Stone Cold Crazy (Lil & Boris #4) (Lil and Boris Mysteries) (7 page)

Just how I’d go about solving it without the physical evidence was also my problem.

Aunt Marge and Roger and Bobbi and Raj listened patiently to all that over Sunday supper. To which Punk had yet to earn an invitation. It wasn’t that they didn’t like Punk. It’s that they weren’t sure how much I liked Punk.

Bobbi carefully carried her spoon to her mouth. She had a towel spread over her belly. “I cannot wait to have this baby,” she declared, “and I don’t mean just to lose forty pounds in a hurry.”

Raj reached over and patted her belly fondly. His grin was smug, insufferable, and too darn joyful to resent. “We’ll meet soon enough.”

Bobbi gave him the look that meant he’d sing a different tune if he was the one with the puffy ankles, sore breasts, and backache. Aunt Marge quickly intervened, passing out little cheddar-quinoa biscuits. “Now try these and tell me what you think. Lil, dear, what do you think you
can
do?”

I nipped off a corner of the biscuit. It was interesting. “What cops did before forensic science. Talk to people. And keep talking.”

Roger eyed me shrewdly. “Can you do that legally?”

A yowl interrupted us. I went into the parlor expecting to find Boris torturing Aunt Marge’s venerable Russian Blue, Natasha by name, neurotic by nature. Instead, I found Boris atop the cat condo, surrounded by Roger’s juvenile trio of catlings. One was a fetching little calico, whose eyes were pure demon. The two boys, both gray tabbies with white markings, flanked her and looked remarkably like the muscle in some old noir film with Humphrey Bogart.

Boris yowled again. His ears flattened, and he looked at me beseechingly. Not for rescue. For permission.

“Roger?” I called.

“Let him at ‘em,” he called back. “They’re getting too big for their fur.”

I walked to Boris, rubbed his forehead with mine, and whispered, “Have fun, sweetie.”

I swear, Boris grinned.

Back at the table, I explained, “I can’t investigate the pipe bombing, that’s true. But I can still investigate a clear case of trespassing. Criminal trespass.”

Out in the parlor, I heard Boris’s war whoop. It was the feline version of a Rebel Yell, with a good dose of screaming hell.

“How so?” asked Bobbi. “I didn’t hear nothing about trespassers.”

“Whoever set the bomb had to trespass to do it. Besides, we found cigarette butts behind a tree just off the back yard, and the Weeds don’t smoke.”

In the parlor, the howl became a snarl, abruptly muffled, as if Boris had a mouthful of something.

“So he’s a smoker?”

“Or she,” I admonished Aunt Marge.

One of the gray tabbies scrabbled madly through the dining room and into the kitchen, ears flat, tail fluffed.

“It’s an interesting tactic,” Roger remarked.

“It’s what I’ve got.”

The second gray tabby shot through, trailing wisps of fur. Out in the parlor there rose a dreadful shriek of rage, too high-pitched to be Boris. Or Natasha.

Aunt Marge smiled brightly. “You know I will help any way I can.”

“Me too,” Bobbi said eagerly. We’ve been best friends since elementary school, and as the best stylist in a four-county area, she hears a lot. She repeats it only to me, and she never embellishes. Between her and Aunt Marge, I have a network of information at my fingertips that is far more reliable than anything I could get off Google. Normally, I’d use them without hesitation, but I knew it’d take till Monday at the latest for the feds to come knocking on their doors. The less involved they were in my shenanigans, the better for them.

Short version: Plausible deniability.

I told them all that over the yowls, hisses, snarls, and screeches in the parlor. By the sound of things, Natasha was getting in a few shots of her own. Can’t blame her. Boris has terrorized her from Day One.

“Are you sure?” asked Bobbi, pouting a little. “I could use something to take my mind off things.”

“Positive. Sorry.”

She sighed.

Natasha sped out in a silvery gray blur.

I heard Boris making muffled chirps under his breath, a sort of happy singsong. Oh boy.

Raj cleared his throat of quinoa biscuit. “What do you expect to find out?”

“Dunno. But I’m hoping the feds won’t find it first.”

“Lil,” tsked Aunt Marge. “That’s pride.”

“Yep.”

“Lil,” she reproved. One syllable, and I might as well be ten years old again. I nearly shrunk up right there. And me with a gun at my ankle.

Across the table from me, Roger suddenly choked into his napkin and pointed. As one, we turned.

Boris entered the dining room. Carrying in his mouth, by the scruff of her charming neck, the demon-eyed calico. It took work, since she was about half his size and maybe a little more, but he did it. With a grunt, he dropped her at my feet, and when she moved, he slammed her down with a heavy paw.

Ignoring the laughter, I bent down and kissed the top of his head. “Good boy,” I crooned. “Now let her go, sweetie.”

Boris snorted. Clearly, he did not feel Little Missie had learned her lesson. He hunched over her, bopping her whenever she tried to move.

Aunt Marge fretted, “Aren’t you worried those federal agents will take it badly? That you’d be interfering?”

I shrugged. “Can’t bust me for looking into a trespassing complaint. Especially since it’s not only the Weeds who got trespassed.” I grinned. “He had to walk in from Turner Gap, and that means he went through Reynolds land. No federal jurisdiction applies.”

The little calico mewed. Boris growled. I reached down and stroked his fur, and after a considerable pause, he let her go. She slunk away.

“You’re going to get into trouble,” Raj predicted.

As if that has ever stopped me.

7.

I
’d sounded confident to my nearest and dearest, but the truth was, I had no idea what I was going to do. I just knew I wasn’t going to let the feds win. Not on my turf.

You think cats are territorial, you try law enforcement.

Not to mention, as Punk immediately did Monday morning, “On what evidence? They even took the cigarette butts!”

“I know, okay? Think it through, Punk. You too, Tom,” I added sharply in Tom’s direction, freezing him halfway to the door. “Think. Between the three of us, how many men do we know in this county who like to talk about defense of their liberties over a beer? Hell, over lemonade? And they usually talk about doing it with their home arsenals, right? And who’re they defending against when they talk up their apocalypse?” I waited for the little light bulbs to pop on in their heads, or above them. “When it’s not us, it’s the federal government.”

“Aw, Lil,” Tom temporized, less genially than he would’ve six months ago. Kim’s descent into felony had hit him harder than it had me, and I was the one who wound up in a car trunk. “It’s just talk.”

“Till it ain’t,” I snapped, and started to pace. There’s not a lot of room to do that in the office. The cells are each maybe ten by ten, the open office area is about ten by twenty. With three desks in it. I could pace the length of the office in six steps without stretching.

“You’re looking at an ex-fed, remember? Oklahoma City. Ruby Ridge. Waco. I know the mentality. It’s in your head that these people you’re trying to do right by are out for your blood. Or think they are, which amounts to the same thing. Now how long do you think it’s gonna be before some dumbass rabble-rousin’ boozer gets himself into a snit and decides it’s time to replay Fort Sumter? If we’re lucky?”

That registered. We get dumbass rabble-rousers just about every Saturday night as it is.

I made a tight turn at Boris’s condo, stalked past the fold-out couch. “Next thing we know, we get tactical assault teams in here. They won’t do it lightly, not with all the media watching,” I went on, “but they’ll do it if blood gets spilled. Especially with that damn flyer around making everyone in this county look like Timothy McVeigh.” I spun on Punk. “How many of those things were stuffed in mailboxes?”

“Everyone on Spottswood got one or thinks they remember throwing it out,” he reported, eyes a little shocked. I’m not usually much on speeches. “Most of the side streets, too, and out at the Elk Creek apartments.”

“Anywhere else in the county?”

Tom hesitated. I gave him points for courage when he asked, “Why not ask Miz Turner?”

“It’ll take till maybe lunch for the feds to know she’s the one to talk to. I’d as soon not put her on the spot between me and them. So, anywhere else in the county get those flyers, or are we special?”

Tom grumbled, “I’ll make a few calls to a few people who won’t yap about it.”

I nodded approval. “All right, that’ll do for a start. You two’re in a better position to know who might look to pipe bomb someone over their last name.” I didn’t need to say it was their sex that made them more likely to know. It’s amazing how few men, even drunk ones, will brag to a woman about their stance on defending the nation from its elected officials, at least on short acquaintance. “I’ll see what I can dig up about the flyers.”

Punk stirred. “How? I mean, without stepping on the feds’ toes.”

I smiled mysteriously. “I’ve got my ways.”

***^***

My way was to take the photocopy I’d made of the flyer up to Charlottesville that afternoon. The drive gave Boris a nice outing, and me some much-needed time alone. What with my ex, my cousin, my not-boyfriend and the bombing, I seriously craved a quiet hour with my own thoughts.

I’d not quite figured out what to do next about Punk, Jack or Steve when I pulled into the driveway of a brick house not too far from the university. I’d called ahead, though it was a safe bet I’d get the help I wanted even if I showed up unannounced.

Sure enough, Jerry Klemm was sitting in a lawn chair by his front door, in the shade of a beach umbrella planted in the marigolds. He’d thinned down since I’d last seen him, and his hair had turned white, but he still had the same old laser-beam gaze. He crowed when he saw Boris. “Delightful! I do love Southern eccentricity.”

“Hey, Jerry,” I said, and we shook hands delicately. His arthritis made his knuckles look like pebbles. “Thanks for letting me come on short notice.”

“I’m grateful for the break in my routine. The dreadful consequence of retirement is that one risks becoming as stale and, may I say, potted, as one’s plants.” He smiled and led us around the back of the house, to a small garden gazebo. Someone had left a pitcher of ice water, two glasses, and a plate of vegetables and dip under a plastic cover. Jerry sat gingerly in a cushioned wicker chair, and I perched on a padded bench with Boris lolling at my side, swatting at an occasional bug.

Once Jerry had done the hospitality bit, I told him what I needed, and showed him the flyer. “What do the mistakes tell you?”

It’s not something English teachers tell kids in high school‌—‌more’s the pity‌—‌but analysis of a text can be a forensic art in its own right. Mistakes and lack of them can indicate level of education, socioeconomic background, even whether or not English is the first or second or third language. Mistakes can also reveal regional tendencies, though in our over-wired world, those are getting rarer. In fact, the FBI and police departments will pay people for their expertise in the field.

That was how I knew Jerry. He’d consulted for the Bureau on one case I’d been part of, and with the local police on another when I’d been there.

“Officially, of course, I can’t say a word,” Jerry remarked, studying the paper first over and then through his reading glasses. “Unofficially, I’d make a few guesses. This is the only exemplar?”

I nibbled celery. “So far.”

Jerry hummed. Most people hum a monotone or maybe a few notes. Jerry hummed Bach. His hand wielded an invisible pen. After ten minutes, he said, “I can offer some guidelines. The first is, don’t believe someone who tells you this was written in haste. In our computerized world, we expect software to edit for us, and so even an educated person can miss glaring errors. Laziness, in other words, is common. In this case, note that there should be a period after the sentence ‘Senator Weed has ruined our country and the futur of our kids’. The periods appear appropriately after the other declarations. The misspelling of future, however, could go either way. It may simply show someone who relies upon software, or could show haste, or simple ignorance. You can infer more from the use of ‘kids’ for ‘children’ and ‘here’ for the verb ‘hear’.”

I scribbled in my notepad. “What do we infer?”

“Informal tone in ‘kids’, and ‘here’ is an error no one with effective literacy at the high school level should make. This is not to say it isn’t made, and often, by those with doctorates, but in combination with the other errors, it is indicative of someone who very probably did not see his name on the honor roll. The use of ‘got’ for ‘have’ supports that.”

I wrote frantically to keep up. “Can you infer anything else?”

“Sex. Probably male. Women, in my experience, would say ‘children’, not ‘kids’. It presents as more maternal, you see. Evocative of apple pie values. I doubt you need me to tell you this is probably someone with a grudge, based on some event real or imagined, and is going to be very probably white. That emphasis on ‘Paid for by Americans’ is telling. Though,” Jerry continued smoothly between tiny sips of water, “I doubt this was paid for at all. The use of plurals is consistent, but it is a cheap way to imply greater numbers than exist.”

My hand cramped. I shook it out. Jerry waited patiently for me to work out the kink before I asked, “Would this person be a physical threat?”

“That I can’t tell you. I am not a psychiatrist. If I were, I might suggest anger management classes.” He smiled, and sagged. “Ah, it does me good to use the old thinking muscles.”

“In other words,” I said as I reviewed my notes, “look for a redneck with a grudge against Uncle Sam. That doesn’t narrow it down much, Jerry.”

“A very personal grudge,” Jerry corrected me gently. “All those capital letters in the modern world indicate anger. Emphasis. Passion. This is not someone who has stewed quietly in a back room. He will have spoken of his views, quite likely at some length, and at significant volume.” He waved a thin hand at the paper after he laid it on the tiny table. “The artwork is juvenile, the use of symbols obvious. Cheap fear-mongering. This person is appealing not to our higher intellect but to our hindbrains. Us versus an Other. The enemy as evil, as shown by the swastika. The call to arms, quite literally. Puerile propaganda, but propaganda nonetheless. He does not seek to persuade, but to terrify.”