I nodded, reaching for the bags. “Can you tell me where the Severn farm is?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
Sally’s eyes widened. “It’s out on Route 2, a mile or so past the cemetery,” she said. “Nobody lives there now.”
I was still light-headed, and I’d broken out in a cold sweat during my out-of-body experience. Normally I’m a pretty quick thinker, but I couldn’t come up with a single viable excuse for wanting to visit an empty farmhouse.
“Oh,” I said, hoping I looked smarter than I sounded—or felt.
Sally shuddered, as though a veil of cobwebs had just dropped from the ceiling and settled over her. “Somebody ought to burn that place to the ground,” she said. “Nothing left but rats and bad memories. Kids go out there to drink beer and smoke dope. It’s a public menace, that house, practically falling in on itself. Ask me, it would be a good thing if it did.”
There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but I was a little off my game. I gripped the counter edge with one hand and leaned against it a little.
“Are you all right?” Sally asked.
“Fine,” I lied. “What happened to Mr. and Mrs. Severn…and their daughter—what was her name?”
“Fred died. Alice moved away after that—married a forest ranger or something. Rick’s been in and out of jail since that accident of his.” Sally narrowed her eyes and peered at me. “What’s your connection to the Severns, anyhow? You’re not a reporter, are you? Or somebody from one of those tabloid TV shows?”
“I knew—Molly. Their older daughter.”
“Well, if you have any idea where she is,” Sally said, “you’d better tell the cops. She’s wanted for attempted murder.”
“I haven’t seen her in a while,” I replied.
Sally looked downright suspicious now. “She ruined a lot of people’s lives, that Molly Stillwell. Fred senior’s, certainly. She poisoned that poor man. Alice all but dried up and blew away, trying to take care of him. And as for Rick and Tessa—”
I grabbed hold of the name. “Tessa. What happened to her?”
“In and out of drug rehab. Married and divorced a couple of times. Last I heard, she was in a mental hospital in Missoula. Slashed her wrists with a broken bottle and almost bled to death. The police found her in an alley.”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling numb now, as well as dizzy.
I left, carrying the bags to the car.
Dave was glad to see me, but then, Dave was always glad to see me, which is definitely not the case with everybody.
I stood a moment next to the driver’s door, breathing deeply.
Once I was inside the car, I snatched a pair of pink panties from the stash, jerked off the price tag and, after checking in all directions to make sure I wouldn’t be observed, wriggled into them.
“There,” I told Dave. “That’s better.”
Tucker was due to hit town anytime now, I reminded myself. The panties would be sliding back down around my ankles as soon as we were alone, and as badly as I’d wanted to put them on, I probably wouldn’t protest. In the meantime, though, it was good not to feel naked.
Dave and I headed for the local pancake house, which had outside seating—picnic tables under a dented metal awning. Together we consumed the three-egg special with a short stack and crisp bacon on the side, although Dave’s appetite was a little more delicate than mine, since he’d had kibble back at the motel.
We piled back into the Volvo and drove up and down every street in Shiloh. It didn’t take long, since there weren’t all that many, but I got a good sense of the place.
Next I found Route 2 and followed it for miles, but if the Severn farmhouse was there, I didn’t see it. It could have been at the end of any number of dirt roads, with rusted rural mailboxes teetering at their weedy bases. Sally had mentioned a cemetery, but I couldn’t find that, either.
I didn’t think I’d go down in history as one of the great detectives.
Finally I turned around and headed back toward Shiloh, intending to ask directions—of anybody but Sally Swenson—to the Severn place.
There was a grassy, tree-shaded park in the center of town, fronting the lake, and it looked inviting. I decided to stop there and let my dog do his business while I thought about who I ought to approach, and what I’d say when I did.
I clipped Dave’s leash to his collar and grabbed the half roll of toilet paper I’d snitched from a public restroom on the drive up from Arizona in case his business happened to be the goopy kind.
There was a modest stone fountain in the middle of the park, and an old man in overalls, a long-sleeved shirt and a billed cap sat on the edge, smiling as Dave lapped at the water. I was pretty sure the codger was alive, but the clothes made me wonder. They could have harkened from a variety of decades.
“Hello,” I said.
“Howdy,” he answered. “You from around here?”
“No,” I replied. “Arizona.”
“Long way from home.”
I nodded. Dave was really sucking up the water; the sound nearly drowned out the old man’s voice. “This is a nice park,” I said.
“We like it.”
Not a talker, then. I’d have to prod him a little.
“I guess you’ve probably lived around Shiloh for a long time.”
He tilted his head back to study me more closely. “All my life,” he said.
“You must have known the Severn family, then.”
He nodded. “Talk about a bad-luck bunch,” he mused.
“I’ve been trying to find their house,” I said.
“Why would you want to do that? Nobody’s there.”
“I’m in real estate,” I replied, inspired.
“You couldn’t get a plugged nickel for the place, even if you put a dump-truck load of cash into renovating it first.”
“I’m still curious.” And I think my sister is hiding in the cellar.
The old man shrugged. Took a little notepad from his overall pocket, along with the stub of a pencil, which he touched to the tip of his tongue before drawing what appeared to be a crude map. “Mind you don’t fall through a floor or something, snooping around out there,” he said.
Blushing because he’d pegged me for a snooper, I studied the map. Three tiny crosses indicated the aforementioned cemetery, and he’d drawn a tiny stick house at the junction of two roads.
Dave stopped lapping at the fountain water and sniffed the grass around my feet.
“I’ll be careful,” I promised belatedly.
“I hope that’s true,” the man replied. “Because nothing else you said was. You some kind of cop or insurance investigator or something?”
I shook my head.
He gave a good-natured little snort of amusement. Then he spat, narrowly missing the dog, who didn’t seem to mind. I let Dave off the leash, since there was nobody around besides the old man and me, but I was watching Farmer Brown from under my lashes the whole time.
About that time, Dave let out a yelp, and I looked up to see that he’d wandered some distance away. Now he was darting toward me, with two rottweilers on his trail, like the hounds of hell, closing fast.
Dave hit me like a bullet, scrambled right up my body. I clasped him in both arms, but the rottweilers kept coming. They were planning on having Dave for breakfast—and they’d chew right through me to get to him.
I looked around for an escape route and made two split-second determinations.
1) The car was too far away to offer refuge.
2) The old man was nowhere in sight, so I couldn’t expect any help from him.
Dave clawed at me, frantic with fear, trying to climb on top of my head.
Holding him tightly, I stepped into the fountain, barely noticing the chill of the water as it bit into my legs. Gripping Dave in one arm, I used the other and both feet to climb the slippery statue in the center.
The rottweilers barked and snarled, their massive front paws on the concrete edge of the base of the
fountain, their haunches poised to spring.
“Help!” I screamed. The statue was greased with mossy scum, Dave was wriggling in my all too tenuous grasp and I figured we had mere seconds before we slid down into the reach of those big teeth.
Out of the corner of one eye I saw a squad car screech to a halt at the edge of the park. A policeman leaped out, ran toward us. But someone else got there first. A man I didn’t immediately recognize, being in a state of wholesale hysteria.
Tucker.
Reaching the base of the fountain, he grabbed the rottweilers by their collars and dragged them back. They struggled a little, but calmed when he spoke to them in a low, commanding voice.
The policeman huffed up, gun drawn. He spoke breathlessly into the radio mic on his left shoulder. “Eleanor,” he growled, probably addressing the dispatcher at headquarters, “you tell Purvis those demon hounds of his got out again, and they’ve run some poor woman and a little dog clean up to the top of the statue in the park fountain! If he doesn’t get over here, pronto, I might just shoot the both of these mutts!” A pause followed, while I clung to the statue and Dave clung to me, whimpering now. I stared down at Tucker, so glad he was there, I couldn’t even speak. “Yes, Eleanor,” the cop went on, “I know that I am the vice president of the Shiloh Animal Protection League. Call Purvis now. These dogs are a menace, and I mean to cite him good this time!”
Dave and I slid helplessly down the stone effigy.
Purvis’s dogs growled ominously, but Tucker restrained them with ease.
Even with Tucker and the policeman there, I was afraid to climb out of the fountain. I was wet to the skin, which left my sundress see-through, since the fabric was so thin. It clung to me.
A person thinks crazy thoughts when they’ve nearly been devoured by rottweilers.
Here’s what came to my mind.
Good thing I stopped by Nellie’s for new underwear.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“MOJE,” TUCKER SAID, when Purvis had rushed over from his auto repair shop and collected his rottweilers, along with a loud lecture and a citation from the policeman, “you can get out of the fountain now.” He held out his arms to take Dave.
Sniffling, I buried my face in Dave’s wet hide for a moment, clinging to him. Looking back, I think that was the moment he became my dog. We’d bonded for good, in a moment of peril.
“Moje,” Tucker repeated, his voice gentle and quiet.
I surrendered Dave, then climbed out of the water, dripping. I sneezed.
“I’m real sorry about this, ma’am,” the policeman said. His name, according to the tag on his uniform shirt, was Joe Fletcher, and he was dark haired and lanky, his features pleasantly rough-hewn. He looked to be about Greer’s age, and I wondered if he’d lived in Shiloh long enough to know her.
I didn’t get a chance to question him, but he gave me his card, which I passed on to Tucker.
With a nod to Joe Fletcher, Tucker slipped the card into his shirt pocket, put an arm around me, carrying Dave in the other one, and squired us toward a rented SUV waiting on the far side of the park. The driver’s door was standing open—that’s how I knew it was his.
When Tucker arrived on a Mojo scene, he was always in a hurry.
“Thanks,” I managed, shivering as a chilly breeze rolled up from the lake and made my wet clothes clammy.
“You need to dry off,” Tucker said, ever practical.
“I have some clothes in the car,” I said, referring to the Volvo.
“I’ll get them,” Tucker promised.
He settled Dave and me in the SUV, cranked on the heat and sprinted across to the Volvo to collect my shopping bags from Nellie’s. I sat shivering in the front seat of his rental, grateful the seats were leather, not cloth, watching the windshield fog up.
Once Tucker was back with the bags—he’d paused to pick my purse up off the ground by the fountain on his way back—we headed for the Lakeside Motel.
There, inside my room, Tucker started a hot shower and peeled off my wet clothes. I was sneezing again, and my sinuses were already clogging up.
“I thought this would be different,” I said.
“Me, too,” Tucker answered, grinning slightly. “Get into the shower. Your teeth are chattering.”
The water stung at first, but the steam was heavenly. Gradually the shivering stopped, but the old sinus passages didn’t cooperate. About the last thing I needed was a bad cold—I had an investigation to conduct—but life, as John Lennon once said, is what happens while you’re making other plans.
When I got out of the shower and left the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, Tucker had brought his stuff in from the SUV and dried Dave off, too. The dog was lying on the floor, cosseted in a couple of towels and the extra blanket from the closet shelf, with two mismatched eyes and his bent ear visible.
Tucker tossed me a sweatshirt from his suitcase, and I pulled it over my head. He’d turned back the covers on the bed, and I crawled in, miserable.
“I need to find Greer,” I complained thickly. “I can’t be lying around nursing a head cold.”
Tucker leaned over me, pressing his hands into either side of my pillow, and kissed me on the forehead. I’d been up for a different kind of action entirely, but I knew, despite my protests, that it was going to have to wait. Along with a lot of other things—like tracking down my sister.
“You’re sick,” he said reasonably. “Get some rest.”
“How could it have happened so fast?” I asked, whining a little. I figured I was entitled. “One plunge into a fountain, and I’ve got pneumonia?”
“It didn’t happen fast,” Tucker told me sagely. “And it’s not pneumonia. It’s probably been coming on for a while.” He gave me another smack, this time on the end of my nose. “I’m going out for some stuff to make you feel better, and I’ll be back before you miss me. In the meantime, try to rest.”
I nodded. My throat began to ache, and my eyes were burning. My head felt twice its normal size, stuffed with something dry and scratchy, like old work socks. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, Tucker was back, slathering mentholated rub on my chest. Again, not the kind of chest rubbing I’d had in mind.
“Brought you some chicken soup,” he said, once I was thoroughly mentholated. He propped some pillows behind me, and I sat up to sip the soup from a foam cup.
Emotion made my eyes sting again. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to bond with Tucker, just as I had with Dave. Dangerous ground. Dave, being a dog, wasn’t likely to reject me. Tucker, being a man, might do exactly that.
Sitting on the side of my bed, he rubbed my tears away with the pad of one thumb. There was no sound except for Dave snoring blissfully in the safety of his blanket and me slurping soup.
“Your timing is pretty good,” I told Tucker, my voice heavy with congestion. “If you hadn’t come along when you did, Dave and I would both be in bloody chunks by now.”
“You’re the one who saved Dave,” Tucker told me. He paused, his mouth tilting up on one side in one of those grins that always made me want to kiss him. “I’ve never seen anybody climb the statue in the center of a fountain before. Especially not with a dog in one arm.”
I smiled a little, though the memory made me shiver again. “Pure adrenaline,” I said, making a stab at modesty.
“Finish your soup.”
It was the kind with the short, stiff noodles floating in it—my favorite—but I didn’t have much of an appetite. “When did you get to town?”
“Probably about five minutes before you headed for the top of that statue,” Tucker answered, rustling in a paper bag on the nightstand, bringing out a bottle of daytime cold medicine.
“Did you bring your laptop?” If I couldn’t gumshoe, I could at least cruise the Internet. Maybe dig up some stray bits of information that way.
Tucker tested my forehead for fever with the back of one hand. “It’s on the desk,” he said.
“Can I borrow it?”
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He sighed. “Sure,” he said, and got up to retrieve the laptop. Just before setting it on my thighs, he pushed the button and it began to boot up.
“How are Daisy and Danny?” I asked while we waited.
“Fine,” Tucker said.
I knew he was hedging. “And Allison?”
“Scared,” he admitted. “Vince Erland’s out of jail.”
“Helen told me,” I said, watching as Tucker turned the laptop around to type in his password. “You’ll be glad to know she fired me.”
“Now, why would I be glad about that?”
“Because you didn’t want me interfering in the case.”
He leaned forward, kissing my forehead. “Interfere all you want. God knows the official investigation isn’t going anywhere.”
“Any improvement in Carmen’s condition?”
Tucker’s jaw tightened. “Yes,” he said. “According to her, she was working in the kitchen when she heard a loud argument in the front of the house, along with a scuffle. She went to see what was going on, and saw Greer shoot Jack Pennington. Greer was in a panic, and so was Carmen. Greer asked Carmen to drive her to a private airstrip, and she did. After that, she—Carmen, I mean—got scared and drove around in some kind of fugue state for hours. When she came to her senses, she was sitting in a cousin’s driveway, with no memory of how she got there.”
“You found the pilot,” I deduced after absorbing all the Carmen info, watching Tucker through my eyelashes as I navigated to my Internet server’s Web site and entered my password.
Tucker nodded. “He dropped Greer off outside Missoula. She had a rental car waiting, and took off right away.”
“Are the Feds involved?”
“Not yet,” Tucker admitted. “But it’s imminent.”
I nodded. Typed Beverly Pennington’s name into Google, tempted, as always, to try out the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. I didn’t really expect to find anything.
Imagine my shock when I did.
“What?” Tucker asked, evidently catching my expression. When I didn’t answer right away, he moved around me and peered at the laptop screen.
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