Stone Cold Crazy (Lil & Boris #4) (Lil and Boris Mysteries) (8 page)

I stowed my notepad and pen. “What kind of job?”

“One that requires mere functional literacy. Do not assume blue collar, however. Low-level white collar is also possible.” His smile faded. “And now, I must ask you to leave. I do not want to be rude, but I am very tired.” His eyes had lost their heat. “Chemotherapy, you know. It does terrible things to the body in the name of preserving it.”

I hadn’t known. “Is it…”

“Oh, it is terminal.
Life
is terminal. But I can expect many good years ahead, once we have routed the tumor in my liver.” He put out a hand to Boris, who for once responded with a polite sniff. “Striking eyes.”

“Thank you, Jerry. This means a lot to me.”

Jerry’s smile resurrected itself. “Thank you, Sheriff Eller. You have made me feel useful again, for a while.”

I drove back to Crazy in a somber mood. Talk about a perspective check. Here I was worrying myself into a tizzy over men, and there was Jerry, all that sick and doing me a favor without a single question of payment.

There are days I really wonder if anything Aunt Marge taught me stuck at all.

8.

T
here were a couple of pick-ups with logos on the doors at Grenville when I headed out Piedmont the next day. Domestic call first thing in the morning out at Elk Creek Apartments. Like DUIs, they’re a fairly regular feature of cop life in Crazy.

I could tell which apartment had the dispute by the screaming. Boris lashed his tail eagerly. He loves arresting people. It’s his idea of fun.

I didn’t have to knock on the door. It was open. Things flew out. Clothes. Shoes. I nearly got clipped by a bedside lamp that shattered on the hood of someone’s car after sailing over the railing and into the parking lot. Boris watched the trajectory with interest.

I banged on the door jamb. “Sheriff’s department! Hold your fire!”

The rain of stuff stopped. So did the screaming, after someone got in a nasty, muttered, “You got the cops called on us!”

I knew that voice. “Eddie Brady, you get your ass out here right now!”

Eddie slunk out, mean-eyed as only a drunk with a hangover and no booze can be. “You always blame me.”

I let that one slide. “Miss? You want to come out here, too.”

The woman came out, meaner-eyed than Eddie, clutching a fluffy too-short robe around her. “He’s throwin’ me out, and I did
too
pay my share of the rent, not my fault he drunk it!”

I stood bemused as Boris opened his mouth in disgust at the liquor sweat coming off both of them. It wasn’t hard to believe I was listening to someone rant against Eddie, but that someone had voluntarily co-habitated with him was a bit of a shock. I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend. Normally, that sort of information made the rounds fast, usually when his ex-wife Paula hollered about it at the top of her lungs. “And your name, miss?”

“Leeza.”

I had no idea how to spell that and opted for phonetics. “Last name?”

“Tompkins.”

I jotted that down too. “Did you pay your share of the rent in check made out to the landlord or to Eddie?”

She shot Eddie a glare that ought to have slaughtered him on the spot. “To him, and he don’t got to throw me out, I’m
going
. Soon as I get pants on, I’m going! And he can fuck himself!”

I nailed on a smile. “Do I need to put anyone in handcuffs?”

“No,” said Eddie quickly. He’d been keeping a careful eye on Boris. He has a certain respect for my cat’s eighteen claws.

“Okay then. Eddie, you go take a walk. Leeza, pack it up and go before he gets back.”

She thrust out a belligerent chin. “How do I know he’ll stay gone a while?”

I grinned nastily. “Because I’ll drop him off at Spottswood Park.”

Eddie opened his mouth. He looked at Boris. He shut his mouth.

Bradys run to stupid, it’s true, but not
that
stupid.

After I dropped off Eddie, I rolled into the office. “Anything new?”

Punk twitched a shoulder. “Some woman named Leeza just called, said she owes us one.”

“For what?” I asked as I settled in to fill out the report properly. I have an incurable tic about proper paperwork. Aunt Marge’s influence, though I let people blame my short stint in the FBI.

“She said once you got Eddie outta there, she found her credit card she thought she lost in Eddie’s wallet.”

Neither of us commented on Leeza hunting through Eddie’s wallet. That kind of thing happens to Eddie a lot.

Punk bent his head over a budget form that the town requires every month. “Nice to be thanked.”

A perfect opening. “Thank you.”

He looked up, startled. “Huh?”

“For…” I waved vaguely. “Y’know.”

He smiled briefly and went back to the form. I exhaled. Okay, all body parts still working. No actual physical pain. Some mild terror, but that was to be expected. Vulnerability is not something I enjoy, and relationships mean vulnerability.

I stroked Boris, who had perched in my out basket. Cats can be a pain in the ass, but they’re still easier than men.

***^***

My big challenge was to figure out how to ask questions when you have feds asking them. Even Aunt Marge, who is not precisely an isolationist, can bridle when outsiders show up and start “nosing around”, to use Maury’s phrase. We start sniffing, we’d be likely to get our noses bopped, either on principle or because we’d be seen as being in cahoots with the feds. Our chances of getting answers were pretty slim. Especially without Bobbi or Aunt Marge to help.

I was fuming about it as I left Bobbi’s at lunchtime. I’d gone over for lunch, and to reassure her that there was very little chance anyone would pipe bomb her house. She and Raj had heard about the flyer, and the language had her half-hysterical with worry. So did her impending motherhood, of course, but I didn’t bring that up. Raj had apparently tried to tell her that her hormones were clouding her common sense, and gotten a verbal whipping. I settled for handing her kleenex and mumbling “Mmm-hmm” a lot.

I’d maybe gotten as far as the elementary school when my cell phone chirped. Boris, who was sleeping off the chicken Bobbi’d fed him, opened one eye and made an irritated little noise before snugging his nose back under his tail.

I didn’t think to look at caller ID. I just grumbled, “Now what?”

“Lil, I was wondering if you’d do me a favor.”

“God, Steve,” I groaned, “don’t you ever go away?”

There was a moment of very offended silence. “It’s business, Lil. Could you meet me at the Grenville site?”

“Sure, fine, no problem, not like I have a job or anything,” I huffed, and hung up on him. I had feds doing God knows what, because they had yet to tell me a damn thing. My best friend was completely irrational. And I couldn’t even talk to Aunt Marge because I’d already heard the feds had paid her a call. If I had a tail, it would’ve been lashing hard enough to snap clean off.

My mind cleared a bit when I saw the windshield of a little backhoe. The glass had spider-webbed around a small round mark. “Oh hell,” I said, and met Steve with a scowl. “You could’ve just called in that you got shot at, you know.”

“I’m trying to be discreet, since we don’t know who did the shooting. Not exactly, anyway.”

I squinted behind my sunglasses. I could feel a headache coming on. “Could you tell me,
exactly
, what you do know?”

“Joey there,” Steve said, pointing to a guy in a chambray shirt and jeans, “he was up at the far end of this cove or hollow or whatever you call it.”

I turned my back on Steve and asked Joey, “What happened, sir?”

Joey’s jaw shifted back and forth, and he looked at Steve and the foreman before he answered. “I was supposed to be making a path. Y’know. For the trucks. Clear out brush and all. And ping, there’s this hole in my windshield. Didn’t hear a sound, but the engine runs pretty loud.”

“When did this happen?”

“About half an hour ago.”

First a pipe bomb, then feds, now a shooting. My week was deteriorating fast. “Up the far end?” I repeated.

Joey nodded.

I walked to the foreman. “Got a map?”

He seemed startled, then pulled the surveyor’s map out of its cylinder and spread it on the tailgate of his pickup. I studied it to get my bearings, and frowned at a name. Oh boy.

“I need to run back to the office,” I told Steve, “then I’ll deal with it.”

“Deal with it now.”

“I can’t leave my cat in the car for however long this takes,” I said coldly. “It’s a hot day, and I won’t waste gas leaving the engine running.”

“This is more important than a cat!”

A few of the construction boys live around here. They stepped back carefully.

I summoned up my iciest Littlepage Glare. “If you want,” I said in a very low voice, “I can decide this isn’t important at all and you can get the county boys in here. They might even write up a report.”

Face hard, Steve drew a deep breath, then released it in a curse. “Fine. Never knew you were so soft.”

I lost my temper. If he’d been a stranger, I probably wouldn’t have, but then, a stranger wouldn’t taunt me. Not and get to me, anyway.

Next thing Steve knew, he was face-down in the grass with one hand up between his shoulder blades and my knee by his kidney. “I may be soft, but you’ve gotten slow,” I hissed into his ear, and got up with maybe more weight on that knee than was completely necessary.

Steve rolled over, and got to his feet wearing an expression I see right before someone takes a swing at me.

“C’mon,” I invited. “Take a shot. Show the boys how fast and sharp you are.”

The color finally drained from his face. He smiled a tight thin smile that promised retribution. “Your jurisdiction.”

When I came back, having left a sleepy Boris in his condo, Steve was not to be seen. I took a quart of water with me, spiked with some electrolyte powder. Our uniforms are not designed to keep us cool, and I knew I’d sweat a bucket or two.

I followed the backhoe’s trail, grateful for the shade, and stopped to consult my mental map of the county. I turned off at a tiny streamlet, and walked up its narrow cut in the mountainside, with an itch between my eyebrows that had nothing to do with sweat. I was wearing my sheriff’s hat, the Smokey-the-Bear hat, and I knew if I was spotted, I’d be in someone’s sights.

Once I got up on higher ground, I stopped and soaked my face and feet in the creek until I cooled off. I swigged some water from my bottle. Then I walked around some boulders, through some trees, and stopped about fifty yards from a cabin.

Out in front of the cabin, just visible to me, sat a man in a cheap lawn chair. He had a rifle across his lap, a jug by his feet, and three ancient mongrel hounds dozing nearby in the shade.

Interesting thing about that cabin. No wires. No phone. No electricity. There wasn’t even an oil tank on the side of it. No truck or car parked anywhere, either. The cabin was built of thick, old-growth logs, solidly chinked, and the chimney was native stone. A stream bubbled down the mountain past the cabin, and that was it. Except for the compost heap downslope, where I presumed all the waste went.

Out in the yard, which was really more just a cleared area, deer hides were stretched on wooden frames.

I drew a deep breath. I exhaled slowly. I told myself I was not going to die.

I stepped into view and called, “Chipmunk Tyler!”

My instinct was to throw myself down to hug dirt, but I held my ground. Even when Chipmunk Tyler spun and sent a random shot in my direction. I kept my hands high and my water bottle in one.

“You’re trespassing!”

Don’t ask me how I kept my voice steady. I don’t know. “Not if you invite me to set a spell.”

He considered it. He was technically an old man, white-haired, quilt-lined face and all. But he moved quick and limber, and nudged a foot at one hound in disgust. “Damn fool dogs don’t even earn their keep.”

“Or could be they know I’m no threat,” I suggested hopefully.

He cracked a grin, showing all his teeth. Healthy and white.

“Come set a spell, missy girl.”

I normally get bristly when someone calls me missy or girl, let alone both. Faced with Chipmunk Tyler, I smiled and said, “Thank you, sir. Hot day.”

He unfolded an old aluminum-framed lawn chair and waited for me to sit before he did. “Ain’t seen someone up here in years. Not since…” He frowned, his black eyes sparkling. “Huh. ‘Bout fifteen years now. Fat man, smelled like pork.”

I took a guess. “County tax assessor?”

He grinned. “That was him. He still doin’ that job?”

“Retired. Heart attack.”

Chipmunk leaned down and grabbed his jug. I declined a drink. “You here about that potshot I took at them trespassers?”

I judged the distance from his cabin, and the point where the backhoe trail would end. “They were still a hundred yards off your property line.”

“And I didn’t want them no closer,” he said matter-of-factly. He put the jug back down. “Now look, missy girl.”

“Sheriff Eller,” I corrected. “Mr. Tyler, I know you’ve got your own way of living.”

He nodded once, proudly.

“Truth is, the Littlepages are putting in a campground down there. Tent sites. Lots of families with kids. Maybe some hunters and anglers.” I gestured at the cabin. “How long you figure it’ll stay quiet here?”

“I can sue. This is my land, has been since I bought it right out of school.” He jerked his chin sharply toward the town. “I don’t go bothering with them, they got no right bothering with me.”

“Littlepage owns the land. He can do as he likes, same as you.”

His jaw tightened.

I stayed silent, to let him think it through. I’d never met Chipmunk Tyler. Like most, I’d only heard stories. Some of them probably true. All agreed he’d turned his back on the world when he was about sixteen, leaving home with what he could carry. He’d built the cabin‌—‌four times before he got it right‌—‌and lived off what he could hunt, fish and gather, or make himself. From what I’d been told, he’d learned a lot of that from his grandfather, which I tend to believe. You learn plants just from books, you don’t outlive your mistakes. Only thing he ever went to town for was to grab a few staples once a year. Salt, beans, bullets, that kind of thing. Where he got money, nobody had ever known or asked. Like the origin of his nickname, it remained a mystery.