“Also, he was left-handed.”
“How…”
“From where his feet were positioned, and where the pile of dirt fell, he had to be shoveling left-handed.”
He said nothing, so I thought I’d demonstrate.
“See, the shovel goes in at this angle, when you come up with the dirt, where’s the easiest place to pile it? Kinda over your shoulder. If you’re digging left-handed, that would be to your right. See?”
He smiled at me. “I don’t know how Rudy stays sane.”
“I suppose he’s just a much bigger man than you,” I said, and I walked away, totally drenched. I began veering off toward the rectory instead of my car. I should have known that Sheriff Brooke would notice.
“Hey, Torie. Car’s that way.”
“I know. I want to see how Father Bingham is.”
I was wondering if God finds out about the lies that you tell on sacred ground faster than he finds out about the normal lies?
The church was a white sandstone with arched windows all down the side plus one on each side of the wooden door. They were stained glass, as was the one round window directly above the door. I walked around the church and up the steps of the rectory, opened the door, and walked in. A photograph of the Archbishop of St. Louis smiled down at me. I noticed that the rectory smelled like Rachel’s classroom. I’m not real sure what that odor is, and it isn’t necessarily an unpleasant odor. It’s just a classroomy smell. It’s distinct.
“Father Bingham?”
“In here.”
He was in his office. I walked in and he sat behind his desk with his head bent over, studying something. He was about sixty, with splotchy skin and sky-blue eyes. His white hair was thin, and he parted it in the middle, of all things. The office was painted in pale blue and it was sparsely decorated with a few biblical paintings and a crucifix.
“Torie, hello,” he said. He arose and motioned toward a chair. “Sit down, sit down.”
“Oh, no. I’m soaking wet. I just wanted to see how you were. I suppose it was quite a shock coming home to find a grave robber.”
“I am just sick over this. Just sick. How’s Rudy?”
“Fine.”
“And your girls?”
“Fine.”
“Haven’t seen Rudy in church, since … 1986.”
“Yes, it was for our wedding.”
He only smiled.
“Look, Father. I don’t want to take too much of your time. See, I have this problem. A nice gentleman let me borrow his … umbrella the other day, and I need to return it to him.”
“Yes?”
“It was at Marie Dijon’s funeral, and I’m afraid I don’t remember his name. Do you think that I could have a look at the guest registry?”
“Well, normally the family gets the registry, but there wasn’t anybody to give it to. I think Sister Mary Lucy kept it. She and Marie were good friends. She is quite shook up over this … atrocity. Let me ask her.”
He picked up the phone, dialed the nunnery, spoke a few seconds, and hung up. “Yes, she has it, I’ll be right back,” he said.
According to Marie’s family charts she had two sisters. I assumed that they were dead, otherwise they would have been at the funeral and there would have been somebody to take the registry.
Father Bingham was gone maybe five minutes, during which time I took a peek to see who had been paying their tithes like they were supposed to. He came in the back door and handed me the registry, a cream-colored book.
“Do you have a pen and paper?” I asked.
He handed me a pen along with a pad of paper and clasped his hands behind his back as I skimmed the pages for names I did not recognize. Andrew Wheaton, Paul Garland …
“So, where’s the umbrella?” Father Bingham said.
“What?”
“Well, you could sure use it now, couldn’t you?”
“Uh, forgot it.”
Sally Reuben, Ransford Dooley …
“I don’t remember it raining the day Marie was buried,” he declared.
“No? Hmph.”
Of all the things, I had to pick an umbrella.
Lanny Lockhart …
Just then I heard the bell buzz and I knew it was Sheriff Brooke. I shoved the piece of paper in my bra, as it was the driest place I could find, and handed the book back to him.
“Well, thanks. I’ve got to go.”
I opened the door to a soaked Sheriff Brooke, smiled at him, and passed on by to my car.
Eight
I decided to drive by the cemetery once before going home to give the whole scene a look from the car. Sometimes you see something from far away that you don’t see up close. I had intended to drive by at a crawling speed when I noticed there was somebody behind me. So, I pulled over to let him by, only he pulled over behind me as well. That was odd.
When I pulled away from the curb, so did he. I use the term he loosely. In fact, I had no idea if it was a man, woman, or kangaroo driving. It was too dark and the rain only made things worse.
I didn’t want to drive home, because then he would know where I lived, providing of course that he didn’t already know. I was probably jumping to conclusions anyway, so I thought I’d just drive around town to see if he followed me.
It was at this point that I considered investing in a car phone or one of those cellular thingamajigs. I don’t even own a cordless phone. It’s times like these that I really feel as though I live during prehistoric times.
I made a quick right on Jefferson and then a quick left onto New Kassel Outer Road, which the car behind me did also. My skin began to tingle. Somebody had just dug up Marie Dijon’s grave and now there was a car following me. I was scared. New Kassel Outer Road is just a two-lane blacktop without any streetlights except at junctions or where somebody’s driveway was.
I decided to drive to Wisteria and pull into the sheriff’s station. Whoever was following me would not follow me into the sheriff’s office. Of course, that meant that if I got out of this unscathed, I was going to be in big trouble. Sheriff Brooke would probably arrest me, again. My mother would probably try to ground me for the first time in fifteen years.
God, what a humiliating thought.
In a few minutes I’d be passing my Aunt Emily’s farm. I wanted to stop, but knew I couldn’t. What if he had a gun and he’d kill us both? No, I had to keep driving. It was amazing to me how the familiar things I saw on this road every day now seemed to take me by surprise and look alien. I never seemed to notice that the log fence on my left was as run-down or as close to the road as it now appeared. I checked the rearview mirror. So far the driver hadn’t made any aggressive moves, he just followed with the headlights on low beam.
I turned on the radio and flipped the stations. I needed some music to calm me down. I continued to turn the dial, trying to find something that fit the mood. Beethoven? Too dark for a lonely, deserted stretch of two-lane country road. Huey Lewis? Too happy. Was this really Adam Ant? Wow, too—I don’t know, too something. Now some girl kept screaming the word zombie. No. Definitely don’t want to be reminded of dead things that go bump in the night. What was this? U2? Perfect.
So, I drove along singing the words to “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” thinking it rather apropos. I had not found what I was looking for. I wasn’t even sure what it was that I was looking for.
Suddenly the car behind me flashed its brights. He sped up and came within a millimeter of hitting the back of my car. It was so close that I actually prepared myself for the impact and was shaken when it never occurred.
The driver brought the car parallel with mine, which by the way meant that he was in the oncoming traffic’s lane. When I glanced over, I could not see who it was. It was too dark, as there were no streetlights at this spot. The driver looked like a male.
We had just passed my Aunt Emily’s farm. Her light had been on in the kitchen, and as usual the moon gleamed off the top of her silo. There was only on
e more marker on the Outer Road before arriving in Wisteria, and that was the intersection with Highway P, which is another two-lane country road leading down to Progress, Missouri. I had about seven more minutes before reaching the Wisteria city limits.
I sped up, not wanting to give the driver the opportunity to sideswipe me, if that was his intention. The car pulled in behind me again. I couldn’t figure out what he wanted. He wasn’t hurting me, and yet he obviously wanted something. If he thought I was going to pull over, he must have his brain in a vise because I’m not that stupid. He was riding my bumper so close that I could barely see the headlights.
While he was riding right on my tail, something darted across the road from the woods on my right-hand side, directly in front of my car. It was a dog. I slammed on the brakes, and the car plowed right into the back of me. There was no sound of brakes squealing because the driver hadn’t had enough time to touch his brakes. I did, however, hear the cringing sound of metal against metal as the two cars crunched together.
I hit my head hard and was stunned for a minute. Blood came from my forehead. I tried to see in the rearview mirror if the driver behind me was all right. I couldn’t see anything. He must be slumped over in the seat, I thought.
I sat there a minute, gripping the steering wheel and shaking from head to toe. Of all the stupid … I had just totaled my car because a dog ran in front of it. It was an instant reaction. I’m the idiot that will cross into the oncoming traffic so that I won’t kill a turtle. I might kill eight people in the process, but the turtle will live! Well, I’d just done the same thing for a dog.
I turned the engine over, and it started with no trouble.
There was still no movement from the car behind me. I had to go check on whoever it was. They could be dead. I couldn’t leave them bleeding to death, no matter what the circumstances were. I just couldn’t do it.
I found my flashlight in the glove compartment and the baseball bat that I keep under my front seat. I got out of the car, leaving the radio blaring and the door open. I walked slowly back to the other car, dreading every single second of it. The sleeve of my sweatshirt was soaked from the rain and the blood that I kept wiping from my forehead. My heartbeat seemed to thud in my head instead of my chest and I was feeling slightly dizzy.
I knew I was feeling strange from more than just the bump on my head. I was scared of what I’d find in the car. I was scared that either he would be dead and I’d have to see that or he wouldn’t be dead. And that could pose a more life-threatening situation for me. I took a few steady deep breaths as I stood by the rear tires of my car.
The back of my car looked as if it had been hit by a Mack truck. Glass was scattered everywhere, and now that I got a good look at the back tires, I knew I couldn’t drive the car anywhere. Not to mention the engine of the other car was in the back of my station wagon.
Good going, Torie. This is by far the stupidest thing I have ever done in my entire life.
When I got to the car, I shivered. There was nobody in the front seat or on the floorboard of the car. I checked the backseat. Same thing.
“Damn, damn, damn.”
The passenger door was half open, and I assumed that whoever was driving had jumped out the passenger side and disappeared into the woods.
I walked back to my car. When I looked inside, something was in my front seat. It was the dog that I had almost hit.
The cutest little face looked back at me, beating my seat to death with his wagging tail. It was a dachshund. A wiener dog with short red hair.
“Are you hurt?” I asked in my instant oh-you’re-so-precious voice.
I sat down next to him and looked him over. I didn’t see any blood, bumps, or bruises. There also wasn’t any collar or any tag. He wagged his tail, licked me, and genuinely looked very happy to be in my car with me.
“A wiener dog,” I said to him. “No, don’t give me that look. No, I can’t keep you, so don’t even try the big brown eyes tactic. Absolutely not.”
He rolled over on his back, paws in the air and panting. Clearly, he wanted his belly rubbed.
“My husband will file for divorce and my mother will go live with her sister and then I’ll have to listen to how miserable she is because her sister’s nuts. I can’t keep you,” I said to him.
I rubbed his belly. “Of course, my children will elevate me to sainthood.”
I shut the door and the dog jumped in my lap, put his paws on the steering wheel, and prepared to drive. “Sorry, we’re not going anywhere,” I said to him. “We’re going to lock the doors and wait until somebody drives by. It should only be a minute or two,” I assured him.
He turned around, evidently smelling the blood on me. His nose went to my forehead and he licked at it slightly. I didn’t have the strength to stop him. He whined a little and looked back at the road in front of him.
I managed to lock the door and put my hazard lights on. I waited impatiently for a passerby and did not fight the sensation as the road in front of me turned into a dreamlike mist.
Nine
“Roses are red, violets are blue, you wrecked the car and your pretty head, too,” Rudy said.
I opened my eyes and found Rudy standing over me with a bouquet of red roses. He smiled. His smile was the kind that was contagious. It took up the majority of his face and his whole body seemed to smile with him.
“Hi,” I said. I remembered Deputy Newsome telling me that they were taking me to Wisteria General Hospital. I glanced around the hospital room, painted in that perfectly boring gray that only hospitals seem to use. It was either that or the dull cream. I think I actually preferred the gray.
Okay, yes, I was still in Wisteria General. Fairies had not come and taken me home in the middle of the night like I wished they had.
“I told the doctors that the reason you weren’t dead was because you were too hardheaded,” Rudy said.
“That’s the oldest line in the book,” I answered.
“But in your case, it’s the truth. So are you in any pain?”
“I have a headache,” I answered. “It’s nothing serious. Just a bump on the head. I was only out for a few minutes.”
“I was here last night, do you remember?” he asked.
Vaguely, I remembered him being here. “Yes,” I answered.
“We have a problem,” Rudy said.
“What’s that?”
He put the roses in the vase on the windowsill. “Well, there’s this dog … a wiener dog. He was in the car with you and I’m not sure what to do with him.”
“Oh.”
Rudy came over and rubbed my face with the back of his hand. “Colin wants to speak to you.”
“I bet he does,” I answered. “What did you do with the dog?”
“He’s at the house for right now.”
Rudy walked around the room, and I got the distinct feeling that there was something that he wanted to tell me. Or ask me. He wore jeans and his T-shirt with the Coca-Cola polar bear on it that the girls got him for Father’s Day this year. After ten years of marriage I still say he’s got the sexiest butt in a pair of beat-up jeans I’ve ever seen.
“Look, Colin’s outside and he wants to see you. Now,” he said. “I told him it depended on how you were feeling.”
“I’m fine. Send him in.”
Rudy came over and kissed me on the forehead. “You two need to call a truce. I think your mother is really falling for him, Torie. Besides, I know you. Something that starts small eats at you, until you’ve got a full-blown festered sore.”
“He arrested me,” I said, indignant.
“I know. And even though I don’t agree with him on that, it’s something you’ve just got to get out of your system. He sees you as a woman who thinks she is above the law because most of the time, people here don’t make you go by any rules. He decided he’d show you that you do have to answer to the system,” Rudy said.
“Yeah, but…”
“Don’t but me, Torie. He pi
cked the wrong time to do it, I agree. But it was still a lesson that you needed.”
I started to tell him that he was just agreeing with Sheriff Brooke because he was a man and this was a man thing. Rudy was just picking on me. But then, the more I thought about it, the more that I knew he was right.
“All right. Send him in,” I said.
Rudy left and Sheriff Brooke came in and stood where Rudy had stood before. He was in his full dress uniform, hat and all. It felt as though this was official business. He took his hat off and held it in his right hand.
“Torie,” he said as he nodded his head. “How ya feeling?”
“I have a headache,” I said and meant it in more ways than one.
“You gonna tell me what happened last night?”
I told him the whole story. “Don’t roll your eyes at me, I’m telling the truth. I got my baseball bat and went to see if the person was all right and there was nobody in the car.”
“It was a stolen car, which you probably assumed.”
“Well, I hadn’t given it much thought. It hurts to think too much,” I said.
“Did you get a look at the driver?”
“Not really. I’d say it was a man only because he had short hair and was kind of tall.”
“Did you get the same list of suspects that I did from the funeral registry?” he asked me.
“Probably,” I said.
“And you probably already know that three of them are staying at the Murdoch Inn.”
“No, but I was going there today to check it out,” I admitted.
He glanced out my window. All I could see from my bed was the top of the doctors’ building next door. It was a sunny day, I could tell that much. The sheriff turned around, pulled his britches legs up at the hips, and leaned against the heat register.
“I propose that we go into business with each other,” he said.
“Well, I’m flattered. But I’m not that good with antiques. I mean, I know what they are when I see them, but I can’t begin to tell you what they’re worth.”
“No, not the antiques store,” he said to me.
A Veiled Antiquity (Torie O'Shea Mysteries) Page 6