Gone Crazy

by Shannon Hill

  “You’re sure? You’re entitled by blood, and if Mother does have Father’s will ruled invalid or whatever the word is, then as your mother’s daughter you’d qualify for a share by law.”

  “God no,” I said, and slid off the trunk, to Boris’s disgust. He had gotten all comfy. “Thanks for the offer, Cousin Jack, but no thanks.”

  Poor guy sounded like he’d agonized over this. “You’re sure? It’d be a lot more money than the Ellers left you.”

  I patted his arm as I walked around my car to open Boris’s door. “I’ve got good credit, I’ll manage. G’night, Jack.”

  He called a farewell to me as I drove away. I’d thought I was the loneliest person in Crazy that night. I wasn’t.

  ***^***

  I woke up to squeals, the smell of cinnamon rolls, and Boris hissing like a pit viper. I was getting smothered in hair, a perfume that reminded me of cherry blossoms, and a faint odor of cumin. I pushed out, and the squeals finally stopped. So did the hair. I sat up, blinking furiously. “What the hell!”

  Bobbi sat at the foot of my bed, grinning like a fool. She bounced. She was holding a container full of cinnamon rolls. She must have known they’d buy forgiveness. “Guess what, guess what, guess what?”

  I snatched at the cinnamon rolls. Still warm. Oh, yeah. “What, what, what?”

  She thrust her hand at me. I stared at it stupidly a minute. Then I saw the fat little star ruby ring. “Holy crap!”

  Boris stopped hissing and leapt on the bed, tail fluffed and lashing. He yowled at Bobbi. Under all that fluffing, he was plain embarrassed. Bobbi must’ve caught him napping, too. Good. I hated to be alone in my humiliations.

  The glory of the ring faded a bit. “Wait a second,” I said, through the happy haze of sugar and cream and cinnamon. “You’ve only known each other a couple months. If that.”

  “Spoilsport,” Bobbi pouted, or tried to pout. She bounced again. I was having flashbacks to adolescence. “I know. But, Lil, honest, it’s different. You’ve met him. He’s nothing like that asshole I married the last time.”

  I couldn’t argue that. “This isn’t just his guilt trip over Ruth’s little stunt?”

  Bobbi tipped her head to one side, viewing me with a kind of sobriety that held a lot of pity. “Lil,” she said softly, “I knew he was special the second I saw him. Doesn’t matter it was in the dairy aisle. And it’s not like we’re kids.”

  Another good point. “Okay, then,” I surrendered, and gave her a big hug. “Congratulations! When’s the wedding?”

  “Just as soon as his mother recovers from her heart attack.”

  I was lost in my second cinnamon bun. “She’s sick?”

  “No,” said Bobbi, “but she will be when he tells her he’s marrying a white girl. His first was a nice Indian girl his mama picked out.” She rolled her eyes as I snorted laughter through my nose. I wasn’t about to open my mouth. It’d waste cinnamon roll. “She’ll probably have as big a fit as Ruth. Not that she could be as mean as Ruth,” Bobbi went on and flicked her nails. They’re short but impeccably manicured. “Old witch. Anyway, no sense getting all worked up about it. We’ll get married when we get married. Fall, maybe. And I am so going to wear red.”

  I had a sudden vision of me in a sari, and I shuddered. “Um, when you say get married…”

  “Civil ceremony,” she said and hugged me. “No ugly dress.”

  Thank God for that. When she married Ruth’s rat filth of a kid, we’d had to wear these flouncy, shiny satin dresses with big bows on the butt and lots of ruffles. With actual petticoats underneath. And lace fans. And lace gloves. And white lace hats. It’d taken me years to track down and destroy all photographs of me in that thing.

  “C’mon, be happy,” she urged.

  I tried, and I gave her something in return for the cinnamon rolls. “You’re first to know I’m getting an acre of land off Littlepage Road.”

  She squealed. Bobbi’s got a squeal that’ll hit a register usually only dogs can hear. Boris’s ears twisted. Mine just about melted.

  I leaned back into my pillows and reached for another cinnamon roll. “So tell me about the ring,” I said. What the hell. I was already late. Crazy could handle a day without me lurking in a speed trap.

  ***^***

  I rolled into the office after directing a lost tourist to the convenience store at the intersection of Piedmont Road and the highway. The weather was summer-hot and sticky, and even Boris didn’t have much bounce. He went right to his water bowl and then his condo without sparing a tail-flick for Tom’s cousin. Who was half-asleep on the little couch, watching Davis eat lunch with his brother Jeff as they played Scrabble through the bars. I didn’t know what surprised me most, and stood for a minute trying to decide what to figure out first. I chose mushrooms, and grabbed a cold juice from the lunch room before I waved Tom’s cousin to the chair on the other side of my desk. “Tell me it’s good news.”

  Tom’s cousin surprised me. He kept it simple, and handed me the kind of report even a federal prosecutor couldn’t pick at. He must’ve seen my expression, because he grinned a little. “I’ve testified before.”

  I set aside the report to read later. “What’s the short version?”

  “It’s Amanita, absolutely, but it’s not local.”

  I scowled, skimming the first page of the report to hide my rising bad mood. “Amanita grows all over. Even Amanita phalloides.” I hoped I hadn’t mangled the fancy name. “I did do a Google search.”

  “True, and yes, it’s death caps, the stains show that,” said Tom’s cousin patiently, and tapped his report heavily. “My methodology and sources are all in there, Sheriff, you can verify them if you want. The thing is, there’s no way those mushrooms came from around here. Whoever dried them didn’t bother to wash them first.”

  My brain was feeling tight and clumsy. Sugar crash from all the cinnamon rolls. “What’s that got to do with it?”

  He sighed, but happily. The guy really did like his job. “Ever hear of fungus gnats? Sciaridae, to be exact. They ruin mushrooms. Real pain in the ass for mushroom farmers. So are a lot of other little critters, but the point is, some insect larvae get into the mushrooms and that’s the end of the mushroom cap. The part people eat, in other words.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, “I get that. So what’s the big deal that these are dirty dried mushrooms?”

  “Not local dirt.” He held up his hands. “Let me back up. Not enough dirt to identify without getting fancier than I’ve got money for. But there’s also some insect traces in those dried mushrooms. Including Lycoriella solani, and I also identified some Lycoriella auripila. Fungus gnats. And you don’t find them in the US. You find them in Europe. And Russia. But they’re not found in our country. Not around here. See, mushrooms get into our country when people bring trees with native soil that’s got the spores and all. But the bugs? The bugs don’t travel so good.” He’d lost some erudition as he got more excited, but that was fine by me. “Those death caps came from Europe, based on the larval remains. And I figured,” he finished with a grin, “that was news worth sharing in person.”

  It was. I leaned back. I whistled. Now all I had to do was figure out who’d been to Europe lately.

  We’d been speaking quietly, but it’s a small office. I was sure Davis and Jeff had caught bits and pieces here and there. When I glanced over, they’d abandoned the Scrabble game. I could tell by the tone that they were arguing, but it didn’t sound very heated. More like men who already know what they’ll do but need to work up to it.

  I gestured for Tom’s cousin to stay seated, and I ghosted over on my rubber-soled shoes. Boris is a good instructor on the stealthy approach. When I got close enough, I announced, “Something to share with the class?” and both men jumped.

  Jeff nodded at Davis. It wasn’t permission. It was an acknowledgment the guy in jail should do the honors of clearing his name. Davis cleared his throat. And he told me which Collier had gone to Europe not quite a
year ago.

  The only surprise to me was that I was at all surprised.

  18.

  I wish I could say I ran right out and rounded up the Colliers, but I’d done that before, shooting blind, and I wasn’t doing it again. I wanted more than Davis’s word, and that took work. The kind of work that you never see cops do on TV.

  Paperwork.

  First on the list, I had to fill out forms for the State Department, so I could find out which Colliers‌—‌if any‌—‌had passports. And more forms to find out where said Colliers had been, on what dates, using said passport. Since I had fourteen Colliers‌—‌strike that, sixteen, because I didn’t assume Jeff and Davis were innocent‌—‌that was a lot of paper. Sixteen names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and on and on until I welcomed the chance to bust a speeder just to break up the monotony.

  Then came the request for credit card records. I’d only asked for six months’ worth. I needed all of the previous calendar year. For sixteen people. From eleven different issuing companies. The only blessing was I knew that already because I’d been through the paperwork once before. Practice definitely makes competent, if not perfect.

  And then, because I’m an impatient gal, and big corporations and government departments don’t exactly have the speediest turnaround times, I started calling every travel agency within a hundred miles. I stopped after I found five that featured some kind of packaged foodie tours of some European nation or other. A quicker way would’ve been the Google search I finally did, and that depressed me past the point of dark chocolate to fix. There were tons of the damn tours. Narrowing it down without records would only waste more time.

  That left me with the insulin that Marilee said had gone missing while Laura was there. Possibly. I wouldn’t put it past Marilee to lie. But by the same token, I wouldn’t put it past Laura to steal the insulin. The question was how to prove any of it. Unless I found a way to crack Laura.

  I started to grin. Kim came to my desk and put down a box of peanut butter cups, then retreated like she’d planted a land mine. “Lil? You’re worrying me.”

  I put the peanut butter cups in a drawer. Not the locked one. “Anyone know about the insulin?”

  “Not to hear them talk,” she said after she’d thought it over. “I haven’t said a word, not to anyone.”

  “Neither have I,” said Tom, who’d come in early to help finish up paperwork. “How about you, Davis?”

  Davis, reading a home decorating book, said, “Like Jeff, I have no one to tell.”

  Even in jail in bile green scrubs, the guy was a smarmy SOB. Made me want to wade right out of the human gene pool.

  “Good,” I announced. I ate a peanut butter cup, and tossed one to Tom. Boris, who’d been feigning sleep, leapt from my desk and batted it around like a hockey puck. It vanished under the sofa, and Boris went squirming after it. Twelve pounds of cat sticking out of a three-pound crack is always good for a giggle, so I watched him try to flatten out while I set up the scene in my head. A big showy revelation of who the mushroom almost-killer was, all expository in the best Sherlock Holmes way, and then drop the bomb that in fact it was insulin that had done in Vera Collier. Normally I’d have recoiled from the mere notion, but these were the Colliers. Melodramatic confrontation should show me the cracks in the clan’s conspiracy.

  “Oh Lord,” said Tom, reading a fax. “Lil, they don’t believe us. They think there is no such town as Crazy.”

  I let my feet thud down to the floor. “Send it to Harry Rucker. He knows how to convince them.”

  Tom grumbled at the fax machine. Kim scrolled through e-mails. Davis read. Boris gave up on his peanut butter hockey puck and sharpened his claws on his condo. I pondered whether or not I should speed things up at State by calling an old college roommate. She still feels she owes me for the time I socked her drunken boyfriend in the nose after he’d kicked in our door and penned her up under the bed in one of his rages. And for the time I took her to the ER when he caught her alone. And the time I hauled her to a counseling center to convince her it wasn’t her fault. And… Well, it had been an eventful year. But I hate to call in favors I might need for something more important than the state of my nerves.

  The telephone rang. Kim answered lazily, “Crazy Sheriff’s Department. Oh, hi, Maury. What?” She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Lil, you better take this one. It’s Bobbi again.”

  Swear to God, she’d given me more vexation these last two months than she had in three decades of friendship. “Now what?” I asked, slapping my hat on my head and clicking my tongue at Boris.

  “She’s in a screaming match with Ruth Campbell, Maury can hear it out his office window.”

  Ruth’s back yard happens to share a few feet of boundary with Morse Sanitation and Disposal’s back yard. The part that isn’t full of equipment, that is. “How does he know all the yelling isn’t just Ruth giving God a good telling-off?”

  Kim relayed the question, and gave me the answer with an impressively straight face. “He’s pretty sure Ruth wouldn’t call God a drunken slut.”

  ***^***

  Ruth Campbell’s house is the last on its side of Fifth Street, on the more or less west side of Main and just far enough from Elk Creek to prevent flooding but close enough for a lovely view of it. A few strategic trees hide the sanitation plant downstream where Crazy’s waste is rendered hygienic, and I’ll say this for Maury and even Delbert. When they were done, you might have a pretty steep bill but you knew you could swim and fish without fear downstream of the plant.

  Too bad I couldn’t put them to work on Bobbi’s mouth.

  They’d moved the screaming match into the shade. I could tell where it started by following Ruth’s discarded watering can, gardening gloves, and finally her big straw hat with the orange ribbon.

  As I came around the corner of the house, I heard Bobbi hollering, “Who gives you the right to tell me how to live you old bitch! You ain’t God!”

  “You stop cussing at me you whore!”

  I didn’t bother with an air horn. They wouldn’t have heard it. I went for the garden hose coiled neatly on its reel. “Watch out, sweetie,” I told Boris, and cranked the spigot as far as it would go. Then I pulled the trigger lever on the nozzle.

  Two near-identical high-pitched screams of outrage hit my ears at once. Bobbi stumbled back, spitting, while Ruth stepped away, sputtering. For a second there, the two were uncannily alike. Then Bobbi rushed up to me. “About time someone arrests that…”

  I hastily overrode her. “That’s enough. I mean it. People can hear you halfway to Charlottesville.”

  Bobbi didn’t care. “Do you know what she did?”

  “No more than your own parents should’ve done!” snapped Ruth. I don’t know what kind of hairspray she used, but her hair didn’t droop a bit. Soaked as she was, that coiffure was intact. I mean the water just beaded up on it like it was a waxed car.

  “How about someone tells me what that is?” I suggested, keeping myself between them. That’s the hell of being me. I even have to protect and serve Ruth Campbell.

  “She got the reverends to say I can’t be married in church! Either one!”

  I opened my big mouth. “I thought you wanted a civil ceremony.”

  Bobbi screeched. I’d heard a noise like that once when I’d stepped on Natasha’s tail. “That’s not the point!”

  “Someone has to keep your filthy…‌your…” Ruth couldn’t find a word, had to settle for “dirty kind out of our churches!”

  I wouldn’t have believed it, but Bobbi could actually go higher and shriller. “Dirty kind?!”

  I lifted my hand. “I still have the hose, ladies.”

  Bobbi shut up, simmering. Ruth didn’t. “Marrying a heathen isn’t enough, oh no, she has to marry him right in front of Jesus!”

  I glanced around for Boris. He was lounging under a bush washing his paws. Great. The one time I want him to tear someone to pieces, he decides he’s a pacifi
st.

  “Mrs. Campbell, Dr. Vidur’s not a heathen.”

  “He’s not Christian!”

  I started to point out that technically heathen in Old English just meant “not Christian or Jewish” and can also mean someone who isn’t Christian, Jewish or Muslim, but that wasn’t going to help. And if I told her it often also meant, in the modern world, someone who was irreligious or uncivilized, I wouldn’t be getting anywhere I wanted to go. Instead, I dug myself a good deep hole by saying, “That doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.”

  Ruth Campbell went to slap me. For a woman her age, her reflexes were fast. I don’t know how I got my arm up in time to block her.

  I heard a low, yowling snarl down around my ankles.

  Boris was crouched by my feet, tail lashing. His eyes were huge, his ears were back, and I could count half of his teeth.

  “Mrs. Campbell,” I said softly, so as not to set off the feline bomb, “put your arm down very slowly. Okay?”

  She put her arm down, very slowly. She was barely daring to breathe.

  “Now back off a few feet. Just a few. Slowly.”

  She backed off about ten feet. Her hand went to her throat. “That menace…” she started.

  “Is doing his job,” I interrupted. I knelt to touch Boris on the head. “Easy, sweetie,” I crooned, then returned my gaze to Ruth. “You don’t want to hit a cop. Trust me on that. Now. Bobbi.”

  She was standing as if mesmerized by Boris’s rhythmically swishing tail. “Hmm?”

  “Go back to work and stop worrying what she does. Okay?”

  Bobbi shook herself. Like a dog coming out of water. “She has no right, Lil.”

  Ruth didn’t know when to quit. “I have no right? She has no right! It’s bad enough we let those people in this country, bringing all their heathen ways with them, contaminating us! But she’s going to marry one and have his mongrels!”

  I had a hand on Bobbi’s shoulder before Ruth finished talking. Later on, Bobbi would call me to tell me I’d left a bruise. I couldn’t be too sorry. Preventing murder is part of the job. “Mrs. Campbell, you should be quiet now. You really should be quiet.”