Flight of the Stone Angel (31 page)

Ray pulled up a chair across the desk from Riker. A new visitor was standing in the doorway, and there was another man behind him. When Riker glanced back to the square, the sentries were moving toward the building. Underneath the desk, Riker was pointing a .38 automatic at Ray Laurie’s midsection.

More men filed into the office. Riker counted eight of them, and now the gun in his hand became meaningless. They stood all about the room, and one of them moved to the window next to the desk. Another man used this distraction to move to the wall behind the desk. He listened to the heavy feet climbing the stairs to the lockup, and then running down again.

This man appeared at the door. Catching his breath, he looked to Ray Laurie. “The place is empty. Maybe she heard right and they did turn him loose.”

Riker never heard Ray’s end of that conversation. He was struck from behind. When his eyes opened again, he was on the floor. He drifted in and out of consciousness as he floated through the back door of the sheriff’s office.

“I don’t buy it. Idiots can’t even write,” said the man who held his legs to the man who held his arms. If there was more to this discussion, Riker didn’t hear it.

Nap time.

The bats had flown from Trebec House in the sunset hour. Ira tracked them across all the sky he could see from the circle of trees around the cemetery. And then he turned back to the statue of Dr. Cass.

His mother had been wrong. This was the same old statue of Dr. Cass with Kathy in her arms, and she was standing right where she always did. But there were changes to deal with. There were wheel ruts and spills of gravel on the grass, and broken twigs on the low-hanging branches.

The birds were flying up from the trees, and the rush of wings created a breeze all around him.

“So you’re the witness,” said a voice behind him, only sound without real meaning. Alarmed, Ira turned to see a man striding down the gravel path between the tombs.

“So you’re the witness,” said Ira, not comprehending, only making the required response as he was backing up to the angel, pressing into the stone folds of her robe, looking there for sanctuary.

The man came closer, growing larger, his hands rising in closed fists. Ira slumped down to the grass. He drew in his arms and legs and tucked in his head like a turtle. The first blow was nothing to him, only an unwanted intimacy. Fistfalls rained harder, and soon the pain seeped in like the color red knifing into pure white paint, cutting a clean sharp edge into his brain.

He was being kicked now. All his fear had become a bright ball of fire, and now it was diminishing in its brightness, the light was going gray, going out. His face was wet. He had blood in his eyes.

He understood what was happening. Babe had yelled at him and swatted his head when he played a familiar handful of notes on the piano. And then Babe had broken his hands. But when the music had ended, the pain ended, too. And now he began to hum the notes that had played all the while Cass was dying.

This infuriated his assailant and the blows were heavier and faster, more vicious.

A strange intimacy, this.

And now Ira reached out to his attacker with the rest of the music. He had learned the entire song, and he crooned it now, his voice becoming horn and flute in an accompaniment to pain, a musical score for violence.

And when his song ended, and he lay quiet, not moving anymore, the violence stopped, just as Babe had stopped. Ira had learned his lesson well.

Even with his eyes shut, Riker recognized the trappings of the Owltown bar where he had spent some time as a guest of the New Church, boozing with the faithful. He could feel the rough wood under his hands and his face. The night before last, he had listened to the same bad music on the jukebox. Now the song was slightly muffled, and he knew there was a door between his prone body and the outer room. The stale smells of beer and sweat were not muted at all. He kept his eyes closed while he counted the voices in the air – three men.

“Wake up, Sunshine.” This greeting was punctuated by the nudge of a boot in his rib cage.

Riker opened his eyes and focussed on the only window and a patch of dusky sky. He had been unconscious for at least five hours. This enforced rest was not such a bad trade for the small ache on the side of his head.

Two men sat at a small square table. Ray Laurie was standing over his body and cracking the seal on a bottle. “Mr. Riker needs a drink – a lot of drinks.” He filled a shot glass with whiskey from the bottle as he spoke to the man with the rifle. And now Riker noticed his own .38 automatic in the hand of the second man. “Now don’t let him nurse his shots. This shouldn’t take all night.”

Ray leaned down and handed the glass to Riker. “Just drink it.”

“Sure, why not?” Riker pulled himself up to a sitting position and drank from the glass. “Not bad. Not bad at all.” And he meant that.

He looked around at his companions and smiled. “You know, this was always my big dream, being forced to drink good whiskey at gunpoint.”

They all smiled back – no hard feelings here, no animosity whatever. He recognized the two men at the table. He had spent some time drinking with them on his last excursion to Owltown.

Ray Laurie was lining up the bottles on the table. “Just keep pouring till the job is done. ‘Night, Riker.”

When the door had closed on Ray, one of the remaining guards lifted the rifle barrel slightly. “Drink up, friend.”

“That’s a lot of liquor.” Riker admired the labels, all beyond his means. What was served out front was watered-down swill, and he guessed these homeboys had never seen the undiluted article in this bar. The collection of bottles on the table must be Malcolm’s private stock. “I don’t think anybody’d notice that I wasn’t drinking alone.”

The two men looked at one another, and then at the virgin bottles. “Go ahead,” said Riker, pretending not to see the rifle barrel as he climbed into a chair at the table. “Would I rat on you guys?”

He slugged back the rest of the whiskey and threw the empty glass across the room. Suddenly a rifle and a gun were pointing his way, aiming at his head. Overlooking this blatant rudeness, Riker grabbed up the open bottle. “Let’s get down to some serious drinking, boys.” He put the bottle to his lips and tilted it back. Then he passed it to the man on his right, the one who was holding on to his .38.

The man accepted the bottle from force of habit, but now he looked to his friend across the table for further instruction.

The man with the rifle shrugged and said, “What the hell.” And then it became a warmer, friendlier group drunk.

As the bottle was passed around the table, Riker wondered if these men knew they were dealing with a full-blown alcoholic, a professional drinker. He assessed the two men as lesser artists. After they had demolished two bottles, Riker began to slur his words, and he dribbled liquor from the corners of his mouth. He considered falling out of his chair, but dismissed the idea as overacting.

Mallory’s shoulder was stiff and sore as she raised herself to lift the shade of the bedside window. The sun had gone down and all the plants she could see were the mute green of the twilight hour.

She had lost a day, a whole damn day. How could that be?

The yellow cat was sitting at the edge of the bed, hissing. Mallory was slow to grab her pillow, giving away her intentions. The cat emitted a low growl. She tossed her pillow at the animal, missing it by a good two feet.

Not possible! How could she have missed such an easy target?

And now the cat came stealing back, perhaps sensing weakness in a slow reaction time, a foggy brain at work, and best of all, a bad aim.

Mallory threw back the covers with the certain knowledge that she had been drugged and that her next target would be Augusta.

She had pulled her jeans over the nightshirt before the cat crawled out from under the mangled sheets.

She found Augusta in the kitchen, stacking plates and bowls in the dishwasher. Charles sat at the table, poring over a sketchbook, his empty plate pushed to one side.

“Well, hello,” he said.

But Mallory only had eyes for Augusta. She glared at the old woman, the herb queen, her personal enemy of the hour. She had already forgotten how much she hated the cat.

“Well, my, don’t you look rested,” said Augusta, well armored against glares of all kinds.

The message in Mallory’s eyes was unmistakable.
I’ll get you for that.

Unimpressed, Augusta turned back to the more pressing business of stirring a large pot on the stove. “Now you go sit down and I’ll heat up your dinner.”

Mallory was thinking it might be a comfort to break something – or someone. She looked at Charles, but he had done nothing to make her angry. She pulled up a chair at the table. “Where’s Riker?”

“Holding down the fort at the sheriff’s office,” said Charles. “The sheriff and the deputy are taking Jimmy Simms to New Orleans.”

“That’s smart,” she said. “But what are you doing here? Why is Riker by himself?”

Charles shrugged. “He told me to leave. I think he wanted to get caught up on his sleep. He thought I might be more useful here.”

“Doing what?”

Charles had no answer for that, but she could guess that this was a baby-sitting detail. And she knew Riker was not sleeping. If he had been planning to close his eyes even for an hour, he would have kept Charles around to wake him in case of trouble.

Augusta put a bowl of aromatic rice and meat on the table in front of her. Mallory looked down at it with deep suspicion.

“Did you want me to taste it first?” Augusta laughed, as she sat down to join them. She poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot on the table and grinned very wide, the better to frustrate the younger woman.

Mallory ignored her and looked out the window. Not dark enough yet to give her cover. “I want the car keys.”

“The car isn’t here,” said Charles. “Riker told me to park it outside of Betty’s and leave by her back door. Thought it would be best if no one followed me back here.”

That didn’t sound like Riker. He was too laid back to be that neurotic about security. “So there was a leak?”

“Well, not a big one,” said Charles. “Jane might have overheard something, but nothing important.”

“That’s the worst possible case,” said Augusta. “She’ll make up what she doesn’t know. So the word is out. Count on it.”

Then why would Riker get rid of Charles? “Tell me what was going on right before you left him.”

“Nothing. It was very quiet. The phone didn’t even ring the whole time I was there. So it’s over.”

The hell it was. But Charles believed it. He wasn’t holding out; he didn’t know anything. Mallory turned to Augusta. “Did Riker know you drugged me?”

Augusta’s smile said it all. So Riker had not sent Charles back as a baby-sitter. Why then?

“The only mystery left is what happened to your mother’s body,” said Charles. He was speaking to Mallory but looking at Augusta. “That must have driven the mob crazy, not knowing where the body was.”

Mallory nodded, though her mind was elsewhere, fighting back the fog of too much sleep.

“I thought the mob made off with the body.”

Augusta pushed the bowl closer to Mallory’s hand. “It’s safe. Trust me.”

Yeah, right.

Augusta read her mind and laughed out loud. But Charles was not even smiling. Something was definitely wrong. What was going on here? And what did Riker –

Charles touched her arm to get her attention. “Is that the way you see it, Mallory? The mob took the body away?”

“No.” Mallory shook her head and decided to risk a cup of coffee – Augusta’s cup. The old woman gave it up with no protest. “That would only make sense if there was some attempt to cover up the crime, and there wasn’t. All the evidence of a murder was lying around in plain sight.”

She was more curious about Riker than her mother’s missing body. When she looked up, Augusta had vanished and Charles was walking out of the kitchen.

Mallory looked into the pot on the stove. It held enough food for several meals. The old woman was obviously cooking in bulk. So she wouldn’t have tampered with the whole pot. Mallory bent over the garbage disposal, scraping her plate of Augusta’s serving. She picked up the pot ladle.

Something was wrong.

Her head was clearing now. She dropped the ladle into the pot and walked back to the other room where Augusta kept her telephone. The door at the top of the stairs was just closing behind Charles.

The yellow cat circled around her as she dialed the number for the sheriff’s office. She listened for four rings.

Riker, pick up the phone.

The cat jumped up on the table and sent the telephone crashing to the floor. Mallory and the cat stared at one another. The receiver in her hand was dead, and its frayed, broken wire dangled to the floor. The cat vanished. Very wise.

Charles trailed Augusta through the rooms of the house and up the stairs to the top floor. The bats had flown, and there were no malingerers in sight when he passed through the midsection of the attic, holding his nose and guided by the electric light from the room behind him. More light streamed through the cracks in the wall ahead. He passed through the door to the last segment of the attic, where she kept her telescope. A cool breeze was rushing through the holes in the roof, and the air was almost fresh.

A bat lay in a cardboard box stuffed with shreds of newspaper. One wing was extended and sporting a large bandage. Augusta was kneeling on the floor, lifting the creature in her hands, and now Charles saw the red metal band that marked this animal as the old man of the colony. Augusta unwound the gauze covering most of the wing. The bat screeched, and she paused to feed him liquid from an eyedropper. He went limp, and she worked over the exposed wound with no further distractions.

Augusta could not help but be aware of him standing only a few feet away, yet she didn’t look up. The silence was stringing out like a taut wire. How to begin?

“It must have driven them crazy, not knowing where the body was.”

“You’re repeating yourself, Charles.” She kept her eyes on the delicate membrane of the bat wing.

He sat down in the dust beside her. “They could never be sure Cass was dead. They’d never feel safe. And a missing corpse would keep the mystery alive.”

Augusta nodded. “Everybody loves a good mystery. It’s been a boon to the tourist trade. So you figure Betty Hale stole the body? She does have a good head for business.”

Charles was silent until she met his eyes. “Don’t you think it would comfort Mallory to know where her mother was buried?”

“No, Charles, I don’t. She’s a wonderfully compact creature. Not an ounce of sentiment to carry around with her and weigh her down. It’s enough for her to know that her mother is dead. I’m sure she does know that much. Kathy would never have left Cass while the woman was still breathing.”

She ran one light finger across the mending tear in the wing.

“And you’re not at all curious about the body, Augusta?”

“No.” She basted the wound with the foul-smelling contents of a small dark bottle.

“Because you know where it is. Finger Bayou literally points to her grave, doesn’t it? Is that why you became the executrix? So you could stop the herbicide on the water along her property line? When the water hyacinth ran wild, it choked off the bayou and made it impassable by boat. And then you planted trees on the road to Trebec House to discourage visitors. Betty does have a way of whipping up the tourists’ curiosity.”

“It’s an interesting theory. I guess I’ve heard worse logic over the years.” She layered fresh gauze on the wound and set the bat back in the box.

“It’s your style, Augusta. You watched Cass Shelley grow up in that house – and then Kathy. And then when you saw what had been done to that woman, ordinary justice wasn’t good enough, was it? Not for an artist like yourself. What an original revenge.”

“And when did I have time to do all of this? Henry was the one who found the body.”

“He reported the murder on the following day. You had all night to dispose of her body.”

“I never heard that mob, and that’s the truth.”

He believed that much. “The mob never made any noise, but you can hear a dog howl in pain from quite a distance. You would have wondered about that howling. You would have seen the dog from this window and gone to help him. You’d do anything for a wounded animal.” The cat gave away her character. It was a natural enemy of her precious birds, yet she had saved the creature. And now she was working over a bat she had once characterized as owl food.

“You’re talking through your hat, Charles.”

“As Mallory said, all the evidence of the murder was lying around in plain sight. No one had attempted to hide the crime. But the sheriff told me the back stairs had been cleaned. I don’t believe Mallory knows about that. If she did, she would have put it together before I did. You took the body down those stairs, and then you erased your tracks – and the smaller tracks Kathy made when she ran from the house.”

“The sheriff was all over my land, poking and digging.” She gently prodded the bat with one finger until the animal was roused from his herbal sleep. “Tom even dragged Finger Bayou. It was a damn thorough job.”