Tin Foil (Imogene Museum Mystery #4) Page 3

  I pulled over the wheeled tool cabinet and rummaged through the drawers until I located a mid-sized crowbar. I also donned a pair of sturdy rubber gloves. After a few bad experiences, they’re now my standard attire when opening crated shipments.

  The first lid popped off with a cracking screech. Vicious looking rusty staples, two inches long, jutted from the edges like claws. I dodged back to the paperwork and checked the shipment date — ten days ago. As a tropical island nation, Indonesia has to be humid, but the staples sure had rusted fast.

  Tetanus is a hazard of the job. I gingerly set the lid, prongs up, aside and pawed through the dried grass used as cushioning and insulation. I grasped a firm rim and pulled out a reddish-brown, pot-bellied jug. The burnished surface glowed with a patina from countless hands. I ran a finger over a glaze drip. Functional and beautiful — the truest definition of folk art, and my favorite types of articles to write display descriptions for.

  I snapped on a spotlight and examined the jug under better illumination. A hand-tooled maker’s mark in the base. The glaze actually had a lot of charcoal black in it, and gradated across the mahogany color to a dark green tinge. Subtle richness. It’s amazing how, when you study something that at first glance appears simple, you can find a wealth of details. Whoever made this jug took great pride in their work.

  It’s a good thing I live in an RV. If I had the space of a standard house, I’d collect beautiful items until there wasn’t breathing room left. The Imogene is like a private storage locker holding my vicarious collections.

  “I thought you must be here, but I couldn’t find you.” Frankie — Frances Cortland — the Imogene’s gift shop manager, walked up. Plump and pretty in a burgundy pantsuit and dangly turquoise jewelry, she leaned in to look at the jug. “Gorgeous.”

  I don’t know how she manages to appear so put together in spite of the heat. Her brown helmet hair was perfectly symmetrical, and she smelled faintly of — was it jasmine? The only things that change about her from one day to the next are the color of her pantsuits and her perfumes.

  “I finished the email newsletter and sent it to you for approval.” She checked her watch. “And I have another hour before I need to open for the day. Want help?”

  “It’s grungy work.” I offered my gloved hands as evidence.

  “I’ll handle this end.” Her cheek dimpled as she smiled and patted one of the transit carts where we organize new arrivals for documentation. She set the jug on its side on the thick pad.

  I unpacked two-handled pots, water vessels, bowls in various sizes, and even a large lidded cooking kettle, handing each one to Frankie as I brushed them free of the raffia-like packing material. It was back-breaking work. Most of the crates took several rounds of prying with my full weight levered on the crowbar to crack open. Artifacts do need to be packed securely, but that also means someone on the receiving end gets a lot of exercise.

  I squatted, resting for a moment.

  “Three more,” Frankie said, checking her watch again. “Want me to take a turn?”

  “Not with that manicure.” I grinned. “I got it.” Frankie’s the public face of the museum. I’m behind-the-scenes, and like it that way.

  I jabbed the crowbar under the next lid and pressed on it, bouncing a little. Whiffs of something disgusting escaped.

  “Ugh. What is that?” Frankie held the back of her hand against her nose.

  “I don’t know.” My voice was muffled because I spoke through a wad of t-shirt I’d pulled up over the lower half of my face.

  “Take it outside.” Frankie waved her arms vigorously as though she could whoosh the stench away. It was a little too late for that.

  I held my breath and heaved. I got an arm under the crate and balanced it against my hip. It’s difficult to maintain proper lifting posture when you’re trying not to inhale. The rough edges scraped welts in my skin.

  I wedged past Frankie as she propped the door open, lugged the crate up the ramp then dropped it next to a dumpster.

  “Just throw it away,” Frankie said.

  “I can’t. What if it’s the most valuable piece in the whole shipment?”

  Frankie scurried back to the basement and returned with the crowbar. She handed it to me and backed away with her hands over her mouth. So much for assistance.

  Every leveraging pry with the crowbar released a new burst of a powerful, sickening odor. Like roadkill, but worse. I’ve had live insects scuttle out of crates before, but this didn’t smell alive.

  The lid broke, and I yanked off the loosest chunk. The packing material was moist and moldering, a brown, stringy mass. I gagged.

  Frankie stomped and flapped her hands. “What is it?” she squealed from her safe distance.

  “This one got wet, or something,” I rasped. My shirt clung to my back, and my hands sweated inside the rubber gloves. Whatever was in the crate had probably been cooked to death — first in the belly of a cargo plane, then a rail car, then a semi-trailer, then a delivery van — all metal containers that can get both extremely hot and extremely cold.

  I hacked off the rest of the lid. What now? I didn’t want to touch it.

  I poked the curved end of the crowbar into the center of the reeking mess, felt something a little firmer and hooked it. I pulled and pulled, and lifted out a bright green snake, about two feet long.

  Frankie screamed — the arcing wail of an air raid siren. In hindsight, I should have dropped the snake back into the crate to keep it out of Frankie’s view. But I stood there like an idiot with my mouth open and a snake dangling from the crowbar.

  Frankie worked into a lather. It did not take long.

  At first, she mimicked an Olympic sprinter, knees and elbows pumping, cheeks puffing like a bellows, except she wasn’t going anywhere. Then she got traction, sprang toward me, grabbed the crowbar and flung the snake against the side of the dumpster.

  Frankie whirled the crowbar in a clanging cacophony against the pavement, the dumpster, and occasionally made thudding contact with the snake’s limp body.

  I wanted to know what kind of snake it was, and it was quickly being pounded into pulp. Frankie was on panicked autopilot. The poor thing was going to put her back out swinging like that.

  I crouched behind her, waiting for a moment when I was safe from the flailing weapon, then lunged and hugged her hard, pinning her arms to her side. “Whoa, whoa. It’s dead.”

  Frankie dropped the crowbar on my foot, and I grunted.

  “Are you sure?” she whimpered.

  “Yep. Come on.” I turned her away from the snake and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Inside.”

  Frankie’s breathing returned to normal in the kitchen after two glasses of water and half a mug of coffee. We sat on metal folding chairs facing each other, and I examined her for signs of returning sanity.

  Her hair hung in limp clumps — the hairspray shield had been unable to withstand such a sustained barrage. Her mascara had collected in dark circles under her eyes, and her jewelry was askew. The pantsuit was unscathed. She was still shaking.

  “Want to tell me about it?” I asked.

  “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,” Frankie whispered.

  “The Rudyard Kipling story?”

  Frankie nodded. “Illustrated. It was the summer I was seven, and I’d selected that book from the library. The story disturbed me, the black cobra images, and I went to find my mother — to tell her. She was in the garden. While we were talking, a garter snake slithered out from between two tomato plants.” She shuddered. “Since then, I’ve never been able to — I can’t—” Frankie exhaled. “I just can’t—”

  I patted her knee. “It’s okay. I have the same thing about spiders. The flatter they are, the better they are.”

  Frankie giggled faintly.

  “Do you need to take the day off?”

  “No, no.” Frankie ran a hand over her hair and pulled it away quickly. “Oh dear. I’ll just freshen up. Give me a few minutes?”

  �
�Of course. I’d be surprised if we had many visitors today.”

  My phone rang as Frankie hurried from the kitchen, already primping things back into place.

  “Meredith?” Sheriff Marge said. “Got your message. George’s taken a turn for the worse. No visitors allowed.”

  “What?” I stood and clutched the edge of the counter.

  “Fever and respiratory complications. The doc’s switching antibiotics and trying some other things I didn’t catch.”

  “How bad?” My stomach clenched, and I sagged against the refrigerator.

  “I was with him for a few minutes before they kicked me out. Pale, labored breathing. They said he didn’t wake up all last night.”

  I groaned. “Any word on the explosive devices?”

  “Not yet. But we have a couple reports of a stranger on the campground property Sunday night. People didn’t think much of it at the time, but they’re remembering now. Descriptions are consistent, but no one recognized him. Arrived and left by boat.”

  “Native fishing rights aren’t worth injuring or killing someone over.”

  “You wouldn’t think so. Maybe some other kind of feud.”

  “Not George. He’s the most peaceful man I know. But he did say he’d seen something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. He wanted to talk to Pete about it.”

  “Pete?” Sheriff Marge’s voice pitched up. “Then it would have to do with the river, activity on the water.”

  “Or in a port somewhere.”

  “Until George can talk to us—” Sheriff Marge sighed. “Later.” She hung up.

  I rubbed my temples. George, George, George — what did he know that put his life in danger? Intentionality hadn’t been proven yet. Maybe it was all a horrible accident. An accident I would have shared in but for George’s quick response.

  I wiggled my toes in my driving mocs and watched the tassels bounce. I had to do something for George. Pete was where? — Longview? Picking up a wood chip load. I checked the clock on my phone. I never know when is a good time to call Pete. But I could leave a message, and he’d call me back when he wasn’t steering the tug or linking up barges. He’d want to know about George.

  I blinked back tears and punched in Pete’s number. At the beep, I left the essential details as quickly as I could.

  I stuffed the phone back in my pocket and stared at the dripping faucet without seeing it for several minutes. Then I snagged a paper towel and polished off water spots clouding the stainless steel surface.

  Keep moving. I had a snake carcass to clean up.

  oOo

  I got the call from the prosecuting attorney at 4:45 while I was writing an introduction to the WWII photography exhibit. With George’s condition nagging on the periphery, I was struggling to focus on wartime scarcity, austerity and the collective stiff upper lip when I learned the jury plus two alternates had been selected and sent home for the night. It’d been a challenge to find people who asserted they didn’t know every grisly detail and hadn’t already formed an opinion of the defendant’s guilt. I suspected half of them were flexing the truth in order to have the bragging rights to sitting in on the county’s spectacle of the decade. The trial of my ex-fiancé’s murderer would begin the next morning.

  CHAPTER 4

  By earlier arrangement with Sheriff Marge, I took a secondary route into Lupine, the county seat — past the county fairgrounds where crews were setting up amusement rides and a queue of horse trailers waited to unload at the livestock barns. I drove to the modular building perched on concrete blocks in the middle of an abandoned grocery store parking lot.

  The courthouse long ago ran out of room for all the necessary offices, so Sheriff Marge, her deputies and office manager/dispatcher are temporarily housed on the property that might someday become a new corrections facility. They’ve been in the modular for eight years, with no groundbreaking in sight.

  Deputy Archie Lanphier sat on the steps, long legs outstretched, waiting for me. He stood quickly and caught his gun belt before it slid down, averting the potential that it would take his pants along with it. The man has no hips to speak of.

  “Mornin’, Meredith.”

  “Thanks for the chauffeur service.”

  Archie opened his cruiser’s passenger door for me. “It’s a zoo at the courthouse. Some nut group protesting capital punishment showed up at the crack of dawn. They’re picketing all the entrances, including the back door. We’re going to sneak you in through the jail.”

  “But Fulmer hasn’t been convicted yet. They don’t know what his sentence will be.”

  Archie grunted. “Exactly. By showing up, they’re reinforcing what everybody already thinks — that he’s guilty. Judge Lumpkin’s going to have his hands full with this one.”

  For a fleeting second, I felt sorry for Ed Fulmer. Then the memory of my ex-fiancé’s stiff body and the look of horror frozen on his face flashed across the back of my eyelids. I sucked in a breath.

  Archie must have heard me. “Doin’ okay?” he asked as he cranked the wheel and pulled onto Main Street.

  I nodded. “Just want to get it over with.”

  “Amen.”

  When Archie characterized the protesters as a nut group, I thought maybe he was expressing a cop’s frustration with people who don’t recognize the law and its stipulated consequences. Turns out he was being realistic, even understated.

  The specimens of humanity waving hand lettered placards on the courthouse lawn were smeared in orange, purple and red body paint. They wore wreaths of fake daisies on their heads and very little else. Clothing-optional social consciousness.

  “Wow,” I said, unable to verbalize further.

  “Yeah,” Archie said.

  Close to eighty people chanted and swung their signs in an awkwardly choreographed dance. All shapes and sizes were represented, none of them of model caliber. It was already so hot that the body paint was melting rapidly.

  The political atmosphere of Sockeye County is staunchly don’t-tread-on-me. But important components of that mindset are don’t-impose-upon-others and the Golden Rule. So while I suppose the county has its share of nudists, to the best of my knowledge, they stick to the woods and don’t flaunt their free expression for their neighbors. Besides, except for a couple months in the summer, it’s too cold to go without clothing. These people couldn’t possibly be local.

  “Isn’t that illegal?” I asked.

  “Where would we put ‘em?”

  Archie had a point. The jail in the basement of the Sockeye County courthouse has a whopping six cells with two bunks each. A big sheet strung across the guards’ walkway is what they use to separate genders when necessary. I guess they could do standing room only for a while, but that would foster further complaints from people who seemed already prone to taking offense.

  “Where did they come from?”

  Archie pulled through the opening in the privacy fence plus razor wire that restricted access to the jail entrance. The motorized gate closed behind us. “One of them — the fat whiskered one with a ponytail in purple paint — looks like Beeker Goyle. He actually lives in the next county over, but he’s known for raising a ruckus when he feels like it. He doesn’t have that many friends, so we think these people might be part of an online forum he’s mobilized. Word has it there’s been increased out-of-state traffic on the road to his place in the hills — tents, campers and clouds of marijuana smoke.”

  In prisoner management style, Archie clamped my elbow with a firm hand and ushered me down a ramp and into the dank bowels of the courthouse. We hurried through gray-green concrete corridors and boarded a sweltering elevator lit by a flickering florescent bulb. A metal cage bolted to the ceiling around the bulb prevented it from being tampered with.

  Riding the elevator was like clacketing up the long ramp of a wooden rollercoaster or maybe being winched jerkily up a mine shaft. Not that I’d done either one, and there’s a good reason for that. My stoma
ch lurched and I closed my eyes.

  “We’ll go in the side door.” Archie checked his watch. “Judge Lumpkin likes to start on time.”

  We exited the elevator into a vestibule I’d never seen before — dingy, with faded wood paneling and alternating brown and cream linoleum tiles. The courthouse building is about the same age as the Imogene Museum, and their private areas are equally decrepit. County maintenance crews do their best to put a good face on things, but there just aren’t funds enough to keep stuff behind the scenes from falling apart.

  Through an open door, I spotted the judge making adjustments to his robe with the help of a fluttering female half his height and twice his age. And Judge Lumpkin is nearing retirement.

  “Hold still, Horace,” the bird-like pewter-haired lady commanded. She plucked at his sleeves, trying to pull the shoulders straight.

  The judge snatched handfuls of black polyester in front and lifted the hem from his ankles to his knees. “I need to get air flow.” He ran a finger inside his collar. “I’m already dripping.”

  She handed him a pair of black-rimmed eyeglasses. “Put these on. You need to look contemplative.”

  “I know how to get dressed, Myrtle.”

  “Huh,” she snorted. “Tell that to the slew of reporters in your courtroom. You’d be wearing white socks if it weren’t for me.”

  Archie chuckled and guided me into a narrow hallway. He leaned close and whispered, “Judge keeps a fan under his desk. A couple years back, he poked a hole in the wall to run an extension cord from an outlet in his private bathroom. You’ll see when you’re up on the stand. Sometimes he slips his shoes off too.” Archie winked. “Just tellin’ you so you’re not shocked.”

  Archie opened a door and gestured me through. As soon as I stepped into the courtroom, I knew why Judge Lumpkin had jerry-rigged a fan. I gasped in the stifling heat. Apparently, air conditioning is not an improvement the county can afford.

  Huge casement windows lined the long opposite wall above chair rail-topped wood paneling. They were all wide open, but since they faced south, sunlight streamed in unmitigated by a breeze.