I opened the cupboard door with the edges of my fingernails and hauled out Lug-nut’s kibble. John had been obsessive about not letting anybody feed the dog but him, so taking the food was almost like stealing from the dead. He had been an uncomfortable man to be around—continually seething with some wrong, imagined or otherwise. I had always felt that he was on the very edge of exploding and had he been there I would not even have gone near the cupboard. I remembered Spit’s ghost story and imagined John’s spectre, enraged at my trespassing, flapping around my head like an angry vulture.
I was just standing up, with the heavy bag cradled in my arms, when I heard something upstairs. Just the creak of a floorboard, maybe, but it was enough for me. I beat it so fast out the front door, I forgot about the police tape and broke through it like Donovan Bailey winning a gold.
Lug-nut was right there where I had left him and wagged his tail as I burst through the tape, but he did not get up.
“Ummm, good boy, Luggy,” I said. He still lay there like a coiled spring. John, for all his neglect of the dog, had certainly trained him well. There must be a magic word.
“Ummm… that’s all right. You can get up now.” Nothing. “It’s okay, Lug-nut!” I said with some exasperation and he leaped about two feet in the air and started running in circles around me. That was it, then. “Okay.” Simple enough. I would have to watch what I said around him, though. There was probably some secret command lodged in his doggy brain that would send him off into attack mode.
Now that I was outside, I laughed at myself for being spooked. If there had been anybody in the house, Lug-nut would have let me know. The overhead creak was probably just the old house settling on its foundations.
I walked sedately to the truck and after I had deposited the dog food in the back with the grain, I returned to the yellow tape to see if I could fix it. Either that, or I would have to call up Becker and tell him that I had broken in. If I didn’t, he’d be off on some wild goose chase, further and further away from finding the real murderer.
The tape had been stapled to both sides of the door, and my dash outside had ripped one end away from the staple, which was still embedded in the door frame. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure that nobody was watching, then used my Swiss Army knife to wriggle the staple out. I lifted the tape back into position, poked the prongs through the plastic just to the right of the original holes and hammered it back with the butt of the knife.
Satisfied, I turned back to the driveway. The cops would have to study it pretty closely to know that it had been tampered with. I was betting that they wouldn’t check to see if the dog food was still there, any more than they’d check to see whether there was still cereal in the cupboard.
Lug-nut had disappeared.
“Shit,” I said aloud. I called his name, and immediately got an answering bark from the quonset hut next to the house. “Come, here, boy!” I said. I know my dog-wrangling techniques from reading Ted Wood’s books. When Wood’s cop-hero tells his wonder-dog Sam to Come, Stay, Keep, or Attack, the dog responds with impeccable, life-saving promptness and barrels full of loyalty.
Lug-nut did not come.
I went into the building to get him.
I’d never been in John’s garage before. Like the dog, it had been his private domain—men only. It was like a mad mechanic’s laboratory. The colours were muddy, all brown and black, and everything was covered in a thin layer of grease and dust. The floor-space was huge. You could have played baseball in there. There were two cars side by side, with open hoods, their guts spilling out and scattered as if some giant predator had been making a meal of them.
Tools were piled on top of one another on every flat surface, and from the ceiling hung chains and pulleys, rope and rubber hoses, like trailing fronds in some mechanical jungle.
I am a complete innocent when it comes to car mechanics, and so I found the atmosphere oppressive. If I’d known what it was all for, I would have felt better.
Lug-nut was waiting for me towards the rear of the building, where it was dark. I called him again, and he barked back, but stayed put. He was sitting in front of a vehicle which had been covered with a dirty tarpaulin and there was something familiar about the shape of it. I looked around for a light switch and found a trouble-light suspended from the ceiling in the corner. I switched it on and the naked bulb cast surreal shadows on the shrouded shape in front of me.
The tarp didn’t quite cover the front bumper, and I’d know that hideous browny-green paint job anywhere. John’s missing truck. Francy was always complaining about it, said it offended her sense of hue. Looking at that colour with an artist’s eye was like listening to a beginner violinist if you had perfect pitch, she said. John had painted the truck himself, shortly after buying it from Otis Dermott. It had been purple, and John had refused to drive it until he got rid of “that faggy colour.”
I lifted a corner of the tarp carefully so I could see into the cab. I don’t know what I was expecting. Another body, maybe.
There wasn’t one, which was a good thing. There was, however, a dark stain on the passenger seat, and the barrel of a shotgun poking up from the floor. I let the tarp fall back, switched off the light and headed for the open air.
As I left the garage, Lug-nut came trotting at my heels—obediently, now that he had shown me what he obviously thought was important. Then I caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look at the house and saw a tall, painfully thin figure loping off into the bush. Lug-nut barked and lunged, but I managed to grab his collar in time to stop him from giving chase. It looked like Eddie Schreier. Nobody else in the world runs quite so much like a frightened spider. The door to the house was still shut and the tape was still up, but I guessed it had been Eddie upstairs, making that noise I heard. What was going on?
I walked Lug-nut to George’s truck, still holding his collar, and put him in the cab. Maybe Eddie had returned to grab Francy’s copy of Lady Chatterley. Maybe, but not bloody likely. I added Eddie to my mental list of people to have a chat with really soon, then fired up the engine and headed home.
Fifteen
Stuff gets born and lives and dies
like fire and sex and that look
in your chocolate eyes.
–Shepherd’s Pie
I drove down to the barn to unload the grain and found George in the kidding pen with Erma Bombeck, who was in labour. Erma was five and an old hand when it came to giving birth, but George liked to be on hand anyway.
“Hey, George. I thought she wasn’t due till next Thursday,” I said.
“She wasn’t. But I found her groaning and pawing at the ground around eleven, and she has had some discharge, so I put her in the pen. She was always stubborn. She is ready now, she says, not next week.”
“You got towels and stuff?” George keeps a stock of “goats only” hand towels up at the house. Birthing goat kids is a messy business, and towels and hot water, trite as it may seem, are important.
“Yes, Polly. It shouldn’t be long now.”
The first time I witnessed the birth of a goat (triplets, actually; they nearly always come in twos or threes—sometimes four on a good day), I had disgraced myself completely. I’d thought, “Oh, wonderful. The miracle of birth. Let me in there.” What I hadn’t bargained for was the guck. I had crouched at the ready, a clean towel over my arm, having been instructed to take the newborn kid, clean it off and give it back to the doe to nuzzle until the next one came along. It had been a difficult birth. The first of three was trapped sideways in the birth canal and George had to reach inside to turn the little fellow around. That didn’t bother me so much. I’d read James Herriot, and I knew this was sometimes necessary, but when George’s arm emerged from the depths of Donna Summer, clutching a slimy, twitching thing, ropes of mucous hanging off it like, well, you know—my gag reflex kicked in, big-time.
“Get out of my barn,” George had roared, hearing my preliminaries. I tossed him the
towel and ran outside to be sick in the manure pile. We both apologized later. He said it happened occasionally to first-timers, and he should have been more sensitive. I reminded him that he had been up half the night with the pregnant doe and was tired and worried. All he needed was to have some city-girl throwing up in his nice, clean barn.
The next time someone kidded I was in there like a pro, grinning from ear to ear. I have even done the unspeakable “reach in and tweak” trick one New Year’s Eve when George was out late carousing with Susan at the senior’s club and Julian of Norwich had delivered early.
Erma Bombeck was in deep labour now, lying on her side and pushing, yelling with each push in an outrageously human voice.
“Puske vaan” George said, softly. Finnish for “push like hell,” I guess. He always muttered in his mother-tongue during a birth. The goats seemed to like it. “Anna tulla vaan.” The first kid made its appearance, popping out so fast that George had to catch it. He quickly cleared the matter away from its mouth as Erma turned her head to inspect her offspring. It was a very pretty kid, almost completely white, with caramel-coloured markings on its back and caramel-coloured ears.
“A male,” George said with satisfaction. Dweezil’s heir, maybe. Two more followed in quick succession, were cleaned, and arranged in a squirming, bleating row at Erma’s side. Two does and a buck, all healthy, and the buck was quite large.
It always made me a little teary-eyed, being in at the birth. There’s something extraordinary about new life—the incredible tenacity of it. Goat kids start bleating only minutes after being born, start trying to stand up almost immediately. By the time we left the barn, one was already trying to get her tiny muzzle around Erma’s enormous teat.
Outside, in the thin autumn sunshine, Lug-nut was having a staring contest with Poe, through the window of the truck cab. The raven was perched on the grain sacks, peering in the back window, and Luggy was not barking, just sitting quietly on the seat, his nose only inches away from the bird’s beak. The only thing separating them was the glass.
“Think I should let him out?” I asked George.
“Well, he isn’t being very aggressive,” George said. “Did you not say he was a watchdog?”
“He’s supposed to be, but I don’t think he’s got great eyesight, and when he’s not tied up, he’s a pussycat.”
“He’s ugly.”
“He is not,” I said. “Well, he’s maybe homely, but he grows on you.” Obviously, some kind of nurturing, maternal instinct was kicking in. Children never affected me that way, but Lugnut seemed to.
I opened the truck door and Luggy bounded forth, tail wagging, and licked George’s extended hand.
“Friendly to me, anyway,” George said. Poe had not moved from his spot on the grain-sack. When I let down the tailgate, Lug-nut jumped up into the truck bed and moved slowly towards the bird, tail still wagging. Poe bristled to make himself look bigger, but he did not fly away.
“Do they know each other already, you think?” I said.
“Perhaps. Poe is often at the dump, and the Travers place is nearby. I have never seen that bird remain so calm around a four-leg, though. Maybe he’s waiting for your dog to get close enough so that he can get a peck in.”
I tensed, ready for a nasty flurry of feathers and teeth. It didn’t happen. The dog and bird were close enough now to touch each other. Lug-nut whined once and Poe croaked, then the dog sat. Poe croaked a few more times and took off in a leisurely fashion, sailing over our heads and making for the farm house. Lug-nut, ignoring us, jumped out of the truck and followed.
“What was all that about?” I said.
George was shaking his head in amazement. “Never seen anything like it.”
We unloaded the grain and drove back up to the house. The dog was sitting waiting for us on the porch, the bird perched on the railing a few feet away.
I got the dog’s feed bowl out of the cab and filled it from the bag of kibble.
“Lunch,” I said, putting it down. We left dog and bird, happily sharing the feast, and headed for the kitchen. I had to use the phone.
Before I called Becker, I told George about finding the truck in John’s garage.
“That is a very strange story,” he said.
“Yup. What’s even stranger is that the cops didn’t find it first. Aren’t they supposed to go over everything with a finetooth comb when someone gets murdered?”
“You would think so,” George said.
“Still, Becker told me this was his first homicide. I guess he’s making it up as he goes along.”
“This news is going to anger him, Polly.”
“Yup. Sure is. Not only because he overlooked the obvious, but if there were any tell-tale tire tracks in the driveway, they’ll be gone by now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, let’s say the killer arrived, shot John, then used John’s truck to take his body to the dump and then drove the truck back and hid it in the garage. That would mean the killer’s car would have been standing there for a while. It might have left, I don’t know, tire tracks. Oil-stains. Something.”
“Unless the killer arrived on foot,” George said.
“Where from? You mean he parked on the road?”
“I mean he, or she, might not have been very far away.”
“You mean a neighbour?” I said. “Who? You think Eddie did it? Or… oh, no, George. If you think Francy did it, I’m going to be really, really pissed off.”
“You did say that she can’t remember what happened,” George said.
“I can’t believe you’re saying this. I thought you liked Francy.”
“I do like her, Polly. All I’m saying is that she had every reason to do it, and she’s the most obvious choice. I think you should prepare yourself for it to be so. Francy was most likely the only one to know there was room to hide the truck in Travers’s garage.”
“Everyone else is prepared for it to be so,” I said, trying to keep my temper. “I seem to be the only one who is willing to entertain the possibility that she didn’t do it.”
“What would happen if her memory comes back and she admits it?”
“You mean when hell freezes over? I’ll be too busy trying to keep warm to care.” I turned my back on him and reached for the phone.
A woman answered the Laingford Police line and I asked if Becker was in. He wasn’t, and I left a message to have him call me as soon as possible.
George had made tea for both of us, so I sat with him and tried to swallow my disappointment in him. It wasn’t easy—particularly because he started in on Becker’s favourite theme: Stay out of it.
“Look, I can’t drop this now,” I said. “Look at the truckthing for instance. If I wasn’t involved, the cops would still be scouring the back roads, wasting their time. All I’m doing is giving them a little boost.”
“But, as far as they’re concerned, the truck hasn’t been found yet. They may still be scouring the back roads,” George said. “Why did you not just leave the information over the phone? Why did you have to speak to that policeman personally?”
There was a little pause.
“Ah,” he said. “Like that, is it? I thought it was so.”
My face went hot. “Like what? What do you mean you thought it was bloody so?”
“Which is why I didn’t tell you where Francy Travers is. I knew you would not be able to lie to that big, handsome policeman.”
“What? You know she’s at Susan’s? You knew already?”
“How do you think she got there? She was in no shape for walking. I drove her, after your policeman left.”
“He’s not my policeman. You mean she was there when we were all talking here before Becker came up to the cabin?”
“She was hiding in the barn. She followed you down here, Polly. She knew I was safe, she only had to wait until you and the policeman were out of the way.”
“Until I was out of the way? Why? Doesn’t she trust me anymore?
God. I’m the one who’s been defending her all this time.”
“She knows that,” George said gently. “But she knows you better than you think. Something you said, perhaps, when she was with you. She knew she had to get away, so she came to me and I took her to your aunt. Don’t look so betrayed. It was all for the best.”
I was devastated. My best friend didn’t trust me. After all I had been doing to try and clear her name, she was trying to get away from me.
“So why are you telling me now?” I said.
“She decided to turn herself in.”
I stared at him, my mouth open.
“You mean she did do it?” Impossible.
“Not necessarily. She still can’t remember, but she wants to go home, and Susan told her that to speak to the police would be the quickest way for it. Susan telephoned a short while ago. They were headed over to the police station together. She’s probably there now.”
I couldn’t speak, I was so angry. I felt like the kid that everybody has labelled a tattletale, not to be trusted with any secrets. I felt left out. I felt like a jerk. But was it true, what George was saying? What Francy had told him? That I was so transparent I was dangerous? Then I remembered that I had told Becker she was up at the cabin. I had led him to her, in fact, except that she wasn’t there. That made me feel even worse.
“I still think she’s making a mistake,” I said.
“It is hers to make.”
The phone rang and I answered it. It was Becker.
“We’ve got Mrs. Travers,” he said.
“I know.”
“I know you know. You could be charged with obstruction, Polly. You and your aunt.”
“I didn’t know where she was for sure until a few moments ago, Becker.”
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