Detour

by Lorena McCourtney

  We had a little more information to give to Deputy Hardishan about Ric Echol now, but he still hadn’t called. We also, wanting to talk to Hardishan first, hadn’t called Megalthorpe yet. I had the cans of peaches in a bag to return to Duke; Sheila had the ice chest in the back seat. Tonight, she was wearing a long black sweater over black leggings. No hat tonight, but a turquoise clip held her hair back, a silver concha belt cinched her waist, and a scarf decorated with brilliant zigzags of color swirled around her neck. Lots of pizzazz that made me feel even more dumpy than usual in my sweatpants and shirt. Though they were purple.

  At Duke’s trailer, we carried our supplies inside. Duke hadn’t missed the peaches, but he was glad to see them. Sheila gave him a hug and he hugged her back, but he was looking over her shoulder at the ice chest, and I had the feeling he was more interested in the steaks than in the fact that she was home. His right knee was giving him trouble tonight. He kept raising his leg and shaking it as if trying to loosen a stiffness in the knee.

  Sheila also noticed the knee lifting. “Old men and their knees,” she grumbled, but it was an affectionate grumble. I’d told her about Mac’s recently acquired knee trouble, though not how he’d acquired it. “Do you still have your pain pills?” she asked Duke.

  “No, I used them all up. You got some more with you?”

  “I’ll bring them over tomorrow.”

  She also had a surprise gift for him tonight. A new cell phone. “The number’s different than your old one, but it’s all activated and ready to go. All you have to do is start using it.”

  She confiscated his old phone, ceremoniously gave it a burial in the trash can, and took a few minutes showing him details on working the new one. He experimented by punching in random numbers until someone actually answered.

  I don’t know who it was, but Duke said, “This is Ghost Goat Space Adventures. Are you interested in reserving a space ride for Mars next year? Ten percent off for early booking.”

  I’ve often heard how gullible people are, but apparently this one wasn’t that gullible because the voice said, “Sure. Sounds great! And I can give you an awesome deal on buying a private island in the Bahamas.”

  Duke just grinned and punched the Off button.

  I shook my head and grinned back.

  Sheila used the broiler in Duke’s little oven to do the steaks. I made a salad and she did quick baked potatoes in the microwave. She’d brought chopped mangos for dessert. “Kathy talks about eating healthy, but she’s always feeding him those cookies that are enough to put a dinosaur on a sugar high,” she whispered to me as she put the mangos in the refrigerator until we were ready for them. I was sorry Mac would miss the dessert. He loves mangos.

  I offered the blessing, not something either Sheila or Duke ever did, I was sure, but they bowed their heads, and Duke said a hearty Amen before he picked up his fork. The steaks were tender and juicy, and Sheila entertained us with stories about quirky people she’d met on her visit to Vegas.

  “And then there was my daughter. Sometimes I wonder about her.” Eye roll. “Would you believe I found a paper clip in the vegetable soup she made?”

  I knew the daughter had three kids, a job, and a husband who apparently thought sitting around and drinking beer was an acceptable occupation. I was surprised the daughter had the time or energy to make soup, with or without paper clips.

  My next thought was that maybe Sheila should have been a little more helpful and made soup herself. Then she wanted to know all about the search of Kathy and Brian’s place. I tried to give her an abbreviated account, by now wanting to get back to Mac, but she kept asking questions. Did the officers in the search group make any comments about what they found? Did they say why they’d decided to search Brian and Kathy’s place? If Brian claimed it wasn’t his gun, how did he explain it being in their laundry room?

  “He said someone must have planted it there.”

  “Sounds like something he’d say,” Sheila scoffed. “Who did he try to make them think did it?”

  She was cutting the last of the meat off the bone for Duke when she asked the question. It sounded like a casual question; she was absorbed with the steak cutting. And yet at that moment a memory rose in my mind like the triceratops in the parking lot unexpectedly roaring to life.

  That day when Mac was going over the dinosaur park fence to retrieve the shovel with Brian’s fingerprints on it. Sheila doing something with the knob or lock on Brian and Kathy’s door when they weren’t home. Trying to get inside to look for evidence, I’d thought at the time.

  I looked at the key ring on a hook beside the holstered gun at Duke’s door. Keys galore, keys past and present. A key to Brian and Kathy’s door, which had once been Duke’s home, was surely among them.

  Sheila hadn’t been trying to get inside to look for evidence Brian had killed Renée. She was locking the door after she’d already been inside planting evidence.

  And if she had evidence to plant, the gun that killed Renée, that meant—

  My mind reeled as facts rearranged and fell into place in my mind. There were gaps. Why had she done it? How had she gotten Renée to go out to the old cabins? Where had she gotten a gun?

  That last question answered itself. Her garage sales. She bought or traded items as well as sold, an underground highway of items that might be legitimate, such as baby clothes or fishing gear. Or maybe less legitimate. Like guns.

  I looked at Sheila. She was looking back at me, and I was aware of a sudden graveyard silence. Her hands were still on the knife with which she was cutting the steak.

  “Awesome steak!” I said enthusiastically. “And cooked just right. Sheila, you’re a great cook!”

  “Sure is,” Duke agreed, and I realized he hadn’t a clue that something ominous had just happened between Sheila and me.

  Sheila, however, now that the moment was past, also acted as if nothing had happened. “I have more steaks in the freezer at home. We’ll have to do this again when Mac can be here,” she said warmly.

  My mind raced. Even if she was acting innocent, she knew that I now knew what she’d done. Somehow, without revealing her real identity, she’d tipped off the sheriff’s department that the gun—the murder weapon she’d put there—was in Brian and Kathy’s place, and she’d done it adroitly enough, probably while she was on the road to Vegas, that they were able to use the information to get a search warrant.

  Get away from her, my mind yelped at me. Now!

  “It’s such a nice evening with the moonlight and all, I think I’ll just walk home tonight,” I declared with manufactured brightness.

  And as soon as I got away from the trailer, I’d call—who?—911? Was telling 911 that I knew who’d planted a murder gun in Brian Morrison’s laundry room an emergency? After what had passed between us, it would definitely be an emergency if Sheila caught up with me on my moonlight hike.

  Heavy woods lined the road all the way between the dinosaur park and home, woods that might contain anything from stray muggers bedding down for the night to wandering ghost goats, but those woods could also provide a hiding place if I needed it. I slid out of the little dinette and stood up.

  But Duke said, “You don’t want to be out there walking in the dark. Used to be it was safe around here no matter the time of day or night. But I don’t think that’s so anymore.”

  “That’s true,” Sheila said. “Sit down and have some of the mango I brought for dessert. I’ll drive you home. We can take some mango to Mac too.”

  She sounded so calm, so totally nonthreatening. I had a momentary twinge of doubt. Had I read something into that brief moment that passed between us that wasn’t really there? Maybe. But I settled for that old adage, Better safe than sorry.

  “I’m really too full for mango.” I patted my stomach. “It was a wonderful dinner, Sheila, and there’s no need for you to interrupt your evening for me. I can walk.”

  “Nonsense. It’s much too fa
r for you to walk. I need to run back to the house and get some pain pills for Duke anyway. I don’t like to see his knee hurting him like it is tonight.”

  But if I got in the SUV with Sheila, she could take me . . . where? Anywhere. And do what with me? If she could use a gun on a former friend and plant that gun to throw blame on someone else—

  Do not get in the car with her.

  “Really, I’ll enjoy the walk. And I need the exercise after that big dinner.” I patted my stomach again.

  “Well, okay, if you really want to.”

  Her easy capitulation surprised me. It might emphasize that I was wrong about her. Or it might merely emphasize that she was a clever schemer with some other nefarious plan in mind. The earlier tap dance of dinosaur toes escalated to an ominous stomp. I hadn’t brought a purse, but I picked up my jacket, felt the reassuring weight of my cell phone in the pocket, and pretended nonchalance as I sauntered the four steps to the door. Once outside, I dropped the pretense and made a headlong dash for escape. I could run to Brian and Kathy for help. I’d gotten to the edge of the trees around Duke’s trailer when the door opened behind me.

  “Hey, wait up,” Sheila called. “You forgot the carton of mango chunks for Mac.” She was already headed down the ramp toward me.

  Another moment of doubt. Was I totally wrong about Sheila’s involvement in Renée’s murder and in planting the gun to make Brian look guilty? My notoriously busy imagination in overdrive? Here she was, remembering that Mac was home alone with a bad knee, thoughtfully sending him nice mango chunks, and I was acting as if the carton she was holding out to me might hold bat tongues in arsenic.

  The plastic carton was in her left hand. I warily reached out and took it. And then, before I could even say thanks, she pulled her right hand out from behind her.

  A holster. Not empty.

  “Where’d you get that?” I asked. As if that were relevant at the moment. What was relevant was that it took her about two seconds to yank the gun out of the holster—Quick Draw Sheila—and point it at me. She let the holster fall to the ground.

  “Duke keeps his gun right by the door, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. I told him I heard something outside and better check since you were out here all alone.”

  I decided all I could do was play dumb. Dumb was what I felt anyway. I’d earlier had some minor suspicions about Sheila, but I’d gotten hung up on suspicions about both Brian and Ric Echol. Why hadn’t this great epiphany about Sheila hit me earlier? Before I was looking down the barrel of a gun.

  “I appreciate your concern.” I clutched the carton of mango chunks. “Do you hear anything now?”

  She cocked her head to listen. Or pretended to. “No, I don’t think so.”

  I didn’t hear anything either. Just a big silence of me and Sheila alone out here in the night. A gun doesn’t make any noise until it’s actually shot, but my ears rang with projection of a lethal boom. In spite of nervous sweat puddling in my armpits, I held to my pretense that this was a normal, friendly situation.

  “Thanks again for a lovely dinner.” I lifted the plastic carton. “And the mango for Mac. Well, I’d better get started. Perhaps we’ll see you in church tomorrow.”

  “I’ll walk a ways with you. There are all kinds of unexpected dangers in the night, you know. Ghost goats. Cougars. Dinosaurs. The gun may come in handy.”

  Yeah, right. But I knew I was looking straight at the biggest danger in this night. Had she smiled at Renée the same way she was smiling at me now? “That’s very considerate of you, but there’s no need for you to—”

  Sheila’s pretended concern for me took an impatient nosedive. “C’mon, get walking. Straight ahead to the gate.” She motioned with the gun.

  Why go to the gate? It was padlocked shut, and she didn’t have a key—

  But, of course, she did have a key. At the gate, under the dim glow of the lone yard light in the parking lot, she opened her left hand and there, like some magician’s trick, was Duke’s loaded key ring. I had a moment’s hope. It would take two hands to get the padlock open. She’d have to set the gun down—

  No, she didn’t. With alarming dexterity, she managed to keep the gun pointed at me with her right hand, maneuver the padlock up tight against one of the gate posts with her hip, and then ram the key into the lock. The padlock opened, and she yanked the chain free with her left hand. Another yank on the gate and it swung with an open sesame smoothness.

  I looked around for a knight in shining armor, but all I saw was the gloomy triceratops with a toe missing.

  I made another pretense at not understanding what was going on. I wrapped my arms around myself. “Brrr. It’s really chilly out here. Don’t you want to go back and get a jacket?” And give me time to do a disappearing act.

  “I’m fine.”

  “There’s a lot of debris from the windstorm on the trail. I don’t think it’s a good time for a walk in the park.”

  “Walk,” she said.

  “You look as if you know how to use a gun,” I said in the most conversational tone I could manage. “That’s very reassuring, out here among the ghost goats and cougars and all. Though I’m not sure how effective bullets would be on ghost goats.”

  Did my laugh sound as phony to her as it did to me? Apparently it did, because what she said was, “Cut the small talk, Ivy. And stop dragging your feet. Move.”

  She closed the gate behind us, but she left the key ring dangling from the padlock. Because she didn’t want to carry it, I supposed. She needed both hands for other things.

  We started up the pathway. Moonlight and the yard light blotched the trail with light and shadows. As I’d pointed out, the trail was still littered with debris from the windstorm. Broken branches, twigs, vines, dead leaves. The dinosaurs looked different in the moonlight, less like deteriorating statues and more like predatory monsters poised for attack.

  “You had this all planned when you invited us to dinner?” I asked. The condemned prisoner gets a last meal. And it was, I had to admit, a great meal.

  “Of course not. I had no idea until the middle of dinner, when you were looking at Duke’s keys, that you’d figured it out.” She stepped over a fallen branch. “It’s kind of like shopping. Sometimes you see something you hadn’t planned to buy but suddenly you realize you just have to have it. Like I now have to do this.”

  She was comparing killing me—because that’s what she had in mind, no doubt about it—with shopping? I stumbled over branch, almost losing the carton of mango chunks in my hand. Lord, I’d really like a chance to give the mango to Mac. He’s very fond of it.

  “You know, this isn’t going to work,” I said when I paused for breath on a steeper section of trail. “You can’t just shoot me in cold blood and hope no one ever finds my body out here.”

  “Oh, I don’t think—” She broke off and paused behind me on the pathway. “Although you could be right about the body being found. I figured it would take a lot longer than it did for someone to find Renée’s body out there in the burned cabin.”

  “You’ll never get away with it.”

  “Oh, I think I will. I’m getting away with it on Renée, and this will be even easier,” she pointed out. She looked over at the tyrannosaurus rex nearby and tilted her head as she sketched a scenario. “Such a tragic accident. We’d decided on this walk in the moonlight and then I mistook you for a predatory animal. A cougar has been seen around here, you know. Or perhaps I thought you were a dangerous prowler sneaking around out here, maybe the same one who killed Renée. I’ll have to decide which will work best.”

  She’d come up with both those ideas within the few minutes between when we were sitting at the table and now? A quick thinker. A deadly thinker. Could she make either of them work?

  I hastily presented the first argument that came to mind. “You could be in for years of legal complications, maybe even conviction, for killing an unarmed LOL.”

  That stopped
her for a moment. “LOL?” she repeated

  “You know. Little Old Lady.”

  “A mistake is a mistake.” I heard a mental shrug in the statement. “I’ll get a good lawyer.”

  I took a different approach. “If you kill me, won’t that mess up your plan to frame Brian by planting the gun in his laundry room? Maybe they’ll figure out you planted it there because you were the one who killed Renée.”

  She didn’t bother to deny she’d killed Renée or that she’d planted the gun. Which I knew did not bode well for the length of my future earthly existence.

  “This won’t change anything,” she said confidently. “They’re totally unrelated incidents. I’m just relieved that those dumb cops actually found the gun in Brian’s place. I was afraid they might be too incompetent to do even that.”

  I didn’t think the local deputies were either dumb or incompetent. But, unless they showed up in the next few minutes, I did think I could be dead before they got everything squared away.

  “You blew up Brian’s Porsche too?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know how to blow up anything. He did that himself.”

  I didn’t think so, but arguing with Sheila wasn’t really getting me anywhere. I had to do something.

  Lord, help me think!

  A weapon. I needed a weapon, something I could use to incapacitate her long enough for escape. A fallen branch? She’d shoot me before I could lift it high enough to do any good. A rock, something bigger than the one with the fingerprints that we’d sent Megalthorpe? I surreptitiously looked around. Lots of rocks, but all I could see were either too small to be effective or so big I’d need Incredible Hulk muscles to lift them.

  Well, in an emergency, you make do with what you have.

  Chapter 21

  IVY

  I bent over, pretending to struggle to move another branch out of the way. I waited until Sheila was just a step behind me in the moonlight. Then I straightened, did a muscle blast with every cell in this LOL body, and swung the carton of mango chunks. Wham! I got her in the nose. The lid flew off and Sheila screeched. Mango chunks and juice splattered her face and hair, filled her nose, dribbled into her eyes, ran down her cheeks. I wanted to run, but I determinedly stepped in closer and used both hands to mango-rub everywhere I could reach. Slippery, juicy, goopy mango! Mash, squish, squash, rub-a-dub-dub! Nose, eyebrows, ears.