Small Town Trouble (20 page)

Amy and I went on like this until it was time for us to get up and boogie.

“Are we up for this?” Amy said.

“Let’s assess later.” Putting off any and all assessments until much later seemed prudent, if not inspired and Amy agreed.

At five minutes before the Howling Hour, Amy and I packed it in and made for the Fogerty Lanes parking lot where the Lexus sat ready and waiting to deliver us straight to the Gates of Hell.

Charlene’s empty car was parked next the old building in the same spot Officer Mike’s car had occupied very recently. Amy wheeled in next to Charlene’s car and cut the engine.
 

There was almost no moon, but it was clear as a chapel bell in a country hollow. Amy popped the trunk and grabbed her industrial-strength flashlight.

“You want the flashlight or the gun?” she said.

Decisions, decisions. “Flip you for the gun?”

“No,” Amy said firmly, handing me the flashlight.

“Why did you even bother to ask me?” I mumbled. Well, it was her gun.

Somewhat reluctantly, we hiked around to the backside of building. The lightning bugs were out in full swing, flashing all around us like teeny weeny yellow neon lights. It would have been a pleasant moment on some other occasion. I let the light sweep out ahead of us.

“Where the hell is she?” I made the beam travel as far out as it would go.

“She’d fucking better be here,” Amy said, a debutante no longer.

Once again, I couldn’t help but throw a few glances in the backward direction. I was really hoping, even praying, that we weren’t walking into a trap of epic proportions.

“Charlene!” I called out. “Hey, Charlene!”

“Where are you, damn it?” Amy said, waving her gun. “Show yourself!”

Then my shoe hit something in the underbrush with an unappealing thud. All that coffee I’d poured down over the past two hours was now swiftly moving north, back up my esophagus.

“Hold up,” I said to Amy. I shined the light down at my feet and held my breath.

Amy screamed like an authentic banshee. Her scream seemed to go on and on, like some horrible echo in a horrible nightmare.

“Holy sheeit,” I said, staring down at what looked like one very expired Charlene.

I hadn’t majored in forensics at Maryville College, but even someone with a PE degree like mine could tell that someone had slit Charlene’s throat. I forced myself to reach down and feel for a pulse.

Negatory. I looked up at Amy and shook my head.

“Let me try,” said Amy.

Gladly, I stepped aside. Amy cringed as she probed around trying to come up with Charlene’s thumper, but I had a sick feeling that I wasn’t going to be only one who couldn’t find the beat.

“I think she’s dead all right.” It looked like Charlene was out of the running all the way around.

I forced my mind to take a jog down the trail of logic, and, after a few false starts, it told me that if Charlene was dead, she couldn’t have been dead for long and that meant whoever was responsible wasn’t far away.

“Good God,” Amy whispered, still hunkered down in the brush next to what used to be Charlene. “What do we do now?”

“Don’t put your gun away just yet.”

“We’ve gotta call the police,” Amy said, as we loped like spooked antelope, high-stepping it for the Lexus. “Don’t we?”

“Ask me later.” So far, I was winning the footrace back to the car, and making it back to car was eating up all of my concentration.

But Amy wouldn’t have to ask me later, and we wouldn’t have wondered about whether we should perform our civic duty. As we hustled around the corner of the building, we were greeted in a big way by a police cruiser wheeled in sideways, blocking the Lexus and there was an officer of the law in full possession of a drawn weapon climbing out of it.

Chapter 40

“What’s the rush, girls?” It was Chief Cokie.

I didn’t know whether to breathe a sigh a relief and gratefully throw my arms around her or just keep running.

Chief Cokie offered a third option. “Hold it right there, and drop the gun, sweetie pie.”

We complied all the way around. The police chief kicked Amy’s gun out of reach, then beamed us with her own industrial-strength flashlight. It looked like Chief Cokie and Dr. Smith had done their shopping at the same flashlight outlet.

“Start talkin’, ladies.” Amy looked at me. I looked at Amy. Neither of us knew exactly where to start.

“Okay then,” Chief Cokie said, “I’ll start. I just got a call on the radio. Ken Soesbe phoned the station and told dispatch that he’d been out walking his dog along the road out there because he couldn’t sleep, and he heard an awful scream coming from this direction. I just happen to be in the general vicinity so I check it out and happen to spot a couple of vehicles here. This interested me some so I pull off and start to nose around. Then voila! You girls come flying around the building about a hundred miles an hour wagging a gun.”

Chief Cokie shrugged. “Guess that brings us right up to the present. Now, who wants to jump in next?”

“First things first, Chief,” I said. “There’s a killer somewhere nearby. You need to move fast.”

“A killer?” She said it flatly, like she thought I was full of s-h-i-t. “Is this little shenanigan somehow related to your stupid theory that Rick Delozier is innocent?”

“He
is
innocent!” Amy blurted. “And that dead body out there proves it!”

I knew that sooner or later we’d have to get around to
that,
but I’d been pulling for later rather than sooner.

“Pardon me?” Chief Cokie said, high-beaming Amy. “What dead body?”

“Guess you better follow us,” I said.

“This better be good,” said Chief Cokie.

“That’s a dead body, all right,” Chief Cokie said, after giving Charlene a quick once over. “I suppose the two of you were just out taking a nature walk and stumbled across this?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“Doesn’t this mean you’ll have to reopen the investigation?” Amy said.

“So far, all this means is that I’ve got a dead stripper on my hands.” Chief Cokie said, staring down again at the lifeless body. “Shit. Guess I’d better get some backup out here.” She pulled out her portable radio.

“Uh, excuse me, Chief,” I said, “That wouldn’t be backup as in Officer Mike, would it?”

“Actually,” she said turning to me, “he’s got the night off. What’s it to
you
anyway?”

“Did you happen know that he was dating
her
?” I said, pointing down at the corpse.

A sickly look came over Chief Cokie’s face. Slowly, she lowered her radio. “
Her?”

Amy and I nodded.

“How do
you
know that?” We told her.

“Keep talkin,” she said and we did until she’d heard everything we knew.

“Shit,” she said again, and sighed heavily.

Then she called for backup, minus Officer Mike, and reholstered her radio.

“I’m gonna lock you two in the back of cruiser while the boys and I have a look around,” Chief Cokie said.

“Are we under arrest?” Amy said.

“No, you’re gonna be locked in back of the cruiser,” she said as she practically shoved us into the rear of her car. “Think of it as a safe little cocoon,” she said, and slammed the car door on us.

The cops combed the area, and because we had no choice, we cooled our jets in the back of Chief Cokie’s police car. The backup boys had brought a dog along, but he seemed more interested in peeing on the tires of Amy’s Lexus than looking for bad guys.

“They’re not going to find squat,” Amy said, slumped in the seat next to me.

Unfortunately, it looked like Amy might be right.

The coroner came and went. We watched them load the gruesome body bag into the meat wagon. We watched the police dog pee on the meat wagon before it pulled out.

“I wish I had a cigarette,” Amy said.

“I wish I had a poison pill.”

It was after two AM when Chief Cokie finally came back to the squad car. She swung open the door on my side.

“Everybody happy?” she said.

God, she was a stitch.

“Ecstatic,” I said.

“Did you find
anything
?” Amy said.

“Yeah, a lot of nothin’.”

“Big surprise,” Amy mumbled.

“Did you say something, Mrs. Smith?” Chief Cokie said. Amy made a snotty face.

“Are we free to go now?” I said.

“Make me a little promise first?” said Chief Cokie. Reluctantly and somewhat petulantly, we nodded like school kids who’d been called to the principal’s office.

“Promise me that you two will go straight home and then first thing tomorrow, you’ll hurry down to the station. I’m sure I’ll have a few more questions for you by then.”

Questions. Everyone had them, but nobody had answers.

Chapter 41

Amy and I piled into the Lexus and got the heck out of there before Chief Cokie changed her mind and carted us downtown to spend the night with Rick Rod. “Would you think I was a big baby if asked you to stay with me tonight?” Amy said.

“Of course not.” I’d practically been reduced to thumb sucking myself. Besides, spending the night, or more accurately, what was left of it, with Amy didn’t exactly sound like torture. “In fact, it’s a good idea.”

We ran by my mother’s house first. I wanted to make sure that everything was A-OK at Tara, that Evelyn was safely tucked in and locked up for the night. I also wanted my toothbrush and my teddy bear.

I left Amy in the car. I let myself in, crept upstairs and peeked in on my mother and found her and Bunky in bed snoring up a storm. All was one at Tara.

I left a note on the kitchen table saying that I’d be spending the night at Amy’s, and I’d call in the morning. Before leaving, I checked to make sure that all of the doors and windows were secure and I locked the front door behind me.

“This really is sweet of you,” Amy said, killing the engine.

“Listen, any night I don’t have to sleep with a foul-smelling Pekingese is my good fortune.” Could I sweet talk or what?

“It’s nice to know I rate over a stinky dog.”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

The Tudor was lit up for nighttime and it glowed like a show home in a glossy magazine. I was glad I wasn’t paying the electric bill, or the mortgage.

“What are the chances that Dr. Smith might make a house call tonight?” I’d already had about all of the excitement I could handle for one evening.

“If he does, I’ll shoot him,” Amy said as she unlocked the front door.

“Sounds reasonable.”

We stepped inside and Amy punched in the alarm code, disarming the system. The little blinking light went from red to green.
 

“I don’t think I’m quite ready for sleep yet,” Amy said. “How about a drink?”

“Excellent idea. Maybe something medicinal, like whiskey and a glass?”

Amy grinned a weary, beautiful grin. “Perfect.”

She showed me into the well-appointed living room and said, “Make yourself comfortable.”

I took a seat on the lovely floral print couch, and she went to the antique mahogany bar and got two glasses and a bottle of Maker’s Mark. I could see that Amy’s bar was a lot more impressive than A.C.‘s. Of course, the bar at the bowling alley was more impressive than A.C.’s.

She dropped a couple of ice cubes in each glass and poured two healthy drinks and carried them over. She handed me mine, kicked off her shoes and took a seat next to me on the couch. There was probably no appropriate toast for an occasion like the one we had on our hands, so we just went ahead and drank our late-night libation.

The Maker’s Mark went down warm and smooth like the fine Kentucky whiskey it was and it was medicine. In no time at all I was feeling almost human again. I was actually starting to relax a little and it looked like Amy was, too. She was stretched out on the couch with her feet in my lap. She had cute little painted toenails and a very nice pair of legs which were scratched here and there from our woods romp the night before.

“This is
some
house,” I said, and it was. The furnishings and ambience were a well-conceived blend of modern and traditional, kind of like Amy. Every room I could see was adorned with fresh flowers and real art. The house reeked of money and taste, an all-too-rare combination. Nancy Merit would go apeshit over this place.

Amy yawned. “It’s okay,” she said, like she was bored with the house. Probably sharing it with the dentist had taken some out of the thrill out of it. He could probably ruin living in the White House.