Lark! the Herald Angels Sing

by Donna Andrews

  “Have her plan to stay here awhile,” Judge Jane said. “I don’t want her to have to drive out here in the snow if something else comes up. I can feed her a good dinner—even give her a bed if this goes on into the night.”

  And Delaney’s cadre of white hat hackers were already starting the search for information about the chief’s nemesis. Starting, I hoped, as instructed—with publicly available information.

  “I think our work here is done,” I said to Randall, as I watched the chief talking on the phone to Delaney. Probably just as well it was Delaney doing this. While Rob had an uncanny knack for coming up with the ideas for computer games that would turn out to be enormous hits, he would be the first to admit that he had no technical skills whatsoever. Fortunately, he also had a knack for hiring really good staff, and the self-awareness not to micromanage them. But still—Delaney was not only motivated, she was also highly skilled in whatever needed doing and could deploy her hackers strategically.

  “We’ll leave you to it,” Randall said to the chief. The chief mouthed “thanks” and turned back to his phone.

  “Any chance you can give me a ride over to Osgood’s?” Randall asked as we strolled out of the police station.

  “Sure. Car trouble?” Randall’s cousin Osgood Shiffley ran the local service station and car repair shop.

  “Engine cooling system’s shot. Needs some five-cent part that will cost a bazillion dollars in labor to install, even at the family discount.” Randall rolled his eyes. “And Osgood didn’t have it in stock, so he had to have it sent from Richmond. Odds are it hasn’t come in yet, but if that’s the case, I can guilt trip Osgood into giving me a lift home. I was just dropping the car off when the call came in about the doings at the shelter.”

  “I wondered how you got there so fast, and on foot,” I said. “I can take you all the way home if you like.”

  “Thanks, but it’s completely out of your way, and right on Osgood’s, and he owes me.”

  We had turned right, and were heading toward the service station, chatting about nothing in particular, when Randall’s phone rang.

  “I should take this,” he said. “Hey, Vern. What’s up.”

  “I can’t stop them.” Vern’s voice carried, even though Randall didn’t have the phone’s speaker on. “So I’m going in with them.”

  “Going in with them? Are you crazy? Vern? Vern?”

  Evidently Vern had hung up.

  “Great,” Randall muttered.

  “What’s Vern going into?” I asked. “And who’s he going with?”

  “When a bunch of my crazy cousins heard last night’s rumor that the Dingles had captured Mark the whistleblower, they decided to go all Rambo and rescue him.”

  “But the Dingles hadn’t captured him, last I heard.”

  “Only a matter of time, they figure. They were going to wait till tonight, but after they heard about the daring daylight raid on the women’s shelter, I guess they moved up their timetable. Vern was supposed to be talking the fools out of it, not joining forces with them.”

  “Damn,” I said. “Have you told them the chief’s doing as much as he can to bring in the Feds?”

  “And pointed out that, quite apart from being completely illegal, what they’re trying could warn the Dingles that the outside world is onto what they’re up to. Make it harder for the Feds when they go in. Couldn’t get through to them. Look—forget Osgood’s. Can you take me a little farther away?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But where?”

  “Start out as if you were going to your grandfather’s zoo,” he said. “I think I know where my idiot cousins would go to start their bone-headed rescue mission. Place in Cousin Dwayne’s woods that we sometimes use as a rendezvous when we’re forming a hunting party. I’ll tell you where to turn off. If you can drop me off there, I can try to track them and talk them out of it.”

  “Roger. By the way, should we warn the chief?”

  “Probably.” Randall sounded grim. He took a deep breath before dialing the chief.

  While listening to Randall’s side of the conversation—and deducing that the chief was not pleased—I pushed the speed limit as much as I dared, and we flew out of town on the Clay County Road. Grandfather’s zoo was way out of town and right on the border with Clay County, so it made sense that the Shiffleys would choose someplace out that way to launch their mission.

  About a mile short of the zoo gate Randall pointed ahead and to the left.

  “See that dirt road? Turn in there. And take it slow, if you’re fond of your transmission.”

  I took it slow, and we lurched into the woods on what was definitely an unimproved road. If it was a road at all. More likely it was the faint track the Shiffley trucks had carved out on their way to that family hunting rendezvous. In some places I had to be careful not to scrape against the trees on one side or the other. I reminded myself that the Shiffleys would be coming this way in trucks that were a good bit wider than my car, so I probably wasn’t going to get stuck. The road was so narrow that the trees, many of them evergreens, met overhead, making it so dark I turned on my headlights. On the plus side, not much snow had made it through the leaf canopy.

  A mile and a half down the road we spotted vehicles ahead. They were parked in—well, it wasn’t exactly a clearing, just a place where the woods didn’t come right up to the edge of the road. I could probably even turn my car around if I worked at it for a while.

  “I guessed right,” Randall said. “The blue pickup’s Vern’s. The red one belongs to our cousin Taylor.”

  “I’d have thought either of them would have more common sense.” I pulled my car in behind Vern’s truck.

  “I think Taylor misses his army days.” Randall was scanning the woods. “Maybe this won’t be a total disaster—all of them are expert woodsmen, and a couple of them ex-military to boot.”

  “But that doesn’t change how stupid it is.”

  “Exactly.” He hopped out of my car and strode over to feel the hood of Vern’s truck. “Still warm. Look, I’m going to see if I can catch up with them and talk them out of this. You skedaddle back to town and let the chief know we’ve found their cars.”

  “Why don’t I just call him?” I suggested. “And wait here in case you end up wanting a ride out of the woods in a hurry?”

  “If you can get a signal, call away,” he said. “But don’t wait here. I have a spare key to Vern’s truck, so if I need a ride in a hurry, I can take that. You get to someplace with cell phone service and work on sending in the cavalry.”

  With that he disappeared into the trees. I turned on my cell phone and looked at the screen. Randall was right—no signal. I got out of the car and waved my phone around—sometimes that helped in the more remote and cell-signal-forsaken parts of the county.

  Not this time. I contemplated, just for a moment, climbing one of the enormous evergreens whose thick, drooping branches were probably part of the reason for the lack of signal. Maybe if I got higher up?

  But it would be faster to drive to the zoo. Cell phone service wasn’t great there, either, and the zoo would be closed by now, but I probably had a key to the staff entrance in my purse—and even if I’d left that at home there would be night shift staff on duty, so I could get them to let me in to use a land line.

  I was about to slide back into my driver’s seat and turn around when I heard a noise. A vehicle. It seemed to be approaching along the same route Randall and I had used to get here.

  Maybe it was the cavalry already coming to the rescue. Just in case it wasn’t, I grabbed my purse and tote and slipped into the woods. I took shelter under one of those drooping evergreen branches and resolved to stay hidden until I’d figured out who the new arrival was.

  Chapter 25

  A truck lumbered into sight. A tow truck. As it passed by, I saw the words CLAY COUNTY TOWING on the cab door.

  I resisted the urge to retreat farther into the woods. Staying still and quiet was my best option.
<
br />   The truck slowed to a stop behind my car and idled. Then a man jumped out of the passenger door of the truck’s cab. He was stout and bearded, with a red plaid jacket and a red knit hat.

  “Dammit, there’s three of the bastards.” His words were slightly slurred—with drink? He was holding a beer can. “This is going to take forever.”

  “No, it’s not.” Another man, similarly dressed, but not as stout, hopped out, also from the passenger’s side. “Anse tows one and you and I hotwire the other two and drive them out.”

  “First I gotta find someplace to turn this rig around,” said the man still in the truck—presumably Anse.

  “You go on that way and see what you can find. Bo, get started on one of them vehicles.”

  Great. I was about to watch my car being stolen.

  Bo grunted. He polished off his beer, crushed the can, and tossed it into the woods. Then he lumbered over and began fiddling with Vern’s truck. The other man went to work on my car. Well, at least he seemed sober. Unlike Bo, who was visibly impaired. Maybe if I ever saw my car again the wiring wouldn’t be completely messed up.

  I pulled out my phone, made triple sure the sound was turned off, and took a little video of the two men hotwiring my car and Vern’s truck. Evidently Anse eventually found a place to turn around—the tow truck lumbered back into the clearing, now heading in the other direction. Anse hopped out, and he and Bo began to hook up Taylor’s red pickup.

  “Cy, I still think it would be safer if we just dumped them in the quarry,” Anse said. “What if someone shows up at the shop before we get them stripped?”

  “Stuff that goes into the quarry can get hauled out of the quarry again,” Cy said, from where he was watching their labors. Clearly Cy was both the leader and the brains of this operation. “They’re not coming back to claim them for while. And if someone else shows up before you get them stripped, you can claim you bought them from someone and it never occurred to you that they were stolen. But that’s pretty unlikely. And any danger’s long gone once they’re broken down into a couple thousand used parts. So we have a busy night ahead of us.”

  I hoped my camera captured their words along with the video. I kept it running until Anse had driven the tow truck off, with Bo following in my car and Cy bringing up the rear in Taylor’s truck.

  I waited until the sound of the engines had faded into the distance. Then I scrambled out from my place of refuge and tried to brush all the twigs and spruce needles out of my hair and off my clothes.

  I felt a moment of panic. I was stranded out in the middle of nowhere, with no way to call for help. And what if one of the Clay County car thieves suddenly realized he’d left something behind and came back to find it?

  Then I reminded myself that I wasn’t in the middle of nowhere. I was a mile and a half from Clay County Road. Once I reached that, I was only a mile or so from the zoo. And if the car thieves returned, I’d hear them coming.

  But they weren’t just car thieves. They’d almost certainly come here with their tow truck because they’d found out about the Shiffleys’ expedition. “They’re not coming back to claim them for a while,” Cy had said. What if Vern and Taylor and whoever else had gone in with them were already on their way to join Mark Caverly in the Clay County Jail? Or worse—no. I wasn’t going to let my imagination run away with me.

  Perhaps it was a good thing I wasn’t a savvy tracker and woodswoman. Because if I was, I’d probably be dashing off right now to catch up with Randall and warn him, and maybe falling into the same trap I was afraid was waiting for him.

  Okay, no cell coverage right here and right now, but I might hit a pocket sometime soon, and so might he. So I composed a text.

  “Look out!” it said. “Three Clay County people just came and took your cousins’ trucks and my car away. Something may have happened to Vern and Taylor’s party. Or they may know you’re coming. Be careful!”

  I followed that with an email, saying the same thing. He probably wouldn’t get either one until it was too late for the message to be useful, but at least I’d tried.

  I couldn’t think of anything else to do, at least not until I got back to civilization.

  “You’ve got this,” I muttered to myself as I started down the uneven track. I set as brisk a pace as I dared, given the dim light and the uneven surface of the road. At least the snow had eased off for the time being. Every so often flakes would start drifting down

  Two and a half miles to the zoo. How long was that going to take me? I almost reached for my phone to look up “average human walking speed.” Just in time, I reminded myself that if I had the signal I’d need to do an internet search I could just call the police.

  I worried for a while about whether Randall was going to find his cousins and convince them to abort their mission before Clay County captured them. Or whether that had already happened. Whether Delaney’s hackers were having any luck at finding something the chief could use to prove his suspicions about Inman the bureaucrat, or at least make some other Fed suspicious enough to want to go in and find out what was really happening in Clay County. Then, just for a change of pace, I worried for a while about the fact that Michael would have expected me to be home already, and would be worried sick. Well, at least I’d had my purse and my tote bag with me when my car was stolen. I wasn’t sure which would stress me the most—having to replace my driver’s license and credit cards, or trying to reconstruct the contents of my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe.

  When I reached the Clay County Road, I wasn’t sure whether to feel optimism or dread. I was probably halfway to the zoo. Over halfway. But I still had a long slog ahead of me. I was more visible to any rogue Dingles still sneaking around in Caerphilly. But also more visible to any friendly souls who might come along and give me a ride. Should I feel relieved or anxious? I settled for feeling a sense of progress, and tried to be alert for any sights or sounds that might herald either danger or rescue.

  A wave of relief swept over me when, at long last, I turned into the zoo’s parking lot. Followed by a wave of cranky that I struggled to keep in check, or at least save up until I ran into someone who deserved to be the target of it.

  The enormous front gates would be locked, of course. But clearly the place wasn’t deserted. I could see three—no, four vehicles in the parking lot, all of them at the far side, the staff were encouraged to park. At that end of the lot there was both a side gate for deliveries and a door for staff use, with a doorbell marked FOR DELIVERIES on the wall between them. This was the door my key would unlock if I had it, and also where they usually let me in when I arrived after hours—to pick up Grandfather, for example. I trudged toward it.

  As I drew nearer, I recognized several of the vehicles. A white van with the logo of the Willner Wildlife Sanctuary painted on it. Not surprising—we were expecting our friend Caroline Willner up for a Christmas visit, and while here she’d probably spend a lot of time at the zoo, checking on the welfare of animals she’d once fostered and arguing with Grandfather about the finer points of zoology. I was a little surprised to see her here so late, though. And why was Dad’s blue sedan here?

  I’d find out soon enough. I rang the doorbell, and smiled up at the hidden security camera.

  “Meg? What’s up?” Caroline’s voice crackled through the overhead speaker.

  “Can I come inside and tell you? It’s damned cold out here.”

  “Of course.”

  Something buzzed. I grabbed the door while I could, and ducked inside, making sure to close the it securely behind me. I was in a small courtyard with the Small Mammal House on my left and Admin—the Education and Administration Building—on my right. A rectangle of light appeared in the side of Admin, and I hurried toward it.

  “Merry Christmas, Meg.” It was Cordelia, my paternal grandmother, also expected for a Christmas visit. Although I was surprised to see her since, unlike Caroline, she tended not to spend much time at Grandfather’s zoo. Or anyplace else where
she’d have to share space with Grandfather. They got on each other’s nerves very quickly. I sometimes wondered how the two had managed to stay together long enough to produce Dad during their youthful romance. Not a question I’d ever managed to ask.

  Since Cordelia was a highly sensible woman, she waited until I was in out of the cold to give me a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek. “We could use your help.”

  “Hang on a sec,” I said. “Let me see if my cell phone works.”

  It did, so I called the chief.

  “We’ve got a problem.” I broke the news that both the Shiffleys’ vigilante mission, and Randall’s effort to thwart it, might already have failed. And being an expert in multitasking, while I was talking to the chief, I texted Michael, saying “Car trouble. Catching ride home soon.” It wasn’t untrue—just a woefully incomplete description of my last few hours.

  “Blast,” the chief said when I’d finished my story. Either he was in a slightly better humor or he’d gotten his vocabulary back under control. “So any time now I could get a call from Clay County telling me they’ve locked up one of my off-duty deputies for trying to break a prisoner out of their jail.”

  “Your off-duty deputy and our mayor,” I said. “Remember what you said about them trying to railroad Mark Caverly on some kind of fake charges? I bet they’d love doing the same thing to a posse of Shiffleys.”

  The chief didn’t rush to say anything reassuring, so I gathered he shared my worry.

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “If I can think of anything to do.”

  “Can I at least report my car as stolen?” I said. “Because if Cy and his minions take it apart and I never see it again, I think my insurance company will want to know that I’ve reported it.”

  “Consider it reported,” he said. “And you can drop by the station tomorrow and finish the paperwork. I might even make a courtesy phone call to Sheriff Dingle. Warn him that we seem to have a rash of car thefts here, and he might want to keep his eyes open in case the perpetrators hit Clay County as well. Although it’s going to be a little hard to explain how you managed to have your car stolen in the middle of the woods during a snowstorm.”