2 A Deadly Beef (4 page)

"Who
are you calling, the sheriff?" Ron asked, clearly agitated by the idea of
Moose bringing in reinforcements.

"No. 
Martha wants me to stop off at the grocery store on the way back home, and I
forgot what she told me to pick up."

Ron
accepted this, and after Moose was a distance away, I said, "All of this
must be horrible for you.  You were close, weren’t you?"

"At
first we were," Ron said.  "But lately, I guess over the past
three months, it was like I didn’t even know the man anymore.  He
got so short tempered with me that he’d yell at me for buttering my toast
on the wrong side."

"How
could you even manage to do that if you tried?" I asked.

"Beats
me, but whatever I did, he found a way to find fault with it," Ron
said. 

"So,
you left him on your own," I said.

"No,"
he said a little reluctantly as he shook his head, "but if he
hadn’t fired me, I was going to quit, anyway, so I don’t guess it
matters.  Victoria, to be honest with you, I felt bad about the produce he
was sending you and Dave over the past few months.  It wasn’t right
taking your money and then giving you something that he knew just wasn’t
very good.  I said something about it one too many times, and that’s
when he told me to get out."

"That
must have hurt," I said softly.

"Like
I said, I was half-expecting it."

"Is
there any reason that you could see for his change in behavior?"

"You
bet there was," Ron said.  "Ever since Penny Rusk started
coming around, he lost interest in just about everything else, including his
farm."

"Was
he that infatuated with her?" I asked.  I knew Penny offhand, and I
doubted that many men would lose their heads over her.

"Not
that you could tell.  It was like she had some kind of hold over him,
though.  It’s hard to explain, and I never did really understand
it."

That
was interesting. 

He
continued, "It was almost as if…"

Ron
stopped abruptly, and I was about to ask him to finish his sentence when Sally
drove up in a flatbed truck that had probably first seen service around World
War II.  She was a bit on the heavy side, with hair the shade of corn-silk
and a faded face that had spent too much time in the sun over the years. 
"Hey there, Victoria.  What’s going on?"

I
wasn’t about to tell her that I’d just been quizzing her hired help
about her recently deceased neighbor.  "Moose and I were driving by
and we saw your arrangements.  I loved them so much I bought you
out."

Sally
looked pleased by my compliment, and even more by my purchase, as Ron handed
her the cash I’d paid.  With a smile, she said, "If I’d
known you liked them that much and were buying them in bulk, I could have
knocked a dollar off each one."

"I
think six dollars apiece is more than fair," I said.  "I had
no idea you had such a creative knack, Sally."

"Well,
it’s not
all
farming around here, and everything we do helps pay
the bills.  I do my best to get away to agricultural conferences a few
times a year, and things like this help pay for my travel."  She
glanced at Ron, and then asked, "Don’t you have some chores to do
back at the barn?"

"Yes,
ma’am," Ron said quickly, and before I could even manage to say
goodbye, he was gone.  What had he been about to tell me before Sally
appeared?  I’d have to find out sometime soon, but it was clear that
our conversation was over, at least for now.

Moose
walked over and smiled at her as he offered her his hand.  "Sally
Ketchum, how the heck are you?"

"Moose,
you are truly a sight for sore eyes.  Is it possible that you’re
getting even
more
handsome with each passing day?"  As Sally
spoke, she held onto his hand and put the other on my grandfather’s
shoulder. It was hard not to notice that she was also smiling a lot brighter
for him than she had for me.

"I
always try to look my best," he said, preening a little with the
compliment.

"Well,
you don’t need to try
that
hard.  No other man in the county
is going to have a chance if you get any better looking than you are
now."

Moose
looked a little flustered by her praise, but then he managed to shift gears as
he said, "It was a shame about what happened to poor old Wally,
wasn’t it?"

Sally
nodded as her smile disappeared altogether.  "I’m still having
a hard time believing it myself.  With him being gone, who am I going to
argue with now?"

"Did
you two fight a lot?" I asked.

Sally
smiled sadly.  "It was more a way to pass the time than anything
else.  Ron and I liked to fuss at each other about our property
lines.  He’d mow ten feet on my land one time, and I’d plow up
five feet of his, just to be ornery.  Most folks would have thought it was
strange, but that was just the relationship we had, you know?  I’ll
miss him more than most, I can promise you that."

"Who
do you think might have done it?" Moose asked.

"I
don’t have a clue," she said.  "I figure it’s not
my place to guess, either.  Let the police handle it.  That’s
why they make the big bucks."

"Aren’t
you worried, being out here all by yourself?" I asked.

"Not
the slightest bit.  I have my friend, Winchester, hanging around, and my
buddies, Smith and Wesson, are never far away, either.  I’m fairly
certain they’ll protect me if anybody decides to take a run at me."

I
didn’t doubt that she was more than capable of taking care of
herself.  "How’s Ron taking the news?" I asked her.

 "I
suppose he’s just fine.  As a matter of fact, I don’t believe
that we’ve even discussed it."

That
was odd.  "How can that
not
have come up in
conversation?" I asked.

"We’ve
been too busy working the farm to get much gabbing in.  Now, if you two
will excuse me, I’ve got to get back to work.  Thanks for stopping
by, and your purchases.  Come back again any time."

Sally
got back into the truck and drove off toward her barn, raising a little dust
behind her as she went.

"That
didn’t go as well as I’d hoped on my end," Moose said. 
"Did you get anything out of Ron before Sally showed up?"

I told
him what Ron had said, and my grandfather whistled softly.  "So, old
Wally had a thing for Penny.  You just never know, do you?"

"I’ve
got a hunch that there’s more to the story than that."

"She’ll
be someone we need to talk to next, then," Moose said.

"What
do you think about Sally?" I asked as we got back into the truck.

"What
about her?" Moose asked.

"She
should go on our suspect list, don’t you think?"

My
grandfather looked surprised by the suggestion, and then he asked, "Why
would you think that?"

"Well,
it was pretty clear that she didn’t want us talking to Ron without her
around, and she came right out and told us that she and Wally used to fight all
of the time.  It’s almost as though she was trying to lay a rumor to
rest before it had a chance to spread, do you know what I mean?"

Moose
stroked his chin, and then said, "I don’t know.  I personally
have a hard time seeing it."

"Is
it because she likes to flirt with you so shamelessly?" I asked.

"I
don’t know what you’re talking about," Moose said, but there
was a hitch in his voice as he said it.  "You know Sally.  She
was just being friendly."

"I’m
willing to bet that she wouldn’t have acted that way if Martha had been
standing beside you instead of me."

"You
have an overactive imagination, granddaughter," Moose said.

"Maybe
so, but that doesn’t make what I said any less true.  I think she
should at least go on our list, Moose, no matter how long a shot she is."

"Then
by all means, put her on it," he said.  "But for now,
let’s focus on how we’re going to handle Penny Rusk."

"I
sort of thought we’d just barge in and start asking questions like we
always do," I admitted.  "If you’ve got a better game
plan than that, I’d be glad to hear it."

Moose
seemed to think about that, and then he said, "No, the ‘bull in a
china shop’ method seems to have worked for us so far.  Let’s
just keep poking around and see what we can uncover.  Sometimes it’s
better to be lucky than good, anyway."

"That
seems to be our credo," I answered.  "Why mess with a
successful formula?"

"Exactly."

Chapter 3

"Hey,
Penny.  Do you have a second?" I asked as Moose and I walked into
The Suds Center.  The laundromat offered three walls of do-it-yourself coin-operated
machines, but they also provided a service that allowed customers to drop off
their dirty clothes and come back for them later, freshly cleaned and
pressed. 

It
appeared that Penny Rusk was working on one such order when we interrupted her.
 She was short, probably not even five feet tall, but Penny had a shape
that offered plenty of curves.  It was almost as though a full sized woman
had been shrunk down to a smaller size. 

As she
folded a T-shirt using a special plastic folding device, she said, "I
never expected to see you two here.  Where’s your laundry?"

"At
home in the hamper," I admitted.  "We’re not here to do
our wash."

"Then
why are you here, the ambiance?" she asked as she waved a hand around the
room.

"Actually,
we were hoping you’d be willing to talk about your relationship with
Wally Bain with us."

"What
relationship are you talking about?" Penny asked as she slammed the
folder this way and that, turning out a surprisingly neat garment when she was
finished.

"There’s
no reason to be coy with us about it.  We heard that you two were dating
up until recently," Moose said.

Penny
frowned when she heard that.  "Sure, we went out a few times, but
I’d hardly call it dating.  It was never all that serious between
us, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not upset that someone decided
to kill the poor guy."

Funny,
she didn’t look all that upset to me, and I had a hunch that she was
lying about her relationship.  It had been more important to her than she
was letting on, according to what Moose had heard, and what Ron had told us
from his own firsthand experience.  "He dumped you, though, and that
could not have felt very good."

Penny
frowned at me for a full second, and then went back to her folding. 
"I don’t know who your source is, but it never happened that
way.  I was the one who told Wally that I was ready to move on.  The
poor guy wasn’t all that pleased about it, I can tell you that much, but
there were no hard feelings by the time I left him.  We decided to stay
friends, and I still can’t believe that someone killed him."

"We’re
all pretty shocked by it," Moose said, and then he asked, "Since
you were the one who cut Wally loose, have you been able to replace him yet, or
did you already have someone else waiting in the wings?"

Penny
gave us a grin that would have made the Cheshire Cat proud. 
"I’m too busy sampling the field to settle on just one guy,"
she said.

Moose’s
phone rang, and he excused himself for a second.  For a man who proclaimed
his hatred for new technologies, it hadn’t kept him from getting a cell
phone.

While
he stepped away to have a little privacy, I looked at our suspect.  Penny
could have been telling the truth about her version of the breakup, but for
some reason, I doubted it.  She wasn’t homely by any means, but
neither would anyone ever come right out and call her pretty.  If
she’d had a more vibrant personality, I was sure that it wouldn’t
matter nearly as much, but there was a constant underlying mean streak in
everything she said, and I was willing to bet that Moose’s version of
what had happened between Penny and Wally was closer to the truth than the
story she was trying to sell us at the moment.

"I’m
curious.  Penny, do you happen to have an alibi for when Wally
died?"

"I
haven’t even heard the time of death yet," Penny said. 
"Myrtle Ransom told me about his murder half an hour ago, but she was
fuzzy on the details."  Was her folding growing louder?  It
appeared that she was slapping the plastic pieces so hard together that I’d
be amazed if something didn’t break soon.

"It
was between midnight and noon today," I said.

"That’s
a pretty big range to account for," Penny said.  "I
can’t believe that it just happened a few hours ago."

"Or
much earlier," I corrected her.  "Do you have anyone who might
have been with you during any of those hours?"  I was asking her
point blank if she’d had male company the night before, as much to get
her reaction to the question as the answer itself.

"From
midnight to nine, I was in bed, alone.  I got dressed, ate breakfast, and
then came in to work.  I’ve been here all day, but unfortunately, I
don’t have anyone to vouch for me for much of that time.  Not that
it matters.  I didn’t do it."

I
wasn’t sure what to say to that when Moose returned from his telephone
call and asked softly, "I’m curious, Penny.  When was the last
time you saw Wally?"

"It
was yesterday afternoon," she said, though she was clearly unhappy about
sharing the information with us.

"And
where exactly were you?"

Penny
looked at him angrily, and then she finally said, "We were downtown in
front of The Clothes Horse."

What
was Moose doing?  Did he have some information that I wasn’t privy
to myself?

"Would
you say that it was a friendly conversation?" my grandfather asked her.

"You
obviously already know what happened, or you wouldn’t be asking
me," Penny said.  "Okay.  I confess.  We were
arguing, but it had nothing to do with us dating, or breaking up, for that
matter."