Stone Angel

CHAPTER 25

Even with his eyes shut, Riker recognized the trappings of the Owltown bar where he had spent some time as a guest of the New Church, boozing with the faithful. He could feel the rough wood under his hands and his face. The night before last, he had listened to the same bad music on the jukebox. Now the song was slightly muffled, and he knew there was a door between his prone body and the outer room. The stale smells of beer and sweat were not muted at all. He kept his eyes closed while he counted the voices in the air – three men.

“Wake up, Sunshine.” This greeting was punctuated by the nudge of a boot in his rib cage.

Riker opened his eyes and focussed on the only window and a patch of dusky sky. He had been unconscious for at least five hours. This enforced rest was not such a bad trade for the small ache on the side of his head.

Two men sat at a small square table. Ray Laurie was standing over his body and cracking the seal on a bottle. “Mr. Riker needs a drink – a lot of drinks.” He filled a shot glass with whiskey from the bottle as he spoke to the man with the rifle. And now Riker noticed his own.38 automatic in the hand of the second man. “Now don’t let him nurse his shots. This shouldn’t take all night.”

Ray leaned down and handed the glass to Riker. “Just drink it.”

“Sure, why not?” Riker pulled himself up to a sitting position and drank from the glass. “Not bad. Not bad at all.” And he meant that.

He looked around at his companions and smiled. “You know, this was always my big dream, being forced to drink good whiskey at gunpoint.”

They all smiled back – no hard feelings here, no animosity whatever. He recognized the two men at the table. He had spent some time drinking with them on his last excursion to Owltown.

Ray Laurie was lining up the bottles on the table. “Just keep pouring till the job is done. ‘Night, Riker.”

When the door had closed on Ray, one of the remaining guards lifted the rifle barrel slightly. “Drink up, friend.”

“That’s a lot of liquor.” Riker admired the labels, all beyond his means. What was served out front was watered-down swill, and he guessed these homeboys had never seen the undiluted article in this bar. The collection of bottles on the table must be Malcolm’s private stock. “I don’t think anybody’d notice that I wasn’t drinking alone.”

The two men looked at one another, and then at the virgin bottles. “Go ahead,” said Riker, pretending not to see the rifle barrel as he climbed into a chair at the table. “Would I rat on you guys?”

He slugged back the rest of the whiskey and threw the empty glass across the room. Suddenly a rifle and a gun were pointing his way, aiming at his head. Overlooking this blatant rudeness, Riker grabbed up the open bottle. “Let’s get down to some serious drinking, boys.” He put the bottle to his lips and tilted it back. Then he passed it to the man on his right, the one who was holding on to his.38.

The man accepted the bottle from force of habit, but now he looked to his friend across the table for further instruction.

The man with the rifle shrugged and said, “What the hell.” And then it became a warmer, friendlier group drunk.

As the bottle was passed around the table, Riker wondered if these men knew they were dealing with a full-blown alcoholic, a professional drinker. He assessed the two men as lesser artists. After they had demolished two bottles, Riker began to slur his words, and he dribbled liquor from the corners of his mouth. He considered falling out of his chair, but dismissed the idea as overacting.

Mallory’s shoulder was stiff and sore as she raised herself to lift the shade of the bedside window. The sun had gone down and all the plants she could see were the mute green of the twilight hour.

She had lost a day, a whole damn day. How could that be?

The yellow cat was sitting at the edge of the bed, hissing. Mallory was slow to grab her pillow, giving away her intentions. The cat emitted a low growl. She tossed her pillow at the animal, missing it by a good two feet.

Not possible! How could she have missed such an easy target?

And now the cat came stealing back, perhaps sensing weakness in a slow reaction time, a foggy brain at work, and best of all, a bad aim.

Mallory threw back the covers with the certain knowledge that she had been drugged and that her next target would be Augusta.

She had pulled her jeans over the nightshirt before the cat crawled out from under the mangled sheets.

She found Augusta in the kitchen, stacking plates and bowls in the dishwasher. Charles sat at the table, poring over a sketchbook, his empty plate pushed to one side.

“Well, hello,” he said.

But Mallory only had eyes for Augusta. She glared at the old woman, the herb queen, her personal enemy of the hour. She had already forgotten how much she hated the cat.

“Well, my, don’t you look rested,” said Augusta, well armored against glares of all kinds.

The message in Mallory’s eyes was unmistakable. I’ll get you for that.

Unimpressed, Augusta turned back to the more pressing business of stirring a large pot on the stove. “Now you go sit down and I’ll heat up your dinner.”

Mallory was thinking it might be a comfort to break something – or someone. She looked at Charles, but he had done nothing to make her angry. She pulled up a chair at the table. “Where’s Riker?”

“Holding down the fort at the sheriff’s office,” said Charles. “The sheriff and the deputy are taking Jimmy Simms to New Orleans.”

“That’s smart,” she said. “But what are you doing here? Why is Riker by himself?”

Charles shrugged. “He told me to leave. I think he wanted to get caught up on his sleep. He thought I might be more useful here.”

“Doing what?”

Charles had no answer for that, but she could guess that this was a baby-sitting detail. And she knew Riker was not sleeping. If he had been planning to close his eyes even for an hour, he would have kept Charles around to wake him in case of trouble.

Augusta put a bowl of aromatic rice and meat on the table in front of her. Mallory looked down at it with deep suspicion.

“Did you want me to taste it first?” Augusta laughed, as she sat down to join them. She poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot on the table and grinned very wide, the better to frustrate the younger woman.

Mallory ignored her and looked out the window. Not dark enough yet to give her cover. “I want the car keys.”

“The car isn’t here,” said Charles. “Riker told me to park it outside of Betty’s and leave by her back door. Thought it would be best if no one followed me back here.”

That didn’t sound like Riker. He was too laid back to be that neurotic about security. “So there was a leak?”

“Well, not a big one,” said Charles. “Jane might have overheard something, but nothing important.”

“That’s the worst possible case,” said Augusta. “She’ll make up what she doesn’t know. So the word is out. Count on it.”

Then why would Riker get rid of Charles? “Tell me what was going on right before you left him.”

“Nothing. It was very quiet. The phone didn’t even ring the whole time I was there. So it’s over.”

The hell it was. But Charles believed it. He wasn’t holding out; he didn’t know anything. Mallory turned to Augusta. “Did Riker know you drugged me?”

Augusta’s smile said it all. So Riker had not sent Charles back as a baby-sitter. Why then?

“The only mystery left is what happened to your mother’s body,” said Charles. He was speaking to Mallory but looking at Augusta. “That must have driven the mob crazy, not knowing where the body was.”

Mallory nodded, though her mind was elsewhere, fighting back the fog of too much sleep.

“I thought the mob made off with the body.”

Augusta pushed the bowl closer to Mallory’s hand. “It’s safe. Trust me.”

Yeah, right.

Augusta read her mind and laughed out loud. But Charles was not even smiling. Something was definitely wrong. What was going on here? And what did Riker -

Charles touched her arm to get her attention. “Is that the way you see it, Mallory? The mob took the body away?”

“No.” Mallory shook her head and decided to risk a cup of coffee – Augusta’s cup. The old woman gave it up with no protest. “That would only make sense if there was some attempt to cover up the crime, and there wasn’t. All the evidence of a murder was lying around in plain sight.”

She was more curious about Riker than her mother’s missing body. When she looked up, Augusta had vanished and Charles was walking out of the kitchen.

Mallory looked into the pot on the stove. It held enough food for several meals. The old woman was obviously cooking in bulk. So she wouldn’t have tampered with the whole pot. Mallory bent over the garbage disposal, scraping her plate of Augusta’s serving. She picked up the pot ladle.

Something was wrong.

Her head was clearing now. She dropped the ladle into the pot and walked back to the other room where Augusta kept her telephone. The door at the top of the stairs was just closing behind Charles.

The yellow cat circled around her as she dialed the number for the sheriff’s office. She listened for four rings.

Riker, pick up the phone.

The cat jumped up on the table and sent the telephone crashing to the floor. Mallory and the cat stared at one another. The receiver in her hand was dead, and its frayed, broken wire dangled to the floor. The cat vanished. Very wise.

Charles trailed Augusta through the rooms of the house and up the stairs to the top floor. The bats had flown, and there were no malingerers in sight when he passed through the midsection of the attic, holding his nose and guided by the electric light from the room behind him. More light streamed through the cracks in the wall ahead. He passed through the door to the last segment of the attic, where she kept her telescope. A cool breeze was rushing through the holes in the roof, and the air was almost fresh.

A bat lay in a cardboard box stuffed with shreds of newspaper. One wing was extended and sporting a large bandage. Augusta was kneeling on the floor, lifting the creature in her hands, and now Charles saw the red metal band that marked this animal as the old man of the colony. Augusta unwound the gauze covering most of the wing. The bat screeched, and she paused to feed him liquid from an eyedropper. He went limp, and she worked over the exposed wound with no further distractions.

Augusta could not help but be aware of him standing only a few feet away, yet she didn’t look up. The silence was stringing out like a taut wire. How to begin?

“It must have driven them crazy, not knowing where the body was.”

“You’re repeating yourself, Charles.” She kept her eyes on the delicate membrane of the bat wing.

He sat down in the dust beside her. “They could never be sure Cass was dead. They’d never feel safe. And a missing corpse would keep the mystery alive.”

Augusta nodded. “Everybody loves a good mystery. It’s been a boon to the tourist trade. So you figure Betty Hale stole the body? She does have a good head for business.”

Charles was silent until she met his eyes. “Don’t you think it would comfort Mallory to know where her mother was buried?”

“No, Charles, I don’t. She’s a wonderfully compact creature. Not an ounce of sentiment to carry around with her and weigh her down. It’s enough for her to know that her mother is dead. I’m sure she does know that much. Kathy would never have left Cass while the woman was still breathing.”

She ran one light finger across the mending tear in the wing.

“And you’re not at all curious about the body, Augusta?”

“No.” She basted the wound with the foul-smelling contents of a small dark bottle.

“Because you know where it is. Finger Bayou literally points to her grave, doesn’t it? Is that why you became the executrix? So you could stop the herbicide on the water along her property line? When the water hyacinth ran wild, it choked off the bayou and made it impassable by boat. And then you planted trees on the road to Trebec House to discourage visitors. Betty does have a way of whipping up the tourists’ curiosity.”

“It’s an interesting theory. I guess I’ve heard worse logic over the years.” She layered fresh gauze on the wound and set the bat back in the box.

“It’s your style, Augusta. You watched Cass Shelley grow up in that house – and then Kathy. And then when you saw what had been done to that woman, ordinary justice wasn’t good enough, was it? Not for an artist like yourself. What an original revenge.”

“And when did I have time to do all of this? Henry was the one who found the body.”

“He reported the murder on the following day. You had all night to dispose of her body.”

“I never heard that mob, and that’s the truth.”

He believed that much. “The mob never made any noise, but you can hear a dog howl in pain from quite a distance. You would have wondered about that howling. You would have seen the dog from this window and gone to help him. You’d do anything for a wounded animal.” The cat gave away her character. It was a natural enemy of her precious birds, yet she had saved the creature. And now she was working over a bat she had once characterized as owl food.

“You’re talking through your hat, Charles.”

“As Mallory said, all the evidence of the murder was lying around in plain sight. No one had attempted to hide the crime. But the sheriff told me the back stairs had been cleaned. I don’t believe Mallory knows about that. If she did, she would have put it together before I did. You took the body down those stairs, and then you erased your tracks – and the smaller tracks Kathy made when she ran from the house.”

“The sheriff was all over my land, poking and digging.” She gently prodded the bat with one finger until the animal was roused from his herbal sleep. “Tom even dragged Finger Bayou. It was a damn thorough job.”

“You put Cass’s body in a temporary hiding place. Later, you had all the time in the world to bury her in ground he’d already covered. She’s probably lying under something heavy enough to keep a corpse from rising – say; a pile of rocks. You were standing on a pile of rocks on the day you fed the alligator.”

“You have a flair for spinning stories, Charles.”

“I wonder if the sheriff could do anything with my guesswork. I think he might go to a lot of trouble to find out where Cass Shelley is.”

“If you start spreading that story of yours, you’ll cause Mallory more grief than you know.”

Oh, very good shot, Augusta. She knew the pressure points.

“That’s Cass Shelley’s grave at the tip of Finger Bayou, isn’t it?”

She was grinning gloriously, unintimidated, unafraid. Might she be laughine at him? And now it crossed his troubled mind that Riker was right, he’d been altered somehow – blinded. Here he was, virtually threatening Augusta, who had done him no wrong. Quite the opposite, she only had helped him, and then she had trusted him with the secret of the alligator.

Her smile was more subdued now, and he could see that she was already forgiving him.

“Charles, I know you wouldn’t do anything to hurt Mallory. So I know you’ll keep all this wild speculation to yourself – and without ever knowing why. It’ll drive you crazy at first, but everybody needs a little mystery in their lives.” She tilted her head to one side as she studied his face. “I’d say you need it more than most.”

It was dark when Mallory left the house. The birds were louder than usual, when they should have been settling down for the night. And it was well past time for Augusta to put the horse in his stall. But there he was, racing back and forth in the paddock, rearing up on his hind legs.

The long black duster whipped around her boots as she walked down the oak lane. What was spooking the animals? Her eyes scanned everything in view, hunting for the thing out of place. She used the mini cell phone to call the sheriff’s office again. No answer. She was on the path leading into the cemetery when she heard the woman.

Mallory was through the skirt of trees, following the sound of crying. Her gun was drawn as she slowly cleared the ground, stopping at each small side street of tombs, watching for movement, then moving on.

She found Darlene Wooley kneeling near the south rim, leaning over Ira’s body and cradling his bloody head in her arms. Ira allowed it. He was past his fear of the human touch, but not yet dead.

“So you’re the witness,” said Ira, as Mallory bent over him, scanning the blood, and wondering how much real damage had been done to him.

Darlene looked up at her. “He was late for dinner. I came to get him for – ”

“So you’re the witness,” Ira said again.

Mallory pulled her palm computer and its electronic bundle from the deep pocket of her duster. She detached the mini cell phone from the battery pack and dialed the emergency number. When the dispatcher answered, she handed the phone to Darlene. “Just tell them you need an ambulance.”

Darlene nodded, and Mallory set to work on Ira’s wounds. He had all the signs of a deadly beating; most of the damage would be internal. She wiped away the blood from his mouth. No broken teeth, but there was a bad head wound, and one arm was broken. “Everything will be all right, Ira.” She walked to the oldest tree and gripped a dry branch, cracking it straight down and pulling it from the tree. Now she tore a cable from her battery pack and wound it around his arm, binding it to the branch to keep him from moving it and causing more damage.

Ira stared at her quietly, his eyes large and full of trust.

She smiled down at her old playmate, humming the music she remembered from their brief childhood. He began to sing as Mallory ripped off a section of his torn red shirt and his mother cried into the telephone.

After a few minutes, Darlene put her hand over the miniphone and spoke to Mallory. “They’re out on a call – all of them, ambulances, fire trucks. One of the chemical plants went up in a ball of fire and torched a cane field. The dispatcher is patching me into the sheriff’s car.”

“Don’t mention my name.” Mallory wound a bloody strip of Ira’s shirt around the bloody head wound. She couldn’t smell any smoke. The fire must be miles down the road.

Now Darlene broke the connection and closed her hand over the tiny phone. “The sheriff is pulling off the highway. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

Mallory checked Ira’s pupils. He was holding his own. Darlene was not doing so well by half.

In her own strange way of offering comfort, Mallory said, “I know who did this. I’ll kill him for you, okay?”

Darlene was shaking her head in confusion. “No, Kathy.” She was talking in the mother tone now. “Cass wouldn’t want that, and neither would I. It has to end, don’t you see?” Her hand wound around Mallory’s arm. “The damage can’t just go on and on. All these years, all this damage.”

Mallory gently pried loose Darlene’s restraining fingers and stood up. As she was moving through the cemetery with slow deliberation, Darlene called out after her, “Kathy, don’t kill anybody.”

Mallory recognized the same worried intonation her own mother had once used to caution her not to touch a dead bird she had found in the yard. As she walked, she checked the chambers of her revolver, and ceased to hear Darlene.

She was on her way to Owltown.

Augusta fixed one eye to her telescope. Studying the wildlife? Charles thought not. “You aren’t bird-watching, are you, Augusta?”

“Not at the moment, but I do find birds more interesting than people. Killer humans are definitely the more gentle species. Now you take the way Cass was killed – no passion. You should see the owls and hawks rip and tear the meat. But death is quick. If you blink, you miss it.”

“I’m sure you manage to keep abreast of all the killing around here.” What was she looking at?

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I spend some of my time watching the stars. But there’s a kind of violence out there too. This whole world is careening through space with a real wicked spin. I try to lay back and roll with it, and I recommend that to you.”

But her telescope was not trained on the stars tonight. “I think you’re a bit less passive than that. You don’t just watch, do you? You’re a player.”

“You’ve been listening to stories, Charles.” She smiled, but never took her eye from the telescope. “They’re all true. I’m a murderess. Killed my own father.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that.”

“Your friend Riker is in trouble. They’re closing in on him.”

Charles ripped the glass from her hand. Augusta patiently helped him refocus on the fairgrounds where the tent used to be. Now the most prominent thing on the field was a large truck with a long, flat bed strung with Christmas tree lights and the brighter spotlights perched on stalks of steel. At the center of the truck bed was a glass-domed coffin. It reminded him of a display case for a preserved insect.

Perhaps a hundred people milled and reeled around the truck waving bottles and paper cups. The women were laden with gaudy jewelry and they wore bright party dresses of shiny materials. Even some of the men wore sequins, and here and there was a costume more appropriate to a Mardi Gras parade than a funeral. A band of musicians stood off to one side and a stilt-walker moved among them with bright silver streamers in both hands.

In addition to the coffin, there was a chair on the truck bed. It was gold and elevated like a throne. Malcolm Laurie sat there, dressed in his suit of lights. He pointed toward the center of the crowd. The people stepped back to clear a wide circle, and there at its center, Riker stood alone, out of place in his drab gray suit.