Crazy Like a Fox (Lil & Boris #3) (Lil & Boris Mysteries)
Page 3
“Infection,” Roger supplied. “You’re on antibiotics.”
I yawned enormously. I considered my options. I fell back asleep. When I opened my eyes again, it was to a yowling, howling aria of woe that made Pavarotti sound like an amateur hack. Only one creature on the face of the earth makes that noise: an unhappy cat.
I shot up in bed. “Boris!”
Bobbi bustled in. Behind her came Rajiv Vidur, her hubby and Crazy’s new veterinarian. An Ohioan of Indian descent, Raj had fallen hard for Bobbi, and they’d married the previous October, to mutual joy and much local consternation. Raj was Boris’s vet. By default, since Dr. Mitchell refused to ever treat Boris again. I didn’t blame him. He’d neutered Boris for me. Boris took it badly. To the tune of Dr. Mitchell getting stitches. Raj had a more lenient view of feral rage, and he held the carrier in both arms despite the fact Boris was rocking it back and forth in his fury.
I held out my bandaged hands. “Gimme!”
Raj set the carrier on the foot of the bed. A nurse hurried in, harried, flustered. “We don’t allow animals!”
Bobbi gestured. Raj turned and started talking to the nurse about the invaluable nature of a companion animal in recovery from trauma, and got her out of the room, shut the door behind them. Bobbi opened the carrier. “There you go, you big baby,” she told Boris, who lurked in the depths. “What a pain in the butt,” she told me. “Complain, complain, complain, it was like having Ruth to supper.”
“Boris!” I cooed. “Boris, c’mon, sweetie!”
It’ll tell you how good a friend Bobbi is that I will coo to my cat in front of her. And that she’d put up with him.
It’ll tell you about Boris that he slunk out of the carrier, ears flat, eyes huge, fur fluffed, until he had crawled safely near my face. Then, having sniffed me all over, he voiced a long series of indignant chirps and growls before he head-butted me bruisingly in the chin. Honor satisfied, he flopped across my chest, and started making happy starfish-paws into my shoulder, his mismatched eyes glowing one gold, one green as he purred.
Arms curled around him, I sighed. “Thanks, Bobbi.”
“No trouble. He’s fine, by the way. He was bouncing off the walls at your place, and Raj thought it’d be best to keep him with us till you came home.” Her smile wobbled. She gave me a gentle half-hug. I felt her tremble. “Oh God, Lil, what we were thinking…”
If I hadn’t been heavily and pretty happily drugged, I’d have asked a lot of questions. Instead, I said again, “Thanks. For bringing Boris.”
Bobbi reached out and tickled Boris’s chin. The tag on his collar jangled. It was a five-pointed star, just like a deputy’s star, that Aunt Marge had long ago gotten him. “Hon,” she said, “what makes you think he gave me a choice?”
***^***
The nurse chased out Bobbi, Raj and Boris, but not without a fight. Boris twisted, squirmed, wriggled, yowled, howled and wailed his way to the elevator at such a volume I thought he’d rupture something.
Worn out, I lay dozing until Tom arrived, bringing with him Punk, and, to my surprise, the county police chief from one county down and over, Kurt Danes. I’d met him in passing, which is to say, we’d traded phone calls a few times to exchange information on this or that law-breaker. He was a sand-colored guy: hair, eyes, weathered skin. Affable. But his smile never hit his eyes.
“Now I know where I was,” I said after we’d greeted each other. “So maybe you can tell me who had me there.”
Tom and Punk traded glances. They nodded to Kurt, as the one who had jurisdiction. He cleared his throat uncomfortably, though that could’ve been the pollen count from the gigantic arrangement Maury Morse had sent on behalf of the town. It had gladiolus, fern, baby’s breath, and a dozen bright flowers I had never seen a name for. Even I had sneezed, and I don’t have allergies.
“It’s like this, Lil,” Kurt said in that soft-drawling way he has that is a complete lie. The man was a drill instructor in the Marines before he came home. “We only found you by a bit of luck, and it was strange at that.”
Not words to make me feel warm and fuzzy all over, but I didn’t get picky. Alive was alive. “I’m grateful no matter what.”
“Give credit where it’s due, your boys put it together.” Kurt waved his hat at Tom and Punk, who blushed identically. “They asked me if I knew anyplace someone could hide a sheriff, and we hit every one I could think of. It’s luck that I knew about that particular one.” To my amazement, Kurt turned pink around the ears. “It was my grand-daddy’s before the feds took the land. Otherwise…” He gave a shrug. “Well, it’s a helluva good set-up for a still.”
Okay, I was on some good drugs, but I wasn’t that out of it. “Wait, how’s that ‘strange’?”
Tom deferred to Punk, who also got a little red around the edges. What ailed those boys? “Well, I know you got no close neighbors on Littlepage Road, but I figured it was worth asking Missy. You know.”
I did. Missy Campbell was a military widow with three kids and a marginal income from working at the Food Mart. She saved her husband’s pension for the kids’ education, and made up the differences by entertaining men in the wee hours. None of us made a fuss about it. She did what she had to do, and from what rumor brought to my ears by way of Aunt Marge and Bobbi, she was smart enough to do it with condoms.
“Turns out, her younger boy’s all about cars right now,” Punk went on earnestly, “and I figured maybe if there’d been a strange one they’d have seen it. Turns out he did. Kid’s got a mind for cars like I don’t know what. Like one of those savants or something.”
I wasn’t surprised Punk knew the word “savant”, but I saw Kurt was.
“He told me about every car he’s seen this whole last week, make, model, color, he even got partial plates on them, yours included.” Punk grinned fleetingly. “Anyway, he tells me that Sunday after lunch he sees a Ford F-150 XLT, super-crew cab, four-by-four, whole nine yards, real fancy truck, he said. Even gave me the last four of the plate, got the color on it too. Dark blue pearl. He’d looked it up on the Ford website.”
I started to appreciate why they said “strange luck.” How many kids paid that much attention?
“He thought maybe it was a new one for your cousin’s place. Then it comes back maybe fifteen minutes later, and he thinks maybe it’s just someone who got lost or turned around. Seeing as we don’t see too many new trucks like that around here,” Punk commented dryly. The truck in question had cost someone a cool forty grand by the sound of it, and that didn’t fit in Crazy. Or our county.
Tom butted in with a quick, “I didn’t even think to ask Missy’s kids.”
I said, “Good thinking, Punk,” and I meant it. He went pinkish again.
“So we got a hit over in Kurt’s jurisdiction,” Punk concluded.
“Any sign of the truck?” I asked. It’s not fun having a cop brain. I didn’t even ask if they’d found Tall and Shotgun. I knew that if they had, I’d have been told.
I’d find out later how much my cop brain had missed in that conversation. Damn drugs.
“Not yet, but the guy it’s registered to is not one of my favorite customers,” said Kurt. “Washed out of the Army.” Kurt’s cough indicated his opinion of those who lacked the wherewithal to get through the US Army’s basic training program for cannon fodder. “Last name’s McElroy. He’s got some buddies about as worthless as he is, mostly work nights as security guards to make their beer money.”
“McElroy work security anywhere?” I wanted to know. I might have run across him that way. I didn’t recognize the truck by its description, so chances were I hadn’t given him a ticket.
“Last I heard, he was pretending to work at the truck plaza on the interstate. His daddy died last year, that’s where he got the money for the truck.” Kurt’s face crumpled up in contempt. “Idiot didn’t save a damn dime of it. I checked with his boss, no word from him since he left work Saturday.”
“Anyone else missing?”
I almost laughed. I said the same thing quite often. “One was tall. By my standards,” I clarified. “I’d put him at six-two or six-three. Other guy was maybe an inch or two shorter than I am. Figure five-ten-ish. Hoods, masks, sunglasses.” I blinked at my own stupidity in not seeing it sooner. “They didn’t take them off, not even inside.”
“You see their hands?”
“Gloves,” I pointed out, “it’s winter. Boots, too, work boots. Older ones, not new. Jeans. They were both wearing coats in camo, but that doesn’t mean a thing around here.”
Kurt and Tom and Punk and I all nodded grimly. One of every four guys around owned a coat with some kind of camo pattern on it. Tom had one, and so did Aunt Marge’s Roger. They weren’t exactly scarce.
“What about the attack?” asked Kurt. “You put up a fight. There was stuff all over the house.”
“Part of that was probably the cat,” I replied with a smile. “Boris has a temper. I remember breaking a bowl in the living room, and I remember being in the cellar doing yoga. There wasn’t even a knock at the door, but you know I never lock the damn thing in daylight.”
Tom tsked. Punk just shook his head. Yeah, yeah, I know. But seriously—who’d think to lock a door in daylight in Crazy? Not many people bothered locking them at night. And I’m the sheriff, for crying out loud. I’m known to be armed. Well, most of the time I’m armed. With a Sig Sauer, no less. I keep my town-issued Smith & Wesson purely for backup. But during yoga, I go unarmed. Yoga with a gun is just creepy.
“All right,” I said briskly, to get them focused on something besides my stupidity. “We have a lot of circumstances and nothing solid, then.”
“There’s some to go on,” offered Tom hesitantly. “Kurt did say not many know about that cabin. How’d McElroy find it, then?”
Kurt grimaced. “My grand-daddy ran shine with Old Man McElroy, that’d be this kid’s great-grandfather. Might be the story about the cabin runs in their family, too.”
So we tentatively had a connection between a truck, a person, and a place. Nothing, in other words. I chewed on that for a few moments, while I tested my feet and hands. The pain was easing, but the pins and needles were just as bad as ever, and in its own way, that felt worse. My feet at least seemed to be recovering by the minute, though the right hand remained raw and flaming sore.
I went to the heart of what bothered me most. “Any idea how they got me down?”
All three men shuffled their feet and looked everywhere but at me. Good grief.
“Tazer?” I suggested. “Mace? Hit to the head?”
“We don’t know,” Tom blurted out in real misery. He’s a big guy, lots of old military muscle still under a sheath of civilian blubber, and when he looks upset, it’s like watching a teddy bear cry. You want to hug the stuffing out of him. “Don’t you know?”
I didn’t. I frowned, concentrating hard. I was down in the cellar, doing yoga. Boris was dozing on the shelf above the washer and dryer meant to hold detergent but that was a de facto cat bed because a cat will always go for the warmest spot around, and I’d thrown in a load of towels after lunch. I mentally reviewed my yoga routine. Mat work. Standing poses. And the world fuzzed out. Or had it?
I thought hard on that after the guys were gone. The doctor came in and told me I was making excellent progress and could go home the next day, with no permanent damage to hands or feet, although they’d be tender and painful for several more days. Then I was left alone, thinking. How the hell had those two guys gotten me down? I knew the doctors had looked for head trauma, and generally if you get knocked out, there’s a mark or a trace or something a doctor can find. So what had they done?
I had been in down dog and…I heard the bowl break….There had to be something in between. Had to be.
The memory bobbed up and smacked me.
I’d heard something on the stairs into the cellar. I’d turned. Boris had woken with a growl. And then there’d been a lot of nothing but a zappy sort of pain, an inability to move…then more zap.
I growled. I had been tazered. But not the single little five-second burst that usually is enough to make someone sit quietly in the back of a cruiser. They’d kept hitting me until I passed out. I wasn’t sure how many hits that would take. Hollywood to the contrary, stun guns don’t render you instantly unconscious. But if you get hit more than once? At once? Let’s just say I have my doubts—and I’m pretty dang sure getting hit by many thousands of volts would explain the gaps in my memory between yoga, the broken bowl, and waking up in that trunk.
I exhaled slowly. Then I got the phone and dialed Tom’s number. Bad enough I’d been tazered and tossed in a trunk, but now I had to do the smart thing, and let someone else investigate it.
4.
I got home to find that little elves had been at work. I could name them, too. Aunt Marge was behind the new art deco bowl on the coffee table for me to toss keys and mail in. Bobbi had left the cinnamon rolls, and I bet she was the one who’d done the laundry. I could practically smell Tom at work on the brand new shiny double deadbolt on my door, and the new, improved, supplementary locks on my windows. And only Kim—bless her heart, as we say—would have put vanilla-scented candles all over the place.
I settled in on my couch to rest, after I’d downed the super-healthy vegetarian soup Aunt Marge left in the refrigerator. I’d been raised a vegetarian, with no regrets, but Aunt Marge forbade all foods ending in –os, along with all other processed foods, and did not recognize pizza as a legitimate means of obtaining nourishment. I had my own views on that, and I called Old Mill, the town’s sole restaurant, and just lately its new source for pizza. Seth Campbell, the owner, was a distant cousin via an Eller infidelity, but he was a decent guy, and he made the kind of food you couldn’t get tired of. And that’s despite the fact his menu had a grand total of twelve items, half of which involved homemade french fries on the side.
While Boris prowled the house angrily mrrowling at the changes, I ordered the triple-cheese, with spinach as a sop to my conscience, and sighed. I was on much weaker pain meds, which meant I could think clearly, but I let my brain take the day off. I was just glad to be home.
There was one other sign that little elves had been here. Someone—by name of Punk Sims, I was betting—had left me an activity summary of what had gone on during my absence. I yawned and kicked back and read up on which mice had played while the cat was away. Josie Shifflett had gotten another warning about her catalytic converter. Eddie Brady spent a night in our tiny jail for public intoxication, more for his own safety than anything else. Kyra Fulton over on Spottswood Lane had gotten a ticket for not having her Yorkie on a leash, said Yorkie having come to Punk’s attention when the Rivers family next door called about the fact it had defecated all over the nativity in their yard. And the Rivers family had been given a friendly reminder to please take the nativity scene down before Easter this year. Phil and Iris Murray, a retired couple on Sixth, had been visited after neighbors called in a screaming match over what Phil said about Iris’s sister, apparently involving said sister’s predilection for much younger men.
In other words, business as usual.
Sometime after my pizza had been devoured, with Boris’s help, my doorbell rang. That was new, too. I grumbled as I hefted Boris onto the floor and opened my door to find Harry Rucker there. I blinked. I’d never known county prosecutors made house calls.
“Lil!” he chirped, and ushered himself in. Trim, on the short side, like a better-groomed modern Mark Twain, he smiled at me with a glint in his eye like a hound off its leash. “How is our heroic sheriff?”
I should mention Harry’s got a mouth full of razors as sharp as his wits. I winced. “Heroic isn’t the word I’d use.”
He dropped easily into my only armchair, took o
ut a cigar, and gestured extravagantly with it. “Oh, but you are the hero of the hour, my dear Lillian.”
Lil is short for Littlepage, and when you’re nearly six feet tall, it’s a bad joke to boot, but I still prefer it to Harry’s flowery and ever-changing variations on it. “How so?” I asked.
Boris sniffed at Harry’s feet and sneezed, then began a rude investigation of Harry’s pockets, probably hoping for tuna treats. Harry patted his head. “Why, you survived kidnap! Frostbite! Probable death from possible starvation!”
“It was hypothermia, I had another good week left before I died of starvation, and there’s nothing heroic about getting thrown in a car trunk.”
At that point, my mouth and my brain finally, fully reconnected.
Harry chewed the end of his cigar contentedly. “I see Tom and Punk have not yet taken your formal statement.”
I ignored him. I’d been thrown in a car trunk. But I’d been abducted in a truck. Hadn’t I?
“Son of a bitch,” I snapped. “Did anyone measure the tracks? Check wheelbase and width, any of that? Try to get tread marks?”
Chuckling, Harry held up a placating hand. “My dear sheriff, your deputies did you proud. Should the offending pickup ever appear, you will be able to confirm you were hauled from your home in a Ford F-150 XLT with new tires, no less, which left lovely marks in the snow when they ran over your petunia patch.”
“It’s periwinkle,” I said absently. “So they changed vehicles.”
“Quite,” said Harry, and contentedly munched a leftover crust of pizza. Boris leapt onto my lap and curled up with a sulky glare.
Changing vehicles was smart. And there’d have been a hundred places to do it without witnesses. I could think of three within a mile of town. Assuming the truck was McElroy’s, and that Kurt was right about the guy, that and the careful obscuring of their identities was an awful lot of smart for two men dumb enough to go after a cop.