Shepherd's Crook

by Sheila Webster Boneham

  He hugged me and laughed. “Did you see the cake?” He steered me to the table. “Isn’t it perfect?” It was. Doreen had created the perfect cake for my mother—simple and stunning, a moderate-sized two-tiered affair with delicate multi-hued flowers around the edges. “I was a nervous wreck driving it here,” said Norm, drawing me to him with one arm. “I would have died if it had been spoiled.” He let go of me and slipped his arm through Goldie’s. “I’m going to steal you away to be sure everything you need is all set.”

  Bill was talking to the two cooks he had hired to prepare the finger foods, but broke away to hug me. “You look great, Sis! You should dress up more often.” I thought maybe Bill should help with more weddings, it put him in such a good mood.

  “I’ll second that.” The voice came from behind me and I turned. My heart did a little pirouette when Tom smiled at me. I had never seen him in a tux before, and rarely in a suit, and although I still preferred him in jeans and chambray, the formal duds looked good. Our eyes met and held, and something warm and fearless spilled in waves through me. Tom made an almost imperceptible nod and we moved into one another’s arms. He whispered, “You promised you weren’t going to cry at this wedding, remember?” We held another moment and I closed my eyes, breathing in his scent and resisting the urge to rip off his clothes.

  When we let go, Tom gave me an “I know what you’re thinking” wink and I smiled and changed tracks. “Did Martin have anything interesting to say after I left the hospital?”

  “Summer and Ray had run a con on Martin when he was in Reno several years ago, just before they were scared into hiding. They never followed through, but Summer still had the photos, and when Martin showed up on her local radar, she went after him.”

  “And she got him to help her set up an insurance scam?”

  “That was the plan. She went home that Friday night, supposedly to stay there and take care of the animals on the farm.”

  “That explains why Evan didn’t question her absence that night,” I said.

  “Right. She came back with a rented stock trailer and Hugo, the Bouvier, and used him to open the gate and drive the sheep.”

  I thought back to Summer’s near-hysteria the morning the sheep went missing. “She missed her calling as an actress, that’s for sure.”

  Tom agreed and continued. “So Summer called the police and reported the sheep missing, and Martin was supposed to push the paperwork through. Summer threatened to take her photos of their little encounter to the press if he didn’t.” Tom chuckled. “I almost felt sorry for the guy. Anyway, the sheep were insured for more than their market value, so she would have collected about eight grand.” He paused. “That wouldn’t have helped Evan much, but I suppose it was a start.”

  I thought about the note Summer had left Evan. “I don’t think it had anything to do with Evan’s debt,” I said. “I think she was planning to leave, had been planning it for a while.”

  Tom nodded.

  “Let’s talk more later, okay? It’s all rather depressing, and I don’t want anything to spoil these few hours.” I excused myself to help my mother, and Tom said he would get the dogs and meet me behind the arbor just before the ceremony.

  My job, it seemed, was mostly done when I got to Mom’s room. She wore a simple pale sea-green dress and one of her resident friends, a retired hairdresser, had arranged her hair in a soft and simple style. I unboxed her bouquet, a simple mix of lavender, pink roses, and baby’s breath. I delivered her to a beaming Tony Marconi and stepped into the solarium.

  By the time I got back to the solarium, most of the forty chairs were occupied by family and a few friends plus Shadetree residents and staff. I found Tom and the dogs waiting behind the arbor as promised. Jay and Drake knew something special was afoot, and they pranced and grinned as if to say, “If our people are happy, we’re happy!” Tom put an arm around my shoulder and I leaned into him for a moment.

  The ceremony was simple and elegant, and it was all I could do to stick to my no-crying promise. Two of Mom’s Shadetree friends provided the music, all popular songs from the fifties and sixties arranged for flute and guitar. The bride and groom came in holding hands, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing a happier pair. Tom and Drake stood beside Tony, and Jay and I stood with my mother.

  Goldie had been certified as a secular celebrant since Indiana legalized secular weddings in twenty-fourteen and she made the ceremony magical. Mom and Tony had written straightforward vows, and Goldie spoke briefly, her theme being “it’s never too late for love.” I hope not. When it came time for the rings—a lovely matched pair of handmade gold bands—I expected Mom to hand her bouquet to me. Instead, she said, “Jay,” and he stepped around me, took the bouquet, and sat down to wait as if they’d rehearsed. When Goldie pronounced them “spouse and spouse,” a cheer rose from the guests and we all turned toward them. Norm and Bill were holding hands in the front row, and seemed to have their roles reversed—Norm was beaming while my brother wiped his eyes.

  As Mom and Tony made their way through their friends, stopping to hug and shake hands, my peripheral vision caught movement in the hall just outside the arched doorway. Something large and moving fast. But when I turned to see, there was nothing.

  Jade Templeton appeared in front of me and grabbed me in a rib-cracking hug. “Who would have thought?” When she finally stopped rocking me and stepped back, her mascara was smudged into the smile lines around her eyes. “Your mama has come a long way in the past year. I’m so happy we’ve been part of her journey.”

  I started to thank her for standing by the lovers when Tony’s former son-in-law tried to ruin it all a few months earlier, but Tom appeared beside me with the dogs. He gave Jade a little hug and turned to me. “It’s cool enough outside. I’m going to put the boys in the car. It’s too crowded in here and you know they’ll wind up mooching.”

  “No no no!” said Jade. “Put them in my office. Percy’s in there. They’ll be fine.” I should have known she had brought her Poodle with her.

  I didn’t need to tag along, and my throbbing ankle begged me not to, but I wanted to see if whatever I thought I’d seen in the hallway was still there. It wasn’t. Still, I had an unsettled feeling, and it ballooned when Jay dropped his nose to the carpet and growled. I stopped and looked one way, then the other, but nothing seemed out of place. Tom turned toward me from the office door and said, “What’s up?”

  I shook my head and smiled. “Nothing.” I closed the door behind us and pulled Tom to me for a long kiss, the kind I could get lost in, the kind that turns minutes to lifetimes. I barely even noticed the three dogs trying to squeeze between us. When we came up for air, I started to speak but Tom laid a finger on my lips and said, “Not now,” and I nodded.

  The party was in full swing when we got back, and Norm rushed over. “It’s perfect, isn’t it?” We agreed. “I’m thinking we’ll cut the cake in about ten minutes, before people start to fade. What do you think?”

  “Sounds good,” I said, scanning the room full of laughing, dancing, chattering people, “but it looks like most of them will be good for a bit longer. Let them enjoy themselves.”

  Norm hurried off to help infirm hands carry plates of finger food to tables and whatever other host-like things needed doing, and Tom went to get us some punch. I thought I heard Jay bark, which he rarely did, and looked past the doorway and hall to Jade’s office door. All seemed quiet. I turned back toward the gathered guests, delighted that everything had gone so well. Mom and Tony were in the center of the main crowd, framed by the arbor thirty feet across the room. I limped toward them.

  And so it was that for the second time in four days I had my back to the source when the screaming started.

  seventy-eight

  The scream came first, frail and wavering. Then a single pop, sharp and loud, from behind me. I may have imagined it later in retelling, but I could sw
ear I heard something whizz past my head just before the top of the arbor exploded, setting off a shower of flowers and plastic and tiny white lights.

  “He has a gun!” someone yelled.

  “Janet!”

  I didn’t recognize the first voice, but the second was Tom’s. As I wheeled around I saw two punch cups fly into the air as he tossed them upward and ran toward me. I stretched my hands toward him, palms out, and shouted, “No! Get down!” but he kept coming. I bent and turned toward the source of the shot, expecting to see the crowd running away.

  But they weren’t. They were converging on a heavy-set man in the same rumpled brown suit he’d worn the night before. Zola. Everything seemed to slow down, and I processed the scene in what could only have been a second or two. A spattering of dark brown stains straddled one shoulder of the man’s suit and ran down the front of his jacket, and I realized it must be dried blood. What was it Joe had said? The second man was “marked.” Now it made sense. He’d been hit by the spray of buckshot when Mick Fallon was killed. And I was sure I’d broken his nose with the rake.

  Even as I turned and ducked, the attacker moved toward me, but he seemed to be pressing his legs together with each step. I pictured Bonnie gripping his crotch and made a mental note to give her a special treat if I got out of this alive. We all need to get out of this alive. Yet Tom was running toward me, toward the line of fire.

  And people were closing on Zola. I looked into his eyes and realized he may have left a good part of his mind in the alley where Mick Fallon died. I watched the gun come up, the muzzle looking for me. A heavy briar cane came down with an audible whomp! on the man’s wrist. It was wielded by Tony, my new stepfather. Zola screeched but held onto the gun and brought it back up. It was pointing at me. Something metallic flashed under the lights and came down like a cage over Zola’s head, rubber feet pointing my way. A walker.

  Tom caught me in his arms without slowing down and pulled me toward the kitchen.

  “Wait!” I resisted, and pointed. “Look!”

  A man I had often seen snoozing in the atrium raised his arms in victory behind the gunman, grabbed the walker, and slid it back and forth, knocking the frame into the gunman’s head and neck with each jerking slide. Zola raised his hands and there was another loud bang! and a ceiling tile shattered and rained down. Tony’s cane whacked the man’s forearm again, and the curved handle of another cane jabbed into his belly. The gun fell to the floor, and Bill grabbed it and dropped it into the punch.

  Tom was holding me so tight I could barely breathe, and I realized I too had my hands clamped onto his forearm where it crossed my chest. “Are you hurt?”

  “No.” And as I watched the scene unfold, I started to laugh. He loosened his grip and we moved toward the melee.

  The goon was turning side to side, dodging blows as he tried to pull the walker off his head. He almost had it when a tiny little woman I thought of as the bird lady flung a crocheted shawl over his head, blinding him. Someone drove an oxygen cylinder on wheels into his shin, and a muffled howl rose from under the shawl.

  I heard barking over the shouts, and suddenly it got louder. I looked toward Jade’s office. The door was open. Jay and Drake raced into the room, Jade Templeton’s Poodle, Percy, right behind. The big dogs focused on the strange figure now staggering in circles. Tom called Drake and the dog changed directions, racing toward the voice he loved. Percy looked around and made a beeline for Jade. I called Jay, but it was too late. He had already launched himself at Zola. His paws hit the man square in the chest, and Jay bounced off, spinning as he hit the ground and racing to obey my call. I hugged him to me.

  The goon had somehow stayed upright, but it was clear from the staggering and screaming and flailing that it wouldn’t take much to finish him. A swath of pale green silk passed between me and Zola. Mom.

  She reached up and pulled the shawl off the man’s head. “Just who do you think you are, crashing my wedding?” She grabbed the legs of the walker and gave them a shove, driving the crossbar into what remained of Zola’s nose. He let out a long, blood-chilling howl and staggered backward, arms windmilling as he tried to stay upright.

  “Oh no, oh no, oh no!” It was Norm, and he was running toward Zola from the side, trying to avert disaster.

  It was too late. The gunman toppled backward onto the folding table. It wasn’t made for that kind of weight, and the end he hit collapsed with a loud crack! The other end stayed up, its top surface sloped toward Zola. Norm leaped over the man’s legs and made a brave effort to intercept the cake as it slid.

  He missed.

  seventy-nine

  Tom and I finally left Shadetree three hours later. He had driven the newlyweds to their honeymoon hotel while I consoled Norm and helped clean up some of the mess. The ambulance had whisked Zola away under guard long before, but the police took some time asking questions and taking names. The residents seemed to enjoy the process—the ones who stayed awake, at least. Hutchinson had been off-duty but got the call, and since he’d been with Giselle, she insisted on coming along. When she saw the remains of the cake, she had said, “Oh, there has to be wedding cake!” and half an hour later she was back with a reasonable replacement from a nearby Scott’s grocery. Norm had put his best face on the cake disaster.

  Tom had to swing by his house to get Winnie, and I was lying on the couch with Jay and the cats, my ankle elevated and wrapped in ice, when my cell phone vibrated.

  It was Hutch. “I thought you should know. Summer’s been arrested.”

  “What? But they never actually made the insurance claim, right? So what—”

  “No, not that,” he said. “There are several outstanding warrants for more serious charges in Nevada. That’s why we put out the alert. She’ll be heading west as soon as the paperwork goes through.”

  “Where is she?”

  “They took her off the train to Chicago this morning. Elkhart police are holding her pending extradition.”

  “This morning?”

  “I was off duty. I just found out.”

  I felt a strange mix of emotions about Summer—anger, sadness, loss, disgust. She had never done anything to me, but she had hurt a lot of people, and had done so with cunning and intent. She wasn’t directly responsible, but people had died because of her actions.

  “Have you called Evan?”

  “No. I drove out there. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing you tell a guy on the phone.”

  “How’s he going to manage?”

  “Seems he was expecting something like this,” said Hutch. “He said the neighbor, the fellow you met—”

  “Meyers.”

  “Right. He’s offered to buy Evan’s place and the sheep. Seems he has a daughter who’s interested in taking over the shop.”

  “Did he say anything about Nell, his dog?” If no one wanted her, I decided, she could come to my house.

  “Well, Evan told her it was just the two of them now, so I guess he’s keeping her.”

  I thanked Hutch and hung up when Tom came through the door with Drake and a folding metal crate. “Winnie’s staying in here while we’re gone,” he said. I buttoned my lip.

  Life-threatening experiences make me ravenous, and since the only thing I had eaten since morning was half a slice of cake, Tom suggested a nearby Indian restaurant. “But first,” I said, “I want to stop by Blackford’s. I think Joe should know the goon won’t be back.”

  But Joe wasn’t in the alley, and worse, his box home was gone. So were his beat-up folding chairs. There was no sign that he’d ever been there, and my heart sank. Had he been frightened away? Had Ralph Blackford run him off? The store was closed, but a car I thought to be Ralph’s was still in the parking lot and the lights were on inside, so I knocked on the front door.

  Ralph smiled when he saw us. “Come in! Come in!”

  “Sorry to bo
ther you, I was just worried about …”

  A door at the back of the store opened and Joe stepped out of the storage area and waved.

  “Oh, I thought—” I said, smiling at Joe. “I was afraid—”

  “Joe’s going to be helping me out,” said Ralph. “I’ve been worried about security, so Joe’s going to be staying in the store to keep an eye on things at night and on Sunday mornings.”

  Joe nodded. “I get a room, too, with a bed.”

  Ralph cleared his throat and looked down, shuffling his feet. “We needed to get my son’s old bed and his dorm fridge and hotplate out of the house anyway, and there’s an office back there just sitting empty.”

  Joe added, “I’ll get paid every Friday, too.” It may have been the first time I’d seen him really smile.

  I was still glowing over Joe’s good fortune when we filled our plates and settled in to eat and catch up. I told Tom about Summer, but added, “I have a very good feeling about people tonight, in spite of everything.”

  He smiled and said, “I missed the rest of the story when I drove Tony and your mom to the hotel. What else did that guy—what’s his name, anyway?—what else did he say?”

  “His name is Albert Zola. He and Fallon worked for some guy in Cleveland named Cucinelli who has his fingers in all sorts of illegal and semi-legal stuff.” I scooped some chana masala into a bit of naan and savored its gingery bite, then went on. “He sent Zola and Fallon looking for Evan, and they found the farm just as Evan and Summer were leaving for the herding event, so they followed them. They didn’t recognize Summer because they knew her with dark hair and sexy clothes, and they weren’t expecting to find her in Indiana. It was a complete fluke that they spotted Ray.”