Gone Crazy (8 page)

I was starting to get a tension headache. I said good-bye to Harry, and let my hand lie where Boris could rest his chin upon it. “Well, sweetie,” I said, “we’re gonna have to go back to Paint Hollow.”

Boris emitted a tiny feline sigh, his tail switching. I sighed too. There had to be a better way to go about this than heading back into Collier territory, but dang if I could see it.

***^***

My uncle’s death interrupted my efforts to get Aunt Marge to let me out of her or Roger’s sight for more than ten minutes. Nothing against Tom as a cop, but the Colliers were getting on my last nerve, and I hated to think of them lurking down in their hollow free and clear when murder had been done. Even worse, the fire had left us at loose ends. So when Aunt Marge came out to the garage, where I was working with hand weights as much as my doctor’s restrictions allowed, I was thinking of a million things besides my sick uncle. In fact, I was mostly thinking that I really had to find a place of my own.

“Lil, dear,” said Aunt Marge. She was managing to wear a smocked caftan-like thing and make it look elegant. “I just heard. David Littlepage has passed away.”

I set down the hand weights very carefully. We’d gone up to see him the previous day, and he’d been pale, gray, almost translucent. That complexion was a dead giveaway, if you’ll pardon the expression. “Oh damn,” I said. “How’s Jack?”

Aunt Marge gently shooed me and Boris towards the house. “Bearing up, of course. Poor boy, he’s all alone now. He should be back at the house this evening, if you think we should call.”

“Tomorrow,” I decided. Give Jack a chance to breathe. “That’s soon enough. Where’s the funeral?”

“Here in Crazy, of course.”

I stumbled over my own two feet. “Here?” I squawked. “Where’ll we put them all? There’s not even a hotel!” I managed to diplomatically not add that her cousin’s daughter couldn’t fit everyone into her bed-and-breakfast. The Country Rose is very quaint, and very small. “I can’t believe they’d stay down to Gilfoyle.”

“I’m sure there’ll be arrangements,” she soothed. “Now come drink your fruit juice.”

When Aunt Marge uses that tone of voice, mountains move. I followed her into the house and drank my fruit juice.

***^***

I went back to work a lot earlier than Dr. Hartley or my ribs wanted me to. Plainly put, there weren’t enough cops for traffic control on the day of my uncle’s funeral, and they needed warm bodies to make sure no high-end cars ended up on our low-end side streets. It wasn’t exactly strenuous duty. I parked my car with my bubble lights on and kicked back with a book to make sure nobody drove accidentally on purpose up to the Littlepage house to crash the festivities.

I’d gotten to the part of the Wars of the Roses where Edward of York entered London when someone cleared his throat near my rear bumper. I peeked out the window to see my cousin Jack, in a very good black suit, with his tie loosened. “I didn’t want to send someone,” he said, and thrust a plastic-wrapped plate of nibbles at me. “The caviar is for Boris.”

I thanked him and passed the fish eggs to Boris, who was stretched asleep in the back seat. He woke, sniffing, and devoured the caviar in four chomps, itty-bitty crackers and all. Jack smiled, but he had bags under his eyes you could use for carry-on luggage.

“You’ll be missed,” I pointed out, and gestured up the way. “Thanks for the food.”

“I doubt it.” Jack made a face like a kid being told to eat his vegetables. “Mother is holding court.”

I winced on his behalf. “So is she staying long?”

“Only long enough to contest the will, I guess,” he shrugged. “She will, too. You want to come to the reading?” His smile went all crooked. I’d seen mine do the same thing under similar stress. It was a little weird to realize it was a genetic trait. “Or you can skip it.”

I considered. “Is your mother going to be there?”

“Yes.”

I shuddered purely for effect. “I’ll skip. Like you said, souvenir teacup.”

Jack ruffled his hair. It spoke well of his barber that it lay right back down. “Not quite.” He laughed, but he sounded more worn out than amused. “He left you land.”

Now I laughed, out of pure denial. “No way.”

“Don’t get excited.” Jack gave that crooked smile again. “I’m sure he meant it well, but…” His hands flapped around a bit, catching Boris’s attention. “He left you a plot in the family cemetery.”

If I hadn’t been leaning on the car, I’d probably have ended up on the ground. I couldn’t decide if I was flattered or offended, and by the way Jack watched me, he wasn’t sure what to think, either. I finally said, “You’re kidding.”

“No joke.”

I suddenly thought of something. “I’m betting it’s in the servant section.”

Credit where it’s due, Jack could take a joke and give one back. “If we had one, it would be. As it is, it’s the plot over by Jefferson and Lydia Gilfoyle Littlepage.”

I burst out laughing, until my ribs reminded me to stop. Even so, I was snorting and giggling. I couldn’t help it. Jefferson Littlepage had died before the Civil War, and he’d been the only Littlepage to wed without approval before my mother did it. That he’d been buried in the family plot with his wife was due solely to the fact his children weren’t about to boot Mama to the town cemetery over on Little Mountain. It was typical of my recently deceased uncle that he’d assume I’d be complimented enough that I wouldn’t see the backhanded insult.

I stopped laughing entirely when I remembered that my mother hadn’t been permitted to rest eternally among the Littlepages. Or the Ellers, for that matter.

“No thanks,” I said as kindly as I could, which wasn’t very. “I’ll pass.”

“I figured you would.” He patted my arm twice. It was, for a Littlepage, downright demonstrative. “I better get back. I’ve got everyone watching Mother to make sure she doesn’t take off with the silver, but she can be sneaky.”

“I’ll search her limo on the way out,” I promised. “You holding up okay?”

Jack stopped, looking peculiarly lost for a minute. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I am. I do wish I had found a wife and had a family before he passed away. It would have eased his mind.”

“You’re a guy,” I said with total lack of tact. Aunt Marge would’ve had a fit. “You can wait.”

“I suppose, but…‌I think my children will spend time here more than we did.” He sighed so deeply that Boris looked at him with his head tipped to one side. “It’s very peaceful.”

That nearly set me off laughing again. Crazy, peaceful? Only if you weren’t the sheriff.

***^***

A couple of days after the funeral, I was still feeling sore, and I headed to the garden to sulk about being on restricted duty. The flower garden, I mean. Aunt Marge’s vegetable and herb garden is a series of narrow terraces cut into the mountain, and it didn’t encourage lounging. I waved to Roger, who was setting up a system of irrigation pipes to be fed by rainwater gathered in barrels off the roof, and I eased down into the new patio couch. Boris flopped beneath it, glaring at the world. He missed work. So did I.

I heard the doorbell, but I ignored it. Big mistake. A minute later, I heard feet pattering up the flagstone walk around the side of the house. One thing about mountain living. You get some damn fine cardio just walking around.

“Lil? Lil, is it true?”

It was Bobbi, eyes shining, a hand to the stitch in her side. She collapsed onto the chair, panting. “Did he leave you
land
?”

I sighed. I was not going to get any good sulking done. “Enough to be buried in.”

“Ruth told me it was land,” she insisted, referring to her ex-mother-in-law. “What do you mean?”

I shifted a cushion. “Burial plot in the family cemetery.”

Bobbi’s nothing if not partisan. “Why, that old…” She shook her head violently, showing off new coppery highlights. “Well, that’s not all. You haven’t heard about the will reading, then?”

“Not a word,” I said happily. She didn’t take the hint.

“Do you know what he left his wife?” she asked, then corrected herself. “Of course you don’t. Oh, Lil, it must’ve been
fantastic
! You know Sherrilyn, she works up there.”

LP Inc. employees, like those who worked at the Eller family estate across the valley, lived on-site and weren’t really considered locals. Sherrilyn, however, had lived in Crazy as a kid, which made her a local no matter how she might feel about it. She was one of the housekeeping staff. It gave her a decent salary, a uniform of blue polo shirt with khaki trousers, and enough in the way of benefits that, unlike most of her family, she didn’t lack for medical or dental.

“Well, she and the others got mentioned, so they were all there this morning, she came in and told me, she was getting her roots touched up.” It was a secret known only to Sherrilyn, Bobbi and me that Sherrilyn had stopped being naturally blonde sometime in high school. “He left her the same thing he left the housekeepers!”

I’d cut back to only one pain med at bedtime, so I followed that. “Which was?”

Bobbi leaned back in feline triumph. If she’d had whiskers, she’d have licked them for satisfaction. “Five thousand dollars. On a gift card. Y’know. Those credit card type ones. Sherrilyn’s going to go to Short Pump and have herself a spree.”

I was grinning. “Bet Mary Littlepage wasn’t happy.”

“Oh, she was
mad
!” chortled Bobbi. “Sherrilyn said she screeched like she’d got stuck, and then she was cussing up and down, the lawyers had to take her outta the room! I guess she’s gonna sue for her widow’s share or something.”

Mary Palmer Littlepage getting five grand of her hubby’s millions. Oh, that was karma with a vengeance. I must’ve looked like a grinning fool. Bobbi certainly did.

“Jack’s a practical guy,” I said, “he’ll buy her off with some kind of annuity, I bet. Anything else?”

“Not that I’ve heard, but I had to tell you.” Her smile shrank. “And Ruth’s making noise about Raj, but that’s not news.”

True. Ruth Campbell wouldn’t admit it aloud, since it might contradict her strenuous protestations of Christian practice, but she’d like best a world where everyone was white, piously Christian by her extremely narrow definition of Christian, and possessed of exactly enough freedom to do whatever she told them. Even Aunt Marge has a hard time finding a nice thing to say about her.

We chatted until Roger came back to the house covered in sweat and dirt and insect bites. Bobbi’s not comfortable around him, since he’s cousin to Ruth’s late husband, and therefore to her own ex. Roger understood. He wasn’t always comfortable being related to Ruth, either.

Bobbi’s news had given me a decent appetite, so I went inside with Roger to set out the gazpacho and tabouli Aunt Marge had left for lunch. She had a big day at the shelter, getting ready for the first annual adoption fair. The shelter had started slow, but now housed forty animals, if you counted the black snake that lurked out back. She was planning big publicity all over a ten-county area, not to mention the internet, and she had a graphic designer coming down from Charlottesville that afternoon. She was insisting that the shelter’s logo incorporate one of Roger’s elegant inky watercolors of Boris sitting on a windowsill, much to Roger’s embarrassment.

After we’d eaten, Roger was heading for his studio, in the old formal parlor, when he said, “Y’know, Lil, I had an idea about the Colliers.”

At that point, I’d have taken advice from Eddie Brady. “I’m all ears.”

“I don’t know if the state police would help, but you may not need them to.” He scratched at one ear. “But why go back to Paint Hollow at all?”

I blinked. “What?”

“Well,” he went on, “why tackle them on their own turf? Get them on yours.”

“I don’t have any way to do that,” I said automatically. Then my brain caught up, and I grinned such a grin that Roger took a step backwards.

8.

A
rresting Vera Collier’s whole brood took some doing, but it was purely in the nature of logistics. Harry cheerfully tracked down one of our county’s trio of judges to make sure we could do it, and he was quite happy to swear out warrants so we could bring them in on suspicion of murder. The problem was in finding anyone to go into Paint Hollow to make the arrests, and how to get them back to Crazy, and where to put them once they got here.

It was Punk Sims who suggested we stow the Colliers at the elementary school, since it would be the weekend. I solved the problem of how to transport them all by asking Maury if we could borrow the old school bus he rented out to the churches for field trips and excursions. But who would be crazy enough to follow me into Paint Hollow to make the arrests?

Eddie Brady.

Tom and I didn’t laugh right in his face, mostly because he’d have slashed our tires. After we’d shooed Eddie gently out the door for his weekly bender in the willows along Elk Creek, we sat down with Kim and Punk for a very glum conference. Tom hadn’t been idle while I was home recuperating‌—‌his cousin had given us good information on mushrooms‌—‌but that was about all we had going for us. Punk didn’t mind helping us out as a deputy when it came to guarding or even transporting angry Colliers, but arrest them? His leg, like my ribs, put him out of the running. Or hitting. Whatever came up, it was going to be on Tom and anyone else we could con into helping.

“If I deputize every man of good character in town,” I sighed, “we still won’t be able to get them down to Paint Hollow.”

“State police?”

I snorted. Breeden’s reply had been more profane and even briefer than mine. “Not a chance.”

“Chief Rucker’d never go for it,” said Punk with the sureness of one who’d worked for the man. “Nobody else, either. It’s Paint Hollow.” He gave me a tiny look of quasi-apology. “And look what happened to you.”

Boris, pacing restlessly because he preferred action to words, leapt up on my desk and sent the Vera Collier file skidding. Kim lunged for it and missed. The papers went slipping and sliding all over the floor. Tom rushed to help her so fast he nearly hurt himself.

“We can get Davis at his restaurant,” I mused. “But the rest… We can’t give any of them time to warn each other.”