Hiding Gladys (A Cleo Cooper Mystery) Page 3

  Finally, on her third glass, Henri revealed her primary mission. “You know,” she said, “Dad was so happy he was able to do something for you today. You should do something nice for him in return.”

  A twinge of guilt pricked me. I’d told Bud I would cook him dinner tonight. However, it was a very small twinge, considering how many times I’d cooked for him only to hear, “Oh, I forgot to tell you, babe, I have a meeting,” as he dashed out the door.

  I twirled the ice in my glass with my finger, sighed noisily and said, “Henri, I’m not interested in excerpts from Henri Cooper’s Complete Guide to Etiquette for Divorced Parents. Your dad and I get along perfectly fine the way we are. When are you going to stop trying to turn back the clock?”

  “I’m not trying to do any such thing,” she said huffily. “And besides, you said it yourself, you get along fine. So why can’t we just be together as a family?”

  “Because you and your brother don’t even live at home anymore, for one thing, and because I really don’t want to do thirty to life at the Women’s Correctional Institute in Raleigh, which is exactly what would happen if I tried to live full-time with your father again. You and your brother have got to give up this fantasy.”

  “But … ”

  “No buts. I’m not going to discuss it another second.”

  “Okay.” She took another sip of her drink and moved on to her second-favorite topic: her love life. How the latest amour de jour just wasn’t working out, how she planned to extricate herself from the relationship and still remain friends, yadda yadda yadda.

  Around midnight I pulled two old oversized T-shirts from my bag, threw one to Henri and headed to the bathroom to change. I don’t remember ever actually owning any pajamas. When I came out, Henri was sprawled on her side of the king bed snoring softly. I slipped under the covers on my side, turned out the light, and smiled at the promise of teasing her with the snoring thing later.

  FOUR

  The next morning, a Tuesday, I was up and dressed at seven-thirty in my summer “uniform” for field work, which consisted of a form-fitting, short-sleeve T-shirt and skinny, straight-leg designer jeans. Designer jeans because the denim is soft, stretchy, and lightweight when compared to old-style jeans. Form-fitting garments because they are vital in the constant battle to keep ticks and other creepy crawling critters from finding their way under your clothes. And, if they do, they are mashed against your skin so it makes it easier to detect them when they move. Fitting my laces into the eyelets of my field boots and executing a quick double knot, I was ready to go hunt down Gladys.

  I left the still-sleeping Henri a note and took off for the Five-Eight Café, which besides being located on Highway 58 and operating from five a.m. to eight p.m., serves a mean bowl of grits and some stand-up coffee. I knew Henri would want me to have breakfast with her at the Morning Glory before she returned to Raleigh, but I wanted some space.

  I sat down at a gray metallic-flaked Formica table—not just reminiscent of the fifties but actually from the fifties—ordered coffee, and started going over my field notes.

  The waitress hadn’t even come by when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

  “I can’t believe it. Twice in two days?”

  Nash Finley. A warm rush washed over me, dropped straight to my lap, and snuggled in. “I could say the same thing,” I said.

  “The Belgrade foreman wasn’t at the quarry yesterday. Had to go back today. Aren’t you going to invite me to sit, Cleo?”

  I motioned to the chair across from me.

  Nash pulled out the chrome and red plastic chair. I stared at him, realized I was fanning myself with the menu, and set it aside.

  He pulled a cigarette from his T-shirt pocket.

  I wrinkled my nose.

  He put the pack back and said, “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were prospecting.”

  “Yeah, but because you used to be a geologist, you know better. No proposed roads so no need for finding rock to crush up and put into asphalt, right?”

  A bright-eyed young waitress in a white uniform with a fake camellia pinned to her ample bust appeared, bent across our table, swiped it with a greasy wet cloth, and said, “Ya’ll having the early bird—two scrambled eggs, grits, and bacon?”

  “That’s good for me,” I said and looked at Nash.

  Nash nodded at the waitress and she bustled off. “Well, just because there aren’t any proposed roads down this way for the next twenty years doesn’t mean you haven’t heard insider information from one of Bud’s cronies at the DOT,” he said and flashed one of his sparkling smiles. Damn, he was pretty. “I’m just curious, that’s all. And I miss the shop talk you and I used to have when we worked together.” His right hand lay next to mine on the table. He extended his index finger, crooked it over my wrist and rubbed it gently.

  I slowly withdrew my hand, but shook my head and smiled in spite of myself. Usually I’d be miffed at someone underestimating me so blatantly, but Nash was a curious mix of lovable, harmless good guy and dark, mysterious sex object. Besides, talking shop was definitely not what I was interested in doing with him anymore, but the cautious side of me still had questions.

  “Okay, Nash. So at the risk of sounding like someone from one of those reality dating shows, why didn’t you call me when you moved to Raleigh?”

  “In the first place, I can’t imagine you watching a reality dating show, and in the second place … well, we weren’t getting anywhere, were we? I mean, what was I supposed to think? I’d tried all my best moves. Just couldn’t get you in the sack,” he said with a big grin.

  I gave him my best horrified look and quickly scanned the nearby tables to see if anyone had overheard.

  He tilted his head like a curious dog and said, “Have you looked in the mirror lately? A woman who looks like you … I figured I just wasn’t doing it for you. Figured you were waiting for … whatever it is you women wait for.”

  I tried to think of a witty remark, but my voice was trapped somewhere. Thankfully the waitress delivered our orders and as we dug into our food, I had the feeling he was as grateful as I for some time to think.

  We finished eating and I was tucking my napkin under the heavy crockery plate when Nash said, “Maybe we could start over. Be friends this time.”

  “Let me give that some thought,” I interrupted. “Right now, I’ve got places to go and people to see.”

  Friends? Not likely. Something else? Maybe.

  Before going to Gladys’s house, I needed to get rid of the mud and broomstraw on the side of the Jeep, so I pulled into the local car wash. I’d deal with the scratches and dents when I got back to Raleigh. While I waited, I flipped open my cell to call the vet and check on Tulip. A perky receptionist pronounced Tulip patched up and ready to go home anytime. I said to let her rest another day, that I’d pick her up on the way back to Raleigh.

  An attendant brought the Jeep around—washing had definitely improved its appearance—and I eagerly jumped in to check off number one on my list of important things to do today: talk to Gladys about what to expect when the drill crew arrived.

  As I approached Gladys’s house a little shiver ran down my spine. I certainly didn’t want another run-in with her darling kiddies. Anxiety turned into disappointment though as I bumped down the dirt road and her house came into view. There were no cars in the driveway or parking area.

  She still wasn’t home.

  I considered driving back into town and looking for her car, then decided that, for the next few hours at least, my time could best be spent finishing my grid. If she wasn’t home by lunch, I’d go looking for her then.

  At the site, I hesitated before getting out of the car. Should I strap on my 380 Beretta or my baby nine? I decided against it. After all, yesterday had undoubtedly been just a hunting accident. I wasn’t about to shoot at someone just for being
stupid. And the rattler? Well, I guess it’s feasible that the varmint crawled in the Jeep several days ago when I was airing it out after Tulip had horked up a half-digested squirrel on the seat.

  The morning went by quickly. I marked the location of drill holes and core samples with flags and tape like a woman possessed. I was flagging the second half of the 150-acre field of relatively clean Coastal Bermuda hay that had just received its first cutting of the summer. Since Gladys still had this part of her land under cultivation, she’d wanted me to synch my testing with her hay baling.

  By noon, sweat was plastering my ponytail to the back of my neck so I wiggled my finger down to the bottom of my jeans pocket and fished out a piece of essential field equipment: a rubber band, one of those clear ones that won’t tangle in your hair. I wadded my hair into a ball and made a few quick loops of the band around it. I tried to fan a little of the humid air under my damp T-shirt, but it did little to cool me and the rumble in my stomach was turning into a full-blown protest. Time for lunch.

  Making my way back to the Jeep, I stopped at an old well beside a tenant house that had seen better days. The presence of water made this another perfect location for taking a core sample.

  I pulled a roll of bright yellow surveyor’s tape and a marker from my back pocket, tied a long strand of it to an old four-by-four corner post that held up what was left of a rickety tin roof and numbered it. Then, because it is impossible to stand next to a well and not look into it, I leaned my elbows on the wide stone rim to gaze down at the water below. I wondered how far it was to the surface. Looked like about twenty feet. When I was getting ready to spit and refine my calculation, I noticed a shape in the far shadows.

  Something rather large and black was down there.

  I moved to the other side of the well and squinted into the shadow, using my hands to block out the sunlight. But I still couldn’t make heads or tails of what I was seeing. A nylon rope, presumably attached to a bucket, hung from an overhead crank down into the water. I reached for it. My intention was to pull it to the object and see if I could get a sense of it by touching it with the rope.

  I’m five-nine, but the width of reinforcing cinder block around the old stone well made it so I couldn’t quite reach the rope. Straining, I pushed myself out over the well wall and reached for the rope again.

  You know how it is when you’re about to do something stupid but can’t stop yourself, so you do it anyway? Well, that’s how this was. One minute I was stretched to the max, reaching for the rope with one hand, the other on the wall, and the next minute my feet seemed to lift off the ground and I was dropping like a rock to the water. Fortunately, I’d rolled in the air so I smacked the surface flat on my back.

  I came up sputtering. “Goddamnit!” I yelled and punched the water with my fist. “You idiot!” Cursing a few more times, I grabbed the rope, willing myself to calm down and assess the situation.

  That’s when I realized two things. One, there was definitely a bucket at the end of the rope. It was submerged about three feet below me. In fact, I was standing on it—it was what was keeping my shoulders and arms out of the water. And two, the large black object reeked. I mean it seriously stunk. I’d smelled deer carcasses in the woods and this was similar, only way worse.

  I reached over and gingerly touched the object. A shiver shot through my body that wasn’t caused by the chilly water. The object was wrapped in heavy-gauge black plastic. White plastic clothesline held the bundle closed, and closer inspection revealed a loop caught on a sharp stone in the wall, thus keeping the stinking object from sinking.

  I probed the bundle a little harder and heard a soft popping sound as several large gas bubbles erupted from underneath it, creating even more of a stench. One bubble was so vile my eyes burned and I retched up what was left of my breakfast grits. No doubt about it, whatever was inside the bundle was well past dead, and I did not want to be anywhere near it.

  With Olympic strength I never knew I possessed, and using the nylon rope twisted around one leg as a boost, I shimmied up the well like a monkey with his tail on fire. They say hard work is its own reward so maybe I’ve got years of working outdoors to thank for the strength to pull myself hand-over-hand up the rope. I don’t know, but my high school gym teacher would have been proud. When I reached the top of the well, I swung my free leg over the rim, grabbed a corner post, pulled myself to the edge and collapsed in a soggy heap on the solid ground.

  I lay there until my heart stopped trying to hammer through my rib cage and my breathing returned to normal, then sat up and wrapped my arms around my knees. I wanted to cry, not only for my bad luck in finding what I was pretty sure was a body in the well, but because I had a sinking feeling I knew whose body it was.

  I trekked back to the Jeep, retrieved my cell from my purse, and dialed 911.

  FIVE

  There was now no way to keep my site a secret until I completed my testing. In a little over an hour, the flag-strewn field was swarming with deputies, detectives, and an assortment of crime scene investigators from the Onslow County Sheriff’s Department. It was indeed a human body in the well. I had answered the sheriff’s repetitious questions as to why I was on the property and how I came to fall into the well. Now I was getting time off for good behavior.

  Or so I hoped. But it didn’t last long, because Sheriff Sonny Evans soon reappeared by my side.

  “Ma’am,” he said, fanning himself with his hat, his face red from the heat, “we’re fixin’ to load up the body now but before we go, I’m wondering, how much longer will you be on Miz Walton’s property?”

  “As long as it takes for me to complete my tests. Even if it turns out to be Gladys—um, Miz Walton—in the body bag, it won’t stop me from testing or exercising my option if I choose to do so. My contract is with her or her heirs,” I said.

  Sheriff Evans shifted his weight. He was a beefy man, in his late fifties I’d guess. “And you think her kids would want you to keep on testing … that is, if it is her … ?”

  I squirmed a little. “Why wouldn’t they? My contract would pay them way more money than they’d get if they developed the land.”

  “So you’re saying her heirs would get this option money you told me about?”

  “That’s correct. And royalty money.” Seeing where his thoughts were headed, I added, “Of course, we don’t even know who it is yet.”

  “No. But this being her land and all, it simply offers food for thought that them lazy kids of hers would get all that money if she was gone. You did say you haven’t seen or spoken with Miz Walton in over two weeks, right?”

  Well, well, I thought. Robert Earle and Shirley seem to have a reputation in the county. “That’s right, Sheriff. I’ve been away on another consulting job. I’ve tried to call her but with no luck. As soon as I got back to this job yesterday, I went by and she still wasn’t home. Her car wasn’t there this morning either.”

  The sheriff nodded, then said thoughtfully, “Even though the body looks to be pretty decomposed, a lot of things could affect that, being wrapped in a plastic tarp, being in water. We’ll just have to wait for the medical examiner over in Chapel Hill to tell us who this poor soul is and when they died. It may take some time.”

  We both paused to consider the implications.

  “In the meantime, we’ll start a search for Miz Walton. And I’ll have a talk with Robert Earle and Shirley. Let them know what we found up here.”

  “Well, if you don’t need me any longer … ” I ducked back into the Jeep, opened the glove compartment, pulled out my business cards, and gave him one.

  “Please let me know the minute you find out who that is,” I said, nodding in the direction of the ambulance as it bumped out of the pasture and onto the dirt road.

  “I sure will.” He studied me in something resembling admiration. “You know? You’re one strong lady to be able to pull yoursel
f out of that well.”

  Replacing his hat, he tipped it courteously and hurried back to the crime scene.

  I was ready to pack it in. I left a message on Henri’s voicemail telling her I was headed home. I try to always let her know where I am. Before returning to the Morning Glory to pack up, however, and since, owing to the July heat, my clothes were now almost dry, I made a quick swing by Irene’s house.

  Her Honda was still in the drive. The hummingbird feeder was now completely dried out. Even the line of ants that had been mining the feeder for dried sugar crystals had given up and left. It was probably a waste of time to knock on the door, but I did so anyway. No answer.

  Still engaged in wishful thinking, I walked around to the back of the house. Maybe Irene had a garden or a tomato patch, and I’d find her there. Sure enough, I found a garden, but no Irene. Just bees, bugs, and lots of weeds.

  Since I was here anyway, I figured I might as well jiggle the back door for the second time in as many days. I climbed the cinder-block steps, crossed the porch and tapped halfheartedly on the door. Silence. The door was still locked.

  I looked around the yard. A floor freezer, a small wooden table and chairs, an old wooden lingerie rack, a charcoal grill. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  I went back to the Jeep and sat there for a few minutes. Then, because I just couldn’t stop myself from committing a federal offense, I got out and walked over to Irene’s mailbox. Well, maybe it would be okay just to look inside the box, as long as I wasn’t shuffling through stuff or taking anything.

  Quite a bit of mail was crammed in the box. It certainly looked like more than a few days’ worth. Near the bottom of the pile I found a postcard. It was from Gladys’s sister in Venice, Florida. That made her Irene’s cousin.