Sleeping Dogs Lie wfm-1

by Sharon Henegar

  Kay wrinkled her nose. “For some reason, a bag with a rope in it is even more sinister than the gun. What did you talk about in the car?”

  “Nothing, really. I said you’re making a big mistake, what’s going on, and she just ignored me except for giving directions.”

  I shivered at the thought of being forced to drive with a silent stranger pointing a gun at me.

  “When we got to her room, she kicked the door shut behind her. She told me to sit in the straight chair by the table, and she tied me up. God, I sound like an idiot, letting some woman tie me up without overpowering her and getting away. But she kept the gun on me even when she was dealing with the rope. I figured at that range she couldn’t miss, and that being shot would hurt rather a lot.”

  “What happened after she tied you up?” I asked.

  “She asked me where the tape was, and I said I wouldn’t tell her. And we repeated that with minor variations for an hour or more. She threatened me with the gun again, but I pointed out if she shot me she’d never learn anything. She opened a bottle of Scotch and sipped it from a glass from the bathroom. Finally she sat down on the bed. She looked exhausted. The only thing she seemed able to focus on was getting hold of the tape.”

  I suddenly thought of something. “Her car,” I said.

  “What about it?” he asked.

  “When I told Chief Johnson about my car being stolen I forgot to tell him that her car was sitting by the road to your house,” I explained. “If it's her own car he can find out who she is from the license plates. It's too old a car to be a rental. I suppose it could have been stolen, if someone else was as stupid as I was and left the keys in the ignition.”

  “I've done the same thing in my own driveway,” Bob consoled. “You couldn’t know someone was lurking.”

  Kay said, “Go call Ed, Louisa, and use the speakerphone so we can hear too.” I looked at her blankly. “Press the button that says speaker and when you hear the dial tone, dial,” she instructed, and sighed at me.

  I went over to the phone on the kitchen counter and did as she instructed. She rattled off the phone number from memory. We listened to the ring, then to Kerry Sue’s Maddock’s perky voice saying, “Willow Falls Police. How may I help you?”

  “This is Louisa McGuire—” I started.

  “Hey, Louisa, how you doin’? I don’t think I've even talked to you since you moved back to town.” There was a little snapping noise. Kerry Sue had always been a gum chewer. “That sure was a shame about your folks. Did your dad suffer much?”

  “I don’t believe—”

  “And your mom, that was really somethin’. She just didn’t want to go on without him, did she?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Kay and Bob exchange a look, which I interpreted as Kay saying ‘I told you so’ regarding Kerry Sue’s mental prowess.

  “Well, no, she—”

  “And your husband too. We were sure sorry about your loss.” She snapped her gum again.

  “Thank you, I—”

  “Is it really true that he choked to death in a restaurant while some bimbo was under the table givin’ him a blow job?”

  I wanted to sink through the floor where I stood. That would put me out of Bob’s sight and near the back door, where I could get in Kay’s car and either drive away and never come back, or go straight around the block to the police station and kill Kerry Sue. I finally found my voice.

  “That’s what the papers said, Kerry Sue, but I certainly wasn’t there at the time.”

  “Well, that’s a blessing anyway. Say, did you find your car yet?”

  “No, I was hoping that you all would be doing that,” I said. “May I speak to Chief Johnson, please?”

  “Ed? He’s not here. He’s out driving around somewhere.”

  “I need to talk to him,” I persevered. “Can you have him call me?”

  “Yeah, sure, Louisa, you bet. I'll tell him as soon as he comes in.”

  “Um, this might be important, Kerry Sue. Could you call him now and have him ring me right away?”

  “Why? What’s up?”

  “Well, I—I thought of something that might help him find my car. And I need to tell him soon.”

  “Your car that got stolen?” More snapping from her gum.

  “Right. That car. Please tell him to call me at Kay’s number, not mine.”

  “You’re at Kay’s? I noticed she has the store closed today. How is she?”

  Across the room, Kay opened her mouth, miming a scream. I turned my back on her. “She’s fine, Kerry Sue. I have to go now. Have Chief Johnson call me soon, okay?”

  “Sure, you bet. See you.” Her phone clattered down and we heard the dial tone. I couldn’t figure out what button to push to disconnect it, so I picked up the receiver and dropped it back in its cradle. When I turned to Kay and Bob, Kay had her head down on her arms and her shoulders were heaving. I wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying. Bob’s face was a study.

  “Kerry Sue will have Ed call us here,” I informed them.

  Kay raised her head and I saw tears on her cheeks, but I could tell they were tears of laughter. We looked at each other, then we both shrugged. “She’s just as likely to call her Aunt Mildred as Ed,” she said.

  “I don’t think she’ll have time,” I said. “I'm going over there right now and kill her.”

  Bob looked alarmed, but Kay said, “Good idea. Certainly no jury of your peers would see it as anything other than justifiable homicide.”

  “And who would my peers be in this case?”

  “Anyone who had ever called the police station when Kerry Sue was on duty.”

  “True,” I said. I made myself look at Bob. “I don’t believe I ever mentioned how my husband died.”

  His expression was carefully neutral. “No reason why you should have. It must have been terrible for you.”

  “It was,” I agreed, “but at least it was worse for him.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The phone rang. Since I was still beside it I picked up and said hello. Miraculously, it was Chief Johnson.

  “Mrs. McGuire,” he said, “I understand you have further information about your car?”

  “Not my car, the other one. The Mercedes. The gray one.”

  “Yes?”

  “I forgot to tell you, we saw it. It was parked off the road near the turnoff to Bob’s house.”

  His voice quickened with interest. “When was this?”

  “Before we found Bob,” I said. “Kay and I saw it there, and that’s why we decided to sneak up on his house, so we went through the woods and that’s how we found him in the barn.”

  “So this was, what, two hours ago?”

  “I guess it's been that long. At least that. It took us a while to find Bob—”

  “May I ask why you didn’t call me immediately?”

  I was stumped for an answer. “I, that is we—um, we were focused on retrieving my car…” I stopped, wondering how ‘my cousin didn’t want to talk to you’ would go over. Maybe saying ‘because it would have brought Kerry Sue one conversation closer to her demise’ would be better.

  “I see. Well, the car isn’t there now. I've been driving in that locale myself looking for your car—”

  “Thank you. How kind.”

  “—and there’s no gray Mercedes beside that road.”

  “Oh,” I managed. “We were hoping you could find out who the woman is from the license plates.”

  “What was the number on the plates?” he asked.

  I looked across the room at Kay and Bob, who were avidly following my half of this conversation. “Um, hold on,” I said, and put my hand over the mouthpiece. “The car’s not there anymore,” I hissed, “and he wants to know the license number.”

  Neither of them spoke. Bob finally shook his head.

  I took a deep breath and said into the phone, “I'm sorry, none of us got the number.”

  “Mrs. McGuire, if you should happen to see t
his gray Mercedes again, it would be extremely helpful if you would get the god damned license plate number,” Chief Johnson said evenly.

  “Yes,” I told him. “I will. Goodbye.” I could hear his voice still squawking from the receiver as I hung up.

  “He’s pissed at us, isn’t he?” my cousin asked, and I nodded. She shrugged and got up from the table, going to the freezer for more ice. “Well, at least one thing is still normal. Who needs more tea?”

  “I need something, though I'm not sure tea is strong enough,” I said. “Arsenic maybe.”

  “My tea is strong enough,” Kay assured me. “Save the arsenic for Kerry Sue.”

  Bob took my glass and his own to the kitchen and held them out for cubes. He set the glasses on the counter and Kay poured more tea from the pitcher. Bob leaned a hip against the counter.

  “I have to confess that after listening to Kerry Sue, I no longer know what we were talking about,” he said.

  “The woman in red,” Kay said instantly. “But I want to go back to something else. Bob, you said the stepfather didn’t know that Ian was seeing you?”

  “I don't think he did,” Bob agreed.

  Kay went on, “So how did he know about the tape or that you were any kind of threat? You really think the police detective told him?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but he’s the only person I told about the tape. Of course, my other patients know I tape all my sessions but—”

  “So is that why you didn’t want to talk to Ed in the car?” I asked. “Because you don’t trust the cops?”

  Bob nodded. “I don’t know who to trust, other than you. Probably the Willow Falls police are safe, but the High Cross detective could have told Ian’s stepfather I had an incriminating video.”

  “What does Ian’s stepfather look like? And what the heck is his name? We keep calling him the stepfather,” I said.

  “His name is Carl Walsh, and he’s a big guy, over six feet and broad. Not fat, just wide. Football player type. You can imagine him in a high school game creaming smaller guys and walking off smiling.”

  “He sounds like the man who was searching my car,” I said. “So that’s why Jack reacted the way he did. He was really terrified when he saw who it was. And we were all scared when Walsh almost caught us in the barn.”

  “What?” Bob stared at me. “What do you mean, he almost caught you in the barn?”

  “I ran away through the woods when I saw him searching my car. I was in the upper part of the barn, the same place we discovered you, catching my breath. I heard him go into the lower part. Then he went around and came in the upper door but I was hiding behind those same hay bales where you were sleeping.”

  He shook his head at me. “My god, Louisa. If he had found you…” He swallowed. “How did you get away?”

  “A mouse ran by him and I guess he thought it wouldn’t be there if we were around. Then a dog barked outside. He took off.” It sounded frighteningly flimsy to my ears. I told myself to go back to the barn soon and leave a wheel of brie for that mouse.

  Silence fell around the table. Kay finally spoke.

  “You know what I’d like to do next,” she said, turning to Bob. “I want to see the tape of Ian’s session with you. Where is it?”

  Bob made a face. “Well, the original is gone, it was stolen from my safety deposit box, which is what made me leave town.”

  Kay and I both stared at him. “Stolen from your safety deposit box!” Kay finally sputtered. “How the hell did they manage that?”

  “Walsh, Ian’s stepfather, runs the bank. He owns it. It was started by his wife’s family several generations ago and he inherited it when she died.”

  We digested the implications of that, then I said, “That was the original. How about this copy? Did you give that one to the police?”

  He shook his head. “I made one copy, figured I'd give it to the cops. But the detective was so awful I just kept it in my pocket. After I found Jack, I stashed it in his dog food bin. A day or so later I went to the bank to get the original so I could make a second back up copy, and that’s when I discovered it was missing.”

  “Did you tell them at the bank it was gone from your box?” Kay asked.

  “No. It was just too weird. And that was about the time I remembered Ian saying his stepfather ran a bank. I had no idea it was my bank. I mean, how many people know who runs their bank?”

  “Well, I do, but that’s because I've known Harold since he was a pup,” Kay said.

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “I called my lawyer, who told me to get out of town and hide.”

  “Why Willow Falls?” Kay asked.

  “My lawyer’s brother owns the stone house and she asked him to let me use it. Which now seems to have left too direct a trail. I grabbed a few necessities and Jack and the copy of the tape and came to Willow Falls.”

  Kay stood up. “Let’s go get it. Is it still in the dog food?”

  Bob shook his head. “I was afraid they’d find me sooner or later, so I hid it somewhere else.”

  “Where?” she demanded.

  “Do you remember the day Louisa and I met, when we stopped in your store and said hello?”

  “Sure, I called your dog a jack rabbit and we talked about bad furniture. It was just a couple of weeks ago.”

  “I had the tape with me in my backpack that day. In fact, that’s why I was walking around. I was looking for someplace to hide the tape, someplace that would be so unconnected to me that Walsh wouldn’t find it, even if he located me.”

  “So where is it?” Kay asked.

  “When Louisa and I met and we walked down Maple Street it occurred to me that perhaps I could hide it in one of the shops. The two of you left the room to get something, and I hid the tape in your store.”

  Kay jumped up and headed for the stairs. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  We clattered down into Kay’s combination office and workroom. The unlit store was still and dim. The light she switched on sliced into the dark, brightening her sales desk. Bob strode into the store and looked around as Kay turned on more lights. He frowned and moved to the arched doorway into the larger sales room.

  “Have you moved things around?” he turned to ask Kay. She shrugged, walking toward him. I was a couple of paces behind her.

  “I’m always moving things around.”

  “Where do you think she got those biceps?” I added. She threw me a look over her shoulder.

  “Things sell and move out, and we rearrange to highlight other pieces. What are you looking for?”

  “That big awful whatever it was,” Bob said, waving his arms to indicate size and awfulness.

  “Not the Albatross—that ridiculous armoire-sideboard-wine cooler-secretary thing?” she said, stopping in her tracks. I walked into her back and bounced off.

  “That’s the one,” he replied. Kay shook her head.

  “I sold it,” she said.

  His eyes widened. “But you said it was so awful no one would ever buy it. You were going to have to be buried in it.”

  “Well, yeah, but that was before I knew of any people as tasteless as the owners of a restaurant in High Cross that Ambrose is decorating. He took them a picture of it and they loved it. He picked it up this morning in fact.”

  “That’s where you hid the tape?” I broke in. “In the Albatross?”

  Bob nodded. “You and Kay left me alone, and I saw a roll of mailing tape on the counter. I used it to attach the video onto the back of a drawer.”

  Kay and I stared as Bob’s expression turned sheepish. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. I thought I'd seen a car like Walsh’s while Louisa and I were at the Bluebird and I had the tape in my backpack. I didn’t want him to catch me with it.”

  “Geez,” Kay said. We looked at each other for a couple of heartbeats. She gave a broad shrug. “Well, I did say that no one was ever going to buy it. I’ll go call Ambrose. Maybe he can do something
about getting it back.” She hurried toward her office and the phone.

  A knock on the front door of the store made my heart begin to clamor. “Now what?” Kay exclaimed. The door knob rattled, followed by more knocking, louder this time.

  “Do you want me to see who it is?” I called.

  “No, I'll get it. I'm halfway there already.” I heard Kay’s footsteps cross to the door and the sound of the locks being opened. The pulled-down shade clattered like dry bones as she jerked the door open. Bob and I remained where we were, beside a big cherry armoire that blocked our view of the front door. “Yes, what is it?” she said in a decidedly uncordial voice. Not the way she usually speaks to a potential customer.

  “Oh, good, you are here,” came a loud voice. A woman’s voice.

  Doris’s voice.

  I locked eyes with Bob. We didn’t move.

  The loud Doris voice continued. “I was here a couple of weeks ago and saw something that I've decided I want to buy—”

  “I sold it,” Kay snapped out. The bell on the door jangled a little, as though Kay had tried to close the door and been stopped.

  Doris said, “I haven’t even told you what it was. How the hell would you know if you’d sold it?”

  Only someone who knew Kay as well as I do would have heard the minute pause before she said, “I remember what you were looking at. It's been sold.”

  Doris could have been cross examining a hostile witness. “Oh yes? And just what do you remember me looking at two weeks ago, when you barely noticed my presence in this store?”

  And where were you on the night of last January twenty-third at 9:42 p.m. when the crime was taking place? I added mentally.

  “You strolled through my store in a counter clockwise circle, pausing before any piece of furniture made of pine. You picked up a silver cocktail shaker and put it down in a different place, and you handled a couple of porcelain figurines. But I imagine the piece you’re talking about is the painted pine handkerchief box that you looked at for several minutes, set down, and returned to twice before you left the store. I sold it to the next person who walked in, a widow from Milwaukee who remembered her mother having one like it in Pennsylvania. The piece is gone. Rare items like that do not wait for your convenience. Now, my store is closed for the day. Goodbye.” I heard the thump of the door closing, the click of the locks being set again.