Crazy Like a Fox (Lil & Boris #3) (Lil & Boris Mysteries) (15 page)

I picked up my Sig and tip-toed to the foot of the stairs.

A floorboard definitely creaked.

I crept up the stairs. The house was new enough that it had exactly three creaky spots, and I knew them all. One was in the living room, one in the bedroom, and one on these very stairs. I avoided that last one, and watched with my heart hammering behind my eyeballs as the knob on the cellar door started to turn. Behind me, Boris merowled softly in excitement.

I went through the door like a cop in a bad 1980s TV show, and knocked someone flat on the floor of my short hallway. Boris bounded out after me, and jumped happily onto someone’s leg in full attack mode. The noise of his claws sounded distinctly wrong. There was no cussing and screaming.

It took me a moment to register the prosthesis poking out of one leg of the jeans.

“Shit,” I said, and dropped to my knees. “You scared me to death!”

Punk sat slowly up, patting himself here and there. “Back at ya. You wanna put that thing away?”

I realized I was still pointing my gun at his nose. I blushed and let it drop to my side. “Sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” said Punk gravely, “you got your reasons. Sorry I walked in but I rang the doorbell and you didn’t answer, and the door was unlocked, and after what happened…”

I held up a hand, trotted downstairs, and turned off the zitar music. When I returned, Punk was where I’d left him, with Boris still growling at his prosthesis. Boris didn’t understand why all his clawing and chomping was being met with perfect indifference.

There are times that cat embarrasses me. “Boris! Leave Punk alone!”

“Nah, it’s all right,” said Punk, accepting a hand up. He grunted as he hit his feet. Foot. Whatever. “Does him good to run into something he can’t beat up.”

That was certainly one way to look at it. “What brings you by?” I asked, hastily ducking into my hall closet for a sweatshirt. I had the shivers. “Something on Kim?”

“Noticed you skedaddled out of church early.” He went to a paper bag on my counter and pulled out two pints of ice cream. Ben & Jerry’s, no less. “Thought maybe you could use some soul food.”

Five minutes later I was lounging on my couch with my spoon buried in creamy chocolate deliciousness, and Punk was on the floor with something full of caramel. Boris was nose-down in a small pile of liver treats, snuffling like a pig in slop. It was all cream and sugar and things Aunt Marge shudders to have in the house, and it was exactly what I needed.

“Problem is,” said Punk, with considerably less anxiety than we’d had before the ice cream, “we got no idea where she might go. I mean, we’re friends and all, but not like that.”

This was true. I licked my spoon thoughtfully. Kim and I were friends, but we’d never gone on vacation or to a movie together. It was a work-friendship. Not a friend-friendship. “She loves the beach but this is the wrong time of year for it.”

“She got a passport?”

“I’d say no, but what do I know?”

Punk stared into the ice cream container. “My PT gal is always telling me sugar is inflammation. She’s gonna have a fit if I tell her I ate this.”

I cringed at the thought of Aunt Marge’s famous “Do-you-know-what-that-does-to-your-arteries?” speech. I set down my spoon. I could feel tears right at the surface. My cop-self wanted to interrogate Kim. The civilian Lil wanted to have a good long bawl about betrayal and doubt. All of me wanted to wake up and find out this was a bad dream.

“Y’know, there’s one thing I gotta wonder,” Punk was saying. “What if she’s not running from
us
?”

Emotion, ice cream, and police work do not mix. I put the cover back on the ice cream. “You mean, she’s hiding from whoever it is we’re looking for.”

Punk shrugged expressively.

I thought it over. I asked, “Doug Winston wouldn’t be your Steven Clay, would he?”

“Not a chance. Too tall. Looked kinda more…‌I dunno. Not him.” Punk grimaced. “Sorry.”

“Wish we had a sketch artist you could talk to,” I grumbled, and then nearly killed myself flying to my telephone. We did have a sketch artist. A graffiti artist, to be more precise.

When I had convinced Heather Shifflett, and her father Bob, that they needed to be at my house pronto, I cleared my ice cream away into the freezer and beamed at Punk. His eyebrows had turned into a solid knot.

“She’s a kid. You think she can do it?”

“Can’t hurt to find out.”

***^***

Tom showed up half an hour after Heather Shifflett. She was perched on the coffee table sketching as Punk talked, while her father hovered nearby, proud and worried. Finally, Heather’s talent for drawing might be useful. Not that Bob said it that way, but I understood. He usually only heard people complain about her latest graffiti mural. Though people didn’t really complain about the murals so much as the fact Heather did them without permission. You’d have to be blind to not appreciate Heather’s talent.

“How’s it going?”

“We’ve got a face shape and maybe a nose. Go help,” I told Tom, and started handing out cups of decaf tea. Heather smiled gratefully up at me. In another year or two, she’d be looking at art schools and a way out of Crazy. I had her pegged as one of the kids who’d never come back.

Then again, I’d been sure
I’d
never come back.

It took another ninety minutes, and two more cups of tea all around, before Heather had a sketch Punk and Tom could agree on. She handed it over with atypical shyness for a girl who had once ridden her bicycle naked down the length of Main Street.

I studied the sketch. The guy was good-looking in a clean-cut way, had a little smirk on his face. I cocked an eyebrow, and Heather said defensively, “They said he was cocky. Y’know. New York-y.”

Cocky, good-looking, clean-cut, and giving off a sense of power. I hadn’t even met this faux Steven Clay and I knew she’d captured him.

“Good job,” I said, and then, to her delight and Bob’s consternation, I added, “Submit an invoice for your time. I’ll see you get paid.”

Heather reverted from earnest artist to squealing teen. She floated out. Tom took the sketch to fax it everywhere we could think to fax it, which at this point was the whole continental United States. I started clearing up. Five people had somehow bred eight tea cups, but only three saucers. My mind hummed. With luck, about half or so of the television stations would air the sketch with the heading “Person of Interest” attached, and our phone number under it. We might even be able to tell the real Steven Clay who’d been using his ID and cell phone to help perpetrate a crime. Not that he needed the morale boost. He was still thrilled we’d given him the heads-up on the Ellers’ financial situation. Saving your bosses eight million looks good on the resume.

I turned away from the sink and smacked into Punk. “Sorry,” I said automatically, but he didn’t step back. Instead, he leaned forward and kissed me.

You can guess the state of my love life by the fact it took me until after he’d actually kissed me to realize that’s what he’d leaned forward to do. There’d been a day, far in my past, when I’d have known that was what was coming.

Damn.

Before my brain could sort out what had just happened, Boris was on the counter by my elbow, yowling. Ever hear cats gearing up to fight? That was Boris, voicing his battle cry. Tail lashing, ears flat, fur on end, teeth showing. The message couldn’t be more clear: Mine!

Talk about awkward.

Both of our cell phones rang. Saved.

My call was from Harry Rucker. “I just had the most extraordinary conversation with a friend in Richmond. Did you accuse your relatives of insurance fraud or do mine ears deceive me?”

Punk’s call was, from the sound of it, his mother. I deduced that from his patient, “Mama, I know God said to take off the Sabbath, but the criminals don’t listen to God.”

I turned to…‌I don’t know what, really. Too late. Punk had struggled back into his coat and, still talking to his mother, gave me a brief, inscrutable nod as he left. I hopped onto the counter next to Boris, who crawled onto my lap with a possessively smug little chirp.

Harry was continuing to rattle on. “I hope you realize it will be an utter waste of taxpayer time and money to try to prosecute them. I am confident they will claim some sort of misunderstanding or emotional trauma and be given a minor fine, after which I am equally confident the prosecutor will find his campaign fund much richer for the experience. He is alleged to be thinking of running for Congress. Good riddance, I say. Let him be inadequate at a distance.”

I hung up on Harry as soon as he gave me a chance to get a good-bye in edgewise. I was halfway to the freezer, my mind on the rest of that chocolate ice cream, when my cell phone rang again. “Now what?” I snapped.

There was a breathless little silence . I recognized it. I inhaled until it hurt, and then I said very carefully, “Sorry, Kim, I thought you were Harry.”

On the other end of the line, Kim burst into tears.

16.

T
he whole thing was Tanya Hartley’s fault.

I didn’t quite follow that, but then, I hadn’t followed much of anything Kim had said. You’d think after all that time in the car, I’d know the whole story. No such luck. Kim’s jitters went so deep she could only spit out an occasional sentence, completely unconnected to any other sentence except in the whirling mass of panic that was her mind. We’d go about half an hour between these peculiar little lightning bolts of random information, and so far I knew about what I’d known when I’d driven to Columbus, Ohio, to get her.

When she wasn’t twisting kleenex into dust in her nervous fingers, Kim wept. When she didn’t weep, she murdered more kleenex. Once in a while, she’d eat or drink or doze. The trip back to Crazy consisted of tears, facial tissue, a few snores, and odd sentences like, “It’s all Tanya Hartley’s fault.”

It was a very long drive.

Tom and I took turns at the wheel, so one of us could always be in the back with Kim. He was driving when she came out with it being Tanya’s fault, and for the first time since I’d asked him to come along, he let something show in his face. I’d never known he could feel that kind of contempt. I wished I’d never had to know.

When we rolled back into Crazy, we were greeted by Boris and Kim’s parents. Boris launched himself into my arms, rubbing his forehead ecstatically against my jaw. Kim’s parents rushed to Kim.

Tom barred the way with one thick-muscled arm. Kim’s mother gasped. Matt Lincoln started to push Tom aside. For a very dangerous second, I thought Matt might take a swing at Tom. After a second look at Tom, he backed down, and we hustled Kim into the office, and into a cell.

That hurt. It ought not have. But it did.

Quite a lot of me didn’t know what to do next. Scream at her? Cry? Beg for an explanation? Slap her silly? Sorry, silli
er
. I paced back and forth until it hit me that this wasn’t mine to do. Now she was in custody, I wasn’t a cop in this matter anymore. I was back to being the victim.

God, I hated that.

I sat at my desk, cuddling Boris like a shield. His mismatched eyes were fixed on Kim, and he was growling low in his throat. Kim slumped on the bunk, shaking with more tears. Matt and Naomi stood uncertainly between the cell and Tom’s desk, while Tom quietly made the call to Harry Rucker. Nobody knew what to say. The Lincolns had never imagined their daughter would end up in a cell for questioning in a felony. I had never imagined it, either. We had no idea where to go from there.

Then Aunt Marge arrived.

In one motion, fluid as a dance, Aunt Marge snatched the key to the cell off Tom’s desk, unlocked the cell door, hauled Kim to her feet with one hand and slapped her with the other.

The crack of her palm on Kim’s cheek ought to have split atoms.

She dropped Kim, the way she’d pick a slug off a tomato vine, and exploded.

“You ungrateful, thoughtless, selfish, greedy…”

Roger and I each took an arm and started to pull, gently. Might as well try to move Johns Mountain.

“…wicked, lying…”

Roger and I are both taller than Aunt Marge. With a look, we agreed on our next move, got our arms around her waist, and hefted her bodily off her feet.

“…vicious, back-stabbing…”

We cleared the cell just as Aunt Marge ran out of breath and had to inhale. I kicked the door shut, and Tom rushed to lock it.

Oxygen supply replenished, Aunt Marge rounded off with a vehement, spitting, “
thug
!”

“Marge,” said Roger near her ear.

“Aunt Marge,” I said by the other ear.

She pretended to be deaf and shook a finger at Kim. Actually shook a finger. She doesn’t even do that to a dog that widdles on the floor.

“How dare you! For shame! What you put us through! And your poor parents!”

“Aunt Marge,” I said more loudly, “it’s not worth a heart attack!”

Naomi burst into tears. Matt harrumphed and started grumbling about Aunt Marge having no right, and by rights he ought to see her arrested for assaulting his daughter. Aunt Marge stood huffing and steaming like a bull that has just run out of matador to trample. Tom was trying to convince Matt to calm down.

Good luck with
that
.

One of the many things I carry on my belt is an air horn. You know. The kind people use at hockey games to make big noise. It’s very useful for getting someone’s attention, on those occasions when a tazer is too much and a gun is too tempting. I didn’t have it on my belt now, but I had a spare in my desk. I pulled it out and pushed the button.

My office is made of concrete block. The inside may be finished nicely with drywall, but it’s still basically an echo chamber.

Boris fled from his cat condo, down the hall to the lunchroom. Everyone else shut up.

My ears felt cotton-stuffed, but at least I’d known what was coming. “Naomi,” I commanded, “get your daughter something to eat and a change of clothes. Matt, if you want Aunt Marge arrested, you go right ahead and try. Tom, call Skip Warner, I don’t think this is a case Tanya ought to have.” I didn’t want to wish it on Skip, either, but our county only has two public defenders. “Now somebody call Lieutenant Breeden and Kurt Danes, they have a right to sit in on the interrogation.”