“Good for you.”
“Thanks,” Tina sighed. “But I couldn’t very well tell him that and then spend tomorrow running a booth at the teddy jubilee, so it means I’m going to miss the show.”
“That’s a shame,” I said, “but as Ash and I know well, that’s the way it is when you’re in the middle of a case.”
“Can I ask you a huge favor? We were supposed to have adjoining tables at the show, so if I set my bears up tonight, could you guys . . . ?”
“Sell them for you? Of course, we’d be happy to,” said Ash.
“Thanks.” Tina paused to watch another car pull into the restaurant parking lot. “Maybe we’d better go inside while there are still some tables left.”
I held the door open for the women and followed them inside. The Brick Pit was housed in a nineteenth-century cabin with hand-hewn log walls and a flagstone floor; its interior felt like a step back in time to the pioneer era . . . if you could overlook the electric lighting, smoke detectors, modern kitchen equipment, and air-conditioning ducts. Another contemporary touch was Sergei’s sound system, which was playing jazz saxophone legend Gerry Mulligan’s version of “Waltzing Mathilda.” Like me, Sergei was a fan of classic West Coast jazz from the 1950s and 1960s.
We joined the short queue of customers waiting to order food from a young woman behind the counter. Sergei had run the place all by himself up until a couple of months ago, but that wasn’t workable any longer. The growing success of his restaurant and his relationship with Tina (which necessitated some free time, after all) had led Sergei to finally hire an apprentice barbecue “pit boss” and a part-time staff.
Tina said, “Okay, you listened to my sad story. What’s yours?”
“It’s short and sour. We can’t buy the Victorian house for our shop,” Ash replied.
“Why? Wouldn’t they negotiate on the price?”
“We didn’t even get that far. It turns out that Liz Ewell owns the place. She took it off the market the moment she found out we were interested in buying it.”
“And so it’ll just continue to sit there empty and falling apart. Talk about acting like a dog in the manger,” Tina grumbled. “What are you guys going to do?”
However, before Ash could answer, something else claimed her attention. On the wall to our left was a bulletin board that usually displayed business cards and yard sale fliers. However, tonight there was an eight-by-ten color photograph thumbtacked to the board, and it showed me facing the rear of the Aztek with my hands outspread on the hatch window while Trooper Fuller frisked me for weapons. Underneath the image was a caption that read, THE LYON TAMER. Both Ash and Tina gaped at the picture, and they had a pretty good reason for being shocked. I hadn’t told either of them about the embarrassing episode.
Ash turned to me. “When did
that
happen?”
“This morning. I guess I forgot to mention it.” I tried to look innocent.
“You forgot to mention you were arrested?”
“Not arrested. Just stopped and removed from the vehicle at gunpoint.”
Ash looked heavenward. “That makes me feel
so
much better.”
“How did it happen?” Tina asked.
“I can explain in three words: The Cannabis Comet.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. I got pulled over for speeding, and the trooper didn’t believe me when I said there wasn’t any marijuana in the car,” I said while reaching over to remove the photo from the bulletin board. “Not that I blame her.”
“But how did Sergei get a picture of the traffic stop?”
“Your compassionate boyfriend was driving by and thought he’d have some fun before telling the trooper who I was.”
By now, we’d arrived at the order counter and could see Sergei hard at work back in the kitchen. He glanced up from the cutting board where he was slicing some baby back ribs and gave me a rascally grin when I held up the picture. I smiled back while trying to figure out some way to sabotage his sound system so that the only thing it would play was “It’s a Small World (After All).” As far as I was concerned, my promise not to mercilessly rag Sergei over the impending vacation at the Mouse Empire was now null and void.
We ordered our dinners, filled our plastic tumblers with sweet tea from a pitcher on the counter, and sat down at a picnic table near the back of the restaurant. Keeping an ear cocked for the young woman to call our order number, we began our debriefing. Tina started by telling us about the autopsy.
“Dr. Grice was right.” Tina leaned forward and spoke in a low tone so that the nearby diners wouldn’t overhear. “The arrow tore out the bottom of Mr. Rawlins’s heart and then lodged in his spine. You were also right. The arrow entered his chest at a downward angle. Then we noticed some potentially weird things.”
“Oh goody. I was worried that we didn’t have enough confusing elements to this investigation,” I said with a humorless chuckle.
“Tell me.” Tina took a sip of sweet tea and then continued, “Odd item number one: The shaft of the arrow is slightly bent, about five inches above the arrowhead.”
“I don’t know that much about archery, but it seems to me that would make the arrow unstable in flight.”
“That’s what I thought, too.”
“Maybe Ev tried to pull the arrow out before he died and that’s what bent it,” Ash suggested.
Tina nodded. “Dr. Grice said that was a strong possibility. She even allowed that it might have happened at some point when they transported the body to Roanoke. Apparently the arrow did bump against the roof of the van as they were pulling the gurney out.”
“So maybe the bent shaft isn’t important,” I said.
“Maybe. But then we have odd item number two: tiny bits of unidentified debris stuck to the four blades of the broadhead.”
“Wow. Great obs.”
“I can’t claim credit for it,” said Tina. “Dr. Grice noticed the stuff on the arrowhead when she removed it from Rawlins’s spine.”
“Could they have been clothing fibers?” Ash asked. “The arrow went through at least one shirt.”
“We found that kind of fiber, but it was the other stuff that caught our eye. It was a mixture of minute and irregularly shaped white and brown particles.”
I said, “Interesting. I’m assuming you sent it to the crime lab. How long will it be before they get back to you with an answer?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Did you sell your soul to the devil? Crime lab technicians don’t work on Saturday.”
Tina seemed pleased to have surprised me. “I know the criminalist handling the case. We went to the academy together. She was going into the lab to catch up on some paperwork and said she’d bump my evidence to the top of her stack.”
Suddenly, we heard the young woman call out our order number. Tina and Ash went to get our dinners. When they returned, the sheriff set a plate with a big wedge of peanut butter pie on it next to my basket of ribs and fries.
I said, “I didn’t order this.”
“I know,” said Tina. “But Sergei insisted.”
“He didn’t like the look of your smile and said it’s a peace offering,” Ash added.
“A peace offering? What for? That picture was a funny prank, and I
love
funny pranks. I just hope Sergei enjoys them as much as I do,” I said, while the women exchanged worried looks.
Then Tina peered down at her dinner as if seeing it for the first time and said, “My God, I can’t believe this. I spent the better part of the morning inside some guy’s chest at an autopsy, and now I’m getting ready to eat barbecued ribs.”
“Want some ketchup?” I pushed the plastic bottle toward the sheriff.
“Brad!” Ash gave me a scathing look.
“Sorry, Tina. Homicide inspector humor. So, is there an odd item number three?” I asked.
“Yes: you,” grumbled Tina as she pushed the basket of food away.
“That’s a given. How about odd item number four?”
Tina took a big swallow of tea and then said, “The other strange thing was that we found some tiny bits of what looks like a different kind of brown material stuck to the arrow shaft itself.”
“Inside or outside the body?” Ash asked.
“Outside and back toward the feathers or fletching or whatever it’s called.”
“Maybe it was chili,” I offered, and then took a bite of dry-rub-style pork rib.
“Brad, now stop trying to make poor Tina sick.”
I chewed and swallowed. “I’m not making a gruesome joke. We know that Rawlins was eating chili just before he was murdered. Maybe he had some on his hands—”
“And it was transferred to the shaft when he tried to pull the arrow out?” Ash finished the thought for me.
“Well, whatever the debris is, I sent it to the lab, too,” said Tina as she reached over to snag a French fry from her basket. “Okay, Brad, now it’s your turn.”
After briefly summarizing the small amount of useful information I’d obtained from my meetings with Wade and Marilyn Tice, I said, “The bottom line is that they both hated the victim’s guts and act as if he had it coming, which makes me wonder . . .”
“If Mr. Rawlins wasn’t the nice guy we thought he was?” Tina took another fry.
I pushed Tina’s basket of ribs back in front of her. “You’re hungry. Eat your dinner. I promise there’ll be no more sick humor.”
“I can’t believe that,” said Ash.
“What, that I can’t behave?”
“Well, yes, that. But mostly I was talking about the idea of Ev having been some sort of secret scoundrel.”
“He might not have been,” I said. “But if the Tices felt that way about him, then other folks might have, too, and we need to know why.”
Tina took a bite of her dinner. Dabbing her lips with a paper napkin, she said, “So we need to investigate Mr. Rawlins’s background. We can start with the paperwork we collected from his house.”
“In the meantime,” said Ash. “Is there any way we can get a closer look at Wade’s quad-runner?”
“I don’t see how,” I replied. “You can take it to the bank that he and Marilyn won’t cooperate, and we don’t have enough for a search warrant.”
“So as long as the quad-runner remains parked on his property, we can’t compare its tires against the plaster casting of the tracks.”
“That’s about the size of it,” I said, and then resumed my narrative, covering the mortifying escape of Chet Lincoln and how I’d interrupted the daytime slumber party in Sherri Driggs’s hotel room.
Tina’s eyebrows arched. “Boffing the employees? That isn’t very professional.”
“I disagree. Management always screws the hired help. Jesse just gets a more personalized and nicer version of it,” I said. “But the most interesting thing about our intimate little visit together was how they both reacted when I mentioned Everett Rawlins’s name.”
Already knowing what had happened, Ash took up the story. “Sherri suddenly and conveniently developed a bad headache, and Jesse gave some double-talk answer about not knowing who Everett Rawlins was.”
“But you think he does?” Tina asked me.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a coincidence that Sherri’s Saab showed up at the Rawlins farm. And maybe Sherri really did have a headache. And maybe Jesse just thought he was putting me in my place by answering my question with a rhetorical one of his own.”
“But you aren’t buying it,” said Ash.
“Nope.”
“Neither am I,” said Tina. “That’s an awful lot of
maybe
s.”
“But why would
they
have been at Rawlins’s farm?” asked Ash.
“We have to assume it’s connected with his death. The problem is, there’s no obvious link between them and Rawlins. We need more information.” I said
“Well, I could call Kurt Rawlins and ask if he’s heard of Sherri or Jesse.”
“And I could do an Internet search on our erotic executive,” said Ash. “Maybe she’s in some sort of agriculture-related business.”
“Both are good ideas, but I’d rather find the Saab. There’s just something so improbable about how the auto theft went down.”
“How so?” Tina asked.
“It was raining and chilly, yet Sherri parked her luxury car in about the most isolated portion of the parking lot.”
Ash shook her head. “It would have made more sense if her boy toy had dropped her off at the front door and then he parked it.”
“Exactly. Or had the valet park it.”
We all looked up to see Sergei approaching, carrying a pitcher of sweet tea. He refilled our glasses and then, at Tina’s urging, agreed to join for us for a moment. Sergei sat down on the bench beside Tina. Early in their courtship, the sheriff had decided it wasn’t appropriate for her to display affection in public while in uniform, so they didn’t hold hands. However, I did notice that they sat close enough together so that their knees were touching.
Sergei said to Ash, “Some of your teddy bear artists were in earlier this afternoon. They’re nice people.”
“Yes, they are. And did you get my message about the lunch tally? I’m going to need twenty-eight lunches for tomorrow.”
“I’ll deliver them at eleven-thirty.” Then Sergei turned to me. “You didn’t eat your pie.”
“It’s almost too sweet. Kind of like the idea of you riding the carousel at Disney World. But more on that later, my friend.” I gave him a beatific grin.
“Brad, you promised,” warned Ash.
“But that was before he gave me the post office wanted-poster treatment.”
“How in the name of God did he find out?” Sergei asked Tina.
Tina shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Somehow, he just guessed.”
“Look, I’ll drop it. I’m sorry, Sergei, and I hope you have a great time,” I said remorsefully. “But when you go to the character breakfast, could you get me Mickey’s autograph?”
“Getting back to the Saab,” Tina interrupted before our male ego melee could get under way in earnest. “We’ve got a statewide bulletin out, but we haven’t heard a word back.”
“What Saab are you talking about?” Sergei asked.
“The one that hit Ash’s patrol car last night. I told you about it.”
“Yes, but you didn’t say what kind of car it was. You just said there was a hit-and-run.” Sergei suddenly looked pensive. “Was this Saab dark blue with Georgia license plates?”
“You’ve seen it?” Ash demanded.
“This morning. But I didn’t know anyone was looking for it. When I left the house on my way in here, I noticed a Saab Nine-Five sedan parked behind the old Baptist church up in Thermopylae.”