Dead Body Language (10 page)

I
never saw it coming.

I was halfway home, pedaling furiously on my all-terrain bike and no doubt looking like the demoniac Margaret Hamilton in
The Wizard Of Oz
, when a bright red Miata pulled out right in front of me.

I grabbed the handlebars—I was riding with no hands, a skill I’d learned early so I could sign to my riding partners while biking—then jerked the bars sideways to avoid a collision, nearly swerving into a roadside ditch. It was the small pothole I didn’t see that caused me to kiss the pavement.

I took the handlebars in the chest, knocking the wind out as I landed on the graveled red pavement, a pretzel of body and bike. For several seconds I lay on the ground, gasping for breath like a fish out of water. As soon as I could speak, I said only one word, unfit for print in my family newspaper.

What I thought was pavement turned out to be red clay mixed with bits of rock. I stood up stiffly, brushing the crimson patina from my once-beige sweater and brown jeans, and surveyed the damage.

At first glance it looked like I could ride the two-wheeler home, providing I didn’t need to sit on the crooked seat and I didn’t mind steering with reversed handlebars. I straddled the front wheel, twisted the bars into forward position an inch at a time, then checked the rims and wheels for further damage. Two popped tires clinched it. I wouldn’t be riding my bike home.

Until this point I’d felt no real pain except for a tightness in my chest from getting the wind knocked out, and a little stinging on my legs. But my knees were starting to throb, so I took a moment to check them. Peeking through my newly shredded jeans were a pair of scarlet kneecaps glistening in the sunlight. The twin circles were bright red except for the small dark circles that dotted the circles. I bent over; a closer look revealed the horror I had feared. Tiny pebbles were embedded in my bloody knees.

“Fuck!” was only one of the words I used while reviling the jerk who caused all the damage. That was followed by more creative language I had picked up at deaf camp as a kid.

The car, nothing but dust on the horizon, had pulled out of the nearby parking lot of the Mark Twain Slept Here bed and breakfast inn, one of the most popular overnight lodges in the Mother Lode. I badly needed some clean water and a couple of hefty Band-Aids or I’d never make it home. Feeling a little dizzy and short of breath, I propped the bike against a nearby tree, and hobbled up the short flight of steps to the inn’s front door, trying not to imagine how bad I was going to feel when the numbness dissipated.

The ten-room, trigabled Victorian mansion, which now took in honeymooners, traveling salesmen, and city-weary executives, had once been the boyhood home of Reuben Penzance. Built by his great-grandfather, Septimus, it had been passed on to his grandfather and later his father. According to a local guidebook, the home had finally been sold when Reuben was in elementary school, as the Penzance family prospered.

The wrought-iron fence surrounding the grounds sported a bronze plaque that defined the architecture and
gave the original date as 1853. Considering gold was discovered in 1848, it hadn’t taken old man Penzance long to build his first dream house.

Now, standing among the lodgepole pines, the home had been renamed the Mark Twain Slept Here Inn, after the Mother Lode’s favorite historical character, who did in fact spend a night as a guest of the Penzance family. The mansion was now coated with what must have been a dozen layers of paint—this time a distracting shade of pink with lavender and blue gingerbread trim. The word “cute” didn’t do it justice. Cinderella could have worn a version of the monstrosity to the ball.

I considered knocking on one of the two front doors. They both featured a pair of tole-painted old miners that had been added since I’d last been to the Mark Twain. I opted for the knob instead, after encouragement from both the “Welcome Forty-Niners” sign overhead and doormat beneath my feet.

The door opened to a cozy foyer, where Beau Pascal, the current owner, had added a rolltop front desk. I tapped the summons bell, then placed my palm on the desk to feel the vibration. I’d once rung a doorbell for fifteen minutes before the occupant opened the door by chance and told me the bell had been disconnected.

I was studying a wall display of miners’ picks, pans, and assorted tools when a wad of sticky paper, like a giant spit ball, bounced off my head, followed by another, and another.

“You’ve got a serious termite problem here, mister,” I said, looking toward the assault weapon’s point of origin. Leaning over the upstairs railing was a slim, slightly balding man in a Bloomingdale’s T-shirt. Upside-down, his thinning hair hung in delicate wisps like spider webbing.

“Hey, Connor. How you doin’?” I’m not entirely sure that’s what he said, since he was hanging upside-down over the balcony. Talk about a lipreading challenge.

I met Beau when I’d first arrived in Flat Skunk. Needing a place to stay until I fixed up my own place, we’d struck up a bargain. He’d just reopened the inn and
could use some publicity to get started, so he’d given me a cut-rate room in exchange for discount advertising in the
Eureka!

Beau bounded down the stairs in a kind of two-step manner. The man never seemed to run out of energy. I suspected a coffee addiction.

“Finally ready to give up that Diner From Hell you poured your life savings into, Connor? Want to move back here ’til those condos are built over in Whiskey Slide?”

The catty remarks about my home were part of a running joke between us, the old my-house-is-better-than-your-house routine. He was currently hanging new wallpaper, which gave him the lead for the moment.

“The offer is tempting, but I’m not leaving the diner without a proper fight. And so far I’ve beat the electrical, the plumbing, and the dry rot.” I looked down at my knees. The stinging felt like a multiple needle attack.

Beau followed my glance. “Whoa! Looks like you’ve lost the latest fight, Connor! What happened? Finally take a header on that bike of yours? I told you to keep your hands on the handlebars. But you have to be a show-off!”

He pulled out a small first-aid kit from beneath the desk, made a close-up inspection, and grimaced.

“Some idiot pulled out of your parking lot right in front of me as I was riding home.”

“Well, looks like I’m gonna have to amputate,” Beau said, brandishing a mean pair of scissors and a reckless, evil grin. “The pants, that is. Hope you got them on sale.”

Thirty minutes and several snips later I was wearing a pair of fifty-dollar cutoffs with dark red fringe. Beau had me sitting on the toilet seat with my legs propped up on an antique chair, while he performed surgery in the bathroom. A small pile of tiny rocks lay on a piece of paper toweling on the counter. The Mercurochrome covering my knees hadn’t kicked in yet, nor had the liquid anesthetic Beau had offered from the minibar disguised as an old mining cart. My knees hurt like hell, not to mention my hands, my elbows, and my right shoulder.

“You should have been a nurse,” I told Beau over a second glass of freshly squeezed orange juice when the surgery was over. I took it with another shot of whiskey for the pain.

Beau grinned. “Always wanted to be a plastic surgeon. Then I could do a little surgery on myself and change my nose every time a new look comes along. Hope you don’t mind but I gave you a little knee-lift while I was digging out those boulders. Michael Jackson, eat your heart out.”

As I finished my spiked juice, Beau and I talked about Lacy Penzance’s death. Of course he had heard about it—it was the topic of the hour, which reminded me of something the sheriff had said earlier.

“Beau, Sheriff Mercer mentioned that Lacy had a business card from the Mark Twain in her purse. Did you give it to her?”

Beau pressed his lips together, then said, “No. She’s never been here, as far as I know. Of course, the door’s always open during the daytime and anyone can walk in. Maybe she picked up a card to give to someone visiting the area when I wasn’t around.”

“Who are your guests right now?”

Beau pulled out his registration book from the rolltop desk. “The McDonalds have been here a couple of nights. They’re from San Francisco, getting away from it all. There are two women in the Roaring Camp room from Denver, here on vacation, Lucke and Richards. The Jacobs family are taking up two rooms—the Red Light room for the couple and the Claim Jumper room for their two teenage boys. They’re here for the frog festivities this weekend. The Jacobs boys won last year in two divisions: Best name for a frog—Ribbet. And cutest outfit—they made a little Superman suit. Then I’ve got a single guy in the Miner room. Name’s Russell. James Russell. In fact, he left just a few minutes before you—”

“Red Miata, right?” I said, as I watched the recognition dawn on him.

“Yeah! Was he the jerk that ran you down?” Beau asked. “He’s a looker. Dresses like one of those guys in the Aramis ads, you know. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen
much of him. Stays in his room mostly, then goes out late at night. But you know how I like the mysterious type,” he said with a mischievous grin.

Although I liked to think a few of the men in this town find me attractive, Beau wasn’t one of them. Being gay, he hadn’t initially been the most popular guy in the macho atmosphere of Flat Skunk. But once people got to know him, things seemed to change. The folks in town became a bit more tolerant of those who wore their Stetsons cocked to a different side. Beau and I had a lot in common; we both felt a little alienated from the mainstream.

I stood to leave and winced at the dull ache that had set in nearly everywhere. “I don’t care how cute he is, stay away from him when you’re biking. He’s a menace on the road.”

I thanked Beau for the medical care and took him up on his offer of a ride home. He carried my mangled bike to my front door as I followed him gingerly from the sidestep pickup, walking like an old lady with arthritis, osteoporosis, and hemorrhoids. Beau wouldn’t leave until I promised to come by for Sunday breakfast—blueberry scones, broccoli quiche, and raspberry mocha.

It was an easy promise to make. Beau made breakfast to die for.

I pulled out my keys to the diner and stuck them in the lock. Flat Skunk isn’t the kind of town where you have to lock your doors yet, but being a deaf, ex-city girl with a suspicious nature, I locked my home, car, and bike automatically. I pushed open the door, picked up the mail that had slid through the door slot, and waited for Casper to attack me.

But when I closed the diner door behind me, I had a funny feeling, a weird sort of déjà vu. Not like when you feel you’ve experienced something before, but as if something very familiar had changed.

Casper appeared in a matter of moments, having finally pushed through her doggy-door, but she wasn’t her exuberant self. I gave her a soft pat, then passed through the diner to my room in the back and slowly took in the
small living area. There was nothing I could put my finger on, but something triggered a semiconscious alert as I set down the lastest packet of mail on the coffee table. Yesterday’s mail, still resting where I had placed it last night, was different.

I picked up the first envelope and peeked inside. The coupon booklet was still intact. Thank God. I checked the next envelope and the next, a bill from the computer software catalog company, and a letter from my old boss. Nothing missing. Nothing wrong. Except the pile of envelopes itself.

I have this habit of arranging things. Got it from my father, I guess, another slightly obsessive-compulsive. As I go through the mail, I sort the letters by size and lay them on the table, largest envelope on the bottom, smallest on the top. Makes sense to me.

Last night’s mail was out of order; big envelopes mixed in with small. I would never have done that to the mail.

I walked around the room slowly, looking for other signs of tampering. I checked my junk drawer by the telephone, pulling it open slowly and dramatically, like I’d seen in those horror movies where the teenage girl opens a drawer and out jumps her cat or something. No cat, and the drawer was still a jumble.

I headed for the dresser where I hid my valuables. The sheriff had once told me the bottom dresser drawer was one of the most common hiding places for secrets. If someone had a reason to look for something, that was the first place to check. I kept my stuff in the top drawer.

If I ever got in a car crash, my mother would be happy to know that my underwear drawer was clean and neat. Underpants on the left, bras on the right, nylons in the middle, and sexy stuff in the back just in case I ever needed them again. Underneath all this satin and lace was where I kept my valuables—mostly love letters from my ex-boyfriend and a collection of little gold charms in the “I Love You” hand shape that I got from my first deaf boyfriend.

There was no doubt about it. Some kinky weirdo
freak had been fooling around in my underwear drawer. A pair of my sexiest panties was in the bra section.

I dug down for the love letters—still there, but not in order. And they had been read—I could tell by the way they’d been reinserted into the envelopes.

I shuddered. Who the hell had had his hands in my drawers? And why? Was it possible the intruder was still here? The back of my neck prickled suddenly.