Angel Sleuth (13 page)

“No, you didn’t. Jeremy, we need to plan in case she doesn’t come home tonight. Did you see Dessie when you got here, Deirdre?”

“Sure.”

“So you could draw a picture of her, and we could put it on the posters,” Kaitlin said. She put her arm around Jeremy. “If we need to, tomorrow.”

* * *

Questioning Mary Jane about ARC, interviewing Deirdre about her work as an illustrator, and searching out the whereabouts of Leda’s will all vanished from Kaitlin’s mind. The household including Mac and Deirdre walked or drove the streets of the village calling Dessie’s name and asking folks if they had seen the little porker.

Dessie did not return on her own. Jeremy slept in Mary Jane’s room that night with Hester curled in his arms and his mother in a sleeping bag on the floor. In all the scurrying around, no one noticed Deirdre had camped out on the couch downstairs or that she was the one who ordered take-out and picked it up. And while the others slept, including Mac in his car out front, she spent the hours at the kitchen table drawing pictures of what eventually turned out to be a good likeness of Desdemona.

Aside from Jeremy, the person most distraught over Dessie was Kaitlin, who missed the warmth of the little gal on her feet while she tried to write and the thankful burping sounds she made when Kaitlin offered her fresh vegetables. And the look of gratitude in Dessie’s eyes when Kaitlin banned all pork products from the house. Kaitlin vowed to write her next children’s book about Dessie.

Kaitlin worried that something bad had happened to her. Worse, Mac’s words about the safety of Jeremy because of Kaitlin’s involvement in ARC and the circumstances of Leda’s death ran through her mind throughout the night. Guilt woke her up again and again. Had someone taken Dessie to punish her for her snooping?

* * *

The posters went up around the village the next day.

When Kaitlin emptied the kitchen garbage in the morning, she found sheets and sheets of Deirdre’s drawings and realized that she had worked hard to get Dessie’s picture just right. Although Deirdre had not given her last name, Kaitlin thought she recognized her from the discarded work and, sure enough, when she googled Deirdre Taylor, information about the artist filled the screen. Deirdre was a foremost illustrator of children’s books. She produced drawings that were as vivid and colorful as she was.

Kaitlin laughed. If she had drawn Dessie as she did for her books, no one would have recognized her as a pot-bellied pig. Kaitlin held one of the garbage can rejects in her hand—a purple pig so close up that the hairs on her snout, colored a neon blue, spread from one side of the page to the other. Deirdre would have had to rein in her showy style to produce a realistic Dessie. And she had. How lucky they were to have her here to make the posters. And how fortunate for Kaitlin her publisher sent Deirdre to illustrate her books.

Or was it luck? After she dumped the garbage and moved the rolling bin to the curb, she picked up the phone and dialed her publisher. When she finished talking, she chuckled to herself. Not good fortune at all. Perhaps more like divine intervention. Except she didn’t believe in that, did she?

* * *

Everyone at the house was so busy hunting for Dessie, by evening they were all exhausted. Mary Jane sent Jeremy to bed early, Kaitlin went up to her room to write, and Deirdre left to go back to the city. The ever-faithful Mac sat outside the house in his old Buick. As the moon grew large over the mountains surrounding the village, Mary Jane watched Mac turn on his book light and continue reading the novel he’d begun earlier that day. It was time for her to go to work.

She hated to do what she was about to do, but it couldn’t be helped. She wasn’t about to let her half-day of volunteer work at ARC go to waste, not when she thought she could pry information out of someone without arousing his suspicions.

Mary Jane tiptoed down the hall and listened outside Kaitlin’s door. All quiet. She’d move now.

She walked to the curb with confidence. “I’m going to pick up some pastries from the café for our breakfast tomorrow morning,” she told Mac.

“Why not get them tomorrow when they’re fresh?” asked Mac.

“Because just before they close, they sell them as day old, and they’re cheaper.”

“I’ll go get them for you. It’ll only take a minute,” he offered.

“You keep an eye on things here. Anyway, I can use a little exercise.”

He nodded his head, but Mary Jane could tell he thought her trip was odd.

“Want company?” he asked.

“No. I need you to make sure Jeremy and Kaitlin are okay. I can take care of myself.”

“That you can, Babe,” he said. He slid farther down in the seat, pulled his cap over his head, and picked up his book. “See ya.”

She met very few people on the street, and no one was in the café when she entered. It was after eight and one of the owners was just about to close. She bought the pastries, then proceeded down the hall toward the ladies room and exited the building through the side door. A sleek, red car sat idling in the alleyway. She slid into the passenger’s seat. Mac would be furious if he knew what she was doing.

“So, where we going?” She ran her hand appreciatively across the black leather seats. “Nice wheels. Yours?”

“Yeah, what’d you think? I stole it?”

“No. I just think it’s kind of weird with your work that you can afford this kind of a car.”

“I’m a business man. I have my fingers in a lot of pies that you don’t know about.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Don’t be so damn nosey.” He accelerated and headed out of town. She flipped the visor down to look at herself in the mirror and caught a glimpse of Mac pulling up to the café. She hadn’t fooled him as she’d thought. Oh, well. Too late to turn back now.

“How about that new place. What’s it called? The Dancing Bear?” Since she wasn’t paying, she could recommend the best.

“That’s kind of pricey.”

“Yeah, but you’re a businessman with your fingers in a lot of pies. I assume you can afford it, right?”

He laughed and punched the accelerator. The car shot forward on the mountainous road, slamming her against the back of her seat.

At the restaurant, he reached across the table to take her hand. Mary Jane watched surprise register on his face as she allowed the familiarity, then she ran her fingernail across the back of his wrist.

“So, Mary Jane, is it?” he asked.

“That’ll do.” She ran her tongue across her bottom lip. Hiram didn’t need to know her last name or much about her. This wasn’t intended to be a fair exchange.

“So I don’t get it. Why’d you call me and set up this date? The other night when I walked into Kenny’s, you didn’t want anything to do with me.”

The other night she didn’t know what she knew now. The other night was before she saw a red corvette parked at the far end of the ARC lot the night Kaitlin got bopped on the head. An afternoon of volunteer work at ARC and she’d traced the car to Hiram, a frequent visitor to the place. It was a connection she wanted to know more about.

“Mac was there. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

“Kaitlin and I were a pretty hot number in high school, you know. But she can’t stand me now.”

“Kaitlin and I don’t see eye-to-eye on everything.” She reached for the bottle of wine and refilled his glass.

“How ’bout you?” He motioned toward her half-full glass.

“Oh, sure.” She filled her glass, also.

He was getting pretty plastered.
Good.
He left for the restroom several times during the evening. While he was gone, she scurried off to the ladies room and dumped her wine into the sink, then dashed back to the table to await his return. So far, of the two bottles of wine he ordered, she had consumed half a glass to his five or six.

The grapevine in the village said Hiram couldn’t hold his liquor, and his kidneys couldn’t deal with the influx of booze. Inebriation and a weak bladder would make him nice and drunk. She had questions to ask before the night was over, and she hoped booze would lubricate his tongue.

Snifters of brandy topped off the meal. Mary Jane didn’t touch hers, so Hiram drank both.

But the evening was a bust when it came to getting information out of him. Kaitlin had warned her he wasn’t socially very adept, and she was right. Hiram was more interested in what lay in the bottom of his glass than polite conversation. At first she was subtle, trying to flatter him about his business ventures, but when he didn’t bite on that, she became more pointed.

“How’d you get from welding metal to driving a Corvette?” she finally asked.

“You’re pretty nosey, ain’t ya?” he said. He tossed down the second brandy.

The bill for the evening came to a whopping two hundred and fourteen dollars without the tip. Hiram paid it without complaint. In cash.

As they walked out of the restaurant, her shoulder under Hiram’s arm to support him, the fog drifted in, all but obscuring the headlights of the cars on the road.

“You’d better drive.” He handed over the keys to the car. She took them, helped shovel Hiram into the passenger’s seat, and started the engine.

“Where to?”

“Let’s go to the reservoir and skinny dip. I think I’m owed something in return for that hefty dinner bill.”

Just what she did not want to do with him. She had no intention of getting naked with him for swimming or anything else. Besides, the water would either sober him up, or he would drown, and that would take a lot of explaining. And suddenly she knew she was in far deeper than she intended. She’d need help with Hiram.

“Nuh uh. How about we go back to my place?”

“Kaitlin home?” he asked.

“Yeah, but we can be quiet. She’s asleep. She’ll never hear us. Besides, I’ve got a twelve-year-old single malt scotch there.” She knew how to tempt him.

“Hit it, honey.”

Mary Jane helped him out of the car and walked him down the driveway out to the patio beyond the lilac bushes surrounding the back of the house.

“Wait right here,” she said. She ran into the house and grabbed the scotch bottle and two glasses, not that she intended to drink, but to make it look like she was, and dashed back outside, being careful to muffle the sound of the back screen door closing behind her.

Hiram patted the settee as Mary Jane handed the glass of scotch to him. His head dipped to one side, and his eyes were slits in his face.

“So, Hiram, your car was parked in the back lot at ARC on Saturday night, late. Why? You a volunteer? Somehow I can’t really see you emptying bedpans or playing scrabble with the folks there.”

“Why’d ya think it was my car? Someone else’s. There’re a lot of those around. My doctor drives one, you know.”

“Baldo? No way.”

“Not Baldo. My other doctor. Why so interested in my car?”

“Because I think you hid there until Kaitlin showed, and then you hit her over the head.”

Hiram’s eyes widened for a brief moment. “Nah. This is a dumb conversation. Let’s get to it.” With that, Hiram plunked his glass on the end table and threw himself across the settee and onto her, placing one hand up her miniskirt, the other on her breast.

“Hiram! Get off me, you jerk.”

Before Hiram could reply, Mac’s form rushed from the bushes. In two strides, he crossed the patio, grabbed Hiram by the back of his collar, and pulled him off her.

“Get up!”

He propelled the drunk toward the driveway. Hiram may have been big, but Mac was no small man himself. He looked like a pit bull with a wharf rat in his jaws. And the night must be catching up with Hiram. She watched him slide into unconsciousness still held on his feet by Mac. Mac shook him, but Hiram hung limp in his arms.

“This doesn’t look like a day old pastry to me,” said Mac.

“I can explain,” said Mary Jane.

“I can hardly wait, but for now we need to get him home. I’ll drive him, but you’ll have to follow in my car.”

Mary Jane agreed. It was one thing to explain her behavior to Mac, she could manage that, but she knew Kaitlin would see her night with Hiram as interference and might ask her to leave the house. And the last thing anyone needed was for the neighbors to wake up to that racy car in the driveway and have a hung-over Hiram Blackman wending his way down the sidewalk or urinating in the neighbor’s petunias first thing in the morning.

She did as Mac suggested; Mac piloted Hiram’s car with Hiram passed out in the passenger’s seat while she followed in the blue Buick. When they arrived at Hiram’s, Mary Jane watched Mac carry him into the house. The door was locked, so Mac simply bashed it in with his foot. Standing in the open doorway with Hiram over his shoulder, he flipped on the overhead light in the living room. Through the lighted window, she saw Mac dump Hiram on the couch and toss his keys on a nearby table. Mac slammed the door on his way out, but the wind caught it, and it swung freely on its hinges.

She pointed out the open door to Mac, but he seemed unconcerned.

“I doubt anyone would consider breaking into that dump, and if they did, there’s nothing worth taking, aside from the car. Well, that’s his problem, not mine.”

Mary Jane slid over, and Mac drove the Buick back to Kaitlin’s.

“Now get some sleep.”

“Don’t you want to know why I was out with Hiram?”

“Insanity?”

“No. His car was at ARC the night Kaitlin was attacked. Residents there say he visits Toliver now and then, but, that night, I think he was the one responsible for hitting Kaitlin. I don’t understand why. And I don’t get him as a volunteer at ARC. He doesn’t seem to me to be the charitable type. Odd, don’t’ you think?”

“Yeah, but even odder that you’d want to date him.”

“It wasn’t a date. It was a…” she paused, “a fact-finding mission. You believe me, right?”

Mac leaned against the door on the driver’s side, his eyes boring into hers.
Please let him believe me.

“From what I’ve seen of you, you’re just kooky enough to think you could get information out of a grizzly bear. What is it with you? You think you have nine lives, like a cat maybe?”

She smiled.
Maybe I do.