Dangerous Undertaking Read online

  Big Jack looked at me for a second, and then started laughing. His cronies joined in. They stepped aside and let Clyde set a tray of six bottles of long-necked Bud on the table. Jack slapped me on the back. “That’s a good one,” he said, and then he shook Tommy Lee’s hand. “I got the job, Sheriff. Maintenance foreman said you put in a good word.”

  “I know you can live up to it.”

  Each of the bikers grabbed a beer. Jack tipped it to Tommy Lee and then to the poster on the wall. “Thanks. Now how many times can we vote?”

  Tommy Lee picked up a beer bottle and clinked it down the line. “Four. But only once each.”

  The bikers took their beers, their leather, their chains, and my fear to the next table.

  “You bastard,” I whispered.

  “Me?” he laughed. “My opponent Bob Cain should have a friend like you. I thought you were going to pass out.”

  “Who is that guy?” I asked.

  “Jack Andrews. I busted him a couple years ago for drug dealing. Small time. He pulled a light sentence and is on parole. Hell of a mechanic. I got him a job in Asheville working on police cars. Figure the more he’s around cops, the more he’ll like them. Maybe he’ll stay straight. You do what you can.” He looked at his watch. “Time to go off duty,” he said, and took a swig of the Bud.

  I pushed my empty mug aside and grabbed the remaining bottle. “You do what you can,” I agreed, and clinked his beer.

  “Well now. Isn’t this a sight.”

  I looked up to see a beefy man standing at our table. He wore a blue nylon jacket, and his white hair was buzz-cut to within a quarter-inch of his scalp. The smirk on his face begged to be wiped off.

  He raised his voice above the din. “I saw your car in the parking lot and thought maybe you were actually making an arrest. But, no, a killer is running rampant through the county and our sheriff sits boozing it up in a bar.”

  Again, the room fell silent. Even Tammy Wynette was between encores.

  “Come on, Cain,” said Tommy Lee. “Why don’t you take your hot air someplace else? We’re having a meeting.”

  Bob Cain. Now I recognized him from his campaign posters. He didn’t look the same without an American flag behind him.

  “Having a meeting? Looks to me like you’re having a drink.” He glanced around the bar, expecting someone to laugh. No one did.

  “Have you met Barry Clayton?” asked Tommy Lee. “He’s a former police officer from Charlotte, and he was shot by Dallas Willard. He’s consulting with me because unlike you I don’t claim to know it all.”

  Cain’s face reddened. “You need more help than he can give you.”

  “You heard the sheriff. Park your lip someplace else.” Jack Andrews slid back from his table and stared at Cain.

  “Butt out,” said Cain. “When I’m sheriff, you and your pals will have to find some other county to stink up.”

  Cain may have been a security consultant, but he certainly didn’t seem to think much about his own. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tommy Lee tense. The way things were headed he was going to have to keep his opponent from getting his ass stomped.

  “You hear that, boys,” said Jack. “This gentleman thinks we stink.” Jack stood up. Although Cain probably topped six-foot-two, the biker had a good three inches on him. “You know what I think?”

  “Can you think?” asked Cain.

  “Man, you got a mouth that just won’t quit, don’t you? I think when your momma was pregnant, a fart got in with the baby. The baby died and the fart lived. We do take baths, but you’re gonna stink every day of your life.”

  The room erupted in laughter. Cain went from red to purple. His right fist came up from his side in a haymaker punch that caught Jack full force on the corner of his mouth. Jack’s head barely moved under the blow, but a trickle of blood streamed down his chin. Cain froze, waiting for a response.

  “I’d call that an assault, Sheriff,” said Jack calmly. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Yep, I would,” replied Tommy Lee.

  Before anyone could blink, Tommy Lee leaped from his chair and snapped a cuff on Cain’s right wrist. The man turned to struggle, and Tommy Lee kicked him behind the knee, sending him face first into the peanut shells on the floor. The sheriff straddled his buttocks like Cain was a ride in the penny arcade, yanked Cain’s left arm behind his back and cracked the other cuff across the left wrist. He grabbed the stainless steel bracelets and lifted Cain to his feet. He spun his hapless opponent around to face him. Ignoring the blood gushing from Cain’s nose and mouth, Tommy Lee stared into his face. “You’re under arrest.”

  For a few seconds, only the sound of a Nikon motor-drive could be heard. From a dark corner of the room, a young woman had stepped forward. She had a reporter’s notepad tucked under her arm and a furiously flashing camera in her hands. Evidently, she’d been the one hiding in Clyde’s the whole time.

  “I’ll read you your rights in the car,” said Tommy Lee.

  “You know you just got your department in one helluva law suit,” said Cain. He turned his bloody face to the reporter’s camera as it continued to snap off shots. “I’m suing for excessive use of force.”

  Tommy Lee shrugged off the threat. “You’ll get your phone call and I’ll ask Judge Wood to authorize releasing you on your own recognizance. I’m not making this personal, Cain. You’ll get the same treatment as anybody else who breaks the law.”

  “You wouldn’t know the law if it bit you in the ass.”

  Tommy Lee turned to Jack. “Thanks for taking the punch. I’ll need a statement.”

  “You got it,” said Jack. “I’ll be down to press charges later. He’s not worth interrupting my beer.”

  Tommy Lee pushed Cain ahead of him to the patrol car and locked him in the back seat. He picked up the mike and told the dispatcher he was bringing in a prisoner.

  “Ten-four. And Sheriff, we’ve had a call about a poisoning,” said the dispatcher.

  “Didn’t you call poison control?” He barked the question into the microphone.

  “Negative. The victim is a horse.”

  “A what?”

  “A horse. You know. Trigger. Hi, Ho, Silver.”

  “God-damn-it! I’ve got a killer on the loose and my political opponent in handcuffs. I’m not interested in a dead horse.”

  The radio went silent for a few seconds as if the dispatcher was trying to build up his courage before talking to his irate boss.

  “Uh, the horse, sir, the horse isn’t dead, yet.”

  “And,” asked Tommy Lee, stretching the word into at least three syllables, “what? Would they like me to drop by and shoot it?”

  “And the call came from Charlie Hartley. He was quite distraught. Pitiful actually. The vet told him he thought it was poison. Charlie insisted I let you know.”

  Tommy Lee sighed and the anger left him. He knew as well as I now did how important those horses were to the old man. “Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry. See if you can get somebody up there.”

  “We’re spread to the limit, Sheriff. It’ll have to be early this evening when the new shift comes in.”

  I raised my hand and caught Tommy Lee’s eye.

  Chapter 9

  The sun was dropping behind the ridge of Hope Quarry as I drove around Charlie’s house to the barnyard. Parked beside the plow was a white pickup truck with Blanchard Large Animal Vet lettered on its side.

  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do or say in the barn. I wasn’t sure why the hell I had volunteered to come up here. Because it was Charlie and I liked him. Because I liked Reverend Pace and the fact that he once buried an old man’s dog. I might be at a loss for words, but I could be there.

  Charlie Hartley leaned over the stall railing and watched the veterinarian examine Nell. I slipped quietly beside him.

  “Tommy Lee sent me,” I whispered.

  “Thanks,” he said and turned his concentration back to the suffering animal. He didn’t seem to care tha
t I didn’t have a badge or a uniform.

  Sporadic convulsions rippled across the mare’s flank, and her nostrils flared with every breath. Charlie shuddered with each sign of the animal’s agony. All I could do was reach my arm across the old man’s shoulders and give a squeeze to say hang on.

  Rich Blanchard tucked his stethoscope in his jacket pocket and shook his head. He gave his patient a gentle pat on the rump, then turned to us.

  “I’m afraid the foal will be stillborn. We’ll deal with induced labor later.”

  Charlie laid his face against the back of his hands and suppressed a sob. “And Nell?” he managed to ask.

  “The next few hours are critical. I’ve given her a heavy dose of mineral oil and an injection of a general antitoxin. I’m also flying a blood sample to the Veterinary Research Lab at NC State. In the meantime, we’ll rig a sling to keep her on her feet. Keep her flushed with large quantities of distilled water. You can get it by the gallon at Ingle’s Supermarket.”

  “You think she was poisoned?” I asked.

  “Never seen anything like it. No sign of disease. Yes, I think she ingested something toxic. Charlie said she was fine until yesterday evening.”

  “Downright frisky when I let her out to the south pasture,” confirmed the old man.

  “The stallion with her?” asked the young vet.

  “No. Keep them separated.”

  “And he is fine,” observed the vet. “Must have been something she got in the pasture.”

  “Who’d want to poison my Nell? That’s why I called the sheriff.”

  Blanchard shook his head. “I don’t mean to suggest it was intentional. Maybe somebody dumped rancid garbage. Then she ate it, or it got in the water supply.”

  “Never found any dumping on my land, and the only stream in that pasture flows from the quarry. No way for anybody to get back up there since the road growed over.”

  “Your other horse been in that field?” I asked.

  “Not for a couple days.”

  Rich Blanchard thought for a few seconds. “I’m going to take a sample of the creek water and send it with the blood. Might be nothing, but right now we got too many questions and no answers.”

  He pulled a clean vial from his black bag and walked out the back to the south pasture. Then I heard car doors slam in the barnyard. Charlie stood oblivious to the sound, staring at his beloved mare.

  “I’ll see who’s here,” I said.

  Reverend Pace and a young woman were standing by his maroon Plymouth Duster, circa 1970. He smiled at me and pointed to the veterinarian’s truck.

  “Is she foaling?”

  “No,” I said in a tone that dissolved the smile from his face. “The foal’s dead. The vet thinks Nell ate something poisonous. Charlie may lose her too.”

  Reverend Pace leaned against the hood of the car. “Oh, dear God.” He squinted his eyes shut as if he wanted the sockets themselves to close up. “Don’t let that happen.”

  He took a few deep breaths, opened his eyes and turned to the woman beside him. “Wait here. I’d like to speak to Charlie alone.”

  I took his words to apply to me as well, and I stayed with his companion as the old preacher disappeared into the barn to comfort his friend.

  “I’m Barry Clayton.”

  “Sarah Hollifield. I’m an intern with Reverend Pace. Just started today. We were on our way back to town from another visit, and he said he wanted me to meet someone. Guess we came at a bad time.”

  “No. You came at a good time. I can’t think of anyone who could help Charlie more.”

  “Is it bad?” She looked to the barn and her smooth forehead wrinkled with concern.

  Sarah couldn’t have been more than twenty-four or twenty-five. Her auburn hair framed her cherub face in a simple page-boy cut. She wore a green, V-necked sweater over a crisp, white blouse that was open at the neck and exposed a small gold cross hanging from a delicate chain. Her skirt was a muted tartan plaid hemmed just below the knee. Her black flats, dangerously close to a fresh horse-dropping, were polished to a soft finish. I imagined they had been extracted from terry cloth shoe bags assigned a special compartment in her suitcase. She was the eager angel wardrobed in a parochial school dress code.

  “Bad,” I said. “About as bad as it can get for the old man.”

  Sarah lifted her right hand to her mouth and chewed her fingers nervously. I noticed a smear of blood on the cuff of her sweater.

  “Did you cut yourself?”

  “No,” she said absently. Then she saw I was looking at her sleeve. “It was in Reverend Pace’s car. Must have been from the rabbits.”

  “Rabbits?”

  “Yes. He said somebody left him rabbits they’d shot. Just dropped them on the front seat.” She shook her head in amazement. “He said it happens all the time. People give him vegetables, deer meat, even pigs’ feet.” Her mouth scrunched up at the thought and she tried to pick off the flecks of dried blood. “Reverend Pace warned me to wear a different outfit next time, and that I especially wouldn’t want to step in any surprises in these shoes.” She glanced down and saw the pile of horse dung. “Oh, my.” She edged closer to me. “And he said this skirt will never make it over a barbed-wire fence. ‘You applied for field work, Sarah. That’s just what this is.’” She smiled. “He told me when he first started, he rode out in the hills wearing a tailored suit, and then walked home with a load of birdshot in his rear. Learned the hard way never to dress like a Federal Revenuer.”

  “Where have you been?” I asked.

  “This afternoon we took a sugar-cured ham to a family that lost a child.”

  “The Colemans?”

  “Yes.”

  “But they wouldn’t be home,” I said. “Reverend Pace should have known they went to Kentucky last night.”

  “Oh, he knew. He said it would be easier for them to accept the gift if they just found it when they got back. He didn’t even leave a note. He said they’ve got a long row to hoe, and they don’t need to worry about thanking a preacher they don’t know. I couldn’t believe the Colemans didn’t lock up, but I guess they don’t have anything worth stealing. Reverend Pace just looped a rope around the shank bone, double-knotted it and hung the ham from the woodstove pipe. Then we closed the door and walked around their property looking for rocks.”

  “Rocks?”

  “Yes. Do you think he’s kind of eccentric?”

  “No. I’d say he has a practical reason for everything he does.” I also knew if Pace and his intern had been on visitations all day he hadn’t heard about Fats McCauley. I’d catch him alone before I left. I walked over to his car and looked in the front window. “Did he leave the Colemans the rabbits too?”

  “No. He took them out before he picked me up. He said greeting me with a couple of dead bunnies would be too much.” Her brown eyes widened at the thought. “This is a lot different than seminary, Mr. Clayton.”

  “They both sound like they’re from another era,” said Susan. She lay stretched out across the braided throw-rug on my living room floor. Beside her, George nibbled a leaf of lettuce while Susan scratched the guinea pig behind her ears.

  George had been my transition from married life to single life. Not that I believed a wife could be replaced by a rodent, although I know some divorced men would argue that point. Some zoologists argue a guinea pig is not a rodent. I did not mean to insult wives or guinea pigs. I had just wanted someone to come home to.

  The pet store owner had assured me of the animal’s masculinity, and my new companion had been thereby dubbed Curious George in honor of the playful monkey whose adventures I had enjoyed reading as a child. Within the first month, it became obvious that George had indeed been too curious because I found him one morning in the company of three miniature white and brown Georges who could only have come from what I had assumed was a guinea pig beer belly. The embarrassed pet store owner took back the offspring, but I had grown too attached to trade George in for the ballsy
model. And not wanting to create a pet with an identity crisis, I decided to leave George as George, but added the appropriate surname Eliot.

  “What do you mean another era?” I asked. I sat on the sofa nursing a cold beer. We had shared a late supper of roast beef sandwiches and salad. George enjoyed the green trimmings.

  Susan wore a pair of my sweat pants and a UNC-Tar Heels tee shirt. No hospital rounds tomorrow meant she would spend the night at the cabin. After the day I’d had, I was grateful for her company.

  “Well, how many circuit-riding preachers still exist?” she asked.

  “A few, I guess. Pace is the only one I know.”

  “And how many goodie-two-shoes who come across like they’re out of a priory school?”

  “Jesus, Susan, she’s training to be a minister. She’s not into body piercing. You of all people should appreciate a woman making it in a man’s field.”

  “I do. Don’t be so defensive. I only said they sound like they’re from another era. That doesn’t mean they’re not playing an important role today. They are.”

  “Yeah. You’re right.” I took a swallow of beer and thought about what was really bugging me. “Maybe I’m the one who’s out of it. I feel incompetent, Susan. Last night I watched Uncle Wayne defuse the tension between that pompous power company executive and Mrs. Coleman. Me, I’m going through the motions, playing a role of somber sympathizer, standing in the background as a surrogate for my dad so that Clayton and Clayton can continue. Today, I was on the front lines with Tommy Lee and Reverend Pace. It felt more, I don’t know, more important.”

  “Who’s more important?” she asked. “Me or the ambulance driver racing my patient to the hospital?”

  “You’re each more important at different times.”

  “Very good, Mr. Deputy Reverend Clayton. And since I can’t save every patient who comes to me, and since death eventually comes to every family, there will be a time when you are the most critical person in the life of the grieving. If that’s not important, I don’t know what is. Buryin’ Barry has the respect and love of this little town, he has the respect and love of me.” She got up, came over and kissed me on the cheek. “So, don’t quit your daytime job.”