Grim Reaper's Dance, The

by Judy Clemens

Casey pulled off her bloody sweatshirt. “I’m not— Never mind. How about you just pretend to respect my privacy?”

  “Whatever. Maybe I’ll just go see what your little friend is doing, instead.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  Casey watched Death walk through the closed bathroom door before she stepped into the shower. She stood under the steaming water for a long time, shampooing her hair twice and scrubbing her body roughly with the washcloth. The cut on her shoulder looked a little better than the day before, even with it re-opening after Davey’s. The cleaning at the hospital had done wonders.

  By the time she was done, her skin felt raw, and after patting it dry she slathered it with the scented body lotion on the counter. She rooted through the cupboard and found a large Band-Aid for her shoulder, and even some of that sticky wrap-around gauze. Finally, she pulled on Bailey’s sister’s clothes, which fit remarkably well, except for the length in the jeans; she was obviously taller than Casey, so Casey simply rolled up the hems.

  “Feel better?” Bailey asked when Casey rejoined her in the kitchen.

  “Much. Thank you.” Casey put her bag of papers under her chair.

  Death was nowhere to be seen.

  Bailey stuck a grape in her mouth. “No problem. Heather’s clothes fit you all right, huh? Hope you don’t mind pink. That’s pretty much all she owns.”

  Pink wasn’t, in fact, one of Casey favorites, but she wasn’t about to complain. “What can I do with these?” She held out her old clothes.

  Bailey wrinkled her nose. “Burning barrel. Here.” She rummaged under the sink and held out a grocery bag, into which Casey stuffed the clothes. “I’ll take them out while you’re eating.”

  “It sure smells good in here.”

  Bailey brightened. “Spaghetti. Sounded good to me, so I hope you like it.”

  It took a few minutes for Bailey to finish cooking, so Casey picked up the newspaper, which sat on the counter. Nothing on the front page about the accident or Wainwrights’ Scrap Metal, but page three held a little of both. Investigators Unsure of Accident’s Cause, one article said, and explained that it was a mystery as to why the construction vehicles were on the road. It described Casey’s appearance and reiterated that she was wanted for questioning, as were a group of men who had been at the accident site.

  Yeah, well, good luck finding them, Casey thought. Or me.

  But there was more.

  “It was so strange,” Bethany Briggs said to reporters at the crash site. “I stopped to help, and the woman had a man in a headlock. She let go when I arrived, and pushed him out of the way. I don’t know what she was doing, but I guess she was in shock. I mean, why else would she be wrestling with someone right after being in an accident?”

  Casey rubbed a hand across her eyes. She’d forgotten about her Good Samaritan in the bright red suit, and hoped she wasn’t going to become a problem. There wasn’t anything more from Ms. Briggs in the piece; just the usual stuff about law enforcement keeping the public up-to-date.

  She looked at the next article.

  Junk Yard Trespassers Surprised

  When David Wainwright, owner of Wainwright Scrap Metal and Recycling, heard his dog barking, he didn’t think much of it until he saw the men on his property. “They just showed up,” he said. “I don’t know what they were doing there.”

  Wainwright and Wendell Harmon, a mechanic visiting the office, looked outside in time to see the two men confronted by a third, who immediately attacked the other two.

  “He just went crazy,” Harmon said. “We couldn’t hear anything they were saying, and we weren’t about to go outside. Instead, we called 911.”

  Wainwright, Harmon, and Rachel Inskeep, the scrap yard’s secretary, watched from safety as the third man incapacitated the other two.

  “As soon as we heard sirens,” Harmon said, “the man took off.”

  The two men, whose names are yet to be released, were taken to the local hospital, where they remain under a physician’s care. Police are waiting to question them further.

  Casey set down the paper. The men and Rachel had completely covered for her.

  “Ta da!” Bailey set a steaming bowl of pasta on the table, dumped a bag of salad into a bowl, sliced some bread, and set out the grapes. While Casey filled her plate, Bailey took the bag of clothes outside. Casey dove into the food, pushing aside her anxiety. Bailey soon came back and ate her share, as well.

  When they were done, Bailey put away the leftovers while Casey placed the dirty dishes in the high-efficiency dishwasher. Bailey wiped the table and threw the dishrag into the sink.

  “Ask for a tour.” Death’s breath was cold in Casey’s ear. “You’ll find something interesting.

  Casey raised her eyebrows and mouthed, what is it?

  “Ask,” Death said.

  “So,” Casey said. “Any chance I could get a tour?”

  Bailey shrugged. “Sure.”

  She took Casey through the sunroom, the den, the living room, the rec room, the master bedroom and bath—which were large enough to comfortably serve an entire family—and the entertainment room, which housed an enormous flat-screen TV and surround sound. In each room Casey looked to Death, who hung back with crossed arms, head shaking “no.” Finally, they stood in front of a closed wooden door, and Death’s face became more animated.

  “Dad’s office,” Bailey said, and swung open the door.

  Casey gasped. All of those corner offices shown in movies or talked about in business circles, had nothing on this place. Bookshelves lined what walls weren’t taken up by floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on miles of golden grain. Thick carpet lay under Casey’s stockinged feet, and colorful artwork dotted the room—paintings, sculptures, even a quilt over the back of an antique sofa. A fireplace with dark red brick sat cold and clean along the far side of the room, with two comfortable—and beautiful—chairs in front of it.

  “Does your father spend a lot of time in here?”

  “Not most of the year. During the winter he’ll use it, but the rest of the time he’s too busy. He doesn’t believe in hiring other people to do work he can do himself.”

  Casey wandered to a table that displayed an array of photographs and thought of Evan’s family picture, which she’d transferred from her old clothes to the pocket of the jeans she was now wearing. On the table were pictures of Bailey’s family throughout the years—as evidenced by Bailey’s changing form and style, as well as her sister’s—photos of dogs, and one of Bailey’s father with another man, standing beside a tractor.

  “My grandpa,” Bailey said. “Dad took over the farm from him. He died a few years ago.”

  Casey didn’t hear the sadness she would acquaint with losing a grandparent, and Bailey’s face showed nothing. “You weren’t close to him?”

  Bailey shrugged. “He worked all the time. I didn’t see him much. Kinda like Mom and Dad.”

  “Who’s this?” Casey pointed to a photo of Bailey’s dad with a group of men, sitting around a table at a restaurant.

  “Dad’s friends. Other farmers. Dad’s known them forever. That picture was taken ages ago, like, five years.”

  Casey took a closer look, then sent a shocked glance toward Death, who sat smugly with a hip hitched up on the big desk. Sitting just two chairs away from Bailey’s dad in the photo was one of the men from Evan’s pack of pictures.

  Chapter Eight

  Casey did her best not to react to the image. She wracked her brain, trying to remember which of Evan’s pictures the guy was in. He wasn’t from the group of men at the car crash, she was pretty sure of that. He was one of the people photographed talking to Owen Dixon and Randy Westing. Casey itched to retrieve her bag from the kitchen.

  “So,” she said, keeping her voice casual. “Are all of these men grain farmers, like your dad?”

  “Sure, mostly. Some of them have beef cattle, too, but it’s mostly crops, as far as I know. So, what do you want to do now?
I don’t suppose you’d want to, like, watch a movie or something?”

  “No, thanks, I… Any chance I could use a computer?”

  Bailey knocked herself on the forehead. “Of course. Duh. You probably have people to e-mail.”

  “I just want to look up a few things.”

  Bailey glanced at her father’s desk. “Not in here. Dad’s pretty…his computer’s the one thing he doesn’t want us messing with.”

  Which of course made Casey want to mess with it.

  Bailey led Casey back up to her room—with a pit stop in the kitchen, where Casey retrieved her bag—and pulled a laptop from a bookbag. She cleared off a spot on her desk and set the computer on it. “We’ve got wireless, so you can go on-line from anywhere in the house, but you might as well just sit here.”

  “Thanks, Bailey.”

  “Sure.” Bailey dropped onto her bed, where she lay on her stomach and kicked her feet.

  Casey hesitated. She couldn’t exactly do her research with the girl sitting three feet away, so she took a little time to look around the room. Posters of rock stars competed with Edward Cullen and the other vampires from the Twilight series, and a full array of glow-in-the-dark stars adorned the ceiling. The bedspread and curtains had been hand-sewn out of black velvet, and the walls were a textured gray. The furniture, including the desk and headboard, had been painted black with globs of shining glitter, and the carpet was full-out gray and black shag. Casey had to give it to the girl—despite the dark color scheme and the immense amount of stuff, the room felt…comfortable.

  Bailey pulled her phone from her pocket and rolled over on her back. Her fingers flew over the keypad. Casey angled the laptop away from the girl and punched in Davey—David—Wainwright’s name, finding his home address and phone number, as well as the scrapyard’s.

  “Scratch paper?” she asked Bailey.

  Bailey stretched to pull out a drawer on the desk. “There. Take all you want.”

  Casey raised her eyebrows at the stack of paper.

  “I make lots of mistakes,” Bailey said.

  Casey grabbed a page and scribbled Davey’s information. Wendell’s numbers were easy to find, as well, and she wrote them down.

  Bailey sat up. “Find something?”

  Casey clicked out of that site, back to the search engine, and covered the paper with her hand. “Nothing much.”

  “You don’t want me to see. All right. I get it.” Her lower lip stuck out, and she looked around the room. “Well, I’m gonna go watch a movie, then. I might as well enjoy my day off. Get me if you need anything, all right?” She left the room, and Casey took a breath of relief.

  “Good job,” Death said from the bed. “Now you’ve ticked off your only friend.”

  “Not my only friend.”

  “The only one with a car.”

  Casey turned to the computer and typed in a name. Death pulled out the rubber band and began twanging.

  Randy Westing. The search came up with nothing relevant—a musician with a slightly different last name, a film reviewer who obviously wasn’t Casey’s guy, plus about a million other hits that separated the two names, giving lots of Randys and Westings.

  Owen Dixon. Casey laughed to herself. Lots of information for a Sir Owen Dixon, from Australia, popped up. Even more obviously not her man.

  So these guys either had false names or they’d miraculously avoided appearing on the Internet. Or they just hadn’t done anything interesting enough that anybody had noticed.

  Casey opened her bag and pulled out Evan’s notebook, paging to the place where he’d listed the truckers’ names. She punched in the first.

  John Simones. Casey sighed. Hundreds of thousands of hits, with more John Simones than she’d bargained for, as well as multiple listings for men named John Simone and John Simons. She went back to the search box and added Evan’s note: UK 2008. This didn’t help one bit.

  She went through the rest of the names, including the ones on the manifests, but didn’t hit on anything until she came to the name Mick Halveston—the male half of the couple seated across from Westing and Dixon at the diner. Halfway through the listed sites was an article about a truck accident in Missouri. Seems Mick had passed out while driving and run his truck up the side of an embankment, overturning and smashing a passenger car containing a family of five. The children and mother had died at the scene, the father at the hospital later that day.

  “I remember that one,” Death said over Casey’s shoulder. “Not a fun job at all.”

  “What happened?”

  “You don’t want to know the details.”

  “No, I mean to the trucker. Why did he pass out?”

  Death shrugged. “He didn’t die, so I don’t know. Want me to ask?” Death pointed toward the ceiling.

  “Would you get an answer?”

  “Probably not. I’d be told it wasn’t in my need to know file.”

  Casey closed her eyes, frustration building in her chest. Of all the things to get mixed up in, did she have to find something involving the death of children in a vehicular accident?

  “What’s wrong?” Bailey stood in the doorway.

  Casey jerked her head up and clicked out of the screen with the article. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  Bailey’s mouth pinched. “You don’t look fine.”

  “Still tired, I guess.”

  Bailey obviously didn’t believe her, but let it go. “I brought you a drink. Lemonade.”

  “Thank you.” Casey took the glass and stopped Bailey on her way back out the door. “Those men in that photo with your dad, the other farmers? Do you know their names?”

  “Most of them, why?”

  “I thought I recognized one.”

  Bailey hesitated. “I thought you weren’t from around here.”

  “I’m not.”

  Bailey studied her some more before turning and walking out of the room. Casey followed. Death stayed on the bed, twanging.

  When they got to the photo, Bailey picked it up. “Which guy?”

  Casey pointed at the familiar one.

  “Oh. That’s Pat Parnell. I’ve known him forever. He’s from somewhere around Wichita. My dad’s roommate in college. For a year anyway, and then he dropped out. Are you from out east?”

  Casey shook her head. “Is he just a farmer?”

  Bailey bristled. “That’s not enough?”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean, does he have another job, that I might know him from?”

  “Oh.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I could ask Dad.”

  “No. He’d wonder why you were asking.”

  “Maybe. But I can lie pretty well.”

  Casey already knew that. “Okay, if you could find out, that would be great.”

  Bailey brightened. “Anything else?”

  “Actually, yes. Can I use your phone? Unless you want me to use the landline.”

  “We don’t have a landline.” Bailey reached into her pocket. “Use it all you want. I’ve got unlimited minutes. Calls or texting.”

  Casey took the phone and went back to Bailey’s room, where she shut the door. She punched in Davey’s work number, waving at Death to stop with the rubber band. Death sighed heavily and twisted the band around a finger.

  “Wainwright’s Scrap Yard.”

  “Davey?”

  “You got him.”

  “It’s…Casey.”

  He let out a whoosh of air. “Oh, thank God. You’re all right?”

  “I’m fine. Are they still there?”

  “No, they’re at the hospital.”

  “The cops, I mean, not the men.”

  “Oh.” He laughed. “I guess that would be strange if they were still lying there. No, the cops are gone. Followed the guys to the ER.”

  “Have you heard anything?”

  “Just that they’re awake now, and they’re going to be all right. Except for the guy’s knee. He’s going to have to have some major work on that.”

 
Casey winced. She wished—

  “I can’t really file any charges,” Davey said, “since they attacked each other, so I’m pretty much out of the loop.”

  “Yeah, as for that police report…”

  “No problem.”

  Casey rubbed her forehead. “I’m sorry about yesterday, about bringing that on you.”

  “Wasn’t your fault.”

  “If it hadn’t been for me—”

  “They would’ve come anyway. It wasn’t you they were after, remember.”

  Of course they were. They thought she knew about Evan’s stash. But they didn’t know she’d be at the scrap yard. They didn’t know where she was. At that moment, yesterday, they’d been after the truck.

  “In fact,” Davey said, “if you hadn’t been here, who knows what woulda happened, so I should be thanking you.”

  “How’s Trixie?”

  “She’ll be okay. She got some broken ribs, so she’s on painkillers, lying here in the office.”

  “I’m glad she’ll be all right.”

  The phone hissed in her ear.

  “Well,” Casey said, “I just wanted to thank you for telling the cops what you did. I appreciate that you didn’t pull me into it.”

  “Glad to do it.” He paused. “I do need to tell you, though…

  “What?”

  “I’m getting rid of the truck. Don’t want those guys coming back.”

  “Good. Make a big production of it, so they know it’s gone.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  She would, anyway. “Well, thanks again, Davey.”

  “Wait.”

  Casey waited.

  “What about the papers and stuff? I want to help.”

  “Davey…”

  “I can take care of myself. What can I do?”

  Casey looked at Evan’s manifests and photos. “Well, I need somebody that knows trucks and can help me…us…figure out what these papers mean.”

  He paused. “I got someone… Let me call him, and see if he’s free.”

  “Davey, it’s got to be somebody you trust.”

  He laughed. “He’s my son-in-law, so I’ve trusted him with more than papers.”