MAZE

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MAZE - book excerpt

Chapter 1

MISSED APPOINTMENT

Gwen Lindstrom pounded on Richard Stuckley’s front door.

“Richard, are you home?” she shouted, her nose inches from the solid wood panel.

Damnit—she had driven all the way from Dubois, Wyoming, to Casper because the private investigator she had hired said he’d discovered something important about her late husband’s missing pension funds, and needed to show her what he had found. Now it appeared Gwen had been stood up. Hell, at eight o’clock on a bright summer morning, was the lazy man still sleeping?

The day had dawned clear and optimistic. It rained in the night, and the fresh scent of warm, damp earth and sagebrush floated in from the car’s air conditioner vents as Gwen made the nearly two-hundred-mile drive. When was the last time she had taken a trip outside Dubois? She couldn’t recall.

Thirty minutes outside Casper, she had pulled to the shoulder of the highway and called Richard to let him know she was getting close. His phone rang and rang. When his voicemail invited her to leave a message, Gwen hung up. Probably in the shower.

She glanced at the dashboard clock. It showed 7:35. A typical time to rise and shower. She’d felt sure that was why he hadn’t answered.

Gwen had been so busy at the Ranchers Café—a restaurant she co-owned—the last couple of weeks that she hadn’t had time to think about the black hole that was Gabe’s lost pension money. June was the height of the tourist season in Wyoming. Visitors coming and going from Yellowstone, Jackson, and the Tetons often found themselves hungry by the time they arrived at the Dubois city limits. She had hired both the young ladies who had interviewed for waitress positions. She’d put Becky on the morning shift, and hired Sandra for the afternoon and evening shifts. They appeared on time with their clothes—jeans and button-down shirts—pressed and neat. Although they were experienced servers, it still took time to show them the nuances of where supplies were kept, and to learn the daily and weekly specials. By Sunday afternoon, Gwen was exhausted and eager for escape.

While Gwen drove, she’d listened to a Dean Koontz book she had downloaded but hadn’t had a chance to enjoy. She loved the otherworldly strangeness of his stories.

“No sign of flying saucers yet,” she’d said into the car’s interior, and smiled.

Gwen had tried to reach Richard a second time when she was ten miles outside of Casper. Again, the phone had just rung and rung, then switched to voicemail. That time, Gwen did leave a message.

“Hi, Richard. Gwen here. Just wanted to let you know I should be there in fifteen minutes or so. Let me know if something has come up.”

She’d hoped to hell nothing else had come up. Although the trip had been pleasant, there were still a thousand other things she could be doing on this Monday, her day off.

“Including fishing,” she muttered to herself.

It hadn’t taken long for Gwen to find the investigator’s house. A late-model Toyota sat in the driveway. After parking on the street, she’d gotten out and headed up the driveway toward his front door. She wondered how old he was and what Richard looked like. She hadn’t asked April Erickson, her sister-in-law and sheriff of Fremont County, who had recommended the private detective. His voice had sounded young and competent on the phone. Was he still in the shower, and surprised at her early appointment, would answer the door wrapped in a towel? Would this be a good thing—young and handsome, maybe tousled dark hair? Or would it be a vision she didn’t want to be stuck with forever in her memory?

After climbing the porch steps, Gwen had pushed the doorbell. She heard it ring inside, but there was no tapping of footsteps heading toward her.

“Hell!” she exclaimed.

Gwen turned and examined the neighborhood. It was middle class, with crisply mowed yards and clipped bushes. Across the street, red and white rose bushes spilled from a front garden. Somewhere, a dog barked.

Was the Toyota Richard’s car, or did it belong to his wife? A girlfriend? A teenage child?

She pressed the doorbell again. Same result: a chime from inside, but no sounds of someone working toward the door. Dammit, he knew she was coming from Dubois. At the least, he should have called her if something had come up. Before she had wasted the day.

She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and called again. No answer.

“Hey, Richard,” she said through gritted teeth when his voicemail came on. “I’m at your front door. Remember, we had an appointment to meet this morning at your house. Call me.”

To emphasize the message—and her growing impatience—Gwen pulled the storm door open and pounded on the solid inside door. Still nothing.

“I’m really going to be pissed,” she growled, as she stomped back to her car.

Gwen recalled passing a coffee shop before she’d turned into the neighborhood. After turning the car around, she drove there.

One cup of coffee, three fresh doughnut holes, and two unanswered calls later, she returned to Richard’s house. The neighborhood was still quiet. The Toyota still parked in the same spot in the driveway.

Before she got out of the car, she opened the visor mirror, ran a comb through her short dark hair, and made sure she didn’t have any powdered sugar from the donuts lingering on her face.

She climbed the porch, none too quietly, and rang the doorbell once again. Same non-responsive result. She opened the outside door and dialed his number. Faintly, she heard music—a riff of a guitar. Music had to mean someone was there, right?

She hung up and pounded on the door. Then, after recalling that she had heard that same guitar riff before, back at the Ranchers Café when an alert went off on a customer’s phone, she held an ear to the door and pressed redial.

There it was. Somewhere inside the house, music sounded. Odd. Had something happened to him? Maybe he’d had a heart attack. Or had he left in a rush and forgotten to take his phone. In his haste to answer her first knock, had he slipped on a wet bathroom floor, fallen, and been knocked unconscious?

Gwen wished there was a neighbor out. She thought about knocking on nearby doors, but dismissed it. What if her worry was for nothing, and by the time a neighbor followed her over, Richard was at his door, irritated and embarrassed at what she had done.

She climbed down from the porch and went around the corner of the attached garage. Peering through a window, she saw no second vehicle in the garage, but there were filing cabinets and boxes stacked on one side, and a motorcycle parked in the middle, facing the garage door.

She continued around to the back of the unfenced yard and saw a sliding glass door leading out onto a low deck. Great! She could sneak closer and cup her hands against the glass to look inside. Would it be an invasion of privacy? What had been her late mother’s saying? In for a penny, in for a pound. Tromping through the investigator’s backyard and spying into his window was more like being in for a Brinks truck full of money pouches.

“Richard!” she shouted, not wanting to scare a man who was most likely armed. “Mister Stuckley?”

No answer.

Gwen stepped onto the low deck and started toward the sliding door when she saw it was ajar. She saw something…strange. She stepped closer. A smear of some substance muddied the glass. Gwen took two more steps, bent to examine it, and froze.

Light flickered in the room. Gwen’s heart leaped to her throat.

“Hey, Richard, it’s me, Gwen. Sorry, sorry…”

The rest of the apology died as she realized the flicker came from a muted television. A plump chair sat in front of the television, its back to the door. It was reclined as if someone had fallen asleep in it. The light from the television brightened, and that’s when Gwen saw it—a hairy arm in a short-sleeved shirt dangled from the armrest.

“Richard? Mister Stuckley?” she squeaked.

There was a pool of something dark under the edge of the chair. It almost looked like…

“Ah, shit, shit,” Gwen whispered in a hoarse tone, and stepped backward.

As she moved, sunlight caught the smear on the door glass, and it shone garnet red.

Gwen fled around the corner and straight toward her car still parked on the street, unmolested in the calm, quiet neighborhood.

Chapter 2: Help Arrives

The street didn’t stay quiet long after Gwen dialed 911. Ten minutes after her call, police vehicles whipped around the corner and gunned toward her. She’d been standing at the bottom of the drive near the street, but the urgency of their arrival made her take a few steps back.

Two officers got out, one from each of the two vehicles. They were big, tense, and had their guns drawn, pointed at the ground.

Gwen took another step back and held out her hands.

“Hold on, hold on. I’m the one who called. Better come around back.”

She turned to guide them, but a voice behind her commanded Gwen to stay.

“Don’t leave,” one of the officers said. “We’ll need to talk to you.”

Gwen started to say, No problem, but they had already disappeared around the side of the house.

The day had become too hot to wait in the car. Looking around for a shady spot, she noticed the neighbor across the street had come outside. He was an older man with thin gray hair and baggy pants. No doubt a retiree keeping watch over neighborhood activities.

“Something happen to Richard?” The neighbor strode across the street toward Gwen.

The police vehicles had come without sirens, but their lights still strobed red and blue, reflecting against the man’s glasses.

“They’re checking,” Gwen replied. “I had an appointment scheduled with Mister Stuckley, but he didn’t answer the door, so I…”

She left the sentence unfinished, not willing to admit to her trespass, or comment on any assumptions she had about his condition. Richard could still be alive, right? Maybe he was a heavy sleeper, and the stain on the floor was liquor that had spilled when he knocked a glass off in his sleep.

The grim expressions on the cops’ faces when they came back dispelled that illusion. One went to his car trunk and pulled out a case.

The other spoke into his cell phone. “We’ll need a coroner. Whoever is on duty today.” A pause as he listened. “No, we won’t need EMS.” Another pause. “I’m sure. And the crime scene techs, we’ll need them, too.”

He turned to where Gwen and the neighbor waited as if noticing them for the first time.

“He’s gone, then?” the neighbor said, a tremble in his voice.

The cop gave a curt nod. “Are you family?”

“No, I live over there.” The neighbor motioned across the street to his house.

It was the same one Gwen had noticed earlier, with the explosion of roses in the front yard.

“How long have you lived around here?” The cop pointed at Richard’s house.

The old man snorted. “I’ve lived here since my wife and I married back in 1975. Now, Mister Stuckley, Richard, he moved in ten years ago or so. Had a wife, but they’re divorced now. He’s one of those private detectives. Works from his home.”

“And you?” The cop turned to glare at Gwen.

“I live in Dubois. I had an appointment this morning with Richard. I tried to reach him by phone when I got close to town, but he never picked up.”

“So you’re a client?”

“Yes.”

“And you said you just got into town from Dubois?”