Stuck with a Stiff

by Scott, D. D.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  While staring out the truck’s passenger window at nothing but snow drift after snow drift, I let my mind wander about all kinds of deadly scenarios with that scary fence post driver.

  By the time I came to, I noticed we’d driven past the lane to Nicky’s farm.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just up the road a bit. Access to our back pasture is through my aunt’s property.”

  Judging by his bemused expression, I knew he knew what I was thinking.

  “Do you mean…”

  He chuckled.

  But I didn’t.

  “You’re crazy cat lady aunt?”

  “Yep,” he said with a way too cocky nod.

  “How many cats does she actually have?” I asked.

  Not as if it mattered. Whether there was one or one hundred and one, I was allergic to every damn one of them.

  “Not really all that many. Fewer than twenty, I think.”

  Twenty?! He’d made it sound like tons more than that during his obviously embellished stories about his crazy aunt. Not like twenty couldn’t make me dependent on my inhaler.

  “Well, that still sounds like twenty too many to me.”

  “They’re mostly outdoor cats. They’re great for controlling mice. The downside is, they also wreak havoc on the local songbird population.”

  Terrific. We were dealing with an out of control cow and a stiff, and Nicky was concerned about songbirds. Why did that not surprise me?

  Okay. Actually, I guess it did. For a guy who writes the best thrillers I’ve ever read, I was beginning to see a softer side to him I would have bet a thousand cats didn’t exist.

  We turned into yet another drive and started up a long curving lane with an even steeper incline than the one at Nicky’s farm. As we crested the hill, I craned my neck back to the left to get a good look at his crazy aunt’s place.

  Standing on her front porch in a multicolored pastel quilted housecoat, a Spartan plaid hunter’s cap and pink knee-high rubber boots was Nicky’s one-of-a-kind, best-left-to-legends Aunt Liza.

  She was waving vigorously while her strawberry blonde locks were whipped in all directions by the brisk Winter winds, making Medusa’s unruly do appear well-coiffed.

  The broom clutched in her other hand indicated she’d been sweeping the snow off her porch, but my imagination stretched its muscles and wondered if she might not be a for-real witch ready to take flight.

  To share a secret, I’ve always wanted to meet and get to know a real witch. But hopefully one, who, by some bizarre chance, didn’t have cats.

  As I turned my attention back in the direction we were headed, I waved at Aunt Liza, hoping my awe and intrigue weren’t too obvious.

  Over the years we’d worked together, Nicky had shared a few stories about his family. The most colorful inevitably involved the very aunt I was witnessing in the flesh for the first time.

  Too bad we had bad cows and a dead guy to deal with. I’d really like to visit with her.

  Nicky stopped the truck, left the door open so I could continue to freeze my ass off and hopped out to open the gate to the pasture. As he fumbled with the frozen chain, I could see Liza gesticulating and hollering at us, but over the sound of the truck’s engine, all I caught was indecipherable animated gibberish.

  Nicky walked back to the truck shrugging his shoulders and gave her the “call me” gesture before climbing back in.

  We drove through the pasture and out into the back field in silence. Me lost in my meeting a witch fantasy, and him…I had no idea what he was thinking. I probably didn’t want to know.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The field had been planted with corn the previous spring and was now a vast expanse of snow broken by row upon row of chopped-off corn stalks.

  Taken out of context, one could have confused the scene with a wacky dream landscape of irregular toothpicks sticking out of a sea of marshmallow creme.

  Wow. Not sure where that analogy came from.

  One would think I could take off my writer’s cap once in awhile, but no. That’s me, always subconsciously looking for a metaphor, even when I was at a loss to understand how I’d become the prime suspect in a murder investigation.

  But back to Beulah 101…

  As we bounced across the frozen snow-covered ground, I noticed most of the cows were gathered a couple hundred yards ahead to our left in the northeast corner of the field.

  They stood at the horizon where the snow covering the field met the dark bark of naked maples and walnuts of the woods beyond, making the cows a cluster of black specks almost invisible against the dark background.

  Driving through such a pale and silent ghostland with nothing to distract my mind had been almost too much to bear. When we’d had police questions to answer, it had been easier to deal with the morning’s events. The stoic winter silence was getting to me.

  I nudged Sam, who was still unusually quiet, and pointed towards the herd.

  After a few seconds, recognition and the hint of a smile replaced her previous look of concern. That put me a little more at ease. At least this city girl knew what cows looked like.

  “How many cows do you have again?” She asked.

  “Around fifty.”

  “Cows are better than cats.”

  “You say that now,” I answered, hoping she wasn’t allergic to cows too, but wishing I had been.

  I pulled to a stop a few yards from the southeast corner of the field and grabbed my binoculars from the back seat. Stepping down from the truck, I glanced to the north. Without the naked eye, I could barely make out the cluster of cows that made up the majority of the herd.

  Stepping up into the bed of the truck, I scanned Donovan’s field to the south, adjusting the binoculars to focus on the far fence line.

  There they were.

  I zoomed in on the leader of the pack, and there was all the conformation I needed. The bright yellow ear tag with only the letter B.

  “You bitch.”

  Dad had been right. I did want to sell her. And always would.

  I had no idea if Dad believed in an afterlife because I avoided such topics like the plague. But I was starting to think the only reason he’d asked me to keep Beulah was because he thought he’d be able sit back, wherever he was, watch her work her magic…and chuckle.

  You’d have to have known my dad. He’d forever been the merry prankster. And I had a feeling, thanks to Beulah, he’d always have the last laugh.

  But those of us stuck with her sure weren’t laughing.

  To keep my sanity, I decided to approach her latest shenanigans as a father-son bonding experience.

  Silly as it sounds, I always get a strange satisfaction out of matching wits with the same bovine troublemaker that bedeviled my father for so many years.

  My revelry was broken, however, by the sound of Sam screaming.

  “What is it?” I asked, having no clue what would have her in such a snit.

  But instead of an answer, all I got was more screaming.

  I leaned down and looked through the back window of the truck. Her arm was outstretched, her index finger pointing toward the truck’s open driver’s door out into the field.

  My gaze followed her animated movements to see what it was that was so terrifying

  It suddenly occurred to me that I might know the source of her distress without even looking. Sure enough, I was right.

  Galloping toward us over the snowy expanse was a deer-sized, wolf-like creature, his wiry fur billowing in the wind as he closed in on us.

  Before I could react, the beast had bounded through the open door into the cab.

  Startled, I hopped down from the bed of the truck and walked around to assess the damage.

  Samantha’s screams had already been replaced by giggles interspersed with curses. She was on the receiving end of a serious tongue bath.

  Grendel, my very own monster, was apparently thrilled to be sharing the cab of my t
ruck with Sam. And, though he wasn’t a descendant of the mythical creature from Beowulf, my overly-friendly Irish Wolfhound could have easily been mistaken for one.

  For most dogs, being affectionate is not a problem for their owners and even a bonus. However, when Grendel stands on his hind legs with his front paws on my shoulders, he stands 6’2”. And, due to his size and frightening storybook appearance, he tends to strike fear into the hearts of folks meeting him for the first time, especially when they see him galloping across an open field in their direction.

  “Dammit, Nicky! Get this thing off me!”

  “Oh, come on now, Sam. He’s just trying to give you a friendly country greeting. The least you could do is say hi and give him a little scratch behind the ears.”

  “I’m not kidding. Get him off me now!”

  “Well, alright then. C’mon, boy,” I said as I reached in and took hold of his collar. “Don’t let her hurt your feelings. She’s from New York. Almost everyone’s bitchy there.”

  Sam was trying to wipe the slobber from her face with the sleeve of her Carhart coat. I’m not gonna lie. It was hilarious.

  Sam was no country bumpkin. And damn, when she was pissed, she was a hoot.

  “Good boy, Grendel. Good good boy,” I said, giving him a hearty scratch behind the ears.

  Totally expecting, then receiving one of Sam’s lethal stares, I kept right on givin’ Grendel some love.

  This was way too much fun.

  “Obviously, your dog doesn’t have any manners either,” she said, swiping away the last bit of Grendel’s drool. “You both need obedience school.”

  “People, and dogs too, for that matter, don’t need obedience, they need love,” I said, then realized I had no fucking clue where that had come from.

  Sam looked just as surprised by my response as I was.

  I cleared my throat and turned my attention back to Grendel.

  “Whatever,” I said, preferring not to explain that slippery slope of a Freudian slip. “We’ve got a Beulah-sized mess to clean-up, so we best get ‘er done then get back to the business of solving murders.”

  “Too bad they’re no longer murders on just our manuscript pages,” Sam said, picking at a small hole in one of her gloves.

  “Touche,” I said, motioning for Grendel to jump into the back seat. We needed get on to the business of handling Beulah’s handiwork.

  “Are you kidding? That thing has to ride in here with us?!”

  “C’mon, Allwitch. Have a heart. Surely, you got one in there somewhere. It’s cold outside.”

  Grendel gave her another big ‘ole sloppy kiss before we headed toward bad ass Beulah.

  CHAPTER TEN

  During Fence Mending 101, thinking it best for all involved, both human and bovine, I stayed in the truck with Grendel. I just wasn’t cut out for this stuff.

  Despite the fact I’d freeze my ass off even more, I rolled down the truck window so I could hear what was going on.

  “Howdy, neighbor. I’ll walk out and lure ‘em in with this feed, then we can work on getting the fence squared away,” Don said.

  Even though I thought I’d heard Nicky ask his neighbor not to bother meeting us, Don came walking out of the woods carrying a bucket of corn and apparently was ready to lead this operation.

  Nicky nodded and began grabbing fence posts and buckets of tools out of the bed of the truck.

  Before he was even able to get started on the fence repairs, Don was back…with Beulah and her entourage sauntering along close behind.

  A bucket of corn must be their elixir, I thought. Wish it were that simple to coax Nicky to get some words on the page.

  Nearing the truck, and waaay too near me, Beulah turned her massive head and gave me what I can only describe as a completely condescending look.

  I don’t know why she’d have a beef with me. I didn’t have anything to do with her being tricked back over to the right side of the fence.

  As she passed by my window, she gave her tail a casual flick, barely missing my face.

  Well, that was rather rude.

  I’d assumed Nicky had been exaggerating with his description of this wily bovine, but Beulah was clearly no ordinary cow.

  I must say, though, I liked her attitude.

  While Nicky and Don dealt with bad ass Beulah and the section of fence she’d annihilated, I needed to get down to business and toss around some major attitude of my own.

  And by that, I mean I needed to take charge of this murder investigation.

  I’d been a crime thriller editor for going on fifteen years, and I knew my way around, as well as right through the middle of, these investigations. There was a damn good reason I got paid the big bucks. I knew my stuff.

  My job as an editor is to make the story as real as real can sound on the page, and that means I’ve spent quality time and done due diligence where homicide investigations are concerned.

  Let’s just say that whoever killed Jack Collins had more to worry about than Nicky’s small town Sheriff Deputies.

  He…or she…was gonna have to deal with me and my people.

  And the perp would be mighty smart to watch his or her ass…’cause I, and perhaps my rather lethal friends, were comin’ for ‘em.

  There were very real advantages to being related to the mob.

  I didn’t want to have to use those connections, but I certainly would if I had to.

  Nicky would shit if I did, but hopefully I wouldn’t have to tell him about that part of my family history.

  No one was gonna frame Nicky Blane for this murder.

  Now then…

  I just had to figure out a way to make good on that promise.

  I may not have known my entire strategy, but I sure as hell knew where to start. And that was with Bitchy Betty, Nicky’s Publicist From Hell.

  Betty Sneed was just a bitch.

  People may think I have a rather hard edge at times, but this girl…oh yeah, she made me look like Glinda the Good Witch.

  Hell, she made Beulah and me combined look like total sweethearts.

  Grendel let out a large whimper then laid his humongous head across my lap.

  See? Even the dog already had Betty figured out. With only my brain waves focused on her supreme nastiness, he could probably sense her darkness closing in. And all I’d done so far was dial the bitch’s cell number.

  While I waited for the Queen of No Heart to answer - and yes, it would be a bit because she never answered till you started to leave a message…another one of her twisted psycho games - I watched as Nicky began to repair Beulah’s damage. Fence mending did not look like anything I wanted to be doing anytime soon.

  “What do you need, All-Witch? I’m busy. Very, very busy.”

  Betty Sneed hissed, her venomous snark probably capable of poisoning a person through the cell towers connecting her calls.

  “Well, so am I, Betty Boop. And trust me, unless I needed to call your snotty ass, I wouldn’t.”

  I took a deep breath while Grendel’s huge eyes implored me as if to say, “you’re scaring me, and here I thought I liked you.”

  I massaged his big goofy head, letting his obvious pleasure at the attention lighten my mood.

  “I’m waiting, Aldredge. And I sure as hell don’t have time to be,” Betty snapped.

  Even the fact that the phone was cutting in and out here in the middle of the field didn’t hide her contempt.

  “How ‘bout you try to find the time then to spin this bit of news I got for ya?” I asked, putting the phone on speaker ‘cause I did not want it next to my ear when I gave her the scoop. “Nicky’s being framed for murder. Jack Collins’ murder.”

  “What the…?!”

  Her rant continued for at least fifteen seconds.

  I extended my arm as far as it could go to quiet the echo ricocheting off every surface of the truck’s cab.

  Grendel literally put his two front paws over his ears. Smart dog. I had a feeling he and I were gonna be B
FFs. And maybe we’d add Beulah to our posse too.

  “Ya done yet?” I asked, having given her an extra ten seconds or so of silence.

  But, oh no…no she wasn’t. She was off to the psycho races again.

  Yeah…right…I probably shouldn’t have opened up the floor again. Note to self: Even yes-no questions are too much for the Ice Queen. Statements. Yep, where dealing with her was concerned, I needed to stick with statements.

  Once she was done screaming, I changed tactics.

  “Here’s the deal, Boopsters,” I said, knowing how much she hated the Betty Boop reference, but hey, it wasn’t my fault she looked like her and chose to dress the part too. In my world, if you’re gonna let it all hang out and act like a pig, you ain’t gettin’ respect from me.

  But anyhoo…

  “You and I both know Nicky didn’t kill Jack…”

  Betty started in again about how the hell was she supposed to spin this nightmare and Nicky’s career was over…sooo over…and on and on and on…

  “But guess what, Betty?” I asked, interrupting her, and this time the poison was being slung from my end, not hers. “Nicky didn’t do it. But I have a hunch you certainly know who did.”

  That shut her up.

  “What? Your cell is breaking up. I can’t hear you,” she said, her voice suddenly, oddly, not quite as bitchy.

  “You heard me, Bad Ass Boop. Don’t play games with me. You picked the wrong chick to tangle with.”

  And with that golden nugget, I hung up on her.

  Okay then…

  I could mark that off my list of To Do’s.

  I had The Boop right where I wanted her.

  On her broom. Flying scared.

  Now I needed to become great friends with our local Sheriff’s Department. But it looked like that would have to wait till Nicky and Don took care of the fence issue.

  “You taking notes, Sam? I may need your help next time Beulah gets a burr up her butt,” Nicky shouted out to me while beating the hell out of a fence post with Don’s post driver.

  Damn. I couldn’t imagine that thing slamming down on a human head. Ouch.