The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery)

by Jessie Bishop Powell

  Then Darnell said, “Okay, we don’t know exactly what happened last night, but we have ideas. There’s what we know, and there’s what we guess. We know two individuals, probably men from what I could tell, broke out a pane of glass in your kitchen and sent car exhaust through the window. We know they have studied your house’s layout in some depth, because they knew where to break in to be closest to a carbon monoxide detector on the side of the building.”

  “And,” Trudy added, “we know they’re not the brightest, because they stood there arguing when you failed to come out the back door. I saw the hose and heard their voices when I started to leave via that door myself. It was why I came out front instead.”

  “Why would we go out back? We only ever use the back door to go in, almost never to go out.” Lance jiggled his leg under the table.

  “They didn’t seem to realize that, which suggests they’ve been studying the place when you aren’t home.” Darnell tapped his pen against his pad.

  Drew accepted a cup of Mama’s coffee. He yawned deeply. “Here’s what I figure. Most people around there use the back door for everything because of the way the driveway is situated, and it was your kitchen detector going off. I think they assumed you’d run out back and straight into their arms.”

  “Yeah,” I echoed Lance’s position. “But our driveway is full with the convertible and primate-mobile. We park the minivan in the street. If we could figure out how to leave our mud on the stoop, we’d go in and out by the front.”

  Drew let me finish talking, then repeated patiently, “Which is why we think they were checking the place out while you were gone. Acting on that misunderstanding, I think they parked in the alley running between your house and Elm Avenue. You’d have noticed if they were there during the day, and Darnell would have seen them if they’d come by way of the front after dark. They pulled up out back after dark and tried to run you out. When you came out the wrong door, they took off back down the alley. Trudy followed until I caught up, then I chased them almost to the bypass, but they pulled into a box store lot and down a dirt road. I followed the road to the end, but they had turned aside somewhere, and it was too dark for me to do anything else. I’ve got a team out there this morning trying to follow up.”

  “It doesn’t explain why they were there in the first place.” I was watching William and Daddy out the window.

  Will had forced Darnell to come outside to interview him, and he’d provided nothing more helpful than, “Circle dots are bad cars.” Now, he had on gardening gloves, and he was using his shears to hold up woody hibernating rose stems for Daddy to actually cut. He should have been freezing. Natasha was upstairs with Sara, helping the younger girl play dress-up with Mama’s clothes.

  “Why did they leave a decapitated body at your sanctuary but hogtie my living deputies in your refrigerator?”

  “Do you know it’s the same people at the center and our house?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence. Natasha’s necklace didn’t get into your spider monkey enclosure by magic. Right now, we want to question Charles Dalton about Natasha’s necklace, but I doubt he’ll be much help. Our force is too small to have surveillance teams everyplace we expect trouble, though, and we figured it was more likely to crop up at the sanctuary, since that’s where it came before. Frankly, if Trudy and Darnell hadn’t been available to keep an eye on you, last night could have gone a whole lot worse.

  “For now, don’t go home. Stay here with your folks or go to a motel. It’s kind of hard to do in a small town, but try not to take the same route twice in a row going places. Make sure the kids are accompanied to and from the school doors.”

  “But it’s Christmas!” I protested. “We’ve got presents to wrap, and our tree is up. We can’t . . .”

  “. . . live like the devil is watching over our shoulders.” Lance finished my thought.

  “I think he is.” Drew rose. “But it’s nine o’clock in the morning, I’ve been awake since six o’clock yesterday morning, and if I don’t get some sleep, I’m going to fall over dead from exhaustion. And that would be no good, because until we find Hugh, I’m the acting senior detective.”

  “You’re . . . wow . . . congratulations,” I said. “Wait. What time did you say it is?”

  “Nine.”

  Mama’s analog clock confirmed this truth.

  “What am I going to do? I have the most important job interview of my life in an hour, I haven’t had a shower, I’m still wearing yesterday’s cruddy blue jeans, and all my work clothes are at home in my closet!”

  CHAPTER 22

  ATTN: ADVICE

  Dear Nora:

  You can read all the advice you want, but nothing will substitute for a long talk with your daughter. Find out what you can do for her. Ask her what she needs most. Build up your bond, because she’s going to need you, Grandma!

  Your Therapist

  “But Trudy, I need my clothes.”

  “You can’t go over there. I can bring you what you want and meet you at school.”

  “No time! I need fifteen minutes to drive to the college, ten to walk to the Bio Science building, another ten to get set up . . . Setup! My slides! Okay, calm down, I have a copy on the hard drive at school. I’ve only got twenty-five minutes to get showered, dressed, and in the car.”

  “Plenty of time,” said Mama.

  “What? Even if Trudy leaves when I hop in the tub, she’ll be twenty minutes to the house, at a minimum. It will take her at least another five to find my stuff, then she’d need fifteen more to get to school, get parked, and I’d be wearing blue jeans in the middle of my presentation before she walked in.”

  “Why would you have time to get your stuff if I wouldn’t?”

  “Because . . . because . . .” I know where it is; I’ll speed the whole way; I’ll . . . “I wouldn’t. What am I going to do?”

  “I may not wear them often, but I do still own dress pants, Noel. We’re of a size around the middle, and I have plenty of time to hem a pair of slacks while you’re in the tub. She knew how I eschewed skirts. I’ve still got all of your measurements from the wedding.”

  “Mama, I love you.” I appreciated being descended from a professional seamstress now more than I ever had in my life.

  Fifteen minutes later, she greeted me at the bathroom door with a muted tan suit. The pants bore inexplicable pale red squares that were almost, but not quite, professional looking. Beggars can’t be choosers. I buttoned myself in cursing the scratchy, hot wool. I couldn’t decide whether to wish Mama’s blouse was long sleeved to stave off my itching or to be grateful it was short sleeved to keep down the heat.

  Although foot problems had long since driven her out of high heels, Mama had never gotten rid of a single pair. The ones she gave me were maroon, presumably to go with the unappealing un-plaid design on my pants, and they were only half a size too large. A little newspaper in the toes, some borrowed lipstick on my face, and I was ready to roll.

  In the kitchen, Lance was waiting to drive me in. He had a 10:30 lab he couldn’t cancel any more than I could my interview, even though all three children were home from school for a second morning, thanks to last night’s adventure. “Hey, hot stuff,” he greeted me.

  I tried to look appreciative of the compliment, but grimaced instead of smiling. I reached for one final swig of coffee as I followed him to the door. Right then, William catapulted in from the garden and collided with me from one side, and Sara pelted into me from the other.

  “William is timed for school!”

  “Don’t leave me! I want to come with you!”

  Coffee sloshed up onto my face, lapel, and white blouse. “I don’t have time to change!”

  “I’ve got an easy fix.” Mama scurried out of the room.

  “William is timed for school.”

  “I thought you were pruning?” I plucked a thorny leaf out of his hair. Moments before, I would have sworn it would have been difficult to roust William and Daddy from t
he rose beds anyway. Never mind that the child wasn’t wearing a coat, he had looked settled in for the day out there. None of the other grandkids would have humored Daddy for half so long as William already had, especially with everything bloomed out and the work revolving around rose hips and repeating already completed winter preparations.

  Darnell was prepared to come with Lance and me. Trudy had work to do in Columbus, but the kids and my parents wouldn’t be staying alone. Drew had given them a pair of deputy watchdogs.

  It seemed far safer and more logical to leave the kids there. But now, William was rocking, glancing back and forth between Lance and me and the open door. There wasn’t a threat there, but I saw the temptation to run etched on his forehead.

  Lance did, too. “Okay, I’ll have time to take you in after I drop Noel.”

  “Lance, it’s not safe. And he’s wearing pajamas!” Also, no underwear. We hadn’t exactly brought any of his undies along, and the pull-up he’d been sleeping in was decidedly soaked by the time we got here.

  “He’ll be safer there than anywhere else. They’ve got detectors on the doors, a fence around the playground, and an aide to keep him from running. And they keep an extra set of his clothes in his cubby. He’ll be fine. Get in the car, buddy.”

  I began dabbing my shirt with a wet paper towel in a futile effort to clean it. “Fine.” We watched until we were sure he was scrambling into the minivan.

  “But what about me?” Where she had been querulous at first, demanding and angry, now Sara’s voice had taken on a plaintive edge.

  “Don’t you want to play with me today, Sara?” Natasha tried.

  Sara didn’t so much as glance away from me. “Don’t leave me.”

  “Sara, there’ll be nothing for you to do,” said Lance. “Noel has to give an important presentation, and I . . . honey, we’re dissecting fetal pigs today. You cannot come to my lab.” Lance hated teaching classes like this. He questioned the ethics of dissection when we had vividly detailed computer programs available.

  Sara sat on the floor and howled. “Don’t leave me!” she sobbed.

  “Go on, you guys. We’ll be fine.” Natasha hunkered down beside her younger sister. Layla might sound more like an adult than a child, but Tasha was the one who acted the part. When I first met her, she had seemed like a typical goth teen to me. But I hadn’t known about Gary’s ongoing abuse then. As the fragments of the deep depression she had lived with for the last four years began to lift, the young woman who emerged wasn’t a child at all. There was nothing typical or goth about Natasha.

  Mama dashed back with an enormous, flashy brooch. She pinned it below my right shoulder, perfectly hiding the remains of the coffee stains. I leaned down to kiss Sara and tell her she’d be fine, but when I buried my nose in her thick, soft hair, with its faint honey scent, I found myself squatting down and wrapping my arms around her middle. Somehow, when I stood up, I hadn’t let go. She slid easily over to my hip, smashing her face against the side of my neck that wasn’t now covered with the appalling brooch.

  “Please,” she sobbed. “Please, please, please. Don’t leave me.” Her whole body shook with tearful tremors. Intellectually, I knew this was simply a meltdown. It had been due ever since the burglar alarm’s first screeches, and it could have been triggered by anything at all, when the real cause was a combination of fear and overexhaustion. William had melted right away and would now, with careful management, likely be fine until the overtiredness caught up with him this evening. Sara had instead, as was her habit, waited until the crisis was over to fall apart.

  I remembered the first meeting on our lawn, when she threw herself into Natasha’s arms, accepting me only when Tasha had to go to the bathroom. She had howled then with the ferocity of terror at losing her brother. Now, she was afraid of losing him again. The people who broke into our house could easily have been coming to take him from her. And to take her from me. Sara wasn’t the only one having a delayed reaction. I squeezed her back.

  And suddenly I realized she had come to me. They had come to us. Neither of them had gone to Natasha. Indeed, Sara had rejected Natasha and games in favor of my boring presentation. William hadn’t demanded Natty to arbitrate, either today at Mama’s house or yesterday at the sanctuary. I couldn’t place when the shift had happened, the changeover in loyalties from them to us. But our children had finally come to us. Now, I couldn’t put Sara down. I couldn’t possibly put her down. “Okay. You can come. But you have to quit crying.” Or else I’m going to start. “And you have to sit in my presentation as quietly as ever you can. Somebody get me some crayons. Tasha, what about you? You staying here or kicking around with us up at school?”

  “If I’m not staying here, I’m going wherever Trudy is. Um. If it’s okay with you, Trudy.”

  “It’s fine. In fact, it’s my preference. I’d rather you all stayed where someone could keep an eye on you. I’d rather I didn’t have something needing attention elsewhere. But that’s neither realistic nor likely to happen. Let’s ask if the deputy can get you some clothes from your house. Tasha, you can look at some pictures for me this afternoon.” Though Mama was clearly irked to be stuck with the final deputy, Daddy seemed happy enough to chat the man up.

  Fifteen minutes later, Lance dropped Sara and me at the Bio Science building. “Knock ’em dead, babe.”

  “And text us when you get there safe and sound,” Darnell added.

  We reached the conference room with ten minutes to spare. Only one member of the search committee had arrived before me. “Anything up, Doc?” I greeted him with false casualness. Should I call him Dr. Chambless? I work with him every day. But he barely knows me. Don’t set the wrong tone.

  “Nothing up here, Doc.” He returned the ritual department joke, then sat comfortably in a seat to the right of the projector, where he was guaranteed to see almost nothing of my slide-show.

  “Ooooh, what stinks?” Sara tried to put herself at the head of the table, where I would go, but I transferred her to the seat opposite James Chambless, where she would also miss seeing most of my slides.

  The conference room carried its usual reek of long-forgotten lunchmeat and vastly overdue milk, along with a nasty fishy smell. Didn’t Tasha and I clean this out again after it nearly ruined our ice cream? Are they bringing in the rotting food from home after it goes bad? There was another smell as well, a hard water smell, almost metallic. I couldn’t quite place it. For some reason, I associated it with the center. I mouth-breathed and cursed whomever had tanked my presentation before it even started.

  Naturally, the chair arrived last, after the rest of us had been seated and making awkward conversation for some time. I had been on job interviews as a graduate student before I realized my work lay here in Ironweed and I wouldn’t be leaving the center after graduation. But those had been outside affairs. If I was nervous, it was only for a little while. If I screwed up, it was in front of strangers who would never see me again.

  But as the inside candidate, all my actions carried a different weight. The search committee was filled with my colleagues. When they ultimately filled Art’s position, I would have to face these people in the halls. I would see them less frequently, of course, when I went back to my part-time schedule, but it would still be embarrassing for all of us.

  We had moved beyond the nervous chit-chat about the twins, Natasha, and our adoption process and reached a lull where I was clearly expected to speak, when Dr. Prescott stomped in and all but threw himself into a chair. “All right, get on with it,” he snapped. And I commenced.

  The first part of the interview involved the usual questions. Qualifications, experience, and, my least favorite question in any interview, why they should hire me. Then I gave a short version of a lecture of the variety I might use in a freshman classroom. Here, my insider knowledge benefitted me because I could safely choose a somewhat edgy topic.

  With the exception of Dr. Prescott and the mandatory reviewer from outside the department,
I knew everyone’s position on genetically modified organisms and their role in our food. GMOs always made for lively discussion, and even among our small group, who largely agreed with one another on the subject, the conversation ranged broadly, and the interview ran well over its allotted hour.

  Sara colored quietly for every moment. She didn’t say one word, though she did change seats to crawl into my lap when I sat down at the end of the slideshow. Finally, we wrapped up, and I set her down. I was beginning to think the interview had gone off without a hitch in spite of the odor when Mama’s brooch snagged on a cabinet handle as I stood. The door flew open and smacked me in the nose. “Ow!”

  Two members of the committee screamed, and the chair’s face paled. “Oh, no.” He staggered back away from his seat.

  What the hell? I’m the one with the bloody nose. We’re nearly all biologists. We’ve seen blood before. The brooch wouldn’t come loose. Blood. The metallic smell. It was iron, it was . . . it was blood. I had smelled it yesterday when the macaques tracked it through the barn. I jerked and pulled, all the while trying to cover my nose with my shirt. What would smell like blood, though? The more I wiggled, the more tightly wedged the brooch became. Finally, with one great wrench, I ripped it off the jacket. Something splatted out of the cupboard with a meaty thud.

  “Oh, no,” the chair repeated. “Oh, no. Oh, no.”

  “Shut up, Winnie,” Dr. Chambless snapped. “You’ll scare the kid.”

  It didn’t sound a bit like lemon cleanser hitting the ground this time. What would have smelled like . . . blood? “Oh, no.” My nose sent another geyser of red down my shirt. I couldn’t stop myself from looking, even though the only question I had now was who I would see when I peered around the door.