over a cliff. This makes sense.”
“So Bruno went to meet someone that night. He’s been going to meet them regularly. I won’t presume it’s the same person he met last night, but it seems that way, which means they are also from town. He was going out to meet them to discuss some kind of scheme. Something to do with money, which he planned to take back to his wife as an extravagant apology.That night, though, his partner in presumed crime pushes him off a cliff. He keeps his mouth shut and meets them in the forest last night.”
“Giving them a second chance. He promised to keep his mouth shut on the condition he still got his share. Generous of him. Not sure I’d trust someone who pushed me off a fucking cliff, though.”
“Or maybe he was using it as blackmail.”
“Give me more than my share, or I tell the nice detective what you did.”
I sip my coffee as I think it through. “Blackmail or simple desperation, willing to let a murder attempt slide if he got his money. Because if he tattled, he’d get the satisfaction of ruining his former partner, but he’d also lose the money, and I get the feeling the money was all that mattered. Also, depending on what he was up to, he might not have dared tell me what happened to him.”
“Because then he’d need to admit what they were doing.” Dalton leans back in his chair, hand dangling to pet Storm. “Any theories on that?”
“It must have had something to do with the build, if he was working with another crew member. He knows there’s a lot of money going into this town. He also admitted he was urging Yolanda to cut corners.”
“Is there anything here he could sell? Anything he could sabotage?”
“I have no idea. I don’t see any obvious source of cash, not on the scale where he’d be willing to cover for someone who tried to kill him. But I must be missing something. I’ll speak to Yolanda.”
At his expression, I add, “Speak to Yolanda, while recognizingthat it’s possible that I could be talking to the very person who tried to kill Bruno.”
“Yep.”
I end upnotasking for Yolanda’s input. She already knows about Bruno’s death—I wasn’t going to keep that from her while I finished interviews—and now she’s at the clinic waiting to speak to April personally. I resist the urge to mediate and protect my sister from any questions that might have her feeling worse than she already does. Anders is there. He will make sure that Yolanda doesn’t misinterpret my sister’s lack of reaction as a sign that she doesn’t care.
Nanette is still outside, waiting to run any messages, and I give her two: to tell April that we’re off pursuing a lead and to tell Yolanda that I finished the interviews and I’ll talk to her this evening.
