Die Like an Eagle

by Donna Andrews

  “Who?” I asked, getting out my notebook. I heard more clicking and key rattling—presumably Festus had done his searching electronically. And then I scribbled rapidly as Festus read out the names.

  I didn’t know any of the Clay County litigants, though I recognized most of the last names. Two Dingles, two Whickers, a Peebles, a Plunkett, and a Smith. Not surprising, since at least two thirds of the Clay County phone book was made up of people named Dingle, Peebles, Plunkett, or Whicker. I jotted the names down anyway. On the Caerphilly side, Will Entwhistle was on the list, along with the Fluglemans, who owned the feed and garden store, one of Randall’s Shiffley cousins, and two Pruitts, Adolph and Herbert.

  “That’s twelve,” I said. “But you left out Mr. Yoder.”

  “He can’t afford to sue Biff,” Festus said. “I’d take on the case myself if I thought there was any point to it, but I have a feeling my fellow attorneys are the only ones who’ll make any money out of suing Biff.”

  “So what is Adolph Pruitt suing Biff about?”

  I heard more clicking and keyboard rattling.

  “Adolph claims Biff owes him three thousand dollars in return for personal services.”

  “What kind of personal services?”

  “Doesn’t say. Though I have heard rumors that Mr. Pruitt assists Biff in his cash flow management.”

  “Are we talking about the same Adolph Pruitt here?” I asked. “I’m not sure the one I’ve met could count to eleven without taking his shoes off.”

  “Cash flow management was actually my diplomatic way of saying that Biff used to send Adolph to encourage reluctant debtors to settle their accounts.”

  “Adolph’s his enforcer?” I said. “Do we know if Adolph’s alibied for the time of Shep’s murder?”

  “We do not, but the odds are the chief has already thought of that,” Festus said. “Although I’m sure if Adolph was responsible for Shep’s death he has already arranged for a suitable alibi. An alibi the chief will know to be fiction, but which will need to be disproved by solid forensic evidence. Let’s hope our cousin Horace can save the day. Look, don’t worry about me and the farm. I’m very well qualified to navigate whatever tangled legal waters may be involved. But you—take care of yourself. Don’t go around accusing any of those litigants of killing Shep. They’re not all nice people.”

  With that we said our good-byes and hung up. I headed home—a good thing I could do the drive on autopilot, because my brain was still turning over what I’d learned from Festus and at the police station.

  I got home just as Mother was organizing the family to go with her to Trinity Episcopal for the eleven o’clock service. Hard to believe it wasn’t even eleven yet—it already felt as if I’d put in a full day’s work. In the interest of setting a good example, I decided to go along with the rest of the family and postpone by much-needed nap until afternoon.

  No doubt the Reverend Robyn appreciated having a somewhat larger congregation than she would have had if baseball had been in session. The boys seemed a great deal more attentive than I would have expected them to be, though about halfway through the proceedings I figured out that they were less interested in the service than in an intense discussion of whether the sanctuary was large enough to play baseball in.

  Damn the weather, anyway. I could already tell that, deprived of the opportunity to pursue their new obsession with baseball, the boys would be cranky and bored. For that matter, Michael wasn’t quite his usual self.

  Inspiration struck. Risking the stern and withering stare Robyn would give me if she caught me using my cell phone during church, I quickly sent out an e-mail to the Eagle families, inviting all the players to an impromptu batting practice in our barn.

  “What a great idea!” Michael exclaimed when I told him about it. “Even if no one else comes, Cordelia and I can work with Josh and Jamie.”

  But to everyone’s delight, all twelve of the Eagles showed up. Chuck and Tory Davis arrived with a carload, and the rest were dropped off by parents who were delighted to find something to amuse their kids on a rainy afternoon.

  Which eventually became merely a cloudy afternoon, thank goodness, meaning that we’d have at least a fighting chance of playing baseball in the morning.

  At around six, we fed the assembled Eagles with leftovers from the various picnics. Then Chuck and Tory and I divided the ten nonresident players between their SUV and the Twinmobile and set off to take them home. It was dusk by the time I dropped off the last player, Sami Patel, made sure he had his bag, and set out for home.

  As I was helping Sami with his baseball bag, I noted a litter of unfamiliar objects left behind. Miguel’s glove. Jake’s left shoe. Someone’s left batting glove.

  If I were a better person, I’d deliver the stray items. Or at least the shoe.

  But I was tired. When I got home, I could send out a group e-mail with an inventory of stray items I’d be bringing to the game tomorrow.

  As I was heading out of town, I noticed a familiar car approaching from the direction of our house. It was Caroline. Then she took a left turn, onto the Clay Swamp Road.

  Odd. What reason could Caroline possibly have for taking the Clay Swamp Road? Especially at this time of night. Most people who wanted to get to Clayville took the Clayville Road, which at least had the virtue of being more or less direct and containing about as much pavement as pothole.

  About the only thing of interest on the Clay Swamp Road was the Brown Construction Company scrapyard.

  I turned to follow.

  Chapter 26

  I followed Caroline as she passed the last few houses on the edge of town. She was definitely heading to Biff’s. Considering how spooky the place was in the daylight, I didn’t much like the idea of anyone going there at this time of night. I pulled out my cell phone and called her.

  No answer.

  And she was going pretty fast. Not a smart thing to do. Between the vast number of deer that lived in the surrounding woods and the vast number of deputies scouring the roads for Biff, following the speed limit seemed advisable. So I did. I soon lost sight of Caroline. But I wasn’t too worried. If she was going where I thought she was going, I could still catch up with her before she got into too much trouble.

  Sure enough, when I came to the end of the long, scantly graveled road through the swamp and pulled into the junk-infested clearing in front of Biff’s front gates, I heard frenzied barking and saw Caroline’s car parked by the fence. Caroline herself was dangling near the top of the fence, gazing at two dogs who appeared to be trying to hurl themselves over the fence at her.

  I stopped my car a little way short of the gate and rolled down my window.

  “Evening,” I said.

  “Don’t just stand there,” she said. “Get me down from here.”

  “And how were you planning to get down if I hadn’t showed up?”

  “I wasn’t planning on getting stuck. Hurry!”

  I carefully maneuvered my car until it was jammed up against the fence directly below Caroline. Not that I couldn’t have climbed the fence under ordinary circumstances, but I didn’t much like my odds of losing a few fingers or toes to the frenzied watchdogs. From the car’s roof I was able to climb up at a level past where the dogs could easily reach. I untangled Caroline’s sweater from a broken end of one of the chain links and then lowered her to the roof of my car. Then I jumped down myself and helped her from the car roof to the ground.

  She stood a few feet from the fence while I moved the car to a safe distance.

  “What a dump,” she exclaimed, when I strolled back to join her.

  “Bette Davis,” I said. “In both Beyond the Forest and Dead Ringer.”

  “I’m serious,” she said. “How are we ever going to find that tracking device in this dump?”

  “If I’d known you were planning on burgling Biff’s business for the tracking device, I’d have told you what a bad idea it was.”

  “Just getting in there’s going to
be murder.”

  “More like suicide,” I said. “I don’t like the look of those dogs.”

  “Now, now,” she said. “Just because they seem to have some pit bull in their ancestry, that doesn’t mean they’re vicious.”

  “I don’t care what their ancestry is,” I said. “I’m talking about their behavior. I wouldn’t climb into a yard with a cocker spaniel who was acting like that.”

  Just to demonstrate, I reached out and rattled the fence a little, pulling my hand back quickly as both dogs hurled themselves at the spot where my fingers had been.

  “So how did you get in there before?”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “I looked at the outside and realized it was pretty foolish to try. And that was before seeing the dogs in action.”

  “Some detective you are.”

  “What’s so all-fired urgent all of a sudden about getting the tracking device back?” I asked.

  “I figured it wasn’t important when all it did was confirm his alibi for Shep’s murder,” Caroline said. “But when I heard about the hit-and-run I got them to run the data from the tracker for that time period. He was there.”

  “At the scene of Callie’s accident?”

  “Yes,” Caroline said. “I went out there with another tracking device to be sure. He stopped right where her accident was—some accident!—stayed twenty minutes, then came back here. We need to get that device.”

  “What we need to do is tell the chief about the device,” I said. “If we go in and find it, we might just destroy any value it has as evidence. It would be our word against his that he ever had it. Make the call. Get Festus involved.”

  She continued staring at Biff’s ramshackle building for what seemed like a couple of hours. Finally she sighed and looked down at her shoes.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll call Festus when I get home.”

  “Let’s call him now.”

  She grimaced, but she didn’t protest when I took out my phone, dialed Festus, and put it on speaker.

  “Meg?” Festus answered. “Something wrong?”

  “Caroline Willner’s ready to tell the chief about the tracking devices she planted on Biff,” I said. “Can you arrange to have that happen as soon as possible?”

  “I’ll make the call now,” he said. “Have her plan to meet me at the police station at eight a.m. tomorrow. If the chief wants to talk tonight, I’ll call her.”

  “That work for you?” I said to Caroline.

  She rolled her eyes and nodded.

  “Meg?” Festus sounded impatient.

  “She’s nodding,” I said. “She’ll be there.”

  And so would I, to make sure she didn’t weasel out. I wished Festus a good night and signed off. Caroline was still scowling at Biff’s fence.

  “Go home and get some rest,” I said.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Or if you’re not in the mood to sleep, talk to the zoo security people and have them start gathering up all the data on where Biff’s been over the last few days.”

  “Might as well,” she said. “No sense standing around here all night.” She stomped back to her car, got in, and took off, going way too fast for the rugged, potholed road.

  I took a long look around. The place was even creepier by night. I couldn’t get over the notion that eyes were watching me. Eyes other than the dogs’. I went back to my car and got in, calmly and deliberately, so at least any hidden human eyes wouldn’t know how spooked I was.

  And I breathed a sigh of relief when I got back to the Clay Swamp Road.

  I was almost back at the main road to our house when Michael called.

  “Are you still delivering Eagles?” he asked.

  “I finished that about half an hour ago,” I said. “I stopped to help Caroline with something. Fill you in when I get there.”

  “See you soon then.”

  “Soon,” I echoed. “I just have one more stop on the way.”

  “Be careful,” he said. “They’re still looking for Biff.”

  “I will be.”

  I didn’t tell Michael where my planned stop was because I was afraid he’d try to talk me out of dropping by the ball field, even though I had no intention of getting out of the car unless there was someone else nearby. Someone trustworthy. And preferably several trustworthy someones. I wasn’t that keen myself on visiting the field, but as the new acting league president, I needed to know how close it was to being ready for tomorrow morning’s games. And however much we might associate the ball field with Biff, given all the activity that had been going on there this afternoon and evening, wasn’t it really the last place in the county he’d be? Odds were he was miles away by now. So however creeped out I was at going to the ball field by night, I wanted to get over the feeling. It wasn’t Biff’s field, dammit—it was our field. Our field, for which I was responsible. Was I going to let Biff stand between me and my responsibility?

  Chill, I told myself. The Shiffleys were probably still there in force. If they weren’t, I could fulfill my responsibilities from the safety of my car.

  And as I approached the field, it looked as if I’d be staying in the car. I should have seen the glow of the big work lights about the time I turned off the main road, but the skies were inky black. I pulled into the freshly graveled lot and parked right behind home plate, where I could look out over the field.

  The completely and utterly dark field. With my headlights on, I couldn’t see a thing for the glare reflected back by the fog and mists, and with the headlights out it was like sticking a pillowcase over my head.

  “Damn Biff, anyway,” I muttered. At any other time I wouldn’t have felt the least bit nervous about getting out of my car to inspect the field. But until they caught Biff … No.

  Maybe if I let my eyes adjust for a minute or two I could see something from here. I fished under the seat, pulled out my binoculars, and trained them on the field. They didn’t help much. Instead of utter darkness I saw a few blurry, utterly dark shapes against the almost-as-dark background.

  “I give up,” I muttered.

  I pulled out my cell phone and called Randall.

  “There’s no one here at the field,” I said. “Is everything ready for tomorrow?”

  “As ready as we can get it,” Randall said. “We’ve gone over the whole field with wet/dry vacs and used a ton of that infield drying compound. Now we just need to keep our fingers crossed that we don’t get any more rain. The boys and I will be going out there in the morning to run the wet/dry vacs again and pile on more drying compound if it’s needed, but I don’t think there’s anything more we can do tonight. How does it look to you?”

  “It looks dark,” I said. “I could probably figure out how to turn on those portable lights to get a better look, but that would require getting out of the car and wandering around by myself in the dark. And quite apart from the fact that we’ve had enough rain to turn any really low-lying places into quicksand, there’s still a murderer on the loose.”

  “A murderer who’s looking a whole lot more like Biff every minute,” Randall said. “Because even if he hired someone to do the actual deed, which sounds more and more plausible, that still makes him a murderer. Did you hear that after reading those files Mrs. Brown brought in the chief put out a statewide BOLO on Biff?”

  “Then if they haven’t found him by now it probably means Biff’s long gone from here,” I said. “But just in case he isn’t, instead of stumbling around a pitch-black baseball field at well past midnight I’m going to go home to get some sleep.”

  “Probably wise,” Randall said. “Even if Biff’s long gone, the chief’s still keeping an eye on the seventy jillion people who had it in for Biff and might have offed Shep by mistake. They’re all still in town. Don’t worry about the field. It’ll be as perfect as we can make it. I’ll be there at five in the morning to make sure of that.”

  “A whole five hours from now,” I said. “My apologies for waking you.”

&n
bsp; “Wasn’t sleeping anyway,” he said. “Been lying in bed listening to the police band radio, hoping to hear that they’ve caught Biff. Unfortunately it’s been a quiet night. See you in the a.m.”

  “Later in the a.m.,” I added, and we both chuckled before signing off.

  I put away my binoculars and started the car. But as I was backing out of my parking space my headlights fell on something—the Brown porta-potty, standing in solitary splendor at the far end of the field, a location that would have been massively inconvenient if anyone had actually wanted to use it. And the words Brown stinks! were still scrawled across the door, in slightly luminescent paint. If I were Biff, I would certainly have cleaned that off before hauling the new porta-potty over. And—

  Wait a minute. The porta-potty with Brown stinks! scrawled on it was the one that had been here at practice Thursday night. And so it should have been the one in which I found Shep’s body Friday morning—the one that was now gracing the locked lot at the police station. Unless someone had defaced more than one of Biff’s porta-potties in an identical fashion.

  I drove over as close as I could to the porta-potty and turned the car off, leaving the headlights on and pointed at the porta-potty. I pulled out my phone, turned it on, and began flipping through the photos I’d taken Thursday night and Friday morning. Surely some of them would show the porta-potty, if only in the background. Then again, I’d probably been doing my best to take my shots against pretty backgrounds, like the woods that surrounded the field. Aha! Here was one from Thursday evening of Josh, Jamie, and Adam with their arms around each other—and the porta-potty in the background. I used the phone’s zoom feature and confirmed that the words Brown stinks! were clearly visible on the side. But what about Friday morning? I flipped on through my photos. Of course, Horace would have taken dozens of photos of the porta-potty from every conceivable angle, so what I really should do was let the chief know about this. But it would be nice to have confirmation that I wasn’t imagining things—after all, it was possible that someone with a grudge against Biff went around scrawling graffiti on all his porta-potties, and maybe even his trucks and tractors to boot. Although I didn’t remember seeing any similar graffiti at his scrapyard. And it was hard to imagine that the unknown graffiti artist always made that little extra line at the top of the second S, as if he’d started out to write “stinkz” and then changed his mind and opted for the more conventional spelling. And—aha! My picture of Dad and Horace squatting in front of the porta-potty door with grave expressions on their faces. Enough of the porta-potty’s side was visible to show that it was bare of graffiti.