Ed Lynskey - Isabel and Alma Trumbo 02 - The Cashmere Shroud (20 page)

T
he quarter-moon hovering in the hazy Monday night sky over Quiet Anchorage had assumed a tangerine orange hue. Sammi Jo couldn’t recall ever previously seeing it that offbeat color, but their night had also veered off on a strange course. She along with Isabel and Alma were returning to the Cape Cod under the honey locusts where Sammi Jo had grown up, and her father Ray Burl had still lived.

She’d
chronicled for the sisters how she came to discover his shotgun. It was stashed behind the column of cardboard boxes inside the storage locker he’d rented at the facility where she worked. Astonishment was also their initial reaction. They sat in the living room with Petey Samson who, after his recent escapades, lay dozing on the carpet remnant Isabel had just put in the corner. He was growing too pudgy to sleep curled up in their armchairs.

“
So he did purchase the shotgun,” said Alma. “What did you do with it?”

“I
put it back and resecured his locker door with my own padlock,” replied Sammi Jo. “Nobody can get back in there without going to a lot of fuss and bother.”

Isabel swiped a
gray curl away from her forehead. “We’re dealing with a desperate enough character who’d go to a lot of fuss and bother.”

Nodding,
Alma went on. “Had the shotgun been recently fired?”

“
Its bore looked clean as a whistle, and I didn’t get a whiff of gunpowder off it,” replied Sammi Jo. “It wasn’t loaded, and I didn’t see any ammo lying around. I saw a few flecks of rust on its new-looking barrel, so he probably hadn’t oiled the shotgun’s surfaces since he bought it last winter. Oh, and I should also add I also found a new hacksaw with the shotgun.”

“Ah.”
Alma hiked up an eyebrow. “Had Ray Burl used it to shorten the shotgun?”

“He never took the hacksaw out of its original packaging,” replied Sammi Jo.

“It leads you to think he bought the shotgun for his self-defense, but then he decided against using it,” said Alma.

“Was he fearful Mo would return to Quiet Anchorage and
do him serious harm?” asked Isabel. She looked at Sammi Jo who didn’t react.

“Or somebody like a boyfriend or a hired thug would do her bidding,” said
Alma.

“
You mean to do her violent bidding,” said Isabel.

“
Isabel and Alma, I’m a little amazed at how you’re sitting here so calmly talking about shotguns and their violence,” said Sammi Jo.

“I
’ll show you a little something about that,” said Alma.

Isabel
felt her breath stall in her chest. Surely, Alma wouldn’t dare, would she?

Alma
untied her shoelaces and removed her right shoe customized with its weighted toe, and raised her foot, or rather her half-foot, for Sammi Jo’s inspection. The front portion, including all of Alma’s toes, was missing, as if she’d undergone an amputation that, in effect, brought about her graphic disfigurement.

“I
had a mishap when I was a few years older than you are. I was out squirrel hunting—I never bagged any game and just liked being out in the fresh air—with a few of our cousins when it happened. Isabel wasn’t there on that hunt. Somehow I managed to snag the muzzle of my shotgun inside my trouser cuff.

“Like the
amazing klutz I am, I accidentally tripped the trigger as I drew back the shotgun. I screamed at the blinding flash and then deafening thunderclap. You can imagine the tremendous pain I felt when I almost passed out from it.

“
So, to address your point, yes, I am well-acquainted with firearms and their destructive power. Needless to say, I turned plenty gun shy, fixed the offending shotgun to sell for just scrap parts, and took up safer pursuits like Scrabble.”

Sammi Jo knew about
Alma’s hunting mishap but had never witnessed the harrowing results. She didn’t walk using any discernible gimp. At a loss for the appropriate words, Sammi Jo also didn’t impolitely gape at Alma’s misshapen foot.

“
Alma, put your shoe back on, please, since show and tell is over,” said Isabel. “I just now glimpsed out the window the lit roof bar lights to the deputy sheriff’s cruiser trawling by on Church Street.”

“Sheriff Fox
has sicced his merry henchmen to spy on us,” said Alma, retying her shoelaces.

“I get the sense things are starting to boil,” said Sammi Jo.

“Exactly!” Hands clasped behind her back and her eyes downward, Isabel was out of her armchair and on her feet. She took to pacing the floor like while at a taxi stand impatiently waiting for a late pick up. “Alma, this mystery has gone on for long enough. We must keep missing the key clue in front of our noses.” She glanced over to be sure her sister was following her. “What in the blue dickens could it be? Help me suss it out.”

Petey Samson opened one eye on them, but otherwise he didn’t stir a muscle.

Alma leaned forward in her armchair, rubbing her palms together, creating a dry rustling noise. “I’m also racking my brain, Isabel, but I’ve got nothing to offer you.”

Sammi Jo
picked up on the dire urgency straining the sisters’ voices. Her pulse also increased to pound away. “My discovery of Daddy’s shotgun didn’t give us any real advantage.”

“Aw, that
blasted shotgun is nothing more than a blue herring, just sending us down the wrong rabbit hole,” said Alma. “I wish a thousand termites had eaten up its wooden stock.”

“
Red herring is the correct usage, Alma.”

“
It is red herring. I know that. The tension is getting so thick in here I can’t think straight.”

“
Since we’re stuck like we are, is it worth our while to return to the starting place?” asked Sammi Jo.

Isabel
stopped pacing and snapped up her chin with a pleased smile. “Starting place. I like it, so keep going. Where should that be, Sammi Jo?”

“
The Cape Cod,” replied Sammi Jo. “This time I’ll tear apart Ray Burl’s bedroom and root out any safe deposit box keys that he may’ve concealed in there.”

“
The Cape Cod is as good a place as any to search again,” said Isabel. “Alma, what about it?”

“
Taking a second look can’t hurt anything,” she said no longer as agitated and rubbing her palms together. “Just be extra careful and keep the lights to Roscoe’s cruisers out of our rearview mirror.”

“Sammi Jo, since we’re laying our
cards on the table,” said Isabel. “There is one more issue we should take up before we leave.”

“Oh?”
said Sammi Jo.

Alma who as a rule didn’t mind being blunt this time
was reluctant to say anything that might hurt Sammi Jo. Alma soft-pedaled articulating their suspicions. “Ray Burl may have been up to no good, and for his troubles, he was fatally shot,” she said.

Sammi Jo
’s mouth tightened. “Are you suggesting he was involved in some illegal shenanigans?”

Isabel and Alma
nodded in unison.

“I’ve prepared myself for dealing with that probability,” said Sammi Jo
never in a solemner tone. “Look it, Daddy and I talked, but we didn’t get into the big things going on in our lives. That worked out fine. I grew up with a father who guarded his secrets as if he didn’t wish Quiet Anchorage to know what he did. That’s why he rented the secret locker I saw by sheer chance for the first time today. I can’t see any other reason for it except he was ashamed or afraid of getting caught.”

Isabel
breathed out in a gush of relief. She smiled. “I’m glad to hear you can take into account all of the possibilities that might come true here.”

S
ammi Jo’s keener eyes first spotted the yellowish glare to the interior light shining out from the Cape Cod’s front pair of windows. She doubted if they’d gone off earlier and left the lights turned on. Ray Burl’s snarky ghost, even if he took a contrary mind to return and haunt the Cape Cod, didn’t have the mortal’s ability to toggle on electric light switches.

S
he blinked twice and used her index finger to rub one eye and then her other eye. However, the windows didn’t fall dark but remained bright, and her blood raced a little fiercer. A mystery intruder had to be up to some monkeyshine inside the Cape Cod. Who was it?

Driving
the sedan after she volunteered to do so, she didn’t thumb on the directional blinker but elected to maintain their current speed and do a flyby of the Cape Cod to perform their first surveillance. She let Isabel and Alma in on the proposal.

“I can
make out light in the windows.” Sammi Jo pointed her finger out the windshield. “Peer carefully that way, or better yet, wait until we’re closer to it…all right, can you see it there?”

“
Now I can.” Isabel’s attention centered on the Cape Cod.

“Me, too,” said
Alma, then, “That’s odd. I’m certain we cut off the lights before leaving earlier.”

“My
identical thought,” said Sammi Jo. “A mystery intruder has invaded the Cape Cod. There might be a car parked in the driveway, or it’s been left to hide in the backyard.”

“No
car is visible out front,” said Isabel.

Sammi Jo
didn’t ease up her foot pressure off the gas pedal and slow their engine noise to spook the mystery intruder that he’d aroused the passersby’s curiosity.

“Did Sheriff Fox return
to pick up the memorandum he left us in the foyer?” asked Alma while they cruised out of sight of the Cape Cod.

“The
line of goose bumps parading down my back warns me Roscoe isn’t the mystery intruder,” replied Isabel.

“I’
ve got a few goose bumps myself,” said Alma. “Sammi Jo, do you care to cast your vote and make it unanimous?”

“My adrenaline rush has
left my mouth dry.” She swallowed and reset her hands’ grips on the steering wheel. An inconvenient attack of the hiccups stirred in her diaphragm.

Good grief
, she thought. “What should we do? Contact Sheriff Fox on my cell phone?”

Alma
kiboshed that idea. “All we’ve got here is the house lights turned on, nothing approaching a criminal act to prod a small town sheriff into taking action.”

“
Do we return to the Cape Cod? Or not?” asked Sammi Jo. She hiccupped.

“
Hold your breath, dear,” said Isabel. “It works nearly every time for me.”

“
Isabel? What do you say?” said Alma. “Do we go inside again?”

“
Was there ever any question about it?” replied Isabel. “Turn this coupé around.”

“I’d like to
know what they’re doing in my house,” said Sammi Jo before her next hiccup came. She held her breath.

T
he sedan’s high beams caught the scarlet glare to a reflector nailed to the white mailbox post planted inside an antique milk can. Beside it ran a rutty farmhouse driveway, and she swerved into it, shifted into reverse, and then backed them out.

When she toed the gas pedal, they spurted off
in the direction of the Cape Cod. She held the steering wheel and squeezed it like a shopping cart’s handle while she stood in a slow-moving queue at a rookie cashier’s checkout lane.

“Who’d have an
y interest to break into the empty Cape Cod?” asked Isabel.

“
Vandal, cat burglar, vagrant, junkie, thrillseeker, or arsonist,” replied Alma. “Take your pick from the standard gallery of rogues.”

“
None of the above.” Isabel gnawed on her inner cheek as she gathered her thoughts made while deliberating in Siberia concerning Mo’s possible homicidal tendencies. “I’m inclined to think it’s a lot more personal than just a rogue.”

“
Is it one of Ray Burl’s old workers from the turf farm?” asked Sammi Jo. “Is it his boss Mr. Barclay?”

Isabel
was reluctant to share who they might encounter in the Cape Cod, but she thought it best to practice caution. “Pull around back. No sense in advertising our presence to Sheriff Fox.”

“I’d like to go to sleep tonight in my own bed,” said
Alma. “Not wide awake on a hard prison bunk.”

Sammi Jo hiccupped.
Isabel’s remedy hadn’t worked all that well.
What else could go wrong tonight?
thought Sammi Jo.

On th
eir second approach, she braked to slow them before their tires rolled off the state road’s pavement and crunched over the graveled driveway. She continued to crawl around the corner then behind the Cape Cod to shield their parked sedan. After she came to a stop, she extinguished the luminous cones to their headlights.

She hiccupped while
staring at the Cape Cod.

“No parked cars
are anywhere in sight, so nobody is still hanging around.”

“
Our going inside shouldn’t be dangerous,” said Alma. “I hope.”

“No guts, no glory,” said Sammi Jo.

“I couldn’t have put it any better myself,” said Isabel.

S
ammi Jo was the first one to pull up on her door latch and enter the night’s sultry murk. Peering skyward, she could take in the tangerine orange quarter-moon blazing through the foliage to the honey locusts standing sentinel over the Cape Cod. Things felt more and more like they were coming to a head.

All around her, t
he night bugs played their buzzy songs, and she hit on a whiff of the fresh hay cut in the field across the road. She saw Isabel, then Alma, now twin silhouettes, emerge from their sides of the sedan, and they convened where the front headlights had just shone.

Isabel
asked Alma to go back and retrieve the flashlight kept in the glove compartment. She also left the sedan doors unlocked in the unlikely event they had to make a hasty exit driving away from the Cape Cod.

Sammi Jo
grabbed with a hand to massage away the pinch in her lower back where her lumbar muscles tensed up, causing the wave of fury to course through her frame. This Cape Cod now belonged to her, and she refused to let any trespasser intimidate or frighten her. A calming bravery fortified her skittish nerves, and she also lost her case of the hiccups.

Meantime
Alma, back with the flashlight, felt stomach-churning anxiety building inside her. They made their careful but quick and quiet way to the front of the Cape Cod. The pair of luminous windows glared back at them like a jack-o’-lantern’s rectangular eyes.

Isabel took the lead as they filed over the flagstone pa
vers, up the porch steps, and grouped at the front entrance. She stepped aside, inviting Sammi Jo to be the one who unlocked the door, opened it, and entered the Cape Cod.

She closed the door with
quiet care behind Alma, the last one to stand in the foyer beside the table with Sheriff Fox’s now prophetic memorandum calling the Cape Cod his crime scene.

The
ir collective groans went up over what they confronted, and Alma didn’t need to switch on her flashlight beam. Isabel didn’t need to dig out the 3X magnifying glass from her pocketbook to search for clues.

T
he living room was cast in bright relief over a human figure lying on the floor just before the entrance to the kitchen. The scene wasn’t pretty. But it was there just the same. Blood pooled on the floor. Sammi Jo broke their silent spell.

“
We found our mystery intruder,” she said with her wry wit. “And she’s deader than a dodo bird at the disco.”