Down Don't Bother Me (9780062362209) (16 page)

“Carla in some kind of scrape?” he wondered, voice low despite the empty store. I knew the habit. In small towns, the secrets tell themselves.

“Not as I know of. I just wanted to talk to her about a mutual friend.”

More appraisals. At last, he nodded and said, “Likely she's there. Carla mostly works out of the house these days. Watch out, though. She's got herself a torpedo of a mastiff bitch.”

“Thanks for the warning. Dogs usually like me, though.”

The dude laughed a little. He said, “This one don't like anyone but Carla. And Patty. And even that sometimes seems like an uneasy truce.”

“Up the road” ended up being ten miles north, through broad-back hill country shot through with mockernut hickories and slender bur oaks and little creeks that overswam their banks and flooded the asphalt. A couple of times the road dwindled down to something not much wider than a deer path, and I worried we'd taken a wrong turn. Even at their widest the lanes were perilous, and the bike rocked and bucked along their cragged edges like a mechanical bull. Anci laughed and enjoyed the ride and pretty soon I was laughing, too, glad we weren't pulled over by some county mountie out looking for joyriding lunatics. By the time we found the cabin, nestled in a dark patch of sweet-gum trees down a quarter-mile gravel drive, my ass hurt like I'd been dragged up the hill.

The Shepherd household was a log cabin with a wraparound porch and beech-wood planks radiating soft yellow beneath the rustle of the autumn canopy. The pegged wood looked as smooth as polished elk bones, and the place generally had a pleasant air about it. You could imagine it making a pretty good hideout, too, secluded spot like that.

“Little luck, he'll be in there,” I said. “Beckett. Maybe this'll be the end of this business, and you and I can go someplace fun together. Like a vacation.”

“Where?”

“I don't know. Anyplace. I ain't ever been to Memphis. Maybe we can go there, make fun of Elvis's bathroom.”

“Maybe we can take grandpa.”

“I don't think so, sweet pea.”

She thought about that for a moment, a serious expression on her face. Finally, she said, “I visit him sometimes, you know?”

“I know.”

“Peggy takes me.”

“I know that, too.”

“And I know he's done bad things,” she said. “He never says so directly, but I know it. I can tell, way he talks about things. The past. Grandma. You. I just wish there was a way.”

“I guess I do, too. At least I used to. Listen, though, what happened between him and me, you know that isn't ever going to happen between the two of us. Not ever.”

“I know,” she said, but I could tell it made her happy to hear it out loud.

I asked her to wait on the bike, and I climbed off and walked to the porch and knocked on the door. No answer. I looked through the front window but couldn't make out anyone inside. Well, I'd come a long way and didn't want to leave empty-handed, so I stepped around back of the house to see what there was to see. Fence. Big one, too. Ten feet, maybe. There wasn't anything else to do. I fought my way up and over. I'll say this, you cross the forty-year line, that
kind of climbing gets a little less graceful. I got up okay, but I came down hard and tweaked my ankle and landed on my butt. I glanced around, hoping no one had seen. I was glad Anci was around front and out of sight.

The backyard was a broad, sloping space spotted with more sweet-gum trees and a few stony outcroppings stippled with brown moss. There was a good-size garden, now tangled with winter vegetables, and a jakes with one of those composting toilets. There was a doghouse filled with nice clean straw but nothing else. I was glad about that. I wasn't ready to meet the family pooch. I didn't anticipate trouble, but I put my hand in my jacket and took hold of the rubber grip of the 9000S. It was a confidence thing.

Everything was still. There was a steep grade behind the house, and a finger of water trickled down a stony moraine, but that was it. I kept near the fence line and hobbled purposefully on my hurt ankle toward the house, and I was nearly there when things suddenly came unglued and got un-still. A dark blur flashed through my peripheral vision. There was a whipcrack of sound like muscles unclenching and a flash of animal heat, and something hit me so hard in the back that I left my feet and did a flop that would have made Dick Fosbury burn with envy. I fell forward and to the side, hitting the fence on my way down. I wondered when they'd started running trains through people's backyards and how I'd managed to stray onto the tracks. Worse, I landed with the 9000S balled up underneath me. It's a wonder I didn't blow my own guts out. I made to roll over, but before I could something heavy hopped onto my back and grabbed the ruff of my neck in its jaws. Spools of hot slobber sluiced down my open collar. So much for the dog lover in me.

“Word of warning,” a woman's voice said in a growl that for a moment I mistook for the dog talking. “You move, or I give her the signal, she takes your head off.”

“That seems like a useful warning.”

“What's your handle?”

“Call me Slim.”

“I'm pretty close to calling you an ambulance. What's your story?”

“It's a tale,” I said. I choked back a mouthful of wet dirt and just a hint of dog shit. They must have been building dogs heavier; this one weighed as much as a wood stove. “I'm looking for Guy Beckett.”

“You're not a cop. Whaddya want with him?”

“Like I said. It's a story. Long one, too,” I said. “Short version is, I'm just doing a job for Beckett's father-in-law.”

“Luster? He's dead, case you haven't heard.”

“I've heard. Do you mind if I get up? I'm lying on a piece here, and it's got a hair trigger.”

“Don't we all,” she said. “Okay, get up, but leave the gun in your pocket. I think for a minute you're pulling my chain, buddy, you'll find yourself right back on the ground, and this time maybe with holes in you.”

The dog lifted off me and padded away.

“No need for holes,” I said. I looked up. A pretty brunette in a wheelchair looked down at me. The mastiff was crouched at her side. She was covering me with one of those .45 Long Colt things. The woman, not the dog. The gun was big enough she had to hold it with both hands, and heaven only knew what would happen if she fired it. Probably she'd go racing down the hill and through the valley and on back toward civilization.

She said, “I kinda thought when someone finally came out here, they'd look like Frankenstein's ugly cousin, but you just look lost.”

“Thanks,” I said. “And I'm sorry to bust in on you with the hand-cannon. It's just I've had a wild couple days, and I'm getting tired of little surprises.”

“Well, I'm going to say you just had another one.”

“I have.” I slapped some of the mud off my clothes. I figured there were muddy paw prints on my back, too. “I don't guess I have to ask how you knew I was on my way, do I, Carla?”

“How do you know I'm Carla?”

“You're either Carla or Patty. I'm just guessing which.”

“Petey phoned me, said you'd been in the store asking questions.”

“It's gotten so you can't even trust a hippie,” I said. “It's dispiriting.”

“Depends on who you are,” she said. “I trust them fine. You want to come inside?”

I wanted to come inside. The place was lodge-warm against the cooling afternoon. The kitchen was big and shiny, with exposed wood and glazed brick and an oven mounted with cast-iron hooks for the pots and pans. Everything smelled faintly of freshly baked bread and crushed herbs, and a bowl over-piled with windfall apples on the butcher-block counter radiated a soft sweetness, like an organic censer. We sat around an oaken farm table with high-backed chairs on one side, a long bench on the other, sipping mugs of coffee while Carla's live-in girlfriend Patty, a wiry, camo-clad blonde, poured hot chocolate for Anci.

Carla said, “She's adorable.” She tousled Anci's hair and gave me a playful look. “And a polite young lady. So don't even tell me she belongs to you, Scruff.”

“I belong to him,” Anci said. She looked at me. “Scruff.” And she and I dapped and blew it up.

“Partners in crime?” Carla asked.

“You have no idea.”

“What ship did he get you off of, girl?” Patty asked. “Tell the truth.”

“Ship of fools, most like,” she answered.

Carla raised her eyebrows at me.

“Genius,” I explained. “Well, criminal genius, but we're working on it.”

Carla said, “I don't guess I have to ask what this is about, do I? You said you're here about Guy, but you mean you're here about Guy's disappearance.”

I said, “That's right. I tell you, I've spent the past three days chasing his trail all over the tricounties without turning up so much as a whisper. He's the most thoroughly disappeared person I've ever heard of.”

Patty sat with us, glowering. She had that look about her, like getting her to glower wouldn't take much effort, and now Guy Beckett's name had jumped out of nowhere and slapped her in the Chapstick and she was glowering up a squall. If she'd actually had a green-eyed monster wrapped around her neck, the meaning couldn't have been clearer.

Carla looked at her and me. She touched Patty on the arm and said, “I know. We've been waiting word from him, too, and hoping he'll reappear, but I'll be honest, we think he's come to evil.”

“You sure he'd have gotten in touch?”

“I'm almost certain of it. We were close. Our group, I mean.”

“Your group?”

Carla nodded. “How we all met. Couple years ago, Patty and I got wind of a plan to build an industrial incinerator out there near the wildlife refuge at Crab Orchard. You know the one.”

“Sure do.”

“Anyway, some dope at EPA was behind it all, and he'd gotten the park's industrial clients behind it. See, the park leases big chunks of land to business and industry types. Has since the war. Back then, they actually built munitions out there.”

“And coal mines.”

“Yeah. Those, too. Hell of a place for all that, a wildlife refuge. Add it up, you've got a mess, so EPA was saying the park needed an incinerator, but they wanted to build it right next door to one of the bird and fish habitats. We put up some flyers around campus to drum up opposition. Anyway, the whole thing made enough noise that Dwayne Mays and Guy eventually picked up the story and ran with it, and when it was over Guy stuck around.”

“Oh, holy shit.”

“What?”

“You're the Friends of Crab Orchard.”

“That's what we called ourselves, yeah. You've heard of us?”

“You might say that. Who else was in the group?”

“Mostly, it was me, Patty, Beckett, and one or two others. Plus, a couple of students from the college. We tend to let our members out themselves, seeing as how our projects
aren't always the most popular things in the world. I'll be honest, I'm not sure Guy's heart was always fully committed to them, either. Though I guess it depends on what the project was.”

Patty glowered some more. She went noisily to the stove and poured herself some more coffee, then came back and took a seat one over from Carla. Carla looked like someone'd just peed in her boot.

I said, “What about this Dwayne Mays? Did he stick around with your group, too?”

“Naw, but we'd have liked to have him. Dwayne was a good man, and he cared more than Guy did. But joining us would have been a conflict of interest, and that was something Dwayne shied away from.”

“I've heard tell.”

At this point, Anci slid out of her seat and looked at Carla and said, “May I use your bathroom, please?”

“So polite,” Carla said.

“Oh, she's a polite one, all right.”

“Down the hall, left.”

Anci nodded thanks, then stuck her tongue out at me and went out of the room.

I said to Carla, “I got to tell you, I was kinda hoping Beckett was hiding out here with you.”

Carla said, “No.”

Patty said, “Hell, no.”

I said to Carla, “Okay, I was getting that sense of it. When was the last time you spoke to him?”

“Few days ago. Right before he vanished. He called late, or early. Four thirty in the morning. Patty answered.”

“So you didn't talk to him personally?”

“No. Would have, but wasn't given the chance.”

She refused to look at Patty. Patty refused to look at her. They both stared at me. Tolstoy wrote that all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. He should have met these two.

I said, “Okay, and what about Tony Pelzer? I've heard he was part of your crew also.”

“Not really. Less so even than Guy, really, and that's saying something. Tony thinks climate change is a big liberal conspiracy, so he certainly wasn't inclined to believe anything we said. Frankly, we couldn't stand him. Guy was a person enjoyed putting on airs, though, and Tony was like a bodyguard. Made Guy feel important. Made the rest of us pretty damn nervous.”

“I've met him, and he makes me nervous, too,” I said. “Let me ask you this: Has anyone made any threats at you lately, or come up here looking for Beckett?”

They sat there a moment without talking. They finally looked at each other and back at me, and Patty grunted a little like something had crawled inside her nose, and then they were quiet again.

I said, “I promise not to yell.”

They looked at each other again, and Carla nodded. Patty said, “Two days before Guy disappeared. After dinner. Carla was in the house. I was walking the dog down the hill and having a smoke. It was just before sundown, or near then, but it gets dark up here that time of day, under the trees. Well, we get a few hundred yards from the house, and the dog here starts growling and carrying on, and at first I think maybe she's spotted a deer or maybe just a squirrel or whatever, but she keeps at it so I go to get a closer look.”