by Joan Hess
My mouth went numb, my lips parted in an unbecoming manner. “Breaking and entering what?”
“The Farberville Community Theater. That’s all I know, except that the officer who arrested them does not want to waste the rest of the long weekend with paperwork and is willing to release them into my custody.”
“Why would they…?”
“I’ll ask them that in about half an hour, unless you’d like to chat a little longer. Did I tell you that my mother is allergic to strawberries?”
“Update me when you know more,” I said, and ended the call without slithering to the floor. I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe slowly. The girls had followed the trail of the Ming Thing from the thrift shop to the theater. They’d returned to retrieve it, which was a more civilized term than “steal it.” How they’d gotten into the building was immaterial. If they’d gone to Kentucky, I would have expected a call from Fort Knox. Ditto the Kremlin. I didn’t want to know when and how they’d been caught. The only significant issue was the Ming Thing. Did they have it, and how could they could come up with an explanation that Peter might accept?
Evan appeared in the doorway. “You okay, Claire? Do you want a bottle of water?”
I shook my head with undue vehemence. “I’m fine, thank you. Do you want to come with me to the morgue?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Consider it a field trip. I’ll explain in the car.” I grabbed my bulging purse and headed for the door.
“I’m coming,” Evan said plaintively, “but I have to lock up.”
I sat in my car, stewing about the Ming Thing, until he got into the passenger’s seat. “Brace yourself, grasshopper. It’s convoluted, speculative, and based on nothing more than an artist’s depiction.”
“Be still my heart.”
I overlooked his attitude and launched into my theories about who was who and who wasn’t. At a stoplight, I took the letters out of my purse and thrust them at him. At a stop sign, I showed him the photo and the sketch. By the time I parked at the hospital, I’d covered almost everything. “So all I need to do is ascertain if the body in the morgue is Roderick James. Deputy Norton couldn’t see the resemblance, but he has tunnel vision.”
“Did you ask him how long he knew Barnard?”
“Twenty years ago the deputy was in kindergarten, busting his fellow students for breaking crayons. It’s a lead, for pity’s sake. Try to show a little enthusiasm.”
We went through the lobby and took the elevator to the basement. It was very quiet. We followed signs to the door of the morgue. I didn’t know the protocol, but I was afraid Evan might bolt if I showed any sign of indecision. “Stop fidgeting,” I whispered to him as I opened the door. “We’re not breaking any laws.”
“Yet,” he said in a surly voice.
The anteroom had a desk, unoccupied, and standard waiting room decor. The plastic plants were dusty, the magazines on the end table years old. A wire rack held brochures from funeral homes. The predominant odor was a combination of pine trees and bleach. The temperature was low enough to evoke a shiver down my spine.
“Hello?” I called.
“Guess they’re closed on Sundays,” Evan said, tugging on my arm. “I’ll request that the medical examiner send the autopsy results to my office.”
“I need to see the face.” I knocked on a door with a sign that forbade entry without permission. Evan’s grip on my arm tightened and he began to hiss. I was trying to disengage his hand when the door opened and a black man in pale green scrubs looked down at us from a height of well over six and a half feet.
“Help you?” he said.
“Do you have visiting hours?” I asked.
His forehead crinkled as he stared at me. “Not really. You looking for anybody in particular?”
Evan gurgled. I stepped hard on his foot before he blurted out something unhelpful, and smiled at the man. His ID badge was partially covered by a towel draped over his shoulder. I couldn’t tell if he was the head pathologist or an orderly—or a fugitive from a professional basketball team. I held out my hand. “I’m Claire Malloy, and I’m a consultant with the Farberville Police Department. I need to confirm the identity of Zachery Barnard.” I pointed my thumb at Evan. “He’s my assistant, Evan Toffle. Is there any way we might take a quick look at the body?”
“Why not?” The man stood back and motioned for us to enter.
The actual morgue was not as impressive as the ones I’d seen on TV shows. Farberville lacks the level of crime that keeps city morgues well stocked. Most of the deceased went from bed to funeral home without autopsies. There were two bodies on tables, both covered with sheets.
“Zachery Barnard was brought here yesterday,” I said. “He drowned in a pond on his property.”
The man picked up a clipboard. “Yes, he’s here. You sure you want to see him?”
“Please,” I said before Evan could respond in a less affirmative fashion. He was breathing heavily, and his face was red. I hoped he wouldn’t collapse when a drawer was slid open. “You can wait outside,” I said to him. “No one will ever know.”
He did not take offense at the implication he was behaving like a timid bunny rabbit. “Good idea,” he said. “I’ll wait for you in the parking lot.” He scampered out the door.
“He’s new,” I said as I followed the man to a drawer. He reconfirmed the number with the list on his clipboard, glanced at me, and pulled out the drawer. I found myself staring at the face of a semitoothless troll with a half-dozen strands of white hair and a flat, misshapen nose. “Are you sure this is Zachery Barnard?”
The man reached down to flip over a toe tag. “Yes. He’s not scheduled for an autopsy. We’re just babysitting until the county decides what to do with him.”
“No autopsy?”
“The alcohol level in his blood was sky-high. No extraordinary bruising or wounds. He drowned, or died from a heart attack or liver failure. Could have been all three, but not in that order. We only conduct autopsies when there’s uncertainty about the cause of death.” He closed the drawer. “We cleaned up the poor bugger, and we’re holding him until we get the paperwork. He may be going to med school.”
I wasn’t quite ready to give up. “Were any other bodies brought in yesterday?”
“A five-hundred-pound woman from the ICU. The funeral dudes are collecting her this afternoon. Sorry if I ruined your day.”
“I guess I was wrong,” I said, thanked him, and went out to the hall. Evan was not waiting with a penitent look on his face, prepared to apologize for his cowardly behavior. I found him perched on the back of my car. “You make a lousy assistant,” I said as I unlocked the car. “What if I’d fainted and fallen on the floor?”
“You were in a hospital. I can’t think of a better place to be injured.”
I bit back the response that came to mind. “The body I saw was that of Zachery Barnard, according to the records. Unless there’s a vast conspiracy that includes the sheriff’s department and the staff at the morgue, the man I spoke to on Friday was someone else.”
“Roderick James?”
“I wish I could get another look at him.” I pulled onto the street and drove back toward Evan’s office. “If the man was James, then he’s probably long gone. It would be too dangerous for him to hang around and risk being arrested.”
“Did he murder Barnard?” Evan asked with a gulp.
“How would I know? Barnard was drunk; he could have stumbled into the pond and been unable to get out. His body was coated with slime and weeds, indicating he thrashed around in the water.”
“While someone held him down.”
I didn’t have time to add another murder to my list. “I need to talk to Sarah. Do you want to go with me?”
“I’m not in the mood for another field trip. I need to write a compelling motion for a continuance. Judge Priestly does not care to be overturned in appellate court, and she’s aware this trial is going to attract the me
dia. What’s more newsworthy than a woman who’s been on the FBI’s most-wanted list for decades now being tried for murder? Besides, Sarah and I did not part on harmonious terms. You’ll do better without me present.”
I turned into his office parking lot. “Did she tell you anything?”
“Same old story.” He got out of the car. “I’ll call the sheriff’s department and let them know you’re on your way. Come back after you’ve talked to her.”
“Of course,” I said with no intention of doing so anytime soon. Mysteries are not solved by burying one’s face in a law book. My nose tingled at the thought of book mold.
Evan let himself into the office. I walked to the jail and went into the front room. The deputy who’d been there earlier led me to the same room and said he’d bring the prisoner. I took the packet of clippings out of my purse and arranged them neatly on the table. My identification of Roderick James was tentative. The man with whom I had spoken on Friday was not Zachery Barnard. I decided to call him Oliver Goldsmith until I was more confident.
Sarah came into the room and froze when she saw the array of newspaper clippings. I’d made sure the headlines were visible, and I was pleased that I’d rattled her. “Sit down,” I said, “and have a look at these.”
She sat, her shoulders hunched, regarding the rectangles of paper as if they were writhing leeches. “Where did you find them?”
“In a trunk in your attic. Tuck must have been saving them to make a scrapbook. The earliest ones concern the SAC demonstration, arrests, and information about those in custody. The ones in the middle cover the trial. The final few have to do with Roderick James’s escape from Folsom Prison twenty years ago.” I could see that she was struggling not to react. “Where would you like to start?”
“Tuck hid them in the attic?”
“In a heavy trunk with a padlock.”
“I don’t believe you.” Her voice was flat, but she was visibly agitated.
“I gather he didn’t share with you,” I said. “Weren’t you concerned about your friends?”
“There was nothing I could do. Turning myself in wasn’t going to help them, and neither was brooding. I decided that I had to put it all behind me and get on with my life. Tuck agreed. We never spoke about it again.”
They’d cohabited with a two-ton elephant in the room. No wonder their furnishings were sparse. “He may have agreed, but he’d been clipping articles since the day after the demonstration.”
She gave me a mulish glare. “That’s not true.”
“This isn’t the time for denial, Sarah. Here’s the proof, from your attic. It must have fanned his paranoia, especially when the others were sentenced to twenty-five to forty years in prison.” I slid the article with the sketch of Roderick James across the table. “Did you know about his escape?”
“I might have seen something. People at the diner left newspapers on the counter when they finished with them. I used to glance through them.”
“But you never heard from Roderick?”
“Why would we? He had no idea where to find us. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have risked it.”
“But he did,” I said mildly. “I spoke to him two days ago. He pretended he was Zachery Barnard.”
Sarah looked down. “I heard Zach drowned in his pond. He wasn’t as bad as everybody made him out to be. I used to take him homemade bread, goat milk, and blueberries. He kept trying to give me kittens, but I couldn’t take one because of Tuck’s imaginary allergies.”
“I’d rather talk about Roderick.”
“Talk all you want, Claire. I have nothing to say.”
I did not stick out my tongue and chant, “Liar, liar, pants on fire.” For that smidgeon of self-restraint, I awarded myself a gold star.
“You might want to ask Roderick about the joys of prison life,” I said.
12
Sarah brushed the newspaper articles to the end of the table, stood up, and leaned against the ubiquitous green wall, watching me warily. “I don’t know how to get in touch with Roderick. Fugitives are not birds of a feather, eager to flock together. We were as dangerous to him as he would have been to us. The FBI had our fingerprints and photos. Tuck and I were very careful not to get so much as a speeding ticket.”
“Sit down,” I said again, making no effort to conceal my irritation. “If you don’t, I’ll write off my efforts to help you as a misguided and foolish waste of my time. Wessell will continue to persecute powerless defendants, and eventually I will find a way to expose him. He’ll be sorry he tangled with me.”
“So this is all about you? He wounded your pride. You want revenge, not justice.”
I felt as though my blood pressure had shot into outer space. I counted to ten, exhaling with each number. I repeated the process in French, and then made it to five (funf) in my limited German before I dared to open my mouth. “What I want is the truth, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to help you if you insist on lying to me—and to your lawyer. He can’t defend you properly if you refuse to help him. So what’s it going to be?”
Sarah plopped down in the chair. “I don’t know where Roderick is or how to get in contact with him. That’s the truth.”
“Okay.” I didn’t believe her, but I have been known to be overly skeptical. “Do you honestly believe that Tuck wasn’t having an affair?”
“That’s absurd. Who could stand to put up with him and his obsessions?”
I gave her the packet of letters. “Read these.” I retreated to a corner of the room and called Peter. Voice mail, suggesting he was occupied arranging to take custody of two wily criminals. I hoped the process was brief, since the red-haired wily criminal was hosting a party in an hour. Chips and dip would have to suffice, since I had no intention of dashing to the grocery store to purchase steaks and potatoes. Or the bakery for tiramisu with chocolate ganache. Très gauche, le ganache.
“Oh my gawd,” Sarah gasped, her cheeks flushed and her breath wheezy. “This is insane! Who wrote these letters?” She yanked the folded paper out of another envelope and skimmed it. “This is ludicrous!”
I returned to the table before she hyperventilated and I lost my visiting privileges. “I’m not sure, but I have a suspect in mind. Have you ever met a woman named Tricia Yates?” She shook her head. “Will told me that he saw her with Tuck one afternoon at a local coffee shop. Tuck denied it.”
“Who is she?”
“The secretary at a local church, in her sixties. I encountered her while I was looking into a church-sponsored teen campout at Flat Rock the night Tuck was murdered.”
“I can’t believe he was having an affair with anyone,” she said. “More power to him if he was. We hadn’t slept together for decades. I’ve never heard that name, and we never went to any church. ‘Religion is the opiate of the people,’ Tuck used to say in a goofy Russian accent. He was a fan of Karl Marx. I preferred Harpo.” She rocked back in the chair and chewed on her lower lip. “Tuck could have had an affair with that woman. I was at the diner all day, and we never owned cell phones. He was adamant that they cause brain tumors. He did the farm work, ran errands, and went to the library between visits to the ER. That’s what he said, anyway.”
“Any out-of-town trips?”
“Yes, but not with me. One of us had to stay home to take care of the animals. Once or twice a year I traveled with friends from the book club. We went to Little Rock to see the Clinton Library, and to the horse races in Hot Springs. We even went to Memphis to tour Graceland. Tuck attended conferences sponsored by organic farming groups and to alternative energy symposiums. He hated motel rooms because he was terrified of bedbugs.” She gestured at the letters. “That’s what he told me, anyway. From what I just read, he found distractions. I still can’t believe it. Did you find a copy of the Kama Sutra in the trunk?”
“I didn’t have a chance to go through everything,” I said. I saw no reason to tell her about the burglars or Deputy Norton. “The writer was familiar with what took
place at the demonstration, and she knew that he worked at a taco truck in Venice Beach. She had some sort of past connection. When the two of you fled to Oregon, did Tuck leave behind a girlfriend?”
Sarah scowled as she thought. “It’s hard to remember. There was a lot of sleeping around in those days. ‘Make love, not war.’ I spent a couple of lusty weekends with Tuck, but then we drifted on, amiably. He was involved with a woman from UCLA the autumn before the demonstration. He broke it off when he found out she was married to a biker.”
“What about the women in SAC?”
“He told me he had a threesome with Jamie and Justine. They were on acid, and the whole thing disintegrated into a mud-wrestling match in the backyard. Other than that, I can’t think of anybody. That doesn’t mean he didn’t. I was busy with classes and assignments. My parents drove down to the campus once a month to take me to dinner and grill me about extracurricular activities. Had they known the truth, they would have dragged me home and locked me in my bedroom.”
“Tuck didn’t always confide in you?”
“Sometimes, but not always. His social skills weren’t stellar, and I gave him advice.” She squeezed her eyes closed. “Around the time of the demonstration, there was somebody he was interested in, but he didn’t say who it was. She could have been a member of SAC, but her name wasn’t Tricia or anything like that.”
“Find the newspaper photo of the demonstration.”
After some fumbling, she located the photo and spread it out. “I can barely recognize myself. I’m not even sure that’s Tuck. These two women are in the shadows. One’s Justine, I think. The other one might be Laura, but there were several women with dark hair. I don’t remember the woman standing behind Abel, but it’s been a while. I’d help if I could, Claire.”
I needed a recent photograph of Tricia to see if Sarah recognized her, but I had no idea how to acquire one. I couldn’t take Sarah on a field trip to an apartment complex, presuming I could get the address. Which I could, I realized in a flash of astuteness, by asking Will Lund. A deacon had access to the church files. Or, as a first resort, by looking her name up in a telephone directory. It was an endangered species, unfamiliar to the current technology prodigies. Caron lets her fingers do the walking across a keyboard.