Gone Crazy

by Shannon Hill

  Gone Crazy

  by

  Shannon Hill

  Published by Shannon Hill

  Copyright © Shannon Hill, 2008

  E-Book formatting: Guido Henkel

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Author’s Note

  Boris is based upon two feral cats who have graced my life. You really can’t make up personalities like that.

  I’ll also add that if, perchance, any of my blood relatives read these…‌I did change all names and details to protect the guilty. Ahem. Innocent. I meant ‘to protect the innocent’. Did I mention you really can’t make this stuff up?

  1.

  My name is Lil. Right there’s a joke, if you’ve ever met me. I stand a few millimeters shy of six feet tall in my socks. That’s one reason I don’t get asked out on too many dates. There are some other reasons I don’t have much of a social life, but being a big tall gal is usually top of the list.

  The gun and badge are probably tied for second.

  Through twists of fate or what Aunt Marge calls my kismet, I am sheriff of the town of Crazy, Virginia, population 300. It’s set in the Blue Ridge, and like all our county, there’s plenty of rural charm to convince you to stay.

  Of course, most people hit 18 and get out so fast all you see is the cloud of dust. Right up until you also see my bubble lights flashing when I pull them over for speeding out past Junior Sims’s garden center on Piedmont Road.

  ***^***

  Trouble started for me, in this particular case, when I needed to move out. I’d been living with my godmother Aunt Marge since I returned to Crazy a few years ago, but now she had Roger, and I had Boris. I needed my own place.

  Roger is Roger Campbell, Aunt Marge’s beau. He’s ex-military and a good man. The kind that small children and animals trust on sight. But sharing a breakfast table with him wasn’t going to work much longer. There’s only so much a girl can handle in the way of realizing the woman who raised her has more of a love life than she does.

  Boris is an ex-feral, one-time tomcat, black and white with mismatched eyes. His mere presence oozes menace as far as Aunt Marge’s cat Natasha’s concerned, and after a cold confined winter, she’d started to lose her fur from pure stress. Which is another reason why I was standing in an April drizzle, listening to Margaret Shiflet tell me all the good reasons for me to buy a four-bedroom, three-bathroom McMansion on Spottswood Lane, a splash of suburbia right in Crazy.

  “Margaret,” I finally said, interrupting her patter about granite countertops and marble-tiled bathrooms. “I need one bedroom, and room for the cat condo. That’s all.”

  Margaret sneered a little, but in a genteel way. The kind of way that said “bless your heart” when it meant “drop dead.” She pursed her mouth. “You could always rent one of the apartments down Piedmont Road.”

  Elk Creek Apartments are a frequent stopping point for me and for my human deputy, Tom Hutchins, during any given shift. Someone renovated an old 1950s motor lodge into apartments, and if you can’t afford better, they’ll do till you can. The residents tend to be what Aunt Marge politely calls “discontented”, which means lots of calls for noise or domestic disputes or a guy puking in the boxwood hedge. Frankly, the place exudes misery.

  Luckily, I had a good reason to shoot down Margaret’s suggestion. “They don’t take pets.”

  Margaret glanced automatically at my cruiser out in the driveway. Boris was curled up asleep in his car seat. House-hunting bored him.

  “Isn’t there someplace…” I waved wildly at the world in general. “My size?”

  Margaret smiled with only a little malice. It’s not smart to irritate the sheriff, however much you want to. “There’s Donny Tucker’s old place now he’s down in Gilfoyle.”

  I shrugged. I had entertained a few wistful thoughts in Tucker’s direction, but when I found out Donny was married, that was that. The fact his wife was in a psychiatric care center for life wasn’t relevant. He was married. Off-limits.

  “There’s gotta be something,” I said, nearly in despair. I couldn’t bring myself to live out of town. It felt like shirking my responsibility.

  The other vacant properties were on Main Street, all commercial properties gone halfway to ruin. The only choice left was the Madison Springs Condos a few miles north of town. I might have considered those but they, like Spottswood Lane, were built by my relatives. If I bought or rented in either location, someone was sure to say I was favoring either the Ellers or the Littlepages. I wouldn’t do that if I could help it.

  My full name may be Littlepage Eller, but that doesn’t mean I have to like them.

  “Well,” said Margaret, “if you hadn’t given up your Eller money…”

  I had, to build the spacious, state-of-the-art animal sanctuary run by Aunt Marge and her legion of church committee ladies. But that was a story and a scandal of its own. Then inspiration struck me. “What about that little place just north of the bridge?” That’d be the bridge over Elk Creek, which comes down off Turner Mountain, flows west, then more or less heads south parallel to Main Street before both creek and road veer east.

  “Sold it last week, to the new veterinarian.” She lowered her voice to a hushed whisper, as if she was telling a dirty joke. “He’s not white, you know.”

  “So he’s purple?” I asked before I could stop myself. So much for staying apolitical, but in this day and age? Who cares about skin color? I’m just happy if people don’t break the law, and Lady Justice is wearing a blindfold for a reason.

  Margaret flashed me a nasty little look. “Sheriff,” she started to say, and my cell phone rang. I grabbed it with relief, and gave her a bland smile that meant I had to tend to official business, and hoped it wasn’t just Aunt Marge asking me to pick up some asparagus at the Food Mart. Maybe I’d get lucky and Eddie Brady would be up to something. He usually was.

  “Lillian, Lilith, Lily of the vale!”

  Harry Rucker, dapper, smooth, vicious, the county’s one full-time and fully-dedicated prosecutor. If he’d chosen to go to Richmond or DC, he’d make a million a year. Instead, he stays down in Gilfoyle, and if you ask him why, he’ll never give you the same answer twice.

  “My dear sheriff,” Harry continued with a chortle, “how are you today?”

  “House-hunting,” I said briefly. “What’s going on?”

  He turned serious. “Business, I’m afraid. My fat cousin doesn’t think it is necessary, but then, he also seems to think that good taste and dental hygiene are optional.”

  The cousin in question is the county police chief, and if ever a man could turn the word “redneck” into an obscenity, it’s Chief Vernon Rucker.

  “We’ve got a spot of bother down in Paint Hollow.” Harry switched effortlessly from haughty Brit to down-home hill-billy all in one sentence. “It’s the Colliers.”

  Reflex kicked in. “Out of my jurisdiction.”

  “Not so, Lil,” he reminded me. “You’re the county’s special investigator, remember?”

  I had forgotten. Damn. I waved meaninglessly to Margaret and hustled to my car. “What’s the problem?”

  “Well,” said Harry, and for once he sounded perplexed, “that’s why we need you. I can’t quite figure out what the problem is, or if one exists.”

  I scowled impatiently
at the sky, gray and flat. “It’s my day off, Harry.”

  “I know, and I will send you chocolates forthwith as an apology, but, well…” He sighed. “It’s the Colliers, Lil.”

  I sighed too, and for the same reasons. “Okay. I’ll be down in an hour.”

  He thanked me and hung up. I got behind the wheel and spent some satisfying time petting Boris, who turned over in his sleep to expose his tummy and the jingly star-shaped ID tag on his collar. Every cop should have a cat or dog in the passenger seat. It does wonders for the blood pressure.

  ***^***

  I rolled out of Crazy with a wave for Tom Hutchins, parked in our favorite speed trap by Junior’s garden center. Then it was east out Piedmont Road‌—‌Main Street in town and Madison Springs Road north of it‌—‌to the highway. I drove south past Mineral Mountain on my right, and west again, finally, on Gilfoyle Road. It runs parallel to Mineral Creek through Gilfoyle Gap, to the county seat of Gilfoyle, our main center of government and population. North of there, at the old quarry, my dad’s family planned to build a subdivision but work had not started. The narrow confines of the location, plus unexpected geological issues like rockslides, had forced Eller Enterprises to re-think their ambitions.

  Gilfoyle sits at the foot of Buckle Mountain, an abrupt uprising some 3200 feet high that keeps the town in happy shadow in summer, and gloomy shade all winter. It’s a typical small town, plus a few struggling artsy boutique stores selling local crafts or high-end coffee. There’d been big money in lumber before the national forest and the parkway ate the western third of the county, then some money in quarrying greenstone, but the truth was, our county’s main industry since the 1940s was survival. Which is why we don’t pay any attention to the moonshiners, so long as their product is clean and safe, or the guy who seems to always have stuffed deer heads ready for someone’s purchase via the internet.

  Making an honest living around here sometimes requires a little deceit.

  Boris meowed excitedly as we pulled up to the county office building. He could tell something was up. He bounded out of the car and toward the door. The courthouse itself was an elegant domed brick building, very Jeffersonian, courtesy one of my feuding ancestors, but the office building was, well, an office building. When I strolled in, the security guard looked up from his Tom Clancy novel, waved casually, and let both me and Boris pass unchallenged, despite the sign that declared “No animals allowed.”

  I found Harry in his office, feet up on a huge old walnut desk that matched the shelves. His own, not the county’s. He was studying his ceiling fan, festooned with dust. “There’s tuna treats in the fridge,” he told me. “Have a seat.”

  I got Boris his tuna treats from the baby refrigerator, and took a chair. Boris leapt up onto the windowsill to groom himself and study the trickling raindrops on the glass. Harry blew imaginary smoke rings from his equally imaginary cigar.

  “Lil,” he said at last, “we may have to change the name of the whole county to Crazy.”

  I shifted. Harry is rarely uneasy, but the Colliers have that effect on people.

  The Colliers live in Paint Hollow, all up and along White Branch, so-named for all the white quartz shining in its water. When the federal government came through to make the Parkway, and the national forest, they had two choices. They could go around the Colliers and Paint Hollow, or through them. It took them about half a minute to decide it was easier to go around.

  And that’s how everyone feels about the Colliers. No one goes into Paint Hollow if they aren’t Collier by blood or marriage. No one gets called to go into Paint Hollow, not even an ambulance. When a Collier needs an ambulance, they drive to the little medical center in Gilfoyle. When a Collier house goes up in flames, Colliers with garden hoses take care of it. If a Collier commits a crime in Paint Hollow, it stays in Paint Hollow. And if a Collier commits a crime outside Paint Hollow, and gets back there before the police catch him or her, that Collier will not be arrested until they set foot outside the hollow again. It’s not that the Colliers are so numerous, or so heavily armed. It’s that they are, simply, the Colliers. They’re not so much a family as a brick wall.

  Harry got to his feet and strolled unhappily to the window. “It’s a delicate situation. If we handle it wrong‌—‌or the Colliers say we do‌—‌we could be looking at a shooting feud.” He smiled wryly. “If there is anything I appreciate about the Littlepage-Eller feud, it is that they have never resorted to violence. Merely over-emphasis on public works.”

  Boris leapt down from the windowsill and bounded onto my lap, butting my chin with his forehead. It’s his way of saying hello, pay attention. I started petting him, and he settled his twelve pounds onto my lap. When he looked at Harry, I knew he was being insufferably smug. “So,” I said, “what’s the delicate situation?”

  Harry smiled sourly. “Vera Collier’s dead.”

  My jaw dropped. I said what came into my head. “Did they stick a stake in her to be sure?”

  Harry simply stared at me. I iced up inside. I whistled. “Someone killed her?”

  “It’s too much to expect she’d die of natural causes,” Harry pointed out with a trace of his usual odd humor. “The problem, however, seems to be who did it.”

  I grunted. Isn’t that always the problem?

  Then Harry said, “She had eleven children, and they all seem quite certain that one of the other ten did it.”

  2.

  A couple hundred years ago, a feud began between the first Littlepage and the first Eller to settle the area. What it came down to was a pissing contest for who got the right to call himself the Founding Father of Crazy, then called Pleasant Valley.

  The town name changed for reasons I, at least, think are completely obvious.

  Over the decades, as each family made its fortune, the feud deepened. If the Littlepages built a church, the Ellers built a church. If Ellers built a road, Littlepages built a road. And while Eller Enterprises has its HQ in Richmond, and LP Inc. is based in Northern Virginia, Crazy remains the battleground of choice. It doesn’t matter that they don’t compete in business‌—‌Ellers incline to tech and e-commerce, Littlepages to banking and investments. It matters that someone someday will win the fight for which family is top dog in Crazy.

  Which is why the town’s name is Crazy. We value truth in advertising.

  The feud between the two families came to a head when my mother‌—‌Helen Littlepage‌—‌met Mark Eller‌—‌my father. They fell in love. They eloped. They had me. They died. It’s very Shakespeare, without the reconciliation or remorse. Instead, the Ellers to this day blame my mother for seducing my father, and the Littlepages blame my father for seducing my mother, and neither family wants anything to do with me at all. My grandfather Eller did leave me a few million dollars, but it was purely by mistake. He’d left instructions for each grandchild to be provided for, and forgot to mention I wasn’t on the list. The Littlepages have yet to give me even a grudging dime, but my cousin Jack is kind and polite. Last fall, I did my best to solve the murder of his sister, who’d run afoul of their mother’s ideas of propriety and died for it. Like Harry said, however, it’s not a violent feud. Until looks can kill, I won’t be cleaning up any bad blood.

  A Collier feud, now. That might be something altogether different.

  My two best resources are Aunt Marge, and my best friend, Bobbi Rucker, who is a genius with hair and at listening to everything without revealing anything, except to me. She’s related to both Harry and Chief Rucker, divorced from the son of Crazy town councilwoman Ruth Campbell, and the only person who doesn’t ask me why I don’t get married. She also makes sure there’s always some half-and-half on hand for Boris, who lounges in the salon like a furry sultan whenever I come in for a trim and information.

  The salon was empty when I strolled in. “Hey,” I said, and shed my neon yellow slicker with reflective stripes. “Closing early?”

  “Might as well,” said Bobbi. She’s petite, ado
rable, and that day, a brunette with caramel highlights. Give her a week, it’d be redhead with purple stripes. When it comes to hair, Bobbi has no fear. “Myrna’s got allergies, and Deb’s mama had her surgery today.”

  I’d heard about Mrs. Payne’s surgery. It was a straight-up gall bladder removal, but she wasn’t all that young, and she was in everyone’s prayers. It’s rare you see someone as genuinely benign as Joanna Payne.

  “And you,” said Bobbi, leveling a perfect nail at me, “don’t need a trim. You’re growing out fine.” She reached up and fluffed the layers she’d cut into my hair. It’s Eller hair, dark and abundant and straight enough to use as a ruler. Bobbi longs to dye it blonde, just to see what’d happen. I know what’d happen. Aunt Marge would have conniptions. She doesn’t even let preservatives touch her lips. Chemical dyes on the head would send her over the edge.

  “Sit on down,” she invited, and handed me a cup of decaf green tea. Like Aunt Marge, I avoid caffeine, alcohol, meat, and junk food, especially if it ends in -os.

  Bobbi poured herself a mug of fermented black sludge that passed for French roast. “So what’s the story?”

  Boris blocked her, tail lashing. His mismatched eyes, one green and one gold, glared up. Bobbi glared back, then laughed. “Just like a man,” she said, and poured him a saucer of half-and-half. “Wants what he wants.”

  I told her that we had a Collier problem. Like any other native, she winced. “Oh damn.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I can tell you. Colliers stick to themselves, you know that.”

  “Anything’ll help.”

  We sat in silence, broken only by the slurping of Boris washing between his toes. Bobbi stirred. She pushed her hair off her face, which is pixie-ish, fair, a little like the fairies drawn on boulders by Heather Shifflett, whose graffiti indicates a talent for art as well as misdemeanors. “Well,” she said at last, examining her nails. She keeps them short, so she doesn’t claw anyone’s scalp, but they’re perfectly manicured. “Huh. You know that old you-know-what Vera had a little heart attack about five years ago or so. You were still up in Charlottesville.”