Champagne for Buzzards (15 page)

“Well, we're as popular as a fart at Sunday morning service, aren't we?” Tully said, watching them amble away.

“Yeah and when their wives see them coming home this early in the day we'll win even fewer popularity contests. Whatever's up with the Breslaus, this town wants no part of it.” How deep did the Breslau family have their talons into this community? It was pretty clear if I came up against Boomer I couldn't expect any help from the town of Independence.

I didn't share this thought with Tully, although I was pretty sure he had figured it out as well.

The moving trucks delivered even more furniture than I expected. Somehow having it all packed so tightly, piled right up to ceiling, had diminished the amount of stuff. I watched in wonder as piece after piece of furniture was carried across the ramp stretched from the rear of the truck to the front veranda. As Clay had said, some of the pieces were genuine antiques and some were just old. The just old and comfortable went into the family room off the kitchen. Clay already had a television and a couple of chairs in there. Now it was pleasantly overstuffed with lots of places to stretch out and nod off.

It took two hours to unload the truck and place the furniture. Paying the movers by the hour made them more than happy to help us arrange it, change our minds and move it around again. It was starting to look like a real home, a place where a family lived.

By one o'clock the trucks drove out the lane, leaving us in a stack of boxes. Marley climbed right into the nearest one, shredding paper and singing out in glee with every new treasure she uncovered. Pieces of glass and silver began to pile up around her. My job was to take each item where she directed. The cut crystal went to the dining room while the silver went to the kitchen for polishing.

“Look at this,” Marley said, holding up a faux Louis XIV lamp with a shepherdess in iridescent pinks and blues on the base. She pulled a ball-fringed shade out of the box and plopped it on top. Another matching lamp was pulled out of the box like a rabbit from a top hat.

“Way cool. Let's put them in the living room for a touch of class,” I said.

“You better be joking.”

“They're retro. I bet Clay's grandma bought them back in the fifties.”

“They are truly gross and ugly. Take them upstairs to the back bedroom.”

“Gee, there's even a junk room. Just like a real home.” Marley looked up at me. Her face kind of dissolved before she bit down on her lip and she ducked her head. I turned quickly away and headed upstairs.

I was setting the lamps on a rickety little table that Marley had also delegated to the little back bedroom, when I caught a glimpse of movement through the window. I moved closer for a better look. Back beyond the open fields three ATVs drove along a path at the edge of the woods. At the lane to the farmhouse they swung apart and two went east while the third went left along the paddock. I ran for the binoculars that I'd seen in Clay's office.

When I returned, the ATVs had almost reached the farthest edge of the pasture. I put the glasses to my eyes, adjusted them and had Boomer Breslau in my sights. I followed him until he came up against a fence and couldn't go any farther. He backed around into the fence, turned and started towards the lane and then hesitated, backing off the gas and turning to look at the house, some feral animal instinct telling him he was being watched. He was looking directly at the house, maybe even looking at the very window where I stood. He wore dark glasses and reason told me he couldn't see me, but reason had nothing to do with the fear creeping up my spine. I jerked sideways to hide. The anger that had made me lash out at him was long gone and cool reason told me I'd made a terrible mistake, one I'd have to pay for and the amount due would surely exceed the pleasure his pain had given me.

Slowly I eased forward, peeking around the edge of the window. Boomer still stared at the house. What was he considering? What was he planning?

He turned away and his eyes went back to searching the underbrush. Something in the woods was more important than coming after me but sooner or later it would be my turn.

The searchers on the east side had reached the end of the corridor between pasture and underbrush and were blocked from going any farther. They turned and slowly made their way back to join up again with Boomer, concentrating hard on searching the underbrush.

Boomer tired of the hunt. He revved his machine and shot ahead fifty feet and then turned quickly and raced back along the edge of the wood, his frantic and mad behavior more designed to frighten his quarry than to find it. Was Boomer trying to scare his prey into making a break for it? As long as the guy Boomer was hunting hid deep in the woods he'd be safe.

Boomer's machine stopped. I used the glasses to check out Boomer's bandaged hand. Only the tips of his fingers protruded from the casing.

He leaned forward and stared into the underbrush. Across the handlebars of his ATV was a rifle. Even as the weapon registered in my field glasses, Boomer fumbled to unhook his weapon and swing it to his shoulder. He laid it across his right forearm and stood up on his machine. Gunfire erupted. The other two machines charged towards Boomer from the east.

Harland Breslau's face came into focus. Harland carried a rifle in his right hand. Kind, caring Harland, the man who looked after his wife with such tenderness, was taking part in this manhunt. And it had to be a man they were hunting. Harland wouldn't have left Amanda to go hunting anything else with his son.

My guess was it would take a whole lot of trouble for the Breslau clan to get Harland out here with Boomer.

They searched along the length of the field but the undergrowth was too dense for them to enter. The three vehicles roared off and I watched them disappear back into the woods. I put the field glasses down on the table and wiped my sweating palms on my shorts. Bad things were happening out there and I didn't know what to do. Telling the sheriff wasn't an option. He knew exactly what was happening. He was the third man who had rushed up to join Boomer at the sounds of the shots.

Downstairs, Ziggy and Tully were both still napping, undisturbed by the sounds of gunfire. “Did you hear anything?” I asked Marley. “Like what?”

“I don't know what, just some loud bangs out back.”

“Old men farting,” she answered, grinning up at me.

“Yeah, guess so. These old houses are so well built you can't hear things inside.”

Her hands stopped unwrapping newspaper. “You're really worried, aren't you?”

“It's this party.”

She waved a hand. “Don't give me that, it's this Breslau guy.”

“On sober reflection,” I told her, “I didn't handle it as well as I could. Sometimes I act before I think.”

She laughed. “Yeah, I've noticed that. I also noticed that your easygoing charm is pretty easily gone these days.” Her forehead wrinkled with concern. “You think Boomer is going to become a real big problem?”

I shrugged. “Hard to say with guys like that. Hopefully someone else will piss him off and distract him from me. I'll be out of here in a few days and in the meantime I'm sticking close to the house. After the party I'm going to scoot right back to Jacaranda and the normal kind of crazies.”

“Jac isn't that far away. What if he follows you? What if he starts stalking you? If he's a psychopath like you say, it's a likely scenario.”

“Then I know a guy with a big bat that does collections…” She clapped her hands over her ears. “Stop right there. I don't want to know.”

“Why?”

“There's a whole lot of people you know that I don't want to know, and a whole lot of things you know about that I don't want to be involved in.” She lowered her hands. “Let's just concentrate on getting the house ready.” “I'm trying to be honest here.”

“In this situation honesty hasn't got a lot to recommend it.”

“You were asking, so I thought I'd tell you, see what you think.”

“These days I believe that thinking should be done sparingly…enough to keep me from walking out in traffic but not enough for me to worry about traffic congestion.”

“So I'm on my own here?”

“Pretty much.”

The conversation was over and I went back to transporting curios.

Later, maybe a half-hour later, we heard the plane. It was small and flying low like it would if it was crop dusting — only there were no crops out in Clay's nearly two hundred acres of swamp and woods. I stood on the back porch and watched the small aircraft fly north and then south, covering the whole property, and then watched it turn and fly across the whole area from east to west in a grid pattern. Whoever they were looking for, they weren't sparing any expense.

“Wow, look at this,” Marley yelled.

I leaned over her and peered into the box. It was something electrical, that much I could tell, but it didn't seem nearly as exciting as Marley thought it was. “What is it?”

“It's a chandelier,” Marley replied. She ripped open a cardboard packet and held up a long glass bobble. “And these are the crystal drops.”

She set the drop aside and I helped her lift the base of the fixture out of the box. “It's the biggest chandelier I've ever seen in my life,” I said. “Is it going to fit in the dining room?”

“Oh, yeah,” replied Marley. “I'll make it fit.” We set it down and Marley pulled out a second box, flat and rectangular, that was nestled below the fixture. It contained strings of glass, yards and yards of it. Our hoots of joy brought Uncle Ziggy from the back room, rubbing his sleep-tousled hair.

“Why, that's real pretty,” he said. “Is it all there?”

“Let's see.” Marley started pulling off the cardboard protection from the different pieces, spreading bobbles and bits all over the floor. Then Uncle Zig and Marley set to work reassembling it.

“We'll have to get an electrician to wire it for us,” Marley said.

Uncle Zig snorted. “Why you want to do that when I'm right here?”

“Can you do electricity?” Marley asked, her voice full of uncertainty, showing she knew my family only too well.

“Know everything about it,” Zig said. “Well, I would, wouldn't I, with all the things I've taken apart, even got some of them back together again.” He grinned at her.

By four o'clock those household members who were still sane had rebelled and were sitting out on the front porch with long neck beers in their hands when the sheriff flew in with his normal amount of drama. He was looking a little ragged around the edges, like he hadn't shaved quite so closely and as if his clothes weren't quite so freshly laundered and pressed.

“Have you found Howie yet?” I asked after a cold refreshment had been offered and turned down.

“Nope, Howie will show up sooner or later.” A small smile confirmed his lack of concern. “He's gone AWOL before. He'll be somewhere comfortable.”

“Got a little bundle of joy hidden away somewhere, has he?” Tully asked. All of the men were grinning. Howard's secret was probably shared by every bit of testosterone in the county, a male conspiracy.

Why do men hide and condone each other's affairs while women in the same situation would rat each other out in a second? Or maybe that was just my own bias from watching Jimmy's friends cheer him on in his wanderings. And then they'd always been shocked when Jimmy made a pass at their wives, which Jimmy would do eventually. Even friendship didn't stop him from poaching on another man's territory. More than one guy had come whining to me and demanding I keep Jimmy from straying — as if I could.

“Have you told Pearl you figure he's safe?” I asked the sheriff.

“Oh, Pearl's got it figured, why else you think she came running 'round here with the pastor in tow? She had the right church but the wrong pew, if you know what I mean.”

Uncle Ziggy and Tully broke into gales of laughter at this bit of wit.

“Men are all disgusting,” I told them. “World would be better off without the lot of you.”

“The world would end without us,” Tully pointed out. I was in no mood for this slice of truth.

“Howard Sweet may well be as dead as Lucan. You do remember that murder don't you, Sheriff?”

His face turned scarlet. “City people don't need to come out here and teach us how to do things. My men are working on it, searching for a suspect. Have any of you seen a man hanging about?”

“You mean besides the dead one I found in my truck?” I asked.

Sheriff Hozen went rigid. He growled, “Have you seen anyone about, in the fields or in the woods?” He looked to Tully and Ziggy, “Either of you seen anyone about? There's been stories of a man hiding out on Clay's property.” They both shook their heads in denial.

I said, “I don't suppose he'll be wearing a baseball cap that says ‘Killer' on it, will he?”

“I just asked a simple question, Mrs. Travis. We don't want anyone else to die, do we?” “You mean like Howie Sweet?”

“I'd think finding Lucan's body would convince you this was no time for jokes and no time to be at Riverwood. If I were you, I'd go back where I belonged. Where it's safe.” The sheriff was trying hard to scare me out of my tutu and doing a pretty good job of it.

“Oh, I surely will think on that,” I said. “You do frighten me, Sheriff. I'm just so glad you are here to look after us all.”

Tully and Uncle Zig looked at me like I'd lost the last of my good sense. All that orange blossoms and honey was unbelievable to Tully and Ziggy, but there's nothing like it to convince a man you're not related to that he's a hero and you trust him absolutely.

“I know I can trust you to keep me safe, Sheriff,” I added for good measure, along with a bit of wide-eyed wonder. Now Tully and Zig were truly incredulous but then they knew me better than the sheriff, although the sheriff wasn't looking too impressed either.

“Good. In the meantime, before you go back to the city, you best keep your doors locked and if you see anybody around here you call me right away.”

“But I still don't understand. What does this person look like?” I asked. “So I'll know if the man I saw is the one you're looking for.”

His eyes lit up. “So you have seen someone?”

“No,” I told the sheriff. Lying to authority is a congenital failing in the Jenkins family, like some fatal illness that runs rampant through the genes. I could be standing beside a threecar pile up, covered in blood, and if a cop asked if I'd been in an accident, I'd say, “Why whatever gave you that idea?

Everything's fine officer, nothing happening here.” It came in my mother's milk and now the denial just popped out before I thought about it.

But my reaction was caused by more than coming from a family of liars. Sheriff Hozen wasn't looking too honest himself. He was more interested in capturing this stranger than finding out what had happened to Howie or identifying a murderer. What could this stranger have done that was worse than the killing of Lucan Percell? What was worse than murder?

I said, “But just in case I do see him, I just wondered what this stranger would look like.”

The sheriff frowned. He wasn't happy to be giving out information. “Hispanic — we're looking for a guy from Guatemala. If you see him don't go near him, just get away and call for help. He's armed and dangerous.” Armed and dangerous described Boomer and the sheriff. It started to rain — just like that, while the sun was still shining, as if someone had turned on a shower. We all looked up at the sky, transfixed for a moment by something other than death. The rain fell straight down out of a clear sky, the first moisture we'd seen in a month.

“Won't last,” the sheriff said. We nodded in agreement, still watching the rain fall.

“When can I get my truck back?” I asked. “I can't go home without it.”

The sheriff said, “I'll check and see if all the forensics are done. I'll have it washed and brought back to you right away so you can get back to Jacaranda.”

The sound of the rain pounding on the tin roof of the porch grew louder and made more conversation impossible, but the sheriff was done with us anyway. He waved a hand at us and raced to his car, peeling away and sending mud flying out in a rooster tail behind him. The three of us trailed inside.

“You want Jimmy's truck back?” Tully asked, closing the door and shutting out some of the noise of the downpour.

“We're short two vehicles. You and I can share it until you get another.”

“But you're really going to drive around in a truck that had a dead body in it?”

“It's not like the body was riding around in the cab with me.”

Tully said, “You might want to think about replacing Jimmy's truck.”

“My truck, and why?”

“Just seems a little strange,” put in Uncle Ziggy, opening the fridge for another beer.

I grinned at them. “Kinda gives me a dangerous edge don't you think?”

Tully said, “Don't know about dangerous, but if you go driving that truck again you'll be officially over the edge.”