To his credit, he took the tongue-lashing and then barked over his shoulder, “Where's Jerry?”
The deputy visibly quivered. “Uh, don’ know, but I'll find out,” and scurried out to call headquarters. He was back in a minute. “Dispatch says someone called in a barn fire at Jerry's dad's. He wouldn't have left for any other reason... sir.”
Caleb set his mouth in a grim line. “I'll deal with Jerry later.” Then he jerked a thumb at the door. “You and Dan are in charge of perimeter, and yes, it's a crime scene. Go on.” He waited until they were out of hearing, and then turned to me.
“Where were you two when the intruder came in?”
I ignored him for a moment and pointed at the door jamb. “Look at this, Caleb,” I said, pointing out the lack of splinters on the door. “If you didn't find the place like this, it means he didn't find what he was looking for, or he wouldn't have stuck around to point a gun in my back and threaten me.”
“Turn around.”
“What for? You're not going to arrest me, are you?”
“Don't be a ninny. Close your eyes. Where did you feel the gun, about here?”
“Lower,” I said, feeling the ghostly pressure again. “At my waist level.”
“Mm-mm.” I'd heard that hum enough to know he was now mentally sorting through faces and profiles, names and crimes, while he stood holding a finger at my mid-section.
“Now think back to the moment when you realized someone was behind you, before he or she spoke. Could you describe any smell or odor about the person? Perfume, aftershave, body odor? Anything at all?”
I took an experimental sniff of the air, filtering memory through my nose. Nothing floated to the surface. “Sorry, no.”
He hummed again, as if I'd given him a reasonable answer. “Your visitor must have been a very cool customer. Stress usually causes people to sweat profusely and then perfume or aftershave really gets strong. Sometimes a witness can identify the perp by smell if not sight. Did he say anything else?”
“He said we took something that wasn't ours.”
“Did he mention Garth by name?”
“No, I think we interrupted his ransacking. I guess he either decided he didn't want to tangle with Garth, or he believed me when I said I didn't know what he was talking about. Of course, I was shaking so badly I couldn't tell, and I never did turn around in time to see him.” Then I remembered something. “He whispered.”
“Could it have been a woman, disguising her voice in a whisper?”
“It was a guy.” I frowned. “Had to be. He called me ‘girly’, my granddad used to call me girly. He also seemed pretty sure of himself, like we were the intruders not him, though he took a powder when Garth dropped something in the kitchen.”
“Could he have mistaken you for someone else? After all, you came in with Garth.”
“Like who? The only other person he knows in this town just died.”
“Anything else?”
“The whisperer? He told me he knew who I was and where I lived. Caleb, what's to keep this guy from coming to our house?”
“There's a pretty big crowd of people who know where you live, Lalla, but I'll put a deputy out on your road, and you really should get a security system.”
“Noah doesn't like the shiny wires, or the beeping of anything electronic, and he wouldn't stand for an unsightly keypad. He says a shotgun is all the deterrent he needs.”
“Fat lot of good that'll do you, since we both know your dad could sleep through the Second Coming.
“Just as well,” I murmured. “He's too mean to be anywhere I'd want to be for eternity.”
Two more police cars rolled up, blue lights churning. Doors slammed and someone laughed at a joke.
I looked at Garth, arms crossed and leaning against an upturned chair. I didn't have to know the guy very well to know we were both thinking the same thing: Here, in the victim's ransacked house, stand the two main suspects.
Detective Rodney walked through the door and huddled with Caleb and his deputy, while Garth and I stared at the floor. Caleb tapped me on the shoulder and nudged me away from Garth's hearing and said, “Don't, whatever you do, tell Garth Thorne a thing.”
I pulled back to look him in the eyes. “You can't be serious!”
“Yes, I am serious,” he whispered. “How'd he get here?”
“You know how he got here. You and your buddy Rodney set it all up.”
His frown deepened. “Fast work, even for you, Lalla.”
I gasped, my cheeks flamed and then I reached out and slapped him.
He pursed his lips and turning on his heel snapped at his deputy and they went out the door. Detective Rodney followed them out, but not before adding a wink at me over his shoulder.
I had managed to whip myself up into a white hot mad and needed to take it out on the first person who lit my match. Couldn't seem to help myself. Unfortunately, Caleb had been it.
Caleb came back inside, walked over to Garth, and said something I couldn't hear. Garth did a negative headshake and a disinterested lift of his big shoulders. After being hauled in for questioning and then detained on a bogus warrant, I thought his wariness of the police reasonable.
Caleb glared at the two of us and thumbed at the door, indicating that we'd been dismissed. Stepping outside, Garth took my elbow and gently guided me away from the knot of police towards his rig. I thanked him in a shaky voice.
He grinned. “Mind letting me know how you get away with slapping a sheriff?”
“We're friends; at least we used to be. I shouldn't have, I'm not myself.”
“He deserved it,” he snapped. “ But remind me not to get on your bad side, Darlin’.”
“This has been just about all I can take for one day,” I said, turning to go.
He caught my arm and said, “Wait up a minute. Your sheriff friend said my aunt's body won't be released for burial yet. What's that all about?”
“Caleb says they'll do an autopsy. They have to when cause of death is unclear.”
He frowned, not happy with the explanation. “But it's obvious. She somehow got your car busted up and drove it into a lake. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but alcoholism runs in my family. By the way, am I missing something here? Are you two an item?”
“Caleb and I go back to the third grade, if that counts. But we're not romantically involved, if that's what you mean.”
“Somebody forgot to tell that ol’ boy. The look I got when he came in the door and saw the two of us together made me feel like a kid with my hand in the cookie jar,” he said, reaching out to stroke my arm. “And a purty damn near perfect cookie jar it is, Darlin’. Which reminds me, can I buy you dinner?”
“Sure,” I said, and scratched my number on a card I found in my purse. “We're going to have plenty of time since we've been advised not to leave the county.”
“What about tonight? I clean up good,” he said, sticking the tips of his thumbs in the top of his tight jeans. His humor was back and so was the slow, sexy smile.
“Oh, sorry, not tonight. If I had that gun pointed at my head, again, I'd have to say go ahead and shoot. I'm that tired and I have to get up for work at the ungodly hour of three a.m.”
Okay, I'll take a rain check then. You drive careful, hear?”
He stood perfectly still next to the door at his rig as I backed out of the driveway. Perhaps he couldn't see past the light reflecting in the windshield, or perhaps he was too shocked from today's revelations to do anything but hang on to the door of his motor home while I drove away.
I turned right onto Hatch and headed for the freeway. What was it the intruder whispered? That we'd taken something that wasn't ours? Could there have been money in Patience's house? Even more disconcerting, could the gun-toting whisperer be the one responsible for her death?
And what was it with Caleb? I, too, had felt angry vibes zipping across the room. Never mind cookie jar metaphors, I had one of my own. I felt like I was in kindergarten again,
and I'd been caught making a mess.
Instead of taking the on-ramp to the freeway, I turned left at the frontage road and headed for the safe warmth of Roxanne's Café. I needed to talk to someone I trusted.
Still on her first marriage, Roxanne hadn't experienced the joys of divorce lawyers, and from the contented smiles between her and her husband of twenty-five years, she wouldn't be getting one anytime soon. They both cheerfully worked the café day and night to keep two kids in college. Terrill was in Berkeley, and Maya, the baby, was in the local City College studying her bellybutton. That is, until she discovered the secret of the Universe, or until I succumbed to her constant entreaties and introduced her to the world she craved—modeling.
Roxanne didn't think much of my last job, look where it'd gotten me, she said, two broken marriages and an unreasonable fear of aging. Lately though, Roxanne was beginning to thaw a bit. She no longer referred to the Eileen Ford Company as those “White Slavers.” She still didn't take to the idea of her precious baby surviving on a concentration camp diet, and for once, I couldn't disagree.
Roxanne was my friend and her daughter was the nearest thing I was ever going to have for a child of my own, but Roxy was going to lose her baby girl to the first strong gust blowing through town, with or without my help. Maya had a hunger for the big city and if any child was born for the spotlight, it was Maya. Tall, graceful, and lovely beyond words, everybody who came into contact with her knew it wouldn't be long before she found a way to make her dream come true. Roxanne still held the vain hope that botany, history, or even belly dancing would jump up to strike her daughter's fancy. However, Maya was eighteen, and nothing had deterred me at that age.
I flopped onto a stool at the counter and waited until Roxanne, coffeepot in hand, turned and saw me.
“Leon heard it on the scanner, huh?” Daytime kept Leon busy building houses, but also cooked the delectable pies that people like me coming in on a daily basis. He also kept a VHF radio tuned to police and fire frequencies while he worked making those pies. Between Leon's radio and a coffee klatch of off-duty cops, nothing stayed private. “Nobody died this time, thank God, but I need to talk to you.”
“Go sit in a booth, I'll be right with you.”
More cracked vinyl, but at least it was easier on my butt. I played with the salt and pepper shakers and thought about the day's troubling events. Was the house trashed by our intruder, or had he come in thinking we'd done it? And why did he leave before Garth came in? I was exhausted from the whirligig of unanswerable questions.
By the time Roxanne finally eased into the seat across from me, my nerves were frayed and I was running on empty. I eyed Leon's latest pastry creation mirrored in the display case. “Think I could have a piece of that peach pie?”
“Sure, honey,” she said, signaling a passing waitress. “Coffee's fresh, want some?”
I nodded and told her everything I could remember; the Caddy found in the lake with Patience McBride behind the wheel, and how Ricky's alibi checked out and I got a gun stuck in my back. Oh, and the cute guy I found in jail and how his ex was intent on persecuting him.
When I was through, Roxanne Leonard, who has the softest, brownest, most comforting eyes in the universe did what she does best—put everything into perspective.
“You aren't going to start dating this guy are you?”
“I should say not! I was coerced into it by the investigating detective.”
“Lalla, Lalla, Lalla.”
“That's my name, don't wear it out.” I was running low on wisecracks, so it's always nice to know I can fall back on the trite.
“Another winner,” she said, screwing up her face in mock horror.
“That depends. Did you say ‘winner,’ or ‘wiener’?” I asked defensively.
“You tell me honey chile’,” she said, mangling her Mississippi roots again. “What kind of father, especially if he is card-carrying member of AA, would wait five years to come see his only daughter? They supposed to do the twelve steps sooner than that.”
Roxanne ought to know, as her father had been a struggling alcoholic who recovered only long enough to see his daughter graduate from college and then died. She attended Al-Anon and knew it wasn't her fault. As opposed to me, I'd come to realize that my mother's death wasn't my father's fault, but the lie I'd been holding for the last twenty-nine years was all my fault and I wasn't going to let any amount of psychobabble ,or self-help books talk me out of that burden. It was all mine.
“All I did was give him a ride back to his aunt's house where he'd parked his RV. We talked about his aunt and his kid. How was I to know we'd come on some burglar robbing her place?”
“Caleb know about this nephew?”
“Of course he did. He was the one who set up the interview with the detective, and he was the one who told me Garth was asking for me and where to find him. I'm really hurt that he would allow that detective to push me into being a despicable snitch.”
She opened her eyes wide, the whites looking like the sidewalls on my caddy. “That don't sound right. Caleb's better'n that.”
“I used to think so too.”
“Look, think about it from his point of view, he has to appear unbiased. It can't look like he's taking your side.”
“Oh, yeah? He was awful to me today,” I said, remembering Caleb's heated spark of antipathy and his spiteful accusation. “I shouldn't have to explain myself to Caleb, he was the one who set me up with the detective.
“Apologize for taking Garth home? I should say not.”
I wasn't about to tell Roxanne that I'd slapped him.
“Okay, let's leave Caleb out of this for a minute. Garth says he let his ex know he was coming out to see his daughter, so why stick around if he knew his wife was going to have him thrown in the pokey the minute he showed up? Besides, so far, there's no real evidence that Patience was actually murdered.”
Roxanne tsked. “No evidence? Somebody helped her into that car. Either before or after they killed her. Did Caleb say she was alive when she went under?”
Suddenly I wasn't hungry any more. I put down the fork holding the tender crust of the peach pie. “Caleb won't tell me a thing. If they find any prints under all that mud on the car, they're bound to be mine.” I threw up my hands. “And, why not me? I have no particular alibi. Will you visit me in prison?”
She patted me on the shoulder. “Maybe that homicide detective knows Garth did it. Though it's a low down skunky thing to do to a girl like you.”
I tried to reconcile myself to the idea of this handsome man murdering his elderly aunt. He had been reckless with his life, but no matter how late, he honestly appeared to be working to reconcile with his daughter. “I don't see him as a killer. He was just as shook up as I was.” Or too vulnerable, or too cute. Okay, cute. “Let's say Garth came out here and killed his aunt. Why? And why put her in my car? And who held the gun on me in her house and kept asking me about taking what wasn't mine?”
“That intruder, do you think he killed Patience?”
“He must've seen us drive up in my dad's truck. I tell you the minute Garth left the room he was right behind me with that damn gun in my back, making threats. Said he knew who I was and where I lived, too.”
“Sweetpea, everyone in the county knows who you are and where you live.”
“That's what Caleb said. He said I should convince my dad to get a security system, but I think I'm going to have to sleep with Noah's shotgun from now on.”
“Who would want to kill her for the piddly little cash she got from her piano students and Social Security?”
“Tell me about it. If she was killed in my car, I will never be able to drive it again.”
“It's late. You go on home, get some rest. I gotta think on this some.”
I yawned and rubbed at my eyes. “Her house is down the road some just off Hatch. Would you ask any of the truckers if they noticed that big forty-foot motor home of Garth's before yesterday?”
“So, the nephew is a suspect?”
“Unless I can prove someone else for a better suspect, I still might be fitted for an orange jumpsuit, and I don't fancy the color or the length of time I might have to wear it.”
With that, I dragged my skinny, tired butt to the truck for the bumpy ride home. I gotta get new shock absorbers on this truck. I had a growing list of things to fix besides the suspicions of the police.
six
I reached the long private driveway to our ranch and in a nod to my long lost youth, turned off the lights, shifted into low, and poked quietly along. Every few minutes, I'd give it a little gas and then let off till I silently glided up to the moonlit house. I put on the brake and turned off the engine . It could be done. The Caddy's motor was tuned to be as quiet as a kitten. Neither of us would have awakened to the soft purr of the car being eased out onto the road. And two nights ago the full moon washed the countryside in shades of blue. There certainly would have been enough light to see all the way down the driveway to our house without headlights. Yes, it could have happened like that. Everybody from Caleb to the pilots and ground crew, and certainly the gang at Roxanne's knew I kept the Caddy in an unlocked barn. Had it started out as a lark, stealing my car, and ending up tragically wrong? Two people. The police would have to be looking for two people, one to drive out and one to leave with my car. It may not even have been premeditated, Patience on a toot with some boyfriend, neither of them sober, stealing my car for a joyride that went terribly bad? It held as much water as any other theory.
Locking the truck, more because of my own edgy nerves than from habit, I stood on the porch and examined the possibilities: During the summer season my movements were very predictable, upstairs to bed for a much needed six hours of sleep, downstairs in the TV room my dad would be snoring through re-runs and late night talk shows. Neither of us would have heard a thing. Though any number of people would know our habits, still, I would be shocked to think that any of them were the sort to pin a murder on me.
A Dead Red Cadillac Page 5
