Dead Man Falls (28 page)

Jerry and Rick positioned themselves near the front of the car. I, the untrained--but smarter than I look--civilian, lingered on the far side of the car in an "I’ve got nothing to do with this" sort of stance.

"It’s about time you got here," Lucille said, huffing and puffing herself to a stop within inches of the men. "I’ve worried myself silly over this whole thing and I want it taken care of." Her red blouse had flat gold buttons up the front that flashed sunlight like shiny mirrors in all directions. "And telling Fritz he had to come back here all by himself. Why, the very nerve. Who knows what might have happened to him. He’s a fine officer to be sure, but I darn well wasn’t about to leave him to guard the place alone."

Fritz Harper stepped out from behind Lucille and gave Jerry a "nothing I could do" shrug. It was a gesture we all understood only too well. With a nod of acknowledgement for the rest of us, he motioned toward the van. "That Redwater guy just now showed up, not two minutes before you all got here."

We all looked to where Fritz had pointed and saw a gangly guy with a crew cut standing near the front of the van, picking his teeth with a toothpick.

Detective Surfer Dude almost choked. "Stewart," he gurgled. "They sent me Stewart."

"Yes," Lucille said, smoothing her blouse down around her hips. "I do believe that’s what he called himself. STP Stewart, or something like that."

Stewart turned and acknowledged us with a curt nod and snappy wave.

"Jerry," Rick said. "I need to talk to you privately. Right now."

"Now, just a darn minute." Lucille waggled a long red acrylic nail at Detective Rick. "That man over there shows up and start spouting all this gibberish about detonators and timers, and then he tells me he’s got to put on some special protector suit before he’ll even step foot in my house. Tells me you can’t be too careful these days, like my house is just a hotbed of germs. Why, the very nerve. The way he was acting, you’d think he’d been asked to run naked through a leper colony. This is my house he’s talking about like that! Special suit, my hind foot. Now just what are you going to do about all that?"

Before anyone could respond--not that anyone wanted to--the man under discussion jogged over to join our cozy group.

He wore what looked like a white Tyvek jumpsuit that was about six inches too short and twice as many inches too wide for his tall, lanky frame. The outfit crackled with every move he made, but he seemed not to notice. Why he’d put on such a thing was anybody’s guess, but if he was preparing for a chemical spill, he’d better hope it didn’t occur on my mother’s driveway as Lucille Jackson has a very firm rule against spots on her concrete.

"Stewart, SFT," he said, nodding to Jerry. "You must be Sheriff Parker. Your mother-in-law said you and your wife would be along shortly."

"That is not at all what I said, Mister," Lucille huffed, tucking her purse up on her arm a little higher. "I said Jerry Don was almost my son-in-law once and still might be one day, and that you’d better treat me accordingly. That’s what I said."

Jerry turned to me yet again with deep and passionate longing, and frankly, in this particular context it was getting a bit tiresome.

Lucille has never paid much attention to anything I say and she wasn’t likely to start now. I gave him a noncommittal little shrug and mouthed the word "sorry," although it might not have come across all that sincerely as he just scowled back at me.

Rick didn’t seem particularly interested in our little petty family distractions as he was still trying to come to terms with the "help" his department had sent him. "What were you planning to do, Stewart?" Rick said, trying to sound casual.

Stewart clamped his toothpick tight between his front teeth as he unfolded a pair of safety glasses and slipped them on. "Disarm it, of course." He patted his chest. "I’ve got an instruction book in my pocket." He pulled the little stick from his teeth and twirled it between his fingers. "I’m ready to give it a go. Just say the word."

Rick’s cute blue eyes crinkled up like he might want to cry. "Why don’t we hold off for a minute," he said, sounding a little choked up.

Couldn’t blame him. The bomb deactivator instruction booklet thing was enough to bring anybody to tears, but the suit was what amused me. Tyvek was great for making envelopes, and the coated variety might very well keep a pint of paint off your pants. It would not, I feared, hold up real well against the shrapnel he was so eager to inject himself with.

Rick glanced at Jerry and tried to smile a little. "He’s getting better with gasoline spills, too--now that he’s quit smoking."

"Jolene," Lucille Jackson called, jerking me right out of a nice chuckle. "Are you going to just stand over there like a bump on a log and let them blow my house to smithereens?"

As if there was any darn thing I could do about it. "Why, Mother, dear, you know I’d do just anything I could to help," I said, ever so sweetly, but possibly insincerely. "It’s just that Sergeant Stewart here seems to have his heart set on gallantly fixing that pesky old bomb all by himself."

"Don’t patronize me, Jolene," Lucille snapped. "I know good and well that idiot in the paper suit doesn’t know a bomb from a bulldog. And like as not, we’re all going to wind up with our innards hanging off the water tower the minute he touches the fool thing. I just wished I’d never said one word about it. I should have just opened the box myself. Even if it had blown up in my face, at least it would have been better than this."

She had a point.

"Now, Lucille, honey," Fritz Harper said, taking her by the arm and patting her hand. "It grieves me to have you upset like this. Let’s you and me go on back and sit in the shade while Jerry Don gets things all straightened out. He won’t let that fool boy blow your house to smithereens."

Oh, enough with the smithereens, already. If anybody said that word again I was going to blow.

Furthermore, as far as I could tell, Sheriff Jerry Don Parker hadn’t done a darn thing except try to get me to take a bullet for him, or more specifically fix it so he didn’t have to deal with my mother, which was pretty much the same thing.

"Oh, Fritz, I’m just so glad you’re here," Lucille said--and not in the same voice she uses when speaking to her daughter or other lesser beings either. She also batted her lashes and smiled beguilingly at the senior Deputy Harper. "If you think it’s best, we can certainly go back over by the garage and wait a bit. We were having us a real nice time, just sitting there in the shade, talking."

Yes, those are the words that came out of my mother’s mouth, and yes, I was about to gag. Would have already done so, in fact, if I didn’t fear it was some kind of ruse to throw the poor new guy off track so she could shoot him or something. To my dismay, and in spite of the foreboding trembling through me, Lucille completely ignored Stewart and strolled arm-in-arm with Fritz back toward the garage. I watched, somewhat in awe, as they settled themselves into the lawn chairs that had been set up under the shade tree and began chatting away.

"Stewart," Rick said, interrupting my undisguised gawking. "Sheriff Parker and I are going inside the house to have a look at the box first. You stay here and secure the area."

Disappointment flickered in his eyes and his toothpick dropped from his lip. "But, detective, I’m already suited up."

"It would probably be best if you studied your booklet for a few minutes first anyway."

"Um, Jerry--"

"Stay put, Jolene," he said, cutting me off. He did not even glance back as he stormed toward the house with Rick.

I didn’t much like being left in the yard with the hazmat guy while Jerry and Rick went in to see
my
box. I leaned back against the Expedition, crossed my arms and watched Stewart gaze longingly at the front door.

After a minute or so, he shook off his disappointment and set about "securing the area." Even though Mother has three city lots, the securing didn’t take long and in no time he was back, marching from me to the door. Some might have called it pacing, but he looked so official in his white paper suit that I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I had to give him credit, too. He did seem to take his job very seriously.

As he headed back toward me, and just before he did another about-face, I said, "So, you handle a lot of hazardous materials, do you?" His immediate look of confusion led me to believe I’d better clarify something. "I just figured since you had a hazmat suit, you probably did that sort of thing a lot."

"Yes, ma’am, er, well, sometimes. The highway department’s got a special crew for that, but if we get there first, like on your basic highway incident, I haul out the absorbent and get right on it. It can get pretty hazardous."

If he ever made the connection between hazardous materials and hazmat, I missed it, but by golly, he knew to put on the white suit. Apparently, Stewart was the Redwater version of Leroy. I had to wonder if these familial appointments were actually intended as favors, or were just a sneaky way of trying to clean out the gene pool.

With nothing better to do while I waited, I pointed to the general vicinity of Stewart’s shirt pocket hidden beneath the white suit. "So is that what your booklet covers, how to handle spills and disarm bombs?"

Stewart snapped to attention, unzipped his suit and yanked the booklet from his inside shirt pocket. He slowly read a few pages, apparently to remind himself of what was actually in the book. Before he could relate any of the exciting details to me, however, Jerry was already walking back toward us. I pushed away from the truck. "Well?"

Jerry ignored me and stopped beside Stewart. "Detective Rankin has determined that the box does not contain an explosive device," he said, all official-like. "He has given the all clear and you are to stand down."

Stewart’s face melted like lard in a frying pan.

"However," Jerry continued. "Dispatch has new orders. There’s a request for SFT assistance with a domestic call in town. You need to get on the radio ASAP."

"A domestic?" Stewart got very serious and you could almost see the adrenaline start pumping. "Those can be tough. Anyone at the scene yet?"

"Call dispatch."

Steward nodded. "Good thing I’ve got a vest with me." He sprinted toward the van, cranked the engine and peeled out.

As he sped away, I breathed a little sigh of relief and walked over to Jerry. "He really had his heart set on blowing himself up."

"I’m sure he’ll get another chance."

Me too. I started walking toward the house. "Not a bomb, huh?"

"Nope."

Pretty speedy discovery, if you asked me. "You opened the box."

"Yeah."

Figured.

I followed Jerry into the kitchen where I got my first view of the problematic package. Sitting there in the middle of the table, the standard corrugated brown carton looked like any other box shipped by UPS, meaning it was crushed and ragged despite the FRAGILE written on the side. But even UPS wouldn’t have cut an actual hole in the side, so I figured Jerry and Rick had taken a non-traditional approach to opening it.

"Now, I do realize that you two enjoy putting me in my place about my lack of law enforcement knowledge, but even a cursory viewing of one
of the zillion crime shows on TV
would lead one to believe that evidence might be handled slightly differently than this."

"Evidence?" Jerry said, pulling on a pair of latex gloves. "What evidence?"

Apparently they had already rehearsed their spiel because Rick chimed in with, "We investigated a suspicious package report and determined it to be a false alarm."

"Is that the official story?"

Rick grabbed a handful of crumpled newspaper from the top of the box and set it on the table. "Could be. Depends on what we find in this box you’re opening."

I’m opening? "Uh, huh. Well, since I’m the one supposedly opening this box, maybe I should get the first look. Since it isn’t a deadly explosive, it could be personal, you know, from a secret admirer. There could be some expensive perfume or maybe some embarrassing exotic lingerie in there."

Jerry reached in and pulled out a round red clock, the plain and cheap variety. "Probably not."

He didn’t have to look so smug about it. It is not entirely impossible that someone might admire me from afar and send gifts to win me over. If somebody had sent me a box of rattlesnakes, no one would have even questioned it. "Hey, you better be careful digging around in there. What if a scorpion or a black widow spider or something is crawling around in there?"

Rick glanced up at Jerry with a look that said either, "Do you think there really could be biting things in here?" or "Where does she come up with this stuff?" Yes, I voted for the latter option as well.

"It is possible, you know," I said, sticking with my imagination. "And you already let the hazmat guy leave. We really could have used that suit. I don’t think spiders could bite through Tyvek, do you?"

The back door creaked open, then slammed shut, sparing them from answering my important query. It was not necessarily an improvement of the situation, however, as the creaking and slamming signaled the arrival of Lucille Jackson.

"Were you just going to let us sit out in the yard all day?" Lucille said, marching into her kitchen, Fritz right behind her. She stopped next to Jerry and scowled at the clock. "Good heavens, is that what was in that box, a stupid old clock?"

Jerry nodded. "It appears this is what was doing the ticking. Battery-operated, but loud."

"Don’t touch anything," Rick said, still carefully inspecting each clump of newsprint. "We’ll be taking everything to the lab after we get an inventory."

"Well, who on earth would want to send Jolene a clock?" Lucille asked. "And who in the world would know to send it here?"

"We hope to find those things out," Jerry said, setting the clock gently on the table. "But it’s going to take some time."

"Lucille," Fritz said, hanging close behind Lucille. "Don’t look like there’s much excitement to be had here for a while. I need to run over to Bowman City and turn in my vehicle now that I’m off shift. Why don’t you ride along with me and we’ll stop over at that new catfish place and have us some lunch."