All the Old Lions (A Thea Barlow Mystery, Book One) Read online

  He tried to move me away to close the truck door, but I stopped him. “I’m going with you.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “Oh, but I am.”

  “There’s no room.”

  “I’ll sit on the floor.”

  “With your head under the dash?” He lifted me out of the way, kicked the door shut and pulled me into a fierce full-bodied kiss that held more anger than passion. My initial startled response turned quickly to struggle. His arms tightened, then just as roughly, he put me from him.

  “Catch,” he said with a bitter grimace, and flung the blanket from his shoulder at me. “If I kill her you can turn me in.”

  The blanket covered my head. I struggled with it, instinctively trying to keep the ends from falling into the sodden mess I stood in. If I’d just thrown the damned thing down I might have been able to catch up with him before the tires caught and the truck skidded out of the yard.

  I stomped into the house, and after a moment to calm down, was surprised, or perhaps comforted, to find I was more furious than apprehensive. Did I really think Minnie was in danger from Max? No, I didn’t. But reason demanded caution. I just hated being bested by him. Hated being stuck here with nothing to do. How long would it take him? Forty minutes or more to get to town, and how long would he stay at the hospital? An hour? Another forty minutes to get back here. If he came back. Surely he wouldn’t leave me waiting in suspense. I’d kill him if he did.

  Pacing aimlessly, I kicked at the clumps of mud I’d scattered throughout the house. I felt helpless. How could people stand to live like this? Totally isolated. My car was useless, mired in the mud at the bottom of the hill. I could take Minnie’s car, though the chances of getting any vehicle without four-wheel drive out of the yard and down to the graveled road were slim. If I could get to Enright’s I could at least telephone the hospital and tell them Max was bringing Minnie. How long would it take me to walk to Enright’s? Probably longer than it would take Max to get to town. I was stuck here, completely useless, stewing in my own juices.

  Making coffee is a comfortable ritual, and I made the most of it, banging the pot around, making a lot of noise. While the coffee perked, I looked for Minnie’s car keys on the off chance that if Max didn’t return soon, and it stopped raining, I might want to give her car a try. I went to the office. The magazine that had fallen from Minnie’s chest while she lay on the couch was on the floor. I picked it up and tossed it on the table. One of her shoes was also on the floor by the end of the couch. I picked it up, too, and absently slapped the worn brown loafer against my palm.

  Funny I hadn’t noticed she’d lost a shoe, but in the confusion I supposed it wasn’t surprising. But why, I wondered, had she gone to the dugout with only one shoe on? She must have been in an awful hurry. And why go to the dugout, anyway? My mind spun back to those hours, trying to arrange them, fit things together.

  When I returned from the Enrights, Minnie was sleeping on the couch. Right? I had gone upstairs, changed my clothes and come back down. No, wait, I thought, remembering the crazy one-footed dance I’d gone through putting on my jeans. I had heard something, a loud enough sound to startle me, and assumed it was the magazine falling off her chest, but would a magazine have made that much racket? Maybe not. Could someone else have been in the house and made his escape while I was upstairs?

  I poured a cup of coffee and paced some more, hunting for a logical scenario. Perhaps the same person who broke into the house the other night had returned, for whatever reason, and—

  “The manuscript,” I yelped. Minnie had been working on the manuscript from the time she got up this morning. I ran into the office and looked through her desk; it wasn’t there. I knew she had a hiding place for it somewhere, but would she have bothered to hide her work if she was just taking a break? And if she had finished working on the manuscript wouldn’t she have left it out, ready to give to me when I left? She had no way of knowing I’d changed my plans. I hadn’t wanted to bother her when I went out for my walk, nor had I disturbed her when I’d gone to the Enrights for the stretchers.

  She could have finished her work early, and not knowing where I was, put it in safe-keeping until I was ready to leave, particularly if she wanted to take a nap. So it was possible that the manuscript hadn’t been within ready reach of an intruder. I began a systematic search through the house. But there was no way of knowing if I had simply failed to find the secret place, or if someone else had taken it. Eventually, I gave up in frustration and, with nerves jumping, returned to my coffee and contemplation.

  I began again and started with the premise that someone had been in the house taking advantage of a sleeping Minnie for his own purposes, perhaps searching for whatever he hadn’t found during his first attempt. Once again he gets stopped by my arrival, hides, then escapes when I go upstairs. He might well have seen the dog in the barn, just as I had, and made the most of a chance to get me out of the house. He’d tied the dog, whipped him until he made enough racket to bring me running, leaving Minnie alone again.

  The man had returned—that meant he had not gotten what he was after—Minnie wakes and catches him. In the ensuing struggle she loses her shoe, breaks away, and runs for the nearest hiding place, the dugout. Then what? She faints? No, there was something much more wrong with her than a faint. He could have struck her some way that didn’t leave an obvious mark.

  An obvious mark. Cause of death. What had Hank said about Cora? There was a slight bruise on the side of her head. Could she have been killed by a blow? Even if it didn’t leave much of a mark? That would make it murder. I could still see Cora flipping through Minnie’s pictures, searching for something. Could she have been killed for some reason connected to Minnie?

  I didn’t know enough about Cora to even contemplate why someone might want to kill her. My mind whirled. There were too many questions and not enough answers. Cora could have gotten that bruise when she fell. The only certain thing was that what had happened to Minnie today couldn’t have been done by Cora.

  But Minnie could have been struck. Something had been wrong with her face, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. Or maybe her assailant thought he killed her and had thrown her in the dugout, or thrown her in, thinking she’d be dead by the time she was found. Either choice seemed grisly, but entirely possible. And had the intruder, or had he not, found the manuscript and our little pile of photographs?

  Or, I thought, recognizing a distinct possibility, was I building a mountain of melodrama out of a shoe that could have been dropped to relieve a bunion?

  Thirteen

  I wished Max were here. I needed someone to bounce ideas off. And what about Max? Could he have done this? I flopped down on the couch and attempted to erase all my feelings about him (ambivalent as they were) and face the situation with cold-blooded clarity. Max was the one who had sent me away from the house in the first place. Certainly he had the time to accomplish everything I’d envisioned and been waiting at the pickup when I got there. Why he would harm Minnie was another question. He seemed to be genuinely fond of her. If he didn’t want the story of his grandfather’s hanging revived, well, he was in a better position than most to simply plead his case with Minnie. And if she printed the story anyway, the discomfort, embarrassment, invasion of privacy, or whatever it was that concerned him, didn’t seem of great enough consequence to warrant attempted murder, or even assault.

  How badly did Max want her land? And wouldn’t he stand a better chance of getting it with her alive? This brought up the question of wills, and if Minnie had one, and who would inherit if she did or didn’t. Too many imponderables. The bottom line seemed to be that I just couldn’t imagine Max dumping someone in the hopes they would die. No, I thought, rather grimly, if Max wanted someone dead, they’d be dead.

  On the other hand I had no difficulty at all visualizing Potts throwing Minnie around, or anyone else for that matter. Regardless of his age, he was certainly strong enough; he had
easily lifted me off my feet at our first encounter. And I could actually see him flailing the dog with the zeal of a Penitente.

  I tried not to be blinded by my prejudice. Jim too, had the time and opportunity. Only Helby seemed to be in the clear. Jim could have stopped here on his way to town, or not gone to his meeting at all. But there hadn’t been any car tracks on Minnie’s road when I’d returned from the Enrights. Surely I would have noticed them. I cursed myself for not being more observant. The thought of someone prowling around on foot in this country where everyone was so dependent on vehicles was chilling. And where was that person now?

  That thought sent me scurrying off on a security check. I also collected an assortment of possible weapons which I stashed in various places throughout the rooms I used.

  The drone of the approaching pickup sent me racing to the back door. The rain had stopped. I peered into the darkness and watched the lights swing around the side of the house. Max trudged heavy-footed to the house. He pulled his overshoes off on the back steps and I unlocked the door.

  His eyes swept across me coldly and he headed for the coffee pot. “This coffee all right?” His voice echoed the tiredness that was evident on his face; the heavy lines of his mouth cut furrows through new stubble.

  “Fresh enough,” I said, then, half-dreading the answer, “Well, how is she?”

  “Okay.” He looked up. “Sorry, I should have said when I first came in. At least she’s still alive. She—”

  “Thank goodness,” I interrupted. Relief washed the tension away, and with it came a flood of words. “Someone must have been in the house, Max. I found Minnie’s shoe in the office.” Max shook his head, but I rushed on. “I think they meant to kill her; that’s why she was thrown in the dugout, in the hope we wouldn’t find her.”

  “Nobody touched her, Thea. She had a stroke.”

  I stopped mid-breath. “A stroke?”

  “Yes, I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “But who tied the dog?”

  “I don’t know. He might have been in the road, chasing a car or something. You’d be surprised how many people don’t like dogs.”

  “What about the shoe?” I asked, snatching it up from the counter where I’d placed it and waved it under his nose. “Would she go out to the dugout with only one shoe on?”

  “Look, I don’t know.” His voice was weary, on the verge of impatience.

  I paused thoughtfully and answered my own question. “After a stroke you often lose control of your feet. Her shoe could have fallen off without her realizing it. But Max,” I said, waving the shoe again, “why go to the dugout at a time like that? For a can of beans?”

  “Maybe she had the stroke in the dugout.”

  “Then why only one shoe?”

  “Thea, I don’t know. All I can tell you is that Minnie had a stroke and there were no other injuries. The doctor examined her thoroughly to be sure she didn’t have a concussion or broken bones from the fall. There was nothing. If you’d just quit waving that damned shoe around and tell me what you’re getting at, maybe I can help.”

  I told him the different scenarios I’d developed and the reasoning behind them.

  “It could have happened any of those ways,” he admitted when I had finished. “But the fact remains that Minnie wasn’t bodily injured. She had a stroke. A stroke can happen to anybody at any time.”

  I didn’t bother him with my brief worries about Cora’s death. More and more I felt like a victim of my own imagination. I remembered Minnie’s earlier reference to some health problems, and how she constantly rubbed her temples. Perhaps that had been an indication of an impending stroke.

  Max went on, “There is no evidence that another person was involved. I also agree that there are enough coincidences or strange incidents to warrant a certain amount of uneasiness. But until there’s something more concrete, or Minnie herself is able to tell us—”

  “How stupid of me,” I groaned. “And how callous I’ve been. Tell me about Minnie’s condition. Is she conscious? How much damage has been done? What’s the doctor’s prognosis?”

  “She was in a serious state of shock when we got there, and of course they wouldn’t let me see her, but the doctor said she was drifting in and out of consciousness. Her right side is paralyzed and she can’t speak. He said that was common for stroke patients and not necessarily permanent. Right now we’re simply to hope she has no more strokes.”

  I felt dreadful. Here I’d been fretting about stupid mysteries while Minnie’s life was in crisis, all her options reshuffled through no choice of her own. What would become of her now? Whether the damage caused by the stroke was major or minor she had surely been given another shove into the depths of loneliness. Who would take care of her? I staggered under the sudden weight of responsibility, but didn’t hesitate. I couldn’t leave now. Not until I knew how she would be taken care of.

  We settled into a spell of gloomy silence that I finally broke with one of those inane bon mots, that for all their stupidity provide speakers with some small comfort. “There’s so much that can be done now; rehabilitation and such.”

  Max had the good sense to say nothing. He put down his coffee cup and picked up the flashlight from the counter. “There’s one thing that still bothers me.” He headed for the door.

  “What? Where are you going?”

  “Your favorite place. The dugout. Want to come along?”

  “Of course.”

  We stepped out into darkness foully rank with a saturation that had reached deeply and found all the rotting things that nourish the earth. I squished along beside Max, hanging on to his arm to negotiate the narrow steps. The old wooden door had soaked up rain like a sponge and it took our combined effort to get it open.

  Max swung the flashlight beam into the corners and across the shelves we’d paid little attention to earlier. A sadiron, a broken pickle crock, empty glass jars. The light flickered to the far corner, then back.

  “Wait, Max. Put the light back in the corner.”

  He swung the beam and my eyes lit on a familiar shape hidden on a bottom shelf behind the door.

  “It’s a typing paper box.” I grabbed it and removed the lid. The pictures were there as well. “It’s Minnie’s manuscript. This is where she hid it.”

  Now that we knew why Minnie had gone to the dugout, everything fell in place. Minnie had finished the manuscript, and decided to hide it, for whatever reason. Maybe she was already feeling ill, and I wasn’t around to entrust her work to. Feeling woozy, or whatever, she had rested on the sofa. She could have been sleeping, or already felled by the stroke when I returned from the Enrights. When I went chasing after the dog, she had either roused from sleep and suffered the first effects of the stroke, or made enough of a recovery from the already received trauma to struggle after the thing she valued most, her manuscript. Perhaps she was afraid that if anything happened to her I’d never be able to find the manuscript. But the effort was too much and she collapsed for good inside the dugout.

  It all sounded terribly logical, and perhaps it was the anti-climactic-ness of it that made a part of me continue to struggle with this simple explanation.

  I was beat, worn to a frazzle. I couldn’t deal with the problem any more, or with the nagging inner imp that kept reminding me that everything Max had told me could be a lie. For all I knew Minnie might be lying in a ditch somewhere dead. But to what purpose? I was numb with speculation. Finally, with me clutching Minnie’s manuscript, Max and I stumbled off to our separate beds, having reached some kind of unspoken agreement that neither one of us was in any kind of mental state to begin unraveling the many uncertainties that lay between us.

  I slept late. The bedside clock showed nine-thirty when I bounded out of bed, slow to realize that Minnie wouldn’t be there to taunt me about late-risers. Max wasn’t around either, though he’d left a pot of still-warm coffee on the stove and his breakfast dishes in the sink. I took a long hot shower, washed my hair, and finally g
ot rid of every trace of yesterday’s mud.

  Back downstairs, I sat at the kitchen table and began a mental list of things to be done. Most important was Minnie’s welfare. I should bring some of her personal things to the hospital, and depending on the doctor’s report, I might need to go through her papers for insurance information. If she needed extensive rehabilitation care, there were agencies to consult. Everything depended on how incapacitated she was, and for how long. The problems seemed enormous. As far as I knew, she had no relatives that should be contacted.

  Max came in and plunked two enormous clumps of mud on the kitchen table. It took a few minutes to recognize them as the shoes I’d left mired in the hill.

  “I see you finally made it up,” he said with a trace of his old mocking humor.

  He looked vigorously alive, but as inscrutable as ever. I couldn’t imagine that those arms had held me, those lips had…He seemed like a stranger. Just as well, I thought with a pang.

  “Did you find out anything more about Minnie?”

  “No. If you weren’t up, I was going to Enright’s to phone the hospital. Now you can do it. I’ve about got that well put back together. When I’m finished we can go to town and see her, if you’d like.”

  “Yes, I’d like to.”

  He shrugged. “I guess we’re the closest to family she has.”

  “We’ll have to manage all the arrangements. Who’s going to take care of her, Max?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s see what the doctor says, before we worry about that.” He gave me a reassuring smile. “I got your car unstuck; it’s at the bottom of the hill, and a mess. You left the door open. The dog is in the barn pretending he’s invisible; I put out some food and water for him. I’ll take you to your car when you’re ready to go.”

  First I got some choice tidbits from the refrigerator and we took them to the barn for the dog. He was timidly eager to see us and more than happy with the extra treats. Max had put salve on his belly and it seemed to be healing properly.