09 Dead Man Running, page 16
I didn’t for one second believe that Bill was smart enough to do this on his own.
So who did that leave? It hurt my head to think about it, any more, so I went downstairs and told Rudy and the kids good night. Matthew was asleep on Rudy’s lap, drooling to his heart’s content. I shuffled back up the stairs and fell asleep almost the second my head hit the pillow.
Seventeen
Something woke me up at ten past midnight. Maybe it was just my internal alarm clock suddenly warning that it was after midnight and Rudy was still not in bed. He should have thrown his big hairy leg over my hip by now and made grinding noises with his teeth. The simple fact was, if Rudy had come to bed, I would still have been asleep.
I pulled the covers back and spent five minutes trying to find my robe. I still couldn’t find it, so I threw on one of Rudy’s sweatshirts and padded down the stairs to go and rescue the recliner from Rudy’s butt. I rounded the kitchen and saw the light from the television flickering on the walls. Sure enough, Rudy was still in the recliner, our son on his lap. Both snored with their mouths open, breathing deep and even.
I moved Rudy’s hands, picked Matthew up, and carried him to bed. The knot on his head had turned purple in the few hours since his run-in with the bathtub faucet. I tucked him in, scavenged around on the floor around his bed until I found his favorite stuffed bear, and nestled it under his arm. Then I headed back out to the living room to turn off the television and try to get Rudy to come up to bed.
The television was showing wrestling. I shook my head. What in the world was he teaching my son? Wrestling, for God’s sake? Well, maybe it had come on after he was asleep and he was none the wiser. Yeah, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt, because otherwise the implications were just far too disturbing.
As I reached for the remote, I heard a noise outside. Thinking maybe the mayor had returned home, I ran to the front door, opened it, and stepped out barefoot onto the porch. There was nothing. No taxicab or car. I thought about Mrs. Castlereagh and wondered just how much she knew about her husband. Had she been lying to me, or had she really not known the truth? If she was clueless about the mayor’s secrets, I couldn’t help but think that she was probably good and scared right now. Wherever she was.
My porch light was off, so it was pretty dark outside. Then I heard another noise. It was definitely coming from the mayor’s house. Maybe he had returned without a taxi. Maybe the taxi had dropped him off up the road and he and his wife had simply walked back to their house because he knew I’d hear him come home if he arrived in a car. Boy, I think you’d have to be slightly demented to think that way, which didn’t bode well for me, since I’d thought of it, too.
I stepped to the end of the porch, hugged myself close, and peeked around the edge of my house. I saw a light flicker in the mayor’s living room. That son-of-a-gun was back. He thought he could just slip in under our noses and … do what, exactly? What would he accomplish by that? Maybe he had come back for something.
I ran across the side yard and across the mayor’s driveway and up onto his porch, wiping my damp feet on his rug. I peeked into the living room and saw him moving around. I rang the doorbell, and the figure stopped. Then I knocked. There was no way I was letting him get out of here without finding out the truth. I was going to make him answer for all of his lies. “Bill! Open up! The sheriff’s looking for you!”
The figure left the living room. What kind of idiot did he think I was? I banged on the door some more. No response. “Bill! Open. This. Door.”
A crashing sound came from somewhere in the back of the house. Or was it the back door? Was he trying to run again? I ran around to the backyard in time to see a huge figure running across the yard, jumping over the fence and into the woods. The mayor’s back door was standing wide open and one of those big terracotta planters had been turned over and broken. Obviously, I was a pretty big idiot. It hadn’t been the mayor at all. There was only one person I knew who was that big, and that was Tiny Tim Julep.
I stepped inside Bill’s house, ran to the phone on the kitchen wall, and called Colin at the office. This was his only night shift of the week. “Brooke,” he said.
“It’s me, Torie,” I said.
Instantly his voice took on a note of concern. It was after midnight, after all, and I’m sure I sounded a bit rattled. “What is it?”
“I’m in Bill’s house.”
“You’re what?” he exclaimed.
“Don’t be mad,” I said. “I heard somebody over here, and I thought Bill had come home. When I got here the back door was open, and I saw Tiny Tim jumping the fence.”
“I’ll be right there. Don’t move. Don’t touch anything,” he said.
“Right.”
“I mean it. Don’t touch anything!”
“Sure thing,” I said. As soon as I hung up the phone, I knew that I would never have this opportunity again. I was alone in the mayor’s house. Can I just say that he had lousy taste? On the wall in his living room were two of those big golden plate-looking things from the seventies. His couch had big rust-and gold-colored colored flowers all over it. His curtains were green paisley, and an ottoman with no fewer than three pieces of duct tape slapped on it was shoved haphazardly against the recliner. It was like stepping into my aunt’s California apartment in 1969. The dining room furniture was made of faux wood, Formica or something. The kitchen had dark brown cabinets, probably pressed board. The refrigerator was a dark pea-soup color. I suppose none of the things in his house would have looked that bad if they all hadn’t been thrown in the same pot together.
I started rifling through kitchen cabinets and drawers. Nothing. I checked the freezer. Don’t ask me why, but it seemed like a good place to hide something. Of course, then his wife would have had to know about it, because most women know what’s in their freezer. No, if the mayor was going to hide something from his wife, where would he hide it? Not between the mattresses, because women are also the ones who usually change the sheets. I’m not saying there aren’t men in the world who change sheets, because there are. It’s a statistical anomaly.
So where?
The garage. I know I don’t set foot in my garage if I don’t have to. Immediately, I ran for the door that led to the garage from the living room, opened it, and stepped inside. It seemed really big, but I guess since both of the mayor’s cars were gone, it would seem as though it had too much room. I checked under the workbench for anything that might have been taped underneath. Nothing. There was a supply cabinet, an old rusty metal one, standing in the corner. I opened it and was confronted with jumper cables and extension cords and … just boy stuff. It all smelled like motor oil and paint. I checked under each shelf. Nothing. Then I noticed, in the very bottom, a sliver of paper sticking up between the floor and the wall of the cabinet. I tugged on it, but it would not budge.
I got down on my knees on the cold concrete floor of the mayor’s garage and tugged some more. I could hear a siren in the distance and knew my time was limited. I rummaged around on the workbench until I found a screwdriver and then went back to the cabinet. I wiggled the screwdriver into the seam of the floor of the cabinet and shoved, and the floor popped up. Just as I caught sight of the stash of papers in the secret compartment, I heard Colin’s squad car. I saw his lights flashing on the walls of the garage through the little windows in the garage door.
Darn it! I shoved the fake bottom back on top of the papers, tossed the screwdriver onto the workbench, ran through the house, and flopped down on Bill’s couch just as Colin came striding through the front door, Lou Counts right behind him.
“I can’t believe you did this!” he said to me.
“Really? I figured this was exactly what you expected from me,” I said. He gave me a dirty look and ran his hands through his hair. Lou Counts looked down at my knees. I glanced down to see what she was looking at. I had dirt stains on the knees of my p.j. bottoms. I said nothing, but her eyes locked with mine, and I knew there was no story I could give her that she would believe.
“What are you doing in here?” Colin asked, pacing the living room floor.
“I thought I heard Bill come home. I came over and heard a crash in the back. Must have been the guy knocking over that big potted plant on the patio. Then I called you,” I said, crossing my arms.
“What if the guy had come back?” Colin asked.
“As fast as he was running, that didn’t seem likely,” I said. Lou put her thumbs in her belt loops and looked around the room. The door to the garage was cracked. She glanced back at me.
“You go in the garage, Mrs. O’Shea?” she asked.
“Why would I?” I asked.
“Just answer the question,” she said.
To lie or not to lie? Oh, boy. My soul was in deep trouble. “I don’t remember,” I said, wincing internally. I was going to hell. No two ways about it. “Maybe Tiny Tim was in there.”
Colin’s gaze traveled around the room, landing on the garage door and then on me. “You expect me to believe you’ve just been sitting here on the couch like an angel waiting for me?” he said. “You were alone in the mayor’s house. Your dream come true.”
“I’m going home. I held down the fort for you guys,” I said. Then I locked eyes with Lou Counts once again. “Now you guys can do your jobs.”
“I want the place dusted for prints,” Lou said to Colin. “Then we’ll know exactly who was where.”
I stormed out of the mayor’s house, ticked off without really having any reason to be angry. I mean, no, I hadn’t waited calmly on the couch. I had been alone in the mayor’s house and taken advantage of it. I had been in the garage snooping. They were accurate in their assumptions, and my fingerprints were everywhere to prove it. I had no reason to be angry. So why was I angry?
I charged across the yard, across my driveway, onto the porch, into the house, and past Rudy. “Rudy, get up and come to bed!” I called out, and smacked him on the shoulder as I made my way to the stairs. I heard him say something to the television as he woke up. When I made it to the second floor, I threw myself into bed. Then I realized I had on disgusting p.j. bottoms, pulled them off, tried to find new ones and couldn’t, and so decided just to go to bed in a T-shirt. Then I realized my feet were filthy, so I had to go in the bathroom and wash them in the tub.
Rudy came in then, scratching his head and yawning. He looked at me and at my feet and back at me. “Why are you washing only your feet?” he asked.
“They were dirty,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, and crawled into bed.
I looked at myself in the mirror and cringed at the gray hair. I still hadn’t managed to color it yet. I really was getting old. Mother Nature was not going to endow me with some special gift as I subconsciously had assumed she would throughout my youth.
Why was I so angry?
I knew why I was angry.
I was angry because they had interrupted me before I could snatch whatever was in the bottom of that utility cabinet.
Eighteen
The next day as I left the house, I noticed the crime-scene tape wrapped crookedly around the mayor’s house. There were still officers there. One of those officers had dusted for fingerprints and would find mine. I supposed I could lie some more and tell them that the fingerprints had been left at some other time, but other than to stand just inside the door, I’d never been in the mayor’s house much. Maybe years ago, but prints from those visits would have been wiped away by now.
I drove through town and dropped the girls off at school. I cracked the driver’s-side window, just because I love the smell of autumn, not because I was hot. In fact, I’ve been known to turn the heat up on the floorboard and roll the window down at the same time. I took Matthew to my mother’s and promised her that we’d come for dinner this Friday. Then I went out to the construction site to see how things were going with our house. They actually had the windows in now.
Egbert Hanshaw met me at the driveway with a smile on his face. “Hey,” he said as I got out of the car. “Whatcha think?”
I glanced up at the house. It was a beautiful sight. To think Rudy and I had designed it ourselves was pretty satisfying. Every little detail that went into the house, Rudy and I had decided. And as much as I was going to miss our view of the Mississippi, I was looking forward to moving into the new house. “Wonderful,” I said.
“Should get the walls up on the stables pretty soon,” he said.
“Yeah, about that. I was wondering if you could put me in contact with anybody who sells quarter horses. I found a few Web sites, but I don’t know. I think I’d kind of like to deal with somebody who’s not a total stranger.”
“Actually, I do know of somebody. Cousin of mine, named Hank Hanshaw. If you take Highway P down about ten miles, he owns that Mississippi Valley Ranch. I bought all four of my horses from him. Let me tell you, Lady is an unbelievable horse. Hank’s the best in the area.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yes, I’ve passed that property a thousand times. I never knew that was your cousin’s.”
“He’s only owned it for about a year. Bought it from old man Jenkins,” he said. “Jenkins decided to move to Taos.”
“Good,” I said. “I’ll go by there later.”
“Is there anything you wanted, or are you just here to look around?”
“Just checking in,” I said. “Ever find out about those tools and concrete mix?”
“We gave a statement,” he said. He shrugged his shoulders as if that were all there was to it.
“Have you had any more problems or theft?” I asked.
“Not a bit,” he said.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll let you get back to work.” I went into the house, nodding at the construction crew as I went. Some of the guys on the crew I knew better than others, because some were from New Kassel. A few were from Wisteria, and a couple of guys were from up in Arnold.
I climbed the stairs to where my office was going to be. With the windows in, it gave the room a feeling of nearly being finished, even though there wasn’t any drywall or finished flooring. I glanced out my window at what had already become my favorite view. A hawk swooped down and landed in the top of a tree. My window was about as high as that first line of trees in the backyard. The hawk moved his head from side to side and then spread his gorgeous wings and soared into the pasture to catch his prey. Wow. If I was going to get to witness hawk activity like that all the time, I would be a happy woman.
Down to the left was where the stable was going to be. The workers had already laid the subflooring for it. I had a good view of it from here.
I was probably crazy for buying a horse. Fritz was the only pet I’d ever managed to not kill. With that thought, I turned to go and caught a snippet of a conversation between the construction workers.
“Well, that poor bastard needs to have an upper hand somehow,” said one of the workers with a deep voice. “She has the upper hand on everything.”
“Yeah, moving out here was definitely his doing. Said it took him lots of smooth talking to get her to agree to it,” the other one said.
“I’ll bet. That woman probably argues over what toilet paper to buy,” the deep voice said.
“He thinks moving her out here will get her away from all the goings on in the town. You know, like she won’t have her nose in everything.”
“Well,” said the deep voice, “I hope he gets some peace. Rudy’s a nice guy.”
The two men crossed in front of the stairway, carrying a saw-horse into the living room. They glanced up to see me staring, struck still at the sight of them. One looked away; the other one made a gesture that made me think he was going to apologize for what I’d overheard. I held a hand up at him. “Don’t bother.”
I rushed past him, tears streaming down my face. Eg saw me leaving and waved. Turning the knob on the stereo, I tried to use the radio to drown out their voices in my head, but I couldn’t find anything harsh enough to do the job. I kept flipping channels and getting soft rock songs or, worse yet, elevator music. I can’t believe they actually have a radio station that plays elevator music. Finally I landed on a station that was playing some Zeppelin, and I cranked it as loud as I could without completely distorting the sound.
Trees flew by the window. Spotted cows moved their mouths to moo at me, but I just cranked that music and sang along. I came to the ranch that Eg had told me about and pulled in. Off in the fenced field I saw no fewer than a dozen horses grazing. I didn’t see anybody around outside, so I knocked on the door of the house.
Hank Hanshaw answered. “Ms. O’Shea,” he said, “what can I do for you?”
“I’d like to buy a horse. Or two,” I said.
“Well, sure,” he said. “Let me get on my shoes.” He disappeared for a second and then came back to the door and took me out into the field. I said a silent thank-you to the powers that be that I’d had the foresight to wear my Doc Martens and not my sneakers. There was horse manure everywhere.
Hank was a small, wiry guy. I would not have known he and Eg were related, except that Eg had told me so and they had a similar way of holding themselves. Shoulders thrown back and elbows far away from their sides. A couple of horses trotted by, and a few just stood where they were. Hank put a hand on the hip of a beautiful buttery-colored horse. “Hey, girl,” he said. “I’m here.”
I watched him as he slid his hand down her back and eventually up to her mane. He pulled her face around, showed me her teeth, and gave me what amounted to a twelve-point check of things to look for in a horse. I just saw that it wasn’t swaybacked and went, “Oooh, pretty horse.”
