Totally Buzzed (A Miller Sisters Mystery) (13 page)

Rob looked ready to pass out and started backing away.

"Wait, Rob. Maggot is an uncouth ass. Hold on and talk to me for a second. We'll go somewhere else and talk. Rob!"

He continued to back away. He suddenly spun and trotted toward the back end. "I gotta go, uh, do stuff, Miz Buzz. My dad is counting on me and besides, he told me not to talk to anyone if they came around." He turned back toward me but kept a steady pace backward. "I don't think he meant like you and Sheriff J., but he said no one, so I gotta go now. You know, I got, uh, stuff." With that, he took off toward one of the many hooped greenhouses lining the back of the property and ran inside.

Whirling on my big-mouth sister with clenched fists and fire in my eyes I calmly said, "Good job, Maggot. You're fired."

I turned and stormed off toward the car.

Looking horrified she struggled to free herself from Ian's death grip. "Buzz, you can't fire me, I'm a volunteer!"

"Fine, then I'll kick your ass and dump your body on the side of the road. Mom will understand." Reaching the car, I got in, slammed the door, and revved the engine.

"Buzz, please, I was just trying to shake him up so he would crack under the pressure!" Near tears and begging, she climbed into the passenger seat, leaving Ian to fend for himself in the back.

"Mag, I told you this was not going to be like television. If you had half a brain you could have seen that kid was on the edge, and your little sarcastic shot about his mother pushed him over. You're fired."

She then exhibited the first good sense of the afternoon. She shut up.

Speeding back toward town, I went over the scene with Rob in slow motion. I was just past the part where Rob turned from the building when Ian interrupted my thoughts. "Say, Buzz, what do you think was in that building Rob was locking when we first saw him?"

Mag murmured, "The potting shed."

Ian looked irritated. "You don't keep a potting shed under lock and key."

She folded her arms and looked at the floor. "It's the potting shed."

I ignored Mag and thought about it for about a quarter mile. "It probably is the equipment shed, you know, mowers, weed eaters, rototillers, hedgers, edgers, the usual. Why do you ask?"

Wearing a sullen expression, Mag mumbled, "Potting shed, Buzz–potting shed."

Ian flashed Mag a confused look and leaned forward. I could see a small conspiratorial grin flash across his face. "I was thinking; what if there was something he didn't want us to see in there? Wouldn't that make him nervous? Maybe the sheriff could get a search warrant or something and take a look."

I laughed. "You and Mag make a good pair. You both watch too much television. Search warrants can take up to a couple of days to get." Ian quieted and sat back. I could almost hear him fuming, but I was beyond caring.

I thought about Ian's words on the way across town. Damn search warrants. What if I didn't wait for a search warrant and just popped over to the garden center unannounced? If I were caught I could say I was poking around looking for Glenn. If I found something, I could always pressure J.J. into obtaining a search warrant and picking up the evidence legally later. No harm, no foul, and no lawyer suppressing evidence for violating anyone's Fourth Amendment rights. "Buzz," I said to myself, "Sometimes you are a genius."

I pulled into the morgue parking lot in a much better mood. I turned off the engine and thought, keep it formal, Buzz, and send Plant Boy on his way and out of our lives, then get rid of Mag. "Thanks for coming out today, Ian. Please let me know what you find out about those seeds, will you? You can call me from wherever it is your mother lives, or better yet, just fax the information to the Sheriff."

Ian knew condescension when he heard it and there was nothing wrong with the boy's hearing. He shook my hand and through gritted teeth, assured me he would. He turned to Mag. "Want a lift home, Maggie?"

Her head jerked up and she was miraculously cured of her martyrdom. I felt a tingle of panic about sending her off with a virtual stranger, albeit a beautiful stranger. There was something about Ian that still did not settle well with me, and he knew it. He was hip to my feeble attempt to get rid of him quick and probably thought to use Mag to stall for more time.

His expression was guarded when he turned back to me. "Since it's getting late and I've been going for over 20 hours today, maybe you ladies could direct me to a decent motel. I'll pop for lunch first, since none of us have eaten, and then sleep until whenever. That way I can head out late tonight or early tomorrow fresh. To
Janesville
, Buzz,
where my mother lives
. In
Janesville
. For about 40 years now. In Janesville. About an hour away from here."

I bit my lip and grinned. "I get it, Ian. Janesville. Uh, thank you for enlightening me."

Mag practically jumped up and down. "I have a great idea! We can all go to Buzz's and order in pizza and discuss the case. She's already got a whiteboard set up with the stuff we have so far.

"We can catch it up with the Rob stuff and see if we have anything that adds two and two. Besides, over at Buzz's we'll be closer to the Interstate. There are a few good motels out there you can choose from."

Yeah, great idea, I thought, sighing heavily–again. Now he's invited to my house, invited to late lunch, what next? I had an evil thought. Maybe I could feed them both to Wesley…. "Uh, Mag, I thought Ian said he wanted to get on the road."

I furrowed my brow, dipped my head, and glared at her out of the tops of my eyes, a Miller Sister Signal that meant
'Shut Up And Go With Me On This'.

"We shouldn't hold him up. Ian is not interested in the investigation, only the seeds. We can catch up later, okay?"

Idiot Mag didn't get it, or ignored me and instead listened to her hormones. "But he offered to buy lunch, Buzz. Didn't you Ian? We're not keeping him too late, are we Ian?" She batted her eyes at him. I wanted to gag.

He laughed and said, "No, no. I'm flexible. Whatever you guys decide. I'd like to see how an investigation looks. It might be a good idea to go over the stuff while it is fresh though, don't you think, Buzz?"

He gave me the same face I gave Mag, only I picked up on it. I laughed out loud. "Okay I give. Pile back in. I'll drive. We'll get you back here later, Ian."

He sat back with a satisfied smile. "Lead on, MacDuff!"

10

Vanished! "The filly vanished?"

Alejandro felt the blood drain from his face. He put his cell phone on speaker then threw the last of his gear into the pickup truck. The sick feeling in his stomach was quickly turning into panic as what Donny Ray said sunk in. "Disappeared? Wrecked your clinic? Oh no! The refrigerator men; maybe it was those bad men who beat me up and put Jose in the hospital. Are you okay, Dr. Little?"

"Okay? Well, I wasn't beat up by any bad refrigerator salesmen, if that's what you're asking. Uh, Montoya, I think y'all better come down here and tell the police about your bad men. I don't know what the hell is going on here, but someone's got to pay for this mess. All I got left to show your mare was even here is one little old sample of blood in a busted vial. Under all this other garbage and busted shit, I might not even have a clinic left."

"Dr. Little, I have already told the police all I know. Something is very wrong here, and I think my boss knows more than he tells me."

"No shit, Montoya. When did you come to that brilliant conclusion? When they busted your lip, or my stuff?"

Alejandro slammed the back door and jumped into the truck. He started the engine. A terrible thought crossed his mind. "Dr. Little, please, can you do me a favor? Please run the blood if you can. Maybe we can find out what killed my Princesa. I might sound crazy, but I don't think I can trust anyone else. This whole thing is crazy. Can you call me when you have the results? You have my cell phone number, and I have yours. I will tell no one, and please, for your safety, I think you should tell no one of the blood sample."

Alejandro hesitated before addressing his greatest fear. "Dr. Little? Do you think that maybe those bad men were hired by my boss?"

Donny Ray thought a moment. "It looks pretty suspicious all right." He looked around his clinic and at the broken vial of blood on what was left of his desk. He gingerly picked it up and turned it in his fingers, studying the blood as if it would give him some answers. "On second thought, Montoya, y'all may be right, and maybe you'd best be heading out right now."

He heard the truck engine in the background. He scrounged around in the debris for his microscope and an unbroken slide. He found them both and set up the microscope on the stainless steel counter. He pulled up a stool and placed a drop of blood on the slide. "So tell me everything that happened last night while you light out of this town."

Heading northbound out of Dallas, Alejandro told Donny Ray what happened after the mare was taken away. He spared no detail as he described everything that had happened up until the time Donny Ray called him. The shocked veterinarian let out a huge sigh.

"Shee-it! It's no wonder you're getting out of town, Montoya. I ain't talking to no one until I find out what the Hell is going on around here. Don't worry about your friend. I'll check on him at the hospital and bring him back here when they let him go."

He spied his broken centrifuge under a surgical table across the room and swore to himself. Thank God most of this stuff was insured. He thought a second more. "Hell, Alejandro, I don't know who to trust either, but I'll tell you what. If I know one thing, I know that you loved that little mare. You've been the only one who's been straight with me so far, so I'll put my trust in you, too, amigo."

Tears of gratitude welled in Alejandro's eyes. He dashed them away before he drove off the road. "That is very kind of you to say, Dr. Little, but how can you run tests if you have no lab?"

"I got a real good friend who teaches over at Southern Methodist University. I know he'll let me use his lab, and no one will know anything about it. I'll stay over to his place for a few days in case those varmints come back for more."

Guilt lay heavily on Alejandro's shoulders. "I am sorry you have to leave your business, Dr. Little."

Donny Ray chuckled. "Hell, man, I can't do much here until after the cleanup is done anyway, and there was something about that little mare those guys didn't want me to find out. I'll give you a holler if and when I find something."

Relief spread through Alejandro and he swallowed the lump in his throat. "Gracias, Dr. Little, thank you very much. I owe you big. Princesa did mean the world to me, and I want whoever did this to her to suffer as she did. I appreciate anything you can do. Again, thank you, sir."

"Under the circumstances, Montoya, since we are now partners in crime, don't you think it's time you called me Donny Ray?"

This time, Alejandro did chuckle as he said, "Yes it is, Donny Ray, it certainly is. Talk to you soon, my friend." He disconnected the phone, stepped on the gas and sped toward Oklahoma.

11

Mag, Ian, and I were each busy with our own thoughts on the short drive over to my house. I went over things in my head again, but nothing seemed to add up. I was very curious about the seeds, but it didn't look like Ian was burning any rubber off his shoes trying to get back to Madison, Milwaukee, Timbuktu, or wherever the Hell he came from, to identify them. Maybe he thought the seeds were not that important to the case. He sure had a cavalier attitude about them. Maybe he already knew what they were. Maybe he had an ulterior motive for his procrastination. Whatever the maybe, it merited keeping him close, and keeping an eye on him.