by J. R. Ripley
Paul ambled over. “Everything okay?”
“I broke a glass,” confessed Kim.
Paul leaned back on his heels. “What? Don’t tell me you were singing again?” His eyes sparkled mischievously.
“Oh, you are so funny I forgot to laugh.” Kim smoldered and chomped down on a slice of pizza. She turned to Dan. “You’re a police officer. Can’t you do something about him?”
Dan grinned. “How about another pitcher, Paul?”
“You’ve got it. This one is on the house.” He flashed his eyes at Kim before departing. “And this time, let’s try to keep it on the house and not on the floor.”
“Ouch!” Dan’s hand disappeared under the table.
I had a feeling he had borne the brunt of Kim’s latest foot attack.
“Sorry, Dan,” Kim said oh-too-innocently. “I had a twinge.”
“Kim gets a lot of those,” Dan said for my benefit.
“Tell me about it,” I replied, giving Kim the evil eye. “Maybe you should see a doctor. Get that checked out. My mom gets those. She says it is part of getting older.”
Realizing what I’d said, I quickly scooted out of range. Kim lashed out but hit only air.
Staring at the damp beer smudge on the floor as I returned my chair tableside brought to mind something that had been niggling at me. “There’s something that’s been bothering me about Gar’s accident, Dan.”
“What’s that, Amy?” Dan asked, as eager to change the subject as I was. My shins couldn’t take any more abuse.
Our server brought a cold pitcher of beer and topped off our glasses.
“I was out at Webber’s Pond and—”
Dan groaned. “I don’t think I want to hear this.” He grabbed his mug and drained half of it in a single gulp.
“I was out at Webber’s Pond to pay my respects and—”
Dan’s elbows hit the table. “To pay your respects? To who? Gar Samuelson didn’t have any kin, leastwise not at the pond.”
I glared at him. “Are you going to let me tell this?”
He waved for me to continue.
“I was out at—”
“We know, Webber’s Pond.” This time it was Kim who had interrupted. “Get to the point, Amy.”
I fumed at the two of them until they got the message, then continued. “I happened to be out at the end of Gar’s dock, and I noticed what looked like the marks of the wheelchair where it landed in the muck.”
“So?” Still Kim.
Dan was showing restraint.
“So, I’m not sure, but I got the feeling that if Gar had simply fallen in accidentally, the marks would have been directly at the edge of the dock. Like your beer.” I pointed to the damp spot on the floor.
“I don’t know, Amy.” This time Dan dared speak. “I mean, you could be right, now that I think on it.” He rubbed his chin. “It does sort of make sense.”
“You mean you agree with Amy?”
Dan shrugged. “She can’t always be wrong, despite what you and the chief are always saying.”
“Jerry is a complete—” I came to a grinding halt and threw my half-eaten slice down on my tray. “Wait, are you saying I’m always wrong?” My question, like my attention, was all on Kim.
Kim burbled something unintelligible, so I turned to Dan. “Is that what Kim says?”
Dan had turned the color of a boiled beet. “Anybody for a game of darts?” He pushed back his chair and stood.
At that moment, Violet Wilcox came teetering out of the ladies’ room and crashed into him. “Sorry!”
She tumbled into the seat between me and Kim and helped herself to a slice of our pizza.
Dan swiveled his chair around and sat on it backward, draping his arms over the back. He eyed her professionally. “You look like you’ve been celebrating, Ms. Wilcox.”
“I am.” She smiled broadly. “Didn’t you hear the news?”
“What news is that?” I asked. Being Ruby Lake and not New York City, it probably involved a scandal at the annual pie-baking contest or the fact that the town had ordered a new streetlight.
“Alan Spenner has been caught.” Her impossibly big smile got impossibly bigger. “And I was the first one to get the scoop in all the Carolinas, the entire country maybe.”
“Are you sure?” Dan asked.
“Sure, I’m sure. I’ve got this friend—” She stopped and turned to Kim. “Do you mind?”
“Do I mind what?”
Without explaining, Violet grabbed Kim’s glass and washed down her pizza. “Thanks.” She licked her lips. “I’ve got this friend down in Nassau—”
“In the Bahamas?” I interrupted.
“That’s right. She works for a news bureau there. She told me that Alan Spenner was shot dead in a police raid not two hours ago.”
“Wow.” Dan followed his word with a low whistle.
“I reported it on the air several times. I’m trying to set up an interview with the head of the police there for tomorrow. It will be another exclusive.”
Violet raised her glass—well, Kim’s glass—with Violet’s plum lipstick smeared on it. “In your face, Lance Jennings!”
“I hadn’t heard. Congratulations,” I said.
Violet frowned. “Don’t you people listen to the radio?”
None of us dared answer. We’d all heard her Town Gossip show at one time or the other, and everybody in town lived in fear of being spotlighted on it.
“I can’t say I’m sorry he’s dead,” Kim said. She helped herself to a clean mug up at the bar and returned to her seat.
“The chief will sure be glad to hear this,” Dan said, filling Kim’s fresh mug.
Kim was looking at me. “What’s wrong, Amy?”
“If Alan Spenner is dead, we may never learn who murdered Yvonne.”
Kim sighed. “You’re right.”
“Say, Dan,” Violet leaned across the table, flashing blood-red nail polish, “my spies at the crime lab tell me Gar Samuelson’s death is being treated as a possible homicide. What do you think?” pressed Violet.
“I think,” said Dan, “that you’ve had enough to drink and are going to need a ride home.”
Violet smiled seductively. “With you?” She winked at me. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Violet rose suddenly and wobbled like a ship on a stormy sea. She planted her hands on the back of her chair to steady herself. “I’ll get my coat.”
Dan looked like he’d been trapped between a rock and a hard place. That hard place being Kim.
Violet wasn’t just sexy, she was persistent.
But Kim was having none of it. “No problem, Violet. We will be happy to give you a lift. Won’t we, Dan?”
Dan was quick to agree. Despite my protests, he paid our bill.
I insisted on leaving the tip.
“Aren’t you coming, Amy?” Kim asked, as she buttoned up her jacket.
“No, thanks. It’s only a short walk for me. Plus, I’ve got some thinking to do.”
And I did.
18
That thinking led me to the Kia, which led me to Webber’s Pond at twelve-thirty in the morning.
I never said it was smart thinking, merely thinking. Okay, dubious thinking.
And if necessary, I could always blame the pizza overdose (didn’t artichoke hearts possess certain psychotropic properties, or was I imagining things?), the excess of beer, and the lateness of the hour.
Already, with the cold seeping through the steel and glass of my van and worming its way into my bones, and the clouds scudding across the low, dark sky like hungry ghosts seeking doomed human vessels to occupy, I was beginning to regret where it was that my thinking had led me.
Here.
Nowheresville, as Lani Rice had so poetically put it.
> I shut off the engine and listened to the tick-tick-tick of the radiator cooling down. I had turned off the headlights as soon as I was close enough to make out the shape of the cabin and stopped a good fifty yards away from my target.
There were three vehicles in front of Yvonne’s cabin, her truck and a white van that I knew belonged to Lani and company. The third, a creamy metallic Lexus sedan, looked vaguely familiar.
There were lights on inside the cabin and smoke coming from the chimney.
“This is crazy,” I muttered. My van remained mum on the subject. Probably for fear I’d send her to the junk heap if she dared agree with me.
I knew that the Lord of Death could not have possibly been responsible for Gar Samuelson’s death. And I knew that Kay Calhoun could very well have been dreaming or hallucinating when she had recounted seeing the spirit push him into the pond. Probably OD’d on English breakfast tea and cookies.
I also knew for sure that Baron Samedi, if Lani hadn’t tossed him on the scrap heap, would be sitting right where Yvonne had placed him—on the mantel.
I just wanted to see for myself.
I opened my van door as silently as possible and only half-closed the latch for fear of calling attention to myself.
As I bathed myself in darkness, a woman screamed bloody murder. But that was okay, I knew it was only a coyote doing his or her coyote thing somewhere out there in the mountains.
At least, I hoped so.
I tiptoed up to the window. There was a several-inch gap in the front curtains. All I needed was one look. One look, and I could go home satisfied. Get some sleep. Wake up in the morning refreshed and with a clearer head and smarter ideas.
Because as ideas went, they didn’t get much dumber than this.
It wasn’t just Kim who had gotten under my skin. There was also Kay Calhoun.
Worse yet, it was Baron Samedi who had worked his insidious soul-sucking self into my life.
But that was okay. I was just going to take one quick look, then skedaddle.
The first porch step creaked maddeningly as I put my foot down on the sagging board. Rusty nails on the ends of the step fought their way upward, screaming to be set free.
I held my breath and counted to ten. No one came to the window, and the front door remained closed. I skipped the second step and put my weight gingerly on the porch.
So far, so good. I moved stealthily to the window to my left. From there, I should have a decent view of the table and fireplace. I inched my way closer, trembling for fear that Lani and his friends might see me.
What would they think?
How could I explain myself?
Sleepwalking? Not even Kay Calhoun would believe an explanation like that. No, for her I could always say I’d been under the spell of the Lord of Death. My gut told me that Lani might not prove as gullible.
I held my breath and hoped for the best. I leaned closer, my nose almost touching the glass.
I could see shapes inside, people. The back of a woman’s head.
Bony fingers clamped around my wrist. “Don’t make a sound,” a voice whispered in my ear.
I gasped and cursed myself for taunting the gods by daring to hope for the best.
“Lani,” I started to turn, “I can explain—” But it wasn’t Lani.
“Phil,” I whispered harshly. “Let go of me!”
He did. With a smile. He motioned for me to follow him.
We slid off the side of the porch.
“I never took you for a peeper.” Phil leaned against a pine tree and smirked.
“It isn’t what you think.” A sweet odor hung around him. He’d been smoking, and if memory of my college days served me right, it hadn’t been a cigarette.
“I think you were spying on us. Or at least trying to.”
“Kay Calhoun said some things and…” How was I going to explain myself? “I just wanted to see if the Lord of Death was still there.”
“Who?” Phil angled his eyes toward the cabin. “Are you talking about Lani?”
“No.” I explained about Baron Samedi and how Kim had given him to Yvonne as a housewarming present.
“Wow,” Phil said softly, “some welcome to the neighborhood present. Why not just give her a box of matches and tell her to use them to burn down her house?”
I was glad it was pitch-black because my cheeks were burning red. “It wasn’t my idea.”
“No,” Phil said. “Your idea was to come sneak around on private property in the middle of the night and peek in the windows.”
Having no real defense, I opted for going on the offensive. “What are you doing out here?”
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
I hesitated.
“Come on. I’m not going to hurt you. I haven’t yet, have I?”
On that rather dubious assurance, I reluctantly followed Phil as he moved in a wide circle away from the cabin. We ended up at their van. He rapped on the rear door, then opened it without waiting for a reply from within.
The smell of marijuana filled the air.
“I brought company,” Phil said. “Move over.”
I peered inside. A candle burned on the bare metal floor in the center of the van’s cargo hold. Several rumpled sleeping bags and a couple of pillows that I recognized as belonging on Yvonne’s sofa filled the edges.
Ted lay sprawled against the back of the passenger seat, the nub of a joint in his left hand. He sucked noisily. “Hey. What’s up?”
Phil had scrambled inside. He held out his hand to me.
“No, thanks. I really should be going.”
“Come on,” Phil coaxed. “We should talk.”
I studied the Lexus beside us. “Whose car is that?”
Phil grinned. “Have a seat and I’ll tell you.”
“Fine.” I pushed aside several crushed beer cans and climbed aboard. The van was cramped, it stank, and the bare metal hurt my knees.
Other than that, it was paradise.
Ted extended the joint toward me once again. I declined with a shake of the head.
The candle flickered wildly as Phil tossed about the sleeping bags and blankets. “Aha!” His hand came up with an unopened can of beer. “Here you go.”
“No, thanks.”
“Are you sure? It looks like the last one.”
“I’m sure. So who does the car belong to?”
Phil took an annoyingly long time in answering. He popped open the beer, which proceeded to explode in his face. This caused both him and Ted to laugh hysterically.
Personally, I was ready to run for the hills.
After they had settled down, Phil took a swig and answered. “It belongs to you.”
“Me?”
The index finger of his left hand wavered in my direction.
Now I was mad. I’d waited around in this smelly van just to hear a drunk and high-out-of-his-mind druggie tell me that the car sitting next to us belonged to me?
Just in case I was wrong about him, I tried again. “I am talking about the Lexus, not my Kia.”
“I know.”
Ted giggled.
“I’m out of here!” I groped for the rear latch.
“Wait, wait!” Phil grabbed me by the jacket and urged me to stay.
I twisted, bumped my skull against the roof of the van, and faced him down. “I really need to be going now. Do I have to scream?”
“Boy, you are a handful. I’m only trying to have some fun.”
“Your idea of fun and mine seem to be miles apart.”
“Tell me about it.” Phil snapped his fingers, and Ted handed him the roach. He sucked it, then spat. “The car belongs to Amy.”
“Amy?”
Phil was smiling, not a bad sight by daylight but somewhat gruesome in the confines of the van
and by flickering candlelight. “That’s her name.”
Then reality hit me. And it was about time. “You don’t mean…” Could it be? “Amy Harlan?”
“Could be,” Phil replied.
“You know her last name, Teddy?” Phil inquired.
“Not a clue.” Ted curled up into himself. “All I know is that Lani said he had a date and for us to stay out here till he was through. I’m tired.” He tucked a pillow between himself and the back of the front seat. “I’m going to sleep.”
He put his hands under his head and shut his eyes.
“Do you know her?” Phil asked me.
“If it’s who I think it is, yes, I do.” The woman I had seen through the slit in the curtains had blond hair. It could very well have been Amy Harlan. “Can you describe her?”
“Sure.” And he did. “She’s the chick that Lani met in Charlotte. Sure was funny him running into her again.”
“Yeah, funny.”
19
I drove home in a daze and maybe just a bit of a haze.
I changed out of my day clothes and into a pair of thick purple plaid pajamas. My toes were toasty in a pair of gray felted slippers with hand-painted holly branches laden with bright red berries and cardinals for decoration. They had been a holiday gift from one of my suppliers.
They weren’t subtle, but they were cute.
I filled a coffee mug to the halfway mark and sat down on the sofa. I switched on the TV and settled in to watch the oldies movie channel. They were running Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, the fifties classic. Our own little theater group had put on a production several years ago at the Theater On The Square. My cousins Riley and Rhonda had played supporting roles. Although since neither of them had ever been married, they knew about as much about the wedded state as I did—zilch.
I took a generous drink from my cup.
Did I mention my cup was filled with sangria?
I mean, coffee after midnight? That would practically be suicidal.
I dragged my feet up on the sofa and tossed the comforter over my lower half. Kim’s spirit board and planchette taunted me from the coffee table.