Plains Crazy (7 page)

“Be right back.” He startled the deputies by sprinting down the hall to the back door.

The Cooper sat there with its windows open, empty. “Hailey,” he shouted. A mockingbird made indecent suggestions from a nearby elm. A gentle breeze rippled through its leaves and ruffled flowerbeds in the back yards behind the courthouse. Hailey didn't respond. Mad Dog stepped back into the hall as the pair of deputies arrived behind him, Wynn with his pistol drawn, apparently worried that Mad Dog was attempting to escape.

“I was just looking for Hailey,” Mad Dog explained. Something thumped against the door as he closed it. “Maybe that's her now.” He opened the door again but the lot behind the courthouse remained empty of wolves or people. There was another thump, however, as he again pulled it closed.

Deputy Parker pushed by him. “Let me look,” she told him, hand on her own sidearm. When she got like that, Mad Dog knew there was no point in arguing.

She inched the door open and peered around its edge. Mad Dog watched her check out the parking lot, then scan the environment beyond. When she was satisfied, she slipped her head out and took a look at the outside face of the door. She pulled her head back and looked at him with wide eyes and a puzzled expression. Mad Dog brushed past, and checked out the back of the door for himself, before she grabbed his belt and yanked him back in.

There were two arrows embedded in the door's hardwood surface. Cheyenne arrows. Apparently, Mad Dog decided, he was the target.

***

What Judy had in mind was sort of a Meg Ryan look. Like she'd seen in that movie on the dish the other night, the one where Meg went off to Paris chasing her old flame and fell in love for real. Judy wanted to take her old flame to Paris and fall in love with him all over again. And look young and cute and perky in the process.

Instead, she looked like an extreme version of the girl who did bit parts on
Xena
and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
, and played the title role in
Cleopatra 2525
. The look might be okay for one of her daughters, if either had dared it, but Judy didn't think your average forty-five-year-old could carry it off. She was stuck with it, though, so she would try. But she didn't leave Millie much of a tip for making her look more campy than cute, even if the cut was pretty much what she'd asked for.

But for a pickup truck coming from the direction of the grain elevator, the street outside Millie's was deserted. No surprise there. The streets were nearly always deserted in Buffalo Springs.

There were a couple of cars in the lot behind the Farmers & Merchants. People were at work over there now. She glanced at her watch and found she still had five minutes until they were due to open. But people didn't stand on ceremony much in Buffalo Springs. She jaywalked across the street and went up and peered through the glass door. A teller glanced at her, then pointedly looked away. The pickup went by behind Judy and someone wolf whistled. She turned to see who was making fun of her. The only person nearby was a farmer in the pickup. She knew him slightly, too slightly for such teasing familiarity. He had slowed way down and was leaning out the window.

“Want to go for a ride, honey?” He was fifty-something, and so was his wife. He had three grandchildren that Judy knew of, maybe more by now.

“Sure, Fred,” Judy called. “Let's you and me go get Pauline and do just that.” Pauline was his wife of more than thirty years. Fred's jaw dropped and he pulled his head back inside the truck and accelerated hard toward Main.

That was weird, Judy thought. She went up and tapped on the front door of the bank and the teller looked at her and glared. Judy pointed at her watch and shrugged her shoulders. The teller waved at the clock on the wall behind her. It was still three minutes short of ten. There would be no favors done for Judy English this morning.

Judy leaned against the wall and tapped her fingers impatiently against its surface. There was a night deposit box just next to her. The flap over its slot wasn't fully closed. Curious, she thought. She reached over and lifted it and found that someone had tried to stuff a thick envelope in the opening. It hadn't fit, maybe because it was wrapped in duct tape that outlined several odd shapes inside. She reached over and picked it up and wondered what it contained—rolls of coins maybe?

Mrs. Kraus, over at the courthouse and freshly aware of the danger of finding strange things in unusual places, could have made a better guess.

***

Judy and the sheriff had two eighteen-year-old daughters, one by the normal method, the other by adoption. Both were named Heather. They might not be confused by their shared name, but others were, occasionally even their parents, who could easily distinguish one from the other. Most folks couldn't do that. Though their blood tie was distant, their height, coloring, and features were enough alike to make strangers think they were twins.

Two Heathers in one house should have been enough to prompt a name change. But giving up a name neither had especially liked, until the prospect of doing without it arose, proved an unsatisfactory option. So, Heather Lane had kept her last name. It worked as far as formal listings, like school, were concerned, to distinguish her from Heather English. But it didn't work for people dealing with both of them at the same time. That's where their nicknames, One of Two and Two of Two, came in.

Heather English was a major Trekkie. For as long as she could remember, she had followed the adventures of the
Star Trek
crews who boldly went where no one had gone before. When the character Seven of Nine appeared on
Star Trek Voyager
about the same time a second Heather came into her life, the answer to their name problem became immediately clear. It didn't hurt that Seven of Nine was sexy and dangerous, qualities both Heathers secretly craved. Heather English became One of Two, or One, for short. She got to be One because she was the first Heather in the English household and the person who came up with the solution. Two hadn't objected. She was glad to have a place to live and people who wanted her to live with them.

“Anybody else up?” One asked, still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. Like most teens, they were heavy sleepers when they had the chance. This morning, on their last weekend at home between spring semester and summer school, it had saved them from discovering that sex, especially three times before breakfast, wasn't something exclusively reserved for their generation.

Her sister, Two, was picking out her wardrobe for the day—a western shirt, silver and turquoise jewelry, and a pair of tight jeans to tuck in her boots. There was a guy who would be home from KU this weekend whom Heather knew Two would enjoy pleasing with her selections—or teasing, depending on her mood.

“You kidding?” Two asked, glancing at the clock. “When was the last time Judy slept until ten?” She called their parents Judy and Englishman. One was still in the habit of using Mom and Dad. “And Englishman was going in early for Buffalo Springs Day. I'm sure he's been at work for hours.”

“I don't think Mom's home,” One observed. She was gathering her own outfit. Having grown up a country girl, she was less comfortable looking the part. She went with shorts and sneakers and one of those bare midriff blouses that were so popular with the guys. She wasn't dressing for anyone special, but lots of boys she'd dated, or wanted to date, would be home for the celebration.

“Mom would have roused us at least an hour ago.” She padded across the carpet to the hall door, opened it, and did what teenagers usually do when they want something. “Mom?” she shouted. The house remained quiet.

She went down the hall. Two followed right behind her, both girls carrying their clothes instead of wearing them. They slept in super-sized tee shirts, One's bearing a Blue Dragon logo, Two's advertising a seed company. “Anybody home?” One called.

Nobody was.

“I wonder if Mom left us breakfast.” Judy had done so regularly while they were in high school and had continued the habit when they came home from college for weekends and holidays. As far as Judy was concerned, they were still kids—too young for most of the things they wanted to do. Heather and her sister had become passionate advocates of their independence, except when it came to preparing meals.

One started down the stairs toward the living room. Two left her clothing in a pile beside the banister across from the bathroom and followed. Squirming into tight jeans was best dealt with after breakfast.

“What this?” One had just spotted the suitcases by the door.

“Looks like someone's going on a trip,” Two said. “You suppose it's us?”

She joined her sister and examined the unfamiliar luggage. Their parents hadn't been anywhere requiring suitcases in years. “Jeez,” Two said. “I know they fight and Judy threatens to kick him out from time to time, but I never thought she'd kick him out far enough to need this.”

“Ohmygod!” One said, looking at the passport. “I didn't even know Dad had one of these. He hasn't been out of the country since he was in Vietnam.”

“I'll bet Judy's been making him renew it,” Two said. “You know how much she wants to travel.”

“But why would he be going now?”

Two shook her head. “And more important, why wouldn't someone have told us?”

***

Why stick a deposit inside a big duct-taped envelope? Then, when it didn't fit into the slot to the deposit box, leave it there so anyone who came along could swipe it? Judy didn't get much time to puzzle over these questions. The lock on the front door to the bank clicked behind her.

It was a glorious day outside, middle seventies, light breeze, popcorn clouds drifting across a sky almost as blue as Englishman's eyes. Inside, it was cold and dry. They were running the air conditioning, filtering out all those spring scents, sanitizing it. Inside, she decided, it smelled like money.

The teller took her time getting back to her window after unlocking the door. She was paying more attention to a piece of paper she was reading than to Judy.

Judy knew the teller, though not well. The woman's daughter had been a problem student and Judy had been forced to call the teller and her husband in on several occasions in search of help or clues. The clues were obvious. Denial appeared to have been a dominant gene in both parents.

Judy couldn't remember her name at the moment and it didn't matter. The woman must have remembered her, though, and decided, in this minor role reversal in which she was in charge, to make Judy pay for those visits to the vice principal's office. She forced Judy to stand and wait in front of her counter for a few extra moments as she reread that sheet of paper over and over again.

“Here,” Judy finally said. When the woman looked up, Judy handed her the duct-taped envelope. If this was someone's deposit, she needed to pass it along for proper handling. “Do you know what this is?”

The woman's eyes got big. Maybe some elderly farmer who had spent too many years inhaling insecticides and herbicides preferred to make his deposits this way. Silly, because the result looked like something illegal—a packet of drugs, or even a letter bomb. Only this was Buffalo Springs. There were plenty of screwballs here, but none of them screwy enough to stuff drugs or a bomb in the bank's night deposit. She felt sure of that because Mad Dog was her brother-in-law. She didn't have to look far for an example.

“What do you want?” The teller wasn't even pretending to be polite. Okay, Judy already had plenty of things to be testy about this morning. She was ready to give as good as she got.

“Money, of course.”

“Of course,” the woman agreed. She opened her cash drawer and began pulling out a stack of bills.

“I only want hundreds,” Judy told her. “Fifty of them.”

“Yes,” the woman said. She reached into another compartment and pulled out a stack of hundred dollar bills and handed it to Judy without counting them. “Here, take them and go.”

Judy wasn't sure there was $5000 there. She picked up the stack and began counting. There was more than $5000. She stopped when she got to fifty and pushed the rest back. “Mistake like that could ruin your day,” Judy told her. Rude was one thing, incompetent, something else. “Let me speak to the manager.”

There was a little hall behind the tellers' counter off which several offices opened.

“Yes, I'll go get Mr. Brown for you,” the woman said, and practically ran into it.

Judy waited. She had worked way too hard to put that money away. Then this rude bitch wasn't even capable of counting it accurately. Come to think of it, she hadn't asked Judy to sign a withdrawal slip or provided a receipt for the transaction. The woman disappeared through a door at the end of the hall and slammed it behind her.

Judy was steaming by now. And the woman hadn't taken the duct-taped envelope either. It was just sitting there, on the counter, along with a couple of stacks of bills. Judy didn't want to cost the woman her job, but there was simply no excuse for behavior like this. She stood and drummed her fingers on the counter top and waited for Mr. Brown. And waited. And waited some more.

After a couple of minutes, she'd had it. She would tell Englishman about this. Get him to take care of it. Or Deputy Parker, maybe, since she didn't want Englishman investigating more weird behavior today. She leaned over the counter and stuffed the extra cash into the open teller's drawer. She wasn't sure whether she got the bills in the right slots, but at least they would be out of sight if someone else wandered in while the teller's window was unattended. She dropped the envelope in there too. If it was full of cash, it shouldn't be left lying about.

She slammed the drawer closed, stuffed her fifty one-hundred-dollar bills into her fanny pack, paused to glare up at the little camera that recorded every transaction in the Benteen County Farmers & Merchants Bank, and stomped out.