"He was a careful man with his money," I said, but knowing how Wade drank, I couldn't blame Erik for not wanting to share. "But didn't he give whiskey to Lucky?"
"He used to," Wade said, "but the vet put a stop to it. She told him that Lucky was going to die from cirrhosis of the liver if he didn't stop. And Erik thought the world of that dog."
I was glad to hear that Erik had had some sense after all. Though Lucky would have been better off with the whiskey than the antifreeze. "Now you leave your boat out there at the dock so anybody could come use it if they wanted to."
"I suppose so. Do you think somebody did?"
"I don't know. Do you mind if I have look at it?"
"Not at all. You want me to come with you?"
"No, you enjoy your football game. I've messed up enough of your day."
I knew darned well he was going to be watching me through the window instead of the game, but I wanted to look around on my own.
Wade's boat wasn't much of a much. It had a motor, and enough room in it for two or three people. Maybe more, if one of them was dead. I squatted on the dock, looking down into the boat. No blood, but there was some light-colored hair or fur caught on the bench. Wade's hair was brown, but Erik's had been dirty blond and Lucky's brown and white.
I had some evidence bags in my pocket, so I put the hair into one of them. I thought about dusting for prints, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. Wade's boat was made of wood, not the best surface for prints, and everybody knows to wear gloves these days.
I gave the boat another look, this time getting in and looking under things, but didn't find anything more incriminating than a package of fish hooks, so I went back to my car. Wade was trying to hide behind a curtain, so I pretended not to see him.
I radioed Mark, getting him as he was driving to the next person on his circuit of the lake. I told him I'd start on the other direction, and we'd meet in the middle.
Neither of us got anything. Walters Lake isn't that big or that scenic, and not many people live right on the water. Wade's place was the closest, and Erik's own house the next after that. Nobody saw or heard anything.
There was another dock on the other side, but the only boat there was leaky and I don't think even a murderer would take a chance on taking it out at night.
"So what have we got?" Mark asked when we met.
It seemed right obvious to me, but Mark likes to have things spelled out. "It looks like somebody brought the bodies out here, arranged them in Erik's boat, used Wade's boat to tow Erik's boat out to the middle of the lake, set it on fire, then left Wade's boat where he found it."
"Had to be a local to know where the boat was, and that Wade wouldn't be home."
"I don't think Erik had many enemies from out of town. Or Lucky either." I looked at him sidewise to see if he'd noticed he was being made fun of. He hadn't. "But I want to talk to Dr. Connelly before I do anything else. Why don't you head back to the station, and I'll call and see if he's finished with Erik's autopsy." I found another pay phone, reminding myself to ask the city council for a couple of cellular phones in the next year's budget.
I guess he wasn't done yet, because it took a while for him to answer the phone, and when he did, he said, "Dr. Connelly," in a tone of voice that meant that I had interrupted him.
I decided not to ask about the autopsy right off. "Dr. Connelly, this is Junior. I've got a sample of hair or fur I found in Wade Spivey's boat. Can you tell me if it matches either Erik or his dog?"
This must have interested him, because he sounded less cranky when he spoke again. "I'm not sure. I can tell if it's human or canine, and if it's human, I can tell you if it matches Husey. But I don't know if I can get a positive identification on a dog. I'd have to do some research."
"Should I run the sample up to you?" Byerly didn't have its own coroner. Connelly served the whole county, and he was a good thirty minutes away.
"It's getting late. Why don't you call the vet in town. He can tell you if it's dog or not, and maybe he knows if you can ID canine hair."
"I'll do that." Now to butter him up. "Do you think you'll have the autopsy on Husey done by the first part of the week?"
"First part of the week?" he said, sounding pleased with himself. "I should have preliminary results this evening."
I whistled in appreciation, some of it sincere. "That's fast work." If I had asked him to have it done that night, he'd have fussed. "Will you call the station when you're done?"
"Of course."
I hung up the phone, grinning a little. And Mama said I didn't have feelings. Of course, I had to admit, I hadn't treated Dr. Connelly like that to make him feel better so much as to get what I wanted.
I was out of quarters, so I drove on over to the veterinarian's place. Josie Gilpin, who insisted everybody call her Dr. Josie, was an older woman with no family who spent most of her weekends tending to animals who were too sick to go home. I didn't think she'd mind a little company and from her smile when she opened her door, I was right.
"What can I do for you, Junior? You didn't find another dog hit by a car, did you?"
"Not this time. I was wondering if you could take a look at a sample of hair I've got and tell me what it came from."
"I can try. Come on in." She led me through a room where the floor was strewn with dog toys and the furniture covered with dogs. They were well-trained and didn't even bark as we walked through and down a hall to where Dr. Josie had a lab set up, complete with microscope, test tubes, and such.
"What animal do you think it came from?" she asked.
"Either human or dog," I said, handing her the evidence bag. "I want to see if it came from Erik Husey or his dog Lucky."
"I heard about them two," she said, which didn't surprise me. News travels fast in Byerly. "Erik should have had more sense, risking Lucky's life like that."
Dr. Josie is partial to animals, and I guess that's why she lives alone. She used tweezers to pull part of the fur out and put it on a slide. Then she turned on the microscope, put in the slide, and peered at it.
"Lucky had been operated on recently," I said. "Was that your work?"
"Sure was. Erik brought Lucky in a few weeks ago, said he was acting puny, not eating."
"Was it from the drinking?"
"Did you know about that? You know, Junior, there are laws about mistreating animals."
I held up both hands in surrender. "I only heard about it this morning, or I'd have said something to him. Anyway, I hear you did a good job of laying down the law yourself."
"You bet I did. But it wasn't the whiskey that made Lucky sick. He had a blockage in his intestines. I had to operate."
"Is that how you found out about the drinking, when you had him cut open?"
She was still peering, so I couldn't see her grin, but I could tell that she was. "As a matter of fact, I didn't see the first sign of it. It's just that I had heard that Erik was giving that dog whiskey, and knew if I scared him, he'd stop."
For an animal doctor, she was pretty smart about people. Then I said, "I'm surprised Erik paid for an operation like that, him being so close with his money."
"He didn't even argue with me. Paid half up front, and the rest in payments. He may have been cheap, but not when it came to Lucky." She pulled the slide out of the microscope. "Well, it's not dog, cat, horse, or squirrel."
"Human?"
Dr. Josie shrugged, no longer caring, and handed me the evidence bag. "Probably."
"I appreciate your help." She showed me out past the dogs, and I went to the station to see if Dr. Connelly had called.
He had, and what he'd told Mark caught me by surprise. Erik really had died in the fire. Only thing was, he had been hit in the head beforehand, hard enough to knock him out. Dr. Connelly said that he might not have lived even without the fire.
"What do you think?" Mark said after he made his report, letting me draw any conclusions there were to be drawn.
"I might be able to convince
myself that Erik got so drunk that he fell and hit himself on an oar or something. The fire could have wiped out any trace of that. But there's two things that bother me."
"What two things?"
"One, Lucky already being dead. And two, the hair I found in Wade's boat."
"So how do you make it out?"
I sighed, wishing he could put one and one together without my help. "Somebody killed him."
He nodded like I had confirmed something rather than giving him the whole idea. "Who do you think it was?"
"We'll start with the obvious suspects. Rinda, of course." The spouse is always the first one you look at. "She said they had a fight Saturday night."
"Would she have told you that if she killed him?"
"Maybe she thought the neighbors heard yelling. And I want to look at those aunts of his. They were fussing about something they wanted and how Rinda wasn't going to let them have it. Maybe it's valuable. And I guess I have to consider Wade Spivey. It wouldn't be the first time that the killer was the one to 'find' a body."
The only other person I could think of was Dr. Josie, and I didn't think even she'd burn a man alive for giving whiskey to a dog. And she'd never have hurt Lucky.
I looked at the clock. "It's too late to start anything now. I'll see you tomorrow." Mark frequently slept at the station, one ear listening for the phone. I did it too, when I had to, but preferred my own apartment.
I guess Mama would have been put out if she had found out how I slept when someone I knew had been murdered, but I slept like a baby. Not even a bad dream.
Dr. Connelly had told Mark he had a couple of early appointments, and I should wait until eleven or so before calling. So I spent the morning making phone calls.
First I called Erik's insurance agent. There's only two agents in town, and I guessed the right one the first time. He was the cheaper of the two, and of course, Erik's life insurance had been the cheapest available. There was just enough money to bury Erik if Rinda didn't mind a pine box.
Then I called Mary Maude Foy to find out just what it was that Rinda was keeping from her and Mavis. I made it sound like I was seriously investigating their claim, and she was mad enough at Rinda to believe it. The thing was, it turned out to be nothing more than a double bed, a dresser, and a chest of drawers. Mary Maude and Mavis were strange, but I didn't think they'd kill their own nephew for a bedroom set. I did make a note to ask Rinda if that's all they were asking for, and to call Maggie Burnette, a dealer at the local flea market who could tell me if the pieces were worth anything.
Then I headed for Dr. Connelly's with the sample of hair. Other than the drive, the visit didn't take long. Dr. Josie had already told me that it wasn't Lucky's fur; it turned out that it wasn't Erik's hair either. Which I should have known, since Erik and the dog had been in Erik's boat, not Wade's. Dr. Connelly showed me something that told me who it was in that boat.
Now I knew who, but I spent the drive back to Byerly trying to figure out why. Mama had said that I didn't have any feelings, but the person who killed Erik must have had feelings, strong ones. To burn a man to death would take an awful lot of feeling. Not to mention killing his dog. It took me most of the drive to figure out just why the killer had hated Erik that much.
I radioed Mark as I got into Byerly so he could make a phone call for me, and had just got out to the circle of houses around the lake when he called me with the answer I needed. Then I told him to come out there and meet me, in case there was trouble.
There was only one car in the driveway at Rinda's house this time, and she answered the door herself. "Hey. Junior," she said. "What can I do for you?"
"I wanted to let you know that the doctor's finished Erik's autopsy," I said. "He'll be able to release the body today."
"I'll be glad to get the funeral taken care of."
"I know you will be. One thing I wanted to ask you. How did you find out about the vet bill?"
Her face turned white as a sheet, much whiter than her hair. "The vet bill?"
Her reaction was enough for me. "Rinda, I have to arrest you for the murder of Erik Husey. Before I go any further, let me read you your rights." I did so, put the cuffs on her, and walked her out to my squad car just as Mark showed up to escort us to the station.
"She killed him over a vet bill?" Mama asked that night over dinner. We don't eat together every night, but I knew Daddy would want to hear the whole story. Mama, too, even if she wouldn't admit it.
I said, "It wasn't just the money. Rinda said she had always known that Erik was cheap, and she accepted that. So when her daddy was dying and he said they couldn't afford for her to fly to Tennessee, she didn't argue. You know she only missed being able to say goodbye to him by an hour—she'd have made it if she had taken a plane. Then when she got back, she found the last vet bill, and it showed how much Erik had paid for Lucky's operation."
"So she killed the dog to keep him from barking while she killed Erik for revenge," Daddy said.
"Nope. Rinda said she never intended to kill Erik, and I believe her. She just wanted to kill Lucky. She left a bowl of antifreeze out for him that morning. Only he didn't die right away like she thought he would. Dr. Josie says that it takes twelve to twenty-four hours for a dog to succumb to antifreeze poisoning. Rinda watched that dog all day long, waiting for him to die."
Mama shivered a little, and I didn't blame her.
I went on. "The later it got, the more desperate Rinda got, so she finally gave him some more and that did it. She was meaning to put the bowl away before Erik got home, but he left work early. When he found Lucky dead next to the bowl, he knew Rinda had done it on purpose."
"So he came after her and she was only defending herself," Daddy said.
"Yes and no. He was carrying on pretty bad, and said he was going to kill her. When he took a swing at her, she picked up a skillet and hit him."
"Cast iron?" Mama asked.
I nodded.
"So she thought he was dead when she burned him," Mama said.
"No, she knew he was still breathing. She wanted him dead."
Daddy said, "Did she think he'd come after her again when he woke up?"
"I asked her that, but she said she wasn't a bit scared. She was mad. Mad about not being able to say goodbye to her daddy, and mad about him spending money on a dog, and maddest of all about him wanting to murder her over that dog. She was determined to kill him. Now she thought that if she burned him, we wouldn't be able to tell he'd been hit in the head. She was going to put him in the car and run it off the road, but she wasn't sure it would catch fire. Besides, she said, it was the only car they had. The boat she didn't care about, so she put Erik and Lucky in a wheelbarrow and pushed them over to the lake. She knew Wade would be out drinking, so she borrowed his boat to tow with. She wasn't sure how she caught her hair on the boat." I had known it was hers as soon as Dr. Connelly told me the sample was bleached blonde. "She used whiskey to start the fire, actually stayed and watched. Said she had to make sure he didn't wake up." It made me right sick to my stomach to think about it. "And you said I don't have any feelings."
"I didn't mean that, Junior, and you know it," Mama said. "I just don't want you to forget that it's people you're working with, not cases."
I nodded. She might have a point.
"What happens now?" Mama asked.
"I think Rinda will plead guilty, but even if she doesn't, it should be open and shut," I said.
"What about Erik's funeral?"
"His aunts are going to take care of it. Spending their own money to do it, too, because Rinda won't let them have the insurance money. Maybe they aren't so bad after all. And they'll get that bedroom set."
"All over but the paperwork," Daddy said. "Nice job, Junior."
"One other thing," Mama said. "You said Rinda didn't resist arrest. So how did you get that dirt on your uniform?"
I looked down at the dark patches on my knees. "Well, Dr. Connelly called and said the funeral home had co
me after Erik, but he didn't know what to do with Lucky. Rinda said we could throw him on the trash heap for all she cared, but I just couldn't see it. So I took him over to Dr. Josie's place and buried him there. She's got a little cemetery for dogs and cats."
Darned if Mama didn't tear up. "That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard. And I said you didn't have any feelings."
With her crying, I knew I had feelings all right, but what I felt most was embarrassed.
AN UNMENTIONABLE CRIME
This story features Sue, who is married to Laura Fleming’s cousin Linwood.
If Sue had been anywhere else, talking to anybody else, she'd have said, "Now don't get your panties in a bunch," but she knew Ida would fire her on the spot if she dared say such a thing to Annabelle Lamar while working at Petticoat Junction. Especially when it was her salmon pink panties that Miz Lamar was mad about.
Miz Lamar's nostrils were flaring, her eyes were flashing, and she was doing all the other things folks do when they're too highfalutin to cuss.
"Were there or were there not panties sent with my ensemble?" she asked.
Sue shrugged, and looked pointedly at Ida. She was the manager—let her take the heat.
"Well..." Sue could see that Ida wanted to blame the supplier, but Miz Phelps, Tori Dupont, and Tori's daughter Marie had been watching when she opened the box, and they'd seen her hang up the panties along with the bra, camisole, and garter belt. Lee Fredericks had come in later, but he'd seen the complete set, too. So, naturally, Ida got out of it by passing the buck to the only other person around.
"Sue," she said sternly, "I told you to keep an eye on things while I was helping Miz Phelps. What happened to Miz Lamar's undergarments?"
Ida had said no such thing, but Sue wasn't willing to lose her job over saying so. "I don't know, Ida. I was helping Tori and Marie, like you said to."
"She helped me, too," Lee said, which was nice of him.
Unfortunately, Miz Lamar wasn't so nice. "Are you saying that anybody off the street could have taken my panties?"
Crooked as a Dog's Hind Leg Page 13