Murder by Serpents (Five Star First Edition Mystery) (4 page)

There was nothing to see but a quiet parking lot behind a small-town café. From here, not even the car with the snakes looked odd.

On the other side of the parking lot, he saw Theo. The arrival of his wife meant that word of some disaster had already traveled on the gossip chain as far as her fabric shop. He’d give the rest of Silersville about ten minutes to complete the transfer of information. He groaned. That aspect of small town life drove him nuts.

Theo’s blond hair gleamed in the morning light and he watched as she pulled the lapels of a brightly colored patchwork jacket up around her throat and stepped aside to let the arriving ambulance pass. His wife’s expression looked strained, at least until she spotted him. He had been a cop in Chicago when a hopped up junkie shot him. Since then, she had trouble dealing with her fears. Not long after that incident, retiring Sheriff Harvey Winston had suggested that Tony move his family back to Silersville and run for the job as his replacement. Theo still owned the house that her grandparents left her. Returning had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Since the move, Theo still worried about him, but not as much. Now that she could see his evident good health, she smiled and waved.

A canary yellow pickup truck equipped with a sporty camper top drove in front of her and stopped, blocking his view. The painting on the door depicted a coiled rattlesnake. It was a very detailed, realistic painting surrounded by the words, “Stan-the-Snakeman” and a telephone number.

Reinforcements had arrived.

Stan-the-Snakeman didn’t take his face away from the car window, but Tony could sense his excitement. He positively quivered. There is nothing like a man who loves his job, and Tony had to admire his enthusiasm. Stan was short and round and everyone’s first choice to play Santa because he knew how to have fun. Clean-shaven now, he would start letting his beard grow out again on Labor Day, and by Thanksgiving he would be ready to play his favorite role.

“That sure is one mad looking snake, Sheriff. That’s the rattler, looks like a Timber rattler. You said that you saw a copperhead as well?” Stan didn’t look up and he didn’t wait for an answer. “Those wooden crates in the back look like cages. I guess there are more of them in there, but I don’t think I can tell you any more than that without getting inside. Can you open the door for me? Slowly. We don’t want to scare the poor thing.” As he spoke, he slipped his hands into long, heavy leather gloves, a smile of anticipation lifting the corners of his mouth, exposing a gap where he once had two lower central incisors.

Tony massaged his bald scalp as he peered in at the driver. The windshield was drying as the clouds dissipated, making it easier to see inside. There was no way that the guy had been alive for quite a while. It looked like he, if it was a he, had been hit with a bomb. Blood and vomit spattered most of the front portion of the car interior.

“Maybe I’ll go away on vacation until this can be cleaned up. They should probably just bury the whole thing.” Tony silently gave thanks that it was not his job to do more than head the investigation if the death was deemed unnatural. This would not make Doc Nash, the coroner, a happy man. In addition to his ceremonial job as mayor, Calvin Cashdollar was the area mortician. He wasn’t going to be happy either. That thought
did
bring a smile to Tony’s lips.

“You think that something suspicious caused this?” Wade held the snake man’s extra bags and a set of forty-inch tongs. “It has to be an accident. After all, it looks like the guy carried his own zoo around with him.” The way his eyes kept moving, he couldn’t have looked less comfortable if he had been forced to perform a striptease at a revival meeting, with his mother seated in the front row.

“Wait a minute. What’s that?” A flash of something silver caught Tony’s eye. He leaned forward trying for a better view. At the same moment, a ray of sunshine penetrated the gloom in the car. Suddenly, they all could see what had been hidden. Handcuffs. Steel handcuffs secured their dead guy to the steering wheel. Someone made sure that he stayed in the car.

“Now
that
looks as suspicious as hell.” He looked over at Wade. “Escort Stan back to his truck and park him there while you get your stuff. I need you to do a little fingerprint work before we touch those handles. While you’re at the car why don’t you run these license plates. Maybe they’ll tell us who this is. Give me the camera, and I’ll take some pictures.”

Seeking reinforcements, Tony stabbed the numbers on his cell phone with more force than necessary. He would have to get a couple of deputies started canvassing the area. He might even have to wake up the night shift.

Stan’s curiosity was clear. He swiveled his head around as he followed Wade but he didn’t seem to understand what caused the increased excitement.

As they moved away, Tony could hear Wade talking to Stan. They weren’t making any attempt to be quiet.

“You might as well get comfortable, but don’t go anywhere and don’t say anything to anyone,” said Wade.

“Kin I at least get a cup of coffee at Ruby’s?” Stan’s lower lip extended in a pout.

“Sure you can as long as it’s take out.” Wade frowned as he opened the trunk of the patrol car and took out an aluminum suitcase and set it down before he climbed into the car to run a check on the plates. “I doubt the sheriff wants you sitting at the counter flapping your lips.” His frown had deepened when he climbed out and hurried back to Tony.

“As if I know anything to flap my lips about.” Stan continued talking to himself as he dropped his tools onto the open tailgate of the truck. Soon he crossed his arms over his round belly and clearly settled in to wait. From his post, he would be able to see Tony and Wade setting numbered markers in the parking lot and taking lots of pictures. An uncustomary frown pulled the corners of his lips down.

His words traveled to Tony’s ears. “I am gonna be an old man when y’all are done.” His eyes sparkled as he watched Theo walking toward him. “At least I git to snuggle with that little lady.”

That morning, Theo had barely arrived at her shop when a customer said there was some trouble behind Ruby’s. The familiar fear that came to her whenever she heard the words “dead” and “sheriff” in the same sentence pulled closer. Memories of Tony bleeding buckets of blood and so nearly dying in Chicago would always haunt her. Coming home to Silersville had eased her fears. Even as she told herself that if something bad had happened to him, someone would come tell her, she barely dared to breathe as she had hurried over the hill.

She spotted Tony standing by a dark green car. One good thing about being married to an oversized man was that he was easy to find in a crowd. Almost six feet four inches tall and broad shouldered, he looked even bigger in his dark brown jacket and khaki pants. Not even the dark brown ball cap with the sheriff’s insignia on the front could disguise the fact that he was as bald as an egg. Tony didn’t enjoy being called “Mr. Clean,” like the cleaning products, but the appellation fit him like a glove.

Theo did her best to keep her fears locked away, but sometimes they crept out like hungry mice. Now that she saw Tony in obviously good condition, she relaxed. She spotted Stan next to his truck. Her eyes were drawn to the logo on the door. “There’s a snake in the car?”

Stan turned to face her. “Yes ma’am.” He looked like he might have said more if he hadn’t seen the local newspaper reporter coming toward them like a heat-seeking missile. As he inserted a cigarette into the gap between his teeth, he hissed like one of his snakes. “That woman from the paper is coming this way.” He pulled a wooden kitchen match from his pocket and struck it on his thumbnail. It flared to life. Cupping one hand around it, he lit his cigarette.

“You don’t like her?” Eyebrows lifted, Theo took a step backwards, dodging the smoke that burned her nose and made her eyes water. “I thought you liked everyone.”

“Humph, people think snakes are bad, but they’re not. That woman is meaner than any of ’em. Wouldn’t surprise me if she gets arrested some day.”

Theo watched the object of their discussion, Winifred Thornby, reporter and editor of the newspaper. Winifred had graduated from high school with Tony, but the last twenty years had only soured her and aged her prematurely. From her frumpy clothes to her already deeply wrinkled face, she looked closer to sixty than forty. As her eyes met Theo’s, it looked like she would like to talk, but she swerved away before she reached them. A glance at Stan’s face revealed his expression of absolute triumph. She wondered why Stan disliked Winifred so much and was about to ask when he cut her off.

“Now, I do have a complaint about you, Theo. I don’t know if you meant to, but you’ve about ruined my life,” said Stan.

“Me? What did I do?” Theo’s mouth dropped open. She was absolutely baffled. Having been born and raised in Silersville, she had known Stan all of her life and he had always treated her like she was about as dangerous as a ladybug.

“Why? Because you went and taught my wife to quilt, that’s why. I never had any idea that you were so cruel.” The laugh lines deepened in his face and his pale eyes twinkled. “I haven’t had a hot meal in months. Why just last night, she stayed in her sewing room picking out fabrics for your new mystery quilt instead of cooking my dinner. I had to go to the Food City myself because I couldn’t even make a sandwich. There wasn’t even a crust of stale bread in the house.” The corners of his mouth turned down and he rubbed his stomach. His customary paunch still existed, but it did seem a bit smaller. “She used to be a wonderful cook and now I’m gonna waste away. At this rate, I’m gonna be a skinny Santa.”

Full of pure joy, the laugh that burst from Theo attracted all eyes. Some of the onlookers moved away as if thinking that the sheriff’s wife and the snake man knew that there was nothing to see. They didn’t appear to be discussing anything serious.

Standing near them, Doc Nash could overhear the conversation. He leaned over to join in. “That’s nothing, Stan. She taught my wife to quilt and now we have to go into every fabric store we come within a hundred miles of, and that’s with two closets full of the stuff at home. I’m surprised she hasn’t filled my golf bag with it.” He braced his fists together and sagged against the side of Stan’s pickup. “After our last girl left for college, the missus started talking about storing our dishes in the garage and using the kitchen cabinets for fabric storage and the counter for her cutting space. It got so bad, I began to fear that I would have to keep my Cheerios in the refrigerator. In self-defense, I had that big room added on to the back of the house. Her sewing room is bigger than the garage.”

Theo’s grin showed no sign of guilt. “I’m just doing my part to keep the economy moving.”

Tony joined them, but he didn’t have a reason to smile. With his jaws clenched, he could feel the scowl that creased his face. It wouldn’t be long before he developed a pounding headache. Headaches and indigestion were not his favorite part of the job, he thought as he searched his pockets for antacid tablets. He found some in his shirt pocket but left them for later.

The pressure in his skull increased with Wade’s news about the license plate. It had been stolen. And not just stolen, for pity’s sake. It belonged on Queen Doreen’s beige Volvo. Tony could hardly wait to ask the mayor’s wife why she had not reported the theft.

He and Wade photographed and made notes of everything they could think of about the outside of the car. There wasn’t much to see except a couple of tire tracks and footprints that remained in the damp lot. The footprints most likely belonged to Tony.

When the last of the clouds dissipated, the sun quickly dried things. Not even a drop of water remained on the car windows. Maybe it had something to do with the difference in air temperature, but he could swear there had been more heat around the car when it was first discovered than now with the sun shining on it.

The sunlight also illuminated Theo’s wild blond curls. He grinned. He didn’t tell her that it made her head look like dandelion fuzz—at least he didn’t this time. The last time he’d said that, his dinner had been pasta from a can for three nights in a row. Who knew she’d be so sensitive about her tangled halo?

This morning, though, she smiled at whatever Doc and Stan were discussing. To his eyes, she still looked more like the little girl he’d first met in Sunday school than the mother of two, business owner, author and quilt pattern designer that the rest of the world knew. Seeing her smile eased some of his tension and he moved to stand close to her, inhaling the clean scent of her shampoo. He addressed the men.

“Okay Stan, if you are still ready, let’s do this. Wade has finished fingerprinting the door handles. Let’s get those snakes out of there. Then we can deal with the body.”

Stan looked less eager now. “I hope they’ve had plenty of fresh air.”

Tony sighed deeply, removed an antacid from his meager stash and popped it into his mouth and looked at the doctor. “I don’t think you’ll have to wait much longer, Doc, but I sure don’t envy you this one.” At the his lifted eyebrow, Tony just shook his head. “Come on along and you’ll see.”

Sunlight reflected from Theo’s glasses as she turned to face him. Instead of speaking, he fluffed his wife’s hair, winked at her and accompanied Stan to the car. She followed, standing with the doctor, well out of the way.

Tony watched as Stan slipped his hands into his gauntlets. All business now, Stan handed a pair of long tongs to Wade and lifted a large hook on a short handle. A cotton bag appeared in his hand like magic. To Tony, it looked a lot like the laundry bag that he had taken to college. The drawstring on it hadn’t lasted very long. He could only hope that this one was better quality.

The three of them stood near the car and adjusted their gloves. Armed with their weapons of a laundry bag, a vaudeville hook and barbecue tongs, Tony guessed they resembled the Three Stooges more than they did anything else. Behind them, Doc Nash made a hissing sound. Tony frowned. He recognized the sound. Doc was laughing.