Murder by Serpents (Five Star First Edition Mystery) (15 page)

With a gasp, Theo jerked upright and immediately started digging in her purse. “Thank goodness for cell phones.” She mumbled to herself as she found her phone in the bottom of her purse. She pushed the button that automatically dialed 911.

Rex Satterfield's nasal voice asking her the nature of her emergency jarred her into more coherent thoughts. “Hey, Rex, this is Theo. Now that you ask, I guess I really don't have an emergency. I've found a body or part of a body, but even I can tell that it has been dead for quite awhile.” When she realized she was babbling, she pulled herself together and gave Rex a brief description of her discovery and location. She disconnected and dialed Tony's number. When he answered, she breathed a sigh of relief. “Tony, guess what?”

“I know, I know. You found a body.” His words crackled through the phone followed by another sound.

Recognizing his laughter, Theo frowned. “It's not funny.”

Tony stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes trained on Theo's face. Only a hint of freckles gave it any color. She hadn't found a body after all. It turned out to be only part of a body, just a hand and forearm, but it was human. She had a right to be unnerved.

Doc Nash had been consulted by telephone and he had flatly refused to come to the scene. He claimed that he needed more than one body part to determine if someone was deceased. Growing testier by the second, the man finally shouted that the loss of one arm was not enough. A head, yes;
an arm, no.

Tony thought the doctor sounded even more out of sorts than usual.

Theo leaned against the blooming redbud, all but surrounded by her husband. “I know you'd prefer I call you before I call 911, Tony, but I swear it was almost like someone else was doing it and all I was doing was watching.” Theo peeked around his shoulder and eyed the deputies as they marked off the area with yellow tape. “The moment I heard Rex's voice, it dawned on me what I had done, and now everyone with a scanner or everyone who knows someone with a scanner is going to come this way.”

Knowing that his wife was right only made Tony's frown deepen. He tried to cheer up both of them. “Maybe no one heard it.”

The line of onlookers forming near the road squashed that idea. Drawn out by the activity in their park, the residents of the area clustered together near Nina's yard. Nina herself stood braced with a pair of crutches, watching everything through binoculars.

Tony waved.

Park County was too small and too poor to have many of the resources available in the larger counties. One thing they could not afford was a trained canine officer. Like the fire department, the search and rescue team consisted of a small cluster of trained and dedicated volunteers. Balanced on the line between professional and volunteer were Deputy Mike Ott and his bloodhound, Dammit.

Mike didn't look like a cop. Most of the time, he didn't even look like an adult, even though he was about thirty-two. He was the average man. Average height, slightly less than average weight, his features were neither unattractive nor handsome. Born to do undercover work, Mike starred in every school play from kindergarten through high school and had even been a drama major at UT. Now he dedicated himself to law enforcement and had become so good at undercover work that other agencies wanted to borrow him. Tony didn't know what he would do without him.

Dammit, the bloodhound, was his baby. The huge, russet and black dog, with acres of skin hanging from its face, adored Mike. They first met when Claude Marmot, the area's professional trash hauler, called to report a case of animal cruelty.

Marmot-the-Varmint, as most people referred to him, spent a fair amount of time digging through the trash he carried to the dump. One day, he spotted a man beating a big puppy with a tire iron. When he refused to stop, Claude picked up a length of pipe and proceeded to give the man a taste of his own medicine.

The dog's owner had vanished by the time that Mike arrived to investigate. Mike fell in love at first sight. After the veterinarian checked the puppy for injuries, Mike took him to his home. He named the puppy Sam, but the name didn't stick. He spent more time calling it Dammit than Sam. The dog grew to be stubborn, headstrong, irritating, opinionated and bigger than his car. Mike claimed he was perfect and took him everywhere.

Over the past couple of years, Mike worked hard to train the dog to track, and it had paid off. One time Dammit had found a couple of lost campers and another time an old woman with Alzheimer's disease who had slipped away from her caregiver. Now Mike and Dammit were preparing to comb this area.

Tony couldn't imagine how they could do a decent search of this area without a dog. The terrain in the McMahan subdivision was rough and heavily wooded. There was only one small stand of evergreen trees. The other trees in the park had been shedding leaves for hundreds of years. It would be impossible to sweep them all aside to look for the rest of their new body. With any luck, Dammit would be able to locate it. After all, if he could track the scent of someone moving down the road in a car, finding something like this should be a snap.

“What do you think?” Theo asked as she watched man and dog working together.

“I don't want to think about it.” Tony lifted a curl away from her face and bent over to look directly into her eyes. Behind her lenses, her hazel gold eyes looked huge and innocent. “If that's part of Nina's husband, I have only two suspects.”

“Really?” Theo's eyes searched his face. “Who are they?”

“Let's just say that if it's him, you're only number two on my list.” The way Theo's mouth opened into a silent O amused him. He wasn't really concerned. He knew that if the hand was part of Daniel Crisp and Theo knew anything about it, she would have left it alone or, more likely, buried it.

Tony walked Theo to her minivan in silence. As she reached to close the door, the afternoon sunlight glinted on her wedding band. It reminded him that he still hadn't talked to Quentin about his cousin's wife. Hadn't he claimed that the man wasn't married while his congregation said the opposite? He needed to find that answer. Leaving Mike in charge, he headed back to town. If Quentin had sobered enough, Tony would take him over to the morgue and let him identify the body.

Tony entered the county communications office.

From his chair, dispatcher Rex Satterfield could keep an eye on the padded cell and on the holding cell at the other side of the room. The jail itself was behind another set of security doors. At the moment, Rex was talking to the deputies on duty. As part of his job, he monitored their activities and locations. He glanced up at Tony.

“Mike has found a few more body parts.” Rex might have been describing lost library books for all of the emotion he expressed. “That dog of his is really something, isn't he?” He didn't even pause to see if Tony had a response. “Sheila is on her way back without Quentin's girlfriend. Evidently Sheila couldn't find her up at the house, and now Sheila's on her way to help Mike. Darren is at lunch with his intended, and Wade is in his cubicle.” Rex had earned his reputation for being completely unflappable. “No one has reported seeing the fugitive Mr. Samson.”

“Thanks, Rex, how's our visitor?” Tony inclined his head in the direction of the padded cell. “Do you think Quentin is coherent?”

The dispatcher burst out laughing. It sounded like a donkey braying. “Oh, man, not even close. He's in there talking to his regular visitors.”

“Visitors?” Since visitors were never allowed in this area, Tony found Rex's comment intriguing. He craned his neck to see the entire area around the cell. It was empty.

“Yeah, his regular visitors are bats. A whole group of invisible bats, or is it a herd?” Rex paused to wipe his streaming eyes. “Animal-type bats, not baseball. The last time he spent some time in here, he told me all about them.”

Tony strolled over to the cell and studied Quentin. He quickly surmised that the bats were frequent visitors in Quentin's personal universe because he apparently knew all of them by name. They seemed to be hanging from the ceiling in one corner of the padded cell but, of course, Tony couldn't tell that for sure. Eavesdropping on the conversation, he did learn that one of the bats was named Elvis. Quentin seemed to be pleading with Elvis for permission to sing along, promising to only sing harmony and backup. Evidently his plea succeeded and Elvis agreed, because Quentin began warming up his voice with a series of commercial jingles.

Quentin's singing voice was a pleasant baritone that surprised Tony. Standing in the corner of the cell, Quentin began to croon, “In the Ghetto.” Shaking his head, Tony backed away from the door and met Rex's amused gaze. “Nope. He's not even close to our planet.” It would probably be hours before his orbit brought him near earth again. Tony couldn't wait that long.

Wade saved the day. Carrying a handful of papers, he found Tony watching Quentin. “I know who our corpse is. We don't have to wait for Quentin to land.” He paused to listen when Quentin, and presumably Elvis, launched into a heartfelt version of “Love Me Tender.”

Rex grinned. “That one's my personal favorite. They do a real nice job with that one.” He turned back to his screen.

“Which corpse?” Tony just loved to pull Wade's chain. The younger man made it almost too easy.

“The first one.” To all appearances, unperturbed, Wade held up his printout. “Harold Usher Brown, but he goes by Hub. He has a record of multiple offenses. His last known address was Lee State Prison in Georgia.”

“Paroled?”

“Nope. He served his time and got out eight years ago. He's been off the Georgia radar ever since.”

“Harold Brown. I know that name, but why? What had the late Mr. Brown been doing to earn his room and board?” Tony massaged his scalp and the back of his neck.

Wade ran his finger down the list. “Just about everything. Mostly small time, until he killed a man in a bar fight and had to do real time. Let's see. Grand theft auto, larceny, domestic violence, assault.” Wade shook his head. “That's a long way from being a preacher.”

Tony nodded and started pacing. “Why is that name so familiar?” A tiny blob of apple pie filling clinging to Wade's tie caught his eye. He stopped abruptly. “Ruby.”

“Ruby?” Clearly confused, Wade looked over the paper he held, reading the information again. “What's she got to do with this?”

“I'm not sure.” Tony headed for the Blazer. “Maybe everything. You're about to find out.”

“How long have you been Ruby?” Tony took a sip of coffee and watched a range of emotions chase across her face. He knew part of the story because she came to him and told him about herself shortly after he won the election. That had been two and a half years ago.

Ruby glanced at Wade before returning her gaze to Tony. An untouched stoneware coffee mug rested on the table in front of her. “Five years now.” A smile of pure delight illuminated her face “Old Ruby even sent me a pink flamingo key chain for an anniversary present.”

Before joining the two lawmen on the cafɾ deck, Ruby had removed her apron and donned a short jacket of soft, red fleece woven with a pattern of black horses. She stroked the sleeve with one finger and grinned at him. “I talked to Old Ruby just last week and she said that living in an RV in Florida is almost heaven. It is what she was born to do and she will never miss being cold.”

Tony had to laugh. Even in the heat of summer, Old Ruby had worn a sweater under her apron. She had not been the first Ruby, but she was the one who had held the title for the longest. Old Ruby was the most recent one. Ruby didn't have to be a woman. For a while Ruby had been a beefy man with a penchant for bar fights. The name simply went with the business. Little Ruby's birth certificate and driver's license listed her as Maria Costello. Her marriage certificate listed her as the wife of Harold Usher Brown.

On the back deck of Ruby's Cafɾ, the sun streamed through the lattice and warmed the air, but it stayed cool enough that they were comfortable in their jackets. From where they sat they had a good view of the Smokies. The almost constant haze that had given them their name had lessened and they appeared closer than usual.

The parking spot where the Focus station wagon had been was in Tony's line of sight but not Ruby's. For a little privacy, Tony had suggested they might enjoy sitting outside while he asked Little Ruby a few questions. Once there, he hesitated while he decided what approach to take.

“Why are you asking this today?” Ruby's voice was soft and her expression of confusion mirrored that of the deputy. “Does this have something to do with the car Blossom found in the parking lot?”

“Yes, it does.” That was the opening Tony needed. “I'm afraid I have some bad news for you.” He cleared his throat. He hated delivering bad news and watched as Ruby released her mug and gripped the edge of the table with her fingertips. The bones gleamed under her skin. Clearly, she needed to physically brace herself against coming pain.

“What happened?”

“It appears that your husband is dead.” Tony watched her process the information. First he saw relief that the news wasn't what she expected. The relief was quickly replaced by an expression of seething anger mixed with outright fear. Fascinating.

“No, he can't be! That's not right!” Ruby shouted. “Not yet. I have to talk to him first.”

“Husband?” Wade looked as if he had come into a movie in the middle. His head swiveled as he looked from face to face. “Whose husband?”

Tony took Ruby's hands and held them tightly. Even though she had just released her warm coffee cup, they felt like ice. “The man in the car.” He cleared his throat as he tipped his head in the direction of the parking lot. “The driver's license he carried identified him as John Mize, but his fingerprints identified him as Harold Usher Brown.”

As the words sank in, Ruby's big brown eyes widened, swallowing her face as they filled with tears. “Was he alone?” Although she spoke softly, she became frantic, struggling against his restraining hands. The blood drained from her face, making her look like she had been carved from wax.