Roll Over and Play Dead (18 page)

“I think you just did,” I said weakly. I dragged the stool over and sat down. “Why do you think I know where the…frogs are?”

“They have been stolen.”

“And you think I’m involved?”

“I
know
Caron is involved, Mrs. Malloy. I’ve taught sophomore biology for eleven years, and never before has this situation arisen. I’ve had girls who were squeamish, but not one of them had the audacity to not only defy the policy but to also steal school property. I teach biology, not politics. Caron has instigated a rebellion among—”

“Wait a minute,” I said before she worked herself into an incomprehensible dither. “The frogs that were scheduled for dissection have disappeared, and you’re accusing my daughter of theft. Is that right?”

“She was the one who stood up in the middle of—”

“Do you have any proof?”

The ensuing silence was somewhat satisfying. I had no idea if Caron had followed in her mother’s felonious footsteps; she was more than capable of it, but she deserved a trial before she was imprisoned for racine robbery.

“Do you have any proof?” I repeated.

Mrs. Horne sniffed. “Well, Caron and some of her friends stayed after seventh period to make some sort of mouse banner in the art room. The art teacher, a flighty woman if ever I met one, told them to lock the door when they were finished, then simply left them there and went to meet her boyfriend.” She sniffed more loudly at such irresponsibility. “I like to remove the specimens the day before lab so they’ll have time to thaw nicely. I went down to the storage room. The five cartons, each containing one dozen specimens, were not where I’d placed them several weeks ago.” The final sniff barely missed being an exclamation mark.

“Have there been any undersize drumsticks on the school lunch menu?” I know, I know, but it really had been, as Caron would put it, One of Those Days.

“May I please speak to Caron?”

“She’s not here, and to be candid, I don’t know where she is at the moment. I promise that as soon as I find her, I will determine if she and her friends took the cartons of frogs from the storage room in order to…” I searched my mind for the proper phrase to complete the sentence, but there didn’t seem to be one. “Just why would they take them, Mrs. Horne? If they need to be thawed, they’ll hardly be in any condition to be set free in the nearest pond.” I struggled to keep a straight face—or at least a serious tone of voice—as I envisioned Caron and Inez kneeling on the bank, reverently watching frozen frogs float away in a bizarre version of a Viking funerary ceremony.

“I fail to appreciate your attitude. Tomorrow I will face five classes of sophomore biology students, all prepared to broaden their knowledge of basic biological systems by taking scalpel in hand and following my directions. What shall I say to them, Mrs. Malloy?”

I bit my lip, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Froggie went acourtin’?” I suggested, humming the next few bars.

She hung up, which was fine with me.

One of the plagues of Egypt was frogs, and said plague had been casteth upon me. Would Caron, Inez, and even the notoriously treacherous Rhonda Maguire, go so far as to steal five dozen frozen frogs in the name of animal rights? More disturbingly, where would they hide them? I resisted the urge to peek in my office, because if they were there, ignorance was vastly superior to bliss.

I decided I’d better go home and check the bathtub, then call Inez’s mother and suggest she do the same. I opened the cash register drawer and was gaping at the empty compartments as the bell jangled above the door.

“Did you get your flat tires fixed?” Peter asked.

I continued to gape. There certainly hadn’t been a fortune in the drawer, but I always kept some money for change and put the excess in a drawer in the office. “I don’t understand this.”

“I don’t understand why you went to NewCo this morning, were chased through the woods, and found all four of your tires slashed,” Peter said mildly.

“That’s not what I’m talking about. All the money is missing from the cash register.”

“The down payment on the BMW? I’ll put out an APB. Roadblocks at every intersection. Alert the Swiss banks not to take any deposits until we get this cleared up.” He flashed his teeth, perhaps because he noticed I was flashing my eyes. “Okay, how much is missing and when did you notice?”

“They stole my purse, but they didn’t take my keys.”

“Did they take your mind? What are we talking about?”

“Yellow Hair and his friend stole my purse when they vandalized the car, but the keys were in the ignition. In fact, I had the store key in my hand when I discovered the light was on and the door unlocked.”

“If the door was unlocked, anyone could have come in from the street and emptied the cash register,” he pointed out so reasonably that I wanted to throttle him.

“But who unlocked the door? Caron has the only spare.”

Peter gave me a smile that oozed pity for my obvious dementia. “There you have it. Caron came by after school and unlocked the store. When she got bored, she wandered off without remembering to lock it.”

“She didn’t come by after school. She was”—I switched to a dramatic whisper—“stealing frogs.”

“Stealing what?”

“Frogs. You know, these green speckled things that sit on lily pads and barrumph. Not these frogs, though; they’re frozen. All sixty of them.” I wrinkled my nose. “They were taken several hours ago, so they ought to be melting by now.”

“Do you think,” he said in a strangled voice that bore an eerie resemblance to a croak, “that you might elaborate?”

I did so, but the image of the frog cubes melting and Mrs. Horne’s outrage and Caron’s sacrifice to be politically correct was all too much for me. A few chuckles intruded into my attempted sober exposition, and shortly thereafter I was howling helplessly. I collapsed into Peter’s arms, and we were both making cracks about frog-sicles and hop-along casseroles and such nonsense when the bell jangled.

I wiped the tears off my cheeks and looked around Peter’s chest. My hippie gave me a twinkly smile.

“Hi,” I said weakly.

“Don’t let me interrupt anything,” he said. “Now that you’re here, I’ll just get my backpack and be on my way.”

Peter shot a copish look at him, and out of the corner of his mouth, said, “Do you think he took the money?”

“I don’t know,” I said out of the corner of my mouth.

The hippie ambled past us, went into the office, and emerged with a bulging denim backpack. With another twinkly smile, he hung it over his shoulder and started for the door.

“Wait,” I said. “Why was your backpack in the office?”

“Your daughter and that spooky friend of hers asked me to keep an eye on the store until you got back. I saw a chick I used to know, so I went outside to talk to her for a minute about scoring some…thing.” He wiggled his fingers at us and once again attempted to leave.

I caught him by one arm, and Peter caught him by the other. We politely escorted him back to the counter. “Where is Caron now?” I asked.

“Like, wow, I dunno.”

“Like, take a guess,” Peter said.

Squirming, he tugged on his beard and finally said, “Well, I was browsing in the SF, and the two of them were over here, acting real nervous and whispering about something. Then the telephone rang, and after a long argument, Caron answered it in a funny voice, like she was pretending to be someone else. I dunno what was said on the other end, but she started chirping like a cricket and getting all excited.”

I glanced at Peter, then squeezed the hippie’s arm and said, “Did you hear the word
frog
mentioned?”

“No, but she said something about dogs.” He pulled his arm free and gave me a wounded look. “So she and the other girl took all the money out of the cash register, asked me to keep an eye on things, and went out by the curb. After about ten minutes, this truck pulled up and they got in. It was maybe an hour ago, and that’s the last I saw of them. There was another call after that, but I didn’t answer it on account of seeing the chick on the street. If you like don’t mind, I’ve got an appointment with her.”

“What color was the truck?” Peter said as he released the hippie’s arm to put his hand on my shoulder.

“It was real splattered with mud,” the hippie said, easing away from us, “but I’d say it was white or light gray.” He bolted for the door, the backpack bouncing wildly.

I went to my office and sat down behind the desk. Peter sat down across from me, his expression carefully composed despite the tightness of his jaw and the deepened lines around his eyes.

Determined to remain equally composed, I moistened my lips and calmly said, “It’s not all that difficult to figure out what happened, is it? Yellow Hair found something in my purse that indicated I owned the bookstore. He called and talked to Caron, who was pretending to be me in case Mrs. Horne was on the line. Yellow Hair demanded a ransom payoff for the dogs. Caron and Inez took whatever cash they found in the register and went tripping out to the curb.” Somewhat less calmly, I ran my fingers through my hair, gulped back a sob, and said, “I think it’s very important that we find Caron and Inez before something happens to them. In that Yellow Hair and Baby Bear were at NewCo this morning, it seems a logical place to start.”

“I’d better alert the sheriff,” Peter said, reaching for the telephone.

“No!” I grabbed his wrist. “Jan Gallager told me she thought he might be involved. We can’t tip him off that we’re going there. If he’s in this with those goons, he might tell them to take the girls to Guttler or someplace else.”

Peter pried my fingers from around his wrist, then came around the desk and put both hands on my shoulders. “They’ll be okay, Claire,” he said, bending down to kiss my damp forehead. “Caron and Inez aren’t exactly mindless Barbie dolls. Those guys won’t know what they’ve gotten themselves into, or how to get out of it.”

“It’s all my fault, Peter,” I said, lapsing and then collapsing into misery. “I lectured Caron over and over again about her irresponsibility that resulted in Nick and Nora’s disappearance. But it wasn’t her doing. Daryl let the dogs out of the pen and good ol’ Arnie picked them up. Caron may have ignored her duty to feed them, but it wouldn’t have mattered either way. All my accusations made her feel guilty, and now she’s in that truck with that awful man and I don’t know—”

“It happens,” he said firmly and in time to avert what was promising to be a display of hysterics that would have rivaled Caron’s best efforts. He propelled me to my feet and out of the office. Ignoring my gurgle of guilt as we passed the cash register, he got me to his car and in the passenger’s seat without further degeneration of my sensibilities.

“Do you have a gun?” I asked timidly as we pulled onto Thurber Street.

“I’m a cop.”

“Then why don’t you turn on the siren and lights?”

“I’m not a dumb cop.”

I sank back in the seat and stared blankly through the windshield. “This is all peculiar,” I commented, biting back a yelp as he ran a yellow light. “Jan’s brother is the most likely suspect, but I don’t—”

“Who?” Peter said, yanking the wheel so sharply my shoulder hit the door handle.

“Daryl Defoe is Jan Gallager’s brother. He went AWOL twenty years ago and is still rather looney about cages. What we don’t know is if he had the opportunity to lock Churls in the pen with the pit bulls, break into the cash box, steal the ledger, and appear with the other commandos when Deputy Amos and I arrived in the backyard.”

Peter stopped for a red light, and when he looked at me, his teeth were positively blinding. “Goodness gracious, you’re a regular encyclopedia of information. Is there any way you might be induced to share any of it?”

“If you or Sheriff Dorfer had been the least bit concerned about the stolen animals, you would have found all this out for yourselves,” I said tartly. The mention of the animals reminded me of the present situation, however, and my irritation faded. “I know, people are more important than animals and homicides are more important than pet thefts, but as the dominant species, we have an obligation to treat the lesser species with compassion.”

“Shall I give you a puppy for your birthday?”

“No. I am more than capable of treating them with compassion from a civilized distance. I am talking about a moral obligation—not a daily one.” I rolled down the window, took a deep breath, and began to tell him everything I knew.

We reached the turnoff as I finished my accounting of everything I knew. As it was a thirty-minute drive, I was rather impressed with the extent of my investigations, and was mentally patting myself on the back as we started down the dirt road to NewCo.

“It’s a long way out here,” Peter remarked as our headlights flashed on the dusty brush and deep ditches along the road.

“I’ve made the trip so many times I can do it with my eyes crossed,” I said, sighing. “What will we do if Caron and Inez aren’t there?”

“We’ll have to notify the sheriff. Jan Gallager may think he’s been gambling on pit bull fights, or even taking money not to follow up on stolen animals, but that’s not cold, hard evidence. He did send Deputy Amos with you the first time you and the others came to search for the pets.”

“He was under a certain amount of pressure,” I admitted. I scowled at the road, wishing we could make better time, then realized something was nibbling at my mind. “It is a long way out here, isn’t it?”

“I’m going as fast as I dare. There are no shoulders, and the ditch is—”

“I wasn’t criticizing your driving,” I said, still trying to piece together my thoughts. “There’s one question I never asked the commandos the night they staged their raid on NewCo.”

“You missed a question? Good heavens, you must be worried sick about the basset hounds. Now that you’ve become so concerned about animals, I think I will get you that puppy. How about an English sheepdog? Then, on cold winter nights when I’m not available, he can curl up on your feet and keep you cozy while you read all those mysteries set on the windswept moors. Of course, when I am available, I’ll curl up on your feet—if you promise to keep your toenails clipped.”

Although I knew his banter was meant to divert me, I was formulating an acerbic response when a motorcycle headlight appeared down the road. “Who could that be?”

“I have no idea,” Peter said, his eyes narrowed, “but I hope he doesn’t slide onto the ditch when we pass each other.”

As the light approached, I realized it was not a motorcycle, but a cockeye. That made three I’d seen in the last twenty-four hours. Unless it made one I’d seen three times. I grabbed Peter’s arm and said, “That’s Yellow Hair’s truck. He’s been following me since last night. That’s why he showed up this morning before the dust had settled on the road. Do something, Peter—make him stop! We’ve got to find Caron and Inez.”

“Are you sure that’s who it is?”

“No, I’m not sure, damn it! But we can’t risk allowing him to take the girls back to Guttler or some other sordid place. You’ve got to make him stop!”

Peter gave me a hooded look, but obediently swung the wheel and braked, effectively blocking the road. We waited silently as the light came closer and illuminated our car. In that I was on the nearer side, I was aware that if it didn’t stop, I would have a bumper in my lap and broken glass between my teeth. Not too long ago I’d had broken glass embedded elsewhere in my body, and I did not look forward to a rerun.

At the last moment, the truck stopped, its one headlight blinding me; I froze as if I were a possum caught in the glare. A horn blared noisily, the sound loud and coarse in the darkness that surrounded us like a wool blanket. I let out a breath and meekly said, “You mentioned a gun?”

“A thirty-eight special, to be precise.” He leaned across me and took an intimidating weapon from the glove compartment. “I hope I’m not about to give some elderly farmer’s wife a heart attack,” he muttered as he opened his car door. “Stay here.”

Squinting, I watched him move around the front of the car and cut across the swath of light to the side of the truck. I rolled down my window and strained to hear what was being said, but the truck’s engine was rumbling and all I could hear was a low exchange of male voices. When that became intolerable (approximately five seconds later), I got out of the car and went to Peter’s side.

Yellow Hair smirked at me, and behind him Baby Bear blinked solemnly.

“I told you to wait in the car,” Peter said.

“I did,” I retorted. “These are the men, Lieutenant Rosen. They not only assaulted me, they vandalized my car and kidnapped two girls. Kidnapping is a federal offense, isn’t it?”

“She’s been smoking loco weed,” Yellow Hair said, winking at Peter as if to establish a macho bond between them. “She might be a decent-looking lady if she wasn’t all scratched up, but I’d sure keep her away from the loco weed.” Baby Bear guffawed, but stopped when he caught my glower.

“Please explain what you’re doing on this road,” Peter said.

“Last I heard it wasn’t a federal offense to drive down a road. But my buddy here and me went to visit a friend who lives down this way.”

“Who?” I snapped.

“Fellow by the name of Newton Churls,” he continued in the infuriating drawl. He paused to scratch a pimple on his chin. “Came by once already today, but he wasn’t home. Thought we saw a burglar, but we weren’t sure and neither one of us saw any reason to break our necks running around in the woods. Churls wasn’t home this evening, either.”

Peter’s face was stony. “Newton Churls was murdered Friday night.”

“Well, I guess that’s why he wasn’t home today,” Yellow Hair said. He poked his companion. “Do you think that’s why ol’ Newt wasn’t home, Bo?”

“I think that explains it, Joe Fred,” Bo answered with facetious seriousness. “Bad timing on our part, wouldn’t you say?”

“That’s what I’d say. How about you?”

The redneck version of Abbott and Costello did not amuse me. “Where are the two girls you picked up at the Book Depot in Farberville?” I demanded, interrupting their and-whatta-you-think-bubba nonsense.

“Now, just exactly where would Farberville be?” Yellow Hair said. “You heard of this place called Farberville, Bo?”

“Shoot them,” I said to Peter. “I’ll testify that they threatened to attack us, and you were forced to shoot them to save our lives. Go ahead.”

“We’ll get to that in a minute,” he said grimly. He asked the two for identification, and they reluctantly produced their wallets. Baby Bear (a.k.a. Bo) resided on a route in Guttler; Yellow Hair (a.k.a. Joe Fred) lived in another town, but I doubted it was an exclusive suburb of a city renowned for its cultural and artistic opportunities.

“We’ve got to find the girls,” I muttered at Peter as he handed the wallets back to the men.

“Wish we had us some girls,” Yellow Hair said, resuming his smirk. “Ol’ Bo and me get tired of each other after a time. You got any pretty young friends, ma’am? We’d treat ’em real nice.”

“And not cut their vocal cords?” I said.

Bo leaned forward and gave me an insulted look. “Now why would you go and say a thing like that? Joe Fred and me ain’t ever been in trouble with the law. He has a nice little farm, and I work for my cousin at a body shop. Why, we go to the same church Sundays and say our prayers every night.”

“Ain’t it the truth?” Yellow Hair contributed. “Why, we’re just a couple of good ol’ choirboys.”

I considered snatching Peter’s gun from his hand and permanently erasing the smirk from the man’s face. Peter looked indecisively at them, then took my arm and drew me away from the truck.

“I don’t know if I can detain them, much less charge them,” he told me in a low voice. “We’re out of my jurisdiction, and the only thing we’ve got is your identification of them as the two men who assaulted you—in another state.”

“Then don’t detain them,” I growled. “Shoot them.” I pulled my arm free. “They know where Caron and Inez are. The girls are fifteen years old, and they’re probably scared out of their minds—if they haven’t been knocked unconscious or drugged.” My voice rose an octave. “Or worse.”

Peter looked over my shoulder at the truck. “Doesn’t one of the sheriff’s deputies live along here? He can make the arrest, and once they’re in the county jail in Farberville, we can see what the department can do.”

“Deputy Amos lives half a mile farther,” I said, “but we can’t wait while these kidnappers are taken to the jail and questioned by that fat jerk of a sheriff. For all we know, these men may be acting under his orders.”

“One step at a time,” Peter said. He put his fingers on my cheek for a moment, then went back to the truck, where the two were passing a jar of clear liquid back and forth. “Park your vehicle as close to the ditch as you can. I’m placing you under arrest and transporting you to a deputy’s house until a squad car comes from Farberville.”

“Under arrest for what?” Yellow Hair said, wiping his mouth on his wrist and giving Peter a surly look.

“I’ll think of something. Now, move it.”

Once they were in the backseat of Peter’s car, they both refused to talk and I was too angry to do anything except glower. We drove the short way to Deputy Amos’s house. The truck and the muddy sports car were parked in the front yard, and light shone from several windows. Peter told me to go to the door, and I did so nervously, unsure what we’d do if Amos wasn’t there.

He opened the door. He was dressed in jeans and a faded blue work shirt, and his feet were bare. He had a beer in one hand and a half-eaten sandwich in the other. His eyes bulged like tiny balloons as he stared through the screen at me. “Mrs. Malloy? What are you—”

“It’s a bit complicated. I’m with Lieutenant Rosen of the Farberville CID, and we need your assistance. That, and your handcuffs.”

“Yeah, I’ll just—put on my shoes,” he said. As he went through the living room, he put down the beer and said something to Bethanna, who was so engrossed in a television show that she didn’t look up.

Peter got out of the car. Deputy Amos came outside, tucking in his shirt and mumbling apologies for not being in his uniform. Peter met him at the front of the car to explain the situation; I could tell from Deputy Amos’s expression that he was awed by Peter but exceedingly leery about taking the two men in custody.

“I’d better call Sheriff Dorfer,” the deputy said, shaking his head.

Peter nodded as he took the handcuffs from Amos’s limp hand. “Good idea. In the meantime, let’s cuff these clowns to your truck. Mrs. Malloy and I are going to NewCo to search for the missing girls.” Before Amos could offer an argument (and clearly he wanted to), Peter ordered Yellow Hair and Baby Bear to get out of his car, hustled them to the side of the truck, slipped the cuffs through the door handle, and then clicked the metal bracelets around the men’s wrists.

It impressed all of us, including the recipients of his attention. Bethanna watched from the doorway, and Deputy Amos was still gaping as Peter and I drove out of the yard.

I leaned forward in the seat, my hands gripping the dashboard. “What if they’re not here?”

Peter shrugged. “Then we’ll find them someplace else.” He parked in front of the gate and cut off the engine. The driveway was black, and beyond it the faint outline of the house was dimly lit by the utility pole beside it. Peter took a flashlight from what obviously was a well-equipped glove compartment. As we started up the driveway, hanging on each other like children on Halloween, I heard a noise that caused me to stumble on a rudely protruding root.

“That’s a dog barking,” I said excitedly.

“Don’t fall and break your neck,” Peter said, tightening his grip on me. “This is a rural area, and I imagine most of the people out here have several dogs. Maybe it’s one of Deputy Amos’s; his property is closer than it seems from the road.”

I stumbled again, although for a different reason. I was not yet ready to offer it for a critique, though, so I nodded vaguely and willed myself to maintain a prudent pace. The three cages were in the front yard where I’d left them earlier in the day. We went past them and around the corner of the house. I eyed the metal structure, but another bark came from behind the house, and I hurried in that direction.

Peter caught up with me and flashed his light at the pen that, in the previous week, had contained three vicious pit bulls, Newton Churls’s bloodied corpse, and most recently, Daryl Defoe’s prone body. We both stopped abruptly. I was speechless, a condition that rarely befalls me. Peter’s hand shook so hard the beam of light danced on the metal fencing.

Caron and Inez sat on the concrete floor, each of them being licked by a fat basset hound with a floppy pink tongue and a stubby, unrestrained tail. An enormous black fur ball with glittering yellow eyes clung to the fence above their heads, hissing at a golden retriever that pranced about like a Ping-Pong ball and let out an occasional bark that was either an invitation to play or a menu order.

It was quite a spectacle.

“Caron?” I said faintly. “Inez?”

Caron shielded her eyes and looked at us. “Mother, stop behaving like a dying trout and Do Something.”

Inez shoved ineffectually at Nick (or Nora), straightened her glasses, and said, “This is very unpleasant, Mrs. Malloy.”

“Are you okay?”

“Other than being drowned in slobber, we’re dandy,” Caron said. “Will you please do something before we go under for the third time?”

Peter nudged me into motion, and we approached the pen. Astra sent a hiss at us, provoking Patton into further frenzy of undisciplined barks. “Why are you sitting in there?” he asked.

Caron rolled her eyes. “Because we were tired of standing in here.” One of the bassets floundered into her lap and tried to lick her extended lower lip. “Ugh! Stop it, you beast! Mother, Do Something!”

I went to the door of the pen and without surprise, noted the padlock firmly set in place. “Did those men take the key?”

Inez let out a shriek as dog spittle splattered her cheek.

“Yes, they did. Is there any way…?”

Peter tugged at the padlock, then looked at me and shook his head. “I’d try to shoot it off, but I can’t predict where the bullet might ricochet and the girls might be hurt.”

Nick and Nora had deserted the girls and were snuffling at me through the fence. I knelt to pat their noses, actually pleased to be doing so. Patton flung himself at me, and I gave him a wary smile. “We know where the men are. If they still have the key, I’ll get it and bring it back. If they opted to throw it into the woods, I suppose all I can do is use Deputy Amos’s telephone and try to find a locksmith willing to make a house call at this hour.”