Corpse on the Cob

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

  “You talk to Cathy today?”

  She shook her head. “My husband told me this morning before he left for work.”

  “You haven’t called your sister-in-law to see how she’s doing?”

  Tara shrugged and picked at a sock on top of the laundry pile. “We’re not close.”

  “She live nearby?”

  “The house across the street.”

  “The blue one, right?”

  Tara nodded. There hadn’t been any signs of life at the blue house when we drove up.

  “It didn’t look like anyone was home when we drove up. You have any idea where she might be?”

  Tara continued looking down at the laundry. “Troy’s probably in school. Cathy might be up at the big house with her mother. Or out looking for Grady.”

  Greg looked up at me, clearly wondering what I was going to say next. I wasn’t sure myself. I’d tuned my ears for sounds of someone else in the house but heard nothing, just the low murmur of a small TV perched on the kitchen counter facing the family room. The volume was turned down. Onscreen was a popular women’s talk show. I decided to get right to the meat of the matter.

  “Who’s the guy you met last night at the North Woods Motel?”

  Tara’s eyes shot up from the laundry to meet my own. Her simple, open face, with its perky nose and large blue eyes, fell like rocks off a dump truck. Her bottom lip quivered, then stilled. To her credit, she didn’t try to deny it. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “I saw you. I was there—” I hesitated. “Um, visiting a friend.”

  “It was no one.”

  “Didn’t look like ‘no one’ to me.”

  “Stay out of this, please.” She dropped her eyes. Unlike the harsh warnings of Clem, her request for us to butt out was delivered in a low, shaky voice.

  “Grady was at the North Woods last night, too.”

  Tara’s eyes latched on to mine again. “He was? Did he tell you he saw me?”

  “No, I saw him just as I saw you. He was in the last cabin—probably why you didn’t see his vehicle. Who knows if he saw your minivan.”

  I had hoped that by now Tara would have crumbled into a puddle of tears and confessed to everything. It would have been too easy, but there’s always hope.

  “Who’s the guy, Tara? He a local? One of your husband’s cronies not above doing his pal’s wife on the side?”

  “No!” For the first time her voice had some meat to it. “It’s not like that. He’s not like that.” Her words drifted back into their previous soft tone.

  I waited, giving her time to offer up more, like professing her love for the guy. And, who knows, maybe she was in love.

  “Please don’t tell anyone. Forget you saw me there.” Tara’s eyes went wide with fear. “My husband would kill us both if he knew.”

  “Then it seems rather risky, doesn’t it?”

  She looked around her own house as if she expected spies to be lurking in the corners. “I’m leaving soon. So please, just mind your own business and don’t say anything.”

  “You’re leaving with him? The guy from the motel?”

  She said nothing.

  I hated to hit her when she was down, but I knew now would be the best time to throw out my next probe. Taking a deep breath, I blurted out, “I know about the drug business at Buster’s stand, Tara.”

  She went pale.

  “And I know that you’re the one who exchanges the money for the drugs with your dealer.”

  She sat down heavily in a nearby wooden chair. After a moment of silent reflection, she looked up at me, then over at Greg. “What do you want? Is this blackmail? If so, you’ll have to deal with my husband and his family. And they’re not easy to deal with, believe me.”

  Greg spoke up, his voice soothing. “No blackmail, Tara. We’re just trying to get to the bottom of the murder in the corn maze. What do you know about it?”

  “Nothing, I swear. I was just there with Troy.”

  I played my bad-cop part. “I don’t buy that, Tara. I think you were there to make a drug exchange with Les Morgan. You knew it was Les in the maze that morning, didn’t you?”

  She remained tongue-tied.

  “We know Les worked for a drug dealer in Boston. The police know it, too. How long do you think it’ll be before they make the tie-in to you? We did.”

  She started sobbing and covered her face with her hands. “I never wanted to do this. I knew one day it would catch up to us.”

  Greg moved closer. “Did Cathy know that her ex-husband was involved with your supplier? Did she know he was here in town that day?”

  With her hands still over her face, Tara shook her head. “No,” she squeaked out from behind her hands before bringing them down.

  I grabbed a nearby dishtowel and handed it to her. She wiped her splotchy face. “Cathy didn’t know. When Les started working for the people who sold us the drugs, I was his only contact. He kept asking to see Troy.”

  “You brought Troy to the maze to see his dad?”

  “Yes. Les said it was a perfect place to meet and both do business and let him see Troy.”

  Looking at Greg, I gave him a smile with my eyes.

  “Did you see Les alive in the maze, or was he already dead?” The question came from Greg.

  Tara thought a moment, her eyes darting back and forth. “He was alive the first time I saw him.”

  I looked at her. “The first time?”

  “When we made the exchange. I gave him money. He gave me the drugs.”

  “You exchanged messenger bags, correct?” asked Greg.

  “How do you know that?”

  “You had a messenger bag in the maze, Tara,” I explained. “Not a typical bag for a woman to carry. But it’s also a bag no one would think twice about a man carrying.”

  “Yes, we had identical bags and exchanged them.”

  “And you’d already made the exchange that morning?”

  “Yes. Les had flag number one. That was the plan. He raised it so I could see it and find him once I was inside. I had flag two. We were the first ones in the maze that morning.”

  “So Troy knew that was his father?”

  “I don’t think so. Les looked different, and it had been years since Troy had seen him. And Les didn’t say anything about it. Just looked the boy over while he and I talked.”

  “So you let Troy see you exchange the bags?” asked Greg.

  “No, after a minute, I told him to find the next puzzle. He ran off, and Les and I did business. After, Troy and I circled through the maze, playing the puzzle game. When we came across Les again, he was dead. I thought he’d already left.”

  My mind was in overdrive. “I was told that Troy was running through the maze on his own and found Les.”

  “Yes, he got quite wound up and was ahead of me. When I caught up to him, he had already found Les.” She started to cry again. “It was only about fifteen to twenty minutes after we’d done the exchange.”

  “And you didn’t hear a struggle or shouts or anything like that?”

  She shook her head. “By then, other people were in the maze.”

  “What about my mother?”

  “That’s all I know, really.” Tara stood up. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. I have a lot to do.”

  I was not about to be dismissed that easily. “My mother, Tara. What about my mother?”

  “She was found with the body.” She looked away.

  “Yes, but I don’t think she killed Les Morgan, do you?”

  She looked away. “That’s all I know. Now please go.”

  As we drove down Farm House Road, Greg looked back at the white house. “She’s going to run.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. Sounds like she was planning to bolt anyway, but I’ll bet now she’s gone by sundown.” I felt bad that our pushing might cause Tara to hit the road prematurely. But if we knew about her affair, it was only a matter of time before someone else found out and told
her husband. Leaving was probably the safest avenue for her right now.

  “There’s still something fishy about her story, don’t you think, honey?” I looked over at Greg.

  “Absolutely. She never came right out and said she saw Grace herself.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And I think she may know who the killer is.”

  By the time we returned to the B & B, Mrs. Friar had already tidied up our rooms and the kitchen. She was busy dusting the parlor when we came in.

  “There you are,” she said when she saw us emerge from our room. We’d come up the ramp and entered the inn via our private entrance. “Has Mr. Carter left? I saw that his things were gone when I made up his room.”

  I dug into my bag and produced the envelope of money and handed it to her. “He’s not quite gone, Mrs. Friar. He’s packed and ready, though. He’s waiting on a call from his office. If it comes in, he must leave immediately. If not, he’ll be here through tomorrow morning. He’s sorry he can’t be more specific. Either way, here is your money for last night and tonight. He wanted to make sure you got it.”

  Bonnie Friar checked the money in the envelope. From the way her eyes widened, Willie must have given her a bonus. She tucked it into her apron pocket. “Such an odd and interesting man, isn’t he?”

  Greg headed for the dining room to work. “Never a dull moment, that’s for sure.”

  Sitting around and waiting for a call from Clark was driving me nuts. Greg busied himself with his work. I tried to read but couldn’t concentrate. Bits and pieces of information, along with faces and names, clustered inside my head like debris caught in a storm drain. I would have scrubbed the inn from top to bottom to alleviate my stress, but it was already spotless. I finally decided to go for a walk.

  I was going to miss these morning walks in the country. At home, I walked along the beach with Wainwright tugging me along on his leash. Not too shabby by anyone’s calculation, but it was nice to have this change of scenery. After making a U-turn, I took a big slug from the water bottle in my hand and headed back, feeling pretty good and perky. About halfway back to the inn, I heard a vehicle approach from behind, then slow to a stop. I didn’t turn around.

  Damn. As much as I wanted to talk to Brenda Bixby, especially after last night, I didn’t want to do it while walking along a back road listening to my favorite music and feeling good about life in general. No, I wanted to have it out with her on my terms, when I was geared up to take her on and get to the bottom of things. I put one foot in front of the other, moving my legs faster, with determination. From the sound, the vehicle was still stopped.

  This is stupid, I told myself. I had to talk to Brenda, especially now, with Grady missing. They were probably together, and maybe both of them were in the car stopped behind me. Suddenly, now seemed as good a time as any.

  Just as I spun around to head towards the car, I heard an engine being gunned. It wasn’t Brenda and Grady, or even a solo Brenda. It was a rusty old truck, and it was coming straight at me. I did a swan dive into the bushes next to the road and tumbled over them. Dazed, I lay on the ground and got my bearings. My face and extremities stung from sharp scratches.

  The truck turned around and came back for a do-over. Behind me a few feet was a broken-down rock wall hardly two feet high in some places. I barely had time to scramble over it and take refuge behind a tree before the truck crashed into the bushes and stopped right over where I’d been a minute before. The driver, who was wearing a ski mask, put the vehicle in reverse and backed it out to the road. I didn’t wait around to see if he would make it over the wall. Screaming, I ran along the fence towards the inn, keeping the jagged-toothed stone barrier between me and my assailant for as long as I could. The vehicle tried ramming me again, but again the old truck couldn’t penetrate the brush and broken wall. The sound of metal meeting stone vibrated my spine like a tuning fork. I had already passed the closest residence to the B & B when the truck made its first bid to land me as a hood ornament, so my best course of action was to continue to the inn while threading through the sparse woods.

  When the wall ended, the beat-up truck made another run at me and missed. I started running, going deeper into the woods, using the trees for cover. This time the truck didn’t back up. Fear covered me like a gummy film when I glanced over my shoulder and saw the driver get out and start after me on foot. There was no way I was in shape to outrun anyone, except maybe another fifty-year-old with a penchant for cookies.

  I was too tired and frightened to scream anymore. Bobbing and weaving through the trees, I hoped I was still heading towards the inn and safety. As I ran, branches snagged my clothes and skin, holding me back like accomplices to the crime. My ears caught the sound of my tracker closing in on me fast.

  As they lost their juice, my legs slowed from a slow run to a raggedy jog to just a bit faster than a walk. My heart was pumping like a steam engine, my breath labored. I had pushed my body to its limit, demanding that it increase its speed. It had responded, but not enough. Just as the inn came into view in the distance, he took me down like a wounded wildebeest.

  I hit the ground hard, face first, with him on top of me. Pain rocketed through my body. Turning me over, he straddled me. I thrashed beneath him until he backhanded me hard across my already tender face. My teeth rattled in their sockets. He struck me again, sending my face in the opposite direction. Then he hit me the other way. My head and neck felt like one of those red balls on the end of a rubber band, his hand the paddle. Blood gushed from my nose.

  When the slaps stopped, he held my arms above my head and leaned in close. My hands dug into the dirt and debris, scooping it up, looking for something, anything to use as a weapon.

  “I’ll teach you to keep your fucking nose out of everyone’s business, you pathetic fat bitch.” His breath was heavy with the smell of coffee and bacon mixed with wet wool.

  I whimpered in response.

  He let loose one of my arms to hit me again. Shattered light, like bits of broken glass, entered my vision with the blow. I shook my head to clear it. Before he could hit me again, I threw the dirt in my freed fist straight into the eye holes of the mask. Yowling, he dug at his eyes with both of his hands. Still pinned under him, I grabbed for anything I could get my hands on—dirt, twigs, pebbles, leaves—and threw it at him. When he lowered one hand from his eyes, I let loose with one more handful. Bull’s-eye.

  “Bitch! I’m gonna kill you!” His eyes closed, his hands searched for my throat.

  Beneath him, my exhausted legs bucked while my hands continued to claw the ground. One hand finally connected with a rock the size of a softball and clutched it. As his hands found my neck and started to squeeze, he leaned forward. When he was within range, I slammed the rock against the side of his head as hard as I could with my last bit of strength.

  The blow stunned him. He rolled off me. He was on his knees, shaking his head and still trying to clear his vision, when I struggled to my feet. Using both hands, I brought the rock down hard but was off balance. It glanced off the side of his head but still did the job. He flattened to the ground.

  I started for the inn, dragging myself the rest of the way, stumbling over the ground as I fought to remain upright. I just wanted to get back to Greg.

  As I staggered from the woods into the parking lot of the inn, Willie’s SUV drove up. He hopped out and ran to me as he yelled for Greg. I collapsed into his arms. Willie half-carried, half-dragged me into the inn and deposited me on the sofa in the parlor.

  “Sweetheart!” Greg was next to me immediately.

  “Knocked him out.” I choked the words out through bloody lips. “Back there.”

  Willie pulled his gun out and took off out the door at a dead run.

  “What happened, Odelia?” Greg held my hand and wiped my hair out of the way.

  Mrs. Friar hovered above us, her face the color and texture of school paste. “Did Mr. Carter have a gun?”

  Greg turned to her. “Ca
n you get me a wet cloth, Mrs. Friar?”

  She looked down at my battered face. “Oh my, yes, of course.”

  “What happened, Odelia?” Greg repeated.

  “Someone.” I gulped some air and tried again. “Someone tried to run me down. Not far from here. Then he chased me. Beat me. Told me to mind my own business.”

  “Didn’t you have your phone with you?”

  “Yes.” I patted the side pocket of my capris. “Didn’t have time. Just ran.”

  “Did you get a look at him?”

  I shook my head. “He had a ski mask.”

  Mrs. Friar returned with a pan of warm water, soap, a facecloth, and a towel. She placed them on the coffee table. “Maybe I should call an ambulance.”

  “No,” I told her. “It’s just scratches and bruises. Not as bad as it looks.”

  Greg soaped up the cloth and patted it against my bloody, bruised face. It stung like hell. “I’m afraid you might have a black eye, sweetheart. But I don’t think your nose is broken.”

  He dabbed the soap and water on my legs and arms. More stinging, like I’d fallen on a colony of fire ants.

  Willie returned. “Whoever it was is gone. No truck anywhere along the road.” He looked me up and down, taking in my torn clothes and bruised face. “Did you see who tried to kill you?” Willie’s voice was as pointed as a sharpened stake.

  I shook my head. “Like I told Greg, he wore a ski mask.”

  “Could you identify the vehicle?”

  “I think so.” I took several deep breaths and put a hand over my heart. The beat was returning to normal. “It was an old truck and rusty or rust in color, hard to say.”

  Greg opened his cell phone and made a call. He asked for Chief Littlejohn. When told the chief wasn’t available, he asked the clerk to get a message to Clark as soon as possible. “Tell him someone tried to kill his sister.”

  “Oh, my.” Mrs. Friar wobbled. Willie gently helped her to a chair. “These things have never happened around here before. First the murder. Now this.” Confused, she looked at Willie. “Did I see you with a gun, Mr. Carter?”

  “Certainly not, Mrs. Friar. I’m a businessman.”