Pride v. Prejudice (15 page)

“Come back here!” I yelled, adding an uncouth Anglo-Saxon expletive for emphasis. I also commented on its canine parentage via the Old Norse word
bikkja.
I may have said some other things as the seriousness of my dilemma hit me like a splash of cold water. I was soaking wet and semishoeless. My car was parked across an expanse of corn stubble, rocks, and whatever denizens lurked underfoot. I could not call the Mounties. More importantly, I could not call Caron back to learn what she and Inez had uncovered concerning the Ming Thing's whereabouts—or why there was “a problem.”

I climbed out of the water. A puddle formed around my feet as I gazed rather sadly at the path the brute had taken. I could hear no barks or an owner's voice. Serenity and solitude became less appealing. Spending the night on a rock was not at all appealing. Caron had no idea where I was, and Peter had left me at the courthouse. When darkness fell and I was missing, he'd call Evan. No help there. I could only hope that my adorable Sherlock might remember Miss Poppoy's name and call her. Could I rely on her to answer the door—and say that I'd asked for directions to Flat Rock?

I reminded myself that I had a couple of hours of daylight to extricate myself from the situation. Since I was already as wet as I could be, I slipped back into the water and swam to the far bank. From a gravel bar, I could see a barbed-wire fence behind a line of scraggly oaks and pines. I made my way across the rocks to the edge of the Lunds' property. The second story of the house and the barn were visible beyond the endless rows of blueberry bushes. Billy could have seen something, I thought as I ventured a few steps farther, feeling oddly furtive. Too many campers had come and gone over the previous year for me to anticipate finding any sort of clue.

As I swam back to the flat rocks, I tried to picture the campsite as constructed under Grady's supervision: a tent for the girls, a tent for the boys, two tents for the chaperones, a primitive kitchen area, and a campfire. Although Grady and Tricia had insinuated that they had restrained their hormonal charges, teenagers were a devious subspecies. Larry Lippet had said he'd found condoms downstream.

The hound from hell had not brought back my shoe. The remaining one was covered with slobber, but I put it on my left foot. Walking across the flat rocks presented no problem. The stile was a good hundred feet away, however, and no one had rolled out a red carpet to cover the rocky ground. My first step with my bare foot was miscalculated and elicited a yelp. I tottered on my shod foot as I inspected my heel, which was not bleeding profusely or even oozing. The first stile looked very far away; the second stile was a good deal farther. I looked carefully before putting down my unshod foot. At this rate, I would be back at my car by the time the teen choir sang for the Sunday morning congregation. Unless it got dark, as it tended to do every night, in which case I might miss the opening statements at Sarah's trial.

I spotted a piece of wood that might serve as a walking stick and made my way over to it. As I reached for it, a snake slithered onto the edge of the rock. My retreat lacked grace, and I ended up on my derriere in the weeds. I blinked to hold back tears of frustration. The sun was over the yardarm, whatever that was. The shadows from the trees covered the width of the water. The chirps and twitters had lost enthusiasm; the birds had either found mates or called it a day. Before much longer, they would call it a night.

Desperate situations call for ingenuity and immodesty. I took off my shirt and wrapped it around my bare foot, then secured it with strategic tucks. It slid off after one step. Huffing with irritation, I took off my bra and secured my makeshift moccasin. I hobbled toward the first stile. I felt a few stabs of pain, but I forged ahead without pausing to examine the wounds. Bleeding to death was not a concern. Being caught in the dark was at the top of the list, along with snakebites, bats, and other wonders of Mother Nature.

I reached the stile and made it to the top. As I lifted my left foot to step over the barbed wire, I heard a sound that chilled my entrails. The blasted dog came racing down the path, barking its head off. It could not have done so with my shoe in its mouth. I cringed as it stopped at the bottom of the stile and assessed its chances of ripping me to shreds, as it surely had done to my shoe.

“Go away!” I shouted. “I've had enough of you! You're a bad, bad dog!”

The bad, bad dog sat on its haunches and growled.

The only potential weapon I had was my remaining shoe, but it didn't seem wise to sacrifice it. It did not seem wise to retreat down the stile, since the dog wasn't hampered by the fence, nor did it seem wise to continue my minimal progress. I sat down on the top of the stile to try to think of something that seemed even the least bit wise. Nothing came to mind except to outwait the dog, although its minute canine brain could take eons to determine we were at a stalemate: I wasn't coming down, and if it tried to ascend the steps, I'd bash it on the head with my shoe. Or fist, I amended. When facing severe danger or deprivation, violence has a certain charm.

And so I sat for what seemed like a very long time. The dog had the audacity to relieve itself on the bottom step of the stile, staking out its territory. I watched Venus rise in the western sky. The dog snuffled and then plopped down in the stubble. I stayed on my perch and concocted recipes for such unknown delicacies as German Shepherd's Pie and Hound Hash
à
la Florentine. This reminded me that I hadn't worked out menus for lunch and dinner on Monday—with Peter's mother. I was considering the possibility of sirloin burgers when I saw a flashlight in the field.

I made it to my feet. “Over here!” I yelled, abruptly aware of how dark it had become. The light bobbled as it came closer. “Be careful! There's a vicious dog at the bottom of the stile!” I waved my arms but then dropped them when I realized the inanity of signaling in the dark. “The stile!” I repeated.

“Hold yer horses!”

To my dismay, I recognized the voice.

 

8

“This way, Deputy Norton,” I called, although I would have been more pleased to be rescued by anyone else in the county, including Billy's mortality-challenged buddies. Had I hackles, they would have been sharper than porcupine quills. The beam of his flashlight hit my face. “It's Claire Malloy,” I added as I squinted at the darkness.

“Yeah, I ran the plates on your car,” he said. “You're trespassing on private property, so I'm gonna have to take you in. You might want to put on your clothes before we get to the department. Then again, maybe you like parading around half naked.”

I abruptly realized I was indeed half naked, since I was wearing my shirt on my right foot. I fumbled to untie my bra as the light moved forward. “Beware of the dog,” I said in a pathetic ploy to slow him down. At that moment, I could hear his smirk.

“Get out of here!” he bellowed at the dog, or so I assumed.

I was chagrinned when the dog clumsily got to its feet and trotted away into the night. “Sexist mutt,” I said in a low voice as I put on my bra and shirt with all due haste. The phrase also described Deputy Norton, but I didn't want him to take offense and stomp back to his car. I was the princess in the tower, so to speak, and for the distasteful moment, he was the only knight in the neighborhood.

“I'm surprised you're on trespass duty,” I said as I came down the stile into the cornfield.

“One of my men saw your car on the highway and reported to me, Mrs. Malloy. Lippet said you'd been at his house, so I decided to follow up. I thought I told you to butt out.”

“I did,” I said, doing my best to sound dignified as I wobbled on one foot. “I was following a potential lead in Sarah Swift's case. Deputy Harraldson acknowledged that a witness had seen activity near Flat Rock the night of the murder. I confirmed that it was possible, that's all.”

“So to celebrate this astounding discovery, you took off your clothes?”

“The dog ran off with one of my shoes. The ground's rough.”

I waited for another sarcastic remark (I could thinks of dozens, if not hundreds), so I was rather flabbergasted when he slipped his arm under mine so I could hang on to his shoulder. Each step with my bare foot felt as if I were traversing a bed of hot coals, but I bit my lip in an admirable display of stoicism and slogged along until we reached the stile by the dirt road.

Deputy Norton waited until I'd scrambled over it and then joined me by my car. “What witness you talking about?” he asked.

“The Lunds' grandson. He was three years old, but—”

“Three years old? Geez, how could we have failed to record his every word? Did he see a cat in a hat, too?”

The truth would not play well with the transformed Deputy Hyde. “He saw someone with a flashlight on the other side of the river.”

“I didn't see anything in the reports.”

“No,” I said, “because Deputy Harraldson didn't bother to write up the interview. I believe the boy saw someone that night.”

“High school and college kids come out here all the time. Lippet can't stop them unless he wants to stand guard twenty-four hours a day—with a shotgun. Damn kids got no respect for the law.”

I did my best to look respectful and a tiny bit penitent. “Thank you so much for helping me across the field,” I said as I pulled my keys out of my pocket.

“What do you think you're doing, Mrs. Malloy? I told you I have to take you in for trespassing. Get in my car.”

“Is this necessary? You can write me a ticket now, or I promise to come by the sheriff's department tomorrow and clear this up. I'd really like to go home and collapse.”

“So would I,” he said coldly, “but I'm on duty until ten. It's been a helluva day. It began with you barging into my office, so it might as well end with me booking you. What goes around and so on. You can collapse in a holding cell until we can get you transferred to a women's facility. Get in my car.”

“Mr. Lippet put up stiles to make it easier for people to get to Flat Rock. Has he ever demanded that these people be arrested?”

Deputy Norton pulled out handcuffs. “You want to wear pretty jewelry?”

I got in his car.

*   *   *

It took Peter over an hour to free me from the holding cell, where I'd met two very drunk sorority girls, a woman covered with tattoos, and a hooker named Angel. We got into his car, and once we were headed out on the highway so I could fetch mine, I said, “I can explain.”

“I'm sure you can.” He held the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were little snow-capped peaks. So manly, my husband.

“Or you can sulk.”

“I was worried about you. Caron called me with a garbled account of you being attacked by a dog. She had no idea where you were. I finally remembered the lawyer's name and called him, but he said he hadn't seen you since the courthouse scene. I drove by the Book Depot to see if your car was there. It wasn't, and the lights were off. I drove out to Sarah's house on the chance you'd broken in for some crazy reason. No car, no lights.”

I politely overlooked his remark about “some crazy reason” and said most reasonably, “Did you try Miss Poppoy's house?”

“You may be familiar with that area, but I haven't spent the last forty-eight hours crawling down back roads. What does she have to do with it?”

I told him every place I'd gone and what I'd learned, which wasn't much of anything. “I think there must have been an incident with the church choir teenagers, but the chaperones aren't talking. Lippet told me that the preacher's daughters are in the group. Maybe they're involved.”

“In the murder?” asked Peter skeptically.

“No, the shenanigans on the Lunds' side of the river.” I stopped for a minute. “I didn't see any poison ivy.”

“And that's a bad thing?”

“I don't know. Tricia Yates claimed to have gotten a rash from it and stayed up all night, feeling sorry for herself. That wouldn't preclude the teenagers from getting into mischief; they simply had to be stealthier than usual.”

“Sneaking across the river under the nose of a sentinel can't be any harder than, say, breaking into the biology storeroom at the high school to liberate frozen frogs.”

“I would say the latter is more of a challenge,” I said. “Caron and Inez had to elude the custodians and any lingering faculty and staff.” It seemed like a good time to change the topic. “I need to question the miscreants without the presence of the chaperones, but I don't even know their names, much less how to drag them off to the nearest dungeon for a bout on the rack.”

“Let's say a couple of them admit crossing the river to drink, smoke pot, or have sex on what must have been an uncomfortable patch of weeds. One of them had a flashlight. All that proves is that the kid saw them.”

“It adds credibility to the rest of his story. He claims he saw a figure by the barn.”

“Didn't Lund say he went outside after he heard the shotgun? The kid couldn't recognize him in the dark, so he created an imaginary scenario—unless you believe in zombies. Please don't nod, Claire.”

“You didn't clap for Tinker Bell?”

“Yes, but I was five years old. By the time I was six, my brothers had tipped me off about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, thus shattering my innocence.” He pulled over beside my car.

I unbuckled my seat belt and leaned over to kiss his cheek. “I'm so sorry you turned into a cynic at such a young age. We can still hunt Easter eggs.”

“Laid by a rabbit? I don't think so.”

“Maybe he buys the chocolate ones at Walmart,” I said. “That's what I told Caron when she questioned the concept.”

He waited until I got in my car and started the engine, and then we both headed home. As soon as I arrived, I took a hot shower to wash away any vestiges of dog slobber. When I emerged from the bedroom in dry clothes, I found Peter on the terrace with a plate of sandwiches and a bottle of wine. I thanked him in a mildly lascivious fashion, then settled down to eat, drink, and think. The first two were easier.