Unspeakable (48 page)

"Okay then, well... You're sure you're okay?"

"Right as rain."

"Call me back when you take a breather."

Ignoring the misery in her voice, he gave her a clipped "Bye now," and ended the call. If she was so all-fired worried about him, she could damn well get into her Buick and come home. As soon as he disconnected, the telephone immediately rang again. "Sheriff's office."

"Yeah, uh, sir, I got a passel of snakes in my yard. When the creek water went down, there they was, squiggling all over the place. The wife's gone ballistic. One of the dogs done got bit." In the background Ezzy could hear hunting dogs barking, a woman shrieking, and an unidentifiable pounding noise. He asked the routine questions and jotted down the man's answers on the standard form. When he gave Ezzy his rural address, Ezzy asked, "So y'all've got your phone service back?"

"No, sir, we ain't. It's deader than a hammer. I'm callin' on my cell phone." Ezzy promised that a deputy would be along as soon as possible, but added that it might be a while. He cautioned the man to be careful until help arrived, but he didn't tell him that they would probably be finding snakes in the house for weeks or months to come. He'd known that kind of infestation to happen after floods.

The next call came from a man who was angry at his neighbor. "If he'd kept that sorry fence of his in better repair, it wouldn't have blown into my swimming pool." Ezzy advised him to take it up with the neighbor and not to clutter the telephone lines with such a petty, personal complaint. The chastisement didn't sit well with a man already irate. When he started cussing Ezzy out, he hung up on him.

He just wasn't feeling too charitable today. His tolerance level had maxed out hours ago. Anybody who rubbed him the wrong way was liable to get his head bit off. When be telephone rang again, he practically snarled at the bailer.

"Sheriffs office."

"Who's this?"

"Ezzy Hardge." A pause. "Didn't you retire?"

"How can I help you, ma'am?"

"I'm not sure you can. In fact I know y'all are awful busy over there. I probably shouldn't even be calling. It's probably nothing."

"You got a name, ma'am?"

"Sorry. It's Ella Presley. Over at the bank? I'm Emory Lomax's secretary." Too bad for you, Ezzy thought. "Is the bank open today?"

"No, sir. Our electricity is off and several windows were blown out. We just got our phones back on. Some of us came in to, you know, to help clean up the mess."

"Y'all been robbed or what?" he asked drolly.

"No, no, nothing like that. The reason I'm calling is, well, Mr. Lomax left a while ago, and the president called an emergency meeting of all the bank officers for four o'clock this afternoon, and I haven't been able to reach Mr. Lomax to notify him of the meeting." To Ezzy this sounded like another personal problem. What was it with people today? Had the tornado sucked all the common sense out of Blewer County? He was slowly losing what little patience Cora's call had left him. "Mrs. Presley, I don't see where—"

"I wouldn't bother you, except that Mr. Lomax is never out of touch. Never. I'm always able to reach him either on his cell phone or his pager. But he doesn't answer his phone and he hasn't responded to my pages."

"Maybe he turned them off."

"He wouldn't. What really bothers me is that he was on his way out to the Corbett place. Mrs. Corbett—you know, the deaf lady?—well she's a bank customer. Mr. Lomax personally handles her account. He was worried about her maybe not having any electricity or phone service, so he told me he was going out there to check."

Ezzy smiled at Mrs. Presley's naiveté. Lomax had turned off his pager because he was with Anna Corbett and didn't want to be disturbed. Recalling how she'd looked the other night, Ezzy couldn't say he blamed the banker, although he couldn't imagine a quality lady like her having any romantic interest in an asshole like Lomax.

"He'll show up before too long," he said with unconcern. "I wouldn't worry too much if I were you."

"I wouldn't, except for what happened yesterday afternoon."

Ezzy stifled a yawn and propped his cheek on his fist. He even closed his eyes. "What happened yesterday afternoon?"

"A man came into the bank and asked to see Mr. Lomax. When I told him he wasn't back from lunch yet, he told me he would wait and sailed right past me into Mr. Lomax's private office."

"What man?"

"He and Mr. Lomax claimed to be old college chums, but one of the tellers told me later—while we were on coffee break—that he was no more a fraternity brother of Mr. Lomax's than he was a Chinaman. She said he was the Corbetts' ranch hand and probably hadn't even gone to college." Ezzy's eyes opened. He lowered his fist and eased forward until both elbows were resting on the desk and he was massaging his forehead with his free hand. This was getting more interesting.

"Why would two grown men try and pass him off as a fraternity brother?"

"It's even weirder than that, Sheriff. I don't think they're friendly at all. I heard raised voices behind the door, like they were arguing. And no matter how they tried to trick me into thinking it was a prank, that business with the knife—"

"Knife?"

"Didn't I tell you that part yet?"

"No, no, you didn't." Ezzy grabbed a notepad and pencil. "But I'd sure like for you to tell me now."

CHAPTER FORTY–SIX

E
zzy despised Emory Lomax. It was damned foolish to give that weasel a second thought, much less devote an hour of his time to him. That's how long it would take him to drive out to the Corbett ranch and back again. Fifteen minutes after leaving the sheriff's office, he was still debating whether or not to return to town.

His eyes were grainy from lack of sleep. Despite what he had told Cora, he was so hungry his stomach thought his throat had been cut. Thinking back, the last thing he'd eaten that hadn't come wrapped in cellophane was the piece of apple pie Lucy had sliced for him yesterday afternoon. He was suffering a burning pain between his shoulder blades caused by hunching over a desk all night charting routes for deputies who called in and reported themselves lost while trying to locate stranded motorists or other citizens in equally perilous circumstances. He'd sat so long his joints were stiff and his arthritis was killing him. Too much coffee had left him with breath that would have brought a camel to its knees. He was in bad need of a shave and shower.

Overall, he felt like hell.

He must have looked it, too, because Sheriff Foster had ordered him to take a two-hour break. He ought to have his head examined for squandering half of it checking on Emory Lomax. Good thing Cora didn't know that he was off on another wild goose chase based solely on gut instinct. She'd give him grief.

It wasn't Lomax's welfare as much as it was curiosity about the hired hand that had him dodging storm debris and speeding toward the ranch. Delray's hired hand must have some mighty strong feelings of dislike toward Lomax to have pulled a knife on him. Or was it Anna Corbett that had sparked that much emotion from the man? Was he dealing with plain old-fashioned jealousy? If so, the romance sure had progressed quickly. Although love worked that way sometimes. Look at him and Cora.

Yeah, look at me and Cora.

He had intentionally ended their telephone conversation on a sour note. Now he felt bad about that. Pure spite had caused him to dismiss her concerns. He should call her and apologize. He'd call when he got back to town. As soon as he got back.

Returning his thoughts to the business at hand, he recalled that day at the Dairy Queen when Delray had introduced him to his new employee. He hadn't struck Ezzy as an overly friendly, chatty sort. But he hadn't seemed like a short-tempered hothead either. Of course, Emory Lomax could test the patience of a saint. Like the time he had stormed into the sheriff's office demanding that Ezzy do something about the birds that were "voiding" on his English import while it was parked in the lot reserved for bank employees. Ezzy had listened to every feverish word of the tirade, and when Lomax finally ran out of breath, Ezzy calmly asked if he truly thought the sheriff's office could do anything about the shitting habits of sparrows. Lomax had stamped out, leaving the deputies and office staff in hysterics. It was in no way remarkable that the new man in town didn't like Lomax. Few people did. Many who had applied to Lomax for a loan would probably enjoy killing him. The difference was that nobody Ezzy knew of had acted on the impulse to the extent that this man had. But if Lomax had felt his life genuinely threatened, why hadn't he reported the assault to the police? There'd been no such report. Ezzy had checked. Maybe the incident had been a joke between college buddies after all and the secretary had simply read it wrong. However, no matter how it came down, you couldn't have folks pulling knives on each other. Even in jest that was a dangerous business. That's why he was on his way out to the Corbett place. If Lomax was paying a call on Anna Corbett and bumped into the hired hand while he was out there, and either or both of them had a heavy crush on her, you had all the makings of a combustible situation.

And dammit, he did have a gut instinct that there was more to this situation than met the eye. Call him crazy, old, and delusional, call him a fool, but he had fifty years' experience in these matters, and something here was out of joint. At the very least it bore checking out. Last night when he'd reported in, Foster, in a rushed and harried manner, had said, "Consider yourself deputized." Legally, Ezzy was acting in an official capacity, although he doubted that Foster would clear him to run down a missing-person report. But what Foster didn't know wouldn't hurt him. Besides, he was still busy with the aftereffects of the storm, so why bother him with something this trivial?

For all his physical miseries, it felt good to be driving an official car again. The Lincoln had been blocked in by someone who had double-parked. When he asked if he could take a squad car on his break, the deputy pulling telephone duty had waved him out by tossing him a set of keys. The car felt as comfy and familiar as the old flannel robe that—to Cora's consternation—he had rescued from the Goodwill bag about a dozen times. A chance to drive a sheriff s unit again was a valid enough reason to be on this errand. He might just as well be following up Ella Presley's call as catching a short nap that would only make him crankier, or checking his house for storm damage that he wouldn't know how to repair, or puzzling over the nebulous clue to the McCorkle case left to him by a dying man.

Cora would have given him grief about that, too.

***

Myron was close to tears.

Carl was still gone and he was getting real scared. He was also afraid he had done something wrong. Carl had told him to shoot anybody who came near the car.

But he had let the man in the car go past and he hadn't shot him. The car had slowed down when it pulled up alongside the driver's door. The man had leaned forward and looked in at him. Then he had sped up and driven off real fast before Myron got a chance to shoot him. It panicked him to think of Carl finding out. But it panicked him even more to think that Carl wasn't going to come back for him and that he would be alone and wouldn't know what to do when it got dark. He would rather Carl yell at him and call him a retard than leave him. He thought about scooting behind the wheel and driving in the direction Carl had gone. He could go find Carl. But he didn't know the way. What if he couldn't find him? What if Carl came back and he was gone? Then Carl would really get mad at him for not doing what he said. So he continued to sit and sweat and guard the money.

But the next person who came by, he would shoot. Then if Carl found out about the other one, he wouldn't get so mad.

That decision reached, Myron didn't even whimper in fear and anxiety when he noticed the approaching car. He saw it in the exterior side mirror. He didn't turn around and look at it, hut kept his head forward. It slowed down and pulled to the shoulder behind his car. He was glad it had stopped, because he wanted to shoot somebody and make Carl proud to be his friend. It was a police car. It was white with blue letters on the side. It had a shiny light bar across the roof. The lights weren't on, but a car with letters on the side and lights on top represented the enemy. Carl hated cops worse than anything. Carl would be extra happy with him if he killed a cop.

The driver opened his door and got out.

"Hey, bud, you having trouble with your car?"

Myron watched him in the mirror as he started forward down the driver's side of the car. When he got closer, Myron could hear his footsteps in.the gravel.

His finger was sweaty, but it tightened around the trigger. "Need some help here?" When the officer bent down and smiled at him through the open window, he raised the shotgun and fired.

***

Emory Lomax slipped a canister of breath spray from the breast pocket of his jacket and squirted the essence of peppermint into his mouth. He checked his reflection in the rearview mirror and was relieved to see that his recent fright hadn't left him looking shaken. He had slowed down to offer assistance to the passenger of the broken-down car, but when he pulled up even with it, he'd received the scare of his life. The eyes staring back at him were colorless, yet rimmed in pink. They were set in a bloodless face surrounded by hair that looked like a Halloween wig. He'd never seen anything like it, and it had scared the hell out of him. Piss on good intentions and public relations. Even if the spook were a bank customer—he didn't think he was; who could forget that face once you'd seen it?—he wasn't about to stop. Gunning his motor, he had gotten the hell out of there and hadn't slowed down until he reached the gate of the Corbett ranch.