Stone Cold Crazy (Lil & Boris #4) (Lil and Boris Mysteries) (16 page)

He froze until I put the mace back on my belt. “Sorry.”

“You oughta know better than to sneak up on me,” I snapped, and took a few yogic breaths to get my heart rate down again. “What’re you doing here?”

He pointed at the fern. “You don’t like flowers much.”

I was absurdly touched and irritated. “So you brought me an apology fern.”

He nodded.

Somewhere in an alternate universe, my parents named me Linda and I had a quiet, faceless cubicle job, a minivan, and two-point-one kids. Instead, I had all this.

If there’s an afterlife, it had better come with an explanation.

Punk said, “I brought chocolates.”

He held up a bag from the fancy chocolate store in Charlottesville, the really expensive gourmet place. In the ninety-degree heat, it was a contest which was disintegrating faster, the candy or the fern.

I sighed. I was doomed. Might as well embrace it. “Fine. C’mon in.”

Boris raced in ahead of us, and I tended to his needs by dumping a can of tuna into his bowl. He settled in with his tail curled around his feet, and began to purr quietly between gobbles.

“I heard about what your ex did. Is doing. With the land and all.”

The whole county had. Some were indifferent, a few thought he had every right to profit if only because they wished they could, and most seemed to think he was a step below pond scum. I was just glad he was going away. Forever, with any luck.

“Um,” said Punk. He was still standing on the little tiled square by the door. I call it a foyer. “Can I come the rest of the way in?”

I wanted to say no. I should have said no. I put the chocolates in the freezer. They’d taste fine once they became solid again. The fern was stuck in the sink and doused in water. “Sure.”

“So are we okay?”

As if he’d get off that easy. “No, we’re not okay. What did Steve say when you saw him at Shifflett’s?”

He bristled. “What makes you…”

“He said something,” I gritted out patiently. “He always has to say something. So was it about you, me, the prosthesis, or what?”

Punk looked at the floor.

“Ah. Me.” I spent a moment staring at my kitchen knives. “Let me guess. I’m not much of a catch, I’ll always put my job first, I’m no good at being a girlfriend, I’m about as multi-dimensional and interesting as a mud puddle, and there’s fenceposts with more feminine allure. Oh, and I’m an idiot. That about all?”

Punk’s silence spoke for him. I took a guess, since I doubted Punk had missed out on my flaws in the time we’d known each other. “Then he said something about if a man with all his arms and legs couldn’t do it, you couldn’t.”

Punk’s response gushed out. “I’d have hit him but…”

“Can’t uphold the law if you break it,” I interjected. “Steve was always good at finding insecurities and using them.” I rummaged in my fridge. I seriously needed to go shopping. And hide my expression.

“How’d you know what he said about you?”

Time for some true confession. I owed Punk that much. “It’s what he said when he dumped me. Everyone had gone up to their rooms at the hotel, we walked outside, gorgeous night, and then out of nowhere, wham.” I emptied the crisper onto the counter. I had the makings of a salad, and not much else. Suited me. I’d lost my appetite when I’d seen Steve.

Punk edged into my kitchen, one eye on my knife. “Hotel?”

This was the part Aunt Marge and Bobbi both knew. “Rehearsal dinner for our wedding.”

Punk looked a little sick to his stomach. “Jee-
zus
.”

I don’t know what inspired me to tell him the part I’d only told Bobbi. I suppose I had nothing left to lose. Of course, if Aunt Marge ever heard, Steve stood to lose a few body parts.

“He said I’d wasted all my potential. Always had, always would. The only thing I was any good at was being a fed.” I had to put down the knife. I value my fingers, and they were shaking too much to risk my holding a blade. “
Only
thing. He got…‌intimate…‌with the insults.” The memory alone made me flush hot and cold. “Said he couldn’t marry a badge and gun.” I took a deep breath and picked up my knife. “Said I wasn’t worth talking to, for that matter. Then he said I was a freak, I threw the ring at his head, and that’s about it.”

My knife made snickety noises on the cutting board. Lettuce flew.

“He really hurt you, didn’t he.”

I chopped that lettuce like it was my life’s work. “Yep.”

A very heavy silence descended. I sliced up a cucumber and tomato before Punk said, in a small, tight voice, “And then I did.”

I kept my reply steady. “I’m a big girl. I’ll be fine. That all? I want to crash.”

“Lil?”

I looked up, with a false little smile. “Hmm?”

He was studying me like he’d never seen me before. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

“Sure.”

Punk kept prodding. “Is that…‌Was that when you came home? When you all broke up?”

“No,” I said, and gave him something else only Bobbi ever got to know. “It was when I lost the FBI too. Being an agent was all I had and then I had to leave it, and that’s when I came home.”

I’d meant to sound well-adjusted and composed. Instead, I sounded brittle and a little bit broken. Damn. I went back to chopping vegetables I wouldn’t eat.

There were about two hundred things Punk could do, and he went and did the single one that was right. He said, “Steve was wrong. About you.”

My turn. So of course I blew it. “I’m pretty tired. I’ll see you at work.”

He’d reached the door before I added, “Thanks for the fern.”

He nodded and left. Boris jumped onto the counter and butted me in the chin, purring. I cuddled him close. At least I always had Boris. He didn’t care if I was boring, or tall, or a cop, as long as I let him have half the pillow.

17.

W
hen I heard a knock at my door early the next morning, I answered it without thinking. Still in my pajamas with the little sunflowers all over them.

I opened my front door to Agent Howard.

Color me embarrassed. Which, incidentally, is a very bright shade of pinkish-red.

He held up a paper bag. “Breakfast.” He smiled wryly. “I probably should’ve called.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Um. Why’re you bringing breakfast?”

He jiggled the paper bag lightly. “Celebratory pastry. We’ll be getting indictments.”

I’m a sucker for pastry. And indictments. “I’ll make the tea.”

“Brought my own coffee,” said Howard and sat down at the table with a disregard for Boris that Boris didn’t like one bit. “I apologize for showing up like this, but I got the call late last night, and I didn’t want to wait to share the news.”

I set out a mug for my tea and a saucer of half-and-half for a very miffed Boris. “None of them smoke Newports, do they?”

His smile fizzled. “No. Look, you know no case is ever perfect. There’s always something to give the conspiracy nuts a talking point. Between the two of us,” he said, “I don’t think these yahoos blew up the Weed House, either. But Alan Quinn confessed that he and his brother were stockpiling pipe bombs, they and a few of their like-minded patriots intended to use them, and since their conspiracy crossed state lines…” His smile returned. “It’s a win, Sheriff. It’s a win.”

“For you. I still have a hole in the ground on Spottswood Lane.” I sat down with my tea and peeked inside the bag. Cinnamon twists, jelly doughnuts, two kinds of danish, and bear claws. It was carbohydrate heaven. I snagged a twist and put it on my plate. “I really figured Bill Lloyd for it.”

“So did I, but you know how it is.” He bit into a jelly doughnut. “We live in interesting times, Sheriff. Tell me, you ever consider coming back to the Bureau?”

I choked on my cinnamon twist. “God, no. No. Small-town sheriff suits me fine.”

Howard eyed me shrewdly. “Maybe it does,” he said, “but you ever re-consider, you give me a call. How you handled Freddie Tyler‌—‌that’s not something the Bureau taught you.”

“Or would allow,” I pointed out.

He conceded that with a dip of his chin. “You mind a question?”

He’d brought pastries. He could ask darn near anything he liked.

“You quit the Bureau over a…‌point of ethics. But you’re dating a deputy.”

I licked cinnamon sugar off my fingers. “As a matter of fact, Agent Howard, I’m not. Boris is the only guy in my life.”

As if he understood, which he probably did, Boris leapt up and settled onto my lap, regarding Howard with smug hauteur.

“Though he is my favorite deputy,” I added, scratching Boris under his collar. His mismatched eyes slid shut in bliss. “I’d probably have missed those cigarette butts without him.”

Howard seemed a little nonplussed by my claim, but he recovered quickly. “And here I always figured you needed a dog to smell out evidence. Well, Sheriff, I’ll let you get on with your day, and I’ve got to get going on mine.” He rose, and put out a hand. “Thanks. We’d have had a harder time of it without your help.”

I shook the hand. “My pleasure, Agent Howard. You’re not bad for a city slicker fed.”

He grinned. “You’re not bad for a hick sheriff.”

Once I’d seen him out, I walked to the shower shaking my head. Go back to the Bureau. You couldn’t pay me enough.

***^***

The problem with pastries for breakfast is sugar crashing at mid-morning. I sat at my desk brushing Boris and staring at my white board in between sips of more decaf green tea. Those cigarette butts were bothering me. Who but Bill Lloyd would smoke that brand
and
have a reason to stare at the Weed house from the woods? Did I have to go door-to-door asking about cigarette brand preferences?

“Too bad you’re not a bloodhound,” I told Boris, and sighed. I had Fourth of July mayhem to worry about that coming weekend, and technically, with the arrest and pending indictment of Quinn and company, I didn’t have a case to solve. Yet it nagged at me. I didn’t know precisely what
it
even was, but it nagged at me.

I’ll never know what made the neurons line up and fire the way they did. Maybe pure chance. Maybe the idea of smelling out evidence. All of a sudden, I was digging into witness statements.

You note everything and figure out relevance later. Sometimes, a lot later.

When Tom came in for his shift, I greeted him by demanding, “What do you do when you smell a gas leak?”

“Open a window and look for what’s leaking,” he said promptly, his face creased in confusion. “This a public safety quiz?”

“You know what I do? I leave the house and call the gas company.”

Tom scratched his head. “Lil, no offense, but we got the picnic at the park this weekend, and the fireworks, and it’s been pretty dry, I don’t see…”

“Adam Weed,” I interrupted briskly. “He didn’t leave the house or open a window or look for the source of the leak. He ran to the storm cellar. Now, when you’re talking to a man who just saw his house blow up, you don’t question his survival too closely, do you? But maybe,” I posited grimly, “we should have.”

Tom gawked at me in pure disbelief. “You think…”

“I think it’s a little odd to run to a storm cellar when you smell gas,” I said, “and I think it’s even odder to smell gas before the bomb breaks the gas line.”

Tom stuttered, “B-b-but it could’ve been faulty already!”

“Neither of the kids mentioned smelling gas.” I handed Tom their statements. “They were eating breakfast one minute, next thing their dad’s yelling to run to the storm cellar. And they get there in plenty of time to avoid being so much as scratched by a single splinter. Maybe you’re right. Maybe the gas line was leaky already. But Vicky Weed didn’t mention any gas issues, and all three of us asked, and so did the feds.”

Tom’s face twisted unhappily. “What about the cigarette butts? And the flyer? And Bill Lloyd?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I think we should have a talk with Adam Weed.”

***^***

My plans to question Adam Weed were temporarily derailed when Punk walked in not long after Tom had gone off to deal with the afternoon crop of traffic stops. He handed me a plain white envelope, and said, “I gave one to Maury.”

I opened it and slid out a piece of paper. It was Punk’s resignation.

My head turned cold and tingly. “Oh,” I said. “Um. But you love being a cop.”

He didn’t reply.

I tried to have a little dignity. I asked, “What’ll you do for a job?”

“I got one. Doesn’t start till fall, but I reckon I can use a couple months off.”

I checked the letter. He’d given no notice. Not even a week. Ouch. “Oh. Okay. Um.”

Unsmiling, Punk went to his desk, cleared out a couple of small items, and left his uniforms and ID on the chair in a plastic bag. “See you at the picnic on Sunday.”

I nodded dumbly. In my head, I knew I should haul Adam Weed in. The rest of me, however, had turned into a shaky mess. I left Tom a voice-mail and did what any grown woman does in a time of emotional upset. I went home to eat too much and have a good cry.

***^***

An evening of Aunt Marge’s good sense and comforting shoulder worked wonders. So did eating the chocolates out of my freezer. When Adam Weed came in not long before lunch, I was ready for anything.

Except, I have to admit, a confession.

I’d only asked him one question. “Why did you go to the storm cellar when you smelled gas?” That was it. The man cracked like an egg from a sick chicken. Guts spilling every which way. I’d never seen anything like it. He didn’t even attempt bluster or self-justification. He just grew thoughtful, and confessed.

“I wondered if anyone would realize,” he said dreamily. Tom, who had come in early to man the videocamera, looked like he’d been hit upside the head. I sympathized.

“Excuse me?” I asked weakly.

Adam Weed shrugged narrowly. “Oh, I thought I’d get away with it, but I wondered, would anyone notice? Realize? Human psychology is highly variable. There was a chance that the miracle of our survival might not be sufficient to mask the inconsistencies in my story.”

“Mr. Weed…”

He went on in the same light, dreamy way, “People don’t question miracles. Isn’t that fascinating?”