by Joan Hess
He went into the bedroom. I walked to the counter and put down my glass before my brain turned to 90 proof sludge. The refrigerator contained condiments, leftovers covered in plastic wrap, limp lettuce, and an empty pickle jar. I opened a cabinet and stepped back as tiny moths fluttered out. I was picking at a dried fleck on the stovetop when Roderick returned to the living room.
“I’m pretty sure that’s Laura. I don’t remember her last name, but she was one of the five who made it out of the student union and disappeared,” he said, shaking his head. “This is too weird. Everybody was supposed to stay underground and never have any contact. Sarah and Tuck moved here, followed by Laura and me. It’s like we scheduled a fortieth class reunion in Farberville. Maybe the entire membership’s here, posing as librarians and mechanics.” He sank down in a chair. “Or the FBI set up a sting to bring us together. All the artful clues on Facebook were posted by a dweeb in a cubicle at Quantico.”
I would have congratulated myself on my keen observation, had Tricia not been dead in the next room. “She hasn’t gone into rigor mortis yet, which means she can’t have been killed more than two or three hours ago. I saw her leave the church at half past twelve. What time is it?”
“I’d guess around six o’clock,” Roderick said from behind the counter. “Any chance it was suicide?”
“Not a Popsicle’s chance in hell. If she’d slit her wrists or her carotid artery, maybe. Samurai warriors reputedly fell on their swords, but it takes single-minded strength to plunge a knife through one’s rib cage. Our credibility may not be high, but we can alibi each other. Sarah can’t be accused of this, although the Weasel would love to pin it on her. It wasn’t a perverted love triangle. You were having an affair with Sarah, and Tuck was having an affair with Tricia. The four of you should have sat down and had a civilized conversation about new arrangements. The house has two bedrooms, after all. If that wasn’t acceptable, you’d flip a coin.”
“Except Tuck had other ideas, so she killed him.”
“That’s possible,” I said, “but impossible to prove. I’m pretty sure that Tuck and Tricia met that night. He might have told her that he’d decided to turn himself in so he could see his family before he died of whatever disease he thought he had. Tricia was either heartbroken or terrified she might be caught.” I rubbed my temples while I tried to concoct a feasible scenario that put them in the barn with the shotgun. “Tuck lied about the fishing trip so he could catch the two of you together. If he followed Sarah when she left the diner, he would have seen her go to the motel. It was reasonable to assume she would stay there all night. He went home for his scheduled tryst with Tricia.”
“Who convinced him to take his shotgun out to the barn? That’s not my idea of foreplay,” Roderick said as he took a swig from a bottle. “Yuck. Pretend I never said that. Maybe he planned to hide in the barn until Sarah showed up the next morning. When Tricia—a.k.a. Laura—showed up, he beckoned her in there.”
“The timing’s messed up. Tricia was back with the campers at eleven, and the neighbors are certain they heard the shotgun at midnight.” I went to the window and peeked between the slats of the blinds. There were no vehicles from the sheriff’s department forming a barricade in the parking lot. If the feds were out there, they were lurking with admirable professionalism. I reminded myself that my car was at Miss Poppoy’s house. By now, Roderick’s van would have been pulled out of the pond and towed to a fenced compound so the forensics squad could examine every slimy inch of it. Luanne’s car wasn’t nondescript by any means, but I wouldn’t have gotten this far if the FBI was monitoring her phone calls.
“So what do we do?” asked Roderick. “This place is giving me hives. How long do you plan to stay here?”
I spun around. “You were in prison. Did I miss the part about the electroshock therapy that turned you into Mary’s little lamb? For pity’s sake, stop whining and help me think. We can’t stay here indefinitely, but I don’t want to tempt fate by driving around town. Traffic cops love to hassle people in luxury cars. Want to speculate on what will happen if I have to show my driver’s license? What are the odds the police officer will tell you to run along while he handcuffs the felonious Ms. Malloy?”
“I didn’t kill the undercover FBI agent. It was an accident.”
“I don’t have time to hear about your avowed innocence,” I said, as angry at myself as I was at him. Perspiration was forming on my face and back, and my armpits were damp. My stomach was calmer, but my mind was buzzing like an enraged hornet, zigzagging from one unanswerable question to another. “Did you call Evan Toffle’s office and tip him off about the motel?”
“No,” he said. “It’s the kind of place that doesn’t waste money on maid service. My fingerprints are likely to still be there after a year. My DNA could be on the sheets. Who did call? The only person who knew we were there was Tuck, if our theory’s right.”
“And he was dead within hours. The only person he could have told was Tricia when they met that night. She suddenly decided to tell Evan, and she was dead within hours, too. That’s an extraordinary coincidence.”
“Did she have any close friends that she might have told?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. See if you can access her e-mail while I try to find her address book.” The clutter was daunting, especially in the dimness. I turned on a lamp and tackled one of the piles on the card table. Roderick fiddled with the keyboard. The computer screen lit up in a promising way. I moved a stack of notebooks and correspondence to the coffee table and examined it. All the unopened envelopes contained bills. A bank statement showed a balance of less than five hundred dollars. Her dentist had sent a reminder that she was overdue for a visit. A card with a depiction of balloons and confetti was an invitation to a baby shower on North Anger Road. Tricia was missing it.
“Awesome,” Roderick said, chuckling. “She must have been online earlier, and didn’t bother to sign off. She has no e-mails or spam.” He continued to click. “Her address book is limited to doctors, a car repair service, two discount shopping sites, Mount Zion Church, and a Chinese carryout. I didn’t find any addresses for people who might be family or friends.”
“No luck here,” I said. “I suppose she was too haunted by her status as a fugitive to risk personal relationships. Too much tippling and she might spill her secret. What a sad life.” After a nanosecond of sympathy, I recovered nicely. “The one person she might have confided in is the choir director at the church. Misery loves company, when accompanied by whiskey. His name’s Grady Nichols. He’s the one who told me that Tricia went for a stroll through the blueberries the night of the murder. There was a lot more going on than he admitted.” I took a sip of the whiskey and shuddered. “Why does everything have to be so damn complicated? I am sick and tired of people with fake identities—like you, Sara, Tuck, and Tricia. Maybe William and Junie changed their names from Bonnie and Clyde, and Grady is Charles Manson’s eldest son.”
“Don’t freak out. Let’s find out if Mount Zion has a Web page.” He mumbled under his breath as he hunched over the keyboard. “Mount Zion seems to be popular with the religious groups. What denomination?”
“Methodist, on County 102.”
“Got it!” he said. “In case you’re interested, it was founded in the forties in an abandoned schoolhouse built in—”
“I’m not interested.”
“Grady Nichols. He believes that music is a spiritual path to heaven, and is filled with awe by the youthful enthusiasm of his choir. He coaches soccer in the middle school league and enjoys cooking, reading, and playing the piano at a senior center. Guys like him used to proselytize outside the student union. They were more worried about Armageddon than Vietnam.”
“Look him up in the online telephone directory. I need to know exactly what happened that night. I’m too frazzled to listen to his glib version, and I’m prepared to sit on him until he tells the truth.”
“You think he killed Tricia?”
“He was lying. The weed around here is crap. I’ve got his address. It’ll take more time to get his telephone number, if he has a landline. Young people usually don’t these days.”
“I don’t intend to call and tell him I’m on my way,” I said, offended by his remark that implied Peter and I were on the verge of dotage. Cell phones were handy, but it was nice to call home. Tears welled in my eyes for the hundredth time. I swallowed and said, “We can’t leave Tricia like this. Maybe the college boys wandered down to the pool or went inside. We saunter out to Luanne’s car and drive to the nearest pay phone to call nine-one-one and report the body.”
Roderick stood up. “’Death’s truer name is ‘Onward,’ no discordance in the roll and march of that eternal harmony whereto the world beats time.’”
“Don’t make me beat time on you or Tennyson,” I said. I went to the window and lifted a slat. I couldn’t see outstretched legs or a cooler. “Onward, as in out to the balcony and down to the parking lot. Try to look as though you’ve been having tea. If you so much as stumble, I’ll push you down the stairs and leap over your body on my way to the car. Good luck in the emergency room.”
“What’s with this bitchiness? I’m trying to help, you know.”
“You’re trying to keep yourself out of prison. I understand that you want to save Sarah, but you haven’t made any noble gestures. That’s okay. I’m going to exonerate Sarah before Wessell tears her into shreds and spits out her bones. Grady’s the best lead now. You can go down to the pool and try to charm one of the sexy coeds. Maybe she’ll let you stay with her until she wakes up one morning and realizes that you’re her grandfather’s age. Just give me Grady’s address and we’ll part ways in the parking lot. You’ve had many years to perfect the art of staying underground. The Missouri border’s half an hour away.”
“I love Sarah. I’m not going anywhere.” He snorted as he realized what he’d said. “Except back to prison. Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m ninety-four? Let’s shake the truth out of Grady Nichols. I’m right behind you, Claire.”
“Lucky me,” I said as I opened the apartment door and stepped onto the balcony. I was not greeted by bells and whistles, whoops, sirens, alarms, or more ominously, bullets. The college boys were gone. The party by the pool was beginning to break up as the participants picked up towels, coolers, and other possessions. None of them looked remotely like Deputy Norton. “Come on,” I said to Roderick, “and put on the sunglasses. Your photo may have made the local news.”
“I was wiping off our fingerprints.”
“I’m glad to hear prison wasn’t a total waste of time. Let’s go.”
We hurried down the steps and into Luanne’s car. I drove out of the apartment and headed for the nearest cluster of fast-food restaurants and stores. There were no pay phones. A convenience store across the road lacked one, too. If I used my cell phone, the FBI would utilize GPS to pinpoint my location; I preferred for them to keep searching the woods behind Miss Poppoy’s house. When they inevitably tracked us to Abbie’s house, they would liven up the baby shower. The call I’d made to Luanne would be traced. Her flawless French might delay them, but they were as inexorable as a glacier.
“There are pay phones at the student union,” Roderick said, “or there used to be. Not many people around on a Sunday evening.”
I turned toward the campus and entered the labyrinth. The streets were mostly empty, as were the sidewalks. Parking places were plentiful, to my relief. The student union was old and tired, almost hidden by massive magnolia trees and overgrown shrubs. I parked as a couple came out the front door. They stopped when they saw the silver Jaguar, then resumed walking across the grass in the direction of the dorms.
“Wish me luck,” I said as I grabbed my purse. After a hesitation, I took the keys out of the ignition. “If I’m not back in five minutes, I suggest you relocate to an adjoining state. Hitchhiking may be hazardous to your health.”
“After all we’ve been through, you don’t trust me?” he said in a wounded voice. “I risked my freedom to haul you away on a friggin’ lawn mower. I identified Laura. I could have split at any time, but no—I stayed with you in case you needed help. Now you think I’d steal your friend’s car?”
“It crossed my mind,” I said, too weary to snap at him. Hoping he hadn’t taken a class in hot-wiring cars while in prison, I went into the student union and looked around. The information desk was unoccupied. I peered down hallways until I saw a glorious line of pay phones, none of them in use. I did not want to be overheard. It had been a long while since I’d used one, possibly predating Caron’s birth. I read an instruction card and learned that I could call 911 without inserting a quarter. I took a tissue out of my purse and used it to pick up the receiver, and used my knuckle to punch the buttons.
“This is nine-one-one,” said a bored female voice. “What’s your emergency?”
I opted for a French accent. “A woman was stabbed in the Skull Creek apartment complex, 221-B. Je pense qu’elle est mort.”
“Your name?”
I replaced the receiver, wiped the buttons with the tissue in case the FBI kept knuckle prints, and walked out of the building at a seemly rate. Roderick was slumped in the front seat, brooding over my lack of faith in him. “Done. What’s Grady’s address?”
“I wouldn’t have stolen the car, Claire. We’re in this together because we want to save Sarah from being wrongfully imprisoned. I’ve had nightmares since the day she was arrested.” He swiped at a tear. “She’s my soul mate, the only woman I’ve ever loved.”
“I’m touched,” I said, untouched. “What’s Grady’s address?”
He told me without further ploys for sympathy. I recognized the name of the street and started the car. It purred with pleasure as I left the campus and turned on a side street. I missed the house number the first time, but caught my mistake and turned around. Roderick had gone into such a deep funk that I had to poke him after I’d pulled as far as possible into the driveway of a small frame house. We dragged two trash cans and a disabled bicycle behind the car, and then spread the grungy remains of a hammock across the trunk. The camouflage was imperfect but adequate.
“Your role is to rumble if he gets evasive,” I told him. “I may have to fabricate a story as we go along, so don’t contradict me. Okay?”
“Whatever you say.”
I poked him more vigorously. “This is our only lead. If you want to save Sarah, you have to do your part. Grady won’t be intimidated if you snuffle and whine.” I had never envisioned myself giving a pep talk to a convicted murderer. Caron and Inez might find it cool. Peter would not. I wonder if his mother would shake my hand through the bars when we were introduced.
Roderick followed me to the front door. I knocked, and then stepped back. I had no idea what to do if he wasn’t home.
Grady opened the door.
16
Grady stared at us. “What do you want?” he said, his bow tie fluttering madly as he swallowed. Had it not been clipped on, it might have taken flight.
“To talk to you, obviously.” I veered around him into the living room, which was decorated in curbside salvage chic. “We’re going to have a lengthy, uncomfortable conversation about what happened at Flat Rock. This time you’re going to tell me the true story.”
Roderick shoved him aside with unnecessary vigor as he followed, rumbling like a p
etulant bear. He grinned at me, but I frowned and shook my head.
“I don’t have anything else to say to you,” Grady said. “I screwed up as a chaperone, but nobody was hurt. There may have been some hangovers the next morning, and a couple of kids were scratching like flea-bitten hounds. The incident was Tricia’s topic at the sunrise service the next morning, and she laid it on thick. ‘But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death…’ Romans 6:23. Scared ’em shitless, so maybe some good came out of it.”
“Including Bianca?” I asked sweetly. “Was she shivering in her panties?”
“Who said anything about Bianca?”
I glanced at Roderick, who obligingly rumbled. “I know all about it,” I said. “Statutory rape, sexual assault, booze, drugs, endangering a minor—all serious stuff. When you get out of prison, you’ll be on the sex offenders list for the rest of your life. That’ll make it hard to get a job as a choir leader at the Church of the Almighty Millionaires.” I gestured at Roderick. “He can give you some hints how to find seasonal employment as a migrant farmworker. You should listen. Once you’re on that notorious list, you won’t be able to find a job or rent an apartment. You’ll be run out of town wherever you go.”
“That’s ridiculous!” he sputtered. “I told you what happened.”
“You gave me the sanitized version, in which you saved the teenagers from drunkenness and debauchery. You instigated it, Grady.” Roderick rumbled without a prompt. I narrowed my eyes and allowed my forehead to crease fleetingly. “You didn’t plan on the level of participation, did you? You issued a discreet invitation to Bianca to join you on the opposite bank. At least I’d like to think you invited only one of the girls, but I may be wrong. Once the other kids figured out that Tricia had left, they waded across the river. Did they catch you in the midst of licentious behavior?”
