The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) (34 page)

“I wonder if we could get something like that. Maybe she and Chuck could chat.”

Before I could get too caught up in discussion about the center, Drew joined us in the hall. “You two eat yet?”

“Gotta go, Christian. We’ll talk later.”

“We hadn’t had time to peruse your fine wares.” Lance waved in the direction he was hoping to find vending machines.

“Not much besides stale candy and weak coffee,” said Drew. “Let’s grab a bite down at the Marine.”

“We’re supposed to be waiting for Darnell,” said Lance. “He’s on his way.”

“And I’m feeling squeamish about the Marine right now.”

“We’re waiting, he won’t be long. What’s wrong with the Marine, Noel?”

I told him about William’s overreaction to the delivery guy’s car, my theory that one of the drivers might have been involved in his kidnapping seeming sillier every second. “I told Trudy,” I finally concluded. “But I doubt she’s had any time to do anything about it.”

“Huh,” said Drew. “Pepperoni pizzas and circle-dot cars. Sounds pretty far-fetched, but that’s the thing I’m getting the hang of with your son.”

“That he’s far-fetched?” Lance demanded.

“No.” Drew sounded surprised. “That he’s got a whole lot to say, but we need to learn how to listen. Where do you want lunch, Noel? My treat.”

Sara wasn’t the only one who skipped her morning meal. “Let’s eat at the breakfast chain on the bypass. I haven’t had food since last night, and I don’t care if it’s good for me or the environment, I think I could murder an overly processed cheese omelet right now.”

“Here’s what we’re looking at.” We were seated in a booth near a window while waitresses and customers buzzed past. I wouldn’t have imagined a breakfast chain could be so popular for the afternoon meal, but we were far from the only tardy lunch diners this afternoon. The moment I sat, my energy drained away. Throughout the meal, I yawned uncontrollably.

Darnell had requested a children’s menu and some crayons, and the befuddled hostess had provided them. Now, he had flipped the menu over and drawn a waxy red circle on it. “We’ve got at least two groups of individuals.” He added another circle intersecting the first. “Possibly more.”

“How do you know?” I tried to remember the last time I had functioned on so little sleep. It had to have been grad school. Maybe undergrad. Or maybe never. College came with all-night study sessions that concluded with bleary classes and parties that only ended when I had to be at work the next morning. But it was only ever a day or two of exhaustion at a time. I hadn’t slept soundly in months, and I felt as if I wouldn’t ever truly do so again in my life. Words and ideas were bypassing me without ever connecting to anything concrete to help me recall them later.

Darnell had slept as little as Lance and I had recently. Probably less. Yet he was drawing diagrams and whispering ferociously about things we should not be discussing in the open. “Why are we even talking about this?” I wanted to crawl in a bed,
any
bed, before I simply fell over.

I could tell I had interrupted him. “I’ll get there. As I said, the clearest indicator we’re dealing with the two groups is the behavior we’re seeing. Your head detective disappeared from a conference in DC, his head came back here in one location, and his body is still missing.”
Why did you have to say that as the eggs got to the table, Darnell?

Darnell ignored his food and doodled squares into the places where the two circles overlapped. “Two men have been dismembered. But your deputies were
not.
They were, in fact, hidden in a place where they were all but guaranteed to be found when the sanctuary opened in the morning. The biology department secretary was bound and abandoned in Lance and Noel’s van. William was taken but not substantially harmed. All of these people were, in fact, ultimately either released or able to escape.

“Plenty of killers of adults would hesitate to kill a child, and someone who kills once might hesitate to do it again, depending on circumstances. But we have two murders here. Someone delivered that head to the biology department when the secretary was kidnapped. Someone murdered the person on the sanctuary grounds. Someone isn’t squeamish at all about murder. Someone else is. Two groups. At least. Working together.

“We have some common denominators. William is probably Natasha’s biological brother. Natasha was living with
you
at the time. Someone was killed on the sanctuary grounds. Where
you
work. The head was dumped in the conference room where
you
gave a job presentation, Noel. Your department secretary was abandoned in
your
car. You’re sure you don’t remember locking it for certain?”

“I don’t remember anything for certain.” Drew had asked me this a dozen times. My window was not jimmied; my door wasn’t scraped. The door was unlocked with a key, if it hadn’t been left unlocked. And I was so tired I couldn’t remember.

“And we’re talking about this in a restaurant because it’s the first place you’ve stood still all day that isn’t swarming with your family. They
aren’t
cleared to know all this. Trudy and I don’t know who we can trust. She’s with them right now, because if one of us
isn’t
with you, we don’t know if you’re safe. Your friend Drew here checks out, and unless he killed his own boss and disabled his own men, I think he’s worth the risk.”

“I’m honored.”

Darnell patted my hand, and I flinched away from him as strongly as Natasha ever had from me. “Sorry,” he said.

“It’s not you.” But it
was
him. It was him, and it was Trudy, and Art, and Ace, and even Stan and Gert, who were about as peripherally related as it was possible to be.

“The federal government doesn’t send in agents to babysit bystanders, Noel. Trudy and I have been free to help you on our own time while we waited to make progress. When we were left in place here in June, we had vague instructions to investigate for additional suspects. When we didn’t find anything in three weeks, we should have been recalled. In July, our boss was doing everything she could do to buy us time at the sanctuary. Before Art was killed, back when we thought we had an animal smuggling ring, the higher-ups didn’t want to waste limited resources on a case they considered small scale. And after, they considered the job done and wanted us moved to other cases.

“But our boss has been told to leave us in place, then told the opposite. And now nobody is saying anything. Suddenly,
nobody
wants us moved. We had begun to think there were people above our boss who wanted us relocated because they
knew
what we might find.

“But when she stopped getting heat, we began to question ourselves. Natasha identifying that man as Charles Dalton was the last proof of our original theory. We were sure we had been betrayed by a federal officer, and we could prove it. But when Trudy took the evidence to our boss with Natasha, the woman was furious. She said, ‘All the work I’ve done to let you stay down there, and you’re chasing some conspiracy theory?’ ”

“Stop.” I understood his reasoning. Not about the betrayal and such. That floated through my muddled brain in a fog. It was the common denominators. I was studying his overlapping circles and the things in their center.

“Noel, you . . .”

“We’re not the
only
people connected to both the sanctuary and the college. Travis said the department chair dumped a bunch of rotten fish in the conference room before my interview. But the
chair
claimed Travis hadn’t been in the office yesterday, and nobody else could remember seeing him. So nobody missed him until Bryan started asking questions later.”

Drew rubbed a hand along his jaw. “Dr. Prescott still swears he didn’t know Travis was there. But you’re right, the man’s strung like a guitar right now. I doubt he has the physical strength to disable Travis or move him unconscious without help, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“He does the weakling routine,” said Lance. “But don’t get taken in. Check out the picture on his desk. He’s holding up a prize marlin on some charter boat. He’s got the muscles.”

“And he dislikes me and disapproves of Travis. He hates the idea of my being promoted. He’s been in the department as long as Art had been, and he loathes the sanctuary. When the detective’s head fell out of that cabinet, the chair is the one who went nuts screaming he’d be next.
He
knows something.”

“Okay,” said Darnell. “We’ll talk to him. Maybe he can help us. But listen to me. I wasn’t finished. The person we’re ultimately looking for is a man posing as a federal agent. The man you met at the gala and the one in the picture Trudy showed you are
not
the same person, though we thought they were. The person you met was Liam Metcalf, but the picture is of Charles Dalton, who has been imitating him for some time.

“Ohhh.” Even in my sleepy state, I understood the importance of Charles Dalton’s name. This was Terry Dalton’s brother. The man Natasha had been afraid of ever since we found her necklace.

“Liam’s ID was taken at your gala. He had it replaced without much fanfare, because the monkey stole something from everybody and destroyed much of it. Liam found his wallet at the end of the chase, but his things were scattered and his badge was gone. My boss asked me to check the monkey’s cage in the quarantine area to see what it had, whether it might have taken a license or badge, and it looked like it could have done it. I don’t think so now.”

“The monkey didn’t take it?” My head hurt. It ached with the weight of exhaustion. “It had dozens of things. How can you be sure?”

“No, I don’t think the monkey took it,” said Darnell. “I think the monkey’s owner did. That capuchin would have destroyed it, and Charles Dalton wouldn’t be imitating Liam in every location where he doesn’t think he’ll be caught. Liam only remembered that the woman crashed into him when he realized he’d been compromised. She took the badge and gave it to Dalton. Dalton had been fooling people before the gala, but we think the badge gave him access to a federal prison.

“It took our misunderstanding to bring the deception to light. Agent Metcalfe never stopped asking our boss to recall us. But she was confused because he seemed to change his mind every other day. Acting as Metcalfe, Dalton was sending messages that directly contradicted the things the
real
Metcalfe was saying.

“We have enough evidence to arrest Dalton, but we can’t find him. He was
counting on
an office full of people who never talk to one another. The man’s brazen. He’s also missing.”

Dear Nora:

My friend talks incessantly during our morning walk. I don’t want to be rude, but the very sound of her voice is starting to grate. Please help!

All Nattered Out

Dear Nattered:

It’s winter. Wear earmuffs. Or take up knitting and stay inside. I’m sending yarn and a nice beginner’s pattern.

Nora

“She and Noel have been friends since
grade
school.”

I woke up with a crick in my neck and Lance’s upper back filling my window. I had fallen asleep on the way home, and my body was
not
thankful. In front of the van, Hannah and Sara were locked in nearly identical poses, arms crossed, brows lowered. But Hannah’s hair was, as always, impeccable, while Sara’s was an unkempt wreck. I couldn’t decide whether they were glaring at me or at the agents arguing with Lance outside my window. I seriously debated going back to sleep.

No such luck. My open eyes had been seen. “Make her
stop
!” Sara pointed at me and shouted loud enough to be heard through the glass.

“Make
who
stop? Lance, honey, move.” I climbed out of the car in time for the meteorite who was my daughter to crash into my stomach.

“Make Miss Trudy stop. She won’t let Hannah-Banana do my
hair.
”

“Trudy, Hannah is fine. Let her twist the child’s hair.”

“No.
I want
braids.
I want a million long beautiful braids hanging to my knees
like hers!”

“Sara, you picked at the twists so much I’ve barely been able to keep them in! How are braids . . .”

“I want
braids
!”

“Lance, Noel, I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation . . .” Trudy’s innocent wide eyes didn’t work on me. It was a cozy-up tactic, and I wanted nothing better than to keep my distance.

“We picked up our son under what amounted to an armed
guard
between Drew, his partner, and Darnell,” Lance snapped. “Don’t tell me we can’t fully appreciate . . .”

“You can’t distrust everybody.” Drew, at least, was trying to be a force of reason. “I can personally vouch for . . .”

“I don’t need anybody to
vouch
for me,” Hannah snapped. “I don’t abandon my friends when they’re in trouble. I’ve got a ton of teeny-tiny rubber bands out in my car and a whole lot of fiber to weave in . . .”

“. . . and she probably took the day off work to do this for us, so
lay off.
” I
so
wanted to go to bed.

Their voices erupted around me again into a new babble of arguments, but Hannah was already heading for her car, which was parked in the cul-de-sac. Because the house used to be a funeral home, it’s situated at the end of a tree-lined road designed to get mourners in and out of the area without jamming up traffic.

Because it stood so far apart from the other buildings in the small town of Granton during the Great Depression, it didn’t burn with the rest of the village. And it now has its own street, and my parents own the land between the house and the state route out front. Periodically, realtors pester my parents about buying the excellent road frontage, which they consider the perfect excuse to build yet another suburb and pull Ironweed a little bit closer to Columbus’s urban sprawl.

But Mama and Daddy won’t budge. They don’t want neighbors, and their position was one of the reasons the previous owner sold it to them when she moved to live with her daughter in Arizona some twenty years ago.