by Anne McAneny
“Take whatever you want, Macy. It’s all yours. All yours.”
“Thanks.” Etta Lee must have tried to put the earrings on, because the next audio was, “Damn if these holes ain’t closed up. Now I gotta get Zeke to poke ’em again.” She leaned over Mrs. Elbee’s face and grinned confidentially. “Least he’s good with needles. Ha!” Etta Lee disappeared from the frame, but stayed near as her voice came through. “Your nails are a mess, lady. I can fix ’em up for you, real pretty-like if you want.”
Mrs. Elbee heaved out a sigh. “Sure, sure. But then you’ll go see Mr. Elbee? He’s waiting for you.”
“Whatever. This okay?” Etta Lee held a bottle of neon orange fingernail polish above Mrs. Elbee’s face.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Mrs. Elbee said. Her slurred voice was showing the effects of the pills. “Not . . . I mean . . . along for the ride.” Her voice withered to breathy notes. “And boom, and then boom, and then boom.”
Mrs. Elbee’s respirations grew steady and deep. Three minutes of silence followed, interrupted only by Etta Lee muttering to herself, complaining about Zeke-this and Zeke-that, and then a more voluble, “There. All done.”
Suddenly, the frame filled with Mrs. Elbee’s fingernails being proudly displayed above her face, held in place by Etta Lee’s scrawny hand. Both hands quickly disappeared from view. “Hey Zeke! Zee-eeke!”
Zeke entered the room, or rather, the sound of his voice did. “Quit yer yapping, Etta Lee.”
“She’s asleep. Can we go?”
“Not yet. He said to wait till dark.”
“Whoa!” I yelled. Sherilyn smiled and nodded the same way people do when they’ve already seen a movie and like to take credit for its surprises.
“Who’s he talking about?” I said. “Who said to wait until dark?”
Sherilyn shook her head. “Can’t be certain, but it sure implicates someone. My money’s on Gator-Bait out there.” She jerked a thumb toward the other room, presumably to the slab holding undigested portions of Boyd. “He was the big dealer in town, and these two have a direct connection to him. But it could be Zeke’s idiot brother, too.”
“Anybody could have hired these morons,” Charlie said. “If you needed cash, wouldn’t you hit up a crazy old widow?” Charlie hit Play again.
“Yeah?” Etta Lee’s voice said. “Well screw his stupid ass. She’s ready. Let’s do it before she wakes up. And hey! You gotta punch holes in my ears again.”
“Always something with you.” Heavy footsteps indicated Zeke was leaving the room.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Sherilyn tensing up with anticipation. I braced myself for another surprise, dreading it but keeping my eyes glued to the screen.
Etta Lee must have untied Mrs. Elbee at some point because a few moments later, the camera view whooshed up and showed a large, standing mirror near the foot of the bed, thereby also showing Mrs. Elbee’s frenzied reflection.
“Damn clumsy idiot!” Mrs. Elbee screamed. She looked like something out of The Exorcist—contorted face, harsh eyes, and rigid body. She stared straight into the mirror and shouted again, perhaps believing it would carry her message to the universe. “Curse you and your fidgety fingers! May you rot in hell!” Then she whipped her head to Etta Lee, grabbed the wispy girl by both shoulders and shook her. “Now go, Macy! I’ve taken care of it. I’ve cursed him to hell. You must go!”
Zeke rushed into the scene, showing the same fleet-footedness he had when chasing me through the Victorian. The video images cut in and out, as if there were a tussle, but best I could tell, Mrs. Elbee went immediately back to sleep after her outburst, sparing Zeke from forcing more pills down her throat.
Charlie stopped the tape. “There’s more,” he said drily, “but it’s just them transporting her to a pick-up and driving to the river. Not much dialogue. From what I could figure, they tie her feet to a couple cinder blocks and dump her in the water.” Charlie let a muted half-giggle escape his lips. “It’s the most incompetently executed crime you’ll ever see, accompanied by the most incriminating video ever made. Too lame for words, really.”
“Charlie wants to release it on YouTube,” Sherilyn said. “But I told him the sheriff would skin us alive!”
“It would rank in Crime Fails for at least a month,” he said. “And my channel could use the viewership.”
I had to agree with Charlie; I couldn’t imagine any crime-fail topping these idiots. Then again, they almost got away with it.
“What was that about fidgety fingers at the end?” I said.
Sherilyn gave a big shrug. “I just find the clues, honey; I don’t process ’em. Maybe her husband was clumsy in bed and never got her off. Who knows? You seen enough?”
“More than. Hey Charlie, Mrs. Elbee had that amulet for a while. What happened to everything it recorded before this final scene?”
“It only retains the last thing recorded until the material is uploaded. After that, no record of it.”
“Except on the computer of whoever accessed it,” Sherilyn added.
“No idea who would have been interested in Mrs. Elbee’s daily rants,” Charlie said.
“How did the camera know when to start recording?” I asked.
“Remote control. The only limitation would be distance.”
“What was the range?”
“About five miles, any direction.”
Projecting outward in a five-mile radius from the Elbee house would cover all of Back Beulah, plus New Beulah and portions of neighboring towns. Pretty big pool of suspects. “At least we know it was someone local,” I said. “Any way to trace the remote’s location?”
“Only if it’s activated again, which doesn’t seem likely,” Charlie said.
“In the rest of the video, did you see any stolen property in Zeke’s truck? To establish motive? Maybe he loaded up when he was off-camera. There must be something missing besides those earrings.”
“No visible stolen goods,” Charlie said, “but I could only see what the amulet camera picked up, which wasn’t much.”
“Plus,” I said, “they could have returned to her house after they dumped the body.”
“Where’d she get the amulet, anyway?” Sherilyn asked.
“Farmer’s Market,” I said. “That guy with the long braid—Bruce.”
Sherilyn lit up. “I’ve been out with him a couple times recently.” She held up an index finger and made a raspberry sound as she let it flop down. “Erectile dysfunction unfortunately, but what a character.”
Only Sherilyn would date a near-mute ex-hippie who chose potato sacks for his attire—and only she would broadcast his bedroom challenges so casually.
“He’s on his way here now,” she continued, “to return some earrings I left in his tent.”
“His tent?”
She smirked. “Right, like you’ve never dated a survivalist. He’s only been doing it for a couple years, but I think he might score a gig on one of those reality shows—a naked one if he gets his way.”
“You know what, Sherilyn?” I said. “The less I know, the better.”
“Okay, then,” she said, clapping her hands together again. “I’ve got half a corpse to finish.”
As I followed her back through the lab, a heightened feeling of disdain washed over me for Boyd. In his final hour, he claimed he’d never killed anyone, but was it possible he’d hired those junkies in the video to do his dirty work?
“What Old Bastard did to Boyd,” I said to Sherilyn on my way out. “You know what I call it?”
“What?” she said.
“A good start.”
Chapter 35
A paper flyer, pinned beneath my car’s wiper, fluttered in the wind. I grabbed it and read: Beulah Magic Show! Come witness mystical, captivating wonders!
It gave the location of the event as The Pavilion on Dirt Hill. The Pavilion was an indirect creation of Richie Quail’s during his pre-lottery years. In a story that never quite rang true, he�
�d cleared land and dug foundations for one development while leaving a huge pile of low-quality dirt near the swamp, allegedly for a second project that never panned out. Eventually, he convinced the county to let him build a pavilion atop the pile—for rental income, of course—rather than remove the dirt. The board members fell for it or, more likely, received a tidy payoff to approve it. Since then, The Pavilion had hosted dozens of weddings and holiday parties, serving as a preferred location for ritzy events that needed a quaint, small-town feel. The place offered a stunning view of the swamp, along with prizewinning sunsets, but its crooked history had never sat well with swamp purists.
For the last six months, though, The Pavilion had not hosted a single event. Some out-of-towner had supposedly rented it at twice its usual rate for the entire duration. Ever since, two swarthy-looking men, solemn as Buckingham Palace guards, stood watch over the area 24/7. Rumor had it that a reality show was in the works—hopefully not naked Bruce’s—but Quail would never confirm or deny. Larry and I had delved into the mystery, but we’d run into such a tangle of red tape and dead ends that we’d given up by month two. Periodically, however, a burst of activity would occur. Short, muscular men would scale the hill in delivery trucks, and drapes would cover whatever they transported inside. Additional workers would show up once in a while and stay for several days, but no one ever saw them around town. Despite a stakeout by a determined intern on The Herald staff, their mission remained a mystery. By the fourth month, everyone had lost interest, settling for the idea that Quail had bound himself to silence via contract and would reveal the truth in his own sweet time.
Would it all now culminate with this magic show? I glanced at the flyer again. It was a bit of a graphical mess, unable to decide what it wanted to be. The center showed sketches of floating ghosts, one of whom vaguely resembled our own grumpy sheriff, and another looked like a buxom woman of the night. In the lower corners were rabbits popping out of hats. Along the top, rows of black and red stars floated amidst bursts of yellow light. A Roman chariot raced through all of it, while a bejeweled snake slithered along the bottom, its tongue caught in the act of smelling the atmosphere. I wouldn’t mind asking that serpent what he could sniff out on this pamphlet, because it confused the heck out of me.
“Hmm. Magic.” The gravelly, deep words came from behind me. I jerked around to see Bruce standing there, apparently reading over my shoulder. Silver hoop earrings shimmered in his hand. “For Sherilyn,” he said by way of explanation.
“I know,” I said. “I just met with her.”
He stepped forward to go around me, but I blocked his path. His reaction was to stop in his tracks and fix me with a glower from beneath wisps of his graying hair. He wasn’t a big man, but something about him reeked of strength, while something else about him reeked of moldy bread. I desperately warded off images of Sherilyn bumping parts with this primitive being.
“Bruce, do you remember selling an amulet to Grace Elbee in the past month?”
“Dead now.”
“Yes, but do you remember the amulet?”
He nodded.
“Where did you get it?”
“Cuthbert’s. Every third Thursday.”
Cuthbert’s Pawn Shoppe had been around for ages, operating on the edge of town and the edge of legality. Sherilyn’s mom had worked there as a teen and shopped there as an adult. No idea why they got the extra letters on Shop, her mom would say, but it sure adds a touch of class, don’t it? I didn’t think so. The place gave me the willies, as did most of the folks who worked there.
“Is that when you go to Cuthbert’s, Bruce? Every third Thursday?”
He nodded and tried to pass again.
“Do you know who the original owner of the piece was?”
“Just brought in. By a gypsy.”
My cynical look said it all. The ethics of Cuthbert’s employees were highly questionable, but they were stellar salespeople. They’d no doubt seen Bruce coming from a mile away: Yes, Bruce, and this one was brought in by a real, live gypsy.
“Is that what you told Mrs. Elbee when she inquired about it?” I said.
“Told her what I knew.”
“Which was?”
“Owned by a gypsy to whom no evil had come,” he said, shuffling past me.
I got in my car and tossed the flyer onto my passenger seat, but even as I tried to dismiss it with a wave of cynicism, a flurry of excitement gripped me—because inside, I was amped to be attending the show with Rafe. On top of that, there was a palpable buzz in town about the event. Nothing had permeated Beulah’s collective consciousness like this since the Forenza-Galasso circus. I wouldn’t mind losing myself in it, too, but for some reason, the thought of the show made my tattoo sizzle. Besides, I needed to forget about it for now and head home. Grace Elbee’s memorial was tonight, and I looked a wreck.
Due to Grace’s case remaining officially unsolved, her body would not be in attendance at the service; however, due to recently adopted spiritual beliefs, she’d arranged with the local pastor to “see her through” to the next dimension within thirty-six hours of her death. The pastor, through no fault of his own, had clearly missed that deadline, but he had managed to throw together a service for tonight, complete with a lowcountry boil.
When I pulled into my driveway ten minutes later, my phone vibrated. I answered as I ascended the stairs to my deck.
“Hey, Chloe,” said Larry Newsome on the other end of the line. “Thanks for all the DeVore Cosmetics scoops. The story’s growing every second. You sure you don’t want in?”
“Got a full plate right now, Larry, but thanks.”
“Listen, I went through your taped interview with Adeline DeVore, but I still have a question. Did she give you any inkling that she knew who the company mole was?”
“The only thing she said was that whoever was behind the corporate leaks might also have taken that photo of her at the Botox appointment.”
“That mean anything to you?”
“Maybe that it was getting personal?” I said.
“I agree. If I find the Botox photographer, I bet I find the blogger.”
“What blogger?”
“You don’t know? There’s a blog called Abhor DeVore. It posts a bunch of negative information on DeVore Cosmetics. Been active for a year. Can’t believe the company didn’t get it shut down.”
“Maybe that would have served to promote it.”
Larry chortled. “Believe me, they wouldn’t have wanted to do that, especially if what’s on there is true.”
“Did it have a lot of followers?”
“No. The posts are like a slow drip of disparagement designed to take the company down implication by implication. Not a lot of solid proof behind the claims, though.”
“Solid enough for the FBI to take an interest.”
“Sure looks like it. Thanks, Chloe.”
“Good luck, Larry.”
I hung up and entered my house, smelling the sweet smoke a moment too late.
Chapter 36
“I was just enjoying the view,” said Levi Carver from the center cushion of my sofa. “That’s a real purty house across the way. Mite big for my tastes, of course.” He sucked on his cigarette. “Mind if I smoke?”
My mind jumped around frantically. Damn! I had no gun. But Levi did. Matter of fact, he had my gun. My cute twenty-two. Larry’s phone call had distracted me and I’d stupidly left my Glock and knife in the car.
“Thought I made my feelings clear last time you were here, Levi. I do mind.”
“And what are you gonna do about it, sweetheart? Got another surprise for me there in your pants?”
His lewd tone reminded me of his brother’s threats in the mansion. These Carver brothers were becoming a serious pain in my hide.
I considered my options: dash back out the door; work my way to the knives in the kitchen; or talk my way out of this mess. Then a new idea hit me. It might just work, but I’d have to move fast because it would
only be a second before Levi thought of it, too.
As he made a smart-ass comment—something about how smoking both calmed and excited him—I snaked my thumb along my smartphone screen and stroked it to power, thankful that the sounds were turned off. Then I tapped the lower left corner where my Contacts icon was located and hoped for the random best.
“Now I heard you yapping to someone as you came in,” Levi said. “Why don’t you put your phone down so’s we can talk uninterrupted-like?”
I placed my cell on the small table near the door. When I vaguely heard a voice say, “Chloe?” I went off into a loud rant, knowing I was speaking for an audience of two. “Listen, Levi,” I said, “I don’t know why you broke into my house, but I have nothing to say to you, and in case you’re not aware, I’ve got deep connections to the sheriff’s department.”
“Oh, I know. That’s why I’m here. We need to talk.”
“Well, I’d appreciate you getting off my couch and giving me back my gun. Then maybe we can have a civilized conversation.”
“Well, ain’t you the chatty one today?”
“What is it you want to talk about, anyway?”
“I need to know what my brother’s gotten himself into—and what the cops know about it.”
I smirked. “You mean Zeke didn’t share his criminal mastermind strategy with you?’
“All’s I know is the police been knocking on my door, knocking on my sister’s door, and harassing my kid about graffiti on the bridge. Then a buddy of mine on the force calls to say they’re putting out an APB on Zeke. Murder one or some such nonsense.”
“So why come to me?”
He waved the gun. “First off, I needed a piece, and I figure this shitty little thing’ll do in a pinch.”
“I find it hard to believe you don’t own a whole rack of guns.”
“I own plenty, but the cops took ’em when they came to the house asking about some damn nail polish my kid had.”
I faked a gasp. “You mean you had unregistered guns in your domicile, Levi?”