by Matt Hilton
Eldon cocked his head at his middle son. ‘You suggesting Caleb hasn’t the right to level things with those who’ve wronged him?’
‘No, Pa, I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying that with Elspeth disappearing so suddenly it might pique the interest of this private eye, and she might start digging into what’s going on here. It was important that Caleb got his kin back, sure, but at what expense?’
‘You’ve changed your tune since last night,’ Caleb grumbled. ‘You sound now as if you didn’t mean it when you were supposedly happy to come to Maine to help me get Elspeth back.’
‘I was happy. Man, Caleb, you know I’d do anything for you. It’s just I’ve had some time to reflect on how things went down and don’t think it was our best play. We should’ve waited. We had the van and the manpower to do it quietly and at a different time and place. I only think that with Elspeth and Jacob disappearing like that, it’s going to guarantee a reaction from a nosey private detective.’
‘When was the last you heard of a private eye doing pro bono work? That shit’s just for the movies.’ Caleb began digging into the last few chunks of vegetable left in his bowl. ‘Uh, sorry about using the S-word, Ma.’
Ellie-May snorted. Her pipe finished with, she set it aside and reached for the pan she’d set upon a trivet at the center of the table. Randolph scuttled to assist her, lifting the pan in reach, and she ladled soup into her own bowl. Then she added a ladleful into Caleb’s emptied bowl. ‘Darrell’s speaking sense,’ she announced. ‘Y’all should listen to him. All of you.’
‘As usual your ma is right,’ said Eldon. ‘What with dealing with Orson Burdon and now this, we should take some extra care. Now isn’t the time to have anybody come poking around our business let alone a nosey private eye. Randy, are you listening to me, boy?’
‘Sure am, Pa,’ said Randolph without raising his head from his food. He’d moved on from the soup to the main course.
‘Good. I want you to double the guard on the perimeter, and have the barrier manned at the bridge. Nobody comes in or out of here without my permission. Y’hear?’
‘Loud and clear.’
‘Darrell. Your ma’s right. You do speak sense, but don’t be getting smart-mouthed with your brother again. I was being sarcastic, but that was between me and Caleb and he didn’t need you pointing it out to him. Caleb’s no idiot.’
‘If that’s what it sounded like I was saying, I’m sorry, Pa.’
‘It’s not me you should be apologizing to.’
‘Caleb,’ Darrell said, sounding sincere, ‘I’m sorry I insinuated that there was something wrong with your head. I only meant that you weren’t thinking straight, right now. And it’s understandable, brother. It was important that you brought your kin home, and, yeah, in your shoes I’d have done the exact same thing. I wasn’t criticizing, just saying we should maybe best get ready for trouble, should it head our way.’
Caleb shrugged off the apology. ‘Seems I should put your mind at rest, Darrell. I’ll go and speak with Elspeth. I’ll get it out of her if she had anything bad to say about us to anyone.’ He sat back, nudging aside his empty second bowl of soup. ‘Ma, you’ve done it again and served up a terrific meal, but I’m full. May I be excused from the table?’
‘It’s about time you showed Elspeth who’s boss,’ Ellie-May said, ‘and could have saved us all this bickering had you taken her in hand before now and gotten the truth out of her. You want, you can take my stick and beat some obedience into her.’
Caleb glanced at her walking stick. He’d never known his mother to rely on it to help walk before; the stick had been a disciplinary tool, and he recalled times when it had cracked across his shoulders, his backside, and occasionally round his head hard enough to leave it ringing for days afterwards. He raised an open hand; his palms were calloused and as tough as sun-dried leather. ‘Thanks, Ma, but this will do just fine.’
‘Suit yourself,’ said Ellie-May. ‘You’re excused.’
EIGHTEEN
So much for avoiding the local cops, Tess thought as she sat down at the table. Po took the bench alongside her, while Pinky jostled the table a few times until he was settled on the opposite side. He reached for the stack of folded menus, and began perusing the treats on offer: partly to avoid meeting the dour gaze of the police officers sitting on stools at the counter. Po wasn’t as shy; he met each cop’s eyes with a nod of acknowledgment, but received no reply.
The instant they entered the café all eyes in the place had turned on them. Tess felt like a gunslinger in a western movie, pushing in through the saloon’s swing doors only for the pianist to fall silent. Necks craned over shoulders so that they could be studied in full, and more eyebrows than those of the cops’ beetled at their appearance. Perhaps they struck an unusual trio to people whose stock fashion appeared to be plaid shirts and denim jeans. The way in which some of those people discarded her as interesting, and fixated on Pinky, made her wonder if people of color were in the minority around here; but no, that wasn’t it, because several of the faces in the room were brown. Even one of the cops was a black man.
As they moved to a vacant table, she decided that strangers per se were in the minority, and it partially stood to reason. Muller Falls was off the beaten track, on a road that petered to nothing a few miles into the forested hills. It was not one of the towns that had sprung up round one of the major north/south routes further to the east, or those that had grown to accommodate vacationers making their way into the Wild Peaks Wilderness. By all appearances the town had existed here since frontiersmen first began taming the land in upper New York before there was such a thing as a state line marked on a map. There were no surviving structures of that vintage she’d seen, but some were more than a century old, and probably built on the foundations of much earlier buildings. Most of the homes were American craftsman-style built with wood, stone and brick, with low-pitched roofs and wide front porches, but several were more ornate Victorian-era homes with turrets, bay windows and wraparound balconies, decorated with metal filigree. The hotel in which she’d booked rooms for their stay was one of the latter, and as they’d arrived Tess had briefly imagined Norman Bates’ mother waving in greeting from an uppermost window. The café was a relatively modern construct though, and resembled most others she’d ever eaten in. It had a red-and-white checkered floor, white Formica tables arranged in individual booths, with red faux leather on the bench seats. The serving counter was clad in stainless steel, and dully reflected the color scheme. The fry cook wielded a spatula directly beyond the counter, where a sign claimed that every meat dish was freshly cooked to order.
Pinky became absorbed in the menu.
Po rested his elbows on the table and cupped his hands as he finally disregarded the cops and allowed his attention to travel around the other faces blinking back at him. Slowly people returned to their meals, and the low buzz of conversation filled the place. The police officers returned to their coffees and sandwiches.
‘Awkward,’ Tess stage-whispered out the side of her mouth.
‘Fuck ’em,’ said Po, uncharacteristically coarse for him.
Unfortunately his voice traveled to the ears of the cops at the counter. Tess noticed the tightening of the black cop’s back, while the other man, a freckle-faced redhead with a small mouth, turned and eyeballed Po anew. Tess grabbed and shoved a menu towards Po, averting a confrontation they could do without. Po studied the menu dispassionately and the cop sneered but lost interest.
‘Try not to have us run out of town the minute after we’ve got here,’ Tess whispered.
‘Just wondering if those two are on Eldon Moorcock’s payroll,’ said Po, but this time sotto voce. ‘That sour-mouthed sumbitch strikes me as the type that’d take the back of his hand to a woman.’
‘Let’s not make any unfounded assumptions,’ Tess warned.
‘How can I not when everybody in the place looked at us as if we just trod dog shit all over their clean floor?’
Again Po’s surly behavior was uncharacteristic, except she knew why. In his mind he thought they were wasting precious time coming to the diner, when they could already have snuck into the Moorcocks’ commune and located Elspeth and Jacob. The freckle-faced cop was drawing his ire towards Caleb by proxy. Thankfully the cop hadn’t chosen to challenge Po’s language, otherwise Tess thought things could end badly, and their rescue attempt thwarted before it had even begun.
A server approached, and she seemed friendly enough, though her ebullience could be well practiced. She had short-cropped graying hair, twinkling green eyes set in plump cheeks atop a stick-slim body at odds with her round head. She wore black leggings and a white T-shirt tucked into a short apron. The name of the café was emblazoned on the shirt, a faded screen-printed motif that said: Annabel’s Pantry, Est. 1972. Tess wondered if the woman was Annabel, and if the fry cook was her husband. There was no other member of staff she could see.
Her assumption was dispelled immediately.
‘Hi, I’m Jenny and I’ll be your server,’ the woman announced with a smile. She took out a cloth from her apron pocket, and swiped the table clean. ‘Can I get you started on some drinks while you finish off checking the menus?’
‘Coffees all round?’ Tess asked, with a quick check for affirmation from the others.
‘Sure. I’ll get those going for you momentarily.’ Jenny tidied the condiments briskly. ‘Say, are you folks visiting relatives in town or something? It’s just we don’t get too many out-of-towners calling in, ’specially not late on a mid-week afternoon like this.’
‘That’d explain the puzzled looks we just got,’ said Tess, and tempered her comment with a smile. ‘No, we don’t have any family in town, we’re just passing through.’
‘Oh, where are you on your way to?’ The question was loaded, and this time Jenny’s smile was definitely faked.
‘Just wherever the road takes us,’ Tess lied. ‘We’re taking a few days out from a hectic schedule to clear our heads and see parts of the country we’ve never been before. We’re staying the night at a hotel up the road from here, but will be moving on tomorrow. Are you local, Jenny? By that I mean, are there any beauty spots hereabouts you’d recommend us seeing before we leave, ones that tourists might otherwise miss? What about the waterfall the town’s named for?’
Tess had offered enough of an explanation to appease the server’s inquisitiveness, and hopefully Jenny would report back to the cops and anyone else suspicious of their arrival in town, and they’d be left alone afterwards. Except Jenny chewed her inner cheek at mention of Muller Falls, and she couldn’t hide the glance she darted at the cops. She leaned in to make her words heard, ‘Sorry, hon, the waterfall’s out of bounds, I’m afraid. It’s on private property, y’see, and intruders aren’t welcomed.’
‘Oh, that’s such a shame,’ said Tess. ‘Is there anywhere else we should be wary of trespassing?’
‘The private land’s posted. Stay to the south of town and you should be fine. That’s the road you must’ve come in on, and the one that takes you back out to the highway.’ Jenny eyed Tess steadily, silently importing a warning. Then she abruptly switched her attention to the men, her voice jovial and louder than before. ‘Had time to choose yet? No? I’ll give you a minute and go get those coffees started for y’all.’
As Jenny headed away, the black cop reached and caught her by the wrist. He leaned in to speak to her, and the freckled cop again peered over at them. Jenny shrugged her shoulders, and gave a noncommittal reply, before she gently pulled free and went around the other side of the counter. As she filled mugs and set them on a tray, the fry cook said something to the cops that had all three men laughing.
‘You might’ve just set the cat among the pigeons, Tess,’ Po said.
‘Sounded as if our server was giving us a friendly warning, her,’ said Pinky.
Tess thought the same. But Jenny wasn’t warning her about the cops, she was telling her to steer clear of the private property, with enough emphasis that she suggested they hightail it back to the highway to ensure they avoided its tenants. ‘Sounds to me as if it’s common knowledge what’s going on out at the commune, but people are too fearful of speaking about it.’
Po aimed a flick of his hand at the cops. ‘Tells me if they aren’t doin’ anythin’ about it, then they must be complicit in what’s going on. Dirty cops are the worst kind of scum.’
‘More the reason you don’t attract their attention,’ Tess warned. ‘Let’s just eat up, keep ourselves to ourselves, then go back to the hotel. Once we’re there we can plan our next move.’
Po didn’t reply directly. He only offered a greeting to Jenny as the woman bustled towards them wielding a tray stacked with rattling crockery and utensils. She set down the tray and began doling out the mugs of steaming black coffee. ‘There’s cream and sugar,’ she said, and transferred a small jug and a ceramic pot jammed with sachets between them. She tucked the now empty tray under her left armpit and stood poised with a pen over an order book. ‘Did you give what you want any thought yet?’
‘Were those cops asking about us?’ Po said.
She darted a glance at the officers again, then offered the tiniest of nods. ‘They asked where you were from, and I told them I didn’t know. I only said you plan on moving on tomorrow.’
‘And that was good enough for them?’
‘Shouldn’t it be?’
‘I’ll have the daily special,’ Po said.
Pinky and Tess gave their orders. Before long Jenny was back with their dishes, but she ensured they didn’t converse too deeply this time, other than uttering a few pleasantries and to wish them an enjoyable meal. When they were partly through eating, Po stopped, his fork poised in the air as he watched the cops stand up from the counter and say their goodbyes. The cops left without looking at them, and Tess thought that she’d diverted attention off them with her tale about being on a journey of discovery. She began eating, this time enjoying the flavors of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy.
Po set down his cutlery, leaning to see past Tess through the window. ‘Apparently it wasn’t enough to put them off our scent.’
Out front, the freckled cop was standing alongside Pinky’s GMC talking into his radio. The black cop moved around the suburban, kicking the tires and checking in through each window. Whatever notification the freckled cop received he hailed his partner, and the black cop frowned, then stared directly back at them through the café’s window.
‘Me and my damn reputation preceding me again,’ Pinky muttered.
‘Let’s hope they don’t order you to open the trunk,’ Tess said, genuinely concerned.
‘You don’t need worry about that, Tess. They’re leaving.’
Po was correct. The cops walked away, probably to where they’d left their cruiser parked out of sight while they enjoyed their break.
‘Hopefully that’s the last we’ll see of them,’ Tess said.
‘Yeah,’ said Po, sounding as if he didn’t hold out any hope of that.
After they were fed and their caffeine quota sated, Po picked up the tab and added a generous tip. Jenny thanked him graciously, and as an afterthought she added a reminder. ‘What I said earlier about that private property? There are some unwelcoming people out there, you want nothing to do with any of them.’
‘We’ll make sure we don’t run into any of them,’ said Po, and the double meaning of his words weren’t lost on her.
Outside the café, Po lit a Marlboro. While he smoked, he scanned the street. Muller Falls was what was sometimes referred to as a wide space in the road. Homes and businesses were strung out on alternating plots of land along the main strip, probably for a distance of more than a quarter mile. Midway along a couple of cross streets had been added and several local businesses had sprung up to accommodate the townsfolk. There was also the ubiquitous lumber yard and also a steel fabricator’s workshop and also a RV site they’d passed on the drive in that
to all intents looked as if its customers were permanent. Their hotel was one of the few in town, and sat off the main road just beyond the hub. Yet Muller Falls was still large enough to have its own police department; even if the duo of cops amounted to the entire manpower, they must also serve the outlying region otherwise they’d go insane with boredom. A couple of hundred yards away, a dog barked, but it was the only hint of life beyond the café.
Po ground his cigarette under his sole, then picked up the crushed stump and flicked it into a trashcan. Tess and Pinky took it as a sign they were moving, and went to the GMC. Po was a half-minute behind them after they’d settled into their seats. Po had again taken over the driving duty. He slid into the driver’s seat. ‘The cops are waiting for us,’ he announced.
‘Yeah,’ said Pinky from the back, ‘I see them now.’
The hood of the marked MFPD cruiser nosed out of the entrance to the steel fabricator’s workshop.
‘Maybe it’s just their usual hang-out spot, where they sit and digest their dinners,’ said Tess, playing devil’s advocate, except she was in agreement with her male companions. The cops were positioned so that they could pull out behind them as they returned to their hotel.
‘What say I drive out of town the other way and leave them wondering what the hell became of us?’ asked Po.
‘Let’s not be assholes,’ Tess warned. ‘If you start pissing them off it’ll make them more determined to give us a hard time. Let’s just return to the hotel and give them no reason to pull us over.’
Po started the engine, and he turned the big suburban on the hardpack that served as the café’s parking lot. He pulled out on the main street and drove, a mile or two below the speed limit, for the hotel. The three of them ensured they didn’t stare as they passed the cops. They had progressed another fifty yards before the cruiser pulled out and followed.
‘What exactly have you hidden in the back?’ Tess asked.