by Shannon Hill
Crazy Like A Fox
by
Shannon Hill
Published by Shannon Hill
Copyright © Shannon Hill, 2011
E-Book formatting: Guido Henkel
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Author’s Note
People have asked me where I get my ideas for incidents and characters in the Crazy stories. You know that shy, sensitive kid with glasses who sits in a corner with a book at all the family reunions? Fear her. She isn’t reading. She’s taking notes.
1.
I woke up inside the trunk of a car.
Waking up in the back of a car is never as ambiguous as, say, waking up in the back of a pickup truck. Usually the worst question you have to ask yourself when you wake up in the back of a pickup truck is, “Where the hell are my clothes?” Another favorite question when you wake up in the bed of a pickup is something like, “What happened to all the beer?”
The one I hear most often is, “What do you mean, I’m getting a ticket? I’m not even driving!”
Lying in the trunk of what, by the space of it, had to be a car from sometime in the 1970s, I had a pretty good idea the question I should be asking wasn’t even who had done this to me but what they intended to do to me when the car stopped. Minor concerns like the headache and the feeling my shoulders were being forced into my skull could wait. First priority was to pull the little lever that Detroit kindly installed in the trunks of cars to allow people to escape them. Except, of course, they didn’t do that until well after the 1970s. No glow-in-the-dark plastic handle dangled anywhere I could see. I was pretty sure I was facing the rear of the car, too. Not that it mattered. My hands were cuffed behind me.
At least it wasn’t my own cuffs. That would have been plain embarrassing.
I flopped onto the rough carpeting to save my neck the pain of craning. My breath got knocked out of me when we hit some rough road. That did nothing to narrow down where I was going. Most of our county is so rural that they don’t bother with asphalt.
I was seriously screwed.
One comfort: My cat wasn’t in there with me. I had no idea where he was, but he wasn’t in the trunk. That meant there was a fair chance he was okay. Boris was a feral for years before he adopted me. He could deal with anything.
I told myself to believe that about twenty times before I decided I had bigger worries.
The fumes from the car’s exhaust had penetrated the trunk. Not enough to knock me out, but enough to explain my headache. The car didn’t have a catalytic converter by the stink of things. Definitely an old car. There’s a lot of those in the county, too.
Assuming I was in the county.
Most days, I think my life can’t be much more difficult than it is just because I’m me. I hate it when I’m wrong.
***^***
The last thing I remembered clearly was doing yoga. The basement of my tiny four-room house wasn’t heated, so I’d been wearing a fleece zip-up jacket over my tank and cozy sweats. It’d been Sunday, my one guaranteed day off in the week, and I’d been unwinding after church. I go to services to please Aunt Marge and to keep an ear on the town’s gossip. No one chatters like women between bouts of religion on a Sunday. Even the Episcopalians of St. Luke’s, where Aunt Marge had taken me since she first inherited me from my parents. But all that piety made me itch. People I saw in church on Sunday—or coming out of First Baptist on Sunday—made up about half the people I ended up handing tickets to the rest of the week. Speeding, broken tail lights, reckless driving, domestic disputes, noise, lapsed inspection stickers, you name it. I’d turned the Crazy Sheriff Department into such a regular source of income for the town that people had begun to grumble I was worse than taxes.
It never seems to occur to them they just have to stop breaking the law.
I usually ignore the mutters. If I paid attention to them, I’d get paranoid. Nobody likes cops. If they’re crime victims, we don’t show up fast enough or do enough to inflict vengeance on the perpetrator. If they’re the criminal, well, that’s self-explanatory. Now, lying in a car trunk, I was thinking maybe I’d made a serious tactical error. Obviously, someone wanted me out of the way. Yet somehow, much as she irritates me, I doubted this was the doing of that old bat Ruth Campbell. And Eddie Brady, town nuisance extraordinaire, can barely tie his own shoes most days. Which meant my abductor or abductors—and I was going to assume the plural—had some brains and some serious cojones.
My first thought went to the Colliers. They weren’t real fond of me. Nor I of them, come to that. But they were involved in a grudge match amongst themselves since last summer, when the matriarch of the clan died and I got some of them put away for crimes ranging from arson to homicide. It turned out old Vera Collier had owned land now worth well over a million dollars, and the Collier kin not in prison or otherwise rendered ineligible to be her heirs were fighting over who got that land. Besides, Collier revenge would never run to kidnap. They’d have just run me down or shot me dead.
Who else was there? I’d arrested and-or annoyed half the county since I’d become sheriff of Crazy. It might even be someone I’d arrested during my stint as a city cop up in Charlottesville. I didn’t seriously consider anyone from my old FBI days. I’d barely been in the Bureau long enough to wear the shiny off my ID. My gut and my achy head both said this was a local job. But who? They’d have to know I’d be missed, and there’d be trouble. A missing cop attracts other cops. Lots of them, as a rule.
I took some comfort from that thought, but it was very cold comfort. Nearly as cold as that damn trunk.
Well, one thing was sure. I hadn’t been kidnapped for ransom. I was both a Littlepage and an Eller, but neither family would pay a dime for my safe return. Cousin Jack had his assets tied up in saving Littlepage Inc. since his father’s passing. My Eller relatives wouldn’t lift a finger, either, though in their case it’s mutual dislike. Cousin Jack may be a Littlepage but he’s got some decency in him. I can’t say the same of Uncle Eller or my Eller cousins.
I gave myself a mental shake. No time to care who had me in the trunk, or why. The only important question was: How do I get out of this?
I groped behind me with my half-numb hands. Figures the inconsiderate bastards didn’t leave me a set of handcuff keys and a crowbar.
***^***
They say your life flashes before your eyes right before it ends. I hope to God that’s not true.
I was born thirty-mumble years ago in Charlottesville to Mark Eller and Helen Littlepage, who died a few years later and left me to my godmother, Marge Turner. No complaints from me on that. Aunt Marge was the best mom a girl could ask for. She raised me to be moral, healthy, and educated. (She also raised me to be ladylike, but that part didn’t stick.) I grew up in the Turner family Italianate mansion on Turner Mountain, just outside the limits of the town of Crazy, Virginia.
That’s about where the normal in my life ends.
My parents belonged to families that have been feuding since Crazy was founded. In fact, Crazy’s founding is what started the feud. The Littlepages claim it’s their town. The Ellers say the sa
me. They might have used shotguns to decide the matter, but instead they built things. Lots of things. Buildings, bridges, roads, a laundry list of competing public works. All through the booms and busts and eventual economic inertia of our county, Ellers and Littlepages one-upped each other in the most civilized, expensive way possible. We’ve got a fabulous library, wonderful architecture all over the county, and a constant source of revenue because the two families won’t leave Crazy until someone comes out of the feud as a clear winner. The Ellers have their HQ in Richmond, and these days are into tech and e-commerce. The Littlepages have their corporate HQ in northern Virginia, and are into banking and investments. Yet the heads of both families spend buckets of time and money in Crazy, a town of 300, because if someone abandons an ancestral mansion, the other guy “wins”.
In my opinion, they’re the reason the town got its name.
When I came back to Crazy a few years ago, I was elected sheriff because most people assumed I’d be equally biased against both Ellers and Littlepages. I assumed I’d be leading a nice, slow, quiet life. Of course, not too long after I took the job, my cousin Lisa Littlepage was murdered, and then there was the Collier mess a while later, and I got some reminders of just why I left Crazy in the first place. People like Ruth Campbell—my best friend’s ex-mother-in-law—and Josie Shifflett—a chronic traffic offender—and Eddie Brady—whose mission in life was annoying people—and…
Well, you get the idea.
All of it complicated by two problems: Vernon Rucker, chief of the county police, and my personal nightmare; and Harry Rucker, the county prosecutor, who appointed me a special investigator for the county to rein in his fathead cousin.
Lucky for me, I had Boris. He’d been a feral tomcat living out of a dumpster when we teamed up, and he’d been my furry deputy ever since. He was twelve pounds of malice when he chose to be, and my cuddly little lap-warmer the rest of the time. He rode with me in my cruiser in a special seat, slept on my bed, went everywhere with me except the bathroom. It was a little strange having a black-and-white shadow with mismatched eyes, but then, I’m not exactly your average everyday sheriff. I stand just shy of six feet in my socks, for a start.
People in the county regard Boris with a mixture of affection and respect. Affection because having a feline cop is quirky enough to be charming, respect because Boris had used his claws to defend me often enough that he’s earned a reputation I don’t mind him having.
It worried me in that car trunk, knowing that Boris would’ve attacked anyone who went for me. Only God knew where he was, or if he was still alive.
If he wasn’t, someone was going to be in big trouble.
Assuming I stayed alive, that is.
I didn’t hold that thought. Okay, I was heading for 40 and I had no love life, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to live. For starters, Aunt Marge would never forgive me for dying before her, and that’s one woman you don’t tick off. My best friend, Bobbi Rucker, was counting on me to be godmother to the baby she’d be having in the summer with her new hubby. I had a house, finally, after living with Aunt Marge for a little too long. And I was in charge of a sheriff’s department, admittedly consisting of two human deputies, Boris, me, and my friend Kim. Most of all, I had to find out who’d done this to me and kick their asses.
I wriggled my face. I felt the pull of duct tape. I wished I could cuss. The adhesive was going to irritate my skin something awful. But at least they’d left my nose free. And my eyes. That last detail bugged me. Either they didn’t care if they were seen—not a good thought—or they knew I’d never have a chance to describe them—another not-good thought.
I tried to straighten out. I did better than I should have. Definitely a very large car. Or all the yoga Aunt Marge had instilled in me. I tried to shift my shoulders, and nearly dislocated what felt like half my ribs. I took as deep a breath as I could stand. It cleared my head of most of the confusion of being stuck in a trunk.
I had to assume I’d be missed fairly quickly. Aunt Marge would call me to find out if I was coming to Sunday supper, or her live-in beau Roger would, and they’d be disturbed if I didn’t call back within a half-hour. Bobbi was bound to call me, too, to tell me the latest flutter or quiver related to her pregnancy, or just to ask for reassurance that she wasn’t too old to have a child, or to freak out about being too old to have a child. We’d been friends for most of our lives, and there wasn’t anything we didn’t see each other through. If I wasn’t available, she’d worry, and if she worried, she’d send her husband over to see if I was okay. Raj would do it, too. Smart man. Bobbi was small, but she was small the way a bullet is small. I might get a call from Tom or Punk, my human deputies. They’d run by if I wasn’t answering the phone. That was three whole chances to be missed right away.
If my cousin Jack Littlepage was in town, there’d even have been a chance he’d miss me. We’d fallen into a loosely friendly relationship since I’d tried to solve his sister’s murder, and we were each other’s only living blood relatives to boot. Okay, I had the Ellers, but I didn’t talk to them, and they didn’t acknowledge my existence unless forced to. Whereas Jack and I were the last of the Littlepages directly descended from the first Littlepage to set foot in our narrow mountain valley over two hundred years ago. But he was away on business, wheeling and dealing, and wasn’t due back till February.
I held onto hope anyway. Somebody would miss me. They had to. Hopefully before I was supposed to be at work tomorrow morning to take the seven-to-three shift and lurk around town to catch traffic offenders on their way to work in Charlottesville or Lynchburg.
My hope didn’t last too long. We were bouncing over and through and into some nasty potholes. It knocked a lot out of me, including my breath. I had four people who might miss me. No more. Until I failed to come to work. Then Kim, my secretary-dispatcher, would worry. She’d call Aunt Marge, then Tom. Aunt Marge would send Roger over to my house. Roger would not find me. Meanwhile Tom would run out to the usual speed traps just to be sure I wasn’t there. Someone would call Maury Morse, our mayor, and then Harry Rucker. Someone might even call the state cops sooner or later. I wasn’t sure what kind of mess had been left but I was pretty sure I’d knocked a glass bowl onto the floor on the way out the door. It was an antique, too. Art deco. Aunt Marge didn’t like art deco as a rule, but I did, so she’d let me have the bowl from the treasure hoard she called an attic. I also had a Tiffany lampshade, a Picasso, a Van Gogh, a Degas, a carved screen brought from Hong Kong by a Turner on the world tour, and a few miscellaneous other pieces she’d been glad to hand over.
There’s a reason Sotheby’s has her number on speed-dial.
As long as Boris was okay, I told myself, it didn’t matter who missed me or when. As long as Boris was okay.
It’s funny how that didn’t help.
The car was slowing, climbing. I slid around in the trunk, getting a hell of a carpet burn on my bare feet and hands. Uphill. Then curving. And then steeply downhill, back up again. I knew what that meant. A hideaway tucked up in the mountains. We had a lot of mountains. Probably still the Blue Ridge, though I’ll be damned if I could explain how I knew that. Something in my blood and bone. I might be half Littlepage and half Eller, but I was all mountain girl born and bred.
I might just end up a mountain girl buried.
2.
The car rattled to a stop. I waited to hear the engine cut off, but it didn’t.
That didn’t bode well.
The trunk flew open. I had no warning, was blinded by sun and snow glare. We’d gotten a few inches two days ago, and it hadn’t warmed up enough yet for it to melt. When four hands hauled me roughly out of the trunk, the cold hit me so hard I shivered painfully with every breath. The air had a feel to it I recognized, a windy bite. Wherever I was, it was high.
I’d half-expected someone to put a hood over my head. Instead, as my eyes slowly adjusted, I saw that they wore h
oods. And ski masks. And sunglasses.
I’d been kidnapped by wannabe Unabombers.
Beyond them, I saw gray tree trunks, blue sky, the white ridge of the next mountain. Then I was grabbed under one arm by the taller person, while the other one waved a shotgun eloquently toward a gap in the trees.
I do yoga barefoot. Walking in that snow froze my feet so deep they burned. I gave both my abductors a taste of the famous Littlepage glare that ought to have turned them to ice, but I kept walking like a good little prisoner and didn’t say a word.
Never argue with a shotgun at close range.
We moved downhill. I had no idea how my captors knew where to go, because I couldn’t see a single trail marker anywhere. No blazes, footprints, posts, not even a bit of colored tape. Which was useful information, if I survived. These guys knew the path very well.
Locals.
I twisted my head to study the mountains. I know the shape and swell of every mountain in our county, but none of these rang a bell. Before I could decide if that was good or bad, Shotgun used the barrel to re-direct my gaze forward. If it wasn’t for Tall, I’d have fallen face-first.
The path opened onto a wind-swept outcrop that fell sheer and frightening a good hundred feet straight down. For a second, I thought they’d throw me over, and my heart jumped into high gear so fast my stomach turned flips. I may have squeaked, like a mouse.
Tall pulled me left. I did my best to balk. He pulled harder, Shotgun pushed, and I was half-walking, half-sliding toward a stone face jutting right out of the mountain, walling off the outcrop on that side. There was nowhere to go from there but some cracked, broken boulders that in summer would be a great place for snakes. In winter, the fractured jumble looked like a great place to toss a sheriff off the cliff.