Stray Narrow

by Jerusha Jones

  I nodded quickly. “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Humph,” Frankie reminded me.

  She was right. The minor alteration in arrangements meant we’d have to postpone our matchmaking efforts where Rupert was concerned. But the current need was far, far greater.

  oOo

  The sketch artist was a delight. Ms. Olivia Oliphant.

  And if her name made me want to giggle, then her appearance exacerbated that particularly inappropriate social response to the point of nearly bursting. But her ready smile, in spite of the circumstances—complete with crooked, feathered neon-pink lipstick—was incredibly endearing. And alarming. But mostly endearing.

  She also knew to knock on the kitchen door instead of the front door. My kind of people.

  “Come in,” I urged, stepping back to allow her to pass. She brought in a slurry of melting snowflakes with her—they were clinging in slushy clumps to her thick faux-leopard, faux-fur, knee-length, uh…robe. It wasn’t a coat, per se. More like a heaping swirl of mangy fabric that she’d swathed herself in. How she managed to be ambulatory, let alone drive, while so encumbered, I couldn’t even begin to guess.

  But she was certainly walking—and talking. Nonstop.

  And she knew Pete. Had to stand up on her tippy toes—in bright-green, four-inch-heel, Mary Jane pumps, no less—to wrap her knobbed, arthritic fingers around the back of his neck and pull him down for a loud smackeroo on the cheek.

  “Oh, you!” she gushed. “I knew you’d grow up to be a handsome devil. Such a time you gave me in class! That stunt with the rubber cement and the toothpicks and the Vaseline, ooch! And then that incident with the glow-in-the-dark tempera paint and the skeleton from Mr. Foster’s biology lab.” She clucked chidingly and shed her robe into a heap on the floor.

  I picked it up and hung it to drip neatly on a peg by the door. Then I dampened a paper towel at the sink and handed it to Pete with a pointed look at the long neon-pink smear along the edge of his jaw. He was still chuckling, and an embarrassed (and absolutely adorable, although I would never say so) flush had crept up his neck. He was going to be grilled—thoroughly grilled—about his high school shenanigans later, and I think he knew it.

  Ms. Oliphant had slung her monstrous bag—apparently handknit of some kind of shredded sea grass with wooden beads painted like ladybugs interspersed in the design—onto the kitchen table, and she was now pawing through its cavernous interior. “I’ll just be getting my graphite sticks out, and a pad of newsprint. I understand time is of the essence, but I couldn’t get out here any sooner because Laddie—my dog, you know—has indigestion, and he has to be watched after he’s fed for a certain length of time, otherwise I come back to a disastrous mess in the house. Poor dog. Unlike your sweet hound here. She’s a shy one, isn’t she?”

  Tuppence was cowering under the table, pressed hard against Burke’s legs. Burke almost looked as though he’d like to slide under that protective surface and join my dog. Olivia Oliphant had a commandeering presence—the kind of personality that might be able to swallow small children whole. But Pete had survived.

  “How about the living room?” I suggested loudly over Ms. Oliphant’s continued running commentary. “I’ll bring you some tea.”

  “Oh, lovely, dear. Lovely, lovely, lovely.” And she began wandering toward the nearest doorway, clutching an armful of supplies to her chest.

  Pete snagged her elbow just before she began descending into the basement and redirected her toward the front room with the comfortable sofas and padded armchairs.

  “Oh, this way? Silly me. Seems the last time I was in this house, Harriet had the living room down there. Or maybe it was her sewing room. Did you know she helped me with the costumes for the eighth-grade presentation of Oklahoma!? That was before I put my foot down and told the school board I could handle only so much nonsense in one school year, and they agreed to switch me to teaching high school art classes only. That young gal they hired for the younger grades lasted just one year, bless her heart. Wimpy, just wasn’t cut out for the rigors of education, that one. Crashed and burned, poor dear…” The clarity of her words petered out as she rounded the corner, even though the general air of constant blather remained swirling like little dust devils in the kitchen.

  Burke and I blinked at each other, just trying to regain our bearings, I think.

  “Well,” I murmured into the static leftover from Ms. Oliphant’s monologue.

  A slow grin spread, and nearly cracked his face in half. Those mineral-green eyes shimmered like iridescent pools in a deep forest.

  “Think you can handle this?” I asked.

  He nodded—even eagerly, it seemed.

  “Off you go, then.”

  Tuppence stuck to his heels as though he offered some kind of magic protection from the startlingly flamboyant woman who’d invaded the house, and they slid into the living room together. I set about performing my hostess duties as quickly as possible. In truth, I didn’t want to miss a minute of the sketching process. And Burke would need backup—maybe.

  But when I carried in a tray of tea things, Burke, to my immense surprise, was wedged in next to Ms. Oliphant on the sofa and was answering her soft questions with murmurs and short shifts of his head—up and down, or side to side. He was close enough that his cheek occasionally brushed her sleeve. She also had toned down her chatter, and they were both deeply absorbed in whatever was manifesting underneath the deft strokes of her graphite sticks.

  From Pete’s intense blue glance, I could tell he was impressed. He’d stationed himself just over their shoulders, watching unobtrusively, and I went to join him.

  “Do you know him?” I breathed after a few minutes, when the solid chin and sharp nose with flared nostrils of what I assumed was the larger of the two murderers took on a more defined shape.

  Beside me, Pete shook his head.

  The result was the same for the second drawing, of the smaller, bossy man. Very clear, very distinct features—but none of us recognized either one.

  “You’re sure, Burke?” Ms. Oliphant asked. Without waiting for an answer, she heaved herself off the sofa and strode to the far wall, spun around and held up one drawing in each hand, her arms spread wide. “How about from a distance? I can change anything you want.”

  Her thick, murky opaque taupe stockings—manufactured of a yarn denier more common prior to WWII—bagged around her ankles, and her hair—what I now realized was of the faux-extension variety—was clumped unattractively over one ear, but she’d achieved wizardry with the drawings. The two men seemed poised to lunge off the newsprint, the menacing scowls on their faces making my heart thump faster than normal.

  I grabbed Pete’s hand, and he gave me a reassuring squeeze.

  “That’s them,” Burke answered quietly, but firmly.

  While she sipped her tea, Ms. Oliphant transferred her sketches to larger sheets of watercolor paper.

  “People don’t think in black and white anymore,” she lamented. “Not since the movies switched over to Technicolor. You have to feed a likeness to them—hook, line, and sinker. Otherwise this bozo could walk right by and they’d never make the connection.”

  I was a little worried about what direction her comments would start to run toward now that her focus had a little more leeway, so I sent Burke upstairs to take a bath. He obeyed, but with a foot-dragging reluctance that would’ve made me chuckle—and probably relent—under other circumstances.

  “Do this often?” I asked when he was safely out of earshot.

  Ms. Oliphant shook her head, the tip of her tongue pointing doggedly out of the corner of her mouth as she swabbed in the first smear of pale blue paint. “More often than anyone would like. First time the witness has been so young, though,” she added in a hoarse whisper. “Poor mite.”

  “He seemed to do okay,” I added in my own whisper, more to reassure myself than anything. “He provided an extraordinary amount of detail.” I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting
, but the drawings were rendered with a clarity that was still disturbing me.

  “Oh, yes.” Ms. Oliphant fixed me with a cloudy stare. Cataracts obscured her eye color to the point of making it unidentifiable, and I wondered how she could produce such accurate sketches—and now paintings. “He’s a brilliant child,” she said approvingly. “Sheriff Marge gave me a bit of background—all part of explaining the urgency, you see. Since Burke hasn’t been distracted by television or video games or any of that other nonsense children are subjected to these days, he’s marvelously astute.” She returned to swishing paints around on the paper. “When you live in nature, you necessarily learn to observe extensively—out of self-preservation and, in his case it seems, innate curiosity as well. He’ll be a fine young man.”

  I figured her predictive powers were pretty accurate. I grinned up at Pete. Because she’d made the right call on him too.

  CHAPTER 15

  The next day—Saturday—was like a blast of incredibly chilly fresh air. Because it was a blast of incredibly chilly fresh air. Fortunately the air didn’t come with much precipitation in it, although the white stuff that was already on the ground stayed there, sparkling like crystallized frosting on every surface and still clinging to the bare oak branches and the evergreen boughs of the trees in the county park that surrounds the Imogene Museum.

  With the silvery-gray expanse of the river flowing beside the mansion and the powder dusted hills on the Oregon side, the setting couldn’t have been a more spectacular backdrop for a wedding reception. Particularly for the out-of-towners who don’t take our marvelous scenery for granted. The wedding party smiled gallantly while their lips turned blue and the photographer dictated poses and positions for picture after picture after picture.

  She’d come prepared—in a down parka with fur rimming the hood and fingerless gloves so she could still flip the little switches and press the shutter buttons on her bevy of cameras. But I felt terrible for the poor bridesmaids in their shimmering, silky, sleeveless gowns and strappy sandals. Those girls were going to need heated benches like NFL players get in Green Bay, or at the very least, warm blankets—which Frankie, bless her heart, thought of and popped in to roast on low in the museum’s kitchen oven.

  The rest of Mac and Val’s guests streamed through the Imogene’s front doors, their breath frozen and suspended in front of their mouths like hesitant ghosts, and the ballroom was soon buzzing with the cheerful screeches of long-lost friends greeting one another, general back slapping, and chair legs scraping on the floor as people found their place cards and took up battle stations for the festivities to come. There was also a run on the restrooms.

  Pete and I had entrusted Burke to Rupert’s care, and the two of them had skedaddled out of the back of the church on the coattails of the wedding party. I’m pretty sure that if anyone noticed a small-for-his-age boy with giant blue-green eyes flitting like a waif in the foyer, they all assumed he was the offspring of one of the many visiting guests and didn’t give him a second thought. At least that was what I was hoping, with my fingers crossed, while I thought of him safely ensconced up on the third floor in Rupert’s time capsule-slash-office. I’d take some food to them later and check to make sure they hadn’t been buried under an avalanche of items of historical and sentimental value.

  For the moment, I was the girl with the clipboard, a little too much like a Frankie clone for my comfort, but nonetheless stationed just inside the double glass doors at her bidding and pointing guests in the general direction of their assigned seats. We figured they could read the diagram, but they still might need a little help getting their bearings and navigating through the large room.

  Deputy Owen Hobart, looking mighty spiffy in his khaki uniform—whether he was on duty or not, I wasn’t sure, but with all the starch and buttons the uniform still might’ve been the nicest suit of clothes he owned—stepped through the doorway, his brown eyes raking the room with a dazed sort of overwhelmedness in his expression. This event was a pretty far cry from his usual search and rescue and patrol responsibilities, and I felt a pang of empathy for him. Maybe all the formality was a touch claustrophobic for him.

  “Hey, Owen,” I murmured. “Thanks for…well, Pete told me, uh…some.” I wrinkled my nose at my own awkwardness. I was supposed to be helping the guests, not confusing them in the doorway. But I couldn’t say a whole lot about what I wanted to say—if you get my meaning.

  Owen certainly did. “Yeah, sure.” He flashed me a quick glance along with a nod. “Just doing my duty. We’ll get it sorted.”

  I had no doubt they would. All of them—Sheriff Marge and her three deputies. Even if they worked a hundred hours a week each for the next three months, they wouldn’t stop until they’d sorted the problem on Gifford Mountain.

  The problem was, I wasn’t sure we—meaning Burke especially—had the luxury of the time it would take the severely undermanned sheriff’s department to complete the task and bring the murderers to justice. There were just so many loose ends, so many unknowns. They were faced with a research project of epic proportions, and when I thought about it that way, I could certainly relate, my knees nearly buckling with the magnitude of the job before them.

  But I pointed Owen toward a table in the front corner of the room and suggested he could be on warm-blanket duty when the wedding party was released from smiling for the camera since there was a lovely bridesmaid assigned to the same table with him.

  He pinked up in a way that had nothing to do with the brisk temperature outside and slipped into the gathering throng, edging around the perimeter of the room like a border collie keeping tabs on all his sheep—just watching, ever alert.

  oOo

  Mac MacDougal—the groom—was acting as his own master of ceremonies. I suppose that’s taboo normally, but in Sockeye County the rules of etiquette are what you make them, and Mac was bringing the house down. It may have been an innate bartender skill, or it may have just been Mac himself—the guy is indefatigable, and utterly charming in an inexcusably corny way. Especially now that he’s married to someone else.

  And his new bride was thoroughly enjoying his banter, laughing and blushing furiously, cheering when it was warranted, and occasionally looking as though she might want to disappear under the head table with her dog, Rosie, who was dressed prettily with a big blue bow on her collar and who’d acted as ring bearer during the ceremony. But I couldn’t have been happier for Val, and, all things considered, she’d definitely known what she was getting into. I caught her eye from across the room, and she gave me a happy little wave.

  I was rather enjoying the fact that as hostess/organizer/person-in-charge under Frankie, I wasn’t assigned to a table myself. So I got to wander and watch and dart in and out and hopefully avert any disasters in the making. Of which there were only a few. Mostly I got to eavesdrop.

  After the obligatory oohing and ahhing over the decorations and the lights and the glamor of the ceremony and all the usual things people say about weddings, most of the celebrants settled down to the serious business of eating while rehashing community goings-on of note. Which turned out to be primarily the spree of petty thefts and vandalism that seemed to have affected—directly or indirectly—just about everyone.

  Someone—or a set of someones, connected or not, no one was sure, although there was rampant speculation—was making their mark on the county. Quite literally, in the form of spray paint and broken windows and cut chain-link fences and slashed tires, a few stolen vehicles, etcetera. The perpetrators were creative, to be sure, and had garnered the attention of the entire county. No wonder Sheriff Marge was fit to be tied. No wonder she was stretched to the point of breaking, trying to handle all those complaints plus a murder investigation. And no wonder she also had a burr under her saddle about the new exhibit.

  Any little thing that could help slow the rate of crime in the county would give her a much-needed boost. I silently vowed to redouble my efforts along the cultural awareness and solidarit
y front that the Imogene and all her treasures on display represents, particularly in the form of the new exhibit. She wasn’t going to like the fact that the rumor mill had so enthusiastically grabbed ahold of the petty crimes, but the alternative—that the community at large knew enough about the murder to speculate upon it as well—was worse. So far, it seemed that knowledge of the much direr situation had been contained to a narrow group of people. I needed to do everything I could to keep it that way.

  Pete, handsome in the charcoal-gray suit and jaunty bow tie dictated upon groomsmen, found me lurking in the corner behind the towering wedding cake and wrapped his arms around my waist from behind, snugging me up against his chest. “Glad we’re finished with all the pomp and hoopla, babe?” he murmured into my ear. “Settled-down is good, yeah?”

  I nodded vigorously and leaned against him, reveling in his warmth. “We narrowly escaped. I couldn’t imagine having a bash like this.”

  “How’s the kid?” he whispered even more quietly, his seven-o’clock shadow scritching against my cheek.

  “I took them plates of food about half an hour ago. Neither Rupert nor Burke did more than holler that they were okay from somewhere deep in the stacks. The fact that they didn’t immediately come out and ravenously scarf the food means they’re hot on the trail of something good up there.” I chuckled. “In other words, he’s fine. If rubble and mass disorganization are defense mechanisms, then Rupert’s office is the safest place in the world for him.”

  “The mood’s pretty somber—for all the happiness,” Pete said, jutting his chin toward the guests. “You’d think people would be giddy for finally having succeeded in getting Mac and Val to tie the knot, but they’re already on to grumbling about the latest problem.”

  I nodded again. “About the crime wave? They’re worried. I don’t blame them. Sounds like it’s affected most of the retail businesses in Platts Landing and many in Lupine as well,” I added, mentioning the county seat about twenty minutes to the east, and the heart of Sheriff Marge’s jurisdiction.