Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels (9 page)

I held the unit pointed at the ground and kept walking up the highway away from Shayna’s house, hoping that soon it would pick up another drop of Eddie Ray’s blood. I didn’t have to wait long. After about five steps I spotted a circle in the road—a splatter that glowed white under the light. If my theory was correct, there would be another splatter ahead.

There was.

Fifteen minutes later, I was still walking, still tracking the dots of blood, and beginning to question the wisdom of doing this on foot. He could’ve bled for miles, I realized as I went. It was too
cold and too dark to walk here much longer—not to mention that I was quite worried that any minute now more police cars would come or go along this main road. Again, I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but considering that I hadn’t been hired to pursue this case, it seemed a bit odd that I would be out here now, tracking the trail of murder.

Still, I persisted a bit longer once I realized the dots were coming closer together. As I walked I thought over what I knew about blood and death. Once a person’s dead, of course, the heart stops pumping and the blood flow ceases. Eddie Ray must’ve survived for a while after his head injury, albeit unconsciously, because he obviously bled enough to drip all the way home, saturate the trunk, and make a puddle under the car. I was musing over this when I realized the drops were coming very close together now, about every two feet.

Finally, my light picked up some larger splatters, and then beyond them, nothing more. I ran ahead just to make sure, but the dots stopped at the larger splatters and didn’t seem to pick up again. I ran back to the area with the splatters, aware that I would have to be very careful not to disturb any evidence, because this had to be the point where Eddie Ray was struck.

I stood in the middle of the dark road, held the black light out in front of me, and turned slowly in a full circle. The light picked up something glowing in the bushes along the side of the road, so I stepped over there carefully and studied what I saw without touching anything. Small flecks of tissue here and there were enough to show the trajectory of the impact. The bush appeared to be something seed-producing, and I thought of the burrs on the back of the dead man’s sweater. He had been hit here, at the edge of the road. Perhaps he had even slumped against the bushes after impact before he was loaded into the trunk and driven back to Kawshek, where the car was parked in front of Shayna’s apartment building.

I stood up straight, walked back to the center of the road, and turned off my light. The darkness was instant and all-enveloping.

Like most of the peninsula this time of night, all was silent and still. I could smell the water. I could hear the rustle of a light wind in the cattails. Because it was November, there were no grasshoppers or crickets to sing in the dark, no nightbirds to peal in the sky. It was just quiet.

Deathly quiet.

A slow shiver made its way up my spine when it struck me that I might not be alone here. Suddenly, despite the silence in the air, I had the feeling that I was being watched.
Stupid, stupid, stupid,
I thought to myself as I gripped the cell phone in my pocket. To come out here in the dark, alone and without protection, was just stupid.

Suddenly, a new smell wafted its way to me, a smell of something familiar but out of place, like something that didn’t belong here in the wilderness. I sniffed, my mind racing. Was it Lysol? Windex?

No, I realized. It was
Clorox.
Inhaling, I detected the distinct odor of bleach.

Resisting the urge to run away, I took a few steps back as I pulled from my coat pocket my cell phone and the business card given to me by Barbara Hightower. I dialed as quickly as I could, hit the “send” button, and put the phone to my ear.

Nothing.

I looked at the screen and saw a blinking message: “Out of service area.”

With a chill, I started walking back the way I had come, wondering how far I would have to go before I was in range of a cellular tower. That’s always how it was out here—spotty service, gaps in usage—but until this moment it hadn’t ever really mattered that much.

My senses were heightened, and I looked around wildly as I continued to walk. It still seemed as though someone were watching me, though I couldn’t put my finger on what made me feel that way. I turned around and shined my flashlight into the darkness surrounding me, but all I could make out, up high and
far in the distance, was a glowing pair of eyes looking back at me. They looked strange, but I knew they probably belonged to an owl.

I heard rustling close by, along the side of the road, and my heart quickened. Was it a person? An animal? I didn’t wait to find out. Instead I turned and took off running, heading back toward Kawshek as quickly as I could.

There were no footsteps behind me, no heavy breathing down my neck, so after a few minutes I slowed down and checked my phone again. According to the little green screen, I was back in calling range.

I stopped and dialed Barbara’s number with trembling fingers, praying it was a direct line straight to her.

She answered on the third ring.

“Barbara?” I said. “It’s Callie Webber. I’ve got something important to show you. I think you’ll want to come see it right now.”

“Where are you?” she asked.

I described my location and reiterated that it was important she come immediately.

“I’m on my way,” she agreed tiredly.

“Oh, and Barbara?” I said, wrapping my arm around myself and trying not to shiver. “If you don’t mind, stay on the line with me until you get here, okay?”

Eleven

By the time I finally arrived home, I was frozen solid and completely exhausted. Though I would’ve liked to start a fire, I was just too tired. Instead, I went straight to the bedroom, clicked
my electric blanket on “high,” and then changed into the warmest pajamas and housecoat I owned.

At least I was allowed to leave the scene of the crime,
I thought. My probing around in the dark at night, following Eddie Ray’s trail of blood with a Personal Inspection Light, had of course looked a bit suspect at first. But then Barbara Hightower had vouched for me, and the fact that I was a licensed PI helped to smooth over any lingering doubts. In the end, and except for the suspicious bureaucrat Mr. Litman, everyone seemed rather grateful that I had saved them some grunt work by locating the actual scene of the crime.

And, apparently, there hadn’t been anyone in the area watching me after all—or if there had been, they had certainly managed to get away without being caught or even making any noise. As for the smell of bleach, it had dissipated by the time the police and I got back to the scene of the crime, and no one seemed quite convinced that what I thought I had smelled actually existed.

“The mind plays tricks on you,” one of the cops had said to me with a shrug, though at my insistence he did check with headquarters just to see if there had been reports of any chemical spills in the area tonight, perhaps from a truck or a ship or a nearby factory. There hadn’t been. Still, I knew what I had smelled. The acrid odor that had hit my nostrils tonight was indeed the smell of bleach.

For now, putting it all out of my mind, I padded to the kitchen in fuzzy slippers to make myself some warm milk, jumping from one foot to the other as it heated in the microwave. While I was waiting, I noticed the red light on my answering machine, so I pressed the button to hear that there was one message, from about an hour ago.

It was Tom.

“Hey, Callie,” his voice said into the empty kitchen, “it’s me. I’m sure you’re wondering what happened. What can I say, except that I’m really, really sorry. You know I wouldn’t have missed seeing you like that without a very good reason.”

I leaned forward on the counter, listening.

“It’s personal. Sort of a family emergency. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about it. Guess you’re not there now.”

He sounded a little lost, kind of sad, and I deeply regretted I hadn’t been here to take his call. I was still upset, and somewhat confused, though I did have to admit that just hearing him talk made me feel warmer inside. As always, in his voice there seemed to be a strong undercurrent of what wasn’t being said that was nearly as important as what was.

“Okay,” he continued, “I guess maybe I’ll try you again later. I hope you made it home from the airport all right.”

I touched the answering machine, wishing it was that easy to reach out and touch him.

“I’ve got my phone turned off, so you won’t be able to get me. I’ll have to call you back. Bye, Callie.”

That was the end of the message. I listened to the dial tone for a moment and then reset my machine, somehow reassured despite the fact that he had given me no new information. I took my cup from the microwave, clicked off the light, and went back to the bedroom. The bed was toasty warm when I got there, and I climbed under the covers and leaned back against propped-up pillows. Sal jumped up from the floor and settled in her familiar spot against my leg. I sipped my warm milk, reached for the bedroom phone, and dialed Harriet’s number.

“Did I wake you?” I asked when she answered.

“Oh, puh-leeze, you know what a night owl I am. What’s up?”

“I heard from Tom.”

I described his brief message, and then we tried to decipher it. I wondered aloud if maybe someone was ill or had died.

“Then again, maybe it was a good thing,” Harriet said. “There can be good family emergencies.”

“Like what?”

“Maybe his mother won the lottery. Maybe his sister decided to get married on the spur of the moment.”

“His sister’s already married, isn’t she?”

“I think she’s divorced. I’m not sure.”

We tossed around more ideas, good and bad, until eventually the conversation drifted to other things. I considered telling Harriet about the events of my afternoon, but I knew she didn’t like mystery, intrigue, or murder. The fact that I had been face-to-face with a dead man several hours earlier would be a bit extreme for her, so in the end I kept it to myself.

“Hey, enjoy the time off while it lasts,” she said, steering the conversation back to Tom’s sudden absence and the fact that he hadn’t left any work for me to do while he was gone. “I’d give anything for a little unexpected vacation.”

“I suppose,” I said, though suddenly the rest of the week felt long and empty before me. The murder investigation of Eddie Ray would surely wrap up in a day or two as soon as the police stopped concentrating on Shayna and found the real killer. After that, I was left with nothing more exciting to do than clean out a few closets.

“Do something fun, for goodness’ sake,” Harriet said.

“Well, why don’t we try to get together this weekend?” I asked. “I could come into the city. We could go out to eat, do some shopping…”

“I’d love to, hon, but I’ve got that line dancing competition over in Chincoteague. I’ll be up to my ears in the Double Split Pony till Monday.”

I smiled, picturing Harriet in all her line-dancing glory.

“You could join us,” she continued. “There’s always room for one more.”

“No, thanks,” I replied. “I’m sure I’ll find something to do around here by myself.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” she said. “We’ve just got to get you out and about more.”

“I get out! Goodness, I’m gone more days than I’m here.”

“I’m not talking about work. I’m talking about your social life.”

“My social life is fine, thank you very much.”

“Yeah, right,” she replied. “When’s the last time you did anything social with anyone else but me? And trying to arrange a quick rendezvous in an airport with your boss doesn’t count. Neither does that thing you do with your church, helping out those young women.”

I thought of Shayna, currently cooling her heels in jail.

“I’m…I’ve been busy,” I hedged.

“How ’bout when you were on your vacation?”

“I spent most of that time in my canoe.”

“Oh, Callie,” Harriet moaned. “We’ve just got to find you a man.”

“I don’t need a man,” I said, bristling. “You know very well I’m perfectly happy on my own.”

“Well, at the very least, you need some more friends.”

“I’ve got friends!”

“Count ’em, hon. If it takes more than one hand, I’ll be flabbergasted.”

“Whatever,” I said, trying not to sound hurt. Harriet was half teasing, but there was an undercurrent of truth in her voice.

I changed the subject, but I felt a bit edgy for the rest of the conversation. Once we had hung up, I thought long and hard about her comments. So what if I preferred to keep to myself? Was that really so bad? I knew how to be friendly. I just didn’t seek people out.

“There’s a difference between being lonely and being alone,” I said out loud, defensively, to no one but my dog, Sal. She answered by burrowing her head into the side of my leg, placing her chin on my knee, and then giving a little wag to her tail.
If Harriet wants me to count the number of my friends,
I thought,
then good old Sal is at the very top of the list.

Twelve