by Molly Macrae
I touched the socks . . . but I didn’t so much feel anything as . . . heard . . . “quack.”
I sat back on my heels. “What the . . .”
“What?” Geneva asked. “What is that silly look on your face?”
“What is it?” Ardis squawked from the phone. “Kath! What’s going on?”
“Did you hear that?” I wasn’t sure who I was asking—Geneva, Ardis, or myself.
“Hear what?” Geneva asked.
“Quack.”
“Shame on you,” she said. “This is no time for lame duck impressions. I am affronted on behalf of the deceased.”
“No, no, it’s what I heard. Didn’t you?”
She swirled around me once, making a noise ruder than a quack, and disappeared.
“Who are you talking to?” Ardis asked. “Is Gladys alive?”
“No. No, she’s not. It was Geneva.”
“She’s there?”
“She was. She’s gone.”
“If she’s gone,” a voice I didn’t know said behind me, “then there’s nothing more you can do for her, so come on out of there.”
I didn’t know that voice behind me, but I recognized its nasal birthplace—Chicago. “Ardis, I think Al Rogalla is here,” I whispered into the phone.
“Then watch your back,” she said.
“He’s at my back.”
“Okay,” she said, “then here’s what you do. Turn around, look him in the eye, mention Hugh’s name, and see what he does. It’s the element of surprise and might be revealing.”
Mentioning a murdered guy to someone Ardis didn’t trust wasn’t the kind of surprise I wanted to spring in the dark, under a bridge, near another newly murdered person. Under the circumstances, just being near the guy Ardis didn’t trust would have given me the heebie-jeebies, but before my nerves had a chance to dance that particular jig, the first wave of police arrived in the form of Shorty Munroe.
“Deputy Munroe’s here now,” I whispered into the phone. “But, Ardis, we need to find your daddy and Ambrose, fast, because—”
“Because there’s a maniac on the loose. Tell Shorty, Kath. Tell him and whoever else arrives. Oh my land, and now I’ll worry about John, Joe, and the kiddos out there, too.”
“You should hang up in case they’re trying to call you.”
“And so you can concentrate. Call me when you know something,” she said, and disconnected.
“What are you doing here, Rogalla?” Shorty said. “You know better than to contaminate a possible crime scene. And who’ve you got treed under the bridge there? Oh, hey, Ms. Rutledge. You’re not with this guy, are you? Did you call this in?”
I acknowledged Shorty’s “hey,” and then we heard Ernestine hailing him from the bridge.
“Yoo-hoo, Deputy Munroe. I made the call. Kath found the body.”
“Hoo boy,” Shorty said. “Cole’s going to love this. You come on out, too, Ms. Rutledge.”
Before making my way out into the glare of his high-powered flashlight, and before my nerves had a chance to run screaming, I quickly brushed my fingertips across Gladys’ sock again. The “quack” that time was just as clear—and just as bizarre. I’d never “heard” anything through my fingertips before. But the quack reminded me of the first time I’d seen Gladys. Outside the courthouse, with Clod holding her by the arm, and she’d whomped him in the stomach with her handbag and called him a quack. Quack?
“Ms. Rutledge, are you all right?” Shorty was on his hands and knees.
“Kind of rocky, Shorty, but I’m okay.”
“Well, you go on out while I see what we’ve got here.”
I crawled past him. I liked Shorty. While Clod’s entire persona appeared to be starched, pressed, and at attention, Shorty always looked as though he’d just stifled a massive yawn, and his uniform as though it was still taking a nap. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and made me think of an overworked pencil pusher—more like an accountant than the guy in running shorts who watched me crawl out from under the bridge and get to my feet.
“Are you Al Rogalla?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Joe had said Al Rogalla—accountant and volunteer fireman— was a nice guy. But he wasn’t so nice that he made any more of an introduction of himself than “yeah,” and he didn’t ask me who I was in return. Maybe he didn’t feel it was the time or place for that kind of polite exchange. He wasn’t as tall as Joe or Clod, though easily a head taller than Shorty. Shorty’s nickname hadn’t taken any imagination. That he had a couple of inches on me wasn’t saying much.
Now that I wasn’t alone in the dark under a bridge with Al Rogalla, I decided it was the time to take Ardis’ advice and spring the name Hugh McPhee on him. And while we were there within scream’s reach of an armed sheriff’s deputy, I decided to up the percentage. “You and Hugh McPhee had a meeting with the Register of Deeds Tuesday afternoon, didn’t you? And another meeting with Rachel Meeks at the bank after that?”
“Yeah.” Neither his face nor his monosyllable revealed a thing. He did shift slightly from one foot to the other; otherwise nothing.
We heard Shorty speak into the radio at his shoulder. It was possible that Rogalla, from his years as a volunteer fireman, could interpret the answering burst of static. I couldn’t. Shorty spoke again, then crawled back out. When he stood he wiped his hand down his face, but he didn’t bother to brush the dirt from his knees.
“You look lonely out here by yourself,” Rogalla said to Shorty. “Everyone else at the poker game?”
“Backup’s on the way. What are you doing here, Rogalla?”
“I was out for a run and caught it on the radio.” A small box clipped to his waistband buzzed to prove his point.
“And you got here before me? All I had to do was walk out the back door.” Shorty hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the courthouse.
“I run fast. You should try it.”
The gibe didn’t bother Shorty. I pictured it landing somewhere on his rumpled khaki and brown and getting lost in the wrinkles. He scratched the back of his neck. “Where’d you run tonight? Were you in the park before you heard the radio?”
“Before? No. I ran the usual loop. Out Depot to Old Stage Road and around to Spring Street. I was crossing the tracks at Fox when I heard the radio.”
“Okay. You can clear out, Rogalla. Ms. Rutledge, we’re going to have to take a statement. Would you like to wait up there on the bridge with Ms. O’Dell?”
“I’d like to walk Ms. O’Dell home,” I said. “But first I need to—”
“I’ll walk her home,” Rogalla cut in.
“You are being rude and staring at him as though you expect him to sprout horns,” Geneva called down from the bridge.
“Ernestine, is that all right with you?” I asked.
“If it doesn’t put him to too much trouble,” she said. “Deputy, I don’t think there’s anything I can add to your report except that if you find a crochet hook and a pair of scissors down there, they’re probably mine.”
“Crochet hook,” Shorty said as though the piece of a puzzle had fallen into place. “When did you lose it?”
“Shortly before Kath made her discovery. I dropped them and she kindly went to find them for me and found—who did you find, dear? Do we know?”
I looked at Shorty and he shook his head.
“It’s unconfirmed, Ernestine.”
“We might need to keep Ms. O’Dell here to answer a few questions, too,” Shorty said quietly.
I shook my head and pointed toward the bridge, toward Gladys, toward the crochet hook twisted in the strip around her neck. I was interested to see that my finger shook slightly. “It’s not Ernestine’s hook,” I said. “She never uses one that big.”
“Old woman?” Shorty said, sounding skeptical. “Bad eyesight, right? My grandmother uses one that
big. Heck, my wife does.”
“Ernestine doesn’t,” I said firmly. “She was with me all evening. Gladys was dead when I found her.”
“All right if I take her home, then?” Rogalla asked. “Your call, Shorty.”
“Go on.”
Shorty and I watched Al Rogalla climb the bank in a few long-legged steps. On the bridge, he bent his head to hear something Ernestine said. Geneva bent to hear it, too. Then Rogalla took Ernestine’s backpack on one shoulder and her on his arm.
“See you in the morning, Ernestine,” I called. “Thanks, um, Al.” He said nothing in return.
“You could walk me home,” Geneva said, floating down from the bridge and hovering beside me. “Now that your art project has blown up in your face.”
“Excuse me, Shorty, my phone.” I pulled it out of my pocket. “Okay if I answer it?”
“No details,” he said.
“I’ll just go over here.” I put a few feet between us. Geneva followed. “What did Ernestine say to Rogalla up there?” I asked her.
“She asked where he bought his running shorts. Will you take me home now?”
While I tried to explain why I couldn’t walk her home then and there, Shorty’s backup arrived. Shorty shooed me up to the bridge, which was fine with me. I sat on the steps, glad I was at least a little removed from the usual controlled commotion of a crime scene. I didn’t want to see them putting Gladys on a stretcher. I didn’t want to see Clod, either. It wasn’t until I was thinking how strange it was to know what consisted of “usual” at a crime scene that I realized this one was usual, except for a conspicuous absence.
“The sheriff is here,” I whispered to Geneva, “but wonder of wonders, Deputy Dunbar isn’t.”
“Because someone probably walked him home,” she shouted back.
There was no point in telling her, again, that she could easily find her way back to the Weaver’s Cat without me. And there was no point in re-repeating that if she stopped moaning about it, she might hear something pertinent to the case. She’d already declared me impertinent and was sulking in a heap on the step below me. Her sulk and Clod’s absence—including the absence of his invariably snarky questions and comments—lent my small space in this wretched night a brief sense of calm. False calm, of course, because the word “absence” triggered a barrage of thoughts starting with a guilty one about Tammie. She hadn’t shown up at the bridge and we, at least I, hadn’t heard anything from her. I tried calling her again. No answer. That could mean nothing, or it could mean I should tell Shorty and—and what a dolt. I hadn’t told Shorty about Hank and Ambrose. That they were still missing, I was sure. If they’d been found, Ardis, John, Joe—or all three—would have called to let me know.
“Geneva?” I moved down onto the step next to her. “I need to go talk to the sheriff. Do you want to come with me?”
“You were told to wait here.”
“I need to tell them about Ardis’ daddy and Ambrose.”
“What about them?”
“What you told me. They’re missing. Remember?”
“I thought it was an escape. From Ardent. I know that is what I felt like doing. That is why I followed them here. Now you are staring at me just as rudely as you did at that nice man who walked off into the moonset with Ernestine.”
“If you followed them here, where are they now?”
“To borrow one of your favorite phrases, ‘beats me.’ Now do you see how defeatist and unhelpful that is?” She heaved a sigh. “No, I am sorry. I do not know where they are. When I saw all of you here at the bridge, I bid the old darlings adieu. I have just had a thought, though.”
“What?”
“Do you think either of those crotchety geezers speaks French?”
As tempting as it was to say, “Beats me,” I opted for grinding my teeth instead.
“Because it’s possible that I do,” she said. “Or it could just be that I had the good fortune to catch a foreign film or two on television. It is so difficult to know these things, mais oui?”
“Come on.” I stood up. “We need to go talk to the sheriff. I need to talk to him, and please don’t interrupt while I do. Then I’ll take you home. This night is giving me a headache.”
“Dommage.”
“Please stop.”
* * *
Sheriff Leonard Haynes did something I didn’t think possible. He made me wish I was talking to Clod. Clod at least listened to me. Clod’s condescending attitude came with signs and portents—a snort or a smirk—before he dismissed what I said. He thought I was a meddler, but he did listen. Sheriff Haynes didn’t care if I made a statement about finding Gladys Weems or not. My words made no noticeable impact on his ears. What I said seemed to go straight into a void of nonresponse. He didn’t make eye contact—not out of some kind of social awkwardness, but out of an obvious feeling that there was no need whatsoever.
I’d been introduced to Sheriff Haynes before. Clod had actually mentioned my name to him as one deserving credit for the help TGIF had given in solving a previous crime. That he didn’t acknowledge knowing me didn’t bother me. Not much, anyway. And I could understand why he didn’t want or need to hear my theory about how Gladys had probably been dragged under the bridge from the opposite side. But he lost my respect when he completely blew off worries over Tammie and then shrugged over the missing old men—didn’t think they could have gone far, didn’t believe they were in danger, didn’t give any credence to the horrible idea that Ambrose might have gone off his mean-as-snakes rocker and attacked Gladys—or Tammie. I didn’t want to give credence to that idea, either, but I also knew that stranger things had happened. Ambrose was a decrepit and tottery old geezer, but there was strength in him yet and he swung a wicked cane. And what kind of danger did that put Ardis’ daddy in? Sheriff Haynes didn’t think any.
Shorty caught up with me as I stomped my muttering way back to the Cat, Geneva’s misty form stomping alongside me.
“How did that man ever get elected sheriff?” I asked him. “I felt like shaking my fist at him, but he wouldn’t have cared. He wouldn’t have noticed.”
Geneva turned around and shook her fist, oddly stomping as easily backward as she’d stomped forward. She turned again and put her arm across my shoulders. “Les flics,” she said. “Phooey. Pigs, all of them.”
Shorty was more polite and probably more accurate. “He’s a good old boy. It’s the way he works and what works for him.”
“But who’s he working for? The community he’s sworn to protect, or himself?”
“Right now he’s trying to figure out how he’s going to tell the mayor that his ninety-three-year-old mother was murdered within spitting distance of the courthouse.”
“Which is absolutely horrible.” I stopped and Shorty stopped, too. “It really is horrible. I liked her. And now this is going to sound callous, but she’s gone, and there are two old men—”
Shorty put his hand up. “A couple of questions and then I need to get back there. “You last saw Tammie on Main sometime before eleven. What’s her last name?”
“Fain.”
“And this yarn project on the bridge—when did you and Ms. O’Dell start working on it?”
“We started the project about ten. We got to the bridge about midnight.”
“Were the old men with you?”
“They were with Ardis and John.”
“But they had access to your—materials?”
“Matériel,” Geneva said.
“Because I saw squares on the bridge,” Shorty said, “and one of the guys said he saw long strips tied around streetlights and a stop sign. It’s the strips I’m interested in. And who had access to them. And when.”
“You mean earlier this evening?”
“Earlier this week. We found the same kind of strip wrapped around Hugh McPhee’s neck Tuesday n
ight.”
Chapter 23
“I hope you realize that what I just said lets Ambrose Berry off the hook,” Shorty said.
I’d closed my eyes when he told me about the strip wrapped around Hugh’s neck. I opened them at that remark, and he nodded.
“Pun intended. Sorry. I wanted to make sure you’re still with me.”
“That doesn’t let any of us off the hook, Shorty. We’ve been knitting and crocheting strips for weeks.”
“Like that one?”
“I don’t . . . maybe not. I don’t know. But that makes it even more egregious that Sheriff Haynes didn’t take a statement from me. He’s got two victims of murder by crochet strip, and there I am, with one of the victims and a bag full of potential murder weapons.” I was getting worked up again. I took a breath and tried to lower my voice. And to avoid spitting on Shorty’s rumples. “Wouldn’t you think Sheriff Haynes would have wanted to see if there was some kind of connection there?”
Shorty gave me a slow, tired blink that did more to calm me than any amount of deep breathing could have. “Did either you or Ms. O’Dell kill Hugh McPhee or Pokey’s mother?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so. I’m not at liberty to tell you why, but Sheriff Haynes doesn’t think so, either. We know where to find you, though, if we have more questions. And I can pretty much guarantee we will have more questions.”
“What about finding Tammie and the old men?”
“I’ve got you covered. I called Cole.”
* * *
Shorty headed back to the crime scene. I walked with Geneva the rest of the way to the Weaver’s Cat. She floated beside me, humming “Frère Jacques.” I said good night on the porch. She stopped humming long enough to say, “Bonne nuit,” and with a wave floated through the front door. I was about to call Ardis when my phone rang. It was a number I’d thought about blocking. The caller didn’t wait for me to say hello.
“We’re at your house and—”
There was a muffled scuffling sound, as though two identically irritating people were fighting over the phone.
