Crazy Like a Fox (Lil & Boris #3) (Lil & Boris Mysteries)

by Shannon Hill

  I sank my head into my hands and started petting Boris. It helps lower my blood pressure.

  “And while you two were playing Keystone Kops,” I said in a low voice that set Boris’s tail to fluffing, “was anyone actually investigating the abduction and ransom demand?”

  Tom and Punk burst into counter-accusations. When they ran out of things to say, I was still waiting for a real answer.

  “I didn’t get anything up in Charlottesville except promises to help,” said Tom, “so I came on back and found the Lone Ranger over here with a jail full of county boys.”

  “More than you had to show for the day,” Punk shot back.

  I smacked my hand down on my desk. Big mistake. My eyes about crossed. It did get their attention. “What did you do about the case?”

  They both would have squirmed, but I think they were scared I’d shoot them.

  “That K&R guy‌—‌Clausen? Claren?”

  Punk interrupted, “Steven Clay.”

  I nodded my thanks for the information.

  Tom went on huffily, “The K&R guy was here when I got back, he wanted to coordinate. He’s done some overseas stuff like this, he said to pay the ransom and they’d drop you on our doorstep by midnight at the latest.”

  Now I was getting somewhere. “So they’d called again to set up the ransom drop?”

  “About an hour before the drop,” Punk confirmed, “at least that’s what the Ellers say.”

  “Did they call the Ellers directly or did they call the corporate line again? Did anyone think to trace the original call?”

  Tom hesitated. Punk looked away.

  “I don’t expect it of Rucker,” I said as calmly as I could, which wasn’t very, “but you two know enough. Or ought to.”

  Punk hunched up his shoulders. “Am I allowed to tell you anything I learned without a warrant?”

  I stopped dead in my mental tracks. Fruit of the poison tree, I think the lawyers call it. Whatever you call it, it means if you get evidence illegally, you can kiss the case good-bye unless the suspect has a real dogfood-for-brains lawyer. On the other hand, I wasn’t working the case. That was still up to Rucker and, to a lesser extent, Kurt Danes.

  I succumbed. “Sure.”

  “I gave the gate guy at the Eller place a hundred bucks to tell me what he knew.” Punk harrumphed uncomfortably. “Turns out he knew quite a bit. They gossip worse than old ladies up there.”

  Cousin Jack had the same problem with his employees. Most were not locals, and it meant their social lives pretty much started and stopped on the estates. We’d take their money, but it was rare anyone took them to dinner.

  “Second call came direct to the house line. Housekeeper got it.”

  The house line at the Eller estate wasn’t listed. Not that I knew of. I jotted a note to check that.

  “They set up a ransom drop at the mini-mart on the highway.”

  Damn. Easy access to a four-lane road. From there it was a straight shot up to Charlottesville or down to Lynchburg, and lots of side roads along the way.

  “For six o’clock,” Punk continued. “Clay said to just drop the ransom and worry about chasing the guys down later, it was smarter. Rucker wanted to ambush them at the drop. Your cousin said he’d drop the money.”

  I held up a hand to stop him. “Drop it where at the minimart? Inside? Outside? Dumpster? What?”

  Tom volunteered, “By the sign on the highway.”

  Another good idea. I knew that sign. It lay on the highway side of the drainage ditch. A passenger could reach out, grab the bag, and the car could be rolling on its way without anyone needing to set foot out of it.

  I rubbed my temples. “So what happened?”

  Punk and Tom were taking turns not looking at me. I sighed. “Is this another Charlie-Fox?”

  Charlie-Fox is a nice way to say cluster-f….well, you get the idea.

  “Not because of us,” said Tom staunchly. “It was Rucker.”

  Of course it was.

  When Tom and Punk agreed that Rucker couldn’t be trusted, they decided to go along for the fun in plain clothes. They settled in at the minimart, which served cheap barbecue and burgers, where they could keep an eye on things. Out in the parking lot, Rucker had his three favorite pets in their own cars, lights off, parked facing the highway for a quick start. The K&R consultant, Clay, had chosen to stand in the trees in the median, with a pair of binoculars and only God knew what else. Rucker himself was parked in his squad car a hundred yards or so down the highway, to give chase. As far as Tom and Punk knew, courtesy Punk’s informant, Clay thought Rucker had agreed to his plan to retrieve me first and the bad guys later.

  At a few minutes before six, Cousin Robert rolled up in his Mercedes SUV, as if buying gas, and dropped a leather overnight bag by the sign. Then he rolled on out again.

  At six-oh-one, a dark-colored four-door sedan suddenly swerved onto the shoulder. The passenger door opened, and someone leaned out, grabbed the bag, and slammed the door shut. The sedan rocketed off. So did Rucker’s boys. So did Rucker. Tom and Punk compared notes. They’d neither of them gotten a good view of the driver or passenger, but they agreed on the first two letters of the license plate, and that the car was made by GM. Probably a Chevy Malibu, and probably late 1990s to early 2000s. No later than 2003, because Punk’s old car had been a 2004, and he knew the difference in the grille.

  The agreement had been that I would be dropped off once the ransom was confirmed.

  What bothered me was that you don’t fit ten million dollars into a carry-on bag. You just don’t. So had the Ellers negotiated down the price? Or was something else going on we didn’t know?

  Who was I kidding? There’s always something else going on the cops don’t know.

  Out in the parking lot of the minimart, a screaming match started between Steven Clay and Chief Rucker. Thanks to Rucker’s boys, Clay had no chance to get a license plate or a visual ID using his night-vision binoculars. Rucker’s boys had, to top it all off, lost the car when it veered onto the road into Brown and Gilfoyle, then sheered right back around and onto the highway heading north. Leaving them in the snowy dust.

  I studied my list of questions. It had gotten longer.

  “Tuesday,” said Tom in a tiny voice, “we were getting anxious. That’s when Punk told Missy to stuff it, and talked to Missy’s kids, and you pretty much know it from there.”

  I hated myself for it, but I drawled meanly, “It took you 24 hours to get from Missy’s kids to the cabin?”

  Tom shrank, impossible as that seemed. Punk looked miserable. “Well, yes,” said Punk, and set his shoulders. He finally looked me square in the eye. “By the time we got the kids to talk, and then ran the plates, and narrowed it down to the ones that are registered within a couple hours’ drive of here…‌We couldn’t get Chief Danes to try those old logging roads in the dark. He figured he’d miss the landmarks, and we’d end up driving ourselves into more trouble. So…‌We waited for daylight.”

  I wasn’t being told something, and I knew I’d guessed it when I said, “Because you figured this was search-and-recovery by then, not search-and-rescue.”

  They both flinched.

  Great. They’d given me up for dead.

  “I hope to God one of you has Steven Clay’s number.”

  Punk produced a business card. I was pleased to see it had a cell phone number on it.

  “Any trace of the Chevy?”

  They both shook their heads. I sighed. Heavily. Then I clicked my tongue for Boris. There’s only one good way to settle my mind after something like that. I needed to prowl.

  6.

  Some people play computer solitaire to relax. I prowl.

  Crazy gives a lot of prowl for its size. The town itself is stretched out in a narrow valley between Elk Hill and Johns Mountain, over about a mile that starts at the mini-plaza where Bobbi’s salon is, and ends at the bridge over Elk Creek. From the vets’ office to the bridge, it’s called Main Stre
et, but north of the bridge, it’s Madison Pike, and where the road veers east at a near-ninety-degree angle, it become Piedmont Road. It’s a pretty enough drive, with Elk Creek running just west of Main, at the foot of Johns Mountain, and a few small branches tumbling into it like pictures off a calendar. The town itself is crammed mostly on the side streets that run up Elk Hill, numbered First through Seventh, with Littlepage Road and Spottswood Lane added in. I also prowl Bare Road, which leads up the hollow between Bear and Johns mountains or Turner Gap Road. Mostly, I roam the town itself. For a cop anywhere else, it’s barely a beat, but we keep busy.

  Unless we feel like quiet, which I did.

  I started out at Elk Creek Apartments, technically outside my jurisdiction but left to me by the county boys. Then past the mini-plaza with the Food Mart, Green’s Pharmacy, Bobbi’s place, and a movie rental shop that survived against all odds. Past Junior’s Lawn and Garden, site of my favorite speed trap. The vets on the left, Shifflett’s Fuel and Service on the right as I hit the actual town limits. WCZY, Crazy’s own talk-news-and-country station. The weekly Gazetteer offices. The library, an imposing brick-and-pillar establishment about five times the size we’d ever needed. A little day care. Shiflet Realty. Hutchins Home Repair, Blue Quartz Pottery, the liquor store, the Hunt & Fish, Shiflet Hardware. The churches, the Emergicare and post office, the elementary school, not necessarily in that order. And lots of small empty lots and vacant buildings. Up Spottswood Lane past the McMansions my Eller relatives had built, even renaming the lower stretch of Turner Gap Road, which ran out past Turner Mountain Road and Aunt Marge’s place on Turner Mountain. Across the creek on Spottswood to Madison Pike, turn left, and repeat in the other direction.

  That day, I started prowling our numbered streets at a slow roll, on the off-chance I’d catch someone doing something I could arrest them for. All residential, tar-and-chip, no sidewalks. Lots of leafy trees and bushes and yards. Elk Branch came down off Elk Hill between Third and Fourth, but the rest was a good attempt at civilized lawns and shrubs and gardens. Idyllic if you didn’t know better.

  And then I was back where I started. I didn’t bother with the short stretches of street on the west side of Main, right on the creek. Those are basically glorified shared driveways. I also avoided Eller Lane. Once past Old Mill restaurant, it was gated, manned, and pointless. My Eller relatives didn’t like me, I didn’t like them, and knowing I had to go thank them for that ransom stuck in my gut.

  At least Boris was happy. He loves prowling. He sits in his fancy cat-tailored car seat with his eyes bright, his ears twitching, just like any cat on the hunt. He growls to himself in a little singsong, too. I find it soothing. Aunt Marge says it sounds like the kind of thing our cave-dwelling ancestors hid from.

  I stopped in at the Emergicare on the my third pass through town. Dr. Hartley was between patients and took a minute to check my hands. “Good,” he said. “Looks like we’ve got it licked. Still sore, I bet.”

  “Tender,” I modified. I clucked to Boris, who was stalking Dr. Hartley’s ancient dog, snoozing under his desk. “Otherwise, I’m fine.”

  He harrumphed. He didn’t believe me. I glanced quickly at my cat. Yes, his tail had given two hard twitches. I have no idea if he smells falsehood or what, but he’s fairly accurate in my experience. Dammit.

  “Stressed,” I decided to say. Honesty is a good policy even when your cat can’t rat you out. “I heard about Rucker.”

  “Vernon was a lout even in grade school,” Dr. Hartley confided, polishing the end of his stethoscope. “But I’m sure it’ll work out, Lil.” He patted my shoulder. “I suppose it’d be a waste of breath to tell you to leave this to someone else for a change.”

  I grinned, but not happily. “Pretty much.”

  He shook his head. I think they teach that particular shake of the head in medical school. It’s the one that says, If only you’d listen… and is probably designed to get patients out of the office at a sprint, to avoid impending lectures.

  My cell phone rang. The one good thing about the Ellers and Littlepages keeping a presence in Crazy is that we have a lot of infrastructure you don’t see in other tiny towns like this. High-speed wireless internet. A huge, I mean huge, dish system to provide cable television. Enough cell phone towers that we get consistent coverage in most of the county.

  Okay, that last part is mostly good.

  I pulled over before I answered the phone. We have a law in town about not talking on the cell phone while driving. I try to obey it. Law enforcement loses credibility if they have to write themselves tickets.

  The call was from Aunt Marge. “I was thinking,” she told me, “it would be a good idea if you made your thank-yous in person.”

  I felt six years old again, being told to eat the lima beans I hated. “Do I have to?”

  “It’s appropriate.”

  I growled to myself. The Turners didn’t run out of money after World War Two, though they certainly lived in reduced circumstances, and they’d sent Aunt Marge to a very good finishing school in Europe. That’s where she and my mother met and became best friends, though they’d both been born and more or less raised in Crazy. I wondered if my mother would’ve been this set on protocol. Knowing my luck, she’d have been worse.

  “They didn’t do it for me,” I pointed out. “They did it because the PR would’ve been bad, and the money’s insured.”

  “They did it,” said Aunt Marge firmly. “Their motives are irrelevant, Lil. You have to thank them properly.”

  I growled out loud this time. “I am not baking them bread or cookies!” Another thought occurred. “And I’m not taking a fruit basket, either!”

  “Your presence will do,” replied Aunt Marge. I knew that tone. I’d have better luck getting the creek to flow uphill than I would changing Aunt Marge’s mind.

  “Fine,” I snapped, like I was fifteen again. “I’ll go. But I’m going in uniform.”

  “That’s fine, dear.”

  I hung up before she could tell me to mind my manners. Aunt Marge dresses in either floaty cotton skirts or age-appropriate slacks and tops, and to look at her, you’d never guess two things about her. One is her age. The second is her ability to run things her own way. The woman’s a tyrant. A genteel one, but a tyrant nonetheless.

  I turned the car around and headed for Eller Lane.

  ***^***

  The Littlepage mansion always reminds me of the big houses in Gone With the Wind. The Eller place is more colonial, and would make a pretty good high school for size. There’s a very antebellum feel to both places, with quarters for the hired help kept discreetly out of sight of the main house, and lots of planted beds of flowers and manicured paths. You need a golf cart to get around either one. I reckon riding out on horseback to inspect the peasants is passé.

  The gate guard had the sense to let me through without phoning the big house first. That was new. I wondered if it was due to the circumstances, or a lingering side effect from Punk’s bribe. Either way, he’d called the big house right after letting me through, because Uncle Eller was, as he always did on the rare occasion I came up here, waiting on the porch. Probably to make sure I didn’t contaminate the house with my Littlepage blood.

  He was wearing a wool overcoat, something more suited to London than January in the Virginia mountains. My cousin Robert stood just behind and beside him, wearing an expensive ski parka. From the zipper dangled the lift tag from Wintergreen, the resort up the road a ways.

  Ellers and Littlepages have distinct looks to them. Littlepages are stocky, average height, with mousy-fair hair and extremely pale eyes, and a decent enough complexion. They look in general like the kind of people who play a lot of tennis, and enjoy boring other people with stories about their time in Paris or Vienna. Ellers are tall, lean, dark-haired, and saturnine, by which I mean morose. Both families are good-looking, though that’s less nature and more the relentless application of high-end health care from birth. Both are, as a rule, sn
obby as all get-out. Still, the Ellers could win prizes for the way they look down those long noses of theirs.

  I kept Boris in the car. He hates the cold, and the Ellers aren’t animal people. Unless they’re shooting them to stick them on a wall.

  “Good afternoon,” said Uncle Eller. Robert Eller Senior, to be precise. My father’s brother. I’ve only got a few photographs of my parents, and it comforts me to think that in each one, my father smiles. I’m pretty sure Uncle Eller doesn’t know how.

  “Good afternoon,” echoed Cousin Robert. He’s a pretty good copy of Uncle Eller, but there’s some softness around the angles of his face. Of course, as Aunt Marge would point out, his mother is a Fleming, and they’ve all got a buttery look about them.

  I tried. I did. I meant to say, “Thank you for paying the ransom.” What came out of my mouth was, “There’s a few questions about what happened.”

  Uncle Eller squished up his face to make it clear he’d just encountered a very bad smell: me. “We have answered sufficient inquiries on this matter. It is closed as far as we are concerned.”

  Ten million bucks out the window and it was closed? I don’t care if he had insurance, not even an Eller could see that kind of cash fly away without a twitch or two.

  The words courtesy call dinged in my head. In Aunt Marge’s voice.

  My chest and stomach knotted up. I could all but feel Aunt Marge pushing me up the three steps onto the porch. Pardon me, veranda. Rich people have verandas. Porches are for the poor.

  I went for Cousin Robert. It looked like the soft option. I put out my gloved hand. “Thanks. For paying. Not that it mattered, but thanks.”

  He shook my hand lightly. Mannerly of him. “I’m glad it’s all settled.”

  It wasn’t settled, but I managed to work up a morsel of tact for once in my life. Aunt Marge would’ve been proud. I even said, “I’m grateful,” without too much visible discomfort. Then I succumbed to my curiosity. “So, how’d you get ten million into an overnight bag?”