Nothing but Gossip by Marne Davis Kellogg Page A

Linda answered the phone.
    “One moment, please, Miss Rutherford,” she saidinto the receiver and raised a hand signaling me to stop. “Miss Bennett will be right with you.”
    “Something’s arrived,” Mercedes told me without preamble when I picked up my extension. “I’d like you to come by the office.”
    I glanced at my watch. “I’ll be there at ten.”
    Stunt men crowded the tiny jail, filling up the air with testosterone, quizzing one of their real-life heroes, Kennedy McGee, who sat comfortably in his cell answering their questions about hair-raising escapes and near-misses with dangerous, wild animals—mostly big cats. I didn’t want to bust their balloon by telling them that the most dangerous wildcats he came in contact with were rich and two-legged.
    “Excuse me, fellas.” I shouldered my way through the crowd. “Sorry to break up your tea party. Official business.”
    “You guys better clear out. Now,” Dwight said importantly. “When Marshal Lilly says business, she means it.”
    “Morning, Mr. McGee,” I said once we were alone, except for Paul Decker and Dwight, who unlocked the cell. “I’ve got the papers here for your release, but I’d like to ask you a couple of questions, if your attorney doesn’t mind.”
    “We don’t mind.” Paul settled himself comfortably at the old scratched oak conference table upon which, according to legend, Wyatt Earp had a bullet dug out of him by Doc Holliday after the Gunfight at the OK Corral. If you looked carefully, you could make out Marshal Earp’s bloodstains in the wood.
    These large lakes of discoloration were renewed every spring by Cousin Buck with a mixture of double-strongespresso and red wine. He had a whole repertoire of bloodstains around town, which he restored when the weather was bad. When it was good, he regrooved the wagon-wheel tracks right outside the fort on the Oregon Trail, a chore he undertook after every springtime thunderstorm. He sang himself hoarse to the Rolling Stones as he swayed back and forth for miles in either direction in an old Conestoga wagon hauled by his silvery-taffy Percherons and belted down tumblers of Stolichnaya from half-gallon bottles he kept packed in ice in a Styrofoam cooler at his feet.
    Paul Decker, Wyoming’s most famous, most successful, and most expensive defense attorney, placed his black cowboy hat with its hand-hammered silver-medallion hatband on the edge of the table and brushed the brim lovingly with his fingers. His longish gray hair fell toward his face, making him look like Wyatt Earp himself. He regarded me affectionately with blue-gray eyes. Paul and I did a lot of work together, generally on the same side.
    “Ask away,” he said affably. “We’ve got nothing to hide.”
    I took my regular chair at the head of the table and examined McGee’s sneer for a second before beginning. He was so ridiculously arrogant and contemptuous, I forced myself to swallow every word I wanted to say and jammed respectful calm into my brain like a dentist cramming cotton packing into an open filling on a giant molar. “I want to ask you again with your attorney present, Mr. McGee: Where were you when Alma Gilhooly was shot?”
    “Whoa!” Paul held up his hand. “What does that have to do with the price of rawhide? My client’s here in regard to elephant tusks that belonged to Ms. Gilhooly, but if you’re wanting to question him abouther murder, well, that’s a whole different bucket of oats.”
    Paul believed that his cowboy colloquialisms endeared him to clients, judges, and juries, and he was always testing new ones outside the courtroom. Some worked better than others.
    “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Decker,” I said. “I thought you understood. The elephant tusks are a done deal: He had them. I caught him. I arrested him. And he’ll go to trial and explain how he came to be in possession of international contraband. And then he’ll either pay a lot of money or do a lot of time. What I’m