A Minister's Ghost

by Phillip DePoy

  My eyes darted around the yard, suddenly straining to see Eppie’s junkyard dog, the meanest animal in the United States. My fear of dogs in general was nothing compared to the concentrated terror that I felt whenever Bruno was near. He was a wolfhound, bigger than a Great Dane, loyal to Eppie and desperate to eat any other adult human being alive. Eppie had trained the dog personally, taking great care to teach it not to menace children and women over sixty. Every other pulsing creature was fair game. It was said that a bull had once wandered onto the property. Bruno dispatched it, eating half, leaving the rest for Eppie to barbecue.

  A bull.

  Eppie read the dread in my eyes.

  “Not to worry, Doctor,” he told me, only condescending a little. “The dog’s chained up in back.”

  “So how did anyone get in here last night?” I marveled.

  “That’s one for the books all right.” He grinned. “Look, you got to hear this.”

  He picked up a tire iron and went to his clothesline xylophone.

  I followed, only mildly confused by Eppie’s shift in concern. I knew him to be easily distracted, a man whose powers of concentration might be bested by a wandering toddler.

  “You mean you haven’t put the Volkswagen back together yet?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Damage is already done,” he said cavalierly, “and you will not believe this tone.”

  He came to a halt before a heavy gray mass hanging pendulously from the airplane wire that stretched between his office and a telephone pole, his bizarre array of metal car parts.

  He raised the tire iron and hit the piece of metal delicately. It made a tone so deep and rich I felt it in my chest, it stopped up my ears. It was like a cathedral bell, the envy of Notre Dame.

  “Beautiful,” was all I could say.

  “Yeah,” he agreed proudly. “It completes the work. I got a full two octaves now. I’m done.”

  I roused myself from the hypnotic rapture of the sound, the overtones still filling the air around me.

  “No, you’re not,” I demanded. “You have to put that back in the girls’ car.”

  “I know,” he snapped. “I mean eventually I can get this, and then I’ll have a complete set.”

  “You have to put it back today,” I told him sternly, “and it still might not matter to Skid, because you did tamper with evidence in a homicide investigation.”

  “Homicide? I thought it was a train wreck.”

  I winced.

  “It was,” I answered hastily, “that’s what I meant. That sound, it disoriented me. It’s really something.”

  “Yeah,” he said proudly. “C below middle C. Damn. I’m thinking of setting the whole thing up different now that I got two octaves, make it easier to play. You got any ideas about that?”

  I only paused a moment to consider that if I were required to sit around a junkyard all day waiting for someone to come and buy something, I would have lost my mind long ago. I found it satisfying that Eppie had turned his lunacy toward music, however insane that music might be.

  “I’d rather get back to this note that someone left last night,” I told him, holding it out. “It says to call me.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t. You waited until Skidmore was here and gone.”

  “I called you eventually.”

  “Why did you wait?”

  “You heard the sound of this thing,” he told me, turning his beaming expression in the direction of the Volkswagen engine part. “I had to set this up, you understand, and give it a listen.”

  “No, I mean, obviously your encounter with Skidmore made you call me.”

  Eppie’s face changed, a cloud came over it. His shoulders sagged and his posture turned more solid. He looked at me with different eyes.

  “Well, okay,” he admitted, a little defiantly. “I thought it was this kind of a deal: I got a note that has your name on it, and it could get you into trouble. You’re friends with the sheriff. So if I don’t show this note to the sheriff, maybe you’ll help me out and make him ease up on me about this evidence tampering, which I did not do.”

  “You’re thinking about blackmailing me?” I looked him up and down, grinning. “Are you serious? In the first place, I don’t care if you show that note to Skid. And in the second place, I don’t have much influence of any kind with Skidmore these days. And in the third place, are you serious?”

  “You said that.”

  “I mean it!” I stared at him. “Besides, I have the note in my hand.”

  I waved it at him.

  He locked his eyes on me, and the menace in them was electric.

  “Come on, Doc,” he said gently, “I got a tire iron, and a mean dog twenty feet away. If I want that note back, I’ll get it.”

  Eppie whistled once, low.

  My head snapped around, my eyes once again desperately searching for any sign of Bruno.

  “That’s really why you called me?” I said softly, the wind knocked out of my confidence. “To get me to do you a favor with the law?”

  “Look, I like you, Doc,” he said, his eyes glued to mine, “and I always liked hearing my music on your tape recorder. But do you have any idea how many times a month I get hassled by the cops? This license and that fee and some other kind of rule about who you can sell what to. It’s like they’re looking for a reason to shut me down. I need you to tell Sheriff Needle to back off. I need my peace of mind.”

  I scoured the junkyard, the gnarled array of broken automobiles and heaps of metal, weedy brown remnants of Queen Anne’s lace and goldenrod, red patches of clay, and the sad, sagging wire that held up Eppie Waldup’s one redeeming social value. The landscape betrayed an almost complete lack of peace of mind. Eppie was not a delicate soul, despite the sound of his voice.

  He was hiding something.

  “All right,” I sighed, attempting nonchalance. “I’ll speak to Skidmore on your behalf. I do like your music, and it would be a shame not to hear it. I’ll have to keep this note though. I want to study it.”

  “You give me your word you’ll call off the sheriff,” he said as sternly as he could.

  “I’ll try to speak with him about the subject today,” I assured him. “Or tomorrow.”

  “Not good enough!” Eppie bellowed. “Bruno!”

  The dog appeared out of nowhere, some black hell of shadows, and landed fifteen feet away from me, rattling his tether chain and snarling foam down his chin.

  I sucked in a breath so suddenly that my heart stopped. My hands flew up and I stumbled backward, careening into jumbled lumps of metal.

  “Good boy, Bruno,” Eppie said menacingly. “Get a good smell of this man. You might need to find him later on.”

  The dog sniffed violently, creating a small tornado around its nose.

  “God,” I stammered, catching my breath.

  “You see I’m serious. I take you at your word, but I got Bruno for insurance, you understand.”

  “You can have the note back,” I gasped, throwing it to the ground.

  “Don’t need it,” he answered casually.

  I continued backing up, sipping short breaths, wheezing, until I got to my truck.

  “This was unnecessary, Eppie,” I assured him once my hand found the door handle. “You know how dogs affect me.”

  “Right,” he said, his eyes burning holes in my head, “same way I feel about the police. And now I can trust you. Fear makes a man reliable.”

  I got into my truck. Bruno sat. Eppie dropped his tire iron.

  My heart was thumping against the inside of my chest like an animal desperate to escape a cage.

  How could anyone have gotten past that monster last night? I thought to myself as I started the truck, eyes glued to Bruno’s slavering mien. How would anyone survive that?

  Still shaking a little, I backed the truck away slowly, turned, and headed for the main road, uncertain where to go. The blood was still drumming in my temples, and I realized I hadn’t exhaled.
>
  I took a few deep breaths, staving off any memory of the event that had produced such a terror of dogs. Still, a snarling ground itself into my ears, and yellow teeth dripped with thick saliva just at the corner of my eye.

  It was clear Eppie was concerned about something more than a few licensing violations. The most obvious explanation was that he was the hub of a stolen-car ring, his junkyard being a perfect place for such an enterprise. He thought I would be willing to convince Skidmore to look the other way. Eppie thought that Skidmore was as corrupt as our previous county sheriff, Maddox. I could barely tolerate the idea that Eppie Waldrup, with his strange musical talents, was, in the main, nothing more than a very common criminal.

  In desperation I struggled to focus on the mystery at hand. What person could have come into Eppie’s yard, spent time examining the Volkswagen engine, calmly penned a note, all with Bruno present.

  By the time the answer came to me, I was nearly on the highway.

  I turned toward Blue Mountain.

  I pulled up in front of Judy’s house fifteen minutes later, barely had the engine off before I was out of the truck and pounding on her front door.

  “Orvid,” I insisted, “are you in there? We have to talk now!”

  The adrenaline from my encounter with Bruno gave the sound of my voice a higher pitch, a grate of strangeness.

  Judy came to the door almost immediately. She was still dressed in her funeral attire: a sleek aubergine suit with an eggshell-white blouse.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, standing firm in her doorway. “You can’t come storming up to my house on a day like this! And what makes you think Orvid is here?”

  “If you don’t let me in this minute, I’ll come back with Sheriff Needle,” I answered, stage whisper between clenched teeth. “He’ll ask the questions instead of me.”

  “Orvid?” she said calmly, eyes locked on mine. “You feel like company?”

  A voice from within spoke serenely, I couldn’t hear exactly what he said. But after the briefest of hesitations, Judy stepped aside and I lunged into her living room.

  Orvid was sitting on the sofa, cane in his hands. He was dressed all in black, linen pants perfectly tailored, black Italian loafers, and a midnight polo shirt.

  A tea service was on the table in front of him, two perfect, bone-white china cups and a pale green pot in the image of a coiled dragon.

  “Would you like some?” he asked me, smiling. “It’s green tea, very beneficial.”

  “I got your note,” I said harshly.

  “Good,” he responded sweetly, “I was hoping you’d understand.”

  “I understand that you’ve been shadowing my investigation every step of the way!”

  “Your investigation,” he repeated, as if the phrase made no sense. “Well, strictly speaking, it’s not possible for me to shadow you since I’ve been every place first. In the second place, I was under the impression that you weren’t really offering much in the way of an investigation. And finally, I sort of asked you to come visit me, in a way, so you can relax, can’t you, and have some tea? Judy-sweet, would you mind bringing another cup?”

  Judy brushed past me and motored into the kitchen without a word.

  “Why are you so upset?” Orvid’s voice was honey.

  I took a deep breath. I looked around the living room, trying to make some choices about Orvid and Judy. I knew I couldn’t trust them completely, but compared to the other primary players in the events of the past days, they were almost kindly.

  “Why am I so upset?” I said, as much to myself as to Orvid.

  “You want to talk it out?” Orvid offered clinically.

  I sat in the same sofa I had taken before, eyes glazed with thought.

  “In no particular order,” I sighed, “my girlfriend’s in grief and she thinks I can help, but I can’t. My best friend doesn’t like me anymore. I’ve found out more terrible things about my home in the past three days than I have in the previous two years. And I was just menaced by the meanest dog on the planet. I can still smell its foul breath.”

  “Bruno’s not so bad, to me,” Orvid said, reaching for his teacup.

  “That’s because Bruno thinks you’re a child,” I said, eyelids lowered, “so he won’t attack you.”

  “I was hoping that would be the case,” Orvid admitted, “although the dog was trained by Eppie Waldrup, whose IQ has to be about the same as his waist size. I had a few tense moments.”

  “You’re alive.”

  “The dog has a taste for raw beef. I brought him some treats.”

  “How did you get the new coroner to give you his information? He seems more the barbecued beef type.”

  “That was easier.” Orvid smiled. “For Mr. Millroy, I was a college student, premed, on a scholarship and desperate to keep it. I mean, you have no idea how difficult a medical school can be for a person of my size, and if only I understood what he was doing a little better, I might make an impression on my professor.”

  “Shameless,” I scolded, but there may have been a slight upward inclination at the corner of my mouth. “What else?”

  “Well,” he sighed, “I have to admit that you got to the kid at the movie house before I did.”

  His voice betrayed a certain irony that instantly made me realize there was something more to his admission.

  “But you do know something about the boy, Andy Newlander,” I said, sitting back in my sofa.

  “I am primarily a creature of the night,” Orvid said, primarily for effect, I assumed. “And in the dark, I see things other people don’t see.”

  “I’m certain you do,” I responded, not biting, “but I’m more curious about what you’re doing at night than what you see other people doing.”

  “All right.” He set down his cup.

  Judy returned with a larger cup for me, poured tea into it without looking at me.

  “Sugar?” she asked curtly.

  “I wouldn’t want to spoil the taste of the tea. Thank you, Judy.”

  “Did you hear?” Orvid asked Judy. “Dr. Devilin was menaced by Eppie Waldrup’s junkyard dog.”

  Judy turned my way to hand me the cup.

  “I have an inordinate fear of dogs,” I said, trying to make light of my terror.

  “Based, no doubt, on a childhood incident,” Orvid said lazily. “Isn’t that where these things usually come from?”

  I took the cup from Judy. She still wouldn’t look at me.

  “As it happens,” I told Orvid, “you’re quite correct. I was attacked by a German shepherd when I was six or seven.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Orvid objected amiably. “Something traumatic brought about a hatred for dogs so virulent that you’d refer to Bruno as it rather than he. I also notice your left knee is bouncing nervously and you are clenching your jaw. We’re only talking about dogs, there’s not a real one in sight.”

  I stopped my knee, hadn’t even noticed I was doing it. And my jaw ached. I had been grinding my teeth since leaving Eppie’s yard.

  “You have a degree in psychology,” I guessed.

  “No.” He smiled. “I’m flattered you would think so. Though I do find that academics generally think a degree is the only possible explanation for a good observation. The fact is that my work has encouraged me to be something of a student of human nature.”

  “Your work as a cutlery salesman,” I said drily, looking at Judy. “Isn’t that what you said?”

  Orvid leaned forward. His pale eyes seemed to crack with an electric spark.

  “I think we both know that’s not entirely accurate,” he said.

  “Correct,” I affirmed. “I believe I know what your business is. But I’m not certain how to proceed. I want to find out what happened to Tess and Rory, but I’m absolutely loath to delve too deeply into your affairs. Not because I’m afraid of you, though I probably ought to be, but because I’ve recently come to see there’s enough darkness in my world without lo
oking for any more.”

  “You don’t know my business,” he said, laughing. “But I would be interested to know what you think it is.”

  “And I’d be interested to know why you were tampering with the girls’ engine last night. You realize that it looks as if you had something to do with their murder.”

  Judy’s head snapped in my direction. The room was so quiet I could hear the steam from my teacup.

  “So you’re using that word,” Orvid said calmly.

  He was right. I’d gone from a conviction that the girls’ death was accidental, to certain knowledge that they were murdered. In under forty-eight hours.

  “They were killed,” Judy rasped. “At least you know that now. But Orvid had nothing to do with it.”

  I simply stared.

  In collecting stories or songs from a reluctant informant, silence is the greatest ally. It’s always better to wait for the interview subject to fill in that silence than it is for the interviewer to keep talking.

  “I’m going to tell you what I know,” Orvid said finally. “And I hope you’ll do the same. We really are in this together, for a number of reasons.”

  “I don’t trust you,” I said plainly, “but I can’t think of anyone I do trust at the moment.”

  “Lucinda Foxe,” Judy suggested, softening, a vaporous smile at her lips. “Your girlfriend. Don’t usually hear a grown man use that word.”

  “Yes,” I admitted, ignoring her mild taunting. “I do trust her.”

  “That’s a start.” Judy took a seat beside Orvid.

  “Like Ariadne,” I sighed.

  “Sorry?” Judy inclined her ear my way.

  “Nothing,” I said, embarrassed.

  “No,” Orvid encouraged. “Who or what is Ariadne?”

  “In ancient Greek folklore,” I explained softly, “a young girl named Ariadne stood at the mouth of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, holding a thread to help Theseus, the hero intent on slaying the Minotaur. Theseus took the other end, wandered deep into the cave, and found the monster, a man with the head of a bull. Down in the darkest part of the twisted stone corridors, Theseus killed the beast. No one had ever found their way out of the darkness of the Minotaur’s maze, but since Ariadne stood waiting in the sun at the doorway, holding the thread, Theseus was able to retrace his steps and return to the world of light.”