Totally Buzzed (A Miller Sisters Mystery) (5 page)

I winced as the man dropped her on the ground and flipped her over. Primal instinct for survival gave her energy and she fought like a wildcat, kicking and clawing at anything she could reach. Someone stomped on her stomach and the fight went out of her. Lying in a fetal position, gagging and sucking in air, she fought to remain conscious. To pass
out
now out surely meant death. "Where are the Millers? Don't they hear me?" she cried.

I felt helpless as I stood aside
,
forced to watch
–
knowing what was coming and dreading the inevitable.

The men argued. One told another to shut up
–
there might be people in the house. Carole was more frightened than she ever thought she could be. She was not only afraid for herself, but she realized she had just put the Millers in jeopardy. She looked at the old farmhouse. A single tear cut tracks through the dirt on her face as she thought about her elderly neighbors. She sobbed, "Please be gone."

Tears coursed down my face as I realized that even facing death, Carole would have rather gone it alone than see my parents hurt.

She began to pray in earnest when she heard she 'saw too much', and with shocking clarity realized her life was about to end. She thought of her husband and son, pulled herself together, and got ready to run. Her legs trembled so hard they wouldn't support her, so she propped herself up on her elbows and waited for an opportunity to escape. When the men turned away to argue, she dragged herself a couple of feet away. The conversation stopped. She stopped…and waited.

When they started arguing again, she clawed the ground and slowly made it to the woodpile near the house. She crawled over the top, breaking off fingernails and bloodying her hands. Her blood-slick hands slipped off a log making a soft clunk. She froze and listened for her attackers. Hearing no break in the conversation, she continued on to the top.

Gathering the last of her strength, she curled her legs underneath her body. Taking in a huge breath, she thought one more time of her son and sprang off the woodpile. She was airborne about two seconds before a bullet hit her between the eyes. The force of the bullet whipped her head back and hurled her body against the woodpile. The sound of her head splitting on contact was like a sopping wet sponge hitting the woodpile. I gagged and tried to rush forward, but my feet were rooted to the ground. Her head flopped to face me
.
I watched in horror as the light in her eyes faded, dimmed, and went out.

Hatred and rage welled up so deep and so fast, it erupted like lava and poured from my soul. I memorized their faces so when I hunted them down, I knew the faces and names of the men I put a bullet through
–
for Carole.

One of the men looked at the other and spit at his feet. "Good shot, cowboy. You probably woke the whole damn county with that. Now you can get rid of her. Clean up your mess, amigo
.
Now." He turned and walked away.

The short, thin man, standing with the smoking gun, stared at the woman's body, a little green around the gills obviously nauseated by the scene. He swallowed convulsively. "How the hell am I gonna do that? It must be a mile back to the barn. Hey, stop. I need some help here! Xavier! You told us to stop her so I did." He watched in amazement as his
compadres
departed leaving him in a strange place with a fresh corpse.

"Felix! Arturo! Where are you going?" He looked down at Carole's body and kicked her. "Assholes," he spit out. He looked around for a place to stash the bitch.

He grabbed the woman by the cowboy boots. Dragging her away from the wood pile and toward the barn was sure harder than it looked. He stopped and looked around, noticed a door leading under the house. He looked around, again.
A big box, destined for the dumpster, near the barn would make the perfect container. He slit the box down the side and rolled Carole into the box. He dragged her back toward the house. Opening the door under the house, he dragged the box in. Pulling and pushing, he jammed it in as far as he could. He brushed out the drag marks in the sand, closed the door, and slapped his hands against his jeans to remove the dust and sand. Quietly he cut through the fields back toward the old barn, congratulating himself on a job well done.

The crawlspace door stood in front of me. I stared at it until I could see the grain in the wood, the rust on the latch, and the body which lay beyond.

* * *

The fog slowly became a mist. The mist faded on the breeze, and I found myself in J.J.'s arms, his hand crushed in mine. I looked into those sea green eyes and watched as they crinkled at the corners.

"Are you back now?" His voice was soft and his touch gentle. I grabbed a handful of his shirt.

"J.J., I saw it," I gasped.

"I figured you saw something, but I was going to wait until you were ready."

I looked down at our clenched hands and gave him a watery smile. "Can't do it later, do it now. I might forget something like the wood pile. The woodpile! She broke her nails on the woodpile. Blood, oh God the blood! We ran and ran and they chased her down here!" I knew I was babbling, but I couldn't stop. I grabbed the clipboard and began sketching madly. I dropped, exhausted, onto the lawn. J.J. was right there. He yelled orders to check the woodpile take pictures and collect evidence. He told Moe to check the yard and the perimeter.

By this time I was crawling around and taking pictures of the plastic bag containing what I knew were some type of seeds with my cell phone in one hand and drawing with the other. Larry took pictures of the crawlspace entrance on his cell phone, and Moe had his out and clicked away at the back fence.

J.J. straightened and looked around." Why are we using cell phones to photograph a crime scene? What happened to the D700?"

The three closest deputies looked at the ground. J.J. cleared his throat.

"I'll ask again. Why is no one using the Sheriff's Department Crime Scene Investigations Camera?"

Again there was silence. J.J. turned to me.

"What the Hell are you doing on your hands and knees with a cell phone camera, for cripes sake?"

"Because I didn't see anyone else do it, and I wanted to make sure I got the plastic wrap in case it was important later on."

He sighed, looked around for his deputies, and made a general announcement. "Anyone get any pictures on a real camera yet? If not, let's get on it. It's starting to turn into a zoo around here, and we need to finish up. You-Moe, find the camera!"

Moe mumbled something and shuffled his feet. I turned back to the body and saw Mag with Mom's digital camera in hand, clicking away at the scene. How odd, I thought. She was not a cop, nor was she a forensic photographer, so what the heck was she doing over there?

"Hey Maggot, what do you think you're doing over there? Are you thinking of changing careers and going into police work or something?"

Click, click
. "Heck
click
no!" Tongue in cheek, she narrowed her eyes. "Why would I give up the fame, glory, and financial independence that being a high school teacher brings? Besides, who would bash heads in my Biology class if I were to quit? Mom wants some pictures so she can show them to Jane, Mary, and Joy when she goes to coffee on Monday. She says they'll never believe someone croaked under her house."

I grabbed her arm and dragged her a short distance away. "Are you crazy?" I whispered to her. "This is a crime scene, not a neighborhood bar-be-cue! And nobody croaked under the house, she was murdered before she was stuffed in the crawl space." I yanked the camera away. "So stop with the camera, will you? These are not vacation pictures from Fort Lauderdale, and those little old ladies don't need any incentive to get their blood up!"

"I think it might be too late, Buzz–when I left the house, Mom was on the phone, bragging to someone that she was the first on her block to have her own croaker, and I don't think she was talking the amphibious type."

I felt a sensation of impending doom. If Mom called her friends, we were in trouble. I shoved the camera back into her hands. "Knock off the CSI stuff Mag, this is serious. I'd better warn J.J. He and Mee-Me went to see if there was a good camera in the meat wagon." I took off toward the driveway thinking of how close to the truth J.J.'s statement about the zoo was about to become.

Just then I saw another dust cloud coming up the driveway. Mag jumped up and down, gesturing toward the driveway with the camera. I stopped in my tracks.

"Hey, Buzz, that might be them now," she yelled. "Isn't that Joy Broussard's black Bonneville? Must be, all I see is blue hair over the dash. And whose red Crown Vic is that? Is that Mary Cromwell driving? Must be–look at all those police antennas. She must have been eavesdropping on the scanner again."

"Yeah, her and the rest of the geriatric SWAT Team. Mom probably didn't even have to call them."

Mag chuckled. "Well now, that's curious. I thought the state took Mary's license for the time she ended up in Volkert's living room with her old blue pickup, after Bobby Haskin's wedding." With a shake of her head, she went back to clicking.

I sprinted across the driveway to warn J.J. and Mee-me, but the huge black car barreling up the driveway beat me to him. J.J. took his life in his hands by stepping in front of Joy's car. I yelled, "J.J., get out of the way! She'll run you down–she can't see over the dash!"

He stood his ground, waving his arms and yelling. "Ladies, please! This is a crime scene. You do not want to be here! Go back home nowww–ohhh shit!"

He jumped out of the way and into the back of Dad's newly-scratched and dented pickup truck. He was still recovering his balance when the cars slid to a stop and the drivers' doors flew open.

J.J. jumped over the side of the truck and stood his ground in front of the ladies, explaining why they were not allowed to enter a crime scene.

His cries fell on deaf ears, and in the case of Mary Cromwell,
really
deaf ears. He had to jump out of the way again to avoid being run over by the stampede of three little old ladies wearing back packs and wielding casserole dishes and Jell-O salads. They waddled, shuffled, and toddled over to where the body still waited in its cardboard box. They stopped and stared as if they were paying their respects. Not wanting to interfere with such a solemn and personal moment, yet needing to know if they could shed light on Carole's death, I stepped within hearing distance and calmly eavesdropped.

"Would you look at that? Gerry wasn't lying!"

"A real live croaker, right under her house!"

"Just like John Wayne Gacy!"

"No, not just like John Wayne Gacy, you old fool. You think that Bill is stashing bodies under the house now?"

"Did you say that Bill stashed the body under the house just like John Wayne Gacy?"

"No! Listen to me! John Wayne Gacy was from Illinois. Stuff like that doesn't happen in Wisconsin!"

"Can you say Ed Gein? Jeffery Dahmer?"

"Don't play know-it-all with me, Joy Broussard! I know my serial killers."

"Ahem, ladies?" I said.

They all raised their heads and looked at me with innocent expressions. They turned as one and bustled over to the picnic table by the back door. Looking as if they had rehearsed, they worked in complete harmony setting up a buffet on the picnic table.

Folding chairs appeared out of nowhere, and Moe, Shemp, and Curly abandoned the crime scene in favor of unsuccessfully setting up a canopy to keep the sun off the elderly partygoers. Larry was still fanning Al and patting her hand. Al was giving her best impression of the dying cockroach, a must in every Drama Queen's repertoire.

My mother chose that moment to bustle out the back door carrying paper plates, utensils, and napkins, followed by Dead Butts carrying soda, beer, and brats. He fired up the grill and to my amazement, began grilling lunch for everyone. Dad followed, grumbling about his truck, and carrying buns and condiments. He gave Ted a scathing look and said, "Hope he don't burn the sausage."