Cam - 04 - Nightwalkers (38 page)

"Holy shit," murmured the second detective, shaking his head.

"That's where he lives," I said. "If he's faking it, he's awfully good at it."

The ADA looked at his watch. "Sheriff, is there a case to be brought here?"

"Well," the sheriff said, "I'm guessing that Ms. Valeria isn't going to prosecute her mother for peppering her with a ten-gauge, and Cubby Johnson is a deal prospect when he comes out of ICU. So I guess, for now anyway . . ."

"Right," Lawyer Davis said. "I'm due in court in thirty minutes, so I'll excuse myself. I have just one question: Why was Mrs. Lee trying to shoot Lieutenant Richter here?"

Great question
, I thought. I explained the sequence of events that led up to Hester's unintentional ventilation of Valeria's backside. ADA Davis looked over at Sheriff Walker, as if to confirm that the
sheriff had himself a genu-wine Lebanese goat-grab on his hands with this one, then left.

"Zo, now vhat?" Hildy asked, suddenly eyeing me like a piece of meat. "Ve haff a crime, or no?"

"Ve haff a hairball, is what," the sheriff said. He rubbed both sides of his face with his hands. "Okay, everybody," he said. "No further action until all the wounded have been restored to duty and we can get some more statements, assuming they'll make some. Lieutenant? You are going to have to move, I understand?"

"In the works," I said. "I'm going to move over to the house at Glory's End. Save all the Auntie Bellums the trouble of evicting my ass."

The detectives laughed at the Auntie Bellums comment, but Hildy was not amused. She vas still trying to pin zome high crimes and misdemeanors on zomeone, hopefully me. The sheriff got up.

"Sometimes," he said, "we just have to wait and see what develops. I'll be in my office, should the president happen to call."

"How about zis little problem?" Hildy asked, holding up the expended concussion grenade case.

The sheriff looked at it. "It appears to have been expended," he said. "Throw it away."

I took the mutts back to the cottage and began the process of packing up my stuff for the move across the road. The big house up across the lawns was silent, what with Cubby and Patience gone, Valeria in the hospital, and Hester probably with her there keeping watch. I wondered if anyone had fed the horses in all the excitement but then realized that the major was probably up there. Surely he would realize that the barn creatures had not been cared for. I was tempted to go up and remind him but then decided against it: If he'd witnessed the altercation with Hester and Valeria the night before, he might just answer the door with his own coach gun.

As I was packing up the Suburban, Carol Pollard came down the
driveway in her pickup truck. Apparently the word hadn't gotten out yet about the night's events, so I had to fill her in. She helped me carry out the rest of my stuff, such as it was.

"You can't live there," she said.

"Old Mrs. Tarrant managed," I said. "Besides we've got the place wired up a bit, and there's reliable electricity. I certainly can't stay here."

"So this thing's over?" she said. "This guy who said he was going to kill you? He's gone?"

"Well," I said, "he might be. He might not be. He can't present a will to the court without exposing himself to local law, and after last night, they've got a fair laundry list of charges."

"Except they can't prove it was Callendar who was shooting at them. Like you said, they never saw his face."

"True," I said. "That's why it may not be over yet. Either way, I can't stay here, and I at least have some surveillance gear over there. Plus these three fuzz balls here."

"I've got three bedrooms in my house," she said. "You're welcome to hole up there if you'd prefer. It might be safer."

I smiled at her. She'd tended to her powder and paint this morning and looked very nice. She'd been doing that a lot lately. "I'd like that," I said, "but it would also put you in the line of fire. This mess has been between him and me since the beginning. I still don't entirely understand it, but if he's alive, he'll be back."

"John Wayne to the very end, hunh?"

"Remember, Carol, his specialty is a long gun through the window. Me first, then anyone who happens to be with me."

"Well, at least let me make you dinner on your moving night," she said, getting back in her car. "You remember how to get there?"

"I think so."

"Oh, good," she said. "I was afraid you'd forgotten."

"Not likely."

"So?"

"I've been busy," I said. It sounded weak, even to me.

"That busy," she said, in fake amazement, as she smoothed the fabric of her jeans around her hips.

I made a bleating noise. It was all I could muster.

"I get home at five thirty." Then she drove off.

I watched her go. The shepherds watched her go.

"She's pretty nice," I told them.

Frick barked at me, which I took as an invitation to provide early chow.

I got back to the stone cottage at ten thirty, pulled into the parking space, and only then did I realize I was at the wrong place. As I was turning around, the sheriff called on my cell, so I stopped in the driveway.

"Went to the hospital this afternoon," he said.

"Worth the trip?"

"In a manner of sorts," he said. "I saw Hester. She was there in Valeria's room, along with the pastor's wife. She's going to stay with them in town until Valeria can come home."

"So you didn't try to get a statement?"

"I'll let the detectives handle that when she's better able to focus," he said. "Besides, they weren't exactly friendly. Then I checked in on Cubby Johnson."

"How'd that go?"

"He's not doing all that well. They got the first infection under control, then moved him to a room, and now he's got something else going, one of those damned hospital bugs. C-something. They're hitting it pretty hard. But Patience ran into Hester in the cafeteria, and she told her she had to get back to Laurel Grove to take care of the major."

"That must have been a relief for Patience."

"Indeed. Visible relief. I did talk to Cubby, but mostly to tell him
everything was going to be okay. He's been babbling about having no choice, they made him do it, stuff like that."

"He was out of it?"

"I couldn't use it even if he gave it up," he said. "Again, I'll let the system work, let my D's do their thing. That's how it works when you're the high shareef: You stay above the details and let your people do it, legal-like."

"I knew that."

"Of course you did. But if your buddy the major goes walkabout tonight . . ."

"That house will be empty."

"I didn't say that."

"Right. I'm at the cottage now. I've moved my stuff over to Glory's End, drove back here out of habit. Maybe I'll hang around, see what happens."

"Good a place as any, Lieutenant. Watch yourself, now."

I took all the mutts into the cottage. I mostly wanted to make sure I'd not left anything behind. I'd had to call Pardee to find out how to take down and then reassemble the TV monitor system over in the other house and where to place the extra camera. He volunteered to come back out, but I told him to hang loose, that I expected a waiting game. He said he'd be up on his cell all night, and he'd get Tony alerted to do the same. Then I sat down in one of the big living room chairs, turned out the lights, and wished I hadn't taken the Scotch next door.

I woke up and looked at my watch. It was a little past midnight. The shepherds were at the windows. I reached for my SIG and then remembered I'd left it in the Suburban. I went to a window and looked out in the direction of the big house. Here came the major, his horse at a slow walk, going down the drive toward the millpond. I decided to go out and talk to him.

"Evening, Major," I said. I was standing next to the Suburban just in case I did need that SIG. The major pulled up and touched the brim of his hat.

"Overseer," he said.

"What's the situation, sir?"

"Tenuous in the extreme," he said. "We've had to send some of the womenfolk south to the city. Many slaves have run away."

I had an idea. "I saw the guards at the bridge firing at a spy last night," I said. "Someone was returning fire from the Virginia side."

"Did you, now," he said.

"I couldn't tell if he was swimming or on horseback," I said. "He may have been trying for the secret ford."

"The ford's not near the bridge," he said. "It's further downstream, near the quarry. They took the tailings from the quarry at Oak Grove at the beginning of the war to fill in the bottom holes."

"Well, there certainly was a bit of shooting," I said. "Right around the bridge."

"Perhaps I'll go scout that out tonight, then," he said. "You are to remain on the grounds here, overseer, in case more spies appear."

"Yes, sir," I said. "I'll do it."

"Very well, then," he said and rode off across the dam.

Now the house should be empty.

I gave the major twenty minutes to clear the plantation and also to make sure he didn't change his mind. Then I grabbed my SIG, called the dogs, and went up to the back door of Laurel Grove. There was no light in the house, as one didn't leave candles burning in an unattended house. I had my small Maglite, which I switched onto its red lens. I took the shepherds in with me, and we prowled that house like any good cat burglar.

It was spooky, just as the sheriff had said. The chairs and sofas were enormous compared to contemporary furniture. The rooms
smelled of beeswax, wood ash, and the stale odors of sachets left here and there. The floorboards creaked when I stepped off the carpets. I felt for the shepherds--their sensitive noses must be overwhelmed by all the different scents. I spent some time in the rear kitchen areas looking for a basement access but didn't find one.

Upstairs there were four rooms, almost identical in size. I didn't go into the rooms, just examined them from the hallway. I figured out that one was for Hester and the major, a second for family visitors, since it had personal items on the vanity, and a third for Valeria, although that one had two large beds. The fourth appeared to be a sewing room with no beds but lots of fabrics, dresses, a mannequin, and a foot-pedal-operated Singer sewing machine that had to be from the early 1900s. There was one spacious bathroom, which had obviously been added to the house at the end of what had been the long upstairs hall. It contained a single commode, a large freestanding bathtub, a vanity with a washbasin, and three armoires.

There were no light fixtures nor electrical switches in any of the rooms upstairs except the bathroom, where there was an electric heater. Apparently the nineteenth century had its limitations. There was also electricity in the kitchen, which ran a single large refrigerator. The stove, however, was one of those British Aga cast-iron wood burners, complete with a wood box next to it. The fireplace in the kitchen resembled the one in Glory's End, big enough for a man my size to walk into and turn around, but with a wooden mantel instead of one made from a single enormous slab of granite. There was a bed of ashes in the fireplace and a second wood box, complete with logs and splinters of hardened pine sap. I hadn't seen any telephones anywhere. There was a maid's room off to one side and a large pantry that gave access to the adjacent dining room through a swinging door.

The ground floor pretty much mirrored the arrangement upstairs. It contained the two drawing rooms, which were nearly identical and opposite each other across the spacious central hallway. A third room appeared to be a library, and the fourth was the dining room. No light
fixtures or switches here, either, but there were chandeliers and wall sconces in every room.

Most important, there was no sign that anyone other than this happy little band of antiquarians had been living there. Now I regretted the events of the night before, because it was pretty obvious I'd been wrong. Valeria's injuries were my fault, and I was going to have to apologize. The only positive result from all of that had been her probably unintentional revelation that Callendar did exist--and something about the bridge.

I was standing in the hallway, trying to figure out if I should really toss the place or just get the hell out, when I noticed the shepherds were missing. Then I heard the scratch of a wooden match and saw a flare of light in the library doorway.

I drew the SIG and walked toward the doorway, which consisted of two ten-foot-high mahogany doors that swung back against the wall. I found the shepherds.

I also found Patience Johnson.

She was sitting in one of those big chairs next to a reading table. There was a smallish hurricane lamp on the table with a lit candle inside. It threw off a surprising amount of light in the dark room, illuminating the gilt lettering on several books. She was dressed in normal clothes, not her high tea uniform. She was smoking a small brown cigarillo, and she held a snifter of what looked like brandy in her hand. The shepherds were lying on the rug in front of her, looking altogether too comfortable. I felt a little dumb, standing in the doorway with a .45 in my hand.