by Joan Hess
“Any luck?” he asked in the voice of a male stretched out on the sofa, within reach of a beer and pretzels. And the remote control, of course.
“No,” I said sourly. “Can you have someone run a background check on Tricia, maybe Patricia Yates?”
“Why?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t have to ask. Is Caron home?”
“Haven’t seen her or heard from her. Damn!”
“Is something wrong?”
“The Pirates scored on an error.”
I had yet to encounter any pirates in the investigation. “I’m sure they’ll work things out,” I said. “The background check may not lead anywhere, but Tricia is hiding something. I’ll call you in an hour.”
He agreed, albeit with less enthusiasm than I would have preferred. I was digging for my keys when I spotted Juniper Lund and Billy come out the front door of the church. Juniper glanced at me, and then looked away as they headed for an SUV.
I caught up with them before they could get into the vehicle. “Juniper,” I said, “can we talk for a few minutes?”
“I don’t know any more than I did on Friday.”
“I really need your help. Did you watch the news yesterday?”
Billy aimed his toy gun and shot me on the spot. When I failed to crumple to the ground, he tugged on his grandmother’s dress. “Can we go? I’m hungry and you said I could have ice cream for dessert if I didn’t wiggle in church. I want chocolate ice cream with sprinkles.”
Juniper ignored him. “Yes, and William and I were shocked. To think we lived within spitting distance of criminals all these years.”
“What’s a criminal?” asked Billy.
“Why don’t we go to the playground?” I suggested.
“All right,” she said, “but I do have to go home to see to Sunday dinner. This is Billy’s last full day with us, and I’d like it to be a happy one.”
The three of us went behind the church. Billy ran to the swing set, while Juniper and I sat down at a picnic table. After a moment, I said, “It must be dreadful to find out your old friends were wanted by the FBI for a crime they committed forty years ago.”
“I don’t recall precisely when they moved into their house, but it must have been more than thirty years ago. My boys were in grade school, and I was pregnant. Sarah was so kind after Addie was born. She brought over casseroles and homemade bread several times a week, and babysat whenever I needed her. Now that I think about it, we never really made a connection. She was vague about her background. I guess I would have been, too, if I carried a load of guilt. Do you know any more details about what happened?”
“Sara told me that she and Tuck fled before the shooting began. They were indicted as co-conspirators because they were members of the group.”
“I remember seeing those antiwar protestors on television with their long hair, bare feet, and shabby clothes. They could afford to waste time staging demonstrations and sit-ins because their parents paid their college tuition and living expenses. The day after I graduated from high school I started full-time at a shipping company. Two years later, I was married with a baby. Working and taking care of my family took all of my time. I never got more than six hours of sleep at night.”
“My husband died when my daughter was very young,” I said. “Sleep was a rare pleasure.”
“William helped out as much as he could, but farming is a hard job. We both still wake up with the rooster. I’d like to wring his neck, but William will just get another one. Got to keep the hens happy.”
I chuckled despite the images that crossed my mind. “I’ve been trying to figure out what Tuck did the day he was killed. Could he have suspected that Sarah was seeing another man?”
Juniper shrugged. “I was raised not to speak ill of the dead, but Tuck had some mental problems that made him real unhappy. He used to come over to the house late in the afternoon, while William was tending to the farm and Sarah was still at the diner. After a couple of beers, he’d get all upset and claim that she had a string of lovers and was hoarding money so she could buy them fancy things. He admitted that he followed her sometimes, but he never caught her doing anything out of the ordinary.”
“Did he have any friends besides you and William?”
“I don’t reckon so. He was prickly and hard to be around when he got into one of his moods.”
“Tricia Yates told me that she met him at the library.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she snapped.
I detected a trace of jealousy in her voice. “Nothing at all. You seem to have known Tuck better than anyone else. I’m trying to help Sarah, not belittle him.”
“If you think they were having an affair, you need to see a shrink. Tuck took his promises seriously. That’s why he was so screwed up the summer before Sarah killed him. He’d sworn to take care of her as long as they lived. I felt so sorry for him, but it was his decision to make.” She turned her attention on Billy. “You put that nasty thing down right now, young man! How many times have I told you not to pick up dead critters? You march yourself into the church and wash your hands this minute!”
I waited until Billy went into the building. “What was the decision he had to make?”
“You don’t want to know. I feel bad about having to testify against Sarah. I don’t want to make it any worse for her. If she’s not found guilty of Tuck’s murder, the FBI will go after her like a flock of Canada geese. Nobody messes with them.”
I had never messed with Canada geese, but my experiences with the FBI had included hostile honking and the flapping of bureaucratic wings. “I need to know everything if I’m going to help her,” I said. “Please tell me what you meant. If it’s irrelevant or aids the prosecution, I won’t say a word.”
Juniper clasped her hands together and closed her eyes. In a flat voice, she said, “I don’t want to tell you, but I suppose I will. Two years ago Tuck confessed everything to me—the demonstration at the college that led to the shooting, their escape, and their false identities. After he finished, he cried like a baby. I wanted to hold him in my lap and kiss away his grief, but all I could do was make sympathetic noises. I promised him that I wouldn’t tell William or anybody else. I’ve betrayed him. Maybe he wasn’t paranoid, since he never should have trusted any of us.”
“It doesn’t much matter now,” I pointed out. “Tell me about this decision of his.”
“That came later, about halfway through the summer. He became convinced he had a deadly blood disease, even though the medical tests were negative. He got to where he couldn’t eat or sleep. Occasionally when I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I’d see him walking around his yard. He wanted to see his family before he died, and the only way that would happen was if he turned himself in to the FBI. He said he couldn’t bear to die without knowing if his parents were still alive. They’d be allowed to visit him in prison, along with his brother and sisters.”
“But turning himself in would implicate Sarah,” I said.
“That’s why he felt so awful. He never loved her, but he said the two of them were outcasts and had vowed to stick together. I told him that he had to talk to Sarah before he did anything rash. A month later, he was dead.”
It was my turn to close my eyes. Up until that moment, I hadn’t believed that Sarah had much of a motive to shoot Tuck. They’d survived forty years of a miserable marriage and managed not go after each other with knives. The option to leave was always within reach. When Tuck had told her that he was content to die in prison, she might not have been amenable to doing the same. “Did he tell her?” I asked, crossing my fingers and toes that her response would be negative.
“I only saw him once after our conversation, when he and Sarah came over for supper. We didn’t have a chance to talk in private.” She stood up. “I better go see what Billy’s up to. His idea of washing his hands is to turn the water faucet on and off, and then wipe his dirty hands on a towel.”
“Than
k you for telling me,” I said as she went toward the back door. She did not respond.
Once I was in my car, I rested my forehead on the steering wheel and resisted the urge to howl. I’d been on the case for nearly three days, and all I’d accomplished could be written on the head of a pin. If I believed Sarah was innocent, I was obliged to believe she’d lied to me. Were I a lawyer, I would not be pleased with my client. Evan’s duty was to present the best defense possible, to force the prosecution to prove her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. To do so, he needed an alternative theory or two. I had not yet determined if the green van was significant, and I wasn’t especially sanguine that it was. There had been some sort of misbehavior on the part of the church choir, but I could barely justify pursuing it. I felt as if I were following a trail of inconsequential breadcrumbs that would lead me nowhere, all because Prosecutor Wessell had ridiculed me in the courtroom.
I was in an abysmal pit of self-pity when the cell phone blipped. I straightened up and took a deep breath before I answered it. “Well?”
Peter seemed a tad disconcerted as he said, “Am I disturbing you?”
“A dinosaur sitting on my car would not disturb me. What did you find out about Tricia Yates?”
“A couple of traffic tickets. She owns an old white Toyota and is not on the voter registration list. She is not involved in any civil litigation. According to the information on her driver’s license, she’s sixty-three years old and has blue eyes. Were you hoping for something more dramatic?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “She’d be a likely candidate for a liaison with Tuck—if anyone believed he was capable of such a thing. No one does. She declined to confide in me, despite my winsome charm, and I can’t make her. She may be pilfering from the collection plate, but that’s irrelevant.” I went on to relate what Juniper Lund had told me about Tuck’s intention to turn himself in to the FBI. We agreed that it did not help Sarah’s case. Caron had not appeared, even though she was having a party in a few hours. Mrs. Jorgeson had called to confirm that she was bringing potato salad. Rather than demanding to know his mother’s preference in potato salads, I told my handsome husband that I would be home later and ended the call.
Juniper’s SUV had left the parking lot during the conversation. A white Toyota was parked in the shade of a clump of trees. As I sat, metaphorically twiddling my thumbs, Dark Roots and the man who’d advocated tithing came out of the church and walked toward a pale blue Mercedes. A second girl trailed after them. I cleverly deduced the trio was composed of the preacher and his daughters.
I finally decided to go to Evan Toffle’s office to share my pathetic progress and find out what, if anything, he’d learned from Wessell and the FBI. As I prepared to pull onto the street, a green van sailed by, headed out of town. It was not a remarkably green van, or a uniquely green van, or even an oddly green van. Most likely, it was an ordinary green van owned by a law-abiding couple on their way home from church. I jammed down my foot on the gas pedal and whipped out in front of a pickup truck. A horn blared as I grasped the steering wheel more tightly, my jaw thrust forward and my brow creased.
Other vehicles had inveigled their way into the gap between my quarry and me. I passed a station wagon, and made it back with inches to spare as a laden chicken truck bore down on me. The driver made an impertinent gesture, but I politely overlooked it while I tried to figure out how to get around an RV plastered with bumper stickers. I was still behind it when we came to a stoplight. I made small, irritated noises until the traffic began to move, and then eased to the left as far as I dared to try to catch sight of the van. The RV was as broad as a billboard and disinclined to cooperate.
As we continued away from Farberville on County 107, the traffic began to thin out. I spotted the green van far in the distance, making much better time than the behemoth that waddled along in front of me. Seconds before I was reduced to sputtering obscenities, the RV pulled into a convenience store. I swallowed a particularly vulgar word and hit the gas pedal as if the road were paved with yellow bricks and I could see emerald towers in the distance. Ten seconds later I was stuck behind a thready line of cars and trucks, their drivers blissfully ignorant of everything and everyone. I passed when I could, and ground my teeth when I couldn’t. I still caught glimpses of the green van, which grew smaller as it sped on its merry way.
I didn’t glance at Sarah’s house as I went past, nor did I wave at Miss Poppoy’s mailbox. On the far side of the bridge was a slight incline. When I crested it, I realized the green van was no longer visible at the head of the caravan. The particularly vulgar word popped out as I strained to spot it on the side of the road or parked in a driveway. Unless it was a well-disguised race car with an engine more suitable to a large aircraft, it had vanished. I pulled over and stopped. Pounding my head on the steering wheel would result only in an unsightly lump, I told myself as I seethed. I forced myself to uncurl my bloodless fingers and sit back. Had I been a science fiction fan, I would have looked upward for the mother ship. Had I been a reader of fantasy fiction, I might have considered the likelihood that the van had been snatched up by a stealthy pterodactyl and carried away to a medieval fortress in the mountains.
The burst of frustration finally began to ebb. I took several deep breaths and tried to think. I was on the stretch of highway that I’d been over (and over) for the last forty-eight hours. I felt as though I knew every pothole, every battered speed sign, every mailbox. My windshield was splattered with its insect life, my fenders dusted with its unpaved roads. The turnoff to Pinkie Sheer Road was ahead on my right, the turnoff to Flat Rock farther and to my left.
Neither one beckoned to me. I finally pulled back out and turned on the road that went past Zachery Barnard’s house and whatever lay beyond it. I averted my eyes as I drove by the loathsome pond where his body had been discovered. His house seemed lost amid the weeds and debris. The road curled this way and that, with no signs of civilization, until I came to a padlocked gate. A sign warned me not to trespass on county property and to beware of high voltage lines. I was not tempted. If the van had taken this route, it had long since vanished into the wilderness.
I turned around and drove back toward the highway, keeping an eye out for any semblance of a turnoff on either side. The ditches were undisturbed. I passed the shack and pond, and then stopped when I reached the highway. The remaining option was the road that led to Larry Lippet’s house and property. My memories were not nostalgic, to put it mildly. I’d been menaced, harassed, and embarrassed. I’d also been threatened with legal complications if I were to trespass in the future.
I do not handle intimidation with grace. I turned onto the highway, and minutes later onto the road to Flat Rock. No vans of any sort were parked near the trailers and mean little houses. When I arrived at the Lippets’ house, the laird himself was in the front yard, apparently watching the grass grow while he drank a soda. I braked and put down the window. “Hello,” I called, plastering on an amiable smile. “Did you see a green van drive by here a few minutes ago?”
He hitched up his pants as he came over to my car. “Heard you had a little problem yesterday evening. I wouldn’t have thought you’d be afraid of a dumbass dog like Duke. He’s scared of squirrels, and the blue jays downright terrify him.” Lippet guffawed, exposing spotted teeth. “Marie asked me if you was daft. Said I didn’t think so, but you can’t never tell.”
“The dog tried to attack me,” I said primly. “About the van?”
“No one’s come along in the last half hour, except for Wade. Said he was going fishing on such a fine afternoon. I could smell the liquor on his breath from ten feet away. Rumor has it he has a marijuana patch somewhere behind the old schoolhouse, but nobody cares enough to look for it. I sure as hell don’t.”
“Have you ever seen a green van out this way?”
“Driven by little green men with squashed heads? I seem to recollect seeing a whole bevy of them one night after Wade and I finished a quart of
vile moonshine.” He rewarded me with another guffaw. “You want to hear about the pink elephants?”
“Another time, Mr. Lippet.” I pulled into his driveway, turned around, and drove away before he could leap into my car and entertain me with more of his hilarious remarks. Once I was safely out of his sight, I slowed down. I was certain that I’d seen a green van, but I was less certain that it was noteworthy. Regrettably, it was all I had on my depleted list of alternate suspects. The Weasel would ride his victory to the bench, where he could continue to terrorize the unfortunate souls who lacked money for a high-priced lawyer (and a contribution to his campaign).
I headed back toward Farberville, reviewing every last conversation I’d had since Friday morning. Billy’s story was gaining credence, although he had to be docked a few points for embellishment. I was not unfamiliar with the youthful impulse to toss in extraneous details for added drama. In her prepubescent days, Caron had been certain she was being stalked by celebrities (Elvis was one of the culprits) and denied her rightful position in the British royal family by the gypsies who’d made the dastardly switch in the hospital nursery.
I was almost smiling as I came to the turnoff for Sarah’s house. The smile evaporated as I saw movement in one of the second-story bedrooms. I slammed on the brakes and skidded onto the gravel road in a fine spray of dust. Sarah had not been released unless something bizarre had taken place, and Peter or Evan would have called me if it had. If she’d found a way to escape from the county jail, she would not have gone home to pack a suitcase. A truck and the SUV were parked outside the Lunds’ farmhouse. Prudence suggested I drive there, alert them, and call the police from their living room. Whoever had broken into the house would have ample time to steal or destroy evidence before waltzing into the maze of back roads.
I parked my car as close to the ditch as I dared, grabbed my purse, and started walking. I could see no vehicle except for Sarah’s car. The barn door was slightly ajar, however, and I had no view of the side or back yard. As I came to the driveway, I saw a hazy figure behind the sheer curtains in the front room. Everybody in the county who was old enough to watch the news knew that Sarah was in jail and the house was empty. I sidled behind a tree while I considered my minor adventure with the green van. It had been ahead of me when I drove by Sarah’s house, but then it had vanished. The perps might have been casing the joint to make sure the police and FBI agents were not there. They’d made a minor detour and returned while I was investigating other possibilities.
