Deadly Row to Hoe

by Cricket McRae

  Nothing on this street. Maybe the next one over.

  A fury of barking and snarling erupted on the other side of the fence. My heart, already pumping like mad, nearly sprang from my chest.

  Sheesh.

  I turned right and pedaled on. Behind me the disgruntled dog ran up and down its property line, sounding like a Baskerville hound. I felt rather than saw a light go on in the house.

  So much for staying under the radar.

  Hallie had no idea I was tracking her, and I wanted to keep it that way. My hip was still tender from her earlier blow, and another confrontation could only net me grief. My only goal on this two-wheeled jaunt was to see where she went, to keep tabs on her for as long as possible so the police would have an idea which direction she had headed. Barr must have gone back into the house to get his car keys, and help would soon be on the way. A phone would have been a good idea, but oh, well. Where would I have put it anyway?

  And that was when I realized I wasn’t wearing any pants.

  The Victoria’s Secret boy shorts were almost like real shorts, I tried to tell myself. At least Barr’s ratty old sweatshirt covered my rear end. Mostly. It certainly explained why Erin’s bicycle seat was so freaking uncomfortable.

  I heard an engine coming up from behind me.

  Barr had caught up. Finally. I turned to wave him in the direction I thought Hallie had gone.

  But it wasn’t my dearly beloved at all.

  I’d zigzagged too efficiently, and come out ahead of the Camaro.

  Oh, crap.

  I wove toward the other side of the street, hoping she wouldn’t recognize me.

  Right.

  Another car turned onto the street behind her. It accelerated and I craned to look over my shoulder, hoping against hope this time my husband had caught up. Hallie was driving too close to the bike for comfort, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her attention focused entirely on the rearview mirror. I recognized the silhouette of a Cadyville police prowler and let out a sigh of relief.

  The lightbar on top of the second vehicle flashed. Hallie tromped on the gas. The sports car sashayed toward me, and I tried to pedal faster, scanning for an open parking spot on the street.

  There.

  I veered directly into the narrow spot. My front wheel hit the curb. My teeth banged together, and the whole back end of the bike flipped up in the air. The sound of scraping metal filled the night as I flew arse over teakettle, tumbled over the grassy verge and public sidewalk, and stopped by bouncing off a neatly trimmed boxwood hedge. Lights came on in the hedge-owner’s house.

  The ground felt steady beneath me. Comfortable, if not soft. I stared up at the clouds. The wind was still pushing them along, more and more of them now. In fact, it was getting kind of chilly out. A raindrop hit my face. My feet were freezing.

  “Sophie Mae! Damn it, Sophie Mae. Are you all right?”

  Against my will, reality came flooding back. I was lying on a public sidewalk. In the middle of the night. Wearing my underwear and an oversized sweatshirt. My husband loomed over me, as did three or four strangers. And my butt really, really hurt.

  “Where are my slippers?” I asked.

  Twenty-six

  “You bruised your coccyx, but other than a few other minor contusions, you’re fine.”

  I cannot express how awful it was to have Jake Beagle examine my coccyx. But he was pulling all-night duty at the Cadyville Walk-In Clinic, so I didn’t have much choice. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Jake. I did. It was just that I knew Jake, and frankly, having a friend look at your broken behind is somehow worse than having a stranger do it.

  “Bruised? Not fractured? Because it feels fractured to me,” I said. The acrid smell of disinfectant was giving me a headache.

  “I don’t think so.” He probed one more time with surprisingly gentle fingers.

  I winced.

  He stepped back. “Okay. You can get dressed now.”

  Which consisted of tugging the scrubs he’d let me borrow up over my hips.

  “I can order an x-ray if you want,” he said. “But that might not show a fracture even if there is one. The bruise is already visible, and probably goes to the bone.”

  Ow.

  “It’s not like we could put a splint on it, you know.”

  “Very funny.”

  “How did you get that other bruise? The one on your hip?”

  “Surprisingly, it’s from the same source,” I said, deliberately vague.

  His eyebrows knitted. “I thought you fell off your bike. Though why you’d be out riding a bike this time of night in those clothes, I can’t figure. Especially since you’re not exactly the sporty type.”

  I gave him a hard look, designed to back him off.

  Which he completely ignored. “Seriously. What were you doing?”

  Covering my face with my hands, I shook my head. “There’s no way I can explain without sounding like an idiot.”

  “Eh. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “What kind of bedside manner is that?” I was too tired to protest more. I wanted to sit down in the worst way. Unfortunately, all sitting was in the worst way—on my tailbone, or on my hip.

  “Let me guess. It had something to do with Darla Klick’s death.”

  I dropped my hands. “So you did know her. I knew it!”

  Holding up his palms. “Everyone knows her name now. It was in the Eye this morning.”

  “But she was your patient, right? Didn’t you look up her records when you found out who she was?”

  He tsked. It sounded funny coming from such a big guy. Fake, too. “Why would you think that?” he said.

  “Well, for one thing, you told me,” I said. “At the farm you thought you recognized her from your practice. You also recommended Meghan’s massage therapy to her four years ago. I know that because Meghan checked her records once we knew Darla’s name.”

  His jaw set.

  I waved my hand in the air. “Relax. I’m exhausted and cranky and my backside is throbbing like the dickens. I’m not going to ask you to reveal patient information. If it comes to that, Barr can deal with the legalities and permissions headache. Besides, I already know about her pregnancy and its sad outcome.”

  Jake’s eyes widened. “Good Lord, Sophie Mae. Stop your search for justice, or whatever you call it, and go home. Take this ibuprofen—” He handed me a paper packet with two tablets in it. “—ice your coccyx for twenty minutes, and get some sleep. You can dive back in tomorrow.” He looked at the watch on his hairy wrist. “Or at least later today.”

  “Isn’t there something else I can do?” I almost kept the whiny note out of my voice, but not quite.

  “Sorry. For something like this the treatment is mostly to grin and bear it.”

  Great.

  Barr was waiting for me in the tiny lobby. He stood when I came out. “Did I hear him say ‘ice your coccyx’?”

  “Shut up.” I pushed the door open and limped toward the Rover.

  He hurried to my side and put his hand under my elbow for support. It felt good to breathe the cool, early morning air. The sky was overcast, and the breeze held a hint of moisture. I shivered in my borrowed sweatshirt and scrubs.

  Barr hadn’t gone inside the house to get his keys to go after Hallie after all. He’d guessed she was heading toward the highway, and alerted the single officer who patrolled Cadyville in the wee hours where to look for her. When Meghan told him I’d ridden off on Erin’s bike, he’d come to look for me in the Land Rover. He was being really nice, too, after that one outburst when he’d found me. I’d expected him to yell at me more.

  Now he said, “I’d pick you up and carry you, but that might hurt even more.”

  “That’s okay. Jake gave me booties.” I looked up just in time to see Barr get his face under control. “Go ahead. Laugh.”

  His mouth twitched.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Booties,” he snorted.

  And suddenly, it r
eally was pretty funny.

  _____

  I didn’t laugh long, though. The ibuprofen hadn’t kicked in yet, and I had to perch sideways on one hip in order to bear the ride home. The adrenalin had worn off, my thighs felt like jelly, and I kept remembering the terror I’d felt when the car had driven through the alley behind our house.

  Sure, it had probably been Hallie scoping out the place, but I didn’t scare easily. Something about Darla’s murder had wriggled deep under my usually tough hide. I’d felt compassion for victims before, as well as passion for finding their killers, but this was something new. Was it because I knew she’d been buried alive? Was it the cumulative effect of being close to so many deaths? Or had I simply managed to scare myself ? The thought bothered me more than I liked to admit. I always thought if you looked up the word “practical” in the dictionary, you’d find my picture beside it.

  What the heck was the matter with me? I glanced at the battered bicycle in back of the Rover. Erin was not going to be happy.

  “So you caught her?” I asked, meaning Hallie. A few big raindrops splatted against the windshield.

  “Patrol pulled her over right after she hit that car,” Barr said, turning the wipers on low. “She complied, though she wasn’t exactly friendly. She says she wasn’t going to take Clarissa, that she only wanted to talk to her about what happened earlier in the afternoon. She was afraid she’d scared her.”

  “She did. She scared all of us. Do you believe her? That she wasn’t going to try to take Clarissa?”

  He shrugged and flipped his turn signal. Never mind that there wasn’t another car in sight. “I don’t know. While you were in with Jake, Zahn called. He says Allie’s at the station, and she believes her.”

  “Is Hallie in jail?”

  “Well, we don’t technically have a jail, but yes, we’re holding her at the station. If the hospital doesn’t press charges—and I doubt they will—we’ll have to come up with another reason to keep her until we figure out why she’s behaving so strangely.”

  “How about attempted homicide? She tried to run me down.”

  “She swears that was an accident, that she didn’t even see you.”

  I let out a disgruntled puff of air. “It’s possible. I saw her eyes glued to the car coming up behind her. She didn’t seem to be paying attention to me at all.”

  Barr glanced over at me. “It’s a good thing you managed to get out of the way.”

  I couldn’t read his expression. Was he more upset with me than I’d thought? “Why wouldn’t the hospital press charges?” I asked.

  He gave a kind of facial shrug. “She didn’t really do anything there. A little disruption, but then she left of her own accord. Why would they bother with the legal hassle?”

  “She was driving drunk, you know. At least she was earlier.”

  “But tonight she only blew .03. There’s no actual evidence of earlier inebriation except you smelled tequila on her breath.”

  “We could all tell she’d been drinking,” I protested.

  “But there’s no evidence. I need evidence.”

  “Speaking of evidence, you haven’t found any at all that she killed Darla?”

  “None. We even went back out and went through all the tools again, just in case we’d missed the weapon there, hidden in plain sight.”

  My head was beginning to pound in time with the throbbing of my poor tailbone. “Again?”

  “Today, with Luminol. Tom and Allie let us search their house as well as Nate’s trailer, since they own it.” He grimaced. “We found nothing.”

  I stared at him. “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

  “I didn’t know I had to report everything the Cadyville Police Department does to my wife.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “That isn’t what I meant at all. Only that if I’m going to be of any use to you I need to know things.” I could hear the stridency in my voice, but I couldn’t seem to stop it. My patience felt like a brittle husk waiting to crumble at the slightest touch.

  PMS. Or, more likely, just a really crappy night.

  “Okay, first off, there was nothing to tell. That’s my point,” Barr said. His patience was wearing thin, too. I couldn’t blame him. “And secondly, you are hereby put out to pasture.”

  “What? Barr—”

  “What would you have done if that test had come out positive tonight? Would you still have hopped on a bicycle and ridden off after a murder suspect in the wee hours of the morning?” He was practically shouting now.

  I burst into tears.

  Barr pulled up in front of the house and came around to my side of the car. He helped me out, and we stood there for a few minutes in the light rain until I got my act together.

  “I’m sorry,” I snuffled.

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “I hate it when we fight.”

  He laughed.

  I pulled away and looked at him. “What?”

  “If that was a fight, I think we’re in pretty good shape.”

  Twenty-seven

  It turned out that a brisk, nocturnal bike ride, an involuntary back flip, and a visit with an old doctor friend before tumbling into bed at four o’clock in the morning was an excellent cure for insomnia. However, the morning after sucked.

  I awoke alone, blinking blearily at the daylight pushing in around the bedroom curtain. It looked bright and yellow, so the clouds from the night before had blown through. The clock on my bedside table read seven-thirty. Only three and a half hours of sleep, and without even moving I could tell the day was going to be painful. I lay on my left side, and my coccyx throbbed in time with my heart. But it was my own fault for chasing after Hallie.

  Buck up, Sophie Mae. Time to get going.

  Easier thought than done, but I managed. Gritting my teeth, I swung my feet to the floor, only to discover my ducky slippers, a bit muddy and worse for the previous night’s wear, sitting by the bed. Standing didn’t feel too bad. I tentatively stretched my arms toward the ceiling. So far so good.

  I made my way gingerly down the hallway to the bathroom. After a dose of ibuprofen and a long, hot shower with invigorating, rosemary-scented soap, I rubbed a generous application of arnica salve on my bruises. Then I dressed at half speed, amazed at how little damage I’d suffered, especially considering how little I’d been wearing on my lower half.

  At least the photographer from the Cadyville Eye hadn’t had a chance to catch my antics on camera. Neighborhood gossips would have to fill the bill in that regard. Unless one of them had gone digital and had already posted pictures of my scantily clad posterior around the Internet.

  What a lovely thought.

  I dressed in my softest, well-worn jeans. They had a big hole in the knee, but I wasn’t aiming for sartorial splendor today. Bette and I were scheduled to volunteer at the Turner Farm this morning, and bruised tailbone or not, I had no intention of letting Tom and Allie down. Adding a worn, Hard Rock Miami T-shirt I’d bought at the thrift store and a pair of sturdy work boots to my ensemble, I opened the door of our quarters and prepared to embrace the day.

  The mouthwatering smell of bacon greeted me, and I discovered Meghan and Erin at the kitchen table, murmuring with their heads together. Brodie lay with his head on Erin’s foot. They all looked up when I entered.

  “How are you feeling?” Meghan asked. Wearing a bright yellow sundress, she looked fresh as a proverbial daisy after so little sleep.

  “A little tender, but okay. Where’s Clarissa?” I headed for the coffee pot as if it were an oasis in the Sahara. A plate of bacon and buttered toast beckoned from the counter beside it. I grabbed a piece of each and poured a steaming mug of dark roast.

  “The Turners picked her up before you got back from your little adventure last night. This morning. Whatever,” Meghan said. “I called them as soon as Barr left to go after you. They were here within fifteen minutes.”

  And Barr and I had been so tired when we got home we hadn’t
even asked about the teenaged object of Hallie’s nocturnal visit. Meghan and Kelly had been sitting on the sofa waiting for us, but no one had been in much of a mood for conversation. I’d assumed Clarissa was back in Erin’s bedroom, and within minutes we’d all retired to our respective rooms.

  Leaning my uninjured hip against the counter, I paused before taking my first much-needed sip of caffeine. “So Allie must have gone to the station after that. Barr told me last night she believes her sister. Hallie’s story is that she only wanted to talk to Clarissa about that weird scene yesterday afternoon.” I glanced at Erin. “I wonder if Allie thought her twin might be the … you know.”

  “Murderer?” she piped up.

  “I have no idea,” Meghan said. “I didn’t get that impression from her, though. She seemed just as anxious to get her sister home as her daughter.”

  My bet was that Tom didn’t share his wife’s concern.

  “Why do you say that anyway?” Meghan asked.

  I wasn’t going to go into all the reasons for Hallie being Darla’s killer and Nate’s attacker, not with Erin staring at me like a cat looks at a bird, so I stuck with the most obvious. “They wanted us to look after Clarissa away from the farm so she’d be safe. I wondered whether they might suspect one of their own. But now that Hallie is in jail, they’ve taken their daughter back.”

  Meghan shrugged. “After all the hoopla here, they probably just want Clarissa home with them.”

  I looked at Erin. “Will you miss her?”

  “No.” The word was decisive.

  I raised one eyebrow.

  “She read part of my book last night while I was asleep!”

  “Ohh … and you haven’t let any of us see it.”

  “That’s because it’s not ready. I didn’t give her permission or anything. She read my story in the middle of the night when I was asleep, and then before her parents came to get her she said it was silly!”