by Josh Lanyon
“Meantime…” Edgar said slowly. He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.
J.X. seemed to shake off his preoccupation. “Right,” he said briskly. “We’re losing daylight.”
They both gazed at me expectantly. “But…you don’t need me,” I protested. “You know where the shrine is. And I’ve got to get out of these wet clothes. Really. I’m prone to ch—”
“We can wait,” J.X. said. “It will save us time in the long run.”
Oh, he was loving this. And what was with the “we” stuff? Was he planning to join the expedition? Once a cop always a cop?
“No, it won’t. She’s right there. You can’t miss her.” First body to the right.
He frowned at this non-civic mindedness, but what did I care what he thought? He was just a guy I had once—er—well, he was just a guy.
“I’m sure we can borrow some dry clothes for you, Christopher,” Rachel said, and I gave her an ungrateful look.
“Sure,” Edgar returned easily. “I’ll bring up some jeans and a flannel shirt.”
“We’ll meet you in the front lobby,” J.X. said. “Say ten minutes?”
If I was going to say anything, it would not be “ten minutes.” But I refrained, letting Rachel drag me away to her room. There was no sign of Satan Krass as we made our way through the crowd. He was probably off booby-trapping careers and destroying other unsuspecting people’s lives. The rest of the room had fallen into disbelieving and shocked murmurs. Bad news travels fast.
The hallway outside the dining room was deserted—as was the front desk. We climbed a steep rustic stairway to the second level. More Indian rugs and Indian baskets by way of decoration. Wrought-iron light fixtures that suggested cacti and tree branches hung from the sloped ceiling and cast a mellow glow over Charlie Russell prints and black-and-white photos of the winery back in the fifties. Rachel led the way down a long hallway. The murmur of voices from behind closed doors reminded me of bees in a hive.
I tried to avoid the mirrors in Rachel’s room, but it was like trying not to look at a traffic accident. All trace of the suave literary lion I’d been impersonating before I arrived at Hell’s Half Acre was gone—killed on safari. What remained was a forty-year-old man, average height, average weight, brown eyes, and dishwater blond hair cut in a very expensive haircut that, sopping wet, looked like every other haircut. The head-to-toe mud-coating was the most interesting thing about me.
Somewhere on my wilderness trek I’d lost one of the two tiny earrings gracing my right ear. I mean, wearing one earring was enough out of character. Two? And the damned things cost a fortune because I was allergic to any metal but platinum. I dropped the remaining stud on the glass shelf and opened the door to the shower.
I took a quick and scalding shower, toweled off and dressed in the oversize jeans and plaid flannel shirt Edgar Croft had dropped off for me. Edgar was about five inches taller than me. I looked like a little kid playing cowboy dress-up. I opened my mouth to bitch to Rachel, then realized she hadn’t said a word since we’d come upstairs.
“Hey, are you okay?” I asked, poking my head out of the bathroom. She stood smoking at the open window, blowing a thin blue stream into the rain-swept air.
She didn’t turn. “Naturally.”
I’d have to take her word for it. My ten minutes had been up fifteen minutes earlier. I returned to the steamy bathroom, blow-dried my hair without regard to the sleek and spiky style I’d left home with. Don King suited my mood about now, and anyway I was warm and I was clean. That was all that mattered to me.
Rachel turned to survey me when I had finished my repair work. “Maybe you should borrow my bronzer,” she said, breaking the uncharacteristic silence.
“Rachel, d’you mind? I’m gay, not European.” Like bronzer was going to make a difference? Maybe a facial. Maybe a facelift. “I think Peaches will appreciate my interesting pallor.”
She shook her head like it was hopeless. I tended to agree with her. In fact, I had always believed my mission was hopeless—even before I had stumbled over the body in the woods. I hadn’t understood half of what she’d talked about that black afternoon on the phone. All that stuff about Candace Bushnell and Sex and the City and shoes—shoes?—it was like she was speaking a foreign language. Very soon I was going to have to admit to her that I still hadn’t come up with the idea for my brand new and absolutely brilliant series. Come to think of it, maybe this gruesome delay wasn’t such a bad thing.
I took the giant quilted plaid jacket Edgar had supplied in exchange for my soaked Burberry, and, looking ready-for-action in what probably looked like my dad’s bathrobe, went downstairs to meet J.X. and Edgar.
I found them in the lobby, standing by the heavy front door, engaged in undervoiced conversation. Edgar looked like the Marlboro Man, and J.X. looked like he had stepped out of the pages of GQ. It’s hard to like a man who’s younger and more successful than you are. His being better groomed endeared him even less.
Rita greeted me from behind the front desk. “You’ll be staying in one of the cabins. Number nine.” She pushed a key across the counter.
Number nine, number nine… The ominous refrain from the Beatles’ White Album ran through my mind.
“Rita, that can wait,” Edgar said. “We’ve got to get a move on.”
“Doesn’t sound like Ms. Sadler’s going anywhere to me,” Rita said laconically. A young woman with thick glasses and hair that somehow reminded me of Velma in Scooby-Doo also stood behind the desk. She gasped at Rita’s words.
I could see that Rita was one of these blunt call-a-spade-a-spade types, but she had a point. “The thing is,” I said, taking the pen she handed me and automatically signing the paperwork she pushed my way, “aren’t the police going to be unhappy about our tramping all over their crime scene?”
All four of them—five, if you counted poor Bullwinkle looming over the desk—stared.
“Crime scene.” They said it in unison. You’d have thought they’d been rehearsing while I was in the shower.
“Uh,” I faltered. “I thought I mentioned that.”
Chapter Four
“Uh, no,” J.X. said after a pause. “You didn’t.”
I was liking him less and less.
I stared at the ring of faces. The kid in the horn-rims looked ready to swoon. Between J.X. and the stuffed moose, it was hard to tell who looked more put out. “Well,” I said. “It was just a thought.”
“It must have occurred to you for some reason.”
I had a sudden vision of what he must have been like when he was a cop—curt and sarcastic and no-nonsense. Nothing like my own delightful Inspector Appleby, who so ably assisted Miss Butterwith on all her cases.
“It looked to me like she was hit over the head with a tree branch.”
Rita made a sound like seals do when they see sardines flying their way. Her husband gave her a warning look.
“A branch could have broken in the wind and hit her,” J.X. objected. “That was a hell of a storm last night.”
“True,” I said. I mean, why should I argue? I hoped it was an accident. Murder would complicate an already complicated situation, as I could see from the Morse code looks passing between him and Edgar.
“Why would anyone want to hurt Peaches?” That high wobbly voice belonged to the kid with the Velma hairdo—and she seemed to be talking to me.
I opened my mouth to assure her that I hadn’t the foggiest—that despite the knife Peaches had dug between my shoulder blades, I wished her nothing but long life and prosperity (well, long life anyway). But J.X. cut me off with a crisp, “We can discuss it on the way.”
It appeared we were under martial law. However, since nobody else seemed willing to challenge J.X.’s assumption of authority, I figured protest would be a waste of time. The sooner we got this over with, the sooner I could eat some supper and get into bed—preferably with the covers over my head and a chair jammed beneath my room doorknob.
&nb
sp; The rain had resumed as we filed out the back entrance, and Edgar handed me a battered felt hat from the rack next to the door. It was the kind of hat homely fat squaws wear in politically incorrect cartoons. I pulled it on and followed them outside.
We scuttled across the rain-slick wooden deck and down a rickety set of steps. I reached for the wet railing. Not that a broken leg wouldn’t have been a piquant touch to an already novel vacation. Or should this descent into hell really be called a vacation? No way would it be classified as such on my tax return.
We reached the lower level safely and started down a slippery walkway which snaked through a small courtyard with dripping patio chairs and tables stripped of their umbrellas. The overhead lights cast blurred reflections in the cement as we hurried past.
We came to a long arbor wreathed tightly in woody vines. It was as dark as a tunnel. The sharp, dry smell of summer reached my nostrils. The withered vines deadened the sound of the rain. Ahead of us, I could hear the steady clomp of Edgar’s boots, though I could barely pick out his bulk moving through the dim light.
“Watch your step,” J.X. threw over his shoulder as the cement path abruptly gave way to a much rougher wooden walkway. I realized this must be one of the original structures on the property, and put out a hand to orient myself. My fingers brushed J.X.’s jacket.
His voice drifted back to me. “Afraid of the dark?”
“Only the things that go bump.”
I meant that literally, as in I didn’t want to trip or bang into anything, but I heard his laugh and realized that he took that quite a different way. Which shows how little he knew me; I hadn’t flirted with anyone since… Frankly, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d flirted with anyone.
Exiting the arbor, we seemed to have traveled back in time. The walkway had given way to hard-packed earth. There were no reassuringly modern overhead lights here, and the lights glinting through the tall hedge of dwarf yew seemed a long way away. We passed a long, low line of chopped firewood. An axe perched in a stump, glistening in the wet. Ahead was a tall brown wooden building, probably the former carriage house.
We dived in a side door, and Edgar turned on the wall switch. Two mini buses, a Land Rover, and a giant pickup with a double cab gleamed in the waxen light.
“Better take the truck,” said Edgar. “Don’t want to take a chance on getting stuck in the mud.”
I murmured agreement. I must have sounded pretty vehement, however, because J.X. glanced at me. His thin mouth twitched with amusement—probably the look the old Conquistadors wore when they were torturing helpless Indians. “What do you have in the way of a tarp or canvas covering?” he asked Edgar.
Edgar moved off toward one of the well-organized shelving units, and J.X. followed. I tuned out their grim debate on what to bring. Pick axes? Shovels? Spray paint? Were they planning on putting in a new swimming pool while we were out? No need to bother. The back forty was now a lake.
Finally they loaded their toys into the back of the pickup, and J.X. gave me a hand into the cramped confines of the double cab. Maybe he thought I had time-warped into my dotage. I took his hand, felt the hard calloused strength of it as his muscles flexed.
Climbing into one of those giant trucks is never the most graceful maneuver, and my ascent was made less graceful by the fact that my foot caught in the giant cuff of my left jeans leg and I nearly pitched headfirst into the narrow confines of the backseat.
“Easy there, young fella,” Edgar advised, watching me right myself with a hostile look at J.X. He started the engine as J.X. swung up with ease and slammed the door shut after him. The cab seemed very crowded; the scent of leather and aftershave and cinnamon was overwhelming. Granted, the cinnamon was me—or rather, Rachel’s scented bath gel.
Edgar hit the remote, and the now-mechanized carriage house doors swung up. We had a stark panoramic view of flooded landscape and the black bulk of the hills beyond.
“Lonely out here, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes,” Edgar agreed, putting the truck in gear.
“Explain to me exactly why you think Peaches was murdered,” J.X. requested as we bumped and bounced down the soggy road.
“I said it was a possibility. I didn’t say I knew it for sure.”
“What you said was, aren’t the police going to have a problem with us traipsing over their crime scene? Sounds to me like you were pretty sure.”
Did he have phonographic recall or something equally annoying? Imagine the horror of being with a man who remembered precisely everything you ever said. And what kind of shelf life did his recollections have?
“It’s kind of a blur now,” I said vaguely. “But, okay, the one really odd thing was that Peaches was out there in her pajamas and bare feet. Doesn’t that seem unlikely in this weather?”
“Go on.”
The truck wheels slipped and spun as we splashed through a pothole the size of a small lake. I held my breath until we had regained firm ground, then replied, “And I already told you about the broken and bloody tree branch a couple of feet from her body.”
“Sounds like an accident to me,” Edgar commented, his attention on the muddy road.
“Yeah, I’m not following.” J.X. directed that my way.
“Look, it was only an impression. I’m probably wrong.”
“Probably.”
I was leaning forward, so we were practically cheek to cheek. Close enough to whisper sweet nothings into his ear. Nothing being about all I had to say to him.
Glancing up, I caught Edgar’s gaze in the rearview mirror.
“Okay, except what was she doing out there in her jammies in that weather?”
“Who the hell knows.” J.X. faced front again. “She was eccentric. To say the least.”
“She was a high-spirited gal,” Edgar agreed. He added after a moment, “What made you go into the woods there?”
“Bad luck,” I said. “I was trying to find a dry place to change shoes.”
As we crested the hill my suitcases appeared in the truck’s headlights. Edgar slithered to a stop, and J.X. got out. He tossed my suitcases in the flatbed and climbed back in the cab.
We continued on our way in grim silence. It was only a few minutes’ drive, but all the same it was dark by the time we reached the shrine.
“I think it’s along here,” Edgar said, pulling up on the side of the road. “This look about right to you?”
“I guess. It all kind of looks alike this time of night.”
J.X. opened his door. Edgar turned off the engine. “You can stay here if it’ll be easier.”
“Not that a little practical experience wouldn’t do your books a world of good,” J.X. tossed back.
It would have been definitely easier—and preferable—to stay in the truck, but after that crack I didn’t have a choice. I climbed down and squelched after them into the wet and silent woods. The smoke from our breath hung in the air, the shadows were deep as night.
It didn’t take long to find the temple.
Frankly, I half expected that the body would be gone, like the corpse in Miss Butterwith and the Dear Departed. But there she lay, her hair plastered and dark against her gray-white skin, her clothes colorless in the gloom. I could see by the stiffness of her limbs that rigor mortis was now advanced.
“Sure you wouldn’t rather wait in the truck?” Edgar asked, switching on one of those industrial-sized flashlights. Peaches’ toe ring glinted in the beam.
Oddly enough, I no longer wanted to wait alone in the truck. I stood to the side, sheltered beneath the tree branches, and watched them.
J.X. circled the body and took picture after picture from different angles with a small digital camera.
“I wish the light was better,” he muttered. He snapped, and the flash briefly illuminated Peaches’ face. Not pretty.
“There’s the branch.” I pointed.
J.X. took a couple of photos of the bloody branch, and then he and Edgar measured the distance from the b
ody to the branch.
“About two feet,” Edgar concurred. He glanced at me. “You’ve got sharp eyes.”
I shrugged.
To J.X. he said, “She could have staggered a foot or two after she was hit, I guess.”
“Maybe.” To his credit J.X. sounded more polite than convinced.
“You didn’t see anything…funny…when you found her?”
Funny? Well, no. I shook my head. Edgar looked like I had confirmed his own thoughts on the subject.
“What about footprints?” I asked J.X.
“Can’t tell a damn thing in this light. Pine needles would cushion them, I guess.”
Between the steady rain and the pine needles, I guessed that there probably wasn’t much chance of tracking Peaches’ footsteps—or the footsteps of anyone following her.
“There’s no way she walked out here,” I said. “And she obviously didn’t drive herself.”
Neither man answered. I knew what they were thinking—that the day’s rain would have eradicated any tire tracks.
“We should probably stake a tarp over her,” J.X. said at last. “I don’t want the crime scene compromised any more than it has been.”
He didn’t look my way, but I still felt this was a criticism.
“The thing is,” Edgar said slowly, “the critters are liable to…”
He didn’t finish it. He didn’t have to. Maybe there weren’t bears in these woods, but there were certainly coyotes, foxes, ravens—even ants and bugs would contaminate the crime scene.
No one spoke. The rain pattered down softly around us.
“You think they’ll be out tonight?” J.X. inquired. “In this weather?”
Edgar gave him a look that in a salsa commercial would convey a certain New York City! sentiment. It occurred to me that if we weren’t leaving Peaches, she would be a travel companion on the way back to the lodge.
J.X. wordlessly considered what Edgar refrained from saying. Then he knelt, pulled the can of spray paint out of the bag they had brought. He scooted around the dead woman, carefully brushing the pine needles and leaves away from around her body. Rising, he slowly, painstakingly sprayed a thin line of navy blue paint around Peaches’ sprawled form.