A Veiled Antiquity (Torie O'Shea Mysteries) (8 page)

While he was riding right on my tail, something darted across the road from the woods on my right-hand side, directly in front of my car. It was a dog. I slammed on the brakes, and the car plowed right into the back of me. There was no sound of brakes squealing because the driver hadn’t had enough time to touch his brakes. I did, however, hear the cringing sound of metal against metal as the two cars crunched together.

I hit my head hard and was stunned for a minute. Blood came from my forehead. I tried to see in the rearview mirror if the driver behind me was all right. I couldn’t see anything. He must be slumped over in the seat, I thought.

I sat there a minute, gripping the steering wheel and shaking from head to toe. Of all the stupid … I had just totaled my car because a dog ran in front of it. It was an instant reaction. I’m the idiot that will cross into the oncoming traffic so that I won’t kill a turtle. I might kill eight people in the process, but the turtle will live! Well, I’d just done the same thing for a dog.

I turned the engine over, and it started with no trouble.

There was still no movement from the car behind me. I had to go check on whoever it was. They could be dead. I couldn’t leave them bleeding to death, no matter what the circumstances were. I just couldn’t do it.

I found my flashlight in the glove compartment and the baseball bat that I keep under my front seat. I got out of the car, leaving the radio blaring and the door open. I walked slowly back to the other car, dreading every single second of it. The sleeve of my sweatshirt was soaked from the rain and the blood that I kept wiping from my forehead. My heartbeat seemed to thud in my head instead of my chest and I was feeling slightly dizzy.

I knew I was feeling strange from more than just the bump on my head. I was scared of what I’d find in the car. I was scared that either he would be dead and I’d have to see that or he wouldn’t be dead. And that could pose a more life-threatening situation for me. I took a few steady deep breaths as I stood by the rear tires of my car.

The back of my car looked as if it had been hit by a Mack truck. Glass was scattered everywhere, and now that I got a good look at the back tires, I knew I couldn’t drive the car anywhere. Not to mention the engine of the other car was in the back of my station wagon.

Good going, Torie. This is by far the stupidest thing I have ever done in my entire life.

When I got to the car, I shivered. There was nobody in the front seat or on the floorboard of the car. I checked the backseat. Same thing.

“Damn, damn, damn.”

The passenger door was half open, and I assumed that whoever was driving had jumped out the passenger side and disappeared into the woods.

I walked back to my car. When I looked inside, something was in my front seat. It was the dog that I had almost hit.

The cutest little face looked back at me, beating my seat to death with his wagging tail. It was a dachshund. A wiener dog with short red hair.

“Are you hurt?” I asked in my instant oh-you’re-so-precious voice.

I sat down next to him and looked him over. I didn’t see any blood, bumps, or bruises. There also wasn’t any collar or any tag. He wagged his tail, licked me, and genuinely looked very happy to be in my car with me.

“A wiener dog,” I said to him. “No, don’t give me that look. No, I can’t keep you, so don’t even try the big brown eyes tactic. Absolutely not.”

He rolled over on his back, paws in the air and panting. Clearly, he wanted his belly rubbed.

“My husband will file for divorce and my mother will go live with her sister and then I’ll have to listen to how miserable she is because her sister’s nuts. I can’t keep you,” I said to him.

I rubbed his belly. “Of course, my children will elevate me to sainthood.”

I shut the door and the dog jumped in my lap, put his paws on the steering wheel, and prepared to drive. “Sorry, we’re not going anywhere,” I said to him. “We’re going to lock the doors and wait until somebody drives by. It should only be a minute or two,” I assured him.

He turned around, evidently smelling the blood on me. His nose went to my forehead and he licked at it slightly. I didn’t have the strength to stop him. He whined a little and looked back at the road in front of him.

I managed to lock the door and put my hazard lights on. I waited impatiently for a passerby and did not fight the sensation as the road in front of me turned into a dreamlike mist.

Nine

“Roses are red, violets are blue, you wrecked the car and your pretty head, too,” Rudy said.

I opened my eyes and found Rudy standing over me with a bouquet of red roses. He smiled. His smile was the kind that was contagious. It took up the majority of his face and his whole body seemed to smile with him.

“Hi,” I said. I remembered Deputy Newsome telling me that they were taking me to Wisteria General Hospital. I glanced around the hospital room, painted in that perfectly boring gray that only hospitals seem to use. It was either that or the dull cream. I think I actually preferred the gray.

Okay, yes, I was still in Wisteria General. Fairies had not come and taken me home in the middle of the night like I wished they had.

“I told the doctors that the reason you weren’t dead was because you were too hardheaded,” Rudy said.

“That’s the oldest line in the book,” I answered.

“But in your case, it’s the truth. So are you in any pain?”

“I have a headache,” I answered. “It’s nothing serious. Just a bump on the head. I was only out for a few minutes.”

“I was here last night, do you remember?” he asked.

Vaguely, I remembered him being here. “Yes,” I answered.

“We have a problem,” Rudy said.

“What’s that?”

He put the roses in the vase on the windowsill. “Well, there’s this dog … a wiener dog. He was in the car with you and I’m not sure what to do with him.”

“Oh.”

Rudy came over and rubbed my face with the back of his hand. “Colin wants to speak to you.”

“I bet he does,” I answered. “What did you do with the dog?”

“He’s at the house for right now.”

Rudy walked around the room, and I got the distinct feeling that there was something that he wanted to tell me. Or ask me. He wore jeans and his T-shirt with the Coca-Cola polar bear on it that the girls got him for Father’s Day this year. After ten years of marriage I still say he’s got the sexiest butt in a pair of beat-up jeans I’ve ever seen.

“Look, Colin’s outside and he wants to see you. Now,” he said. “I told him it depended on how you were feeling.”

“I’m fine. Send him in.”

Rudy came over and kissed me on the forehead. “You two need to call a truce. I think your mother is really falling for him, Torie. Besides, I know you. Something that starts small eats at you, until you’ve got a full-blown festered sore.”

“He arrested me,” I said, indignant.

“I know. And even though I don’t agree with him on that, it’s something you’ve just got to get out of your system. He sees you as a woman who thinks she is above the law because most of the time, people here don’t make you go by any rules. He decided he’d show you that you do have to answer to the system,” Rudy said.

“Yeah, but…”

“Don’t but me, Torie. He picked the wrong time to do it, I agree. But it was still a lesson that you needed.”

I started to tell him that he was just agreeing with Sheriff Brooke because he was a man and this was a man thing. Rudy was just picking on me. But then, the more I thought about it, the more that I knew he was right.

“All right. Send him in,” I said.

Rudy left and Sheriff Brooke came in and stood where Rudy had stood before. He was in his full dress uniform, hat and all. It felt as though this was official business. He took his hat off and held it in his right hand.

“Torie,” he said as he nodded his head. “How ya feeling?”

“I have a headache,” I said and meant it in more ways than one.

“You gonna tell me what happened last night?”

I told him the whole story. “Don’t roll your eyes at me, I’m telling the truth. I got my baseball bat and went to see if the person was all right and there was nobody in the car.”

“It was a stolen car, which you probably assumed.”

“Well, I hadn’t given it much thought. It hurts to think too much,” I said.

“Did you get a look at the driver?”

“Not really. I’d say it was a man only because he had short hair and was kind of tall.”

“Did you get the same list of suspects that I did from the funeral registry?” he asked me.

“Probably,” I said.

“And you probably already know that three of them are staying at the Murdoch Inn.”

“No, but I was going there today to check it out,” I admitted.

He glanced out my window. All I could see from my bed was the top of the doctors’ building next door. It was a sunny day, I could tell that much. The sheriff turned around, pulled his britches legs up at the hips, and leaned against the heat register.

“I propose that we go into business with each other,” he said.

“Well, I’m flattered. But I’m not that good with antiques. I mean, I know what they are when I see them, but I can’t begin to tell you what they’re worth.”

“No, not the antiques store,” he said to me.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I’m going to stop telling you to stop snooping around, as long as you don’t do anything illegal. Don’t break into anybody’s house, that sort of thing. Don’t endanger yourself. If you can do whatever it is that you do without breaking the law, have at it.”

“What’s the catch?”

“Nothing. If it doesn’t endanger you to snoop around and ask questions, then I’m not going to tell you not to anymore.”

“I get it. You think that if you tell me it’s okay that it will take all the fun out of it and I’ll just stop on my own. It won’t work, because that’s not why I do it. All I know is that I get something in my head and it won’t leave until I have an answer for it that is satisfactory. It drives me nuts. That’s it. Curiosity. There are no hidden motives,” I said.

“Whatever you say. All I know is sometimes I need the input of outsiders. It helps to get a fresh approach.”

“Oh, paleeze,” I said. “I’m choking from all the cow manure in here.”

“I’m serious. You helped me a lot on the Zumwalt case. And you made the right call on this one. Duran missed the two glasses on the table bigger than day. So if you want to give me advice in the future I’ll accept it,” he said. “As long as you don’t break any laws or any bones, get yourself killed, or get anybody else killed. And of course you have to tell me everything you find. But don’t tell anybody else,” he said.

“I can’t tell anybody? It’s no fun if I can’t brag about it.”

“You brag, the deal’s off.”

“Oh, all right,” I agreed.

He stood up and pulled a clear plastic bag out of his pants pocket. “Is this yours?” he asked.

It was an inhaler for asthma.

“No. Why would you think that?”

“I found it in Marie’s house. Marie did not have asthma.”

“Where in the house did you find it?” I asked.

“In the entrance from the living room to the kitchen,” he said.

“That’s what I tripped over,” I said more to myself than to him.

“What?”

“Well, I stepped on something in the house that was sort of round and I fell. It was in the same area.”

“I’m betting whoever was there that night dropped it.”

“Yeah, and I’ll bet that if he or she didn’t have an extra, then they are having to get a refill.”

“I’m already checking the surrounding pharmacies. I’ll get a list of everybody that got a refill or a replacement in the last week.”

He was silent now. Neither one of us had much more to say to each other.

“Anything you want to tell me?” he asked.

I thought about the photocopies that Camille had. “Not yet. Maybe by this evening I will have something,” I said. “Maybe something from Marie’s.”

He raised his eyebrows.

I didn’t think there was any point in getting Camille involved in all of this if there was no reason to. I would just wait and see what the documents said first. Then I’d tell him.

“Okay,” he said as he put his hat back on. “I hope your headache goes away soon,” he said.

“Oh, I doubt that it will.”

Ten

I was released from Wisteria General at noon. Rudy came with Mary to drive me home. Mom was waiting at the door as I came up the steps.

“I can make you a bed on the couch if you want. I don’t think you should be climbing too many steps,” she said.

“I’m fine. Really. I’m just a little stiff. All I did was bump my head. They just kept me overnight for observation.”

She looked tired, I noticed. Dark smudges lay underneath her eyes, ruining her otherwise perfect creamy complexion. I wondered if she was tired from just being up in the middle of the night worrying about me, or from being up all night convincing Sheriff Brooke to call his truce. I was certain that Mother had pep-talked him just as Rudy had with me. This whole idea was probably Rudy and Mother’s to begin with.

“Is that Speed Racer I hear coming in the door?” My grandmother of eighty-one years came in from the kitchen.

“Hello, Granny,” I said.

She gave me a hug. It was a warm, nurturing, loving hug. Then she smacked me on the butt as hard as she could. “You need a good spankin’, that’s what you need. You better take that offensive driving course that Tobias was telling us about at bingo last week.”

“Granny,” I pleaded as I rubbed my backside.

“I mean it,” she said. Her eyes were like my mother’s, dark-brown and large. Her skin was creamy and clear, too. But Granny had a square face and much higher, more prominent cheekbones than my mother.

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

“Well, I’m making you chicken and dumplings,” she said.

That settled it. I wouldn’t feel bad for long. Chicken and dumplings was a cure-all. At least for me.

“And,” my mother added, “I made a lemon chiffon pie.”

Heck, I’d be doing a hoedown by sunset.

I went up to my bedroom intending to lie down to take a nap. But I ended up in the office instead. I pulled some books off of the shelf and started thumbing through them. I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular, just everything in general. I was looking for information that would tell me the state of France in 1756.
The Age of Voltaire
seemed like a good place to start.