Gone Crazy (6 page)

5.

I
headed to Gilfoyle with a head full of spinning wheels. Boris snored in his seat, exhausted by all the work he’d watched.

When I walked into the café that Davis owned, I had to admit, I got no first impression. Davis was not a guy you’d get to know if he had anything to say about it. The man was walking camouflage. The tan pants, buff shirt, dark colorless tie were just like his generic haircut, meant to keep people from looking twice. He took me back to his office, a rigidly organized cubicle, and eyed Boris with misgiving. “There are health regulations.”

“Boris already used his litter box,” I said. I sat down on a hard plastic chair. Boris perched on the paperwork. Davis flicked a single eyelash, then folded his hands. “You wanted to ask about my mother?”

“I’d like to ask how things work in your family, that you are all so convinced one of you killed her.”

That didn’t faze him at all. Without changing expression, he ran down his siblings. Ken was an ass, and so was Beau; Eileen was hopeless, Honey vicious, and Laura sanctimonious. Army was “waiting to die” and Rob lacked personality, while Jeff was “harmless”, but Buck and Marilee were “okay”. Then he asked, politely, “Is this over now?”

It wasn’t. I prodded, “And what did you think of your mother?”

He tipped his head to one side. He smiled thinly. “Mama was a hard woman. We had our differences. But she did her best with what she had. That’s all anyone can ask.”

It was rehearsed. I recognized it as the same kind of spiel I’d give people who asked me how I felt about the Ellers and Littlepages.

“But to be honest, Sheriff,” he went on, getting up to show me out, “every family has its problems. Ours weren’t enough to kill over.”

Boris’s tail switched hard, twice. I glanced at the daily specials as I left. One was a sautéed veggie sandwich that included mushrooms. Call me paranoid but a guy who ran a restaurant might just know about toxic fungi.

***^***

After all those Colliers, what I wanted was to put up my feet, watch TV, and sulk. But I had to go back to Aunt Marge’s, where TV was for news and education and DVDs and PBS, not getting over a bad day. I went to the office instead, and put my feet up on my desk, dangling Boris’s favorite toy, a squirrel tail. He leapt up, grabbed it in his teeth, and flung it into the air, to pounce on it again. Then he bit it, held it to himself with his forelegs, and went into a mock disembowelment. He looked up wildly, mouth open on a snarl, and then rolled over before he sprang to his feet and charged up his cat condo. I tossed the squirrel tail after him, and he settled down to groom it. I envied him. I needed a squirrel tail.

I got Tom Hutchins, coming in for a break. “Hey,” he said genially. “Get the message?”

I read the pink slip. Marilee couldn’t call; her youngest was in the ER. “Thank God,” I said, glad to be off that hook for now. “You get Harry’s call?”

“Yep. I had a couple ideas. About the inventory, I mean. Why not get Kim in to help?”

Tom’s crush was an open secret, except to Kim, who managed to remain oblivious. But he had a good point. “Good idea. We need an army, though.”

“Well, what about Punk Sims?”

Punk Sims was a county police officer, or had been until he’d lost control of his car during an ice storm and lost his leg from the knee down. No idea how he got the nickname, but since his given name was Purdy, Punk was a step up.

“Good idea,” I said.

Tom’s face went hard. “Yeah, well, y’know he doesn’t need two legs to be useful.”

“We should see if we can sign him on as a deputy, help fill in some shifts now and then,” I suggested, mostly to make Tom happy. I knew Maury wouldn’t have the budget. “He got a prosthesis?”

“Yeah. Ain’t much but he gets around fine with a cane these days.”

One problem solved, a million to go. I updated him on the Collier situation, and he winced along with me a few times. “Damn.” He sighed. “Mushrooms. Hey!”

I jumped. Boris jumped.

“I got a cousin, he’s a what-you-call-it, mushroom expert. Does botany at Tech. We can ask him!”

“Call him up in the morning.”

Tom beamed. He is one of the truly good guys in the world. There aren’t many.

“Anything here while I was gone?”

Tom grimaced. “New vet got his car vandalized.
Not
Heather Shifflett,” he added quickly. “She can spell.”

He showed me the photos off his digital camera. Someone had misspelled towel-head (two Ls) and Muslim (muslin). Not someone who’d spent time in the linens section of a department store. I sighed. “Eddie.”

“Probably,” he agreed. “I’ll ask Mr. Shiflet if he’s got any spray paint missing. He’s still at the store. Or was.”

I waved him off. I closed my eyes and yawned. Compared to Colliers, Eddie Brady was easy.

I’d just about relaxed when the telephone rang. I checked the caller ID. It was Marilee Collier. I pulled out my secret stash of dark chocolate bars and broke off a piece. Then I answered the phone.

***^***

Marilee had nothing new to add. She didn’t like her sisters, found her brothers “okay”. She loved her life as a Navy wife and hated mountains. Her youngest had a sprained ankle, her oldest a funny rash, she didn’t know anyone who didn’t want Vera dead, she had to go. The whole conversation took ten minutes. I hung up and crawled into a set of scrubs we keep in the restroom that doubles as our locker room‌—‌spare ammo is kept in a locked cabinet with the toilet paper and soap‌—‌and crashed for the night in a cell. We rarely use them, and they’re not half-bad for comfort. Boris curled up with a sigh by my head. He washed his leg a moment, then licked my forehead a few times for good measure. I fell asleep listening to his nose-whistle snores, and thinking there was something to be said for being the next cat lady in town.

Boris woke me around six in the morning, wanting his breakfast. I fed him before I microwaved some leftovers in the lunch room that is also our interrogation room. I ate them while wondering what to do about my living situation. I really needed my own space. But where? I couldn’t live in the jail. Maury wouldn’t mind but it’d be just plain creepy.

I was brushing Boris when Kim came in. She didn’t blink. She understood. She lived with her parents, after all.

“I’ll swing by Miz Turner’s and get you a clean uni and stuff,” she promised brightly, handing me some decaf green tea in a refillable mug. “What’re you doing today?”

“We are going to do an inventory of Vera Collier’s house,” I told her. “You, me, Tom, and his buddy Punk.”

Kim’s face lit up like fireworks. “Really?”

I raised a warning hand. “Confidentiality applies.”

She hugged herself and pranced in place. “Who cares? It’s so cool! Thank you!”

She rushed out, then back. “Should I get sandwiches or something?”

“Good idea,” I said. “Call Seth.”

Seth Campbell owns and runs our only restaurant, the Old Mill. He’s got Eller blood by way of an Eller’s infidelity, but he’s good people despite it. He caters to carnivores, but respects the vegetarian crowd, which in Crazy boils down to me and Aunt Marge. He also always remembers to include treats for Boris. That’s a relative I don’t mind claiming.

Tom showed up before Kim got back, all but dragging Punk behind him. I’d seen Punk around the county a few times, but he’d changed and it was more than the lack of a leg. He was thin now, all his muscles like tight-wound steel cables, and his face declared he expected the worst of everything. I didn’t try to play. I looked right at the prosthesis, which was metal, and studied it. Then I said, “Thank God it’s not wood or Boris’d use it for a scratch post.”

He smiled a little, and some tension left his shoulders. We shook hands. “I brought my truck,” said Tom. “Loaded up a bunch of boxes.”

“Thanks,” I said, and then Kim returned. She looked at Punk curiously, then blushed when she saw his prosthetic leg. But she greeted him pretty normally, thrust my clothes at me, and went out to grab our lunches from Old Mill. Tom offered to drive her down to Paint Hollow, and she rolled her eyes. “I can find the way.”

Poor Tom. Punk and I traded grins, as I called Boris. I felt like I should give some kind of inspirational speech, something like the famous St. Crispin’s Day one, but all I could come up with was, “Let’s get this started. And if you see any houses for sale, let me know.”

***^***

Vera’s house was a one-story white-sided ranch, the kind that screamed 1950s suburbia. It had black trim and shutters, and sternly trimmed banks of azaleas that were furiously pink behind an actual white picket fence. You could practically see Donna Reed waving bye-bye to the hubby and kids in her twinset and pearls.

Then I cut the yellow tape and used bolt cutters to get rid of the lock Chief Rucker had thrown on the door. The thing wasn’t installed correctly at all. I could’ve yanked it out of the door frame. But it made me feel good to cut the dang thing.

And then I opened the door.

And Punk said, with admirable restraint, “Holy shit.”

***^***

Not holy excrement, or even excrement, but
stuff
. Everywhere and every way. Up and down and all around. There were narrow pathways between stacks, not a speck of daylight or dust, and a sense that we needed to make a map. Maybe get GPS.

We retreated outside to gather ourselves. “Jeez,” breathed Tom, wide-eyed. “I never‌—‌I mean I just‌—‌What do we do, Lil?”

I exhaled heavily. I had no idea. “Garage?”

Punk stumped over, peered into the window by the side door. “Can’t tell.”

I echoed Tom. “Jeez. Okay. Tom, run to Gilfoyle and borrow the tents the fire department uses for the barbecue. And the tarps to keep everything up off the grass and dirt. We’ll set those up out here. Kim?”

She was huddled back behind me with Boris, shock-faced but recovering. “Yeah?”

“Go tell Ken Collier‌—‌third house down on the left‌—‌we’ll be taking everything out of here and we’re videotaping the whole thing so they’ll know there’s no thieving. When we decide we don’t need it, we’ll put it back in the house. Anything we can use for the investigation goes with us.”

Kim nodded briskly and trotted down the road. Punk and I stared at each other a minute. Then I gestured. “Help me open that garage door. Anyone complains we busted the lock, we’ll tell them Rucker did it.”

Punk grinned. The two of us combined had enough savvy to pick the lock, and the door rolled up to reveal a blue Chevy sedan, and more boxes. All plastic crates, the kind you buy to store clothes or Christmas decorations, same as in the house. And as in the house, stacked to the rafters. Some milk crates too, stolen, not the cheap ones you buy. These still had the dairy name on them.

“We’ll move the car,” I decided, and Punk hotwired it so we could park it under the hickory tree. That gave us just enough room to feel like we needed more.

Within an hour, Tom was back and had the big heavy white canvas tents set up. I had a permanent marker and some “Hello My Name Is” stickers I’d found in a stack, and we got to work labeling the boxes. Punk couldn’t do much lifting, so he ran the video camera. It was pretty dull work, watching us label each box with a number and a room. “Living Room #44”, that kind of thing. By lunch, we had emptied the living room, and discovered that someone had kept Vera’s house immaculate despite the hoarding. The carpet was clean, the dust minimal. I suspected the daughters and daughters-in-law came in once a week or so and were behind the boxing. I’d never seen a hoarder crate anything, at least not so meticulously.

I had Kim get to work labeling the rest of the boxes after lunch. Punk and Tom and I settled down with Boris’s help to empty and inventory the 52 plastic storage boxes that had filled the living room. All sizes, from “just right for shoes” to “can hold three stacked-up couch cushions”. All of them full of…‌stuff. It’d be the dullest video footage ever taken, but I knew the Colliers would be less litigation-happy if we had it. Not to mention it’d make a hell of an insomnia cure.

We found magazines mostly that day. Bookmarked with phone bills and electric bills and subscription cards that had come from other magazines. The 1960s featured mostly the usual suspects—
Good Housekeeping
,
Family Circle
, that sort of thing. Then came the 1970s, and a little branching out into
National Geographic
and
Cosmo
. We flipped through the magazines looking for stock certificates, CDs, anything that might indicate hidden wealth. We mostly saw the hallmarks of a woman obsessed with recipes, housecleaning tips, and fingernail maintenance. By the time we hit the early 1990s, we were bored nearly senseless. Boris had given up on prowling and gone to doze under the cruiser. Kim was lost somewhere in one of the three bedrooms, having emerged only to get another batch of stickers and permanent markers.

They never mention these really boring parts of police work when you sign up.

Then we hit the boxes full of paper. All of it photos, clippings, programs from graduations, for the whole Collier clan. Recipes, obituaries, church announcements. It could fill probably fifty scrapbooks. It was like seeing under someone’s skirts to have all those private moments flitting through my hands.

It was nearly suppertime when we finished. Kim staggered out to report another hundred boxes marked, and more to go, and I cursed nearly as profanely as Tom and Punk. At this rate, we’d be here till Christmas. All on the off chance we’d find a clue.

It’s no mystery to me why so many cops drink.

We put back the living room boxes, locked up the house with a much better and stronger lock. We all wanted hot showers and a hot supper, and we still had to drive home. Tom was dropping Punk at his trailer on Quarry Road, then heading to the place he rented on the Madison Springs road. Kim and I had Crazy to look forward to. It wasn’t what you’d call a good end to a good day.

It got a lot worse when someone tried to kill me.

6.

U
sually when you wake up in a hospital, you ask where you are or what happened. I knew that. I was in a hospital because I’d gotten run off the road on that killer curve where the road kinked around the south end of Mineral Mountain. Somebody in a pickup had rammed my cruiser, and I’d just enough time to put an arm out to hold Boris in his cat seat before the car went helter-skelter off the road and smacked sidelong into a boulder. So I asked, “How’s Boris?”