On Pins and Needles (6 page)

“For who?”

“For you. My letting you be in on this is not by-the-book.”

“If my parents were here they'd have the right to face their accusers.”

“In court. Not in the initial inter view. You're here just to satisfy yourself that I'm not overlooking anything that leads away from your parents. Period. And if it seems to me that someone is holding some thing back because you're here, I'm going to ask you to wait outside. And I want you to go without an argument. Is that clear?”

“What if I think you aren't delving deeply enough into some thing or that you're leaving an important question unasked?”

“I think I know how to do my job. But if there's some thing really important—and I mean
really
important—that you think I'm neglecting, I suppose you can pipe up a little. But what I don't want is for this to become some kind of campaign to convince anyone that your folks are innocent or to defend them against any remarks you might take offense to. If you get into any of that I'll do today's inter views—and the rest of the investigation—alone.”

“You expect me to sit by and
not
defend my parents if they're being slandered and defamed?”

“I expect you to sit by and let me handle it. You have to know going in that there's likely to be some things said about your folks that won't make you happy. From what I've heard, they didn't really fit in around here and Elk Creek is just conservative enough to be automatically suspicious of things and people who are different
than they are. Now, with a body turning up in your backyard, those suspicions are all going to come to the surface and seem to be legitimized. If you can't listen to what might be said about your family without debating it, you can't stay. You'll have to leave it to me to wade through what's just bias and what might be evidence.”

“And you will be looking for leads in other directions,” Megan said with a note of warning in her tone.

“I'll be looking for anything that seems pertinent. No matter who it's about or what it is. If you don't think you can handle that—”

“I know, I know, I can't stay,” she said, letting him know she'd heard that edict enough. “Don't worry, I can handle it.”

Josh stared at her another moment. But this time, rather than appreciation for how she looked, she read doubt in his expression.

“I'll be fine,” she asserted, holding her head high.

He still didn't seem convinced but he finally took those midnight-blue eyes off her, pushed a button on the intercom on his desk, and said, “Okay, Millie, you can start sending 'em in.” Then he released the button and those blue eyes returned to Megan. “Here we go. Come on back and make yourself comfortable.”

Megan did just that, doing as he'd suggested and pulling one of his visitor's chairs to the corner behind Josh's desk and chair. From that position she could see the other visitor's chair that faced the desk and the back of Josh again as he also sat down.

It was either an opportune spot or a dangerous one and she had to remind herself to keep her focus off of
the nape of his thick, strong neck where his hair was cut short and very precisely, as well as off his broad shoulders where they rose above his chair back.

After all, she lectured herself, she was, in essence, her parents' representative and she needed to pay attention to every detail of what went on in that room. Not to every detail of the town sheriff.

Then in came the first of the number holders and from that moment on even Josh was less of a distraction as one story or suspicion wilder than the next was woven.

It was no surprise that, as Josh had predicted, her family was what most people wanted to talk about. The fact that she was there to listen to it tempered some of what was said but it didn't stop it.

“All that peace, love and don't-hurt-the-animals was just a cover-up,” was one claim. “Those Baileys were environmental terrorists hidin' from the authorities and that body in their yard was an FBI or a CIA agent that caught up with them.”

“A cult,” came another report. “It was a cult they ran out there. Keep diggin' and you'll probably find hundreds more bodies buried from a mass suicide.”

“Free love ain't never as free as it sounds,” one sanctimonious man informed them. “That's what was goin' on out there. Free love gone bad.”

“They were fanatics about not eatin' meat,” a local rancher's wife pointed out. “They acted like we were all heathens because we did. Every body knew they tore up the slaughter house and that poor person buried at the
Bailey place was likely a hunter they took care of the same way.”

Yet another opinion was, “It wasn't only pottery they were craftin', if you ask me. Look into the evil arts. Witchcraft's what they were probably practicin' and this has some thing to do with that. Mark my words.”

There were accusations of an under ground railroad for bad hippies. Mind control. One woman was certain she'd seen Megan's parents on
America's Most Wanted
at least three times. Another believed tofu killed a Bailey guest and they buried him in the yard rather than admit meat eating was healthier.

By the end of the day the only thing Megan knew with any certainty was that many of Elk Creek's citizens had very vivid imaginations.

She was grateful, though, for the way Josh dealt with it all. He wasted very little time on the absurd angles or ridiculous theories, and he cut every unflattering comment short. Instead he said over and over again that he was only interested in the facts.

But those were in short supply until long after the sun had gone down and Megan and Josh had lunched on sandwiches from Margie Wilson's Café and wolfed down a quick pizza supper between inter views.

It was nearly eight o'clock when Buzz Mar tin dale dropped in just as they thought they might be able to call it a day.

Buzz was the grandfather of the McDermot family—who employed Josh's mother—and he came to let Josh know that he had a recollection of a drifter who had
come through town at about the time Josh was interested in.

“I don't remember his name,” the elderly man said. “And I couldn't tell you what happened to him. Like any drifter, he was here one day and gone the next. I just figgered he'd moved on. But what makes 'im stick in my mind was the rumor that he had two valuable coins of some kind. Coulda been nothin'. Coulda been somethin'.”

“Can you describe him?” Josh asked.

“After all these years? A million faces passed before my eyes since then.”

“Was he tall? Short? Thin? Fat?”

The older man thought about it. “Tall as me then—six feet. Not fat. Looked like he could use a good meal. The Baileys was folks likely to take in somebody like that, feed 'em. And if I'm not mistaken, that's where he spent his time. 'Round their place.”

“How about the color of his hair? Or his eyes? Any scars or marks that might have made him memorable?” Josh persisted.

“Nope. Just the coins is all. And like I said, I never seen 'em or nothin'. Just heard talk about 'em. Don't know if they was made up or for real. But that's what I remember—a drifter stayin' out at the Bailey place moochin' off them people when he coulda sold them coins to help himself.”

Buzz paused a moment as if some thing else was rising to the surface of his brain from deep below.

Then he said, “Wait a minute. His teeth. He was missin' one front tooth and most of the other. Uppers.
What was left of the partial one was pointy. That help any?”

“It might,” Josh answered, taking notes on everything the old man was saying and sounding more interested than he had in anything else that had been said today.

“How about personal effects other than the coins?” he asked then. “Do you remember anything about his clothes or what he had with him?”

Buzz thought about it but then shook his head. “Sorry.”

“Don't be sorry. This could actually help with an identification some where down the line.”

And help to hang my parents, Megan thought.

But, as if the same thing occurred to Buzz Mar tin dale and he didn't want it left that way, he said, “The Baileys were decent enough folks. Don't go thinkin' otherwise by what I said. They weren't the kind who'da took in some drifter so they could rob him of those coins and plant 'im in the yard. They had their peculiarities but those were all about savin' things, not hurtin' 'em.”

Megan wanted to thank him for saying that but felt sure she wasn't supposed to do that any more than she was supposed to defend her parents.

“I just have to look into everything, Buzz,” Josh said.

“Yeah, I know. That's why I came in to tell you what I recalled. But I'm not tellin' anybody else. Town's all het up over this already, convincin' itself that the Baileys were somethin' bigger'n life and badder'n bad when that just ain't the way it was. Not that it looks good for 'em,
what with that body bein' on their property. But still, every body deserves the benefit of the doubt.”

“Thank you,” Megan heard herself say, this time before she could curb the impulse.

Josh tossed a warning glance over his shoulder and then faced the elderly man who was laboriously pushing himself from the visitor's chair.

“That's all I got,” Buzz announced then. “I just come into town to have supper with Bax and when I saw the light still on in here on my way home I thought I'd drop in and tell it to ya. Now I better git.”

“I appreciate you coming in. If you think of anything else let me know,” Josh said.

“Pretty sure that's all there is but anything else comes to me, you'll be the first I tell,” the McDermot pa tri arch assured him. Then he nodded in Megan's direction to bid her goodbye. “Young lady.”

“Good night,” she countered, but it was to his re treating back.

Josh had taken notes during all the inter views, regard less of how far fetched the information, but this time he was more intent on the task, leaving Megan to her own devices without making any comment on what Buzz Mar tin dale had reported.

But the silence in the office was not the only silence, Megan realized. The din of voices that had been coming both from outside the building and from outside the office since she'd arrived at the court house was missing, too.

“It's so quiet. Do you think Buzz Mar tin dale was actually the last of them?” she whispered, as if saying it
out loud might conjure up more people with some thing to say on the subject of her parents and the make shift burial site in her backyard.

“I don't know. Poke your head out the door and see what Millie has to say about it.”

Keeping her fingers crossed, Megan did just that, finding the diminutive older woman with her coat already on, taking her purse out of her desk drawer.

“Is that it?” Megan asked, again in a quiet voice.

“Thank the good Lord,” Millie answered with gusto. “Tell Josh I'm goin' home and I'm comin' in an hour late tomorrow.”

Whether he likes it or not
was the implied finish to that statement. But no one could dispute the fact that the woman had earned more than an hour's delayed start after the day she'd put in. Besides, it was after eight o'clock—long past what Megan was sure was Millie's quitting time.

“I'll tell him.”

Millie walked out then, without another word, and Megan turned back into the office to face Josh.

He'd apparently finished what he was writing because he was on his feet and in the middle of an elaborate stretch that had his long arms in the air, his spine arched and his torso bowed in a display so magnificent just the sight of it lit a tiny spark inside Megan.

“We're finished,” she announced, going on to relay Millie's message in an attempt to keep herself on track and not get lost in watching Josh.

He relaxed from his stretch by slow increments and
even talk of Millie couldn't help Megan's eyes from following every step of the way.

“Long day,” he said when it was complete.

“And not all that productive,” she felt obliged to point out.

Josh didn't respond to that and there was a certain amount of denial in his lack of confirmation.

But Megan realized suddenly that she was saturated with the subject of this case and her parents' involvement—or lack of involvement—in it and so she didn't push it.

Instead she said, “I should get going. Nissa will be wondering what happened to me.”

Why was there a question in her tone at the end of that? Was she asking him to give her a reason to stay?

If she was it didn't matter because rather than doing that Josh accepted her decision without argument. “Did you drive over this morning?” he asked as if he were only too willing to have her go.

“No, my car is still at my office. I walked over when I got your call.”

“Then how about if I walk you back?”

That was a much nicer proposition than what she'd been thinking before—that he just wanted to get rid of her.

But in an attempt to fight her own eagerness to prolong this already extended day with him, she said, “You don't have to.”

“I know I don't have to. But I've been cooped up here for longer than I can tolerate and I could use the fresh air.”

So that's all he was interested in. It didn't have anything to do with her, Megan thought, her spirits riding a roller-coaster of ups and downs.

“Whatever,” she said with a negligent shrug to go with her I-couldn't-care-less-what-you-do tone.

Josh's brow twitched into and out of a brief frown but he didn't say anything about her attitude. Instead he said, “We could go the long way around and pick up a couple of cups of hot chocolate at the Dairy King for the walk. My treat.”

Again Megan's mood rose with the thought that he might want to spend some personal time with her. “That sounds good,” she agreed even as she told herself to cut it out, that she shouldn't even be spending personal time with him, let alone hanging her heart on the possibility that he might or might not want to be with her.