Dead Body Language

by Penny Warner

  Although I liked to think a few of the men in this town find me attractive, Beau wasn’t one of them. Being gay, he hadn’t initially been the most popular guy in the macho atmosphere of Flat Skunk. But once people got to know him, things seemed to change. The folks in town became a bit more tolerant of those who wore their Stetsons cocked to a different side. Beau and I had a lot in common; we both felt a little alienated from the mainstream.

  I stood to leave and winced at the dull ache that had set in nearly everywhere. “I don’t care how cute he is, stay away from him when you’re biking. He’s a menace on the road.”

  I thanked Beau for the medical care and took him up on his offer of a ride home. He carried my mangled bike to my front door as I followed him gingerly from the sidestep pickup, walking like an old lady with arthritis, osteoporosis, and hemorrhoids. Beau wouldn’t leave until I promised to come by for Sunday breakfast—blueberry scones, broccoli quiche, and raspberry mocha.

  It was an easy promise to make. Beau made breakfast to die for.

  I pulled out my keys to the diner and stuck them in the lock. Flat Skunk isn’t the kind of town where you have to lock your doors yet, but being a deaf, ex-city girl with a suspicious nature, I locked my home, car, and bike automatically. I pushed open the door, picked up the mail that had slid through the door slot, and waited for Casper to attack me.

  But when I closed the diner door behind me, I had a funny feeling, a weird sort of déjà vu. Not like when you feel you’ve experienced something before, but as if something very familiar had changed.

  Casper appeared in a matter of moments, having finally pushed through her doggy-door, but she wasn’t her exuberant self. I gave her a soft pat, then passed through the diner to my room in the back and slowly took in the small living area. There was nothing I could put my finger on, but something triggered a semiconscious alert as I set down the lastest packet of mail on the coffee table. Yesterday’s mail, still resting where I had placed it last night, was different.

  I picked up the first envelope and peeked inside. The coupon booklet was still intact. Thank God. I checked the next envelope and the next, a bill from the computer software catalog company, and a letter from my old boss. Nothing missing. Nothing wrong. Except the pile of envelopes itself.

  I have this habit of arranging things. Got it from my father, I guess, another slightly obsessive-compulsive. As I go through the mail, I sort the letters by size and lay them on the table, largest envelope on the bottom, smallest on the top. Makes sense to me.

  Last night’s mail was out of order; big envelopes mixed in with small. I would never have done that to the mail.

  I walked around the room slowly, looking for other signs of tampering. I checked my junk drawer by the telephone, pulling it open slowly and dramatically, like I’d seen in those horror movies where the teenage girl opens a drawer and out jumps her cat or something. No cat, and the drawer was still a jumble.

  I headed for the dresser where I hid my valuables. The sheriff had once told me the bottom dresser drawer was one of the most common hiding places for secrets. If someone had a reason to look for something, that was the first place to check. I kept my stuff in the top drawer.

  If I ever got in a car crash, my mother would be happy to know that my underwear drawer was clean and neat. Underpants on the left, bras on the right, nylons in the middle, and sexy stuff in the back just in case I ever needed them again. Underneath all this satin and lace was where I kept my valuables—mostly love letters from my ex-boyfriend and a collection of little gold charms in the “I Love You” hand shape that I got from my first deaf boyfriend.

  There was no doubt about it. Some kinky weirdo freak had been fooling around in my underwear drawer. A pair of my sexiest panties was in the bra section.

  I dug down for the love letters—still there, but not in order. And they had been read—I could tell by the way they’d been reinserted into the envelopes.

  I shuddered. Who the hell had had his hands in my drawers? And why? Was it possible the intruder was still here? The back of my neck prickled suddenly.

  Catching movement from the corner of my eye, I spun around and screamed. Poor Casper. Nearly scared her to death.

  I patted my leg—the sign for “Come here, girl”—calling her back from the hallway. She returned timidly, wagging her tail between her legs. “It’s all right. I think,” I said, while I signed “Good dog.”

  Casper responds to about fifty signs. Although she’s not an officially trained hearing dog, I taught her myself, from the first day I got her as a puppy. A fluffy white-and-cream-colored Siberian husky with transparent blue eyes, Casper learned her first sign—“stay”—in two hours. Now she responds to basic signs like “wait,” “stop,” “come,” “lie down,” “door,” “food,” as well as concepts such as “where?” “listen,” “quiet,” bring me,” and “what’s that?”

  Right now she was using body language to let me know I had frightened her with my scream. That made two of us. I still wasn’t sure we didn’t have a reason to be scared. But at that point I figured if there was an intruder in the house, he or she would have made his presence known by now.

  Armed with a two-foot wooden pepper mill I made a timid search of closets, corners, and cupboards, but found nothing. With two bandaged knees, several decorative bruises, a splitting headache, and a doubled heart rate, I was in no mood for this latest intrusion into my life.

  But someone had been eating my porridge and it was not only scaring me, it was pissing me off.

  “Sheriff …” I typed, after I’d given my living quarters a second, more intensive search. “Someone broke into my place while I was out this morning. Can you come over and dust for prints or do whatever it is you guys do to catch burglars? GA.”

  “COnnoor? WHat are you talkig about? GA.”

  There he went again with his creative keystrokes.

  “Sheriff,” I typed more slowly, thinking that might help. My fingers trembled over the keyboard. “Someone broke into my diner. My things have been …” I paused. The cursor pressured me into a word choice: “… disturbed. Can you come take a look? GA.”

  “SOmeone broke in? How? ANYthing missing? ARe you sure the perps gone? GA.”

  I took a deep breath and resumed keying. “Yes, someone broke in. I don’t know how they got in. I keep the place locked all the time. Nothing is actually missing—so far. At least, I don’t think …”

  Another pause while the cursor blinked like a demanding instructor tapping a foot, waiting for an appropriate answer to an inscrutable question. I had no idea what the creep had come for—or if anything truly was missing. And I wasn’t absolutely certain he was gone.

  “COonnor? You there?” he broke in.

  “Yeah, I’m here. I’m pretty sure whoever it was is gone. I don’t think anything was taken, but some of my things are … messed up. GA.”

  There was a long pause on his end. The pulsar winked rapidly at me in time to my pounding heart.

  “MEssed up? what do you mean exactly? RAnsacked? DAmaged? DEStroyed? Overturned? what? GA.”

  I realized I was beginning to sound a little odd. “No, actually, everything’s very neat. Nothing’s been broken or destroyed. But—it’s not the way I left it. GA.”

  There was another long pause before the sheriff came back on line. His hesitation was beginning to irritate me.

  “ok. YOur things are messed up. DId you leave the dooor open? A window? MAybe your dog got into your stufff. GA.”

  “Sheriff, I NEVER leave my door unlocked! And I don’t think Casper has much interest in my mail or my underwear drawer. Everything’s … just … well, different! GA.”

  “Different. ok. WHat did the 415 do exactly? GA.”

  I typed a little more forcefully and hoped he felt my irritation on the other end. “THE 415 WENT THROUGH MY MAIL! MY LETTERS ARE BACKWARDS FROM THE WAY I STACKED THEM. AND HE WENT THROUGH MY … MY UNDERWEAR! GA.”

  There was yet another long p
ause. Sheriff Mercer was probably having a good chuckle over this one. No doubt sharing it with Mickey and the dispatcher and anyone else who happened to be in the office.

  “HOld tight. I’ll come take a loook at your underwear drawer when I get done here. I may be a couple of hours tho if its not an emergency. GOt another urgent call and stack of forms for the M.E. I have to process before I can deal withh suspected mail disarray and felony underwear dishevalment. YOu’re SURE someone was in your place? I mean, its possible in your hurry to gett to your newspaper this mornig, you might have left the diner open or messed up things yuorself? GA.”

  He wasn’t taking this very seriously. Maybe more exclamation points would help. “NO, SHERIFF!!! I KNOW WHEN SOMETHING’S NOT RIGHT! SOMEONE’S BEEN HERE! CAN’T YOU COME OVER NOW? GA.”

  “Ill get over as soon as I can. Maybe I can get Mickey to cruis by when he comes in.”

  “I can’t wait long for him. I have to go up to Whiskey Slide this afternoon on business. I don’t want to leave the place open.” I hated the thought of the deputy or the sheriff rummaging through my Calvins without a chaperone.

  “10-4. We’ll do the best we can. GA. SK.”

  I signed off, feeling more exasperated at the sheriff than frightened by the intruder. I headed to the closet for a change of clothes, peeking and scanning before taking too many steps, just in case. I pulled my favorite denim skirt and white cotton top out of the clean laundry pile next to my couch-bed, then I thought about something the sheriff had said. The front door hadn’t been damaged, but maybe a window had been pried opened somewhere.

  I checked the diner’s front windows, then the living area windows in the back. All secured. Barefoot, I stepped into the tub in the tiny adjacent bathroom and checked the small smoked porthole window. Locked.

  I stepped back out and felt something gritty beneath my bare toes. I raised one foot and brushed it off. Fine red clay drifted down like snowflakes.

  Dirt in my bathtub. I wasn’t usually that dirty when I took a bath.

  I stepped back into the tub and examined the powdery dust, then stood up and looked out the window again. The window was definitely locked, just as it had been this morning when I left. But the thin layer of dust along the sill had been wiped clean.

  I wasn’t that clean, either. I never dusted this early in the week. Frankly, I never dusted.

  I went out the back door, examined Casper’s doggy door, then moved around to the bathroom window. There weren’t any telltale footprints in the red clay beneath the window, but one of my white poppies and yellow monkey flowers looked a little squished. And the dirt around the area seemed unusually smooth.

  I examined the window for signs of tampering. The glass looked untouched, as did the wood sash and sill.

  Nothing.

  No signs of breaking and entering. The diner was locked up tight. I finished dressing and opened the medicine cabinet to renew my bandage accessories. A nearly empty box of Road Runner Band-Aids hid behind a bottle of piña colada-scented suntan lotion. I pulled out the box, helped myself to half a dozen, then replaced the box next to the lotion. I started to close the cabinet door, then stopped.

  They say you can tell a lot about people from their medicine cabinets. Not surprisingly, I keep things all lined up in neat little rows, tall at the back, short at the front. Kind of like my mail.

  Something was missing. There was a gap between the hearing-aid earpiece cleanser and the hydrogen peroxide. Whoever had invaded my cabinet had moved back a short bottle to disguise the space. But I couldn’t for the life of me remember what was gone. And it sent a chill up the back of my neck.

  Once I was certain my diner was a fortress again, I finished getting dressed, stuffed a pair of blue jeans, a red rugby shirt, and a pair of sneakers into a backpack for a comfortable change, and grabbed my reporter’s notebook, along with a handful of personalized business cards.

  I thought about calling my old boyfriend before I left to let him know about the intruder, make him worry about me a little. But I knew it was just an excuse, and I was feeling vulnerable. With a last look around the diner and a curse for the unknown invader, I headed for my Chevy and Whiskey Slide.

  Whiskey Slide is a thirty minute drive if you take Highway 49, even longer if you opt for the back roads and hit every podunk mining town along the route. I took the long way. I liked the ride and I didn’t get many opportunities to drive my classic car.

  Aside from getting a giggle or two out of the town names, I’d found most of the old camps were nothing but dry creeks or large pits in the landscape. Early settlements like Lousy Ravine, Humbug, Poverty Hill, Bogus Thunder, Poker Flat, and You Bet weren’t much more than dusty markers on the side of the road now.

  My personal favorite, Git-Up-And-Git, still sported an old weathered waterwheel, but the land was mostly a series of dug-up mounds that look like oversized burial plots. The entire town gave the impression of being one big cemetery.

  Whiskey Slide, however, had managed to survive the influx and desertion of the argonauts. Like Flat Skunk, it had become a tourist mecca full of boutique overkill and gold-panning lures for weekend wanderers, only on a much larger scale.

  Larger in acreage and population than Flat Skunk, Whiskey offered additional amenities: a decent discount clothing mart, a computer store, and one good Mexican restaurant. It was worth the trip from time to time.

  I pulled into a gas station/bait shop and filled up the car before locating a telephone booth that still housed an intact directory. Searching the L’s for Longo, I found nothing between Samuel Longnecker and Zachary Longueville. Rats. On to Plan B.

  Whiskey Slide is one of a handful of towns in the Mother Lode that doesn’t offer mail delivery. With such a small population, folks just keep a post office box and make the daily trek to town to pick up their mail.

  I entered the post office building, found the postcard machine, and dropped two quarters into the slot. Voilà! Instant stationery. The one I chose featured an old prospector holding a nugget the size of a tooth. Appropriate, since he was missing a few canines himself.

  I wrote a vacation cliché in the blank space—“Having a wonderful time! Wish you were here!”—then signed it and addressed the front to Risa Longo, filling in a post office box number that matched my age.

  “I’m not sure I have her right box number,” I told the clerk as I handed him my bogus correspondence. “Could you check it for me, just in case?”

  He mumbled something, looking down at a large envelope he was taping closed for a previous customer.

  “What?” I said, as I leaned in.

  He repeated his question but I still couldn’t understand him. I stared at him blankly, shaking my head and tapping my ear.

  He glanced up, looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “You’re deaf?”

  I smiled as he pushed a notepad over to me.

  “I can lip-read, if you speak clearly and look at me.”

  He began to speak again, exaggerating his mouth and talking slowly as if I were a child just learning the language.

  “Longo? Let me see,” the clean-cut middle-aged man said, scratching his left eyebrow with his pinkie ring. He looked at a well-worn plastic-covered list and shook his head, causing a handful of loose neck skin to ripple. “I think it’s fifty-four. Fifty-four. Fifty-four. Yep, here it is. You’re way off. There, that’ll do it,” he said, drawing a line through the thirty-seven and replacing it with the correct number.

  After thanking the man for his invaluable assistance, I went outside to find a comfortable spot under a tree, hoping I hadn’t already missed Risa Longo’s mail pickup. I pulled out a dog-eared Dick Francis mystery and read with one eye on the page and one eye on the post office. A number of people went in and out, but none seemed to fit the bill of Lacy Penzance’s sister.

  I was all the way to the part where the horse trainer gets killed when a woman in a silk jumpsuit brushed past me and entered the post office. She was approximately Lacy’s ag
e, but that was the only similarity to Lacy, as far as I could see from a distance. This woman was plumper and shorter, with close-cropped dark hair and ringless hands. As I had done with all the other post office visitors, I watched her as surreptitiously as I could from my vantage point, then moved in closer so I could see the rows of boxes more clearly.

  Fifty-four. Bingo. It was Longo.

  I turned around and pulled out my compact for the old pretend-to-check-my-face trick while the woman retrieved her mail. Peering over the top of the case, I watched as she paused at a nearby counter and sorted through the stack, discarding nearly half into a trash bin with a blank expression. When she reached my postcard, she stopped, read it, flipped it over twice, glanced around the room, and frowned. I pretended to struggle in my backpack for some change to use in the stamp machine. Did the name I had signed at the bottom—Lacy Penzance—ring a bell? Or was Lacy a stranger to this woman? I couldn’t read Risa Longo’s puzzled expression.

  With a second glance outside the door, she tucked the card into a copy of TV Guide, stuffed the mail she’d saved into her oversized carry bag, and left the post office. I was right behind her.

  As I ducked behind my Chevy, I watched her walk to her BMW parked across the street. When she arrived at her car, she pulled the postcard from the small magazine, frowned again, then replaced it and got into her car.

  I knew one thing for certain. She was soon going to need major collagen treatments for those deepening frown lines.

  Following a suspect looks easy in the movies. You jump in the car, keep your distance, and eventually you both end up at the same destination.

  But anticipating the direction a real live person is actually headed when she doesn’t use her blinker, she drives too fast, and she’s three cars ahead, is about as easy as lipreading.