Roll Over and Play Dead (11 page)

“Right,” I said, then sank back and waited grimly until our breakfasts arrived. The food was limp, greasy, burned, and tepid, but I shoveled it down greedily, allowed the waitress to refill my coffee cup several times, and was beginning to feel better by seven-thirty. I looked at Vidalia, who was humming under her breath as she spread jelly on a piece of toast, and tried to figure out where I could stash her while I went to the dog sale.

My yellow-haired friend paused beside our table. “Have a nice day,” he said in a gravelly voice. It was a threat.

“Why, thank you,” Vidalia said absently.

Most of the other customers were checking their watches, joking with the waitress while they settled bills at the cash register, and slapping each other on the back as they crowded out the door.

By the time Vidalia and I came outside the café, the parking lot had been depleted. I took the page of directions from my purse to review the route to the livestock sale barn. Vidalia was drifting about like a dandelion seed in a breeze, toying with the beads around her neck and singing to herself. Taking her with me seemed as immoral as dropping a puppy in a pen with pit bulls, but the alternatives were extremely limited.

“Let’s go,” I said, resigned. While we drove down the narrow side road, I elicited promises that she would wait in the car, ever vigilant and prepared to drive for help.

We encountered more and more pickup trucks until we were the sole civilians in the procession. All of the trucks had either enclosed beds or cages, and as Runnels had promised, gun racks. It was not the place to disparage the dogmatic policies of the NRA.

I parked at the far edge of a field, gave Vidalia a paperback mystery from the glove compartment, and made her swear to wait in the car while I made the rounds of the dealers. I then put the bandana on my head, settled the wire-rimmed glasses in place, and got out of the car, narrowly avoiding stepping on that which is indigenous to livestock barn environs.

The sale was what I’d envisioned. Those with animals to sell had parked in long rows along the fences. Some dogs were tethered to stakes, others left in cages. Those with cats had grouped at one end. The odor was unmistakably organic; I made no attempt to isolate the elements that contributed to the miasma. The pathetic wuffly noises from the dogs competed with conversations and the nasal wails of country singers coming from radios.

There were a few women sitting together in aluminum chairs, sharing coffee from thermos bottles and doughnuts from a box. A group of children shrieked as they chased each other between the trucks. From inside a cab, a baby cried. A toddler with an unpleasant nose howled as its diaper slid down its legs. The dealers were already transacting business. Dogs were examined, occasionally hefted to judge weight, and cats were prodded through the wire mesh. Prices were tossed out for spirited negotiation. Pint bottles in brown sacks were passed back and forth, and spitting seemed obligatory.

In an eerie way, it had the ambiance of a local crafts fair or a family reunion. Had the ultimate goal not been to deliver animals to laboratories, it might have struck me as a festive rural scene.

I was not invisible. As in the café, voices broke off as I casually sauntered past the trucks and attempted to peer into the cages for the animals stolen from Willow Street. The majority of the dogs were hounds, but of the lean, hunting variety. I was the recipient of increasing narrow looks, but I continued on my way, my face as blank as possible and my fists hidden in the pockets of the fatigue jacket.

A bark caught my attention, since most of the dogs had been deprived of that ability. I turned around and tried to determine the direction of the barker, but the crowd pushed me forward and the noise seemed to swell until I couldn’t even hear the wuffles. The yellow-haired boy gave me a sneering smile as I passed by his truck. I heard another bark from behind me. I stepped out of the tidal wave, but a fat, bearish man with a pink face blocked my way. His expression was childlike and genial, but I felt a flicker of alarm and moved back into the crowd.

The stench of unwashed bodies, mingled with animal excrement and exhaust fumes from the trucks still arriving, was making me queasy. I glanced back and saw Yellow Hair coming after me. The fat man was rubbing his hands together as he pushed through the bodies. I elbowed my way between two grizzled sorts.

Now I could hear cats yowling. A radio blared out the nasal lament of a discarded lover. A small boy crashed into me, stuck out his tongue, and skittered away before I could reciprocate. Yellow Hair seemed closer. This was not the place to find a friendly cop—or even a friendly face.

I darted between two trucks, but a high fence blocked me from the field. I spun around. Yellow Hair and Baby Bear stood in the narrow space between the trucks, both looking pleased with themselves. The bumpers of trucks were against the fence; I was in a corridor with an entrance but no exit.

A face appeared between their shoulders. For a brief, paralytic moment, I met Daryl Defoe’s startled look. The two men crowded me into the fence. I kicked at their legs, and as I opened my mouth to scream, Yellow Hair grabbed me around the neck with one arm and clamped his hand on my mouth. “Now, now, Mizz Malloy,” he simpered in my ear, “we don’t want to have to cut your vocal cords.”

I caught a glimpse of a padded object coming down on me. The lights went out.

Writers, particularly those in the mystery genre, seem to take great pleasure in bopping people over the head and rendering them unconscious. It is not only gratuitous, but also selfish on the writer’s part to use a trite device. Very little consideration is given to the victim, who returns to consciousness with a blinding headache, a severe sense of disorientation, overall shakiness, and a gnawing fear that his or her skill is battered beyond repair.

Groaning, I tentatively explored the back of my head. I found no blood, no brain seepage, no permanent indentation that would rival the Grand Canyon. It merely felt like it. I forced myself to open my eyes, and after a brief battle with nausea, tried to figure out where the hell I was.

The good news was that Yellow Hair and Baby Bear were not in the small room with rough wood walls and rafters decorated with cobwebs. The bad news was that I was, and I had a sneaking suspicion that the door would prove to be locked, presuming the assailants knew their business, whatever it was. There were no windows; sunlight wormed through cracks in the roof and walls. I leaned against a grain sack and pieced together what had happened from my arrival at the sale to my departure from consciousness.

Had I seen Daryl Defoe seconds before the attack, or had I simply seen someone who resembled him? My head throbbed so fiercely that I put that aside. Yellow Hair and Baby Bear had come after me as if they knew who I was and why I was there, I thought with a frown. I’d heard my name muttered. But that, of course, was impossible. Vidalia had blurted out my first name in the café, and Yellow Hair might have heard her. No one else, except for Jan Gallager and Brian Runnels, had any idea that I planned to attend the sale.

I stood up and kept my hand on the wall until the floor stopped undulating. The door was secured on the outside. Banging and rattling did not succeed, nor did pounding on it with my fists and screeching for help. I put my ear against it and listened. I heard nothing but ducks.

I was not in the immediate vicinity of the sale, which had been as noisy as a carnival. I had no way to judge how long I’d been unconscious, other than it was still daylight, nor did I want to consider another encounter with my attackers. I needed some sort of tool to break the hinges, I decided as I began to search the shabby yet effective cell. There were sacks of feed, pieces of rope and leather straps, a stack of flowerpots, and several plastic tubs with screws and nails. I dragged the remains of a rocking chair across the room, climbed on it, and felt around on a high shelf, willing myself not to think of spiders and other unappealing denizens of dirty storage sheds.

I found a metal object that proved to be a tent stake. As I carefully got down from the chair, the door behind me opened. Squeezing the stake and telling myself it was a dull dagger, I turned around.

With the glare behind her, Vidalia’s hair was a halo of fog engulfing her face. “I think we ought to be going,” she murmured.

I tossed down my weapon and hurried across the room. “Are those men nearby?”

“Which men would that be?”

I grabbed her arm as I went through the door. On our left was a labyrinth of dog pens, mostly empty, and beyond that a scummy pond. Two trucks were parked in front of a trailer on our right, one that I recognized and the other unremarkable. A dog came to the fence and wuffled at us, and near the pond two ducks argued. A robin hopped across the driveway. In other instances, it might have seemed bucolic.

“Where’s your car?” I demanded.

“I felt it prudent to park down the road,” Vidalia said. “I could almost hear Colonel Culworthy’s lecture about—”

“Which way?”

She went around the corner of the shed, and I followed her, trying not to step on her heels. We passed the last of the dog pens, slipped down a muddy slope, and battled through a patch of stunted fir trees and tentacles of prickly branches.

Vidalia’s car was parked at the edge of a rugged dirt road. I paused to listen for voices or engines from the hill above us, but it seemed my departure had not yet been noticed. I dove into the car and within seconds we were lurching down the road, splashing through puddles and bouncing madly. The sorry excuse for a road curved and dipped for what felt like miles, but at last we arrived at a paved road.

“Which way?” I asked curtly.

“If you wish to return to the sale, to the left. If you prefer to go back to Farberville, to the right,” she said. “I was thinking it might be nice to have a cup of tea before we started the long drive home.”

“Not in this state,” I growled as I yanked the steering wheel to the right. We did not vanish over the hill in an instant, but we made it and the next several without a dirty white truck appearing in the rearview mirror.

Vidalia reached over and removed a cobweb from my hair. “I was terribly worried about you, Claire. This whole trip has been most unsettling.”

“I tend to agree,” I said, still glancing nervously in the mirror. “How did you find me at that place?”

“Well, I was reading the novel you kindly loaned me, and had reached a very exciting part in which the amateur sleuth, who happens to own a bookstore just like you do, although hers is on an island in North Carolina and specializes in mysteries—”

“Vidalia, do you mind!”

“Goodness, you sound grumpy. I have some aspirins in my purse; perhaps you might like to take one?” When I glowered, she sniffed and said, “Luckily, I looked up as that man from the café came by. There was another man with him, and at first glance I thought they were escorting a girlfriend who was a tiny bit tipsy. Then I saw your bandana. I was quite confident you hadn’t been drinking, especially at such an early hour, and watched carefully as they helped you into a truck and drove away. I wasn’t at all sure what to do, but I heard Colonel Culworthy telling me that I must be brave and act quickly, so I tailed the truck.”

As we drove though Guttler, I toyed with the idea of stopping at the Red Bird Café to call the state police and report the assault and kidnapping. My witness—a dotty gypsy—would back up my story, but Yellow Hair and Baby Bear would proffer an entirely different one. We drove on.

“I don’t suppose you saw Astra?” Vidalia said sadly.

“No, but I think I saw someone familiar. Right before I was hit, I thought I saw Daryl Defoe in the crowd.”

“Why was he there?”

I shook my head, then immediately regretted the movement. “I have no idea, and I can’t swear it was he. I didn’t tell anyone that I was going to the sale, and there’s no way he could have known.” I slowed down for a church bus that was going even slower than we were, and checked once again in the mirror. “Unless he followed us, of course. There was a car last night that stayed behind us most of the trip.”

“Daryl doesn’t own a car, or if he does, he never parks it at Emily’s house. I always see him walking to and from school with that briefcase, except when he rides with his girlfriend.”

“He has a girlfriend?” I said, having difficulty imagining him in the role of a suitor.

“I’m not sure. Astra is very demanding, so I hardly ever notice his comings and goings.”

“But he does have access to a car, which means he could have followed us to Guttler. Why, I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t see him,” I added. “Maybe it was a preconcussion hallucination.”

“Oh, but you most likely did, because I saw him, too. I waved but he didn’t see me. It’s very interesting, isn’t it?”

“Very interesting,” I said with a sigh.

It was late in the afternoon when Vidalia and I arrived back in Farberville. My shoulder and neck muscles were aching and my head was gripped by a cosmic vise. My stomach remained unhappily aware of the greasy breakfast at the Red Bird Café and the dubious hamburgers we’d eaten on the road. Before Vidalia started snoring, we’d discussed every permutation we could devise to explain why Daryl had been at the animal sale in Guttler. Nothing had made much sense, nor had we come up with an explanation for the attack and abduction by Yellow Hair and Baby Bear.

I drove past my apartment. I had no idea how seriously the sheriff was taking my unauthorized hiatus, although I supposed it fell somewhere between minor annoyance and a statewide “armed and dangerous” APB. There were no official vehicles lurking among the sorority girls’ modest limousines, no snipers on the roof, no nondescript van parked within electronic surveillance range. The downstairs tenant, an elderly theater professor with a cane, shuffled slowly past the sorority house and went through our common front door with no more than his usual difficulties.

I disembarked at the corner, thanked Vidalia for the use of her car and for rescuing me, and trudged up the stairs to solitude and scotch.

Lieutenant Peter Rosen sat on the sofa, presumably in a civilian capacity since he wore slacks and a sweater rather than his customary detective garb of three-piece suits and Italian shirts. Caron and Inez, in identical sweatshirts, were sprawled on chairs. All three of them goggled at me as I went into the kitchen, poured myself a stiff drink, and tried to concoct a passable story.

“Welcome back,” I said to Peter as I sat down beside him. “How’s your mother?”

I might as well have spoken in tongues. The three continued to stare at me; their reaction was not any friendlier than what I’d encountered in the Red Bird Café. “How’s your mother?” I repeated, emphasizing each syllable.

“Dotty as hell,” he said. He was clearly perplexed and not in a wryly bemused, what-have-you-gotten-yourself-into fashion.

I smiled at the girls. “Did you have a pleasant weekend?”

“Yeah,” Caron said numbly. Inez nodded with an equal lack of enthusiasm, although in her case it was not remarkably abnormal.

“How about Chinese for dinner? I’m starving,” I continued brightly, pretending I wasn’t surrounded by three end products of botched brain surgery.

Peter’s eyes were narrowed, a bad sign. “There’s an outstanding warrant for your arrest, Claire. Jorgeson heard about it and left a note on my desk.”

“Where were you last night and today?” Caron demanded. “Why are you wearing that incredibly tacky army jacket?”

Inez blinked solemnly. “Your face is scratched.”

“Why does the sheriff want you so badly?” Peter added in his officiously official cop voice that I detest. “According to highlights of the warrant, you harbored a fugitive, impeded an investigation, and escaped while you were in custody. Those are felonies, you know.”

“I did wonder about that,” I said.

Caron was still staring at me as if I were not the gentle soul who’d changed her diapers, force-fed her strained carrots, corrected her grammar, and held her hand all night when she decided she hated her hair. “And that Arnie person Called Here to speak to you. He said something bizarre about senators being buddy-buddy with lawyers, then said it was his only call and would I send a pizza to the county jail.” She swallowed several times. “I didn’t, of course, but why did he call you?”

Peter flinched. “Is this the same Arnie…?”

“I’m afraid so,” I said. “He came hiking down the railroad tracks yesterday afternoon, and one thing led to another, and I suppose he’s been booked for murder by now.” I had ample time to finish my drink in the ensuing silence, and I then sweetly suggested to the girls that they run along and allow me to talk to Peter.

After a few rounds of arguments, they sulkily retired to Caron’s bedroom. I told Peter the entire story, beginning with Miss Emily’s six pages of lavender prose and concluding with a vague mention of being knocked unconscious and locked in a storage shed.

He looked at me for a long while, no doubt expecting to see tiny lavender butterflies flutter out of my ears. “This is the craziest story I’ve heard since I left my mother’s house this morning. You don’t even like dogs. You claim you’re allergic, but I’ve always assumed it was a deep-seated aversion, if not a phobia.”

“And all I’ve been doing for the last week is looking at dogs, thinking about dogs, talking about dogs, and searching for dogs, not to mention watching dogs kill someone. I’m quite sure I’ll dream about dogs tonight—unless I get lucky and dream about astrologically correct cats.”

“You amaze me at times,” he said. His perfect white teeth flashed at me, and his molasses-colored eyes lingered on my mouth. Something mellowed inside me; I discovered I was leaning toward him.

The sensation alarmed me. Firmly ignoring it, I said, “What puzzles me the most is how the two men knew my name. I can’t imagine Runnels having any involvement, nor can I think of a reason why Jan Gallager would have told someone who subsequently called Yellow Hair and ordered him to prevent me from looking for the stolen animals.”

Peter seemed more interested in the arrest warrant and kept harping on it until I was driven to another drink. I brought him a beer, sat down tangentially, and attempted to express my pleasure at his return. Rather than responding in an appropriately warm manner, he said, “You have to call Sheriff Dorfer’s office—now. I’ll go with you and do what I can to keep him from locking you up with Arnie and charging you with conspiracy.”

“Don’t be silly. I’ll call him in a few minutes and we’ll discuss it as adults. He was a bit huffy yesterday, but now that he’s had a chance to think it over, I’m sure he’s realized that he made an error.”

“I’ve met him before,” Peter said.

“So have I,” I said, supremely confident of my assessment.

Three hours later I had begun to doubt myself. The sheriff’s office was thick with smoke. I’d had no sleep the night before and was struggling to stay awake (and breathe). Sheriff Dorfer had had a long talk with Peter, and then questioned me relentlessly, demanding that I repeat conversations I’d repeated a dozen times, making tasteless remarks about the women’s correction facility, and lacking the common courtesy to provide a smoke-free environment and decent coffee. The stenographer grunted from time to time, but laboriously recorded each and every word. This time, apparently, spelling didn’t count.

Sheriff Dorfer dismissed the woman, who shot me a dirty look as she left the room, then leaned back in his chair. “What am I gonna do with you, Mizz Malloy?”

“Tell me to stop meddling?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of locking you up,” he said, shaking his head morosely as he worked the cigar butt from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Thing is, we’re overcrowded and understaffed, and you’re not exactly a menace to society, although I won’t put that in writing and I’ll deny ever saying it.” He inhaled deeply and blew a stream of blue smoke into the already polluted atmosphere of his office. “Is there any point in making you promise to mind your own business?”

“Finding those animals
is
my business,” I said. “Has Arnie been arraigned for the murder of Newton Churls?”

“He’s still in residence downstairs, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“How much cash did he have on him?”

“Mizz Malloy, it’s late and we’re both tired. I thought we agreed that you were going to butt out of the case.”

“As soon as the basset hounds and the other missing animals are returned, I will gladly retire. I’m not interested in Newton Churls’s murder, or whatever it was. If you’re convinced Arnie’s the guilty party, that’s fine with me. He told me he argued with Churls. Presuming his pockets were stuffed with Churls’s money, you’ve got a good case.” All of this was delivered in a cool voice, but I was watching him closely.

“We think he hid the money in the woods when he walked back to town,” the sheriff muttered. “I had three deputies start searching his route this morning, but it’s damn near twenty miles of railroad track. Arnie was feeling no pain. Deputy Amos and the others are soaking their feet, counting blisters, and threatening to resign.”

“Were Arnie’s fingerprints on the box?”

“No prints except for Churls’s, but anyone who’s watched television knows to be careful.” He sighed and wheezed, and finally told me to go away, which I did briskly. Peter was in the front room, and we drove back to my apartment. I related the gist of the interrogation, adding that although the sheriff had failed to appreciate the necessity of my departure from his custody, he had decided to forget about it.

“What’d he say about the attackers?” Peter asked.

I sank back on the sofa. “He implied they were just a couple of good ol’ boys having fun with an outsider. I’m not positive, but I don’t think the Willow Street animals were at the sale. I’d checked almost all the cages when the goons cornered me. If the animals weren’t there, what was their motive?”

“Amorous intent?” he murmured, displaying some himself.

I closed my eyes and was feeling much better when the telephone rang. I squeezed my eyes more tightly and ignored it, aware that Caron would answer it in her bedroom. She sounded deeply offended as she yelled, “It’s for you, Mother!”

I reluctantly extricated myself from Peter’s embrace and picked up the receiver.

“Claire, dear, this is Emily Parchester,” came a breathless voice. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” I said, startled. “Are you having a nice trip?”

“Everything’s been absolutely lovely. Sandra, our tour escort, has become ever so careful to count noses, on account of Mr. Delmaro having been left behind twice. He’s a bit of a maverick.”

Her laugh was gay, mine shaky. “That’s good to hear,” I said. I crossed my fingers. “There haven’t been any changes in the itinerary, I hope?”

“Only a small one. Several of us decided we’d seen enough of the desert, and we suggested a detour to Las Vegas. Sandra was appalled, but we took a vote and informed her in no uncertain terms that democracy would prevail. Mr. Delmaro was naughty and slipped the bus driver twenty dollars, so he assured Sandra that the charter bus went where its customers desired. She’s so furious she hasn’t spoken to any of us all day…unless that might have something to do with the whoopee cushion…”

“Don’t lose your pension at the blackjack table,” I said faintly.

“Mr. Delmaro has been teaching me how to play the card games,” Miss Emily said. Her wicked little giggle made me wonder what else Mr. Delmaro had been teaching her. “Have you had any problems with Nick and Nora? I know they must miss me dreadfully, and I do hope they’re not too depressed to eat.”

“Everything’s fine,” I said with what conviction I could muster. The truth would have alarmed her, and there was nothing she could do from Nevada, even with the devilish Mr. Delmaro at her side.

We exchanged good-byes. I told Peter I was exhausted, which was true, and he made me promise to cease any activities that would enrage the sheriff. I meekly agreed. Once I was in bed, however, I found myself wide-awake and damp with sweat as I considered how next to proceed in order to retrieve the dogs and live happily ever after.

The leading character was the recently deceased Newton Churls. The sheriff seemed content with Arnie as the murderer, but I wasn’t comfortable with the scenario—and it did nothing to resolve the stolen animal problem. When I at last fell asleep, my nightmares were as rife with canines as I’d dourly predicted.

As I made coffee the next morning, I remembered the telephone call from Caron’s biology teacher. My reluctant agreement to appear at the school for a conference had been lost in the jumble of the weekend. Now it came back like an ulcer. My daughter was going to get herself expelled from school unless she could be bullied into dissecting a frog.

I was definitely not in a good mood when she came into the kitchen. “I have an appointment at the high school later this morning,” I said icily.

She buried her head in the refrigerator. “Then Mrs. Horne called?”

“Yes, Mrs. Horne called. She called Friday evening, which is why I called Inez’s house and learned that the two of you had lied to me and to her mother. Now that I think about it, you’re grounded until you leave for the convent.”

“Oh, Mother.” She took out a carton of milk and ever-so casually filled a glass, all the while watching me narrowly. “You know I did it to save Miss Emily’s dogs from torture and death at the hands of some yuppified Dr. Frankenstein in a med school.” She paused, and then nonchalantly added, “How did Miss Emily take the news about poor Nick and Nora?”

I gave her a sour look that should have curdled her milk. “I didn’t tell her. And I was serious when I said you’re grounded. Since you won’t be attending school the remainder of the semester, you can stay in your room twenty-four hours a day and write letters on behalf of the ASPCA. I’ll get yarn and you can knit sweaters and booties for orphaned Alaskan puppies.”

“Oh, Mother.”

“Oh, Mother—what?” I snapped.

She sat down across from me and attempted to appear earnest. “It’s morally wrong to kill frogs so that a bunch of kids can poke their livers and stuff. The kids don’t care, but the frogs do. Someone has to take a stand and refuse to condone the senseless slaughter.”

“Do you honestly believe this or are you squeamish about the dissection and looking for a way to avoid it?”

“I honestly believe it,” she said promptly.

“You’re not worried about all the local publicity this will generate?” I continued, still not sure if she was lying. She was so very adept at it that I had fallen for excuses that later were proven to have no validity whatsoever—and only the vaguest relationship to reality. “We’ll have to attend a school board hearing to argue your expulsion. You’ll have to swear you’re sincere in your beliefs, and they’ll question you at length.”

“Will I have my picture in the newspaper? Do you think the local television station will interview me? What about state coverage?” She was turning pinker and squeakier with each proposed media opportunity. “The national news? ‘The Tonight Show’?”