Crazy Like a Fox (Lil & Boris #3) (Lil & Boris Mysteries) (12 page)

His mouth thinned and whited out a moment. That’s never good, by the way. Boris hissed, back arched. I would’ve done the same, if I was a cat. Roger was giving off the same vibe as a very angry, very hungry dog that’s been kicked once too often.

I heard three whole minutes tick by on the clock before Roger jerked his head in a nod, and left without another word. I sank onto the floor next to Boris. I knew why Roger hadn’t told anyone his daughter-in-law was Craig McElroy’s sister. Protecting his son. I could understand, at least in theory.

I unrolled my wallpaper and wrote down the name of Roger’s son and daughter-in-law, and called Harry Rucker and Punk to let them know what I’d found out.

***^***

Punk was taking an evening shift that day, to spare our little town the lack of attention given lately by Rucker’s disgruntled county boys, and called me on his way to a domestic disturbance call.

At the Turner mansion.

I was in the car so fast that Boris nearly lost his tail tip in the door.

I got there before Punk, who’d received the call when he was out Piedmont Road, and barreled up to the house. You could hear the yelling clear down Turner Mountain Road. That explained the call. One of the Reynolds family, who owned the farm out Turner Gap Road, had rolled down a window to flick a cigarette into the ditch at the stop sign where the two roads met, and gotten an earful.

So did I. In all my childhood, I had heard Aunt Marge’s voice raised maybe a handful of times. She didn’t need to go for volume. She had conviction. And, frankly, a certain tone of voice that would’ve dissolved reinforced concrete. To hear her yelling now sent me flashing back to a few memorable incidents, one of which involved her finding a stash of junk food in my room during my teens. The only thing that had gotten her angrier was finding a romance novel.

Roger’s voice interrupted. “You don’t understand! This is about my family! My flesh and blood! Not some orphan left on the doorstep!”

Uh-oh. I edged back from the front door half a step. Aunt Marge would not take kindly the implication that she was less my parent for the lack of shared DNA.

She didn’t. “How dare you! You stand there after lying to me for
weeks
…”

I could guess where that was headed, and I decided to open the front door. By the time I’d crossed the parlor and gotten to the kitchen, Aunt Marge had concluded her sentence, and Roger was retaliating with, “You can’t put this all on me, Lil’s no saint!”

I was relieved to see Aunt Marge’s face was neither too red nor too pale. She’s not young, after all. I watched a smile spread over it and she went very quiet.

Lurking isn’t all I’ve learned from my cat. I padded up quiet as Boris on the hunt.

I was right behind Roger when I said, “The not-saint is here.”

He jumped, and spun around, all in one awkward movement.

I followed up with, “Punk’s on his way.”

I waited patiently while Roger stalked to the other side of the kitchen. I added, “I’d love to hear how this is my fault.”

Aunt Marge rushed to fill in the blank. “That was said in anger, Lil.”

Ah, domestic disputes. No matter how much they hate each other, they’ll unite against the common enemy, also known as the cop unlucky enough to catch the call.

I looked from one to the other. “So, that about it? All sorted out?”

“Lil,” Aunt Marge reproved. “You know sarcasm isn’t constructive.”

“Look,” said Roger furiously to Aunt Marge, “either you trust me or you don’t.”

That’s a man for you. I cut in before Aunt Marge could regain enough breath to re-start World War Three. “Oh for the love of God, would you stick a sock in it? She’s protecting her child, you’re protecting yours. Call it even and call it a night, will you?”

They both drew themselves up indignantly. Aunt Marge’s mouth twisted all prim and prissy, and Roger glowered. Well, at least they were getting along.

Punk sidled in a moment later, trying to shed one of Roger’s three half-grown cats as it climbed up his trouser leg. It was having a wonderful time, unlike the rest of us. “Everything okay here?”

“Don’t ask me,” I snapped, “I’m just an orphan left on the doorstep.”

Aunt Marge made a tiny reproachful noise. Roger snorted something under his breath. I detached the cat from Punk’s leg and deposited it on the nearest flat surface. While Punk rattled off the standard “don’t make me come back here” speech, I hunted up Boris. He had Aunt Marge’s Natasha penned up under the antique rocker, and every time she stuck her head out, he’d reach down from the seat and bop her between the eyes.

I envied him. I’d have liked to smack someone myself.

12.

I
n a town of three hundred, rumors don’t spread. They occur, like lightning, and at about the same speed. Roger’s relationship to Craig McElroy was everywhere by the time I clattered into the office the next morning. I didn’t really need to be there, with Tom taking my shifts, but staying home was not an option. I’d spent enough time staring at my unrolled wallpaper to make my eyes water as it was.

Kim greeted me in a flutter. “You hear about Roger? Can you believe it?”

“Ugh,” I said and grabbed a chocolate-iced donut from the box on her desk. I threw a dollar bill into the office petty cash cup. “I heard.”

“How weird is it his son is married to Craig’s sister?”

“Weird,” I agreed, squinted at her through a fog of insufficient sleep. “You losing weight?”

She nodded. It wasn’t a happy, proud nod. “Yeah, Mom’s on me about it, she says you can’t get a man if you’re ‘hippy’.” She rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “She says I shouldn’t have broken up with Len, but he was just not my type. Too…” She waved a hand around in a vague circle.

“You do favor the average redneck,” I said with about half my attention. “Who’s your next victim?”

A cold silence crept across the room. Kim said in a tiny voice, “That wasn’t very nice.”

“Sorry,” I said, and meant it. “So who’s your next…‌paramour.”

Kim shrugged, eyes distant. “If I have someone, I’ll be damned if I tell anyone around here. Like living in a goldfish bowl. A really, really
small
goldfish bowl.”

I couldn’t argue that. What you said at breakfast usually traveled the town by lunch. “You okay?” I asked, not entirely out of concern. She was on the list, after all. “You’re looking stressed out.”

She put on a big smile, let it fall. “Tom is not easy to have as a boss.”

Indisputable, but Boris’s tail shivered. Hmmm. I probed a little more. “Everything okay at home?”

“I live with my parents,” she pointed out. “Of course it’s not okay. What’s with the interrogation?”

“Bad night,” I said quickly. If I had to go by moods alone, everyone on my list was looking better by the moment. We were a town full of touchy grouches. “Didn’t mean to interrogate. It’s a habit.”

“Which is why I’ll never marry a cop,” Kim muttered. “Don’t know how Tanya puts up with it.”

Before I could reply, the telephone rang. It was Randy Rush. He’d locked himself out of his car. I told Kim I’d take it, and went out to my cruiser to be sure the slim jim was in the back. It wasn’t. I came back in to retrieve it from the bottom drawer of my desk and caught Kim worrying at a fingernail. I’d never noticed her biting a nail before. She took pride in her nails. She got a manicure every two weeks at Bobbi’s salon.

I grabbed the slim jim and headed out. Life would be a lot easier if you could put on magic glasses that showed you a little “guilty” sign over people’s heads.

***^***

Randy Rush safely in his car and lectured on spare keys, I rolled by Bobbi’s salon. She smiled but said crisply, “I’m booked solid, hon, can it wait?”

“Just saying hi,” I said, and went to the Food Mart like I’d meant to do that. I’d forgotten I had Boris trotting at my heels. The assistant manager, Jess Spivey, just waved when she saw us. Worse than cat hair gets tracked into the Food Mart.

I made it back out to the parking lot with a box of granola bars before I was hailed by anyone. The black sheep of the Campbell family, no less. Roger’s niece Amanda. A pharmacist down in Gilfoyle, she’d gotten on everyone’s bad side for never marrying the father of her three children. She’d never lived with him, either. Somehow that was much more immoral to people than forcing herself and her kids to co-habitate with a guy whose idea of a good time had turned out to be lots of other women.

“Sheriff!”

“Yes, Amanda?”

“Look, I’m sorry, I heard about Miz Turner and all…‌You don’t really think Uncle Roger did something wrong?”

“I don’t know,” I said as diplomatically as I could. “Your ice cream will melt,” I added stupidly, pointing at her bags. It was about forty out. The ice cream had time.

“It’ll re-freeze,” she said briskly. “It’s just…‌I’ve known Jeannie for years, y’know? She’s not that kind of person. Neither is my uncle. Or my cousin.” Her earnest puppy-dog eyes flashed at me. “From what Jeannie said once, her brother’s always been the bad apple, y’know?”

I held onto my temper. “I picked up on it, yes.”

She rattled on obliviously. “We were all at school together, y’know? That’s how Jeannie meant RJ. My cousin,” she clarified, in case I hadn’t realized Roger’s son was RJ, short for Roger Junior. “He was a real asshole, even then. Craig, I mean, not RJ.”

My head hurt. “School?” I said blankly. The McElroys were from a whole different county. She couldn’t mean high school.

“Community college,” she clarified. “Y’know? In Lynchburg? We all went. That’s how RJ got started on his degree, and that’s where he met Jeannie, and we met Craig and all that, and I got my pre-reqs.”

If God had hit me with a lightning bolt, I’d have gone grateful for the reprieve from Amanda Campbell’s half-breathless rambling. “So Craig was never much good, okay,” I said, and tried to edge closer to my car.

“It’s just, Uncle Roger’s so nice and I know he really likes Miz Turner, and I didn’t want you to think…” She flapped her hands helplessly. She didn’t know
what
she didn’t want me to think. Fair enough. I was clueless, too.

“Amanda, I need to go,” I said desperately.

“Sorry,” she winced, “but….I know y’all haven’t found the other guy yet.”

That was putting it mildly. “And?” I prompted.

“Did anybody talk to Doug?”

I was getting a severe headache. “What Doug?”

“Doug Winston? Craig’s cousin? They were always hanging out together. Back then, I mean. I don’t think I’ve seen any of them since RJ got married.”

“I’ll look into it,” I told her, and ran.

***^***

Finding Doug Winston took about twenty minutes, most of it spent on the phone with Kurt Danes. He faxed over Winston’s criminal record. I grabbed it eagerly. It was refreshingly brief: Two minor traffic offenses. Both, I noticed, tickets on a 1977 Ford LTD. Now that was a car with trunk space. Hell, it was practically a tank. I’ve seen cars like that roll down an embankment and suffer nothing worse than busted glass.

The question Danes couldn’t answer was, “Where is he now?”

“No one’s reported him missing, and he works for himself. HVAC. He could be gone a while without anyone noticing.”

I studied the faxes, passed them to Punk. Winston was six-three. He qualified as tall. Could have been Tall. Besides the LTD, he also had a Chevy van registered in his name. Nothing on it.

I could nearly smell a break in the case. “Chief,” I asked Danes when I’d called him back, “can you find Winston?”

“I’ve sent a unit by his house.”

I possibly had my Tall, assuming McElroy had been Shotgun. About Kim’s age, I noticed. Younger than me. Well, I was heading fast for forty.

Straddling a chair backwards, Punk glared at the fax. He flipped it back to me, and Boris pounced on it, rolling over to show his tummy in a bid for a fight. I dangled his squirrel tail and he happily began gnawing at it. I rescued the papers under him, looked up to find Punk staring at me with dark sympathy. “What?”

He shook his head. “Where’d Kim go?”

I shrugged. “Lunch, probably.”

“Did she see this fax?”

I had to think it through. “No. What’s wrong?”

Punk’s voice cracked on urgency. “She left right after we, you, called Danes, didn’t she?”

That feeling of a Big Break started to turn sick. “Spill it,” I said tightly enough that Boris stopped playing to stare at me.

“She went to the same community college. Graduated the same year as Doug Winston.”

My head turned. I stared across the room at the little diploma Kim had hung with pride on the wall behind her desk. I walked to it. She’d gotten her degree as an administrative assistant. I’d known that. I’d just never known it with such a sense of dread.

I speed-dialed Aunt Marge. “I’ve got a possible emergency,” I clipped out. “I need to know who Kim Lincoln dated when she was at community college, and if anyone suspects she’s dating someone now, and I need to know where she is right this minute.” I could hear Roger in the background, and gave up. Even if he was involved somehow, I’d never break Aunt Marge’s heart by telling her. “And have Roger call around, too. His niece Amanda might know.”

I sat down in Kim’s chair. Boris ambled over and leapt onto my lap. He head-butted me in the chin, his version of a hug. “Jesus,” I said numbly, and it was definitely more a prayer than a swear. “What was she like when I was…‌gone?”

Punk had paled. “Stressed, but we all were.”

Aunt Marge called back. She sounded like I felt. “Lil? Dear? Naomi says Kim came in about fifteen minutes ago and left about two minutes later with her big purse. She can’t remember anything about Kim’s boyfriends, but she and Matt do think she’s been sneaking around with someone. They thought maybe someone married, but they didn’t ask her about it. She’s so prickly lately about her love life.”

“Roger?”

“He left a voice-mail.”

“Tell him to leave another. Tell him to have Amanda call me directly, on my cell.”

I slid my phone back into the holster on my belt. It rested between my little air horn and my pepper spray. Kim had once joked I’d get distracted one day and end up macing my ear.