Junior Hudley patted me awkwardly on the shoulder while MacFarley stared out the window. Abruptly, he turned around and met my eyes. "The sheriff of Tallatahola County, Dwight Dooley, is on his way up. He was real fond of your aunt, so you better get your facts straight."
"I was real fond of my aunt too!"
His expression turned disapproving. He was very good at looking down on people. He had this look of disdain that couldn't be faked. It only came from years of being better than everyone else. "Well, of course you were. I'm just saying that he's going to find you suspicious."
"Me? You said she was strangled. How could she be strangled by a girl?" That didn't even make sense.
"An old woman and a girl like you in such good shape…" He let the sentence trail off.
I decided that I liked being called a person in good shape, so I left out the truth. Sometimes I have trouble taking out my own garbage because it's too heavy. I have to pay the boy from 4B to take care of it. Instead, I tried a less embarrassing tack. "She wasn't old. She was like, what? Fifty-seven?"
"She was sixty-three last winter."
"Okay, sixty-three. So what? Last time I saw her, I'd met lumberjacks that were weaker. I mean, the woman could bench press two hundred pounds. How could this happen?"
MacFarley ushered the other men out of the house, and I could hear them drive away in the unmarked "police vehicle." Then he turned on me again.
"Nobody is accusing you of anything." The word yet hovered in the air. "All I'm saying is that Dwight and Penny were in the same bowling league. He's going to be on the warpath that one of his own is dead."
I had to ask it, although I was not sure I wanted the answer. "If this guy is so unreasonable, why did you call him? Can't you handle it yourself?"
He smiled slightly, without any trace of real amusement, revealing two deep, long dimples. "No. I have no actual right to enforce the law to any extent."
"What?"
"I'm not a sheriff, a lawyer, a cop… I'm not anything but a guy who volunteered to round up the drunks on Saturday night." He shrugged. "The only law around here is from the county. We don't even have a lockup. Do you know the last time that someone was murdered around here? 1969. That's a lot of years. Forty-seven of them, point of fact. The people around here, they don't break laws if you don't count drinking and brawling, and these guys think that right is part of the Constitution."
I was trapped in some horrible, horrible alternate reality where everyone said and did ridiculous things with the countenance of a normal person. Suddenly, I began to cry. Honestly, I was shocked I'd hung on to sanity for quite so long. That wasn't like me at all.
He patted me on the shoulder, with just slightly less awkwardness than Junior Hudley. "It'll be okay. You'll see. I know it's a shock right now, but just give yourself time, okay?"
I didn't think that any amount of time could convince me of the sanity of any person living or working in Birdwell, Texas. On the sign they should have written "Birdwell Texas, 562 born-and-bred crazies." But I didn't think he understood what I was really crying about.
Any crying that I did for Penny, I would do in private. I could tell that Aodhagan MacFarley was keying up to give me the grievance speech that he had probably learned at the Texas school of politicians. I was saved from that piece of work by the arrival of two black-and-white police cars and an ancient Yugo. Out got the real law enforcement officials of Tallatahola County.
The first car provided a portly man in his sixties, who had apparently styled his outfit and hair after Boss Hogg. I could only assume he was the sheriff. The shiny gold star pinned to his chest winked at me in the Texas afternoon sunlight.
The second marked vehicle unearthed two deputies in frighteningly starched muck-brown uniforms with smaller silver stars. They looked like a comedy routine. The taller of the two was stick thin with a golf-ball-sized Adam's apple and slightly bulging eyes. I could only guess that he had some kind of thyroid disorder. The shorter one was only about five feet tall, bald and pale. He was so fat, his over-starched uniform looked like it was about to break. Actually, he looked like he might have a thyroid disorder as well.
The man with the scrap-heap Yugo was eighty if he was a day. He was dressed in an outfit similar to Aodhagan MacFarley's and carrying a black medical bag. The county coroner, here to categorize Penny a victim of foul play? He walked toward us, and I noticed he had some old injury that caused him to bob up and down like an aged buoy when he walked.
They all congregated in the door around Aodhagan MacFarley and had a whispered conference that I could not discern no matter how hard I tried. And I was trying really hard. While the two deputies and the man I assumed was the doctor headed out the door and into the backyard, the sheriff approached me. "I'm Sheriff Dooley." He didn't extend a hand or offer any more introductions. "Miss…"
"Uh…" For a second, I'd actually forgotten my name. This was all way too much for me. I was about three seconds from whipping out my phone and putting in an emergency call to my therapist whom I'd previously been hiding from since I didn't want to talk about Lenny. I needed an extremely stiff drink and a Xanax. I sniffed and rubbed my nose. "Harding. Helen Harding."
"You called the police. Is that right?" I think his stare was supposed to be intimidating, but it missed the mark since he blinked at the rate of about five blinks a second. I wanted not to look at him but was sure it would be misconstrued as guilt.
"Yes, that's right."
I had to look away for at least a second or two. Then I would miss at least ten blinks. Lucky for me, but not for it, a mosquito landed on my arm, and I was able to divert my attention by flattening it violently with my palm. I realized my mistake when I viewed Sheriff Dooley's blinking countenance. He'd obviously decided that if I could kill a harmless mosquito in cold blood so too could I have killed Penny.
"Let's start at the beginning," he said, voice dripping with disdain, as though I was trying to divert the line of questioning. "What is your relationship with the deceased?"
I shook my head. The Deceased, no longer even human, without a name or identity. Just the deceased. "She was my aunt."
Actually, this was a police investigation, so I decided I should be a little bit more specific.
"You know what, she actually wasn't my aunt. That's just what I always called her. She and my mother were first cousins. But Mom and Penny were both only children, so I had no aunts or uncles, and she had no nieces and nephews, so they decided she would be my 'aunt.'"
"So you were close?"
I cocked my head to the side, trying to formulate an answer that made sense. "We were when I was a child. We sort of drifted apart when I got a little older."
I was surprised that he keyed in on some of the same questions that a much smarter Aodhagan MacFarley had. "So why are you here?"
I snuck a look at the volunteer law. He was standing a little off to the side of our conversation, watching me, concern marring his features. Concerned for whom, I couldn't begin to say, but it didn't make me feel any more comfortable. "Well, she wrote me a letter and asked me to come."
"So you came." Dooley's voice carried an alarming amount of violence.
I stepped back a little. "Well, yes, obviously I came."
"Why?" He was practically screaming now. What the hell? Who conducted an interview this way?
"Why what?" I was getting offended. "I'll give you a why. Why are you shouting at me?"
Behind him, the mayor's expression changed to a touch of pleasure. Obviously it was me he was worried about, which was sort of comforting. It just showed that he didn't know me at all, or he never would have believed I might let myself be bullied by a man like Dwight Dooley. Maybe I was a mess of mental hang-ups, but I didn't like bullies.
Dooley didn't apologize, but he did lower his voice. "Why did Penny want you to come?"
I thought about lying and saying she just wanted to catch up on old times, but that was a bad start to an investigation if even the people
who had nothing to do with it were lying. "I don't know exactly. She wasn't really specific. She just said that she wanted my career expertise."
Dooley blinked at me for a few seconds. "So, what is it that you do?"
"You see, that's the thing. I don't know what she was talking about. I don't have career expertise. I majored in photography in college. I mean, I went to art school. I spent a few years doing art shows, and then I started writing. That's it. Maybe she wanted to do a photography exhibition of Birdwell history or…or write the great American novel."
"You have no other work experience?" Dooley's disgust was palpable.
Maybe he thought it wasn't really working unless one was mucking out stables or repairing parts on Fords. Actually, he was right. Taking photos and writing wasn't the same as working. I could always include my many, many temp jobs, half of which had not been intended as temp work. I just wasn't very good at holding a job.
"Why didn't you just ask her what she wanted?" Dooley questioned, at the same time as Aodhagan asked, "What kind of books do you write?"
I decided to answer Aodhagan MacFarley first, since I liked him better, though it was a close race. "I write true crime books."
Even as I said it, a little light came on in my head. What if that was the advice she had wanted? What if she had known someone was going to kill her, but had not known whom? Or what if she had tried to solve some mystery herself and been killed for it? Could she have wanted me to help her solve a mystery?
But that was absurd. I was just a writer. I'd never actually solved a mystery. I had no special detection skills. I either wrote about murders that had already occurred and been solved or historical cases that might never be. I never solved anything. I couldn't even solve my personal problems, let alone a murder. I was sick at the very idea that Penny had called on me for that kind of assistance. No, surely I was assuming too much, once again.
"Like Ann Rule?" Dooley asked.
Teeth clenched, I straightened my shirt and pulled in a slow breath through my nose. "No. Not like Ann Rule. Historical crimes. A hundred years or more, in most cases."
Freaking Ann Rule.
Looking just a hint disappointed, Dooley asked, "Why didn't you ask her what she wanted before coming?"
Here was the line of questioning that I had dreaded, and my just deserts for making another impulsive decision. I would never, never learn to stop acting before I started thinking.
"I never actually spoke to her. She wrote me a letter. We played phone tag, and finally I just left a message on her machine that I would see her this morning. I even tried to call her last night, but I didn't get an answer, so I just left another message." I gestured to the machine, blinking benignly on my aunt's desk. "You can check. I'm on there."
"So she asked you to come in a letter, didn't even tell you why, and you just packed it up and came all the way to Texas, without a second thought. Tell me again if that's what you're saying."
"I had second thoughts."
I could see a slight smile twitching at the corners of Aodhagan MacFarley's lips. Maybe he was growing on me a little, after all.
"Would you like to tell me what you're really doing here?" Dooley had kept his voice pretty reasonable since my outburst, but it was starting to rise again.
I decided to give just a little bit, although I had no intention of spilling it all in front of two strange men. I had come here to avoid people who knew about my sordid love life. The last thing I wanted was to invite more people to participate.
"Penny wrote me a letter. I hadn't seen her in a really long time. Maybe I would have usually said no, but I needed a change of scenery. I can work anywhere, and I had fond memories of her, so I said okay."
When they just kept staring, I shrugged self-consciously.
"Do you have the letter?" Dooley's voice had turned sly.
Why, why, why do these things happen to me? Then I felt bad. At least I wasn't dead. "No, I don't have the letter. I didn't realize that when I got here my aunt would be dead and someone would want it for exhibit A."
My head kept telling me that it's bad business to be rude to a cop, but apparently it had a poor line of communication with my mouth. Dooley actually didn't seem to notice my sarcasm, which was just as well, but I could tell that Aodhagan MacFarley did. His dark eyebrows pulled together in the slightest hint of a warning.
Dooley fiddled with the cassette recorder he was using to record our conversation. I had one like it I used when I did interviews for books. The tech was outdated, but it helped me feel a little bit of a connection to the bygone days I wrote about. Even if it was only twenty years old. "So, tell me about when you got here."
I told him all of it again, careful to try to remember every detail. I was already starting to go mostly blank on every one of the morning's events. Too much excitement will do that to a girl. I gave my narrative right up to the point that I had called Thelma Sue, because I was very sure that no one wanted to hear a repeat of that conversation. Actually, the way that woman could talk, I was sure everyone in town had already heard it a number of times. I was sure that at least the Bubba Dick story had gotten lots of mileage.
"So," Dooley was trying to look casual, but just looked so ridiculously Boss Hoggish that I kept expecting the General Lee to come flying into the yard, horn blaring. "Who do you think killed Penny?"
He was trying to bait me somehow, although I couldn't imagine what he expected me to say. Oh, it was me, and I didn't tell you before because you didn't ask?
"Maybe Penny had a boyfriend she was keeping a secret. Do you know anything about that, Dooley?" Aodhagan interrupted my sarcastic response.
Both Dooley and I stared at him in disbelief. Dooley looked shocked to the tip of his white dress shoes, which I thought was a little bit of a strong reaction. I thought that the idea was a little silly, considering whom we were speaking about, but not totally without the realm of the possible.
"I don't really think so." I shook my head. "She wasn't really the secret-boyfriend type. I mean, the woman was practically a sailor." Both men gave me harsh looks, so I added meekly, "I mean, when I was a kid. She probably improved with age." This earned me another cross look from Dooley, so I tacked on, "I mean, not that she was that old." Aodhagan gave me a warning glare, so I just fell silent.
"Now Aodhagan, let's not start looking for ghosts when it's only possum," Dooley placated in a soothing voice.
I had no idea what the heck that was supposed to mean. In fact, I wasn't entirely certain what a possum actually was, beyond some sort of large rodent, but he wasn't addressing me, so it hardly mattered.
"I don't think we need to look to a secret boyfriend as the guilty party." I could almost hear him add, when we have such a good suspect right here. Apparently MacFarley could hear it too, as he intervened on my behalf.
"Calling the police doesn't make you a criminal, Dwight," the mayor prompted in a gentle voice.
I could tell that Dwight disagreed with that tidbit of wisdom, but to my surprise he just asked me, "You work out, Miss Harding? You look like a strong girl."
"Why does everyone keep saying that? I don't look like a strong girl at all. I mean, did I miss it or something when I woke up this morning looking like one of those weight-lifter girls on late-night cable? And no, I don't work out. I have a serious aversion to working out. I don't even believe that gyms exist, since I've never actually seen the inside of one."
This time Dwight Dooley, sheriff-extraordinaire, came right out and asked me, "Miss Harding, did you kill your aunt?"
"No! Of course I didn't. I mean, I haven't seen the woman in like fifteen years. What reason could I possibly have to kill her?"
"Maybe you're the beneficiary of her will. Maybe she left you this house."
Mayor MacFarley apparently found my look of terror amusing, if his low snort was any indication, but Dooley didn't seem to notice. "Maybe you need a place to live or the money from this place."
He seemed to be thinking out
loud. Stupidly. But thinking just the same.
"Maybe this place is the Trump Tower of Birdwell, Texas, but I'm not from Birdwell, and as far as I can tell, this place should be condemned. I can't believe anyone I know lived in this house. I have a thousand square feet, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a doorman named Cedric who would walk my dog for me if I had one, which I wouldn't because dogs make me nervous. You think I'd give that up to kill someone for…this?" I gestured wildly at the house. "I would make more capital renting people cardboard boxes in Battery Park."
Dooley looked slightly wounded. I made a point of not looking at Aodhagan. If his feelings were hurt, I didn't want to know it.
Momentarily, Dooley recovered. "I take it you can prove you still own this 'flat?'"
"Of course I still own it. Do you know how hard it is to find a place to live in Manhattan? If I was planning to move to Europe for the next twenty years, I would keep that flat, because that would be easier than trying to find another place when I came back."
Dooley asked me a few more questions and made a few more notes on his little recorder before packing it away. By this time, Laurel and Hardy were back in the house and combing the rooms with an astounding amount of noise for just two people. I looked at my watch and realized that it was already almost five PM. I had been in Birdwell for over six hours. My, how time flies when you're being interrogated by the police.
"I assume you're staying in town." Dooley's voice was heavy with significance. It was clear his assumption was actually a demand.
"Well, actually, I wasn't planning on it. I was planning on going back to New Mexico tonight and back to Denver tomorrow." Why lie to the man? It would have taken more than a demand from Boss Hogg for me to stay here for any longer than I had to. Eric lived in Denver, and I had an open-ended invitation to crash at his place.
"Actually," Aodhagan MacFarley put in, "she's got a point. Since the Sleep Inn's been closed since '86, I don't know where she would stay."
Obviously, Dooley was struck dumb by this consideration. Although I don't think it took that hard a hit. He pondered for a long minute before he said, "She could stay here."
Digging Up Bones (Birdwell, Texas Mysteries Book 1) Page 3