Gone Crazy (3 page)

I waved the file Harry had xeroxed for me. “At a guess? All of them. But mostly Vera’s kids, and Vera, for that matter.”

Marge poured a cup of chamomile-ginger tea out of a thermos, and opened a container full of her oatmeal-cranberry cookies. Kim gave up pretending not to eavesdrop and bolted over.

According to Aunt Marge, Vera and her spawn were a little odd even for Colliers. Sam Junior had died not long after his youngest child was born, possibly of nuptial exhaustion. Vera, born a Craig, continued to rule her children with an iron hand. Ken, oldest at twenty, joined the Marines when his father died, and a drill instructor must have seemed like a soft touch after Vera. He had done well, come home, and gotten married, and dutifully begun to pop out more Colliers. In fact, only two of the brood hadn’t returned to the hollow. Buck was a sergeant in the US Army, a career noncom; Marilee had married a Navy man and lived in Norfolk. All had children but two. Davis had never married‌—‌he was what Aunt Marge called a non-practicing homosexual. Jeff was about my age, and was never married, nor intended to marry by all gossip accounts. No surprise with such a mother.

As for Vera… Aunt Marge strove to be charitable, and had to be blunt. Vera had her good points‌—‌she was a hard worker and kept herself to herself‌—‌but she lacked what Aunt Marge called “compassion for others”. In other, less tactful words‌—‌mine‌—‌Vera was a right royal bitch. It was rumored she’d used a belt on her children well into their teens, she’d recycle paper towels if possible, and considered it a shame she couldn’t buy her panties at the secondhand shop along with everything else. The words “unpleasant” and “difficult” cropped up quite a lot when anyone mentioned Vera, but there were other words, too. Mean, miserly, vicious, hard-hearted. But the most descriptive phrase came from Harry Rucker, of course: “A woman full of all Hell.”

I digested that along with the cookies. I slipped my notes into the file folder, and popped it into the drawer of my desk that has a lock on it that Kim hasn’t figured out how to pick.

I reached out and scritched Boris along his spine.

“Lil,” said Kim, “swear to God I’ll quit if you don’t tell why you need to know all this!”

Boris’s tail shivered, then lashed twice. I grinned. No one believes me, but that’s his signal someone is lying.

“Vera passed away yesterday.”

Aunt Marge cooed sympathy. It wasn’t a surprise she hadn’t heard. Colliers by and large aren’t on the church-lady-mafia radar.

I stroked Boris meditatively. “The kids are saying it was murder.”

Aunt Marge’s coo turned into a choke.

I grinned mirthlessly at them. Boris sniffed at me, as if he knew what I was thinking, and didn’t approve. “Actually, they’re each saying one of the others did it.”

Aunt Marge squawked. Boris eyed her curiously, head tipped to one side. His markings make it look like he has a hat pulled over his upper face. He reminded me of some old Humphrey Bogart character.

“You have to go to Paint Hollow?” she demanded. “Oh, Lil!”

Kim looked pale and scared. “Harry can’t make you do it, Lil.”

Boris meowed. I swear he sounded as worried as they did.

“I will call Harry Rucker immediately,” said Aunt Marge, in mama bear mode.

I hated to do it to her, but I had to. “Then it’ll be up to Chief Rucker.”

We all fell silent. Chief Rucker’s idea of investigating was to decide who’d done it, and invariably it was someone he knew was “bad” or a passing, and invariably nonexistent, hobo.

“Then promise me one thing,” said Aunt Marge, worrying the hem of her blouse. “You will wear your bulletproof vest.”

“I promise,” I said, and Boris’s tail stayed perfectly still.

3.

P
aint Hollow is one of the most beautiful places in the county, if not the state. Buckle Mountain shelters it to the north and east, Sims to the west, Hog Ridge to the south, and swirling mists hang heavy over the hollow in the morning like a protective veil. At that time of year, with green rising like a blush up the mountains and azaleas in bloom in big wild hedges, the hollow was at its softest and prettiest. The land around the creek was thick with new grass that a few horses and cows grazed in the first of the morning sun to break through the gap. The houses were tucked up off the road, mostly south of White Branch, where the land was gentler, and each one was tidy and well-kept. So were the cars and trucks in the driveways. The ditches were clean of sludge and litter. Along the dirt road on either side were broad pathways bordered in cheerful periwinkle and phlox. It looked like an advertisement for some rural Utopia.

Welcome to Collier country.

There were no numbers on the houses. Even the US Postal Service didn’t penetrate Paint Hollow. There were mailboxes at the gap, and a sturdy shack where packages could be left by UPS or FedEx, and Collier children waited for the school bus. A big satellite dish, like the one that gives Crazy its TV, rested on a small outcrop. I had no idea how the power company had gotten in to string electric, but other than that, there was no sign at all that Paint Hollow had ever admitted an outsider. It reminded me eerily and uncomfortably of those “compounds” built by survivalists, angry militia, and the occasional religious cult. It didn’t even need walls. It had the mountains.

Boris fluffed his fur and yowled unhappily. My scalp itched. I knew there weren’t just eyes on us. There would be at least half a dozen guns, too. I myself don’t see how anyone reasonable or remotely honest can admit they need a semi-auto with laser targeting and power scope to hunt anything but other armed humans, but that hasn’t stopped anyone from buying up weapons meant for military operations and, in this case, keeping them trained on me.

I was starting to wish I had a bulletproof helmet to match my vest when a man ambled into the road. He was wearing a red flannel shirt and a ball cap with a tractor company logo on it. He held up a hand, and I rolled to a stop. I had driven my cruiser, figuring I’d be safer if they knew I was a sheriff from the get-go. I was starting to wonder if maybe my personal vehicle, a bland Ford, might not have been better.

He strolled to my window. His face was pleasant, but his eyes were hard with suspicion. “Mornin’,” he said. “Somethin’ I can do for ya?”

I reminded myself I had spent a few years in the FBI, and more years on the job in Charlottesville, and faced far worse than a Collier. I fixed him with the famous Littlepage glare, made possible by the fact I have the famous Littlepage eyes: so pale and cold a blue they’re ice. “I’m looking for Ken Collier. I’m Sheriff Eller, the county’s special investigator.” I flashed my badge at him. “Harry Rucker sent me.”

The man’s face softened a little, and he peered past me at Boris, who nervously washed a shoulder. Then he grinned. “I’m Ken. Come on up the house.” He pointed up the nearest driveway, to a modest brick ranch-style house overshadowed by a huge white barn with red trim. “Didn’t expect you.”

I exhaled in relief. “I’d have called, but your number’s not listed.”

He chuckled as he walked away. I got the feeling he was pleased.

I pulled into the turn-off. Dogs swarmed the car, barking and snuffling. Boris puffed himself out to twice his actual size. When a dog jumped against his window, he lashed out, his paws whap-whapping hard against the glass. His ears back, he hissed and screeched. He wanted a chunk of those dogs and he wanted it bad.

Ken whistled off the dogs, and secured them to chains along the garage. Boris sneered at them as he marched up to the house behind me. I don’t know if “smug” can be a verb, but if it can, then that cat was smugging for all he was worth.

***^***

Ken and May were in their late fifties, with all four kids grown and out of the house. Two were at college, the other two working in Richmond. May told me all this between attempts to pet Boris, who was crouched under the old-fashioned wood chair I sat in. She warmed a little milk in the microwave and slid the saucer to Boris, who guzzled it happily. So much for my lie detector.

Ken sat across the table from me. An old heavy wood table, like the chairs. Lovingly cared for, I could tell. “Great-Grandpa made it,” said Ken when I commented. “He was a good man with his hands.” He studied the depths of a large black mug that read, in white, “Dad”. He sipped the coffee. It smelled like it’d take the hair off a hide.

“Well,” said May nervously. She glanced over at Ken. She was a Payne by birth, had the soft cheerful look of that family. “I’ll leave you to talk.”

She skittered out into the fresh air. I flipped open a notepad and made sure my pen had ink. “Mr. Collier…”

“Ken,” he corrected, smiling a little sourly. “There’s a lot of Mr. Colliers around here.”

“You and some of your brothers and sisters went to Harry Rucker with a complaint,” I went on like I hadn’t noticed the hordes of Colliers lurking around this morning. “About your mother’s passing?”

His knuckles whitened around the mug. He pushed it away. His mouth was stone. “Yeah.” He looked everywhere but at me, and I wished I could see Boris’s tail. I had no idea how to read this guy.

“Take it slow,” I suggested. “Tell me what you can tell me.”

Ken nodded. He kept his eyes on the table. I let the silence grow and swell right up to the ceiling. He finally tried to fill it. “I figured it wasn’t natural causes right off.”

“How so?” I asked, though I already knew. Harry had faxed me the initial medical examiner’s report, fresh from the district office. It was a minor miracle the local ME had even noticed anything unusual‌—‌he wasn’t known for his forensic brilliance‌—‌but apparently there’d been a spectacular bruise around a needle mark that even he couldn’t miss. We usually didn’t get such quick results from the district ME, but Harry had fast-tracked it. I didn’t ask how.

It’d be a while before we got any toxicology reports back, but a big needle mark on a woman taking her heart pills by mouth was a bright red flag that someone might have hustled her off this earthly plane before she was ready to leave. We could proceed with this as a murder without too much concern we were making a mistake.

Ken shot me a nasty little stare. “You tell me. I just know Mama was healthy and then she’s dead and she wasn’t hardly sick a bit with her pills and all. So we told that doctor and that…‌Mr. Rucker,” he corrected mid-sentence, “we wanted them to look into it.”

I pushed back my chair to allow Boris onto my lap. His tail was shivery, but not lashing. So far, Ken was passing the lie detector test.

“But I figured…‌well, she went so quiet is what it was,” said Ken, more in wonder than anything else. “I always figured it’d take an axe to kill her.”

I shifted Boris’s weight. “I never met her. She was a tough lady, I’ve heard.”

Ken barked a laugh. “Mama? She was a damn bitch is what she was. Not that I mean that in a bad way,” he hastily added. “She worked hard to raise us after Daddy passed. But…‌She was a hard woman. Hard.” He glowered at his coffee. “Had a punch like a bulldozer. She laid out some guy come up to talk to her about buying up some land, I guess he was looking to get himself into the hollow. Back twenty years or so.” Ken sighed heavily and ruffled his hair. “I just don’t know, Sheriff. I don’t. I hate to think ill of my kin.”

Boris’s tail lashed twice. I almost nodded. I’d spotted that lie easily enough on my own.

“But you’re a Collier,” I said boldly. “All those kids, stands to reason you won’t all get along. And there’s all your cousins. Lots of ways to get on each other’s nerves.”

Ken’s face went ugly. “You want a motive, I’ve got one. Mama had money, Sheriff. Nobody’d believe it, the way she lived. But she had money. Stashed it all over the house. She got sneakier when she got older, once she knew us kids figured it out, but she had it hidden all over, and she was smart.” He barely paused for breath. Always a sign that the pimple has popped, if you’ll pardon the image. “Real smart. Had stocks and stuff, too. I seen ‘em once. Lookin’ for Daddy’s squirrel rifle.”

I had to ask. “Can I ask where?”

“She moved ‘em after that,” said Ken impatiently, fingers flicking dismissal. Then he blinked, seemed to remember something. “Oh. You wouldn’t know. Mama was a what-you-call it. Some fancy thing now. Hoarder, that’s it. Pack rat, we called her. Doubt she threw a damn thing out. Kept it all clean,” he continued. I noticed his English had grown markedly less formal. Get someone rattled, you can always tell where they’re really from, socio-economically speaking. “But you couldn’t move two feet without comin’ up against some box of shit she said she couldn’t throw out. Dunno how the little kids survived. You know we found her dog once under a bunch of magazines fell over? Followed the flies buzzin’.” He shuddered, grimacing. His eyes were dark and mean with memory. “Oughta just set fire to the house and to hell with it.”

Boris’s tail had remained still, confirming my impressions. I said silkily, “And to hell with her money?”

Ken turned red, glared at me. “I loved my mama.”

“Money’s a powerful motive,” I pointed out. “About how much do you figure there was?”

He shook his head. “Dunno.” Now he thrust his head forward, shoulders hunched. “You-all won’t let us in there!”

The county police, headed by that idiot Rucker, hadn’t done more than seal the house. A real inventory would take forever, or at least months, if I waited for them. Especially if they’d seen the inside of her house. I’d run into a couple of hoarders before, and that’s not something you forget.

I noted that I’d try to get Harry Rucker to help me get permission to do the inventory myself. I asked Ken, “When we do an inventory, you can tell us if anything’s missing?”

“How the hell would I know?”

Good point, but it had to be asked.

The meanness was back. “You don’t go stealin’ my mama’s things!”

Boris’s ears flicked. I felt his claws dig into my legs, and the faint wriggle that meant he was readying for a pounce. I petted him a moment, letting Ken blush and mumble an apology in his own time.

“You told Harry Rucker you thought maybe one of your siblings did it.”