by Molly Macrae
“A rifle?” I squeaked. “Where’d that come from? How’d you get around Ardis? Ardis? What’s going on?”
“She got down and crawled under the table,” Ardis said. “Good move, Debbie. Now, please tell Bill he can stand down.” Bill held Ardis in the corner with a firm eye and a low noise in his throat.
“He’s fine where he is,” Debbie said calmly. “This isn’t a rifle, Kath; it’s a shotgun. It belonged to my husband. Don’t worry. I know how to use it and I always keep it safely locked away until I need it. Like now. I’m taking it outside with me and it’s going to help me find out who’s in my studio without my permission.”
“That’s stupid.” As if blurting that to someone holding a gun was particularly bright. All she needed to do was point the thing at me and I would let her go anywhere she wanted.
In fact, all she did was vaguely wave it at me and I didn’t challenge her. She told Bill to stay, leaving Ardis cornered and unhappy. But she didn’t tell me to stay and, although I had to keep myself from screaming as though I were charging into the jaws of a forlorn hope, I followed her out the door and into the night.
“If it is Eric Lyle, what do you think he’s looking for?” I whispered in Debbie’s ear. A mistake. She was so intent on sneaking quickly and quietly across the darkened farmyard to the studio that she hadn’t noticed me following her. And she was more keyed up than her calm voice had suggested.
“Ee-eee-eee,” she started to say. Only part of it escaped, though, before she clapped her hand over her mouth. She turned to me with big eyes. “Are you crazy? Don’t ever sneak up on someone holding a gun.”
“Good idea,” I whispered. “Why don’t we go back to the house before we surprise whoever’s in there, who might also have a gun and be a cold-blooded killer. We can wait for the cops. Maybe it’ll be Deputy Dunbar who comes.”
Her only answer to that was for her eyes to go from big and alarmed to slitty and cynically dismissive. We stood on the studio’s porch, an extension of the concrete slab, our backs flat against the wall between a window and the door. I tried to hear movements inside but the place was too well insulated. I heard more rustlings and twig snaps in the dark night surrounding us than coming from the building. Debbie turned and started toward the door. Before she inched too far, I put a hand on her shoulder. Another mistake.
“For cripes’ sake,” she whispered fiercely. “What?”
“Shouldn’t we have a plan before you jump in there with your gun blazing?”
“I’m not going to shoot anyone.”
“What if he shoots you?”
“Tch.” She turned away and started moving before I could ask my other pressing question—what if he shot me?
She continued to inch, which told me she wasn’t entirely sure about barging into the studio. I continued listening for sounds coming from inside, trying to tell myself I wasn’t rooted to that spot with the bone-rattling fear that bullets might start flying past my ears or through them.
Too bad I was so logical and convincing. In no time at all I had myself believing I was doing something much more important than standing there shaking. I believed I was using skills honed to an expert level during my previous experience of finding someone sneaking around where he didn’t belong—namely, sneaking around in the cottage where I’d stayed after Granny died. Said expertise then led me to conclude that any movements currently transpiring in the dye studio couldn’t be heard because they were as stealthy and lowdown as they came. And that’s when I realized I had a pretty good idea of who was inside and I peeled my back from the wall and sprinted after Debbie.
“Now what?” She was really having trouble keeping her reactions to a whisper at that point.
I looked past her. The door was very slightly ajar. Good.
“Where’s the light switch?” I whispered in her ear.
She put her hand on the doorframe and mimed reaching inside at that height.
“Okay. Good. I’m ready.” I bounced on my toes, feeling the fizz of the righteous vigilante in my blood. “Let’s do it. Let’s throw the door open, flip on the light, and just plain surprise the hell out of him. Come on. Before the cops get here and steal our thunder. We’ll do it on three.”
Debbie gaped, obviously not so into this scenario as she’d let on. I stepped around her.
“One, two, and the heck with three.” I slammed the door open and flipped on the lights, expecting to surprise Joe Dunbar, our friendly neighborhood burglar-of-all-trades, with whom I was really annoyed because I thought he’d given up this pastime.
He was surprised, all right, only it wasn’t Joe and it wasn’t a he. It was the younger of the two journalism students from Asheville. The one with the camera. Pen. And she was going to make one crackerjack photojournalist someday. She had guts and good instincts and she didn’t scream or freeze when Debbie came in after me with the shotgun pointed straight at her. She snapped a picture.
Chapter 16
“Hands up,” Debbie snapped at Pen, “camera down.”
Those commands did make Pen freeze. Maybe in confusion. I decided to help her out.
“Put the camera on the table, Pen. Then put your hands in the air.”
Pen, standing to our right at the far end of a solid work island, had a look of “really?” with a touch of the sardonic to it on her face. She followed through quickly, though, when Debbie diagrammed the instructions with brisk precision, aiming the shotgun at the camera, the table, her hands, the ceiling, and back at the middle of her chest. I let Debbie keep Pen’s attention and moved forward to lean an elbow on the island at the opposite end from Pen, going for a serious, in control, just-a-bit-menacing look.
I was torn, though, because Debbie’s studio was calling to me. The labels on jars and boxes wanted reading; the bundles of dried dyestuff hanging from hooks and nails wanted pinching and squeezing. There were cupboards to open and shelves to explore. Kettles, tubs, dippers, and stirring rods waited, ready for vibrant colors to engulf them. I smelled chemicals, plants, and wool. I’d always loved rummaging through Granny’s dye kitchen, and a circuit of Debbie’s whole studio wouldn’t take long. The space was only about fifteen feet by twelve. But I couldn’t ignore the confronter and the confrontee before me.
Debbie was looking down the length of her shotgun at Pen. No doubt she was seeing a tabula rasa with a bull’s-eye on it. She hadn’t met Pen and Sylvia the morning they’d inveigled their way into the shop and my good graces. She and the cat had been snoozing in the comfy chair.
“You know her, Kath?” Debbie asked, nodding her chin at Pen without taking her eyes from her.
Pen turned a hopeful smile my way. If she hadn’t been dressed in head-to-toe black, with her long hair tucked under a black knit cap, I might have smiled back. As it was, I wondered if she were taking Special Ops 101 in addition to her journalism class, and I was almost surprised she didn’t have shoe polish smeared on her face to complete the look.
“Nope,” I said. “Can’t say that I do.”
“Yes, you do,” Pen said. “You called me by name.”
“You came in the shop once. That hardly counts as knowing you.”
“So who are you?” Debbie stepped closer.
“I’m Pen. Pen Ledford. Penelope.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Research.”
“I bet,” Debbie said. “What kind of research? Into what? And what makes you think you can break in here and sneak around to do it?”
“Oh, well, see, it’s for my final project. I’m filling in local color. Interviewing folks, taking pictures, poking around here and there. That kind of thing.” She kept her hands raised but waved them to show how much of “that kind of thing” she was accomplishing. “You’ve got a nice setup here, by the way. Some of your equipment’s pretty interesting. Sharp knives, pruning shears. I like the poisonous chemicals, too. And that huge marble mortar. Or is that the pestle? I never can keep those two straight. Which is the one that looks l
ike it could be used as a bludgeon?”
“What are you talking about?” Debbie asked.
“For my class project I’m writing about that murder-suicide thing, and I thought if I could soak up some atmosphere by coming out here I’d have a chance of getting a real scoop, you know? And I’ve got a pass here somewhere, if you want to see it.”
“A what?”
“I think it’s in my pocket. And it’s a legit press pass. Well, almost, anyway. Class ends next week, though, and I really need to finish this up. And with the stuff I’ve already got, and after tonight, I’m pretty sure this will get me an A.” Pen jabbered on, eyes wide and innocent. But there was a hint of something like satisfaction or cynicism tickling the corners of her mouth.
“I don’t think that’s the way a press pass works,” Debbie said, nose wrinkled. The barrel of the gun was beginning to droop, and she looked as though she’d like to scratch her head.
“I can show you the pass if you want to see it,” Pen said. She started to lower her hands.
“Keep your hands up, Pen,” I cut in, “and keep your gun up, Debbie. Don’t let her stun you with her twaddle. Of course that’s not the way a press pass works. You must think we’re a couple of idiots, Pen. Talk about insulting. And where’s your buddy? Where’s Sylvia? I thought you were working on this project together. Are you two splitting the research or are you cutting her out of your scoop?”
That’s when I wondered about the flashlight. The bobbing, probing light that had alerted me to her presence. Where was it? Not in her hand. Not next to the camera on the island. It sure wasn’t tucked into the waistband of her snug black superspy pants.
“Where’s the flashlight, Pen?”
Pen didn’t answer any of my questions. She didn’t move or shift her weight. There was no infinitesimal flick of her eyes to the area of floor we couldn’t see behind the nice, solid, four-foot-wide, six-foot-long work island. Pen stood still, her face blank. And she was quiet. Too quiet.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said, figuring out what was going on and instantly furious. “You have got to be kidding me. Nice try, Sylvia.”
“You mean there’s another one here?” Debbie asked.
“Yes,” I spat, and I stormed around the end of the island knowing I’d find Sylvia crouched behind it. Probably in a matching head-to-toe snoop suit. And probably with a voice-activated snooper spy recorder. She’d be smiling at me cordially on the outside and snickering on the inside. “Darn it!”
“Where?” Debbie asked.
Nowhere.
“Darn, I was sure she’d be here.” But as hard as I stared at the floor behind the island, Sylvia wasn’t there. Double darn. When would I learn that my instincts for surprising people red-handed were pitiful? Although…although there was a double-door cupboard on that side of the island. “Aha!” I yanked the doors open—and terrified an entire stack of enamel pots and another of plastic tubs.
“I could’ve told you no one would fit in there,” Debbie said over my shoulder.
“I was so sure,” I muttered. “Whoa, wait a second. What are you doing over here? Where’s…darn it!”
We were victims of my own misdirection. Debbie had followed me around the island and now Pen was gone. So was the camera. Debbie looked at me, spirits sinking and shotgun drooping. She swore more colorfully than I had and started for the door.
“Don’t bother, Debbie. We won’t find her in the dark.”
She swore again.
“But I did see a flashlight,” I said. “So where is it?”
“At this point, who cares? It was probably something like this, though.” Debbie pulled her key ring from a pocket and I walked over to see something no bigger than one of her keys. “She probably tucked it in a pocket or up her sleeve.”
“The light I saw was bigger than that.” By then we were both sounding petulant.
“This is brighter than you think. Here.” She flipped the overhead lights off. “See? All you do is squeeze it. It’s plenty bright. You could sneak around anywhere with one of these.”
She flashed the light toward the window in the end wall, then lit up the stove and sink along the back wall and played it over the island. I was about to grumble agreement when the hair on the back of my neck prickled and I was aware of movement in the dark near the open door behind us.
“Hands where I can see them, and freeze!”
Debbie’s micro flashlight, while adequate for the casual cat burglar, was nothing compared to the industrial explosion of light Deputy Dunbar blasted into our eyes. I knew it was Clod behind that nuclear torch only because I recognized his barked order. He’d barked it at me another time when it also hadn’t been necessary. To be fair, he was doing his cop thing, following his stiffly starched cop training. To me, his adherence to cop procedure cemented my opinion of him as a knee-jerk clod.
My eyes were still dazzled, so I couldn’t see the look on his face when he realized whom he’d bagged, but I did expect to hear some sort of swallowed oath or at least a groan when he recognized us. I didn’t. I also expected him to quit shining the light in our eyes and he didn’t do that either. He drilled the blazing beams farther in. I screwed my eyes shut and put my left hand on the island because my head was starting to swim.
“Deputy, for God’s sake, will you take that light out of our eyes? Please?” I refused to cringe in front of Clod, but I might have been whining by then.
A voice fortified with honeysuckle offered respite. “Turn your back to him, hon, and the light won’t be in your eyes anymore.”
“Oh yeah, good thinking, Ardis.”
“Don’t move,” Clod snapped.
“Sorry, too late.” I made the mistake of looking at him over my shoulder and received another blast of light.
“Put that flashlight down, Cole Dunbar,” Ardis said. “Can’t you see these girls aren’t who you’re after? Here, give that thing to me.”
I heard a scuffle, a grunt, an indignant “well,” and a low growl. The grunt was Clod and the “well” had to be Ardis. The growl sounded like Bill, the border collie, giving his opinion of Clod. I agreed with him. Someone was smart enough to flip on the overhead lights. I turned around. Ardis stood with one hand on the switch and the other behind her back. She scowled at Clod. Clod was not a healthy shade of any natural color.
“Hey, Bill,” Debbie said. A happy tail whapped my shins. “How did Ardis get past you, huh, big boy? How’d you let that happen?” She still had the shotgun in the crook of her arm as she bent to rub his ears.
“I believe I was a dog whisperer in a previous life,” Ardis said. Her face softened as she watched Debbie with Bill. “It just took finding the right words and the right tone of voice and then we got on like a house on fire.”
An ear-piercing whistle popped our little bubble of pleasantries.
“Stop talking. All of you,” Clod said. “Stop. No talking. No moving. Ms. Buchanan, return my flashlight.” He held out his hand.
“Do not turn it back on,” Ardis said. She looked down her nose at him and made him nod before she brought the flashlight from behind her back and handed it over.
“Ms. Keith,” Clod said, turning to her. “You will slowly and carefully put that shotgun on the floor and step away from it.”
“Best do as he says, hon,” Ardis said. “No telling how long we’ll be here otherwise.”
Debbie shrugged. “It’s not even loaded.”
“It’s not?” I said. “Yow. We came out here with a gun that wasn’t loaded? We jumped in here and accosted a person or persons unknown with our bare hands and an empty shotgun?”
“Well, really, you’re the one who did the jumping,” Debbie pointed out fairly enough, “and you seemed to know what you were doing, so I just went with it. But you”—she turned on Clod—“what took you so long getting here? We had the prowler cornered and she got away. Oh, sorry.” She’d inadvertently pointed the shotgun, still in the crook of her arm, at Clod. “I’m sorry. I’m
putting it down. It’s down. There. And now I’m being quiet.” She backed away from the shotgun and folded her hands. “There.”
Clod stood, eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose between a thumb and index finger. That wouldn’t be part of his meticulous cop training, but it seemed to help him cope. Ardis started to say something. Feeling uncharacteristically kindly toward Clod, I shushed her with a finger to my lips.
“So the prowler got away.” Clod opened his eyes and gave me a sour look. “Considering Ms. Rutledge is involved, that sounds about right.”
“Hey!”
“Hey, yourself, Ms. Rutledge.”
“I wasn’t saying hello.”
“No, but it’s always a pleasure running into you in the course of an official inquiry. Your involvement generally saves me time. There’s less chance of there being an actual perpetrator and quite often no facts to sift through. That means there isn’t so much to put in a report and I can go home early. I like that.”
“You are such a negative person. You need to work on that. And for your information, I know who the prowler was. Her name is Penelope Ledford. Hair to the middle of her back, straight and dark. Tall. About like this.” I held my hand above my head. “Slim. Late twenties to early thirties. Dark eyes. She’s taking a journalism class at a community college in Asheville. It’s the same class an older woman named Sylvia Furches is taking and I bet her car was parked out there on the side of the road just before the curve. So there.” That last part slipped out, but I meant it, so I let it lay.
“And what was she doing?” Clod didn’t show he was impressed by my recitation, but he looked less pained and more cop-like.
“Sneaking around in here with a flashlight,” Debbie said. “Kath saw the light from the house.”
“Do you keep this place locked?”
“Always. Door and windows both. Unless I’m in here.”
“Who has keys?”
“I’ve got mine right here.” She pulled out the key ring with the tiny flashlight and separated out a door key and held it up.
