Roll Over and Play Dead (10 page)

“Armed, woman,” Culworthy said. “Means the enemy is armed and dangerous. Went over it with you for an hour.”

“It’s the cusp,” she said with a sniffle. “I always find it difficult to retain things during the cusp.”

George crossed his legs and settled back in his chair. “We haven’t seen you since our encounter at the sheriff’s office this morning. Did he wring every last drop out of you?”

Helen rumbled, but I gazed at him and said, “Every last drop, right down to my theories about the identity of the murderer.”

“How fascinating,” he said smoothly. Helen was now rumbling like a volcano, forcing him to raise his voice slightly. “And on whom did you cast your suspicion, Claire?”

There was something very peculiar about him, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. “It could have been any of you,” I said. “You left Helen in the woods when you went for another flashlight. The colonel and Vidalia were separated, and Daryl claimed he went to the far side of the house.”

Helen erupted. “How dare you accuse any of us of murder! We are all responsible members of this community. I worked for thirty-seven years at the county clerk’s office, and George for nearly that many years at the post office. Neither of us has had so much as a speeding ticket.”

“I retired with full military honors,” Culworthy sputtered. “Got the papers to prove it.”

“I once received a stern letter from the library about overdue books,” Vidalia said with a coy look.

While I, a veritable paragon of innocence, was wanted by the sheriff’s department for harboring a fugitive, impeding an investigation, and escaping from custody. I saw no reason to enlighten them. “All I said was that each of you had the opportunity to come up to the pen while Churls was inside it and click the padlock. Perhaps pit bulls are unstable enough to attack anyone who invades their territory.”

“Nonsense,” Helen said uneasily. She jabbed her husband, who echoed her remark.

I glanced at my watch, calculated the amount of time before I had to be on the highway to Guttler, and said, “Not necessarily. The fact that he had the puppies enraged us all, and I’ve learned more recently that he indeed did purchase animals from a very dubious source. If one of you had encountered him behind the house, and he’d opened the pen to let the dogs loose, shoving him in and locking the padlock might be interpreted as an act of self-defense. What happened to Churls could not have been foreseen.” If I thought I’d hear a confession, the expenditure of brain cells was in vain.

“Why in heaven’s name were you dressed like that,” Vidalia trilled, getting back to business. “It was most alarming to see a strange woman in Emily’s kitchen.”

The four of them waited expectantly for me to produce a rational explanation. Culworthy snorted several times, and George winked at me from behind his bifocals. Helen folded her hands in her lap. Vidalia gave me her most encouraging smile.

“Where’s Daryl?” I asked in a weak attempt at diversion.

“Acted most peculiar,” Culworthy said. “Talked to him at oh eighteen hundred, said he was busy but would be back later to patrol Olive Street.” “I was patrolling Olive,” George said.

Culworthy shook his head. “Supposed to be on Walnut.”

“I was supposed to be on Walnut,” Helen said. She took a folded paper from her pocket and flapped it at him. “When you issued the assignments, I wrote it all down so none of us would be confused. Now it seems you’re the one who’s confused, Colonel.”

“Never been confused a day in my life.”

“Do you want to look at my notes?”

“Never needed notes, never will. Trained in military maneuvers, madam, and spent thirty years telling wet-eared privates where to go and when to be there. Furthermore, can’t abide pushy women contradicting me. If we were on the battlefield, I’d have you flogged.”

The ensuing exchange drove me to the porch, and when that was deemed insufficient, on out to the yard and around the corner of the house to the staircase that led to Daryl’s apartment. The windows were dark, the door closed.

Time was slipping away rapidly. The directions I’d received from Runnels were meant to be followed during daylight, when highway signs were easily visible and landmarks unmissable. On the one hand, there was truth to the adage involving safety in numbers, and if I proposed a mission hinting of danger, those inside squabbling away like a flock of geese would be pushing and shoving to sit in the front seat.

But I’d eliminated each for good cause, and although I’d proposed a scenario in which Churls’s death was self-defense, I was still aware of the emptied box on the table. Daryl had the same motive and opportunity I’d assigned to the others, and I hadn’t planned on being totally relaxed in his company. It seemed I wasn’t to be afforded that minor tension.

For a person with no particular affinity for pets, I’d not only devoted the majority of my waking hours for most of a week to them, I’d also committed a rather impressive number of crimes on their behalf. One more wouldn’t matter, I decided.

I returned to the porch, opened the door, and said, “Vidalia, could I please have a word with you?”

She came outside, her face puckered with excitement, and said, “Oh, yes, is there something you want to tell me?”

I slid my arm through hers and gently coerced her down the steps to the sidewalk. As we started for her apartment house, I said, “Do you own a car?”

“Why, yes,” she said delightedly. “Do you?”

“Mine’s out of commission at the moment.” I glanced over my shoulder. Culworthy was in the doorway of the house, his arms akimbo and the porch light shining on his metal buttons. I hurried her along. “Do you think I could borrow your car? It would mean so much to me, since I’m without transportation.”

She was enchanted with my conspiratorial facade. “I’ll pop inside and fetch the key. The car’s parked in the little alley out back.”

I waited until she was inside, then strolled around the building, hoping the colonel had ceased his surveillance. In the alley was a boxy little car that looked like a child’s toy. My desk at the Book Depot was slightly larger and a good fifty years younger than this museum piece, but I wasn’t exactly flabbergasted. She was not the type to drive a mundane Chevrolet.

Vidalia came out the back door and handed me a leather key case. “Isn’t this exciting?”

And aren’t you a fruitcake, I thought. “Thanks very much, Vidalia,” I said levelly. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

She went to the far side of the motorized cigar box, put her hands on her cheeks, and with glittering eyes, said, “Tomorrow will be perfect.”

I got in the car and slammed the door.

She got in the car and slammed the door.

There was a moment of silence. I finally moistened my lips, took a nice, clean breath, and said, “What are you doing, Vidalia?”

“This is so exciting. I’m quite beside myself, you see, although perhaps some of it is due to the cusp. I did Astra’s chart again this morning—poor, dear Astra, who must be utterly heartbroken without her own bed and her little rubber mousie and her—”

“You can’t go with me.”

“Of course I can,” she said brightly. “If Astra comes home during this brief absence, she’ll wait right here by the back door, yowling until I let her inside. I have explained to her in detail how sometimes I might be at the grocery store or the library, and she knows she’s to wait right here.”

Harboring a fugitive, impeding, escaping, grand theft auto—these were all crimes I could commit without a problem. But I sensed it would take assault and a hefty dose of battery to remove her from her car, or several hours of argument involving cusps, cats, and whatever else she threw at me. Having noticed that the speedometer only went to sixty, I did not have time to dally in the alley.

“Okay,” I muttered as I put the key in the switch and was rewarded with an asthmatic wheeze from the engine. “But I’m giving the orders and you’re following them. This might be dangerous.”

“I’m sure you’re ever as good a field commander as Colonel Culworthy. Some are born to lead, and some to follow. I shall pay strict attention and do whatever you order me to do, without the slightest concern for my physical safety.”

“Thank you.” I tried the key once again, and this time the car coughed for a minute, then purred to life. As we pulled onto Willow Street, I saw that Culworthy was in the doorway and had been joined by George and Helen. All three were staring as Vidalia and I chugged into the night.

“Where is it that we’re going?” Vidalia asked cheerfully.

“Guttler, Missouri,” I said. We were on a shoulderless, winding highway, and we had not encountered a car for a long while. The moon had slid below the horizon, but without the interference of urban lights, a ghostly white glow illuminated the surface of the road and what scenery there was. Every now and then a car raced up from behind us, braked in astonishment at our plodding pace, and whipped around us with minimal effort. My palms were moist on the steering wheel; I realized we were in more danger from a rear-end collision than from a loss of control at the perilous speed of fifty miles per millennium.

“Guttler, Missouri?” echoed Vidalia. “How fascinating. What is it we’re going to do when we get there?”

I knew what I was going to do, within reason, but I hadn’t decided what she was going to do. Runnels had told me to expect fifty or so trucks with cages or enclosed beds and several hundred animals, without water or food. I would be greeted by a large group of surly, uncommunicative (if I was lucky), brutish dealers who would be angered by my presence at the parking lot outside a livestock auction barn. Runnels had also mentioned the prevalence of well-stocked gun racks on the rear windows of the trucks. Jan’s comment about one of the activists requiring dental work had not been dismissed lightly.

“We’ll find a motel when we get to Guttler,” I said. “I have one errand in the morning, and then I’ll pick you up at the motel and we’ll drive back to Farberville.”

Vidalia was flighty, but she wasn’t a candidate for mind-numbing medication and cushioned wallpaper quite yet. “I shall assume this errand of yours has something to do with the animals stolen from the neighborhood, including poor Astra.”

It was time to add mendacity to my rap sheet. “No, I wish there were something I could do, but we’ll have to let the sheriff handle the case. I’m going to pick up several boxes of mystery novels. They’re from—ah, an estate. A collection of first editions, I was told when I purchased the lot.”

She laughed gaily at my lie. “In a place called Guttler? How very quaint of you to tell me that. Oh well, we have several hours ahead of us and I do enjoy guessing games. I could start with the traditional question, ‘Animal, vegetable, or mineral?’ but there’s no reason to waste a question on that because we both know the category is animal. Let me see…”

I sternly told her I had no intentions of participating in a guessing game and that my sole purpose was to pick up the books. I refused to answer her questions, but she was a keen observer of inadvertent body language and clapped her hands when I winced or blinked. Within an hour, she had arrived at a description of our mission that was pretty much accurate, and was proposing actions that required a side trip to an arsenal.

“You’re going to wait at the motel,” I said firmly.

“It would be much too dangerous for you to go there alone,” Vidalia said, dismissing my firmness with a toss of her chin. “I shall be your bodyguard.”

She weighed all of a hundred pounds, was gray-haired and frail, and could be easily toppled by a gust of wind. I said as much, then glanced at the fuel gauge and noted it was low. We continued the argument as we came to a small town. It was nearly midnight; the local citizens, from splotchy pink neonates to whiskery great-grandpas, were nestled all snug in their beds. The only indication of life were the streetlights, and they were few and far between.

I stopped in front of a dark gas station. “I hadn’t thought about this,” I said, sighing. “There are plenty of all-night service stations on the interstate. I’m not sure if we can find anything open on the back highways, though.”

“Pull over to the pump,” Vidalia said.

“It’ll be locked.”

“That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?” She hopped out of the car before I could say anything, plucked the nozzle from the gas pump, and gestured imperiously at me to pull forward. Shortly thereafter, the pump began to hum and the odor of gasoline to sweeten the night air.

As we drove away, I made a mental note of the species of station and vowed to send a check, in an attempt to reassure myself I had not abandoned every last iota of respect for the law. Not yet, anyway.

“Who do you believe murdered Churls?” Vidalia asked once we were again chugging down the highway.

I glanced at headlights in the rearview mirror and waited to be passed, but the distant vehicle seemed content to match our speed. I relaxed my grip on the steering wheel and said, “As I said earlier, any of you could have.”

“Possibly, but none of us did. What about the driver of that ungainly car found in Churls’s yard?” she asked, doing a much better imitation of Miss Jane Marple than I ever had. Had she pulled out her knitting, I wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. “You said at the time it belonged to one of the people at the animal shelter.”

I told her what Arnie had admitted in the office of the Book Depot, eliding my subsequent arrest and unladylike departure. “He went out there with four animals, and Churls refused to pay him. That gives him a shaky motive, but Arnie’s got a shaky mind,” I said pensively. “If Arnie decided to lock Churls in the pen and take his money from the cash box, that would explain the destruction of the lock. He must have still been there when the Willow Street commandos arrived, and realized he couldn’t show himself by driving away.”

Vidalia shook her head. “I’m afraid you haven’t explained everything, Claire, although I must say your hypothesis is nice. If Arnie brought Nick, Nora, and two other animals to the property, left Churls in the cage, and decided to walk back to Farberville, why didn’t we find the animals?”

I had no answer. “Let’s just hope we find them in Guttler.”

“Yes, indeed,” she said. “Colonel Culworthy makes every effort to present a gruff facade, but he’s a cream-filled cupcake when it comes to Patton. You may find this hard to believe, but he himself sewed a little khaki rain outfit and knitted an olive drab sweater for Patton. He was too embarrassed to purchase the yarn and pattern, so he asked me to do it for him. Now he claims he ordered the outfits from a pet catalog. Isn’t that amazing?”

“Then there is no Mrs. Colonel Culworthy?”

Vidalia gazed out the window. “One evening some months ago, he and I enjoyed a few martinis and a spirited game of gin rummy in my sitting room. He told me how his wife had gone shopping in a town near the base and never returned. He discovered she’d taken most of her things, but not Patton. Patton was her last anniversary present.”

I slowed down as we entered another slumbering town. “I suppose the dog has a great deal of emotional significance for him?”

“More than one would suspect.”

“Helen Maranoni seems distressed about Juniper,” I said as I glanced at her.

“Doesn’t she? I think George is, too, although he hides it.”

“What do you know about them?”

“Very little.” She yawned broadly, her fingers fluttering in front of her mouth. “They bought their house only a month or so ago.”

The highway grew darker, the curves sharper, and the towns sparser as we continued toward Guttler. Vidalia had nodded off, and I was fighting the same impulse as I drove past closed cafés that might have provided caffeine and protein. I attempted to rouse myself with a virulent mental lecture about the idiocy of this mission, even comparing it unfavorably with Culworthy’s blundering maneuvers.

Periodically I noticed headlights behind me, but no cars loomed on my bumper. I cracked the window for fresh air and pondered Vidalia’s question: Why didn’t they find the dogs? Drumming my fingers on the top of the wheel, I ran through my hypothetical schedule of events at NewCo. Arnie arrives with four animals. Churls accepts the animals but refuses to pay him. Arnie locks Churls in the pit bulls’ pen and opens the metal box. The intrepid band arrives. Arnie takes the cash and a hike. Deputy Amos and I arrive.

“So why didn’t they find the dogs?” I muttered repetitiously until it had a rollicky cadence. I’d given it a melody by the time I saw a battered, pock-marked sign that announced the outer limits of Guttler, population twenty-two hundred.

The eastern sky was noticeably lighter as I looked curiously at the town, wondering if a goodly percentage of the twenty-two hundred inhabitants had defected or died. The store windows were covered with mustard-colored newspapers and peeling tape. The gas station had been gutted by a fire, as had the house next door. No one had gotten around to removing the ebon skeletons. Apparently the zoning regulations did not preclude mobile homes, since the majority of visible housing was comprised of rusty oblong boxes ringed with weeds. A pickup truck stopped in front of one, and its driver, a pudgy dwarf, spat on the gravel as he went inside. If nothing else, his presence confirmed the existence of a population of sorts.

Guttler did not have a Hilton. It did not have a Holiday Inn, nor did it have a trashy establishment that rented by the hour. It did have a café, however, made of concrete blocks and surrounded by pickup trucks and a stray car or two. The neon sign blinked suggestively, and white light spilled out of the front window. It was not only open, it was clearly the local hot spot for grits, gravy, and early morning gossip.

I parked, frowned at myself in the mirror, and nudged Vidalia, who was snoring ever so discreetly.

“We’re here,” I told her, trying to sound pleased.

After more encouragement on my part, she finally awakened and gazed blankly at the exterior of the Red Bird Café. “Is this where we find the animals?” she asked querulously. “It doesn’t look very clean.”

“We have very few options,” I said. “I’m in dire need of a rest room and a lot of coffee. My last meal was lunch yesterday. How bad can it be?”

It was bad. It was the worst I’d ever seen, or at least remained inside after a quick look—and I’d traveled in Algeria and Morocco. The glass-topped counter with a cash register and a toothpick dispenser was unattended, but beyond it was a low, wide counter packed shoulder-to-shoulder by men in denim overalls and caps. I didn’t know about shoes and shirts, but clearly personal hygiene was not a requirement for service. There was loud, good-natured banter as we opened the door, but it stopped abruptly and they all stared at us, their expressions unfathomable. There were a few booths with red plastic seat covers and stained tabletops; those occupants seemed equally stunned by our audacity.

Vidalia gurgled and stepped back, but I caught her elbow and dragged her to the only unoccupied booth.

“Sit here and order coffee for me,” I said quietly, although in the continued silence it was easily heard by the forty or so people watching us as if we were alien life-forms. I flashed a smile at the men along the counter and looked around for the rest rooms.

A waitress in a pink uniform bustled out of the kitchen, balancing plates up both arms. Her hair, piled in a lacquered beehive, had a subtle tint that matched the color of her uniform. She grasped the situation without hesitation. “It’s out back, honey,” she said in the sugary drawl common to the profession. “Can’t miss it.”

I went around to the back of the building and found it, but it was certainly something I’d have preferred to miss for all eternity. As I came back, a dirty white truck with a dozen cages in its bed pulled into the lot and parked. The cages contained dogs with the same resigned demeanor as those we’d seen at NewCo.

“Whacha staring at?”

I frowned at the driver, a pimply young man with stringy yellow hair, a receding chin line, and pale, porcine eyes. “The dogs look as though they need water and more room,” I said tartly.

“So?”

I decided it would not be productive to be gunned down in the parking lot. “So I answered your question,” I said as I went back into the café.

Vidalia was fanning herself with a plastic-encased menu and shooting frantic looks at those at nearby tables. When I sat down across from her, she clutched my hand and whispered, “Thank heavens you’re back, Claire. I was so very worried about you. These people are not friendly, you know.”

“They may be curious about your attire,” I murmured, wishing I’d suggested she leave the scarlet scarf and her bead collection in the car. Her eye makeup was smudged, and she bore a disturbing resemblance to a raccoon who’d been in a brawl.

The waitress brought coffee for me and tea for Vidalia. “What y’all doing in town? Passing through on your way to St. Louis?”

Everyone seemed interested, so I spoke loudly. “That’s right. My aunt’s going to baby-sit for her sister’s kids.”

“I am?” said Vidalia, startled.

“The twins,” I said brightly. “Little Nick and Nora, both cute as roly-poly puppies.” I smiled at the waitress while aiming my toe at Vidalia’s shin. “My aunt gets confused at times, but you know how that is.”

“You can say that again, honey,” the waitress said. She looked over her shoulder at the men along the counter. “This lady’s going to baby-sit for her sister’s twin babies in St. Louis. Ain’t that nice?” Nobody seemed enthralled, but a few of them turned back to their food and coffee. The waitress poised a pencil over her pad, but before I could order, she said, “Where’d you say you and your aunt are from?”

“I didn’t,” I said.

“Farberville,” Vidalia chirped. “We both live in Farberville. Claire has her very own bookstore, and I’m retired.”

The yellow-haired boy flopped down in the next booth and stared sullenly at me. I kicked Vidalia once again, grimaced at the waitress, and said, “Auntie is a tiny bit confused; she must be thinking of my cousin Luanne in Wichita Falls. Luanne has a lovely store that specializes in religious books, records, and little knickknacks.”

Giving me a mutinous look, Vidalia said, “Oh, that’s right. Luanne in Wichita has the bookstore with the ceramic praying hands and the braille editions of the Bible.”

The waitress winked at me. After she took our orders and left, I leaned over the table and whispered, “We don’t want them to know who we are or why we’re here. This is a covert operation.”

“I know that,” Vidalia whispered back. “Colonel Culworthy has trained us for the possibility of this form of warfare.”