“Or going back to?” Valerie asked, shivering.
Jane frowned and studied the painting. There was a sharp similarity between it and the sketch she’d drawn.
She frowned, looking at Henri.
“That’s Sage McCormick?” she asked, but she already knew the answer.
“Our beautiful ghost!” he said reverently. “Yes, indeed, that is Sage McCormick!”
Jane studied the old painting. It portrayed the woman she’d seen on the landing. Sage McCormick had rich dark curls that surrounded her face. Her eyes were large and gray, framed by rich lashes. Her lips were generous and curled into a secretive smile. She did, indeed, have the look of a queen—a sweeping, emoting drama queen. And yet...there was something about her eyes. She would have done well in their modern world, Jane thought. She was a bit of a wild child, a rebel. A woman before her time.
“Ah, Sage! Bless this place!” Henri said, overemoting himself. “May you help us prosper, indeed, because we cannot let this theater fail, can we?”
*
“At least it’s a slow week,” Dr. Arthur Cuthbert, one of the county medical examiners, told Sloan. “I have a died-at-home-alone octogenarian on my schedule and that’s it. I can keep the old fellow on ice awhile longer. My diener—assistant—is just cleaning up our tourist, Mr.—” he paused, checking his notes “—Mr. Jay Berman. However, I’m willing to bet he died from a .45 caliber to the back of the head.”
“Looks likely,” Sloan said. He hadn’t worked with Cuthbert before, and he wasn’t sure of a medical examiner who made quick suppositions. What seemed obvious... Well, things weren’t always what they seemed. He might be judging too hastily, though, he told himself.
Whoa, there, Sloan. Getting testy these days.
However, Detective Liam Newsome with the county joined him at the autopsy. He’d arrived at the crime scene when the forensic units were finishing up. Newsome was a decent cop, an oddly thin little man with sharp eyes and a sharper mind. They’d worked a hit-and-run on the town line when Sloan had first returned to Lily.
When the three of them headed into the autopsy, Sloan’s opinion of Cuthbert began to change. Cuthbert was precise, speaking to him and Detective Newsome and into a recorder all the while. Their dead man, Berman, had been approximately five-eleven and two hundred pounds. He had suffered no defensive wounds, which seemed consistent with the fact that he’d probably been kneeling. His attacker had likely walked behind him and pulled the trigger almost point-blank, judging by the powder burns. When he was done with the initial work, Cuthbert told Sloan he’d have the stomach contents analyzed, which would help narrow down the time of death. His informed guess was between two and four in the morning. When the lab reports came back, he’d send all the information to both Sloan and Liam at their respective departments.
“So, our tourist came to Lily and was shot execution-style,” Newsome said as they exited the morgue together. “You ever seen anything like that before?”
“Not in Lily.” Sloan had seen the style of killing, but that had been when he was dealing with known drug lords and their minions and in a big city rather than a little town where it seemed everyone knew everyone. Even the tourists. He pulled out his phone, looking at the information Betty had sent. “My deputies traced his identity—he’d given the management his credit card at the Old Jail and at the stables—and they’ve been checking his movements since he got to town. He’s from New York. Flew out to Tucson and drove to Lily late last week after picking up a rental car at the airport. He said he was on his own and just loved all the stories he’d heard about the Old West. He went to the show one night and took a couple tours with the stables. That’s all I’ve got at the moment. Appears he was friendly with everyone he met and seemed like a regular guy on vacation. I’ll start making further inquiries, try to find out if anyone got anything more from him.”
Newsome nodded. “I’ll work on the home angle. Maybe he was running from New York. Maybe his killer was never in Lily. Any word on the rental car?”
“No. Betty called the rental agency. No tracking device on his car. It was a new Nissan XTerra. Silver-gray.” Sloan looked down at the page and gave Newsome the license number.
“I’ll get a trace on it,” Newsome said.
Sloan nodded. “I’ll start with our locals.”
“We’ll see if he had family or friends—acquaintances—in New York who might’ve known if he had a different reason for coming out here. You had any trouble with drugs lately?”
“No more than the usual. Kids, mostly,” Sloan told him.
The two parted ways at the morgue. Sloan headed back to his office, stopping at Old Town first.
Mike Addison was at the desk in the Old Jail. He already knew about everything that had happened in the desert.