14
A
reserved, tree-shaded parking spot in the driveway on the east side of the courthouse was one of the perks enjoyed by the Kinderhook county sheriff.
There were others. A new cruiser with a quiet air conditioner that didn't leak coolant, for instance. David felt reasonably certain he'd conjure a few more, once this poor excuse for wasting a Saturday morning was behind him.
A flick of the ignition key fired the Crown Victoria's engine. By year's end, the odometer would have racked up more miles than the average civilian vehicle logged in twenty-four months. David was copying the mileage reading in a spiral notebook marked Unofficial Biz, when Marlin rapped on the side window.
The tinted glass was a shade darker, but in the same spectrum as his naturally unhealthy skin tone. Suck in another case or six of Marlboros and he'd be the Invisible Man, riding shotgun in the cruiser.
David lowered the window, just as Marlin said, "What's with the getup? You look like that lumberjack on the paper towel wrapper."
David regarded his red plaid, short-sleeved shirt and black jeans. Until a second ago, he'd thought the shirt was perfect for pressing the flesh at a bluegrass festival and barbecue, but no longer. Hell with the paper towel guy. As soon as he clapped on his Stetson, he'd look like Howdy Doody's big brother.
"Did you just mosey over to offer wardrobe advice, or do you need something?"
"I saw you going out the door when I came up from the basement. Thought I'd tell you to drive careful. You know. Arrive alive and all that shit."
The dashboard clock confirmed there was time to cat and mouse. God forbid Marlin should come out and say what was on his mind. "The basement." David nodded at a smudge on the detective's sleeve. "Did you raise anything besides dust?"
The detective shook his head. "Les Williams faxed me the report he gave Toots, plus a copy of the transfer memo. The to-and-from were interagencyno names, ranks, badge numbers."
A sloppy, accidental oversight, or intentional? "I can't say if that was against protocol. Far as I know, there still isn't one."
"Not for an entire file," Marlin said. "I mean, did the uniform delivering it to the courthouse get beamed up to Mars, or what?"
"Might as well have, I reckon. Lost is lost."
"Who cares, though, right? Ancient friggin' history. That Moody drone goes
pfft.
The jacket on him goes
pfft.
Why it makes my head itch, I dunno."
It bothered David, too, and he knew why. The Beauford investigation was dwindling and they had no brilliant ideas to kick-start it again. A lead might develop if the phone company ever forwarded the records. In the meantime, poking around in something else was akin to not staring at a pot, waiting for the water to boil.
"From what Hannah said on the phone last night, Bisbee doesn't think Royal took off on Chlorine. He thinks she poisoned him with arsenic and buried him in the backyard."
"Bisbee's nuts." Marlin shrugged. "Okay, so maybe he's not the dumbest cluck at the nugget factory, but whatever he has, you know damned well he obtained it illegally, which makes it worthless to us."
"Not all of it." David told him about the out-of-state sale of Moody's vehicle. "Send me your fax from the PD. I'm going to make some phone calls before I meet with Bisbee next week."
"Sure you want to do that?" Marlin gave him a hard look. "It's a bad time to be rattling skeletons."
"Assuming there are any."
"There are. You know that as well as I do." Smoke streamed from Marlin's nostrils. "It's who they are, and the fallout
" His glance at the square's far side begot a whistle that ought to have drawn every mutt in town on the double.
An old-fashioned cannon's muzzle impeded David's view out the windshield. A wide-brimmed brown Resistol combined with a pair of long, skinny legs identified the figure loping toward them.
Jimmy Wayne McBride looked from Marlin to David, expectant, eager and a touch wary. A bead of sweat skidded down his cheek, but he wasn't out of breath. David wouldn't have been, either, five or six years ago.
"Got a lead on Beauford?" he asked.
"I wish." Marlin flipped his cigarette onto the ground.
"Then why'd you whistle me over?"
When Marlin didn't respond, Jimmy Wayne chuffed. "I just saw Junior at the Short Stack. Kimmie Sue wants the visitation for Bev on Monday evening and the funeral at two on Tuesday."
David guessed as much. Kinderhook Countians didn't live and die by the
Sanity Examiner
's weekly publication schedule, but they did get buried by it.
Jimmy Wayne went on. "She also wants the three of us, Cletus, Bill Eustace and Marv Frazier to serve as pallbearers." He looked at David. "And you to deliver a eulogy."
"For Bev, it'd be an honor." For her daughter, it was undoubtedly intended as a public show of their contrition, her magnanimous forgiveness for suspecting her of murder, or a subtle proclamation of innocence.
"Marv Frazier can't walk without a cane, for God's sake," Marlin said. "That's why he took early retirement from the department."
"Junior says the casket will be on a trolley. We'll just walk alongside and the five of us can lift it on and off the bier, into the hearse and at the cemetery."
"Whatever." Marlin snorted. "Like you said, for Bev, it's an honor. It is whenever a guy's tagged for it. But even the wife agrees, women won't be liberated till they pull pallbearer duty as often as men do."
"It ain't easy," Jimmy Wayne agreed, "and I don't mean on your back muscles. It's the one upfront and behind your ribs that gets a workout, and you can't let it show."
Leaning against the Crown Vic's fender, he peeled off the Resistol and fanned himself with it. "Ninety-one in the shade already, boys. Misery loves company and all that, but I'm headin' for the bunkhouse."
Marlin said, "Aw, it ain't that bad, here in the shade." A fake casual note in his tone, he added, "Me and Hendrickson were doing some free associations before he takes off for the hootenanny. Want to try a few?"
The chief deputy seemed as bewildered as David. They both knew Marlin hadn't summoned him to play a parlor game.
"You know," he went on, "like if I say
banana,
you say what pops into your head, first.
Yellow,
or
fruit,
or what the fuck ever. Got it?"
Jimmy Wayne frowned. "I guess
"
"Okay"
"Corral."
Marlin cursed under his breath. "Cute, McBride. Real cute. How about jailer?"
"Turnkey."
"Fat cats."
"County commissioners." He flinched and glanced around. "Make that Garfield."
"Reports."
"Paperwork."
"Case files."
"Too damn many."
"Missing files."
"Beauford." Jimmy Wayne stiffened. His green eyes strafed the detective with a glare usually aimed at scofflaws about to rabbit. "What are you getting at, Marlin?"
"Proving a point to the sheriff, is all." To David, Marlin said, "I thought of him right away when that file the PD allegedly transferred wasn't at the Outhouse or in the basement."
As he explained the gist to McBride, David considered the warning against rattling skeletons. On the night of Larry Beauford's stroke, any number of files and records disappeared from the sheriff's office, while emergency room personnel fought to stabilize their clinically deceased patient.
Throughout Beauford's tenure, rumors abounded that his cooperation was available for a priceeither to make a charge go away, or levy one against an enemy. David never witnessed any collusion or corruption, but eventually sensed his hiring as chief deputy was window dressing. Beauford wouldn't have been the first crook to take cover behind an honest man.
Except dirty or clean, a sheriff's badge is a magnet for accusations of kickbacks, cronyism, graft, extortion and abuse of power.
There was a time, David allowed, when too many sheriffs let that power go to their heads, then slide south to their wallets. Others were figureheads who served at the pleasure of a political machine.
Corruption hadn't been cured. It just wasn't as easy to intimidate people as it once was.
"You're thinking Beauford was somehow involved with Royal Moody's disappearance," he said to Marlin.
Jimmy Wayne cut in. "Hey, I didn't shed any tears at his funeral, but he wasn't even the sheriff back then. Just a grunt deputy."
"Christ on a chariot." Marlin shook his head, a gargling noise escaping his lips. What sounded like bronchial spasms affirmed that he was capable of laughter, rare though it was. "I don't think nothin', except that the two of you are confusing me with that whackjob, Delbert Bisbee."
He hooked his fingers on the cruiser's window ledge and pulled himself to his feet. "Larry Beauford couldn't have done a murder for hire on a Yorkshire terrier. Five bucks says, he never flushed a dead goldfish down the toilet on the first try."
David squinted up at him, trying to read a face as inscrutable as Lincoln's at Mount Rushmore. "Then why in the hell did we even have this conversation?"
"Like I said, I just bopped out to say drive careful." Marlin motioned at David's shoulder harness. "Click it or ticket, kemosabe. Sheriffs aren't above the law, and it's got a mighty long reach."
David shifted into reverse, feeling a deep, profound sympathy for Josh Phelps. Marlin was a top-notch criminal investigator, but a mighty tough, exasperating man to work with, even when he didn't talk like Yoda.
He took out a notebook and pen from his pocket, then latched the seat belt. If he could steer with one hand and compose a statement for Chase Wingate with the other, then the newspaper editor could shoulder his phone against an ear and take dictation.
The heel of his hand kept the notebook balanced on his thigh. Putting thoughts into words fit to print? To get that job done, David would need every mile between town and the bluegrass festival at Coffman Bend.
* * *
Hannah yelped and leapt into the handsome, silver-haired man's arms. Laughing, he hugged her tight and swung her around on the porch. "God, you look good. And you smell great. I've missed you so much, it was all I could do to keep it under a hundred, getting here."
A trial, no doubt, for an incurable speed freak with a Jaguar Mark II, who regarded an interstate highway as an elongated Indianapolis 500 with off-ramps.
As he set her down, his hands grazed Hannah's arms, then his fingers circled her wrists. "Oh, yeah, I forgot. Surprise!"
"And happy birthday to you, Mr. Clancy." She feigned disgust. "You big fat liar."
The cornflower-blue eyes he'd inherited from IdaClare crinkled at their corners. "Only in self-defense, sweet pea," he said, following her inside. "A guy has only one mother. Mine has pink hair, a pink house and thinks I'm forever six years old."
Malcolm gallumphed in from the kitchen and stuck his snoot in Jack's crotch to say hello. A series of enthusiastic snuffles left a lasting impression on his slacks.
"That's the only thing mom's Furwads have going for them," Jack said. "They're short."
"A mutt with chronic sinus drainage over two ankle-biters? No contest." Crooking a finger, Hannah led her employer into the breakfast room.
Streamers dangling from the fixture above the table danced in the breeze from the ceiling vents. A birthday-balloon bouquet was tied to a chair back. At its place on the table was a small, rectangular gift. On a saucer was a blueberry muffin impaled with a lighted candle.
Hannah burst out laughing at Jack's dumbfounded expression. "You are so busted, Clancy."
"Stephen blew it, didn't he? You called the loft to tell me happy birthday and he told you I was coming."
"Now, why would I do that, if I thought you were at cruising altitude somewhere between St. Louis and Michigan?"
"Oh. Good point. You'd have called my cell." Jack closed his eyes and shuddered. "That leaves what I've suspected for years. My mother is a witch."
"Wrong again. She's just a lot smarter than you are. But then, most of us already knew that." Hannah told him about IdaClare's ruse with his pilot. "If I had time this morning to buy muffins and decorations, I can't imagine what she's put together since yesterday."
Jack bowed his head and massaged his brow. "If you love me, you'll tell me how many old people are going to jump out at me when I get to mother's. If you
don't
love me, you'll still tell me, because I'm your boss and I'll fire you if you don't."
Hannah crossed her arms, contemplating her options. A zipped lip? Or the truth. One was tempting from an instant-unemployment perspective. Unfortunately, Jack wouldn't fire her if she stuck the birthday candle up his nose flame-first. Plus, there was his future as a ground-floor Garvey Group client to consider.
