But who was she? Apart from being a Plunket. I tried not to hold that against her.
Decision time. I could keep lurking out here in the cold until frostbite set in, or I could go in and confront Janet.
I strode up the steps and knocked on the door.
Chapter 19
I heard scurrying inside the house, and what sounded like a piece of furniture being shoved across the floor. Were they blockading the door against a possible home invasion?
“Who’s there?” came a voice, finally.
“Meg Langslow,” I said. “I’m a friend of Janet Caverly.”
A pause.
“Who?”
“Oh, come off it,” I said. “I know Janet’s in there. I saw her through the window. I came to find out why she drove off in Reverend Smith’s car. Let me in, or I’ll call the police to report the vehicle stolen.”
A pause. A fairly long pause. More furniture moving.
Then the door opened.
“Come in.” The young woman opened the door and beckoned me in. She was looking down the lane a little wild-eyed, as if to make sure I was alone.
“It’s just me,” I said.
“It’s okay.” Janet had entered from what I assumed was the hallway to the bedrooms. Or maybe the only bedroom, given the small size of the house. “She’s the one I told you about. Meg, what are you doing here?”
“I spotted you hightailing it out of town in Robyn’s station wagon,” I said. “I came to ask why?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m a patient person.” I sat down on a lumpy couch covered with two brightly colored afghans. Possibly a tactical mistake—the afghans spruced up the look of the couch but they did nothing to make up for its broken springs, one of which poked uncomfortably into my rear. “Start with why you stole Robyn’s vehicle.”
“I didn’t steal it.” She perched on the edge of a lopsided easy chair draped, like the couch, in bright afghans. “I’m going to take it back.”
“That’s nice. But I notice you didn’t say that she lent it to you.”
“She didn’t actually. But I didn’t think she’d mind. She doesn’t need it until she has to go back to the church, at eleven forty-five. I heard her say so.”
“So why are you here?”
“I came to get my things.”
“Your things!” I spotted a suitcase lying open on the floor. Clothes were spilling out of it—clothes and a few cosmetics. “You came here for a bunch of stupid clothes? Was that all a lie about being afraid of the Clay County sheriff?”
“It’s not the clothes,” Janet said. “I came for—”
Someone knocked on the door, heavily.
“Rachel! Open up!” A deep male voice.
“Oh, lord,” Janet whispered.
“Back into the attic,” Rachel hissed.
“Rachel! I know you’re in there.”
“Who is it?” Rachel called.
“Brad Peebles.”
“Deputy Brad Peebles,” she murmured to me. “Hang on a sec,” she shouted to the closed door. “I just got up.”
Rachel threw an afghan over the suitcase and scurried down the hallway, tearing her sweater and jeans off as she went. She ducked into a doorway. Janet tiptoed on past the doorway to where an access stair was pulled down—much like the one I’d recently climbed in the courthouse, but shorter and flimsier. A light curio cabinet was shoved aside—I gathered it would normally occupy the space right under the trap door. Janet hurried up the stairway. I followed. Rachel emerged from the doorway, tying a robe around her. She quickly lifted up the stairs and shut the trap door behind us. I heard the faint sounds of the cabinet being shoved into place. We were trapped here in the attic.
Not much of an attic, either. No floor—just bare joists with stretches of insulation between them and a few sheets of plywood thrown over them near the ladder. And it was only three feet tall at the peak of the roof. Janet and I crouched there on the plywood in the near dark on either side of the folded-up access stairs.
I hit my knee on something and the something made a faint hissing noise.
“Ssshh, Sammy,” Janet whispered.
The something—presumably a cat in a carrier—uttered a faint yowl of feline protest and fell mercifully silent.
“I came back for Sammy,” Janet whispered.
“Okay,” I said. “I get it. Let’s keep the noise down.”
Downstairs, I could hear Rachel opening the door.
“You only just getting up?” Deputy Peebles’s voice mixed disapproval with a hint of flirtation.
“Give me a break. I had to work late shift at the Burger Barn last night.”
“Where is she?”
“Who?”
“Ms. Caverly.”
“Janet? I haven’t seen her since she and her husband went on the lam.”
“Then why is her car parked in front of your house.” The deputy’s tone said “Gotcha!”
“Her car?” Rachel was a good actress. She sounded genuine puzzled. Then her tone changed. “Hey! What’s going on? Lucius’s truck was parked there when I went to bed.”
“Then I’d say you got the worst of the bargain.” Deputy Peebles seemed to be enjoying her reaction. “Someone takes a brand-new F-150 and leaves behind an old beater like that.”
“Damn.” Their voices were a little more distant now—I suspected they’d gone outside. “I should have checked to see if Lucius had left a spare key tucked up on the visor. As many times as I told him it was a stupid thing to do, and here I forget to look. But that’s not Janet’s car. It’s from Caerphilly.”
“She was driving it.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because Ben Dingle saw her doing it over in Caerphilly, and heading out of town in this direction. He’s been hanging around Caerphilly, playing tourist and keeping his ear to the ground, on account of we figured one or both of the Caverlys would try to hide there.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Do I have to go down to the station to report Lucius’s truck as stolen, or can I just tell you?”
“I’ll call it in. And I’ll get a tow truck out here to pick up this abandoned vehicle.”
“No rush.” Rachel’s voice was closer now—they’d come back inside. “The abandoned vehicle’s not going anywhere. But you might want to have your officers look out for Lucius’s truck, because if Janet Caverly really did take it, I doubt if she’s planning on staying around here much longer.”
For the next forty-five minutes Janet and I crouched in the attic. We listened in as Deputy Peebles reported the stolen truck and called for the tow truck for Robyn’s car. We overheard his heavy-handed attempts to flirt with Rachel. I could have assured Rachel that the insulation in her house did its job beautifully, but since that job was to keep the heat in the house—and out of the attic—I began to worry what would happen if we had to stay up here for a couple of hours. I must have checked half a dozen times to make sure the ringer on my phone was turned off. I’d have texted someone to tell them where I was and what was happening, but like much of Clay County, Rachel’s house was in a cell phone dead zone. I fretted that Sammy would grow tired of sleeping in his crate and would begin yowling for food, a litterbox, or just a little attention. I had to suppress the urge to cheer when I finally heard the sounds of the tow truck hauling Robyn’s car away. After all, getting it back was probably going to be a real headache. Deputy Peebles made a few final halfhearted attempts to get Rachel to agree to meet him that evening for drinks at the Clay Pigeon, the indescribably sleazy watering hole that was Clayville’s only bar. Then he gave up and drove off.
Janet and I waited in tense silence.
A few minutes later, we heard the sound of the cabinet being moved. Rachel pulled down the steps.
“The coast is clear,” she said. “I’ll make you some hot coffee.”
“I won’t say no,” I said. “But could you put it in cups we can take with us? Because I think t
he sooner we get out of here the better.”
“Good idea.” Rachel led the way into the tiny kitchen and poured water into a coffeemaker. “But just how are you getting out of here? For that matter, how did you get here?”
“I parked my car about half a mile away,” I said. “On what I hope is a little-used lane. And I did what I could to hide it but I doubt if it would take local law enforcement long to find it if they started searching the area for Janet.”
“Which they probably will when they find Janet didn’t take Lucius’s truck,” Rachel said.
“If they tow my car, we’ll have to hike back to Caerphilly.” And wouldn’t that be fun, I thought glumly. “Where is the truck, anyway?” I asked aloud.
“Grendel, my pig of a cousin came by last night and took it,” Rachel said.
“Grendel?” I wasn’t sure which seemed more unlikely—that anyone would knowingly name a defenseless child after an Anglo-Saxon monster, or that anyone in Clay County would have read Beowulf.
“Grendel Plunket,” Rachel said, as if that explained anything. “He came around just after midnight. He had been threatening to do it if Lucius died—said it was too much truck for a little lady like me. I told him if he wanted the truck he should make me an offer. Well, let’s hope this will teach him. I just hope I don’t get the truck back full of bullet holes.”
I shoved my curiosity over Grendel’s name aside. Something had just dawned on me.
“Lucius Plunket?” I said. “Your brother was the one who was shot?”
“The one who was killed,” she said. “You can say it. Your chief of police broke the news to me last night.”
She turned away and began fiddling with something on the end of the kitchen counter—a bedraggled little Christmas tree. It only had room for about a dozen tiny ornaments, but she seemed intent on rearranging all of them.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
She nodded. Janet was patting her on the back. Rachel held up one grape-sized silver ball and frowned at it as if it were to blame for her brother’s demise.
“That was how Rachel came to help me,” Janet said. “Because Mark and her brother were working together.”
“And Lucius wasn’t shot by Mark Caverly—no matter what Sheriff Dingle says.” Rachel turned back to me, still clutching the tiny ornament.
“Then what did happen to him?” I asked.
Rachel and Janet exchanged a look.
“She’s okay,” Janet said.
Rachel didn’t look entirely convinced, but I could see the moment when she decided to take Janet’s word for it.
“He was going to help Mark get the goods on the Dingles’ crooked operation,” she said. “Making moonshine, growing weed, and maybe even smuggling in other illegal stuff. Lucius worked for them for a while, mainly to earn money for college. He didn’t realize exactly what they needed an electrician like him for until he took the job, and by that time he couldn’t really get out. And he realized maybe they never would let him go. And that it was the small fry like him who’d end up taking the rap if they ever got caught. Mark knew the financial side, and Lucius knew a lot of the operational stuff, like how they managed to hide everything from the Feds.”
“Mark had reached out to some federal agency,” Janet said. “I don’t know which—he never said. He told them that he and Lucius were willing to testify.”
“A pity we don’t know which agency.” Rachel’s voice shook with anger. “Because I think someone there’s dirty, or at least damned careless. The next thing we knew Lucius had a bullet in his head and they were blaming Mark for it.”
Janet frowned slightly, and I had the feeling she knew exactly what agency, and possibly how to contact it. Or maybe I was just being paranoid.
“By ‘they’ you mean the Dingles, right?” I said aloud. “So if something happens to Mark before he can testify, their problems are solved.”
They both nodded. I didn’t say it aloud, but it occurred to me that the two of them knew enough to make things awkward for the Dingles. Maybe Janet’s fears for Mark and herself weren’t entirely paranoid. Maybe Rachel should also be worried.
“You should get out of here, too,” Janet said to Rachel. Was she reading my mind? “Sooner or later they’re going to start suspecting you know something.”
“You’re probably right.” Rachel finally set down the little silver ball—miraculously still whole—and began pouring coffee into two plastic cups from the Burger Barn, Clay County’s version of fine dining. “I don’t know why I’ve stayed here this long. Our mother wasn’t from around here,” she added by way of explanation to me. “So I’m a lot more open to the idea that there might be someplace worth living outside Clay County. Let’s get the two of you out of here first.”
“The three of us,” Janet corrected. “I’m not leaving Sammy behind.”
She threw aside the afghan that had hidden her suitcase and began pulling out a few items. Then she went back to the attic and hauled the carrier down.
Sammy proved to be a smallish Siamese cat. He purred when Janet opened the door to his carrier, and when she picked him up he nestled against her and uttered one soft yowl that almost sounded like a baby. He wasn’t as thrilled when she stuffed him back into the carrier and shoved half a dozen items of clothing in after him, but he quieted when she told him to.
“Ready,” she said.
“If you’re serious about leaving Clay County and worried about them coming after you, go see the Reverend Smith at Trinity Episcopal in Caerphilly,” I said to Rachel. “She runs the local women’s shelter, and she has helped quite a few women escape stalkers.”
“Good to know.”
She stood in her doorway and watched as Janet and I hiked away from her house. Hauling the cat carrier seemed to slow Janet down, so I took it over and set a brisk pace. If not for the snow, I’d have considered setting out through the woods, even if it took longer. But at least walking along the lane and then the Clay County Road we wouldn’t be leaving quite such a glaringly obvious trail. Or taking quite so much of a chance of getting lost in the woods.
I was relieved to see the lane much as I’d left it, with my amateur camouflage efforts unsullied by any car tracks or footprints. While I’m fond of my old blue Honda, I don’t usually feel an impulse to hug it when I’m reunited with it. I wanted to this time. I settled for patting its fender and mentally promising it an oil change if it got us safely out of Clay County.
While Janet loaded the cat carrier into the backseat, I retrieved the old blanket I kept in the trunk for impromptu picnics and handed it to her.
“If you see a car approaching, or if I say ‘duck,’ pull this over you and crouch down,” I said.
“Why don’t I just ride in the trunk?”
She sounded serious.
“If it makes you feel safer.”
“If they stop you, you’re just taking your cat to the vet,” she said.
“They might know who I am,” I said. “And they’d know my route to the vet wouldn’t take me through Clay County. So if they stop me, I’m coming back from Tappahannock with a cat I bought there as a Christmas present for my mother.”
“Whatever works. You’re the local.” She climbed into my trunk. I felt a brief pang of guilt. I had a habit of making good use of my time while waiting for the boys at school or at their various activities by tidying trash and clutter out of the body of the car and, if no trash can was readily available, stowing it in the trunk. The theory was that then it would be easy to complete the cleaning by emptying out the trunk. In practice, I didn’t get around to that final phase nearly often enough.
But Janet seemed quite content to nestle down among the power bar wrappers, empty juice boxes, and fast food detritus. Well, if cozying up to a few stale French fries was the worst thing that happened to her today, it I’d consider it a major victory. I tucked the blanket over her—more for warmth than concealment—and shut the trunk.
Then I took a deep breath and eas
ed my car into motion.
Chapter 20
Hiding Janet in the trunk turned out to be a good thing. I didn’t have to pull out my story of cat acquisition in Tappahannock, but half a mile from the county line I spotted a pickup truck approaching. As it drew nearer, I could see that the driver wore a deputy’s hat. My heart began pounding, especially when he slowed down as we passed by. I kept my face neutral and nodded at him. He didn’t nod back, and he made no bones about the fact that he was using his truck’s superior height to look down into my car. He’d have spotted a blanket-covered lump in the passenger seat. Points to Janet.
When we passed the back of the WELCOME TO CLAY COUNTY sign and then the WELCOME TO CAERPHILLY sign, which was in much better repair than its counterpart, I breathed easier—but only a little easier. After all, we were still very much out in the country and spies from Clay County had definitely been lurking around Caerphilly.
And now I had to figure out what to do with Janet.
“All that effort to smuggle you into the women’s shelter before dawn, and you go and pull a stunt like this,” I muttered, with an irritated glance over my shoulder toward the trunk. And from the sound of it, Sheriff Dingle’s spies hadn’t spotted her until she’d taken off on her cat retrieval mission. Maybe taking her back there at this time of day wasn’t such a good idea.
But where to take her instead?
We were approaching Grandfather’s zoo. If it were after hours, I’d use my key to smuggle her in the staff entrance. But the parking lot was swarming with tourists coming to see Grandfather’s annual “Animals of the Bible” holiday exhibit. If the Dingles wanted to keep an eye on comings and goings from Clay County, a parking lot crowded with tourists would be an excellent surveillance point. I drove on past and kept my eye on the rearview mirror.
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