by Anne McAneny
Chad glanced up, his mind still linked to whatever he’d been reading.
He and Strike occupied a small space here at the station, along with Annika, the receptionist who was nowhere in sight. It was an area far more compact than I would want to share with my father, but Chad lacked the childhood baggage that the rest of us accumulated in the teen years.
“He should be here any second,” he said as the sheriff barged in on cue, treating the door like a thickset opponent in the ring.
“Tell you what!” Strike declared to whoever happened to be in the room. “Someone needs to take a belt to the bottoms of half the kids in this town. Would save a lot of trouble down the road.”
“What happened?” Chad asked.
“Bunch of skateboarders doing graffiti on the bridge again. I pulled over and they took off, leaving one of their idiot friends dangling sixty feet in the air.”
“What’d you do?” I asked.
“Reeled his butt up. And guess what comes falling out of his pocket?” The sheriff produced an evidence bag containing a bottle of bright orange nail polish.
I stepped over to take a closer look at the small, pricey bottle of DeVore Long-Lasting Nail Lacquer. “That looks like the same shade Mrs. Elbee was wearing,” I said.
“Gonna need Sherilyn to verify that,” the sheriff said, “but sure looks like it, don’t it?”
Chad tapped the file he’d been reading when I came in. “According to this report, there was no orange nail polish found at Mrs. Elbee’s house.”
“So it was missing,” I said. “Makes you wonder where the tagger got the polish.”
The sheriff set the small bottle down. “Idiot said it fell out of his uncle’s truck and he thought it would add the perfect detail to his bridge art. Bridge art . . . you believe that?”
“Hmp,” Chad said with a disapproving frown. “Not what I used to use.”
“Kid considers himself some sort of Pee-casso. Up there drawing a deformed-looking woman, and I am not about to mention the parts he used the polish for.”
Thank God. No one in Beulah needed to hear the sheriff struggling for euphemisms for female parts that merited neon.
“Who’s his uncle?” I asked.
“That idiot, Zeke Carver.”
“You’re kidding,” I said with enough shock that both Chad and the sheriff craned their necks and waited for an explanation. I swallowed and went with the only thing that came to mind. “I sort of pulled a gun on him and his brother this morning.” At their bewildered expressions, I added, “What? They broke, they entered, I pulled. At least I didn’t point.”
They shook their heads but didn’t seem too surprised. Meanwhile, I felt compelled to say something about Zeke’s current location, but how to present it without implicating myself?
“By the way,” I finally said, “Richie Quail mentioned that he hired Zeke to work on that Victorian house in Flinton. You should look for him there, Sheriff.”
“All right,” he said. “We’ll see what Sherilyn finds first, but I swear, I’m not sure my I.Q. can dip low enough to handle a conversation with one of them Carver brothers.” He suddenly shifted moods and frowned at me. “What are you doing here, anyway? Thought our interview was tomorrow. You bring me that Grace Elbee tape?”
“Not yet, but Chad was just telling me about an interesting detail Sherilyn discovered. Something involving you.”
Chad glared at me. I caught it with my peripheral vision but kept my eyes averted.
The sheriff turned to Chad. “Well? What is it?”
Chad cleared his throat, not quite as confident as he’d been earlier. “Darnedest thing, Strike. That duct tape they found in Boyd’s basement room, you know—”
“Yeah, what about it?”
Chad blurted it out. “They found traces of your DNA on it.”
The sheriff looked as excited as a sloth awakening from a nap. “And?”
“And it was in a sealed room with someone’s blood and a set of handcuffs—”
“Handcuffs that were most likely securing Hoop Whitaker’s wrists,” I finished accusingly.
“So?” the sheriff said. He shifted his gaze repeatedly from Chad to me with a menacing expression. It was probably a good thing Strike Ryker had never raised small children. “You two cook up this little presentation to make me cower in a corner and confess to something? Because that simply ain’t happening.”
Chad looked relieved, but I didn’t quite buy it. “Care to explain, Sheriff?”
“It’s a piece of duct tape,” he said. “Been using it all my life, some of it right here in this office. Years back, I used it in those school demonstrations. Even fixed my mower a time or two with the dang stuff.”
“Then what was it doing in a room you supposedly didn’t know existed?” I said.
“A yank of tape in some rotten old basement? How should I know? Could’ve been there for years.”
“It was,” Chad mumbled.
“Funny how it was your lottery winnings, Sheriff, that paid to create a top-of-the-line forensics lab, but when the evidence points to you, the results mean very little.”
The sheriff frowned, harder than usual. “It means there’s a piece of tape in a room in a building where I’ve been a thousand times. But you can’t jump from that to whatever’s going on in your head, young lady. You’re hardly objective here, and I think we both know that.”
His voice had adopted an unexpected air of pity, and I didn’t like it.
“I’m stating facts,” I said, “and they need to be explained.”
The sheriff harrumphed. “That tape could’ve been there from when I helped Boyd Senior with an addition twenty years ago. Or maybe I dropped it once while getting coffee. What does it matter?”
Chad shifted uncomfortably as the sheriff continued. “Y’all are coming off like two terriers going at the last bone—and I’m the bone.” He put his hands on his hips. “I don’t like being the bone.”
I took the lead. “We need to know exactly how you were involved with whatever happened in that basement. Because honestly, it rings a little false that you didn’t know about Boyd’s drug operation all this time. Boyd’s troubles have always had a way of vanishing into thin air, don’t you think?”
The sheriff’s expression grew as dark as I’d ever seen it. He whirled toward his desk, not knowing where to vent his anger when his fists were compromised by decorum. “For God’s sake, my DNA is probably wallpapering this town.” He grabbed a garbage can from the floor, turned it upside down, and shook the contents onto his desk. From the pile, he pulled a used Band-Aid. “Here! How ’bout this? I threw it out yesterday. Maybe you can use it against me! Or how about every crime scene in Beulah over the last twenty years? I must’ve left a hair or a trace of spittle at each one.” He snatched a pen from his desk and thrust it in my direction like he wanted to plunge it between my ribs. “What about this? Go throw it in the swamp! Maybe you can accuse me of drowning Mrs. Elbee!”
Well, I’d clearly struck a nerve—but I couldn’t deny enjoying the scene just a bit.
“You know what, Chloe?” the sheriff said, suddenly softening in tone in a jarring way, leaving me shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. He took a quiet step in my direction. “Enough is enough. You see, Jacqueline told me how everything that went down twelve years ago was extra hard on you, particularly. And she had to tell me again last year when Chad here got all sweet on you.”
“Strike!” Chad said, horrified that he was now a pawn in his father’s defense.
“Shush, now,” the sheriff said, walking over to within arm’s reach of me.
I burned inside. Strike’s wife, Jacqueline Ryker, had been the K-8 school librarian. She was as perceptive as she was caring. Whenever a student had become upset or disruptive, Mrs. Ryker could settle matters with a few wise words, gently delivered. She seemed to know things about people they barely knew about themselves, but I sure as hell did not want my secrets revealed by Sheriff Strike Ryk
er. Not here, and least of all in front of Chad.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mumbled.
The sheriff exhaled deeply, as if working out a cramp. For a man who best expressed himself through fists and feints, this was clearly a difficult conversation. “Come on, Chloe. You lost Macy and Hoop in a single day. You got crushed by tragedy from both sides.”
My hands flew up defensively. “This is a nice diversion and all, Sheriff, but we’re straying from the fact that your DNA—”
“With Macy, you lost a close friend, and with Hoop, you lost the boy you were in love with. All in a single day.”
I tightened my fists, and the pressure of my clenched jaw worked its way to my ears. It filled them with a pounding deafness, as if I could block the truth from entering. I’d sealed off my feelings for Hoop at every pass and could not fathom my barricades being knocked down by the likes of Strike Ryker.
“Hoop and I were only fourteen, hardly—”
“And you knew Hoop only had eyes for—”
“Stop it!” My voice blazed with fury, the tension in my neck traveling through my body. I glanced at Chad, then back at the sheriff. “You have no—”
“You could barely imagine life continuing after they both—”
I shoved the sheriff, but it was like a butterfly ricocheting off a concrete pillar. The emotional onslaught, fueled by shame, transformed me into a combustible mess. “Stop trying to change the subject!”
“It’s time someone said something! That week threw you into a vicious cycle.” He grabbed my right arm, turned it palm-up. “Believe me, I know.”
I jerked my arm away, torquing my shoulder, but I remained silent, defenseless.
“Why do you think you’re still dredging all this garbage up?” he yelled. “Still writing about the damn lottery and things that happened twelve years—”
“Strike!” Chad shouted, his voice more defiant than I’d ever heard. “Cut it out! Right now! This is cruel, not to mention irrelevant. If Chloe has a personal agenda, it has nothing to do with Sherilyn’s findings.”
Despite the harshness of his voice, Chad sounded disheartened. Strike’s revelations had been news to him, or at least a confirmation of something he’d suspected.
Strike Ryker turned to his son and showed the worst emotion possible to someone who shunned the sentiment: abject pity. “I’m sorry, Chad, but she’s been searching for that boy her whole life. That’s why you and her never worked out. A living man can’t compete with a ghost. It’s impossible. Because a living man has faults.”
Chad glanced in my direction for an awful moment, seeming to hold out hope that I’d rebut the comment. But Wizard of Oz, indeed, a curtain had been pulled back to reveal an advantaged rival—one he hadn’t even known existed. The truth showed in the rapid rise and fall of my chest, the quick swallows of guilt, and my too-fast blinking as I stifled tears. Finally, I raised my eyes to the sheriff, my resentment falling squarely on his shoulders.
“Keep trying to spin it, Sheriff. Keep trying to take the focus off yourself. But you can’t explain the DNA. Maybe that duct tape will end up explaining why you never found Hoop, or why Boyd was allowed to thrive as a drug dealer and destroy our community. I’m not sure what-all went on in that basement, but I will find out.”
I spun to leave.
“Now wait a gosh-darn minute,” the sheriff said. He took two deep breaths, in and out. “I’m sorry, Chloe. I am. Maybe I shouldn’t have said everything I just did.”
I stopped, moved by the sincerity in his voice.
“But here’s the God’s honest truth. I wish to hell I could’ve found that boy. You think it shines high on my list of accomplishments that I let him disappear without a trace while his father was laid up? I tell you, I couldn’t stop picturing Avis regaining consciousness—learning that he’d not only killed a girl but that his boy had gone missing, too. Despite everything, I really liked Avis. That’s why I visited him every day. I mean, how was he supposed to handle everything when he woke up? What was his future gonna hold?” The sheriff’s face bunched up, emotions pushing against the surface.
As if to counter the display of vulnerability, his next words spilled out. “I don’t know what happened to Hoop, but believe me, no one wanted to find that boy more than I did.”
I glared. How dare he claim that title? The mystery of Hoop’s vanishing had left a hole so gaping in my heart that its rough edges had hardened and sealed over with the thickest of scars. Yet here stood the sheriff—now linked to the case—proclaiming desperation to solve the mystery. I shook my head—No!—and stomped to the door as Chad’s desk phone rang.
“Hold up,” he said. “It’s Sherilyn.”
The sheriff and I stood awkwardly and waited while Chad took the call. When he hung up, he looked from one to the other of us.
“It’s about Mrs. Elbee,” he said, his handsome face taking a decided twist toward the confused. “There were significant traces of Ambien in her system but she didn’t have a prescription, and no sleeping pills were found in her house. There was also petechial hemorrhaging around her neck, a stress fracture on her collarbone, a bump on the back of her head, and multiple bruises on her arms. Sherilyn’s ruling it a homicide.”
Chapter 22
Three Days Before the Thump
Macy listened to the pounding on the door. She knew who it was. She considered ignoring him, but better for her to deal with the situation than her mother. With a sigh more befitting an older soul, she hoisted herself from the kitchen table to handle the 300-pound problem on the stoop.
At the second hammering against the door, Macy glanced at her mother’s bedroom and hoped all would stay quiet within. Then she crossed the rectangular room that served as the hub of her life. At least her father had left the old television behind; it gave her and her mother something to watch while eating dinner. On the day Darrell LeGrange had stormed out of the duplex, he’d cracked the screen with his size eleven boot and assumed it was ruined for good. It wasn’t, as long as nothing important was happening in the upper left hand corner of whatever program was on.
When Macy pulled open the front door, the bright sun forced her eyes into a squint. The hour had crept to near eleven, but with all the blinds pulled to minimize Momma’s headaches, Macy hadn’t realized the time. At least there was a huge gut in front of her that blocked most of the sun’s rays. She raised her eyes to the owner of the gut.
Quail the Whale wheezed as if he’d just climbed three flights of stairs, rather than three cracked steps.
“Good morning, Mr. Quail,” Macy said with characteristic exuberance. “How are you today? Did you hear that thunder last night?”
“What’s your name again?” Quail asked, his face not altogether unpleasant and his manner mild compared to his knock.
“Macy, sir.”
“That’s right. Well, Macy, I did hear that thunder last night, but I tell you what, it didn’t wake me up.”
“It did me, sir, that’s for sure.”
“Well, see, I was already awake, worried about making payroll this week. Do you know how a person makes payroll, Macy?”
“No, sir, I sure don’t.”
“Let me enlighten you. I collect money from people who live in my apartments and townhomes, and then, I give that money to other people who take care of the apartments and townhomes.”
Macy’s eyes brightened with optimism. “Sir, if you got those people on your payroll, we sure would appreciate you sending them over here because we ain’t had hot water for days, and when we do, seems like all the cockroaches like to swim in it anyway.”
Quail sucked in a breath that so filled his stomach, it almost blocked out his face. “Now listen here, little girl, I don’t need to be hearing no complaints from the likes of you. People who pay their rents”—he waggled a hot-dog-length finger at her—“they’re the ones who get the attention.”
Macy giggled. “I feel like you give Momma and me plenty of attent
ion every month, sir.”
Richie Quail looked unsure how to respond to Macy’s lingering smile. He finally just huffed and shook his body from head to toe. “Why don’t you go get your mother for me? Tell her I’m here for the rent, and I’m not leaving until I get it.” His last words made him sound like a stubborn teenage boy—and Macy sure knew how to handle them.
She let her shoulders drop and her head droop. “I’d sure like to, Mr. Quail, but Momma’s out looking for a new job. Just like every day. Said to tell you she’d have that money by tomorrow, that’s for sure.”
Quail looked both impressed and skeptical. “Really? Now that’s good news. Where’s she looking?”
“Where isn’t she looking? The diner, the theater, the school, the library, and that new place that opened up with the funny lights and the motorcycle parked out front.”
Quail drew back. “The tattoo parlor?”
“That’s it. Inks and Kinks, right?” Macy found herself unable to stop some fabrications once she’d gotten started. It was the reason Miss Farlow often chose Macy’s stories to read aloud in class, although one of Hoop’s had really shined recently. But something about this Richie Quail character just begged to be lied to, so Macy didn’t fight it. “Momma said she hoped she wouldn’t have to get a tattoo to work there, but she was willing to do whatever was necessary to land the job. Whatever was necessary.”
Quail’s face knotted up as he tried to process Macy’s meaning. “I certainly hope she’s not coming across too desperate. She could get into trouble, you know, a woman as attractive as your mother.”
“That’s what the man told her.” Macy conjured an imaginary, tattoo-shop owner—rangy, too tan, and confident as all get-out. “Told her she was real attractive.” Macy watched as the deep, parallel lines between Richie Quail’s brows dug in and held on.
“What man told her that?” he said, the rattling wheeze in his voice increasing a notch.