Authors: Shannon Hill
“Amen,” said Punk, so fervently that Boris stopped licking his hind end and stared at Punk with worrying interest.
I wanted to lean back and put my feet up, but the ribs interfered. I glared at the world in general. I had to get enough men to go in en masse, fast and hard. Before any Colliers got wind of it. I needed the friggin’ Marines.
Boris’s tail, swishing back and forth, caught my “out” tray. I saved the paperwork, all of it related to the upcoming hearings for the Senior Dare Day nudists. Not because of a backlog in our system. Judge Gilfoyle was on vacation till the end of May.
I got a very good bad idea. Or a very bad good idea. I kissed Boris’s forehead, to both his and Punk’s surprise. “Kim!”
She popped up from the floor, flushed and irritated. “What?”
“Call Dr. Mitchell, Rod Twigg, and Ken Tucker.”
Tom saw it before she did, by a whisker. I pulled out my cell and chirped, “Harry my lad!”
Payback was sweet. Harry said, “Huh?”
“How would our overburdened courts feel if we let the nudists off the hook.”
“It saves paperwork,” he said curtly. “What’re you thinking?”
“Community service,” I crooned, because I was cuddling Boris, but my tone startled Harry into asking, “Lil, are you high on those painkillers? Should I call your godmother?”
“I’m fine. I’m just asking. If we can convince three worried daddies to help us out in Paint Hollow…”
Harry clued in. “Oh-ho! I see your point, and it’s a very sharp one, too. Isn’t the Mitchell boy going to William & Mary?”
“Yep. And Rod Junior is going to Radford, so…”
“A terrible thing to have their futures ruined,” he agreed with mock gravity. “Who shall make the calls?”
I smiled at my poor deputy. “Tom. They’ll take it better from a guy.”
“Sad but true,” Harry agreed. “That gives you… four people to make about twenty arrests in as short a time as possible, yes?”
“Yes, but Kim’s going to sweet-talk her dad into it, and Maury’ll volunteer once he knows he has some company.” I got an outraged look from Kim, but Tom chuckled.
“Excellent. I assume your godmother knows nothing of your intentions to go along?”
“I am purely riding shotgun.” I glanced at my tiny gun cabinet, thought of my ribs, and amended that to, “Well, pistol, really.”
“It’ll have to be first thing in the morning,” Harry warned me unnecessarily. “Good luck.”
I thanked him and hung up. I needed more than luck. I needed to get a lot of men to take orders from me.
I called Bobbi. “Hon,” she said, “I’m in the middle of giving Mrs. Preston her perm, make it quick.”
“I need cinnamon rolls by four tomorrow morning.”
“Is that all? How big a batch?”
“Two dozen.”
“Well, snap, girl, I thought you’d ask something hard. Your office?”
“Yep.”
“Will do.”
I hung up on her to find Punk giving me a peculiar look. “What?” I asked, and ran my hand over my hair. “Something stuck?”
“Nothing,” he said hastily. “Just thinkin’. The Colliers sure don’t know what they got comin’.”
I scratched Boris’s ears. I hoped Punk was right. If this went badly, I wouldn’t need to worry about the Colliers. Aunt Marge would kill me.
***^***
There weren’t even ten of us the next morning, gathering in the humid pre-dawn outside my office. We had me, Tom, and Punk, of course; Maury, Kim’s father Matt, Dr. Mitchell, Rod Twigg, Ken Tucker. And Aunt Marge’s Roger. They all solemnly took their oath as deputies, then tore into Bobbi’s cinnamon rolls at a rate of two per man, with lots of coffee and juice chasers. They all had their own guns, except Dr. Mitchell, who borrowed a shotgun from Maury and carried it like he thought it’d bite him. They paired up into pickup trucks, and left me and Punk and Tom to man the school bus.
Punk eyed the running chain Tom had rigged. “They’re gonna have fits,” he predicted.
Tom shrugged, throwing the bus into screeching gear. “Fine by me,” he said. “They get mad, they might tell us what the hell happened to Vera, and who set that fire.”
It was a small comfort to know Beau Collier at least was already in county lockup, waiting to pay for running me off the road. That eliminated the biggest of our worries, although I didn’t discount Ken Collier by any means. Not to mention half a hundred other Colliers with guns who might take exception to seeing their cousins hauled away in handcuffs.
Even petting Boris couldn’t calm me down when I thought about
that
.
We had a rough plan of attack. The bus would block the road out of Paint Hollow, and Punk and I would watch the prisoners as they came in. The three pairs of deputies would hit Ken, Army and Rob simultaneously. They’d take on Eileen, Laura and Honey after that, saving Davis and Jeff for last. There was a little strategy to that. Davis didn’t strike any of us as likely to resist, and Jeff’s house was far enough up the hollow he likely wouldn’t notice what was going on. But if we went up there first, the rest would see.
We had fifteen people to arrest—Beau’s disgruntled wife, Donna, was still a Collier as far as the investigation was concerned—and I wanted to be in and out in under an hour. Kim had printed off Miranda rights for everyone to receive, partly to make sure no deputies screwed up reciting them, and partly to be sure that no Collier could claim he or she had not gotten a written copy to consult. We had handcuffs and the phone numbers of our county’s two public defenders: Dr. Hartley’s daughter, Tanya, and Skip Warner. Everyone was wearing a bulletproof vest, courtesy Roger making a call to a mysteriously unnamed buddy who, I suspected, was stockpiling such things against possible zombie apocalypse. And I had Boris, who made for a pretty handy combat weapon in a pinch.
I still couldn’t work up enough spit to swallow.
We slunk into Paint Hollow like thieves just as the sun was about to come up. It was May, the days getting longer, and even in the hollow the thin gold light was spreading faster than we were going to be able to move. I said a lot of prayers very quickly, mostly along the lines of “God, help!”
Tom parked the bus, left the door open, and stood just outside, cradling his favorite rifle. He wasn’t much of a hunter, but he could outshoot me with a long-barreled weapon any day of the week, and with that thirty-ought-six, he was a dangerous man.
Punk sat in the bus driver’s seat, his prosthetic stretched out in front of him, and his revolver in his lap. I had pushed all the windows down to catch the cooling breeze, and to air out the distressing smell of sweaty children, then perched myself outside by the rear of the bus. Boris lounged in the roadside grass, ears twitching as the birds started their morning chorus.
“This is either brilliant,” said Tom, “or damn fool stupid.”
“Both,” I said, and watched as May Collier opened her front door at the exact moment Gloria Shenk Collier opened hers. Rob’s wife Lynne was slow off the mark; it was Rob who answered the knock, and was in handcuffs before he could holler.
“Y’know they got kids, some of ‘em,” Tom pointed out.
I shifted my weight. My bruised ribs were better, but the broken one still throbbed. “They’ve got plenty of family around to watch the kids.”
Tom grunted. “They’re watching
us
.”
It was true. But I could practically smell the rifles and shotguns being placed carefully back in their racks over fireplaces and sofas. Then Steve Collier, son to Adam Collier and cousin to the people we were arresting, strolled out of his house and down the road toward us.
When he got near, he held his hands out from his body. “I come in peace, Sheriff.”
“Good,” said Tom.
Steve ignored him. “My cousins in trouble?”
I smiled sunnily at him. “Not yet.”
“They under arrest?”
He knew the answer, but I let him have it anyway. “So far, that’s all they are.”
He squinted at me. Then he nodded, and shrugged. “A’right then. I’ll get the women to look after the little ones.”
“Thank you.” I let him walk a few paces before I added, “We’ll be searching the houses, so you’ll be keeping the kids all day.”
His gait hitched a little, then smoothed. There’d be a few dozen angrily buzzing Colliers for Tom to deal with when he and Punk came back for the searches, but I suspected they’d keep out of the way. Colliers tended to their own, it’s true, but this wasn’t a squabble over fences. It might unsettle even a Collier to think they were capable of murdering each other.
A few of our targets did give us trouble. Rob’s wife Lynne screamed curses, Army tried to swing on Roger, Eileen’s husband Hal Lynch made a run for the back door. But they were marched to the school bus in their sweatpants and robes and slippers, while their cousins collected their children and pets with a quietness that had Boris’s fur fluffing. When Laura demanded to know if they’d just let this happen, let Colliers be “dragged off”, I saw the truth plainly enough. So did everyone. Vera had been a Collier, and while the cousins of the clan weren’t helping us, they weren’t about to help Vera’s children—and potential murderers—either. It was the best compromise we could hope to get.
We’d just gotten Lynne to shut up when Roger and Dr. Mitchell drove up to the bus. Empty-handed.
“Where’s Jeff?” I demanded.
Roger answered, “Not home. But his truck’s there. We checked everywhere. He was there, all right, there’s coffee still hot in the cup. But he’s gone.”
I admired Laura. She tried. “I refuse to believe Jeff could be the one who hurt Mama.”
She might refuse, but it was easy to see Honey didn’t. But what really struck me was the look shared between Ken Collier and Rich Shenk, also known as Honey’s husband. They were stuck in a stinky, rattling old school bus, handcuffed to a length of cow chain padlocked to the emergency exit—but they looked pleased. It wasn’t much, just a quick flash, but I knew I hadn’t imagined it.
“We’ll deal with it,” I told them, and swung up into the bus. I gave Tom the nod to shut the doors and start us rolling toward Crazy.
9.
H
arry met us at Littlepage Elementary, bearing a sheaf of search warrants. “Thank God we live in the boondocks,” he confided after passing them to Punk and Tom. “A big city judge would never go for this.”
“Probably not,” I agreed, from experience. I raised an eyebrow at a particularly colorful burst of curses from Lynne, turned my attention back to Harry. “Thanks for sticking around.”
“My pleasure,” he assured me, with a dapper little grin, like a shorter, hillbilly version of Cary Grant. “Who’s first?”
“Tom’s cousin said
Amanita
mushrooms stay potent if they’re dried, and he circled some places you’d be likely to find them.” Boris at our heels, I led Harry down the corridor, painted that universally despised green known as vomit. “There’s some potentially good habitat within an easy walk of Paint Hollow. Davis features locally grown produce on his menus, so…” I shrugged. “It’s a place to start.”
I opened the door to the principal’s office. It had occurred to me that reinforcing the psychology of the surroundings couldn’t hurt, since the Colliers were being kept in classrooms meant for small children. I’d also divvied up the prisoners to create the least harmony possible. Roger had Ken, Gloria, Eileen and Rob; Dr. Mitchell was watching May, Donna, Honey and Army; Mr. Twigg got Rich Shenk, Davis, and Seth Tyler; and Mr. Tucker was left with Lynne and Hal, and Laura.
I rapped on the door, and walked in without waiting. Rich and Seth were glowering at each other, and Davis was staring at his shoes. I tugged him to his feet—his hands were still cuffed behind him—and he pulled away. I made a mental note. He did not like to be touched. I could use that, if I needed.
Back in the principal’s office, I got comfy in Eli Dowd’s big pleather chair. Harry had rolled in a secretary’s chair and had his feet up on the desk. That left Davis in a hard wooden chair that had probably been there since the 1940s. I hit the remote button to activate the video camera, and re-read him his rights. “You’re sure you want to waive counsel?” I asked sweetly. “We’ve got both public defenders next door in the nurse’s office.”
“I assure you,” said Davis coldly, “I do not need a lawyer.”
He reminded me of my Eller relatives. I put that thought away, and patted the desk. Boris jumped up, and hunched into a meditative loaf. I kept an eye on his tail. “What do you know about mushrooms?”
“Don’t sauté them too long or in too much oil or you get slime,” he replied tartly. “It’s really why most people dislike them. Properly cooked, they’re a fine addition to any dish.”
Harry’s face puckered. “You’re very condescending given your position.”
“Which is uncomfortable, nothing more.” Davis managed to look down his nose at both of us at once.
I smacked the desk once with a wooden ruler. Boris didn’t even twitch, but Davis and Harry both jumped. “I get enough smart-ass remarks from Eddie Brady, Mr. Collier. Let’s be plain. Your mama was poisoned by mushrooms.
Amanita
, most likely.”
“Mama hated mushrooms,” said Davis, eyes darting in confusion. “She said they were nothing but toenail rot.”
Well,
that
was an image I didn’t want stuck in my head.
“Dried mushrooms are easily slipped into other food, chopped fine or otherwise. You’re the cook in the family.”
Davis flushed. “I am a restaurateur,” he snapped. “I do not
cook
.”
“You started as a short-order cook,” said Harry drily. “At The Happy Pig.”
The Happy Pig was a barbecue place in Gilfoyle, and like all such eateries, it had a picture of gleefully dancing, presumably suicidal pigs on the sign. I wouldn’t think Davis would soil his loafers in such a place.
“Your bacon-stuffed twice-baked potatoes were legendary,” Harry oiled on. “Particularly the crunchy black parts.”
Davis was red from his forehead on down to his collarbones. “I was a kid.”
I stepped in quickly. “
Amanita
poisoning takes time. Alibis are pointless. And since she died intestate…”
“Without a will,” Harry supplied maliciously.