Halfway to Half Way

by Suzann Ledbetter

  A concrete driveway on the bungalow's kitchen side accessed the detached, single-car garage. Its heavy kick door had been replaced by a solid steel one with an automatic opener. Otherwise, what money Mrs. Moody lavished on her property's exterior was earmarked for upkeep and security, not beautification.

  Behind that block of MacMillan Street, the property owner who'd fenced his yard first and without regard to easements and boundary lines had set the standard followed by neighbors to the opposite end of the block.

  An uprooted hodgepodge of temporary enclosures, dirt piles and construction equipment impeded the view of the alley. For that Delbert was grateful, since broad daylight on a Friday morning wasn't an optimum time for trespassing on private property.

  The exception to that rule was a mission that couldn't be undertaken after dark, on account of needing to see what the hell you're doing while you were doing it. Not to mention, when you were working with an operative such as Leo Schnur, who couldn't be trusted not to shine a dingdanged flashlight straight at somebody's window.

  Amateurs, Delbert grumbled to himself, and glanced back over his shoulder. The same long-sleeved, one-piece coveralls that hung on him like Columbo's raincoat had Leo looking like the Pillsbury Doughboy with an untreated thyroid condition.

  "Jehosophat, Schnur. Will you hurry up?"

  "The hurry, I am," Leo wheezed. "The up I cannot any faster."

  The alleyway's slope to street level wasn't much of a hill for a climber, unless he was a hundred pounds overweight, had a canvas bag full of equipment slung over his shoulder and was dumb enough to wear a pair of wingtips for a mission called Operation Tomb Raider.

  A designation Leo wasn't aware of. Or what it entailed.

  Keeping details on a strict need-to-know basis was critical. The less Leo knew, the less he could argue about—and the less inclined he'd be to panic, turn tail and waddle back to Valhalla Springs.

  Delbert pulled down the bill on his cap, in the event a neighbor looked out to see what his idiot dog was yapping at in the alley. Flipping open his metal clipboard case, he gandered at the top page. A masterpiece, if he didn't say so himself.

  The city's blue-inked logo and letterhead had been cut off a notice swiped from the public works' department's bulletin board. Pasted on a clean sheet of paper fed into a color photocopier loaded with watermarked stationery produced a dozen blank, almost perfect replicas of Sanity's official letterhead.

  It probably wasn't used for work orders, but the one Delbert composed on the computer, then printed, looked gimcrackin' bona fide to him.

  Beneath it was a handwritten list of dos and don'ts for removing and preserving hazardous materials. He was refreshing his memory on the finer, more potentially fatal points when Leo scuffled up beside him. "A bad feeling, I am getting," he said. He mopped his face with a monogrammed handkerchief. "Ach, the bad feeling I had before we got here."

  "I know what you mean." Delbert pounded his chest with a fist, then turned his head and burped. "Tell Rosie to go easy on the black olives next time she makes that dip."

  "Last night's refreshments is not what the bad feeling is. The why we are here, I am afraid to ask."

  "Good."

  Delbert closed the clipboard. He moved to the edge of an abbreviated culvert extending to the far end of the block. Straddling it were utility sawhorses rigged with flashing caution lights. Wired to orange plastic netting were several Danger and Keep Out signs.

  A parked front-loader and a dump truck barricaded vehicular traffic. The stench exuded by a half-dozen garbage cans said their owners would sooner wait for the city's alleyway pickup to resume than drag them around front to be emptied.

  Leo waved at a wall of climbing roses looming nearly as high as the power lines overhead. "Worse, it looks than in the newspaper picture."

  "That's why we're tunneling through," Delbert said, "not going over."

  From the duffel bag, he took out two pairs of leather gloves, hook-bladed loppers and a hacksaw. "If we free up that gate, we're in like Flynn. You start on the hinge side. I'll take the latch side and we'll meet in the middle at the top."

  Leo surveyed the perimeter. "You are sure, the lady is not home?"

  "A lady she ain't, but affirmative on the not-home part. If you'd read my scouting report, you'd know she cooks and delivers for Meals on Wheels every Wednesday and Friday morning."

  Leo's scowl deepened. "A murderer, she takes food to shut-ins twice a week?"

  "Yeah, and goes to church regular, and maybe hustles old folks cross the street when the Boy Scouts are off tying knots in a rope somewhere." Delbert shrugged. "So what? The vote was unanimous that she whacked her husband."

  "Five to one," Leo corrected. "Not unanimous."

  "Five in favor," Delbert recorrected. "Hannah didn't vote against it, she abstained."

  "But no vote did we take on what Mrs. Moody did with the body."

  "Didn't need to." Delbert jabbed the hedge with the loppers. "I'm tellin' you, Royal's absotively posilutely buried in the backyard. I already checked the cellar and—"

  His mouth slammed shut about five words too late. Leo's dropped open as wide as the scoop on the front-loader. Delbert gagged him with a work glove before he yelled something incriminating loud enough to be heard clear to city hall.

  Holding the glove in place, Delbert said, "What I'm gonna tell you is strictly confidential. Got that?"

  Leo nodded.

  "Between you and me. Not you, me and Rosemary."

  Leo nodded.

  "Because if you blab to Rosie, she'll blab confidentially to IdaClare, and she'll blab confidentially to Marge, and she'll blab at the Curl-Up & Dye, and lickety-split, Hannah and the whole damn county will know about it."

  Leo nodded.

  "Okay," Delbert said, reassured, but not enough to remove the gag. "When I was talking up the neighbors yesterday, I saw Moody's white Caddy back down the driveway. After she left, I slipped into the backyard for a lookie-loo and spied the door to the cellar.

  "Lots of them had dirt floors, once upon a time, so I picked the padlock on the doors and ventured in. No dice. Just wall-to-wall concrete as old as the foundation. No corpse in the cellar means Chlorine had to have planted Royal in the yard. Capisce?"

  Leo nodded.

  Delbert wrestled with an urge to tell Leo what else he'd left out of Code Name: Epsilon's report—and lost, mostly because he'd bust a gut, if he didn't brag to somebody.

  "Since the cat was away," he said, "I figured the mouse ought to poke around a bit."

  Leo's eyebrows shot up and disappeared under the bill of his cap.

  "Hell yes, I was scared she'd come back and catch me, but the inside of that house?" Delbert whistled through his dentures. "De-ee-lux, amigo. All the woodwork's mahogany, the bathrooms are white marble, and the kitchen alone's worth more than the entire house."

  Realizing he was practically shouting, Delbert lowered his voice. "Now, why would Chlorine spend a king's ransom remodeling an old house, when she could've sold it and built a fancy brand-spanking new one?"

  Leo said, "Uhtauautawnngmamawt."

  Assuming he meant, "I'll tell you, if you'll take your dirty, stinking glove out of my mouth," Delbert complied, albeit cautiously.

  Leo spat, smacked his lips together, then rubbed them on his sleeve. "For that, I should punch you in the nose. Ever you do it again, and I will."

  "Fair enough."

  They shook on it, then Leo said, "The house she did not sell, because of the husband buried in the yard."

  Delbert beamed at his protégé. "Correct-o-mundo."

  "So the hole in the bushes, that, I will help you make. The digging up a corpse?" Leo shook his head. "That I don't got the stomach for."

  "Neither do I, pal." Delbert clapped his shoulder. "I promise, all we're gonna do is get the dirt on Chlorine Moody."

  As hoped, the thorny canes they bisected with the loppers and hacksaws were so enmeshed in the overgrowth, they dangled above their
heads, instead of falling to the ground. Leo had struggled with hewing the branches snared between the gate's hinge straps and wrapped around the post. What he muttered under his breath might not have been obscene, but ordering a cheeseburger and fries in German sounded like blasphemy.

  Their faces were scratched, their chins and noses dripping sweat, and rose petals caped their shoulders before brute force swung the gate wide enough to crawl through.

  "The other side," Leo panted, pointing a trembling finger. "More bushes. Too tired, I am, to cut them."

  Delbert swiped his face with his sleeve and yelped when an embedded thorn raked his brow. It was too hot. The job was too hard. Too big, even for the both of them.

  No, damn it. They were too old. The spirit was willing, the mind as sharp as ever—well, his was, anyhow. But the body

  Funny how a man can remember being young, but can't for the life of him put a finger on when or how he got to be dadblasted old.

  If he did, Delbert reminded himself. Royal Moody hadn't. He'd been cheated out of seeing his son become a man, just as Rudy had been cheated out of a father. Even worse, the boy grew up believing his father abandoned him.

  He'd surely tried to pray his daddy home, then dared him, then sworn he'd slam the door in the bastard's face if he ever had the balls to show up. All the while, he'd likely watched fathers coach ball teams and lead Scout troops, and would've happily settled for an ordinary Joe who went to work in the morning and came home every night.

  Hannah knew how that felt. So did Delbert. He dug through the duffel bag for a bottle of sports drink. It was half empty before the bitter taste washed from his mouth.

  Yes-sirree. If sixty-nine years had taught him anything, it was that sparing the innocent was an excuse the guilty used when they lied to protect themselves. And even awful truths never did as much damage as the lies they hid behind.

  "I can't quit on Rudy, too." Delbert finished his drink and tossed the bottle aside. "I won't."

  * * *

  David watched Rocco Jarek through the one-way mirror. The interrogation room's decor was as lovely as the rest of the Outhouse: flat, institutional-green walls and brown-speckled linoleum that had seen better days several decades ago. Recessed fluorescent light boxes added a greasy sheen and sallowness to the healthiest complexion.

  Jarek fidgeted in the armless plastic bucket chair, worry lines creasing his forehead. He was dressed in last night's wrinkled shirt and jeans, and had a bad case of bed head.

  Hard to say what he was thinking. David had a strong suspicion it wasn't Thank God it's Friday. Especially after a preliminary chat with Marlin Andrik, followed by an equal period of perceived isolation in that ugly, claustrophobic room.

  Around dawn, a city patrol unit had spotted Jarek's vehicle in the Holiday Inn Express's parking lot. The patrol officer called for backup. It being a slow night and an even quieter early morn, half the Sanity PD, two deputies and a highway patrolman converged on the motel.

  Jarek and Kimmie Sue were rousted like Public Enemy Numbers One and Two. It was professionally executed and not unwarranted for homicide suspects with an all-points order out on them. In hindsight, the sheriff's department would have preferred a smaller and less exuberant response than the D-day invasion on Normandy.

  "Just because Jarek hasn't been charged with anything," David said to Marlin, "I'm surprised he hasn't lawyered up."

  "The drone's living off Kimmie Sue," he said. "And she isn't paging an attorney for herself, much less for glamour boy."

  David had remanded Ms. Beauford to a locked interview room at the courthouse. If separation anxiety didn't turn one of them, the lies cops told for leverage were easier to pull off.

  He said, "I'm still trying to wrap my head around them checking out of the Wishing Well and into the Holiday Inn because of a cricket in the bathtub."

  "That's Jarek's story. Kimmie Sue already bitched about their room smelling like feet. When she saw the bug in the tub, she freaked."

  "And you just couldn't resist asking if it had a top hat and answered to Jiminy."

  Marlin sighed. "Try to be thorough and what do you get? A shitload of attitude."

  "Imagine that." Usually his smart-ass interrogation techniques were worth a grin, if not a belly laugh. Maybe this would, too, someday, if the case ever stopped feeling like sand slipping through their fingers.

  Slightly under twenty-four hours in, leads should have begun meshing with others into a discernible pattern of events. An investigation worked backward, starting at the scene and the estimated time of its occurrence. Reverse order didn't defy logic. Normally it enhanced it.

  "Bug or no bug," David said, "moving from one motel to another is a pretty short flight to avoid prosecution."

  "You want to rag me about it? Take a number and stand in line." Marlin stepped away from the glass and stalked toward the coffeemaker. "Seemed like common sense that a homicide victim's daughter would keep me informed of her whereabouts, unless she was involved. Of course, I'm just the asshole detective assigned to the case, so what the fuck do I know?"

  He lofted the carafe at David, who waved a no thanks. "I'm not ragging you, Marlin. I was there, remember?"

  David pushed aside photos and evidence bags and hiked a hip on the corner of Marlin's desk. "I've got no problem admitting that this one's felt hinky from the get-go and not only because the victim was Bev Beauford."

  He took the cup of coffee Marlin handed him, as though he hadn't declined it three seconds ago. An oily skim congealed on the surface as the fumes cleared all eight sinus passages. Balancing the cup on his knee, he added, "It wouldn't have taken all night to locate them if they'd used that credit card again, instead of Jarek paying cash for their room."

  Marlin grunted an agreement. "He says Kimmie Sue was too upset to get out of the Jeep when they checked in. He couldn't charge it on her card without her there to sign for it."

  "Her card? Bev's name was on it."

  "Kimmie Sue is allegedly authorized to use it. I'm expecting a court order any month now. Until I get it, the issuer won't verify the current time and temperature in beautiful downtown New Delhi."

  David shook his head. "If Kimmie Sue's on the account, why wouldn't Bev authorize a second card in her name? Technically, Kimmie Sue is forging her mother's signature on every sales slip."

  "If she did, we can charge her on it." Marlin jerked a thumb at the interrogation room. "Jarek the douche bag clammed up when I asked how his print got on Bev's rearview mirror. Him, we can hold for a while, but if we don't come up with something fast, I have to cut him loose."

  "He could walk now, if he cared to."

  "Couldn't stop him," Marlin agreed. "Fortunately, he's too stupid to know that."

  David stood and set the untouched coffee on the desk. "I guess Kimmie Sue's been neglected long enough. Maybe her version of the truth will trip up the both of them."

  "You're right about her being more receptive to you than me." Marlin swung side to side in the chair, his gaze leveled at David. "That's not a joke this time. Last night convinced me there's nothing funny about Malibu Barbie. Guilty or not, she's one spooky broad."

  He glanced at Josh Phelps and Cletus Orr bent over their respective desks. Lowering his voice, he said, "It's like I told the wife after I got home. It wouldn't surprise me to find out Kimmie Sue loved to pull the wings off flies when she was a kid. It also wouldn't surprise me if she didn't, but bragged that she did, just to screw with people's heads."

  * * *

  Take the fork to the left, a skosh past a fence post with an MFA Feed sign stapled to it. At the second rock cornerstone, go right, then left again at the third sycamore from the chimney where the old McGill place stood before it burnt. If you come to the trestle bridge over Turkey Creek, you'd done gone too far.

  Hannah smiled, remembering the morning Ruby Amyx drew a map to David's house on a handful of paper napkins. They were still in the Blazer's glove box, though she now knew every dip and heave in Turkey
Creek Road's concrete-slab surface.

  Oncoming drivers had always raised a four-finger howdy and most smiled to back it up. Such was the literal passing acquaintance that native Ozarkers bestowed on everyone, yet familiarity had quickened the waves and broadened the smiles. Even though they wouldn't recognize one another on the sidewalk downtown, it was nice to be a member of the rural road-less-traveled club.

  Along the shoulders, spiky purple blazing stars and blooming goldenrod mingled with taller, feathery Johnson grass—an allergy sufferer's second circle of hell. And a very short-lived bouquet, as Hannah learned when she was little.