Still Waters (35 page)

“Jolynn seems perfectly capable of reading a clock,” he said quietly, his gaze catching Rich's and holding it. “You have any reason to lie to me, Rich?”

“No!” Cannon swore and tossed his cigarette down to grind it out with the toe of his wingtip. He paced around in a circle, wagging his head in disbelief. “Jeez, Dane, I can't even believe you're asking me this shit! So maybe I'm wrong about the time. Maybe I'm off by a few minutes. Big deal.”

Yeager snagged him by the arm and jerked him to a standstill, leaning into his face. “A man is dead, hotshot. That's a pretty big fucking deal where I come from.”

Rich yanked his arm free and stepped back, looking petulant. “Yeah, well, I didn't kill him.” He turned and looked Dane straight in the eye. “I didn't kill him.” His denial hung in the air with the smell of sawdust and cigarette smoke. He glanced at his watch again. “I have to go.”

Dane eased himself off the hood of the Thunderbird and stepped away. Boozer gave the car's right rear wheel an extra spray of pee, then wandered over to flop down at his master's feet.

“Everything about that guy smells like a horse's ass,” Yeager growled as they watched Rich Cannon drive away.

“He's hiding something,” Dane murmured, his gaze fixed on the retreating car, his mind sifting through theories he never would have wanted to associate with his town. “One thing is clear, partner. We've got to find that book.”

ELIZABETH HUNG UP THE PHONE, PRESSED HER FINGERTIPS
to her temples, and squeezed her eyes closed. The relentless pounding going on outside the
Clarion
office echoed inside her head until she wanted to scream. It had been going on for hours—the pounding outside
and
the headache. The judge's booth for the Horse and Buggy Days parade was being constructed right smack in front of the office, giving the judges a good view and ruining foot traffic into Elizabeth's business all in one fell swoop.

She dug into her bottom desk drawer in search of more aspirin, but came up with nothing but an empty Excedrin bottle and half a bag of M&Ms. The screech of a drill penetrated the plywood covering the broken front window and pierced her eardrums, drilling right into the core of her brain. She dropped the M&Ms on the desktop, plugged her ears with her thumbs, and clamped her fingers down on the top of her head to keep it from splitting open.

God was testing her. As He had that poor slob Job. She never had been able to figure out why Job hadn't gone stark raving mad and hacked his whole family to death with an ax. That was what she was fixing to do to the workmen outside—just as soon as the pain subsided enough for her to regain control of her motor skills.

She had gone to bed with the last of that bottle of scotch Dane said she drank too much of, and gotten up with this lovely pounding head. A condition that had not been improved by five calls from businessmen canceling their advertising in the
Clarion
—most notably Garth Shafer, who had expounded on his reasons for ten earsplitting minutes.

They were up shit creek, to put it mildly. Advertising was where newspapers—even little piss-ant papers like the
Clarion
—made their money. They couldn't afford to lose five advertisers. Especially when half of their customers hadn't paid their bills since man first landed on the moon. Shafer Motors had been their biggest, most reliable account. Now that money was gone and more was sure to follow if Shafer had his way.

“Life's a bitch and then you die,” Elizabeth muttered as the drill started again.

“Omigodyouwon'tbelieveit!” Jolynn squealed as she burst in through the back door.

She charged through the room, sneakers pounding on the old wood floor, not even slowing down until she grabbed the end of the counter and wheeled around to lean against it. Her cheeks were flushed, her bosom heaving beneath her Harley's Texaco shirt. Her eyes were bright as marbles, staring out from beneath a tangled shock of bangs.

“You won't believe it!” she repeated emphatically.

Elizabeth peered up at her, eyes barely slitted open behind the lenses of her Ray-Bans. “I'm at a point where I'll believe just about anything,” she said softly, careful not to jar her throbbing head with any undue jaw movements. “White mice cause cancer. Elvis is alive and pumping gas in North Dakota. Go ahead. You can't shock me. I'm fixing to go to work for a tabloid when I get run out of this town. Screw the truth.”

“Boyd Ellstrom is doing the wild thing with the Widow Jarvis.”

For one blessed moment, absolute silence reigned. Elizabeth shoved her sunglasses on top of her head and squinted at Jolynn as she rose slowly from her chair. Excitement stirred inside her, filling her with a giddy kind of euphoria.

“You liar,” she said, fighting a grin.

Jolynn shifted anxiously from foot to foot, like a child in urgent need of a potty chair. “It's true. I stopped by to talk to Helen. You know—get her feelings about the aftermath of Jarrold's death, etcetera, etcetera, see if she knows anything about the book.” She snatched a breath, pushed her hair out of her eyes, and pressed on. “So she comes to the door in her bathrobe and she's acting all weird and trying to get rid of me. Says she doesn't know anything about any book and tells me Doc Truman has advised bed rest for her nerves. She gives me the bum's rush, shoos me out onto the porch, and shuts the door. Well, I'm thinking this is strange, even for Helen, and I decide to pull a Columbo—you know, ‘Excuse me, ma'am, just one more question.' I open the front door and guess who's standing in the hallway in his BVDs?”

“Christ in a miniskirt!” Elizabeth breathed.

“Close, but much uglier.”

“Oh, my soul!” Elizabeth pressed a hand across her mouth, turned around in a circle, then plunked a hip down on her desk as vertigo threatened.

Jolynn scooted around the end of the counter and snatched up the crumpled bag of M&Ms. “I want hazardous-duty pay for this,” she said, chuckling as she poured out a handful of candy. “If God had wanted women to see Boyd Ellstrom naked, He would have created him in the image of Mel Gibson.”

“I wonder how long that's been going on,” Elizabeth mused. She pulled off her sunglasses and nibbled on the end of one temple as the wheels of possibility turned in her head. The unbalanced Helen with the ambitious Deputy Ellstrom. Ellstrom, who hadn't wanted the BCA called in on the murder.

Jo popped three green M&Ms into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “I don't know, but it certainly adds an interesting twist to the story, doesn't it? The plot thickens.”

“That it does, my friend,” Elizabeth murmured, remembering the predatory look in Ellstrom's eye as he had backed her into a corner in this very room. “That it does.”

The drill started in again, and she winced as if the thing had struck a nerve.

“I take it the hangover is hanging on,” Jo said.

Elizabeth slid her a look. “You have a real grasp for the obvious, sugar.”

“Just call me Scoop Nielsen.” She tossed the empty candy wrapper in the trash and moved toward the back door. “Come on, boss, I'll buy you a Coke. We'll go someplace where we can talk without the Black and Decker serenade.”

They went to the back entrance of the Coffee Cup, where an assortment of lawn chairs sat in haphazard arrangement on an open porch that served as the employees' lounge during good weather and a sheltered spot for the trash Dumpster in the winter. Elizabeth lowered herself into a web chair, slipped off the camel-and-white spectator pumps she'd had made in Milan, and propped her stocking feet on the low porch rail, grateful for the sanctuary. She was in no mood to face another accusing glare from another native. News of the vandalism at Shafer Motors had run like wildfire through town, and, while Dane might not have had enough to charge Trace with, the citizens of Still Creek had tried him and found him guilty—and her along with him.

Jolynn emerged from the door and held it open while Phyllis stepped outside, a tray of tall iced Cokes in her gnarled hands. The three of them settled back and sat in silence for a moment, savoring their drinks and the quiet. The scenery left a little something to be desired—a weedy, graveled alley that faced the back of Buzz Knutson's welding shop and lawn implement dealership. But someone had hung a trailing pink geranium from one of the porch posts, giving the spot some color and a fresh scent, and the day itself was pretty, if not the surroundings. The sky was a soft, cloudless blue, the breeze warm with just a hint of the humidity Elizabeth had been told would come in July.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, pretending she was a thousand miles away, on a secluded beach on Paradise Island, with nothing to do but enjoy the feel of a man's strong hands as they rubbed suntan lotion into her back. Dane's hands.

Cursing her wayward hormones, she snapped her eyes open and shot a sideways look at her companions. Jolynn was off in her own dreamworld. Phyllis, though, was watching her like a hawk, watery brown eyes wide, ruby lips pressed into a thin line.

“What?” Elizabeth asked, sitting ahead and smoothing her long Ralph Lauren safari skirt. She lifted her hand to her cheek. “Have I got ink on me?”

“I'm just wondering if you've got the mettle to stick it out here,” Phyllis said, then sucked on her straw. “It's not a bad town, you know. You're just here at the wrong time.”

Elizabeth arched a brow. “Murder brings out the worst in people?”

“Adversity makes them close ranks. People are afraid. They band together with their own and leave outsiders to fend for themselves. I ought to know, I was an outsider thirty years ago.”

Elizabeth sighed. Not only was she not “closing ranks” with the natives of Still Creek, she was holding up a spotlight to the town's flaws and warts and secrets. That was her job. How would they ever accept her if she insisted on doing it well?

“They had to accept you,” she said dryly. “You give them food. All I give them is bad news and grist for the gossip mill.”

“Things will settle down once Dane and Yeager nail whoever killed Jarvis,” Jolynn said. Still overheated from the excitement of catching Helen Jarvis with Boyd Ellstrom, she raised her glass and brushed it across her forehead, wondering what would become of her fledgling romance with Yeager once the case was solved. As regional agent, Rochester was his base of operations. Rochester wasn't so far away—if you had a car that ran on all cylinders. . . .

“That might happen a little faster if we could get our hands on Jarrold's little book,” Elizabeth said. “If we could convince Dane the book exists.”

“Oh, he's convinced,” Jolynn said, leaning around Phyllis to look at her friend. “Bret told me they were going to take another look at the interior of the Lincoln today in case it got wedged down in between the seats or something. I think you getting attacked convinced him.”

Phyllis pricked her ears and went on point like a bird dog scenting a quail. “Bret?”

“Agent Yeager,” Jolynn said primly, a hint of color staining her cheeks.

“Well, I'm glad to be of service,” Elizabeth said irritably, too caught up in her own problems to catch Jo's reaction “He might have told me he decided to believe me,” she grumbled. “That man is the most stone-headed, stubborn, rude—”

“Sounds like someone I know,” Jo said dryly.

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. “I am
not
rude.”

“Pardon me.”

Phyllis watched her carefully, reading all the nuances of her expression as skillfully as any psychiatrist. She hadn't spent thirty years observing folks without learning a thing or three about human behavior.

“Dane's a good sheriff,” she said. “And a good man. Tricia turned him sour when she divorced him, but he's still got a good heart waiting for the right woman.”

Elizabeth sniffed, dodging the older woman's sharp gaze. “Don't look at me, honey. I've sworn off men. Besides, there's only one thing Dane Jantzen wants from me, and it is not my hand in matrimony.” She took a sip of her Coke and changed the subject. “So, what do you know about the Widow Jarvis and Deputy Dope?”

“There hasn't been anything on the grapevine,” Phyllis said. She squared her bony shoulders and lifted her tiny chin to an angle of smugness. “But I've suspected something for a while now. There's something odd about that trio—Jarrold, Helen, Boyd.”

“Gruesome, you mean,” Jo said, shuddering.

Phyllis ignored her, too caught up in her role as consultant to bother with jokes. “I got the feeling Jarrold had some kind of sway over Boyd.”

Jolynn made a face. “Jeez, you don't mean you think they were
all
involved, do you? God, Phyllis, that's disgusting.”

“It might not have been that. It might have had to do with business, I don't know. But I wouldn't rule it out just because it paints an ugly picture. Small towns have their share of perversion and depravity too. We just don't like to think about it.”

Preconceived ideas. Elizabeth set her glass aside, watching the condensation run in rivulets down the side to puddle on the red tin Dr Pepper tray. No one wanted to see the underbelly. Small towns were supposed to be neat and clean and free of sin. Deputies were good guys. Businessmen were upstanding. Divorced women who drove flashy red cars were trouble on the hoof. People saw what they wanted to, clung to their ideals of small town life, fought against anything that disputed their perceptions. She couldn't say that she blamed them. The more she found out about the truth, the less she wanted to deal with it.

NINETEEN

T
HE TRUTH. CARNEY FOX HAD DANCED AROUND THE
edges of it most of his life. From the time he was a little kid he had cultivated the fine art of lying. Like telling people his father had been killed in the famous wreck of the
Edmund Fitzgerald
on Lake Superior when the truth was his father was his mother's uncle, a piss-mean son of a bitch who worked on the docks in Duluth and screwed anything that didn't move fast enough to get away from him. Lying had become as natural to Carney as breathing. He had never been able to figure out why everyone didn't do it. A lie could save your ass every time if you were good at telling it.

It struck him as being wildly funny now that it was the truth that was going to have him rolling in dough.

“I know the truth,” he said, his voice pitched to the level of conspiracy. He almost couldn't hear himself above the happy-hour noise in the Red Rooster, even though he was tucked back in the dark, narrow hall by the johns. In the pool room behind him, Gene Harris shot the break for a game of nine-ball and a chorus of shouts went up as balls skittered off in all directions. Garth Brooks was blaring again from the jukebox.
Shameless
. Half a dozen women just off work from the furniture factory joined in with voices like chain saws. Carney stuck a finger in his free ear and pressed his mouth against the receiver. “I saw you there. In Jarvis's car.”

He had made this call once before. Just to get his new friend thinking about it, sweating out the possibilities, considering what the going rate for silence might be these days. With this call he would arrange the delivery of the first installment of his fortune. Shit, he was going to be a master at blackmail too, he thought, snickering, smiling against the grubby receiver of the pay phone. Someone flushed a toilet on the other side of the wall and he waited for the noise to subside.

“I think five thousand is a nice wad of cash, don't you?”

TRACE WHEELED HIS BIKE INTO THE PARKING LOT OF THE
Red Rooster and parked it next to the Pepsi machine. He dug a pair of quarters out of the pocket of his jeans and bought himself a Mountain Dew, which he slammed down in half a dozen gulps, Adam's apple bobbing. The soda cleared the dust from his throat and hit his stomach with an explosion of bubbles that came bursting back up in the form of an enormous belch.

No one was around to hear it. Happy hour was in its final raucous minutes. Everyone was in the bar sopping up the last of the cheap beer. Trace wished he could join them. A man liked to toss back a brewski or two after a long hard day in the fields—or so he was told.

He had lived up to his promise to Sheriff Jantzen and worked like a dog, first laboring under the sun on the back of a hay wagon, stacking bales until the muscles in his arms and shoulders were hard as rock, then standing up in the hay mow, where the air was stifling and dusty, stacking the bales as fast as the elevator ran them up.

He'd never worked so hard in his life. His hands ached from lugging countless sixty-pound bales by the twine that bound them. Truth to tell, his whole body ached as if someone had beat him from head to toe with the narrow edge of a yardstick. By the end of the day his clothes had been drenched in sweat, as wet as if he'd stood out in a downpour. Chaff had covered him, sticking to every inch of exposed skin. The stuff was embedded in his hair and in his ears and fine bits of it were still working out of his eyes.

He had gathered from the grumblings of his coworkers that haying was no one's favorite job. The heat, the dirt, the backbreaking endlessness of it got to everyone except the lucky dog who got to drive the tractor—a job reserved for females or men with seniority. The latter had been the case at the Jantzen place. Pete Carlson had supervised the work. His two sons and Trace had provided the muscle.

Pretty good guys, the Carlson boys. Ryan and Keith. Seventeen and fifteen respectively. They had shown Trace the ropes. They had teased him about being a city kid, but it had been a good-natured kind of teasing. By the end of the day they had all been kidding around like old buddies. Ryan had even invited him to come to the VFW baseball game that night. The team was pretty well set, he'd said, but they could always use some extra guys for practice.

That was where Trace was headed. Never mind that he was so exhausted he could have lay down and slept for a week. He had his mind set on playing baseball—and seeing Amy.

Amy. His stomach did a double clutch at the thought of her. Man, she was pretty. She had brought them all lemonade that afternoon. Ryan and Keith had eyes for her too—what man wouldn't?—but she had let Trace know, just by the sparkle in her eyes and the way she crinkled her nose when she smiled at him, that he was the guy for her. He shook his head at the wonder of it. Quick as he could snap his fingers, his whole life seemed to be turning around.

He crushed the pop can and tossed it into the trash barrel ten feet away, pretending he was Larry Bird sinking a game winner at the buzzer. The Rooster's side door swung open and Carney Fox ambled out with a can of Old Mil in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

“Hey, kid, where ya been all day?”

Trace cursed his luck. He hadn't planned on running into Carney, had hoped to avoid him for the rest of his life actually. He leaned back against the Pepsi machine and tucked his fingertips in the pockets of his worn jeans.

“Working,” he said.

Carney sucked on his beer and belched derisively. “Working?” he sneered. “Working for who? I didn't think anyone in this shit town would hire you.”

“Yeah, no thanks to you,” Trace grumbled.

“Hey, you were swinging that pipe same as I was.”

“It was your idea.”

Carney took a step back, as if Trace's change of heart was a personal affront. He cocked his pointy chin to a truculent angle. “Jesus, what are you now—some pussy won't stand up for himself? I thought you had balls. Maybe I was wrong.”

Trace just glared at him.

Carney took a long drag on his cigarette and exhaled twin streams of exhaust through his nostrils. “So, who ya workin' for?”

The answer stuck hard in Trace's throat. He didn't have to be a genius to know Carney wasn't going to think much of him working for the sheriff. Tough shit. A man had the right to work where he wanted, where he could.

“I was putting up hay at Jantzen's.”

“Shit!” Carney jumped back, his sneakers scraping on the gravel. He tossed his cigarette aside. “The sheriff? What are you—stupid? The sheriff! Christ!”

He wagged his head in disbelief, then jerked it up and took an aggressive step toward Trace, his dark eyes gleaming with a feral brightness. “You didn't tell him nothing, did you?” he asked quietly, menacingly, leaning up into Trace's face.

Trace grimaced. “Jesus, what'd you eat for supper—shit sandwiches?”

Carney's expression hardened, tightening the skin over his bony face. He poked Trace in the sternum with a grubby forefinger. “Did you tell him something?”

“No.”

“Then why'd he hire you? He thinks you're a jerkoff juvenile delinquent.”

A part of Trace wanted to refute the statement. Dane Jantzen thought he was decent, had called him a man, had given him a chance. But he held his tongue. You couldn't win an argument with a guy like Carney. Better to just keep your mouth shut.

He sidled away from the pop machine, away from Carney and his rancid breath, and moved toward his bike. “I gotta go.”

“Where?” Carney challenged. “Off to suck up to the sheriff some more?” His expression twisted from snottiness to a leer that curled his lip and showed off his crooked teeth. “Or is it his daughter you want to suck?”

Trace stopped in his tracks, protective instincts stirring to life inside him.

Carney cackled a malicious little laugh. “Oh, yeah, you got your pecker primed for her, don't you, Trace? I'll bet she's got some sweet hot pussy. She give you a taste yet?”

“Back off, Carney,” Trace said softly, turning slowly around. His hands curled into fists at his sides and his temper rose inside him like steam in a pressure cooker.

Carney laughed again, flashing his crooked teeth. “Come on, Trace, tell me. She let you get in her panties yet?”

“It's none of your business,” Trace snarled.

Swaggering a little closer, Carney tipped his head back and snickered again. “Afraid to fuck her, virgin?”

The taunt struck a nerve, jolting Trace like a bolt of lightning. How could he ever have thought this creep was his friend? Why would he ever have wanted to?

“Maybe you need a real man to show you how,” Carney sneered. “I wouldn't mind taking a poke at her. She's just my type—”

The rest of his monologue rushed out of him in a grunt as Trace barreled into him, head down, and hit him square in the chest with his shoulder. Carney sailed backward, landing on his ass and skidding back another five feet on the gravel. His beer spewed out of the can he still hung on to, white foam flowing down over his hand like lava from a miniature volcano. He hurled it aside and scrambled to his feet, his eyes narrowing, mouth twisting into a grotesque grimace.

“You little shit!” he hissed, spittle spraying.

He came at Trace with both fists flying, catching him in the belly with one and the nose with the other. Trace's glasses went flying. He doubled over as blood spurted from both nostrils in a hot red stream. Through the haze of pain he saw Carney's knee coming up and he grabbed it and shoved, sending Carney sprawling backward again.

All the pent-up rage came rolling out like floodwaters from a burst dam. Trace didn't try to stem the flow. He'd been holding it back so long, he was sick of it. He let it all pour out, all the anger, all the hurt, all the fury he'd been storing up for years. And he focused it all on Carney, letting Carney take the fall for everyone who had ever hurt him or let him down—his father, Brock, Shafer, everyone.

He fell on Carney, swinging, and landed two hard blows before Carney reversed their positions. They rolled across the parking lot, grunting and swearing, each straining for the upper hand. Trace was bigger and stronger, but Carney had grown up scrapping to survive. The patrons of the Rooster streamed out of the bar to watch and cheer. Trace didn't see them, didn't hear them. All he was aware of was the blood roaring in his ears and the acid burn of anger in his veins. He fought blindly, not really seeing Carney Fox's face even when he rolled on top of him again and started swinging at his head. He didn't see the police car skid to a stop on the lot either, didn't hear the doors slam or Deputy Ellstrom yell at him.

Ellstrom grabbed him by the back of his neck and hauled him to his feet with a series of rough jerks. Carney scuttled out of harm's way and got to his feet, jabbing a bloody finger in Trace's direction.

“You're fucking crazy, man!” His lip was split, his nose was bleeding. Beneath a shock of greasy red hair that had fallen across his forehead his left eye was already beginning to puff up and darken. Half the buttons had been ripped off the front of his thin brown plaid shirt, and the tails hung out, making him look even skinnier and more weasellike than ever.

Trace had fared no better. The front of his white T-shirt was spattered with the blood still flowing from his nose. An inch-long cut angled across his cheekbone. His knuckles were scraped and bleeding. The left knee of his jeans had ripped wide open, the tear framing a kneecap that was bloody and dotted with bits of gravel. He figured he looked as though he'd just gotten the shit kicked out of him. Swell. He couldn't go to the baseball game like this. He couldn't let Amy see him this way. Damn Carney. All that bastard had given him was trouble from the word go. Trace couldn't believe he'd ever been desperate enough to want him as a friend.

Ellstrom gave him a rough shake. “I said, what the hell started this?”

The two combatants exchanged glances. Carney sucked in a mouthful of blood, turned his head, and spat. Trace tried to stem the flow of blood from his nose with his forearm.

“Nothing,” he mumbled. He bent to retrieve his glasses—a half-formed blob on the ground by his left foot—and put them on as he stood, cursing mentally at the cracked lens that fractured the view from his right eye. His mother would have a fit when she saw this. Damn Carney.

“You two dickheads want to kick the shit out of each other, take it out of town,” Ellstrom growled. He stepped between them like a referee, his right hand resting on the butt of his nightstick. “I've got a goddamn town full of tourists. I don't need trash like the two of you rolling around in the street. I ought to run you both in and let you rot in jail for a week.”

“I didn't do nothing!” Carney protested, jabbing his finger at Trace like a bony exclamation mark. “He started it. He fucking tried to kill me!”

Trace didn't say anything. Carney would have given up his own mother to keep his skinny ass out of jail. Jerk.

Ellstrom looked at the Stuart kid, his eyes narrowed. The kid was nothing but trouble—him and his mother too. The bitch. She had wheedled that statement out of him, got his dick in a wringer for him, then walked away as though she didn't owe him a thing. Then her partner had caught him with his pants down—literally. Things were not going his way—Jantzen was on his case, he hadn't found that damned notebook, his bowels were in knots—and, the way he saw it, the trouble all came back around to Elizabeth Stuart. He reached out and gave her kid a rough shove that knocked him off balance.

“Go on, get out of here. If I catch you screwing up again, you're dead meat. That goes for you too,” he said, shooting a glare at Carney Fox as he dug a Gas-X tablet out of his pocket and popped it into his mouth.

Carney lifted his bloody nose a notch, instantly smug over the prospect of escaping a night in jail. “Yeah, I'll go,” he said, a sly gleam in his eye as he smiled at Ellstrom. “I got more
profitable
things to do tonight.”

He chuckled a little as Ellstrom stared at him, then turned and swaggered away. Screw Trace Stuart. He had bigger fish to fry.