Signs of Struggle (26 page)

L
iv, I think that went pretty well, as far as romantic evenings go, don’t you?”

I helped her up into the truck, went around, and got in behind the wheel. I turned on the ignition and adjusted the a/c to fight off the thick, hot night. I turned on the headlights and looked at her when she touched my right arm.

She said, “Well, you captured my heart for sure tonight. I would have preferred a little more intensity with Clontz, especially when he jabbed his finger in your chest. I’m surprised you didn’t break it off.”

“I don’t know, Liv. I kinda like the guy. He’s certainly on the money about the function of women in society.” Liv’s punch on my shoulder was only a glancing blow, so I was able to stifle my cry.

“What a piece of work,” she said.

I headed out of the parking lot and stopped at the exit. “Enough about Clontz; heck, the night is still young. What might we do for some fun?”

“Let’s go find Larry Soderstrom.”

“I’ve been trying,” I said as we pulled onto the blacktop. “So has Harmon. In fact, last night I took a chance and drove out by his place around twelve thirty. No luck.”

“Where does he live?”

“Not far from here.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to go take a look-see. We just might catch him, and how cool would that be? Besides, I’d like to see the place where he takes all those wild women.”

“That would be fine, but I don’t have Moon’s shotgun with me. I left it at home. I could go get it, then we could come back out. Larry’s A-frame is only about five miles away.”

“Let’s go right now before I chicken out.”

“Okay, but not until I get Chief Justice.”

“That’ll take too long, and I suspect you’ll want us to stay at your place once we get there, and who knows what carnal caperings could ensue?”

“Carnal caperings?”

“Oops.”

“So now I have wonderfully lurid pictures in my head. Your fault. Your words,” I said.

“Thank you.”

“But we still need a weapon,” I said.

“There’s no need to go get a gun. We are not unarmed.” And then Olivia Olson reached daintily into her glittering little purse and extracted a small pistol. “Look what I found, Thomas. My God! Is this one of those firearm doohickeys you big boys talk about all the time?”

I just shook my head and we took off as she placed the pistol, a double-barreled, pearl-handled .22 derringer, back in her purse.

Minutes later, maneuvering around a corner on the dirt road leading to Larry’s house, I noticed with sharpened interest that some of the lights were on in the A-frame.

“Can we be this lucky?” I asked. Liv smiled and patted her purse.

I doused my headlights and rolled my truck to a stop out of sight of the house. I shifted into park and secured the emergency brake.

“What are we going to do now?” Liv whispered.

“Go see if he’s in. Quietly scout the house, apprehend him, if possible. What do you think we should do?”

“Shoot the sucker in the croakies, ask questions later,” she said, then she started giggling. “It’s fun talking tough. Nice to slip out of my schoolmarm persona.”

“This is sooo disappointing, Liv.” She stopped giggling, but a smirk remained.

I pushed the switch for the dome light to “Off,” then eased out of the truck and quietly pushed the door shut. Liv came around to my side of the truck. She took my hand and said, “That was way cool, neutralizing the dome light. You are sooo hot!”

I put my finger to my lips, and Liv whispered, “Oh, really, you think we should try to be quiet?”

She followed me as I approached the house, darting from tree to tree. The night had cooled, and a fine mist drifted in the air. I smelled earth and plants and rainwater, and I heard the corn growing in the fields across the road from Larry’s house. The moon, nothing more than a vague disc gliding through a batting of wispy clouds, offered little light. As we waited, we heard the velvety call of a hoot owl from a tree behind the house.

Then we heard another sound, definitely not natural, a big handgun going off. We froze. I waited for three or four minutes without hearing another shot, then took off, sprinting low, keeping trees between us and the house until we were at the front door.

I inched my way to a window with a curtain partly drawn across the glass. By the light of a single lamp on a small table, I saw Larry Soderstrom slumped in a big chair, blood slipping from his mouth, and something odd about the shape of his head. His right hand draped over the chair’s armrest, a handgun hanging from his fingers. I watched as the weapon fell to the floor. His left hand dangled out of sight.

I could not see anyone else. The sorry sucker had committed suicide. I rushed to the front door and tried the doorknob. It did not turn. I stepped back and kicked in the door, grateful the lock gave way and not my knee or hip. The wood splintered and the door swung open, banged against the rubbery tip of a doorstopper, then swayed slowly back toward me. I pushed the door back and rushed inside the room, Liv right behind me.

She saw Larry, muttered, “Oh, Jesus,” and grew silent.

I held my hand up and she nodded her head. She looked like she was going to be sick. I turned and approached the chair. Larry Soderstrom was dead. Shot in the mouth, and I knew a thorough examination of the scene would find bits of skull and brain behind the dead man, perhaps on the ceiling. A half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey lay tipped over on the floor. Good taste in hard stuff, I guess, but then, I don’t touch it. I just ooze virtue.

A door closed in the back.

I stopped, completely silent, listening. Liv tapped me and I turned. She had her pistol out, and when she nodded toward the back of the house and raised her eyebrows in a “Shall we go?” expression, I nodded back, and we crept toward the sound. Another sound could be heard, the rumbling of a powerful automobile engine cranking up.

We burst through the kitchen and out the back door onto a terrace and saw Larry’s silver Corvette parked in the driveway. But we also saw a Jaguar sedan speeding rapidly down the driveway, lights off, tail lights flashing once as the driver negotiated a turn in the dark, and disappearing around the house and out toward the road. When the taillights flashed, the license plate was revealed—MYLAND. Like there was any doubt about who else might be driving a Jag in rural Rockbluff County. They’re all over the place, farmyards filthy with them.

Liv and I rushed around to the front of the house to my truck, me babying my leg so it wouldn’t go south on me again, Liv hobbling along in her high heels. “I’ll get in myself! Hurry, hurry!” she shouted, pushing me to the other side of the truck. We jumped in and I got the engine roaring, flipped on the headlights, backed into Larry’s driveway, turned around, and floored it, fishtailing down the dirt road while Liv fumbled briefly with her cell phone.

“Pick it up, pick it up,” she chanted softly, then, “Harmon, this is Liv. I’m with Thomas. We just left Larry Soderstrom’s house. He’s dead and we just chased off someone and we’re in hot pursuit. Is that how you say it? Hot pursuit?”

“It’s a Jag with the MYLAND license plate,” I said.

“Harmon, it’s a Jag with the MYLAND license plate. Yes! Yes! He's going north. I’m following now in Thomas’s truck. Got it?” A pause. “I won’t do anything foolish, believe me. Can’t speak for Thomas, but I’ll keep an eye on him. Bye.” She pushed a button, exhaled loudly, and tossed the cell phone over her shoulder into the backseat. Flamboyant crime fighter.

“Can’t speak for Thomas?”

Liv shrugged and smiled.

“Larry didn’t kill himself. Clontz just murdered him.”

“Ya think?” Liv said as we flashed down the country road, green fields of corn streaking by us on both sides. “He’s not going to get away from us, the stinkin’ misogynistic creep!”

“I love it when you use big words,” I said, pressing the accelerator harder and delighted I had a big V-8 powering us down the road. “Turns me on, woman.”

“Just don’t let that sucker absquatulate!”

Five minutes later, following the Jaguar’s dust clouds in the misty night air, we swooped down upon the car nosed into a deep, soft ditch beside the road. A Rockbluff County Deputy Sheriff’s car stood twenty yards farther down the dirt road blocking the way, headlights lighting up a green cornfield. I recognized Deputy Sheriff Doltch walking toward the Jag, flashlight in one hand, Glock nine millimeter in the other.

I braked hard and pulled over, blocking the road from our direction, but the way the Jag nosed into the scenery made any escape unlikely. The car was stuck in a soft dirt bank and wouldn’t be getting out without a tow truck. Too much Chivas on the rocks.

I scrambled out. Liv jumped out of the truck on her side, hand in purse, rushing forward. I caught up to her, put my hand on her shoulder, and said, “You’re a helluva woman, Olivia, but I want you to stay right here, okay? No need to go down to the car.”

She saw I was serious and stopped. “Be careful, Thomas.”

I hurried to reach Clontz slumped over his steering wheel, my mind already made up to punch the man in the face when I got to him. “Don’t let him be dead, Lord,” I muttered. "I want a piece."

But as I drew near, I saw that it wasn’t Jurgen Clontz, Jr. behind the wheel. It was a woman. Doltch stopped, then moved forward, his gun hand dropping.

“Watch her, Stephen!” I shouted, and the Deputy brought his Glock up again. We slid down the bank side by side, arriving simultaneously at the car. I wrenched the door open.

Wendy Soderstrom sat behind the wheel, staring straight ahead into the milkweed and long grass on the bank, headlights muffled into the vegetation, the green weeds white in the glare. Her head rested on the collapsed airbag, a fine white powder sprinkled across her lovely chest, along with dark spots here and there I could not identify, but suspected. She’d suffered a small cut over her right eyebrow, and a thin line of blood trickled down alongside her nose and onto her cheek and lip. She held a cell phone in her left hand.

Doltch said, “Would you please step out of the car, ma’am, if you are able?”

Wendy started to move but her seatbelt snagged her. She released it with her right hand, dropped the cell phone on the floorboards, slipped out from the seatbelt, and emerged from the downward-angled car. “I’m okay,” she said as she struggled briefly, and then squirmed up the bank with Doltch on one side of her and me on the other, each gripping one of her elbows, assisting. Doltch delivered her Miranda rights. She cursed briefly. He patted her down. She cursed some more.

Wendy looked at me. “So you’re the asshole back at Larry’s. Christ. Talk about timing.”

She preceded Doltch to his cruiser, turned around, and leaned up against the car’s grill. She wore designer sweats, dark chocolate brown with orange piping, and a dark headband in her tangled blonde hair. Even in the bright headlights of my truck, disheveled and banged up, she was beautiful. But no longer appealing as I realized the dark spots on her front were blood splatter.

A rising siren wailed over the fields of corn and soybeans in the drizzle of the black night. The four of us in the Iowa countryside waited silently and, in a moment, Sheriff Payne pulled up behind my truck and parked, leaving the blue lights flashing, but killing the engine and the siren. He got out and strode to the bleak gathering.