Claws for Concern

by Miranda James

  I drove closer to it so I could see the make and model. Once I did, I saw that it was a match. I stopped the car and nudged Jack. “Look at that SUV,” I said. “It matches the one that hit Delaney. What do you want to bet that it belongs to Elizabeth Barber?”

  “I think I’d lose that bet,” Jack replied. “I’ve got an idea. Park next to it. It’s parked away from other cars, so the owner has to be one of those people who can’t stand the thought of their car getting scratched.”

  I did as Jack asked. “What’s your idea?”

  Jack unbuckled his seat belt. “I’m going in there and tell the receptionist that I accidentally scraped the side of that SUV. I’ll ask to talk to the owner. I doubt Elizabeth Barber knows what I look like, so I won’t give my name. I’ll ask her to come out and look at the damage, and I’ll say my insurance information is in the car.”

  “Then once you get her out here, I can tell her that her SUV matches the description of the one that hit Bill Delaney,” I said. “That ought to shake her up a little. I can hint that my daughter and son-in-law actually got a picture of it with part of the license plate.”

  “Are you sure you feel comfortable with telling a lie like that?” Jack asked. “A few minutes ago you didn’t seem okay with it.”

  “It does bother me, but if Elizabeth Barber tried to run Bill down, my scruples can take a brief vacation.”

  “Good man,” Jack said. “Okay, I’m going in.”

  I watched as he crossed the parking lot and entered the front door of the clinic. Then I turned to Diesel. “I want you to lie down and be a good boy, Diesel. I don’t want this woman to see you and be alerted too soon. We’re going to act like we’re taking a nap. Okay?”

  Diesel meowed and stared at me for a moment.

  “I’m going to lie down, too,” I said. “Nap.”

  Diesel meowed again and stretched out on the seat. He knew what the word nap meant. I twisted so that I could lie across the front seats and got myself into position. I didn’t turn the car off because it would get too hot. I hoped the SUV’s owner would be too upset to notice until it was too late.

  I don’t think we had to wait more than six or seven minutes before Jack appeared with a striking woman in scrubs that did little to disguise a shapely figure. She was shorter than Jack and had bright red hair pulled back and twisted into a bun on the back of her head. She was gesticulating in an angry manner.

  Jack maneuvered her into the area between my car and hers. He got on the other side of her and drew her toward the front of the SUV. That allowed me to sit up, open the door, and effectively trap her between the two of us.

  She was in such a state, continuing to flap her arms about, that she evidently didn’t hear me open the car door. She was still facing Jack.

  “. . . some sort of prank. You look way too old to be pulling this kind of crap. I’ve got work to do.”

  “I’m sure you do.” Jack looked over her head toward me. “Charlie, I’d like you to meet Elizabeth Campbell. Elizabeth Barber Campbell.”

  She whirled to face me, her expression furious. “What the hell is going on here? Who are you people?” She pulled a cell phone out of a pocket of her scrubs. She started to tap in a number.

  “I’m a friend of Bill Delaney’s,” I said. “The man you tried to run down on the square in Athena recently.”

  That hit home, I could see. She almost dropped the phone. Then she recovered. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I’m going to call the police.” She started to tap on the phone again.

  “Go ahead, by all means,” I said. “I’ll be happy to report to them that we’ve found the hit-and-run driver that the Athena police have been looking for.”

  She stopped tapping and stared at me. I could see the fear creeping into her expression. I didn’t need anything more to tell me that she was guilty.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said. “I was nowhere near Athena that day. You can’t prove any of this.”

  “And what day would that be?” Jack asked.

  She realized her slip but tried to bluster. “Whatever day you’re talking about, I wasn’t in Athena. I haven’t been in Athena in a long time.”

  “Not even to visit your best friend, Leann Finch?” Jack asked.

  Elizabeth Barber—I couldn’t think of her by any other name—backed up against her SUV and glanced wildly back and forth between Jack and me.

  “You might be disappointed to hear that you didn’t kill Bill Delaney, though you did put him in the hospital,” I said. “That was a pretty dirty trick, you know. Going to see him that day, getting him drunk, and then trying to run him down.”

  Her eyes widened again, and I took grim satisfaction in the fact that my hunch had proved true. She had been in Bill’s apartment that morning. The lipstick Diesel had found on the floor belonged to her, I was sure of it.

  “Too bad you lost your lipstick while you were there,” I said. “My cat found it, but I left it there. I’m sure the police in Athena will be happy to test it for fingerprints. What do you want to bet they’ll match yours?”

  All at once her legs seemed to give way, and she slid down the side of the SUV until she was sitting on the pavement. Tears started streaming down her face.

  Jack and I exchanged startled glances. I hadn’t expected this. I thought she would continue to brazen it out. A cynical thought flashed through my mind, however. She might be trying this tactic in order to garner sympathy. Best not to be taken in by it. I glanced at Jack again, and I could see by his expression of disbelief that he’d had the same thought.

  “Why did you do it, Elizabeth?” I asked, my tone gentler than she probably deserved. “Did you really want to kill him?”

  THIRTY-THREE

  While Jack and I waited for a response to my question, I could hear Diesel in the car meowing loudly and scratching at the window. Elizabeth Barber, her hands now over her face, continued to cry.

  Since Diesel sounded more frantic as the seconds ticked by, I opened the door and let him out. He meowed again and climbed onto Elizabeth’s legs and butted his head against her hands. Obviously startled by the sudden weight on her legs and the pressure against her hands, she let her arms fall. Diesel butted his head against her chin. Elizabeth wrapped her arms around my cat and buried her face in the side of his neck.

  Jack and I watched as the cat’s ministrations proved effective in calming the distressed woman. We waited as the sobs diminished in volume and Elizabeth’s breathing appeared to be normal again.

  An unfamiliar voice from behind me startled me. “What’s going on here? Liz, honey, are you all right?”

  A small woman, no more than five feet tall and whippet thin, pushed by me to get closer to Elizabeth. “Is something wrong with the cat? I got worried when you didn’t come back.”

  “I’m okay, Louann.” Elizabeth raised her head from Diesel’s neck. Her reddened eyes and tear-stained appearance apparently did little to reassure her coworker, however. Louann glared at Jack and me in turn.

  “What did y’all do to her car? The damage must be really bad for her to carry on like this.”

  “My car is fine,” Elizabeth said. “They brought me some bad news, that’s all.”

  “Judging by the way you look, honey, it must be pretty dang bad news. Who’s that cat belong to?”

  “He’s mine,” I said. “Come on, Diesel, let the lady get up now.”

  Diesel warbled as if in protest. Elizabeth offered a watery smile as she stroked his head.

  “It’s okay, Diesel,” she said softly. “I’m okay.”

  The cat meowed and climbed off her legs. He moved next to me, and I stroked his head. Elizabeth slowly raised herself off the pavement. Jack extended a hand to help her, but she ignored it.

  “You come on back in the clinic,” Louann said. “Wash your face and have something to d
rink. Your makeup’s all streaky.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll be fine,” Elizabeth said. “You go on back, Louann, and I’ll be there in a minute. Go on now, I mean it.”

  Louann shot hard glances at Jack and me before she moved away, but she headed back to the clinic after one more plea to Elizabeth to come back inside. Elizabeth ignored her.

  “You said Bill Delaney is in the hospital,” she said, addressing me. “How is he?”

  “Not good,” I said. “His health was already bad, and that’s going to make it more difficult for him to recover from this. He’s in the ICU now.”

  “I’m sorry he was hurt,” Elizabeth said.

  She still hadn’t admitted that she was responsible. I thought we had shaken her enough that she would confess to it, but she was evidently made of sterner stuff than I expected.

  “I’m sorry he’s in the hospital,” she said. “I hope he’s okay. There’s nothing I can do to help him. I really have to get back to work.” She made as if to push past me, but I didn’t budge.

  “You do realize that we are going to have to tell the police that we have identified your SUV as the one that ran Bill Delaney down,” I said. “Don’t you have anything to say about that?”

  “I’ll talk to the police if I have to,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t see that it’s any business of yours. I told you already that I wasn’t in Athena.”

  “There were witnesses,” I said, “who saw the whole thing.”

  That startled her. The mask of defiance slipped for a bare second but then was back.

  “It’s nothing to do with me,” she said. “Whoever they saw that day, no one can prove it was me.”

  “I guess you’ll just have to wait and see,” Jack said. “Several of the businesses around the square have security cameras, and some of them run twenty-four hours a day. I’d be willing to bet one of them caught the whole thing. Including the license plate of the SUV in question.”

  I did my best to hide my surprise at Jack’s statement about the video cameras. As far as I knew, there were no such cameras around the square.

  Jack’s bluff shook her. Her body stiffened at his words, but she didn’t reply to him. Instead, she pushed me out of the way and hurried back into the clinic.

  “That was some performance,” Jack said. “Those tears may have fooled your cat, but they didn’t fool me. That woman is stone cold.”

  “Maybe.” I wasn’t completely convinced that Elizabeth Barber’s display of emotion was totally calculated. Diesel responded to genuine emotion, not put-on feelings. He had seen Laura acting out tragic scenes from her favorite Shakespeare plays in my living room, and even as Juliet lay dying on my sofa, he didn’t budge an inch. At least some of what we saw Elizabeth Barber doing was genuine. Whether it was remorse, sympathy, or fear, I didn’t know. Perhaps it was a combination of all three.

  “What now?” I asked.

  Jack shrugged. “I think it’s time to go back to Elmer Lee and tell him everything we’ve heard. And especially about this SUV.” Jack tapped his knuckles against it. “I’m going to record the license plate.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket.

  Diesel and I stood aside and let him get by to the rear of the SUV. He took a couple of pictures of the license plate. “Let’s have a look at the front. Which side hit Bill Delaney?”

  “It would have been the passenger side.” I moved to the front of the SUV, and Diesel and Jack followed me. I bent to examine the front more closely. I couldn’t really see anything that indicated the vehicle had hit anyone. I moved aside to let Jack have a look.

  He took my place and squatted to put himself at eye level with the bumper and the lights. I envied his knees the ability to do that without making noise. Mine creaked anytime I had to squat or get down on my hands and knees. Getting back up was also not pleasant.

  Jack stayed in his squat for what seemed like several minutes. I was perspiring under the heat of the afternoon sun, and I knew Diesel must be getting uncomfortable. I put him back in the car where it was air-conditioned. I wanted badly to join him, but I would wait until Jack was finished.

  Finally he stood. “Find anything?” I asked.

  Jack shrugged. “I’m not sure. I think there may be some fibers snagged in the light surround, but it’s hard to tell without some kind of magnification. I’ll report it to Elmer Lee. It’ll be up to the Athena police, I guess, to have it examined.”

  “If they’ll accept what we tell them. That reminds me, that bit about the video cameras around the square was a bluff, wasn’t it?”

  “Mostly.” Jack grinned. “But you never know. Let’s head to the sheriff’s department. I’m about to burn up out here.”

  Finally. I opened my door and slid into the wonderfully cool air. I wished I had a cloth of some kind to wipe my head with. The sweat would soon dry, however.

  Before I drove away, I decided on impulse to call the hospital in Athena to check on Bill Delaney. I told Jack what I was going to do, and he nodded.

  Within a minute I was connected to the nurses’ desk in the ICU, and I asked for an update on Delaney’s condition after identifying myself.

  This time I was talking to a man who told me that Delaney’s condition had improved somewhat. He had rallied a bit and was alert and able to eat on his own. If he continued to improve they would be moving him out of the ICU later in the day, or by the next morning. I thanked the man for the update and ended the call.

  I shared the information with Jack as we headed back to the sheriff’s department. On the way I was thinking about what I should do next. I decided I should go on home. Jack could easily handle the talk with the sheriff. I said as much to Jack.

  “Sure,” he said. “In that case, head for the Kountry Kitchen. I can pick up my car and go to the sheriff’s department from there.”

  Within a few minutes we reached the diner and I pulled into the parking lot behind Jack’s car. Before he got out I reminded him to take the folder of autopsy reports. I didn’t want to be tempted to look in the folder if I went home with them.

  “I think we accomplished a lot today,” Jack said.

  “Much more than I ever expected, frankly,” I replied.

  “We’re getting close,” Jack said. “Keep me posted on Bill Delaney. Are you going to try to see him tonight?”

  “I think I will,” I said. “I don’t want to risk causing a setback, though, so I’ll have to be careful.”

  “I’ll let you know what Elmer Lee has to say,” Jack said.

  “Please thank your wife for everything. It was a pleasure to meet her,” I said.

  “Will do. She enjoyed meeting you and Diesel.” Jack opened the door and got out. He closed the door and bent to wave good-bye to Diesel. The cat meowed.

  I decided to fill up the car before we left Tullahoma, and I found a gas station on the way. With the tank full, Diesel and I headed for home.

  As I drove, I mulled over all that we had learned today. I tried to assimilate it all and put it into a plausible pattern. I came up with several scenarios, each of which might explain everything. The question was whether any of them contained the actual truth of what happened that night.

  We made record time on the drive home, and I was surprised to see that it was only four thirty-three when we walked into the kitchen. Given all the activities of the day, I felt like it should be past my bedtime.

  Azalea greeted us and asked how the day had gone. Before I could respond, Diesel started warbling and chirped, with a couple of meows thrown in. Azalea stared at his face in fascination, as if she understood every single sound.

  “Is that so?” she said when Diesel finally stopped. He meowed once before he padded away in the direction of the utility room. Azalea looked at me. “I swear that cat thinks he’s a person like you and me.”

  “I wouldn’t argue with you on that.” I chuckl
ed. “I imagine what he was trying to tell you is that we had a pretty busy day. We talked to several different people today, and we learned a lot.”

  “You reckon you got everything figured out now?” Azalea asked before she turned back to the stove. She stirred the contents of a pot that was emitting a tantalizing scent.

  “In a way,” I said. “The problem is there are several potential answers, and I’m not sure which is the correct one. What is that you’re cooking?”

  “The filling for a couple of pecan pies,” Azalea said. “Mr. Stewart’s been pestering me for one. Says he can’t make them like I do.”

  “I don’t imagine anyone can.” I was never a huge fan of pecan pie until I tasted Azalea’s. She refused to divulge her secret recipe, however, despite all Stewart’s blandishments.

  “What’s for dinner?” I asked.

  “Roast beef,” she said. “Over there.” I followed the direction of her nod and saw the Crock-Pot on the counter. I sighed happily. Azalea made the most tender roast I’ve ever eaten. It would practically melt in your mouth.

  “When will it be ready?” I asked.

  “Around six,” she said. “I have to leave before then, but it’ll turn itself off. Stewart said he’ll whip up some mashed potatoes and gravy to go with it, and there’s a pot of green beans in the fridge that just needs warming up.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” I said. “I’m going to the den for a while but I’ll see you before you go.”

  She nodded, and I headed from the room.

  A few minutes later I was comfortably settled on the sofa with my laptop and Diesel stretched out beside me. I opened my e-mail program and waited for it to load. My cell phone rang and I picked it up from the end table beside me. Jack Pemberton was calling.

  “Hi, Jack,” I said. “How did it go with the sheriff?”

  “It went fine,” Jack replied. “Look, I’m calling from my car. I’m tailing Elizabeth Barber, and she’s headed for Athena. I bet she’s planning to go to the hospital. She might be intending to make another attempt on Bill Delaney.”