Murder by Serpents (Five Star First Edition Mystery) (7 page)

A shrug of his shoulders was Tony’s initial answer, but he frowned. “Whatever Quentin is taking now is powerful stuff. If he keeps on, it is going to kill him.”

Back on the county road, he returned to two-wheel drive and looked at the houses in the little settlement. Everything looked normal, but if something turned up in the autopsy, he would have all the residents interviewed. “Most of those preachers are so fundamental that they won’t even touch anything that isn’t in the Bible.”

“I guess that rules out a lot of vices.” Sheila pointed to a narrow drive. “There’s a shortcut.” After they made the turn, she looked at Tony. “What bothers me is that the last I heard, the stealing of license plates is not encouraged in the Bible either.”

Theo watched the influx of the curious into her quilt shop. Even the air seemed to buzz, sending Theo into hiding in her studio. After the excitement in the parking lot at Ruby's, a wave of gossip seekers descended on the shop. She hoped that they were buying fabric and not just talking down there.

The shop's main room was large enough to accommodate several thousand bolts of fabric plus a couple of large cutting stations. The back room served as classroom, meeting room and what Tony referred to as “gossip central.” Built to Theo's specifications, the spacious room had fantastic lighting, skylights and fixtures, plus a kitchenette. The electrician she hired to install the myriad outlets on several circuits maintained that NASA didn't need that much electricity to track a rocket.

At one end of the room, chairs surrounded a quilt on a full-sized frame. Anyone who wanted to work on the current quilt for charity was welcome. Theo supplied free coffee and most of the regulars had their own mugs. Luckily, Jane purchased a large supply after the previous day's drought. They would use a lot today.

At all hours, a small cluster of women and the occasional man stitched on it. As far as gossip, well, one woman summed it up with, “we have to talk about something.”

Theo's studio filled the large upstairs room. Visitors were not welcome. A large sign posted on her door made sure that no one was in doubt of that fact.

Jane Abernathy,Tony's mother, ran the retail end of the shop. With a couple of part-time employees, she cut fabric orders and chatted with customers. Theo helped out when needed, but she usually let Jane handle the counter while she designed patterns in her studio.

Today seemed no different, except the telephone would not stop ringing. For some perverse reason, many of the county's citizens seemed to believe that Theo would have additional information and be prepared to share it. Every two minutes, Jane's voice would come through the intercom telling her that someone wanted to talk. Desperate, Theo told Jane to leave her alone and turned off the intercom. She loaded a stack of CDs into the player and turned up the volume.

“Do they think I share a brain with my husband?” Theo complained, talking to herself again. Sometimes the habit concerned her, but most of the time she believed it helped her think. With a laugh, she shoved a pile of fabric off her worktable and into a laundry basket.

To her amusement, Zoe, a kitten recently adopted as the official office pet, chased an empty thread spool to the basket and then abandoned her game in favor of the pile of fabric.

“Theo?” Jane pounded on the studio door. “Can I come in? Please?”

“Are you alone?” Frustrated by her inability to get any work done, Theo was past caring about hurt feelings. She had a deadline with her publisher. Three quilts scheduled to be in the book hadn't been started. At this stage of the process, she wondered why she had ever wanted to design quilts. Maybe it wasn't too late to learn how to type. She could work at some nice “normal” job. Surrendering, she lowered the volume on the music and called out, “You can come in if you are alone.”

“I hate to bother you.” Jane opened the door just wide enough for her to squeeze into the room. “I know that you are running behind schedule, but the members of the bowling group want to know if tonight’s meeting is on as usual?”

“Why wouldn't it be?” Distracted, Theo stared at her mother-in-law. She had not seen Jane today except to wave across the room to her. From this distance, Jane's hair seemed to be turning more blond than gray and her eyes were sparkling with mischief. It even looked like she had applied mascara and a touch of makeup. She opened her mouth to ask about it when Jane's statement cut her off.

“I won't be there tonight.” She fluffed her hair with her fingers. “I have a date.”

That statement caught Theo's full attention. “A date?” Theo didn't think that in the years since her husband had died Jane had come closer to dating than sitting next to a single man at a carryin supper at the church. She had been a widow for over ten years, in fact, just few months longer than Tony and Theo had been married. Growing up in the same small town, they had known each other, but it wasn't until Tony came home for his father's funeral that they had started dating. Only a few months later, they had married and she had joined him in Chicago. Theo raised her thumbs, showing her approval. “It's about time. Who's the lucky guy? Does Tony know?”

A tinge of pink colored Jane's cheeks. “Not that it is any of your business, or his, but Thomas Smith and I are driving over to Knoxville to see a play at the Clarence Brown Theatre, you know, at the University. We've been planning it for a couple of weeks.” Jane grinned.

“Since when could you keep a secret for a couple of weeks?” Theo thought that maybe it wasn't just the hair color that was making her mother-in-law look younger. Jane's choice for a date surprised her, though. Thomas Smith was the morning cook at Ruby's and everyone but Jane called him Red. A nice man in his late sixties, he and his wife had moved to Tennessee from Georgia the previous year. Theo had known the couple for several years starting when Red's wife Raeleene had taken Theo's beginning quilting class on one of their annual visits. The couple had moved permanently right after he retired. Soon after their move his wife became ill and had succumbed to cancer only a couple of months later.

“It hasn't been that long since poor Raeleene died,” said Theo.

“We are just friends and we both wanted to see the play.” Jane patted her hair into place even as her blush deepened. “At least that's all it is, for now.”

“Am I allowed to talk about this or is it a secret?” Theo was accustomed to keeping information to herself. While it was a challenge in Silersville, she was experienced. As the wife of the sheriff, she sometimes heard things that had to stay private.

“You can tell Tony, but I'd rather you not tell the group.” Jane lifted her eyebrows as if to remind Theo of her original reason for visiting.

“Say yes, of course, to the bowlers.” Theo snatched a rectangle of fabric away from the kitten. The kitten retaliated by meowing and going after the spool again. Both women grinned at its antics. “You know that they are going to want to know why you aren't there. You never miss a meeting and there are few secrets that last around that group.” They had named their group of quilting friends the Bowlers to appease the husband of one of the older members.

“I know, I know.” Jane gave her daughter-in-law a hug. “Just tell them that I went to the play. They don't need to know that I have an escort.”

“Deal. I'll do the best I can.” Theo pushed the older woman to the door. “Go. Work. Have fun. Stay away from me.” Theo latched the door firmly behind her. “Let's get back to work, Zoe.” Grabbing her rotary cutter and a length of crimson batik fabric, she started to work.

Zoe blinked a couple of times, her golden eyes flashing like caution lights, then turned and bounced onto the window seat and settled down for a bath and nap.

It didn't take Tony and Sheila very long to reach the location of John Mize's temporary church. The motel office sat on a dead end road just off the highway. Over the decade or so since the motel had stopped operating, it had been used for many things. At one time the twenty units, which were built like tiny cabins, had been offered as individual low cost housing. Poorly insulated and poorly constructed, they were only comfortable in the summer. No one stayed past the first frost.

Looking more like a bunker than a church, the office building was a flat-roofed cinderblock rectangle squatting under some old, large tulip trees. If an architect had been involved in the project, it was one with zero imagination. At one time the cinder blocks had been painted white. Now the paint was peeling but the basic structure remained sound. The trim was painted robin's-egg blue, complete with speckles.

A sign propped in the front window announced the building's new use. Written in crude block letters on a sheet of neon yellow poster board was an invitation. “Join our Church of Divine Revelation. Mon thru Fri 6:30 p.m., Sun 9:30 a.m. All Welcome.” There was no phone contact.

The windows gleamed. Using his hands to shield the glare, Tony could see through the spotless glass and into the room. Devoid of all furnishings but a double semi-circle of metal folding chairs, it looked absolutely uninviting but spotlessly clean. Even the battleship-gray linoleum floor had the shine of fresh wax.

Sheila walked around the building, checking the doors and windows. She reported to Tony that they were tightly locked and the area around the building had been cleared of trash. The bare dirt showed signs of being recently raked. “Who owns this place?”

Her question echoed his thoughts. “I'm not sure, but it won't take Ruth Ann more than thirty seconds to find out.” He grinned at his deputy. “That is, of course, if her nail polish is dry. If she still has to apply a top coat, it might take her five minutes.”

Sheila's exuberant laughter proved to Tony that she, like everyone in Park County law enforcement, knew that Tony's incredibly bright and efficient secretary virtually ran the sheriff's office. She had when Harvey Winston had been sheriff and it didn't change when Tony was elected.

Since Tony was basically lazy, it worked out well for both of them. Ruth Ann was anything but lazy. She worked full time for his office and studied law in the evening. Theo told him she thought Ruth Ann stayed so busy because of her mother-in-law. After an accident at work rendered Ruth Ann's husband Walter partially disabled, the older woman had come to help and stayed on.

The two women barely tolerated each other.

Everyone at the station also knew that Ruth Ann allowed nothing to interfere with her manicures. One drawer of her desk was dedicated to her fingernails. She owned innumerable bottles of polish in every imaginable shade, and a few that Tony thought should not have been imagined much less bottled.

“It's lunch time,” said Tony. “Let's go back and see if Wade has had any luck with his project. I can't say I envy him spending more time with that car.”

Sheila turned to follow him.

Tony thought that he saw movement in one of the windows and paused, looking back at the units.. It might have just been his imagination, or not. “Wait. Let's see if any of the cabins show signs of being lived in. Maybe this is where Mize stays when he doesn't go back up the mountain.”

They started with the unit nearest to the road. Nothing. No door. One glance inside showed that even the bathroom fixtures were gone. The next two looked about the same. In the fourth one they found signs of occupation. A family of raccoons had taken it over. When the door opened, their little black masked faces turned to check out the intruders, but they did not appear frightened.

Only the next to the last cabin showed signs of recent human habitation. It was still in fairly good physical condition. The door worked and the windows were intact. With the exception of a plastic grocery bag half-full of empty sardine tins, the floor was surprisingly free of debris. Three unopened sardine cans balanced on the narrow windowsill. Wadded into one corner of the room was an old down sleeping bag, leaking feathers. It looked like a pair of chickens had been fighting in that corner. The air in the room made their eyes water. The vile aroma suggested that some little creature, probably a skunk from the smell of it, must have died somewhere in the building and started to decay. That aroma, mixed with the sardine scents rising from the bag, rendered the air in the space intolerable.

Wordlessly, Tony and Sheila quickly backed out of the cabin.

Tony wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his jacket. “Has it occurred to you, Sheila, that we have made our way from stench to stench this morning? Have you had enough yet?” He could see that against the pallor of her face, her freckles seemed darker than usual.

Sheila grinned at him, even as she wiped her own watery eyes. “I can take it if you can, Sheriff.” She breathed deeply through her mouth and the muscles of her throat moved under her creamy skin. “I'm one stench behind you because I didn't get to smell the car this morning, you know.” She managed a chuckle. “If you think that we need more, we could always go out to the dump and chat with Marmot-the-Varmint, you know, just for fun. I'll bet something out there stinks.”

“Yeah, it's usually Claude Marmot.” The corners of Tony's lips turned up. “Sounds like more fun than I can handle today. Let's go see what Wade has accomplished, maybe compare aromas, but first I think I'll snag an empty tin. I'm curious if there are fingerprints on it besides those of our furry friends. Maybe we can match them to our dead guy.”

“Do we need a warrant?”

“To pick trash off the ground? I sure hope not.” Reaching into the room, Tony used his pen to lift an empty tin that had fallen from the sack onto the floor. He slipped it into a small plastic evidence bag that he dragged from his pocket.

Tony managed to hang his jacket on the hook before Ruth Ann dropped the bomb. The gentle smile on Ruth Ann's coffee-colored face would normally have warned him. Any display of merriment on her part usually signaled a problem on his, and he knew that all too well. The compassionate expression in her deep brown eyes lulled him into a false sense of security. Without invitation, she settled onto one of the industrial strength chairs that faced his desk and sat blowing gently on her raspberry colored nails. Her smile widened.