Still Waters33

by Tami Hoag

  The fat toad had been walking around town all day with that damned note in his pants pocket. Boyd Ellstrom: $18,700. He’d slipped it out and set it on the table at the Coffee Cup just that morning while pretending to hunt for change for a tip. Boyd had just about died at the sight. For the minute and a half that slip of paper had lain on the table, in plain sight of half the town, he had seen his whole cursed life pass before his eyes and swirl right down the toilet. If anyone in Still Creek got wind of him owing Jarvis—or, more important, why he owed Jarvis—he could just bend over and kiss his political ass good-bye. Jarvis had merely smiled at him over the rim of his coffee cup, the pig.

  Well, he’d died like a pig too, hadn’t he? Boyd thought. Like a pig at the slaughterhouse. Poetic justice, that’s what that was.

  Elizabeth studied the deputy from the corner of her eye, not liking what she could see of his face in the light from the dashboard instruments. He kind of favored Fred Flintstone with his big square head and droopy shoulders. He had the look of a bully about him, the kind of man who sought out positions of authority to give him a sense of power over other people.

  She had learned early on in her life to be a quick and shrewd judge of character. It had been essential to her survival as she’d come of age around Bardette, a dusty, hopeless place where the honky-tonk and whorehouse were the only thriving businesses and most of the men were meaner than the rattlesnakes that coiled behind every rock. She had learned to size up a man at glance. Deputy Ellstrom fit into the same category as Jarrold Jarvis had.

  The image of Dane Jantzen filled her head in Technicolor memory—handsome, predatory, churlish. What category did he fit into? One all his own, she thought, doing her best to ignore the disturbing shift of feelings inside her—heat and uneasiness, wariness and anger. The last thing she needed right now was to run afoul of a man like Dane Jantzen.

  She had come to Still Creek to start her life over, to build up a business and her self-respect and her relationship with her son. They hadn’t been here three weeks and she was embroiled in a murder investigation and on the bad side of the sheriff. Pure damn wonderful.

  “Did you know him?” she said abruptly, needing to break the silence and her train of thought.

  Ellstrom jerked his head in her direction as if he’d forgotten she was sitting there. “Jarrold? Sure I knew him. Everybody did.” He said it almost defiantly, daring her to dispute the fact that the dead man had been well known if not well loved.

  “This is quite a shock, I guess,” she said, intrigued.

  He shifted on the seat and mumbled something under his breath as he adjusted the volume control on the police radio. The crackle of static rose like the noise from one of those mechanical ocean wave sound devices guaranteed in the backs of cheap magazines to put people to sleep. It put Elizabeth’s teeth on edge. She flinched at the discordant screeching but tuned in automatically when word of the BCA mobile lab’s imminent arrival came across the airwaves.

  Ellstrom chewed on a swear word, clenching his jaw, his hands on the steering wheel.

  “I take it you don’t approve,” Elizabeth commented, turning sideways on the seat so she could better gauge his responses.

  “We could handle this ourselves,” he said, still defensive. “Jantzen brings in those city boys and we’ll be nothing but gofers. We don’t need a bunch of college dickheads poking around.”

  A sly smile tugged at one corner of Elizabeth’s mouth. Dissension among the ranks. She knew without having to ask, Jantzen would hate it. He had the air of the absolute ruler about him.

  “Can I quote you on that, Deputy?” she asked, her tone curling automatically into honey and smoke. She wasn’t above the prudent use of feminine wiles, as long as she didn’t compromise herself. A girl had to use what tools she had at her disposal. If batting a lash or two would loosen a man’s tongue, she figured that was his problem, not hers.

  An even nastier smile turned the corners of Ellstrom’s lips as he considered the ramifications of having Elizabeth Stuart quote him in the Clarion. Jantzen would shit a brick. That alone made it worth his while.

  He shot her a sideways glance, taking in the big silver eyes and ripe mouth. He’d seen her around town. She had a body that could give a man a fever. He couldn’t make up his mind which he would grab first if he got the chance, tits or ass. Either way, a man was guaranteed a good time. It wouldn’t hurt him a bit to do her a favor or two, he thought, shifting a little in his seat as the crotch of his pants tightened up, making him forget about his intestinal distress for a moment. Rumor had it she’d be willing to return a man’s favor—on her back. His dick twitched at the thought.

  “Yeah, sure. Why not.” He straightened up behind the wheel, puffing his chest out with self-importance. “Like I said, Jantzen’s blowing this investigation calling in outsiders. We can take care of our own in Tyler County.”

  “My, you certainly do sound like the voice of authority, Deputy,” Elizabeth murmured, glad for the poor light so he couldn’t see her roll her eyes.

  Ellstrom sniffed and nodded. “Yeah, well, I should have beat Jantzen in the last election, you know.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “He only won because he used to play pro football. Big fucking deal.”

  Elizabeth’s imagination instantly conjured up a picture of Jantzen in full football regalia—pads accenting his shoulders, tight little spandex britches hugging his behind. She cursed herself for having a natural weakness for big, strapping athletic men. Her life would have been a whole hell of a lot tamer if she had been attracted to the anemic, balding, bookish type.

  The headlights of the cruiser spotlighted her Eldorado hanging off the south side of the road, abandoned like a beached whale, and she heaved a sigh. Damn car. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the Caddy had an undercarriage lower than a sow’s belly, she would have driven right on past Still Waters and been home now, blissfully ignorant of Jarrold Jarvis’s murder and blissfully ignorant of Dane Jantzen.

  Ellstrom slowed the cruiser and gave the car a suspicious glance, showing off his miraculous cop instincts. “That yours?”

  “Yep.” Elizabeth’s heart sank a little as they rolled past the car. She couldn’t bring herself to be mad at it. It was the ’76 model, a sleek cherry-red boat designed before the days of fuel economy and aerodynamics. The last of the GM ragtops of its day, the Eldorado had held the dubious distinction of being the world’s biggest automobile that model year. It sucked gas by the gallon and used oil with the abandon of a Saudi sheikh, but Elizabeth loved every gaudy inch of it. It reminded her of Texas and money, things she had left behind.

  “What happened?” Ellstrom asked, an extra touch of male arrogance sneaking into his voice. “Run out of gas?”

  “No. It just sort of . . . acts up every once in a while,” Elizabeth hedged. Bone-headed male smugness was something she could do without tonight. Tomorrow would be soon enough when she went in search of someone to tow the car back up onto the road. It would be a man, and he would pat her on the head and snicker to himself. In her opinion, the Lord had not seen fit to create nearly enough female tow-truck drivers. But then, he was a man.

  “Have any ideas on who might have killed him?” she asked, steering the conversation back on track.

  “Do you?” Ellstrom’s eyes darted her way. “You’re the witness.”

  “Me? Sugar, I didn’t witness much more than my own regurgitated Snickers bar. The place could have been crawling with killers. I sure as hell didn’t stick around to see. And I’m not long on theories either. Don’t know anyone round here well enough to say whether or not they might kill someone. How about you? You being the man who should have won the election and all, you must know somebody who’d want old Jarrold dead and gone.”

  Ellstrom’s face set into a scowl. Ignoring her, he reached for the microphone of the radio and called in to tell someone named Lorraine that he was bringing in an important witness and she had better have everything ready.
Elizabeth settled back in her seat. Deputy Ellstrom’s loquaciousness was apparently not going to extend beyond bad-mouthing his boss. Figured. If he spouted theories on suspects, he might actually have to back them up with something other than hot air.

  Still Creek had closed up for the night. The imitation gaslights that lined Main Street cast a hazy pinkish glow on the shop fronts that shouldered up against one another on either side of the wide main street. The ornate facades of the buildings that had been constructed in the early 1880s stood like silent sentinels, dark windows staring blankly as the police car cruised past.

  A tidy little town, Still Creek was kept spit-and-polish clean out of midwestern habit and for the benefit of the tourists being lured to take in the bucolic scenery and the sights of the many Amish farms in the area. There was no trash in the gutters, no shop fronts in need of paint. Wooden tubs of geraniums sat curbside at regular intervals. The occasional spiffy red park bench tucked up against a building offered respite for those weary of walking from gift shop to gift shop. Windows were decorated either with austere Amish artifacts and quilts that were like works of graphic art or with gaudy Scandinavian rosemaling painted on the window glass in colorful curlicues like frosting on a bakery cake. A banner had been strung up above Main Street advertising the annual Horse and Buggy Days festival that would begin in one week.

  The cruiser rolled slowly past the old building that housed the Still Creek Clarion. Like its neighbors to the north and south, it was built of dark brick two stories high with fancy dentils and cornices along the front belying the fact that it was really just a plain old square commercial building with a wet basement and dry rot in the floors. The gold letters arching across the wide first-floor window had been there for ninety-two years, proclaiming to one and all that the Clarion printed the truth.

  Elizabeth thought of the hours she would put in the next day working on the story of what had happened to her that night. The truth. Looking around her at the sleeping town, she knew instinctively that the truth was going to go far beyond the death of Jarrold Jarvis, and Still Creek would never be the same. But the truth was what she had come here to print. The truth, unadorned and unadulterated.

  The courthouse squatted like an enormous toadstool smack in the center of town, surrounded on three sides by Keillor Park. Built in 1882, the year the railroad had come through and Still Creek had won the title of Tyler County seat, it was constructed of native limestone, big square blocks of it stacked stone upon stone by Norwegian and German immigrants whose descendants still lived here. The old-time town square had forced Main Street to skirt around it and, while it was a picturesque arrangement, it wasn’t conducive to traffic flow, explaining why the state highway had swung off to the west, missing the heart of Still Creek altogether.

  Ellstrom pulled the cruiser into the parking lot and nosed it into a slot up against the side of the building that was marked SHERIFF JANTZEN. Elizabeth felt a smile threaten, but she ironed it out. Whatever this antagonism was between the sheriff and his deputy, it wasn’t cute. The gleam in Ellstrom’s eye was too malicious to be mistaken for cute.

  He led the way into the building through a side door marked TYLER COUNTY LAW ENFORCEMENT CENTER and down a set of marble stairs and a cool white hall glaring with bare fluorescent overhead lighting. Elizabeth followed him along the corridor and to the right, the heels of her cowboy boots thumping dully against the smooth, hard floor. She wondered what would come next and how long it would take. Trace was supposed to be home by eleven. The large round clock mounted above the dispatcher’s station already showed eleven-ten.

  “Lorraine,” Ellstrom said in a tone of voice that rang with phony authority, “this is Miss Stuart. She’s the one found Jarrold. Dane wants her to wait in his office. I have to get back out there and help secure the crime scene.” He hitched up his pants and puffed out his chest. Macho and tough, the man in command.

  Behind her big U-shaped fake birch desk, Lorraine Worth gave him the cold, hard look of a woman who wasn’t fooled by much and certainly wasn’t fooled by him. The dispatcher-cum-secretary sat at her post with schoolmarm posture and pinched lips, dressed in something June Cleaver would have worn around the house with a string of pearls at her throat. Her hair rose up an impressive height in a cast-iron bouffant the color of gunmetal. Her eyebrows were penciled on, thick, dark lines drawn in a style intended to make her look stern and to minimize the motherly quality of her eyes. She stared at Ellstrom from behind rhinestone-studded glasses that pinched up on the outside corners like cat’s eyes, and somehow managed to look down her straight, long nose at him, even though he towered over her desk.

  “The crime lab is about to arrive,” she announced imperiously. “You’d better get out there, or there won’t be anything left for you to do except sweep up the coffee cups.”

  Ellstrom narrowed his eyes to slits and scowled at her without noticeable effect, then turned on his heel and stalked away as Lorraine snatched up the receiver of the ringing telephone to her right.

  “Tyler County sheriff’s office . . . No, the sheriff has no statement at this time . . . No arrests have been made that I’m aware of,” she said, turning an eagle eye on Elizabeth, taking in her appearance in one scathing glance, disapproval tightening her mouth into nothingness. “I wouldn’t know anything about the woman and I don’t spread gossip, at any rate. Now, I must ask you to hang up. This line has to be left open for emergencies.”

  She ended the call herself, cradling the receiver with a resounding thump.

  “I don’t mind telling you, I dislike this business intensely,” she said sternly, her gaze still boring through Elizabeth as if she was more than ready to lay the blame at her feet. “There hasn’t been a murder in Tyler County in thirty-three years. Not since Olie Grimsrud did in Wendel Svenson, the milk hauler, for having hanky-panky with Leda Grimsrud behind the bulk tank in their milk house. I don’t like it a bit.”

  “I’m not so crazy about it myself,” Elizabeth said as the phone at Lorraine’s elbow rang again. She didn’t like the woman’s implication that it was somehow her fault the amazing streak of law and order had ended, but she had caught the glimmer of fear beneath the anger in Lorraine Worth’s eyes, and she sighed. Still Creek had been a safe haven for its residents for a long time. Now the ugly reality of a brutal world had intruded. The woman had a right to her anger.

  Elizabeth’s own nerves were frazzled right down to the nub. She wasn’t in the habit of finding dead bodies practically within sight of her own house. The reminder of just how near home she had been made her shiver. She thought of Trace wandering along the road, maybe trying to hitch a ride from wherever he’d gone for the evening, and the nerves in her stomach congealed into a gelid lump.

  “Listen, is there a pay phone around here I could use? I need to call my son.”

  The dispatcher gave her a long look that Elizabeth guessed was intended to communicate the woman’s feelings about divorced mothers or women who stumbled across dead bodies, or both, then tilted her bouffant sharply to the left. Murmuring a thank-you, Elizabeth headed in the direction of the pay phone that hung on the far wall while Lorraine snatched up her receiver and singed some other poor curious fool’s ear.

  The phone at the other end of Elizabeth’s call went unanswered for five rings before the answering machine switched on. She swore under her breath. It wasn’t unusual for Trace to be late. In fact, it was the rule rather than the exception, one of his little ways of telling her he didn’t like their new home, their new life-style, their new codes of conduct. The counselor in Atlanta had told her to give the boy structure; he had failed to mention how to get Trace to accept it.

  Elizabeth left her message and hung up with a sigh. Her sweet little boy had been swallowed up by a sullen youth with troubled eyes and broad, tense shoulders; a defiant, belligerent teenager. But speaking with a defiant, belligerent teenager would have been much preferable to wondering where he was on the night of the first murder in Tyler Count
y in thirty-three years.

  She dug another quarter out of her purse, dropped it in the phone, and dialed again, then leaned a shoulder against the wall and stared across the room at Lorraine Worth. Frighteningly efficient, she sat at her station as alert as a Doberman on guard duty. On the sixth ring a muffled voice answered.

  “Yeah, what? Who? Hmm?”

  “Jolynn, it’s me,” Elizabeth said, lowering her voice to the pitch of conspiracy. “Did I wake you?”

  “Stupid question. What are you, a reporter?”

  “Wake up and listen. There’s been a murder.”

  “A what?”

  “Murder. Somebody killed somebody. I reckon you’ve seen it happen on television once or twice.” She caught Lorraine Worth glaring over at her, her head tilting like a satellite dish tuning in for maximum reception. Elizabeth scowled and turned her back to the woman so she could speak with her editor privately.