“Ouch. On a Friday night, Thanksgiving weekend.”
“That about sums it up.”
“Ouch,” he repeated. He was silent for a long minute, then shook his head. “I know the party supply place in Meritville can get hold of them, but I think it takes a week or so to get them shipped. And even if it didn’t, they’d be closed now, with no way to reach anyone.” He fell silent again, then at last shook his head. “Sorry.”
I shrugged. “That’s what I was afraid of. Emergency backup arrangements should have been made weeks ago.”
“Cindy Brody,” Simon said, and we nodded in unison. “Well, I’d offer to let you use my place…” He gestured around the decidedly unspacious cabin.
“Thanks all the same. Well, maybe it’ll clear up.” I paused, and the pelting of the rain on the roof made its point. “Oh, well.”
“Oh, well, is right. Anything else I can do for you? What brought you out? You could have just called about the tents.”
I explained about needing to get away from phones, then told him about the need for a chain saw.
“I’ll bring tools if you’ll bring a break in the weather,” he offered.
That seemed to sum it up. Thanking him, and armed with his envelope, I left. I didn’t really want to go home, yet. And there was still one matter I hadn’t taken care of. If, on the slim chance I really did bring a break in the rain, we had to hang the Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa decorations. And, unlike the frozen pumpkin, I knew where the town stored them. At the Still. And since both Adam Fairfield and Dave Hatter would be on duty at the moment, I might as well head over there, remind them about the promised bottles of liqueur, and see if I could pick anything up now. Maybe I could leave the turkey in exchange.
Pine and redwood needles littered the road to the distillery. I inched along the hazardous curves, the river roaring in its gulch not that far below. It must be rising steadily with all the rain. With a sigh of relief, I spotted the glow from the parking lot lights and rounded the last curve with more confidence.
Several cars stood in the lot, including Sheriff Sarkisian’s Jeep. That surprised me. What I didn’t see was Adam’s pickup. I continued along the road and turned down the hill that led to the lower level with the shipping and receiving dock. After all, I hoped to receive a trunk-load of decorations. But the odds of being able to ship out a turkey seemed pretty slim. Maybe the Still would like to adopt it as a mascot. I could but try.
And there was Adam’s pickup, parked next to the loading dock. I pulled in beside him, glared at my unwelcome passenger and climbed out into the downpour. I ran up the cement ramp toward shelter and in a few moments rang the bell.
Several minutes passed before Dave Hatter appeared. “What are you doing here?” he demanded with less than enthusiasm.
“Came for the holiday decorations. We need them for the park tomorrow, remember?”
“Rain’s not going to let up.” But he stepped aside and let me in.
“That’s the ticket,” I said cheerfully. “Think positive but prepare for the worst. What’s going on around here?”
“A full-scale police investigation.” He sounded glum.
“Has something happened?” I looked around, fearing to see some vandalism, some damage. My gaze met only the clean emptiness where trucks pulled into the dock. Tony Carerras’ motorcycle parked near the massive roll-down doors, and a few crates stood at one end, neatly sealed with the distillery’s name and logo stamped on the cardboard, but that was about it.
“The sheriff’s looking at the books.”
So, he hadn’t wasted a minute getting that warrant.
“Might as well come on up,” he added. “He’ll want to know you’re here.”
“I’ll bet,” I murmured, but followed Dave through the door that led to the storage area.
Tony was there, sweeping. He stared at me but made no response to my wave, merely turning back to his work. Then we passed through to the production floor, where a middle-aged woman wandered around in a white lab coat checking instruments and making notes on a clipboard.
“The current experimental batches,” Dave explained as we mounted the iron grate stairs to the office level, with their glass windows looking down on the rows of copper stills and the single bathtub-sized vat.
I nodded, looking straight ahead, anywhere but down.
The accounting office was one of the few that didn’t overlook the production floor. It held two desks, a wall of filing cabinets, another of shelves partly filled with binders of completed financial records, a table piled with purchase orders, inventory printouts, memos, and every other bit of paper Peggy had yet to process, and four people. Adam Fairfield and Sarkisian stood to one side, watching the plump, fiercely concentrating Roberta Dominguez at work with her official cameras. Her accomplice, a man of medium build, black hair and a handlebar mustache he obviously spent hours tending, dusted for fingerprints.
The sheriff turned as we entered and snorted. “I should’ve known you’d turn up.”
“She came for the holiday decorations,” Dave explained. “I thought you ought to know she was here.”
Sarkisian nodded, his gaze lingering on me. Abruptly he turned back to the two technicians. “Almost done?”
“Just this last one,” said the photographer.
Sarkisian waited, Roberta Dominguez finished, and she and the other man packed up their equipment. “All yours,” she said as they loaded themselves down with their cases of gear. “We’ll take people’s prints downstairs,” she added as they left. At the sheriff’s signal, Adam and Dave followed them.
I eyed the mess that remained. “Did they fingerprint everything?”
Sarkisian nodded. “So now it’s safe to touch.”
“Well, have fun.” I turned toward the door.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“Decorations?”
He looked at his shoes, then up at me. “I don’t know anything about bookkeeping.”
I nodded in a sympathetic manner, a touch of unholy glee starting deep within me. “That’ll make it a lot harder for you.”
He glared at me. “You’re going to make me beg, aren’t you?”
I grinned, savoring the moment. “Only ask. But I wish I could have witnesses.”
“For?” He sounded suspicious, and well he should.
“For the next time you ask the world in general if anyone heard you asking me to help with the investigation.”
He grinned. “All right, you win. Please, An…Ms. McKinley, will you help with the investigation?”
My own grin of triumph faded as I turned to regard the pile of ledgers and printouts that sprawled in untidy heaps across the desks and table. I’d had a really long day, what with fighting with pies, before, during and after the event. I was going to have another long day tomorrow. I sighed. “Let me call Gerda to tell her I’ll be a little later than planned.”
I was going to be a whole lot later. We had no idea where, if, or how any discrepancy might have occurred. I determined to prove to Sarkisian that Peggy had to be innocent of any wrong doing, but that required going back to the beginning of the year and checking every entry against every receipt and every invoice. And if we didn’t find anything we’d have to do the same thing for the previous year, and maybe all the many long years she had worked for the Still.
Sarkisian went to get us coffee and returned bearing snacks from the machine and with Adam and Dave trailing after him. The clock read twelve-twenty. I yawned, downed a cup of barely palatable caffeine, sank my teeth into the bliss of pure chocolate, and checked more entries.
“Did you look to see if Brody left any notes in his office?” Adam asked as I finished another page of the daily journal.
“Nothing pertaining to anything amiss, here.” Sarkisian sounded bored. I had set him to work unearthing paid bills and receipts from file folders for me, but the delights of that occupation had worn off for him within a very few minutes. “Why?” he add
ed.
Dave peered over my shoulder. “He’s been here an awful lot, lately,” he said. “Turning up at odd times, wanting me to let him in at night, poring over the books. You know, definitely above and beyond what you’d think was normal duty.”
“Yeah,” Adam agreed. “For about a month, now, wouldn’t you say?”
“Six weeks?” suggested Dave.
Sarkisian picked up a handful of reports from the table, then glanced at the bound journals and ledgers that surrounded me. “The books or some of the rest of this stuff?”
Dave shrugged.
“The books,” Adam said after a moment of thought. “At least, they’re what he was studying whenever I looked in on him.”
I finished my last bite of chocolate. Paper rustled, and Sarkisian handed me a fresh bar. I really could begin to like this man, I decided. I bit into it, savoring that miraculous blend of caffeine and chemical nirvana, and set to work on the next page of entries. Brody’s intense interest implied he suspected Peggy of being up to something. Sarkisian suspected the same thing. I was determined to find some other reason for Brody’s preoccupation with the books.
“Time to quit for the night.” Sarkisian’s hand rested on my shoulder, shaking slightly.
I looked up, bleary-eyed.
“You were nodding off to sleep,” he explained.
I peered at the clock. Either it was ten after midnight, or-
“It’s two in the morning. Come on.” He took my elbow and helped me to my feet. “I’ve already called Adam and Dave.”
The two men appeared a few minutes later, both armed with boxes stacked on handcarts. In a little over half an hour we had carefully packed away every financial record, whether bound or filed, the place boasted. Dave and Adam transported them to the parking lot where they began stacking them into the Jeep.
Sarkisian turned to me. “You be all right?” Then, “Where’s your car?”
“Around back. I came for…” I broke off to yawn. “Decorations,” I finished.
“Tomorrow,” he decided. “Want a lift home?”
I yawned again. “I’ll be fine. Besides, you don’t have room.” I nodded toward his front seat where Dave stacked more of the boxes. I waved at them, then reentered the building, staggered down the stairs and made my way out to my car. And to that damned bird.
At least the rain had let up a little. I climbed in, started the engine and headed up the hill. The Jeep stood near the entrance to the parking lot, waiting. I slowed as I neared it, but Sarkisian stuck out an arm, thereby getting it wet, and waved me ahead. A touch of chivalry? I considered the source and decided that yes, it probably was. He wanted to make sure I got home safely. I accelerated past him, slowed for the turn, eased onto the road and sped up a little along the straight.
The next curve came almost at once. I let up on the gas, felt the bump of twigs and branches beneath my tires, then abruptly my car spun out of control, pivoting around the right front wheel, throwing me against the side window. A screech of panic reverberated around the car, and part of me registered that it was the turkey, not me. Other tires squealed and protested, and the Jeep spun past me, swerving to avoid a collision. It slammed through the frail metal barrier, hovered on the brink for a terrifying moment, then to the horrific racket of snapping branches and metal grinding against stone, it lurched down the gorge.
Chapter Fifteen
I must have blacked out, because the next thing I remembered was a nightmarish jumble of impressions, the worst being that damned bird peering at me, its beak a scant three inches from my face. I may have groaned, I’m not sure, but it scuttled to the other bucket seat and attacked the window. Rain beat down on my head, drenching me, running in rivulets down my face, drumming a violent tattoo on the soft roof of my car-at least, the portion that was still up. Those damned latches, I thought, that damned mechanism…
I became aware of men’s voices yelling in the distance. Then I remembered Sarkisian’s Jeep plunging over the embankment and I was struggling with my seat belt, trying to pull myself free. The buckle felt sticky, and my fingers kept sliding.
“I’m all right,” Sarkisian’s voice, muffled, a bit shaken, reached me.
All right. I stopped my struggles, leaned my head against the headrest and lost consciousness again.
This time when I roused, it was to the sensation of someone gripping one of my hands. I opened my eyes and focused on Sarkisian’s face. “Much better than the beak,” I said.
“I’ve got a beak of my own.” The sheriff touched his aquiline nose. Mud streaked his face, mingled with blood from a number of scratches and cuts. An odd puffiness altered the line of one cheek bone. He’d be covered in bruises in the morning, but he was alive and apparently not badly hurt.
“The Jeep…” I began.
“Stuck in the rocks, only about three feet down. You can see the top of it from here, just behind that tree.”
So it hadn’t gone all the way down, it hadn’t crashed into the rocky river. He hadn’t drowned, or been bashed to death. I closed my eyes again, relieved. Everything felt fuzzy, and I feared I was either going to be sick or pass out again.
“I’ve called a tow truck. What do you think, Annike? Think a tow truck can drag out the Jeep?”
“What?” I tried to look through the trees, but everything seemed blurry.
“Come on, Annike, talk to me. Just say a few words. The ambulance will be here real soon, but I want you to talk to me.”
“Thought you wanted me to keep quiet.”
“Not now. Go ahead and tell me what a rotten sheriff I am.”
“Not,” I mouthed, realized I hadn’t made any sound and tried again. “Just shouldn’t suspect Gerda.”
“That’s right.” He smiled, a not altogether felicitous effort considering the state of his face. He didn’t look like he really meant it, either.
“Sheriff!” Dave Hatter looked in through the passenger window, rain dripping down his yellow slicker hat.
I realized Sarkisian sat in the car, on the front seat where the turkey had squatted last time I looked. I supposed it would be too much to hope that Sarkisian had thrown it out. A rustling of feathers from the backseat answered that thought. Sarkisian and Dave were exchanging a few words, but my mind had drifted, missing them.
The sheriff released my hand which he’d held all this time. “Got to check on something. Be right back. Talk to the turkey.”
“Turkey talk,” I agreed with the affability of the seriously concussed. “Hi, turkey. You need a name.”
Sarkisian threw me a worried look, then climbed out into the downpour. Someone appeared at the driver’s window. “You okay, Annike?”
I looked hazily up into Adam Fairfield’s worried face. He looked unnaturally pale. And very wet.
“God,” he said, “when we heard the crash…”
“I crashed?” The edges of my vision seemed black, as if everything were tunneling.
“Not you,” he assured me. “You spun out, but hit your head on the side window. It was Sarkisian, swerving to avoid hitting you, who slammed into the rocks and bounced over the edge. It was a miracle he didn’t go all the way down into the gulch.” He sounded shaken.
I didn’t blame him. The thought of it left me pretty shaken, too. Sarkisian could have been killed, and all because I’d skidded in the rain.
“Your front left tire blew,” he explained.
I realized I’d said my last thought aloud. “Blew?”
“Ripped apart is a better description. Dave just found bolts and screws scattered across the roadway. It’s a miracle you didn’t go over the edge.”
“Good driving,” I muttered, not that I really believed that. “Or maybe it was that damned bird flapping her wings that kept us up.” I was tired, and talking was too much trouble. I closed my eyes.
The passenger door opened, and Sarkisian slid back onto the seat. The turkey gobbled some protest. “Oh, shut up,” sighed the sheriff, endearing himself to me even
more. “That had to be deliberate,” he declared. “That many large sharp objects…”
“If they’d been there when you arrived,” Adam said, “you’d have run over them then. No way you could have missed them, even if the road wasn’t so dark and wet. They’re everywhere.”
“So someone scattered them while we were going over the books.”
A very pregnant silence fell. “Deliberate,” said Dave. “Aimed at the sheriff?”
“I was inside,” I said, not bothering to open my eyes. “Best alibi in the world. Had the sheriff with me almost the whole time.”
“You could have done it on your way here,” Sarkisian pointed out with an attempt-I hoped-at humor.
“Maggie-the lab tech-left after Annike arrived,” Adam stuck in. “So that leaves Annike in the clear.”
“Why would someone do this?” Dave persisted. “Did you find something in all those ledger books?”
“Not yet,” Sarkisian’s voice sounded like steel, of the pointed, sharpened and honed variety.
“But you must be getting too close for someone’s comfort,” mused Adam. “Damn, who knew you were out here with a warrant tonight?”
“Anyone could have figured it out. Especially if they came by to hide evidence or correct the books and saw my car here.”
“You must be coming close to solving Brody’s murder, then.” Dave sounded almost regretful.
“Not Peggy,” I said. “She couldn’t.”
“She’d never do anything that might hurt Annike,” Adam agreed.
“Even if she was desperate?” Dave sounded skeptical, like one who knew the depths to which desperation might drive a person.
“Annike’s car was down at shipping and receiving,” Sarkisian pointed out. “Whoever did this might not have known she was here.”
“Except Gerda,” I stuck in. “I called her, remember?”
Sarkisian let out a deep breath.
“And don’t you go thinking Peggy and Gerda are in on this together, and Gerda killed Brody, and Peggy was trying to cover up by killing you and destroying the records, and…” I stopped, having lost the thread of what I was saying. In the ensuing silence, the rain pounded with renewed vigor, the river roared a few feet below the wedged Jeep, and in the distance a siren sounded. “They’re coming to take me away, ha ha,” I muttered, from the vague memory of an old song.
Cold Turkey Page 18
