Still Waters

by Tami Hoag

  His gaze scanned the crowd slowly, taking in the faces of people he had known his whole life. He had always felt his knowledge of these people made him a better sheriff, not a poorer one. He knew what to watch for, whom to keep an eye on. He knew Gordon Johnson got mean when he drank because he always had. He knew that the young Odegard boys drove too fast on the Loring road because the Odegard men had been driving too fast since the days of Henry Ford; fast driving ran in their genes. He knew who was always scraping by to make ends meet and which families had kids who were liable to end up in trouble. He knew Tyler County, knew Still Creek. He didn't want to think that knowledge had become more hindrance than help.

  Our Savior's Lutheran Church was full. The sun shone through the huge stained glass window depicting Jesus wringing his hands in the garden of Gethsemane, raining colors down on the heads of those who had come to grieve or gawk. There were both, Dane knew, though he suspected the gawkers outnumbered the grievers by a wide margin.

  Helen Jarvis made a production of breaking down beside the closed polished oak casket at the front of the church, half collapsing against it and wailing like a banshee. This outburst was something so out of character for her—or for anybody in the state, for that matter—that no one knew quite how to react. There were a lot of horrified, embarrassed looks. Arnetta McBaine cranked up the volume on the old pipe organ and pounded out the chorus of “How Great Thou Art” so loudly that people actually cringed.

  Susie Jarvis Cannon was sitting in the front row in her little black dress and hideous pillbox hat. She had Helen's tiny eyes, Jarrold's hook of a nose and weak chin, the overall effect making her face somewhat parrotlike. Her two bored children sat beside her, swinging their feet and pinching each other. At her mother's outburst Susie turned from her children to her husband with her ears pinned back and all but shoved him out of the pew. Looking sulky rather than solicitous, Rich stood and straightened his dark suit jacket, then took Helen by the arm and tried to lead her to her seat.

  Helen had her widow's veil peeled back over a hat with a brim so exaggerated that it looked as though it might have been involved in one of man's early attempts at flight. She presented her stricken visage to the crowd, and this time Dane cringed a little. She looked like Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Her makeup so overdone she could have been a geisha girl—porcelain-white skin, dots of cherry red on her cheeks and outlining her mouth, long false eyelashes elaborately curled and caked with mascara. Of course, she had cried most of the mascara off into black rivulets that streaked down her face. The dark crescents beneath her eyes gave her the appearance of some odd tribal woman emulating the sacred raccoon.

  The overall picture was ghoulish, and no one seemed to know what to make of it. Everyone in town knew Helen and Jarrold had stayed together only out of spite and meanness. Dane doubted either of them had held much capacity to love anyone but themselves. So this was another of Helen's little melodramas, which seemed to be getting stranger and stranger.

  “Was it a man or a woman?”

  “A man . . . I think. It sounded strange.”

  Elizabeth's answer whispered through the back of Dane's mind as he watched Helen slump into her seat. He couldn't help but think of the way the woman had looked when she had launched that Jell-O fish at Elizabeth, or the way she had sounded. If Helen was slipping a few gears in the wake of all that had happened, she might have made a call like that. She didn't like anyone stealing her thunder the way Elizabeth had inadvertently done by stumbling across Jarrold's body and triggering an avalanche of gossip. But the vandalism was out of the question. It had taken strength to pry the padlock off the back door of the Clarion office, more strength than Helen possessed even in a rage.

  Dane pulled his gaze away from the grieving widow, looking at Rich in his new politician suit, and Susie, who was more concerned with her children making her look bad in public than with the idea of laying her father to rest. In the pews behind them sat a dozen people who owed Jarrold money, and more whom he had cheated in one way or another. Dane looked over this crowd of people he had known since childhood and realized that his perception of them was changing subtly. For the first time he was looking at them as potential suspects, and he didn't like it. He didn't like seeing them that way any more than they liked the idea of crime coming to Still Creek. But times they were achangin', and, like it or not, Dane knew he and the rest of Still Creek would have to change with them.

  He slipped into a pew as Reverend Lindgren emerged from the sacristy, and turned his mind to murder as the rest of the crowd turned their hymnals to “Faith of Our Fathers.”

  ELIZABETH WHEELED HER ELDORADO INTO THE SERVICE drive of Shafer Motors and cut the engine. The business was located on the southwest side of town along the highway, to help attract customers, Elizabeth suspected, but there wasn't any sign that the location was doing good today. In fact, most of the town had looked deserted as she drove down Main Street, devoid of locals at any rate. Two tour buses were parked in front of the Coffee Cup, and she had spotted a gaggle of tourists gawking and pointing as an Amish buggy clomped toward Hardware Hank's. But the crowd was down at Our Savior to see Jarrold Jarvis put into the ground, and to feast on ham salad and German chocolate cake in the church basement afterward. All things considered, Elizabeth had decided it prudent to send Jo to observe the ritual.

  She climbed out of the Caddy and took a long look at what Garth Shafer had done for himself after the partnership with Jarvis had gone awry. The building that housed the Ford dealership was by no means new or fancy. In fact, the cinder-block building looked badly in need of paint, the sea-green walls having turned a polluted shade over the years. A new gray Thunderbird was parked in the showroom window, but most of the cars on the lot appeared used.

  The sign in the door proclaimed the place open, and Elizabeth let herself in quietly, hoping to get a look around before anyone came to sell her a car. The sound of power tools whined and wheezed from what was presumably the service garage. The manager's office stood open and empty. Shafer himself was probably at the funeral with all the other hypocrites, Elizabeth thought, edging toward the office. She was wrong.

  He came up behind her, quiet as a cat as she leaned into the office. Suddenly his reflection appeared in the window glass and Elizabeth jumped, clutching her heart, nearly crashing into him. He took a step away and she stumbled around and backed toward the Thunderbird, scrambling to compose herself as her heart rammed into her ribs like a paddleball.

  “Oh, my Lord in heaven, you startled me!” she gasped, trying to laugh it off and seem friendly and innocent all at once.

  He didn't apologize, but stood there with a frighteningly large wrench in his hands and a carefully blank look in his dark eyes. He was a tall man, late forties to early fifties, who bore an unfortunate resemblance to Jack Palance. Unbidden, the lines from City Slickers came to Elizabeth's mind: “Kill anyone today, Curly?” . . . Jack Palance smiles that chilling smile. “Day ain't over yet.”

  She rubbed her hand over the purse that rested against her hip, trying to take reassurance from the solid weight of the Desert Eagle tucked inside, trying not to imagine a situation where she would actually have to use it.

  “Can I help you with something?”

  “Well—a—you just might, sugar,” she said, pasting on a bright smile. “I might be in the market for a car soon.” Or not. “Someone told me to come on down and ask for Garth. I don't reckon he's here today, though, what with the funeral and all.”

  His expression didn't change so much as a blink. “I'm Garth Shafer.”

  “You are?” She tried to sound more pleasantly surprised than dismayed by the prospect of having this particular conversation with an armed man. “Well, I'm in luck, then, aren't I?”

  He didn't seem to have an opinion on that one way or the other. He just stood there in his grimy blue coveralls, twisting that blasted wrench around and around in his greasy hands.

  “I'm Elizabeth Stuart.”
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  “That newspaper woman.”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded and turned to glance out the door at the Caddy that gleamed as bright and red as a maraschino cherry under the afternoon sun. “Trading in?”

  “Could be.” She started to circle the Thunderbird slowly, needing to put some distance between herself and that wrench. She shot him a curious look. “Mind if I ask why you aren't at the funeral? I understand you and Jarrold used to be partners.”

  “I've got a business to run,” he said flatly.

  He looked like the kind of man who wouldn't take time off to bury his own mother. At any rate, it didn't seem wise to call him on it. She trailed a finger along the side panel of the car and slanted him a sultry smile. “You like selling cars, do you? Better than the road construction business?”

  Shafer must have considered the question rhetorical. He didn't say a word.

  Elizabeth shrugged and tucked her fingertips into the front pockets of her faded jeans. “Well, you must to have traded one for the other. I mean, selling cars is a feast-or-famine kind of thing, up and down with the economy, which is most always down, if you ask me. Roads, on the other hand, we always need roads. A man can get rich building roads.”

  “Do you have a point to make here, Mrs. Stuart?” he asked quietly. His face was the same blank mask, but anger now simmered in his eyes. He tapped the wrench against the palm of his left hand methodically.

  Elizabeth swallowed. Yes, she had a point to make. That Jarvis knocked up Garth Shafer's wife, screwed Garth in the buyout of the construction business, and left him with a career that would never make him rich while Jarvis had been rolling in dough like pig in pink mud. That was her point, but she couldn't see any tactful way of making it. This investigative stuff always seemed easier in the movies.

  She shrugged a little and batted her lashes. “Just making conversation. Is this an automatic?” she asked, sliding a hand along the roof of the Thunderbird.

  “Yes. Power steering, power brakes, power windows, air-conditioning, AM/FM stereo.” This was delivered in his same flat monotone. A dynamic salesman, Garth. It was a wonder the whole town hadn't converted to horse and buggy.

  “Mmm . . . nice.” She leaned against the car, looking across at Shafer, her gaze drawn inexorably to the wrench. “That was terrible, Jarrold getting himself killed that way. You must have known him a long time. What do you think about it?”

  Shafer didn't move, but the field of tension around him made Elizabeth feel as if he had yanked her closer with it. He seemed suddenly nearer, larger, angrier. His nostrils flared and he drew in a deep breath through his yellowed teeth. The hair on the back of Elizabeth's neck bristled.

  “Get out,” he snarled, hands twisting harder on the neck of the wrench as he stalked around the hood of the Thunderbird. “I don't have anything to say to you.”

  Elizabeth backed up slowly, her gaze darting between Shafer's face and the tool in his hands. She thought about the pistol weighing down her purse, but her fingers were clenched on the strap, cold and damp with fear. Swallowing down the lump in her throat, she said, “Mr. Shafer, don't get angry. I was just—”

  “Looking for dirt to put in your paper,” he said bitterly. “What happened between me and Jarrold was buried twenty years ago. I won't have a tramp like you drag it out again. You're not welcome here—not in my business, not in this town. You've brought nothing but trouble—”

  Elizabeth held up a hand to defend herself from his words if not his wrench. “Wait a minute. I'm not the one who killed—”

  “Get out. Get out,” he chanted, backing her toward the door, the volume of his voice rising with each word as his temper finally broke through his stony facade. “Get out!” he yelled, red-faced, the cords in his neck standing out sharply.

  He hurled the wrench past her and it hit the block wall, ringing like a horseshoe hitting the stake. Elizabeth ditched her dignity, turned, and ran, jerking the door open and bolting for the Caddy. She jumped into the car and gunned the engine, slamming it into reverse with no regard for the transmission as Shafer came out onto the step to glare at her. She was a half mile down the highway before she stopped feeling those cold, dark eyes on the back of her neck and started thinking about the power of a grudge that had been nursed for twenty years on a diet of bitterness and hate.

  TRACE PEDALED TOWARD STILL CREEK, HIS HEAD DOWN, back rounded as he bent over the handlebars of the twelve-speed. The bike had been an expensive toy in Atlanta, a custom-made racer imported from Italy, something for his friends to envy. Here it was his only mode of transportation, which took all the fun out of owning it. For one thing, it wasn't cool for a man to have nothing to get around on but a bike. And the bike was a failure on gravel roads. It seemed to Trace he spent most of his pocket money replacing tire tubes. And, on the narrow two-lane state highway that took him into Still Creek, it seemed he was forever having to dodge farm equipment or Amish buggies or old geezers in boat-size Buicks who drove only as fast as their eyesight allowed.

  What he needed was a car. A car would make all the difference in his life. He would be free if he had a car, not at the mercy of Carney or anyone else. Not at the mercy of tire tubes or the weather or eighty-year-old gomers too blind to drive. If he had himself a car, he could whiz by the stupid Amish instead of having their stupid horses breathing down his neck every time he came to a hill. If he had a car, he could be his own man. If he had a car, he might get up the nerve to ask out that girl he'd seen in the courthouse Friday.

  Lord, she was pretty. Big blue eyes and long, wild hair and a smile that could have stopped a clock. She'd smiled at him. He couldn't quite get over that. She'd looked him right in the eye and smiled at him, as though she didn't think he was some disgusting piece of southern trash. She had smiled and her little nose crinkled up and the freckles on her cheeks seemed to bounce. Trace still got that funny feathery feeling in his belly just thinking about it.

  He wanted to see her again, but he didn't know her name so he couldn't call her. Not that he'd ever get up the gumption to do that anyway. It was hard enough to talk to a girl in person, when you could see their faces and kind of half know what they were thinking. As far as he could see, the phone was just an instrument of torture when it came to dealing with women. With his luck, he'd call her up and she would have found out who he was and what he was doing at the courthouse and she'd sit on the other end of the line, not saying anything while she doodled ugly faces and words of rejection on a little pink notepad. No, he'd need to see her in person to talk to her. And it sure would help to have a car to impress her with.

  He shifted down for a long hill and stood on the pedals, the bike swaying side to side beneath him as he powered it up. The muscles in his shoulders and thighs bunched with the effort. Sweat rolled from his forehead and made his white T-shirt stick to his back.

  He would have had a car by now if they had stayed in Atlanta and his mother had stayed married to Brock. And it wouldn't have been some crummy old rusted-out Impala with a coat hanger for a radio antenna like Carney Fox drove either. It would have been something sleek and sporty, a Miata, maybe, or one of those new Vipers. Black and shiny as a record album with a Blaupunkt sound system and a Fuzzbuster. Brock would have had it ordered for him—not because Brock gave a shit about what Trace wanted, but because it would have been a matter of pride to him that “his son” have nice wheels.

  But they weren't in Atlanta and his mom wasn't married to Brock anymore. Trace had asked her once about getting another car, and she'd told him they could barely afford the one she drove, let alone one for him and the insurance to go with it. He hadn't asked again. She didn't think it was any fun being poor either, and it wasn't her fault old Buttwipe had dumped her. Trace knew the whole story there—who had done what to whom—and he sure knew who had gotten the shit end of the stick.

  He was just going to have to fend for himself, that was all. It wasn't as though he was some little kid who needed his mother to wipe h
is nose for him. He was a man. Men fended for themselves, stood up for themselves and their friends, did what had to be done. He would get himself a job and buy himself a car.

  Carney had told him the quickest way to make a buck was dealing dope. He claimed he had a pipeline from Austin through some biker down in Loring and he could get Trace a little if he wanted to sell—just 'cause they were friends. But Trace told him no. His mother was already afraid he'd started using again. She'd peel the hide off him if he got caught dealing, to say nothing of what the sheriff would do to him. Besides, he didn't see Carney driving no Viper with a Blaupunkt stereo in it. Nobody was going to get rich selling dope in a stupid little Amish town like Still Creek. Anyway, he was all through with that stuff. It hadn't been worth the trouble it got him.

  He crested the hill and coasted down, sitting back with his arms dangling at his sides, letting the racing bike fly. Still Creek came into view, looking practically like something out of the last century, with its old brick and stone buildings. The grain elevator rose up on the edge of town, all rusted corrugated metal, stark and ugly, with Amish buggies tied up at the hitching rail, as small as toys beside the towering buildings. Trace bypassed Main Street and stuck to the highway as it curved west to skirt the edge of town.

  He hadn't had any luck finding a job yet. Jarvis had turned him down at Still Waters, and Arnie at the Red Rooster said he couldn't hire anybody who wasn't old enough to drink. The manager at the Piggly Wiggly claimed they had enough bag boys, though Trace knew for a fact he'd hired on two new guys since then. His options were narrowing down in a hurry. One of the many drawbacks of living in this jerkwater town was that there wasn't a whole lot to pick from jobwise. But he'd heard just last night about a new opening, and he meant to get it.