Sidebar: my other dog, the late Bluto, was the greediest animal I ever knew. Once, while Mother was away, he got up on a chair and ate my entire pancake and sausage breakfast when I went to answer the phone … and he’d already had his own dog food! That made me mad. And I wondered just how much Bluto would eat … if given the opportunity. So I took a fifteen-pound turkey out of the fridge, cooked it, placed it on the kitchen floor, and left the house to go play with some friends. Well, when Mother came home late that afternoon, she found Bluto passed out over the stripped-clean turkey carcass. I was in so much trouble because (1) the vet had to pump the dog’s stomach, and (2) that turkey was supposed to be for our Thanksgiving dinner!
Bluto never hankered after turkey much, after that.
As we moved on to the thawed Girl Scout cookies, Joe asked, “So what’s this covert meeting about?”
I said, “Well … I could use some information.”
His eyes narrowed; with the one eye too high, it gave him a vaguely demented look. “Reconnaissance?”
“Call it … research.”
The eyes tensed. “Explain.”
I shifted to get a better look at him, trying to convey a certain seriousness without setting him off. “Way I see it, Joe, when you hang at the park, you always try to kinda fly in under the radar …”
“Affirmative.”
“… and are in a position to hear and see things.”
He nodded curtly.
“And I suppose you know about Clint Carson’s death.”
“I’ve heard the scuttlebutt, affirmative.”
Encouraged, I pressed him. “Ever see him out here with any of the drug crowd? Crackheads, dopers, whoever?”
He thought for a moment. “Negative,” he said. But then he leaned forward and quietly said, “Not that a lot of trafficking hasn’t gone on, in and out of this place.”
“Local?”
This time he gave me three whole nods. “And as far away as Colorado.”
Remembering the Colorado license plate Mother had heard about from her bartender friend at the hardware store, I chewed thoughtfully on a cookie.
Joe said, “Look—if it’s drug dealing you’re ‘researching …’”
“Yes?”
“I did witness something odd out here one night.”
I waited for the shoe to drop.
“You know that cop that got kicked off the force?”
Mia.
What a clunk that shoe made.…
Swallowing, I bobbed my head. “We were friends as little kids.”
“Well, the grown-up version was up top with another cop. They sat in an unmarked car for a long time, having a real confab. Then she got out and drove off in her own vehicle.”
Shaking my head, I asked, “What did you make of that?”
Joe shrugged. “I thought something was going down—and I don’t mean sexually.”
“Did you know who the other policeman was?”
“Negative. He never got out of the car. All I saw was the blue uniform.”
“So … it could have even been another woman?”
“No. That wasn’t my impression. I can differentiate the sexes with some ease.”
“Good to hear.… You wouldn’t happen to know Brian Lawson?”
“Yes. A good man.”
“Could … could it have been him, meeting with Mia?”
“Affirmative.”
My eyes popped. “You mean it was Lawson?”
“No. Affirmative it could have been Lawson.”
“Oh.”
Sushi was getting restless, and I was afraid she might take a tumble off the rock, so I began to pack up the trash.
As I did, I asked him, “How come you hang around out at the Den so much, Joe?”
“Surely you jest?”
I squinted at him sideways. “Uh, no.…”
He squinted back. “Because of the terrorists, of course.”
My eyebrows headed north. “Here? In Wild Cat Den?”
He looked at me as if I had lost my mind. “Of course! Don’t you see?”
“Uh, no.…”
Very quietly, leaning close, he said, “It’s the perfect place. No one would ever expect them to strike here.”
I said, “Uh, gee. Never thought of it like that.”
Joe smiled, filled his scrawny chest with air. “That’s why you’re lucky you’ve got me, watching your back.”
Then he gave me a loose salute for good-bye and headed back toward the Punch Bowl.
I had started the downward trek with Sushi and basket when he called out after me, “Hey, Brandy! Heads-up! I spotted a cougar this morning!”
Oh dear. If Joe was seeing cougars now, how could I believe anything else he’d seen?
I called back with my thanks, and headed on down.
Then I was alone on the trail, every sensible human being in the Wild Cat Den vicinity having had the sense to get out of the heat and humidity.
I had passed Fat Man’s Squeeze and was approaching Steamboat Rock, when an unmistakable scream came from close by, making me all but jump out of my skin.
Not a human scream, an animal one—a wildcat!
And I’m not kidding, this time.
I tossed the basket, clutched Sushi to my pounding chest, and raced down the path as fast as I could. Nearing the bottom, I stumbled over a tree root snaked across the path, skinning both knees, but managed to hang on to Soosh.
Finally I burst into the clearing and looked over my shoulder expecting to see a mountain lion leaping out.…
But there was nothing.
I had the sudden quick image of Joe sitting up on a rock, pushing a button on a boom box to play a prerecorded wildcat screech, grinning crazily to himself. Wouldn’t put it past him … a great terrorist deterrent, wildcats.…
A few lingering tourists, packing up their belongings, stared at the frazzled young woman with disarrayed hair, frightened expression, and skinned knees, clutching a dog with even wilder eyes, as she walked on wobbly legs toward her car.
No way was I going to go back for that basket!
“Don’t go up there,” I told them, and booked.
After we were locked safely in the Taurus, I said to Sushi, “And how did you like our little outing?” My heart was beating like a disco bass line.
Even Soosh looked a little traumatized.
Driving back on the River Road, I noticed that the police tape across the entrance to Carson’s place had been removed.
What the heck? I thought, and pulled in, cruising down the one-way lane, and came to a stop in front of the farmhouse.
I got out and stood near the car, appraising the place. Funny how everything seemed different in the daylight—the tan clapboard with its gingerbread accents looked homey and inviting … not like the Amityville-like house of the night I’d come out here. The barn, too, with its funky old rooster weather vane, appeared nothing more than a facility for farm equipment storage, rather than a good place to bury bodies.
I swiveled at the sound of another car coming down the lane, tires snapping tiny twigs. A silver sedan pulled into view, and I wondered who else was anxious to look around the murdered man’s digs.
The car came to a stop behind mine, and the woman behind the wheel eyed me as suspiciously as I did her.
Could she be the mysterious lady Ashley saw with Carson at the Haven Motel? Assuming the motel woman wasn’t my sister Peggy Sue, of course.…
She climbed out. Middle-aged, dressed in a brown linen suit, sporting short helmet-hair, she asked in a coolly professional manner, “Can I help you?”
It was as if I’d just entered a dress shop and the manager had deemed me too dowdy to trade there.
“Just having a look around,” I said pleasantly.
Her demeanor suddenly became more friendly. “Oh! Then you’re interested in the place?”
I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I said, “Maybe.”
She stuck out a slender, manicured h
and. “I’m Sue Roth,” she said. “My company is handling this property.”
Now I knew what she meant. At least she didn’t consider me too dowdy to be a customer.
“Would you like me to show you around?” she asked.
Recalling some recent advice given me by a fortune cookie—Confucius say: Better to be lucky than smart—I smiled and said, “Very much—could we start with the barn?”
“The barn?” The Realtor was looking at me curiously, even skeptically. “Most women want to see the kitchen right off.”
“That’ll be my second stop! But that barn looks perfect for my hobby.”
“Hobby?”
“Refinishing furniture.”
She brightened again. “Oh! Are you an antique dealer, too?” Instantly her face fell. “Oh … sorry. That was tactless.”
Shrugging, I said, “Doesn’t bother me that someone died here.”
Sue let some air out, in obvious relief; then she rolled her eyes. “Good … good. Because some buyers, well, find that a little off-putting, about a property—especially if there was … foul play.”
Which explained why slick Sue hadn’t turned her nose up at a sweaty girl with skinned knees, a beat-up jalopy, and a shih-tzu with white eyeballs. A prospect was a prospect.…
I retrieved Sushi from the car, then followed the crisply professional Realtor to the barn, where she used a jangling key chain to unlock the padlock on the double doors, and together we swung them creakingly open.
I don’t know what I expected to see … my beloved furniture stacked in a corner, just waiting for me, maybe?
But, of course, the barn was empty. Zip, zilch, zally, zero … no furniture, and for that matter, nary a backhoe, salt lick, or bail of hay—only floating dust motes.
I turned to Sue. “What happened to everything in here?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Oh—you mean all that furniture that was stacked to the ceiling?”
I nodded.
“Why, the police took it, naturally.”
“Why would the police ‘naturally’ do that?”
Sue shrugged, not terribly interested—how did this help her make a sale?
“All I know,” she said, mildly annoyed, “is that everything in the barn, and everything in the house? Was confiscated. Why, I don’t know. Maybe you should go talk to the police, if it’s the furniture you’re after. Do you care to have a look at that kitchen, or not?”
A Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip
To revarnish or not to revarnish, that is the question. You might be stripping away value along with the old coat. Consult an expert before proceeding … after which, you can say good-bye to your thirty-five-dollar manicure.
Chapter Seven
Tools Rush In
If nothing else, traffic court serves as a reminder that the average midwesterner is still in abject fear of the law’s long arm. The anxiety in the air was palpable—you could almost hear the knees knocking.
I sat with Mother and Mr. Ekhardt in a secondary courtroom of the Serenity Courthouse; the much larger trial room—reserved for murders and mayhem, where Mr. Ekhardt had won many a high-profile case—was located on the top floor. In my opinion, traffic court should have been moved up to those spacious digs, considering how all of us were stuffed into these pews like ancient frat boys cramming phone booths—granted, horizontal ones, but we’d have set a campus record, if this had been a campus.
Every walk of life was represented this morning: young, old, rich, poor, white, black, Asian, Hispanic … all equal in the eyes of the law (that’s the story), all equal in their sweat-inducing fear (no question), waiting for the gavel of fate (nobody here was thinking “justice”) to fall.
I was wearing a sleeveless retro floral-print dress by Too Cool and Brandy-affordable lime rubber Juicy Couture thongs. Mr. Ekhardt looked the elder statesman in his navy pin-striped suit, crisp white shirt, and red-patterned tie with elegant pearl stickpin.
But the getup Mother had chosen to don was as mysterious as what goes on in the books her mystery reading group tackles. She might have been an old frontier schoolmarm in the shapeless, austere gray skirt and jacket, high-necked blouse, and cameo-brooch, her thick, wavy, silver hair pulled back in a severe bun. Maybe she wanted to appear forthright and upstanding before the judge.
Hey, it worked for Lizzie Borden.
This much I knew about Mother, however: she had a reason for everything … even if it wasn’t always clear, or logical, or even sane. But there would always be a reason. …
I had the feeling Mother felt very much at home here. This was, after all, a theater of sorts, the players talking among themselves, sotto voce, defendants going over their alibis, family members expressing concern, lawyers explaining procedure … the side door next to the judge’s bench opened and an official-looking woman in a brown uniform entered.
She may have been attractive once, but years of unpleasantness—from her job, initially, from herself, later on—had taken a toll, etching permanent scowl lines on her spade-shaped face.
The official woman planted herself next to the American flag and barked,” Quiet!”
Pin-drop silence followed as she slowly scanned the room like the Alien trying to sense potential lunch in a dark spaceship. That she was chewing gum in a cow/cud manner took the edge off for me, but it was pretty chilling nonetheless.
Finally she said, in a wholly unnecessarily nasty way, “This is a courtroom and deserves respect!”
Then from the pack an anonymous voice (it sounded a lot like mine) said, “Then why are you chewing gum?”
“Who said that?” the court clerk snapped.
Everyone looked around, including me. Frowning, my expression seemed to say, “Yeah—yeah, who said that? How rude!”
“One more outburst,” the woman threatened, “and I’m going to clear the courtroom.”
And then what? We’d have to come back another day? As if a reprieve wouldn’t be welcomed, even for twenty-four hours.
Besides, did she really have the authority to do that? I sure didn’t think so.
But the voice that sounded strangely like my own seemed to have nothing to say now—in fact, everyone fell into submission, reinforcing the gum-chewing bailiff’s self-deluded power. (With a certain satisfaction, though, I noticed the witch ditching her gum in a wastebasket when she thought nobody was looking.)
After what seemed like forever, a male judge in a flowing black robe came through the side door—our little theater at last had a star (besides Mother). His hair was thin on top, long strands unsuccessful in covering a bald spot, the black bags under his eyes packed for a badly needed vacation.
The judge took his dignified if weary position behind the raised desk and called court to order with a bang of the gavel that, even though we saw it coming, made us all jump.
We sat through several hearings, waiting for Mother’s turn.
A father and mother, dressed like they had money, came before the bench with their teenage son, a round-faced boy with long hair that had been slicked back for the occasion; the kid seemed incredibly uncomfortable in a suit and tie. Their well-dressed attorney lawyer pled not guilty to the charge that the boy drove sixty miles an hour on a downtown street, the lawyer’s confidence at odds with the kid who was staring at the floor, as if waiting for the blade to fall. They were dismissed pending a trial date.
A young black man in a black T-shirt and jeans, with no lawyer, admitted to various parking violations and took his lumps: two hundred dollars and court costs.
A middle-aged woman with overbleached hair got fined for parking in a handicapped place without displaying the necessary tag. She claimed a recent injury had inspired her to use the spot. Even though she sort of limped on her way out, it looked faked, and she won no sympathy and a couple of “boos.”
The courtroom was an oven baking the defendants and their retinue, the old-time ceiling fans ineffective in circulating what paltry air a single rattling window air conditioner was
able to pump out. Maybe the town did need a new courthouse … and maybe the gum-chewing witch had reason to be crabby.
Slender, white-haired, handsome Mr. Ekhardt had fallen asleep, head bowed, snoring ever so softly. But when Mother’s name was called, he suddenly snorted awake, eyes clear, with some of the old fire that had gotten more than one husband killer off scot-free (ironically, one of those husbands had been named “Scott”).
Earlier, at his office, Mr. Ekhardt had told us just how Mother’s hearing was to go, a director laying out the script for his star actress, detailing her disappointingly small and unchallenging role:
Judge (to Mother): And how do you plead to the charge of operating a motor vehicle with a suspended license?
Mr. Ekhardt (speaking for Mother, who was instructed to say nothing): Your honor, my client pleads not guilty.
Judge: Then trial will be set for … (consults calendar, names date).
Gavel.
Curtain.
No applause.
Mr. Ekhardt had explained that there would be no trial (the same as with the sixty-mile-per-hour boy above), for behind closed doors he would cut a deal with the district attorney that would be more lenient than had Mother pled guilty.
Why?
Because no court wants to waste the taxpayers’ money on a minor traffic case.
But, naturally, Mother double-crossed us.
“Your Honor,” she said, chin up, head high, a noble frontierswoman facing a hanging judge, “I … am … guilty.”
Her voice could have reached the last row of the last balcony in any Broadway theater; in this cubicle, it rang and echoed and made everyone (but Mother) shut their eyes. In my case, I considered not opening them again.
She was rattling on, in her best Katharine Hepburn–esque manner: “How can I say that I am not? Why, that would be dishonest … and honesty means everything to me.”
Half of little Brandy wanted to run away, but the other half was glued to her seat, captivated—the woman could deliver a line.
Mr. Ekhardt, for his part, sighed and stood by dutifully, long since resigned to Mother’s theatrics. Truth be told, he probably expected this, and had only been going through the motions when he explained a script that he’d known would go out the window.
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