Shepherd's Crook (28 page)

seventy-eight

The scream came first,
frail and wavering. Then a single
pop,
sharp and loud, from behind me. I may have imagined it later in retelling, but I could swear I heard something whizz past my head just before the top of the arbor exploded, setting off a shower of flowers and plastic and tiny white lights.

“He has a gun!” someone yelled.

“Janet!”

I didn't recognize the first voice, but the second was Tom's. As I wheeled around I saw two punch cups fly into the air as he tossed them upward and ran toward me. I stretched my hands toward him, palms out, and shouted, “No! Get down!” but he kept coming. I bent and turned toward the source of the shot, expecting to see the crowd running away.

But they weren't. They were converging on a
heavy-set
man in the same rumpled brown suit he'd worn the night before.
Zola.
Everything seemed to slow down, and I processed the scene in what could only have been a second or two. A spattering of dark brown stains straddled one shoulder of the man's suit and ran down the front of his jacket, and I realized it must be dried blood. What was it Joe had said? The second man was “marked.” Now it made sense. He'd been hit by the spray of buckshot when Mick Fallon was killed. And I was sure I'd broken his nose with the rake.

Even as I turned and ducked, the attacker moved toward me, but he seemed to be pressing his legs together with each step. I pictured Bonnie gripping his crotch and made a mental note to give her a special treat if I got out of this alive.
We all need to get out of this alive
. Yet Tom was running toward me, toward the line of fire.

And people were closing on Zola. I looked into his eyes and realized he may have left a good part of his mind in the alley where Mick Fallon died. I watched the gun come up, the muzzle looking for me. A heavy briar cane came down with an audible
whomp!
on the man's wrist. It was wielded by Tony, my new stepfather. Zola screeched but held onto the gun and brought it back up. It was pointing at me. Something metallic flashed under the lights and came down like a cage over Zola's head, rubber feet pointing my way. A walker.

Tom caught me in his arms without slowing down and pulled me toward the kitchen.

“Wait!” I resisted, and pointed. “Look!”

A man I had often seen snoozing in the atrium raised his arms in victory behind the gunman, grabbed the walker, and slid it back and forth, knocking the frame into the gunman's head and neck with each jerking slide. Zola raised his hands and there was another loud
bang!
and a ceiling tile shattered and rained down. Tony's cane whacked the man's forearm again, and the curved handle of another cane jabbed into his belly. The gun fell to the floor, and Bill grabbed it and dropped it into the punch.

Tom was holding me so tight I could barely breathe, and I realized I too had my hands clamped onto his forearm where it crossed my chest. “Are you hurt?”

“No.” And as I watched the scene unfold, I started to laugh. He loosened his grip and we moved toward the melee.

The goon was turning side to side, dodging blows as he tried to pull the walker off his head. He almost had it when a tiny little woman I thought of as the bird lady flung a crocheted shawl over his head, blinding him. Someone drove an oxygen cylinder on wheels into his shin, and a muffled howl rose from under the shawl.

I heard barking over the shouts, and suddenly it got louder. I looked toward Jade's office. The door was open. Jay and Drake raced into the room, Jade Templeton's Poodle, Percy, right behind. The big dogs focused on the strange figure now staggering in circles. Tom called Drake and the dog changed directions, racing toward the voice he loved. Percy looked around and made a beeline for Jade. I called Jay, but it was too late. He had already launched himself at Zola. His paws hit the man square in the chest, and Jay bounced off, spinning as he hit the ground and racing to obey my call. I hugged him to me.

The goon had somehow stayed upright, but it was clear from the staggering and screaming and flailing that it wouldn't take much to finish him. A swath of pale green silk passed between me and Zola.
Mom.

She reached up and pulled the shawl off the man's head. “Just who do you think you are, crashing my wedding?” She grabbed the legs of the walker and gave them a shove, driving the crossbar into what remained of Zola's nose. He let out a long,
blood-chilling
howl and staggered backward, arms windmilling as he tried to stay upright.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no!” It was Norm, and he was running toward Zola from the side, trying to avert disaster.

It was too late. The gunman toppled backward onto the folding table. It wasn't made for that kind of weight, and the end he hit collapsed with a loud
crack!
The other end stayed up, its top surface sloped toward Zola. Norm leaped over the man's legs and made a brave effort to intercept the cake as it slid.

He missed.

seventy-nine

Tom and I finally
left Shadetree three hours later. He had driven the newlyweds to their honeymoon hotel while I consoled Norm and helped clean up some of the mess. The ambulance had whisked Zola away under guard long before, but the police took some time asking questions and taking names. The residents seemed to enjoy the process—the ones who stayed awake, at least. Hutchinson had been off-duty but got the call, and since he'd been with Giselle, she insisted on coming along. When she saw the remains of the cake, she had said, “Oh, there has to be wedding cake!” and half an hour later she was back with a reasonable replacement from a nearby Scott's grocery. Norm had put his best face on the cake disaster.

Tom had to swing by his house to get Winnie, and I was lying on the couch with Jay and the cats, my ankle elevated and wrapped in ice, when my cell phone vibrated.

It was Hutch. “I thought you should know. Summer's been arrested.”

“What? But they never actually made the insurance claim, right? So what—”

“No, not that,” he said. “There are several outstanding warrants for more serious charges in Nevada. That's why we put out the alert. She'll be heading west as soon as the paperwork goes through.”

“Where is she?”

“They took her off the train to Chicago this morning. Elkhart police are holding her pending extradition.”

“This morning?”

“I was off duty. I just found out.”

I felt a strange mix of emotions about Summer—anger, sadness, loss, disgust. She had never done anything to me, but she had hurt a lot of people, and had done so with cunning and intent. She wasn't directly responsible, but people had died because of her actions.

“Have you called Evan?”

“No. I drove out there. It didn't seem like the sort of thing you tell a guy on the phone.”

“How's he going to manage?”

“Seems he was expecting something like this,” said Hutch. “He said the neighbor, the fellow you met—”

“Meyers.”

“Right. He's offered to buy Evan's place and the sheep. Seems he has a daughter who's interested in taking over the shop.”

“Did he say anything about Nell, his dog?” If no one wanted her, I decided, she could come to my house.

“Well, Evan told her it was just the two of them now, so I guess he's keeping her.”

I thanked Hutch and hung up when Tom came through the door with Drake and a folding metal crate. “Winnie's staying in here while we're gone,” he said. I buttoned my lip.

Life-threatening
experiences make me ravenous, and since the only thing I had eaten since morning was half a slice of cake, Tom suggested a nearby Indian restaurant. “But first,” I said, “I want to stop by Blackford's. I think Joe should know the goon won't be back.”

But Joe wasn't in the alley, and worse, his box home was gone. So were his
beat-up
folding chairs. There was no sign that he'd ever been there, and my heart sank. Had he been frightened away? Had Ralph Blackford run him off? The store was closed, but a car I thought to be Ralph's was still in the parking lot and the lights were on inside, so I knocked on the front door.

Ralph smiled when he saw us. “Come in! Come in!”

“Sorry to bother you, I was just worried about …”

A door at the back of the store opened and Joe stepped out of the storage area and waved.

“Oh, I thought—” I said, smiling at Joe. “I was afraid—”

“Joe's going to be helping me out,” said Ralph. “I've been worried about security, so Joe's going to be staying in the store to keep an eye on things at night and on Sunday mornings.”

Joe nodded. “I get a room, too, with a bed.”

Ralph cleared his throat and looked down, shuffling his feet. “We needed to get my son's old bed and his dorm fridge and hotplate out of the house anyway, and there's an office back there just sitting empty.”

Joe added, “I'll get paid every Friday, too.” It may have been the first time I'd seen him really smile.

I was still glowing over Joe's good fortune when we filled our plates and settled in to eat and catch up. I told Tom about Summer, but added, “I have a very good feeling about people tonight, in spite of everything.”

He smiled and said, “I missed the rest of the story when I drove Tony and your mom to the hotel. What else did that guy—what's his name, anyway?—what else did he say?”

“His name is Albert Zola. He and Fallon worked for some guy in Cleveland named Cucinelli who has his fingers in all sorts of illegal and
semi-legal
stuff.” I scooped some
chana masala
into a bit of
naan
and savored its gingery bite, then went on. “He sent Zola and Fallon looking for Evan, and they found the farm just as Evan and Summer were leaving for the herding event, so they followed them. They didn't recognize Summer because they knew her with dark hair and sexy clothes, and they weren't expecting to find her in Indiana. It was a complete fluke that they spotted Ray.”

“So, Ray and Summer had conned Cucinelli?”

“Yep. Just like Martin and who knows how many other guys. She'd gotten Cucinelli into a hotel room in Reno where Ray had set up cameras and tried to extort a bundle out of him. Hutch was too embarrassed to tell me everything, but from what I gathered, Cucinelli liked to play
dress-up
games. But he didn't extort well, and when they figured out that he wasn't really a shoe salesman, they ran.”

“But not together.”

“Hutch thinks they may have been planning to split up and rendezvous somewhere. Cucinelli's people were looking for a man and woman together, so that makes sense. But when Summer spotted Evan, she latched on.” I thought about how long it had taken me to feel safe after I dumped my ex, and wondered whether Evan would ever trust another woman.

Tom said, “What kind of man makes his living by blackmailing people who have sex with his wife?”

“I guess they deserved each other.”

“Do the police think she killed Ray?” asked Tom “After watching her hoist sheep onto their feet, I still say she's strong enough—”

“No! Zola confessed. He was kind of out of it, just rattling on. He said he and Fallon didn't mean to kill Ray. I suspect he meant not right then. Anyway, he said they just wanted to know where Summer was. I don't know if that's true, but anyway, they conked him on the head and dragged him into the storage room, and when he came to, they started breaking his fingers. And he died.” I thought about it for a moment. “The autopsy will probably show a heart attack. Once he was dead, they decided to hang him to scare Summer. They knew she was around, and didn't think they'd have any trouble finding her.”

“They must have seen her during the weekend event.”

“Probably,” I said, “but again, they were looking for a thinner
dark-haired
woman. So my hunch is they just didn't recognize her until they saw her with Evan's truck that evening at Blackford's. She was wearing a dark wig so people around here wouldn't recognize her, and that obviously backfired.”

“Now that Zola's telling all about his boss, Evan is probably off the hook for the money.”

We were drinking our
chai
when I changed the subject. “Tom, I've been thinking.”

“I have, too.” He looked very serious, and I felt a flutter of fear, but forged ahead.

“You know I've been afraid to give up my independence, but, well, I think we should give it a try, as we've planned. I'll adjust. I hope you'll still move in with me.”

“I've already made other arrangements,” he said, staring at his chai. “But we can still see each other.”

More ominous words have seldom been spoken.

Eighty

We can still see
each other
. The words cycled through my mind, and the churning in my stomach made me sorry I'd eaten so much. Tom folded his napkin and set it on the table. “Come on, I'll show you the house I may buy.”

I was so numb that for the first ten minutes I didn't notice where we were going. Eventually, though, familiar landmarks began to filter into my awareness, and when Tom turned onto my street, I managed to say, “I thought you were going to show me your new house?”

He just smiled and drove past my driveway and turned into the one next door. We were in front of Phil Martin's house. Tom turned off the engine and said, “Well, what do you think?”

“About what?”

He took my hand and squeezed it. “After Martin's wife told him to get rid of the house, I thought he might entertain an offer, so I went back to his room after everyone left the hospital.”

“Really?”

“It's not a done deal yet. I wanted to see what you think, and see the house. But it seems like a plan, don't you think?”

He was right. If the pet limit passed, we'd still be okay. We'd have our privacy and wouldn't be driving back and forth all the time. We could be together, and apart, as much as we both liked.

“Martin is willing to sell at a loss and get out quickly, since his wife is on the warpath.” Tom got out and came around to open my door. He offered his arm, and I stepped forward and took it. “I have the key. Let me give you the tour.”

As we walked toward the door I was still limping, but I felt stronger with every step.

the end