by Shannon Hill
“Ruth told me it was land,” she insisted, referring to her ex-mother-in-law. “What do you mean?”
I shifted a cushion. “Burial plot in the family cemetery.”
Bobbi’s nothing if not partisan. “Why, that old…” She shook her head violently, showing off new coppery highlights. “Well, that’s not all. You haven’t heard about the will reading, then?”
“Not a word,” I said happily. She didn’t take the hint.
“Do you know what he left his wife?” she asked, then corrected herself. “Of course you don’t. Oh, Lil, it must’ve been fantastic! You know Sherrilyn, she works up there.”
LP Inc. employees, like those who worked at the Eller family estate across the valley, lived on-site and weren’t really considered locals. Sherrilyn, however, had lived in Crazy as a kid, which made her a local no matter how she might feel about it. She was one of the housekeeping staff. It gave her a decent salary, a uniform of blue polo shirt with khaki trousers, and enough in the way of benefits that, unlike most of her family, she didn’t lack for medical or dental.
“Well, she and the others got mentioned, so they were all there this morning, she came in and told me, she was getting her roots touched up.” It was a secret known only to Sherrilyn, Bobbi and me that Sherrilyn had stopped being naturally blonde sometime in high school. “He left her the same thing he left the housekeepers!”
I’d cut back to only one pain med at bedtime, so I followed that. “Which was?”
Bobbi leaned back in feline triumph. If she’d had whiskers, she’d have licked them for satisfaction. “Five thousand dollars. On a gift card. Y’know. Those credit card type ones. Sherrilyn’s going to go to Short Pump and have herself a spree.”
I was grinning. “Bet Mary Littlepage wasn’t happy.”
“Oh, she was mad!” chortled Bobbi. “Sherrilyn said she screeched like she’d got stuck, and then she was cussing up and down, the lawyers had to take her outta the room! I guess she’s gonna sue for her widow’s share or something.”
Mary Palmer Littlepage getting five grand of her hubby’s millions. Oh, that was karma with a vengeance. I must’ve looked like a grinning fool. Bobbi certainly did.
“Jack’s a practical guy,” I said, “he’ll buy her off with some kind of annuity, I bet. Anything else?”
“Not that I’ve heard, but I had to tell you.” Her smile shrank. “And Ruth’s making noise about Raj, but that’s not news.”
True. Ruth Campbell wouldn’t admit it aloud, since it might contradict her strenuous protestations of Christian practice, but she’d like best a world where everyone was white, piously Christian by her extremely narrow definition of Christian, and possessed of exactly enough freedom to do whatever she told them. Even Aunt Marge has a hard time finding a nice thing to say about her.
We chatted until Roger came back to the house covered in sweat and dirt and insect bites. Bobbi’s not comfortable around him, since he’s cousin to Ruth’s late husband, and therefore to her own ex. Roger understood. He wasn’t always comfortable being related to Ruth, either.
Bobbi’s news had given me a decent appetite, so I went inside with Roger to set out the gazpacho and tabouli Aunt Marge had left for lunch. She had a big day at the shelter, getting ready for the first annual adoption fair. The shelter had started slow, but now housed forty animals, if you counted the black snake that lurked out back. She was planning big publicity all over a ten-county area, not to mention the internet, and she had a graphic designer coming down from Charlottesville that afternoon. She was insisting that the shelter’s logo incorporate one of Roger’s elegant inky watercolors of Boris sitting on a windowsill, much to Roger’s embarrassment.
After we’d eaten, Roger was heading for his studio, in the old formal parlor, when he said, “Y’know, Lil, I had an idea about the Colliers.”
At that point, I’d have taken advice from Eddie Brady. “I’m all ears.”
“I don’t know if the state police would help, but you may not need them to.” He scratched at one ear. “But why go back to Paint Hollow at all?”
I blinked. “What?”
“Well,” he went on, “why tackle them on their own turf? Get them on yours.”
“I don’t have any way to do that,” I said automatically. Then my brain caught up, and I grinned such a grin that Roger took a step backwards.
8.
Arresting Vera Collier’s whole brood took some doing, but it was purely in the nature of logistics. Harry cheerfully tracked down one of our county’s trio of judges to make sure we could do it, and he was quite happy to swear out warrants so we could bring them in on suspicion of murder. The problem was in finding anyone to go into Paint Hollow to make the arrests, and how to get them back to Crazy, and where to put them once they got here.
It was Punk Sims who suggested we stow the Colliers at the elementary school, since it would be the weekend. I solved the problem of how to transport them all by asking Maury if we could borrow the old school bus he rented out to the churches for field trips and excursions. But who would be crazy enough to follow me into Paint Hollow to make the arrests?
Eddie Brady.
Tom and I didn’t laugh right in his face, mostly because he’d have slashed our tires. After we’d shooed Eddie gently out the door for his weekly bender in the willows along Elk Creek, we sat down with Kim and Punk for a very glum conference. Tom hadn’t been idle while I was home recuperating—his cousin had given us good information on mushrooms—but that was about all we had going for us. Punk didn’t mind helping us out as a deputy when it came to guarding or even transporting angry Colliers, but arrest them? His leg, like my ribs, put him out of the running. Or hitting. Whatever came up, it was going to be on Tom and anyone else we could con into helping.
“If I deputize every man of good character in town,” I sighed, “we still won’t be able to get them down to Paint Hollow.”
“State police?”
I snorted. Breeden’s reply had been more profane and even briefer than mine. “Not a chance.”
“Chief Rucker’d never go for it,” said Punk with the sureness of one who’d worked for the man. “Nobody else, either. It’s Paint Hollow.” He gave me a tiny look of quasi-apology. “And look what happened to you.”
Boris, pacing restlessly because he preferred action to words, leapt up on my desk and sent the Vera Collier file skidding. Kim lunged for it and missed. The papers went slipping and sliding all over the floor. Tom rushed to help her so fast he nearly hurt himself.
“We can get Davis at his restaurant,” I mused. “But the rest… We can’t give any of them time to warn each other.”
“Amen,” said Punk, so fervently that Boris stopped licking his hind end and stared at Punk with worrying interest.
I wanted to lean back and put my feet up, but the ribs interfered. I glared at the world in general. I had to get enough men to go in en masse, fast and hard. Before any Colliers got wind of it. I needed the friggin’ Marines.
Boris’s tail, swishing back and forth, caught my “out” tray. I saved the paperwork, all of it related to the upcoming hearings for the Senior Dare Day nudists. Not because of a backlog in our system. Judge Gilfoyle was on vacation till the end of May.
I got a very good bad idea. Or a very bad good idea. I kissed Boris’s forehead, to both his and Punk’s surprise. “Kim!”
She popped up from the floor, flushed and irritated. “What?”
“Call Dr. Mitchell, Rod Twigg, and Ken Tucker.”
Tom saw it before she did, by a whisker. I pulled out my cell and chirped, “Harry my lad!”
Payback was sweet. Harry said, “Huh?”
“How would our overburdened courts feel if we let the nudists off the hook.”
“It saves paperwork,” he said curtly. “What’re you thinking?”
“Community service,” I crooned, because I was cuddling Boris, but my tone startled Harry into asking, “Lil, are you high on those painkillers? S
hould I call your godmother?”
“I’m fine. I’m just asking. If we can convince three worried daddies to help us out in Paint Hollow…”
Harry clued in. “Oh-ho! I see your point, and it’s a very sharp one, too. Isn’t the Mitchell boy going to William & Mary?”
“Yep. And Rod Junior is going to Radford, so…”
“A terrible thing to have their futures ruined,” he agreed with mock gravity. “Who shall make the calls?”
I smiled at my poor deputy. “Tom. They’ll take it better from a guy.”
“Sad but true,” Harry agreed. “That gives you… four people to make about twenty arrests in as short a time as possible, yes?”
“Yes, but Kim’s going to sweet-talk her dad into it, and Maury’ll volunteer once he knows he has some company.” I got an outraged look from Kim, but Tom chuckled.
“Excellent. I assume your godmother knows nothing of your intentions to go along?”
“I am purely riding shotgun.” I glanced at my tiny gun cabinet, thought of my ribs, and amended that to, “Well, pistol, really.”
“It’ll have to be first thing in the morning,” Harry warned me unnecessarily. “Good luck.”
I thanked him and hung up. I needed more than luck. I needed to get a lot of men to take orders from me.
I called Bobbi. “Hon,” she said, “I’m in the middle of giving Mrs. Preston her perm, make it quick.”
“I need cinnamon rolls by four tomorrow morning.”
“Is that all? How big a batch?”
“Two dozen.”
“Well, snap, girl, I thought you’d ask something hard. Your office?”
“Yep.”
“Will do.”
I hung up on her to find Punk giving me a peculiar look. “What?” I asked, and ran my hand over my hair. “Something stuck?”
“Nothing,” he said hastily. “Just thinkin’. The Colliers sure don’t know what they got comin’.”
I scratched Boris’s ears. I hoped Punk was right. If this went badly, I wouldn’t need to worry about the Colliers. Aunt Marge would kill me.
***^***
There weren’t even ten of us the next morning, gathering in the humid pre-dawn outside my office. We had me, Tom, and Punk, of course; Maury, Kim’s father Matt, Dr. Mitchell, Rod Twigg, Ken Tucker. And Aunt Marge’s Roger. They all solemnly took their oath as deputies, then tore into Bobbi’s cinnamon rolls at a rate of two per man, with lots of coffee and juice chasers. They all had their own guns, except Dr. Mitchell, who borrowed a shotgun from Maury and carried it like he thought it’d bite him. They paired up into pickup trucks, and left me and Punk and Tom to man the school bus.
Punk eyed the running chain Tom had rigged. “They’re gonna have fits,” he predicted.
Tom shrugged, throwing the bus into screeching gear. “Fine by me,” he said. “They get mad, they might tell us what the hell happened to Vera, and who set that fire.”
It was a small comfort to know Beau Collier at least was already in county lockup, waiting to pay for running me off the road. That eliminated the biggest of our worries, although I didn’t discount Ken Collier by any means. Not to mention half a hundred other Colliers with guns who might take exception to seeing their cousins hauled away in handcuffs.
Even petting Boris couldn’t calm me down when I thought about that.
We had a rough plan of attack. The bus would block the road out of Paint Hollow, and Punk and I would watch the prisoners as they came in. The three pairs of deputies would hit Ken, Army and Rob simultaneously. They’d take on Eileen, Laura and Honey after that, saving Davis and Jeff for last. There was a little strategy to that. Davis didn’t strike any of us as likely to resist, and Jeff’s house was far enough up the hollow he likely wouldn’t notice what was going on. But if we went up there first, the rest would see.
We had fifteen people to arrest—Beau’s disgruntled wife, Donna, was still a Collier as far as the investigation was concerned—and I wanted to be in and out in under an hour. Kim had printed off Miranda rights for everyone to receive, partly to make sure no deputies screwed up reciting them, and partly to be sure that no Collier could claim he or she had not gotten a written copy to consult. We had handcuffs and the phone numbers of our county’s two public defenders: Dr. Hartley’s daughter, Tanya, and Skip Warner. Everyone was wearing a bulletproof vest, courtesy Roger making a call to a mysteriously unnamed buddy who, I suspected, was stockpiling such things against possible zombie apocalypse. And I had Boris, who made for a pretty handy combat weapon in a pinch.
I still couldn’t work up enough spit to swallow.
We slunk into Paint Hollow like thieves just as the sun was about to come up. It was May, the days getting longer, and even in the hollow the thin gold light was spreading faster than we were going to be able to move. I said a lot of prayers very quickly, mostly along the lines of “God, help!”
Tom parked the bus, left the door open, and stood just outside, cradling his favorite rifle. He wasn’t much of a hunter, but he could outshoot me with a long-barreled weapon any day of the week, and with that thirty-ought-six, he was a dangerous man.
Punk sat in the bus driver’s seat, his prosthetic stretched out in front of him, and his revolver in his lap. I had pushed all the windows down to catch the cooling breeze, and to air out the distressing smell of sweaty children, then perched myself outside by the rear of the bus. Boris lounged in the roadside grass, ears twitching as the birds started their morning chorus.
“This is either brilliant,” said Tom, “or damn fool stupid.”
“Both,” I said, and watched as May Collier opened her front door at the exact moment Gloria Shenk Collier opened hers. Rob’s wife Lynne was slow off the mark; it was Rob who answered the knock, and was in handcuffs before he could holler.
“Y’know they got kids, some of ‘em,” Tom pointed out.
I shifted my weight. My bruised ribs were better, but the broken one still throbbed. “They’ve got plenty of family around to watch the kids.”
Tom grunted. “They’re watching us.”
It was true. But I could practically smell the rifles and shotguns being placed carefully back in their racks over fireplaces and sofas. Then Steve Collier, son to Adam Collier and cousin to the people we were arresting, strolled out of his house and down the road toward us.
When he got near, he held his hands out from his body. “I come in peace, Sheriff.”
“Good,” said Tom.
Steve ignored him. “My cousins in trouble?”
I smiled sunnily at him. “Not yet.”
“They under arrest?”
He knew the answer, but I let him have it anyway. “So far, that’s all they are.”
He squinted at me. Then he nodded, and shrugged. “A’right then. I’ll get the women to look after the little ones.”
“Thank you.” I let him walk a few paces before I added, “We’ll be searching the houses, so you’ll be keeping the kids all day.”
His gait hitched a little, then smoothed. There’d be a few dozen angrily buzzing Colliers for Tom to deal with when he and Punk came back for the searches, but I suspected they’d keep out of the way. Colliers tended to their own, it’s true, but this wasn’t a squabble over fences. It might unsettle even a Collier to think they were capable of murdering each other.
A few of our targets did give us trouble. Rob’s wife Lynne screamed curses, Army tried to swing on Roger, Eileen’s husband Hal Lynch made a run for the back door. But they were marched to the school bus in their sweatpants and robes and slippers, while their cousins collected their children and pets with a quietness that had Boris’s fur fluffing. When Laura demanded to know if they’d just let this happen, let Colliers be “dragged off”, I saw the truth plainly enough. So did everyone. Vera had been a Collier, and while the cousins of the clan weren’t helping us, they weren’t about to help Vera’s children—and potential murderers—either. It was the best compromise we could
hope to get.
We’d just gotten Lynne to shut up when Roger and Dr. Mitchell drove up to the bus. Empty-handed.
“Where’s Jeff?” I demanded.
Roger answered, “Not home. But his truck’s there. We checked everywhere. He was there, all right, there’s coffee still hot in the cup. But he’s gone.”
I admired Laura. She tried. “I refuse to believe Jeff could be the one who hurt Mama.”
She might refuse, but it was easy to see Honey didn’t. But what really struck me was the look shared between Ken Collier and Rich Shenk, also known as Honey’s husband. They were stuck in a stinky, rattling old school bus, handcuffed to a length of cow chain padlocked to the emergency exit—but they looked pleased. It wasn’t much, just a quick flash, but I knew I hadn’t imagined it.
“We’ll deal with it,” I told them, and swung up into the bus. I gave Tom the nod to shut the doors and start us rolling toward Crazy.
9.
Harry met us at Littlepage Elementary, bearing a sheaf of search warrants. “Thank God we live in the boondocks,” he confided after passing them to Punk and Tom. “A big city judge would never go for this.”
“Probably not,” I agreed, from experience. I raised an eyebrow at a particularly colorful burst of curses from Lynne, turned my attention back to Harry. “Thanks for sticking around.”
“My pleasure,” he assured me, with a dapper little grin, like a shorter, hillbilly version of Cary Grant. “Who’s first?”
“Tom’s cousin said Amanita mushrooms stay potent if they’re dried, and he circled some places you’d be likely to find them.” Boris at our heels, I led Harry down the corridor, painted that universally despised green known as vomit. “There’s some potentially good habitat within an easy walk of Paint Hollow. Davis features locally grown produce on his menus, so…” I shrugged. “It’s a place to start.”
I opened the door to the principal’s office. It had occurred to me that reinforcing the psychology of the surroundings couldn’t hurt, since the Colliers were being kept in classrooms meant for small children. I’d also divvied up the prisoners to create the least harmony possible. Roger had Ken, Gloria, Eileen and Rob; Dr. Mitchell was watching May, Donna, Honey and Army; Mr. Twigg got Rich Shenk, Davis, and Seth Tyler; and Mr. Tucker was left with Lynne and Hal, and Laura.