Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels (10 page)

I couldn’t sleep. An hour later my mind was still spinning, drifting back to Shayna and the conundrum of who killed Eddie Ray.

By the time I had left the scene of the crime, the police were still busy collecting evidence and floating theories. Shayna remained their primary suspect, though as far as I knew, she still hadn’t been charged with anything beyond drug possession. I was comforted to know no other drugs or drug paraphernalia had turned up in her apartment; that lent much more credence to her claims that she was clean and sober and that the bag of marijuana found in her car wasn’t hers.

Still, her boyfriend’s dead body had been found in the trunk. I thought about that, floating some possible theories of my own. I decided it was most logical that Eddie Ray had taken Shayna’s car during the night, some time after he stormed over to the bar and spent a while there. Where he was going in the car so late at night was anyone’s guess, but he must’ve been on his way either away from or back to Kawshek when for some reason he pulled over to the side of the darkened road a few miles out of town. Considering that the physical evidence had been found on the right side of the road, I thought it logical that he was heading away from Kawshek when it happened.

But why had he stopped? It wasn’t a flat tire—earlier this afternoon, peering over the shoulders of the police, I had gotten a good look at the lug nuts on all four wheels, and none of them had shown any signs of having been recently tampered with. So what was it? Was someone in the car with him who asked him to pull over? Was someone waiting on the road, waving him down?

Regardless of what it was that got him to pull over, apparently Eddie Ray climbed out of the car, was whacked on the head by someone wielding the tire iron from that car, and then he was shoved into the trunk, where he remained unconscious, slowly bleeding to death. But here was the tricky part: At that point, someone had driven the car, with his bleeding body inside the trunk, all the way back to Shayna’s apartment and parked it there. No wonder the police thought she had done it.

The very fact that the car was parked at Shayna’s precluded any thoughts about a random killer or some sort of homicidal maniac wandering the Chesapeake. Whoever killed Eddie Ray had known who he was and where the car he was driving belonged, because they had gone to the trouble to deliver it right back there. Was it someone who wanted to frame Shayna for murder? If so, then perhaps the marijuana under the seat had been a part of that frame-up as well. I made a mental note to ask her if she had any enemies.

I also wanted to ask her about the car keys. Did Eddie Ray—or anyone else for that matter—have a duplicate set of keys to her car? If not, where had her keys been the next day when she was ready to drive the car? Surely the killer hadn’t delivered the car back to its parking spot
and
quietly put the keys back where they belonged in Shayna’s apartment. That would be creepy indeed.

Facts swirling in my head, I climbed out from under my nice, warm covers and grabbed my laptop. I got back in bed, opened it up, and propped it on my knees. This wasn’t an official investigation by any means, but it would be a shame not to follow my standard procedure of creating an information database about the case so I could keep track of the data I had gleaned.

A half hour later I had created the database and loaded in all of the information and theories I could possibly think of. I decided I would talk to the public defender in the morning just to make sure Shayna was in good hands. Once that was done, I would offer my cooperation, provide any information I had, and then back away and let the police and the attorney do their jobs. I could offer Shayna support but would try and stay out of the investigation.

I shut down the computer, set it on the floor, and then reached over to click off my light. Now, perhaps, I could put the whole thing out of my mind and try and get some rest. I closed my eyes and, even as wired up as I was, at some point I must’ve drifted off to sleep.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the darkness, vaguely aware of Sal making some kind of noise at my feet.
Confused, I propped up on one elbow, trying to peer through the darkness at my dog.

I could feel her pressed against me, closer than usual, and in the silence of the night I listened as a low, gutteral growl bubbled out from her throat.

“Sal?”

Usually, she wasn’t a very verbal dog, not much of a barker or a growler. The sound she was making now was almost foreign to me, but I could feel her little body trembling against me even as she continued to growl.

Slowly, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Without speaking, I reached down and put a hand on her shoulders, and for a moment, she stopped. Then she barked, a sharp, sudden yap of warning to whoever or whatever it was that had put her on alert.

Heart pounding, I swung my legs over the bed and reached into my bedside drawer for some kind of weapon. The best I could come up with was a metal “Elvis” back scratcher, a souvenir Harriet had brought me from Memphis. I clutched it in front of me with one hand while I reached out with the other toward the phone.

I wasn’t an alarmist, that’s for sure, and I definitely knew how to defend myself against an intruder. But until I had figured out what had so spooked my dog, I wasn’t taking any chances. I had 911 on speed dial, and I was prepared to use it if necessary.

I waited, my pulse pounding in my head. For the moment, Sal had stopped making any noise at all, though now she was standing on the end of the bed, her body facing the half-open bedroom door, as tense as a pointer with a grouse. The house was silent, but something didn’t feel right. If I were a dog, I decided, I would be growling as well.

Suddenly, Sal flew into a barking frenzy as she jumped off the bed and dashed out of the room. She barked all the way down the hall, and then it sounded as if she were at the back door, barking still. I looked at the phone then looked at the hallway, and I made
my choice. I wasn’t going to call the police based solely on the barking of my dog. Until I knew for sure that I had some sort of intruder, I would attempt to handle this by myself.

I thought the police had heard enough from me tonight already.

Silently, I crept to the bedroom door and peeked out into the hall. Aside from the frenzied Sal, nothing seemed amiss. The back door was shut tightly, and there were no looming shadows in the kitchen that I could see.

Clutching the back scratcher, I ventured forward, creeping along the dark hallway until I reached the window that looked out over Sal’s play yard.

I used one finger to pull aside the blinds, hoping that I wouldn’t come face-to-face with someone outside, trying to look back in at me! The night was dark, but all I saw was the yard, the grass, the trees. Sal was still barking though, so I squinted and stared harder, praying that if indeed someone were out there I would be able to spot them before they could break through into my house.

Nothing seemed wrong. There was no one at the door or lurking in the shadows of the carport. I sucked in a deep breath, trying to remember if anything like this had ever happened with Sal before. Just once, I realized, last year. When there had been a possum in the trash can.

A possum in the trash can! Of course! I stood up straight and relaxed, dropping the blinds as I exhaled loudly. My trusty guardian was letting me know that the nocturnal animals were at the garbage again.

I flipped on the patio light and looked out at the cans, which were half hidden in the shadows of the storage shed. From what I could see, the cans were, indeed, wide open. With one lid askew and a full bag of trash inside, I had practically been begging for an invasion.

“Come on, girl,” I said to Sal, unlocking the door and pushing it open so she could run out. If she needed to defend me against the night’s creatures, the least I could do was let her at ’em.

I slipped on a pair of sneakers and then followed her outside, surprised at the burst of cold that hit me as I went out. I hadn’t looked at the clock, but judging from the night sky, it had to be very late, maybe 4
A.M.
? As Sal ran around the yard, sniffing and yapping and growling, I crunched through the leaves toward the shed, calling out a warning to any animals so they could scamper away before I got there. Once I reached the shed, I worked quickly, raising the trash can lid and setting it on straight, then clicking it shut on the side. First one can, and then the other.

As I worked, I thought of Bryan’s dog, the sweet black Lab he had gotten the year before we were married. Hubble was a real barker, and if it had been him here now, he would be barking twice as loudly and twice as frantically as Sal. But I had given him to my brother after Bryan died, unable to keep him around because it was too emotionally painful for me. Hubble was a big, lumbering galoot of a dog who continued to wait at the front door for Bryan to come home every night for two months after Bryan was gone. Even when I would go to bed and call for Hubble to come with me, he would whine and remain at the door, as if he believed that if he wanted it badly enough, eventually it was bound to happen. One night I sat on the floor next to him and sobbed into his fur, begging him to stop waiting, screaming at him that Bryan wasn’t coming home, that he wasn’t ever coming home again. The next day, I gave Hubble to Michael.

I hadn’t seen the dog since.

“Sal, settle down!” I commanded now, a surge of emotion filling my throat. I wiped away angry tears, thinking first that I was mad at Sal, and then wondering if my anger was at the memory of Hubble. Finally, as I marched back toward the house, I realized that it was
Bryan
that I was really angry with.

Bryan,
who ought to be here in bed with me at 4
A.M.
when possoms invade the trash and the dog starts to growl.

Bryan,
who ought to be protecting me, keeping me safe.

Never mind that I had always been able to take care of myself, even when Bryan was alive. He still had no business going off and dying on me. No business at all!

I called Sal back inside when I reached the door, and she obeyed, letting out little yips as she came. Once in, I locked the door, turned off the light, and led her back to the bedroom.

It wasn’t until I had washed my hands and was back under the covers that I was able to calm down a bit and look objectively at my anger. I was way beyond this stage in my grief; that such a rage had risen up like this in the middle of the night and reared its ugly head scared me. I thought I was doing so well. Now all it took was one creepy experience and I had regressed nearly all the way back to square one. Sometimes, the grieving process just seemed too complicated to comprehend.

I was almost asleep when the truth finally hit me. It wasn’t about Bryan or his death, and it wasn’t about the dog. It was about the trash cans.

I sat up in the bed, skin tingling.

Replaying my actions in my mind, I saw myself as I had been less than 20 minutes before, flipping on the outside light, striding brazenly toward the shed, fixing the lids to the trash cans.

Closing my eyes, I realized it only now: There had been a smell out there, a smell as strong and as odd as the one I had detected earlier, at the murder scene. A smell that didn’t belong.

The smell of bleach.

Thirteen

After several more hours of tossing and turning, I was up by seven the next morning. I threw on some clothes and did some stretches, and then Sal and I went outside. With an uneasy feeling, I looked all around the shed, all around the house, for signs of an intruder, but I couldn’t find anything other than one possible half footprint in some mud behind the shed. The smell was gone, and all that was left was a vague memory of a middle-of-the-night disturbance that seemed a lot less scary now that the sun was coming up.

Finally, I gave up and went down the dock to the canoe. I figured if I wasn’t going to be able to sleep in, the least I could do was find some pleasure in a little time on the river. As I pushed off, Sal took her position in the bow, eagerly facing forward, two paws up on the deck plate. Her name, Sal, was short for “La Salle,” the French explorer who once traveled about 3000 miles by canoe. True to her name, Sal loved canoeing as much as I did.