Invisible (35 page)

There was a bit of confusion about what had gone on here, since one man was dead, another was unconscious with a head injury, and I, a soaking wet LOL, was in control of the guns when the officers arrived. I supposed they didn’t encounter this particular scenario on too many occasions.

“Do any of you know Detective Dixon?” I asked the two police officers eyeing me with a combination of consternation and suspicion. We were in the office now, clustered around the desk. “I think he can vouch for me.”

Under the circumstances, I wasn’t certain just what Dix might vouch, but his name seemed to have a favorable effect on the officers at the moment.

“I also think, if you check the gun I gave you and the bullet in Benny against the bullet taken from a young woman currently in the morgue, the one whose body was found in the river a while back, that you may find they match.”

“And why would that be?” an officer asked skeptically.

“Because Bo killed her when she found out that he’d also killed her brother, or had someone kill him, right here at Thrif-Tee Wrecking and I’m pretty sure if you check that wall safe—” I nodded toward the metal corner exposed by the tilted calendar picture, “with that key—” I motioned toward the key I’d set by the computer, “that you’ll find interesting details about some very illegal activities in stolen vehicles and altered VINs here.”

I’d like to be able to say I concluded these dazzling revelations with a graceful, enigmatic smile, but what happened was that Duke suddenly decided maybe he should pay attention to all this activity, even if he was chained up. He came around the desk with a snarl, I jumped backward and skidded and tumbled to the floor with a noticeable lack of grace.

Which is how, having survived the Hound of the Baskerville’s attack in the car, a killer gunning for me, a jump out a window, and an avalanche of blue barrels, I wound up in the hospital with a broken arm.

32

Medicare patients are not encouraged to linger in hospital beds, but the hospital kept me for almost forty-eight hours while they checked out my working parts, X-rayed everything, and kept me under observation for a possible concussion. I was amazed at the parade of people who rushed in to see me. I wasn’t certain how all of them found out about my situation, but Magnolia and Geoff showed up. Tiffany and her Ronnie. Jordan Kaine. Charley Mason and the pastor from Tri-Corners Church. Dix and Haley. Even Cecile called from the nursing home, saying she’d read something in the newspaper.

Everyone was helpful. Magnolia and Geoff zipped off to pick up my car from the tavern parking lot. Tiffany had quit her job at Bottom-Buck Barney’s and didn’t know what, if anything, might be going on there, but she and Ronnie offered to drive me home from the hospital. Jordan Kaine overrode that offer and insisted he’d do it. The pastor prayed. I had to fight off Cecile’s determination to give me her treasured blue starfish necklace.

Everyone also had questions, most of which I answered with an I’ll-have-to-talk-to-the-authorities-first primness. Two officers showed up to question me. So did Detective Harmon. To my surprise, Detective Harmon said he’d already contacted Aunt Chris and that she was supposed to arrive the following day to identify the body.

Dix, however, was the only one who came with information to answer my questions, information he’d acquired through his new desk job at police headquarters. He sat beside my hospital bed with his plaster-encased leg stretched out in front of him.

Bo’s full name, Dix said, was Beaumont Zollinger. He’d suffered a serious concussion, but he’d regained consciousness and was expected to recover completely. He did indeed, through a series of interlinked corporations, own both Bottom-Buck Barney’s and Thrif-Tee Wrecking. He was also the more open owner of a prestigious foreign car dealership, and was married with three children. He had no criminal record. Which to my mind, of course, didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t a criminal.

Benny was Benny Littleton, age forty-seven, currently unmarried, with a record of small-time crimes some years ago, nothing recent.

Duke had been taken to an animal shelter and, since he had committed no crime beyond being an excellent watchdog, would probably be released to Benny’s married daughter.

I was still mulling over the name Littleton. It sounded familiar. Then it came to me. Emma Littleton, the little chicken girl! And Alana Braxton, nee Littleton, the woman who had inherited the land behind Country Peace. I summarized the connection for Dix.

“So that explains why Benny was helping Drake Braxton vandalize the cemetery. He was a relative of Braxton’s wife. And he was so fond of his and Drake’s loop-and-drag system of vandalism from the cemetery that he and Bo used it on Harley’s bench at my house.”

Dix didn’t congratulate me on the brilliance of my logic. He was still a bit grumpy about my having further involved myself in all this. But he nodded grudging agreement. “You could be right.”

“So, what about this Beaumont ‘Bo’ Zollinger? Has he been charged with murder yet? And what did they find in the safe?”

“We’re still awaiting results of the comparisons of the bullets from Bo’s gun, Benny’s body, and the body of the girl in the morgue. The papers in the safe are under investigation.”

I sighed. The feet of justice tramp slowly.

* * *

Jordan took me home the following morning. He was extremely kind and solicitous of my welfare and comfort. He returned that evening with a takeout Thai dinner. Tiffany and Ronnie showed up with pizza, and Magnolia brought over fry bread made into what she called Indian tacos, so we had a fine multicultural meal.

The broken arm was inconvenient and the cast awkward, but it was no big deal. Except it meant I couldn’t enroll in a computer class because I couldn’t use that hand.

A few days later Dix reported that the comparison tests on the bullets had come in. Until then, Bo had been held in jail on the basis of attempted murder for trying to gun me down in the junkyard. After the tests showed a bullet from Bo’s gun had killed Kendra, who by now had been officially identified as Debbie Etheridge, murder charges were also filed against him. Aunt Chris had Debbie’s body shipped back to Arkansas for burial.

The papers in the safe were minimal but enough to show what was going on at Thrif-Tee. The fact that there was a stolen ’01 Malibu in the shop pretty much confirmed everything. Thrif-Tee Wrecking legally bought wrecked or disabled cars, often from out of state. They then, through what appeared to be an ever-widening network, matched them up with appropriate stolen cars. The VINs on the stolen cars were altered to show the numbers from a legal vehicle, and the cars were then sold through Bottom-Buck Barney’s, also using the titles from the legal vehicles. If no suitable wrecked or disabled car from which to take numbers was available, the stolen car was chopped up and sold for parts in what Dix called “chop shop” activity. Some of the wrecked cars were also dismantled for parts, just to make things look on the up-and-up.

It was my personal opinion that that was how Kendra/ Debbie’s Corolla had been disposed of, because the red car at Thrif-Tee did not turn out to be hers. The system had worked so well because both Thrif-Tee and Barney’s did sufficient legitimate business, which included selling trade-ins from Bo’s foreign-car dealership, to conceal the illegal activities.

I testified at the grand jury hearing, which indicted Beaumont Zollinger on murder and a bevy of other charges to do with the activities at Thrif-Tee. I’d have to testify again at the trial, scheduled to begin in about three months, but, other than that, my involvement in all this was over.

33

The call came about a week later. I was studying a postcard I’d just received from Mac. The postmark was from Idaho, and he wrote that he was doing an article about a week on a dude ranch. No mention of any upcoming trip to Missouri, no address where to reach him. Although he did say he’d been out looking at the stars the night before and thought of me.

When the phone rang I answered it rather absentmindedly, still thinking about the postcard and trying to decide if I was pleased, relieved, or disappointed. “Hello?”

“Ivy Malone?” A deep, growly voice, with none of the energetic enthusiasm of the voice from an hour earlier that had tried to sell me super-potent vitamins.

I jerked to attention. I was holding the phone to my right ear, which still felt awkward, as if I were listening in on someone else’s conversation. But I couldn’t use my left hand for the phone as I did pre-junkyard brawl.

My first instinct at the sound of the growl was to say, “No, Ivy moved to the south of France.” But I
was
Ivy Malone, so I said, “Yes.”

“If you know what’s good for you, lady, you won’t testify at the trial.”

I swallowed. “What trial?”

“Don’t play cute. You know what trial. This would be a good time for a nice vacation, a nice long vacation, somewhere far, far away, until the trial is long over. Or you’ll find yourself taking a permanent vacation from life, with a view from about six feet under.”

He hung up, and I stood there clutching the phone. Momentarily, I was too stunned to panic. Was this for real? Who was it? My first thought was Bo. Beaumont Zollinger. But Bo, though he was scheduled to be released on bail shortly, was at the moment still in jail. Surely he wouldn’t be making a threatening phone call from there. Couldn’t be Benny, of course. Who else?

I had no idea. But whoever he was, he hadn’t sounded like he was playing games. Then panic kicked in, and I called Dix at his desk at the police department. He asked questions that I couldn’t answer. No, I didn’t recognize the voice. No, I’d heard no accent or identifying peculiarity. No, I had no idea where the call was coming from.

My question was, “Don’t the police offer some kind of protection? Guards or something? Or maybe they’d like to send me on a long vacation—yes, the south of France would be nice—and then bring me back to testify at the trial?”

“I might be able to get you a police guard for a few days, but three months . . .” I could almost see Dix shaking his head.

“And there’s no money in the police department budget for sending little old lady witnesses on extended vacations?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“I should just ignore the call, then? Chalk it up as a crank call and forget it?”

“No. You absolutely cannot do that.”

“So I’m just a sitting duck until the trial, waiting for someone to take a potshot and get rid of me?” I’d been a sitting duck once already, in that cramped bathroom at Thrif-Tee Wrecking, and it was not an experience I wanted to repeat.

“Look, for right now, just lock all your doors and windows. Don’t go outside and don’t open the door to anyone who isn’t a best friend. Nobody looking like or claiming to be a delivery person, utility person, long-lost acquaintance, nobody. Haley and I will be over this evening.”

“I can’t spend the next three months just sitting here with my doors locked!”

A brief silence from Dix, as if he were thinking,
I don’t see why not. Take up pinochle. TV soap operas. Quilting.
But what he said was, “Just hold on until Haley and I get there, okay?”

They showed up about 7:00. After a repeat of the questions, which I still couldn’t answer, Dix finally said, “Okay, we’ve worked out a plan.”

“Does it involve going to the south of France?”

“Not that far,” Haley said. “It involves coming to live with me until the trial.”

I looked at her in astonishment. “I can’t do that.”

Haley put a hand on my arm and squeezed. “Yes, you can. I’d love to have you. My grandma was my roommate for a couple of years when I was a kid, and it was great. She used to tell me wonderful bedtime stories.”

“But giving up my home, going into hiding . . . Doesn’t that seem a bit extreme?”

“I consider a death threat extreme,” Dix said. “Unless you’d prefer that six-feet-under, permanent vacation?”

Well, no.

“There is another alternative,” Dix suggested. “You could
not
testify at the trial. And announce that decision to the media.”

I shook my head. No way. I would testify at that trial if I had to spend the next three months hiding in a closet eating grits.

Dix discussed the threat with Detective Harmon, and the detective thought moving in with Haley was an excellent idea.

I did it the following day. Dix was adamant that I tell no one where I was going, so all I told Magnolia and Geoff was that I was going “into seclusion.” They would pick up my mail and keep an eye on the house and contact Dix if they saw anything suspicious. Dix would collect my mail from them once a week. I had the newspaper discontinued, and I called Cecile at the nursing home to tell her I wouldn’t be in to see her for a while. It was a bit disconcerting to realize my life could be wrapped up so easily.

Haley lived in a one-bedroom apartment near the community college. She had a second twin bed moved up from the apartment complex’s storage area. I left the Thunderbird locked in my garage so my caller couldn’t use it to trace me, and took only a minimal amount of personal belongings. Plus a fair supply of jittery nerves.

The nerves calmed in a few days, and Haley and I settled into a surprisingly comfortable routine. I didn’t tell her bedtime stories, but we started studying Romans together before bed. Haley gave me lessons on her home computer, including how to connect with the Internet, where I spent much of each day. It was a bit difficult, given my one-handed limitations, but I was soon familiar with Windows and modems and was using spell-checker and thesaurus, entering chat rooms, using the delete key to correct my errors, and backing out of websites that looked too much like the calendar at Thrif-Tee Wrecking.

I didn’t go to church on Sundays. That was disappointing, but we all agreed it was prudent not to show my face anywhere. Dix’s adamance about keeping undercover extended to Jordan Kaine, which brought that budding relationship to at least a temporary halt. Haley went to her church, of course, and I was astonished when, on the third Sunday after I moved in, Dix started going with her.