Murder Crops Up (22 page)

He stepped back a pace, and more of the sky came into view behind his head. “Just lie still,” he said in a rough whisper. “You don’t want anything bad to happen to anyone else.”

He clapped the lid of the bin on, and I was shut into warm, odoriferous darkness. The leaves and garden debris around my ears rustled with every movement, and even when I didn’t move, courtesy of roly-poly bugs and worms. Ventilation slits punctured the sides of the bin, making bars of brightness, but not allowing me to see out.

I still felt stunned from the blow, dizzy and unable to think. But I could hear, if I held still to keep the rustling down. I heard Webster moving around his plot, the clink as he took out some tool. And in the distance, coming closer, I could hear running footsteps, which slowed as they reached the perimeter path.

The footsteps were muted by the sound of Webster shoveling in a regular rhythm, accompanied by occasional grunts. I had the hysterical thought that the bed he was digging, no doubt in the well-mounded French Intensive method, would be my grave.

The footsteps slowed more, walking past the compost bin on the perimeter path, not two feet away from my black plastic prison. I could hear Amy’s gasps for breath and Barker panting as if he planned to hyperventilate.

“Do you see her, boy?” The footsteps stopped, then resumed a slow walk. “Babe is here, but I don’t see Aunt Liz.”

Barker didn’t reply. It sounded as if he’d flopped down on the dead grass beside the path. Amy must have looped his leash over one of the fence posts. The garden gate creaked. Her footsteps came down the main path, heading for my garden plot. Webster was still digging.

“Hmm.” Straining my ears, I could hear the soft sound she made when she saw my spade stuck in the ground, the bag of potatoes and bucket of tools. Silence for a moment, except for Webster’s shovel and the soft thud of earth being rearranged. I hoped Amy was picking up on my thought waves, telling her to go immediately to the library and call Bruno.

“Excuse me.” Her clear voice sounded closer, coming from the path at the end of Webster’s plot. “Have you seen Liz Sullivan? I know she was here. Did you see her leave?”

“I got here a little while ago and no one has come or left since then, except you.” The undercurrent of amusement in Webster’s voice as he told her this polite, prevaricating truth made me seethe. “Maybe she went to the Dumpster.”

“Maybe.” I could hear the uneasiness in Amy’s voice. I willed her to leave, to run away.

Webster’s shovel ceased cuffing into the earth. His feet crunched through the mulch; his voice came from farther away. Closer to Amy.

“Tell you what, why don’t we walk over and check it out? I can take my weed bucket and empty it.”

“No, thanks.” Amy’s footsteps retreated. “I’ll just get started with the potatoes, and then when my aunt comes back, we’ll be closer to leaving.”

“Suit yourself.” In an agony of anticipation, I waited for Webster to take his weed bucket and go. I was sure I could make enough noise to get Barker’s attention, and then I would get Amy’s.

But Webster didn’t leave. He started digging again, in counterpoint to Amy’s work in my plot. The shovels bit into the dirt in out-of-sync tandem,
thunk-thunk, thunkthunk.

The tight wire twisted around my wrists was cutting off circulation to my fingers, making them stiff and swollen, like bunches of balloons. I could hear Barker, still panting, probably less than ten feet from the bin. I reached as far behind me as I could. Not just my fingers were painful; every movement made my shoulders scream in agony. I was too close to the garden side of the bin to touch its fence side.

Hoping I wouldn’t make enough noise to draw Webster’s attention, I tried to slither across the bin. My cheek met something slimy, which stuck there. Finally my swollen fingers brushed against the far wall. I moved my hands as best I could, up, down, in a frustratingly small arc. Nothing. I inched up in a different direction, my fingers questing across the hard plastic of the bin.

At last I felt the edge of a ventilation slit. I stuffed one, two sausagey fingers into it, letting them hang down outside the bin below the edge of the slit. I could feel a breeze move along my skin, so I knew the fingers were visible. I hoped they were smellable, too. I did my feeble best to move them enticingly.

Nothing happened for a long, agonizing moment, while the shovels worked together and I waited for Webster to begin to hurt Amy. The breeze intensified, sweeping my pheromones toward the garden gate—toward Barker’s sensitive nose. He was probably picking up other rich smells in the immediate area, so I wasn’t sure he’d be able to scent mine.

Then Barker whined, softly, and again more loudly. His whine sounded closer. He was on his feet. I pictured him, straining at the leash, his nose pointed in my direction.

Webster’s shovel stopped, then started again. He spoke in a loud voice.

“So, are you visiting your aunt for Thanksgiving?”

“Just for a while.” Amy’s voice held reserve.

“Aren’t you in school?” Webster moved a little farther down his plot. I redoubled the motion of my fingers, afraid that at any moment he would leap on Amy and we’d both be goners.

Barker whined again, and then, bless him, gave voice to his signature noise. It wasn’t his danger bark, at least not yet. It was his let-me-go-I’ve-got-something-to-check-out bark, the one usually caused by squirrels or cats.

“Barker. Stop it. Do you see a squirrel? Do you want to chase a squirrel?” Amy sounded indulgent. “You didn’t like the leash all the way here, did you? Want to chase those squirrelies, don’t you?”

Barker agreed enthusiastically with the tone of the comments, if not with the content.

“Dogs are supposed to be on a leash in Palo Alto. It’s the law.” Webster sounded edgy. Amy’s footsteps went down the main path. The gate creaked.

“I’ll put him back on the leash after he has one dash. It’s not like he ever catches them.”

Letting Barker off the leash, except in places with lots of running space and no leash laws, was strictly forbidden. But I wasn’t going to give Amy a hard time over it. I was going to hug her, assuming we both got out of this with whole skins.

I redoubled my wiggling, ignoring the pain in my fingers. Suddenly Barker’s rough tongue was licking them. Tears welled up in my eyes.

“What are you eating? No, boy. Bad dog. Garbage.” Amy rattled the leash, but Barker kept licking.

“Get him out of my compost,” Webster growled, dropping the matey act.

“He’s just found something hanging out of your bin.” Amy’s voice came closer. “What in the world—wait a minute!”

Webster’s shovel struck against something nearby, hard enough to give out a twang and send a jolt through the bin. “What are you trying to do?” Amy, breathless and indignant, was retreating toward the parking lot, from the sound of her voice.

“Stop right where you are.”

“Is that—do you have a
gun?”
She was incredulous. Barker abandoned my fingers. I could hear his low growl, deep in his chest. It’s the only time he’s dangerous, when he lets out that growl.

“Stop or I’ll shoot you. And your damned dog.”

“What is going on?” Amy sounded more impatient than frightened. “Look, if you try to shoot me, a million people are going to come out of the library and find you.

“Library’s not open yet.” Webster was unruffled. “Now come back through the gate. Slowly. Don’t try anything.”

“I don’t know anything to try.” The gate creaked. “What are you going to do? What’s this about?”

“It’s about a parcel of meddling busybodies,” Webster muttered. Amy might not have heard him. Beside me, Barker’s growl went on and on. Maybe Webster thought he was safe because of the fence between him and the dog—the fence only a little higher than my picket fence at home.

“Don’t touch me, you creep. I’m pregnant!”

Webster laughed. “So? What’s that supposed to mean to me? You’re in my way. That’s all that matters.”

“Let go. Let go—that hurts!”

Barker loosed his most fearsome growl, a horrible slavering thing he usually saves for the mail carrier. The sound went right over the bin as he jumped. I could feel the thud of his landing—at fifty pounds, he’s solid.

“Stupid dog.” Webster’s voice was shaken.

“Don’t shoot him!
No!”
Amy screamed.

“Bitch. Call him off! Call him off!”

I strained against the bond of the jean jacket, and the knotted sleeves loosened and gave way. It was hard in the spongy mass to get purchase for my legs and straighten up. I got my shoulders against the lid of the bin and heaved up, knocking it off.

A frightening sight met me. Barker had fastened his jaws deeply into Webster’s forearm, rendering the gun he held in that hand useless. Webster was trying to raise his arm, shake Barker off, but a big dog isn’t easy to budge. He couldn’t turn the gun enough to shoot Barker. In his preoccupation, he’d let go of Amy. She was behind him, yanking his shovel out of the dirt.

Amy swung the shovel, missing Webster’s head and back, but landing a good clout on his elbow from behind—probably right on his funny bone. The gun flew out of his hand and landed in among his raspberry canes. If I hadn’t erupted out of the compost just then, she might have managed to take him out, and it would all have been over.

“Aunt Liz! My God!” Amy flung the shovel away—it landed in Tamiko’s garden—and ran to me. Barker was distracted, too. He still gripped Webster’s arm, but his ears were no longer flattened against his head, and his eyes rolled back toward me.

Webster shook his arm again, and this time Barker dropped off. He had broken the skin; blood seeped through the sleeve of Webster’s trendy barn jacket.

“Damn you all!” He looked around for the shovel, but it was out of sight among Tamiko’s fava beans. Barker lunged at him again, getting him in the thigh.

I held Amy’s gaze, unable to talk with the gag in my mouth, and jerked my head toward the library. She nodded and swung one leg over the chicken-wire fence.

Webster lashed out with his other foot at Barker, who yelped and skittered back. “Barker!” Amy swung back around.

Balked of his weapons, Webster spotted the wheelbarrow loaded with heavy bags of soil conditioner. He grabbed the handles, and with a spurt of maniacal strength, drove it in a rush straight at Amy.

Her mouth formed a disbelieving O, her eyes wide. The wheelbarrow rammed into her, mashing her against the chicken-wire fence.

Webster ran across Tamiko’s plot, through the gate and out through the trees toward the parking lot. Moments later, an engine roared to life and drove away.

I was frantic, unable to help Amy with my wrists still imprisoned behind me and my mouth stopped with Webster’s leather glove. Amy’s eyes lost their glazed look, though her face was very white. Slowly she pushed the wheelbarrow away, and then collapsed against the fence. Whining anxiously, Barker licked her face.

“Oh, Barker.” She put her arms around his neck and let him drag her toward the compost bin. When she was close enough, she managed to pull herself up the side of it.

“Aunt Liz.” Her fingers fumbled with the knot of bandanna, and finally freed me to spit out the noxious glove. “My God. Are you okay?”

“Are you?” I had a hard time forming the words—my mouth was dry and felt misshapen.

“Yeah.” She didn’t sound okay. She was working now at the wire that held my wrists together. “Your hands. My God.”

The bond loosened, and my arms fell to my sides with painful relief. I tried to raise them, to look at my hands, but I couldn’t make them work. At the ends of my arms were obscene-looking purple appendages.

“They’ll recover.” I looked around anxiously. “We’ve got to call Bruno right away.” I put one hand on the edge of the bin to climb out before I realized that wasn’t going to work. “Run and call him, use that pay phone. Wait, be careful, make sure Webster’s gone before you go.”

Amy didn’t move. She leaned against the bin, and then slowly slid down until she was sitting on the ground. “I can’t,” she whispered. “Something is wrong. You’ll have to go, Aunt Liz.”

I managed to sit on the edge of the bin next to the fence, swing my legs over, get down on the other side of the fence without falling. I have no clear recollection of how I managed to find a coin in my pocket and use the pay phone.

My fingers were still bloated when the ambulance arrived minutes later. By the time Bruno got there, as the EMTs were putting Amy into the ambulance, the tingling in my hands was intensifying into exquisite pain, a good sign, one of the EMTs told me.

“You get in there, too.” Bruno wouldn’t take no for an answer, and I didn’t want to leave Amy anyway. He put Barker in his car and followed us in the ambulance. I held her hand in one of my throbbing ones and watched her grow paler and paler.

At the hospital, an intern examined the lump on my head and my lacerated wrists with great interest, assuring me I’d live and be healed up in no time. A nurse sponged off my face and hands, getting an incredibly dirty basin of water in return. I noticed that people wrinkled up their noses when they first came within sniffing distance of my redolent atmosphere. Bruno and I had a large clear space around us in the waiting room while I told him what had happened and we waited to learn how Amy was.

“Thanks, by the way.” I smiled at him, glad it was Bruno who sat with me in my unlovely state, and not Drake.

“For what?” He was polite enough not to hold his nose while we talked. His laptop had received much information, and he’d made several calls on his cell phone, while we waited.

“For getting them to treat Amy without insisting on calling her parents. They’ll have to know about the attack, but maybe they won’t have to know about—the rest of it.”

“Do you not think she’ll tell them?”

“She might. But I sure wouldn’t in her place.” It was going to be bad enough to tell them about what she’d gone through in the garden.

He looked at me with great sympathy. “She will lose the baby, you know.”

“I guessed as much.” I didn’t know how she would take this abrupt ending to her dilemma, whether with relief or sadness. “As long as there’s no permanent damage.”