A Tangle in the Vines

by Anna Celeste Burke

  Austin must have been listening to the exchange between Zelda and Melody. Or maybe I was still close enough to the illumination from my flashlight on the ground to see me shaking. I was chilled to the bone by more than the weather. Zelda hadn’t fallen for my lame attempt to deny the truth about the man glaring at me. I’d played the role of a psychopath long enough to recognize one and Zelda knew it. Austin was adamant when he spoke up again.

  “Lily, go home, please! Take your diva posse, Judy, and Marlowe with you. Jesse and I will deal with the police. Lock the doors, get cleaned up, and don’t open the door for anyone until I tell you to do it, okay?”

  “Austin’s right. Let’s get out of here.” Judy urged. I hesitated, hoping to hear what Rikki had to say before I left. I hadn’t known her long, but from what I could tell, Austin’s boss was a clever, experienced member of the U.S. Marshals service.

  “Her track record is strong, and she’s got great instincts,” Austin had told me before we were introduced a few months ago. There’s no question in my mind that Rikki is more competent than Dahlia, an officer with the county sheriff’s department. Even if Rikki didn’t take a direct role in investigating the case, she’d make it easier for Austin to help.

  I’m not sure why I’d slowed things down with Austin. I find him insanely attractive, and there’s no one on earth I trust more, professionally-speaking—even with my life. My heart raced as a whiff of smoke reached me, triggering a flashback. The eyes of the man lurking in the brush had bored into me like torches.

  Why is he angry with me? I wondered.

  “Hey, Rikki, it’s Austin. I know it’s late, but I’ve got a situation on my hands.” He was silent for a moment. “Um, well, yes. It involves Lily because the bodies are on her property. Three of them. Lily says one of the bodies may belong to Penney Lincoln, a classmate who went missing twenty years ago.”

  “Rikki’s in the loop about Penney Lincoln’s reappearance, let’s go, okay?” Judy argued. I took a step and then stalled again by leaning over as if clearing something from my shoe. Despite urging me to go, Judy wasn’t moving any faster than I was, and she was doing her best to eavesdrop.

  “What if Rikki has a question for me? We can’t get any wetter than we already are, and this drizzle can wash off some of the crud I wallowed in.” Another enormous bolt of lightning and a deafening clap of thunder propelled Judy into drill sergeant mode.

  “Let’s move! I’d like to stick around and hear more, too. You know what they say about curiosity killing the cat. I’m older than the rest of you so I’ve used up most of my nine lives already. Our handsome lawman will give us the scoop. If your smile doesn’t do it, Lily darling, my cookies will.”

  We nearly ran the quarter of a mile back to the sprawling two-story ranch house that Aunt Lettie had remodeled into a bed and breakfast. Now that my friends had moved in, there weren’t any vacancies. The night air filled my lungs and cleared my head.

  Should I send my friends home to LA until this latest disaster in my life has been cleaned up?

  If he’d killed Penney Lincoln and had eluded capture long enough to kill again, what kind of a sinister mastermind must he be? I’d been so focused on myself, that it hadn’t occurred to me until now that he’d also seen Judy and my diva pals. I love them like family. No way was he going to give us a reason to hang out a vacancy sign.

  3 Slimy Chic

  I squinted as my eyes adjusted to the bright overhead lights in the kitchen. We looked like a bunch of drowned rats. Marlowe was a muddy mess too. Melody took him straight to the sink, and when the water was warm, hosed him down. He snapped at the water squirting from the sprayer and did a tap dance, splashing in the water around his feet.

  “What happened to you?” Julie asked as she suddenly appeared in the doorway that led from the hallway into the kitchen. She scanned us and then zeroed in on me. Our playwright, Julie, had stayed here in the house trying to complete another draft of the play we planned to debut in November.

  Telling her to stay put and focus on rewriting the play was an effort to stay on track for opening night. Julie held Melody’s teacup Yorkie, Darjeeling. The pooch was whining and squirming to get to her “mom” or to her best buddy, Marlowe.

  “She got up close and personal with a dead body,” Zelda snapped.

  “More than one,” Judy added. Then she wagged a finger at me. “You’re stinking up the place.”

  “I’d stink worse if I hadn’t ditched the raincoat after I felt a creepy-crawly thing slithering up my arm.” I shuddered. Melody towel-dried Marlowe and handed him to Julie.

  “You’re not kidding, are you? I need to write some of this into the play—Andra Weis gets her comeuppance!” A staff writer for the soap in which Melody and I both had long-running parts, Julie killed us off—me first and then Melody early this season. Not that it was Julie’s fault. She’d argued against it, but staff writers in Hollywood don’t win many arguments. My writer diva pal was still ticked off about it, which is one reason she’d decided to “call in well” and take a leave.

  “Comeuppance?” I asked not exactly sure what she meant.

  “You bet! Andra never minded blood and guts but bugs and stinky mud, uh, no!”

  “It’s not the bugs you can see that worry me. You need to keep Darjeeling and Marlowe out of here. Who knows what Lily has brought inside with her?”

  As Melody’s brow furrowed, I suddenly felt itchy all over. The first time her career had stalled years ago, Melody had considered becoming a nurse. She quickly discovered she couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Unfortunately, the courses she’d taken had turned her into a germaphobe.

  “Melody’s right. You need to get out of those clothes and shoes,” Judy insisted. “I’d tell you to throw them away, but the police may want them.”

  “Despite my recent stint as a sports reporter, I’ve been at enough crime scenes to recognize the odor. The crime scene investigators wear hazmat suits. You don’t just need to get rid of your clothes, but you’ve got to scrub down, or you’re going to stink like that tomorrow too. Put your clothes and shoes in a plastic bag and seal it tight for the cops—even your underwear.”

  “Eew, you’re right. It’s on my skin,” I said after sniffing my arm. Then I pulled a loose strand of hair under my nose. “In my hair too! What am I going to do?”

  “If there’s hydrogen peroxide in the house, I can whip up something for you to try,” Judy offered. “It’s a home remedy that works great on skunk odor.”

  “I use hydrogen peroxide.” Zelda kicked off her shoes. “I’ll get it. My feet are clean, and dry enough not leave a trail like a slug.”

  “Then what? I’m too big to fit in the sink like Marlowe. Somehow, I’ve got to get to a shower.”

  Judy removed a box of plastic bags from the pantry. The huge ones like we use for yard work. She pulled one from the box and held it up to me. Then she pulled a second one out and searched the pantry until she found a box of gallon-sized freezer bags. After opening the bottom seam on one of the enormous orange lawn bags, she poked holes in it on each side, and handed it to me.

  “Put it on—over your head. The other holes are for your arms. Take off everything else you’re wearing and drop it into this bag.” I was too tired to come up with an alternative, so I did as she asked.

  “You could stuff this and turn me into a pumpkin,” I said when the big orange bag billowed up as I wrestled to take off my disgusting wet clothes. Marlowe and Darjeeling were quiet as mice and took turns cocking their heads as if trying to understand what the crazy human was doing now. I was getting sweaty from the exertion. Once I’d finished by tossing my shoes and socks into the bag, I used the armholes Judy had made.

  “Close the bag tight until we can give it to the police!” Judy ordered as she handed me a rubber band. As soon as I’d secured the bag, Judy offered me a plastic grocery bag. “Stuff your hair up under this and tie the handles together in the front.”

  “Now, for your feet,”
Judy added as soon as I’d done my best to turn the grocery bag into a plastic shower cap. She handed me the smaller plastic bags and rubber bands.

  “Thanks.” I put a foot into each gallon bag and then used the rubber bands to bind them to my ankles.

  “Here it is, Judy,” Zelda said as she bounded back into the kitchen with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. She stopped abruptly with her arm still outstretched. I was standing there, awkwardly, with one hand on my hip, waiting to hear what Judy would tell me to do next. “Chica, you’re workin’ it! That’s gonna be a whole new style thing, I just know it.”

  “What should we call it? Slimy Chic?” I asked. Everyone had a good laugh as I did a fashion model turn. Darjeeling and Marlowe, who must have figured everything was okay, woofed and wagged their tails. Then Carrie spoke up.

  “If the show’s over, I’m heading upstairs. Dibs on the shower in our apartment over the garage.” Barefooted, she’d taken one step when a huge bolt of lightning hit somewhere close. The lights flickered and then went out. In the dark, I could see red and blue police lights flashing through the blinds over the sink.

  “Cue the sax, we’ve just gone from Vaudeville slapstick to film noir,” Melody announced.

  “Crime jazz, baby,” Julie added. “Although the soundtracks to the Chandler and Hammett films didn’t come from the streets of LA, but from Hollywood orchestras.” Julie also teaches writing classes and loves to share what she’s teaching with us—whether we wanted to hear it or not.

  “Shush, Julie. I hear someone running through the rain, don’t you?” Zelda was right. More than one person was running toward us. The flash of lightning that had killed the lights had come from a different direction. Perhaps the storm had passed us, which explained why the footsteps were audible.

  I briefly flashed on the man caught in the glow cast off by flames from the burning tree. In my imagination, the glint of fire in his eyes was more than reflected light. Was he still out there? Was someone running after him? We all shrieked when the dogs barked at what sounded like stormtroopers mounting the steps to the deck. Fists pounded on the door.

  “Is everything all right in there?” That was Dahlia’s voice. The local constabulary had arrived.

  “Lily, it’s me. Let us in,” Austin added.

  “You’d better do it. The Marshal will just kick the door in if you don’t.” I was about to do as Judy suggested when I remembered the way I was dressed. The frigging orange bag almost reached my knees, so nothing was exposed, but Slimy Chic hadn’t become a “thing” yet. “Oh, good grief! He’s going to see you looking lots worse than you do now after you two have been married for a while.”

  “That’s not happening anytime soon,” I groused and stepped away from the doorway as Judy unlocked it.

  “Then it doesn’t matter what you look like, does it?” She removed the chain and swung the door open. A pair of high beam flashlights swept the darkness before coming to rest on me.

  “Trick or treat!” The snarky local police detective remarked as the lights came back on. She stepped inside, and Austin shut the door as he and a crime scene investigator in full hazmat regalia crowded into the kitchen.

  I was tempted to smack the smirk off Dahlia’s face. My alter ego, Andra, wouldn’t have hesitated. All I needed was to get hauled into jail in this getup. Austin’s mouth was hanging open as he stared at me. When I glared at him, he shut his mouth.

  “Wow! We need pictures of you in Slimy Chic with the crime scene guy at your side. Julie, hon, you just gotta work this scene into the play!” Zelda whipped out a phone she had in a pocket. Before I could say a word, the guy in the hazmat suit had stepped next to me, and Zelda clicked away.

  “Uh, no offense, but you’ve got the smell of decomp on you. You really need to be decontaminated.” He raised the mask that hung around his neck, covered his nose, and inched away. More clicks and giggles as both hands flew to my waist, hiking the up the bag.

  “Perfect!” Zelda said. “A little more leg is exactly what the shot needed.”

  “You’d better stop, Zelda. She’s about to blow her top!” Carrie said, scooting closer to the doorway. I tapped my foot and the plastic rustled.

  “So, what pray tell brings you here?” I asked our guests.

  “You mean besides the little matter of a dumpsite left by what’s most likely a serial killer?” the snippy detective asked.

  “If that’s the reason for your visit, why aren’t you and your helper out there collecting evidence before the storm of the century washes it away?”

  “We’ve tented the area and borrowed some sandbags to contain the runoff as well as we can.” Her tone had turned defensive.

  “At a second site, in the preserve area too,” Austin added almost before Dahlia had finished. The photo-happy crime scene investigator held up a gloved finger.

  “To be more precise, the site in the woods is the original dumpsite—at least for the older bodies. Unofficially, I’d say that all but the newest body were moved from the first site to the second site here on this property. By that, I mean the old skulls and bones were stuffed into the drainpipe before the most recent body was deposited in there as well.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “This is merely speculation at this point, but I’d say coyotes!” He paused as if for effect or waiting for us to get it. I had a hunch, but Judy posed a question pulling it all together.

  “They dug up the bones, the rain carried them down the slope, and the killer found himself with a problem on his hands, right?”

  “Excellent! Some version of your scenario would be my guess, yes. I do mean guess, so please don’t quote me on anything I’ve just said. If you do, I’ll say you’re nuts.” He arched one eyebrow as he fixed his gaze on me. I ignored him, itching quite literally, to decontaminate myself. To do that, I had to come up with some way to get Dahlia to postpone taking our statements until tomorrow.

  “The newest is victim can’t have been dead long. It’s obvious she’s a woman, do you have any idea who she is?” I asked.

  “From a name tag or the driver’s license in her hand?” Dahlia snapped. I was immediately sorry I’d asked. Apparently, Marlowe objected to Dahlia’s tone and growled at her.

  “You’d better not tick him off. He’s already taken on one unwelcome intruder tonight.” Melody took Darjeeling from Julie and then rubbed Marlowe’s little head as she said that.

  “Ooh, snap!” Zelda said. That set Dahlia off.

  “We know that! Austin told us some guy grabbed Marlowe. It’s because Marlowe bit him that we’re here. That and the fact that Austin took off when he saw the house go dark.”

  It was Dahlia’s turn to tap the floor with her foot. My inner Andra was crying out to wring Dahlia’s neck when I suddenly felt sorry for Austin. Standing there in a poncho issued to him by the crime scene investigators, he still had mud on his face. He had to be exhausted and yearning for a shower as much as I was.

  That’ll teach you to come over for a Friday night dinner and a movie with the jinx I’ve become! I thought as we made eye contact. It had to be more than plain old bad luck that he was here when all hell broke loose in my life—again.

  “What do you want with Marlowe?” Julie asked, taking a step back and hugging him closer.

  “I’d like to check him over in case there are fibers on him from the contact with the mystery man who may or may not be the killer.”

  “Too late, Hazmat Man!” Melody replied, testily. “I already gave him a bath.”

  “That is unfortunate. Has he had anything to eat or drink?”

  “Water from the sprayer I used when I hosed him down in the sink,” Melody replied.

  “We haven’t had a chance to feed him,” I stammered feeling like a neglectful mother.

  “Marlow had water and food backstage before I brought him outside to do his business. That’s right before he took off after that guy who was standing behind you, Lily.”

  “Standing behind me? When?” C
ould he have been that close without me even knowing it?

  4 Bag Lady

  “When Marlowe started barking, I couldn’t understand why he was upset,” Judy explained. “He got away from me and when lighting hit, I caught a glimpse of a man in a hoodie standing right behind you. By then, Marlowe had already taken off running. When you screamed, I thought the guy had grabbed you or hurt you. That’s what I told Austin until we saw you were okay.”

  “I’m going to be sick!” I said. A flood of recollections crowded in on me—the noises behind me, an imagined touch on the shoulder, and a figure in shadow that vanished. Dahlia reached for the orange trash bag near her.

  “No, no! Not that one!” Several people said at the same time.

  “That bag is for you, Hazmat Man.” Julie smiled at him in a playful way. He didn’t appear to know how to respond.

  “We’ll all be sick if you open that in here,” Carrie added.

  “It’s Ben, please. Why is it you seem so familiar to me? I’m not great with names, but I never forget a face.”

  I rushed to the sink, not waiting for Carrie to say more or for someone to hand me a bag I could use. When I encountered the pungent odor of hydrogen peroxide, I spun around. Heck with heaving, I was going to pass out realizing how close I may have been to becoming another body in the dump. Judy handed me a damp cloth for my face and a cold soft drink.

  “Ben, this no place to practice your pickup lines. Get on with it so we can get out of here before Lily loses her dinner or does something equally theatrical.” Dahlia harrumphed. The room went quiet as I faced Dahlia, squared my shoulders, and dropped my hands to my side like a gunfighter about to draw.

  “Don’t worry, Dahlia, I’ll save the theatrics for opening night. I have a venue in which to do my grandstanding, so I don’t have to act like a drama queen when I’ve barged into someone’s home. Surely, you must have a better place than my kitchen to play bad cop.” Austin squelched a smile before Dahlia could catch it.