The Jezebel Remedy (26 page)

“If we're not here on Thursday, I'll have to reschedule my meeting with Montana and her new teacher. It makes me seem unreliable. I hate to miss the first appointment. I was planning to take her shopping too. Buy her some summer clothes. Her shiftless father's in rehab again.”

“You've been doing that program for years and volunteered for everything under the sun. I hardly think they'll be upset. It's June. School starts in August. And you can buy clothes every day of the week.”

“We'll have to see if Erica can house-sit and feed the horse and give Brownie his…” She stopped. “His medicine.”

She and Joe drove directly back to the farm, and for a second time they searched everywhere they knew to look, kept at it, hunted along the creek, honked the horn all the way to the main road, crisscrossed the woods calling Brownie's name, crawled behind the square bales of hay and shined the flashlight, circled Foy Rice's pond, Joe with his hands cupped around his eyes so he could see into the shallows. Nothing. Lisa was so miserable she couldn't eat dinner, and soon after sunset, at nine-thirty or thereabouts, she dozed off on the sofa, woke near midnight and couldn't fall back asleep, then went upstairs and lay in the dark bedroom, hot and uncomfortable, the sheets and counterpane shoved aside, a random cloud occasionally smearing across the moon. Her cake was abandoned in its bowl, neglected, a lumpy pink swamp, the batter dried fast to the mixer blades, a chore to scrub.

She finally went under, a forced, translucent sleep too near the surface, some portion of her still tethered to her surroundings, but she didn't sense Joe leaving the room, didn't realize he was gone. At daybreak, she heard him downstairs shutting the front door, and she was quickly alert and pulling on the same shorts from Saturday, scooting into her flip-flops. She was starting the stairs when she spotted Joe coming toward her from the kitchen. “Found him,” he said.

“Is he okay? Where was he? Is he hurt?”

“Come on,” he told her, beckoning with his hand.

Lisa held the banister and clopped down the remaining steps. Brownie was in the den, lying on the rug in front of the fireplace, a favorite location during the winter months. He looked up at her and thumped his tail. He opened his mouth and panted, licked his black lips, sighed.

“He was at the far end of the pasture,” Joe said. “Buried in a patch of broom straw a few yards outside the fence. I'll bet we came damn close to stepping on him ten times yesterday.”

“Which end?” Lisa asked. “That doesn't make any sense.”

“By the big oak that got hit by lightning. The split oak.”

“He had to hear us, Joe. Is he hurt? Can he walk?”

“Yeah. He's weak, but he can walk. I came within five feet of him, and he didn't even stir. He didn't want to be found.”

“Huh? Why?”

“It's what they do, sweetie. They wander off to die. He didn't want us to bother him. I'm sure he heard us. Hell, he could've walked back to the house whenever he wanted. I remember when my father's old bluetick did exactly the same thing. Daddy found him two days later in the corner of a tobacco barn and called Dr. Witt to put him down. Left him where he lay, and he and the doc walked to the barn and put him to sleep.”

“Maybe Brownie was disoriented. He takes all that medicine.”

“I suppose it's possible.”

Lisa dropped to all fours and rubbed her nose across the dog's. “Hey, good boy.” She scratched his head, stroked circles on his belly. “I'll cook him some eggs. And I'm going to call Dr. Withers. I don't care if it is Sunday; this is an emergency.”

The vet was polite and understanding, especially given the early hour. “The theory,” he said after Lisa explained why she was calling, “is basically anecdotal, but unfortunately it's frequent and recurring. We know for sure that many animals seek a quiet, confined place to die, especially cats. There's really no clinical data to support the notion, but from my experience there's an absolute correlation. I'd suggest keeping him inside or walking him on a leash. Make sure he has plenty of fresh water.” Withers offered to drive to their farm and have a look at him, though he assured her there probably wasn't much he could accomplish medically. They finally agreed she'd bring the dog to his clinic early the next morning, and he'd see them before business hours, 7:30 on the dot.

Brownie was listless for the rest of the day. He did eat chunks of scrambled eggs when Lisa held them to his mouth, but he didn't show much enthusiasm for the food. “He seems so sad, Joe,” she said. “I hope he's not suffering.”

Monday, she and Joe were at the vet's a few minutes early, before the doctor arrived. They walked to the clinic's entrance with Withers, and Joe had to pick Brownie up and carry him when he balked at the threshold and stubbornly collapsed and refused to stand. Withers
probed the dog's chest with a stethoscope, shined a light in his ears and mouth, then shaved his foreleg and pierced him with a needle to draw blood. Stung by the needle, Brownie yelped and jerked.

“He does seem to be declining,” the doc said solemnly, confirming what they already knew. “I'm concerned the blood work won't be too promising, especially his liver function. We'll just have to do our best and make prudent decisions.”

While they were talking, Brownie licked at the white, pallid spot on his leg, took two or three lethargic passes and quit. He lay flat and closed his eyes. The very tip of his tongue remained outside his mouth, a pink sliver against his black muzzle. At the end of the visit, he bit the vet's Milk-Bone treat, crunched it and broke it and partially ate it, but left the majority in pieces on the silver metal examination table, crumbs and dry tan bits. Joe stoically toted him back to the truck. Lisa let him ride in the cab, curled in her lap, his nose pointed toward Joe, a paw touching his thigh. Neither of them spoke, until Joe said he would take Brownie to the office, even if he had to carry him all the way from the truck and even if the dog had to piss on the floor.

Joe was finishing a call to a client and folding his cell phone shut when he walked into Toliver's office at the Henry County Sheriff's Office later that morning. The cop was seated behind his desk, studying a file and marking sections of a report with a yellow highlighter.

“Whoa there, Johnnie Cochran, what you holdin'?”

“What? Huh?” Joe asked. “And I'm white. The reference doesn't work. I'd be Shapiro or Barry Scheck.”

“Where'd you find the fossil phone? That's a TracFone, isn't it? The LG cheapie from Walmart.”

“So?”

“Seriously? You're sportin' the thirty-bucks-a-month TracFone from Walmart? You, the seasonal Mexicans, the food stamp artists and the wannabe drug dealers. I was kidding your wife not long ago about her BlackBerry, which is already nearly the same as a cassette tape, but this is feeble, even for you.”

“All I need is a phone, Toliver. I have a computer at my house and
office, I don't text, I don't play online games, I don't take photos and I'm not on Facebook or Twitter. Tell me again why I need an expensive phone and a draconian service plan? I don't even use the minutes I have. As we say in the legal world, the phone is a sword for me, not a shield. I rarely turn it on. I'm bothered enough as it is by people wanting free advice while I'm trying to eat dinner in a restaurant or buy a loaf of bread at the grocery store.”

“Sure, Joe. You could have a horse and buggy too.” Toliver grinned. “Wait, you sorta do. I saw you on your scooter last week. Easy Rider Stone. Still makes me laugh, especially now that you've put the basket on the handlebars. Me, I'm state of the art. New Droid. Amazin' technology. I don't have the luxury of switchin' it off. Crime don't take a holiday.”

Joe adjusted a chair and sat down. “Did you ever look into that e-mail from the library? Supposedly sent by Lettie?”

“Yeah, damn, I went over there, and they stubbed up on me and really didn't want to help. It's fallout from the Patriot Act and all that shit. Can't say I blame them. I talked to Hal and told him it was for you and that we didn't need to know what anybody was readin' and we already had the contents of the e-mail and we're not Big Brother tryin' to pry into somebody's business. Plus Lettie's dead, so we won't be bruisin' her feelings. He finally agreed to check the sign-in log for the computers, and she was in fact there when the e-mail was sent. You want more information than that, you're on your own. He told me last Wednesday. I was plannin' to give you the news next time we crossed paths.”

“Thanks,” Joe said. “I don't have much doubt that it's authentic.” He stood and leaned against the wall. He focused on the policeman. “I promised you I'd keep you up to speed if we discovered anything criminal in Lettie's situation. I think we're there now. I believe she was killed.”

“Ah, okay. Gotcha.” Toliver chuckled. “What you're actually sayin' is that you've chased this as far as you can, and as a last resort you want me to help you find something that you can't find by yourself. Do some grunt work. Misuse my authority for your advantage.”

“To some extent, I suppose, yeah. But let me tell you what we have, and you tell me why you shouldn't be concerned. I know for sure Lettie
invented a medicine or, well, a formula that is valuable. So valuable that the head of Benecorp, Seth Garrison, is hiring private, ex-military security and yanking strings to guarantee he has the rights to it.”

Toliver widened his eyes. “Seth Garrison? There's a serious actor for you. Rich motherfucker too. The History Channel did a show on him. Have you met him? How do you know all this?”

Joe cocked his heel on the baseboard and detailed what he'd learned so far and how Toliver's earlier information about the rental car plugged into the bigger picture. He included Lisa's visit from a leprechaun claiming to be Lettie. “So you're right in a certain sense,” Joe admitted after he'd finished. “We are stuck. We can go to Virginia Beach and meet Garrison, but I seriously doubt he's planning a confession, or that he'll do much more than a two-bit soft shoe and then maybe try to buy us off. We'd hoped we could count on your expertise. Hoped you might open a case and investigate it, or give us an idea how we can find an undeniable, direct, incriminating link. Or figure out who was in the backseat of Lisa's car and why.”

The detective had been scribbling notes on his small, spiral-bound pad, listening and writing, but he didn't comment or ask questions. “Bunch of dead ends,” he finally said. “Lot of smoke, no fire. Your idea of checkin' the hospital records in Charlotte is reasonable, but it still isn't a home run kinda solution. As for Lisa's plan, even if we could tie the location of the money orders to a city where Benecorp is located, so what? Plus, there's virtually no chance some rinky-dink convenience store kept their surveillance tapes this long supposin' we
could
trace the money orders somehow.”

“Do you have any ideas?” Joe asked.

“Of course I do.” Toliver made no effort to hide his satisfaction. “You want me to clue you in?”

“Absolutely,” Joe said sincerely. “Please.”

“You should've come in earlier. This is what happens when rookies and amateurs attempt to do police work. You end up frustrated and chasin' your own tail. Everybody watches
Barnaby Jones
reruns and
48 Hours
and figures, shazam, hey, ain't nothin' to this. By the way, you ever notice how almost every detective on
48 Hours
is a fat white guy with a mullet? Horrible dressers, most of 'em.”

“I hadn't noticed,” Joe said flatly, paying his dues.

“So here's what we do. We go to circuit court and get a warrant. We serve it on the phone service providers for our area. We narrow the focus to the few hours this Jane Rousch was supposedly in our area and review the calls that went through the cell towers. We see if any of the dialed numbers lead us to Garrison or Benecorp. I figure, especially after a strong dose of Lettie, that whoever was here called to report back. Routine warrant, easy to obtain. If it hits, we've linked Lettie, Garrison and the sheisty rental.”

“Damn, Toliver. Sweet. Nice. Never would've crossed my mind.”

“No shit, Joe. How perfect you just roll in here from the electronics wasteland too. I'm surprised you don't still have a bag phone. We do a call search once or twice a month. The lawyers usually don't hear of it 'cause it's so far removed in the chain of things. It rarely matters
how
we locate your guilty clients; it's what they say when we find them or the stolen property in their trunk or the DNA they give us that you spend your energy tryin' to keep from the judge.”

“I'm assuming there'll be a ton of calls going through, even if we limit the time frame.”

“Yeah. It'll take a while to search the records. You better hope this doesn't bog me down and ruin my stats.”

“We could help,” Joe volunteered.

“What did I just say?” Toliver asked.

“Right, yeah. You're the pro, we're the donkeys.”

“Exactly.”

“You think we should follow through and meet with Garrison?”

“Oh, hell yeah.” Toliver almost squeaked the words and simultaneously made a nobody-can-be-that-ignorant face. “Absolutely. You never, ever pass up the opportunity to talk to a suspect. Never. Sometimes they slip. Sometimes you just catch a vibe, a feeling. Sometimes you can prove a little detail wrong later on. You should know this by now—all you shysters ever tell your clients is ‘don't talk to the cops.' Why's that? Here, the fact this big-shot guy even wants to meet with you raises my antennae.”

“How long before you'll have the records and an answer?”

“When I have them, okay? You can give me this Pichler's number, Briggs's number and the number at Dr. Downs's sister's. I suppose you
could also locate the main numbers for Benecorp. Try not to fuck up that simple task. There'll be ten digits. We call the first three an area code. And let me have any new beyond-the-grave messages from Lettie. I'll send the cardboard she supposedly gave Lisa to the lab for a print check.”