Invisible

by Lorena McCourtney

  Then I realized how imprudent I was being, lying there wondering anything. Don’t ask questions, lady. Just run, run while you have the chance!

  I headed for the fence, crawling through the maze of fallen barrels with all possible speed, ignoring bits of glass and metal biting into my hands and knees. I grasped the rim of a barrel to pull myself to my feet. I was trying to climb on top of it when a second thought struck me. Did I have to take this difficult over-the-fence route? I didn’t understand why no one appeared to be gunning for me now, but maybe I could just sneak out the front gate.

  I stood poised by the barrel, trying to make sense out of the odd situation. Yellowish light still streamed from the bathroom window, but all it illuminated was the jumble of fallen barrels. I could read the printing on one now. Hydraulic fluid. On another, motor oil. No sounds came from inside the office. The area by the wall of the shack below the window was all in dense shadow.

  Were they toying with me? Planning to shoot me in some way that they could claim they’d mistaken me for a burglar? If that was so, making a silhouette of myself on top of the fence might only be playing into their scheme.

  Standing bent-bodied in hopes of making myself a smaller target, I felt my way around the fallen barrels and slid toward the darkest shadow under the open window. From there I planned to slip over to the corner of the office and reconnoiter. Then, if the way looked clear—and Duke didn’t sink his teeth into my leg—I’d head for the gate. Thank you, Lord! Thank you for giving me this chance.

  I was almost to the office wall when I stumbled over something on the ground. Something not metallic. Something different, softer …

  I shrieked when I groped with one hand and found what it was. A body.

  I found an arm, followed it up to neck and face. Encountered wetness warmer than rainwater. I stood up and thrust my hand into the shaft of light from the restroom. Blood.

  I knelt down and felt around again. A big body. With a lot of hair on the head. Wearing a lightweight jacket that was now soaking wet. Bo.

  My first instinct was to jump and run for the gate. My chance to get out of here! But something—Christian conscience?— made me reluctantly put my fingers to Bo’s throat and feel for a pulse.

  Yes. He was alive. I tried not to feel disappointed. Apparently the avalanche of barrels had knocked him down, and he’d hit his head on something harder than I had, and he was out cold. But for how long? And where was Benny? Had he heard my shriek?

  I wanted to just cut and run and put Ludlow Boulevard in my rearview mirror, but instead I started around the office to get to the door and phone. A second thought made me turn back. Where was the gun?

  No clever searching on my part found it. I stumbled over it where it had fallen, a few feet from Bo’s hand. I cautiously picked it up and took it with me. It occurred to me that I was mixing my fingerprints with Bo’s, probably not a good idea. But at this point I was less worried about fingerprints than about Bo regaining consciousness and finishing me off.

  I passed his car as I circled the office. The vehicle was big and long and foreign, expensive enough to finance a portion of the national debt.

  Inside, I dialed 911. For the first time I realized I was soaking wet too, hair plastered to my head, clothes stuck to my body, shoes squishy. Duke, still chained to the desk, appeared unconcerned about me or my wet state. I gave the 911 people what was undoubtedly a garbled account of events here, given that both my brain and muscles were beginning to dissolve into wet mush. A businesslike woman interpreted it well enough to say they’d send police and an ambulance immediately.

  “Are you in danger now?” she asked.

  I eyed my available artillery, a double-barreled shotgun and a heavy handgun. I wasn’t too sure how to use either, but I figured I’d give it a good try if Bo or Benny showed at the door.

  “I’ll be okay.”

  I went in the bathroom and, ignoring the washbasin filth, washed the blood off my hand. A hint of wooziness returned as I watched all that red swirling down the drain, even if it wasn’t my own. I returned to the desk and scooped everything back into my purse.

  Then I realized something. This was my chance to accomplish what I was here for. I tiptoed over, keeping an eye on Duke, and slid the girlie calendar aside. Bingo. Wall safe. Now all I had to do was find the key in the filing cabinet. Which I did, right up front in the second drawer. Ray knew what he was talking about. All I had to do now …

  Then conscience got to me again. A man was lying out there injured and unconscious. Shouldn’t I be doing something? A couple of jackets, dusty enough to have been hanging there since last winter, were draped over hooks by the door to the shop. I grabbed them, put one around my own wet shoulders, and headed for the door with the other. On second thought, I went back for the handgun.

  The good Samaritan with a gun. I didn’t stop to ponder the inconsistencies inherent in that.

  Behind the shack, I was relieved to find Bo still alive. Even more relieved, I had to admit, to find that he was still out cold. I covered him with the jacket so he wouldn’t get chilled. Since the thunderstorm and rain, the air had cooled considerably.

  I still didn’t know what had become of Benny. It didn’t seem likely he’d also been conveniently knocked unconscious. I tentatively called his name a few times. No answer.

  The answer came a few minutes later, after two police cars and an ambulance arrived in a screaming parade of sirens and flashing lights. The medics loaded Bo, still unconscious, into the ambulance and sped off with him, sirens wailing. The police had a spotlight on their vehicle, and its roving beam picked out another body among the fallen barrels.

  Benny didn’t need an ambulance. He was quite dead from the gunshot wound in his back. One of Bo’s shots meant for me had accidentally nailed Benny instead.

  There was a bit of confusion about what had gone on here, since one man was dead, another was unconscious with a head injury, and I, a soaking wet LOL, was in control of the guns when the officers arrived. I supposed they didn’t encounter this particular scenario on too many occasions.

  “Do any of you know Detective Dixon?” I asked the two police officers eyeing me with a combination of consternation and suspicion. We were in the office now, clustered around the desk. “I think he can vouch for me.”

  Under the circumstances, I wasn’t certain just what Dix might vouch, but his name seemed to have a favorable effect on the officers at the moment.

  “I also think, if you check the gun I gave you and the bullet in Benny against the bullet taken from a young woman currently in the morgue, the one whose body was found in the river a while back, that you may find they match.”

  “And why would that be?” an officer asked skeptically.

  “Because Bo killed her when she found out that he’d also killed her brother, or had someone kill him, right here at Thrif-Tee Wrecking and I’m pretty sure if you check that wall safe—” I nodded toward the metal corner exposed by the tilted calendar picture, “with that key—” I motioned toward the key I’d set by the computer, “that you’ll find interesting details about some very illegal activities in stolen vehicles and altered VINs here.”

  I’d like to be able to say I concluded these dazzling revelations with a graceful, enigmatic smile, but what happened was that Duke suddenly decided maybe he should pay attention to all this activity, even if he was chained up. He came around the desk with a snarl, I jumped backward and skidded and tumbled to the floor with a noticeable lack of grace.

  Which is how, having survived the Hound of the Baskerville’s attack in the car, a killer gunning for me, a jump out a window, and an avalanche of blue barrels, I wound up in the hospital with a broken arm.

  32

  Medicare patients are not encouraged to linger in hospital beds, but the hospital kept me for almost forty-eight hours while they checked out my working parts, X-rayed everything, and kept me under observation for a possible concussion. I was amazed at the parade of people who
rushed in to see me. I wasn’t certain how all of them found out about my situation, but Magnolia and Geoff showed up. Tiffany and her Ronnie. Jordan Kaine. Charley Mason and the pastor from Tri-Corners Church. Dix and Haley. Even Cecile called from the nursing home, saying she’d read something in the newspaper.

  Everyone was helpful. Magnolia and Geoff zipped off to pick up my car from the tavern parking lot. Tiffany had quit her job at Bottom-Buck Barney’s and didn’t know what, if anything, might be going on there, but she and Ronnie offered to drive me home from the hospital. Jordan Kaine overrode that offer and insisted he’d do it. The pastor prayed. I had to fight off Cecile’s determination to give me her treasured blue starfish necklace.

  Everyone also had questions, most of which I answered with an I’ll-have-to-talk-to-the-authorities-first primness. Two officers showed up to question me. So did Detective Harmon. To my surprise, Detective Harmon said he’d already contacted Aunt Chris and that she was supposed to arrive the following day to identify the body.

  Dix, however, was the only one who came with information to answer my questions, information he’d acquired through his new desk job at police headquarters. He sat beside my hospital bed with his plaster-encased leg stretched out in front of him.

  Bo’s full name, Dix said, was Beaumont Zollinger. He’d suffered a serious concussion, but he’d regained consciousness and was expected to recover completely. He did indeed, through a series of interlinked corporations, own both Bottom-Buck Barney’s and Thrif-Tee Wrecking. He was also the more open owner of a prestigious foreign car dealership, and was married with three children. He had no criminal record. Which to my mind, of course, didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t a criminal.

  Benny was Benny Littleton, age forty-seven, currently unmarried, with a record of small-time crimes some years ago, nothing recent.

  Duke had been taken to an animal shelter and, since he had committed no crime beyond being an excellent watchdog, would probably be released to Benny’s married daughter.

  I was still mulling over the name Littleton. It sounded familiar. Then it came to me. Emma Littleton, the little chicken girl! And Alana Braxton, nee Littleton, the woman who had inherited the land behind Country Peace. I summarized the connection for Dix.

  “So that explains why Benny was helping Drake Braxton vandalize the cemetery. He was a relative of Braxton’s wife. And he was so fond of his and Drake’s loop-and-drag system of vandalism from the cemetery that he and Bo used it on Harley’s bench at my house.”

  Dix didn’t congratulate me on the brilliance of my logic. He was still a bit grumpy about my having further involved myself in all this. But he nodded grudging agreement. “You could be right.”

  “So, what about this Beaumont ‘Bo’ Zollinger? Has he been charged with murder yet? And what did they find in the safe?”

  “We’re still awaiting results of the comparisons of the bullets from Bo’s gun, Benny’s body, and the body of the girl in the morgue. The papers in the safe are under investigation.”

  I sighed. The feet of justice tramp slowly.

  *

  Jordan took me home the following morning. He was extremely kind and solicitous of my welfare and comfort. He returned that evening with a takeout Thai dinner. Tiffany and Ronnie showed up with pizza, and Magnolia brought over fry bread made into what she called Indian tacos, so we had a fine multicultural meal.

  The broken arm was inconvenient and the cast awkward, but it was no big deal. Except it meant I couldn’t enroll in a computer class because I couldn’t use that hand.

  A few days later Dix reported that the comparison tests on the bullets had come in. Until then, Bo had been held in jail on the basis of attempted murder for trying to gun me down in the junkyard. After the tests showed a bullet from Bo’s gun had killed Kendra, who by now had been officially identified as Debbie Etheridge, murder charges were also filed against him. Aunt Chris had Debbie’s body shipped back to Arkansas for burial.

  The papers in the safe were minimal but enough to show what was going on at Thrif-Tee. The fact that there was a stolen ’01 Malibu in the shop pretty much confirmed everything. Thrif-Tee Wrecking legally bought wrecked or disabled cars, often from out of state. They then, through what appeared to be an ever-widening network, matched them up with appropriate stolen cars. The VINs on the stolen cars were altered to show the numbers from a legal vehicle, and the cars were then sold through Bottom-Buck Barney’s, also using the titles from the legal vehicles. If no suitable wrecked or disabled car from which to take numbers was available, the stolen car was chopped up and sold for parts in what Dix called “chop shop” activity. Some of the wrecked cars were also dismantled for parts, just to make things look on the up-and-up.

  It was my personal opinion that that was how Kendra/ Debbie’s Corolla had been disposed of, because the red car at Thrif-Tee did not turn out to be hers. The system had worked so well because both Thrif-Tee and Barney’s did sufficient legitimate business, which included selling trade-ins from Bo’s foreign-car dealership, to conceal the illegal activities.

  I testified at the grand jury hearing, which indicted Beaumont Zollinger on murder and a bevy of other charges to do with the activities at Thrif-Tee. I’d have to testify again at the trial, scheduled to begin in about three months, but, other than that, my involvement in all this was over.

  33

  The call came about a week later. I was studying a postcard I’d just received from Mac. The postmark was from Idaho, and he wrote that he was doing an article about a week on a dude ranch. No mention of any upcoming trip to Missouri, no address where to reach him. Although he did say he’d been out looking at the stars the night before and thought of me.

  When the phone rang I answered it rather absentmindedly, still thinking about the postcard and trying to decide if I was pleased, relieved, or disappointed. “Hello?”

  “Ivy Malone?” A deep, growly voice, with none of the energetic enthusiasm of the voice from an hour earlier that had tried to sell me super-potent vitamins.

  I jerked to attention. I was holding the phone to my right ear, which still felt awkward, as if I were listening in on someone else’s conversation. But I couldn’t use my left hand for the phone as I did pre-junkyard brawl.

  My first instinct at the sound of the growl was to say, “No, Ivy moved to the south of France.” But I was Ivy Malone, so I said, “Yes.”

  “If you know what’s good for you, lady, you won’t testify at the trial.”

  I swallowed. “What trial?”

  “Don’t play cute. You know what trial. This would be a good time for a nice vacation, a nice long vacation, somewhere far, far away, until the trial is long over. Or you’ll find yourself taking a permanent vacation from life, with a view from about six feet under.”

  He hung up, and I stood there clutching the phone. Momentarily, I was too stunned to panic. Was this for real? Who was it? My first thought was Bo. Beaumont Zollinger. But Bo, though he was scheduled to be released on bail shortly, was at the moment still in jail. Surely he wouldn’t be making a threatening phone call from there. Couldn’t be Benny, of course. Who else?

  I had no idea. But whoever he was, he hadn’t sounded like he was playing games. Then panic kicked in, and I called Dix at his desk at the police department. He asked questions that I couldn’t answer. No, I didn’t recognize the voice. No, I’d heard no accent or identifying peculiarity. No, I had no idea where the call was coming from.

  My question was, “Don’t the police offer some kind of protection? Guards or something? Or maybe they’d like to send me on a long vacation—yes, the south of France would be nice—and then bring me back to testify at the trial?”

  “I might be able to get you a police guard for a few days, but three months …” I could almost see Dix shaking his head.

  “And there’s no money in the police department budget for sending little old lady witnesses on extended vacations?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

 
; “I should just ignore the call, then? Chalk it up as a crank call and forget it?”

  “No. You absolutely cannot do that.”

  “So I’m just a sitting duck until the trial, waiting for someone to take a potshot and get rid of me?” I’d been a sitting duck once already, in that cramped bathroom at Thrif-Tee Wrecking, and it was not an experience I wanted to repeat.

  “Look, for right now, just lock all your doors and windows. Don’t go outside and don’t open the door to anyone who isn’t a best friend. Nobody looking like or claiming to be a delivery person, utility person, long-lost acquaintance, nobody. Haley and I will be over this evening.”

  “I can’t spend the next three months just sitting here with my doors locked!”

  A brief silence from Dix, as if he were thinking, I don’t see why not. Take up pinochle. TV soap operas. Quilting. But what he said was, “Just hold on until Haley and I get there, okay?”

  They showed up about 7:00. After a repeat of the questions, which I still couldn’t answer, Dix finally said, “Okay, we’ve worked out a plan.”

  “Does it involve going to the south of France?”

  “Not that far,” Haley said. “It involves coming to live with me until the trial.”

  I looked at her in astonishment. “I can’t do that.”

  Haley put a hand on my arm and squeezed. “Yes, you can. I’d love to have you. My grandma was my roommate for a couple of years when I was a kid, and it was great. She used to tell me wonderful bedtime stories.”

  “But giving up my home, going into hiding … Doesn’t that seem a bit extreme?”

  “I consider a death threat extreme,” Dix said. “Unless you’d prefer that six-feet-under, permanent vacation?”

  Well, no.

  “There is another alternative,” Dix suggested. “You could not testify at the trial. And announce that decision to the media.”

  I shook my head. No way. I would testify at that trial if I had to spend the next three months hiding in a closet eating grits.