Simply Lies

Chapter 35

The woman who answered her knock was in her late sixties and looked like she had spent most of her life outdoors doing things that required a lot of physical labor and determination. Her frame was blocky and strong. She had on faded jeans encasing thick legs, dirty muck boots, and a light blue cotton sweater with several holes in it. A pair of leather work gloves stuck out of her front jeans pocket. Her white hair was pulled back in a tight knot. Her face was lined and absent of any artificial coloring.

“Yes?” the woman said, her voice as husky as she appeared.

Clarisse held up her iPad. “Hello, I’m here taking surveys of certain people for my company. My information tells me that Daryl Oxblood lives in the house next door. We were supposed to meet today, right now in fact, but I knocked and no one answered.”

“What company?”

“Online marketing.”

“I doubt Daryl owns a computer. It’s not really his thing.”

Without missing a beat Clarisse said, “That’s why I was sent out, to meet with people like that. They have no online presence and that’s in line with the audience we want to survey.” She glanced over the woman’s shoulder and saw the desktop unit on a farm table in the small kitchen visible from where she was standing. “I take it you don’t suffer from that affliction.”

The woman said, “I suffer from an affliction. It’s called having to spend too much damn time on my computer. Whatever happened to a phone call or meeting someone for real?”

“I sympathize. I’ve been trying to get my own screen time down from a ridiculously high level. But Mr. Oxblood doesn’t indulge, which is why we so wanted to talk to him.”

The woman now looked over her shoulder at Oxblood’s place. “His truck is there, which means he should be, too. It’s the only vehicle he has.”

“And he lives alone?” She glanced at her iPad screen, which was blank. “At least that’s what our records show.”

“That’s right. His ma died, oh, four years ago. Daryl’s never been much of an outside guy, if you know what I mean. He would have never left the house if his mother hadn’t made him go out and get a job. Just sit in his room and do God knows what.”

“What exactly does he do?”

“He’s actually good with anything mechanical. And there’s a lot of stuff around here, farm equipment mostly, that constantly needs fixing.”

“I saw the John Deere tractor in his backyard. It looks like it needs a lot of work.”

The woman smiled. “I guess it’s ‘do as I say, not as I do’ with old Daryl. He makes all our stuff run good and doesn’t lift a finger for his own.”

Clarisse had frozen for a moment on the woman’s first words. The same tagline in the secret room where Harry Langhorne had died.

“If he’s an introvert he might not want to open the door to a stranger.”

“You said you had an appointment with him?” the woman asked.

“Yes, but he doesn’t know what I look like. I called out and said who I was and why I was here, but no one responded.”

“Now that is strange.”

“Maybe if you...”

The woman stepped out, and Clarisse followed her over to Oxblood’s. The woman knocked hard on the door. “Daryl, it’s Barbara. You okay? There’s a lady here you have an appointment with. Daryl!”

No sound came from within. Barbara looked at her. “Okay, now I’m getting a little worried.”

“What should we do?”

“I think we’re justified in going in and seeing if he’s okay.”

“Maybe we should call the police.”

“Hell, the county sheriff’s department’s the law around here and they got a lot of ground to cover. So by the time they showed up we could have taken Daryl to the hospital, if he’s fallen and hurt himself.”

“Okay, but how do we get in?”

Barbara scooted back to her house and came back waving a key. “He has one for my place if something happens to me, too. Way it is out here.”

“I’m sure.”

Barbara unlocked the door, and they walked into a house that was filled with junk and clutter.

“He really let the place go after his ma died. He makes decent money, but Daryl has never been much of a housekeeper. Hell, neither am I.”

“I’m sure,” Clarisse said, her gaze roaming around the small space. “Maybe upstairs?”

There were ten steps up, and on the fifth one Clarisse reached into her bag and gripped the pepper spray. On the ninth step her hearing was as concentrated as was possible.

When they reached the second floor Barbara turned right.

“He’s usually up here reading comic books and such. His ma used to complain.”

“And his father?”

“Never knew him. He died before they moved here.”

“How long have the Oxbloods lived here?”

“Nearly twenty years. I’m born and bred.”

Barbara knocked on the door and got no answer. “Daryl, if you’re in there, say something or we’re coming in.” She looked back at Clarisse and shrugged. “He’s overweight and has diabetes and he’s not good about taking his insulin. He’s not that old, around forty, but maybe a heart attack?”

“One way to find out.”

Barbara gripped the doorknob as Clarisse got ready to deploy her pepper spray. She didn’t expect to find her adversary inside, but stranger things had happened to her.

The door opened and Barbara stepped through.

“Oh my God,” she cried out.

Clarisse pushed past her and looked at the bed.

The dried, congealed blood was everywhere, and the assailant long gone.

She made a sweep of the room and then stepped closer to the corpse on the bed, avoiding the spots of blood on the wooden planks.

“Is this Daryl?” she asked.

Barbara hung back by the door. “Y-yes. All that blood. What the hell happened? Did he have some sort of accident?”

She looked at the cut that ran from one earlobe to the other.

“I think you should call the sheriff’s department.”

“And tell them what?”

“That a man has been murdered.”

“Murdered! Here?”

Clarisse turned back to look at Barbara. “Go do it now,” she said in a strained voice.

Barbara turned and clattered back down the stairs. She could hear the older woman bouncing off the walls in her haste.

She bent down and scrutinized the dead man’s face and then recoiled in horror.

No way. It cannot be. Please.

She stepped back and glanced at the man’s arm. She edged the sleeve up to the elbow and then slowly turned the arm toward her so she could see the inside of the forearm.

She saw what she needed to see and pulled the sleeve down and put the arm back.

It was a tat of Superman’s insignia.

Shit.

Unfortunately for Clarisse, she had chosen burgundy gloves to wear today. And thus she didn’t notice the small bit of congealed blood that had leached onto one of her fingertips.

Clarisse stepped away and looked at the shelves lining one wall. They were filled with comic books. She rushed over and then stopped and stared at the one on top of a large pile. It was, she knew, a copy of a special edition Superman comic. But was it that one? She opened the cover and looked on the first page.

The initials BD and RE housed inside a drawn-in heart.

She thrust the comic back, her panic rising. Now she had something else to look for, and she needed to do it quickly.

She rushed across to the opposite room she had noticed when they had reached the second floor. Clarisse pushed the door open using her gloved hand. It was a small room that was obviously used for storage. Boxes and old bed frames and the clutter and castoffs of seemingly several lifetimes were piled in here.

Her sweeping gaze stopped at the far wall. And there it was. She lifted her iPad and took a picture of what was written on the wall in black Magic Marker.

She didn’t want this found. She pulled a pen out of her bag and had started to mark through the words when she heard Barbara on the stairs. She quickly put her pen away as Barbara appeared in the doorway.

“They’re on their way.” She looked at the message on the wall. “Oh my God, what does that mean?”

“I don’t know. The police will have to figure it out. And I have to be going.”

“What! Aren’t you going to wait for the cops?”

“Look, I came out here because it was part of my job. I don’t know anyone here. I certainly didn’t know Daryl Oxblood. You’ll be able to tell the police a lot more than I ever could. And while I don’t want to sound heartless, I have twenty more people to survey before the day is out, and they live all over.”

Barbara glanced at the message and shrugged. “Well, all right, I guess. But I’m not staying in the house alone.”

“You can wait for them outside.”

They walked down the steps and out into the yard.

“Oh, what’s your name, in case the police ask?” said Barbara.

“Julia Frazier. Good luck. And I’m very sorry about what happened to your friend.”

“Well, we were more neighbors than friends. His mother was my friend, though. I bet it’s drugs. That opioid stuff. Maybe he owed money or something and they came and did that to him when he couldn’t pay. Bastards.”

“You’re probably right.”

Barbara went back over to her house while Clarisse hustled to her car. She reached the main road and turned left. A few seconds later she saw two sheriff’s cruisers in her rearview mirror. Sirens blaring and lights swirling, they turned down the road where there was a dead man waiting and disappeared from sight.

A few moments later, so did Clarisse.