Still Waters33

by Tami Hoag

  Dane rubbed a hand over his jaw, fighting off a yawn. What would it hurt to give her the same official statement he intended to give the rest of the press? He could consider it a practice run. Eyes on the road, he hit the blinker and turned onto the highway.

  “We think it was a transient,” he said flatly. “Murder-robbery. He caught Jarvis alone after hours. Killed him. You came along before he had a chance to steal the car.”

  The idea sent a shudder through Elizabeth. If she’d gotten there a little sooner, she would indeed have been a witness—or another victim. She remembered again the feeling of being watched as she’d stood there staring down at the body, and her skin crawled beneath a cold wave of pinpricks. Fear gripped her throat, and she had to nearly spit the words out of her mouth.

  “His wallet was gone?”

  “Empty. And the glove compartment had been rifled.”

  “Maybe Jarrold was just out of cash.”

  Dane shook his head. “Jarrold was never out of cash. Some men measure masculinity by the length of their cock; Jarrold Jarvis measured it by how big a wad a man carried in his hip pocket. I saw him at the Coffee Cup yesterday. Phyllis would have liked to have taken a frying pan after him. He paid for a dollar-ninety-eight check with a hundred and cleaned out her till. She had to send Renita to the bank and wait tables herself while All My Children was on. That’s just about motive enough for Phyllis to have killed him herself. She gets cranky when she misses her soaps.”

  Elizabeth nibbled at her ragged fingernail as she turned the possibilities over in her mind. “So what was this transient doing out at Still Waters? It’s hardly on the way to anyplace. He’d have to be some piss-poor retarded kind of mugger to be looking for a victim out in the country like that.”

  “He’s not a mugger by trade. He’s a man who saw an opportunity and acted on it. We get our share of drifters through here in the summer. Looking for farm work and odd jobs. There’s been a guy hanging around town since April or so. Came down from the Iron Range. Said he was looking for work, but more like he was looking for trouble. He’s been skirting the edges of having his butt thrown in jail since the day he got here.”

  “This drifter have a name?”

  “Yep.”

  “You gonna share it with me?”

  “Nope.”

  “Is he in custody?” she asked, professional interest taking a backseat to her personal fears. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the killer had seen her, had stood there and watched her, had been out there in the night as she’d waited for Trace to come home. She had sensed him, had felt the heaviness in the air, the electric tension of something dark and menacing.

  “Not at the moment,” Dane said. “I’ve got every deputy in the county beating the bushes for him. If he’s gone to ground around here, we’ll find him.” And the case would be closed and everyone in Still Creek could go back to business as usual. He could take a few days off to get his first crop of hay in and to just be with his daughter. “We’ll get him.”

  “How’d he know Jarvis?”

  “He tried to hire on at Still Waters and got turned down.”

  “You think that’s a motive to kill?”

  “Depends on the man. In New York, Chicago, there are kids—sixteen, seventeen years old—willing to cut your throat if they happen to like the jacket you’re wearing. This guy had the opportunity to see Jarrold flashing his cash around. Money will motivate people to do a lot of things.”

  “Ain’t that a fact,” Elizabeth murmured. A picture of Brock flashed through her mind. The man had more money than God and he’d still gone rabid at the idea of more. She doubted he would have let anything stand in his way of marrying that brainless twit of a European princess, Marissa Mount-Zaverzee. Marry-and-Mount-Me. Bags of money there. Rumor had it her daddy had bought their titles, that their blood was no more blue than a dirt farmer’s, but that didn’t make their money any less green.

  “Know a little something about that, do you?” Dane eased off on the gas as they reached the edge of town, and shot her a hard glance.

  Elizabeth was ready to snap back, but she caught something in his look, a cynicism that was old and ingrained, a bitterness that had to have predated her arrival in his life. She narrowed her eyes in speculation.

  “Put the screws to you in the divorce, didn’t she?”

  He flinched as if she’d reached across the cab and pinched him hard. A ghost of a smile curled the corner of her mouth. It held no joy or humor, only weariness and the kind of knowledge she would gladly have done without.

  “My luck,” she said on a long sigh, wishing for a cigarette. She had enough to deal with just scraping by through life right now. She surely didn’t need a man with an ax to grind climbing on top of everything. She already felt as though she were in the middle of a stampede, fighting to keep her feet under her. Then along came Dane Jantzen, weighed down by a load of old emotional baggage, kicking at her for spite’s sake.

  She rolled her window down and let the cool morning air wash over her for a minute while she stewed. This would have been a good time to let things slide, she reflected, but she was sick of taking the blame for other people’s sins. Besides, she’d never been much good at keeping her mouth shut when she had the need to say something.

  “I’m not your ex-wife, Sheriff—”

  “Thank God.”

  She scowled at him as her temper simmered a little hotter, the flames of righteous indignation leaping up inside her. “I’ll second that,” she said, “’cause dollars to doughnuts, you’ve got to be pure D hell to live with. But I don’t need to be taking all kinds of shit from you because Mrs. Dane Jantzen got herself some shark lawyer and cleaned your pockets for you. That’s your fault, sugar, not mine.”

  “Yeah,” Dane drawled. “I guess you’ve got enough faults without me adding to them.”

  Elizabeth gave a sniff and shook her head as they turned off Main Street and headed west on Itasca, skirting around an Amish buggy that was plodding toward the Piggly Wiggly. A round-faced boy no more than five peered out at them from the dark interior, eyes eager and owlish. He raised a chubby hand to wave, and his mother frowned at him and rattled off something in German.

  “While wallowing in your sad and bitter past, you seem to have taken a wrong turn,” Elizabeth said sarcastically. “We’re nowhere near the courthouse.”

  “We’re not going to the courthouse. I have to stop at the Jarvis place first. Helen Jarvis called in to say someone trashed their mailbox last night.”

  “No fooling?” She sobered and shifted sideways on the seat. “The killer adding insult to injury?”

  “Seems pretty juvenile.”

  “I don’t think our prison system is overflowing with psychologically mature men.”

  He hit the blinker again and turned left, easing the Bronco to a stop in front of a glorified split-foyer house that had been overdressed with a row of fake Doric columns along the front. It had the look of a low-rent Tara, complete with a little grinning black-jockey hitching post standing beside the front step, as if Ashley Wilkes might actually ride up, tie his horse to it, and stay to chat about The War. Pink plastic flamingos lurked in the juniper bushes, their long necks bent at unnatural angles. Smack in the middle of the front yard, amid a riotous patch of pink petunias, stood an enormous carved stone fountain that would have looked more at home in Versailles.

  At the end of the curving drive, the mailbox—encased in white imitation wrought-iron filigree—was in a sad state. It stood crumpled over sideways, like a skinny kid who’d had the wind knocked out of him by the class bully. The frame was twisted and scabs of paint were missing in a manner that suggested someone had tried to beat it to death with a tire iron.

  The complete picture of Jarrold Jarvis’s home had a weird, incongruous, surreal quality about it that made Elizabeth shiver in distaste. If the king and queen of tacky had needed a palace, she thought, this would have been it.

  “Christ in a miniskirt,” she
muttered, leaning ahead. “I’ll bet you a nickel they’ve got a black velvet painting of Elvis hanging over the imitation Louis XIV settee.”

  “You lose.” Dane pulled the keys from the ignition and palmed them, flashing her a wry grin. “It’s a bull-fighter. Wait here.”

  “Wait here!” Elizabeth wailed.

  He slammed his door on the rest of her indignant protest and started for the house. Elizabeth scrambled down out of the truck, pushing her sunglasses up on her nose and hitching her purse strap over her shoulder. If he thought she was going to stay in the car like some recalcitrant child and miss out on meeting the bereaved Mrs. Jarvis, he had another think coming. In the first place, that she offer her condolences was only decent. In the second place, she wanted to see what kind of woman had married a pig like Jarrold. Then there was the matter of her job.

  She took one step toward the house, and Dane wheeled on her with a look that could have frozen molten lava. It stopped her in her tracks, discretion, for once, winning out over impulse. She shrugged and showed him a big, phony smile.

  “Just stretching my legs,” she said meekly.

  Dane snarled a little under his breath, backing toward the house until he was certain she wasn’t going to follow him. He couldn’t think of many more distasteful things than facing a new widow with a reporter in tow. God only knew what the amazing Miss Stuart might come up with—I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Jarvis. By the way, did your husband sleep around or anything? Just for the record. The public has a right to know.

  Helen Toller Jarvis met him at the front door with a cherry Jell-O mold in hand. Short and moon-faced, she looked to be near fifty and was hardened rather than well preserved, as if the layer of plumpness under her skin had solidified into something more dense than fat. Her face was stretched unnaturally taut, the result of being the only recipient of a face-lift in all of Still Creek.

  She was dry-eyed and pale, her skin looking waxy beneath a layer of makeup that had been applied with a lavish hand. Two shades of blue shadow arched over her eyes in a monochromatic rainbow that went to her brow line. Rouge dotted her cheeks in spots of hectic red. Her hair, dyed a shade of peach that brought to mind fiberglass insulation, rose up in a teased and sprayed cone, looking impervious to any disaster—natural or man-made. Tragedy might drive Helen to her knees, but her beehive would survive.

  A low buzz of activity sounded in the house behind her. News of Jarrold’s death had hit the grapevine, and the women of Still Creek had begun to arrive with food in hand to offer comfort and shore up the grieving with tuna casserole and applesauce cake.

  “Dane,” she said, the corners of her lips flicking up in an automatic smile. “I thought you might be another woman from the church. We have enough Jell-O to last the year already. Mavis Grimsrud brought this one.”

  She lifted the jiggling red mass to give him a better look. It was molded in the shape of a fish with bulging maraschino cherry eyes and fruit cocktail innards showing through the transparent sides. Dane tucked his chin and clenched his teeth against a grimace.

  “I don’t know why people think we need Jell-O when someone dies,” Helen said, her piping voice hovering somewhere between chipper and shrill. She looked up at him, her eyes a little glazed from shock or tranquilizers, over-plucked brows tugging together like a pair of thin question marks. “Why do you think that is, Dane?”

  “I—a—” He shrugged, at a loss. He had expected her to have questions about Jarrold, the case, the senselessness of murder. Jell-O was out of his realm.

  “I suppose everyone has a box in their cupboard,” she mused absently. She balanced the plate on one forearm and picked at a cherry eye with a long coral fingernail. “If you know that trick with ice cubes, you can have it ready in a flash. Now, a hot dish, that’s something else. Arnetta McBaine brought one by made with Tater Tots. She told me once she keeps a casserole in her freezer for emergencies.”

  Dane drew in a long, patient breath. “Helen, how are you doing? Do you need anything?”

  She snapped out of her fog with a half-laugh of embarrassment. “I’m fine,” she said, her voice fluttering like Glinda the Good Witch from the Wizard of Oz. Her lips tightened against her teeth and her eyes squinted into nothingness. “Jarrold is the one not doing too well. And my mailbox. My poor mailbox isn’t well at all.”

  “I know. Lorraine told me you’d called. I thought I’d drop by myself—”

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Jarvis. I just wanted to offer my condolences.”

  Dane jerked around, eyes blazing. Elizabeth stepped past him on the stoop and offered her hand to the Widow Jarvis.

  Helen’s wispy brows scaled her forehead again. “I’m sorry,” she chirped. “Do I know you?”

  “No, and I’m terribly sorry we have to meet under these circumstances. I’m Elizabeth Stuart.”

  “Elizabeth—?”

  For an instant Helen Jarvis went still while the cogs of her brain slipped into gear. The lull before the storm. Elizabeth saw the sudden flash of recognition, then fury in the woman’s tiny eyes, the rise of natural color beneath the clown dots of rouge on her cheeks. She pulled her hand back and braced herself for she knew not what.

  “You’re that woman,” Helen said, her voice suddenly so low and rough, she sounded like the devil talking through Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Elizabeth took a cautious step back, the short hairs rising on the back of her neck. “You’re that southern woman.” She hissed the word as if it were one of the foulest in her vocabulary.

  “I’m from Texas, actually,” Elizabeth said weakly.

  Helen edged out onto the step, a wild sound rumbling in her throat like a poodle growling. Her body was rigid and trembling visibly, her face flushing red as rage bubbled up inside her. If a human could have imitated a volcano about to blow, Elizabeth figured this was about what it would look like, right down to the fiery cone of hair thrusting up from the top of her head. It was a frightening thing to behold, and she could only stand and watch, like a deer caught in headlights, too flabbergasted to think of anything else.

  “You bitch!” Helen exploded, fury blasting out of her in waves. “How dare you come to this house! How dare you!”

  Before Elizabeth could draw breath to answer, the Jell-O mold came flying at her. The plate dropped away en route, like a booster off a rocket, and shattered on the concrete of the terrace. The gelatin bass kept coming. It hit her square in the chest and burst like an overripe melon, spewing fruit cocktail and shards of Jell-O in all directions. Elizabeth fell back with a gasp of astonishment, arms spread wide as if she’d been shot.

  Dane snarled a curse under his breath as globs of red goo pelted his clean shirt. He grabbed Helen by her rigid shoulders and turned her back toward the house.

  The doorway was suddenly overflowing, ladies from Our Savior’s Lutheran Church spilling out onto the terrace, their faces frozen in various expressions of horror and excitement according to their personal bent. Mavis Grimsrud, who bore a notable resemblance to Ma Kettle, let out a shriek at the sight of Elizabeth, though whether it was concern for Elizabeth or for her own dismembered Jell-O masterpiece was difficult to tell.

  “Grandma Schummacher’s plate!” she wailed as her gaze fell to the terrace. She hitched up her cotton housedress to her knees in one meaty fist and squatted down to pick up the slivers of china.

  Dane herded Helen around her, singling out Kathleen Gunderson with his gaze. “Kathleen, take Helen inside and see that she lays down.”

  “Lie down,” Helen growled, digging her heels in every step of the way into the foyer. “Talk to that slut about lying down.”

  Kathleen, a dainty woman Helen’s own age, took a firm hold of her friend’s arm and dragged her another step into the house, her mouth tightening with disapproval. “Helen, for heaven’s sake, there’s no need to air that dirty laundry now.”

  “Dirty laundry! I gave her some dirty laundry!” Helen’s shrill little-girl voice ended in a squeak and giggling uncontrollably sh
e went off into the nether reaches of the house with Kathleen.

  “Judas H.,” Dane muttered. He turned and pinned Edith Truman with a look.

  She raised a hand, needing no order. “I’ll go call Doc.”

  The rest of the women lingered around the doorway, eyes on Elizabeth. No one rushed out to console her or to help her brush the mess off her clothes. Not one voice was raised in inquiry or sympathy or explanation. They stood up against the side of the Jarvis home as if they were guarding the portal against a foreign invasion, their gazes ranging from carefully blank to wary to accusatory.

  Elizabeth stood just off the terrace, staring back at them, reading their expressions. The faces were new, but the sentiment etched there was no different from what she’d seen on the faces of the Atlanta Junior League ladies the day news of her impending divorce had hit the grapevine. She was an outsider. She was unwelcome here. Separation stretched like an invisible gulf between them, yawning wide, with no one willing to reach across to her. She was alone.