On Pins and Needles

by Victoria Pade

  There were accusations of an under ground railroad for bad hippies. Mind control. One woman was certain she’d seen Megan’s parents on America’s Most Wanted at least three times. Another believed tofu killed a Bailey guest and they buried him in the yard rather than admit meat eating was healthier.

  By the end of the day the only thing Megan knew with any certainty was that many of Elk Creek’s citizens had very vivid imaginations.

  She was grateful, though, for the way Josh dealt with it all. He wasted very little time on the absurd angles or ridiculous theories, and he cut every unflattering comment short. Instead he said over and over again that he was only interested in the facts.

  But those were in short supply until long after the sun had gone down and Megan and Josh had lunched on sandwiches from Margie Wilson’s Café and wolfed down a quick pizza supper between inter views.

  It was nearly eight o’clock when Buzz Mar tin dale dropped in just as they thought they might be able to call it a day.

  Buzz was the grandfather of the McDermot family—who employed Josh’s mother—and he came to let Josh know that he had a recollection of a drifter who had come through town at about the time Josh was interested in.

  “I don’t remember his name,” the elderly man said. “And I couldn’t tell you what happened to him. Like any drifter, he was here one day and gone the next. I just figgered he’d moved on. But what makes ’im stick in my mind was the rumor that he had two valuable coins of some kind. Coulda been nothin’. Coulda been somethin’.”

  “Can you describe him?” Josh asked.

  “After all these years? A million faces passed before my eyes since then.”

  “Was he tall? Short? Thin? Fat?”

  The older man thought about it. “Tall as me then—six feet. Not fat. Looked like he could use a good meal. The Baileys was folks likely to take in somebody like that, feed ’em. And if I’m not mistaken, that’s where he spent his time. ’Round their place.”

  “How about the color of his hair? Or his eyes? Any scars or marks that might have made him memorable?” Josh persisted.

  “Nope. Just the coins is all. And like I said, I never seen ’em or nothin’. Just heard talk about ’em. Don’t know if they was made up or for real. But that’s what I remember—a drifter stayin’ out at the Bailey place moochin’ off them people when he coulda sold them coins to help himself.”

  Buzz paused a moment as if some thing else was rising to the surface of his brain from deep below.

  Then he said, “Wait a minute. His teeth. He was missin’ one front tooth and most of the other. Uppers. What was left of the partial one was pointy. That help any?”

  “It might,” Josh answered, taking notes on everything the old man was saying and sounding more interested than he had in anything else that had been said today.

  “How about personal effects other than the coins?” he asked then. “Do you remember anything about his clothes or what he had with him?”

  Buzz thought about it but then shook his head. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. This could actually help with an identification some where down the line.”

  And help to hang my parents, Megan thought.

  But, as if the same thing occurred to Buzz Mar tin dale and he didn’t want it left that way, he said, “The Baileys were decent enough folks. Don’t go thinkin’ otherwise by what I said. They weren’t the kind who’da took in some drifter so they could rob him of those coins and plant ’im in the yard. They had their peculiarities but those were all about savin’ things, not hurtin’ ’em.”

  Megan wanted to thank him for saying that but felt sure she wasn’t supposed to do that any more than she was supposed to defend her parents.

  “I just have to look into everything, Buzz,” Josh said.

  “Yeah, I know. That’s why I came in to tell you what I recalled. But I’m not tellin’ anybody else. Town’s all het up over this already, convincin’ itself that the Baileys were somethin’ bigger’n life and badder’n bad when that just ain’t the way it was. Not that it looks good for ’em, what with that body bein’ on their property. But still, every body deserves the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Thank you,” Megan heard herself say, this time before she could curb the impulse.

  Josh tossed a warning glance over his shoulder and then faced the elderly man who was laboriously pushing himself from the visitor’s chair.

  “That’s all I got,” Buzz announced then. “I just come into town to have supper with Bax and when I saw the light still on in here on my way home I thought I’d drop in and tell it to ya. Now I better git.”

  “I appreciate you coming in. If you think of anything else let me know,” Josh said.

  “Pretty sure that’s all there is but anything else comes to me, you’ll be the first I tell,” the McDermot pa tri arch assured him. Then he nodded in Megan’s direction to bid her goodbye. “Young lady.”

  “Good night,” she countered, but it was to his re treating back.

  Josh had taken notes during all the inter views, regard less of how far fetched the information, but this time he was more intent on the task, leaving Megan to her own devices without making any comment on what Buzz Mar tin dale had reported.

  But the silence in the office was not the only silence, Megan realized. The din of voices that had been coming both from outside the building and from outside the office since she’d arrived at the court house was missing, too.

  “It’s so quiet. Do you think Buzz Mar tin dale was actually the last of them?” she whispered, as if saying it out loud might conjure up more people with some thing to say on the subject of her parents and the make shift burial site in her backyard.

  “I don’t know. Poke your head out the door and see what Millie has to say about it.”

  Keeping her fingers crossed, Megan did just that, finding the diminutive older woman with her coat already on, taking her purse out of her desk drawer.

  “Is that it?” Megan asked, again in a quiet voice.

  “Thank the good Lord,” Millie answered with gusto. “Tell Josh I’m goin’ home and I’m comin’ in an hour late tomorrow.”

  Whether he likes it or not was the implied finish to that statement. But no one could dispute the fact that the woman had earned more than an hour’s delayed start after the day she’d put in. Besides, it was after eight o’clock—long past what Megan was sure was Millie’s quitting time.

  “I’ll tell him.”

  Millie walked out then, without another word, and Megan turned back into the office to face Josh.

  He’d apparently finished what he was writing because he was on his feet and in the middle of an elaborate stretch that had his long arms in the air, his spine arched and his torso bowed in a display so magnificent just the sight of it lit a tiny spark inside Megan.

  “We’re finished,” she announced, going on to relay Millie’s message in an attempt to keep herself on track and not get lost in watching Josh.

  He relaxed from his stretch by slow increments and even talk of Millie couldn’t help Megan’s eyes from following every step of the way.

  “Long day,” he said when it was complete.

  “And not all that productive,” she felt obliged to point out.

  Josh didn’t respond to that and there was a certain amount of denial in his lack of confirmation.

  But Megan realized suddenly that she was saturated with the subject of this case and her parents’ involvement—or lack of involvement—in it and so she didn’t push it.

  Instead she said, “I should get going. Nissa will be wondering what happened to me.”

  Why was there a question in her tone at the end of that? Was she asking him to give her a reason to stay?

  If she was it didn’t matter because rather than doing that Josh accepted her decision without argument. “Did you drive over this morning?” he asked as if he were only too willing to have her go.

  “No, my car is still at my office. I walked o
ver when I got your call.”

  “Then how about if I walk you back?”

  That was a much nicer proposition than what she’d been thinking before—that he just wanted to get rid of her.

  But in an attempt to fight her own eagerness to prolong this already extended day with him, she said, “You don’t have to.”

  “I know I don’t have to. But I’ve been cooped up here for longer than I can tolerate and I could use the fresh air.”

  So that’s all he was interested in. It didn’t have anything to do with her, Megan thought, her spirits riding a roller-coaster of ups and downs.

  “Whatever,” she said with a negligent shrug to go with her I-couldn’t-care-less-what-you-do tone.

  Josh’s brow twitched into and out of a brief frown but he didn’t say anything about her attitude. Instead he said, “We could go the long way around and pick up a couple of cups of hot chocolate at the Dairy King for the walk. My treat.”

  Again Megan’s mood rose with the thought that he might want to spend some personal time with her. “That sounds good,” she agreed even as she told herself to cut it out, that she shouldn’t even be spending personal time with him, let alone hanging her heart on the possibility that he might or might not want to be with her.

  But did she tell him to just forget it? To go have his hot chocolate by himself while she retrieved her car alone and went home?

  No, she didn’t.

  What she did say was, “I’d love a cup of hot chocolate.”

  “Great. Then let’s go before anyone else can drop in here to tell me they’re sure Martians landed on your roof eighteen years ago and what we really found in your yard was the space craft.”

  “Mmm. That is about the only thing they didn’t come up with today,” Megan agreed with a small laugh.

  Josh went around his desk to open the door on a closet on the inside wall, taking a short brown wool jacket from a hanger inside.

  “Where’s your coat?” he asked then, as if the thought had just popped into his mind.

  “I ran out so fast this morning that I left that at my office, too.”

  Three strides of his long legs brought him to where Megan still stood at the door. “Here. Wear this or you’ll freeze to death,” he ordered, holding it open for her to slip into.

  “If I wear it you’ll freeze to death.”

  “Nah. The cold will feel good after this hot, stuffy office. I’ll wear it on the way back, once you’re in your car with the heater on.”

  He ignored her further protests and urged her into the jacket.

  It was several sizes too big and Megan knew she must look ridiculous but as Josh ushered her out of the office she could smell his after shave on the coat and the feel of it around her made her think about having his arms around her much the same way.

  On guard, she reminded herself sternly. She was supposed to be on guard against the attraction to him sneaking up on her, against thoughts like that sneaking up on her. Against him. After all, it wasn’t the walk or the hot chocolate that were potentially dangerous to her. It was her own thoughts. And the uninvited hope that went with them. And that couldn’t go on. It had to be nipped in the bud.

  So, determined to do just that, as soon as they stepped outside the court house building, she jabbed her nose skyward and took a deep draw of the cool night air, holding it in her lungs as long as she could before exhaling and hoping that was enough to clear her mind.

  Josh misinterpreted the actions. “I know. Beautiful night, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Megan agreed as if that had been what was going through her mind the whole time.

  The Dairy King was around the corner from the court house. Megan and Josh shared in consequential small talk as they walked there, ordered two hot chocolates and then headed across the town square again in the direction of Megan’s office.

  It was only once they were back on Center Street, sipping the sweet, creamy drinks as they lei surely strolled the board walk that Josh said, “So where did you and your folks go when you left Elk Creek?”

  Megan stopped mid-sip to look at him out of the corner of her eye. “Aren’t you ready to go off-duty yet?”

  “I am off-duty. That was a purely friendly question.”

  “Honestly?”

  “Honestly.”

  “Or at least it was a purely friendly question unless I just happen to say some thing that could be used against my parents.”

  “Okay, we don’t have to talk. I was just making conversation. Trying to get to know you a little.”

  “Without any ulterior motive?”

  He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Without any ulterior motive.”

  Megan didn’t say anything for a while, weighing whether he was telling her the truth or if he was fishing under the guise of friendliness and conversation-making.

  She couldn’t be sure. But on the other hand, she also couldn’t think of anything she might say in answer to his question about where her family had gone after leaving Elk Creek that could be used against her folks, either.

  So she finally said, “From here we went to California to work on improving the conditions of migrant laborers. We were there until after the first of the next year.”

  “And then?”

  “And then,” she repeated as if it were hardly that simple. “And then it isn’t easy to remember it all in chronological order. For a while after California we were on a ship in the Bering Sea. But after that? There were picket lines and protests and petitions against fast-burning plutonium reactors, oil spills, toxic land fills, refrigeration units leaking hydro-fluorocarbons, petroleum derivatives seeping into the water basins, and for got ten nerve-gas bomblettes found near suburban developments. We spent time in the Arctic Circle. We went to Russia after Chernobyl. Basically, you name the site of an environmental hazard or a human or animal travesty and that’s where I’ve been.”

  “You’re well-traveled, is that what you’re telling me?” he under stated.

  “More or less,” Megan confirmed with a laugh.

  “Wouldn’t it have been simpler for your parents to do some thing more main stream that still aimed for the same goals? Like going to work for the EPA, for instance?”

  “Now you’re talking about forcing them into a mold. That has never worked for my folks. Or for Nissa or I, either,” she added pointedly.

  “Have you ever tried?”

  Again she gave him a sideways glance, this one even more suspicious and leery than the last. “We’re interested in effecting change, not in being changed ourselves.”

  “Okay,” he said as if he knew when he was up against a brick wall. “What about school then? You left here after the sixth grade. You had to get farther than that. Or was formal education too molding, too?”

  “Mostly my folks taught us. Occasionally they’d enroll us in a school for a few months if they thought we were going to be in one place that long. But more often they played teacher and then we’d have to take equivalency tests to get credit for having finished a grade. Of course the curriculum on the bus was a lot heavier on the civics and social sciences side than when we were in real schools, but Nissa and I both got our diplomas and scored high enough on the SATs to have our choice of colleges.”

  “You went to college?”

  Megan turned her head to look straight at him that time. “Don’t sound so amazed. I have a degree in biochemistry and Nissa has one in biology. We were both accepted into medical school but decided not to go the traditional route.”

  Josh smiled sheepishly. “It wasn’t that I was doubting your intelligence. It just didn’t sound like you’d ever stayed in one place long enough for higher education.”

  “Nissa and I did. Well, for the two and a half years it took us to get our degrees. Our folks spent most of that time in the rain forest.”

  “And then you graduated and went back on the road?”

  “Surprised again? Yes, we went back on the road. Our folks aren’t the only one
s who believe that it’s important to stand up to the wrong doers of the world. After college I went on to learn acupuncture and Nissa went into massage and herbal medicine and when we completed all that training we went back to the traveling life style, practicing wherever we were at any given time at Peoples’ fairs, Renaissance festivals, or just from the motor home.”

  “And then you decided to come to Elk Creek?” he said as if it didn’t seem to fit.

  Megan laughed again. “I know. We aren’t going to find many wrong doers to stand up to around here—especially since even though Nissa and I are vegetarians we aren’t as militant about it as our folks are. But the thing is, my sister and I just got really, really tired of living like nomads. We started craving a more normal life. A chance to make friends and have families of our own. To put down roots. Maybe it’s latent rebellion against our parents,” she added with a joke. “And then you thought of Elk Creek,” Josh surmised.

  “It was the only place either of us had ever actually considered home. Certainly it was the place we’d lived the longest in our lives. And there was the house my grand parents had built. A little bit of land. We just decided, hey, what better place?”

  They’d reached her office by then and Megan let them in the front door, turning on the lights as she did. “Elk Creek is a pretty good place,” Josh agreed, coming in with her.

  “Mmm. After today I’m beginning to wonder,” she muttered, more to herself than to him.

  “Don’t hold today against the whole town. For one, it wasn’t the whole town. And for two, this is an odd situation and no matter where you are, in an odd situation, people tend to think the worst and come out of the woodwork with bizarre theories—it was one of the lessons of sheriff’s training.”

  “But still Nissa and I are faced with having to convince them all—and you—that our parents didn’t have anything to do with that backyard burial, then drum up interest and belief in the benefits of acupuncture, massage and herbal therapy, before we can actually make a living and have a life here—that’s slightly more than we bar gained for when we made this decision.”