Tickled to Death (10 page)

He ignored my solicitude. “I need you to follow me to the sheriff’s office. I’ve arrested Cissel for murder, and now it’s time for formal statements from all the witnesses. You, Mrs. Malloy, are at the top of the list. I hope you take that as a compliment.”

“Why did you arrest him?”

“Because he’s guilty. We went down to Horseshoe Bend Marina, where he left his boat last night. The engine had recovered miraculously and started right up. Unless the elves worked on it in the dark hours of the morning, there was never anything wrong with it. Cissel claimed to be baffled. He claims to be baffled about a lot of other things, too, like why his car was seen at Blackburn Creek and why there was a phone call made from his house in town to the lake house.”

“Was he home at the pertinent time?”

Gannet glowered down at me, huffing and puffing as though he’d like to blow my car into a tree. “I’m not in the mood to stand in the middle of the road and answer your questions. You can follow me voluntarily, or I can charge you as a material witness and give you a lift in the backseat of my car. You may not like it. A couple of days ago I took in an old geezer who vomited all over the floor. I haven’t had time to clean it up.”

I wasn’t finished. “Dick Cissel is not a stupid person. He must have known you’d examine the boat. Why would he lie about something so easy to disprove?”

Captain Gannet declined to answer my astute question and repeated the two options. He sounded belligerent enough to stuff me into his trunk as if I were a sack of laundry, so I agreed to follow him in my own car. He failed to express gratitude for my cooperation, but he was not in
an appreciably courteous mood. Nor did he take my advice about his driving.

The sheriff’s office was located in a small town twenty or so miles away. Gannet had disappeared inside before I’d found a place to park among the official vehicles and the pickup trucks, all of which sported militant NRA bumper stickers. Landscaping consisted of eroded asphalt, beer cans, and weeds alongside the building. I had a foreboding feeling that it was not my kind of place.

Within an hour, I found myself in a cell less charming than any vomit-splattered backseat. The stench was abrasive enough to make my eyes sting. I decided not to attempt to identify the individual elements involved, and instead assessed the decor. One metal bunk with a thin, stained mattress. A porcelain sink with cracks like a spiderweb. A genuine spiderweb beneath it. Dried bugs along the perimeter of the concrete floor. Everything was gray or brown, with nary a fuchsia throw pillow in sight. They definitely needed the name of Agatha Anne’s interior designer, I concluded as I sat on the edge of the bunk.

The incarceration was the result of statements taken earlier from two gentlemen purportedly named Noddy and Martin. Their last names had been mentioned, but I was hardly in the mood to hunt them up in the telephone directory to thank them for their contribution. Noddy and Martin,
it seemed, had been fishing near the dock at the Blackburn Creek Marina the previous evening. Around eleven, they’d determined they were out of beer and sandwiches. The engine was balky, they admitted, and they’d made a great deal of noise before they coaxed it into life. Noddy and Martin were quite sure they’d awakened everyone within a mile of the dock. One of them had added that he felt like he was setting off Chink-made firecrackers. It sounded like a remark someone named Noddy would make.

Gannet was not amused by this minor omission in my earlier recitation or in the formal statement I’d given in an inhospitable interrogation room. Unwilling to even listen to my explanation (which surely I could have concocted after some thought), he’d personally escorted me down a grungy corridor and held open the cell door. He’d slammed and locked it, too.

No one came down the corridor for what felt like a very long time. Dick was somewhere in the building, but I’d not spotted him and there’d been no noise from the cells on either side of mine. I propped my head on my fists and contemplated my hostile reception by Turnstone Lake, home of the sleekly rich. From the moment I’d turned off the highway and entered the maze of roads and trails, I’d been in one sort of trouble or another. I’d been insulted and assaulted. I’d been smirked at and spied on. I’d subsisted on cold lasagna.

I vowed to take down the bird feeder outside
my living-room window—and to eat chicken and turkey on a more regular basis, along with pheasant, quail, and Cornish hen when the opportunity arose. If eagleburgers ever came in vogue, I’d stand at the front of the line and hold out my plate.

In the meantime, there was nothing to do. The graffiti on the wall were symptomatic of the sorry state of rural education—even the crudest basic four-letter words were misspelled. Gannet had laughed nastily at my demand to be allowed a phone call; my only hope for bail resided with Luanne, who might notice my car if she came to the office to rescue Dick. My mind was too benumbed to ponder the situation. I lay down along the edge of the filthy mattress and mutely beseeched whatever vermin resided in the cell to do only minimal damage. Eventually, I drifted into a restless sleep.

Amid much clanking and squeaking, the door opened. I awoke instantly, but I kept my eyes closed and waited to find out if I was to be interrogated by Gannet or offered bread and water.

“Claire?”

I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to keep my breathing slow and steady. The last time I’d been in jail, I’d expected a certain person to rush to my salvation. He’d sent an underling. Now, when I truly had no desire to see or speak to him, he’d abandoned his guests and galloped across the county. Drat.

“What happened to your football game?” I muttered, declining to play the gracious hostess.

“It’s still going on, I guess. Would you stop growling and sit up, please? I feel as though I’ve intruded on a hibernating bear.”

I refused to move. “That’s exactly what I’m doing—hibernating. I’m sure the guys need you more than I, so why don’t you go home and worry about this first and ten business?” I put enough emphasis on “the guys” to let him know I’d overheard some of the background chatter.

Peter’s rumble of irritation was familiar, as was his frigid tone. “If you insist, I’ll go back to Farberville and start the charcoal. Captain Gannet may well go to his house and do the same thing. One thing he won’t do is release you until tomorrow morning at the earliest. Your stubbornness is going to lead to eighteen more hours in here, Claire. By the way, you may be getting a roommate before too long. They have to get her sedated and hosed off before they lock her up.”

“You’re awfully crabby today,” I said as I sat up and smoothed my hair. “Where’s that renowned Rosen sense of humor?”

“This is not the time for jokes. You’re in bad trouble with these boys, and I have no jurisdiction whatsoever. They barely grasp the concept of professional courtesies.”

I looked at him and shook my head. “Perhaps if you weren’t wearing tattered gym shorts and a grass-stained shirt, they’d take you more seriously.
Those sneakers must have come from a Dumpster. What happened to your shining armor?”

Peter’s usually mild eyes were flickering. There were lots of white teeth in sight, but there was nothing sincere about his smile. “Listen, I left my guests and drove here as fast as I dared to try to help you, but you’re behaving as if I were your sworn enemy. I didn’t tell Gannet to lock you up—although if I were in his place, I might have done the same thing. Cops are testy when they’re told lies during a murder investigation.”

“I didn’t tell a single lie,” I said coolly. “I forgot one tiny detail, that’s all. Gannet needs to be sedated and hosed off.” I stood up and forced a measure of warmth, if not enthusiasm, into my voice. “I really do appreciate your coming, Peter. Can we go now?”

“All I know is that Gannet’s willing to talk to you one last time before he flings the cell key into the lake. Don’t keep pushing him. The mention of your name turns him rabid.” He put his hands on my shoulders and shook me gently. “I realize you’ve never listened when I’ve tried to convince you to stay out of official investigations, and I’ve done it so many times we both know the exact phrasing. I have no influence with Gannet, nor does my superior or anyone else on the Farberville police force. Constitutional rights can get lost out here in the woods. The legal system is a combination of rewards and family favors, and outsiders don’t have a chance.”

“I didn’t opt to spend the weekend making Gannet’s life miserable. I came to help Luanne. As distasteful as the idea may be, I’m beginning to agree with Gannet that Dick Cissel was implicated in his second wife’s death. I cannot allow Luanne to find herself in the same predicament, or in this case, the same funeral parlor.” I stopped, aware that my face was flushed and my eyes blinking too rapidly. I tried to laugh, but my mouth was dry and the sound that emerged sounded like a pitiful little cough. “Can we go, warden?”

I’m not sure if what crossed his face was frustration or tenderness, but the ensuing behavior seemed to suggest the latter. For that matter, I wasn’t sure if my motive was gratitude or a sudden realization that I did care for him, even at his crabbiest. The cell stayed steamy until we put a few inches between us and grinned like a couple of bashful, embarrassed adolescents. Had the mattress not been so unappealing…

Gannet sat at his desk, which was covered with photographs and diagrams. He stolidly acknowledged my meek apology for the oversight. I insisted that I had not heard a second boat, but I had a feeling he thought I was lying to protect Dick. After a bit of wrangling, he informed me that I could return to Farberville, as long as I remained at his beck and call. I had an urge to ask him if he actually had a beck, and if so, could I see it, but the specter of the cell overruled it. Peter
made the obligatory noises of gratitude and hustled me out the door.

“Did you see those diagrams?” I asked Peter as he opened my car door. “They relate to the boat explosion, not Bubo’s murder. Someone has measured the distance from the hillside behind the marina office to a point out in the lake. Is there some kind of radio device that could have caused the propane to explode?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on,” I said, pleased with my nascent theory. “What if you could fiddle with a cigarette lighter so that it would ignite when you punched a button?”

“No.”

“There’s probably some sort of stove in the cabin. Couldn’t you do something so that the burner would come on and set off the propane?”

“No.”

Clearly he was not in the mood to work on this newest brainstorm. None of the Turnstone Lake residents had seemed knowledgeable in electronics, but I would ask around and then explore the possibilities. If it came down to it, I could call an electronics store and quiz an employee.

“Never mind,” I said as I looked up sweetly. “I’m going by Dick’s house to grab my suitcase and pick up the girls. Do you have time to come along before you go back to town? Luanne’s
likely to be gnawing her toenails by now. She needs some support.”

“No.”

“Have a nice day,” I said, then rolled up the window and drove away.

Dick’s lake house was unlocked, but also uninhabited. I scribbled a note to Luanne, packed my things, and left before Jillian materialized in the shadows. The girls were sitting on their luggage in front of Dunling Lodge; they flung all of it and themselves into the car before I’d come to a full stop. I waited outside the convenience store long enough for them to snatch up an array of junk food and a six-pack of sodas, and was regaled with chomping and slurping for the remainder of the drive. Their grumbles were made through mouthfuls of chips, and were therefore mostly unintelligible. My car resembled a portable garbage bin by the time I’d dropped off Inez and pulled into the garage below the duplex.

“Are you going back next weekend to start earning money?” I asked Caron as we carried our bags upstairs.

Her lower and now well-nourished lip shot out. “Yeah, we said we would. It wouldn’t be so
horrible if we got to drive the barge, but we don’t get to because we might”—she mimicked Agatha Anne’s honeyed voice and plastic smile—“inadvertently go too close to the aerie and frighten Mama and Papa Eagle and all the little eaglets.” She resumed her more typical mien of martyrdom, replete with rolling eyes, sighs, and an occasional gulp of despair. “We have to lead groups on bird walks. I was assigned the three-mile-long Mallard Trail, so I get to point at ducks while we go slogging through the swamp. ‘Oooh,’ I’ll squeal, ‘a duck!’ Everybody will crumple with excitement, and I’ll have to do CPR on a five-hundred-pound bald guy while I drag him to the lodge. Agatha Anne literally was gloating when she assigned it to me, then gave Inez the Mockingbird Trail, which is only a mile long and doesn’t go anywhere near the swamp. I’m going to have nightmares about things that go quack in the night!”

“Hmmm,” I said.

“And there’s a sign by the door that says tipping is against the rules. It’s in all the pamphlets, too. What kind of Atheist Organization Is This? I’d believe Agatha Anne was a communist if I hadn’t seen her diamond-and-ruby Republican Party pin.”

“It’s a nonprofit organization,” I said, wondering why I bothered to use a phrase Caron found ludicrous, if not obscene. She harrumphed and snorted until I’d unlocked the front door, then
dropped her luggage in the living room and fled to her bedroom to share her resentment with whomever she could entice to the opposite end of the telephone line.

I took a long bath to wash away any lingering redolence from my interminable confinement, dined on nuked food, and was settled on the sofa with a glass of scotch and the Sunday newspaper when the telephone rang. I ignored it.

Caron came to the doorway. “It’s for you,” she said accusingly. “Try to keep it as brief as possible, okay? Traci’s going to call me back as soon as her father gets finished talking to some man in someplace ridiculous like Frankfurt. I was in the middle of telling her about all the frat boys we met out on the lake when the line blipped. Unlike some of us, Traci has call waiting.”

“How many frat boys did you meet?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Some.”

“Oh, really?” When no further enlightenment was proffered, I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“What happened to you this afternoon?” Luanne began indignantly. “I waited and waited, then finally drove over to the marina to see if you’d gone for another swim. A pubescent deputy said he hadn’t seen you, but that Captain Gannet was looking for you. When I got back to the house, who should drive up but the jolly old captain himself, his chubby cheeks as rosy as Santa’s. He took great pleasure in telling me Dick was in custody, charged with two counts of first-degree
murder. To my astonishment, Jillian fell apart, and it took an hour of tea and sympathy before she calmed down.”

“Jillian fell apart?” I said. “She’s the least emotional woman I’ve ever met. It’s hard to imagine her shedding a tear if a truck ran over her foot.”

“Trust me—she did. She was edgy when she arrived back here in the afternoon, but when Gannet told her he’d arrested her father, I thought she was going to expire on the spot. Neither Gannet nor I could make much sense of her blubbering and moaning, although she did manage to convey that she was positive Dick hadn’t killed Becca. She went through an entire box of tissues before she staggered off to her bedroom. I kept thinking you’d show up, but nooo…”

“I left a note on the breakfast bar.”

“Why would I look for a note on the breakfast bar?” she snapped. After a pause, she said in a more conciliatory tone, “All right, I found it. So you left a note.”

“Are you going to stay at the lake?”

“No, there’s no reason for me to do that. I called the sheriff’s office, but Gannet wouldn’t speak to me. He did send the message that Dick would remain in custody until the end of the week and I wouldn’t be allowed to communicate with him. Jillian called a lawyer, who’s going there as soon as he can tomorrow. I’m afraid that if I stay, I’ll be beset by Agatha Anne and Sid, Georgiana,
Livia Dunling, and whoever else wants to hear the gruesome details. Besides, I need to water my houseplants.”

“I don’t think Gannet can hold Dick that long without a bail hearing, but that’s what lawyers are for.” I took a deep breath and an equally deep swallow of scotch, then told her how I’d spent the afternoon.

Rather than expressing horror at my ordeal, Luanne sighed and said, “Now that you’ve been in that awful place, you should be all the more eager to help me get Dick out of Gannet’s evil clutches. By the way, I need to ask a small favor. At some point tomorrow I want to run by Dick’s house in town and pick up some books and the mail. I can take them with me when I go back in a day or two, and surely Gannet will let Dick have them after they’ve been X-rayed for machine guns and hacksaws. Then I started thinking about it. It sounds so innocuous, but the idea of going inside this dark, empty mansion all by myself—”

“Tonight you’ll go inside a dark, empty apartment, and tomorrow morning you’ll go inside a dark, empty store. In both situations you will flick on the lights to banish the ghosties and ghoulies. You’re way too old to worry about things that go quack in the night.”

I hung up. The telephone rang almost instantly, but Caron picked it up in her bedroom
and began to chirp and chortle. I turned to the obituary section to see how the competition (in the human race) was faring.

Business was deadly the next morning. I drank coffee, dusted, rearranged racks to confuse my customers, and finally went into the office to argue via long distance with a particularly snippety shipping clerk who insisted that her invoices were accurate. She seemed to feel the problem lay in my lack of visual acuity rather than in her indecipherable numbers. Our conversation ended on what might be described as a crescendo of acrimony.

Invigorated, I refilled my coffee mug, then found the telephone directory under a stack of unopened letters with cellophane windows, and cheerfully resumed meddling in an official investigation. Half an hour later I closed the directory. No one at any of the local electronics stores was willing to explain how to design a device to blow up a boat. On the other hand, no one flatly denied it was possible. Gannet was convinced Dick was in town half an hour before the explosion, making the bogus call to Becca. The lake was an hour’s drive, at best. Someone else had clutched the clicker.

I returned to the front room and climbed onto the stool behind the counter, took the deck of cards out of the drawer, aimed it at the door, and pressed my thumb down. “Boom!” I said, idly supplying the sound effects while wishing I could be
sure the technology existed. I wondered if I could pose as a writer doing research and find someone at the college willing to share the methodology of my hypothetical death ray in exchange for a mention in the acknowledgments. “Boom,” I said again, this time symbolically obliterating a cockroach beneath the classics.

“Boom, boom,” whispered a voice from within the paperback section. It was not an echo.

This was not the infamous dark, empty mansion. The sky was blue and pedestrians paraded down the sunny side of the street. Traffic was light, but there were enough cars and trucks to pervade the environs with noxious fumes. I took the feather duster and cautiously eased around the end of the rack; if worse came to worst, I was prepared to tickle the intruder into submission.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor was my semi-regular science fiction freak, a woolly old hippie with unnaturally bright eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses and enough breadcrumbs in his wispy beard to provide dinner for a flock of starlings. He wiggled his fingers at me, then turned the page of whatever he was reading and bent over it as if he were licking the words off the page.

Lowering my lethal weapon, I asked, “How long have you been here?”

“Not too long. You were in the back room, yelling at somebody named Jennifer. I didn’t want to interrupt on account of I met Jennifer at the last World Con and she was the scariest Speculumian
warrior-queen I’d ever seen. She was like six feet tall, and dressed in a studded black leather bikini and a hood. Speculumians are short and squatty, but when I told her so, she jerked me up over her head and threw me at a Gorget dude. He threw me back at her, and I ended up being intergalactic ballast for ten minutes. It was not my best convention.”

“I don’t think it’s the same Jennifer,” I said, then paused to consider the call. “But I may be mistaken. In any case, I was on the telephone. Did the bell above the door jangle when you came in?”

“You were yelling really loud,” he said apologetically. He replaced the book, stood up, and ambled out the door. This time the jangle was audible.

Caron arrived at noon. Her hair was uncombed and her face devoid of makeup. She wore torn shorts, a T-shirt from years past, and rubber flip-flops. Clearly she was dressed for a particular role, but I couldn’t predict what it would prove to be. Anything was possible.

“I called the high school to make sure I’m signed up for second-semester driver’s ed,” she announced in the sepulchral tone of an elderly tragedienne in a faded crinoline gown, standing in the doorway of a dusty ballroom. “Coach Scoter’s not going to teach it because his wife had surgery or something. They’re trying to find someone else. With my luck, it’ll be some bufflehead who believes in separation of the sexes.
Louis and I won’t be allowed in the car at the same time, much less the backseat.”

“Bufflehead?” I repeated carefully and very blankly. “Is this some sort of reference to a bison?”

“A bufflehead is a duck, Mother. It’s found in salt bays and estuaries. The male, known for its squeaky whistle, has a greenish-purple head. The book did not explain why this color combination is referred to as ‘buffle,’ but I was not intrigued enough to ask Agatha Anne.”

“It does have a nice ring to it, dear. Do you happen to know anyone who builds model airplanes or cars that are operated by some sort of remote control device?”

“Why would I know anyone that totally nerdy?” Having deftly dealt with my question, Caron slumped to the floor and leaned against the self-help rack. Her breathing grew raspy, but it would have to halt altogether before I would feel any alarm. “Inez called to say that she talked to Louis’s sister last night, and she said that Louis is going to a swimming party at Rhonda’s house on Saturday night. Everyone’s going to be there, except the total nerds and maybe Allison Wade, who made some catty remark about Rhonda’s Monumental Buttocks. If you ask me, they ought to be a national park.” She slithered further down so she could gaze up piteously at me, and the wheezing became more pronounced as she resumed her earlier role. “The total nerds,
Allison—and Inez and me. We’ll be stuck at the lake all weekend, eating bran and listening to twaddle about eaglets. Unless, of course, someone could drive us here after the last tour of the day and take us back to the lake after the party.”

“I’ll ask around for volunteers, but I wouldn’t count on it if I were you.” I opened the directory to the yellow pages and hunted for the heading “Nerds, electronic.”

“Or we could hitchhike,” said a despondent voice.

“And find yourselves grounded in perpetuity. You’ve already blackmailed me once this week. Part of our bargain was that you would accept your responsibilities as an employee of the Dunling Foundation and carry through on them.”

Caron opted to change the subject rather than explore the components of our agreement. “The first tour starts at seven on Saturday morning and the same on Sunday. While everybody else is sleeping until noon because they went to a fabulous party, I’ll be slogging through the swamp.”

“And earning ten dollars an hour,” I reminded her before I was treated to a replay of the scenario. “You’re always referring to Rhonda’s little brother as nerdy. Does he know anything about electronics?”

“He collects gum wrappers and swizzle sticks.” She slunk away to collapse on the sidewalk and die before the horrified pedestrians, or to call a child-abuse agency and turn me in. I resorted to
the hum and drum of bookselling for the remainder of the afternoon. I was checking to make sure the back door was locked when Luanne burst into the office.

“Claire! You must come with me!”

“Don’t be a bufflehead,” I countered. “The only thing I must do is close the store and go home. I may decide to pick up Chinese food later, but that does not fall in the category of essential.”

“I went by Dick’s house. As soon as I opened the front door, I heard another door close somewhere in the house. Fools may rush in, but I sure as hell didn’t. Please come back with me, Claire.”

“Call the police,” I said promptly. Despite my superior judgment and a lifelong habit of reading fiction, I’d been known to prowl inside what I’d supposed were empty houses. Invariably, the results had been unpleasant, and I’d sworn off such behavior (thus precluding a career in real estate and/or cat burglary).

“I can’t call the police,” Luanne said with more despair than Caron had ever manufactured for my entertainment. “Dick would never forgive me if I invited them to search his house, especially now.”

“Because they might find additional proof of his guilt?”

“There is no proof of his guilt! You’ve had several encounters with Gannet. He’d do anything to hang Dick, including plant evidence or invent faceless witnesses who just happened to have
been at the right place at the right time.” She came forward as if to clutch my arm, forcing me to retreat into the tiny bathroom made tinier by the inclusion of boxes of books, piles of outdated catalogs, and cleaning equipment. “Dick values his privacy. He couldn’t bear the idea of people pawing through his things. Please come with me. We’ll just make sure all the doors and windows are locked, grab the books and the mail, and be out in three minutes.”