Crazy Like a Fox (Lil & Boris #3) (Lil & Boris Mysteries) (5 page)

It’s a perk of my job that I get the new cruiser to myself.

Aunt Marge and Roger joined the circus at this point, not long before Bobbi and Raj came at Tom’s request to get Boris. By now, the town was buzzing. So was Littlepage Road, since half the town seemed to have chosen to come by in person to gawk at the spectacle. Punk finally erected a barricade, earning the wrath of the Littlepage Inc. employees who maintained the Littlepage estate up the way from my place.

The chaos had started to quiet down a bit when my uncle Eller arrived. Since they’d been trying to reach Cousin Jack, Tom and Punk were understandably confused. Everyone in town knew the Ellers loathed me, and I had as little use for them. Avoidance had escalated into dislike a few years ago, when I was left three million dollars in a trust set up by my late grandfather’s attorney. When Grandfather Eller said he wanted each grandchild to get one, he had forgotten to specify I didn’t count, and the lawyers had set one up for me, too. I’d tossed the money to Aunt Marge, who built the animal shelter. The Ellers had disliked me enough for getting the money. My giving it away sealed the deal. Hence all the surprise at Uncle Eller’s appearance.

Things didn’t get much clearer when Uncle Eller announced he’d had a telephone call demanding ten million dollars be delivered within 24 hours or he’d have a dead niece.

I halted Harry there. “They know his number but they don’t know he can’t stand me?”

Harry grinned wickedly. “The thought had occurred to us, as well.”

I grumbled to myself and waved for him to continue.

Of
course
these criminals had not called on the private line, Uncle Eller seethed with all that saturnine dignity of his. They had called the headquarters of the company, using the publicly listed number, and the bizarre nature of the call had prompted someone to wisely pass it on to him. Since commerce didn’t sleep, neither did Eller Enterprises, so that at least made sense.

Uncle Eller intended to ignore the demand, but the housekeeping staff had heard I was indeed missing, and so he had come to present this information to the authorities, and let them make of it what they would. As for himself, he was uncertain what to do. As Harry described it, Uncle Eller refused to deal with terrorists, but on the other hand, a refusal could get him, and by extension his business, bad PR.

When people say the rich are different, they don’t know the half of it.

Consternation reigned. Should they call the state police and FBI? I’d only been gone a few hours, not even long enough for anyone to file an official missing persons report. Yet the ransom call seemed a good indication I hadn’t just skipped town with a beau for a quick romp in a hotel that rented rooms by the hour. To make matters worse, Tom and Punk got into a nose-to-nose argument about their next step. Tom wanted to arrange the ransom and get me back that way, then worry about apprehending the abductors. Punk was all for getting a posse together to hunt me and the kidnappers down right away, and to hell with ransoms. Called upon to mediate, Harry suggested a three-pronged approach. Tom should go ahead with his plan, and Punk should go ahead with his, while Harry called everyone he could think of to seek advice on which course was better.

Two hours of telephone calls left everyone frustrated. Lieutenant Breeden of the state police, whose mother rules his life and happens to be a friend of Aunt Marge’s, advocated doing both, and advised that maybe my cousin Jack could come up with the funds. Jack, finally reached by telephone, revealed he had no liquid assets at the moment. All his money was in the company. He was also halfway to Germany on business he couldn’t delay, but ordered Harry to give him regular updates.

Meanwhile, Punk had started canvassing my few neighbors, but Missy swore she’d seen nothing, and her kids were not the kind to gawk at their neighbors, and he needed to go away before he scared off her Sunday afternoon gentlemen callers. Stymied, Punk called his old friends in the county police, who were also Tom’s former co-workers, and got nothing but quiet concern and promises not to let Chief Rucker make things worse.

Which was, of course, when Chief Rucker showed up to take control of the investigation.

For an idea of Chief Vernon Rucker, think of an unfunny redneck joke, and add a badge.

Up at the Eller estate, Tom was getting the cold shoulder from the Ellers, who were themselves debating their wisest course of action. This was told to Tom by the housekeeper, who had a rather strict New England view of propriety, and found the quarrelling unseemly. Cousin Robert favored handing over the money. It wouldn’t be loss, he argued, because they had insurance against this sort of thing. Admittedly, they’d gotten it out of worry for what might happen to his sister, but the policy didn’t specify
who
had to be kidnapped. It was just a K&R policy (kidnap and ransom, Harry informed me) that covered the Eller family. Technically‌—‌whether Uncle Eller liked it or not‌—‌I counted as family. The money would come back by way of reimbursement, so nothing was truly being risked.

Uncle Eller had a different point of view. Giving in once, for a much-disliked niece, sent a signal that he could be extorted. What might they demand for Robert? Or his sister? She is married to Carter Randolph of Richmond, himself a scion of famous First Families of Virginia (AKA FFVs, though I substitute a profanity for one of those Fs), and they have children. Whom, Robert pointed out, are covered by Carter Randolph’s K&R policy, which came of being an old Virginia name with gobs of not-so-old tobacco money. But Uncle Eller held firm. No ransom. Let the police find me.

At about this point, Harry got a call from Cousin Jack. Jack didn’t have ten million to spare, but he could scrape up a million by the deadline of Monday at 6 PM. Would that help?

I knew I was right to like my cousin Jack.

By midnight, Vernon Rucker had won the jurisdictional pissing contest, on the grounds that my deputies were too close to the victim to be any good at their jobs. I couldn’t really argue with Judge Harper’s informal ruling. I’d have said the same, though I’d have given the case to Breeden before I let Chief Rucker near it. The guy despises women, and women cops are his idea of a sin against the natural order.

Rucker ruled that the smart thing to do was set out money as bait, and nail the kidnappers when they came to pick it up. From there, it would be simplicity itself to force them to reveal my location.

Chief Rucker watches way too much TV.

I wasn’t much of a fed, but I know the drill on kidnap-for-ransom cases. The goal is to get the victim home alive. Catching the kidnappers can wait. But the truth is, we don’t see many kidnaps for ransom in the US. It’s too hard to get away with it. Even small police departments like mine can rustle up the wherewithal to ambush a kidnapper when he comes to pick up the money, or at least have cameras pointed at him, or stick a tracking device in the cash bag. Something that ends with the kidnapper in handcuffs. Most kidnappings in our country are either parents in a custody fight, or they’re connected somehow to human or drug trafficking, as a very hostile way to force repayment of a debt. Not for ransom.

Like I said, the goal in any kidnap is to get the victim home in one piece. Catching the kidnappers can wait. Except for Chief Rucker, who might in this case have bought them a steak dinner. So paying the ransom, or negotiating a bit, would’ve been the best way to play it, in my opinion.

Which, it turned out, was what the insurance company told Cousin Robert. I hadn’t known it, but K&R insurance often comes with a consultant who’ll tell you how to handle the situation. He was on his way in from New York. He’d be there around lunch on Monday, and they’d just have to wait till then.

As Harry phrased it, Punk “took that badly”. He stomped off‌—‌no mean feat for a guy with one leg‌—‌muttering words even Harry claimed not to know. Harry begged a bed for the remainder of the night from Aunt Marge, and everyone more or less went home in a bad mood.

Come Monday morning, while I was watching the last logs dwindle to ash, Vernon Rucker painstakingly, lovingly interviewed everyone in Crazy who might have a grudge against me. In his mind, that list included every resident of the town, and a good number of those who lived outside town at the apartments on Piedmont Road. Since he had court, Harry had rambled home early, but heard from a frustrated Punk later in the day that Rucker was moving at the speed of molasses in a January freeze. Rightly claiming no idea how to get his fat cousin to accelerate, Harry asked not to be bothered.

“What happened after that,” he finished, “you’ll have to ask someone else. I didn’t hear another peep until you were on your way to the hospital.”

I saw him out, locking my door tight, and went to bed. Boris cuddled against me, sighing happy little cat sighs now that everything was back to normal. Whatever
that
was.

5.

I
was technically off-duty for another week, but I showed up at work first thing Monday morning armed with a legal pad of questions. Tom and Punk weren’t expecting me. I could tell by the way their eyebrows crawled up their foreheads.

Boris bounded to his cat condo in the corner for a good scratch, detouring around Kim’s legs with a scrabble of claws on the way. Kim squeaked a surprised hello, and hustled to bring me a cup of decaf green tea. “Does Miz Turner know you’re here?”

Miz Turner‌—‌no one calls Aunt Marge “
Miss
Turner” —did not. I smiled sunnily at her, but didn’t say a word. Boris’s tail twitches twice in the presence of a lie, and while Kim may not believe me on that, I wasn’t taking any chances. “Boys,” I said to Tom and Punk, both of whom were slinking door-ward. “Sit.”

They sat. There’s this about being Eller tall, with the Littlepage glare: I do get results.

“Now,” I said, tapping my pen on the legal pad, “who wants to pick up where Harry left off? Say, last Monday morning maybe?”

They squirmed. Tom inched a foot toward the door. “Someone’s gotta keep an eye on the traffic.”

I stared at him. He sank back in the chair and uttered a single, useless, “Um.”

I tried Punk, who seemed to find his prosthesis suddenly fascinating.

I stopped tapping. They both jumped. “Well? What happened?”

I let them run out of hot protests about Vernon Rucker, and exhaled hard. “What did he do?”

They’d both worked for Rucker as county cops. I usually didn’t hold that against them, but I was getting tempted. I went for the Voice of God, though I am not nearly as good at it as Aunt Marge.

“Tell me what he did!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kim raise her hand like a kid in a classroom. “Um. Do I have to be here?”

I waved her free. She bolted. Boris stopped his butt-wash to watch her go, his pink tongue sticking out between very sharp white teeth. He looked demonic. Good kitty.

I leaned back in my chair. I folded my arms. I drew on what little hauteur I have, which isn’t much. Turners don’t go in for hauteur, and DNA isn’t everything.

Tom caved first. When we were in high school together, way back, I accidentally nailed him in the crotch with a softball. I don’t think he ever forgot it. “I was off that day, it was Punk’s day on.”

Punk spun in his chair. “Don’t lay this on me! You were acting sheriff!”

I knew Rucker’d been up to something, but I didn’t think it was
that
bad. I whistled sharply to get their attention. “What did Rucker do?”

Tom drew a big, deep breath. Then he jerked his head at Punk and mumbled, “I wasn’t here. I went up to Charlottesville.”

No way I heard that right. “Come again?”

Punk snapped, “He went up to Charlottesville.”

Loudly unspoken was the word
coward
.

Tom reddened and tried to loom over Punk. Not hard, since he’s bigger, but some people refuse to be loomed over, and Punk is one of them. “I thought maybe the city cops’d have some idea what was right to do,” Tom defended himself. “It wasn’t just to get out from under Rucker.”

“The hell it wasn’t!”

Boris doesn’t like people to yell in my presence. He hissed.

If Hell has a steam-vent, that’s what it sounds like.

Punk glowered. Tom growled. I just sat there waiting for the testosterone levels to drop.

Good thing Aunt Marge taught me patience.

Too bad I flunked that right along with “ladylike deportment.”

Punk shifted, his prosthesis making a dull clunk when it hit the leg of the chair. “Fine,” he snarled.

Finally. Answers. I got my pen ready. “Shoot,” I said.

Punk’s mouth twisted. “Wish I had.”

***^***

Though he hadn’t shown it where anyone could see it, Punk hadn’t liked working for Vernon Rucker. Not all the county cops did. Some of them had come into policing from the military, like Tom, and some for a chance at a job with a steady paycheck. The rest, as far as Punk could tell, went into the county police department to throw their weight around and show what big tough guys they were. Those were Vernon’s pets, which showed you what Rucker was about, and it was better to stay a lowly nobody than get promoted by licking Rucker’s boots as far as Punk was concerned.

Punk had gone into the police for the paycheck, but was bitten by the civil service bug, and enjoyed being a cop. Now Rucker was on
his
turf, and so were his pets. Rucker confined himself to the office, ruffling through papers and files, which Kim had opened to him thinking there might be a chance he’d find a clue. Better odds of seeing snow in August, to Punk’s thinking, and he’d told Kim so before he’d gone out on the daily rounds. Someone had to maintain law and order in Crazy.

Not so easy. Rucker’s pets were
everywhere
. They searched Bobbi and Raj’s house because Raj might be a terrorist plotter. Punk got a call from Bobbi’s salon, where one of Vernon’s boys was making snide remarks, not quite under his breath, about mixed-race babies. When Punk ejected his erstwhile co-worker, the guy rolled over to the veterinarians’ office, and used a slim-jim to pop the lock on Raj’s car and search it without a warrant.