The Claudia Hershey Mysteries - Box Set: Three Claudia Hershey Mysteries

by Laura Belgrave

  “What?”

  “Did you know this is a camphor tree?” His voice caught, as if he were shivering. “It’s just like the one at the No-Name Pond. Not as big, but the branches are sturdy. You can find them almost anywhere in the state.” His voice hitched again. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

  “It’s all right, Booey,” she said gently. “I’m going to get you down.”

  Claudia could barely see him from her position, but she judged him to be about twelve, maybe fifteen feet up. Theoretically, he could drop to the top of her car and they might be able to spin away before the dogs could react. She dismissed the idea as too risky before it was entirely formed. She dismissed her next idea, too—using herself as a lure. Stepping out of the car would be suicidal for both of them.

  That left her gun. If she had to, she could shoot the dogs—or some of them. It was a last resort for reasons both philosophical and practical. Claudia was hardly an animal activist, but clearly the animals were doing what either came naturally or by training. They didn’t deserve to die for that. Besides, her .38 Colt Special was at home. The silver-plated .22 in her purse might take down a few of them, but even with a true aim she wouldn’t stop them all. Indeed, the effort might bring on a far more dangerous opponent: Raynor.

  Claudia eyed the chicken breast and rice on the floor. She fantasized flinging the chicken out the window and watching the dogs tear each other apart in a competition for the choice meat while Booey scrambled down and got into the car . . .

  Right. One lousy piece of chicken. Probably one bite for a single dog. Mere perfume for the rest. She either needed seven chickens or—

  “Booey,” she said into the phone, “where are your car keys?”

  “In my pocket.”

  “Good. Is your car locked?”

  “No.”

  “Good. How fast can you get down that tree if you have to? Don’t answer until you think it through.” She waited.

  “Fast?” he said.

  “You don’t sound sure. I need you to be sure.”

  “I . . . maybe ten seconds? Fifteen?”

  Claudia paused, automatically doubling his estimate, then doubling that, thinking about the timing, calculating the odds. It could work. She told Booey what to do, what she would be doing. When she was sure he understood, she closed her eyes for a minute and ran the scenario through her mind one last time. Finally, she took her .22 from her purse, set it close beside her, groped in her purse again, this time for a pocketknife, and then began unbuttoning her shirt.

  * * *

  The summer before Robin was conceived, Claudia and Brian found cheap flights to Mexico. Claudia’s interest was in the culture—the Mayan ruins, the Folkloric Ballet, the silver mines. Brian wanted to see a bullfight. She didn’t want to go, but neither did she want to duel over their itinerary. So they went. While they settled into their seats, Brian nattered about the long history of the fights and flung terms at her that he pulled from a brochure. Claudia barely listened. All she could hear was the bloodlust of the crowd, thousands of people waiting in eager anticipation for the fights to begin. After the first, watching the bull taunted into savagery, watching the matador make the kill, she got up and left. She found a concession stand and drank bad coffee until the fights were finished. Weeks later, when Brian suggested they plan a trip to Spain for the running of the bulls, she told him no with such swiftness that he never brought it up again.

  The images swam to Claudia’s mind as she rolled down her window just far enough to toss a chunk of chicken at the dogs. It took them a few seconds to react and when they did, they seemed more confused than anything else. Then a squat brown dog—a pit bull, she guessed—bulled its nose into the ground. He snatched the trophy and downed it in a gulp. By then the other dogs understood. They pushed at him, darting in and out, snapping at him. Claudia threw another piece, just off to the side. The dogs dove at it, as if they’d never eaten. It was gone in an instant; she didn’t see which one got it. Agitated, they pushed against each other and snuffled at the ground, some of them turning in furious circles.

  Claudia backed the car up slowly. This time, she threw two pieces at once, one of the pieces wrapped in a piece of her shirt, which she’d torn and thoroughly rubbed with the chicken. Midway in flight, the piece popped out of the fabric. Neither pieces of meat landed as far from the tree as she hoped, but the dogs moved swiftly to claim them, and they fell on the cloth as if it were just as edible. And now they understood. They looked toward the car and stared at its occupant. Claudia felt her heart hammer. They were deciding something, she was sure of it. She barely had time to throw out another shirt-wrapped piece of chicken before they lunged. She flinched, and accelerated backwards, almost dropping the last piece in her hand before she could throw it out, too. It stalled them just long enough for her to drape the rest of the shirt from the window and roll it up with shaking hands, clamping it to the frame. She couldn’t hear their snarls, but she felt the car rock when they threw themselves against it. She backed up with reckless speed, her hands slick from the chicken. The dogs tore at the shirt, battering the car and snapping at each other. Claudia glanced in the rearview mirror. If she didn’t brake now, she would ram Raynor’s trailer.

  “Now, Booey! Go!” she shouted at her cell phone. She counted to ten, her eyes on the dogs, then cracked the window long enough for them to wrest the shirt entirely free. For a second, they forgot her. They ripped and pulled on the shirt in a frenzy, their bodies quaking with rage. Claudia seized precious seconds to chuck a fistful of rice out the window. It cascaded onto some of the dogs, turning them into targets for the others. She threw another, and then another, until she had none left. She caught her breath and looked over the dashboard, squinting into the path cut by her headlights. She looked for Booey, couldn’t spot him, glanced down at the dogs. They were beginning to break up, their ears perked. She reached for her .22 . . . and stopped. She heard what the dogs heard—Booey’s car starting up.

  Claudia sent up a silent prayer of thanks, shifted into drive, and got the hell out of there.

  * * *

  She’d told him to meet her in the parking lot of the Git-Go, a small convenience store that was convenient only until nine o’clock at night. It was nine-thirty now, and the parking lot was vacant except for Booey’s VW. He sat on the ground, leaning against the car until he saw her headlights. Then he rose unsteadily to his feet.

  Claudia almost didn’t care if he saw her in her bra or not, but she told him to look away as she got out of her car. She flicked sticky rice from her left arm and retrieved her parka from the trunk. She felt queasy and took a few deep breaths. She wondered how he was doing, and asked.

  “Well, I didn’t wet my pants,” he said shakily. “That’s something.”

  It caught her off guard. She threw back her head and laughed. At that moment, she liked him more than she ever had and more than she probably would again.

  He laughed uncertainly with her, then both fell into silence for a minute.

  “How are the bug bites?” she finally said.

  “Bad. But I’ll live.”

  “Too bad tree climbing isn’t an Olympic event. I don’t know how fast you went up it, but it didn’t take you long to come down. I gather you didn’t break any bones in the process?”

  He shook his head. “I knocked my left ankle hard somewhere along the line—I’m not even sure if it was going up or coming down—but it’s all right. I’m all right. Other than being stupid.”

  Claudia nodded. “What’s the story, Booey? What were you doing out there?”

  He told her then, too rattled to tell it neatly, but the gist of it was that somewhere on Raynor’s property he’d lost his Palm Pilot and he’d gone back to get it. He didn’t find it. Didn’t have time before the dogs came out from beneath the trailer.

  “It had my whole contact list in it,” he said, as if that explained everything. “I probably have three hundred names and addresses. The minute I meet someone I
add them to it . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Give me a minute, Booey,” Claudia said. She went back to her car and rooted through her purse for cigarettes. She lit up and came back. Booey had dropped back to the ground again. She joined him there.

  “Why’d you go alone?” she asked. “You knew what kind of man Raynor is. You knew about the dogs.”

  Booey played with a shoelace. “I thought I could handle it. And I thought—I’ve read this—that if you don’t show fear to dogs, they’ll leave you alone. Then they didn’t even seem to be around. I must’ve sat in my car for a good five minutes, just to see. So I knocked on Raynor’s door. When he didn’t answer, I headed back for my car. I wasn’t far from it when the dogs came out.”

  Claudia pulled on her cigarette, then asked, “What I don’t understand is why you parked so far from the trailer. You could’ve pulled right up to the door, or just about.”

  “I . . . to show I wasn’t afraid.” He looked at Claudia. “You wouldn’t be. Uncle Mac wouldn’t be.”

  “Booey,” she said gently, “we both carry guns. We both have years of experience and even then, we—”

  “No!”

  He spoke so suddenly, so passionately, that Claudia almost dropped her cigarette.

  “It’s not that simple!” He grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked on it, hard. “I . . . do you know what it’s like to have hair like, like . . . this? To have a name like mine? It defines you, it defines how people see you. They don’t care whether you’re smart. They don’t care if you’re friendly. They only care about the package. Look at my package, Lieutenant! Look at it!” He began to sob. “They see a nerd, a goofball, a . . . a clown. And they’re right. They’re . . .”

  Claudia stared at him, speechless. With Robin, she’d know what to do. She’d grab her, hold her, murmur reassurances, let her cry it out. But this . . . man-child. She was too tired, too rattled to ferret out a response—the right response, if there was one—in the middle of a convenience store parking lot. She crushed out the cigarette with her shoe and waited for him to come around, thinking.

  “Done?” she asked.

  He nodded miserably, too embarrassed to look at her.

  “All right, here’s what’s going to happen, Booey. Tomorrow, I don’t want you in the station. In—”

  “I understand,” he mumbled to the ground. “I’ll type up a—what? Letter of resignation. Yeah. I can drop it off or put it in the mail it or—”

  “Shut up, Booey.” Claudia slapped at a mosquito. “I didn’t say I don’t want you in the station forever. I said I don’t want you there tomorrow. You need a break. We need a break. You can work on your computer at home. Think things through. ”

  Booey sat upright. “You’re not throwing me out?”

  “Not yet. Pull another bonehead stunt like tonight and I will. That’s a sure bet.” She lowered her head, forcing eye contact. “I don’t give a damn about your fear, or about your red hair or your stupid name. It is what it is. You are what you are. Get over it.” She paused, then added, “I’ve heard every tall joke in the book and I’ve lived with a lot of people calling me Claude because they think they’re so clever. Guess what? I’m never going to be shorter and my name isn’t going to change.”

  It began to sprinkle, rain so light and feathery that it was little more than a mist. But that could change in a heartbeat and Claudia pushed herself off the ground. “Long night, Booey,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

  He stood quickly. “Thank you. I—”

  Claudia waved her hand, cutting him off.

  “What should I tell my uncle? He’ll ask why I’m not going in tomorrow.”

  “Tell him whatever you think is appropriate for the circumstances,” she said tiredly. “You’re on your own with that.” She turned to go, telling him she’d touch base in the morning. She was almost to her car when he called her back.

  “I forgot something,” he said. He thumped the side of his head with a hand. “I don’t know if this is important, but just after you got the dogs to follow your car, I saw a light wobbling from the direction of Wanda Farr’s trailer. It looked like a flashlight. I put it out of my mind because I had to think about getting down the tree.”

  Claudia looked at him. She smiled slowly. “Interesting. Score yourself a brownie point.”

  “Think it was Raynor?”

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Booey. Put some lotion on those bug bites.”

  She got in her car and started up the engine. Rain was beginning to dance off the windshield. She turned on the wipers, wondering if the cell phone had enough charge left to call Dennis.

  Chapter 11

  More sleep would have been nice. Claudia stifled a yawn and leaned against a desk in the multipurpose room. She studied the six officers assembled in front of her, all of them freshly shaved and sipping coffee, hooting over a joke one of them got off the Internet the night before. Except for Moody and Carella, she didn’t know them well. Most were young, using Indian Run as a stepping stone to larger departments. Made sense.

  She rapped on the edge of her desk to get their attention. She hated leading roll call, but had no choice. Chief Suggs was out again—or maybe just not in yet—and Sergeant Peters was still cashing in on vacation time.

  “All right,” she said, “let’s get started.” She called off the roll and ran down a summary of activity from the previous shift, which she’d barely had time to review herself. Not much to talk about: no arrests, no significant complaints. Keeping the peace in Indian Run hadn’t taken any muscle.

  “Hey, Lieutenant,” said an officer, “you hear about the ex-nun who just signed up with some little police department north of Orlando? Sixty years old—the nun, not the town.”

  “Hurley, what’d you drink last night to bring on hallucinations like that, man?” This from a lean officer whose hair was still damp from a morning shower. “Whatever it was, I want some.”

  “I swear,” Hurley said. “I read it in the paper. Town’s got like two thousand people. Bet someone’s already writing a screenplay based on it.”

  Claudia gave the officers a minute to play out the nun thing, then rapped on the desk again. “All right, all right. Anybody have anything else?”

  Moody gave a half wave. “In the good news department, we got a call just before roll call. Gorman’s El Dorado surfaced in Daytona. Two guys on a drunk wrapped it around a stop sign after they took down a couple mailboxes in a residential area. Naturally, they claim they didn’t boost it. Said they bought it from another guy, thought it was legit. Daytona’s processing it now.”

  “Gorman will be pleased,” said Claudia.

  “I doubt it. Daytona says the car’s banged up good, but not totaled. Gorman’s going to be looking at a lot of body work. He’ll probably take a loss when he sells it.”

  “Okay. Well, let him know what’s going on so he can get in touch with his insurance people. Are the bad guys anyone we know?”

  “Nope. Daytona’s boys. Daytona’s headaches.”

  “Good. Finish up the details, Mitch. You know the drill.”

  “Got it.”

  “Anything else?” Claudia asked the group.

  An officer with a cherubic face told her he had a court appearance on a disputed traffic stop and would have to bail from the shift at noon. Another groused about the new computers. Carella asked about the chief; Claudia had no answer. Then Hurley started with the nun again.

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “Let’s give the nun a rest, all right?” She waited for the officers to settle back down, then gave them a thumbnail of the Farr investigation. “Moody and Carella are working with me on this, but I need all of you to keep your ears open. You’re on the streets. You talk to a lot of people. See what they’re saying, what they’re speculating. You never know what might come out. But keep everything low key. We don’t even know for sure that we have a murder yet. All we do know for sure is we don’t have a crazed killer on our hands and we don’t
need anyone thinking we do.”

  A few of the officers had questions. With a patience she didn’t feel, she took them in order, then concluded the briefing. The officers began to file out. Claudia watched them leave. She wondered if the story about the nun was true.

  * * *

  “Lieutenant?”

  Claudia looked up from the paperwork on her desk. She’d been wrestling with administrative forms for an hour, debating whether she could shuffle them off on anyone without ruffling Suggs. Anyone could put in an order for No. 2 pencils.

  “Hey, Sally,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “I got the M.E.’s office on the phone. They’re looking for a Lieutenant Claude.”

  “Ha ha.” See Booey?

  “No, really. I think the guy’s serious. Says he’s got ‘Lieutenant Claude’ on the Farr autopsy request.”

  “Obviously I need to make myself better known in Flagg,” Claudia muttered. “All right. Put the call through.”

  She gave her full name and title when the phone rang on her desk a minute later. “I’m the ‘Claude’ on the Farr case,” she added.

  “Oh. Sorry about that,” the caller replied. He identified himself as Dirk Lorren.

  “Please tell me you’re calling because you finally have Farr scheduled for the table.”

  Lorren sounded confused. “No . . . I’m calling with a verbal on the results.”

  “What! Your office told me yesterday she wasn’t even scheduled yet! I was planning on being there.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. I’m just a grunt here. Morrison had a family emergency. He left, told me to give you the verbal. He’d fax a report later.”

  Son of a bitch. It wasn’t the first time the medical examiner’s office had crossed signals with her. But Morrison was a decent M.E. She’d take what she could get.

  “All right. Let’s hear it,” Claudia said. She clicked a pen open and reached for her pad. “Any surprises?”

  “There usually aren’t in drownings, and that’s what this was—a garden variety drowning. Toxicology showed she had alcohol in her system. Morrison says it could’ve been a contributing factor. She also had a head injury at the base of her skull, which would be consistent with her banging the bottom of her head on the faucet.”