Stiffs and Swine (12 page)

Assuming from Scott’s tone that all was peaceful at the library, James said, “So all’s as it should be this evening?”

“Not quite,” Scott answered with deflated enthusiasm. “The kids are back. All the ones from last week and some new ones, too.”

“What!” James was shocked. “What are they doing?”

“Same thing. Paying homage to that brute Martin and messing up all the magazines.” Scott paused. “And they’re definitely less willing to listen to Francis and me,” he confessed ruefully. “We’re not having much success keeping them quiet.”

James looked at this watch, struggling to keep his irritation at bay. “How many nonteenage patrons are there?”

“Only two. Mr. and Mrs. Schroeder. They’re picking out a pile of books to take to the beach next week.”

Visualizing the teenagers creasing magazines and talking in loud voices as they chewed gum and conducted their illicit activities nearly drove James insane with frustrated anger. He wished he could teleport to Quincy’s Gap and have Lucy drive to the library while wearing her uniform and a fierce scowl. He knew that she could frighten some sense into the group of teen miscreants without uttering a single word.

“Okay, this is what you’re going to do,” he told Scott. “First of all, go turn off the A/C. As soon as the Schroeders are finished checking out, make an announcement over the intercom system that due to technical difficulties with the air conditioning system, the library will be closing early.”

“Seriously?” Scott said after a stunned pause. “Can we do that?”

“Oh, we’re doing it!” James shouted and then felt guilty about taking his frustrations out on Scott. “Really, Scott. This thing with the kids is getting out of control, and I can’t help you from here.” James sighed. “And I want to apologize for assuming that I had the problem all figured out.”

“No worries, Professor,” Scott assured him. “Francis and I know that you’ll get to the bottom of this mystery sooner or later.”

James grinned. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. Now, close up shop and go see a movie or something. You guys deserve a treat after putting up with that group
again
.”

Stuffing the phone angrily into his front pocket, James picked his way through the muddy grass to where his forlorn friends pushed food around on their plates.

“I can’t stand this!” Lucy declared, standing up. “It’s time to split up and search every inch of this park, from the campground area to the face-painting booths! I can’t sit still for another second!”

Bennett also rose and cleared their table of their unfinished meals and drink cups. “Come on, James. We’re not goin’ back to that inn without Gillian.”

The four friends scoured the festival grounds until almost ten at night. They interrogated anyone carrying a walkie-talkie, poked their heads into magic shows, animal pens, tents in the camping area, and port-a-johns. They questioned merchants, entertainers, and any crowd members wearing Birkenstock sandals or trailing a dog on a leash.

Finally, exhausted and dirty, they met back at Lucy’s Jeep. When James and Bennett heard that Lindy and Lucy had no better luck in finding even the slightest trace of Gillian, they all grew disheartened. At a few minutes past ten, R. C. called to say that his network of festival workers had had no success either.

“I’m sure she’s waiting for you at the Fox Hall,” he said in an attempt to console Lucy.

But back at the inn, Gillian’s bed was empty and her belongings were untouched.

“Before I go to bed,” Lucy stated wearily to her friends, “I’m going to call the local sheriff.”

“Let us know if there’s any news,” James said gloomily. Lucy promised that she would phone them and then closed the door to their suite.

Following Bennett as he shuffled off to their room, James thought it would surely be impossible to fall asleep. With his worry over Gillian and the goings-on at the library, his mind was on overdrive. However, the moment he closed his eyes, his body seemed to melt into the bed and immediately drown in dark waves of sleep.

The ringing phone jolted James from a dream in which he and Murphy were at the beach. The sun was burning his pale cheeks and forehead into a crisp red but he couldn’t move a muscle. Looking at the incoming surf, he realized that Murphy had buried him neck-deep in sand and then had run off to interview a man who was screaming that his surfboard had just been bitten by a twelve-foot shark.

Blinking the dream away, James switched on the bedside lamp. Bennett answered the phone. As his friend croaked out “hello,” James pulled the digital clock within inches of his nose. It was three minutes past seven.

Bennett listened to the caller for several seconds and James tried to read the mixed expressions passing rapidly across his friend’s face. He sensed that whatever Bennett was hearing was completely unexpected, for Bennett’s eyes widened into black pools as he nodded
mechanically.

“I see,” Bennett finally said in response, his voice leaden. “We’ll meet you downstairs in ten minutes.” He waited, listening again, and then sighed lugubriously. “Yes, of course I’ll tell him.”

Replacing the receiver with a gingerness that was atypical, Bennett finally looked James in the eye. “That was Lucy. She didn’t have good news, my man. Jimmy Lang was found dead this morning—inside his camper.” He stood slowly, as though his body was stiff.

“Jimmy’s dead?” was all James could think to say.

“Yeah. The local sheriff wants to meet us in the judges’ tent in fifteen minutes. They wanna question us about yesterday.” He reached out and squeezed James on the arm, as though hoping to comfort both of them with the gesture. “It gets worse, James. Gillian was there when Hailey found Jimmy’s body. The law boys have got her in custody.”

“Who?” James said, trying to fathom what Bennett had just told him. “Gillian or Hailey?”

“Gillian,” Bennett replied as he grabbed his jeans from the closet. “They think she murdered Jimmy Lang.”

Though James plied
Bennett with a thousand questions as he sped to the festival grounds, his friend could offer little more in the way of new information.

“I’m in the dark myself, man!” Bennett finally shouted when James demanded to hear the precise details of how Jimmy Lang had met his end.

“But it must have been a violent one or Gillian wouldn’t be sitting in a holding cell right now,” James persisted as though his friend had never spoken. He zoomed into an empty parking space next to Lucy’s Jeep, turned off the engine, and burst open his car door with so much force that his Bronco shuddered. When he saw that Bennett’s mini recorder had fallen from his friend’s pants pocket, he scooped it up and shoved it into his own and then slammed the Bronco’s door closed.

“Where are we supposed to go?” James looked around frantically. “To the crime scene?”

“Look, there’s Lindy,” Bennett said with palpable relief, pointing at a figure heading toward them. “Maybe
she
can give us some answers before we both crack apart like boiled eggs.”

Lindy was jogging straight for them, her unbrushed hair forming a black tornado over her head as she ran. As she grew nearer, James could see that tracks of black mascara lined both of her cheeks and she had buttoned her blouse incorrectly so that one side was longer than the other. Stopping within three feet of her friends, Lindy paused to catch her breath. James stared at her misaligned shirt, unintentionally observing that there was a gape large enough at chest level to expose a flash of the red and white polka-dotted bra she wore underneath her rust-colored blouse.

“Lucy’s talking to the sheriff right now. I’m supposed to take you straight to them,” Lindy informed James and Bennett between pants and then started walking back in the direction from which she had come. “Isn’t this awful?” Her brown eyes pooled with tears and she swatted them away in annoyance. “Do you think Gillian really could … ?” she trailed off and then shook her head fiercely. “No! She’s no murderer!” Clinging to James’s sleeve, she cried, “What are we going to do?”

James held out his hands in supplication. “Please, Lindy! Tell me what the hell is going on! How can I help when I don’t know a damned thing?”

Struggling to regain her composure, Lindy stopped short and took several deep breaths, unknowingly pressing her hand over the puckered hole in her shirt. “Okay, here’s what I know. I overheard the sheriff telling Lucy that Jimmy Lang died of propane poisoning. He went to sleep last night with a portable heater turned on high and the window vents fully open. Apparently, someone taped over the window vents, the plumbing pipes, and even climbed onto the roof and covered the roof ventilators with several layers of duct tape. Jimmy couldn’t get a lick of fresh air if he wanted to and over the course of the night, he just slipped away.”

“And they think Gillian did this? Gillian?” James spluttered and then turned to Bennett. “This sounds crazy! Is it possible to get a propane overdose from some little rinky-dink heater?”

Bennett nodded. “Sure, man. Some of those suckers run off full propane tanks. They can pump out, like, thirty thousand BTUs an hour.”

“Speak in English,” Lindy commanded. “And why do you even know that?”

“Hey, I camped out a lot as a kid. I was an eagle scout, remember?” Bennett answered testily. “BTU stands for British Thermal Unit. It’s the quantity of heat needed to raise one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit.” He scowled at Lindy as they walked. “I know
that
from studying acronyms to prepare for
Jeopardy!
”

“I still don’t understand, but I don’t care about the scientific definitions. Can you just explain how can a heater kill someone?” Lindy demanded with uncharacteristic impatience.

“The heater eats up oxygen at the same time it produces carbon monoxide.” Bennett rubbed his mustache. “That’s not good. Without a source of oxygen, the carbon monoxide can take away your last breath and you’d never know it. It doesn’t have any kind of smell. That’s why they call that sneaky gas the silent killer. Doesn’t happen fast either, so someone must have taped the vents pretty soon after Jimmy went to sleep.”

“Wouldn’t manufacturers make some kind of safety switch on those heaters if they’re that dangerous?” James wondered aloud.

“They did after a bunch of folks had already died from carbon monoxide poisoning.” Bennett slowed as they approached Jimmy’s camper. “A few years ago, I read an article about accidental deaths caused by those portable heaters in an issue of
Outdoor Life
. If Jimmy had one of those older models, it would’ve kept right on pumpin’ out the bad gas until someone turned it off.”

“But Gillian doesn’t camp!” Lindy spluttered. “How would
she
know how to use a heater as a weapon? And for crying out loud, what was Jimmy doing with the heater on, anyway? Couldn’t he just wear a sweatshirt or use a blanket or something?”

James nudged Bennett. “He was cold yesterday. Remember him asking Hailey for another shirt? And I saw goose bumps on his arms when he came up to the mic to receive his prize. That can’t be normal.”

“I wish I had some answers, friend, but I don’t.” Bennett stared gloomily ahead.

A cluster of deputies from the Hudsonville County Sheriff’s Department turned at the sound of Bennett’s voice. Lucy stood among them, an unreadable look on her face, but when she saw James, her cornflower-blue eyes betrayed the seriousness of the situation. She slowly raised her hand to wave at her three friends while offering a timid smile, but James saw genuine fear written on her face. Gillian was in real trouble.

Stepping away from her fellow officers, Lucy approached her friends and steered them a few yards farther away from Jimmy’s RV.

“They’ve already removed the body,” she told them, her tone sounding detached and official. As she looked at her friends, she rubbed a business card between her fingers until James was certain the ivory card stock would turn to ribbons. “Hailey claims that she had no idea Jimmy’s life was in danger. Apparently, she was in charge of keeping an eye on the ribs for today’s contest. According to her statement, one or two people from each cooking team must pull an all-nighter on what they call Rib Night.” She glanced down at the nearly destroyed business card and stuffed it into her pocket. “Hailey admits to spending the hours between one and three hanging out with the Marrow Men—coming back to check on the cooker from time to time. She then went to catch a few hours of shut-eye in the back of her SUV. She says that lately, Jimmy had been keeping the camper too hot for her to be comfortable, so she slept in the car.”

“How does Gillian fit into this scenario?” James asked impatiently.

Lucy shrugged as though she couldn’t figure out how best to answer his question. “Hailey woke up at about five thirty and saw Gillian on the camper steps. She thought Jimmy and Gillian might have been messin’ around, so she burst into the RV and found Jimmy stone dead on the sofa. She called the cops on her cell and told Gillian to stay put.”

“And Gillian listened to her?” Lindy sounded surprised.

Lucy bowed her head, clearly not wanting to make eye contact with her friends. “She didn’t say a word, but Hailey says that Gillian was smiling like a deranged clown the whole time they waited for the sheriff and her crew to get here.”

Bennett scratched his head. “Smilin’? And … did you say the sheriff is a she?”

“Yes.” Lucy glanced over her shoulder. “Here she comes now, and she doesn’t look happy.”

The conversation among the group of deputies abruptly came to a stop as a petite woman with skin the hue of warm toffee and closely-cropped, dark hair marched toward the supper club members. Her eyes were almond-shaped and sparkled with determination and intelligence.

“Sheriff Jade Jones,” she introduced herself, shaking all of their hands with a brief but firm grip. “I’m sorry to have to start your morning off in such an unpleasant manner, but I need to take statements from all of you regarding Gillian O’Malley’s interactions with Jimmy Lang.”

“There was only
one
interaction!” Lindy spat out. “We didn’t even know that she
knew
him until yesterday. And we had no idea what she was talking about when she accused Jimmy of killing her husband.” Lindy’s eyes flashed. “But I’ll tell you one thing I
do
know. Gillian didn’t murder anyone. She’s a deep believer in karma and in that what-goes-around-comes-around stuff. She doesn’t even kill spiders! She
relocates
them to the plants on her front porch. Does that sound like someone capable of an act of cold-blooded violence to you?” After this outburst, Lindy began to cry.

Something that might have been respect for Lindy’s loyalty flitted across Sheriff Jones’s face for a millisecond. She then shifted her compact, muscular body and gazed into the distance, her expression steely. “We’re investigating all angles, ma’am,” she said to Lindy. “Miss O’Malley has not been formally charged with a crime, but as of this moment, we’re very interested in discovering her history with Mr. Lang.”

“So are we!” Lindy retorted and then forced herself to calm down. “Has she said anything yet?”

Sheriff Jones shook her head. “No. She hasn’t spoken a word since we found her here this morning.”

James eyed the perimeter of crime scene tape fluttering in the morning breeze and muttered, “Jimmy seemed to enjoy rubbing people the wrong way, Sheriff. Just because Gillian was at the scene doesn’t mean she was involved.” But his words sounded unconvincing, even to his own ears. Did he completely believe in Gillian’s innocence or had her bizarre behavior from the day before caused him to doubt her character?

The sheriff stared at him curiously. “And which people did he rub the wrong way? Mr. Henry, is it?”

When James hesitated in order to gather his thoughts, Lucy jumped in. “The woman who runs the Inn at Fox Hall, for starters. She was pretty irate when she discovered that her
teenage
daughter had fooled around with Jimmy on Thursday night.” She pointed at James. “He even saw the evidence on Francesca’s neck. That’s Eleanor’s daughter and Eleanor was pretty livid. Francesca has to maintain a spotless reputation if she wants to become the next Miss Virginia.”

“Francesca doesn’t seem to give a fig about the upcoming pageant,” Lindy added, “but her mother certainly does.”

The sheriff tilted her chin at the nearest deputy who immediately produced a pad of paper and began taking notes.

“Mrs. Fiennes isn’t the only other possible suspect,” James said. “Bennett and I also overheard a heated exchange between Hailey and Jimmy yesterday. I don’t know what Hailey’s told you about their relationship, but from what we heard, it wasn’t what I’d call harmonious. In fact, it seemed downright volatile. Right, Bennett?”

James turned to his friend, but Bennett appeared to be deaf and dumb to anything except the presence of the attractive sheriff. Casting his eyes back and forth between Bennett and Sheriff Jones, James realized that the pair were close in age and were of almost the same height. The comparison ended there, however, for although Jade had a boyish haircut and an air of intensity about her, she possessed a regal beauty that had clearly struck Bennett to the core.

James elbowed Bennett in the ribs, and he was pleased to hear his friend come to his senses and join the conversation. “James speaks the truth, Sheriff.” Bennett faced the sheriff. “And let’s not forget the dog lady, folks. That crazy woman spit on Jimmy’s cooker and called him all sorts of names. She sure looked like she’d have liked to see him sleepin’ with the fishes. That was a seriously unhappy woman, yessir.” Bennett cleared his throat in embarrassment. “Uh, I mean, ma’am.”