Gone Crazy (10 page)

Davis’s voice spiraled up half an octave. “I know what it means!”

“And given the circumstances of her death,” I went on, “the court is going to appoint an executor, probably not a Collier, and they’ll have to account for everything in her estate.”

“A pile of ashes,” sneered Davis.

“Well,” I drawled, because it would annoy him, “there’s also the small matter of some stock certificates and such that I assume the arsonist took home.”

No one but a serious actor could fake that kind of confusion. “Mama didn’t have stocks. Mama kept her money in jars, and they’re all probably buried in the azaleas somewhere.”

Now that was interesting. I made a note. “Look, Davis, you want to get to work, I want to arrest whoever killed your mother. Do you have any reason, other than malice, to think any of your siblings did it?”

He tried to shrug. It’s not easy when you’re handcuffed. “None of us got along with Mama very well. We don’t get along with each other, either.” He glared at me as if I was to blame. “But I always assumed if one of us did Mama in, it’d be a crime of the moment. And we’d use something like a gun or an axe. Or maybe bash in her head with a chair,” he added almost wistfully. “I didn’t kill my mother, but God knows I thought about it a few times.”

“Such as?”

“Any time I spent with her,” said Davis promptly. Harry covered his snort of laughter with his handkerchief. I choked on mine.

“Poison’s not a Collier thing,” continued Davis. He sounded prim, disapproving. Probably of the mess. “I can’t think of a single one of my siblings‌—‌or in-laws‌—‌who would be…‌inclined that way.”

I took a shot in the dark. “The Shenks?”

He started visibly and became very thoughtful. “I don’t know,” he finally pronounced. “None of them have much to do with me. It’s my…” He tried to wave a graceful hand, and nearly dislocated a shoulder. “Preferences. I’m as out of it as Jeff, really.”

“Jeff ran,” I said quietly. “Any idea where to?”

He shook his head, became suddenly very human and tired. “I can’t believe he’d kill Mama. That would have meant being near her.”

Harry pounced. “Grudge?”

Davis smiled. Even I was taken aback. I’ve seen plenty of cynical in my day, but that man was cynical to his bones. “Suppertime at our house was mandatory and cruel, Sheriff. She spent the whole meal informing each of us of our flaws. Every day. If you want my honest opinion?”

It was nice of him to pretend to ask.

“The only surprise in any of this,” said Davis Collier, “is that Mama wasn’t killed sooner.”

***^***

The worst part of that day was the weather. It was perfect. We’d had a cold front push through, and the sky was a perfect clean blue puffed with white cottony clouds. A breeze glided off the mountains, and everything smelled cool and green and delicious. It was the kind of day when sitting at a speed trap with the windows rolled down and the smell of wild strawberry blossoms was just about as close to heaven as I wanted to get. But there I was, cooped up with Colliers in a musty school with nothing but an open window to keep me sane. It was so nice out that Boris abandoned police work and sat on the sill, eyes half-closed, his ears flickering constantly as he listened to the birds and the rustle of the leaves.

I might have felt better if the suspects had cooperated.

Davis turned out to be the least hostile of the bunch. Ken said nothing, but sat with his head pressed into his shoulders like a snake readying for a strike. May just sobbed about how ashamed she was of being arrested and how it would look at church. Even when we asked her how Vera died, and she sobbed out, “Muh-muh-mushrooms?” Boris’s tail didn’t twitch. That was the truth as May knew it‌—‌or Boris couldn’t tell if she was lying because of all the crying.

We got one civil answer out of Eileen, when we asked her if she had any reason to believe any of them would profit from Vera’s death: “Mama wasn’t about to leave us a dime if she could bury it in the backyard somewhere.” After that, it was all stony silence. Her husband, Hal Lynch, tried to head-butt Mr. Tucker, then Harry, and called me names, upsetting Boris so much that when Hal snapped, “Far as I know, she was poisoned!” to our question of how Vera died, my cat’s tail was already lashing.

Army looked shifty, and said “I dunno” to every question no matter what. He even said “I dunno” when we asked how to spell his name, just to see what happened.

Gloria Shenk said only that it had to have been Jeff or Davis, since “Jeff is weird and Davis is a queer”, and wouldn’t budge from that stand. Even when we asked her how Vera died, hoping against hope she’d be dumb enough to say “insulin”—a fact not released to the public‌—‌she said, “Jeff or Davis.” To which Boris’s tail twitched exactly twice, but I already knew she was lying, so it did me no good.

By lunchtime, Harry and I were exhausted. Boris was sound asleep on the windowsill. Kim brought over food and drinks from the Old Mill, and we uncuffed everyone so that they could feed themselves because I frankly didn’t feel like dealing with complaints of brutality on top of everything else.

My brilliant idea had gotten us nowhere.

I munched a lukewarm french fry sprinkled with malt vinegar. “We’re screwed,” I told Harry. “They’re so mad they’d sooner kill me than admit the sky is blue.”

Harry fastidiously wiped his fingers clean and tossed his napkin into the trash. “It’s odd,” he said.

“Tell me about it,” I groused.

“No, Lil, think for a moment. We’re letting our own frustration get in our way.”

That was true enough. “Keep talking.”

Harry started to light a cigar, caught my eye, and stuck to chewing its end. “When you spoke to them before, they were all pointing fingers every which-a-way. Now we can’t get them to point any fingers at all, except at Davis and Jeff.”

“The two outcasts,” I said slowly. “So either they know something we don’t…”

“Oh, I am quite confident of that,” Harry purred.

I shot him an icy Littlepage glare. “Okay, so either they really do blame Davis and Jeff, or…” I groped for the rest of the thought, but it wasn’t about to get snagged. “Dammit! They’ve closed ranks because they
do
know who it is! They know! They didn’t before, and now they know!”

“They know,” agreed Harry grimly. With the cigar wagging, he looked ridiculously like Groucho Marx for a minute.

I had to take several calming breaths. You’d think I’d be used to human ill-nature after all those years, but I never have gotten comfy with the way people throw their loved ones to the nearest devil. “Those’re their brothers.”

“Davis is a deviant as far as they’re concerned,” he reminded me, “and Jeff is conveniently absent.”

I scowled and finished the carrot and pineapple juice in my thermos. Aunt Marge had added fresh ginger and enough cayenne to melt my sinuses. It didn’t help me think but it sure kept me awake. “I was going to say innocent men don’t run, except sometimes they do. If they’re afraid.”

Harry checked his notes. “So far Ken is the only one who hasn’t tried to throw blame onto either Davis or Jeff, but then, he didn’t say anything at all.”

I recited an old adage. “Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is conspiracy.”

“Indeed,” said Harry. “If I was not a good Baptist…”

I snorted.

Harry serenely ignored me. “I would bet dollars to doughnuts that we’re going to hear the same refrain from the rest of our Greek chorus. Fair Lily, I fear we are wasting our time.”

“Damn right we are,” I replied with as evil a grin as I could. I’d been taking lessons from Boris. “But we’re giving Tom and Punk as much as they need.”

Harry popped to his feet. “Good enough. I’ll round up our next victim, and first thing Monday I will work on Judge Harper’s sensibilities in the hopes he will eventually give us warrants for financial records.”

“We’ve got Vera’s,” I pointed out. “If she had money, it probably is buried in the yard. It sure wasn’t in any bank. Tom checked with the utilities and she even paid them by money order or cash.” I grinned. “One time, all in dimes.”

Harry laughed. “I would have loved to have seen that. Who shall we torture next? Robert or Laura?”

“Oh, Laura,” I said airily, and leaned back to rub Boris’s shoulders, where new fur had finally covered his scar. “Let’s see what glad games Pollyanna can play in handcuffs.”

***^***

It was just as well I didn’t expect Laura to veer from the new Collier party line. After informing us she was innocent and didn’t need a lawyer, she told us it had to be Davis. “He’s not normal, after all, and he does know about food.” My lie detector was snoring on the windowsill, meaning I had to rely on my own gut feeling that she was not telling me the whole truth. I’d had it all day, though, so it might have just been indigestion.

Honey blamed Jeff, saying he’d finally snapped. Donna, Beau’s long-suffering wife, just smacked gum loudly, and scratched her belly button ring. That left us back where we started, with hours to go before Tom and Punk could possibly complete their searches for insulin, syringes, mushrooms, books about either, and any stocks or other papers in Vera’s name. So we started over. Back to Davis, Ken, May, Eileen, Hal, Army, Rob, Lynne, Gloria….the day was a blur of Colliers. Angry, sullen, cussing, unhelpful Colliers.

Finally, around five, Tom called my cell. “We did ‘em all,” he said, sounding as worn out and irritated as I felt. “Nothing, Lil. Not a damn thing. Not even a can of mushroom soup.”

“Jeff’s place?” I asked, stretching gladly as I got outside into the fresh air. Boris chirped happily and chased a butterfly as we crossed to the parking lot.

“Same bunch of nothing.” He sighed so heavily I practically heard it without benefit of telephone. “Whatever evidence there was went up in the fire. We’re screwed.”

He was right, which only made me angrier. “Not yet we’re not.”

Poor Tom. He squawked. “What’s left?”

“There’s about a hundred Colliers up in that hollow. We’ll ask them what they know.”

The silence was so profound I thought Tom must have lost cell phone signal. Then he lost his temper.

“Ask the other Colliers? Are you outta your mind? They been giving us looks all day like we’re Bambi and it’s the first day of buck! You want me to come back here, you’re on your own! I dunno what you got taught but I was told suicide’s a sin!” Tom gulped air, then added, “No fricking way! I’d sooner put my nuts in a vise!” And he hung up.

I spent a few minutes staring at my phone in disbelief before I put it away. He was right, of course. I could spend years interrogating the rest of the Colliers, and end up with a fat load of even more nothing. But what else did I have? Any chance of evidence in Vera’s house was up in smoke, and a search of her kids’ houses had gotten us zero. Every possible suspect was hostile, or on the run. All we had was the medical examiner’s reports, and that didn’t help. On TV they’d charge someone and tell the rest that the someone was singing like a canary, but that was TV. In real life, I’d already pushed my luck. I couldn’t even risk keeping the Colliers overnight. The judge had been very clear about that.

“Shit,” I said. Then, because no one was around, I pulled Boris into my lap and let myself despair into his soft fur. My ribs ached, my head hurt, my shoulders were pure rock from tension, and my case had gone ice cold. I needed a pound of chocolate truffles and a good cry. But what I had was a squirming cat, and Drake Morse whipping past at ten miles an hour over the speed limit. I hit my little dashboard bubble light, set Boris in his car seat, and peeled out.

10.

M
y new cruiser arrived the following weekend. It was the only bright spot I’d had for days. Tom was avoiding me, Kim was on vacation at the Outer Banks, Aunt Marge was in the middle of her adoption fair, and the Colliers had gone to ground. If it hadn’t been for Boris, I’d have chucked it all and moved back to Charlottesville. At least there I’d had company in my police misery.

All of which vanished when I saw my new cruiser. Maury was standing beside it when I rolled into the office for lunch, sweating because we were in the middle of a heat wave that made it feel like August three months early. I forgot all about sticky shirts and the hell that is a brassiere in summertime when I saw the shiny new black-and-white with gold lettering. I whooped, causing my broken rib to twinge, and pelted over. “It’s beautiful!”

Maury beamed, fanning himself with his baseball cap. His bald spot glowed. “I’m glad you like it. Your cousin Jack donated the funds. Good man, for a Littlepage.”

I should point out Morses are traditionally inclined to the Ellers in the Great Crazy Feud.

I ran my fingers along the car, examining the town seal and the glittery gold letters of “SHERIFF”. I popped the trunk and the hood, sighing with delight. “Oh, wow. A real honest-to-God brand-new prowler. God bless Henry Ford.”

“Him too,” said Maury. “Take a look.”

I looked inside. There was a state-of-the-art cat car seat, with mesh over the window so Boris couldn’t fly out if it was rolled down, and a litterbox bolted into the foot well. Maury snickered. “You should’ve heard the phone calls I got about that one.”

I barely heard him. I retrieved Boris from my car and he sniffed long and cautiously before he started slinking through the new cruiser. He was as plainly delighted as I was, eyes bright, whiskers bristling. I went back to the engine, so new it was as shiny as the rest of the car, and sighed. Then I hugged Maury. “This is the best ever,” I told him. “Just the best. Wow.”

“We’ll try to scrape up one for Tom,” Maury apologized, twisting his hat a little. “But the council isn’t about to do that if they can help it.”

For once, the town’s council couldn’t bother me. Besides, Tom’s cruiser was fine, and at least was new to him. He’d only had it three months. I didn’t ask how long the state boys had been driving it before we got it.

Maury tossed me the keys and ambled down Main, along the cracked and weed-grown sidewalk. Morse Sanitation and Disposal was nearly at the other end of town‌—‌figure a mile‌—‌but Town Hall was across Spottswood Lane from my office, and he’d be headed for air-conditioned joy on such a day. As for me, I forgot about lunch and started my new cruiser. It practically sang.