The Claudia Hershey Mysteries - Box Set: Three Claudia Hershey Mysteries

by Laura Belgrave

  * * *

  John Simpson Raynor held the record for the number of complaints filed against Wanda Farr. Claudia wasn’t surprised to learn that; Raynor’s trailer was about eighty yards from Farr’s, making him her nearest neighbor. Still, thirty-two complaints in eighteen months—twenty-one to animal control, the rest directly to the police department—that was a lot, and it more than suggested he didn’t hold a fond spot for her in his heart. Farr clearly hated him right back. She’d called in fourteen complaints on Raynor herself and might have made more if calling didn’t mean a long walk to the nearest phone booth, which was just shy of a mile away.

  Claudia learned all that and more during a visit to Delilah Glasser, a wiry woman at the animal control department who smelled vaguely of dog. She fielded complaints and dispatched animal control officers in a voice made raspy by years of talking above the din of the pound, situated in the back of the same building. Claudia didn’t know how Glasser could stand it. The racket made her want to retreat to the police station, where Booey was still feasting on databases.

  “So what’d Raynor do?” Glasser asked Claudia after they finished with introductions. She fanned herself with the complaint file she’d pulled. “He shoot her and throw her in the tub? That’s what some of the boys were speculating.”

  It always fascinated Claudia, the Indian Run grapevine. “We don’t know that Raynor did anything,” she said. “I’m just trying to tie up loose ends, finish up my report. Tracing the history of complaints between two neighbors—that’s a routine part of it.”

  “And neighbors is a nice word for those two,” Glasser said. “You want to know the truth about Raynor and Farr? Think Hatfield and McCoy. Think Deliverance. Think—”

  “Was it just the cats that created problems between them?”

  “Hah! The cats, they were only half of the problem. The other half was Raynor’s dogs. You didn’t know about them?”

  Claudia shook her head. “One of your officers told me Raynor had a few dogs, but he didn’t indicate they were a problem.”

  “Yeah, that’d be Bob, no doubt. He’s on the quiet side. Methodical and objective, which just means he understates everything. Anyway, Raynor’s got a bunch of dogs, and he trained every one of them to be as mean as he is. Couple of Dobermans, a shepherd or two, and three or four pit bulls. The Farr woman—”

  Glasser stopped abruptly, rolled her eyes. Something had set the animals off in back. Claudia waited out the noise with her, then leaned forward when the woman started speaking again.

  “Farr claimed he set the dogs on her cats at every opportunity. And you know? She might’ve been cranky and maybe even as nuts as everyone says, but I believed her about that.” Glasser thumped the complaint file. “They both aggravated me on a regular basis, but if one of them had to go, I’d just as soon it had been Raynor.”

  “I’m surprised I didn’t hear his dogs when I was at Farr’s trailer,” Claudia said.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t of. You know how some people crop their dogs’ ears?”

  “Yes?”

  “Raynor cropped his dogs’ vocal chords.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “They make noise, but it’s not a bark. Matter of fact, it’s not like anything you ever heard. That man—he silenced them, if not like that, then somehow else.”

  A flash of unease shot up Claudia’s spine, but it passed so quickly she felt foolish for even acknowledging it. She hid a smile. The propensity for exaggeration among Indian Run’s residents ran so deeply, so exhaustively, that it was like a virus.

  “You don’t believe it,” Glasser said. “I can see it in your eyes. Well, doesn’t matter to me.” Obviously it did, though. She took a look at her wristwatch, as if she suddenly had a hot date. “What else can I tell you, Detective?”

  “I didn’t mean any offense,” Claudia said. “Sorry. I have just one more question. Does Raynor live alone?”

  Glasser stood. “He does if you discount the dogs. But if you’re planning on visiting him, you might do well to regard them as kin.” She pursed her lips. “Believe that.”

  * * *

  When Claudia got back to the station, Booey was still on her computer. He was on the phone, too, the receiver cradled between his ear and neck, and his eyes on the monitor while he typed at a speed Claudia never would have imagined humanly possible. She watched for a minute, then retreated to the desk she’d occupied earlier in the multipurpose room. Except for the indistinct murmur of Booey’s voice and sporadic background chatter from Sally’s communications desk, the station was as quiet as an insurance office.

  Claudia sighed. Now and then, and never for long, she yearned to be back on the job in Cleveland. The days were brutal. The departmental politics were crippling. But you could count on someone manning the front desk twenty-four hours a day. No one would ask you to hold down the fort because the dispatcher needed a pee break. There were rooms for every purpose, procedures that never varied, and if someone went on vacation, it didn’t represent a crisis in staffing. She gazed around at the handful of desks. This . . . it was the police equivalent of a one-room schoolhouse. She picked up a stained coffee mug that someone had left on the desk and read the inscription: “Indian Run Police Department—To Serve and Protect.” The print was beginning to flake around the edges; she frowned, wondering if Suggs rightly worried that Flagg County would eventually absorb the department. Indian Run had just fourteen sworn officers to spread over three shifts—only marginally enough to serve the town’s eight thousand residents. Add to that a couple of civilian workers, some of them only part-time, and it didn’t take a leap of imagination to see what the chief saw. If Flagg decided to . . . Claudia abruptly set the mug down, annoyed. She’d walked herself right into Suggs’s head. It was the last place she wanted to be.

  “Boy, talk about being lost in thought.” Sally stood a few feet away, her eyes speculative. “What do you want first, the good news or the bad news?”

  “Dealer’s choice, Sally. Give it to me anyway you want.”

  “All right.” She handed Claudia several sheets of paper. “The good news is that our fax machine is working again. Flagg S.O. just sent that over.”

  The crime scene report. “Thanks,” Claudia murmured, already beginning to scan the pages.

  “Don’t get too settled in just yet.” Sally waited until she had Claudia’s attention again. “At least that’s how I interpret the bad news.”

  Claudia shrugged. “Go ahead, Sally. Make my day.”

  “Wish I could, but this isn’t gonna do it. The chief just radioed in. He said—and I quote—‘Tell Hershey to put Booey in her pocket so she don’t forget him and then get her tail over to the No-Name Pond ASAP.’”

  “Terrific. What’s up?”

  “We got ourselves a—” Sally glanced at a scrap of paper in her hand— “a Code 26.” She looked up expectantly, but Claudia was already brushing past her, aiming for Booey, aiming for the pond.

  Chapter 4

  The No-Name Pond wasn’t a pond at all. It was part of a complex state canal system that meandered into and out of Lake Okeechobee to the south, a liquid highway carved from the ground for water management and used for just about everything else. But because canals in the system weren’t designed for aesthetic reasons, most ran in tediously straight lines, their banks as parallel as railroad tracks. Not so with the No-Name Pond, which was far too distinguished by its crescent shape, wide girth and surprising depth to be regarded as a canal, at least not by the locals who were aware of its existence.

  Claudia had heard various stories about the No-Name, her favorite being that the fabled Florida Skunk Ape had been spotted near it on several occasions. What nobody could tell her, though, was why the pond—the canal, whatever—was called “No Name.” It just was. As for its irregular contours, speculation held that the canal’s shape represented a thoughtful and respectful accommodation for an immense camphor tree situated on its south bank. Given that the state had built the cana
l system, that made no sense to Claudia whatsoever, but she was willing to go along.

  Unfortunately, the camphor tree, a beauty with a canopy that would dwarf most houses, was rarely seen by anyone. Or at least it wasn’t supposed to be. Too many accidental drownings had prompted the town to seal off the No-Name eight years earlier with chain-link fencing. The fence curved around both sides of the No-Name, then continued east and west along the narrow portion of the canal for a quarter-mile. That barricade alone would not have stopped persistent visitors—indeed, it was repeatedly punctured by trespassers—but unchecked growth of prickly shrubs and tall grasses eventually discouraged most human company. Besides, a golf course serving the exclusive Feather Ridge development had been built just beyond the fringe of wild vegetation, on the north bank. To get to the No-Name meant trespassing across the golf course and then negotiating the fence and scrub. An approach to the No-Name from the south held its own challenges. An abandoned train track ran parallel to the canal, the far side of it shielded by a berm and the fence, the pond side by more nasty brush.

  All in all, the No-Name Pond was just too damned hard to get to for most people to bother trying. There were other places to fish or picnic.

  Someone had visited the No-Name recently, though. A body floated facedown at the surface, in the shade of the camphor.

  Claudia stood on the north bank and peered over at it, a hushed Booey at her side. To the west, a narrow wooden footbridge optimistically built of two-by-fours during the No-Name’s heyday connected the banks, but time and weather had badly eroded it. It bowed in the middle, and its boards were brittle—too brittle, she thought, to safely sustain much weight.

  Suggs stood a short distance away with three patrol officers. She felt his eyes on her, but he said nothing, giving her a moment to lock the grim image in her mind. When she finally looked up, he broke from the others and walked over.

  He gave his nephew a distracted smile. “Hey, Boo.”

  “Hey, Uncle Mac,” Booey said, his voice small.

  Suggs turned to Claudia. “It’s gotta be Becker,” he said quietly. “According to Moody, he never did wander home this time. Our guys looked for him—even poked around here as late as last night—but I guess he didn’t pop to the surface ’til now.”

  Claudia nodded.

  “We’ll do what we have to for an official identification, but I put my money on this being him. Poor old guy.”

  “How come the wife didn’t call him in missing until yesterday?”

  Suggs shrugged. “There was some kind of screw-up in communication between the wife and a woman who looked after the old man when the wife was out of town. The wife thought this woman was with Becker. The woman thought the wife was.”

  A fish splashed across the way, drawing their attention back to the body. It moved gently with a slight current, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Claudia pulled at her shirt. She’d remembered to leave her jacket in the car this time, but the forethought was of small consequence in the afternoon heat.

  “The No-Name used to be real popular,” Suggs said. “Now it’s a bitch to get to.” He jerked a thumb at the patrol officers. “We had to take an old access road to where the canal just starts to widen, crawl through a hole in the fence, then scratch our way past the weeds and shit. I’ll be pickin’ spurs out of my socks for the rest of the day. Where’d you park?”

  Claudia gestured behind her. “On the edge of the golf course.”

  “Wait—you drove over it to get here?”

  “I didn’t see any other way to get here fast.”

  Suggs leaned in toward Claudia, out of Booey’s earshot. “See, now that’s just the kind of thing about you what irritates me, Hershey. You don’t see the big picture in this town, or maybe you just refuse to. These Feather Ridge people? They have a lot of weight with the town council, which calls the shots for our scrawny little police department. I bet someone in that development is calling the mayor right now, raisin’ a stink about you tearin’ up their private damned golf course.”

  “The message was a Code 26. We have a drowning victim.”

  “Yeah, well in case you didn’t notice, he’s been dead for a while. We’re not exactly talkin’ about a situation that calls for lights and sirens.”

  Claudia let it go. He’d started the day aggravated with her and clearly he would finish it the same way. She watched him grapple with a Tums roll and pop two of the tablets into his mouth. Maybe it was just his stomach acting up.

  “Lieutenant?” said Booey, his eyes still on the body, “Excuse me, but even upside down, he doesn’t look . . . right. How long do you think he’s been in the water?”

  “Hard to know, Booey, but at least a few days. Bodies don’t usually float to the surface—”

  “They don’t come up for a while, son,” Suggs interrupted. “They sink first and stay down ’til their gases make them rise, all bloated up and . . . nasty. That’s somethin’ you need to learn about if you’re gonna be in law enforcement.” He turned to Claudia. “And before you even ask, Hershey, I already called Flagg for crime scene and the medical examiner.” He grunted and lowered his voice again. “This may surprise you, but I do know what’s what with procedure on somethin’ like this—isolated area, no obvious witnesses, etcetera, etcetera.”

  “I didn’t say you didn’t.”

  “No, but you were thinkin’ it.”

  For the second time in as many minutes, Claudia bit back a response. She looked at Booey. His face had paled, though less than it had in the Farr trailer. “Listen, you still carrying a digital camera in that bag of yours?”

  “Sure, absolutely. I bring it everywhere.”

  “Good. When crime scene gets here they’ll photograph everything, but—”

  “Standard ops,” Suggs said.

  “Right,” said Claudia, inwardly rolling her eyes. “Anyway, Booey, they’ll take pictures, but we won’t get them back right away. Think you could get some shots for us now?”

  He brightened and snapped his fingers. “That fast, no kidding. I’ll be back in a second, maybe even faster.” He pivoted and started to jog off.

  “Hey! Booey! Watch where you step,” Claudia called sternly. “Take exactly the path we took coming in.” She kept an eye on him briefly, then nodded to herself.

  “So Hershey, the point of that busywork would be . . . what?” Suggs pulled a handkerchief from a pocket, wiped his face. “I ask because from where I stand, it looks like just one more way you’re tryin’ to keep my nephew in the back seat.”

  Claudia shook her head. “Then you’re standing in the wrong place. Look, if we get digital shots he can load them on the computer. We can look at them right away. Also, he needed something to do. He’s seeing his second dead body in two days. That’s a load for anyone.”

  “Don’t you baby that boy, Hershey,” Suggs snapped. “I told you he needs some toughening up. I put him with you for that reason.”

  “You put him with me because you’re buying down a debt.”

  “Both.”

  The patrol officers looked over. Suggs lowered his voice. “Just this once, Hershey, go my way. I’m not foolin’ with you now.” He swept an arm toward the pond. “Do it with this, and do it with Booey.”

  Claudia met his eyes. “Believe it or not, I’m trying—on both counts.” She paused. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. On this Becker thing, just in case you don’t take my meaning, what I’m saying is do what you gotta do out here, but do not make a federal case out of things.” He stuffed his handkerchief back in his pocket. “I’m headin’ back now. Make a point of keepin’ me apprised.”

  * * *

  Booey stood where Claudia told him to stand. He shot the pictures she told him to get, and for every step he took, he walked as if the ground were made of glass and might crack. Try as she might, she could barely picture him as a grown man, never mind a cop. Still, there was something about his persistence she admired, not to mention his extraordinary attention to
detail.

  On the drive to the No-Name he’d told her what he’d learned about Wanda Farr. As Claudia listened to his rendition, his voice rising and falling with drama, she knew he was embellishing some, weaving facts with supposition. But she didn’t stop him. In remarkably short order he’d done what no one else had been able to do, or maybe just hadn’t cared to do. Driven by single-minded purpose, he’d plowed through databases and made a swift succession of phone calls, undeterred by voice mail loops and disinterested bureaucrats. Of course, his pseudo-police status didn’t hurt in speeding the process. But even so, and quite on his own, he assembled a background for the cat lady that gave her texture and dimension, that elevated her beyond the cardboard persona she’d acquired in Indian Run. Ultimately, the history might not matter. The person did.

  Wanda Farr, Booey related, had been born in Chicago as Wanda Joy Harrimond, a name she forfeited for a marriage that produced two children by the time she was nineteen. Her husband Robert worked in the stockyards. Wanda worked as a waitress. Their babies, boys born eleven months apart, were shunted around while their parents navigated graveyard shifts and overtime schedules that left them exhausted and still somehow perpetually behind on their bills. Like so many who had come before them and would come still, they decided that a better destiny lay in Florida, where if they could just get away from killer winters they would find good jobs and marital harmony, which somehow never took hold in Chicago.

  Their aging Plymouth got the couple and their babies as far as Jacksonville before it died. Neither Robert nor Wanda despaired about that, though. Jacksonville’s streets positively sparkled compared to those in Chicago, where curbs were perpetually crusted with dirt from traffic and old snow. And the palm trees! Wanda had never seen them except in pictures; here, they stood like elegant ornaments in every neighborhood. People seemed friendly and, of course, there were beaches. They would get work. They would visit every tourist attraction. They would save up to buy one of those one-story houses with the red tiled roofs.