by Shannon Hill
Then I sat back and lurked.
I am a cop. I am good at lurking.
I have a cat. I am very good at lurking.
If you ever want to learn to lurk, watch a cat. Specifically, watch a feral cat. Or, in my case, Boris. He’s black and white. In green shrubbery, he should stick out like a sore thumb. But when he curls up under the azaleas in the spring, all you see is light and shadow. Boris isn’t there. Until some poor bird or chipmunk finds out he is, usually with a small, terminal squeak.
I settled in to watch the people around me the way Boris usually watches the world.
No wonder cats are so damn jumpy.
Speak of jumpy: Tom resembled a man dancing barefoot on hot asphalt. Part of that was doing my job, I suppose. It’s not easy being the one to whom the town and indeed, several citizens of the county, address numerous brain-deadening complaints. Like “Why is the speed limit on Turner Gap Road so low? No one drives on it!” or that all-time classic, “Can I shoot trespassers?” (Answers being, respectively, “So no one dies on it,” and “Yes, but only if you want to be arrested.”)
The rest of Tom’s nerves I could lay at Tanya Hartley’s door. They’d been dating for several months, and she was hitting that stage of life where a lack of husband and children was becoming an embarrassment. The few times I saw her around, she was clinging to Tom like a barnacle to a ship’s hull, and he couldn’t scrape her off. He had a slightly wild look behind his eyes around her, one that said he’d be happy enough to try the marriage and kids, but not just now.
In other words, Tom was under pressure. The kind that happens when you keep shaking, gently, a bottle of fizzy beverage. Sooner or later, the cork pops and smacks someone between the eyes.
A man can do some damn stupid things under that kind of pressure. Especially a man who wouldn’t mind buying a nice ring but maybe has qualms about how to also afford the nice house—say, on Spottswood Lane, the overpriced McMansions built by the Ellers some years back—and the nice car and the nice clothes that were part of the dream package Tanya Hartley had sold herself with a little help from Madison Avenue.
All of which is easy to tell you, but if you want to see it for yourself, consider this little vignette the day Punk went to see Harry Rucker.
Deborah Rush, the retired lady who keeps house for the two reverends, called in with a complaint about Eddie Brady. This was normal. We get at least one of those calls a week about Eddie. Tom, however, slammed down the telephone, slammed on his hat, and slammed the door on his way out, with a word that I’d never expected him to use in female company. I was ostensibly finishing on my paperwork from a domestic dispute at the Elk Creek Apartments, and kept my head down, but Kim huffed. “What’s wrong with him?”
Twenty minutes later, Tom was back, with Eddie Brady in tow. In cuffs. Sporting a red mark on his forehead.
Enough’s enough. I was lurking, not dead. I got to my feet and said in a fair imitation of Aunt Marge, “How did that happen?”
“He wouldn’t put his damn head down,” snapped Tom, “that’s what happened.”
I narrowed my eyes. Boris picked up on my mood and started lashing his tail. “A word with you,” I said.
We went into the lunchroom, which gave us at least an illusion of privacy. “He didn’t get his head down or you didn’t give him a chance to?”
Tom bristled, but his face went dark brick red. “You know how he is, and besides, your cat tore him up and no one said a thing.”
“I wasn’t arresting him when it happened,” I reminded Tom a little stiffly. “Look, if it’s getting on you, I’ll step back up.”
Tom snapped at me a second time. “I can do the job!”
I grabbed his arm and lowered my voice. “If it’s not the job, what is it, then? You’re as bad as Boris at the vet’s.”
He pulled his arm free, but gently. His color ebbed. “I just never get a minute to breathe these days. I’ll be all right.”
I took a risk. “Tanya pushing to move in?”
He twitched, but shrugged. That meant she was, but he hadn’t decided what to tell her about it. I went back to my desk, and I was the one who called Dr. Hartley over to look at Eddie’s head. Not that the years of boozing had left much in the way of brains to damage, but better safe than sued.
I put Aunt Marge in charge of finding out from the church lady mafia if Tom had been enquiring about bigger places to live, or if the Hartleys suspected their daughter of moving in with her boyfriend anytime soon. We’d agreed she wouldn’t spy on Roger, but everyone else was fair game as far as she was concerned. “If they colluded in this crime,” she told me austerely while Roger painted in his studio, “they deserve whatever comes.”
Good enough for me. I let her work out her anxiety by doing her Master Spider routine on the gossip web. Pluck a thread here, a thread there, and see what vibrations come back. It’s a talent I lack that she and Bobbi own in abundance.
Speak of Bobbi: another nervous wreck. Impending motherhood had her shaking in her newly sensible shoes. She’d hit her second trimester and didn’t really like it. “First I couldn’t smell anything without wanting to vomit,” she told me when I went over one evening, “now I can’t smell anything at all, it’s like my nose went on strike.” She scowled, before adding in a now-typical non sequitir, “Do you know it’s an average cost of over two hundred thousand dollars to raise a child nowadays?”
And here I was complaining about the cost of the canned salmon and tuna I bought for Boris. “C’mon, you’ll be fine. You know all a kid really needs is love and the basics.”
“I know, and I know we have plenty of money…” she stopped cold, turned pink. I pretended not to get a sinking feeling in my gut. Since when did Bobbi have plenty of money? Or Raj? A vet around here makes a living, not a great big fabulous living.
I pasted on a smile and retrieved Boris from her recliner. “You’ve just got the jitters,” I said honestly enough. “So what’s the latest?”
She shrugged moodily and started to curl a strand of hair around one finger, and began to pluck at it with her other hand. “Oh, it’s all the same. Old biddies and young idiots, you know how it is.”
I’ve known her since we were still figuring out how to write in cursive. When she does that little hair-curling trick, she’s lying. I decided to see just what she was lying about, with one eye on Boris’s tail. “I know it’s not polite to ask, but are you worried about money?”
“No,” she said, and Boris’s tail stayed still.
I tried to joke, “You have enough to raise a child at a cost of ten thousand a year for the first twenty-one years?”
She didn’t meet my eyes, but she said, “We’re fine for money,” and Boris’s tail again remained still.
I took a shot in the dark. “Is it Ruth?”
She shook her head.
I tried Raj. No, all well there. The salon? Nope. Her in-laws, who were hoping for a grandchild to be raised Hindu? No, she had that under control. I finally gave up. As we were leaving, Bobbi hugged me. “Sorry I’m in a lousy mood, Lil. I really am glad you came over.”
That time, Boris’s tail twitched twice.
***^***
With all that spinning around in my head, I tackled Roger. Not directly. That’d be suicide. I watched him from a safe distance. His days were as routine as anyone else’s. Get up, eat breakfast, take a nice long walk with Aunt Marge, spend the morning at the animal shelter, come home and paint or fuss in the garden getting ready for spring. Once a week he would spend a day up in Charlottesville to see his two adult children, shop for art supplies, and take his completed works around the various small galleries. His watercolors had a very peculiar quality to them, somewhere between Chinese calligraphy and mapmaking.
For my Charlottesville skulk, I left Boris at home. He was not happy about it, but he attracted too much attention.
First Roger had coffee on the downtown pedestrian mall with his daughter. She had brought her little
son, whom to my knowledge Aunt Marge had never met. Roger’s children persisted in the amusing belief that Aunt Marge was a seductive home-wrecker.
Then Roger went to an art supply store. After that, he wandered through a little art center. I was getting pretty bored by the time he met up with his adult son for lunch back on the downtown pedestrian mall. The son’s wife came along. Something about her tugged at my brain. She was familiar, though I knew I’d never met her. The shape of her face, the set of her eyes—I knew them somehow, from somewhere.
I took a discreet photo with my cell phone, which worked out very poorly because I am a lousy photographer even with a good camera, and followed Roger discreetly enough to three appointments with people who seemed to own galleries or want to do something with his artwork. Maybe talk about it. I didn’t get that close.
We were homeward bound when Roger turned in to a gas station one county up. I rolled onward. I didn’t need to gas up the car, and I wanted to get home before Boris chewed through the walls.
I’d almost won forgiveness with fancy liver treats when someone knocked on my door. I left Boris growling with his face buried in his food dish, and peeped out the window. I blushed when I saw Roger’s car. Damn. I should’ve known he’d spot me. I don’t know what he did in the military, but he’d been good at it.
I answered the door when I had gotten my color back to more-or-less normal. “Hey, Roger,” I said cheerfully. “What can I do for you?”
Roger stepped into my little living room. His face was normally pleasant, but right then it was more like a memory of pleasant. He did not take off his coat. Oh boy.
He didn’t meet my gaze. Well, I am taller.
“Spare yourself the trouble, Lil,” he said. His voice was honed to a very fine slicing edge. “I spotted you around two o’clock.”
I sighed. “Crap,” I said. “Well, at least it took till two.”
He didn’t smile. “You were there all day?”
“Pretty much,” I admitted. I made sure to get my kitchen island between us. Roger has always given me the impression he is capable of killing someone with a toothpick and a rubber band.
“Then I am a suspect. I knew Marge was lying.”
Poor Aunt Marge. Well, she was off the hook now. I’d taken her place.
No wonder worms squirm.
“Sorry,” I offered insincerely.
Roger huffed. He puffed. Then he smacked his hands together. Boris, who’d belatedly clued in to his presence, jumped about three feet in the air with his tail fluffed out.
“Fine. Well, you’ll figure it out soon enough.” He raised his eyes to mine, and for once, mine weren’t the coldest in the room. “My son’s wife is a McElroy. Jean McElroy. Two years younger than her brother, the late Craig McElroy.”
Funny how I couldn’t get any body parts to work. Finally my mouth said, “Oh.”
“I suppose it’s pointless to tell you I wasn’t involved, what with the family connection.”
I opted for an abysmally tactless, “It sure doesn’t help your case.”
His mouth thinned and whited out a moment. That’s never good, by the way. Boris hissed, back arched. I would’ve done the same, if I was a cat. Roger was giving off the same vibe as a very angry, very hungry dog that’s been kicked once too often.
I heard three whole minutes tick by on the clock before Roger jerked his head in a nod, and left without another word. I sank onto the floor next to Boris. I knew why Roger hadn’t told anyone his daughter-in-law was Craig McElroy’s sister. Protecting his son. I could understand, at least in theory.
I unrolled my wallpaper and wrote down the name of Roger’s son and daughter-in-law, and called Harry Rucker and Punk to let them know what I’d found out.
***^***
Punk was taking an evening shift that day, to spare our little town the lack of attention given lately by Rucker’s disgruntled county boys, and called me on his way to a domestic disturbance call.
At the Turner mansion.
I was in the car so fast that Boris nearly lost his tail tip in the door.
I got there before Punk, who’d received the call when he was out Piedmont Road, and barreled up to the house. You could hear the yelling clear down Turner Mountain Road. That explained the call. One of the Reynolds family, who owned the farm out Turner Gap Road, had rolled down a window to flick a cigarette into the ditch at the stop sign where the two roads met, and gotten an earful.
So did I. In all my childhood, I had heard Aunt Marge’s voice raised maybe a handful of times. She didn’t need to go for volume. She had conviction. And, frankly, a certain tone of voice that would’ve dissolved reinforced concrete. To hear her yelling now sent me flashing back to a few memorable incidents, one of which involved her finding a stash of junk food in my room during my teens. The only thing that had gotten her angrier was finding a romance novel.
Roger’s voice interrupted. “You don’t understand! This is about my family! My flesh and blood! Not some orphan left on the doorstep!”
Uh-oh. I edged back from the front door half a step. Aunt Marge would not take kindly the implication that she was less my parent for the lack of shared DNA.
She didn’t. “How dare you! You stand there after lying to me for weeks…”
I could guess where that was headed, and I decided to open the front door. By the time I’d crossed the parlor and gotten to the kitchen, Aunt Marge had concluded her sentence, and Roger was retaliating with, “You can’t put this all on me, Lil’s no saint!”
I was relieved to see Aunt Marge’s face was neither too red nor too pale. She’s not young, after all. I watched a smile spread over it and she went very quiet.
Lurking isn’t all I’ve learned from my cat. I padded up quiet as Boris on the hunt.
I was right behind Roger when I said, “The not-saint is here.”
He jumped, and spun around, all in one awkward movement.
I followed up with, “Punk’s on his way.”
I waited patiently while Roger stalked to the other side of the kitchen. I added, “I’d love to hear how this is my fault.”
Aunt Marge rushed to fill in the blank. “That was said in anger, Lil.”
Ah, domestic disputes. No matter how much they hate each other, they’ll unite against the common enemy, also known as the cop unlucky enough to catch the call.
I looked from one to the other. “So, that about it? All sorted out?”
“Lil,” Aunt Marge reproved. “You know sarcasm isn’t constructive.”
“Look,” said Roger furiously to Aunt Marge, “either you trust me or you don’t.”
That’s a man for you. I cut in before Aunt Marge could regain enough breath to re-start World War Three. “Oh for the love of God, would you stick a sock in it? She’s protecting her child, you’re protecting yours. Call it even and call it a night, will you?”
They both drew themselves up indignantly. Aunt Marge’s mouth twisted all prim and prissy, and Roger glowered. Well, at least they were getting along.
Punk sidled in a moment later, trying to shed one of Roger’s three half-grown cats as it climbed up his trouser leg. It was having a wonderful time, unlike the rest of us. “Everything okay here?”
“Don’t ask me,” I snapped, “I’m just an orphan left on the doorstep.”
Aunt Marge made a tiny reproachful noise. Roger snorted something under his breath. I detached the cat from Punk’s leg and deposited it on the nearest flat surface. While Punk rattled off the standard “don’t make me come back here” speech, I hunted up Boris. He had Aunt Marge’s Natasha penned up under the antique rocker, and every time she stuck her head out, he’d reach down from the seat and bop her between the eyes.
I envied him. I’d have liked to smack someone myself.
12.
In a town of three hundred, rumors don’t spread. They occur, like lightning, and at about the same speed. Roger’s relationship to Craig McElroy was everywhere by the time I clattered into the
office the next morning. I didn’t really need to be there, with Tom taking my shifts, but staying home was not an option. I’d spent enough time staring at my unrolled wallpaper to make my eyes water as it was.
Kim greeted me in a flutter. “You hear about Roger? Can you believe it?”
“Ugh,” I said and grabbed a chocolate-iced donut from the box on her desk. I threw a dollar bill into the office petty cash cup. “I heard.”
“How weird is it his son is married to Craig’s sister?”
“Weird,” I agreed, squinted at her through a fog of insufficient sleep. “You losing weight?”
She nodded. It wasn’t a happy, proud nod. “Yeah, Mom’s on me about it, she says you can’t get a man if you’re ‘hippy’.” She rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “She says I shouldn’t have broken up with Len, but he was just not my type. Too…” She waved a hand around in a vague circle.
“You do favor the average redneck,” I said with about half my attention. “Who’s your next victim?”
A cold silence crept across the room. Kim said in a tiny voice, “That wasn’t very nice.”
“Sorry,” I said, and meant it. “So who’s your next…paramour.”
Kim shrugged, eyes distant. “If I have someone, I’ll be damned if I tell anyone around here. Like living in a goldfish bowl. A really, really small goldfish bowl.”
I couldn’t argue that. What you said at breakfast usually traveled the town by lunch. “You okay?” I asked, not entirely out of concern. She was on the list, after all. “You’re looking stressed out.”
She put on a big smile, let it fall. “Tom is not easy to have as a boss.”
Indisputable, but Boris’s tail shivered. Hmmm. I probed a little more. “Everything okay at home?”