Murder at Spirit Falls

by Barbara Deese

  “It’s all taken care of,” he assured her and steered her back toward the living room. “Go back to the party. I need to change into dry clothes.”

  Even in dry slacks and a heavy cotton sweater, Ross shivered. The temperature must have dropped twenty degrees since the storm front moved in, and yet his guests, gathered around the fireplace as they were, drinking and partaking in their drugs of choice, seemed unaware of anything going on outside. They probably wouldn’t notice unless the roof blew off, he thought, leaning heavily against the end of the bar.

  He heard Martin trudge up the basement stairs, saw him turn toward the bedroom he and Melissa shared. When he came out again, Martin was twitching at the collar of his fresh dry shirt to flatten it. “What now?” he said, sliding a look to Ross.

  Ross appraised him. “You’re fine. Come on.” As he shepherded him into the living room, Martin sniffed and wiped his nose with his wrist.

  “Hey, check that out.” Ross motioned with his chin to where the ballplayer sat in the middle of the cordovan leather sofa, his left arm draped over the shoulder of his girlfriend, the right over Candi’s shoulder.

  Martin followed Ross, who slipped behind the sofa to hover over the trio. They were just in time to hear Candi say, in a breathless tone, “Sure, why not?”

  The man’s eyes were closed as his oversized hands moved over the women’s breasts.. “Sure, why not?” he echoed. “That is, if I read you correctly,”

  “Must read Braille,” Ross said under his breath. “They say he’s good with his hands.”

  Martin jerked his head, as if coming out of a trance. “How can you be so cavalier?”

  “About Candi?” Ross spoke inches from Martin’s ear. “We have no relationship. It doesn’t matter to me who services her.”

  Martin turned to look at his friend whose features morphed in the shifting firelight. They had been friends for over twenty years and yet here he stood looking at a stranger. “Jesus! You’re a cold son of a bitch!”

  “Get a grip.” Ross’s hand was heavy on Martin’s shoulder.

  Martin involuntarily pulled away.

  In a voice meant for a larger audience, Ross said, “Excuse me.”

  The ballplayer opened heavy-lidded eyes, hands abruptly motionless. His girlfriend sat up.

  “Oh, hi, we were just talking.” Candi said, disentangling herself.

  “Yeah, we noticed.”

  Ross’s head swung in an arc, encompassing his roomful of guests. Placing thumb and index finger between his lips, he whistled.

  All heads turned his way.

  “Hey! Listen up!” Ross called out, “Seems one of our guests decided to go home, even though we tried to persuade her to stay.”

  Martin sucked in his breath sharply at the derisive snort from a corner of the room, where José materialized from the shadows.

  Ross continued. “These things happen. No big deal, really, unless she gets stopped by the highway patrol.” He paused, waiting for the implications to sink in. “Well, when they find that the car’s registration isn’t in her name … No need to panic, just a little heads up, in case the authorities come calling.” The brief silence ended with scuffling and grumbling and a few choice expletives. Candi, giggling nervously, extracted a small plastic bag from her purse and poked it into her bra. “Jeez, I hope Melissa’s okay. She’s really nice. Smart too.”

  Ross saw José slip into the kitchen and out of sight. He thought of following him, but was stopped by a woman’s voice from the bathroom, saying that the toilet wouldn’t flush. One of the men, in paternalistic tones explained to her that with the power out, the pump couldn’t refill the tank.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” the woman wailed.

  The stout attorney who Ross knew to have political aspirations snatched a bottle of Chivas in one beefy hand and Stoly in the other, wended his way through the crowd and disappeared into the bathroom. The sound of bottles glugging their contents into the flush tank was followed by a loud groan from the ball player. “—the fuck you doin’ in there, man?” he said as the lawyer walked past him to grab two more bottles of premium liquor and the ice bucket, which he emptied into the tank.

  Too late, Ross realized what he was doing, and mentally tallied what he’d spent on the booze that was now being swept into the septic tank.

  “I think we’re going to hit the road,” said the oral surgeon uneasily, scratching his bald head and taking his protesting companion by the hand.

  Ross stepped forward, gesturing with an open hand. “People, people! Let’s not overreact. Nobody’s going anywhere. That’s what put us in this predicament in the first place.”

  “But what if the police come?”

  Ross gave a reasonable facsimile of a chuckle. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” He shot a look at Martin, whose mouth hung slack. “Besides, we’re just a bunch of friends getting together for a few drinks. Right? Nothing illegal about that.”

  The realtor’s girlfriend bobbed her head eagerly. “He’s right.” The multiple gold and gemstone rings on her fingers picked up the firelight as she gestured with her hands. “And because we’re law-abiding adults, we made the responsible decision to stay the night rather than drive under the influence, right?”

  There was a murmur of assent.

  As he spoke, Ross fingered his shirt pocket. Enough left for one line, anyway, he thought as he looked around for José.

  One of the women, the leggy one who’d come with the ballplayer, offered to make coffee.

  The ballplayer scratched his jaw and grunted. “Coach always told us coffee wouldn’t sober us up, just turn us into wide-awake drunks.”

  Ross looked from one guest to the other, “I think everyone should stay here ’til morning. By that time I hope the young lady will have gotten home without any trouble, and will, with any luck, be sleeping it off.”

  Martin snuffled loudly against the back of his hand.

  Within minutes, the partiers were back to drinking the contents of the remaining bottles as if they’d lost precious time. “By the way,” Ross said in an affable tone, though his words were anything but, “if anyone should ask, for any reason, I will deny any of you were here. I expect you’ll do the same.”

  That prompted raised eyebrows, a few hastily whispered words. Then, slowly they began to nod.

  Ross nodded back, then sought out Martin. “What do you suppose that prick José is up to?” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m beginning to think he’s more trouble than he’s worth.”

  5

  Morning sun filtered through the trees and onto the bed where Robin woke slowly, seeing the sunlight through closed lids, a golden glow that turned, wavelike, to scarlet and back to gold. Snug under her puffy comforter, she listened to a cacophony of bird sounds outside the screened sleeping porch, and wondered what part of her memory of last night’s storm was real. It all had a nightmare quality, especially that embarrassing scene in the storage closet after deluding herself into thinking she’d conquered her fear of the dark.

  As she had each morning since her surgery, Robin woke to find her hand covering the flat spot where her left breast had been. The mastectomy itself left a curved line, roughly the shape and position of a bra’s underwire. Connecting to it was a pink vertical line that ended where her nipple used to be. There was a small indentation just to the right of that from the biopsy, a larger one under her arm where seven lymph nodes had been removed, and below that, the incision that had caused the most pain, the one for a drainage tube that had stayed in place for almost two weeks after she’d left the hospital. The still-pink scar tissue was numb and yet somehow tender. To her, it felt alien, as if sculpted out of Silly Putty.

  Although her oncologist was confident he’d “gotten it all,” he’d insisted on chemotherapy. The prognosis was hopeful. Still, she knew that cancer cells had escaped the affected duct to infiltrate breast tissue and one lymph node. For all she knew, there were still marauding cancer cells m
oving silently through her body, looking for a new site to plunder. Reflexively her hand moved over to her healthy breast.

  Breathing deeply through her nose as she’d been taught, she visualized toxins and worry leaving her body with each exhalation. In her mind, the toxins were lime green blobs, the worry, tangled gray corkscrews. Inhale, exhale, inhale. She inhaled the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Opening her eyes, she saw that all the beds except Foxy’s had been vacated. After a quick detour to the bathroom, she grabbed a mug of coffee and followed the voices to the front porch where Louise and Grace sat wrapped in quilts, discussing the difficulties of owning a small business.

  Grace patted the sofa next to her. “I’ll even share your afghan with you. Did you sleep okay?”

  Robin nodded and nestled next to her. “Keep talking. I’ll just listen until the caffeine kicks in.”

  Prompted by Grace, Louise continued. “It’s not that we’re not getting along. Charlie’s a real love,” she said with a shake of the head that made her curls bounce. “But we eat and sleep together, run the shop together, go on buying junkets together to get more antiques for the shop, then come home and start the cycle all over again. I mean, sometimes, it gets a little close.”

  “Hmmm.” Grace tilted her head. “I guess I don’t understand, then. What would change if you and Charlie got married?”

  Louise laughed. “Would it sound crazy if I said there’s something romantic about our arrangement that I don’t want to ruin by being, well, respectable?”

  “Respectability isn’t everything,” Grace erupted. “Some people our age with good careers, living in picture-perfect homes with nice, respectable husbands and kids that can fend for themselves, suddenly find themselves thinking more and more about what it would be like to risk it all for a little excitement, one crazy adventure, a walk on the wild side.” She cleared her throat and looked away. “You know what I mean.”

  Louise and Robin raised eyebrows at each other. The silence became uncomfortable. Robin carefully sipped the steaming brew before asking, “Where’s Cate? I suppose she was up at the crack of dawn looking for the wounded deer.”

  “No, we told her she had to wait for the rest of us,” Grace answered. “I said if it was wounded, it would be long gone by now, and if it’s dead, it’ll still be dead when we get there.”

  “She’s outside with Molly Pat,” Grace answered. Hearing her name, Molly charged across the clearing to scratch on the screen door.

  Robin let her in and wiped her muddy paws on a towel before the dog settled on Grace’s feet.

  “Breakfast will be ready in about twenty minutes,” Louise said. “Should I wake up Foxy?”

  “She’s up,” Foxy groaned, padding her way over to the rocking chair opposite Grace and Robin. “Not awake, but up.” Scratching her mass of auburn curls and yawning, she flopped into the chair.

  Molly Pat leapt onto Foxy’s lap and slid a wet tongue the length of her owner’s neck.

  “Okay, okay, Mol, I’ll get your breakfast.”

  “Oh, good,” Catherine chirped from the doorway. “They insisted I wait until you were all up.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I’d really like to check on that deer.”

  Enough about the damn deer already, Robin wanted to say, but she held the thought.

  “I’d really like to eat first,” Louise said, coming up behind her.

  “Me too,” Grace and Foxy said.

  Outvoted, Catherine gave in.

  When there was nothing left of the salmon and spinach quiche but a few morsels reserved for Molly Pat, Catherine said, “I’ll clean up while you get dressed. Who wants to walk out to the road with me?”

  “Me,” Foxy said, and headed for the dressing room.

  “Me too, but I think y’all are just plain lucky you didn’t get struck by lightning last night,” said Louise, sitting back in her chair and lacing her fingers behind her head. “Besides, I’m not convinced anything happened last night, other than that gully-washer.”

  While they changed out of their pajamas, they talked about the storm, but none of them, Robin noticed with relief, made mention of her panic attack last night.

  Grace held up a sodden jacket. “I left this on the bench outside last night, so I guess I’ll just wait here.”

  “No problem.” Robin directed her to where she and Brad hung spare jackets and sweaters on pegs in the storeroom.

  In a few minutes, all five women proceeded carefully down the driveway, sidestepping tire ruts now filled with muddy water. Molly Pat uncharacteristically trotted beside them, head down. More than once she nuzzled Foxy’s hand. Other than the occasional birdcall the woods were unusually still.

  Reaching the road first, Louise looked in both directions, adjusting her prescription sunglasses on her nose. “Except for where the gravel’s washed over the road at the bottom of that little ol’ hill, I don’t see a thing,” she declared.

  “Everything seems quiet enough,” agreed Foxy.

  At first they stood in a cluster to look around them at the flattened grasses in the ditch, with the residual rain still dripping off the trees, then they began to disperse. Foxy watched Molly Pat wander down the road, intently inspecting each square inch of the gravel shoulder. Within seconds, Foxy lost view of her entirely as the dog moved into the underbrush. When she called the dog’s name, Molly Pat emerged to bark three sharp barks before disappearing again.

  “You heard me, Molly. Get back here,” Foxy commanded.

  This time the dog didn’t respond. In exasperation Foxy started after her, Catherine following close behind. Carefully, Foxy stepped down the slight decline into the ditch and up the other side to where Molly Pat enthusiastically sniffed the ground at the base of an old oak.

  “What did you find, girl?”

  Molly looked up, cocked her head and barked peremptorily.

  What is it?” Robin came up behind them, her breathing labored.

  “There was an accident, all right.” Foxy pointed to a gouge on the tree trunk.

  Robin ran her fingers across the gash and sniffed the exposed wood. “It had to be last night.”

  “Paint,” Foxy mused, pointing to a yellowish smear on the bark.

  Slipping a camera from her jacket pocket, Robin started clicking.

  They looked at the tree, and then wordlessly cast their eyes to the ground, pointing out marks in the soil, tire marks leading to and away from the damaged tree. Despite the heavy rain, there seemed to be several indentations—no continuous lines, but enough to surmise where a car had left the road, then reentered it.

  Robin squatted to inspect the grasses in the shallow ditch. In several places, they were not only matted by rain, but crushed, presumably by car tires. She took more pictures. Molly Pat flew past her, stopped, spun, backtracked. In the ditch a couple yards from Robin she sniffed avidly.

  “That’s just a rock, you nitwit,” Foxy said, when she saw the focus of Molly’s attention.

  Catherine stood peering into the woods.

  “What are you thinking?” Robin asked.

  “If the car crashed there,” she said, more to herself, “and it left the road here, assuming it was driving on the right side of the street, then the deer …” her voice trailed off.

  Robin asked, “Do you think we should call the police?”

  “What for?” Foxy asked. “I doubt they’d come over to investigate a dented tree, and even if a deer did get hit, it’s long gone.”

  “Way I see it, this was some good ol’ boy who’d had a few too many,” Louise offered, “and when he reached in back for another six-pack he just swerved right off the road.”

  “What about the blood on Molly Pat?” Grace asked.

  Foxy said, “There’s no blood on the road.”

  “The rain would have taken care of that,” Grace responded.

  “Okay, here’s what happened,” Louise announced. “The guy gets out to see what he’s done to his big old gas guzzler, and he stands there
weaving around saying, ‘Oh, Lord, why me?’ and all the time he’s bleeding like a stuck pig from this head wound that looks a lot worse than it actually is.” To dramatize her narrative, Louise held her head and stumbled a few steps, then gasped and looked down the road. “And suddenly he hears thunder, but he thinks it’s the cops who followed him from the tavern, so he jumps in and guns the engine. Wonder of wonders, the sucker still works. So he just backs it up onto the road again and heads home, wondering if he should stop and have a quick one while he figures out what he’s going to tell his momma about her car.”

  Though Louise hadn’t taken the stage in decades, her theater major had not been wasted. She still had the knack for turning a mundane occurrence into a howlingly good story.

  Catherine chuckled along with the others, but her attention was drawn to Molly Pat, whose barking had turned to a persistent, high-pitched whine. She sidled over to her, and the dog let Catherine collect her in her arms.

  “What’s the matter, Mol? Tell me what the problem is,” she murmured to the trembling animal. She closed her eyes to sense what the dog was trying to communicate, but no picture came. Only a flutter of fear.

  “It’s the Dog Whisperer at work,” Grace said, not quietly enough and with a touch of derision.

  Catherine tried to ignore the jibe, but her concentration was broken.

  “What did Molly say?” asked the others when Catherine rejoined them.

  She looked at their bemused faces. “She didn’t say anything.”

  “Nothing at all?” Grace asked, ruffling the dog’s fur. “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” She was rewarded by a couple of grins. “C’mon, what did she tell you?”

  Catherine shrugged. “Actually,” she said, lowering her voice conspiratorially, “she did tell me something, but I didn’t think you believed in such things.”

  With a glance at the others, Grace persisted. “Well, are you going to tell us, or is it some kind of doctor-patient confidentiality thing?”

  Robin, guessing what was coming, gave Catherine the look.

  But Catherine, said, “Okay, if you really want to know, Molly Pat asked me to give you a message.” She looked to see she had their attention. Grace leaned forward. “She says, ‘Arf, arf, arf, arf!’”