Saving Cecil

by Lee Mims

  It was about twenty feet long and covered a lower section of the old pit. Now what the heck was that doing out here? Was someone still working the clay pit? Local potters maybe. Maybe even amateur fossil hunters. Seemed logical, and I badly wanted to investigate, but I didn’t feel safe.

  “Tulip,” I called softly. “Get over here!” I had a bad feeling about this place. Whoever the mystery hog farmer was, he surely wouldn’t want me nosing around. Stubbornly, Tulip ignored me, pulling harder on whatever was under the tarp. Then with a jolt, she fell back on her haunches, rewarded with a good-sized stick. I clucked softly to her and this time she responded and trotted past me, keeping at arm’s length so I wouldn’t take her treasure.

  On the way back, we were about halfway across the second cornfield when my iPhone rang. I had been expecting Bud to call. It was only a little before 11:00 p.m. in Greece. A rush of warmth flooded over me. He was calling to say good-night. I forgot all about hidden hog pens and camouflaged clay pits and scrambled to dig the phone from my tote before it stopped ringing.

  I tapped it on quickly. “Well, hello,” I said, doing my best to muster a sultry bedroom voice in the middle of a dried-out cornfield. “Are you all tucked in?”

  “Uh, it’s a little early for me,” Chris said with obvious amusement.

  “Oh, man!” I said, totally disappointed. “I’m sorry. I was expecting someone else.”

  “Nooo! Really?” Chris said sarcastically, then he got serious. “Hey listen. I’ve got some news to run by you. It’s about the bullet hole in your tire.”

  “I’m all ears. What about it?”

  “I’m not at a very good place to talk right now. Let’s meet for supper at the Spring Chicken since hubby-to-be is obviously somewhere in another time zone. Ehh, you did think that’s who I was, didn’t you … your hubby-to-be?”

  “Of course I did!” I huffed. “I just have to finish in time to make my Krav Maga class at nine.”

  “Wow,” he said. “Israeli street fighting. I’m impressed. Doesn’t get much tougher than that.”

  I shrugged, though he couldn’t see me. The courses were something I’d promised myself for a while. Especially in light of some of the close calls I’d had over the last few years. “You never know when they might come in handy,” I said.

  “This is true,” he said. “You think six-thirty will leave you enough time?”

  “Sure. See you there.”

  I still had time after I got back to the doghouse to pull up the online edition of the Sanford Herald on my laptop and find the article on Clinton Baker. Despite what the Lauderbachs and Sara had told me about him, I wanted to know more. When I finished reading the article, I did.

  In fact, I felt even worse now that I’d read he was an Eagle Scout, a lettered high school athlete, a member of the debating team, an accomplished pianist and number one on the most-favored counselor list at Camp Morehead on the coast. The list of things he’d accomplished in his short life went on and on. Toward the end of the article, a mention of his passion for fossils, that he was majoring in Paleontology at UNC and even joined a local fossil-hunters group reminded me of what Sara had said about how he loved antagonizing creationists on their blog sites. Something I probably should mention to Chris when I saw him.

  I checked Mickey. Time to meet Chris. Besides, staring at the article on screen and feeling sad wasn’t helping me find out what happened to Clinton. Although it did fire up my determination. I turned off my laptop, locked the company logs in the floor safe, and padlocked the doghouse.

  On the way to the Spring Chicken, I realized the minivan needed gas. Now seemed better than after dinner, so when I saw a small country station at the next intersection, I pulled in. Their gas was more expensive and it looked like they were having some sort of political shindig, but I like giving my business to locals.

  Smoke coiled lazily from a pig cooker outside the station, perfuming the air with the delicious and unmistakable aroma of North Carolina barbeque. Under the overhang of the porch roof, the usual gaggle of old men in ladder-back chairs leaned against the outside wall of the station and smoked cigars. Inside, more folks were gathered, chattering and laughing.

  I swiped my card, stuck the nozzle in the tank, and was just setting the handle to fill when Sheriff Stuckey moved into the open doorway. An obese man with a florid face and a cigar clamped between his teeth—a heart attack waiting to happen—took hold of his elbow before he could leave. Stuckey clapped him on the back as the large man pumped his hand vigorously. “You’ve got my vote, Clyde,” he said.

  “Thanks, Elton,” said the sheriff, moving down the steps to shake hands with the men in the chairs.

  He didn’t see me and I watched as he greeted each with a comment that implied he knew them well. Then it dawned on me, this was an election year for him. That’s what all the schmoozing was about. I’d almost finished filling the tank and was hoping to leave without him noticing me, but I didn’t get my wish. As though sensing he might have missed a voter, he turned my way. His phony political smile vanished, replaced by a stony glare.

  “Well, well,” he sneered as he walked up to me. “You saved me a trip out to see you tomorrow.”

  “What? Aren’t you going to ask for my vote too?”

  “I know what you and Johnny and Buster are up to, thinking you can overturn your dad’s conviction. But hear this, missy. You can’t. The case against him is airtight. Besides, you won’t be around much longer to do anything anyway. You’ll be in jail … ”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Stuckey,” I said, pulling the nozzle from the tank and replacing it. “You’re raising the bar for lunatics worldwide. Who, pray tell, are Johnny and Buster and what have they got to do with me?”

  I knew who Johnny and Buster were. What I wanted to do was goad him into admitting he’d seen me at Johnny Lee’s well-drilling shop. Meanwhile, some new voters had arrived at the little gathering and gone inside the station. Heart attack man came out and called to the sheriff. “Hey, Clyde, got some new supporters here that want to meet you!”

  “Be right there,” Stuckey called, then turned and left, but not before squinting his eyes and shooting me with a finger gun à la Dirty Harry. He was clearly a lunatic. That he was also the sheriff was seriously scary.

  I saw Stuckey’s Interceptor parked on the side of the station as I pulled away. Wishing I’d seen it before making my refueling choice, I drove on, determined to get to the bottom of this latest mind-bending tidbit of information regarding my dad’s long-closed case. At least I thought it was long-closed. Another call to Dad was in order soon as I got home after dinner and before my Krav Maga lessons.

  Dinnertime at the Spring Chicken was crowded and noisy but Chris had arrived ahead of me and snagged a corner booth where it was relatively quiet. He’d also ordered me an iced tea. “Just the ticket,” I said, slugging down half the tasty brew.

  “You know that’s not Jack Daniels, don’t you?”

  “Of course. If it were, I’d have sucked down the whole thing.”

  “Bad day at the office?”

  “You could say that,” I said and gave him the condensed version of my latest little altercation with Stuckey. Wilma, our waitress, arrived and we both ordered the dinner special, meatloaf, mac and cheese, and fried okra. When she left, I asked, “So how do you get along with the sheriff? Don’t you think it’s a little odd, his bringing up my dad’s old case, right out of the blue? Then, there’s his insistence that I’m the prime suspect in the murder of Clinton Baker, despite the fact that I have no motive nor any past association with him.”

  Chris seemed a little uncomfortable. “Well, as I said, opportunity is a consideration and you were there … ”

  “I found him. Big difference. The killer was there, too, only a few hours ahead of me if the coroner is to be believed.” Wilma delivered our plates, dropping Chris’s a little hard at
the mention of the word “coroner.”

  “Yes, there is that,” Chris said. “Which brings me to my reason for wanting to see you. One of them anyway. It’s about the hole in your tire. I went back out to the junkyard. Dexter helped me pull the tire off the rim and we got lucky.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The bullet was caught inside.”

  I wrinkled my brow.

  “Instead of going straight through, it hit the rim and stayed inside the tire.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  We ate in companionable silence while I considered how this might affect me. If it proved to be from Stuckey’s gun, it would be so long Sheriff Stuckey. Not only would he be out of my life, but someone else, better qualified for the increasingly complicated job of sheriff in a rapidly growing county would be able to take the reins. After a while, I asked, “Can I see it?” It was Chris’s turn to wrinkle his brow. “The bullet,” I reminded him.

  “It’s locked in my desk in an evidence bag, but I can tell you it was very likely from a hunting rifle.”

  Is that a “no”? I considered his not offering to show it to me and wondered if he thought I was being irrational to think the sheriff could do such a thing. Then I put myself in his place, and well, it was a lot to take in. I worked on my dinner a little longer, then said, “Let me ask you something, Chris.”

  “Shoot.”

  “If you were to match the bullet with, say, one of the sheriff’s hunting rifles, what would you think then?”

  He drank some tea, then said, “I don’t deal in hypotheticals. First I’d have to have a reason to confiscate his rifle. I can’t just take it off the wall in his office and test it, you know. He’d have to be charged first. You willing to bring charges against him for attempting to kill you?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Does he know you have the bullet?”

  “Not yet, but I’ll have to tell him sooner or later.”

  “Anything that says you have to make that sooner rather than later?”

  “No, not really.”

  Well, that’s something, anyway. “Good,” I said sarcastically. “After all, we wouldn’t want to worry him, what with his trying to get re-elected and all. And, since he’s already got me in his crosshairs for the Baker murder, making him even angrier seems a little counterproductive, don’t you think?” Chris fiddled with his spoon. “You have to admit, you think it’s possible he’s the one who shot out my tire or else you wouldn’t have told me about the bullet. You’d have just chalked it up to a hunter’s shot gone wild.”

  Wilma returned and took our plates. “Coffee?”

  We both nodded in the affirmative. “I’ve thought of a few things I need to tell you about the Baker case,” I said, changing the subject. “Remember when I told you Clinton was quite the fossil buff, even to changing his major to Paleontology?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I forgot to mention that, according to Sara, he liked to antagonize the creationists and did so on their blog sites … a lot.”

  Chris put down his spoon, showing renewed interest in what I had to say. “We’ve got his computer,” he said. “I’ll have the analyst check it out. What else?”

  “He belonged to a local fossil hunters’ group.”

  “What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China? And, I believe I told you not to be playing detective in this case anymore.”

  “Jeez, I read it in the paper. Calm down, I’m just trying to help here. Plus, I’ve been thinking about him lately. Like, why was he wearing camo? He wasn’t hunting. Was he into military gear or … ”

  “Now, you calm down,” Chris interrupted as Wilma set down our coffee and sped away to wipe up a spilled soda at one of the large family tables. “I told you I’d get to the bottom of this and I will, but solving cases like this—no witnesses and no real suspects—takes a seasoned detective. Not a geologist.”

  “Have you got some other leads, other ideas, perhaps?” He didn’t answer, just watched creamer mix into his coffee in big looping swirls. I couldn’t help staring at his downturned eyes. Sooty lashes so long they seemed to rest on his cheeks. Damn he was pretty—and annoying. Obviously, he wasn’t planning on sharing information. Well, two could play at that game. No need to tell him about the wild hog breeding operation I’d found. Not just yet anyway.

  Chris squirmed in his seat. Something, it seemed, was still bothering him.

  “Problem?”

  “No,” he said. “But I do have a question for you.”

  “Ask away,” I said over the top of my mug.

  “Is your daughter married?”

  Oh, good grief. “No.”

  “Spoken for?”

  “No.”

  His expression turned quizzical. “You’re not very encouraging.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Henri goes through three guys like him—hot body, to-die-for face, mediocre job, scant ambition—a month. “No. Call her if you want. She’s unattached. Just consider yourself warned.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means she’s got a lot on her plate right now. You’d be a nice … distraction for a while but that’s all there would be to it.” His blank stare said I wasn’t getting through. “You’ll get all attached, then poof! She’ll be off to the next distraction and you’ll be just another piece of wreckage floating in her wake. I’ve witnessed this pitiful scenario many times.”

  He continued to stare, undaunted. I sighed, removed one of her business cards from my purse, gave it to him, then headed home.

  By the time I got off US 1 and onto I-40, it was almost eight o’clock and I had come up with a whole new plan of attack in searching for Baker’s killer. Well, it wasn’t really a plan of attack, more like a fact-finding expedition, which centered around the wild hog breeding operation. The fact that he was in camo—good for spying on the operation—and found on a path that eventually, albeit circuitously, led to the pens, told me it was something to look into.

  I was so deep in thought when I pulled the minivan into the drive that at first I didn’t notice vehicles belonging to Bud, Henri, and Will, respectively, parked in the drive. “What the hell,” I said aloud as I pulled around a catering truck and into the garage.

  After lowering the door with the remote that still worked despite having been submerged in Pocket Creek, I shoved it back in my purse and opened the door to the kitchen. Delicious aromas enveloped me. “She’s home!” Henri called, then disappeared through the swinging door as a chef, complete with tall white hat, starched tunic, and rotund belly, poured wine into a balloon glass for me.

  “Thank you,” I said, glancing around my kitchen. It looked like the set of The Iron Chef. Just then Bud busted through the swinging door and, before I could even sip my wine, swept me off my feet and planted a great, big sloppy one square on my lips. It felt so good, I just went with it. When we came up for air, chef and cooking crew applauded! To my great embarrassment, I giggled.

  “You’re just in time, Mom,” Henri said, apparently having forgotten her recent claim to have had enough of Bud and me. “When Dad let me know he was flying in tonight, I started thinking. Since you both missed my last attempt at letting you sample the wedding food before the big event, I thought tonight would work perfectly. We’re serving your favorite, French country cuisine. The one thing you’ve both actually told me you wanted.” This last she muttered under her breath. “Dinner will be a little later than we expected, but as it turns out, you’re both a little late, so it’s all good.”

  “Dinner?” I said.

  “You haven’t eaten have you?” she asked anxiously.

  “No!” I lied. “I’m famished! Let’s do this thing!”

  Late that same evening, I dropped an Alka-Seltzer in a glass of water and gulped it down as I enjoyed watching Bud shed his clothes. He tossed them
onto the lounge chair in my bedroom and said with a happy grin, “I don’t know who’s more excited about this event, the kids or us.”

  Yeah, that’s a tough one. “Well,” I smiled, still enjoying the show. “I can only say it can’t get here soon enough.” Bud narrowed his eyes. “No. I mean it. I can’t wait.” I’d never told him about my little catfight with Henri, and didn’t plan to. I was just damn glad she’d calmed down, because lately I’d taken to breaking out in a cold sweat at the thought of having to take her place in the slow torture known as wedding planning.

  To be honest, no matter how much of my life had been spent as Bud’s wife, I could never handle conspicuous consumption. Even after I finally clawed my way to my own financial independence, I wasn’t comfortable with throwing money away on such things as five-course meals for five hundred people in a tent fit for a Bedouin sheik set up in … . I suddenly realized I didn’t know where the wedding was to be held. Probably a little detail I ought to inquire into.

  Had I ever known where it was to be? Probably, but since the where of it wasn’t as important to me as the point of it—being with Bud for the rest of my life—I guess I’d forgotten. I didn’t have long to ponder the question that night because just then Bud let me know he had other plans for me that didn’t involve my memory.

  ELEVEN

  I’d arrived at the site early Friday morning and was on my knees in the doghouse, spinning the dial on the floor safe. I’d left the house before Bud even woke up, wanting to get a jump-start on the day. The last tumbler fell into place and as I turned the handle I heard Tulip’s toenails click on the floor behind me. She’d entered through the open office door. The weather was so gorgeous, I’d left it open. Besides, she likes to come and go as she pleases and conduct her wide patrols. Apparently a canine can never be too careful.

  Still crouched, I was shuffling through the logs when she dropped an object beside me.