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

by Laura Belgrave

“Wow,” Peters said softly. “I can’t figure out if this is a lucky break or rotten luck.”

  “Maybe neither,” said Suggs. “Look, this thing makes me uneasy—I’ll grant you that—but I don’t see how you can make a case for the murders being related. Farr and Becker were as different as you and me, Hershey. Why would the same person want them both dead?”

  “Because maybe Wanda Farr saw the killer dump Becker’s body in the No-Name.”

  “And the killer saw her witness it?” said Peters.

  The chief made a face. “Sounds pretty speculative to me.”

  Claudia reminded him that the medical examiner’s reports indicated both had died around the same time.

  “Yeah, so? If the killer saw Farr when he dumped the body in the pond, don’t you think he would’ve panicked? Don’t you think he’d just bang her on the head or shoot her? Why go through all the trouble of finding her at home, pouring liquor down her throat and drowning her in the tub?”

  “Because he needed it to look like an accident as much as he needed the Becker drowning to look like an accident.”

  From the corner of her eye, Claudia saw Booey’s hand waving tentatively. He’d been plowing the air that way through her entire exchange with Suggs. “Yeah, what, Booey?”

  “Sorry. I don’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Go ahead, go ahead.”

  “Okay. I . . . well, would it mean much if the display in Becker’s garden was different now?” He jangled coins in his pocket when they looked at him. “I mean different from what’s in my pictures?”

  “Different how?” said Claudia.

  “Different like if things were missing? If—”

  “Criminy, son!” Suggs put his hands on his hips. “What the hell are you trying to say and can you just please get it out already?”

  Booey straightened like an Army grunt at attention. “Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “What I’m saying is that when Lieutenant Hershey and I went back to the Becker place, that time we saw Miss Kensington and the ponytail guy at the pool, I had a chance to look in the garden again.”

  He glanced at Claudia. “You remember? This was when Miss Kensington had gone inside to get Mrs. Becker for us?”

  She nodded.

  “I didn’t have my camera with me and I didn’t make any kind of connection to the first time I saw the garden display, but after I fooled with these pictures I realized that on the second trip, the doll and the cats were gone. Everything else was there. But not those. Someone must’ve been in the garden. Someone must’ve taken them out. Does that mean anything?”

  “You’re sure about what you saw?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Claudia grinned. “Then off the top? I’d say it means a whole lot, Booey. You’ve just been promoted again.”

  “What’s this about a promotion?” said Suggs.

  “I want another look at the pond.”

  “The—Hershey, what are you imagin’ you’ll find out there, all this time after Becker’s been dead?”

  “The last time we were out there, we thought Becker was an accidental drowning. This gives us a new perspective. A new perspective means a new look.”

  “And I suppose this ‘new look’ has to be now?”

  “No point in waiting.”

  Suggs sighed. “You think you can handle that on your own, or do you need a whole army? I need Sergeant Peters here and your two sidekicks aren’t back yet.” He gave Peters a meaningful look.

  “Lieutenant?” Peters said. “I think I’ll just excuse myself, if that’s all right. I need to see what came in on the overnight reports.”

  “That’s fine, Ron. Booey and I can handle the pond. Chief, you want to come?”

  “Nooo, I do not want to come, Hershey. Number one, it’s busy here. Number two, I’m still pluckin’ spurs out of my socks from the last time I was out there. Number three, the first press call on Becker’s murder came in just before Booey’s picture show here. From a radio guy, no less. He told me they aired a little news brief late last night. It didn’t have any details. That’s what he wants now—and you know this means the other press people will be callin’ next.”

  “Rotten luck. I thought maybe we’d catch a break and they wouldn’t pick up on this for a while.”

  “Wishful thinking.” Suggs tapped the laptop with a finger. “I put the reporter off for this, but I told him I’d call back. If I don’t, he’ll make things up and put that on the air next. Probably already has. You know how they do.”

  “Okay. I’ll talk to you as soon as we get back.”

  “You do that.” Suggs turned toward his office, then paused. “And hey, Hershey, when you’re done foolin’ around out there? I’m gonna want to know what this business is about a promotion, too. I’m the chief. I make the promotions around here.”

  Claudia smiled. “Yes sir,” she said to his receding back. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard him chuckle. “Booey, close up your machine and let’s go ‘fool around’ at the No-Name. And bring your camera, just in case.”

  “I’ll bring both, the digital and my 35mm. I also have a—”

  “Take whatever you want.”

  She didn’t care if he brought a desk with him. Her mind was already at the pond. She headed to her office for her jacket and purse. Five minutes later they were out the door.

  Chapter 25

  Photosynthesis. She couldn’t shake the word from her head. It played over and over like a bad song that cements its impression in your brain the minute you turn off the radio. It was Booey, of course, who’d put the word out there, running it into a commentary about the dense growth around the No-Name Pond. But she didn’t need a science lesson to recognize that the sun had done its part in boosting the foliage into an ever higher, ever thicker jungle. What she needed was a machete—anything that would spare her hands from parting the thorny weeds in search of . . . what?

  They’d been at it for almost two hours, plumbing the thickest of the scrub some six feet from the south side of the canal bank, where Becker’s train display suggested that Wanda Farr visited. Perhaps the cat lady had carved a path. If she had, it was gone now, grown over with persistent vines and razor-sharp grasses. Of course, Becker’s display likely didn’t conform to any kind of scale, which meant they could be searching in the wrong area entirely. And that only brought up another point: The doll and the cats might have been a figment of the old man’s imagination altogether, having nothing whatsoever to do with Farr.

  Claudia straightened for a minute to stretch her back. She wiped her forehead, wincing when sweat leached into a cut above an eyebrow. In some places the grass rose nearly to her waist. What was she doing out here? She hadn’t even noticed that Moody’s mustache was gone. Now she was going to make a case linking two murders because of some toys that an old guy with Alzheimer’s included in his train display? She bent to the task again. Someone had removed the toys.

  “Hey, look!”

  She stood again and peered past the grass toward Booey some seven feet away. He was holding something aloft. She cursed silently. She’d told him not to touch anything that looked promising.

  “I think I found an arrowhead!” he said. “You want to look? I found it by some—”

  “This isn’t a treasure hunt, Booey,” she snapped.

  His shoulders slumped. “I know. I’m sorry. And anyway, this is probably just a stone. But . . . well, there’s some scat here too. At least I think it’s scat.”

  “Some what?”

  “Scat. You know, animal . . . poop? It could be from cats.” He looked at her hopefully. “Couldn’t it?”

  Or raccoons. Or opossums. Or squirrels. But Claudia fought past the weeds to take a look. She hooted at the image she must be presenting. Tough city cop, moving crab-like on all fours to examine scat when the only experience she had with animal dung was the cat shit she religiously sifted from the kitten’s litter box.

  When she finally reached him Booey pushed aside yellowing
weed that tapered into spidery tendrils. “It’s hard to spot because this weedy stuff is all knotted together with the grass, but the growth here is actually thinner at the bottom. See the tops, though? They’re locked together, like they reached over the ground to shake hands or something—kind of like what Confederate Jasmine does.” He sat back on his haunch to give her room, then pointed. “Look low,” he said. “See it?”

  She saw it. Just behind the curtain of growth was a pocket of space showing faint new life. Dried clumps that looked like feces lay partially concealed near a small mound of dirt. From cats? She thought they fastidiously buried their waste, though it occurred to her that Robin’s kitten wasn’t always zealous about it. So . . . what? She was looking at an abandoned cat bathroom?

  The grass rustled as Booey nestled beside her. “If Wanda Farr wasn’t coming here to feed them anymore, then maybe they stopped coming here, too,” he said. “Don’t you think it kind of looks that way?”

  “You’re reading my mind,” she said, straining to see further into the narrow opening, if that’s what it was. It could’ve been a path recently, a strip of ground not quite filled in with new growth but blocked from sight by the scrub all around it. Claudia backed out of the hole, feeling her revolver press against her ribs from one side, her portable radio from the other. She slapped at something on her elbow then moved to the canal bank and sat, looking north across it to the Feather Ridge side. Booey settled beside her.

  They were west of the sprawling camphor tree—too distant from it to enjoy the shade it cast. Claudia wished she had thought to bring her cigarettes, but they were locked in the trunk with her jacket and purse. A hot breeze raised her hair briefly, then pushed it back against her neck. It was hot and buggy, but they couldn’t leave yet. She had to go deeper into the hole. Just in case.

  “It’s peaceful here, isn’t it,” Booey said quietly.

  “I guess.” Claudia watched a pair of dragonflies flirt above the canal. “On the right kind of day, it would be.”

  They lapsed into silence, Claudia’s mind turning over the possibility of snakes out here, wondering whether she’d find any slithering in the grass. “Look, Booey,” she said, “I’m going to take another look in those weeds. Think you can find your way back to the car?” She struggled to get her keys out of her pants pocket. “I have a small evidence kit in the trunk. Can you—”

  “Sure.” He was scrambling to his feet. “Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Are you going to bag the cat stuff?”

  Was he nuts? “Not if I can help it,” she said. “Wait here for me when you get back.”

  She watched him bound away on his mission, then stood stiffly and returned to hers, back on all fours, “photosynthesis” still fooling with her head.

  * * *

  Sometimes, you’ll find what you’re looking for only when you stop looking. Fourteen feet into the depression Claudia had just about given up, her hands raw and her knees aching from scrabbling over the ground. Once, she’d tried making her way on her feet, but then the brush blocked her view and horseflies dove at her unprotected face, forcing her low again. She crawled another couple of feet, then simply stopped and sat, not winded but thirsty, disgusted, and discouraged. An insect the size of toenail clippers skittered past her. Warily, she watched until it disappeared beneath something shiny. She shuddered. No telling what was living in her hair by now. She pushed blades of grass from her face and struggled to turn around in the cramped space. It was definitely time to go.

  Should she bag the cat shit, if that’s even what it was? It proved nothing. She had nothing. The only light at the end of this particular tunnel had already been claimed by a bug that probably ate cats for dessert. It was certainly big enough to—

  She stopped abruptly. Cat food can. The shiny something—that’s what it was; that’s what the bug took cover under. She laughed. Photosynthesis—yes! Warped, but there. The light had reached her brain.

  Claudia clumsily twisted around, then crawled back a few more paces, her eyes locked onto the can. As she drew closer she saw more of them, maybe even a dozen. Friskies this, Friskies that . . . a smorgasbord of flavors. Tentatively, she pushed aside some whiskery weeds. Her mouth opened. More of them, maybe forty. She grinned. Wanda Farr was a litterbug. Better yet, she was either forgetful or purposeful. Claudia didn’t know, but a cheap can opener lay next to the discarded cat food cans. It was one of those hand-crank devices and still new enough not to show rust.

  Her knees screamed, but she crawled past the cans and further into the tunnel. It widened slightly and finally opened on the other side, not far from the train tracks. She’d found Wanda Farr’s path, the one she took to feed wild strays, the one that intersected with the path of an old man who might have been her only friend and tried to tell their story with his garden display.

  Claudia had a beginning. She had an end. All she had to do was fill in the middle and she had an idea for that.

  * * *

  By the time she bagged the can opener and as many cans as she could fit in the evidence kit, put markers on the ground and scribbled some notes, another hour had passed. They ate up thirty minutes more while Booey shot some photos, first digital and then with a 35mm camera. Dark clouds were rolling in. Claudia almost wished it would rain. Maybe it would wash the grit from her face and arms and ease the prickly sensation she felt from rubbing up against unmerciful foliage.

  She yawned while she watched Booey tuck his camera gear into his backpack. Four hours without anything to drink, without a cigarette, without a toilet. He bent to tie a shoe, then hitched the pack to his shoulder and joined her. They looked like beggars as they fell into step together.

  “That was productive, wasn’t it?” he asked.

  “We’ll know for sure once I get this stuff over to the lab. But off the top, yeah, I’d say it was productive.” She glanced at him. “Maybe you ought to shift that pack to your other shoulder. You’ve got all your weight on the canal side. One little stumble and you’ll be swimming.”

  “Good idea.” He paused to make the change. “I’m not the best swimmer in the world.” He told her a convoluted story about an Olympic swimmer who’d been booted from competition when a drug test revealed he was on steroids.

  Claudia half listened while she made a mental list of what she still needed to do when they got back to the station, which thankfully wouldn’t be long now. They were almost to the camphor tree. Ten minutes more and they’d be in the car. Of course, it would be hours before—

  A sudden boom sounded from their right. A chip of the camphor flew past Claudia’s face.

  “Fireworks already! You’d think—”

  She launched herself at Booey, knocking them both over the bank. The camphor’s mighty roots jutted erratically from the slope. By an accident of her shoe, she stopped them on one, less than a foot from the water. A second boom rang out.

  “That’s not fireworks,” she hissed, her body pressed against his. “Someone’s shooting at us. Stay down. Don’t move.”

  Her body muffled his response, but she felt the terror in his thin frame. “Shhh. I’m going to get us out of this.”

  They clung to the camphor’s roots, clipped to the bank like earrings. She freed one hand and reached for her radio, choosing her moment at the same time Booey shifted his weight. The portable slipped from her grasp. It thudded against a tree root and splashed into the water. There would be no help.

  Claudia felt her pulse roar in her ears. She inhaled, once, twice, a third time. Then she processed their position. On the negative side, the bank pitched more steeply below the camphor than elsewhere along the canal, as if the weight of the tree were a burden too great for the bank to bear. They leaned into the pitch at an unsettling seventy-degree angle. If they let go of the tree roots they would stumble into the water. On the plus side, the roots provided an uneven latticework that extended in both directions a good fifteen feet. Claudia looked up into a fringe of grass hanging over the bank. They were
less than two feet from the top—another plus except for the not knowing. Not knowing who was out there. Not knowing how close that someone was. Not knowing whether that someone was approaching them even now.

  “Listen, Booey, I need to move to the other side of you. If I go east along the bank I think I can come up behind the shooter.” The shooter. What he had was a rifle or a shotgun. She knew the sound, and knew that her .38 revolver was no match for it, but she didn’t tell him that. “Can you hang on here?”

  “I think so,” he said in a voice so faint she hardly heard.

  “All right, good.” She let go of a root long enough to give his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Now look, this is going to be a little tricky when I climb over you. Just stay as still as you can.”

  “Okay.”

  Her left leg was already partially clamped over him. She lifted it slightly, groped for purchase on the other side and shifted her weight until she was on him and then over, grappling for a new root. Sweat poured into her collar and she felt a sliver in her left hand. She glanced to her right. Booey looked like he was nailed to a cross, but he stayed still.

  “I won’t be gone long,” she said. “You might hear splashing—my left foot’s going to slide in and out of the water while I’m moving—and later you might hear shooting. Do not move unless I scream at you to move. Understand?”

  In a voice that trembled on the point of hysteria, he asked about alligators. What about them? Would he know if the splashing was her or a gator?

  “It’ll be me,” she said firmly. She craned her neck uneasily, looking into the water. Once before she’d been close to an alligator. It was—she shook her head. She couldn’t think about that now. Gators were a possibility. The shooter was a definite. “This’ll all be over in a few minutes.”

  She began to move off, shuffling along the roots as quickly as she could, unable to stop her left foot from plunging into the pond now and then, feeling the water ride up her slacks, surprised at how warm it was. But she remembered that it was deep by the camphor, that the pond dropped off quickly. It was not her friend, not now, and she strained to keep a grip on the roots, cursing once when one of them snagged at her pants pocket.