Roll Over and Play Dead (13 page)

“We’ve got to call an ambulance,” she said as she grabbed the receiver.

“Ambulance?” Culworthy barked.

She frantically punched buttons. “It’s Daryl. He’s been shot!”

I dashed out the back door. The door to the pit bull pen was ajar, and Daryl Defoe had collapsed in the center of the concrete floor. Blood seeped from a wound in his chest, but there was not nearly as much as there had been when we’d found Newton Churls’s savaged body.

I dropped to my knees beside Daryl. His eyes flickered, and he let out an agonized groan. “Get me out of here,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t take it. Please get me out of here.”

“Who shot you, Daryl?”

His eyes closed and his head flopped to one side. I looked up as Vidalia and Colonel Culworthy approached the pen. “He’s alive,” I said.

“An ambulance is coming,” Vidalia said. “Is there anything we can do for him?”

Jan ran into the pen with a blanket and knelt beside Daryl to cover him. “They said they’d be here as quickly as possible,” she said, stroking his forehead. “It’s so damn far. I hope he can hang on.”

“What happened out here?” I asked.

She rocked back and gave me a bewildered shrug. “I don’t know. I came out to pick up a file and for some reason glanced out the kitchen window. He was lying here, just like this. I ran out to the pen, ascertained that he was alive, and was coming inside to call the ambulance when you and…” she gestured at Vidalia and the colonel, who were hanging on the fence and her every word with equal intensity, “those two suddenly appeared. In that the house had been vacant one minute earlier, it gave me quite a start.”

“What about the gun?” I said softly.

She looked even more bewildered. “It was lying in the grass. I didn’t stop to think; I just grabbed it.”

Vidalia had been studying Jan. She met my eyes and nodded, but before I could decide what to do, I heard a car come up the driveway on the opposite side of the house.

“The ambulance!” Jan scrambled to her feet. “I’d better show them the way.”

“It’s too soon for the ambulance,” I said. I caught her arm and stopped her. “Let’s wait and see who it is, Jan. If you didn’t shoot Daryl, someone else did.”

“If I didn’t…?” she said weakly.

“Smoking gun, you know,” Culworthy said through the fence.

Jan jerked her arm free and stared at me. “But why would I shoot Daryl?”

Deputy Amos came around the corner of the house, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and limping slightly. He halted as he caught sight of our group and the motionless form beneath the blanket. “Oh, my God,” he gurgled.

“We’ve called for an ambulance,” I said. “He’s been shot, but he’s not dead.”

Ignoring Vidalia’s chipper greeting, Deputy Amos came inside the pen and squatted down. “This is the guy who was here with you before,” he said in a shocked voice. “What happened? Who shot him?”

“We don’t know,” I said, hoping we weren’t going to add to the body count on the concrete floor.

He gulped several times, but when he stood up, he seemed to have remembered at least some of his training. “I…I’d better call the sheriff. Don’t touch anything. Maybe you ought to move away from the pen or something.”

Jan was bent over Daryl, crooning to him and lightly stroking his face, but Vidalia and Culworthy obediently moved a few yards back. I followed Amos into the kitchen and waited while he called the sheriff’s department and gave a garbled explanation of the situation. The mention of my name elicited a series of squawks from the receiver, which was less than comforting.

“They’ll be here as fast as they can,” he told me after he’d hung up. “What is going on, Mrs. Malloy? Every time you show up, someone gets…hurt.” Sweat glistened on his face like a light frost, and he was gulping unsteadily.

I mentally revised my estimate of his age to less than twenty. “I don’t know what happened,” I said carefully, “but I’m not responsible. Vidalia, Colonel Culworthy, and I arrived a very few minutes ago. Jan Gallager’s car was parked out front. We went inside to find her, and she came into the kitchen and announced that Daryl had been shot.”

We both turned to stare at the gun on the table. Deputy Amos started to pick it up, then yanked his hand back as if it had hissed at him. “How’d it get here?”

“Jan was carrying it,” I admitted.

“Did you hear a shot?” he asked. I shook my head. “Does she have a motive to shoot the victim?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly, declining to go into detail. Vidalia had confirmed that Jan had visited Daryl’s apartment late at night, and her youthfulness in the photograph hinted that their relationship had been established a long time ago. I wanted to talk to her, but I wanted to do so privately, and this was not the time.

A siren whined in the distance. I told Deputy Amos I would go out front to direct the medics and escaped before he could ask further questions, such as why I was there when I’d been ordered not to set foot near the property.

The sheriff asked, of course. Because I could not rely on Culworthy’s discretion concerning the photograph, I grudgingly related the entire story, stressing that I’d gone to Miss Emily’s house on the purest of motives and had entered Daryl’s apartment merely to determine that he wasn’t incapacitated by illness.

The interrogation took place in the now-familiar confines of the sheriff’s office. Jan had been driven away from NewCo in an official car, and she’d looked very small and wan through the window. Vidalia, Culworthy, and I had been ordered to drive to the sheriff’s office; the presence of a tobacco-chewing deputy in the backseat had put a damper on conversation. Once there, we’d been deposited in separate rooms to ponder our sins in solitude.

Sheriff Dorfer was making unhappy noises as he lit the umpteenth cigar. I decided it would not be wise to comment on the lack of amenities or the uncomfortable chair seat, and waited politely until he completed the ritual.

“Arnie didn’t have anything to do with the shooting,” I pointed out. “He’s in a cell in this building. The three of us have each other as alibis, and it’s difficult to imagine Jan shooting her boyfriend. She was deeply upset.”

“Mizz Malloy,” he said, “you’re something, aren’t you?”

“I certainly am, and I’m delighted that you’ve finally noticed. What I don’t understand is how Daryl fits into this,” I continued. “He was eager to join the group and insisted on involving himself even though he hadn’t lost a pet. I wonder what he was doing at NewCo?” I paused to visualize the scene. I’d parked next to Jan’s car, and Churls’s Lincoln was where it had been earlier. The truck with the cages was still there. Arnie’s monstrosity was missing; I assumed it had been impounded by the sheriff. “Or how he got there,” I added, frowning. “He doesn’t have a car, and it’s a long way from Farberville. He didn’t ride with Jan; he was already there when she arrived.”

Sheriff Dorfer was regarding me without expression. His eyes were flickering, however, and his hand seemed to tremble as he took the cigar from his mouth and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “So what’s your theory?” he said in an ominously quiet voice. “I feel real sure you’ve got one, Mizz Malloy.”

“Sarcasm does not become you.” I crossed my legs and tried to make myself comfortable on the hard seat. “Well, somehow it goes back to the stolen pets. Arnie admitted he picked up four hefty animals and took them to NewCo Friday evening. Someone broke the cash box. Churls ended up locked in the pen and was being mauled when I arrived. The animals vanished, as did Arnie. Where are the four animals?”

“I’m sure those folks feel real bad about their pets, and in fact, Miss Lattis and Colonel Culworthy made it more than clear. But I don’t have the manpower to launch a full-scale investigation into the theft of a pair of basset hounds, a retriever, and a cat. I’ve got one murderer downstairs, and a perfectly good attempted murderer in a detention room talking to her lawyer.”

“But she doesn’t have a motive.”

The sheriff ran his hand across his gray hair. “I don’t give a damn, Mizz Malloy. It looks like they went out there together, got into an argument, and she ended it with a bullet. Then she realized what she’d done, panicked, and ran into the house to call the ambulance. It happens all the time, lovers or married folks attacking each other and then regretting it.”

“Where did she find the weapon? If they went there together, they must have been on amiable terms.”

“Maybe it belongs to Defoe and he carries it in his pocket. Some of those Vietnam vets have been known to act a might odd.”

I conceded that one, especially since Daryl had been known to act more than a might odd. “Who searched Churls’s house?” I asked. “And why? What cash was there had been taken, possibly by Arnie. Churls didn’t look like the type to have a Rolex stashed under his mattress or diamond cuff links in a drawer.”

“The Gallager woman claimed she went out there to find some damn-fool file. Right now she’s denying she trashed the house looking for it, but it doesn’t matter. She and Defoe were the only two people at the scene, and her fingerprints are on the weapon.”

We argued for a while longer, then the sheriff repeated all his tedious threats and told me to get out of his sight and stay out of it in the future. I sailed out of his office and down the corridor, wishing there was a way I could speak to Jan. Vidalia and Culworthy sat on the plastic couch in the entryway; the former was twinkling merrily and the latter grumbling to himself.

“I’m beginning to feel at home here,” Vidalia said as we went out to the parking lot. “That nice receptionist offered us coffee and showed me pictures of her sister’s baby.”

“Damn foolishness,” muttered Culworthy.

“The baby was adorable.”

“Not what I meant.” He opened the car door for her, assuming correctly that I could handle my own. “The sheriff said to get another dog. Said after a week I wouldn’t know the difference. The man’s a fascist.”

“He certainly is,” Vidalia said tartly.

I wasn’t paying much attention to the two, who tended to remind me of Caron and Inez on a bad day—or a good day, for that matter. Caron. “What time is it?” I yelped.

Culworthy consulted his watch, then squinted at the sky to confirm his information. I was about to leap across the seat at him when he said, “Twelve hundred hours. Noon.”

“I had an appointment at the high school at eleven,” I said.

“No excuse for tardiness,” Culworthy said. “We don’t tolerate that sort of thing in the service.”

“When I was in school, they gave us pink slips,” Vidalia contributed from the backseat.

I rested my forehead on the steering wheel, gazing bleakly at my bloodstained knees. Everything was unraveling at an alarming rate, I thought. Miss Emily’s dogs were nowhere to be found. Arnie was in jail for murder, and in some obscure way, I felt responsible for him. Jan would soon be charged with attempted murder. My daughter faced expulsion, and missing the conference was not helping the situation. And unless I climbed in the clothes dryer and remained there (on permanently depressed), I would have to face Peter, who would have heard the latest tidbit on the cop vine.

It was only noon (a.k.a. twelve hundred hours). I had the remainder of the day to have a car wreck, start a fire in the Book Depot, learn I’d been cut out of some unknown relative’s will, or receive a letter from the IRS.

Vidalia patted my shoulder. “There, there, I’m quite certain they’ll give you a pink slip. After all, you have an excuse. You were detained by the authorities.”

I reluctantly raised my head and saw a deputy walk past the car with a man clad in an orange jumpsuit, rubber sandals, and handcuffs. The two went down an exterior flight of stairs on their way, I guessed, to the jail in the basement.

Vidalia and Culworthy debated the validity of my excuse as I drove them home. A sheriff’s car was parked in front of Miss Emily’s house, and a deputy was headed for Daryl’s apartment. I dropped the two off at the curb, refused Vidalia’s offer of a tuna sandwich and a nice cup of tea, and drove to my apartment as quickly as I dared, although speeding was such a minor misdemeanor that it hardly would have made my rap sheet.

Thirty minutes later I was dressed in a stern blue suit and sensible heels. My hair was held back in a semblance of a bun, and my reading glasses were planted squarely on the bridge of my nose. In lieu of a briefcase, a large purse hung from my well-padded shoulder. I found a notebook in Caron’s room. I practiced a few pinched smiles in the mirror, made a final adjustment to my panty hose, and drove back to the parking lot adjoining the sheriff’s headquarters.

I went down the concrete steps into a small reception room. The two deputies in the office were protected by glass, and neither deigned to acknowledge my grand entrance. I sniffed once or twice to get into the role, then rapped on the glass with a well-educated knuckle.

One of the deputies opened a small window. “Yeah?”

“I am Ms. Malloy of the regional office of the ACLU,” I said briskly. “I need to see Arnold Riggles. There is a possibility of the violation of his constitutional rights.”

The deputy studied me while I did my best to look like a taloned legal eagle. He then conferred with his associate, who gave me the same appraisal, and after a few minutes activated a buzzer and gestured at me to go through a door. I followed him down a hallway lined with metal doors, each with a grill. I looked around curiously, never having been in a jail before and having reasonably decent expectations of being locked up in this particular one in the near future. The ambiance was not of repressed violence but of futility; too many small-time criminals had gazed blankly through the grills, wishing they’d paid their child support or bought drugs from a legitimate dealer.

The deputy unlocked the last door and held it open for me. “Holler when you’re ready to go,” he said. “Visitor, Arnie.”

I entered the small room, trying not to wince as the door banged closed behind me. The furnishings were basic, the walls cold and damp, the ceiling oppressive. The occupant, on the other hand, was rather cheerful, considering his situation. Effusive, one might say. Others might say drunk.

“Senator, Senator, how ya doin’?” Arnie said, struggling to lift himself off the narrow cot. “I been thinking about you. Thought you was goin’ send a pizza?”

I let the purse strap slide off my shoulder. “How’s it going, Arnie? Are they treating you decently?”